Back in ’97 when I was living in Houston, I picked up a record on KRS1’s private label called “Free Mumia” which was a huge record over there. I never knew what the title was about until today when I was listening to Immortal Technique‘s track “The War Vs Us All by Mumia Abu Jamal” (click here for an exerpt):from his Bin Laden remix 12″.
Here’s Mumia’s speech that’s sampled on the record (from here):
Submitted and Transcribed by Noelle Hanrahan
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The War Vs. Us All- Speech and Radio essay for March 19th Mass Anti War
Rally
This war in Iraq isn’t the end; it’s the beginning of wars to come all
around the world at the whim of the neo-cons in the White House. This is
the Bush Doctrine come to life: war, war, and more war. War brought to
you by the big corporate masters who run the show. This isn’t just a war
against Iraqis or Afghanis or even Arabs or Muslims. It is ultimately a
war on us all. That’s because the billions and billions of dollars that
are being spent on this war—the cost of tanks, rocketry, bullets, and
yes, even salaries for the 125,000 plus troops—is money that will never
be spent on education, on health care, on the reconstruction of
crumbling public housing, or to train and place the millions of workers
who have lost manufacturing jobs in the past three years alone. The war
in Iraq is, in reality, a war against the nation’s workers and the poor
who are getting less and less while the big defense industries are
making a killing—literally. What’s next? Iran? Syria? North Korea?
Venezuela? We’ve already seen the corporate media play megaphone to the
White House to build and promote a war based on lies. It’s been a long
time ago, but that great Russian revolutionary, Leon Trotsky, said, “War
is utilized by the imperialists, first and foremost, to crush internal
enemies.” We’re seeing the truth of his insight when we see the sad
state of American education, the rush of seniors to buy affordable
medication from the Canadians because American drugs are just too
expensive, the threatened privatization of Social Security, and the wave
of repression that comes with an increasingly militarized police. Does
the Homeland Security Department make you feel any safer? In Black
America things get grimmer every day as resources that are already
scarce begin to shrink even further. Young people feel that prisons are
rite-of-passage, an inevitable place to visit. And a decent job seems
like a distant dream. This is a war on all of us, and the struggle
against war is really a struggle for a better life for the millions of
folks who are in need here in this country. The fight against the war is
really to fight for your own interests, not the false interests of the
defense industries, or the corporate media, or the White House. Down
with the wars for empire! Ona Move!
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Having heard that, I had to find out more and after some searching found www.freemumia.com
You can read the shockingly terrible history of Mumia’s plight on www.freemumia.com
Listen to his speeches from death row on Prison Radio.
How can something as corrupt and as high profile as this go on unchecked for 27 years?
