Internationell aktionsdag: FREE MUMIA!

Den radikala aktivisten Mumia Abu-Jamal sitter sedan 28 år inlåst i Förenta Staterna. Han dömdes till döden, i en farsartad rättegång av en vit jury och en öppet rasistisk domare, för ett mord han inte begått. Mumia Abu-Jamal var poltistiskt aktiv innan han greps och han har fortsatt kämpa från "death-row". Idag är det internationell aktionsdag för hans sak. Vi förenar oss med de tusentals människor som världen över idag kräver denna politiske fånges frigivning. Frihet för Mumia!
Läs mer om Mumia Abu-Jamal och hans fall, här.

I sammanhanget vill vi även uppmärksamma en annan afroamerikansk radikal aktivist, Malcom X. Även om han inte var kommunist, och därför, bland annat, inte hade ett tydligt klassperspektiv, är hans texter läsvärda och tänkvärda. Nedan följer ett utdrag ur ett tal Malcom X höll i januari 1964, hela texten finner ni här.

"These are traps that he creates. If you speak in an angry way about what has happened to our people and what is happening to our people, what does he call it? Emotionalism. Pick up on that. Here the man has got a rope around his neck and because he screams, you know, the cracker that’s putting the rope around his neck accuses him of being emotional. You’re supposed to have the rope around your neck and holler politely, you know. You’re supposed to watch your diction, not shout and wake other people up – this is how you’re supposed to holler. You’re supposed to be respectable and responsible when you holler against what they’re doing to you. And you’ve got a lot of Afro-Americans who fall for that. They say, “No, you can’t do it like that, you’ve got to be responsible, you’ve got to be respectable.” And you’ll always be a slave as long as you’re trying to be responsible and respectable in the eyesight of your master; you’ll remain a slave. When you’re in the eyesight of your master, you’ve got to let him know you’re irresponsible and you’ll blow his irresponsible head off.

And again you’ve got another trap that he maneuvers you into. If you begin to talk about what he did to you, he’ll say that’s hate, you’re teaching hate. Pick up on that. He won’t say he didn’t do it, because he can’t. But he’ll accuse you of teaching hate just because you begin to spell out what he did to you. Which is an intellectual trap – because he knows we don’t want to be accused of hate. And the average black American who has been real brainwashed, he never wants to be accused of being emotional. You ever watched them? You ever watched one of them? Do that – watch them, watch the real bourgeois black Americans. He never wants to show any sign of emotion. He won’t even tap his feet. You can have some of that real soul music, and he’ll sit there, you know, like it doesn’t move him. I watch him, and I’m telling you. And the reason he tries to pretend like it doesn’t move him is that he knows it doesn’t move them. And it doesn’t move them because they can’t feel it, they’ve got no soul. And he’s got to pretend he has none just to make it with them. This is a shame, really.

And then you go a step farther, they get you again on this violence. They have another trap wherein they make it look criminal if any of us, who has a rope around his neck or one is being put around his neck – if you do anything to stop the man from putting that rope around your neck, that’s violence. And again this bourgeois Negro, who’s trying to be polite and respectable and all, he never wants to be identified with violence. So he lets them do anything to him, and he sits there submitting to it non-violently, just so he can keep his image of responsibility. He dies with a responsible image, he dies with a polite image, but he dies. The man who is irresponsible and impolite, he keeps his life. That responsible Negro, he’ll die every day, but the irresponsible one dies and takes some of those with him who were trying to make him die."