All states pass legislation that, to the rational mind, is just plain wrong. We all know why, simply to protect the status-qua. However, that "land of the free", the Good ol' US of A, takes the trophy for some of the most blatant, prejudiced legislation in the Western world. A recent article in the Freedom Socialist, (Voice of Revolutionary Feminism) highlights one such a piece of ignorant, blatant, prejudiced crap, that passes for law.
Mumia Abu-Jamal spoke these revolutionary words by phone from his prison cell during his commencement speech to Goddard College on Oct. 4, 2014.Abu-Jamal, a renowned journalist skilled at exposing crimes of the U.S. “justice” system, was framed for the killing of Officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981, and sentenced by a judge who vowed to “fry that n––––r.” Now, Faulkner’s widow Maureen claims she’s upset that Mumia, a “radical who hates America,” is allowed to speak to journalists and the public. That’s why the day after Mumia’s speech, Tom Corbett, Pennsylvania’s outgoing Republican governor, introduced the Revictimization Relief Act of 2014. The Act criminalizes public speech by offenders that causes “mental anguish” and punishes any journalist who quotes such speech.This new law reveals an appalling trend by cops trying to gag those who publicly criticize the U.S. justice system, especially political radicals. In December 2014, St. Louis police demanded an apology from five St. Louis Rams players who entered the field with their hands up, a gesture cops deemed “offensive, tasteless, and inflammatory.”Notably, not Faulkner, Corbett, or the St. Louis cops have tried to ban bigoted speech by the KKK or Westboro Baptist church to protect the feelings of their victims. This shows that Pennsylvania’s lofty Revictimization Relief Act has nothing to do with helping victims, and everything to do with silencing political dissent. (For more information, visit prisonradio.org.)
