Mumia speech at Antioch College graduation

[JSchaffner <jschaffner@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

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  Transcript of speech made by Mumia Abu-Jamal at Antioch College's
commencement Saturday. Abu-Jamal is on death row for killing a
Philadelphia police officer in 1981.

 My congratulations to you all here today. To the students graduating,
to teachers exhaulting in their graduates, to administrators rejoicing
in their professor's successes, to parents who secretly hope this is the
beginning of their children's financial independence and an end to their

bills, to you all at an extraordinary college -- Antioch.

  I thank you for your gracious invitation and I hope these words have
worth and meaning to you all. I've thought long and hard about your
proposed query about an individual's impact on the world. Against what
passes or matters, I'll answer a question with a question. Who do you
admire?

  Of course, in any huge student body, as I hope this graduating class
is, there is a wealth of perspectives, or should be. However, on any
given list, if logical, the following figures will be found: Nelson
Mandela, Malcolm X, Ella Baker, and W.E.B. DuBois.

  Just a few folks, right? What are the common features of these people.
Of course, they were all radicals or revolutionaries but that's not it.
Add Paul Robeson to that list. Does that help? How about Angela Y.
Davis. Some quick wits out there in the audience might well conclude,
well, they're all communists. Close, but that's not quite it either. For
neither Malcolm X nor Ella Baker, to my knowledge, ever joined the
party. And, though that I'm not certain, I don't think Paul Robeson was
member of the CPUSA.

  When you look at these people, you find folks who committed class
suicide, who turned their backs on the acquired class advantages and
potential opportunities to give voice and supportive presence to the
most oppressed sectors of their society.

  Dr. Nelson Mandela, trained as a lawyer, then joined the armed wing of
the ANC or African National Congress to further the African Liberation
Movement in South Africa. Malcolm X, with a stellar intellect, could
surely have joined any profession that he set his mind to -- he chose to

work for the dispossessed of the Black nation. Ella Baker, writer and
organizer, worked in the Civil Rights Movement and in exposing the
sexual exploitation of poor women who worked as domestics. Dr. DuBois,
despite his patrician-like bearing, was a genuine radical and iconoclast

who was constantly betrayed by his class brethren for his radical
opinions. He was purged from the NAACP. Similarly, lawyer, athlete and
actor Paul Robeson was vilified for his support of socialism and had his
flourishing career broken like DuBois before him. Robeson had his
passport illegally and unconstitutionally seized by the U.S. government
for his anti-imperialist beliefs. Angela Davis, as many of you no-doubt
know, was chased across the nation, captured, chained, jailed and almost
imprisoned for life for her support of the Black Liberation Movement.

  We admire these people because, at critical junctures of their lives,
they cast their lot with the oppressed, the poor, the worker, or those
in the third world. Now they didn't do this because it was popular,
quite the contrary, it was quite dangerous for many of these people. All
lived under constant government surveillance. Some lost their
livelihoods. Others lost their lives. They joined, aided and/or formed
the movements that they did because it was the right thing to do. Look
at them. For there your answer lies. Can one individual impact the
world.

  Dr. Mandela lead a chained nation from apartheid to multiracial
political democracy. Malcolm X inspired the Black Nationalist Movement
of the 1960s. Ella Baker was a key organizer who helped the Student
Non-violent Coordinating Committee called SNCC survive. W.E.B. Dubois
was a founder of the NAACP and a leader of the Pan-Africanist Movement.
Paul Robeson's
cultural and political contributions to people the world over were, and
remain, immense. And Dr. Angela Y. Davis' work furthered Black
Liberation and Prisoner's Rights Movements of the 1970s.

  Have those lives had impact?

  Their lives have expanded the very notion of what freedom means in the
minds of millions. Although they are and were extraordinary individuals,
they worked with movements that truly transformed consciousness and how
we look at the world. Their lives teach us all what it means to betray
one's class, to contribute to the movements that have meaning, and to
work on behalf of the oppressed.

  You, at this commencement at Antioch, have the somewhat unique
opportunity to prove that old axiom, that man is made for more than meat
and life is more than bread. In an age where everything, even the human
gene, is commodified, it can't be denied that we are all material
beings. Yet, aren't we also social beings? If we say we are, then we
must ask, what is owed to one's class? What is owed to humanity? What is
owed to life, itself? Think of the lives of those people you admire.
Show your admiration for them by becoming them. For by so doing, you
give birth to movements.

  Thank you.

  On the move long live John Africa.

  From death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal
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