Activists support N.J. teacher who had students write get well letters to Mumia Abu-Jamal

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A teacher at an Orange, N.J. elementary school is suspended and leaving parents in an uproar for what she’s done. Marylin Zuniga had her students write get well letters to Mumia Abu-Jamal, who is currently serving a life in prisonment for the murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner in 1981.

Some are saying while they understand the teacher’s intentions were not ill-will, she shouldn’t have imposed her social and political beliefs on the children. Schools officials claim they had no knowledge of what Marylin Zuniga was doing, leaving parents a bit angry as well.

But some activists, who are educators themselves, say the teacher should be not suspended and get back to teaching.

Larry Hamm, chairman of the People’s Organization for Progress, spoke out on the issue during a discussion on police brutality and other issues at Bethany Baptist Church in Newark Monday night, reports NJ.com.

He urged the attendees, including prominent professor and activist Dr. Cornel West, to gather outside Orange High School prior to a Board of Education meeting to support Zuniga.

“She tried not only to instruct her children in terms of skills, but also tried to help them understand what it means a compassionate human being,” he said. “We need to support this young woman…her heart is the right heart.”

Johanna Fernandez, a professor at Baruch College in New York City and advocate for Abu-Jamal’s innocence who delivered the student’s letters to Abu-Jamal, was also in attendance at the discussion, and echoed Hamm’s call for solidarity and support.

“Unless we mount a struggle right here in Newark, she will be fired,” she told the crowd.

Fernandez and others in attendance feel Zuniga is being unfairly criticized because of Mumia Abu-Jamal’s status as a prisoner.

Nyle Fort, a local activist who described himself as a close friend of Zuniga’s, told nj.com the idea to write the letters actually came from a group of students in her class who were already aware of Abu-Jamal and recent news that he had been hospitalized due to complications from diabetes.

He stated that many students in the class, which is entirely black and Hispanic, have relatives in prison, which could remove any stigma others might have about having them write to an inmate.

Mumia Abu-Jamal is currently hospitalized in a prison hospital due to diabetes complications.