BROOKLYN, N.Y.
'Shaka Sankofa lives'
By
Imani
Henry
Brooklyn,
N.Y.
Three
hundred people packed Brooklyn's House of the Lord Church July 7 to celebrate
the life of murdered prisoner activist Shaka Sankofa, formerly known as Gary
Graham.
Sankofa
was executed by the state of Texas on June 22.
Sankofa,
a revolutionary leader, fought all the way to the death chamber. His last words
were a call to end the racist death penalty.
During
the three-hour program, speakers brought a similar message of fightback to the
primarily African American crowd.
The
program opened with video footage from Peoples Video Network of the heroic June
22 protest outside the Huntsville, Texas, death house. The Rev. Herbert Daughtry
then set the theme for the evening. Daughtry led the audience in chanting "Shaka
lives!"
Speakers
paid special tribute to Ashanti Chimurenga, a leader of the Shaka Sankofa/Gary
Graham Justice Coalition, for her tireless effort to bring international
attention to Sankofa's
case.
Chimurenga
talked about Sankofa's childhood. She spoke of his mother's struggle with a
mental disability and his father's drug addiction. She talked about how these
tragedies led to Sankofa's conviction for armed robbery as a
teenager.
"The
next time you walk by a homeless person or someone addicted to drugs and think
that you are better than them, think of Shaka," Chimurenga
said.
She
described her last conversations with Sankofa and his determination to live. She
called on the audience to follow his powerful example as a fighter against the
death
penalty.
"If
you knew that the bullet was coming for Malcolm X, what would you have done?"
she challenged the crowd. "We must resist these state-sanctioned
murders."
Larry
Holmes of Millions for Mumia/International Action Center talked about the
media's role in making Sankofa's "one the most public legal lynchings in
history."
He
called on the audience to take their rage and anger over Sankofa's murder to the
streets at this summer's Republican and Democratic conventions.
"We
need to go and tell [Texas Gov. George W.] Bush that he's a killer in
Philadelphia and we need to tell Gore he's a killer in Los Angeles. Let them
know that Shaka lives--through us."
Other
speakers included Lawrence Hayes, an innocent man who spent two years on New
York's death row; Zayd Muhammed of the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee;
Rachelle La Forrest of Hunter College Student Liberation Action Movement; Elombe
Brath of the Patrice Lumumba Coalition; Viola Plummer of the December 12th
Movement; and Herman Ferguson of the Jericho Amnesty Campaign. The church choir
and Welfare Poets performed.
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