I know it's taken me a while to get to this, but I wanted to thank Frank for sending us this example of both Mumia's work and the influence of Chomsky on us all.
--

On Thu, 22 Feb 2001 19:47:44
 frank scott wrote:
>'BUBBA' GOES TO HARLEM
>By Mumia Abu-Jamal, M.A.
>#496 Column Written 2/13/2001
>All Rights Reserved
>
>News Item: Former U.S. President, Bill Clinton, stung
>by criticism stemming from the almost $600,000 a year
>costs of his offices in mid-town Manhattan, has sought
>offices in the city's uptown Harlem district, where
>costs are expected to be half the mid-town rate.
>
>Not since the slim, ascetic Muslim Minister, Malcolm
>X, strolled Harlem streets, has the chocolate colony
>seen such excitement.  This time, an ex-president, one
>both loathed and loved, comes to Harlem to establish
>his base of operations, and by so doing, has
>demonstrated the twin, contradictory sides of his
>political persona.
>
>Former president Clinton has, in his long 8 years at
>the helm of the U.S. Ship of State, presided over an
>explosion in the crippling prison industrial complex,
>the expansion of the U.S. death penalty, and the
>related contraction of the constitutional right to
>habeas corpus, all of which have had a demonstratively
>injurious effect on America's Black population.  In
>order to obtain his office, he traded in Black death,
>by overseeing the state murder of brain-damaged death
>row captive, Ricky Ray Rector; in order to retain his
>office, he leapt to betray the Black bourgeoisie, by
>the abandonment of high justice dept. candidate, law
>professor, Lani Guinier, and former Surgeon General,
>Dr. Joycelyn Elders.
>
>That said, Clinton remains a genuinely beloved figure
>in Black America, so much so that when he was attacked
>by his political adversaries on the right, Blacks felt
>almost as if they were attacked, and were, by far, the
>most vigorous in his defense among American
>constituencies. America's perhaps greatest living
>writer, Toni Morrison, went just a tad beyond
>hyperbole when she affectionately dubbed the Arkansan
>"America's first Black president."
>
>Beyond his almost legendary political skills, there
>must be other reasons for this weird political
>courtship between African-Americans and Bill Clinton.
>It's not his much-vaunted upbringing in poverty, for
>despite the conventional wisdom, several U.S.
>presidents (for example, Garfield, Andrew Johnson, and
>Andrew Jackson) had an impoverished youth.
>
>It seems like it's not so much Clinton, the man, as it
>is Clinton, the man who spent his youth on the
>periphery of the Civil Rights Movement and adulthood
>in the proximity of the largest generation of Black
>professionals in U.S. history.
>
>It is therefore a case of interaction, and as Clinton
>courted the black bourgies, he studiously ignored the
>wretched suffering, imprisonment, scapegoating, and
>cop repression against the black poor in the urban
>centers.
>
>And the black bourgeoisie, following their own class
>interests, joined him in either ignoring or damning
>the so-called "black underclass."  For what else was
>that so-called Welfare Reform but more war on the
>poor?
>
>Now, as the nation's former chief executive takes up
>digs in Harlem, the bourgies once again preen at their
>new neighbor, while for the poor, it just means more
>gentrification, and therefore a harder struggle to
>afford rapidly rising rents.
>
>It's about time millions of African-Americans learned
>who their real friends are.(c)MAJ 2001
>
>******************************************************
>This column may be reprinted and/or distributed by
>electronic means, but only for non-commercial use, and
>only with the inclusion of the following copyright
>information:
>
>Text (c) copyright 2001 by Mumia Abu-Jamal. All rights
>reserved. Reprinted by permission of the author.
>
>Get Mumia's columns by email: http://www.MumiaBook.com
>******************************************************
>
>Mumia Abu-Jamal is the author of three books: 'Live
>from Death Row', 'Death Blossoms', and 'All Things
>Censored'. A new biography, 'On A Move: The Story of
>Mumia Abu-Jamal', is available at www.MumiaBook.com
>


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