57 QuickLinks

Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Mumia Abu-Jamal Faces US Supreme Court as New Book and Film Expose Injustice
(4 comments) With Monday's PCRA rejection, Abu-Jamal's upcoming appeal of the Third Circuit decision (the filing of this appeal is due by Oct. 20 unless a 60 day extension is requested) is now more important than ever, because this is now his last chance for a new guilt-phase trial. This crucial moment coincides with two new media projects that expose injustice in his case that extends beyond the narrow issues being considered in court.

Thursday, October 2, 2008
Urgent Action Alert! Prisoners Under Attack in Camp Hill's SMU
(1 comments) In the last four months over a dozen prisoners confined in the Special Management Unit (SMU) at State Correctional Institution (SCI) Camp Hill have written HRC/Fed Up! about conditions of severe brutality, white supremacy, and the systematic sabotage at all inmate efforts to file grievances and/or obtain legal assistance.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008
Indymedia Journalist Raped and Murdered in Oaxaca
Marcella "Sali" Grace Eiler, solidarity worker with the people's struggle in Oaxaca, was found dead last week with signs of a brutal rape and murder. She helped with documentation accompaniment, and gave report-backs on the movement in Arizona.

Tuesday, September 30, 2008
PERU: Interview with Political Prisoner Lori Berenson
(1 comments) American activist Lori Berenson was pulled off a bus in Peru in November of 1995, detained by anti-terrorist police, and tried for treason against the Peruvian state by a hooded military tribunal. A gun was held to her head as she received her sentence: life in prison. Accused of being a leader of the MRTA (Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement), Lori was one of thousands of people kidnapped, tortured, disappeared, and...

Saturday, September 27, 2008
Alaska's Blacks and Palin: a Strained Relationship
Did the Governor Say She "Didn't Have to Hire Any Blacks?" Linn Washington Jr. writes that "Alaskan blacks fault Palin for not hiring African-Americans, dismissing blacks from government posts, spurning repeated requests to meet with black leaders to discuss issues of concern and refusing to attend that state's major African-American celebration."

Tuesday, September 23, 2008
KBOO Radio's "Prison Pipeline": Journalists for Mumia
Prison Pipeline presented an interview between host, Ruth Kovacs and telephone guest, Hans Bennett--a Philadelphia-based independent journalist and co-founder of Journalists for Mumia. They reviewed updated information on pending appeals for Mumia Abu-Jamall and current recent stories about his case.

Thursday, September 18, 2008
PhillyIMC: Mourning the death of Imam W. Deen Mohammed
The Shalom Center mourns the death of Imam W. Deen Mohammed, may the memory of this righteous and loving leader be a blessing to us all. Imam Mohammed, 74, was the son of Elijah Muhammad, the founder of the "Nation of Islam." After his father's death in 1975, Imam Mohammed led his community to mainstream Islam. Those who followed him took a path similar to that of El-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz ("Malcolm X" ) in his last months...

Thursday, September 11, 2008
How Mumia was Railroaded
Reviewing J. Patrick O'Connor's recently published "The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal," Ben Davis writes that "Opponents of Abu-Jamal always say that his supporters should just 'read the transcripts' of the trial for evidence of his guilt. Supporters can now reply: Read 'The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal'".

Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Video interview with Amy Goodman after being released
Watch the video. Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman and producers Sharif Abdel Kouddous and Nicole Salazar have all been released from police custody in St. Paul following their illegal arrest by Minneapolis Police on Monday afternoon.

Saturday, August 30, 2008
Leonard Peltier Sends Messages to Obama and the DNC Protesters
Leonard Peltier writes to Obama: "Your election as president of the United States, where slaves and Indians were long considered less than human under the law, will undoubtedly constitute a historic moment in race relations in the United States. Yet symbolism alone will not bring about change..."

Monday, August 25, 2008
PHOTOS and AUDIO: Watsonville LGBT Pride Day a Huge Success
Watsonville's (CA) first Pride celebration was a huge success, with 325 marching through the streets and over 500 enjoying a liberating party in the Plaza. The party is probably still going on... fotos and audio (MP3) included below. Features photos of many different groups, including the Brown Berets holding a banner that read "Liberación para to@s l@s Oprimid@s" (Liberation for All of the Oppressed).

Thursday, August 21, 2008
Dispatch From Paraguay: Hope Reigns at Dawn of Fernando Lugo Presidency
"Soldiers will never again be sent out to kill campesinos," Lugo promised, but the uniformed men who passed through the crowds nevertheless drew quiet, suspicious looks. Their olive green uniforms still in some sense symbolized the forty-year-long Stroessner dictatorship....Lugo had broken all protocol by dressing in sandals and a typical Paraguayan shirt, an aopo'i, and he began his speech in Guarani, the indigenous language.

Wednesday, August 20, 2008
VICTORY! -Tree Sitters Descend; Old Growth Won't Be Cut on Old Pacific Lumber land
Eureka, CA-Community residents and forest activists from the redwood region and far beyond Humboldt County in Northern California, were relieved and elated as news spread of an unprecedented commitment by Humboldt Redwood Company owners of what was Maxxam/PL land to spare the Nanning Creek and Fern Gully ancient groves where tree-sits have been keeping chain saws at bay. The message was delivered directly to tree-sitters...

Monday, August 18, 2008
Can a Handful of International Activists and Two Boats Break the Siege of Gaza?
It is the responsibility of all activists for human rights and social justice worldwide to stand behind the courageous passengers of the SS Free Gaza and SS Liberty in the coming critical days as they prepare to depart from Cyprus. This is an act of nonviolent civil disobedience following in the footsteps of Gandhi - unarmed ordinary people with an unshakable moral conviction facing down one of the most powerful militaries...

Thursday, August 14, 2008
Communication Breakdown: How Cell Phones Hurt Communities
It was a fresh morning after a night of rain and we were hiking up into the mountains in Southern France. The plants and trees glowed with green, vibrant life. Sheep and cows were meandering in the fields, and the sky was blue, stretching out for miles. Then I heard a faint beeping noise that didn't sound like a bird.

Friday, August 8, 2008
One year after Jena tree was cut, little progress has been made
We have made some progress since the ugly incidents in Jena, La. But we still have a long way to go to make the noose a thing of the past....on Feb. 19, 2008, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly said on his radio program: "I don't want to go on a lynching party against Michelle Obama unless there's evidence, hard facts, that say this is how the woman really feels...."

Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Angola death case hinges on '63 ruling
(1 comments) An important update on the case of the Angola 3, who many feel are political prisoners. At the angola3.org website, you can watch an NBC news report which features the widow of the slain prison guard, who is supportive of a new trial, because she says she doesn't want innocent people to be blamed for his death.

Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Video and photos from Sweatfree Communities rally and worker testimony in Philadelphia
July 12, 2008: Video footage from the anti-sweatshop rally across from the National Association of Governors meeting in Philadelphia.

Saturday, July 19, 2008
San Francisco Bay View: The end of an era, the dawn of a new day
(1 comments) Publishing the Bay View in print has been a labor of love and the love of our lives for over 16 years, but although major advertising agencies recognize the Bay View as one of the top 10 Black papers in the country, we were never able to make it profitable or even sustainable. Now we've had to face the reality that we're flat out of funds or any source to tap.

Sunday, July 13, 2008
The Freedom Archives: An Interview with Claude Marks
(1 comments) Claude Marks is the director of The Freedom Archives, a San Francisco-based organization. Through the website and email list-serves, it provides a valuable resource documenting both revolutionary struggle and police state repression. Freedom Archives also creates high quality audio and video documentaries, including the recent video about the San Francisco Eight, titled "Legacy of Torture."

Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Kiilu Nyasha on George Jackson and Black August
This is the 29th anniversary of Black August, first organized to honor our martyred freedom fighters, Jonathan and George Jackson, Khatari Gaulden, James McClain, William Christmas, and the sole survivor of the August 7,1970 Courthouse Slave Rebellion, Ruchell Cinque Magee. It's a time to embrace the principles of unity, self-sacrifice, political education, physical fitness and/or training in martial arts, resistance and...

Sunday, July 6, 2008
PhillyIMC: Global Day of Action Protests Starbucks' Anti-Union Terminations
Philadelphia journalist and IWW member John Kalwaic reports that on July 5, the Philadelphia IWW organized an action outside Starbucks "to protest the firing of Starbucks baristas who had been trying to unionize with the IWW Starbucks Workers Union in the United States. This event was coordinated with the Anarchist CNT Union in Spain where baristas have also been fired for organizing.

Monday, June 23, 2008
Philly activists still homeless after arrests and seizure of home
(3 comments) On June 13, 2008, police entered a home in North Philadelphia without warrant and arrested its 4 residents, whose recent community activities included petitioning against police brutality and new police surveillance cameras in their community. One of the arrestees, Jen Rock writes that police "said they were responding to a complaint about 'trespassing in an abandoned building'. We have lived in our home for almost 4 years."

Saturday, June 14, 2008
Police critics arrested, home seized in police raid!
Philadelphia Police descended upon the home of homeowners who have been questioning police tactics in Mayor Nutter's new "stop and frisk" program. 4 residents were arrested in their home at 17th street and Ridge Avenue, and the police are in the process of sealing the building. The homeowners are being held at the police station, no charges have yet been filed.

Thursday, June 12, 2008
Flag Day in Chester County: calling all colors
(1 comments) For the nearly six years the Chester County Peace Movement (CCPM) has been holding regular anti-war vigils at High and Market Street in West Chester, PA. Just this year, though, their efforts have attracted the ire of several pro-war groups including the Gathering of Eagles, who now hold a regular counter vigil on the opposite corner. Several weeks ago the Gathering put out a call for a special protest on Flag Day, June 14

Sunday, June 8, 2008
Philly's Keystone Kop Follies: Police Brutality and Cover-up
Family and supporters of the now incarcerated trio say the beating arose from a case of mistaken identity and authorities filed charges against them to evade responsibility for the beating. One of the trio, Dwayne Dyches, physically resembled a man police sought for the murder of a policeman days before the trio's beating. The trio admits being in the area of that 5/5 street corner shooting but say they were visiting with...

Friday, May 30, 2008
BLACK COMMENTATOR: Assassination Talk Shows Hillary's True Colors
(2 comments) Hillary Clinton cannot claim to be a feminist whose candidacy has fallen victim to misogyny, yet engage in raw, unabashed appeals to white-skin solidarity, and endorse military aggression against innocent women and children in Iraq and Iran. Red meat, testosterone and hubris dressed in a pants suit do not equate to feminism.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008
PhillyIMC: Philadelphia-area Mid East Peace Activists cast a Shadow of Mourning over "Israel at 60" Celebration
As supporters of how Israel was created were celebrating down the Ben Franklin Parkway, Palestinians and solidarity activists sent a cloud of 1000 black balloons into the sky to mark the 60th anniversary of Palestinian dispossession, when the Israeli military uprooted and killed Palestine's indigenous population to make way for the Israeli state.

Monday, May 19, 2008
PHILADELPHIA: Brewerytown Organizers Threaten to Boycott Rita's Water Ice
On May 15, 2008, community members in Brewerytown, held a meeting to create a preliminary plan for how to address the imminent opening of a Rita's Water Ice franchise at 2829 W. Girard Avenue. The attendees were responding to eight years of frustration over the way Rita's handled the rape of an 11-year old African-American girl by two white Rita's employees at Veteran's Stadium in 2000.

Thursday, May 8, 2008
IWW Delegation Returns from Haiti
(1 comments) An Industrial Workers of the World delegation has just returned from Haiti where we spent twelve days meeting with representatives of the Confederation des Travailleurs Haïtiens (Haitian Confederation of Workers) and other worker and peasant movements....We kept a detailed blog and are making a video from the trip. There will be organized report backs with photos and video in June.

Friday, May 2, 2008
NY Times showcases new book "The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal"
The book, "The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal," by J. Patrick O'Connor, asserts that Officer Daniel Faulkner died on Dec. 9, 1981, from shots fired by Kenneth Freeman, a business partner of the brother of the convicted man, Mr. Abu-Jamal, who has been on death row for 25 years for a crime he says he did not commit.

Friday, April 18, 2008
Author of "The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal" analyzes March 27 ruling
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit's ruling in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal continues a long and tortured denial of Abu-Jamal's right to a fair trial. Just as the Pennsylvania Supreme Court reversed its own precedent to deny Abu-Jamal a new trial based on the prosecutor's improper summation to the jury during the guilt phase of his trial, the Third Circuit's March 27 decision has now followed suit by...

Thursday, March 20, 2008
BlackCommentator.com Analyzes Obama's Race Speech
(1 comments) 11 editors of BlackCommentator.com respond to Barack Obama's speech given this week about Race in the US.

Tuesday, March 18, 2008
WHAT'S UP WITH TIBET
(1 comments) A look at the Dalai Lama's dark side...."I can't tell you what the people of Tibet want, but neither can Richard Gere."

Thursday, March 13, 2008
The Revolution Will Be Digitized: The Media Mobilizing Project works to bring grassroots organization into the 21st cent
Media consolidation and the digital divide - which effectively silence populist concerns - receives a blow by the Media Mobilizing Project.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008
The Black Commentator: GOP Jesus Is No Friend of Mine
(1 comments) Christian conservatives have created a perverse and profane Jesus with warped priorities. Frankly, their invention disturbs me. This GOP Jesus is preoccupied, even obsessed, with two issues: abortion and same-sex marriage.

Monday, February 25, 2008
Two birthday parties for the late great Huey P. Newton
(2 comments) Last weekend the people of West Oakland and East Oakland celebrated the birth of Black Panther Party co-founder, its leading theoretician and practitioner and Minister of Defense Huey P. Newton in two separate ceremonies on Saturday and Sunday. Both events were filled with political information and insight coming from veterans of the Black Panther Party. Those who spoke included Ericka Huggins, "Big Man" Howard....

Saturday, February 23, 2008
Stand with Cab Drivers: Demand that PPA is Accountable to Drivers and Philadelphians
The Taxi Workers Alliance of Pennsylvania (TWA) is calling drivers and concerned citizens to the Philadelphia Parking Authority (PPA) Board Meeting on Monday. The cabdrivers are attending the board meeting to demand that the PPA live up to its promise of removing the failing GPS systems from city cabs.

Sunday, February 17, 2008
Philadelphia for Philadelphians!: The Don't Tax Me Out Campaign
The City's plan to get back on budget will place an even heavier tax burden on poor and working class Philadelphians despite widespread foreclosure thanks to property taxes already overwhelming for many low- and fixed-income home owners. Properties, the scheme urges, should be taxed at full market value instead of the lower "assessed value" now used to determine real estate taxes.

Saturday, February 16, 2008
Bush Defends America's Indefensible Human Rights Record
So, how do you defend the indefensible? The Bush administration pretends the problem doesn't exist, and tells the victim to stop playing the victim and show some personal responsibility. On the issue of human rights, this administration never fails to disappoint.

Friday, February 15, 2008
Inter Press Service interviews Mumia Abu-Jamal
(1 comments) In this rare interview from Pennsylvania's death row, Abu-Jamal talks about being a journalist on death row with IPS correspondent Adrianne Appel and radio journalist John Grebe. "Writing from a radical and populist, black liberation point of view, never left me," he says, "We do truly live in amazing times, times that are challenging, times that are dangerous -- but also times that are inspiring."

Thursday, February 14, 2008
To Snitch or Not To Snitch: The View From The Other Side
(1 comments) "Stop Snitching" is not directed to the majority of people within these communities that are working class people. It does not apply to the grandmother living in terror from idiot thugs terrorizing the neighborhood and robbing working class people of their hard earned dollars and possessions....[It]is directed at those who are in the "game" and street life, informing and telling on people in exchange for the freedom to....

Tuesday, February 12, 2008
The Obama campaign: Organizing and empowering the people
Obama has enlisted hundreds of seasoned organizers -including unions, community groups, churches and environmental groups - into his campaign. They, in turn, have mobilized thousands of volunteers - many of them neophytes in electoral politics - into tightly knit, highly motivated and efficient teams. This organizing effort has turned out a new group of voters, many of them young people and first-time voters.

Monday, February 11, 2008
Al Nakba Remembered in Philly: 60 Days of Action to Coincide with the 60th Anniversary of the Palestinian Catastrophe
(1 comments) This spring marks the 60th anniversary of Al Nakba, "the catastrophe," the little known side of Israel's creation that murdered thousands of Palestinian civilians in 1948 and drove over 700,000 others into exile after a terror campaign by the nascent Israeli state. Philly SUSTAIN (Stop US Tax-funded Aid to Israel Now!), Temple and Penn Students for Justice in Palestine and the AL Nakba Committee are responding to....

Thursday, February 7, 2008
PhillyIMC: Restructuring Process Looms for up to 70 Schools in Philadelphia
Like districts across the country with schools in Corrective Action, the School Reform Commission has been weighing what to do at those 70 schools – and has talked about interventions including privatization or charter conversion.

Saturday, February 2, 2008
PhillyIMC: Philly Activists Urge Israel to End Gaza Siege, Cite Humanitarian Crisis
At noon last Saturday, January 26th, at least a hundred Philadelphians marched through Center City, from 5th and Market to the Israeli Consulate at 15th and Locust, urging Israel to lift its blockade of the Palestinian Gaza Strip and to allow a waiting convoy of much-needed relief supplies into the territory.

Friday, February 1, 2008
BlackCommentator.com: Ward Connerly's Super Tuesday for Segregation
Ward Connerly, that high profile opponent for affirmative action and Black water carrier for the new Jim Crow, has returned. He wants to eliminate affirmative action everywhere, and make a buck at the same time. And with the help of corporate philanthropy and hate groups, he wants to take us back to the future we know too well.

Saturday, January 26, 2008
HUFFINGTON POST: Obama in Context (about new Mumia documentary)
(2 comments) My husband Colin and I have ongoing discussions on who we would support for this presidential campaign. Obama, Clinton, Edwards -- I tend to go for Obama but yesterday, while having lunch with friends here in Sundance, an African American studio executive said that should Obama be elected, he fears there would be several attempts to assassinate him simply because he is black. This sent an icy shock through me.

Sunday, January 20, 2008
Philly IMC: Martin Luther King events across Philadelphia
This year marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In an effort to cement the memory Dr. King's legacy, a local organization has launched a 40-day effort to promote nonviolence.

Monday, January 14, 2008
Santa Cruz: Tree Sit Re-suppliers Pepper Sprayed, No Arrests
(1 comments) On January 12th, two University of California police officers used pepper spray to disperse about 15 people gathered below an occupied redwood tree on Science Hill at UC Santa Cruz. The officers got out of their car, and then followed the people dressed in black and wearing bandannas across their faces. One officer proclaimed that the group was trespassing and then both officers began pepper spraying people in their faces.

Thursday, January 10, 2008
America's Racism is a Human Rights Violation
In 1964, Malcolm X called Uncle Sam "the earth's number-one hypocrite" on the issue of human rights. It's nearly four and a half decades later; some things never change....America, your record on racism drips with hypocrisy. As the self-proclaimed beacon of human rights, yet a chronically habitual human rights offender and purveyor of wolf tickets, now is the time to clean up your act and practice what you preach.

Sunday, January 6, 2008
Ramona Africa interview: Guiness World Records Rewrites History
The 2008 Guiness Book of World Records lists the 1985 bombing of the MOVE organization in Philadelphia as the sixth most deadly mass suicide in recent history.... The only adult survivor of the bombing, Ramona Africa, served seven years in prison, but was eventually awarded $500,000. Africa has started a vigorous campaign calling on the Guiness Book of World Records to correct the information in their latest edition.

Thursday, December 20, 2007
Reverend Pinkney Arrested For Exercising Free Speech, On Hunger Strike In Berrien County Jail
(2 comments) On Dec. 14, Judge Alfred Butzbaugh issued an arrest warrant for Pinkney on the grounds that Pinkney violated his probation by engaging in "assaultive, abusive, defamatory, demeaning, harassing, violent, threatening, or intimidating behavior." At issue was an article in the Nov./Dec. issue of The People's Tribune, in which Rev. Pinkney stated "We must fight for justice for all anytime you have a Judge like Alfred Butzbaugh...."

Friday, December 14, 2007
Reverend Pinkney's Fight Against Racism, Gangsterism and Land Stealing
An outspoken leader in the fight against racial injustice, poverty, corruption and corporate greed, Rev. Pinkney was sentenced to jail by an all White jury for voter fraud. His crime was leading a successful effort to unseat a city powerbroker, and resisting corporate development of his poor Black community...."There is a problem here," says Pinkney. "They are like gangsters here. They're pushing them out of the community."

Tuesday, October 30, 2007
PHOTOESSAY: Philadelphia Anti-War March and Human Chain
In conjunction with 11 cities around the country, Philadelphia held a major anti-war demonstration on Saturday, October 17. A long human chain stretched out the Veteran's Hospital in West Philadelphia, and then marched all the way into Center City where the march concluded at the Liberty Bell and Constitution Center.

Thursday, October 25, 2007
UK Guardian: "I Spend My Days Preparing For Life, Not Death"
The former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal has spent 25 years on death row in the United States - despite strong evidence that he is innocent. In his first British interview, he talks to Laura Smith about life in solitary, how he has remained politically active, and why the Panthers are still relevant today.

Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Torture: an interview wit' Harold Taylor of the San Francisco 8
Harold Taylor is one of the political prisoners released on bail in the SF 8 case that is currently underway. The police and the government are using a 1971 unsolved police murder in the Ingleside District of San Francisco to continue their torture and life-long harassment of community workers. Most of them were members of the Black Panther Party, who the FBI called "the greatest threat to the internal security" of the US.