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Message From
Imam Jamil Al-Amin (H. Rap Brown)
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There
will be peace in the east before there will be rest in the
west...
They
didn’t make you, so they can't break you....
We’re
all doing life without parole...
At
some point the defense has to become the offense...
We’re
in it, to win it.
I'm
true to this, I'm not new to this.
If
he ain't nothing but a minute man, he oughtn't get in it.
Being
a man is the continuing battle of one’s life.
One
loses a bit of manhood with every stale compromise to the
authority of any power in which one does not believe.
Our
will to live must no longer supersede our will to fight. For our
fighting will determine if our race shall live.
To
desire freedom is not enough. We must move from resistance to
aggression, from revolt to revolution. Brothers and sisters and
all oppressed people, we must prepare ourselves both mentally
and physically for the major confrontation yet to come.
We must fight. It is
the people who in the final analysis make and determine history.
Not leaders or systems. The law to govern us must be made by us. |
H. Rap Brown
Interview with Imam Jamil Al-Amin
PanAfrican JamilAl-Amin.mp3
Imam Jamil Al-Amin
Reidsville Prison
1104651
2164 Highway 147
Reidsville, Georgia 30499
posted 9 December 2005 *
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Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (born October 4, 1943, as Hubert Gerold
Brown), also known as H. Rap Brown, was chairman of the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the 1960s, and later
the Justice Minister of the
Black Panther Party. He is perhaps most famous for his proclamation
during that period that "violence is as American as cherry pie", as well
as once stating that "If America don't come around, we're gonna burn it
down". He is also known for his autobiography
Die Nigger Die!. He is currently serving a
life sentence for the murders of two Fulton County Sheriff's
deputies in 2000.
Brown was born in
Baton Rouge,
Louisiana. He became known as H. Rap Brown during the early 1960s.
His activism in the
civil rights movement included involvement with the
Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), of which he was
named chairman in 1967. That same year, he was arrested in
Cambridge, Maryland, and charged with inciting to riot as a result
of a speech he gave there. He left the SNCC and joined the
Black Panthers in 1968.
He appeared on the
FBI's
Ten Most Wanted List after avoiding trial on charges of inciting
riot and of carrying a gun across state lines. His attorneys in the gun
violation case were civil rights advocate Murphy Bell of Baton Rouge,
and the self described "radical lawyer"
William Kunstler. Brown was scheduled to be tried in Cambridge, but
the trial was moved to Bel Air, Maryland on a change of Venue.
On March 9, 1970 two black
radicals, Ralph Featherstone and William ("Che") Payne died on U.S.
Route 1 south of Bel Air, Maryland when a bomb being carried between
Payne's legs on the front floorboard of their car exploded, completely
destroying the car and dismembering both occupants. Allegedly the bomb
was intended to be used at the courthouse where Brown was to be tried.
The next night the Cambridge, Maryland courthouse was bombed.
Brown disappeared for 18 months,
and then he was arrested after a reported shootout with officers. The
shootout occurred after what was said to be an attempted robbery of a
bar in 1971 in
New York.
He spent five years (1971-1976) in
Attica Prison after a robbery conviction. While in prison, Brown
converted to
Islam and changed his name to Jamil Abdullah al-Amin. After his
release, he opened a grocery store in
Atlanta,
Georgia and became a Muslim spiritual leader and community activist
preaching against drugs and gambling in
Atlanta's West End neighborhood.—Wikipedia
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Only political education borne of
authentic struggle will do. Rap's political education
was initiated by his brother Ed.It was Ed who pulled Rap into the growing
"sit-in" movement and who got him involved with
Non-Violent Action group (NAG). It was Ed that got Rap reading
Du Bois, Frederick Douglass, Marcus Garvey, and Richard Wright.
And it was Ed Brown who got Rap involved with the Student
Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the organization that
broke away from the civil rights movement to explore
"revolutionary politics" and "Black Power."
From sit-ins, voting rights campaigns,
and marches, Rap learned that there was an authentic
spirit to be found among some of those who lived in the
Black Belt of the South. Here racism was uncompromising,
naked, and brutal. Water hoses, vicious dogs, and white
mobs often met black and white students who attempted to
desegregate lunch counters, motels and other public
accommodations.
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Struggling with black Americans who
were ready, if necessary, to give up their lives for the
cause of freedom and the brutal response to that effort by
conservative and liberal whites alike began to have a
profound impact on Rap's thinking. He began to see
"integration" as "impractical." t
was somewhere during this period that Rap's
revolutionary conversion took hold. And at that moment,
he no longer saw the current order as one that could be
reformed. racism was rooted too deeply into the fabric
of America to be laid to rest by the changing of a few
laws.
Amin Sharif
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The Great Divergence
America's Growing Inequality Crisis and What We Can
Do about It
By Timothy
Noah
For the past three decades, America has steadily
become a nation of haves and have-nots. Our incomes
are increasingly drastically unequal: the top 1% of
Americans collect almost 20% of the nation’s
income—more than double their share in 1973. We have
less equality of income than Venezuela, Kenya, or
Yemen. What economics Nobelist Paul Krugman terms
"the Great Divergence" has until now been treated as
little more than a talking point, a club to be
wielded in ideological battles. But it may be the
most important change in this country during our
lifetimes—a sharp, fundamental shift in the
character of American society, and not at all for
the better. The income gap has been blamed on
everything from computers to immigration, but its
causes and consequences call for a patient,
non-partisan exploration.
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The Gardens of Democracy: A New American Story
of Citizenship, the Economy, and the Role of Government
By Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer
American democracy is informed by the 18th century’s most cutting edge thinking on society, economics, and government. We’ve learned some things in the intervening 230 years about self interest, social behaviors, and how the world works. Now, authors Eric Liu and Nick Hanauer argue that some fundamental assumptions about citizenship, society, economics, and government need updating. For many years the dominant metaphor for understanding markets and government has been the machine. Liu and Hanauer view democracy not as a machine, but as a garden. A successful garden functions according to the inexorable tendencies of nature, but it also requires goals, regular tending, and an understanding of connected ecosystems. The latest ideas from science, social science, and economics—the cutting-edge ideas of today—generate these simple but revolutionary ideas: (The economy is not an efficient machine. It’s an effective garden that need tending. Freedom is responsibility. Government should be about the big what and the little how. True self interest is mutual interest. |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
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Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
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