Cop killer Abu-Jamal
EAGnews.org: A collection of labor unions is demanding that leaders of California’s Oakland Unified School District allow a lesson plan that compares convicted cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal to civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to appear on the district’s website.
In a resolution passed on July 14, the Alameda Labor Council condemned Oakland Unified school leaders for censoring the pro-cop killer lesson plan, entitled “Urban Dreams,” and accused them of buckling to the intimidation tactics of the Fraternal Order of Police and Fox News.
The Alameda Labor Council – which is affiliated with the AFL-CIO – is an umbrella organization that coordinates the political activities of more than 100 unions, including the Berkley Federation of Teachers and the California School Employees Association.
“ … (I)t is dangerous and unacceptable to allow the police to determine the curriculum of a major school district like Oakland, or any school district,” the group declares in its resolution.
The Alameda Labor Council, on the other hand, sees nothing dangerous about Mumia Abu-Jamal who was convicted of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner on Dec. 9, 1981.
As EAGnews reported earlier this year:
(Abu-Jamal) was working as a cab driver for extra money that evening, and was apparently parked along a city street when he witnessed his brother, William Cook, being pulled over by Faulkner in a traffic stop. Abu-Jamal left his vehicle and intervened, a struggle ensued, and both he and Faulkner were shot.
Abu-Jamal claimed an unidentified person arrived on the scene, shot Faulkner and fled. Three witnesses testified that they saw Abu-Jamal shoot the officer.
Abu-Jamal was convicted of murder in 1982 and sentenced to death. He spent 30 years in Death Row before an appeals court lowered the sentence to life in prison with no chance of parole in 2012.
Meanwhile, he’s become a cult hero to thousands on the extreme political left.
In its resolution, the Alameda Labor Council maintains that Abu-Jamal is innocent of killing Faulkner and defends the “Urban Dreams” curriculum as “invaluable” for teaching students to think critically about social justice.
Specifically, the “Urban Dreams” lessons ask students to “critically examine a possible parallel between Martin Luther King, Jr., and someone else many believe is currently targeted by the U.S. government, Mumia Abu-Jamal.”
Many left-wingers believe Abu-Jamal has been unfairly singled out for punishment because the convicted cop killer is “an outspoken critic of the corruption and racism of the American legal system and both parties of American capitalism.”
The left-wing activists compare Abu-Jamal’s views to King’s “radical politics (that) were evident in his last years of his growing collaboration with Black Power leaders, his leading of study sessions … on socialism, his support of the movement against the Vietnam War and his challenge to U.S. militarism, declaring at Riverside Church that the U.S., ‘my own country,’ was ‘the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.’”
“It’s an absolute disgrace that they’re trying to make any comparison,” Maureen Faulkner, the police officer’s widow, told Fox News earlier this year.
“It’s a travesty,” Faulkner continued. “You’re going to teach children about a man who murdered a police officer? That’s not a good lesson to be teaching children. He was a radical, a militant. My question is: Are our tax dollars paying for this?”
As long as Oakland Unified school leaders stand strong, tax dollars won’t be used to spread pro-Abu-Jamal propaganda. But, as the recent Alameda Labor Council resolution makes clear, the radicals running today’s labor unions aren’t going to accept defeat so easily.
EAGnews’ full examination of the “Urban Dreams” lesson plan can be found here.
DCG