EMAJ EDUCATORS FOR MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
15 Years Educating and Organizing for Abu-Jamal and Social Justice
website: http://www.emajonline.org
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PRESS RELEASE
CONTACTS: Professor Johanna Fernandez, Baruch College (CUNY),
johanna_fernandez@baruch.cuny.edu, 917 930-0804;
Professor Mark Taylor, Princeton Theological Seminary, mark.taylor@ptsem.edu, 609 638-0806
STUDENTS, TEACHERS & DIVERSE PUBLIC
TAKE UP ANEW THE CASE OF
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
CORNEL WEST, VIJAY PRASHAD, JAMAL JOSEPH –
SPEAKERS TO ANCHOR COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY EVENT
AT THE BARNARD CAMPUS
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“Mumia at the Crossroads in the Age of Obama” –
A Theme to Galvanize Conference Goers
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–Princeton and New York City. Released, March 30, 2010. Hundreds of students, teachers and others will gather at the Diana Center of the Barnard College campus of Columbia University, to highlight the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and to coordinate organizing efforts in their national campaign for Abu-Jamal.
The event begins with workshops between 1:00 and 5:00 p.m. and concludes with inspiring plenary lectures, beginning at 7:00 p.m. by Cornel West of Princeton University, Vijay Prashad of Trinity College and a well-known culture critic, and also Jamal Joseph, professor of film in the Arts school at Columbia. Abu-Jamal himself plans to call in to address the audience. Pam Africa of International Concerned Family & Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal will bring greetings to educators from the national and international movement for Mumia.
Abu-Jamal has been on Pennsylvania’s death row since he was judged guilty in a Philadelphia political culture still dominated by the era of Mayor Frank Rizzo of the 1970s and 1980s. In 1982, the city’s District Attorney, Ed Rendell (now, Governor of Pennsylvania) secured a conviction and death sentence in a jury trial, which lasted only three weeks, claiming that Mumia had murdered Philadelphia police officer, Daniel Faulkner, on December 9, 1981.
The U.S. Supreme Court denied Mumia a hearing for a new trial last year, and in January of 2010 issued a very dangerous ruling that overturned an earlier decision by federal judge William Yohn that vacated the death penalty. Abu-Jamal is now perhaps closer to execution than he has ever been. Even if execution is prevented, he faces the sinister prospect of life in prison for a crime he did not commit, and of which no fair trial has yet to convict him.
Abu-Jamal, an African-American writer and journalist, author of six books and hundreds of columns and articles, has been kept alive through nearly 30 years of appeals due to the vigor of his lawyers, and a public mobilized nationally and internationally in his support. The distinguished human rights organizations, Amnesty International, concluded an independent study of the case, arguing “that justice would best be served by a new trial.”
Abu-Jamal, is also supported in his demands by heads of state from France to South Africa, by Nobel Laureates Nelson Mandela, Toni Morrison, Desmund Tutu, by the European Parliament, by city governments from Detroit to San Francisco to Paris, France, scholars, religious leaders, artists, scientists, the Congressional Black Caucus and other members of U.S. Congress, the NAACP, labor unions, and by countless thousands who cherish democratic and human rights the world over.
“It is not just his notoriety or his publishing accomplishments that makes Abu-Jamal such an extraordinary figure,” says scholar/writer, Tameka Cage of Pittsburgh, who is one of the three coordinators of Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal (EMAJ), which organized the Columbia conference. “It is also his extraordinary humanity, his ability to tap into the universal concerns of so many, and in fact to foreground others’ concerns and not just his own.”
The conference is co-sponsored by a wide array of other groups from Columbia University: Lucha, Black Students Organization, Muslim Students Association and International House. [others?]
Another EMAJ coordinator, Johanna Fernandez of Baruch College, stressed the linkage between Abu-Jamal’s case and the struggles of so many others. “We would like to re-ignite a real conversation about the racialized character of mass and wrongful incarceration in America. We believe that Mumia’s case stands as a primer for understanding race and the criminal justice system as it relates to broader questions about many dimensions of political power in the US.”
The other EMAJ coordinator, Mark Lewis Taylor of Princeton Theological Seminary, emphasized, “The US media tends either to neglect Mumia altogether or to caricature his supporters as only crazed members of some “looney left.” Taylor counters, “The hundreds of educators who have signed ads in the New York Times and elsewhere, with our organization, put the lie to that caricature. With this conference we not only foreground the urgency of Mumia’s case for him, but show how Mumia matters for us all and must become the concern of a broad, informed and diverse public. We think that with the electorate re-energized as it has been in the so-called ‘age of Obama,’ it’s time for a fresh look at Mumia’s case.”
Vijay Prashad, a historian and prolific author, also one of the keynote speakers for the evening, issued a statement in advance heightening the multiple and polycultural energies that the Mumia movement catalyzes. “Those of us who come from other nations found our America in the heart of the global fights for justice. My reference points include the Shays Rebellion, which took place in my home town of Northampton, and later of people like Sojourner Truth, who spent many of her productive years in my neighboring village of Florence. Daniel Shays, Sojourner Truth and so many others fought for the widest definition of freedom, of liberty, of justice. Not for private gain, but for social community. Mumia is a symbol of what has gone wrong in the republic: incarceration instead of education, punitive justice instead of social justice, war instead of peace. A reversal is on hand. Walk with us.
Cornel West, the renown Princeton University professor and major keynoters at the April 3rd event emphasizes that “Mumia’s case, overshadowed still by a judge whose mockery and flippancy turned Mumia’s trial into a Jim Crow court, also forces us to come to terms with how the failure of our two training grounds for citizenship – education and law – signify the disintegration of American democracy.”
The event is open to the public. The workshops beginning at 1:00 p.m. will treat the following issues: (I) “Mumia 101 – An Introduction to the Case,” (II) “Teaching Mumia in the Classroom,” (III) “The National Civil Rights Campaign,” (IV)“Campus Organizing for Mumia,” (V) “Mumia’s Battle in the Courts,” and (VI) “Media-Building a Viral Campaign for Mumia.” Workshops I, II, and III run from 1:00 to 2:30 p.m. Workshops IV, V, and VI, from 3:00 pm to 4:30 pm.
The plenary addresses begin at 7:00 p.m. sharp.
