Soon I will be donating some tattoo time with me to skeletonkeyauctions.com. We will be working out the details soon. All the money raised will go to support the defense fund for the West Memphis Three. I will announce on this site when we start the auction, but in the meantime, stop by skeletonkeyauctions.com and show your support. Also, check out www.myspace.com/almosthomevol1 and www.WM3.org for more information on supporting the West Memphis Three.

This week we are going to be talking about Mumia Abdul Jamal.
I remember reading and hearing little bits and pieces about Mumia growing up, but not knowing the full story until I got older. He was one of those names you here, growing up in the punk rock community, but didn’t know the details and importance of his actions and life. Here’s a little run down on Mumia.

Mumia Abu-Jamal is a renowned journalist from Philadelphia who has been in prison since 1981 and on death row since 1983 for allegedly shooting Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. He is known as the “Voice of the Voiceless” for his award- winning reporting on police brutality and other social and racial epidemics that plague communities of color in Philadelphia and throughout the world. Mumia has received international support over the years in his efforts to overturn his unjust conviction.

Mumia Abu-Jamal was serving as the President of the Association of Black Journalists at the time of his arrest. He was a founding member of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Black Panther Party as a teenager. Years later he began reporting professionally on radio stations such as NPR, and was the news director of Philadelphia station WHAT. Much of his journalism called attention to the blatant injustice and brutality he watched happen on a daily basis to MOVE, a revolutionary organization that works to protect all forms of life–human, animal, plant–and the Earth as a whole.

On a side note, MOVE also had some interesting events happen. On May 13, 1985, the Philadelphia Police Department attempted to clear a building in which the MOVE members lived. The police tried to remove two wood-and-steel rooftop bunkers by dropping a four-pound bomb made of C-4 plastic explosive and Tovex, a dynamite substitute, onto the roof. The resulting explosion caused the house to catch fire, igniting a massive blaze which eventually consumed almost an entire city block. Eleven people, including John Africa, six other adults and four children, died in the resulting fire.
It was reported later that John Africa was not killed by the fire but by actions of the Philadelphia Police as they set off explosives in an effort to knock down a common wall of an adjacent property to the MOVE compound. John Africa was killed by one of these explosions.
Mayor Wilson Goode soon appointed an investigative commission, the PSIC or MOVE commission, which issued its report on March 6, 1986. The report denounced the actions of the city government, stating that “Dropping a bomb on an occupied row house was unconscionable.” In a 1996 civil suit in U.S. federal court, a jury ordered the City of Philadelphia and two former city officials to pay $1.5 million to a survivor and relatives of two people killed in the incident. The jury found that the city used excessive force and violated the members’ constitutional protection against unreasonable search and seizure.

In 1981, Mumia worked as a cab driver at night to supplement his income. On December 9th he was driving his cab through the red light district of downtown Philadelphia at around 4 a.m. Mumia testifies that he let off a fare and parked near the corner of 13th and Locust Streets. Upon hearing gunshots, he turned and saw his brother, William Cook, staggering in the street. Mumia exited the cab and ran to the scene, where he was shot by a uniformed police officer and fell to the ground, fading in and out of consciousness. Within minutes, police arrived on the scene to find Officer Faulkner and Mumia shot; Faulkner died.

The trial began in 1982 with Judge Sabo (who sent more people to death row than any other judge) presiding. Mumia wished to represent himself and have John Africa as his legal advisor, but before jury selection had finished, this right was revoked and an attorney was forcibly appointed for him. Throughout the trial, Mumia was accused of disrupting court proceedings and was not allowed to attend most of his own trial. Sabo lived up to his nickname of “Prosecutor in Robes.”

The prosecution claimed that the shot which killed Faulkner came from Mumia Abu-Jamal’s legally registered .38-caliber weapon, contradicting the medical examiner’s report that the bullet removed from Faulkner’s brain was a .44-caliber. This fact was kept from the jury. Moreover, a ballistics expert found it incredible that police at the scene failed to test Mumia’s gun to see if has been recently fired, or to test his hands for powder residue. One of the most damning prosecution claims was that Mumia confessed at the hospital. However, this confession was not reported until nearly two months after December 9th, immediately after Mumia had filed a brutality suit against the police. One of the officers who claims to have heard the confession is Gary Wakshul. However, in his police report on that day he stated, “the Negro male made no comments.” Dr. Coletta, the attending physician who was with Mumia the entire time, says that he never heard Mumia speak.

Mumia was found guilty. He was sentenced to death during the penalty phase, and have been on death row ever since.

In 1999, Arnold Beverly confessed to killing Officer Faulkner. This confession is validated by a lie detector test administered by eminent polygraph expert Charles Honts. Despite concrete evidence supporting this confession, the Philadelphia District Attorney has refused to investigate, and the courts have not even allowed it to be heard.
here’s a video of that confession,

Here also is a video from Mumia in his own words.

click the next buttons to see parts 2 and 3

Check out www.freemumia.com to see how you can help.
Also, check out www.workers.org/2007/us/pvn/ to watch a video of Mumia from death row.
Next week we are going to be discussing Leonard Peltier and what led to his imprisonment.

When I first heard this story when I was a kid, I couldn’t believe it was true. The idea that people could imprisoned for not committing a crime was completely foreign to me. Your average person thinks the same way, how can someone go to jail, face the death penalty, for not committing a crime. Isn’t the justice system suppose to make sure that that doesn’t happen? Aren’t we suppose to live in a country that protects it’s people? Here again is a wool being pulled over the eyes of all of us.. For the next month we are going to be discussing people who are now in prison for crimes they did not commit. Many of these are on death row. People facing death because of an unjust judicial system.

I think we have all heard about the west memphis 3, here’s some of the story.
This comes from www.wm3.org.

Shortly after three eight-year-old boys were found mutilated and murdered in West Memphis, Arkansas, local newspapers stated the killers had been caught. The police assured the public that the three teenagers in custody were definitely responsible for these horrible crimes. Evidence?

The same police officers coerced an error-filled “confession” from Jessie Misskelley Jr., who is mentally handicapped. They subjected him to 12 hours of questioning without counsel or parental consent, audio-taping only two fragments totaling 46 minutes. Jessie recanted it that evening, but it was too late— Misskelley, Jason Baldwin and Damien Echols were all arrested on June 3, 1993, and convicted of murder in early 1994.

Although there was no physical evidence, murder weapon, motive, or connection to the victims, the prosecution pathetically resorted to presenting black hair and clothing, heavy metal t-shirts, and Stephen King novels as proof that the boys were sacrificed in a satanic cult ritual. Unfathomably, Echols was sentenced to death, Baldwin received life without parole, and Misskelley got life plus 40.

For over 15 years, The West Memphis Three have been imprisoned for crimes they didn’t commit. Echols waits in solitary confinement for the lethal injection our tax dollars will pay for. They were all condemned by their poverty, incompetent defense, satanic panic and a rush to judgment.

here’s a documentary called “Paradise Lost” that is about this crime.

click on the “next” part to see all 16 parts of this documentary.

Here is also an update since the making of this documentary.

and here is another update.

you can do something and help,
visit www.wm3.org and click on the “how to help” button.

Next week we are going to be talking about Mumia Abu Jamal, another person unrightfully imprisoned in this country.

so that brings us to today.
Athens Greece is now filled with protestors and rioting, very similar to that of May of 68, which we discussed last week.

Here’s the rundown on what has been going on there.

On Saturday 6th of December at around 10pm, two Greek policemen were in patrol in a central street by Exarchia square, in the center of Athens. They had a verbal argument with some young people who were there. During the argument, one of the cops pulled his gun and shot a 16-year-old guy twice. The victim was moved to Evangelismos Hospital to be found dead. According to eye-witnesses, the cop had been swearing against the young man.
In a spontaneous response, thousands of people gathered in the centers of most of Greek cities. In Athens, people gathered outside Evangelismos Hospital, in order to prevent the cops from entering the building. A little later the riot police attacked in a street in Exarchia resulting to one person being arrested. The evening in Athens evolved with a spontaneous assembly in the Polytechnic University, a lot of riots in the whole center of Athens, including attacks against police departments and banks, until the early hours of the next morning. Meanwhile, a spontaneous demonstration took place, but it was confronted by the riot police with tear gas. Three more University building, the Economic, the Pantion and the Law School have been occupied.
Rallies, demonstrations, direct actions and riots took place all around the country. In Thessaloniki, a big spontaneous demonstration took place, while 2 Police Departments were attacked, several bank departments were burnt and Egnatia str., the main street, was block by burning trash bins for hours. Reports have been also posted about actions in Yannena, Iraklio [photos], Chania, Komotini, Mitilini, Xanthi, Serres, Sparta, Alexandroupolis and Volos.

here’s a link to indymedia reports,
http://ch.indymedia.org/demix/2008/12/65094.shtml

Alot of tension has been boiling in that region for a while now.
The average well educated person makes 700euros a month, the same as anyone with practical training. This has angered the students and caused slogans such as ,
“We dont have any future, all we can do is fight for it”.

Here’s some videos from the protest

Here in the States we hear very little of these things happening, and more about Paris’s latest love interest. Things are not that much different here. We are in a huge recession, layoffs are now happening by the thousands, yet they are still trying to tell us that these quasi-celebrities are who we need to be watching. And here is why, the people in control are scared. They are scared of a society that realizes what is really going on, realizes that what is happening isn’t right, and realizes that they deserve better. We are constantly showered in trivial media bullshit to keep us occupied so that we won’t realize what is really happening.
I have one clear memory when I was a kid. One day my dad decided to take me to the toy store. As a kid I loved it, who wouldn’t. I was obsessed with legos, i mean obsessed. I loved building anything I could. I ran around the toy store, trying to find the perfect lego set. I loved all the space craft ones, which was what I always picked. So we left said toy store with a new lego set, and I was stoked. When I got home something was not right. I then realized that my mother was gone. I asked my dad and that was when he told me they were getting a divorce. What I didn’t realize was that they had planned for her to move out while he took me to the toy store. I had no clue what was going on, I didn’t know what divorce was. I was confused and scared, and the older I got it made me angry.
This is the state we are in. We are being taken to the toy store everyday. We need to educate those around us, the working class, everyone, and we need to go out and make a difference. It can be done. We’ve seen from the past, and the present, so let us look to the future. We need to take what we’ve learned from the movements of the 60’s and apply them to today, because we are obviously still in the same world, Athens has shown us that.

Next week I’m going to start a month long series on the justice systems and unjust imprisoning. We will start with the West Memphis 3.

So I originally read about May of ‘68 in “Days of War, Nights of Love” available at www.crimethinc.com. At the time I was living in a new world that was exciting. I had just walked away from college and the religion around it. I had nothing, no home, no job, no possessions, nothing. It was freeing. I began to amerce my self in stories in history of people who felt the same way I did, and who wanted to make a change. I was alone on a beach when I stumbled upon this chapter about may of ‘68, but it changed my life. I was amazed that this actually happened, within the past 40 years at that. Here’s a brief explanation for what happened. Alot of this taken from wikipedia.org.

May 1968 is the name given to a series of student protests and a general strike that caused the eventual collapse of the De Gaulle government in France. Many saw the events as an opportunity to shake up the “old society” and traditional morality, focusing especially on the education system and employment or lack thereof.

It began as a series of student strikes that broke out at a number of universities in Paris, following confrontations with university administrators and the police. The de Gaulle administration’s attempts to quash those strikes by further police action only inflamed the situation further, leading to street battles with the police in the Latin Quarter, followed by a general strike by students and strikes throughout France by ten million French workers, roughly two-thirds of the French workforce. The protests reached such a point that de Gaulle created a military operations headquarters to deal with the unrest, dissolved the National Assembly and called for new parliamentary elections for 23 June 1968.

The government was close to collapse at that point.

amazing.

But let’s go back a little further to see how it got there.

On 22 March far-left groups and a small number of prominent poets and musicians, along with 150 students, invaded an administration building at Nanterre University and held a meeting in the university council room dealing with class discrimination in French society and the political bureaucracy that controlled the school’s funding, similar problems to what we have today.
The school’s administration called the police, who surrounded the university. After the publication of their wishes, the students left the building without any trouble. After this first record, some leaders of what was named the “Movement of 22 March” were called together by the disciplinary committee of the university.
Following months of conflicts between students and authorities at the University of Paris at Nanterre, the administration shut down that university on 2 May 1968. Students at the University of the Sorbonne in Paris met on 3 May to protest against the closure and the threatened expulsion of several students at Nanterre. On Monday, 6 May, the national student union, the UNEF - still the largest student union in France today - and the union of university teachers called a march to protest against the police invasion of the Sorbonne. More than 20,000 students, teachers and supporters marched towards the Sorbonne, still sealed off by the police, who charged, wielding their batons, as soon as the marchers approached. While the crowd dispersed, some began to create barricades out of whatever was at hand, while others threw paving stones, forcing the police to retreat for a time. The police then responded with tear gas and charged the crowd again. Hundreds more students were arrested.

High school student unions spoke in support of the riots on 6 May. The next day, they joined the students, teachers and increasing numbers of young workers who gathered at the Arc de Triomphe to demand that: (1) all criminal charges against arrested students be dropped, (2) the police leave the university, and (3) the authorities reopen Nanterre and the Sorbonne. Negotiations broke down after students returned to their campuses, after a false report that the government had agreed to reopen them, only to discover the police still occupying the schools. The students now had a near revolutionary fervor.

On Friday, 10 May, another huge crowd congregated on the Rive Gauche. When the riot police again blocked them from crossing the river, the crowd again threw up barricades, which the police then attacked at 2:15 in the morning after negotiations once again floundered. The confrontation, which produced hundreds of arrests and injuries, lasted until dawn of the following day. The events were broadcast on radio as they occurred and the aftermath was shown on television the following day. Allegations were made that the police had participated, through agents provocateurs, in the riots, by burning cars and throwing molotov cocktails.

Here’s some film of that protest.

here are a few of the slogan’s they are saying,
“A bas l’etat policier” (Down with the police state)
“Universite populaire” (University of the people)
“unite, ouvriers etudiants” (unity, workers, students)
“dans la rue etudiants, ouvriers” (students and workers, in the street)
“les assassins, les fascistes” (the assassins, the fascists)
“democracie universitaire” (Democracy in university)

The government’s heavy-handed reaction brought on a wave of sympathy for the strikers. Many of the nation’s more mainstream singers and poets joined after the heavy-handed police brutality came to light. American artists also began voicing support of the strikers. The Parti Communiste Français (PCF) reluctantly supported the students, whom it regarded as adventurers and anarchists, and the major left union federations, the Confédération Générale du Travail (CGT) and the Force Ouvrière (CGT-FO), called a one-day general strike and demonstration for Monday, 13 May.

Well over a million people marched through Paris on that day; the police stayed largely out of sight. Prime Minister Georges Pompidou personally announced the release of the prisoners and the reopening of the Sorbonne. However, the surge of strikes did not recede. In fact, the protesters got even more enraged.

When the Sorbonne reopened, students occupied it and declared it an autonomous “people’s university”. Approximately 401 popular action committees were set up in Paris, including the Occupation Committee of the Sorbonne, and elsewhere in the weeks that followed to take up grievances against the government and French society.

In the following days, workers began occupying factories, starting with a sit-down strike at the Sud Aviation plant near the city of Nantes on 14 May, then another strike at a Renault parts plant near Rouen, which spread to the Renault manufacturing complexes at Flins in the Seine Valley and the Paris suburb of Boulogne-Billancourt. By 16 May, workers had occupied roughly fifty factories, and by 17 May, 200,000 were on strike. That figure snowballed to two million workers on strike the following day and then ten million, or roughly two-thirds of the French workforce, on strike the following week.

These strikes were not led by the union movement; on the contrary, the CGT tried to contain this spontaneous outbreak of militancy by channeling it into a struggle for higher wages and other economic demands. Workers put forward a broader, more political and more radical agenda, demanding the ousting of the government and President de Gaulle and attempting, in some cases, to run their factories. When the trade union leadership negotiated a 35% increase in the minimum wage, a 7% wage increase for other workers, and half normal pay for the time on strike with the major employers’ associations, the workers occupying their factories refused to return to work and jeered their union leaders.

On 25 May and 26 May, the Grenelle agreements were signed at the Ministry of Social Affairs. They provided for an increase of the minimum wage by 25% and of the average salaries by 10%. These offers were rejected, and the strike went on. The working class and top intellectuals were joining in solidarity for a major change in workers’ rights.

On 27 May, the meeting of the Union Nationale des Étudiants de France (National Union of the Students of France), the most outstanding of the events of May 1968, proceeded and gathered 30,000 to 50,000 people in the Stade Sebastien Charlety. The meeting was extremely militant with speakers demanding the government be overthrown and elections held.

On 30 May, several hundred thousand protesters (400,000 to 500,000—much more than the 50,000 the police were expecting) led by the CGT marched through Paris, chanting, “Adieu, de Gaulle!” (Meaning: “Farewell, De Gaulle.”)

While the government appeared to be close to collapse, de Gaulle remained firm, though he had to go into hiding, surprise surprise. After ensuring that he had sufficient loyal military units mobilized to back him if push came to shove, he went on the radio the following day (the national television service was on strike) to announce the dissolution of the National Assembly, with elections to follow on 23 June. He ordered workers to return to work, threatening to institute a state of emergency if they did not.

From that point, the revolutionary feeling of the students and workers faded away. Workers gradually returned to work or were ousted from their plants by the police. The national student union called off street demonstrations. The government banned a number of leftist organizations. The police retook the Sorbonne on 16 June.

here’s a short video about the protest

Though that might have seemed like the end, let’s look at what happened around the world because of those days in France.

France was far from the only country to witness student protests in 1968. The events were preceded by the announcement, in the United States, that United States President Lyndon B. Johnson would choose to withdraw from the 1968 presidential campaign in March due to rising domestic opposition. This was soon followed by the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. on 4 April and a student-led occupation and closure of Columbia University on 23 April.

In Mexico, on the night of 2 October 1968, a student demonstration ended in a storm of bullets in La Plaza de las Tres Culturas at Tlatelolco, Mexico City, ten days before the celebration of the 1968 Summer Olympics in the same city.

Interestingly, in Chile, the student movement had its own national revolution in August of 1967, with many reform processes as a result.

The American and German student movements were relatively isolated from the working class, but in Italy and in Argentina, students and workers joined in efforts to create a radically different society.

In Belgium, students from the Flemish university Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Leuven protested against the dominance of the French language in the university, which resulted in a separate Francophone university, Université Catholique de Louvain.

In Eastern Europe, students also drew inspiration from the protests in the West. In Poland and Yugoslavia, students protested against restrictions on free speech by Communist regimes. In Czechoslovakia, the Prague Spring offered a broadening of political rights until it was crushed by the USSR and its Warsaw Pact allies.

Many of the student groups involved with May 1968 were also inspired by a strain of political thought called tiers-mondisme (third worldism). Students idealized and followed socialist movements in countries such as Cuba, Vietnam, or China, and revered figures such as Fidel Castro, Che Guevara or Mao Zedong. Their struggles in their own countries were tied to their support of these third world socialist movements.

In Brazil, student protests against the military dictatorship increased sharply in 1968, with students forming a majority among armed revolutionary movements combating the police and the military and orchestrating operations such as the kidnapping of foreign diplomats (most notably the ambassador of the United States Charles Burke Elbrick in 1969) in order to demand the release of previously imprisoned revolutionaries. This escalation of student protests led to the declaration of the Institutional Act Number Five, which consolidated the absolute power of the military dictatorship, dismantling congress and revoking constitutional rights of citizens.

In Pakistan also, student protests played a major role in toppling the dictatorial military regime of General Ayub Khan.

Here is some of the May 1968 Graffiti that could be found written around the city, which still applies today. I really love some of these.

“Boredom is counterrevolutionary.”

“In a society that has abolished every kind of adventure the only adventure that remains is to abolish the society.”

“Those who make revolutions halfway only dig their own graves.”

“No replastering, the structure is rotten.”

“We will ask nothing. We will demand nothing. We will take, occupy.”

“Down with the state.”

“It’s painful to submit to our bosses; it’s even more stupid to choose them.”

“Abolish class society.”

“We want neither to rule nor to be ruled.”

“All power corrupts. Absolute power corrupts absolutely”

“Politics is in the streets.”

“Barricades close the streets but open the way.”

“People who work get bored when they don’t work.
People who don’t work never get bored.”

“The boss needs you, you don’t need the boss.”

“Humanity won’t be happy till the last capitalist is hung with the guts of the last bureaucrat.”

“A single nonrevolutionary weekend is infinitely more bloody than a month of total revolution.”

“We refuse to be highrised, diplomaed, licensed, inventoried, registered, indoctrinated,
suburbanized, sermonized, beaten, telemanipulated, gassed, booked.”

“Coming soon to this location: charming ruins.”

“Our aim is to agitate and disturb people. We’re not selling bread, We’re selling yeast.”

“You will end up dying of comfort.”

“Poetry is in the streets.”

“The most beautiful sculpture is a paving stone thrown at a cop’s head.”

“Revolution, I love you.”

“I’m a Groucho Marxist.”

“Desiring reality is great! Realizing your desires is even better!”

“Be realistic, demand the impossible.”

“Those who lack imagination cannot imagine what is lacking.”

“Arise, ye wretched of the university.”

“Professors, you are as senile as your culture, your modernism is nothing but the modernization of the police.”

“Neither God nor master.”

“If God existed it would be necessary to abolish him.”

“How can you think freely in the shadow of a chapel?”

“The more we make love, the more we want to make revolution. The more we make revolution, the more we want to make love.”

“Revolutionary women are more beautiful.”

“Make love, not war.”

“Down with consumer society.”

“The more you consume, the less you live.”

“Commodities are the opium of the people.”

“You can’t buy happiness. Steal it.”

“The economy is wounded - Lets hope it dies!”

“I don’t have time to write!!!”

“Don’t get caught up in the spectacle of opposition. Oppose the spectacle.”

“No forbidding allowed.”

“The freedom of others extends mine infinitely.”

Here’s an awesome video showing how similar our world today is to the world of may of 68

Next week we are going to tie all of this together and apply it to today.
stay strong.