Letter to Mumia dated 15th November 2006
Dear Mumia
We are a group of people from Brixton who’ve known of your case for years and decided to take action to raise awareness about it amongst our local community. Brixton is the heartland of the Black community in
London and we’ve had good response to our publicity about the event.
On the night, Sunday 19th November, we are going to have some spoken word, the Partisan Defence Committee film, and discussion about your case, a group of female drummers and local bands and DJs will round the night off. As well as raising awareness amongst our community, we also aim to raise funds for your legal defense.
We want to express our solidarity with you now for everything you have gone through, and our utmost respect for the way you have dealt with the outrageous affront to your humanity and personal dignity that this conviction has caused you to suffer. We thank you for your inspiring writings and columns which serve to educate and give moral strength to those of us outside of the prison walls you have to bear.
We sincerely hope that you will come to visit us in
London when this conviction is quashed,
Yours in solidarity
Brixton 4 Mumia collective
Letter to Mumia Abu-Jamal from Subcomandante Marcos 24th April 1999
I am writing to you in the name of the men, women, children and elderly of the Zapatista National Liberation Party in order to congratulate you on April 24, your birthday.
Perhaps you have heard of us. We are Mexican, mostly indigenous, and we took up arms on Jan 1 1994 demanding a voice, a face and a name for the forgotten of the earth. Since then, the Mexican government has made war on us, pursues and harasses us seeking our death, our disappearance and our absolute silence. The reason? These lands are rich with oil, uranium and precious lumber. The government wants them for the great transnational companies. We want them for all Mexicans. The government sees our lands as a business. We see our history written in these lands. We are also people of colour (the same colour as our brothers who have Mexican blood and live and struggle in the American Union). Our colour is brown, the colour of the Earth, the colour from which we take our history, our strength, our wisdom and our hope. But in order to struggle we add the colour black to our brown. We use black ski masks to show our faces. Only then can we be seen and heard. Following the advice of a Mayan elder who explained to us the meaning of the colour black, we chose this colour.
Old Don Antonio told us that from black came light and from there came the stars that light up the sky around the world. He recounted a story of a long time ago when the first gods were entrusted to give birth to the world. In one of their gatherings they understood that the world needed to have life and movement but in order to have life and movement light was necessary. Then they thought of making the sun so that the days would move, making day and night and time struggling and time for making love and the world would go walking with the days and the sleep with the nights. The gods had their gathering and came to this agreement in front of a large fire and they knew it was necessary that one of them be sacrificed by throwing himself into the fire and himself become fire and fly into the sky. The most beautiful god was chosen to fulfil this important task but he was afraid. Then the smallest god, the black god said he wasn’t afraid and threw himself into the fire and became the sun. then the world had light and movement and there was time for struggle and time for love and while it was day the bodies worked to make the world and while it was night the bodies made love and sparkles filled the darkness.
This is what Don Antonio told us and that is why we use black ski masks so we are of the colour brown and of the colour black. But we are also yellow because the first people who walked these lands were made of corn. And we are also red, because this is the colour of blood that has dignity. And we are also blue because we are the sky in which we fly. And green, for the mountain that is our house and our strength. And we are white because we are paper so that tomorrow can write its story.
Mr Mumia
We have nothing big to give you as a gift for your birthday. It is poor and little but all of us send you an embrace. We hope that when you gain your freedom you will come to visit us. Then we will give you a birthday party and if it isn’t April 24, it will be an unbirthday party. There will be music dance and talk, the means by which men and women of all colour understand and know one another and build bridges over which they walk together, towards history, towards tomorrow.
Happy birthday, vale
We greet you and may justice and truth find their place.
From the mountains of the Mexican south east.
Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos
PS I read somewhere that you are a father and a grandfather so I’m sending you a gift for your children and grandchildren. It is a little wooden car with Zapatistas dressed in black ski masks. You can explain to them that there are people of all colours everywhere, just like you, who want justice, liberty and democracy for everyone.
