Posted on Pan-African News Wire:

The excellent summary below, written by Saeed Shabazz and just published in the Final Call, about the current repression and brutality against our political prisoners is a very accurate and chilling picture. But there is a more positive counterpart to this story, as evidenced in the event on political prisoners the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition(FMAJC) and Resistance in Brooklyn held this past Friday night, November 21st, at St. Mary’s Church in New York City.

The evening was one of education and solidarity with political prisoners, on the occasion of the publication of an important new book on political prisoners, Let Freedom Ring by Matt Meyer. Former political prisoners Chairman Fred Hampton, Jr. of POCC, San Francisco 8 defendant Francisco (Cisco) Torres, Tarik Haskins, former BPP and BLA member incarcerated and tortured during a 17 year imprisonment, and Pam Africa of MOVE were among the speakers.

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One day after Barack Obama’s first visit to the White House as President-elect, we speak to the Pulitzer-winning novelist Alice Walker. In a recent open letter to Obama, Walker writes, “Seeing you take your rightful place, based solely on your wisdom, stamina and character, is a balm for the weary warriors of hope, previously only sung about.”

With reactions from author Eduardo Galeano, Dr. Vincent Harding, political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Relevant links: theroot.com, democracynow.org, prisonradio.org.

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The U.S. Supreme Court rejected more than 2,000 pending appeals Monday, including a request to grant a new trial for former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer 27 years ago.

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Mumia breaks down his take on Barack’s campaign and raises questions about its future.

It should surprise no one the candidacy of Illinois senator Barack Obama has evoked fascination, not least because of his presumed outsider status as a man at least partial African descent. It is this racial inheritance that accounts, to a considerable degree, for the fascination among both Blacks and whites posed by his candidacy. But as ever in America, race often hides as much as it reveals. For if Barack is an outsider to the American body politic because of his Blackness, he is too an outsider to much of Black America precisely because of his direct East African heritage, one unleavened and unmitigated by the 500 years of Black bondage, resistance, repression and rebellion that is at the heart of the African American experience and identity. In this sense Obama is a double outsider and has had to work out his own way into what being Black in America means.

Listen to the full commentary here.

More from  Mumia

From Friends of Peltier

To Mumia Abu-Jamal — my brother in this Struggle; and your family, friends, and supporters.

I offer you my warmest greetings. How appropriate, after so many years, that I now send you word from a cage housed in the very same state as yours.

Perhaps it is destiny that we would find ourselves incarcerated so near, under similar circumstance, by similar forces, using similar excuses, for a similar love of our people.

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Commentary by Mumia Abu Jamal:

It has been 40 years - a lifetime - since Martin Luther King, Jr. was felled in Memphis, Tennessee.

His life of committed activism, and his martyrdom, has left an indelible mark upon the world.

There were, indeed, echoes of him, in Black and some White churches this past Easter, but also in what the corporate media has called “incendiary” speeches of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

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PHILADELPHIA - A federal appeals court on Thursday said former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal cannot be executed for murdering a Philadelphia police officer without a new penalty hearing.

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