Mumia Abu Jamal

Note the similar handcuffed fist of Mumia and the RNR logo!

Just ahead of the Republican National Convention, a liberal organization of actors and musicians will gather in New York this week to pay tribute to what it calls "unconventional heroes" -- a group that includes librarians from Santa Cruz, Calif., and the father of an American contractor who was beheaded in Iraq earlier this year.

The Artists Network of Refuse & Resist! will present "Unconventional Heroes: An Evening of Performance to Honor Courageous Resisters" Thursday at NYU's Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. The organization said the event is intended to recognize "everyday heroes who put their reputations, their jobs and even their lives on the line to preserve their freedoms and voices."

Librarians in Santa Cruz are being recognized for opposing the USA Patriot Act, a post-Sept. 11 law that supporters said would give federal investigators stronger enforcement tools against terrorism. Anne Turner, director of the Santa Cruz Public Libraries, told United Press International that other libraries around the country followed her system's lead in opposing a provision of the Patriot Act that empowers the federal government to obtain court orders to see library and bookstore records.

"The court does not require that the FBI show reasonable cause for looking at those records," said Turner. "It's a secret court, and basically it gives the FBI the power to go fishing -- to say, 'There might be somebody planning a terrorist act in Santa Cruz, so let's go look.'"

Santa Cruz libraries posted signs on their circulation desks notifying patrons that the system could no longer ensure their privacy. The libraries also began more thoroughly to shred daily documentation on who was signing up to use its Internet facilities and which Web sites they visited.

The lineup of artists scheduled to perform or present awards at the event includes actress Blair Brown, singer-songwriter Steve Earle, Tony-nominated playwright Reg E. Gaines and legendary folk-blues singer Odetta.

The event is one of many scheduled in New York between now and the end of the Republican National Convention intended to draw attention to protest of President George W. Bush's policies.

The New York International Fringe Festival, running through Aug. 29, offers several theater pieces that touch on politics associated with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Wrong Barbarians" examines the idea that the media and the government have set up a culture of fear in America after Sept. 11. "John Walker, the Musical," looks at the case of John Walker Lindh, who was convicted of conspiring to kill Americans and aiding the al-Qaida terrorist network.

Brown will be participating in several convention-related events, including the Imagine Festival of Arts, Issues & Ideas, a Planned Parenthood march across the Brooklyn Bridge and a public reading of the Constitution at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art.

The actress, who starred in the TV series "The Days and Nights of Molly Dodd" and played Jacqueline Kennedy in the 1983 miniseries "Kennedy," told UPI she is aware that many Americans don't put much stock in the political opinions of artists, but she said she is participating in these events as a citizen.

"I don't think it matters that we're artists," she said. "We have a right to an opinion, and beliefs, and convictions."

Steve Earle, who was poised to become a country-music star in the 1980s before drug abuse led to prison and rehab, has a particular emphasis on opposition to capital punishment. However, he told UPI that over the past year he has broadened his agenda to include a wider range of issues on which he differs with Bush.

"I've had to shift, like a lot of people are, over every issue that comes into this election," said Earle, "because it's time to drop everything until we get this guy out of office."

Earle is preparing to launch a tour to promote his new CD, "The Revolution Starts Now." He is not one of the recording artists who recently announced plans to tour in electoral battleground states to promote the presidential campaign of Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

"We talked about it," he said, "but I'm playing in some of those places anyway."

Earle said his tour dates will concentrate on swing-state venues through Election Day, with stops in Chicago and New York. Illinois and New York are widely regarded as leaning towards Kerry, but Earle said economics necessitated scheduling dates there.

"A good chunk of the records I sell are in Chicago and New York," he said.

On the day before the Republican convention, Earle plans to take part in a march with the Kensington Welfare Rights Union, an organization of welfare recipients in what he described as the poorest section of Philadelphia.

As police and political observers prepare for the possibility that some demonstrators will become violent in New York next week, Earle guaranteed that he will be non-violent.

"I'm just non-violent," he said. "Also, I've had all the jail I can stand."

Former Rio Rancho High School humanities and poetry teacher/coach Bill Nevins of Albuquerque, New Mexico, was given a 2004 Courageous Resister Award by the Artists Network of REFUSE & RESIST!, a national organisation, in a well-attended public ceremony on August 26 at New York University in Manhattan.

Controversial country star Steve Earle presented Nevins with his award. Nevins was joined by more than a dozen other 'resisters', each cited in the Unconventional Heroes program notes for "their acts of defiance, at times in the face of grave consequences for both them and their loved ones".

Nevins was praised for his work with at-risk and other students engaged in creative writing and poetry performances in the Rio Rancho high schools, and for his active protest of censorship of "controversial" opinions at the school in the time leading up to the start of the 2003 Iraq War.

Nevins commented, "It was humbling to be in the presence of these fine people, my fellow award recipients, many of whom have suffered so gravely, yet achieved so much. At the same time it was a deep honour and a true thrill to receive this award on behalf of the creative, hard-working students of the Rio Rancho poetry team and all joyful, outspoken youth. "It was a very encouraging experience for me personally to receive this award, and I hope that this will encourage creativity and freedom of expression in our schools and among our youth. That's the American way, as I see it, isn't it?"

Nevins has offered to provide funds to re-start the disbanded Slam Poetry Team at Rio Rancho high school's . He is working to establish a Poetic Justice Institute to encourage creativity and freedom of expression in New Mexico and nationally.

A video of the Courageous Resisters Unconventional Heroes 2004 Award ceremony is available via Bill Nevins.

A film documentary of the Nevins case is in preparation.

Information on the Courageous Resister Awards and the Unconventional Heroes event is available online at the Refuse and Resist website

When Rachel Corrie was two and a half, she asked her mother if being brave is part of growing up. I thought.really good question. It could be.Except for.think about all the official and unofficial signposts in this late-imperialist society that tell you instead to be craven, to be fearful of the people in (or from) other countries or even the next town over; fearful of the unknown, the uncommon, the new, of change itself.

But people don't always do what the powers tell them to. And so 500 of us gathered in New York University's Skirball Auditorium on August 26--a week before the coronation of the most-hated and least-brave President ever--to honor more than a dozen "unconventional heroes" who had shown remarkable courage in their resistance to the dictats of this regime.

Rachel's bravery was a thing that grew and grew during her short life as she found her place with the oppressed of the planet. She went to Palestine as a volunteer with the International Solidarity Movement in the Occupied Territories. Her mother recounted, "I remember distinctly her voice when she first called from Gaza. I believe she was in the house that she died in front of. Her voice was trembling, and she was saying, `Can you hear that? Can you hear that?' It was the shelling that was coming from the border. And then I remember talking to her for the last time, about five days before she was killed. Her confidence had grown along with her conviction that she was doing absolutely the right thing. I think about the courage that she drew from just being among the Palestinian people who are living with that situation."

Cindy Corrie's recollection was included in a beautiful newspaper filled with stories and interviews created by artist Ann Messner for the "Unconventional Heroes" event. The evening was produced by the Artists Network of Refuse & Resist! and the newspaper was one of many inspired notes struck that night as an extraordinary group of actors, musicians, poets and artists found poignant and telling ways to honor the resisters.

The award plaques themselves were the result of a collaboration conceived of by the well-known sculptor John Ahearn. As the resisters arrived in town, they were brought up to his studio in East Harlem and he created individual pieces with them--casting their hands--for each award.

* * *

I've only started here with the story of Rachel Corrie and I will have much more to say about that night. When it was over, I wanted to run down the street and tell the world about every story, each resister, and the great hope that spilled from that stage. I think everyone in the audience felt the same.

Look at the list of resisters. Taken together, they faced down the brutality, bigotry, know-nothing ethos, arbitrariness, and terror that is the hallmark of this imperialist democracy hellbent on conquering the world and laying down a police state at home. They set a standard for fighting this tyranny; they demonstrated the only honorable way to live. And it is no small thing that they were brought together by a national organization, Refuse & Resist!, which is taking responsibility for joining with millions to not just resist, but to build A Resistance--and not a moment too soon.

Each of these resisters decided to take responsibility for how they think society should be. Their visions--and how we could get to a different future--are widely divergent from each other, and from my own communist view. But you could feel electricity and a deep longing from every corner of the room when Vijay Iyer delivered his haunting "re-mix" of John Lennon's Imagine on the grand piano. No lyrics were sung, but fragments drifted through my head.

Imagine there's no countries.
It isn't hard to do.
Nothing to kill or die for
and no religion too.

The evening made me ponder deeply how people actually can create a new world we would all want to live in. How we are in a race against time to take over our toxically twisted planet now controlled by a small obsolete class, and how this will require conscious action by the rising proletarian class leading and uniting millions from all walks of life to make revolution, including millions who do not now see things this way.

Cindy Corrie talked about their first press conference, two days after Rachel was killed: "I remember the fear in taking that first step. But there comes a time when people need to make a decision, there comes a point when people need to do more than just think about it or talk about it. People need to take a step. It's real momentous when people do that."

What if many more people took that step--confronted this monster in this urgent moment and said, resistance starts here, with me. What if more people, as Bob Avakian has put it, followed their aspirations, their beliefs, all the way out to their logical conclusion. What could we together learn then about what it'll take to realize our dreams. We got a taste of how this might look by week's end in NYC: hundreds of thousands had rejected the "fear factor" incessantly pumped by Bush and Mayor Bloomberg and came out in widely embraced protests. It was the Republicans who had to conduct their fascist extravaganza behind barricades and barbed wire.

We all know this is just the beginning, and each of us will be tested many times. Sometimes we will be alone, like Toni Smith, the basketball player who protested the Iraq war by turning her back on the flag as the national anthem was sung in packed arenas. Sometimes we will be reviled and punished, like James Pendergraft, a late-term abortion doctor who, after withstanding born-again assaults and seven months in federal prison, continues to this day to provide this essential service for women.

As Courageous Resister Bill Keys put it, "We have to be prepared to be hated. But to be hated is also to be loved, one does not come without the other. If you want to remain neutral then you can drift through life and amount to very little more than the stripe down the middle of the road."

I think his is a dialectical statement, and a materialist one. For everyone who loves the people, it is an invitation to grow up, learn the truth about the world, and become very brave.

On the eve of the Republican National Convention, as the battle raged for the streets of New York City, the Artists Network of Refuse & Resist! presented an evening of performance to honor Courageous Resisters. The honorees included Aaron Lebowitz, a high school student in Darby, Montana who resisted a resolution to make creationism part of the public school curriculum; Toni Smith, the NYC College basketball player who, in the months leading up to the war on Iraq, turned her back on the US flag during the singing of the national anthem; Camilo Mejia, the first soldier to go AWOL because of his opposition to the Iraq war; Juanita Young, a leader of the movement against police brutality in New York City whose son was killed by the police, and many more.

read more at the Artists Network website