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Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Attacks on Obama’s DOJ Nominee Debo Adegbile

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Fox News reports: “The Senate has postponed a key vote Monday on the controversial nominee to head the Civil Rights Division at the Justice Department. …

“Supporters of nominee Debo Adegbile would have needed a simple majority of 51 votes Monday to clear the way for a final vote. But the procedural vote was canceled because of a snowstorm forecast for Monday, the same day most Capitol Hill lawmakers return from their home states.

“The vote has been rescheduled for midday Tuesday. If Adegbile clears the procedural vote then, after another short debate, a final vote in which he would again only need a simple majority of 51 votes to be confirmed will take place.

“Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., joined others in his concern about Adegbile’s support for convicted Philadelphia cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.”

LINN WASHINGTON, linn17 at rcn.com
A columnist for the Philadelphia Tribune and Temple University professor, Washington worked alongside Abu-Jamal as a journalist in Philadelphia in the 70’s and early 80’s. He authored the book Black Judges on Justice: Perspectives from the Bench, and has extensively studied Philadelphia politics and race relations.

NOELLE HANRAHAN, globalaudiopi at gmail.com
A private investigator and journalist based in Philadelphia, Hanrahan is director of Prison Radio. She edited Mumia Abu-Jamal’s book All Things Censored and for years has produced his recordings from death row and now from prison. Most recently, she helped produce the documentary” Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal.

She said today: “Today’s stage is the floor of the U.S. Senate where a cloture vote on Adegible’s nomination takes place in the wake of his clearing the Judiciary Committee. According to an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal, Adegbile’s representation of Mumia Abu-Jamal when he headed the NAACP Legal Defense Fund is reason enough to derail his nomination. The Fraternal Order of Police, Fox News and the bipartisan derision of Pennsylvania Senators Pat Toomey, and Bob Casey has fueled the impending drama.

“Mumia Abu-Jamal is an internationally acclaimed intellectual who writes in the tradition of Franz Fanon and Noam Chomsky. That he has done his work from an American prison cell for over 33 years — 30 of which were spent in solitary on death row — is remarkable. His worldwide radio broadcasts and bestselling books and have been translated into nine languages.

“Nelson Mandela, the European Parliament, Maya Angelou, E.L. Doctorow, Amnesty International, Danielle Mitterrand, Danny Glover, among many others have called his trial a miscarriage of justice and lauded his incisive writing.

“Abu-Jamal directly challenges the false but convenient ‘we have realized the dream narrative’ that virtually everyone, including Time magazine, is promulgating in honoring Martin Luther King and celebrating Black History Month.”

Free Speech Radio News recently ran a commentary by Abu-Jamal on Black History Month.