Boots of the Coup Interviews Mumia Abu-Jamal-gctid29526

[nattyreb]

The Minister of Information JR
POCC Block Report Radio
Block Report Radio - Home

San Francisco Bay View

Another World is Possible:  Boots of the Coup Interviews Mumia Abu-Jamal

Wednesday, July 9, 2008

PART 1

The POCC: Block Report Radio show recently recorded a conversation where internationally known musician Boots Riley of the Coup interviewed political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal. Although people can hear Mumia on prisonradio.org with his weekly commentaries, the Block Report believes that it is important to hear from Mumia in a looser setting where he can talk casually and interact, rather than just try to make a few concise points with credible evidence. The interview that we produced before this was with M1 and Mumia; it can be found at Block Report Radio - Home, along with the audio from this interview in its entirety.

Boots: Hello!

Mumia: Hello, hello!

Boots: Oh wow! This is Boots Riley from the Coup. It's an honor to meet you, sir.

Mumia: The honor is mine, brotha.

Boots: There are a few things that I always wanted to ask you. In my music, a lot of times I've been accused of dealing with things that seem more personal than political, although I see them as very political.

I try to deal with that piece that gets people to move to action where the system interacts with people in their personal lives. What is it that separates you and I and other folks that consider themselves part of a movement from the masses of other folks who don't consider themselves part of that movement?

Mumia: Well, actually very little. I remember hearing, and this is in another context, but I remember hearing a boxing trainer say that the difference between champs and those who are not champs can be measured in inches, not feet. And I was always impressed by that.

I mean we think of champs as these great, great, great creatures, but the fact of the matter is that it is really very little between those of us that consider ourselves activists or revolutionaries and those who are not. It often turns on one's personal experience.

Remember you mentioned the personal, in terms of what you put into your music? But I assure you there is an intersection between the personal and the political. And how people were raised, when they were raised, and their experiences influence how they see the world. I mean, it can not be otherwise.

If Huey P. Newton didn't have the background that he had in the streets – he was a thief, you know? – if Malcolm didn't have his background in the street – you know he was a pimp and a burglar – they would not have been put in the position where they had to question what they were doing in the world and how they could change themselves ...

THIS CALL IS FROM THE STATE CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION SCI GREENE, AND IT IS SUBJECT TO MONITORING AND RECORDING.

Mumia: ... and how they could change themselves into political people. You know Malcolm's transformation began in the prison in Massachusetts. Huey's began really in the streets. He used to write about how he would get busted for a theft or something like that and he would go to court and, because he studied the law somewhat, he saw what was happening in court and he internalized it. And he began challenging it and representing himself and stuff.

So there is a thin line, a very thin line, between those of us who are political and those of us who are not. And events sometimes change people, literally in the snap (of the fingers), in the blink of an eye.

Mao used to say, "A single spark can start a prairie fire." He meant the spark in the mind – the insight, the realization, you know? And that is why I say that there are millions of Malcolms. They just don't know it yet.

Boots: All right, going along those same lines, many times when I've been involved with various organizations or even doing the music that I do, I've heard this comment, one that cuts to the core of me, from people in my neighborhood or whatever; it's "I really like what you are doing, but, you know, I got to pay the bills."

It has often caused me to think that possibly that the Movement in general doesn't have its finger on the pulse of the people because it seems that people should say, "I need to be involved in the Movement because I got to pay bills."

Mumia: Well, I would agree with that, but I would even take it a step further. The fact that people have to expend more and more of what little and little they have on paying the bills, on buying gas, on buying food, on paying the rent, more and more now, is because more and more people are not involved in the Movement. Let me explain.

Almost all of us who work in the world, especially those of us that have "nine to fives" if such a thing even exists any more, they have those jobs, they have those "nine to fives" because 40, 50, 60, 70 years ago people organized something called unions and fought for 40-hour weeks. If they had not done that, the norm would have been 80 hours.

I mean they used to have children working in factories, babies, you know what I'm saying? If people didn't organize and say, "Hold it, hold it!" – weren't they working to pay the rent? Weren't they working to pay their bills? But they were also organizing to make the day better and their lives better for their children and people coming after them.

And you better believe if people were really politically and economically organizing, they could demand that the speculation be taken out of the oil prices, and instead of $4 or $5 soon, it would be what it should be, $2.70 or $52 a barrel, instead of $135 a barrel. People forget that when the Iraq War started, oil was $30 a barrel, now it's $135 the last I checked, and it might be $138 today.

But it's like that because people essentially did protest against this war, (but) many people after it started went back home. "Well, we can't demonstrate in a time of war, that's Un-Amerikkkan." Well, damn it, if they had organized more, if they had continued fighting, then we would be closer to ending this war as opposed to changing the management of the war so that it continues on and on and on or goes to another place – or they bomb Iran next week, you know what I'm saying?

PART 2

by The Minister of Information JR

This is the final segment of the interview that legendary political rapper Boots from the Coup did with political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal, via telephone. This is one of the many interviews that Block Report Radio has done in its project, to expose political prisoners to cultural and political forces on the streets. There are more to come.

In the 2nd segment of this interview, Boots and Mumia talk about unions, Mumia's favorite writers, as well as Mumia's comments on a recent Supreme Court decision giving Guantanamo Bay prisoners the right to see a judge. Check it out.

Boots: And I think that that was kind of the thought that I was having, is that the union movements that we see now, they are definitely not revolutionary or radical. There is some really good people trying to do things, do you think that people who do consider themselves revolutionary or radicals or progressives, more of them need to get involved with some issues that have to do with labor or economics on the grassroots level?

Mumia: I do. That might mean joining a trade union. That might mean just organizing among trade unionist and union members. You know in order to make this thing happen, in order to change society , all the factors of society have to be organized, and touched, and moved, and motivated. You see, if it doesn't happen that way, then there'll be increasingly smaller groups of people involved in organizations. And there'll be less and less influential. When people organized those union things that I've talked about, they did it because their lives were hell, and they also did it, if you think back and check back, the Supreme Court said "criminal syndicalism or syndicalization".The Supreme Court criminalized unionization, saying it was a burden on production, and a burden on business, and the private property of corporations. It took millions and millions of people organizing all around the country, to change that into the kind of normalization that...We now think of unions as a background noise. It's a normal thing. It's not extraordinary. Instead of what they could be, they're much better than they were. They can be much much better, but its going to take a change in consciousness among union people, and among organizers to work together, and work outside of the realm of work, and in the area of culture for example. I mean, we can not under-estimate the power of culture in a society where entertainment is one of the biggest industries in this country, in the world really, because that's where people hear things, that's where their minds are changed. Think of the impact of a Bob Marley for example.

THIS CALL IS FROM THE STATE CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION SC GREENE, AND IS SUBJECT TO MONITORING AND RECORDING.

Boots: You and Commandante Marcos are two of the most beautiful right-on writers that I have read, to break down how society works.

Mumia: Thank you, brotha.

Boots: And who are some of your favorite writers?

Mumia: I have a lot, given the situation, I read a lot, but I've found that some of Huey's early stuff is, and it hasn't really been read even by former members of the Party. He was brilliant. He truly was brilliant. There is an old-head, a West Indian, who's no longer among us, he wrote some really deep stuff. His name was C.L.R. James. He was from Trinidad. This brotha was brilliant, because you know, he was a scholar, a thinker, and all of that, and he was also an organizer, a revolutionary, a political figure, a thinker, a writer, and one of his greatest collections of interviews and speeches was something called, "Every Cook Could Govern", where he analyses the world. He was just a brilliant cat. So I read a great deal, and a lot of people have influenced me in different ways; Eldridge. I was a teenager when I first got turned on to Eldridge. Eldridge was a very very powerful and brilliant writer, who influenced me deeply when I was a kid, and I still have that influence with me today.

Boots: What do you think about the Supreme Court decision letting people in Guantanamo get to see a judge?

Mumia: You know what is most amazing about that Boots, that 4 members of the Court said "no they don't". (Sarcastically Laughing) You know, I am surprised pleasantly that 5 members of the Court said that the Constitution covers them because they are under the jurisdiction of the United States of Amerikkka, okay. So there has to be some kind of hearing, or the availability of habeus corpus in federal court. But 4 justices, including the chief justice said "no they don't", and when you think about that, that should astound people. You know in the space of 7 or 8 years, in addition to Guantanamo, you have so-called "black sites", secret prisons, you have legalized for all intents and purposes torture, and there are other prisons that we don't even talk about, called Diego Garcia, and others around the world, where people are tortured in the name of Amerikkka. And the fact that more people aren't crazy about it, or making noise about it, or demonstrating in the streets about it, is stunning, and it shows you how repression really does close down the minds of people. Because people must be paralyzed by fear, instead of energized by indignation to say "this is not my country", "this is not the country I want", "this is not the world that I want to live in". Now we know, as Kmtyw-Americans, that Amerikkka has rarely if ever followed its own Constitution. I mean, it would be a good idea if they did that. They certainly violated it for centuries when it comes to Kmtyw-Americans. It doesn't even matter what the Constitution say, they passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendment and then said in so many words, this applies to everybody and corporations, but not niggers, you see? And denied Black people for a hundred years, the rights enshrined in the Constitution.

YOU HAVE 60 SECONDS REMAINING.

Mumia: It took people organizing in the streets, all across the South and the North to change those words into reality. Ona Move. Good to hear you Boots.

Boots: Thank you very much, and its an honor to speak to you.

Mumia: The honor is mine brotha. Keep doing what you're doing, because you're doing some real beautiful stuff.

Boots: Oh wow, I'm glad that you even know who I am. Thank you very much.

Mumia: I've read about you in the Bay View. I saw your interview, and it was all of that (laughing). Thank you brotha.

This interview, arranged and recorded by POCC Minister of Information JR, can be heard in its entirety at Block Report Radio - Home.
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