Scheduled Execution Is Called Lynching

About 200 people rallied Saturday to protest the scheduled execution of a journalist convicted of shooting a Philadelphia police officer to death in 1981.

“The lynching they’re planning in Philadelphia is no different than the lynchings of our brothers in the South years ago,” City Councilman Clyde Cleveland told the crowd at New Bethel Baptist Church.

“We have to recognize Mumia Abu-Jamal is a political prisoner,” said Abayomi Azikiwe of the Emergency Appeal Committee to Stop the Execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal. “He is not a criminal.”

The scheduled Aug. 17 execution is expected to be postponed.