Mumia Abu-Jamal Encampment Message: “Students who protest against injustice, against racist violence, should be celebrated, lauded, and applauded.”
A Shift, a Reckoning. The Youth of This Generation Are Potential Revolutionaries, with the Historic Power to Transform Our Dull Realities
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In Mumia’s recent encampment messages to CUNY and PENN, he spoke to roaring crowds of approving students, proclaiming that “Students who protest against injustice, against racist violence, should be celebrated, lauded, and applauded.” He encouraged the rebel youth to answer the call of history, not to bow down, to recognize the rightness of their actions, and to keep fighting for humanity. What did you think an old Panther would say, other than to urge today’s youth to “Seize the Time” and “keep on keeping on”?
Mumia’s message, coming from a maximum-security prison, an institution from which the state plans to never release him, is an intergenerational handshake, made to a new generation of youth about to learn the devastating lessons of state harassment, violence, and terror. A new generation poised to learn the difficult and sobering message of where state-defying strategies can land you.
“Think about it,” he prompts, what is the nature of a state that punishes people for protesting against a genocide?
If we think about it, what does it mean that Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former rebel youth himself, should be forced to address the encampment students through the crackling lines of globeltel prison network phone system while being held captive in an enemy death camp?
This is a moment where we cannot fail to discern our collective force, to equate the liberation of Palestine with our own, and to equate the liberation of Mumia and all political prisoners with our own.
Mumia’s first published book, Live from Death Row, in the essay “The Lost Generation” he counters the assumption that the current generation of youth is directionless. Of them he claims,
“They are not so much lost as mislaid, discarded by this increasingly racist system that undermines their inherent worth. They are all potential revolutionaries, with the historic power to transform our dull realities.”
It was true when he wrote those words in 1995, and even more true now.
We salute the student protestors and are starkly reminded that Mumia’s future, their future, our future – all of our futures are entwined. Across the generations, across national divides, we remain coterminous factors in the equation for justice.
When We Love, We Win.
When We Survive, We Win.
When We Fight, We Win.
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