Abu-Jamal - Have Black Lives Ever Mattered?

PRAISE FOR MUMIA ABU-JAMAL

Abu-Jamals writing tends to be forceful, outraged, and humorous, but he also engages in the bombastic approaches of another era.... The author offers powerful columns on diverse subjects ranging from the plight of black farmers to the crushing of dissent after 9/11. Some remain all too relevante.g., those decrying systemic police brutality as seen in flashpoints from Rodney King to Ferguson or the rise of racial disparities in drug sentencing. Abu-Jamal meditates on central figures in the black political narrative, ranging from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Trayvon Martin.... These topical essays [from 1982 to 2014] testify to the effects of incarceration on mind and spirit. While his prose has sharpened over time, Abu-Jamal remains enraged and pessimistic about an America that, in his view, remains wholly corrupt: [Blacks] know from bitter experience that while Americans may say one thing, they mean something quite different.

Kirkus Reviews for Writing on the Wall

Hope and the seeds of revolution can come from the depths of isolation. Writing from his cell on death row, where he was held in solitary confinement for nearly 30 years, Abu-Jamal has long been a loud and clear voice for all who suffer injustice, racism, and poverty. Edited by [Johanna] Fernndez, this selection of 100 previously unpublished essays includes a foreword by Cornel West.

Evan Karp, SF Weekly for Writing on the Wall

The power of his voice is rooted in his defiance of those determined to silence him. Magically, Mumias words are clarified, purified by the toxic strata of resistance they must penetrate to reach us. Like the blues. Like jazz.

John Edgar Wideman

Mumia refuses to allow his spirit to be broken by the forces of injustice; his language glows with an affirming flame.

Jonathon Kozol

Mumia is a dramatic example of how the criminal justice system can be brought to bear on someone who is African American, articulate, and involved in change in society. The system is threatened by someone like Mumia. A voice as strong and as truthful as histhe repression against him is intensified.

Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking

Brilliant in its specificity and imperative, Mumia Abu-Jamals work is about why multitudes of people dont overcome. It rings so true because he has not overcome.

LA Weekly

Expert and well-reasoned commentary on the justice system.... His writings are dangerous.

The Village Voice

Uncompromising, disturbing... Abu-Jamals voice has the clarity and candor of a man whose impending death emboldens him to say what is on his mind without fear of consequence.

The Boston Globe

Abu-Jamal, a gifted and controversial Philadelphia journalist, [has an] ever-lucid voice and humanistic point of view. [His essays are] eloquent and indelible.

Booklist (starred review) for All Things Censored

Like the most powerful critics in our societyHerman Melville... to Eugene ONeilMumia Abu-Jamal forces us to grapple with the most fundamental question facing this country: what does it profit a nation to conquer the whole world and lose its soul?

Cornel West

HAVE BLACK LIVES

EVER MATTERED?

Mumia Abu-Jamal

City Lights Books | Open Media Series

Copyright 2017 Mumia Abu-Jamal

All Rights Reserved

Open Media Series editor: Greg Ruggiero

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file

ISBN: 9780872867383 (paperbound), 9780872867390 (ebook)

City Lights Books are published at the City Lights Bookstore

261 Columbus Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94133

www.citylights.com

DEDICATION

To the Nameless Ones, those valiant souls who fought for Freedom their whole lives long, and never lived to taste its intoxicating flavor; to the sons and daughters of Africa who lived in this strange and cruel land, yet dreamed of brighter tomorrows.

To Lydia Umyemi Wallace Barashango and her devoted husband, Rev. Dr. Ishakamusa Barashango, the renowned brilliant nationalist scholar and teacher; to the beautiful Bev Africa; to Samiya Hamida Abdullah, whose life was like a brilliant shooting star, who dazzled us all, before falling back into the river of Eternity: gone, but never forgotten, for in our hearts, in our being, she shines still.

To Ron The Flame, Basil Ali Abu-Jaleel, a brother loved despite the distance of time and space.

To souls who shone brightly, and were dulled by American hate; to those who struggle still; to the youth of America who dared to march, to yell, to stand on the simple Principle that Black Lives Matter, I hereby dedicate this work.

Spring is coming,

Mumia Abu-Jamal

HAVE BLACK LIVES EVER MATTERED?

An Introduction

Does the title of this work seem provocative? If so, then good. Thats how its intended to be. For if the question is provocative, then what of the answer? Is not the answer, no matter how damning, far more provocative? And yet, who dares answer in any way other than the negative?

There is an old axiom, especially among journalists and journalism professors, that todays newspapers are the first draft of history. Like most axioms, they hold a kernel of truth, but there is more.

Here is another axiom: History is written by the victors.

The words printed here were not written by a victor, but by one who has seen and sensed what was happening on the other side of a prison wall, who seeks to convey those impressions with truth, and who has often done so several times a week.

In a sense, the impressions recorded in the pages ahead are a form of historyBlack historyrecorded during a particular passage of time. During this particular period we experienced the greatest economic disaster since the Great Depression of the 1930s, the cultural dominance of hip-hop, the nations fever over mass incarceration, the Obama presidency, the spread of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the unexpected onset of the Donald J. Trump era.

True historywhat Howard Zinn called the peoples historyis the one that ordinary people create through their everyday struggles. And yet for Blacks, much that never makes it to the newspapersor, if so, only in a distorted formstill leaves scars in the mind, evidence of traumas sustained from simply existing as a Black person in the United States of America.

The pages ahead reflect the peoples struggles in the invisible sectors of American society, sectors which, by a terrible necessity, are populated largely by Blacks, Latinos, immigrants, the incarcerated, and those with little income. The pages ahead are also, by equal necessity, reflections of insurgent, emergent, radical, and revolutionary aspiration, thinking, and living. For from oppression comes solidarity, resistance, rebellion, and change.

National movements like Black Lives Matter are manifestations of such solidarity and resistance, and give voice to the eruption of outrage, angst, hopes, and insurgent protest provoked by each new killing. That such a movement was brought into being by three young women of colorPatrisse Cullors, Opal Tometi, and Alicia Garzais telling, for throughout American history we have seen how the dedicated efforts of women of color have driven resistance networks and liberation movements. These determined sisters have both studied history and altered it, and continue to do so today.

The American nation-states began with Europeans brutally dominating and enslaving indigenous people. The lands seized in the New World were worked by so-called Indians, people whose lives did not matter to the white Europeans who, quite literally, worked the locals to death.