Mumia Abu-Jamal's Radio Essays
951 episodes - English - Latest episode: over 8 years ago - ★★★★★ - 96 ratingsMumia Abu-Jamal is an award-winning journalist who chronicles the human condition. He has been a resident of Pennsylvania's death row for twenty-five years. Writing from his solitary confinement cell his essays have reached a worldwide audience. His books "Live From Death Row", "Death Blossoms", "All Things Censored", "Faith of Our Fathers" and "We Want Freedom" have sold over 150,000 copies and been translated into nine languages. His 1982-murder trial and subsequent conviction have been the subject of great debate. Major issues in the trial have led to a worldwide campaign to gain Mumia a new trial and, ultimately, to gain his freedom.
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Episodes
Death & Texas: The Kenneth Foster Case
June 06, 2007 21:11 - 2 minutes - 1.04 MBwritten 5/31/07 Mumia Abu-Jamal For a decade Kenneth Foster, Jr. has languished on one of the worst Death Rows in the U.S. - Texas. He now faces an execution date (of August 30, 2007) despite the fact that even the trial judge, the DA, and the jury that sentenced him to die admit he never killed anyone. Whoa! I know that it sound funny (or fishy), but it's not. It's just a fluke of Texas law. In Texas, that fluke is called the Law of Parties - a variant on conspiracy law, but like mos...
Congress: Your Money and Your Life
May 13, 2007 15:39 - 2 minutes - 1000 KBWith congressional passage of the administration's supplemental money bill, the president threatens a veto because of his aversion to timetables. But whether he vetoes it or not, the die is cast. More money for war, a war that never should have been waged in the first place. When news broke of the congressional passage, I thought not of Congress but of a robber, like the ones of old time movies who snarled your money or your life. Congress goes one better, for it's your money and your life. F...
Democracy or Puppetry
May 09, 2007 02:30 - 3 minutes - 1.55 MBWith wars waged abroad purportedly for "spreading democracy", it's time to face some uncomfortable truths. People are awake and aware that the U.S. and the West doesn't give a fig about democracy. They care about puppets -- people in state power who are answerable to them -- and fear democracy more than terrorism. From Karzai in Afghanistan, Siniora in Lebanon, al Maliki in Iraq, and beyond, people are rising up against these shills for Western, corporate interests. Protests from Kabul to...
Jamestown: The Lessons of Indians and Empire
May 06, 2007 21:17 - 3 minutes - 1.75 MBIt was a bright spring day, May 14th, 1607, when one hundred and eight men and boys from England went ashore in an area that we now call Virginia. Before a generation could pass, the indigenous people would be all but destroyed. They would become the sad reflection of the English missions of civilization and Christianizing. Having failed in this dubious experiment, the so–called Indians would be reduced to beggars in the land of their fathers. Jamestown. During this month, and throughout th...
Harriet Tubman: A Woman Called General Moses
February 18, 2007 22:40 - 4 minutes - 2.16 MBShe has been gone for almost a century, and still her name is on millions of lips; her memory sacred among those who love freedom. Her parents named her Araminta, the daughter of Black slaves in the Tidewater area of Maryland, perhaps in 1820 (or 1821 -- no one is sure). As a baby, the slaves shortened her fancy name into the nickname, "Minty." History remembers her by her married name: Harriet Tubman, freedom fighter. She began on the road to freedom as a child, for she wasn't even 10 ye...
What War on Terror
February 08, 2007 22:31 - 2 minutes - 1.23 MBHave you ever thought (but were afraid to admit) that there really wasn't such a thing as a 'war on terror?' Well, worry no more. England's top prosecutor has set the record straight. Britain's director of public prosecutions, Ken McDonald, gave a speech in late January to the nation's Criminal Bar Association. In words that few U.S. figures of such stature could ever muster, McDonald told the assembly: "On the streets of London, there is no such thing as a 'war on terror', just as there...
Who Protects Whom
February 05, 2007 01:52 - 2 minutes - 942 KBA woman is stopped for a traffic violation. She tearfully explains that she is pregnant, she is bleeding, and she begs -- at least a dozen times -- to be taken to the hospital. She might as well have been talking to the wall. The cops either ignore her, or make light of her plight. They respond, when they bother to do so, with replies like, "What do you want us to do about it?" She was jailed -- and not taken to a hospital despite her pleas. Several days later, upon her release, she giv...
Give War a Chance
February 04, 2007 01:28 - 3 minutes - 1.66 MBA lifetime ago, when the British rock band, the Beatles were at the top of the charts, and before cable TV and the reign of computers, anti-war activists sang a haunting chorus as they demonstrated by the tens of thousands at the Pentagon: "All we are saying, is give peace a chance." Decades later, and there is still war (albeit in another place, and for another 'cause'), and demonstrations seem far less potent than times past. American imperialism, unshackled by the prospect of a true glob...