On Saturday, January 28th, the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee will host its 16th annual dinner tribute to Black political prisoners and their families!
This special event, co-sponsored by the SEIU Activists, will take place at the Martin Luther King Jr. Labor Center, 1199 Union Headquarters, 310 West 43rd Street, Manhattan from 3-7p.m. Dinner will be served promptly at 4pm.
The theme for this year’s dinner tribute is “One Struggle! Many Fronts!”
This year’s guest speakers are Dhoruba Bin Wahad and Monifa Bandele.
Bin Wahad was the field secretary for the Black Panther Party in New York and a Black Liberation Army combatant. He served 19 years in prison as a consequence of the COINTELPRO Operations against the Black Liberation Movement and against the Black Panther Party in particular. He is one of the few former political prisoners to be freed through the appellate courts.
Monifa Bandele is a daughter of the New Afrikan Independence Movement and has been a pillar in the Brooklyn based Malcolm X Grassroots Movement now for some time.
The dinner will also feature special guest artist George Edward Tait, the poet laureate of Harlem, and his wife, Jazz song stylist Akosua Tait.
George’s most recent volume of poetry ‘Swordsongs’ will be available for purchase.
This dinner is to also feature special guest co-hosts, author activist Asha Bandele and M1 of Dead Prez.
Tickets for this special event are $40 in advance,$45 at the door (Validated parking is available for $10.) All proceeds go to the political prisoners who are represented by their families at the dinner.
Although 2011 proved again to be a difficult year for political prisoners, some interesting ground was broken.
Marshall Eddie Conway got passed the first round of the parole process in Maryland. Conway has been wrongly incarcerated since 1969!
An exemplary prisoner and elder, Conway just penned and published his memoirs, Marshall Law, The Life and Times of a Baltimore Black Panther, done with Dominique Stevenson. It has already been well-received around the country.
In the case of Black Panther pioneer and revolutionary journalist Mumia AbuJamal, Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Abrahams dropped his office’s bid to have Mumia’s death sentence reinstated. The courts then automatically changed his sentence to life without parole. Mumia was then moved from death row in Waynesburg state prison where he had been for years and summarily put “in the hole” or as the prison system says euphemistically in “administrative segregation.”
“While the new development removes Mumia from any immediate threat of an execution, our struggle was never just to get him off death row,” said MXCC press officer Zayid Muhammad.
“Our struggle is to get him free,” he finished emphatically.
To be sure, no court has yet to be open to hearing any of the new evidence exonerating Mumia.
Incredibly, against that cynical background, Mumia is still a very busy journalist. He just co-authored a talking book, The Classroom and the Cell, Conversations on Black Life in America, with young Philadelphia-rooted author, Marc Lamont Hill.
As this release goes to press, MXCC’s founding chairman Herman Ferguson will be observing his 91st birthday on December 31st.
This past year also saw this incredible long-distance runner for justice release his own memoirs as well.
The book, written by his and closest comrade Iyaluua Ferguson, is called An Unlikely Warrior and was released in July. It too has been well-received in serious humanitarian circles.
To purchase tickets in advance for this moving tribute, please call 718 512 5008 or email the Committtee at mxcc519@verizon.net…
THE MALCOLM X COMMEMORATION COMMITTEE
PO BOX 380-122,BROOKLYN, NY 11238
718-512-5008, mxcc519@verizon.net
CONTACT: ZAYID MUHAMMAD, PRESS OFFICER @ 973 202 0745
https://theblacklist.net/
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