By Mark Lewis Taylor Mumia Abu-Jamal’s fight today for his physical health exposes the pervasive inhumanity of US mass incarceration’s very nature. It is a lethal system. Abu-Jamal is currently incarcerated in a Frackville, Pennsylvania state prison, serving a Life Without Possibility of Parole sentence (LWOPP). That began after nearly 30 years on death row […]
by Mark Lewis Taylor A Review published in Theology Today (April 2015) of Jacques Derrida, The Death Penalty, Volume 1. The Death Penalty Seminars. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013. (at right: Derrida at one of his death penalty seminars – this one in New York City, I believe) _____________________________ It is highly significant that no philosophical discourse […]
[ Latest update: We just heard today, May 18, that Mumia phoned his wife, Wadiya, this morning. He confirmed that he is in this hospital where I visited last Saturday. He sounded stronger. The call was only for 15 minutes, and neither family, lawyers, nor anybody can visit him. So a press conference is being held to […]
The letter below was mailed on April 22, 2015 to the New Jersey Orange Township Public School District Superintendent and Board, as well as to the Mayor of Orange, New Jersey, Dwayne D. Warren, Esq. This letter represents a fuller statement of my support for Ms. Zuniga than I was able to give in my […]
by Mark Lewis Taylor This essay is forthcoming in Socialism and Democracy, first to appear in print within a few weeks, then going online, but not until after a year’s time. At present, only the Introduction to this Special Issue on Mass Incarceration is available at the online site. For the full table of contents […]
As a kind of meditation in the wake of hearing too many complaints about Ferguson protestors “destroying property,” I here type out segments of my marked-up copy of chapter 4 of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s Trumpet of Conscience (New York: Harper and Row, 1967, pp. 55-7). If you have the large James Washington volume, see […]
Statement of “Greetings” by Mark Lewis Taylor from the Host Committee for the dialogue on “Revolution and Religion: The Fight for Emancipation and the Role of Religion,” between Bob Avakian, Chair of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA, and Cornel West, Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice, Union Theological Seminary. Taylor was introduced as professor at […]
Below is the statement I penned articulating my support for the October 2014 Month of Resistance, sponsored by the “Stop Mass Incarceration Network.” I will be speaking on the same theme at one of the Major Panels for the National Lawyers Guild’s 2014 National Convention in Chicago, this weekend, Saturday, September 6, 2014, 10:30 pm. […]
SPECIAL NOTE: August 3, 2014. As I combine an intense leave for writing with family vacation, Israel’s brutal and unjustified attack on the people and families of Gaza continues. (photo, left, from APA at the Electronic Intifada) I cannot now write on this latest Israel outrage, called “Operation Protective Edge.” But I find that my […]
By Mark Lewis Taylor My grandfather showed me the bullet hole in his knee from his soldier days of battle in World War I. That was back in the late 1950s when I was 6 years old. When he died, I was gifted with the ceremonial flag that draped his coffin. I used it for . […]