From: nyt%nyxfer%igc.apc.org@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu (NY Transfer News)
Newsgroups: misc.activism.progressive
Subject: NEWS:Struggle to Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
Date: 18 Dec 92 20:33:39 GMT
Followup-To: alt.activism.d
Organization: The NY Transfer News Service
Originator: daemon@pencil.cs.missouri.edu
Resent-From: "Rich Winkel" <MATHRICH@MIZZOU1.missouri.edu>

Via The NY Transfer News Service * All the News that Doesn't Fit


STRUGGLE TO FREE MUMIA ABU-JAMAL HEATS UP

By Andy McInerny
Philadelphia

Movement for a Peoples Assembly activists from New York and State
College, Pa., joined over 500 people here Dec. 9 to demand
freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal. The demonstration, timed to coincide
with the 11th anniversary of Abu-Jamal's arrest, was organized by
the Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Supporters traveled from Connecticut, New York, Baltimore and
Washington for one of the first major regional activities to
support Abu-Jamal, a revolutionary Black journalist currently on
death row in Huntingdon, Pa., for allegedly shooting a cop.

Abu-Jamal earned the wrath of the state when he exposed police
brutality, especially the bloody repression of the Philadelphia
MOVE organization, in articles and radio broadcasts. Despite
evidence of his innocence, he was sentenced to death in 1982.

Several former political prisoners, including former Black
Panther Dhoruba bin-Wahad and MOVE member Ramona Africa, spoke at
the Dec. 9 rally. Jane Henderson of the Equal Justice Project of
the Quixote Center reported on the legal fight to save Abu-Jamal
from execution, which civil rights lawyer Leonard Weinglass
recently joined.

Several speakers vowed to make the cities of the United States
battlegrounds in the fight against the racist system if Abu-Jamal
is executed.

STRUGGLE GROWS

In July a group of Penn State-area activists formed the Committee
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal as a local project of the Movement for a
Peoples Assembly. Since then, the campaign has successfully
spotlighted both his case and the racist character of the whole
U.S. legal system. Thousands in central Pennsylvania now know of
Abu-Jamal's case, and many are calling for his freedom.

The Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal opened its campaign with a
September rally featuring Pam Africa from MOVE. MPA activists
have since tirelessly worked to publicize the case. They
confronted Pennsylvania Gov. Robert Casey on Veterans Day,
demanding justice for Abu-Jamal.

On Dec. 1, over 100 people attended a forum in State College,
Pa., co-sponsored by the Committee, the Penn State Black Caucus,
and Students and Youth Against Racism entitled "Racism, Police
Brutality and State Terror: From Huntingdon to South Africa." The
forum featured a panel including Monica Somocurcio of the MPA;
Huntingdon prisoners' rights activist Phil Bloch; African
National Congress member Donnie Jurgens; and former Los Angeles
police officer Don Jackson, who received national attention when
he went undercover to expose racist police brutality and was
subsequently videotaped being thrown head first into a
plate-glass window by a white cop.

(Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if
source is cited. For more info contact Workers World, 46 W. 21
St., New York, NY 10010; email: ww%nyxfer@igc.apc.org; "workers"
on PeaceNet; on Internet: "workers@mcimail.com".)


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