I am proud to be one of the 48 elected OEA representatives who voted to move ahead with the January 14th teach-in on Mumia Abu Jamal and the death penalty. I also worked with the committee to distribute the curriculum to over one-hundred teachers and taught the lessons as well. As most of the press coverage did recognize, these issues were worthy of study and perfectly in line with official curriculum guidelines which call for studying the death penalty and controversial issues of the day. All of these arguments rang hollow.
Balance is simply a strawman.
Teaching in general is permeated in the same manner. The charge that we were politicizing the classroom was made not because of any serious questions about Jamal's case and the death penalty as worthy topics of discussion but rather, as Jamal's attorney, Leonard Weinglass , noted, because views opposing the status quo on these subjects are in a minority. Had our teach-in been predicated on majority views, Weinglass went on, there would have been little, if any, reaction. That said, the curriculum we circulated to more than one hundred teachers actually did provide for consideration of pro-death penalty arguments and it was never proposed to discourage opposing views on either issue. It is instructive to note that those who called for teachers to stop teaching on January 14th did not declare a work stoppage for themselves in recognition of the slain policeman.