“No white man should have all that power!” rapped Mike Flow of dead prez as he parodied Kanye West’s "Power," blasting out from a temporary stage towards the thousand or so protesters that packed the sidewalk in front of the Department of Justice headquarters in downtown D.C. on Tuesday.

“The clock’s ticking we’re in the final hour,” he continued, in a line particularly relevant to those who came for Occupy the DOJ, an action calling for an end to the death penalty among seven main demands.

The April 24 event, which ended with the arrests of 28 protesters, coincided with the birthday of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a former death row prisoner now serving a life sentence for the alleged murder of a police officer in Philadelphia. Abu-Jamal has long been a focal point among advocates for the wrongly imprisoned. He has demanded a retrial and though it has not been granted, he was finally removed from death row last year after the Supreme Court upheld federal rulings that found his original trial had been unconstitutional.

“It’s a movement to release Mumia Abu-Jamal, but it’s also a movement to end mass incarceration,” said one of the day’s organizers, Johanna Fernandez, a history professor at CUNY and producer of the film "Justice on Trial," which documents Abu-Jamal’s story. She says when Abu-Jamal’s literary agent addressed an audience on Dec. 9 at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, and called for the occupation of the Department of Justice, “[The reaction] was electric. People went up in a roar.”

“This is a movement that is emerging, building and growing,” said Fernandez about the coalition of long time prison activists and newer, Occupy participants. From large, established organizations combating racial profiling to individuals just trying to get a little attention for their loved ones in prison, the event brought together many different types of Americans who feel the “criminal justice system” is increasingly being defined by how "criminal' it is.

“For me, it’s always about justice,” said artist M1 of the hip-hop group dead prez, one of the afternoon’s performers. “I’ve been a friend of the movement and a comrade for many years,” he said, explaining that he’s visited Abu-Jamal in prison. “I think we always knew there would be a connection [between criminal justice activists and Occupy].”

On the opposite end of the participant spectrum was a soft-spoken mother, Laila Yaghi, holding a simple sign with a photo of her 24-year-old son Ziyad. She came from North Carolina to tell her son’s story. “People think that when they put you in jail, you’ve done something wrong, but my son...didn’t even do anything out of the ordinary.” Yaghi said her son took a routine trip to Jordan to visit family and ended up with a 35-year sentence for providing material support for terrorists. “Then there are people like George Zimmerman who shoot someone, and nothing even happens.”

If Yaghi spoke of her son’s plight with a look of bewilderment, Flojo Mason, another mother, who came from Philadelphia, spoke with fiery indignation. She said that she herself, and all of her five children, have at some point been harassed and unjustly arrested by police. “My son could easily have been Trayvon,” she said in a phrase heard throughout the day’s events. “The difference is you wouldn’t have seen me marching. You would’ve had to explain why this mother went out and killed some people.”

Mason said she’s fed up and quoted Malcolm X as reflecting her philosophy of looking for justice “by any means necessary.” She spoke of fighting back against those who have been given the exclusive right to use force with impunity, lamenting the experiences of her children. “Children are supposed to think police are there to protect them.”

The event tapped into a vein of energy which some have said the Occupy movement initially missed with its focus on economic issues. Participants at this protest saw the action as a natural extension and a key coalition-building event to bring people of color into the wider movement, which has often been criticized for being too white.

“Occupy helped the country focus on corporate greed and how corporations profit off the back of everyday people,” said Chioma Iwuoha of the Criminal (In)Justice Committee that grew out of Occupy DC and the long-standing criminal justice activist community in D.C. “The Occupy movement has helped ordinary people realize this is an issue we need to pull to the forefront...and it’s how you’re going to get more black and brown people involved in Occupy.”

The connection was working both ways, in fact, drawing in occupiers active in other areas who may not have been aware of criminal justice issues. Vulon Crespo, of New Jersey, who works with the Philadelphia section of Occupy The Hood, said it was those activities that first educated him about Abu-Jamal’s story and which brought him to the protest, which he saw as an awareness raising opportunity. “It might just touch one person on that bus,” he said pointing to a metro bus passing behind the stage, on Pennsylvania Avenue.

Similarly, Diane, a legal services attorney who came to D.C. from the New York area where she's been involved in Occupy Wall Street, said, “I’m upset about funding cuts for legal services for low-income clients.” Through state budget cuts, she said she has seen first-hand the effect of mismanaged economic choices on public defenders’ resources.

“I’m concerned [that] you’ll get a public defender but it’s just a facade; it’s not justice if you can’t get experts and evaluations,” she said, pointing to the Abu-Jamal case as an example, where the defense wasn’t able to afford a $400 ballistics evaluation. Worrying about public defenders with impossible caseloads as well, she added, "If you get someone exhausted who just met you in the hallway on the way to court, it’s a joke.”

Stop and frisk policies, like those now infamous in New York City, were another of the grievances aired during the Occupy the DOJ action. “For teenagers in the south Bronx, being stopped and frisked has become an after school activity,” said Rod Starz of the group Rebel Diaz. A Bronx native and one of the day’s performers, Starz is an artist who also considers himself one of “the messengers of this movement.”

“Our role as artists is to make the revolution irresistible,” said Starz of the connection of his art to politics. When Rebel Diaz performed the song “Stop! Stop and Frisk”, the crowd visibly enjoyed the experience of hearing “Fuck the police!” resonate at full volume towards the Justice Department’s front doors.

“The fight for equality is still being fought,” said Chuck D of Public Enemy, holding a sign and standing in front of the White House where the protest had migrated. Speaking about the obstacles to mass actions like this one, he said, “That’s the thing, you’ve always got to keep fighting for it. The whole goal of this nation is to dissipate this energy [of protest] and to make it seem like this energy is insane, to make it seem like [these protesters] are screaming over nothing.”

Nevertheless, he added, “the energy is infectious. We’re hearing the voice of preventing desperation, in effect.”

Moments later, a group of around 30 protesters in orange jumpsuits prepared to sit in front of the White house fence and risk arrest. The speaker called for them to put a spin on the Florida law under scrutiny since the Trayvon Martin shooting: “Let’s fucking stand our ground.”