Revolutionary Doctor, Revolutionary Lawyer

Preface

The goal of the article is to educate readers on the importance of Dr. Mutulu Shakur and Attorney Chokwe Lumumba as freedom fighters who used their professions to free the land. I hope to help readers use their engagement in their current profession/career/job as an organizing tool and space and encourage people to support the fight to Free Dr. Mutulu Shakur.

Introduction

I think some of the most significant things happen in history when you get the right people in the right place at the right time, and I think that’s what we are. — Chokwe Lumumba

As a daughter of the movement for Black self-determination, I have sat at the foot of revolutionary leaders Dr. Mutulu Shakur and my father, the late Mayor and lawyer Chokwe Lumumba. I have been an insider-outsider witness to struggle, truth, and transformation in spaces created by and/or with people that have survived the American carceral system, criminal legal system, and economic violence. I have been a part of institutional, organizational, radical and grassroots spaces that have allowed me to reaffirm how and why it is necessary to use every tool in our arsenal to create new institutions and systems of justice that protect, instead of cause harm to, Black lives. From these experiences, I have learned that when you get the right people, in the right place, at the right time, you can make revolutionary change. And I think, you as readers are those people and now is the time.

Revolutionary Doctor

I believe that the fundamental reason Our oppression continues is that We, as people, lack the power to control Our lives. — New Afrikan Creed

In the play, “A Raisin in the Sun” by Lorraine Hansberry, the character Beneatha explains why she was studying medicine. She explains:

When I was very small … We used to take our sleds out in the wintertime and the only hills we had were the ice-covered stone steps of some houses down the street. And we used to fill them in with snow and make them smooth and slide down them all day … and it was dangerous, you now … far too steep … and sure enough one day a kid named Rufus came down too fast and hit the sidewalk and we saw his face just split open right there in front of us … And I remember standing there looking at his bloody open face thinking that was the end of Rufus. But the ambulance came, and they took him to the hospital and they fixed the broken bones and they sewed it all … and the next time I saw Rufus he just had a little line down the middle of his face … I never got over that … That was what one person could do for another, fix him up-sew up the problem, make him all right again. That was the most marvelous thing in the world. I wanted to do that. I always thought it was the one concrete thing in the world that a human being could do. Fix up the sick, you know-and make them whole again

Dr. Mutulu Shakur has served as my first teacher of “healing as a revolutionary act.” Early on in his political development, Dr. Shakur recognized the importance of the physical and mental healing of Black people as one of our first steps to self-determination. His political and social consciousness was influenced by his experiences supporting his mother who suffered not only from being Black and female in America but was also blind. While assisting his mother in negotiating the social service system, Dr. Shakur learned that the system did not operate in the interests of Black people, instead he quickly realized that Black people must take control of the institutions that affect their lives. This propelled Dr. Shakur to study various forms of healing that allow those suffering pain to work with trained community practitioners to heal that pain. Along with the Young Lords and the Black Panthers, Dr. Shakur is credited with creating some of the first community-led health clinics in the United States. He led a movement to create community health clinics to care for the healing of Black people using acupuncture. As a Doctor of Acupuncture and a co-founder and director of two institutions devoted to improving health care in the Black community, Dr. Shakur used and encouraged the use of acupuncture to treat addiction and other kinds of conditions. He inspired the use of acupuncture in the context of social action and community health as part of a response to government-sanctioned violence on Black people. A brilliant mind, he recognized the need to build the capacity of everyday people to deliver healing services to each other. And he emphasized building codependency within the community as an alternative to depending on the State, which had proven over and over again to care more about capital than the actual healing of people under its care. He insisted on the use of acupuncture in community settings facilitated by trained community practitioners to treat addiction and other kinds of conditions. Dr. Shakur, along with members of the Black Panthers and Young Lords, developed the infrastructure that is known today as the “community acupuncture model.” While most acupuncture schools sought to establish acupuncture within mainstream culture and to build up the social status of acupuncturists to compete with other medical professions, Dr. Mutulu went in a different direction. He laid the groundwork for the “community acupuncture” model, a clinical and economic model designed to make acupuncture accessible and self-sustaining in working class communities. His efforts to allow healing to be available to all people, regardless of income, threatened the capital of the medical field and proved to be a major entryway for Black and Brown people to mobilize and become organized to take control of the resources to change the conditions that negatively impacted their lives. His efforts to spread the use of acupuncture in North America—not only as a healing practice, but one that was community led—are often overlooked and underestimated. However, he planted the seeds of healing as a revolutionary self-determined act that could be executed by everyday people to heal each other. He used his profession to free minds, heal bodies, and create an alternative system of care. He used his profession to Free the Land

Revolutionary Lawyer

I believe in collective struggle: in fashioning victory in concert with my Brothers and Sisters. — New Afrikan Creed

My father, the late mayor, human rights lawyer, and activist, Chokwe Lumumba, like Dr. Mutulu Shakur used his profession in the fight to end the oppression of Black people and to build a better world. Exposed to Black violence through the killing of Emmett Till, inspired to join the movement for liberation by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and stayed in the movement as a result of teachings and life example offered by Malcolm X, the late Chokwe Lumumba used his legal training to *Free the Land. As emphasized in the mission statement of the National Conference of Black Lawyers, the late Lumumba was a part of the legal arm of the movement for Black liberation. He served not only as Dr. Shakur’s attorney, but a comrade and friend. Like Dr. Shakur, the late Lumumba, could have used his legal training to join the mainstream corporate economy of lawyering to increase his economic status. Instead, he chose to use his lawyering to challenge the American criminal legal system and to free Black people from the pits of jail and prison cells. Like Dr. Shakur, the late Lumumba believed in a “collective struggle,” in fashioning victory in concert with Black people. He worked with his clients to develop their criminal defense and connected the dots of white supremacy to the over policing, criminalization, mass incarceration and exacerbated charging and indictment of Black bodies for the economic and political gain of the white ruling class.

He would often forgo payments on cases or barter with clients for music records, TVs, and other items in exchange for his legal services. He recognized his lawyering as a revolutionary act to serve as an intervention to reduce the harm caused by a criminal legal system that sought to destroy Black people, families, and institutions. One of his bravest acts was his representation of Dr. Mutulu Shakur.

As a victim of COINTELPRO, Dr. Mutulu Shakur was arrested and charged as a terrorist of the United States for allegedly conspiring to rob a Brinks money truck to fund the Black Liberation Army. The late Mayor Chokwe Lumumba stood up to serve as his attorney. Similar to the criminalization and abuse we currently see executed against Muslims by the United States, Black Nationalists like Dr. Shakur were targeted and criminalized for their efforts to create self-determined community institutions that cared for the housing, nutrition, economic, and physical and mental health needs of the most vulnerable Black communities—communities living in poverty, under the thumb of violent police occupation and provided little to no social resources and economic development. My most vivid memory of Dr. Shakur’s trial comes in three waves. The first is visions of people spitting at my father, the late Lumumba, on the train or giving him side eyes, murmuring “he’s that attorney.” My next memory is the red, round white face of the Judge in the New York Courtroom as he would often look at Dr. Shakur and his codefendant the late Marilyn Buck with eyes of a slave master disgusted at the thought of a Black person daring to defend himself against a White man’s accusation. The third memory is the loving welcome and smiling eyes that Dr. Shakur would give me every time I entered the courtroom. I was only in the second grade, but he made it his duty to acknowledge my presence.

Watching the relationship of my father and Dr. Shakur develop in the courtroom and continue, even after Dr. Shakur’s unjust conviction and harsh sentencing, provided a tangible example of what the New Afrikan Creed instructs us to do. That is, “[t]o be in collective struggle, in fashioning victory in concert with my Brothers and Sisters.” Despite the distinct difference of their physical conditions, one living and struggling behind prison walls and the other living and struggling outside of prison walls, they continued to be in constant communication, both firmly committed to constant struggle for freedom to end oppression and build a better world. The late Lumumba worked tirelessly to advance the freedom of Black people by representing Black people facing death penalty cases and unusual and harsh punishment. He challenged racist judges in and outside the courtroom for their explicit judicial bias when adjudicating cases involving Black defendants. His efforts often found him in contempt of court, sitting for a day or two behind jail walls for calling a judge a racist, or zealously defending his client by refusing to be silent when a judge has refused to hear his motion of dismissal or new evidence that would evince his client’s innocence. His experience representing Dr. Shakur taught him that he must struggle without cease to fight for the freedom of his clients. His efforts in the courtroom inspired community members to want to organize to learn more about the concept of self-determination and to experiment with what it would be like to have a revolutionary mayor. Consequently, in 2013, residents of Jackson, Mississippi encouraged the late Lumumba to run for mayor and they supported his efforts by voting him in with over 85% of the vote.

Imprisoned for over 40 years, Dr. Shakur has used his physical placement to continue to build the capacity of Black men, in particular, to care for themselves and be self-determined in spite of their conditions. His mentoring in prison has decreased violence within prisons and increased the educational development of many Black men that have survived the carceral system. His efforts outside American cells have been just as important as his contributions behind prison walls. Through constant writing and limited phone communication and visitation he continued to mentor young Black people. His most known effort is the impact he had on his son Tupac Shakur. Tupac’s political ideology was influenced by his mother the late Afeni Shakur and his incarcerated father, Dr. Mutulu Shakur. Tupac’s music and writings are considered some of the most intellectually inspiring bodies of work in modern history, depicting the common struggles of Black life and internal struggles of Black people in resisting and surviving white supremist systems of government. Despite his incarceration, Dr. Shakur continues to “Free the Land.”

Stand for Something, Live for Something!

You need to listen to what comes out of my mouth. You must stand for something. You must live for something! And you must be willing to die for something! — Mutulu Shakur

Dr. Mutulu Shakur and the late Mayor Chokwe Lumumba sacrificed their entire lives in the fight for Black people to be self-determined to improve their material conditions for a better quality of life. From the moment they agreed to be client and lawyer, their fates were tied to each other. Lumumba proudly wore a “scarlet letter” after representing Dr. Shakur. He was under constant attack by the criminal legal system to disbar him for his association with Dr. Shakur and his stance against implicit and explicit racial biases in the criminal legal system. He consistently fought against attacks to maintain his law practice to make a living to support his family. He was victorious against the Mississippi Bar Association’s attempt to restrict him from practicing law in Mississippi, his state of residency. Later, he survived a temporary disbarment by a racist white Mississippi judge who was subsequently removed from the bench for his bias in judicial actions against Black and Indigenous defendants. Lumumba spent his remaining years after representing Dr. Shakur in a state of urgency—feeling the need to do all he could, from daybreak to day end in deep thought and action to defend Black lives. To his untimely death at the age of 66, he spent every waking moment trying to free Black people and create the alternative institutions that his comrade, teacher, and friend, Dr. Mutulu Shakur inspired. Since the time of his incarceration, Dr. Shakur has sacrificed every possible material condition and right, with the exception of his dignity, in the fight for Black people to live a better quality of life. He has suffered unspeakable harm, sacrificing his family, career, and literally his freedom. He has given all that there is to give. He has given his mind through blueprints for the development of community-led and community-based health clinics. He has given his body. As an incarcerated elder, he is aging faster and subjected to environmental conditions that have caused cancer to ravage his body. He has given his spirit through mentorship inside and outside of prison to inspire a generation of young Black people to save themselves through self and collective care. It is time for us to give to him. It is time for him to come home. Sign the petition to free our beloved freedom fighter, director of alternative health systems and father of a movement for community led-health care and Black self-determination. If you have already signed the petition, consider donating to his legal defense.

I am forever inspired by the client-lawyer, collective leadership, thought partnership and mutually nourishing friendship between my father the late Mayor Chokwe Lumumba and our beloved community leader and healer Dr. Mutulu Shakur. May we all be motivated by them to engage in our individual daily work as agents for revolutionary change.

RESOURCES

https://www.azquotes.com/author/71590-Chokwe_Lumumba https://www.asetbooks.com/Us/AsetU/Courses/BlackGovernment101/Creed.html https://mutulushakur.com/about/

http://liberationacupuncture.org/node/50 https://seedzofrevolution.com/research