"Avengers" on ABC's "Nightline"

New York, NY – – A broad coalition of community organizers, activists, artists, students, scholars, celebrities, and concerned individuals will hold a national rally and protest at the headquarters of the US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday April 24, 2012 at 11:00 am in Washington, DC (located at 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW). The purpose of the protest is to call for the release of political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal on the day that is his 58^th birthday. Renowned activists Frances Fox Piven, and Norman Finkelstein; actor Danny Glover; hip hop artist M-1 (of the duo dead prez); and others will engage in acts of civil disobedience at the protest. Organizers hope that the planned civil disobedience will dramatize their formal request that US Attorney General Eric Holder meet with a delegation to discuss systemic police corruption and civil rights violations in Abu-Jamal’s case and in the cases of hundreds of others across the nation.

Organizers will make seven core demands of US Attorney General Holder:

1. Release Mumia Abu-Jamal

2. End mass incarceration and the criminalization of Black and Latino Youth

3. Create jobs, education, and health care, not jails

4. End solitary confinement and stop torture

5. End the racist death penalty

6. Hands off immigrants

7. Free all political prisoners

Attorneys will be available to answer questions.

Johanna Fernandez, a professor of history at Baruch College, CUNY in New York and the filmmaker of Justice on Trial: The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, announces that the rally and protest are tied to short term and long term goals. “Our immediate goal is to have Mumia Abu-Jamal released from prison. His recent release from death row was only a half victory. Our long- term goal is to end mass incarceration. Toward that end, we have developed a project called Liberation Summer. In just a few months, we will join with others to mobilize, train, and organize thousands of people who want to see an end to the unjust criminalization and mass incarceration of African Americans, Latinos, Muslims, other people of color, immigrants, and poor communities. Mass incarceration is not the solution to social problems. Rather than criminalization, we want a world without prisons.”

Background: Mumia Abu-Jamal

On December 9, 1981 in Philadelphia, journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal was arrested for the killing of a Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. In 1982, he was convicted and sentenced to death row. Last year, the Supreme Court allowed to stand the decisions of four federal judges whose unanimous rulings and arguments state that Abu-Jamal’s 1982 death sentence was unconstitutional. In early December, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office decided that it would not continue to pursue a death sentence in this case and Abu-Jamal’s original sentence was commuted to life in prison without parole. Supporters of Abu-Jamal have cited the elimination of the death sentence in this case as one of the few civil rights victories in the post-civil rights era. Abu-Jamal’s demand for a new and fair trial and freedom is supported by heads of state from France to South Africa; by city governments from Detroit to San Francisco to Paris; by the Congressional Black Caucus and other members of U.S. Congress; by the European Parliament; by the NAACP, labor unions, and distinguished human rights organizations like Amnesty International; by Nobel Laureates Nelson Mandela, Toni Morrison, and Archbishop Desmond Tutu; by scholars, religious leaders, artists, scientists; and by countless others around the world.

Now that Abu-Jamal is off death row, activists are demanding his release from prison. On December 9, 2011, in an event at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia that marked the 30^th year anniversary of Abu-Jamal’s incarceration, Archbishop Desmond Tutu joined countless others and asked the nation to “rise to the challenge of reconciliation, human rights, and justice” and called for Abu-Jamal’s “immediate release.”

Background: Why Rally at the Department of Justice?

The police officers who shot, beat, and arrested Mumia Abu-Jamal in 1981 — for the shooting death of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner — were under scrutiny by a Department of Justice investigation of the Philadelphia Police Department. The probe, which began in 1979, marked the first time in the nation’s history that the federal government sued a police department for civil rights violations and charged an entire police department (rather than individual officers, with police brutality). The DOJ suit maintained that the Philadelphia police’s practices of “shooting nonviolent suspects, abusing handcuffed prisoners, suppressing dissension within its ranks, and engaging in a pattern of brutal behavior ‘shocks the conscience.’” (Philip Taubman, “U.S. Files Its Rights Suit Charging Philadelphia Police with Brutality,” The New York Times, August 14, 1979). Only days after the end of Abu-Jamal’s trial and conviction, 15 of the 35 police officers involved in collecting evidence in his case would be convicted and jailed, as a result of this federal investigation, on charges that included graft, corruption, and tampering with evidence to obtain a conviction. Chief among these officers was Alfonzo Giordano, the police inspector who led the crime scene investigation in Abu-Jamal’s case. The DOJ investigation remains unfinished: it did not provide relief for defendants like Abu-Jamal who were convicted by the testimonies and work of these corrupt and convicted cops.

ENDORSED BY: International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu Jamal ? Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal ? Coalition to Free Mumia (NYC) ? Occupy Philly ? OCCUPY General Assembly (NYC) ? Occupy DC Now ? Occupy DC Criminal Injustice Committee ? Occupy the Hood ? Decarcerate PA ? Supporting Prisoners and Acting for Radical Change [SPARC] ? Millions for Mumia/Int’l Action Center ? dead prez (Sticman and M1) ? John Carlos ? Talib Kweli ? Immortal Technique ? Angela Davis ? Danny Glover ? Alice Walker ? Francis Pixen ? Amiri Baraka ? Marc Lamont Hill ? Cornell West ? Vijay Prashad ? Norman Finkelstein ? ANSWER Coalition ? Prison Radio

For event information, contact Johanna Fernandez at 917.930.0804. Media inquiries are directed to AKILA WORKSONGS at 718.756.8501 or pr@akilaworksongs.com .

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"More Avengers Clips" (One After The Other)

Posted on April 19, 2012 by drumsintheglobalvillage

Marable (Posthumously) Wins Pulitzer For "Reinvention"

Posted on April 16, 2012 by drumsintheglobalvillage

If it was any other major Black biography, I’d be overjoyed. But nope. I’ll stand by what I’ve said on this, and what I will say.

Columbia professor, 3 alums, including former Spectator editor, win Pulitzers

In addition to the four Columbia affiliates, the Associated Press team that uncovered the NYPD surveillance of Muslim communities received a Pulitzer.

By Naomi Cohen
Spectator Staff Writer

Published April 16, 2012
Updated, 4 a.m.

The late Columbia professor Manning Marable, Eli Sanders, CC ’99, David Kocieniewski, Journalism ’86, and Tracy K. Smith, SoA ’97, were among those awarded Pulitzer Prizes on Monday.

The Associated Press team that uncovered the scope of the New York Police Department’s surveillance of Muslim communities, including college students and the Columbia Muslim Students Association’s website, was one of two award winners for investigative reporting.

The winners were announced in the newly renamed Pulitzer Hall, formerly Journalism Hall, on Columbia’s campus.

Sanders received the award in feature writing for “The Bravest Woman in Seattle,” his narrative of a woman who was raped and whose partner was raped and murdered. Sanders, the editor-in-chief of Spectator’s 122nd managing board in 1998, now writes for The Stranger, an alternative Seattle weekly.

The announcement of Marable’s award for “Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention” made waves in the Institute for Research in African-American Studies and the Center for Contemporary Black History, which Marable founded.

“In many ways, it was a surprise,” said the institute’s director, Fredrick Harris, who worked closely with Marable. He said the institute exchanged enthusiastic emails regarding the news, which coincides with the planning for a memorial conference for Marable next week, at which leading African-American scholars will speak.

“Here we have an opportunity to reflect on Professor Marable’s scholarship as well as his activism. It highlights the important contributions that Manning Marable made … to Columbia and to the world of scholarship,” Harris said.

The book, which was originally a finalist in the biography category but was awarded the history prize, “separates fact from fiction and casts Malcolm X into a human figure,” Harris said. “It talks about how Malcolm X reinvented himself, and his reinvention of self really reflects on how Black America in the 21st century has to in many ways reinvent himself to address some challenges when it comes to racial inequality.”

Marable died in April 2011 after a double lung transplant and complications from pneumonia. Posthumous Pulitzer awards are rare—the last was awarded in 1996 to the late Jonathan Larson for the musical “Rent.”

One of the two investigative journalism awards was given to Matt Apuzzo, Adam Goldman, Eileen Sullivan, and Chris Hawley at the AP. The national attention resulting from their series inspired a vocal response from students on campus and fireside chats with University President Lee Bollinger and University Chaplain Jewelnel Davis.

“It’s important that they’re [the AP reporters] being recognized for their work,” said Abdul Rafay Hanif, CC ’14 and president of the MSA. “They showed a lot of initiative in reporting the issue and shedding light on the issue that’s not only important to Columbia, or to New York City, but to the entire United States.”

Kocieniewski, a writer for the New York Times, was awarded the prize in explanatory reporting for what the jury called his “lucid series that penetrated a legal thicket” in the tax loopholes often exploited by the affluent.

Smith, a creative writing professor at Princeton, was recognized for her collection of “bold, skillful poems” called “Life on Mars,” which the jury said was capable of “taking readers into the universe and moving them to an authentic mix of joy and pain.”

“It was clear from the very start that Tracy K. Smith’s voice would be a beautiful force to be reckoned with in contemporary American poetry,” said School of the Arts Poetry Director Lucie Brock-Broido, who taught Smith at both Harvard and Columbia. “It is deeply gratifying for us in the School of the Arts to see the body of work that she’s gone on to create and even more gratifying to see that work receive the recognition she so truly deserves.”

Pulitzer Prize Administrator Sig Gissler said, “The watchdog still barks, the watchdog still bites,” referring to the strength of American journalism even “when resources are stretched and newsrooms are thin.”

Resurrected Tupac, Yesterday, Today, Forever

Posted on April 16, 2012 by drumsintheglobalvillage

A little eerie (scary?), but it’s not like Tupac has really left the Hiphop Generation’s collective consciousness. But a tour? Really?

Animated Icon and Rocket!

Posted on April 16, 2012 by drumsintheglobalvillage

After five years of watching “Static Shock!” and being disappointed that they didn’t appear, HOORAY! ICON and Rocket! My Milestone favorites! Thanks, Dwayne McDuffie! I know you are in the Realm of the Ancestors, smiling!

Hey, Marvel! "Captain America 2" To Have A Sidekick, Huh?

Posted on April 16, 2012 by drumsintheglobalvillage

Dear Marvel:

I know the younger fanboys are obsessed with The Winter Soldier (which, as the scenes clearly showed in last year’s Cap flick, is so gonna happen in a future Cap 2 or 3), but please consider this post an Oldhead fanboy voting for “Captain America 2: Flight Of The Falcon.” Nice title, huh? 🙂 Take it!

Thank you.

—TSB

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