Pop Quiz on Communism (pdf)
Historic Resistance Statements
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Clark in his prison duds. The red triangle he is wearing is like the one placed on political prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. |
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On
March 5, 2001, C. Clark Kissinger was released from three months in the
federal detention center in Brooklyn. His crime? Fighting for justice for
Mumia Abu-Jamal!
Clark has been a journalist and political activist since the early 1960s. "In an earlier life," as he puts it, "I was National Secretary of Students for a Democratic Society and organized the first March on Washington against the war on Vietnam in 1965." So Clark has been on the government's shit list for a long, long time. In recent years, Clark has been one of the leading writers and activists in support of condemned journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal. So it was no surprise when Clark was scooped up along with 95 other people at a demonstration for Mumia at the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia on July 3, 1999. What happened after that is quite instructive. Clark was issued a summons by a federal Park Ranger (complete with Smokey-the-Bear hat) for "failure to obey a lawful order." This is a federal Class-B misdemeanor, and is roughly equivalent to a speeding ticket. Most people just checked "guilty" and mailed it in with a fine. But Clark asked for his day in court. When Clark and seven other went to trial, the judge not only found him guilty and fined him, but put him on one year of supervised probation with the added requirements that he turn in his passport and be restricted from traveling outside his home federal court district for one year. In addition, contact with convicted felons (i.e. Mumia) was forbidden. The purpose of these restrictions was to stop Clark from continuing his traveling and speaking on Mumia's behalf. But Clark is hard to stop. On August 1, 2000, in Philadelphia during the Republican Convention (the "Executioners' Ball"), there was a large rally in support of Mumia and against the death penalty held in Thomas Paine Plaza in downtown Philadelphia. This was part of a whole day of action against the criminal injustice system.
C. Clark Kissinger was not supposed to be there. He had asked the judge
for permission to go and speak, but was denied. Yet someone looking
amazingly like C. Clark Kissinger, and introduced as his twin brother D.
Clark Kissinger, did speak to a cheering crowd. "D. Clark" denounced George
Bush and the way the death penalty is administered in this country, and
called on people to fight for Mumia Abu-Jamal. As a result, Clark was
sentenced to jail for 3 months. During this time he was thrown in "the hole"
three times, had his mail censored, and had his phone calls cut off when he
did radio interviews from the inmates' phones. |
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Rage Against the Machine
Freedom Fighter of the Month, March 2001: