-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 8, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
MUMIA ON SHAKA" `RESIST THE DEATH MACHINE!'
By Mumia Abu-Jamal
At the tender age of 17 a youth named Gary Graham was
faced with a terrifying reality. The state of Texas and
Harris County district attorney picked him as another
expendable Black life form: a Black youth to feed to the
death machine. In a case of murder, where neither
fingerprints nor ballistics nor any credible evidence
points to any notion of guilt, Gary Graham faces a legal
murder.
Over half his life spent in a hellish and harsh Texas
death cell, Gary Graham has grown into the man now known
as Shaka Sankofa, a young man who is deeply conscious of
his individual and collective self and of his place in
history.
If there is a crime for which Bloody Texas seeks his
death it is this: It is a crime in a racist nation for a
Black youth to be conscious and thinking in political and
collective terms. For Shaka Sankofa innocence is not
enough. The state and federal judiciary have, it is true,
provided oceans of process, but not an iota of justice.
His life, and the lives of thousands of young men and
women like him, were expendable at birth, not just at
trial. Why should it be otherwise before the lily white
and wealthy appeals courts?
The Sankofa case presents a challenge to all of us, not
just those of us who steadfastly oppose the death
penalty, but for those who say we believe in fundamental
fairness and basic human rights. Under the terms of
international human rights pacts (to which the United
States is a party) the execution of a person who is a
juvenile when the alleged crime occurred is a violation
of international law. But the American Empire sneers at
international law.
It is necessary to mobilize unsparing protests and stiff
resistance to the death machine to bring about what
should be our obvious goal:
the life and freedom of Shaka Sankofa.
May 5, 2000
- END -
(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
------------------
This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
