This holiday season is a critical time for two freedom fighters, Sundiata Acoli and Mumia Abu Jamal.
Sundiata is Assata Shakur’s co-defendant and is in his 36th year of incarceration! Now 72, Sundiata will be up for parole consideration in February. Letters supporting his bid for parole are crucial! If your family or organization is hosting a Kwanzaa or a holiday event, please consider setting a few moments aside to have your participants write a letter for Sundiata right there where you can collect them. If you decide to do so, contact us with all of the particulars for your event so we can highlight your organization’s commitment. We will also make arrangements for getting them from you and getting them mailed.
We especially encourage professional persons, clergy, activists, performers and entrepreneurs to write a letter on your own respective letterhead. The parole board should also see that leading elements in our community welcome our beloved Sundiata home.
If you cannot attend any of the supporting events, but would still like to send a support letter, please use the sample below as a guideline and do so. Send us a copy so we know we can count on you.
Please also sign the online petition for Sundiata:
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/2/parole-for-sundiata-acoli
This is something simple that everybody can do. At the time of this release, the online petition has a little more than 200 signatures. Our goal has been to secure 1000 by month’s end. I don’t know how anyone who claims love for Assata and Sundiata can accept that tame response. It is absolutely unfair to Sundiata and to his comrades.
Mumia’s situation is most critical if you or your organization has yet to send a letter to the Justice Department, please do so as soon as possible. The campaign to have the Justice Department intercede on Mumia’s behalf appears to be the last real chance to save Mumia’s life. The courts simply have not shown that they will. Mumia himself made it most plain in another context about
the court system in this country when he said, “we have courts of law, not courts of justice."
Letters supporting Sundiata Acoli
New Jersey State Parole Board
P.O. Box 862
Trenton NJ 08625
December 1, 2009
Chairwoman Volette C. Ross
New Jersey State Parole Board
P.O. Box 862
Trenton NJ 08625
Chairwoman Ross:
I am writing this letter concerning Sundiata Acoli, NJ#54859/Fed#39794-066, who is eligible for parole February of 2010. I strongly encourage you to grant his parole request.
Sundiata’s age is a strong reason to grant parole. In January 2010, Sundiata will be 73 years old. He has been incarcerated for 36 years and has served his sentence. Elderly prisoners’ recidivism rates are extremely low and they are highly unlikely to commit a crime once released. In addition, elderly prisoners require more intensive medical care to remain healthy, which is an added cost to the prison system.
Sundiata’s prison record has been impeccable. Not only has he not had any violations or write-ups in decades, he is a talented painter, writer and educator. He has worked with high school and college classes across the country, providing information and insight, as well as providing support to other prisoners who want to further their education.
Sundiata himself has a very impressive educational and work background, having worked at NASA in the 1960s as a computer programmer. He left that job to travel to the South to register Blacks to vote during the Civil Rights movement.
Sundiata has expressed remorse for his involvement in the circumstance that has led to his incarceration. I believe with all of my heart that if he is released, he will be an asset to the community, one that is sorely needed.
Sundiata is a father and a grandfather, and his greatest desire is to get to watch his grandchildren grow up. Please help fulfill that desire.
Sincerely,
Name: _________________ ______________________ ___________________
Address: __________________________________________________________
Email: _________________________________________
*address and email is optional but is very important for letters coming from New Jersey.
Letters supporting Mumia Abu-Jamal
US Justice Department
Washington, DC
Attn: Atty General Eric Holder
November 12, 2009
US Justice Department
Washington, DC
Attn: Atty General Eric Holder
RE: Mumia AbuJamal
Greetings,
The New Black Panther Party, as a part of a global human rights united front, proudly presents this letter demanding that your department intervenes in the incredible case of Mumia Abu–Jamal.
If there was ever a case that challenges the American image on race and the American system of justice at its core, it is this case, at this historical moment.
Even though Mumia’s attorneys have made an incredible and obvious case of numerous constitutional violations in his trial, even though those same efforts unveiled a range of new evidence establishing his innocence, and even though there are precedents for the proper granting of a new trial, in hearing after hearing and in court after court, including tragically even the federal courts, the deepseated race-based and political animosity facing Mumia has overridden the rule and principle of the law at every turn. Now we are faced with watching one of the most biased death penalty prosecutions seek the reinstatement of his death sentence, even though the world knows that this man is innocent.
At this critical moment, we can not allow political conventions to stand in the face of justice and allow what the world sees as a legal and political lynching to take place. The affirmation of slavery and the property holding rights of slavemasters was once the political convention of the day. Jim Crow segregation and the practice of lynch mob terror to enforce that order was also once the political convention of the day. However, on this date, at this incredible hour, in this enormous historical moment, with the eyes of the world upon us all, we, not just as in we, the international human rights community, but we, as in ‘we the people,’ simply can not allow this to happen!
So it is with respectful, but absolutely uncompromising urgency, that we come to demand that the Justice Department, here to prevent such tragedy as was once the common order of racial terror throughout much of this land, properly intervene in this case and see to it that true justice is served.
At the very least, Mumia Abu-Jamal deserves a new trial, and given the ordeal he has faced placing him at the threshold of a racist and politically motivated execution, he should be released in the interests of justice.
May the God of our ancestors be with you as you confront this enormous historical challenge.
Respectfully submitted,
Zayid Muhammad,
Natl Min of Culture, New Black Panther Party
cc: Malik Zulu Shabazz, Esq., Nat’l Chairman, New Black Panther Party
(published in The Amsterdam News)
