SAN FRANCISCO
Rally for Mumia electrifies standing-room-only crowd
By
Brenda Sandburg
San Francisco
"Sometimes the case of one individual can be a touchstone, a
defining issue for an entire era," author and lesbian
transgender activist Leslie Feinberg told a standing-room-only
crowd attending a rally for political prisoner Mumia
Abu-Jamal.
Like the case of the Scottsboro Brothers, who in 1931 were
falsely accused of rape and sentenced to death by the state of
Alabama, Abu-Jamal's frame-up has sparked a mass movement,
Feinberg said.
The power of that movement filled the gallery hall at the
Mission Cultural Center in San Francisco on Sept. 24. The
event, featuring Feinberg, drew hundreds of people,
predominantly youth, from the lesbian/gay/bi/transgender
community, as well as others from the prisoners' rights and
progressive communities. It was the biggest Mumia Awareness
Week event in the Bay area.
The rally was sponsored by the National People's Campaign
and Rainbow Flags for Mumia. Joyce Miller--project coordinator
for Family Rights and Dignity, a project of the Coalition on
Homelessness-- and Saul Kanowitz of Rainbow Flags for Mumia
co-chaired the event.
The energy in the room was electrifying, intensified by the
powerful music of the Babatunde Lea trio. The power of unity
and the connections among all struggles for justice was the
theme that wove through the speeches and performances.
`Your struggle is mine!'
"As youth, especially as queer, gender-deviant, people of
color, we are so immersed in the everyday realities of trying
to survive, we often don't see the big picture," said Malachi,
a representative of the Lavender Youth Recreation and
Information Center. "If the system is going to change, we have
to continuously lift each other up and realize that your
struggle is mine."
Dorsey Nunn, program director of Legal Services for
Prisoners with Children, talked about how the struggle for
prisoners' rights is part of the battle for human rights in the
United States. He noted that there are 1.8 million people
incarcerated nationwide and 4.1 million on parole or
probation.
Nunn pointed out that in the state of California 40 percent
of African American males between the ages of 19 and 29 are
under the control of the criminal-justice system. One out of
eight African American males no longer has the right to vote as
a result of a prior conviction.
Nunn declared: "My question is not about prisoners' rights.
My question is about human rights, about racism, about sexism,
about classism, about fascism."
Other speakers included Gloria La Riva, an organizer of the
National People's Campaign, who gave an overview of Abu-Jamal's
case. La Riva noted how the Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death
Penalty Act of 1996 has blocked his efforts to get a new trial.
She said that under this law a federal court is prohibited from
reviewing arguments if they were rejected by a state court.
Abu-Jamal "has wakened a struggle against every form of
bigotry," La Riva said. "This is an historic event that shows
our solidarity."
Spoken-word artist Jimmy Salcedo of Producción a La
Brava and the International Action Center gave a powerful
performance, accompanied by his brother Manuel. Salcedo's words
echoed the age-old struggle for justice:
"The Revolution must be on the broadcast/cuz we're taking
some lessons and learning from the past/the federal government
taxes and is funding my own oppression,/this nation controls
the masses using police repression/Mumia has inspired a
cultural movement/peoples from all backgrounds, gender,
orientation, generations/rising up from the roots
movements/unite like a match that ignites and spreads to
consume."
`Mumia is all of us!'
Feinberg eloquently and passionately wove together all these
struggles and the role of the state in trying to silence those
fighting for justice.
"Why is the state so hell-bent on executing Mumia?" Feinberg
asked. "There's so much judicial misconduct in the case.
There're witnesses that weren't called, witnesses that were
intimidated, witnesses who said it wasn't him," she stated.
"And you could ask what's the big deal? Why not just give him a
new trial?'"
The answer is a simple one, she said. "Mumia is an African
American revolutionary. The state wants to silence the voice of
the voiceless."
Similarly, she said, the slave owners in Rome crucified
rebellious slaves. In the Middle Ages, the feudal landlords
burned people at the stake for being pagans or lesbians. And
after the Civil War the Northern industrialists withdrew
federal troops from the South and allowed the Southern
slavocracy to form the Ku Klux Klan, which carried out racist
lynchings.
"And we have seen legal lynching in this century of Sacco
and Vincetti, the Haymarket anarchists, labor leader Joe Hill,
and Ethel Rosenberg and Julius Rosenberg," Feinberg added.
If the state were to execute Abu-Jamal, she asked, "What
kind of message would it send to the NYPD cops who shot down
Amadu Diallo in cold blood? To the cops who killed Taisha
Miller in Los Angeles and were seen high fiving and using
racist slurs afterwards?
"What does it say to the 12 cops who were just suspended
from the LAPD for having shot and paralyzed and then framed a
young brother? And what message does it send to the
Philadelphia cops who just last year were accused of
fabricating hundreds of cases against African American and
Latino people?"
Feinberg pointed to the banner of Rainbow Flags for Mumia,
noting that these banners are seen everywhere in the struggle
for Mumia. "They mean that there is a significant part of the
lesbian and gay and bisexual and trans communities in this
country that are coming out and voting with their feet to win a
new trial for Mumia," Feinberg declared.
"And I think that's because we know that what happens to
Mumia is going to have a big impact on our movement," she
concluded, "and we also know that we have got to stand up and
do the right thing at any historical moment."
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