Status Updates From All Things Censored

I speak from Pennsylvania's death row, a bright, shining, highly mechanized hell. In this place, a dark temple to fear, an altar of political ambition, death is a campaign poster, a stepping stone to public office. In this space and time, in this dark hour, how many of us are not on death row?

From death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.

In Pennsylvania, libraries are being closed and university appropriations are being cut so that prisons can be built

At bottom, the media is a multibillion dollar industry that serves the interests of the owners, investors, and stockholders, as in every other industry. So-called public interest is, at best, purely incidental.

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In this context, reporters are mere products, purchased personalities packaged for the attainment merely of profit, and, as with any product, they are ultimately expendable.

Although usually two hours long, today's yard lasts ten minutes, for fear those condemned to death by the state may perish, instead, by fate.

As we push off into the next thousand years, which I personally feel are going to be great, what is the fundamental voice we need to hear to start us on the journey? It is the voice of those, like the Zaapatistas, like Mumia, whose love outweighs their fear.

-Alice Walker, Foreword: We Are in this Place For a Reason