To fellow writers, write on. Dear sisters, brothers, poets, scholars, fellow scribes – On the move. I thank you for coming together in New York to add your presence with ours, to add your words with ours. It has been my joy and honor to be with you, if only on the page, to write, to comment, to analyze and to share my thoughts with others. It has been a challenge, and a joy, to share our people’s history of resistance, to call attention to freedom struggles, then and now. It has been a high honor to write about the remarkable MOVE organization, a group that has struggled for decades, not just for themselves, indeed not only for Black folks, or even for humanity, but for all life to be free from the choking poisons of our deadly civilization.
As writers, why is it so hard for us to admit how utterly dangerous, how lethal civilization has been for the living world? Is it because we are writers, and thus assume to be inheritors of this thing we call civilization? How many millions of people have perished on the altar of civilization? How many Africans? How many Indians? How many Asians? When truth be told, we all came from civilizations; people who organized life, family, agriculture, religion, politics, how they want it, until greed invaded, bringing a promise that was poisoned fruit. Africa had vast and working empires. Indians had cities in the middle states regions of 1000s, all warped, ruined, vanished for a temple of unending profit. I thank you, sisters, brothers, friends, colleagues. You keep writing. I’ll keep reading. On the move! Long live John Africa. From death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are produced by Noel Hanrahan for Prison Radio.
