Always Been A Government Conspiracy” (quote from the September 2019 IJAN Status Update), the F.B.I.’s COINTELPRO continues to violate the human rights of Imam Jamil and the New Afrikan Nation.
Photo Credit: Kwame-Osagyefo Kalimara
In March 2002, Imam Jamil Al-Amin was convicted of 13 criminal charges, including a murder of a Fulton County Sheriff deputy, sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole; although a person confessed to the shooting prior to Al-Amin’s conviction, which the prosecution hid from defense council. The trial judge, it must also be noted, placed a “Gag Order” on Al-Amin forbidding him to speak in his defense, which is still in effect. During the appeal process the F.B.I., under the Freedom of Information Act, was forced to acknowledge and release 44,000 pages of surveillance documentation on H. Rap Brown from the 1960’s forward. Friday’s symposium workshop titles were Plenary 1 – From H. Rap Brown to Jamil Al-Amin; Plenary 2 – Jamil Al-Amin’s intellectual trajectory and Black women in the movement; Plenary 3 – Agitation: From the Local to the Global; Plenary 4 – Radical Memories, Black Power, and Islam; and Culture, Arts, Imam Jamil and Struggle. The moderators and panelists were respectively, Robyn C. Spencer (Brooklyn College), Karima Al-Amin (spouse and Attorney), Komozi Woodard (Sara Lawrence College); Efia Nwangaza (Malcolm X Center S.C.), Shafeah M’Balia (Black Workers for Justice), Aisha Al-Adawiya (Women in Islam, Inc.); Michael West (Binghamton University), Quito Swan (UMASS Boston), Eusi Kwayana (Guyanese cabinet minister in the People’s Progressive Party government of 1953); Arun Kundnani (New York University), Imam Nadim Sulaiman Ali (Imam of the Community Masjid of Atlanta); Jameel Blair (spoken word artist) and Bilal Sunni-Ali (former Political Prisoner, artist). Akinyele Umoja welcomed and opened the entire symposium, sharing the purpose and its objectives.