Mumia Abu-Jamal Quotes
Conventional wisdom would have one believe.
Abu-Jamal, Mumia. Commencement Address. The Evergreen State College, 11 June 1999.
This appears to be the first time that this phrase has been used.
This was much more the case in 1840 when this quotation was written. Since then, a much higher proportion of American society has become educated, and the cultures that American immigrants have come from had multiplied. Publications abounded and after radio and television there were more attacks on American majority positions. The major change came with radio call in talk shows, similar TV shows and then the Internet provided a painless way to publicly go against majority opinion. By the first decade of the 21st century, movements of majority rejectionists such as the Tea Party and the Occupy Movement were thriving and “futile contests” received much public attention and showed that there were others with the non-majority views who made it socially acceptable to be outside the norms of the majority.
Mumia Abu-Jamal is a political activist and journalist who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1982 for the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. He became widely known while on death row for his writings and commentary on the criminal justice system in the United States. After numerous appeals, his death penalty sentence was overturned by a Federal court. In 2011, the prosecution agreed to a sentence of life imprisonment without parole. He entered the general prison population early the following year.
