We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party

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South End Press, 2004 - 292 pàgines

In his youth Mumia Abu-Jamal helped found the Philadelphia branch of the Black Panther Party, wrote for the national newspaper, and began his life-long work of exposing the violence of the state as it manifests in entrenched poverty, endemic racism, and unending police brutality and celebrating a people's unending quest for freedom. In We Want Freedom, Mumia combines personal experience with extensive research to provide a compelling history of the Black Panther Party--what it was, where it came from, and what rose from its ashes. Mumia also pays special attention to the U.S. government's disruption of the organization through COINTELPRO and similar operations.

While Abu-Jamal is a prolific writer and probably the world's most famous political prisoner, this book is unlike any of Mumia's previous works. In We Want Freedom, Abu-Jamal applies his sharp critical faculties to an examination of one of the U.S.'s most revolutionary and most misrepresented groups. A subject previously explored by various historians and forever ripe for "insider" accounts, the Black Panther Party has not yet been addressed by a writer with the well-earned international acclaim of Abu-Jamal, nor with his unique combination of a powerful, even poetic, voice and an unsparing critical gaze. Abu-Jamal is able to make his own Black Panther Party days come alive as well as help situate the organization within its historical context, a context that included both great revolutionary fervor and hope, and great repression. In this era, when the US PATRIOT Act dismantles some of the same rights and freedoms violated by the FBI in their attack on the Black Panther Party, the story of how the Party grew and matured while combating such invasions is a welcome and essential lesson.

Des de l'interior del llibre

Continguts

THE BEGINNINGS OF THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY AND THE HISTORY IT SPRANG FROM
1
THE DEEP ROOTS OF THE STRUGGLE FOR BLACK LIBERATION
31
A PANTHER WALKS IN PHILLY
51
THE BLACK PANTHER PARTY
65
HUEYS PARTY GROWS
95
THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK COINTELPRO
117
A WOMANS PARTY
159
A PANTHERS LIFE
185
ONE TWO MANY PARITES
227
Afterword
247
Photos and Documents
251
Endnotes
269
Bibliography
277
Index
283
About Mumia AbuJamal
Copyright

THE SPLIT
205

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Sobre l'autor (2004)

Mumia Abu-Jamal is an award-winning journalist & author of two books, "Live from Death Row" & "Death Blossoms", which address prison life from a critical & spiritual perspective. In 1981 he was elected president of the Association of Black Journalists (Philadelphia chapter). His 1982 murder trial & subsequent conviction has raised considerable controversy & criticism for alleged constitutional violations & other improprieties. In spite of his almost two-decade long imprisonment on death row, Abu-Jamal has fought for his freedom & for his profession. He holds a BA from Goddard College & an MA from California State University, Dominguez Hills. His books have sold more than 100,000 copies & have been translated into seven languages.

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