MEMORIAL LETTER TO SUSAN BURNETT FROM JULIA WRIGHT
Dear Susan,
I've been putting off writing to you since you passed. Just to say I miss
your long distance calls to put us in the loop, to put France, Europe and
the world in the loop.
Susan, you put the world in the loop for Mumia.
When Ali Bey called Paris and left a message telling me what time you
passed on September 25th, I thought how typical of you. Two thousand of us
had blocked traffic in downtown Paris all afternoon. As we passed in front
of the French Macy's a young Japanese girl raised her fist in a Black
Panther salute. I remember saluting back but little did I know that in
another time zone you were still fighting, holding on, saluting life. It
was only when, our voices hoarse with chanting, we folded our banners out
of breath, that you finally let go as if to say: I may not have made it to
Paris as I planned but I am a living part of that ole Paris connection.
Yes Susan, you were, you are, you will be till Mumia is free!
You were bigger than the small, narrow life your peers tried to lock you
into. No wonder you understood political prisoners: you broke loose from
the prison politics of your class! You may have labored for breath but you
blew the OXYGEN OF REVOLUTION into our struggle to free Mumia.
Your fiesty love of life as we are surrounded by the culture and politics
of death is your gift to everyone of us as we enter Phase 2 of the struggle
to save Mumia. You reminded us that to love LIFE against DEATH is a matter
of passionate fierceness, of tooth and nail-ness, of protective claws. You
taught the lingering romantics amongst us that this revolution is no rose
garden and yet you took time to grow flowers in fornt of your house. You
were the reevolutionary mother of your House. And your House was no
half-way house for the panther cubs and grand cubs and the sons and
daughters of so many warriors who flocked through it. Your House was and
still is a WHOLE WAY HOUSE for all of us with Ali Bey as its guardian.
Inside that house, where the furnace used to be, there was your Computer
and you were the revolutionary fisherwoman netting the world into Mumia's
cause, bringing the world to Mumia in SCI Greene, Pennsylvania, via
Norwalk, Connecticut. But that was not enough: you gave a human face to
your friendly meetings on the net, and warriors from Guyane, Egypt and the
world came to rest and celebrate LIFE in your Kitchen and out on the Deck
where only the birds heard. You taught us the Computer is not enough if
its connections are not translated into physical presence in the revolution.
But, most of all, Susan, I remember the words you uttered two and a half
years ago at the Brecht Forum as you put an in-HUMAN face on the COINTELPRO
- making the invisible enemy materialise, telling us how the FBI used to
meet Ali Bey's children at school if you were a few minutes late. Did your
breathlessness begin way back then?
May all of our children hear the tape of your words that day because you
were as you spoke, as you speak to us still, the living link between all
the inhuman contradictions the COINTELPRO creates to divide us: colour
against colour, class against class, generation against generation, life
against death.
As Mumia says, when we were young, little did we realize how hard our
parents resisted. Today WE are the parents and grandparents and our cubs
need to HEAR. SUSAN LEFT THEM THE BREATHE SHE FOUGHT SO HARD FOR.
WE LOVE YOU SUSAN
MAY YOU LIVE ON IN THE REVOLUTION. MAY YOU REST IN OUR VICTORIES.
YA SISTA,
JULIA.
From Julia Wright
International Concerned Family and Friends For Mumia Abu Jamal,
France
C/o LPJ
58 Rue Gay Lussac
75005 Paris
tel/fax : 011 33 1 45 79 88 44 cosimapp@yahoo.fr