Posted on 07/21/2005 10:44:31 PM PDT by doug from upland
Mumia Made Honorary Citizen of Paris
On October 4, 2003, the city of Paris made an honorary citizen of celebrated US death row inmate and black activist Mumia Abu-Jamal, falsely accused and sentenced to death for the 1981 murder of white Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner.
It is the first time Paris has bestowed the honor since Pablo Picasso was made honorary citizen in 1971, Socialist Mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoe told an audience of 200 people, taking the occasion to attack the barbarity of the death penalty. In attacking the "barbarity called the death penalty," the mayor said "as long as there is a place on this planet where one can be killed in the name of the community, we haven't finished our work." Raising his fist in a sign of solidarity, Delanoe then shouted "Mumia is a Parisian!" as the crowd cheered and applauded.
Black activist Angela Davis, a former member of the Black Panthers and the Communist Party, hailed the "profound sense of humanity" of Abu-Jamal, attacking American unilateralism and racist attacks against immigrants.
The movement to free Mumia Abu-Jamal "takes on a new sense in face of American unilateralism, the aggression against the Iraqi people and the racist attacks against immigrants which can only further gnaw away at the vestiges of democracy in the United States," said Davis, a professor at the University of California in Santa Cruz.
Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former Black Panther civil rights activist and journalist who has maintained his innocence, was sentenced to death 21 years ago for the murder of Daniel Faulkner. and scores of movements and organizations have sprung up around the world in his defense.
Abu-Jamal is regarded worldwide as the most well-known political prisoner on death row. Another person, Arnold Beverly, has come forward to claim responsibility for the death of Officer Daniel Faulkner. Both the federal and state appeals courts have to this day refused to hear this significant testimony that should have led to Abu-Jamal's freedom.
His case has provoked particularly vivid debate in France, which abolished the death penalty in 1981. French school children are required to study the case as part of their education.
Mumia Abu-Jamal’s message to the French on the occasion of his being awarded honorary citizenship of Paris.
My friends, comrades, brothers and sisters. I want to take this opportunity to thank our good friends in France, to the many good people who are deeply opposed to the modern barbarity of the death penalty, and for those who have retained the taste of liberty that sparked the great French revolution over two hundred years ago.
I have been forced to think about what it means to be a citizen, even an honorary one. I have often wondered what such a thing meant for I have seen precious little of what it means in my life and in the lives of many of my contemporaries. It must mean far more than the empty right to vote. Does it mean the so-called right to have Black jurors summarily removed from your jury? The right to have openly racist judges appointed to decide whether you shall live or die? The right to a trial that violates the laws of the land and indeed international law?
If that is so then I am an American citizen and it has become virtually meaningless. I am hoping that an honorary citizenship may mean something more. What more? I don’t have the experience to know. But I do have the knowledge to thank you and the French Republic for–since the time of Mitterand, 1981, taking the side of life. There are indeed over three thousand men, women, and juveniles, who if they could would surely thank you all for such a choice.
I am but one of them. So I thank you all. Merci, On a Move! LONG LIVE JOHN AFRICA!
Just to show, we have a sense of humor his first meal in prison was French toast.
I was just thinking that..and they would not extradite him to the US because we have a death penalty, even though Einhorn kept the body of Holly Maddox in his apartment for a year after he killed her. But if you're an American hating hippie scum, then I guess that washes away even the sins of murder in the eyes of the French.
It was scheduled for a couple years ago but stopped by a judge. I did a song about it. I'll search.
"Oh France, loves Philly crminals. Ira Einhorn had to be basically pried from their hands with a crowbar."
That's "Not Proven"!!
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