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Hans Bennett is a multi-media journalist mostly focusing on the movement to free Mumia Abu-Jamal and all political prisoners. An archive of his work is available at insubordination.blogspot.com and he is also co-founder of "Journalists for Mumia," created to challenge the long history of corporate media bias, whose website is: Abu-Jamal-News.com
(2 comments) SHARE Wednesday, November 15, 2017 Interview with Edward Herman about Latin America and the US
Longtime activist and author Edward S. Herman was interviewed in Philadelphia on December 26, 2008. In this interview, Herman discusses the history of US influence in Latin America, and contextualizes this with what he says is an anti-democratic US policy throughout the Global South, designed to create a favorable investment climate for US corporations.
(8 comments) SHARE Friday, January 22, 2010 The Voices of Participatory Democracy in Venezuela --A review of Venezuela Speaks! Voices from the Grassroots
There are many different ways that the corporate media continues to misrepresent the Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela. Many critics of this biased media coverage have directly challenged the demonization of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, but very few critics, if any, have exposed the media's virtual erasure of the vibrant and growing participatory democracy in Venezuela. --Check out the interview with Carlos Martinez!
(4 comments) SHARE Friday, January 15, 2010 The Necessity of Revolution in the USA
"This Country Must Change" makes two important contributions to US activist literature. It raises awareness around the neglected issue of political prisoners and state repression, and it encourages an honest dialogue and critical thinking about the effectiveness of activist strategies and tactics. Readers may not agree with everything written here, but they will certainly have their beliefs challenged.
(5 comments) SHARE Tuesday, November 3, 2009 The Assassination of Fred Hampton -- a Book Review
On the morning of December 4, 1969, Chicago police raided the apartment of Chicago Black Panther leader Fred Hampton. Hampton and fellow Panther Mark Clark had both been shot dead, and four other Panthers in the apartment had critical gunshot wounds. Police were uninjured and had fired their guns 90-99 times. Hampton had been asleep, but was alive after the attack, so police shot him twice in the head, point black. Murder.
SHARE Friday, October 9, 2009 Book Review: "Anarchy Alive!: Anti-authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory"
Uri Gordon writes: “In case anyone hasn't noticed, anarchism is alive and kicking. This past decade or so has seen the full revival of a global anarchist movement on a scale and on levels of unity and diversity unseen since the 1930s. From anti-capitalist social centres and eco-feminist farms to community organizing, blockades of international summits, daily direct actions and a mass of publications and websites...
SHARE Thursday, September 10, 2009 Neoliberalism Needs Death Squads in Colombia
In her new book, Jasmin Hristov seeks to expose the rational motivations behind state violence for capitalism's economic elites in the US and Colombia. In meticulous detail, Hristov shows how the super-rich benefit from state repression and how the violators of human rights have essentially become immune from any consequences for their actions. If death squads are truly to be abolished in Colombia, we must look honestly at...
SHARE Friday, July 24, 2009 Beyond Attica: The Untold Story of Women's Resistance Behind Bars
The central thesis of Resistance Behind Bars is truly profound. In clear, non-academic language, Law argues that recent scholarship documenting and radically criticizing the increased incarceration rates and mistreatment of women prisoners "largely ignores what the women themselves do to change or protest these circumstances, thus reinforcing the belief that incarcerated women do not organize."
(1 comments) SHARE Friday, July 17, 2009 Anarchism, Marxism, and Zapatismo
Both Staughton Lynd (a Marxist from the US) and his co-author Andrej Grubacic (an anarchist from the Balkans) of the book 'Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism and Radical History,' are public supporters of the Zapatistas, who they argue have set a powerful example of revolutionary organizing that should influence anti-capitalists around the world.
SHARE Wednesday, June 24, 2009 New Book Surveys Oaxaca Uprising to Teach Rebellion
The movement that surfaced in Oaxaca took over and ran an entire city for six months starting in June 2006. Govt. officials fled, police weren't present to maintain even the semblance of responding to social harm, and many of the government institutions and services that we depend on daily were shut down. Without relying on centralized organization, neighborhoods managed everything from public safety (crime rates declined)...
SHARE Tuesday, June 23, 2009 Citing Withheld Evidence, Supporters Of Mumia Abu-Jamal Call For Civil Rights Investigation
In April, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to consider an appeal from death-row journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was convicted of first-degree murder in the shooting death of white Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner in a 1982 trial deemed unfair by Amnesty International and numerous others. Now Abu-Jamal's support network is calling for a federal civil rights investigation into his case.
(1 comments) SHARE Tuesday, June 16, 2009 Appalachia and Colombia: The People Behind the Coal
Aviva Chomsky is a professor of history and Latin American Studies at Salem State College in Massachusetts, and is a founder of the North Shore Colombia Solidarity Committee, which has been working since 2002 with Colombian labor and popular movements, especially those affected by the foreign-owned mining sector. She just returned from a Witness for Peace delegation that traveled to Kentucky and northern Colombia.
(3 comments) SHARE Monday, May 4, 2009 The Angola Three: Torture in Our Own Backyard
"My soul cries from all that I witnessed and endured. It does more than cry, it mourns continuously," said Black Panther Robert Hillary King, following his release from the infamous Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola in 2001, after serving his last 29 years in continuous solitary confinement...Together, Herman Wallace, Robert King, and Albert Woodfox have spent more than 100 years in solitary confinement.
SHARE Sunday, April 19, 2009 BOOK REVIEWS: Abolishing The Prison Industrial Complex and Freeing All Political Prisoners
Above all, these three highly-recommended books (available online at www.akpress.org) argue that prison-related issues are inseparable from racism, classism, sexism, and all oppression, so the more we know about prisons, the better informed multi-issue activist strategies will be. They conclude that in working to abolish all oppression, we must also work to abolish the PIC and free all political prisoners.
(3 comments) SHARE Saturday, April 4, 2009 Media, Revolution, and the Legacy of the Black Panther Party --An interview with Kiilu Nyasha
I initiated a correspondence with George Jackson in early 1971, and months later, got a one-hour visit in the holding cell of San Quentin. I've met no one before or since more dedicated to revolutionary change....George was one of the three "Soledad Brothers," whose story began on January 13, 1970 when a tower guard at Soledad State Prison shot and killed 3 Black captives on the yard, leaving them unattended to bleed to death.
(3 comments) SHARE Thursday, January 1, 2009 Interview with Edward Herman about Latin America and the US
Longtime activist and author Edward S. Herman was interviewed in Philadelphia on December 26, 2008. In this interview, Herman discusses the history of US influence in Latin America, and contextualizes this with what he says is an anti-democratic US policy throughout the Global South, designed to create a favorable investment climate for US corporations.
SHARE Wednesday, December 3, 2008 As DA Appeals to Execute Mumia Abu-Jamal Without New Penalty Hearing, Supporters Mobilize Internationally
On Dec. 6, supporters of death-row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal will march from Philadelphia City Hall to the Federal Court Building. International solidarity actions are being held in France, Switzerland, Germany, England, Mexico, and around the US. Abu-Jamal is appealing to the US Supreme Court for a new guilt-phase trial, while the Philadelphia DA is appealing to execute him without a new sentencing-phase jury trial.
(2 comments) SHARE Friday, July 11, 2008 Organizing to Abolish the Prison-Industrial Complex
An interview with Rose Braz of the CR10 Media Committee, about the prison abolitionist movement and Critical Resistance's 10 year anniversary conference on Sept. 26-28 in Oakland, CA.
(2 comments) SHARE Sunday, April 13, 2008 The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal: an interview with author J. Patrick O'Connor
In his new book, O'Connor argues that Abu-Jamal was clearly framed by police, and that the actual shooter was a man named Kenneth Freeman. O'Connor criticizes the local media, who, he says "bought into the prosecution's story line early on and has never been able to see this case for what it is: a framing of an innocent and peace loving man."
(1 comments) SHARE Saturday, March 8, 2008 MOVE 9 Parole: Was Officer Ramp killed by police gunfire?
Almost 30 years after their imprisonment, the eight remaining "MOVE 9" prisoners are now eligible for parole, with hearings scheduled for April. Veteran Philadelphia journalist Linn Washington Jr. reported from the scene on August 8, 1978. In this exclusive interview, Washington cites several sources in the police department who told him that Officer James Ramp was actually shot by police gunfire, and not MOVE!
(1 comments) SHARE Wednesday, January 23, 2008 The Bourne Ultimatum: rejecting the CIA
Accompanying recent anti-war films like "In The Valley of Elah" and "Lions for Lambs," is this summer's blockbuster action movie, "The Bourne Ultimatum," starring actor Matt Damon. After explosive confrontations with CIA "assets" in London and Tangiers, Morocco, Bourne returns to New York City where he finally confronts the man who created him as part of an experimental training program for the CIA's elite assassins.