Interview mit Angela Davis über Mumia’s neues Buch “Jailhous Lawyers” (nattyreb)

– 24. April 2009Eingestellt unter: Infos über Mumia und die Solibewegung von 1999 bis 7. Dezember 2011
Datum: Freitag, 24. April 2009 16:25
via: Greg Ruggiero
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In Her Own Words: An interview wit‘ Angela Davis
Source: The Liberator Magazine
http://weblog.liberatormagazine.com/2009/04/in-her-own-words-interview-wit-angela.html
[2-day liberatormagazine.com featured story]
JR Valrey is the Minister of Information for the Prisoners Of
Conscience Committee, an Oakland based organization founded by Fred
Hampton, Jr. with the mission to liberate the minds and hearts of
African and colonized people. The POCC takes the stand that all
prisoners are political. JR is a regular contributor to The Liberator.
In Her Own Words. An interview wit‘ Angela Davis: Angela Davis is a
legendary political activist professor in the U.C. System who has a
history of resistance. She is a former political prisoner who has done
work with the Communist Party, and she is also author of 8 books
analyzing race, class, and gender. She also is a cofounder of the
prison abolitionist group, Critical Resistance. She recently wrote a
foreword to political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal’s new book „Jailhouse
Lawyers“, in which the Block Report did an interview with her to help
promote.
I was first taught about Angela Davis being a political prisoner,
later on the first jailhouse lawyer that I met through the mail was
her codefendant who is still locked up, Ruchell Magee, whom I used to
write occasionally. So this book gave me a better insight into what
life as a jailhouse lawyer really is like. I dug the fact that Mumia
picked a subject that is rarely discussed on this side of the walls. I
learned a lot and it wet my appetite to wanting to learn more about
these legal warriors. Check out Angela Davis as she talks about her
foreword in Mumia’s new book, in her own words…
M.O.I. JR: I want to talk to you today about your foreword in Mumia
Abu Jamal’s new book, „Jailhouse Lawyers“. Since I know a lot of
readers do not have the book, I want to start off with reading a few
quotes, and I will ask you questions in relation to the quotes. You
say in your foreword, „Mumia points to me what was for me a startling
revelation. Jailhouse lawyers comprised the group most likely to be
punished by the prison administration, more so than political
prisoners, Black people, gang members, and gay prisoners whereas
jailhouse layers are punished by what Mumia calls ‚cover charges‘.
Historically they could be charged with internal violations for no
other reason that they used the law to challenge prison guards, prison
regimes, and prison conditions. In your opinion what is the importance
of Mumia choosing jailhouse lawyers to be the subject for his new book?
Angela: Well first of all, this is an amazing book. Everyone should
read this book. And I was extremely excited to learn that he was
working on a book on jailhouse lawyers because the story of jailhouse
lawyers is a hidden story. Most people in this country are not aware
of the extent to which resistance to the regimes of prisons, state
prisons, federal prisons all over the country, has been shaped through
the work of jailhouse lawyers. There is a long tradition of
resistance. And Mumia, himself, is a jailhouse lawyer. And if one
thinks about how many men and women have used the law in order to
challenge the prison regimes, one gets a sense of what a powerful
legacy that resistance is.
M.O.I. JR: In another quote in your foreword you say, „Mumia argues
that the passage of the Prison Litigation Reform Act is a violation of
the Convention Against Torture for in ruling out psychological or
mental injury as a basis to recover damages such sexual coercion that
was represented in the Abu Ghraib photographs if perpetrated inside of
a U.S. prison, would not have constituted evidence for a lawsuit. Why
did you point this out in your foreword?
Angela: Many people assume that the the P.L.R.A., the Prison
Litigation Reform Act, as I tried to point out in the foreword, simply
prevents prisoners from engaging in frivolous lawsuits. But as Mumia
points out, it is a pointed attack on the capacity of prisoners to use
the law itself. It is not about frivolity at all, it is about taking
away from prisoners one of the only instruments that they’ve been able
to develop to challenge the whole system. So we can’t assume that
under the Clinton administration the P.L.R.A. was passed, and that put
prison lawsuits to rest. It’s important for those of us on the outside
to support the rights of prisoners to use the law to resist the
violence of the state.
M.O.I. JR: Again to quote you, you say in the foreword of „Jailhouse
Lawyer“, „The way he situates the P.L.R.A. historically as an
inheritance of the Black Codes, which were themselves descended from
the Slave Codes, allows to recognize the extent to which historical
memories of slavery and racism are prescribed in the very structures
of the prison system, and have helped to produce the Prison Industrial
Complex.“ Can you discuss the importance of Mumia making this
connection in „Jailhouse Lawyers“?
Angela: Well this is one of the things that I really loved about
Mumia, he knows how to make these historical connections. He makes
connections with what might appear to be very dispirit and different
kinds of phenomenon, for example he points out that the P.L.R.A. was
passed at the same time as the disestablishment of the welfare system,
and that there is a connection between preventing women primarily from
having access to safety nets for their families, and this assault on
prisoners being able to defend themselves. So I really like the way
that he makes those connections with slavery. I think of the prison
system today in this country, and especially the system of capital
punishment, I think of it as a historical memory of slavery, as a
palpable inheritance of slavery. And as a matter of fact, the
existence of those systems provide us with real evidence of the fact
that slavery was not fully abolished. So I like the way in which he
can show us the similarities between the Black Codes, that were
produced in the aftermath of slavery to basically replicate the system
of slavery after slavery was allegedly abolished. And the P.R.L.A.
serves a similar contemporary purpose.
M.O.I. JR: Again, you write in „Jailhouse Lawyers“, in the last
sentence, „He (Mumia), allows us to reflect on the fact that
transformational possibilities often emerge where we least expect
them.“ Why did you end your foreword with that statement in this book?
Angela: Well you know because people don’t usually think of prisoners
in general as defending democracy. They think of the prison as the
underside, the underbelly, of democracy; as the place where you send
people who no longer have the right to be citizens. But I think that
what Mumia does, he manages to portray jailhouse lawyers in such a
ways as to persuade us regardless of what our political persuasions
might be, the jailhouse lawyers have been, in a sense, on the front
line of the defense of democracy. I’m not talking about capitalists
democracy. I’m not talking about neo-liberal democracy. I’m talking
about the kind of democracy that would also tend to not only political
equality, but racial equality, economic equality, and sexual equality
as well.
M.O.I. JR: What is the importance of us recognizing that Mumia is
facing deathrow right at this second, right when he released such an
eloquent book on jailhouse lawyers? You also pointed out in this
foreword that he rarely speaks of himself, so in the midst of this
being a time of the first Black president of America, what does
Mumia’s imprisonment, with all the flaws in his case, say about the
real political climate in America?
Angela: Well, first of all, Mumia’s case is so important for us to get
involved in. We have to save his life. We have to free Mumia. And
yeah, as many people acknowledge he rarely uses his amazing talent and
capacities to advocate for himself. He’s always advocating for others,
and that is all the more reason to be passionate advocates for him. I
have traveled in other parts of the world a great deal, and there are
movements to free Mumia all over the world. Sometimes I feel very
embarrassed that we have not managed to overcome the power of the
Fraternal Order of Police for example and the other conservative
forces that are determined to put Mumia to death. But this book is yet
another reason why we need to defend him, and why we need to use
whatever is available to us, whatever knowledge, whatever instruments
are available to us to guarantee that his life is saved and that he is
eventually set free.
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Excerpts from Mumia’s book Jailhouse Lawyer’s, including Angela Y.
Davis’s complete foreword can be downloaded as a PDF for free from
the City Lights Web site.
http://www.citylights.com/book/?GCOI=87286100448090&fa=complements
FREE MUMIA!