Category Archives: Forums and Educational Events

LAC Successful Meeting vs Gag Law, and

In a meeting held at La Pena Cultural Center in Berkeley on Friday the 5th, the Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, together with Oakland Teachers for Mumia and Prison Radio, held a successful public event which netted $611 to fight the Pennsylvania “gag” law, which targets Mumia and the free speech rights of all convicts.

Thanks to everyone who attended and donated to this important effort!

Most of the proceeds were pledged directly to the web site on computers provided at the event by Prison Radio, the non-profit organization which publishes Mumia’s commentaries, and which organized the legal challenge to the “gag” law.  If you haven’t yet contributed to this effort, the site to go to is:

http://bit.ly/defendfreespeech

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Cops vs Free Speech

Speakers and Film: “Manufacturing Guilt”

Save the Date!

7 pm, Friday 05 December 2014

at the La Pena Cultural Center, 3105 Shattuck Ave, Berkeley

(just below Ashby Avenue)

Everyone, from black and Latino youth, anti-war activists, labor militants and rap artists can be in their cross-hairs. Join the the Labor Action To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, Prison Radio and Teachers For Mumia to hear how police are targeting political enemies with attempts to restrict free speech. 

 

•  “Manufacturing Guilt” will be shown — the riveting documentary of the frame-up of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

 

•  Keith Cook, brother of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and 

•  Cephus “Uncle Bobby” Johnson, uncle of Oscar Grant,

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Urban Dreams Restored!

20 November 2014 — In an unexpected announcement, the new Superintendent of Oakland Schools, Antwan Wilson, announced yesterday that the Urban Dreams website, taken down in April of this year by Oakland School officials, would be restored. This teacher-generated, social issues site had been singled out by the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) and Fox News as a target, because it included a curriculum which focussed on a comparison between Martin Luther King and Mumia Abu-Jamal. Mumia has been a target of the FOP ever since police and prosecutors framed him up for the shooting death of a police officer in 1981 in Philadelphia.

The Oakland School Board could have defied this police attack on free speech and academic freedom months ago, but chose instead to capitulate under a Fox News onslaught without a whimper. Now, let’s make sure they stick to their word to restore the site!

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National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA) Solidarity Statement

The National Treasurer of the National Union of Metalworkers of South Africa (NUMSA), Mphumzi Maqungo, recently visited the Bay Area and gave presentations at ILWU Local 10, UC Berkeley and the Black Repertory Theater.

NUMSA, which represents 340,000 workers and is the largest union in South Africa, recently broke from the ANC (African National Congress), the party of Nelson Mandela, due to its abandonment of the Freedom Charter and support for IMF economic policies, which have resulted in the immiseration of the South African working class since the end of apartheid in 1994. This process culminated in the Marikana massacre of 2012, at which striking platinum miners were deliberately executed by police acting under orders from the highest levels of the ANC government.

Maqungo signed a solidarity statement for Mumia on behalf of his union, which is reproduced below.

 

Scan of Mumia petition 1

Two Film Showings on Repression and Resistance

The Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Invites you to Join us at:

THE BATTLE FOR OSCAR GRANT PLAZA

Showing how Oakland police turned the Plaza into a war zone in their attempt to crush the Occupy movement,

and…

MANUFACTURING GUILT

Exposing the deliberate police & District Attorney frame-up of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is still a political prisoner after 31 years.

Saturday, October 19, 3 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.
The New Parkway Theater
474 24th Street in Oakland

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