MUMIA ABU-JAMAL’S AUDIO INTERVIEW. HE IS A TOWER OF REVOLUTIONARY RESISTANCE AND AN INEXHAUSTIBLE INSPIRATION FOR US ALL
Jeff J. Brown
SPECIAL INTERVIEW
Downloadable SoundCloud podcast (also at the bottom of this page), Bitchute, Brighteon, YouTube videos, as well as being syndicated on iTunes, Stitcher Radio, RUvid and Ivoox (links below),
Note before starting: This post’s audio and video podcasts are in two parts. Part I is our 25-minute interview. Part II is a reading of my Prologue, Mumia’s Biography and Epilogue.
Part I: 25-minute audio/video interview
Bitchute: https://www.bitchute.com/video/ZbAqRojUwr6T/
Brighteon: https://www.brighteon.com/dashboard/videos/906cbaa6-288a-4cc7-a35d-516e9d682680
Part II: Prologue, Mumia’s biography and Epilogue
Bitchute: https://www.bitchute.com/video/3fkAHv3FA5vn/
Brighteon: https://www.brighteon.com/dashboard/videos/13b0392f-6c11-422f-8a3b-5656fad864c7
Prologue
It is hard to describe what has transpired with Mumia Abu-Jamal, since 6 June 2020, when I sent him my first message via his prison’s for profit “email” system.
Like an uninformed goober, I sent him hyperlinks to my website and books, only to learn that Mumia is completely cut off from the internet. This “Prison Connect Network” is the only way I could communicate with him, and to stifle the exchange of information, you can only send 2,000 characters – not words – characters per message. That’s like three paragraphs at a time, and it costs money for each message.
Not only that, but it’s crap quality, like using Microsoft DOS 30 years ago. I learned quickly to copy and save all my messages, since half the time I have to start over, as the system crashes frequently. The vendor, GTL must pay some handsome sunshine bribes to get this contract for concentration camps all over the USA, charging monopoly rates for prisoners to telephone and be called by loved ones. For friends and family members struggling to put food on the table and pay the rent, it’s a vexing situation.
Thus, our now four-month long journey to work together through this dog-end messaging system began and continues. Including our interview below, I have 25 pages of communication between us.
Through it all, I am humbled and inspired by Mumia’s infectious good humor and unswerving optimism. He reminds me of one of those tall, inflatable figures that have rounded, sand-filled bottoms. No matter how hard you push, hit or kick them, they always pop right back up. For me, that’s a perfect metaphor for Mumia. He frequently puts a music note symbol at the end of his messages, likes he’s singing a happy song.
Yet, here is a man who has sacrificed his freedom for a cause – the revolutionary ideals of the Black Panther Party (BPP), his support for Philadelphia’s MOVE and their collective fight for socialism’s vanguard party, all power to the people, self-determination and to serve the people. He is a political prisoner trapped in the USA system of private concentration camps. Framed for a shooting that appears to have been a set-up, Mumia has been on death row, held in solitary confinement for many years, has to hire lawyers to get lifesaving medical care, and other than this aforementioned messaging system, phones calls and prison visits across thick plate glass, he has been cut off and incarcerated since 1982, when he was only 28 years of age. Today, he is 66, six days older than me.
I feel lucky to have lived and worked with the Chinese people for 16 years. It taught me a lot and changed my life. However, at Mumia’s same age, I feel just as fortunate to have recently learned about the Black Panther Party, its amazing history of courage, conviction, and the countless members who have been government assassinated and illegally held in USA concentration camps, since its founding in 1966. As a result, all this knowledge and understanding has changed my life’s perspectives, just as much as my time living in China.
At the same time, over the last four months of struggling to communicate via the rinky-dink prison messaging system, through it all, across the oceans and continents, I feel like I’ve made a friend and revolutionary comrade. Since we are the same age, we can stay in touch into our senior years, wherever we may be – hopefully Mumia finally being liberated from the USA concentration camp system. My next return back, I would be honored to go meet him in Frackville, Pennsylvania, USA, to talk across that thick sheet of glass, and eventually share a good Chinese meal upon his liberation!
It is a great honor and privilege to introduce Comrade Mumia Abu-Jamal to all the friends, fans and followers of China Rising Radio Sinoland across Planet Earth. I hope you will share this post and its audio/video podcasts widely, (I will also include a downloadable PDF file for easy distribution) to bring more pressure on the USA injustice system to liberate him from his illegal incarceration, as a political prisoner of conscious. Sadly, there are many like him (https://operamundi.uol.com.br/politica-e-economia/40718/a-list-of-54-political-prisoners-in-the-united-states).
After our interview, there is Mumia’s biography. It has instructions to support his legal defense, as well as how to send him mail and books – and be forewarned – there are two different addresses and systems. I hope you will contribute to his cause. I sent him my China Trilogy, my father’s book about Civil War slavery and one hundred pages of off-the-internet articles. For the future, I have decided to help him overcome being cut off from the internet, by staying registered and sending him via the messaging system, texts of articles he might not otherwise see.
Finally, there is also an epilogue with some extracts from Huey P. Newton’s autobiography, Revolutionary Suicide, which really resonate from all my experiences with Mumia.
(Credit: J. Griffin)
Interview (text of its 25-minute audio podcast)
Question and Answer #1
Jeff J. Brown: First, I would like to thank John Potash, who inspired me to contact you (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2019/12/16/john-potash-talks-about-his-explosive-book-the-fbi-war-on-tupac-shakur-and-black-leaders-u-s-intelligences-murderous-targeting-of-tupac-mlk-malcolm-panthers-hendrix-marley/ and https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2020/02/28/john-potash-talks-about-his-explosive-book-drugs-as-a-weapon-against-us-cia-murderous-war-on-musicians-and-activists/), and in the interim, having interviewed Chairman Fred Hampton, Jr (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2020/05/27/chairman-fred-hampton-jr-the-black-panther-pantha-cubs-their-revolution-for-self-determination-to-serve-the-people-and-fight-the-us-governments-ongoing-program-of-domestic-genocide-on-china/).
Comrade Mumia, friends, fans and followers around the world are always seeking courage to stand up to global capitalism, oligarchic control of the world’s non-communist, non-socialist peoples and the tyranny and genocide of Western empire. They are hesitant to step outside the oppressive conformity of the Matrix.
They really get inspired hearing stories of others who have taken these steps along their arc of awareness, towards freedom of conscious and liberation of the soul. Some learn sooner than others. I didn’t get it until 2010, when I was 56 and having moved back to China for the second time. You are six days older than me. Better late than never!
Now, thanks to reading John Potash’s two outstanding books and doing hundreds of hours of reading and research, my arc has recently been raised to another critical level, in learning about the Black Panther Party. (BPP), its unexpected nexus with Comrade Mao Zedong and other great international heroes of socialism and solidarity (https://chinarising.puntopress.com/2020/06/08/protests-in-usa-land-of-marlboro-man-will-come-to-nothing-because-there-is-no-solidarity-no-vision-nor-guiding-ideology-to-unite-the-people-in-common-struggle-against-the-1-just-ask-the-black-pan/).
Comrade Mumia, please share with us your arc of awareness growing up in the United States as a Black man, and what inspired you to fight for social and economic justice for the 99%. Your encouragement is invaluable to those who are hesitating to join the cause.
Mumia and his wife
Mumia Abu Jamal: Dear Jeff: I greet you–and yours. When I think of the 60s, I remember times of vast movement across many communities for national independence, for freedom, for self-determination, against state repression and against imperialist wars like Vietnam. This period, in retrospect, was one of convergence of many social movements coming together with a broad, deep vision of another country, one tied not to slavery and oppression, but to a liberating vision that ignited a generation or seemed to the system, used all of its tentacles to pull people apart, chiefly racism, and muddy that vision to one of cool acquiescence.
Remember that movie The Big Chill? Such times as these are visionary eras when and where people look over the walls of their prisons for a brief glance at freedom, the freedom offered by possibility. Because Fred Hampton not only had this vision and acted to craft it into being. He was killed in his bid by the state to dock in the eyes of a generation. Movements are made by collectives of people who have hope for social transformation or as anthropologist Margaret Mead said, you paraphrase, never doubt that a small group can change the world if the only thing that ever has to grow up in such a time was truly remarkable and a wonderful thing.
Question and Answer #2
Jeff: These days, Black Lives Matter (BLM), a non-governmental organization (NGO) is splashed all over the global mainstream media and has broad, popular support. However, it’s not all such a rosy, revolutionary picture. Soon after forming, it took $100 million in donations via the Ford Foundation and affiliate NGOs. Just recently, George Soros’ foundations have pumped $220 million into Black justice groups, as well as Antifa and many others. These are astronomical sums of money.
It is widely known that Ford Foundation and left-wing philanthropists are largely fronts for the CIA and deep state, hiding behind their liberal image. This strongly suggests that BLM, Antifa and their ancillary groups are being used as managed opposition to satisfy the ambitions of our oligarchic 1% and are likely fully infiltrated by agents and fifth columnists. Occupy Wall Street was another prime example of this happening.
What to do? If you were handed the BLM movement, what would you do to try to right the ship? Was MOVE infiltrated? I’ve read the Black Panthers also had, and I assume still fight the same problem.
What recommendations do you have for anti-imperial, anti-capitalist people who want to organize and take their movement to the next level, without becoming managed opposition?
Mumia: Dear Jeff: Ona Mover! Greetings! As I contemplated your last question, I remembered a book I read several years ago entitled The Revolution Will Not Be Funded. It illustrated how the right used its excess capital to build and sustain think tanks, which intellectually supported the system of capitalism, the wealth of the left had no quarrel, for its excess capital went to social services, but not the erection of ideological structures. The authors essentially instructed activists to not get caught in these weapons of the wealthy. But when you think about it, doesn’t it make sense? Why should it surprise us that the system perpetuates the system? Who expects capitalism to build revolutionary structures that are inherently anticapitalist? BLM is not the BPP except in the mind of Rudy Giuliani, perhaps. The BPP was nominally politically independent because its newspaper funded its operations. When poor, black people organize, the wealthy seek to control and moderate them. When that doesn’t work, it unleashes its “hidden” to extinguish such movements. Hence the ferocity of the attacks on groups like the BPP and MOVE. It unleashes its corporate media to demonize those who resist the forces of exploitation.
Remember this? American revolutionaries were invariably rich guys who fought to preserve a system of slavery, captive labor. George Washington was one of the richest men in the colonies, owning hundreds of people and vast tracts of land. Thomas Jefferson also owned hundreds of black captives, but had the decency to write that one hour of slavery’s misery was worse than wages of British rule over America that sparked a revolution. Oppressive systems continue to buy off people so that those systems can continue to function. There’s an old saying. He who takes the Kings coin dances to his tune.
If BLM were mine. I’d institute an intense study of history to show how systems try to show how systems try to defang popular movements. I develop an independent economic stream to support organizational frameworks, they teach COINTELPRO efforts to destabilize social change movements. That said, BLM or Smart inform young folks who may not want nor need anything from an old head like me. That’s because the youth movements must be youth movements, that is their essence, that is who they were born to be. alla best, maj♪
Question and Answer #3:
Jeff: Dear Mumia, History seems to repeat itself across our Pale Blue Dot.
In 1962-1964, the leaders of the African National Congress (ANC) in the Republic of South Africa were rounded up. They were convicted for their political activities and beliefs, including Nelson Mandela. The Apartheid government wanted to put them to death, but international pressure forced them into sentencing them to prison for life. Apartheid eventually fell, due to years of internal and global pressure, as well as economic sanctions. Starting in 1985, these freedom fighters began to be released from incarceration, with Mandela being the last in 1990.
In 1966, the Black Panther Party was founded. In 1972, MOVE was founded in your hometown of Philadelphia, also becoming a primary target of the CIA-FBI genocidal war on all Black liberation movements. In 1978, nine MOVE members were rounded up and sent to prison for life for their political activities and beliefs. You actively supported MOVE and in 1981-82, also became a political prisoner and given the death penalty, which was later commuted to life. Starting in 2018, the MOVE 9 who were still alive behind bars began to be released from prison, with the last one set free in February 2020. You are still in prison for life and trying to get out.
Question: how do you compare the ANCs liberation movement and Nelson Mandela’s cause to eventually be released from political prison, to that of the Black Panther Party, MOVE and your efforts to gain your freedom?
Question and Answer #4:
Jeff: This was in the alternative media today, which you might find interesting,
Get the f**k out!: WATCH Chicago residents confront BLM protesters in tense standoff
Residents of Chicago’s Englewood community angrily accosted a group of Black Lives Matter protesters who showed up to demonstrate at a police station, where hostilities between locals and activists nearly boiled over into a brawl.
A BLM protest march from Englewood to Chicago’s 7th District police station on Tuesday ended in a showdown with community members, at times devolving into shouting matches as locals insisted the demonstrators were giving their neighborhood a bad name.
If you ain’t from Englewood, get the f**k out of here! longtime south side resident Darryl Smith was heard shouting at the protesters, who he said were not from the community.
They were… gonna come to Englewood, antagonizing our police, and then when they go back home to the north side in Indiana, our police are bitter and they’re beating up our little black boys, Smith told reporters on the scene, adding that we don’t need any outsiders coming and antagonizing.
A photojournalist with the Chicago Sun-Times (Tyler LaRiviere) tweeted some of the march’s more tense moments, including when a heated argument nearly escalated into a physical confrontation.
Tweet: From earlier Daryl Smith an Englewood resident of 51 years, and community activists tells reporters why he doesn’t want protesters in his neighborhood.
Tweet: Tensions between community members are growing, community activists aren’t tolerating these folks here.
Tweet: Community members continue to ask protesters to leave and ask where are you when a baby’s shot.
Tweet: Some community members and protesters are getting into arguments here at the 7th district police station, many community members are demanding that these protesters leave their community and protest somewhere else.
An organizer of the protest, which was put together by members of Black Lives Matter and advocacy group Good Kids Mad City, told a local news outlet that some demonstrators decided to leave following conflict with residents, saying they felt unsafe. Other organizers maintained they were from the local area, but they said they decided not to participate in the rally due to agitators.
The protest came days after the police shooting of a 20-year-old suspect who reportedly opened fire on officers, which kicked off a spree of looting in downtown Chicago over the weekend. Smith said the unrest had been unfairly blamed on Englewood, and that the protesters were only feeding that perception.
A lot of people are saying the looting downtown sparked from Englewood. We’re not having that. It didn’t spark from Englewood, he said. Those looters were opportunists, and we’re tired of Englewood getting a black eye for any and everything that happens.
Some 400 officers were deployed to the downtown shopping district to quell the looting on Sunday, making over 100 arrests amid what Mayor Lori Lightfoot dubbed an assault on our city.
What do you think, Mumia?
Question and answer #5
Jeff: If someone asks me what are the three favorite books that I’ve written, it not a hard question, since I’ve only published four! You, however, have been a fairly prolific author, with 10 books published, by my count.
I’m going to have to ask you to brag on yourself a little here, so friends, fans and followers of China Rising Radio Sinolandcan learn more about you and your mission:
- What are your three favorites amongst your body of work?
- Please briefly describe each one.
- Then tell us what you like about each one and why it’s a good choice for us to read.
Written works
- Have Black Lives Ever Mattered? City Lights Publishers, (2017) ISBN 9780872867383
- Writing on the Wall: Selected Prison Writings of Mumia Abu-Jamal. City Lights Publishers (2015) ISBN 978-0872866751
- The Classroom and the Cell: Conversations on Black Life in America. Third World Press (2011) ISBN 978-0883783375
- Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners in the U.S.A. City Lights Publishers (2009) ISBN 978-0872864696
- We Want Freedom: A Life In The Black Panther Party. South End Press (200 ISBN 978-0896087187
- Faith Of Our Fathers: An Examination Of The Spiritual Life Of African And African-American People. Africa World Press (2003) ISBN 978-1592210190
- All Things Censored. Seven Stories Press (2000) ISBN 978-1583220221
- Death Blossoms: Reflections From A Prisoner Of Conscience. Plough Publishing House (1997) ISBN 978-0874860863
- Live from Death Row. Harper Perennial (1996) ISBN 978-0380727667
- Mumia Speaks (pamphlet)
In revolutionary solidarity, Jeff
Mumia: Dear Bro. Jeff: How are ya?
When I getta question like this (about my faves), I recall a conversation I had years ago w/ the sci-fi award-winning writer, Terry Bisson. He said, ‘It’s like asking a father to say who is his favorite child–it’s impossible!’. That’s my answer, Jeff. I dig all the works I’ve ever written; because they spoke for the time they were written. Plus, it really doesn’t matter what my fave is: it matters to the Reader(s), for they really decide this question. That’s my answer, man. — maj♪
Question and answer #6
Jeff: Dear Comrade Mumia, I loved your answer to Question 5. As they say in the sport of fencing, touché.
We’ve got a good set of Q&A. Here is a final one:
Over the last four months, we’ve spent time getting to know each other as revolutionary friends and comrades.
You know I lived and worked in China for 16 years.
What would you like to ask me about this amazing nation, its people, 5,000-year civilization and communist-socialist revolution, to close out this interview?
Sino-best, Jeff
Mumia: Ah, flip the script, huh? Actually, I would, for 16 years is a considerable amount of time to dwell in a place, specifically a foreign nation. I wonder, based on that long, 5,000-year history of Chinese civilization that You mentioned, what are the continuities that You see that have survived the 1929 revolution? allá best, maj♪
Jeff’s answer: This is really an excellent question, Mumia, because Mao Zedong worked really hard to create a “New China”, to be people-powered by “New Chinese”, not the ones and their leaders who let Western and Japanese imperialists rape, plunder and ply them with illegal drugs, from 1839 to 1949, which is known as China’s “Century of Humiliation”.
For sure, Mao succeeded beyond anyone’s imagination at these two goals. If he hadn’t, China would have already been suborned to Western, oligarchic capitalism, only to be turned into a continent-sized, balkanized resource whore like Indonesia, or an occupied narco-state like Columbia. I always say that half the Chinese like Deng Xiaoping’s market oriented reforms and opening up – the urbanites – the rural folk less so, but 95% of them agree with Mao’s geopolitical worldview: that is, imperialism, colonialism and global capitalism are the enemy of China and its communism and socialism. For this reason, the Chinese are some of the most aware and savvy people, about history and current events.
That being said, Mao could not undo five millennia of continuous civilization. Confucism, Daoism and Buddhism are a very powerful and influential guiding force in the mentality, spirituality and daily conduct of the people, and always were after 1949, even when the official and public focus was on the revolution. While Mao’s “Little Red Book” is among the most sold titles in history, the Chinese people continued to and still love their ancient literature, poetry, paintings, calligraphy, sculpture, dance, acrobatics, opera, music and their version of Vaudeville.
From the very start in 2012, President Xi Jinping’s administration began to synthesize this vast cultural and historical repository with the Communist Party of China as the vanguard party. This was to protect the people from Western sabotage of their highly successful Socialism with Chinese Characteristics and communist way of life, thus making it possible for the nation to prosper, develop and progress in its own interests, not those in Eurangloland.
It all comes full circle. This is similar to the Black Panthers establishing their vanguard party to protect and empower the people to provide for themselves and prosper, while drawing on global and national Black cultural and historical reserves to help maintain the spirit of solidarity.
End of audio interview.
Mumia Abu-Jamal biography
The state would rather give me an Uzi than a microphone. — Mumia Abu-Jamal
Mumia Abu Jamal is an award-winning broadcast journalist, essayist, and author of 12 books. Most recently, he’s completed the historic trilogy Murder Incorporated, its third volume Perfecting Tyranny coming out this fall to follow Dreaming of Empire and America’s Favorite Pastime.
Prophet, critic, historian, witness . . . Mumia Abu-Jamal is one of the most insightful and consequential intellectuals of our era. These razor sharp reflections on racialized state violence in America are the fire and the memory our movements need right now. — Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination.
In the late 1970s, Abu-Jamal worked as a reporter for radio stations throughout the Delaware Valley. He was a staff reporter for WUHY (now WHYY), the NPR flagship station, and he filed nationally for All Things Considered and the Morning Report. Along with his team at Philadelphia’s WUHY, he won the prestigious Major Armstrong Award (1980) from Columbia University for excellence in broadcasting. In 1981, Abu-Jamal was elected president of the Association of Black Journalists’ Philadelphia chapter. For the past 38 years, Abu-Jamal has lived in state prison. 28 of those years were spent in solitary confinement on death row. Currently, he’s serving life without parole at SCI Mahanoy in Frackville, PA. Abu-Jamal’s 1982 trial and its resultant first-degree murder conviction have been criticized as unconstitutionally corrupt by legal and activist groups for decades, including Amnesty International and Nobel Laureates Nelson Mandela, Toni Morrison, and Desmond Tutu. Abu-Jamal has earned overwhelming international support. His demand for a new trial and for freedom is supported by the European Parliament. He has been made an honorary citizen of Paris, France. Abu-Jamal earned his BA at Goddard College in 1996; his MA from California State University, Dominguez Hills in 1999; and an honorary Doctorate of Law from the New College of California in 1996. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Legal Team:
Sam Spital, Legal Director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.
Judith Ritter, Professor of Law Widner University.
Common Pleas Court ruling 3/27/2020
Medical Legal Team:
Bret Grote, Legal Director Abolitionist Law Center
Robert Boyle, Esq.
Abu-Jamal v. Wetzel 2017 “Mumia Long Distance Revolutionary”
www.mumia-themovie.com
www.prisonradio.org
www.freemumia.com
www.bringmumiahome.com
International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal
Books: – Live from Death Row (Harper Perennial, 1995) – Death Blossoms (Common Notions, 1996) – All Things Censored (Seven Stories, 2000) – Faith of Our Fathers (Africa World Press, 2003) – We Want Freedom (Common Notions, 2004) – Jailhouse Lawyers (City Lights, 2009) – The Classroom and the Cell (Third World Press, 2011) – Writing on the Wall (City Lights, 2015) – Have Black Lives Ever Mattered (City Lights 2016) – Murder Incorporated, – Volume One: Dreaming of Empire (Prison Radio, 2018) – Volume Two: America’s Favorite Pastime (Prison Radio, 2019) – *Soon-to-be-released:* Perfecting Tyranny (Prison Radio 2020). His work has been published in French, Japanese, German, Dutch, Spanish, Catalan, Portuguese, and Italian.
Info from Black Philly Radical Collective
Mumia Abu-Jamal is a political prisoner from North Philadelphia. He attended Benjamin Franklin High School in North Philadelphia and joined the Black Panther Party in 1968. As the spokesperson for the BPP, Mumia was targeted by the Philadelphia Police Department and the FBI for his activism. After the Black Panther Party dissolved, Mumia settled down and started a family. He became an award-winning journalist whose reporting on police brutality led then mayor Frank Rizzo to threaten him. In 1981, Mumia was driving a cab in order to make extra money to care for his family. As he approached 13th and Locust, he noticed his younger brother involved in an altercation with the police officer. The police officer was killed during the altercation and Mumia was shot in the stomach. In 1982, Mumia Abu Jamal was convicted of the murder of the Philadelphia police officer and sentence to death after a trial that international observers say was unfair, unconstitutional, and racist. The judge presided over his case was famously quoted as saying, “I’m going to help them fry the n-word.” Mumia spent close to 30 years on death row and came close to being executed in 1995 before an international outcry prevented it. The Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police actively campaigned for his death. Mumia’s death sentence was overturned in 2011 and he is currently serving life without parole. Mumia has always maintained his innocence. He is currently suffering from multiple medical ailments including cirrhosis of the liver caused by the prison’s delay in treating his Hepatitis C. He is 66 years old. He is presently imprisoned in State Correctional Institute Mahoney (SCI-Mahoney).
USPS MAIL
Here is the “how to send a letter” to Mumia. They scan and copy and give him the copies of all mail, pictures, cards etc. No original paper goes into him. Books are different see below re books.
Mail: takes 10-20 days to reach him:
Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal AM 8335
SCI Mahanoy
PO Box 33028
St Petersburg, FL 33733
BOOKS
Books must be sent directly from vendor with no letters included.
Security Processing Center
Mumia Abu-Jamal AM 8335
268 Bricker Road
Bellefonte, PA 16823-1667
Epilogue
HUEY NEWTON—THE LEGACY
Huey's mugshot—rite of passage for most black males in the US.
Huey P. Newton echoed much of what Mumia Abu-Jamal has said, written about and how he conducts his life. This is taken from Newton’s autobiography, Revolutionary Suicide,
My prison experience is a good example of revolutionary suicide in action, for prison is a microcosm of the outside world. From the beginning of my sentence, I defied the authorities by refusing to cooperate. As a result, I was confined to lock up in a solitary cell. As the months passed and I remained steadfast, they came to regard my behavior as suicidal. I was told that I would crack and break under the strain. I did not break, nor did I retreat from my position. I grew strong. If I had submitted to their exploitation and done their will, it would have killed my spirit and condemned me to a living death. To cooperate in imprison meant reactionary suicide to me. While solitary confinement can be physically and mentally destructive, my actions were taken with an understanding of the risk I had to suffer through a certain situation.
By doing so, my resistance told them that I rejected all they stood for, even though my struggle might have harmed my health, even killed me. I looked upon it as a way of raising the consciousness of the other inmates as a contribution to the ongoing revolution. Only resistance can destroy the pressures that cause reactionary suicide.
The concept of revolutionary suicide is not defeatist or fatalistic, on the contrary, it conveys an awareness of reality in combination with the possibility of hope-reality, because the revolution must always be prepared to face death, and hope because it symbolizes a resolute determination to bring about change. Above all, it demands that the revolutionary see his death and his life as one piece. Chairman Mao says that death comes to all of us, but it varies in its significance. To die for the reactionary is lighter than a feather. To die for the revolution is heavier than Mount Tai.
(Our mother) helped us see the light side in even the most difficult situations. This lightness and balance have carried me through some difficult days. Often when others expect to find me depressed by difficult circumstances and especially by the extreme condition of prison, they see that I look at things in another way. Not that I am happy with the suffering. I simply refuse to be defeated by it.
Huey P. Newton, Revolutionary Suicide (autobiography)
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Punto Press released China Rising - Capitalist Roads, Socialist Destinations (2016); and for Badak Merah, Jeff authored China Is Communist, Dammit! – Dawn of the Red Dynasty (2017).
Jeff can be reached at China Rising, jeff@brownlanglois.com, Facebook, Twitter and Wechat/Whatsapp: +86-13823544196.
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