Volume 3, Issue 1, 2000
Mumia Abu-Jamal
Pages 41-45
A Life Lived, Deliberately
June 11, 1999 Evergreen State College Commencement Address
In this address, Mumia Abu-Jamal argues that a sustained commitment to revolutionary activity is no accident, that it depends upon an initial and irrevocable choice to change intolerable social conditions. The individual who makes such a choice, Abu-Jamal recognizes, is often aware of the suffering that his or her decision may entail. Citing the deliberately led lives of several revolutionaries, including Huey Newton, John Brown, and Ramona Africa, the author hopes that young people will draw inspiration from these examples by understanding the importance and continued possibility of such a choice.