Imprisoned Black Panther activist speaks to student encampment by speakerphone
Incarcerated Black Panther activist Mumia Abu-Jamal told USA TODAY he supports “anti-imperialist” student encampments spreading across the country to protest the war in Gaza. He has been in prison for over 40 years after being convicted for the 1981 murder of a Philadelphia police officer. Abu-Jamal’s death sentence was overturned by a federal court. He has maintained his innocence.
Today’s activism on college campuses reminds 70-year-old Abu-Jamal of his youth during protests against the war in Vietnam and the civil rights movement for Black Americans, he said in a brief phone call from Mahanoy state prison in Pennsylvania. He compared the protests to people once holding up lighters at concerts. Today, people tend to use cell phones.
“These are flickers of light in an anti-imperialist movement,” he said. “It’s remarkable to see.”
Abu-Jamal was set to speak Friday afternoon to the City College of New York student encampment in West Harlem, but Muslim students were in prayer on the campus lawn, so his call would be rescheduled for the evening. On Thursday, he spoke to Columbia University’s student encampment via speakerphone. A microphone amplified his voice.
− Eduardo Cuevas
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How it happened, according to the Mumia Abu-Jamal Listserv:
Johanna Fernandez via FreeMumia Unsubscribe 5:33 PM (2 hours ago)
to Free
Folks, I was being interviewed by USA Today at the City College encampment and Mumia called and I thought to pass him over to the journalist. Mumia’s remarks made it to this long list of updates. Hurray. Very positive intro to his remarks.
This is truly sad news. He was the artist for Icon, who, despite being a conservative in his first incarnation, was perhaps my favorite Milestone superhero!
I remember so clearly when this was “sneak-peek”ed in the fall 1992. It feels like a lifetime ago: I had just started grad school. It was on #FoxKids, home of #BatmanTheAnimatedSeries. I hadn’t read a X-Men comic since 1985 so I didn’t know half the team’s members. I quickly learned and for much of the ’90s dopamine instantly flooded my insides whenever I heard the words, “Previously, on ‘X-Men’….” So, #MarvelEntertainment #MarvelEnterprises, please air these *in order* this time? An advance THANKS!
Generative AI is experimental. Learn more Marvel Studios announced the cast for The Fantastic Four on Valentine’s Day, 2024, with a Valentine’s Day-themed art on Instagram: Pedro Pascal: Plays Reed Richards/Mr. Fantastic Vanessa Kirby: Plays Sue Storm Ebon Moss-Bachrach: Plays Ben Grimm Joseph Quinn: Plays Johnny Storm
CONTACT: Todd Steven Burroughs (toddpanther@gmail.com/@ToddStevenBurr1)
NEW, FREE ONLINE NOVEL ON MEDIUM.COM TELLS THE STORY OF HOW AMERICA’S FIRST BLACK MUPPET, A SYMBOL OF THE BLACK POWER MOVEMENT, WAS EVICTED FROM “SESAME STREET”
“The more I read about Roosevelt, the more I realize that a puppet actually went through the Black Power experience,” said Burroughs, who, at 56, was part of the first generation of American toddlers to watch the then-brand-new “Sesame Street” on PBS. So it was clear to him that Roosevelt’s “life” had to be explored in-depth.
“Originally I was going to write an article, but that had been done to death already,” said Burroughs, a freelance writer and public historian. “I was going to make it a little different by doing one of those long magazine pieces that would have allowed Roosevelt his first-person segment—a mini-platform to tell his own story—and that idea expanded into this attempt at fan fiction.”
Roosevelt Franklin was created by Matt Robinson, the show’s first “Gordon” (pictured, along with Loretta Long, still the show’s “Susan” in 2024). Decades before “Elmo’s World,” he was the first character to get his own “Sesame Street” segment named after him, “Roosevelt Franklin Elementary School,” a series of skits that had Franklin work as a student teacher at a vibrant, noisy, inner-city school.
A mainstay from 1970, the year after Sesame Street began, to 1975, he was even one of the show’s first toys.
So what happened?
“Roosevelt was a victim, ultimately, of middle-class Black respectability politics,” said Burroughs. “Once I saw his arc and how it intersected, and even mirrored, the Black Power Movement and the problems and paradoxes of racial integration and cultural nationalism, I knew I had to do something a little different, to tell the story I began to see in my own mind—basically write the last Black Power memoir about someone who, pun intended, wasn’t going to be The Man’s puppet.”
Published in full and for free on Medium.com,At The Dark End of Sesame Street fills in significant gaps in Roosevelt’s story, giving him friends and mentors—some of whom are very well-known in New York’s Black communities in the early 1970s—and, by doing that, tells fun and interesting tales about television, music, and finding a sense of purpose. Along the way, it exposes the internal tensions that are inevitable when a young Black man tries to balance the demands of white liberalism and Black radicalism during the Black Power era.
“The weirdest part for me was writing a story that mentioned both pioneering New York Congresswoman Shirley Chisolm and Big Bird,” said Burroughs, a lifetime student of New York’s Black public affairs television programming and Black radio history. “TV has always created strange bedfellows, and this novel is no different.”
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DISCLAIMER:A PEOPLE’S NOVEL: At The Dark End of Sesame Street: The Autobiography of Roosevelt Franklin (OR Coup Tube: The Prose Ballad of Roosevelt Franklin) is a nonprofit work of fanfiction written and posted for free online consumption, and hopefully enjoyment, under Fair Use. Roosevelt Franklin is a fantasy puppet character created by a real Black man, Matt Robinson, for use by the Children’s Television Workshop (CTW), now known as the Sesame Workshop. Sesame Street is a creation of the Children’s Television Workshop for the Public Broadcasting Service and HBO and is trademarked by Sesame Workshop. The Muppets were created by Jim Henson and the CTW. All Sesame Street Muppet characters are trademarked and copyrighted by the Sesame Workshop. All images, names and likenesses of Sesame Street characters, puppets and PBS actors used in this promotional material and in the novel are done under Fair Use. No copyright nor trademark infringement is intended.
Ras Baraka (reading his father’s poem “Digging Max”):
(At Seventy Five, All The Way Live!) Max is the highest The outest the Largest, the greatest The fastest, the hippest, The all the way past which There cannot be
When we say MAX, that’s what We mean, hip always Clean. That’s our word For Artist, Djali, Nzuri Ngoma, Senor Congero, Leader, Mwalimu, Scientist of Sound, Sonic Designer, Trappist Definer, Composer, Revolutionary Democrat, Bird’s Black Injun Engine, Brownie’s Other Half, Abbey’s Djeli-ya-Graph Who bakes the Western industrial singing machine Into temperatures of syncopated beyondness
Out Sharp Mean
Papa Joe’s Successor Philly Joe’s Confessor AT’s mentor, Roy Haynes’ Inventor, Steve McCall’s Trainer, Ask Buhainia. Jimmy Cobb, Elvin or Klook Or even Sunny Murray, when he aint in a hurry. Milford is down and Roy Brooks Is one of his cooks. Tony Williams, Jack DeJohnette, Andrew Cyrille can tell you or youngish Pheeroan Beaver and Blackwell and my man, Dennis Charles. They’ll run it down, ask them the next time they in town.
Ask any or all of the rhythm’n. Shadow cd tell you, so could Shelly Manne, Chico Hamilton. Rashid knows, Billy Hart. Eddie Crawford From Newark has split, but he and Eddie Gladden could speak on it. Mtume, if he will. Big Black can speak. Let Tito Puente run it down, He and Max were tight since they were babies in this town.
Frankie Dunlop cd tell you and he speak a long time. Pretty Purdy is hip. Max hit with Duke at Eighteen He played with Benny Carter when he first made the scene. Dig the heavy learning that went with that. Newk knows, And McCoy. CT would agree. Hey, ask me or Archie or Michael Carvin Percy Heath, Jackie Mc are all hip to the Max Attack.
Barry Harris can tell you. You in touch with Monk or Bird? Ask Bud if you see him, You know he know, even after the cops Beat him Un Poco Loco. I mean you can ask Pharaoh or David Or Dizzy, when he come out of hiding, its a trick Diz just outta sight. I heard Con Alma and Diz and Max In Paris, just the other night.
But ask anybody conscious, who Max Roach be. Miles certainly knew And Coltrane too. All the cats who know the science of Drum, know where our Last dispensation come from. That’s why we call him, MAX, the ultimate, The Furthest Star. The eternal internal, the visible invisible, the message From afar.
All Hail, MAX, from On to Dignataria to Serious and even beyond! He is the mighty SCARAB, Roach the SCARAB, immortal as our music, world without end. Great artist Universal Teacher, and for any Digger One of our deepest friends! Hey MAX! MAX! MAX!
Me (after an hour): Oh, that’s Cassandra Wilson!
Saul Williams:The music carries memory
Me: Yaas……
Sonia Sanchez:Keep that beat
Williams: We run on different fuels
Sanchez (reading one of many haikus for Max): your sounds exploding in the universe return to earth in prayer
Sanchez: I teach my students how to write haiku because it is one long prayer