Some random notes, anyway:
Thinking of going to this, just for the hell of it. Protest in the spirit of the Billionaires being the only thing going these days; fuck ANSWER, et al. UFPJ seems dead in the water as well.
But in the spirit of petty bourgeois indulgence and escapism (or whatever also feeds the cooking-show obsession in this country...we've been eating superbly of late, I'll have you know. The secret to any successful relationship, surely, is cooking together. Clothes or no clothes, etc.)...I'm actually sort of excited that a new Bach composition has been discovered. The last thing in his own handwriting, nonetheless! Thus capitalizing on the passion for the old and the passion for the new and the passion for the Real simultaneously. Passions all around. In addition, I see there's a good deal of free Beethoven going around, if that's your pill. Plants like classical music, you know (they also like to be talked to, or so I hear.) Anyway this blog will take Bach or Shostakovich over Radiohead or even The Decembrists anytime, though I'd refrain from reading too much into that if I were you.
Reminds me of a "poem" I was (perhaps overly) prone to quoting back when:
Culture
i must confess that waltzes
do not move me.
i have no sympathy
for symphonies.
i guess i hummed the Blues
too early,
and spent too many midnights
out wailing to the rain.
—Assata Shakur, in The Outlaw Bible of American Poetry
...and an email received just now, regarding Mumia Abu-Jamal (on whose behalf Derrida once wrote Bill Clinton, you'll recall. Crime Bill Clinton did not respond.)
Death-row visit A memorable day with Mumia Abu-Jamal By Monica Moorehead
SCI-Greene Prison in Waynesburg, Pa. Published Jun 8, 2005 7:44 PM
Visiting someone in prison can be one of life’s most heartbreaking
experiences.
As you approach the prison, you can’t help but be affected by the
impenetrable thick brick walls topped with coils of barbed wire—or by
the steady stream of women and children, disproportionately people of
color, who have traveled from far distances to visit their loved ones,
who are spending years locked up in steel cages, sometimes for
23-and-a-half hours daily.
This is the situation that death-row political prisoner and
revolutionary journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal has faced for almost 23 years
now.
Larry Holmes and I took a seven-hour car trip to visit with Mumia on
June 5 at the remote SCI-Greene prison unit near the West Virginia
border.
After going through the standard security checkpoints to get to the
visiting area, we came face to face with a handcuffed, smiling Mumia.
Separated by a plexiglass barrier, Larry and I instinctively press our
hands up against the glass to meet Mumia’s hands, even with the
knowledge that human contact is almost forbidden under these
unimaginable circumstances.
Yet somehow the omnipresent physical barriers take a back seat during a
face-to-face meeting with Mumia. Since he is allowed only one visit per
week, excluding his lawyers, we decided to make every minute count. As
it turned out, the six hours that we spent with him went by so quickly.
He said that he is in relatively good health and that the swelling in
his feet had gone down. This has been an ongoing problem due to prison
conditions.
When we asked him about the May 27 Pennsylvania Court of Common Pleas
dismissal of his request for a new Post Conviction Relief Act hearing,
Mumia stated that this came to no surprise given the biased nature of
the courts.
Mumia can no longer receive important news sources like C-Span because
of new regulations.
The bulk of our political discussion focused on the problems and
prospects facing the anti-war movement in light of the deepening Iraqi
resistance and the outcome of the 2004 U.S. presidential elections, the
development of the Black-led Million Workers March Movement, the
upcoming Millions More March this October, and the growing impact of
immigrant workers’ rights on the overall labor movement.
We also discussed the upcoming 50th anniversary of the Montgomery bus
boycott, which helped launch the modern civil rights struggle, and how
to best impart the important lessons this event can have on today’s
struggle against war, racism and cutbacks. Mumia shared with us his fond
memories of his last visit with the actor Ossie Davis, who remained a
committed activist until his recent death.
When we were forced to say good-bye and leave him behind, Mumia flashed
his stunning smile and with his cuffed hands in fists, told us to tell
everyone to keep up the good fight. Larry and I left the prison sad but
also so grateful for time that we spent with this remarkable
revolutionary leader and comrade in the struggle.
Free Mumia Abu-Jamal and all political prisoners!
Moorehead and Holmes are members of Workers World Party’s secretariat,
an elected body of WWP’s national committee.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
Email: ww@workers.org
If there is a communist dreaming inside us, I imagine that communist dreams all the more loudly when (doubly) imprisoned.
Update: Simulacron P, anyone? (To channel Zizek for a brief moment: Is in not the case that nothing betrays our complete depletion of faith in prisons as potentially redemptive sites so much as the atmospheric and desertified way in which we publicly envision and fantasize about celebrity inmates?)
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