Ona Move With Pam and Ramona Africa

Freedom is a Constant Struggle TV show, September 26, 2008.

Pam Africa is the Minister of Confrontation for the MOVE Organization and the Coordinator of the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Ramona Africa is the Minister of Communication for the MOVE Organization and the sole adult survivor of the May 13, 1985 massacre. On that day, a State Police helicopter dropped a C-4 bomb, illegally supplied by the FBI, on the roof of the MOVE Organization’s house at 6221 Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia. The bomb started a fire that was allowed to burn, and eventually destroyed 61 homes, leaving 250 people homeless: the entire block of a middle-class black community.

The Philadelphia Special Investigation Commission (The MOVE Commission), appointed by Mayor Wilson Goode, documented that when the occupants of the house tried to escape the fire, police shot at them, blocking their escape. In the end, six MOVE adults and five children died. Ramona Africa and 13 year-old Birdie Africa were the only survivors, after successfully dodging the police gunfire.

For more information about death row political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, visit www.freemumia.com and www.abu-jamal-news.com and read/listen to his essays at www.prisonradio.org

For more about MOVE and the struggle to free the MOVE 9, visit www.onamove.com and move9parole.blogspot.com

RELATED EPISODE: Crystal Bybee: Kevin Cooper and Mumia Abu-Jamal (Oct. 30, 2009)

Dennis Cunningham on the Attica Prison Uprising

Freedom is a Constant Struggle TV show, September 12, 2008.

Our guest, Attorney Dennis Cunningham, established the People's Law Office in Chicago, from which he and young Attorney Jeffrey Haas conducted a landmark civil rights lawsuit, "Hampton v. Hanrahan," on behalf of the families of slain Black Panther Party (BPP) leaders Mark Clark and Fred Hampton, and the survivors of the Dec. 4, 1969 police raid on the apartment of Illinois BPP Chairman Fred Hampton, at 2337 West Monroe Street in Chicago. The civil rights lawsuit lasted for almost 13 years, but ended with a $1.85 million settlement paid equally by the city, county, and federal governments--although Chicago's killer cops were never criminally charged.

Dennis continued doing civil rights cases over these 40 years, during which he also worked on the long-running class action for the prisoners who rebelled and survived the massacre at New York's Attica State Prison in 1971, and the Earth First case resulting from the 1990 bombing of Judi Bari and Darryl Cherney in Oakland, among many other defenses of protesters and victims of police misconduct, brutality and/or murder.

RELATED EPISODES: Dennis Cunningham: The FBI and the Resistance (May 2, 2008), Dennis Cunningham: The 40th Anniversary of the Assassination of Fred Hampton (Dec. 4, 2009), Bobby Seale: The Attica Uprising (Sept. 11, 2009), Elbert "Big Man" Howard and Billy X Jennings: Black August (Aug. 7, 2009), Willie Sundiata Tate: Black August (Aug. 21, 2009)

Pierre Labossiere on Haiti's 2008 Hurricanes

Freedom is a Constant Struggle TV show, September 19, 2008.

Pierre Labossiere, a Haitian national, co-founder of the Haiti Action Committee, has been a long-time social-justice activist and advocate for the Lavalas Party of President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, currently exiled in South Africa. Pierre has also been active in the campaigns to free political prisoners in Haiti and the U.S.

Learn more at: www.haitiaction.net and www.haitisolidarity.net

RELATED EPISODES: Pierre Labossiere: Revolutionary Haitian History (Oct. 12, 2007), Pierre Labossiere: The Kidnap & Exile of President Aristide (March 14, 2008), Pierre Labossiere: Haiti's Heroic History (Aug. 14, 2009), Emiliano Echeverria & Pierre Labossiere: Coups in Honduras and Haiti (Oct. 23, 2009), Pierre Labossiere: Haiti (July 23, 2010)