Category Archives: world history

"Today" Wasn't Maureen's Day :)

Posted on by drumsintheglobalvillage

 

This one speaks for itself.  🙂

The transcript comes from NewsBusters, a conservative media monitoring site. (And no, I’m NOT linking to it! LOL! 🙂 )  I fixed one thing: the “unidentified woman” is clearly Pam Africa.

Here’s the Tee Vee segment link.

MATT LAUER: On December 9th, 1981 a Philadelphia police officer was shot and killed while serving in the line of duty. A man named Mumia Abu-Jamal was convicted of the murder and sentenced to death. To this day he maintains his innocence. To some he is a cold-blooded killer, to others he’s a political prisoner. Here’s NBC’s Rehema Ellis.

[On screen headline: “Murdered By Mumia, Police Widow’s Fight For Justice.”]

UNIDENTIFED REPORTER: Police tell us that Officer Daniel Faulkner was shot down at 13th and Locust.

REHEMA ELLIS: When Officer Daniel Faulkner, a 25-year-old newlywed was gunned down on a Philadelphia street following a traffic stop no one knew it would ignite a debate that would be heard around the world.

PROTESTOR: Free Mumia now!

PROTESTOR#2: Kill Mumia now!

ELLIS: Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther, radio journalist and taxi driver was arrested, charged and convicted of murder. For 25 years now he’s been on death row for a crime, he says, he did not commit.

PROTESTORS: Free Mumia! Free Mumia! Free Mumia now!

ELLIS: He’s attracted Hollywood stars and gained international fame.

PAM AFRICA: It’s a righteous cause! That’s why you see people right here from Belgium, from France, from Germany, from South Africa, here!

ELLIS: There have been rallies and fundraisers for a man many say was framed by a racist legal system but Officer Faulkner’s family has a different view.

TOM FAULKNER, BROTHER OF MURDERED POLICE OFFICER: He’s no damn martyr. He assassinated my brother.

ELLIS: Over the years Abu-Jamal’s advocates have tried but failed to overturn his conviction. Now supporters say there is new photographic evidence that should lead to a new trial.

ROBERT R. BRYAN, LEAD COUNSEL FOR MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: The jury only saw one side of the coin.

UNIDENTIFIED REPORTER: Do you believe you will, one day, be a free man or do you believe, one day, you will be put to death?

MUMIA ABU-JAMAL: I’m working for the former, not the latter.

ELLIS: In May Abu-Jamal’s defense team argued he should be set free while prosecutors still insisted he should be executed. As everyone awaits a court’s decision 53-year-old Mumia Abu-Jamal remains on death row and the debate over what happened that night, almost 26 years ago, continues. For Today, Rehema Ellis, NBC News, New York.

LAUER: Maureen Faulkner is the widow of slain police officer Danny Faulkner, Michael Smerconish is a conservative radio host and columnist based in Philadelphia. Their new book is called “Murdered By Mumia: A Life Sentence of Loss, Pain and Injustice.” Good morning to both of you.

MAUREEN FAULKNER: Good morning Matt.

MICHAEL SMERCONISH: Good morning.

LAUER: I was struck, Maureen, I was watching that piece and I’m trying to think if you could have ever imagined 26 years ago, when this first happened that, that 26 years later you’d still be in the midst of debate over this case?

FAULKNER: No, Matt, absolutely not. After Danny was murdered in 1981 and he was buried and the case was over I thought I could go on with my life and try to rebuild and have a new life. But for the past 26 years I’ve just been haunted by the Free Mumia movement.

LAUER: And, and in some ways it seems the debate over guilt or innocence or racism or injustice has somehow left Danny out. And, and, at times when I hear this debate I don’t hear people remembering that a police officer was murdered by someone.

FAULKNER: So often they do not mention Danny’s name. And that’s what they need to do. I mean he was a young police officer, he was 25-years-old and he was brutally murdered by Mumia.

LAUER: I want to show people a live shot outside our studio right now and show them that there is a fairly substantial protest right across the street from our studio. These people got up early in the morning, came from some place to express their views that this man is innocent. How do you feel, why do you think they’re here, if they don’t truly believe that?

FAULKNER: They are trying the case in the court of public opinion and not in the court of law and that’s why I think people need to read the book. It’s all there. My life, the facts, what happened the night my husband was murdered is all in the book.

LAUER: Michael, Abu-Jamal’s attorney since 2003 is a guy named Robert Bryan. He says that when the conviction and sentence came down in 1982 there were constitutional issues, there was racism, there was injustice, there was evidence tampering. He also says, by the way, that you’re a guy who’s involved in this for your own personal gain because you didn’t try this case, you’re not a lawyer. Why, why are you involved in this?

SMERCONISH: Well I resent that charge and obviously Mr. Bryan hasn’t read the inside flap of the book. “The author’s proceeds from the sale of this book are being donated to a not-for-profit,” that Maureen has established for the benefit of murder victim children. This is a three-year investment.

LAUER: Maybe he’s not talking about financial personal gain. Maybe he’s talking about for status and, and, and attention.

SMERCONISH: There’s, there’s no upside. There’s a tremendous drain on my time to write this but America needs to know the story of an unbelievable woman who for 26 years has fought the fight when I think most of us would’ve washed our hands of it and walked away.

LAUER: If, if there is something new in this case and for so many years there really hasn’t been an awful lot new, there’s just been heated debate but there are some photographs that have been released by supporters of Mumia and, and they were taken by a freelancer named Pedro Polokoff. They say, the supporters say, these photos show a policeman holding two guns in his bare hand, contradicting what officers trial testimony was that he had preserved, ballistics evidence. Another shows Faulkner’s hat, your husband’s hat on top of a car, not on the sidewalk, as in the official police photo of the crime scene. And the third shows a blood-stained sidewalk where the shooting took place but does not show any signs of marks in the concrete that might have occurred if, if your husband had been shot from above as prosecutors contended. The defense attorney says he can have a field day with these photographs if a new trial is-

SMERCONISH: But this is the outrage. For 26 years these canards have enabled the manipulation of the process. I mean it’s as reliable as the fact that Christmas is on the 25th on December that they will come up with something every year. One year it was a guy who stood up and said, “I know who murdered Danny Faulkner! I did it!” And the defense lawyers thought he was preposterous. Another year it was a guy who said that he was there and that the dying words of Danny Faulkner were, “Get Maureen, get the children!” When everybody agrees he died instantly and unfortunately she never had the chance to have children with Danny. I mean it’s, where does it stop?

FAULKNER: Where have these pictures been for 26 years? I mean where have they been? Why hasn’t this man come forth sooner than now?

LAUER: Maureen, when you’re ever, when you’re alone, when you’re alone with your thoughts at night, when you even see pictures of the protest like the one we have across the street, does it ever cross your mind that perhaps they’re right? Do you ever allow yourself to consider the fact that perhaps he didn’t do this?

FAULKNER: He murdered my husband in cold blood and there is no doubt in my mind. Absolutely no doubt. And I wrote this book, it, it was a therapy for me to get my life in black and white so people can read it. And Michael, thank you Michael. Michael has been with me for 15 years helping me and standing up and speaking out for me, 15 years.

LAUER: The emotions of this case run very high and, and I’m sure we’re not gonna have an answer today, that’s for sure. But Michael thank you for being here. Maureen thanks so much, it’s nice to meet you.

SMERCONISH: Thank you, Matt, thank you.

FAULKNER: Thank you, Matt.

LAUER: We appreciate it. The book is called “Murdered By Mumia” and an excerpt can be found on our Web site at todayshow.com.

ADDENDUM:  My friend Linn Washington asked me for my on-the-record, for-an-article reaction. Here’s my “official quote” that I wrote to (and for) him:

“Viva Reuters! LOL!  The legitimacy of the international wire service article—with the pro-Mumia New York City protesters in a distant second place—clearly made ‘Today’ take the ‘Free Mumia’ movement seriously.

“It was good to see Faulkner and Smerconish finally being asked some critical questions about the legitimacy of Abu-Jamal’s trial and all of the evidence that points to a set-up, Mumia’s guilt or innocence be damned. The fact that there was news on the pro-Mumia side actually made ‘Today’ actually take its focus away from its usual white-woman-as-victim fetish.

“Kudos to Hans Bennett and Michael Schiffmann, followed by Lauer and our sister Rehema Ellis. Unlike Philadelphia’s mainstream news media, ‘Today’ is not ‘tired’ of covering this case.

“I hope the ‘Free Mumia’ movement will study what happened this week. Because it got a legitimate mainstream news outlet to take some actual news it had seriously, one of the world’s top mainstream outlets followed along and represented its concerns. We need more actual news about Mumia and less vigils, puppets and symbolic tribunals.”

Book Reviews: "Incognegro" and "Democracy With A Gun: America And The Policy Of Force"

Posted on by drumsintheglobalvillage

Two book reviews. The first is fiction, the second nonfiction.

Incognegro

The Horror Of Lynching (And The Power Of ‘Passing’), Through The Eyes Of The Black Press

Incognegro.
By Mat Johnson (Writer) and Warren Pleece (Illustrator).
New York: Vertigo/DC Comics.
136 pages. $19.99.
ISBN-10: 140121097X
ISBN-13: 978-1401210977

It’s become a cliché to say that both lynching and “passing” are parts of the African-American experience most Americans, including and perhaps especially African-Americans, would like to forget. However, the recent Black media rallying over the Jena 6 case—in which nooses were found under a tree under which Black teenagers were allowed to sit near a Louisiana high school—have brought up the ugly history of the former again. The latter—in which light-skinned African-Americans would, in effect, secretly cross enemy lines, disguising their true identities—has, interestingly enough, found new, “overground” currency in post-modern America, with famous light-skinned Blacks now being able to publicly claim their inter-racial “diversity,” in effect refusing to take a side in the classic divide.

Taking a side is what this graphic novel—a fictional tribute to NAACP leader Walter White’s real-life, death-defying lynching investigations almost a century ago—is all about. Harlemite Zane Pinchback’s secret identity is “Incognegro,” the muckraking investigative columnist for the best Black newspaper in town, The New Holland Herald (an obvious play on The New York Amsterdam News). He’s light-skinned enough to “pass,” so he can investigate lynchings close-up, literally risking his neck in the process. Although he wants to place his real byline into the Harlem Renaissance vortex swirling around him, he’s summoned back to wear the mask one more time to free his brother, who’s been framed for the murder of a white woman.

Johnson—winner of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, an increasingly major Black writer peer honor—beautifully alternates humor and horror, turning even a profanity-filled phrase as easily as blood flowed from the lynching trees. The colors, notably and powerfully, are absent; all is, appropriately, in black and white. Pleece’s simplicity in draftsmanship keeps the attention on the story and characters, not the pretty pictures. And since lynching is the subject, the pictures should be only so pretty. A powerful, passionate, funny adult work to be read and discussed by old and not-so-old, especially the teenagers who want to know what all that Jena fuss was about.

*****

democracy.jpg

To One Japanese Journalist, Gun Violence Is ‘In America’s DNA’

Democracy With A Gun: America And The Policy of Force.
By Fumio Matsuo. Translated by David Reese.
Berkeley, California: Stone Bridge Press.
296 pages. $26.
ISBN: 978-1-93330-46-4

Mary Matalin, the Republican strategist who has made her name and fortune by trimming both Bushes, asserted last Sunday (11/25) on NBC’s “Meet The Press” that gun culture was “mainstream culture” in the United States. “I’m from the (Dick) Cheney Way,” she said, referring to the vice president who will be forever known for his 2006 accidental shooting of a friend during a hunting trip. “If you come hunting for me, I’m going to shoot you.”

Matalin may or may not agree with veteran journalist Fumio Matsuo that America’s use of force is in its DNA, from the Revolutionary War through Columbine and into the United States’ occupation of Iraq. But it’s clear that Matsuo, a longtime American correspondent and former Washington Bureau Chief for the Kyodo News Service, creates a masterful outline of American political and legal history from the point of view of the gun. He traces the story of the Second Amendment, explaining how it could lead to the scorched-earth philosophy behind the World War II bombing he miraculously survived as a boy in Japan. He learns the latter by digging up the history of the bombing and profiling its generals. The work is completely thorough.

Any writing elegance, for the most part, might have gotten lost during translation, but Matsuo deftly walks through three centuries of America. He dispassionately teaches the American way of violence to other Japanese first (the book was originally published in Japan), then calling for better U.S.-Japan relations by asking for a real, public reconciliation based on the acknowledgement of both sides of the atomic fires of World War II. Fundamentally an optimist, he sees America’s racial diversity as its strength, but he also analyzes why he thinks that the neo-conservatives who got America mired in Iraq are the next coming of “The Best and the Brightest” White House intellectuals who got the nation sucked into Vietnam. Matsuo depends on the reader to draw his or her own conclusions—an increasingly rare attitude in political books these days. It’s an important view of America from someone who knows parts of it better than most natives.

When The Sky Isn't Blue

Posted on by drumsintheglobalvillage

See the above? Well, it isn’t torture—at least, not according to America’s elite mainstream media. Well, at least not yet. See, they haven’t made up their minds.

Whenever I think “Democracy Now!” sounds too strident, all I have to do is hear the MSM’s hand-wringing over the obvious to again be reminded why we need national, professional advocacy journalism based in the United States.

What?!? No More Kids' WB!?!?

Posted on by drumsintheglobalvillage

And then, in 2008, there was none. Damn. Money really does talk, and talk well, huh? DAMN! What happened to subsidizing your BRANDS? Oh, that’s right; the network is the CW now. Boy, am I naive! LOL! 🙂

Clearly, after 16 years of geek bliss, it’s finally time to leave the house on Saturday mornings. 🙂 I will always have great memories of the Great Animated Superhero Cartoon Commercial Television Era of 1992 (the year “Batman: TAS” premiered on Fox Kids on weekday afternoons) to 2008. “X-Men,” “Spider-Man: TAS,” “Phantom 2040” , “Gargolyes” and “Superman: TAS” followed on Fox Kids, Kids WB! or in weekdaily or weekend first-run syndication (not counting UPN Kids, ’cause it just showed repeats of the other network shows), all to great acclaim from fanboys (read: me 🙂 ).

And on and on, “Fantastic Four: TAS,” “Iron Man: TAS,” “Silver Surfer: TAS” (my all-time favorite) “The Avengers: TAS,” and more, as the ’90s turned into ’00s. Up through “The Batman” (a show I only tolerated until it began to take itself seriously, writing-wise, at the start of its fourth season) and “Legion of Super Heroes.”

With Fox Kids and Kids’ WB! gone, at 39 I really can’t make the audience investment anymore, following the remaining cartoons to cable or wherever. *SIGH* At least there are now a lot of (direct–to-) DVD animated films from which to choose.

Time to take those Saturday art classes—sculpture? painting?— I keep claiming I want. And perhaps I should start pulling out my “How-To-Write-A-Screenplay” books and my African myth anthologies……..

New Website About Katrina

Posted on by drumsintheglobalvillage

 

Got this from my friend and mentor Don Rojas as we observe the Katrina anniversary.

NEW WEBSITE CALLS FOR EQUITY AND INCLUSION IN THE GULF COAST

On the occasion of the 2nd anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s devastation of communities in the Gulf Coast region, the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation (LDRF) in collaboration with many partners has launched a new Web site ( www.equityandinclusion.org ) to focus regional and national attention on the continuing plight of grassroots organizations working on behalf of those displaced and impacted by hurricanes Katrina and Rita in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Texas.

With Gulf Coast community news, blogs, podcasts, commentaries and calendars of events, the site aims to be a focal point on the Web for community organizations and coalitions to engage each other and collaborate in an ongoing campaign to adequately inform the nation and lift the public’s awareness.  

“Two years after Katrina, hundreds of thousands of poor and marginalized people are still shut out of the recovery and rebuilding of the region,” said Ashley Shelton, interim Chief Operating Officer at LDRF.

The site will also promote consistent advocacy at both the Federal and State levels and will demand of all the candidates who are seeking to be the next president of the United States to make an equitable, just and fair Gulf Coast recovery a top priority in their campaign planks.

As the Equity & Inclusion campaign site grows and expands, there are plans to publish Web content not only in English but in Spanish and Vietnamese as well, thus reflecting the three main languages spoken in the communities that were hardest hit by the storm.

The campaign’s Web site content will inform the general public about Gulf Coast realities with sound evidence, scientific data and credible research, all of which would come together to make the argument that the recovery, to date, has not been equitable, has not been balanced, has not been inclusive, has not been fair.

“The poor and the powerless have been left out of the recovery because racism and classism have been prevalent in the decision-making process”, said Don Rojas, creator of the E&I campaign’s site. “The job of this campaign is to expose these injustices and imbalances and to mobilize broad public pressure on the political leadership in Washington and also in the State capitols.”

Rojas added that close to a million people of good will from all across the United States and from as far away as Japan and Europe have traveled to Coastal communities over the last two years to volunteer selflessly their time, energy and money in the rebuilding process.

“We are all grateful and appreciative of their generosity. But when they return to their homes they go back to a reality of relative isolation, deprived of a steady flow of information about the ups and downs of Gulf Coast rebuilding. Their empathy for the plight of those in this region who are being shut out of the recovery process will wane and dissipate if we do not keep them engaged and informed, if we do not call on them to organize in their own communities and to pressure their Congressional representatives to deliver on their promises to make the Gulf Coast region whole again. This will be one of the main objectives of the campaign and the site.”

“And then, of course, there is the “Katrina Diaspora,” the tens of thousands of displaced Gulf Coast residents who are living across the 48 contiguous states of the US, most of whom want to return to their homes and communities and to a bright and secure future,” added Shelton.

“Their right to return is a basic human right, a basic constitutional right that this campaign must advocate for consistently and vigorously.  Like the volunteers, people in the Katrina Diaspora are also starving for up-to-date information and analysis on the recovery. They have an invaluable role to play in mobilizing public support and this campaign should place a high priority on reaching out to them and keeping them engaged,” she said.

The new site ( www.equityandinclusion.org ) is powered by PromoSuite Interactive.

Contact: Don Rojas

Tel: 443-834-9693 Email: donrojas30@gmail.com