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| Alice Walker |
November 17, 2014 FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Celebrated Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice
Walker is calling on the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) school board to
restore a website of social justice lesson plans. OUSD took down the
"Urban Dreams" website last May, caving in to pressure from the
Fraternal Order of Police and Fox News.
Ms. Walker (awarded a Pulitzer in 1983 for her
novel "The Color Purple") has written to OUSD Superintendent Antwan
Wilson and OUSD school board President David Kakishiba saying:
"I am dismayed to learn that the Oakland
school board has dismantled a website of social justice lesson plans because
the police objected to it. The board has
a duty to defend students' right to learn against police interference. I am
asking the Oakland school district to repost the Urban Dreams website.
"The police attack on Urban Dreams is part
of a long campaign to injure and defame political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, a
brilliant journalist and author who is innocent of all charges against him. In
October the police obtained a state gag law in Pennsylvania specifically
intended to silence Mumia Abu-Jamal. One lesson on the Urban Dreams website in
Oakland asked students to compare media suppression of Mumia's writings with
suppression of the radical thoughts of Martin Luther King, and the police call
for censorship was meant to shut out the words of both of these defenders of
freedom."
Mumia Abu-Jamal had been an award-winning radio
reporter in Philadelphia when in 1982 he was falsely convicted of killing a
policeman. Another man, a career
criminal, confessed to the murder, but was not allowed to testify by the police
and the courts. From prison Mumia has published eight books on history, law,
and religion and recorded scores of commentaries and editorials for public
radio.
In her message to Superintendent Wilson and
school board President Kakishiba, Alice Walker said, "I hope that the
educators of the Oakland school board will defend free speech and academic
freedom by restoring the Urban Dreams website."
Earlier, seven-time Emmy Award-winning actor Ed
Asner had written to the board, saying "This email is to request that the
Urban Dreams website be reinstated without deletions and to let academic
freedom prevail!
Oakland Teachers for Mumia (retired OUSD
teachers who organized the 1999 Oakland schools teach-in on Mumia and the death
penalty) will be at the school board meeting this Wednesday (November 19) to
deliver Alice Walker's call for the board to repost the Urban Dreams website --
fully intact. We urge the public to support this call for free speech and
academic freedom, and to insist that the police not be allowed to dictate what
is and isn't taught in our public schools, by writing to OUSD Superintendent
Antwan Wilson (antwan.wilson@ousd.k12.ca.us) and OUSD school board President
David Kakishiba (david.kakishiba@ousd.k12.ca.us).
Oakland Teachers
for Mumia (communard2@juno.com)
Bob Mandel
(510.523.7892)
Bob
Wells (510.595-7811)
Jack
Gerson (510.658.5520)
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