By Sarah Lazur
Daily Bruin Contributor
The Muslim Student Association and the African Student Union
presented “Throwing Our Social Leaders Behind Bars,” a
discussion of civil rights activist Imam Jamil Al-Amin’s
incarceration, on Friday.
Keynote speaker Imam Abdul Alim Musa, a Washington, D.C.,
activist who is conducting a national tour to rally for
Al-Amin’s release, said the conviction was unjust because of
insufficient evidence. He said it is part of government efforts to
silence African American community leaders.
“In 1971, a group of students broke into the FBI offices
and found secret documents about this unfair internal war against
the black people of the United States,” Musa said.
Al-Amin, formerly known as H. Rap Brown, was convicted last year
for murdering a police officer. The officer and his partner
were approaching a store owned by Al-Amin to arrest him for a
missed court date when a man in a car opened fire on them. The
surviving officer identified Al-Amin as the shooter.
But Musa said faulty DNA evidence and conflicting police reports
are grounds for Al-Amin’s release.
The surviving officer testified he saw the shooter’s eyes
were gray, but Al-Amin has brown eyes.
Also, due to an eye condition, Al-Amin must wear sunglasses at
all times, which would have prevented the officer from noticing his
eye color, Musa said.
“In Imam Jamil’s case, everything they have shows
that he’s innocent so we should be able to beat this,”
Musa said. “But you only get as much justice in America as
you can buy.”
ASU programming coordinator Robbie Clark said she’d like
students to question the way the judicial system works.
“A lot of people don’t realize that there are
injustices in our society and that our own justice system can be
biased and unfair,” Clark said.
According to Musa, the case against Al-Amin represents a
concerted effort by the government to deny the African American
community leadership.
“They spot potential leaders before the people spot them
themselves and by arresting someone over and over, you break up
their train of work and the traction they have,” Musa
said.
The movement to put African American leaders in jail is nothing
new, Musa said. He distributed a 1968 FBI document which detailed
FBI protocol for fighting African American nationalist groups. The
document urged agents to “prevent the coalition of militant
black nationalist groups.”
“An effective coalition of black nationalist groups might
be the first step toward the “¦ beginning of a true black
revolution,” the document said.
Musa pointed out that among the five major African American
leaders the document deemed dangerous ““ Stokely Carmichael,
H. Rap Brown, Martin Luther King Jr., Maxwell Stanford and Elijah
Muhammed ““ only Brown, or Al-Amin, is alive today.
Al-Amin’s roles in the civil rights movement included
leading the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, being the
Black Panther Party’s Minister of Justice, membership in the
Black Liberation Army, and writing the book “Die, Nigger,
Die!”
According to Musa, drug use in inner cities caused a decline in
revolutionary leadership.
“If you want to find the 10 most drug-addicted cities in
America in the 1970s, look at the most revolutionary cities in
America in the 1960s,” he said.
Clark sees the suppression of African American leadership and
the underrepresentation of students of color as inextricably
linked.
“Without affirmative action, there is no equal access, and
in effect, they’re stopping our access to higher
education,” Clark said. “We’re not able to
educate people who could become leaders in the community and in
that way they’re silencing the voice of our
community.”
MSA President Ghaith Mahmood said this connection makes
Al-Amin’s case relevant for UCLA students.
“A lot of people know about the injustices but what they
need is two things ““ an education and somebody who can guide
them,” Mahmood said.
“So when we see the issue of SP-1 and SP-2 and the issue
of Imam Jamil, it’s so intertwined to us we have to address
this problem,” he continued.
The UC Board of Regents’ SP-1 and SP-2 decisions ended
affirmative action in university admissions policy and hiring
practices in 1995.
Mahmood said he hopes students made the connection between civil
rights movements of the past and the struggles of minorities
today.
“We need to realize that we’re not doing this by
ourselves and that this is something that has been going on for so
long,” he said.