CCNY'S INDEPENDENT
STUDENT NEWSPAPER
MAY 2000 VOLUME
2, NUMBER 5
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CCNY'S INDEPENDENT
STUDENT NEWSPAPER |
Antioch College Ignites Controversy Around
Mumia Abu-Jamal Speech
by Hank Williams
Graduating students at Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio made a courageous stand when they chose a political prisoner on death row and a lesbian transgender author and activist who is his supporter to be the twin keynote speakers at their commencement ceremony on April 29.
The graduating class came under heavy pressure from police groups and other conservative organizations when they learned Mumia Abu-Jamal was invited to speak at the school’s commencement. Abu-Jamal will tape a speech for the commencement from his death row cell in Pennsylvania.
Teishan Latner, a member of the Antioch Commencement Committee, said, “We’ve been getting hit with hundreds of hate-type calls and e-mails from cops and conservatives all over the country.” The Fraternal Order of Police, openly campaigning for Abu-Jamal’s execution, launched a harassment campaign against the students.
Lesbian transgender activist and author Leslie Feinberg also spoke at the commencement. Feinberg, a co-founder of the National Rainbow Flags for Mumia coalition, said “The attempts by the Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police to terrorize these students is criminal.”
“The sentence of death for Mumia is meant to silence the African American revolutionary journalist known as the ‘voice of the voiceless.’ But because public support for Mumia has widened and deepened, the state has not been able to carry out the execution. Now the Philadelphia police are trying to terrorize and silence that support,” Feinberg explained.
Last year students at Evergreen College in Washington State decided to have Abu-Jamal tape a commencement speech, a decision that also brought nationwide protests from the Fraternal Order of Police. Abu-Jamal also taped a commentary for the 30th anniversary of the killing of Anti–Vietnam War protestors on May 4th at Kent State University in Ohio.