Quotes

"I am enormously proud to be an American. I would say that the things that our corporate-controlled government has done at best are shameful and at worst genocidal-but there's an incredible and a permanent culture of resistance in this country that I'm very proud to be a part of. It's not the tradition of slave-owningfounding fathers, it's the tradition of the Frederick Douglasses, the Underground Railroads, the Chief Josephs, the Joe Hills, and the Huey P. Newtons. There's so much to be proud of when you're American that's hidden from you. The incredible courage and bravery of the union organizers in the late 1800's and early 1900's-that's amazing. People of get tricked into going overseas and fighting Uncle Sam's Wall Street wars, but these are people who knew what they were fighting for here at home. I think that that's so much more courageous and brave." - Tom Morello

A Statement by Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine
Working to ensure the legal rights that all us presume to enjoy certainly has turned out to be controversial!

Let me say straight up that tonight's benefit is not to support cop killers, or any other kind of killers. And if there were no question about the guilt of Mumia Abu-Jamal, we would not be holding this concert.

But whether Jamal is guilty, or is himself the victim of an outrageous miscarriage of justice, is precisely what is at issue. Tonight's benefit seeks to answer that question by allowing Jamal to have the fair and impartial judicial review that he was denied by the state of Pennsylvania.

The proceeds from tonight's event go, not to Mr. Jamal, but to pay for the investigators, forensic experts, and lawyers needed to get an unbiased hearing of this case in the federal courts.

Parents should be proud that their children are attending and standing up for the rights to which all people are entitled.

Rage Against the Machine and the artists participating tonight are hardly along in questioning what has happened to Mr. Jamal. Among those who have questioned the Pennsylvania proceedings are Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Nobel laureate and head of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Ronald Hampton, Executive Director of the National Black Police Association; The European Parliament, meeting in Strousbourg; and Amnesty International, who are with us at the concert tonight.

We first heard of this case some years back when the Fraternal Order of Police and Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole pressured National Public Radio into censoring a Series of commentaries on prison life recorded by Mr. Jamal. Then Pennsylvania prison authorities put Mr. Jamal into punitive confinement as punishment for writing his first book, Live from Death Row, published by Addison-Wesley.

We began to ask ourselves, shouldn't political dissidents in THIS country enjoy the same rights that the U.S. government demands for political dissidents in Chine or Iran?

When we looked into the case, we found that Mr. Jamal was a prominent radio journalist in Philadelphia. He frequently reported cases of police misconduct on the air and was threatened along with other journalists by then Mayor Rizzo. He had no criminal record, but as we later learned, he had an enormous FBI surveillance file that had been kept on him since he was 15 years old.

His trial in 1982 was nothing short of a travesty. He was denied the funds necessary to hire expert witnesses, his court-appointed attorney did not interview a single witness before putting them on the stand, he was denied the right to represent himself, and then he was barred from attending his own trial when he continued to protest these outrageous acts. Important evidence was withheld from the defense by the police and prosecution. Witnesses were induced to change their testimony. And the state used its preemptory challenges to knock off prospective jurors on the basis of race.

Perhaps the most absurd allegation against Jamal is that he confessed to shooting Officer Daniel Faulkner. Jamal had been shot by Officer Faulkner and was beaten by other police arriving at the scene. Two months later, when Mr. Jamal filed police brutality charges, the police officers who were with him that night suddenly "remembered" that he had confessed. This was accepted by the court, even though the emergency room doctor and written police reports from that evening said that Jamal had made no statement.

We were then shocked to find that when he was granted a hearing on whether his first trial was unfair and whether he should be granted a new trial, this hearing was conducted by the same judge who had conducted the original trial that was in question.

This judge was a former member of the Fraternal Order or Police, and had pronounced more death sentences than any other sitting judge in the country Ü almost all of them on Black defendants.

If that were not enough, when his case went to the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, we found out that 5 out of the seven justices were endorsed by the FOP in their electoral campaigns for that courts, and most of them brag about receiving various awards by police organizations.

We have a great deal of sympathy for anyone who is a victim of tragedy, including the widows of slain police officers. But we do not feel that the proper answer to tragedy is to inflict injustice on others. We need to base ourselves on fact, not on emotion. And our path to closure should be paved with a search for truth and justice, not a search for revenge against whomever is targeted by the police.

Rage Against the Machine is not a stranger to controversy. And we are happy that our small effort in doing this benefit has focused increased attention on this case. We find ourselves following in the footsteps of Bob Dylan, whose famous song and concert for Ruben "Hurricane" Carter in 1975, helped to free someone who was falsely accused of murder right here in New Jersey.

It is ironic that tonight, on the day after the Pope called for an end to the death penalty in the United States, we will have others outside tonight calling for the taking of a life on the flimsiest of evidence.

One of the great things about young people is that they DO question, that they do care deeply about justice, and that they have open minds. We hope that some of them brought their parents tonight!

"The only bad "f-word" is FCC." - Tom Morello on censorship

"This is a very unlikely tour package to be playing in venues this size. You've got Wu-Tang Clan, like the least commercial, least radio friendly, most raw hip-hop group on the planet, who also, coincidentally, has the number one album, and then Rage Against The Machine, whose politics make Ralph Nader look like Ghengis Khan." - Tom Morello, on the Rage/Wu-Tang tour on MTV's Week in Rock

"I just finished reading Noam Chomsky's (who visited Israel a couple of weeks ago) biography, and among books I've taken I got one specially for Israel. A book that will give me some Info and understanding of some of the places we'll visit. It's called the "Bible" (the old testament)." Tom responding to a question about books he reads on tour "They use force, to make you do, what the deciders, have decided you must do." Zack uses this quote from Black Panther member Eldridge Cleaver usually at the beginning of Killing in the Name. He'll repeat it like 5 times, and then the song starts. "It's been 20 years....they have no proof....and he's still in jail" Zack says this 4 or 5 times before Freedom every once and awhile. Freedom has sortof become the song for Leonard Peltier, that's why Zack says that before it...I've only heard it once though. "Things like rebellion and resistance to authority are absolutely as much a part of the human experience as love and cars are, and it's a part that doesn't get covered very much in pop music.

" Tom Morello in Alternative Press "A good song should make you wanna tap your foot and get with your girl. A great song should destroy cops and set fire to the suburbs. I'm only interested in writing great songs." Tom morello in Alternative Press "He has the nerve to call us violent when last year there were 80,000 cases of police brutality filed against departments all over the country this sheriff pig is poppin' off, poppin'off about how we're violent. Well, shit, he belongs to the most violent gang in US history " Zack referring to a Sheriff who tried to get the Rage concert banned. "The classroom's the last room to get the truth." Zack says this before Take the Power Back sometimes "This will be our final conduction of the afternoon..." Tom said this at their first show before playing the last song... I thought it was funny "Everybody have fun on inauguration day? It was fun. I like the fireworks my self. Nice." Zack talking about inauguration day...