A street named Mumia

The importance of keeping the struggle to free Mumia Abu-Jamal front and center was brought home here Sept. 6 at a meeting welcoming French activists who had been instrumental in the naming of a street in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis in honor of the Pennsylvania journalist and world-renowned death row activist.

Rafael Barontini, Julia Wright, Pam Africa and Patrick Braoezec, representative to the French National Assembly and a former mayor of Saint-Denis. WW photo: Joe Piette

The delegation included Julia Wright, daughter of the late African-American author Richard Wright; Patrick Braoue zec, representative to the French National Assembly and a former mayor of Saint-Denis; and youth activist Rafael Barontini, coordinator of the Mumia Committee of Saint-Denis.

Saint-Denis is a working-class town of more than 100,000 people, 80 percent of whom are Black and/or Arab. It already has a Che Guevara Avenue, a Bobby Sands Street and streets named after Spanish victims of the Franco dictatorship. Rue Mumia Abu-Jamal runs alongside Human Rights Square near Nelson Mandela Stadium.

Along with the street naming in April, the St.-Denis Mumia Committee conducted a campaign to inform Saint-Denis residents—many themselves victims of police brutality—about Abu-Jamal’s case and its significance to the international struggle against the racist death penalty.

Barontini reported that when a group of right wingers tried to stage a “renaming” of Rue Mumia by pasting up a sign reading “Rue Daniel Faulkner”—the Phila del phia police officer Abu-Jamal was accused of shooting—local residents met them with hostility and forced them to leave.

A primary goal of the delegation from France was to counter a vicious campaign by the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) and its allies, who are trying to prevent a new trial for Abu-Jamal. They have promoted anti-St. Denis resolutions at all levels of government. The resolutions, including one passed by Philadelphia City Council in May, are full of lies and distortions about the case, including newly concocted versions of the events of Dec. 9, 1981, when Faulkner was killed and Abu-Jamal was shot and brutally assaulted by Philadel phia police.

The Philadelphia City Council resolution also claims that Abu-Jamal has exhausted all appeals, ignoring the fact that the federal Third Circuit Court of Appeals, based in the city, approved Abu-Jamal’s request for an appeal on four counts last fall.

The delegation had been scheduled to meet with Philadelphia Mayor John Street, but decided to leave after being kept waiting for several hours. As they walked out, Street ran after them saying now they could meet, but Braouezec said no. He told Street that he wouldn’t meet with him after they were left for so long in the hall, but he’d be back with a delegation of French mayors to discuss Mumia Abu-Jamal’s case.

In his talk to the welcoming meeting, Braouezec described Saint-Denis as a working-class town with a strong tradition of welcoming immigrants. He raised the common struggles faced by the workers and poor, whether in Philadelphia or Harlem. Discrimination, police brutality, poverty, social injustice, segregation and unemployment all exist in France and were the primary causes of the uprisings there last November.

He concluded his talk with a quote from the late Ossie Davis: “Each generation has its moral obligation, and our obligation is to save Mumia Abu-Jamal.”