Mumia Abu-Jamal is a prominent Black revolutionary
journalist and the only political prisoner in the United States
facing execution. As a teenager, Mumia was a member of the Black
Panther Party. And for years, as a journalist, he exposed the
racist brutality of the Philadelphia police. On December 9, 1981,
Mumia was shot, beaten, and nearly killed by the police in a
street incident in which a cop was killed. Mumia was then framed
up on murder charges and sentenced to die in a trial where he was
denied even the most basic rights of legal defense.
Mumia has been on death row for over 12 years. And
throughout his imprisonment he has continued to speak out against
the system, bringing revolutionary truth to millions of people
through his writing - in spite of attempts by prison authorities
and others to censor him and break his spirit.
Mumia's case has become the spearhead of a racist campaign
to restore the death penalty in Pennsylvania where no one has
been executed since 1962. The attempt by the state to kill Mumia
is a major escalation in the use of state violence against the
people. And it is a move by the power structure to establish the
death penalty as an accepted weapon against the revolutionary
movement. The people cannot let the enemy murder this precious
revolutionary brother! And the fight to prevent the execution of
Mumia is now even more urgent with the recent election to office
of a viciously pro-death penalty govemor and legislators in
Pennsylvania.
The Revolutionary Worker recently interviewed Mumia Abu-
Jamal in the state prison at Huntingdon, Pennsylvania. This
interview was conducted by Revolutionary Worker contributing
writer C. Clark Kissinger. It appeared in Revolutionary Worker's
#784 & 785, in December of 1994. For in-depth information and a
history of Mumia's case and the campaign to save his life, see RW
#763 and RW #769.
RW: Mumia, you once used the phrase before that the police in
Philadelphia saw you as 'a target to be neutralized.' What do
think is behind this campaign by the state of Pennsylvania to
kill you? Why do they want to make an example out of your
execution?
Mumia: Because to them and to other people I've become more than
a living being, I've become a symbol (...) a symbol of resistance
to the system. It is no accident that the Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania in my prosecution - "persecution" - literally leaped
back over a decade in time to tell jurors about my political
background, about my membership in the Black Panther Party, about
words I'd said, like "all power to the people" and "political
power grows out of the barrel of a gun" and "the Black Panther
Party is a political and uncompromising party." These were
quotations that the prosecutor very skillfully and very
intentionally wanted to inject into the minds of a predominately
white and middle class older jury. By the injection of those
quotes was the injection of a reality that was over a decade old,
and they used that as kind of an additional aggravating
circumstance to call for my death and my execution.
RW: At the time of your arrest you were already very well known
to the Philadelphia police, isn't that true?
Mumia: Even before I was a "mainstream journalist", I worked in
the Ministry of Information of the Black Panther Party, and among
my duties were the writing, the production, and the layout and
the distribution control of newsletters, newspapers, and
propaganda coming out of the Philadelphia chapter of the Black
Panther Party. At the risk of sounding obvious, the information
that was put out by our office was less than glowing reports on
the Philadelphia Police Department. In fact, they dealt with the
real clear campaign of historical repression that had been
happening against Black people and poor people in Philadelphia
for years, and years, and years. I had been threatened as a
Panther years ago. I had been arrested several times. Our offices
had been raided. So I was not a nonentity - I was a known
quantity even in my youth, in my teenage years.
RW: And this is the same Philadelphia Police Department under
chief Frank Rizzo that not only raided and attacked the Panthers
as in many other cities, but went out of their way to attempt to
humiliate the Panthers publicly. I remember that photograph where
they lined up a group of captured Panthers and made them drop
their pants for a photographer.
Mumia: Yeah, drop their underpants. That was an intentional, as
you say, humiliation, or attempt at humiliation, of the Black
Panther Party, done at gunpoint by Philadelphia policemen on the
orders of Frank Rizzo. That was the public attempt to tame the
Black Panther Party. Of the many chapters across the eastern part
of the United States, Philadelphia's was energetic, youthful, and
had a very good relationship with the Black community and 2
supportive communities. And I think it's because of that, members
of the Black Panther Party in Philadelphia were deemed as
threats.
RW: And at the time of your arrest you had already begun to
report on the MOVE organization (1), isn't that true?
Mumia: That's very true. I reported in kind of a vacuum because
even though there was substantial and a good deal of reporting on
the MOVE situation in Philadelphia, most of it was from a pro-
system bias - a presumption of guilt bias, a pro-police, pro-
prosecution perspective. When MOVE people said anything, if you
looked in the Daily News or the Inquirer or the leading
newspapers of the day, or the Bulletin or the Journal of those
times, you would find that MOVE members said "a mouthful of
rhetoric." That was always the pat phrase they would use when
they were describing allegedly what MOVE people said. They
wouldn't quote what MOVE people said. And I thought that not only
was it politically dangerous, but it was 'journalistically
inappropriate' to do so.
I mean, politicians live and die by rhetoric, however you
can't open up a newspaper without getting an exact quote of what
a given politician, be he president, mayor, police chief, or
judge, says every day. So it was important from a radical
journalistic liberation perspective to hear what they had to say
and to report what they said in their own words. Because if they
were taking that kind of stand against the most repressive police
department in America, a police department that once was boasted
by the mayor of Philadelphia as one capable of invading Cuba and
winning, then I thought it was necessary that people hear what
they had to say. And what they had to say was pretty god-damn
compelling.
RW: You've pointed out a number of times that your only crime is
that you survived - you were shot and almost killed by the
police. I understand you had a police bullet enter your chest
from above and go down at an angle into your lower abdomen or
kidneys and ended up near your spinal cord. You had to either
have been doubled over or on the ground when you were shot like
that. How did the police treat you immediately after your arrest
and at the hospital?
Mumia: I would not say "treat" me, I would say that they "beat"
me. They beat me on the street. They beat me in the paddy wagon.
RW: This is when you had a bleeding chest wound from a gunshot,
and they beat you?
Mumia: Bleeding from a wound that perforated a lung and my liver,
that was life-threatening. According to a witness that testified
at the trial, I arrived at the hospital, maybe two or three
blocks from the scene, about 40 to 45 minutes afterward. So not
only was I beaten at the scene, and beaten in the paddy wagon,
they were driving me around the city of Philadelphia waiting for
me to die.
RW: And what happened when you awoke in the hospital?
Mumia: This is post-operative. And what I felt was a pronounced
real strong pressure, kind of swelling me up. I felt swollen,
full. This was my first sensation of consciousness coming out of
the operation. Despite the real sense of tiredness and fatigue, I
forced myself to open my eyes. And I saw a policeman just
standing over me, looking down in my face. About 35ish, brown-
blond hair, mustache. I didn't understand what was happening at
first. I saw him looking down at me smiling a cold, grim, deadly
smile.
Then, after what seemed like minutes but might have just
been 15 or 20 seconds, he moved out of my range of vision and I
felt a sense of relief as if a balloon had deflated in my
abdomen. And he did this two, three, four times. Perhaps more.
And even though I was handcuffed on this hospital bed, I was able
to swerve my neck around and look and see that he was stepping on
a urine bag, a clear plastic receptacle for urine, forcing that
urine back up a plastic tubing and into my bladder. He was trying
to burst my bladder, while I was laying in a hospital just a
half-hour or so after I had gotten out of surgery. Here I was,
tied down, handcuffed in a hospital bed, in a hospital. Not in a
prison hospital, but in a civilian community hospital, with a
Philadelphia policeman with an Uzi submachinegun trying to kill
me early that morning.
He continued and I couldn't do anything. I couldn't say
anything because I had an esophagus tube stuck down my throat, I
had tubes up my nose and other body orifices. All I could do was
look at him. And he smiled, and he did it and he did it and he
did it. I just laid back and watched.
RW: Well, let's go back to the beginning. Even before you became
involved with the Black Panther Party, I understand that in 1968
you went out to picket against the racist George Wallace, when he
was running for president against Nixon and Humphrey. The year
that we had the choice between Tweedle-dee, Tweedle-dum, and
Tweedle-dixie.
Mumia: Yeah, that's about it. That was back in the days when I
really believed that the First Amendment and the other amendments
meant that you had a freedom of speech, freedom of assembly,
freedom of speaking your opinion. It was also in the days of the
growth of Black Power consciousness in Black America. Me and four
other guys from North Philly had the bright idea of going down to
South Philly, which at that time was white ethnic Italian, and
not a very healthy place for an African-American person of dark-
skinned persuasion to be. Especially at night, and especially one
should think at a rally for George Wallace of the American
Independence Party.
RW: But surely the police would protect you! [laughs]
Mumia: [Laughs] Well, we thought so initially. Little did we know
that they were there to protect others from us, and not us from
others. We came, we demonstrated, and we were clubbed into
insensibility afterwards by plainclothes police who never
identified themselves as police, who put three of us in the
hospital. We were 15, 16-year-old boys from North Philly, who got
a lesson in constitutional law very quickly, very clearly. I
remember going in front of the judge, half of my face swollen,
the other half bloodied, looking up to the bench. And the judge,
back in these days they were probably more racist and more
twisted and corrupt than they are today, but the judge looking at
me and looking at the cop who charged me (incidentally I was
charged with assault and battery on a police officer), and said
to him "Oh, he assaulted you, huh? This case is dismissed." And
threw it out just like that. I mean that's almost unheard of, but
it happened. Cuz it was very clear that when police beat people,
they put assault charges on the victim.
RW: In fact, the worse you are beaten, the bigger the charge
against you.
Mumia: The bigger the charge. Yeah.
RW: So how did the Panthers get started in Philly, how did you
hear about the Black Panthers and what attracted you to them in
the beginning?
Mumia: What really attracted me to the party was just reading.
Someone had sent me a magazine called Ramparts. It had an
interview in there about Eldridge [Cleaver]. There were several
other articles in there, and I'd never seen anything like this
before. That for me was a definite psychological hook, to see a
group of young Black men fighting to defend themselves and their
communities from police aggression. Knowing as I did precisely
what police brutality was, I was sensitized, open, to hear their
appeal. A group of young guys got together and we began writing
out to California to get copies of the Panther paper, and rented
a office in the heart of North Philadelphia on what was then
called Columbia Avenue.
RW: So you were one of the founding members in Philadelphia?
Mumia: Yes. Huey [Newton] used to say that the lifeblood of the
party is the paper. It really was. It was through the paper that
we were able to pay the rent and take care of the daily needs of
the office and party members, and build the organization. Towards
the waning years, after the national party kind of fractured, the
party in Philadelphia had four or five offices around the city,
and there were chapters in three or four different cities across
the state. It was really a thriving, burgeoning young
organization. And it was really because the paper gave a sense of
cohesion, sense of consciousness, a sense of unity with a
movement that was growing by leaps and bounds in the late '60s
and early '70s.
RW: I remember at its peak the party was selling 40,000 a week in
Illinois.
Mumia: Oh easy. I know at its peak the party paper nationally
sold more than any other African-American newspaper, not just
nationally but internationally as well. And they sold more than
"respectable" national papers like the African-American which had
bureaus in four or five cities; sold more than Muhammed Speaks of
its time. It really, really was a paper that people looked for
every week. And I think they looked for it because nowhere else
in America could you read where a pig is called a pig.
RW: And had some flies around him.
Mumia: With flies around him! Our Minister of Culture, Emory
Douglas, was a very creative, talented artist, who spoke to those
who couldn't get into the more theoretical stuff. Very clear,
punch-to-the-gut art. Political art. Revolutionary art, that has
never ever been repeated or bettered in the years since the
party's apex.
RW: After the Panther Party, where did you go and how did you get
involved in journalism?
Mumia: I think I got involved in journalism through the party,
and not after it, because I worked in the ministry for so many
years. It was people in the party, editors and deputy ministers
on several coasts, who taught me the skills of writing. Of
writing with a political bent. Of pushing radical ideas through
words on paper. Of course, working in this chapter in
Philadelphia, but also working in New York, working in California
as well. So it was a kind of natural progression when the party
was no more, the party had broken into splinters, to still be
involved in a non-party but still radical ministry of ideas, a
ministry of information. It's from that the writing and the
broadcasting really blossomed.
RW: It's interesting that it's still a battle today to get the
revolutionary press into prisons across this country.
Mumia: Yes.
RW: It's kind of ironic, isn't it, that you are doing an
interview today that you won't be allowed to read?
Mumia: [Laughs] I hope the interview's good, cuz I'll never see
it! I guess my captors will enjoy it, but I won't be able to read
it. The Revolutionary Worker has not been allowed since October
1987.
I got involved in journalism by being involved in radical,
non-mainstream journalism. In fact, I think I would challenge
that definition of not being mainstream. Remember we were talking
about the circulation of the party paper? If the Black Panther
paper was the most widely published and read paper in Afro-
America, then how could it be anything less than mainstream? It
was the mainstream. We were selling more papers than any other
Black paper, and many white papers, in America. And people were
reading that paper, because they would get stuff in there they
wouldn't get anywhere else in America.
RW: What happened when you tried to report the trial of the 'MOVE
9' in the regular press, and report it from the side of the
people?
Mumia: Let us say that my bosses were less than happy. I remember
once I was working for a white radio station in Philadelphia. I
changed my name and I assumed a European accent, but I reported
the same reality using a white name. It worked for a while. This
station beamed to Kensington in northeast Philadelphia, white
working class generally. These are people who from morning until
night would never hear the voice of Chucky Africa [of MOVE] (...)
until "William Wellington Cole" reporting for this radio station,
got on a tenspeed during a lunch break, rode up to 33rd and
Powelton, the old MOVE headquarters, and did a sound bite - a
brief interview with Chucky and Janine. Went back, cut the tape,
and put it in. I mean, this was news, this was during the time
back in the middle '70s, around '76, '77, when MOVE was involved
in an on-going conflict with the Philadelphia police department.
They had a blockade, for Christ sake.
RW: This trial came out of a raid on their house in which the
police shot each other in their crossfire, and then everybody in
the house was charged with murdering a police officer. And since
they couldn't pin it on any one person, they sent them all to
jail for 100 years. You're trying to report on this, and were
censored.
Mumia: I was told, I remember being told at one station that I
lacked (...) this was the softest, sweetest firing one had ever
heard of. My bosses called me into the office and said, "Look,
Jamal, you've got great pipes. I mean, Christ, we don't know why
you're not at CBS by now. You do good work." "So what did you
call me down for?" "Well, we're going to have to let you go
because we don't think you have thenecessary commitment to the
station." That was how I got fired.
RW: This was in the middle of the trial?
Mumia: No, this was actually before the raid, a full year before
the August 8, 1978, raid. There was a blockade up, so for that
year, if someone wanted the news, they would get the news that
the regular white bourgeois press wanted to kick out. No one
talked to the MOVE people. No one dared talk to the MOVE people.
You talked to the police chief, you talked to the mayor, you
talked to the district attorney...
RW: But it was forbidden, "verboten", to cross the lines and talk
to the other side.
Mumia: Yeah! Well I don't think it was so much officially
verboten as the presumption that the other side had nothing to
say that was worth hearing. Almost a dehumanization of the other
side, if you will. And I think that was what irked me the most.
These were people, literally, with their lives on the line. And I
think that's also what irked my bosses the most, because that
part of Philadelphia wasn't supposed to hear those voices. That
was one of my adventures in mainstream journalism.
RW: There were these stunning videotapes I remember seeing of the
beating of MOVE member Delbert Africa. It was almost a precursor
of the Rodney King incident in the way it affected people. People
always denied that these sort of things happened, and there it
was, captured on tape.
Mumia: Absolutely.
RW: How did the mainstream media deal with that?
Mumia: At first, the Philadelphia police commissioner at that
time denied it had happened. I remember a reporter for Channel 3
said, "Well, is there a case where one of the MOVE members might
have been beaten a little more violently, a little more
aggressively, zealously?" "Oh, no, no, no. That's that MOVE
propaganda." So the reporter kind of told him, "Look, man. We've
got videotape of this." And they just went off. Assaulted the
whole media. The way the system got off of that was to blame
Delbert Africa for being beaten by police. They criminalized the
victim.
RW: Delbert deliberately stuck his head under the boot of the
cops.
Mumia: Yeah, he deliberately assaulted the rifle butt with his
forehead and his cheekbone. He deliberately destroyed pieces of
concrete with his skull. Not only that, you have to remember that
around that time because this was so undeniable, because it was a
videotaped vicious beating of an unarmed African-American
revolutionary, the system had to go to some motion to make it
look like it was fair. So they actually tried three cops, there
was four cops involved in the beating if you look at the tapes
and pictures, but the three cops wouldn't say who the fourth cop
was. So they could only identify three cops.
Three cops were tried for beating Delbert Africa, and a
reporter who worked for a television station at that time got up,
swore to the tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and
so forth. And said that she saw a piece of metal which may have
been a knife or a clip from an automatic weapon in Delbert
Africa's hand, when he came out of the basement and stood up in
front of the police officers. This, despite the fact that you had
very clear evidence on tape also, with him with no shirt on,
hands and fingers spread, nothing in his hands. The judge ignored
what was on videotape, used what this reporter had told him,
ignored what he saw on print and photos and videotape, and said
"Delbert Africa came out of the basement armed, and therefore he
threatened the police officers. Because he was in such
extraordinary physical condition, the police were terrified and
had to beat him into submission."
When I look at that, and then I look at Rodney King, it
shows me how little things have changed in that span of time. And
it also shows me that where they succeeded to a certain extent in
dehumanizing Delbert Africa, they tried to dehumanize Rodney
King. Oh, well, he was a convicted criminal. "He was speeding 150
miles an hour", - in a Hyundai for Christ sake. I don't think the
thing will go that fast. But they tried the same tactic, and it
didn't work, because Rodney didn't have dreadlocks, and he wasn't
political. He just happened to be everyman. And the reality is,
it doesn't matter what your politics are. It doesn't matter how
politically involved you are. It doesn't matter if you're radical
or conservative. I mean Rodney King for all intents and purposes,
when those cops came down and tried to beat him to death and
attempted to murder him by blackjack in that street, could very
well have been Martin Luther King the fifth, he could have been
Jesse Jackson the third. No one knew who he was, they didn't know
his name, they didn't know his record. They said "Nigger, you
made us run. And we can do this."
RW: How do you see the role of the revolutionary press? What's
the role of the revolutionary paper in making revolution?
Mumia: The role of the revolutionary press is crucial. Because,
just by looking at the function of the press. The function of the
press is not just to inform, but to create a consciousness of
resistance, by continuously reporting on acts of resistance
against the empire, but also continuously challenging the
imperial structure itself. What happened in the '60s was a change
and a shift in consciousness. And it's because people were
growing into this new consciousness, that they became hungry for
the Black Panther newspaper. I mean they would read something in
the Daily News or the Daily Times or the Daily Press, but they
would read something else in the Black Panther paper, that
contrasted, contradicted, challenged, expanded, deepened the
realities that they could not read in the regular press.
The role of the press in bourgeois society, the so-called
mainstream press, is to act as a bulwark for the system in which
their so-called constitutional rights, First Amendment rights,
freedom of the press rights, exist. That's why you will read
certain things in the straight press that you will never read in
the radical press. For example, when a defender of this system, a
cop, an army soldier, an imperial leader, is killed or executed,
that's front page news in the system's pages. But when the system
executes someone in the street, that's page 19. That's back near
the comics section, if at all. It's unimportant. You see what I'm
saying? At the same time, the system will tell you that all life
is equal, this is a classless society, everyone has rights, and
everybody is the same as everybody else. Well, that's bullshit.
Everyone is not the same as everybody else. And it's very clear
that the role of the press in mainstream society, bourgeois
society, is to, support this system. That's its role. To support
their privileges, to support this class, economic imperial
structure.
RW: While you've been on death row, some very major things have
gone down on the outside. There was the May 13, 1985 bombing of
the MOVE house and the 1992 Los Angeles Rebellion. How did you
hear about those things, and how did they affect your mood and
the mood of other prisoners? Do you remember the day you heard
about the MOVE bombing?
Mumia: Sure. I believe at the time that happened I was doing DC
[disciplinary custody] time, and I wasn't able to see a TV. But
someone was describing to me kind of point by point what was
happening. It was devastating. It really was. I felt proud for
those brothers and sisters who stood up, who rebelled, who
resisted. But there's no way to look at that reality without also
recognizing the success of the state in dehumanizing MOVE people
to the extent they could use some selected neighbors to achieve
their aims. And they could use the media to create a picture of
mass murder and make it justifiable. And that's exactly what they
did. To date, I might add, only one person involved in that
complete, total mass murder, massacre, has ever seen the inside
of a jail cell. That's Ramona Africa.
RW: Her crime was surviving.
Mumia: For surviving. For daring to survive. For not dying when
they tried to burn her and shoot her and crush her to death under
stone and brick. That's it. No cop, no politician, no fireman,
none of them have ever been charged with a crime. In fact, this
is one of the few cases where an investigating grand jury was
called and was told not to indict. They called a grand jury, and
then the district attorney returned a proposed submission to the
grand jury, and it was "Do not indict."
I don't believe in this system. I think millions of people
really don't believe in this system. They are forced to deal with
it, the forces and oppression of the system. But they don't
believe in it. In fact, people in the system don't believe in the
system! I use the example of that guy Bud Dwyer. He was the third
highest guy in the state government a few years ago. He was
secretary of the treasury, or something like that. He was under
federal indictment for some corruption charges, taking money from
this big corporation. Bud Dwyer held a press conference, pulled
out a .357 Magnum and blew the top of his head off. Here was a
man that had been a lawyer, had been a legislator, and rose up
through state government. But when it came time for him to choose
whether he trusted that same system to determine his guilt or his
innocence, his freedom and his liberty versus his incarceration,
he chose death. I mean this was a very clear statement to me
about how much faith he put in this system. And he spent his
whole life being a part of it. So I say that to say I didn't
expect justice from this system for the murders of May 13 and
they didn't disappoint me.
As for the L.A. Rebellion, I think that's a harbinger of
things to come. As a recent study showed, there are over 39
million people living in poverty in the United States. That's
larger than the population of Canada. Most of the countries in
the UN don't have that kind of population. But you have 39
million people, according to the latest census, living in poverty
in the United States. That's a pool of discontent that must chill
the spine of the ruling class.
RW: It was very striking in particular because the U.S. had just
come out the victor of the Cold War and the conqueror of Iraq,
and then in the space of two hours they lost control of the
second largest city in the U.S., which fell into the hands of the
people who live there, and it took them three days to mobilize
enough troops to recapture Los Angeles. And that was a
spontaneous rebellion.
Mumia: That's the key! This was unorganized. This was completely
[snaps his fingers]. You know, it was people's hearts exploding
in anger and rage.
RW: Some people in Washington must have been worried: Gee,
suppose this had actually been organized?
Mumia: That's the key. You know what? When you look at it from
that perspective, that is the impetus for that Crime Bill. That's
the impetus for this law and order. You know, the biggest secret
in America is that the crime rate is down. That by all
indications, except for perhaps car theft, which is really an
economic kind of crime, in all crimes affecting the person -
burglary, rape, robbery, homicide - all crimes in America are
down, and have been consistently for the last three or four or
five years. So they are not responding to "crime", they're
responding to the perceived threat of resistance, of "L.A. 2", or
"L.A. 4", or "L.A. 15." And that's really at the bottom of it.
RW: The political nature of your trial came out most intensively
when the prosecution argued for the death penalty by bringing up
your political associations. They argued, "Mumia Abu-Jamal, the
dangerous Panther, radical and revolutionary, and MOVE defender"
and all, has to be put out of commission here. I found it very
interesting that the Supreme Court actually overturned that sort
of argument for the death penalty in the case of a white
supremacist in Delaware. Yet when you took your case up, after
that, and made the same argument, the Supreme Court wouldn't even
hear your case.
Mumia: Not only that, the real kicker with that Aryan Brotherhood
case is that in the interim between me being affirmed by the
Pennsylvania Supreme Court and him filing for relief in the
United States Supreme Court and getting it, if you read the
opinion from the Delaware Supreme Court, you'll find that there
is one case that they use. They don't have any case on point from
the whole Delaware precedent. They leap over to Pennsylvania and
say, "Oh yeah, this is cool. Pennsylvania did it in this
Commonwealth versus Jamal, so we can do it. [wacks the table like
a gavel] Affirmed. You gets nothing."
RW: So just to trace the logic again, the Delaware Supreme Court
said: "We can use such testimony to argue for a death penalty,
because they did it in Pennsylvania with regard to Mumia."
Mumia: Absolutely.
RW: Yet when the Delaware case was taken to the U.S. Supreme
Court, the Supreme Court said: "No you can't." But when Mumia
went to Supreme Court and said, "Hey, what about me"?
Mumia: They said, "No, you can't."
RW: How does your case fit into this current political campaign
to extend the death penalty, to restrict legal appeals from death
row, and in general criminalize Black youth?
Mumia: I think it's typical, in the sense that what the state has
been saying, for all intents and purposes, is that in
Commonwealth vs. Abu-Jamal the defendant has no rights. The right
to counsel, the right to counsel of one's choice, the right to a
fair trial by a jury of peers, the right to whatever. That would
be denied, denied, denied, denied. This has been shown in my
case.
As a human being, I would have been better off being an
Aryan Brother, being a member of the American Nazi Party - there
is a case out of Nevada called the Flanagan case, these were two
fellows who were convicted of killing their grandparents or
something like that. It was introduced into their trial, evidence
of their belief in Satanism or Black Magic of some sort. The U.S.
Supreme Court reversed their conviction like in one day without
an opinion, because of their First Amendment rights. You know, a
one page, one line: Their convictions and death sentences are
reversed in light of Dawson vs. Delaware, which was the case of
the Aryan Brotherhood. So I would be better off being an Aryan or
something like that than being a past member of the Black Panther
Party and a supporter of the MOVE organization. In essence, there
is no greater crime that someone can commit in America than being
Black and resisting the status quo. There's no greater crime.
RW: You've been on death row now for some 1-2 years. The
officials have tried to break you, both in body and spirit. Yet
what continues to come out in your writing is your deep
connection with the people and your commitment to revolution. Our
readers would like to know both how you have fought back on the
inside for your rights, and what keeps you standing strong?
Mumia: I think an extraordinarily strong belief in structure. I'm
a follower of the teachings of John Africa, as are MOVE members
and MOVE supporters. John Africa teaches that "It is insane not
to resist something that gives nothing but pain to you, your
family, your mothers, your fathers, your babies." And when you
think about something like that, there is so much wisdom locked
into that little phrase. Contrary to popular belief conventional
wisdom would have one believe that it is insane to resist this,
the mightiest of all empires, the victor in the Cold War, the
empire that devastated Iraq and all that. But what history really
shows is that today's empire is tomorrow's ashes. That nothing
lasts forever, and that to not resist is to acquiesce in your own
oppression. The greatest form of sanity that anyone can exercise
is to resist that force that is trying to repress, oppress, and
fight down the human spirit.
RW: What have they tried to do to you here?
Mumia: Isolate, destroy, silence, cripple. I don't want to make
it sound like what they are doing to me is unlike what they have
done to millions of others. They've done the same thing. No doubt
your pictures here and your words will describe this. This is the
kind of visiting room for all visitors. If you were my lawyer it
would be this visiting room. If you were my wife, my children,
this would be the visiting room.
RW: No physical contact.
Mumia: At all, at all, at all. And the function is (...) human
contact is necessary for human health, to survive. It was very
clear their intent was for us not to survive.
RW: So you are living in a small room, like living in your own
bathroom for 20 hours a day.
Mumia: 22 hours a day.
RW: And you get two hours out to exercise in a cage. And then you
read in the newspapers that the politicians say we're coddling
people in jails and we need to take away their television sets
and their weight lifting programs.
Mumia: (Laughs) I love it! I love it! In fact, the best thing
they could do is that. Because once they take away people's
diversions, then people won't have anything to barrier themselves
from the repression of the system. That day will come. And I
think it's a good development. People will become more
rebellious. They won't have to worry about what's on the soap
opera. Or what's on jeopardy. Or who's on Soul Train. They'll
have to worry about themselves, being in direct conflict with a
system that is trying to extinguish their lives.
Nothing happens in a vacuum. The prison movements of the
'70s happened because of the movement in the streets, to be sure.
But there is still a lot of consciousness that needs to grow in
this place. And the more repressive they become, the more
consciousness will grow. Back when I was a young Panther and I
was writing for the paper, I wrote a quote called "Repression
Breeds Resistance." And it's still so. It's absolutely true. And
the L.A. Rebellion proved that in the least expected places
people will resist. I mean L.A. is probably one of the most
repressive cities in America, with police versus the citizens.
The helicopters, the bulldozers...
RW: The barricading of communities.
Mumia: Right!
RW: I don't know how much of a sense you get on the inside, but
there is a virtual convergence of the conditions under which
oppressed people live on the inside and the outside. The turning
of housing projects into minimum-security prisons, the lockdowns
of buildings, people required to wear ID cards to enter their own
apartments, the building of barricades and fences. It's been what
we sometimes call "the pigification of America."
Mumia: Yeah, I see that in a lesser degree, but I do see that.
Part of that same reality, of course, is the Crime Bill that
makes being a member of a gang an aggravating circumstance... As
if the U.S. Army, the U.S. Senate, the state legislatures are not
gangs of rich, the gangs of wealth, the gangs of power. As if
when those gangs went to Vietnam or went to Southeast Asia they
did not rape, and rob, and pillage. As if they are not in power
today as the result of the rape, robbery and pillage of this
continent from its original people.
RW: And they do drive-by shootings of whole countries.
Mumia: Absolutely. From the air. Fly-by shootings.
RW: I think one of the things that continues to impress people
who read your work is, living under the conditions you live
under, you are able to continue to practice your profession as a
revolutionary journalist. Under the most trying conditions you
still go out there and stick it to the system every chance you
get. Recently you achieved national notoriety when National
Public Radio contracted you to be a commentator on the program
All Things Considered. Then they dropped you like a hot potato
when police groups and the New York Times told NPR that wasn't
such a swift idea. Even Senator Dole got up and denounced you on
the Senate floor. How did you first hear ftom NPR that they were
dropping you, and what did they say to you?
Mumia: You'd be surprised to learn that I never heard from NPR
that they were dropping me. They haven't said anything to me.
Very recently I did get a letter from a leading person in NPR,
but I heard about this from one of my lawyers who called me and
said, "Did you hear?" I said no, I hadn't heard anything, you're
the first word. That's how I found out that I was persona non
grata with All Things... well, maybe not "All"...
RW and Mumia in unison: "Some Things Considered!"
Mumia: I guess it was a real clear lesson for me of the limits of
liberalism. How what passes for a left wing in this country is
little more than a right wing with manners. I can't say I was
surprised. I can say I was disappointed. Not surprised because
the history of American liberalism has been couched in the velvet
above the iron fist kind of situation. Not surprised because
probably the most well-known liberal in America is president of
the United States, because he had the political wherewithal to
execute a brain-dead Black man. So in that context, I wasn't
terribly surprised. I just think that it's very clear that when
some people go around talking about considering all things, that
all things are still not considerable.
RW: What's happened with your mail and your communications with
your lawyers and getting support from the outside?
Mumia: As a direct consequence of the NPR fiasco, and political
repression coming from politicians in Pennsylvania and in
Philadelphia, all of my mail has been severely restricted on the
pretext that it might contain illegal funds for me; I might be
operating a business from death row. This has included letters
from supporters with no money in it that have been held for over
a month. When I complain about it, they say, well, three or four
days. They just don't acknowledge the fact they've held the
letter for 28 days. This has included a letter from my lawyer
with material on my case that has been opened, sealed, and then
delivered to me some eight to 11 days afterwards. And they say,
"oops, we made a mistake." They blame me for the volume of mail I
have when I complain about it. "Well, you have so much mail we
couldn't tell the legal mail from the regular mail." Here's a
letter with my lawyer's name, title, and address, "Legal -
Confidential", the whole deal.
Again I have to go back to what I said to you earlier about
not being terribly surprised. The government has never given a
damn about my right to counsel. That's why I was assigned the
counsel I was assigned to and refused the right to represent
myself. So that now that I have a lawyer, they want to make sure
that so-called confidential communications are non-confidential.
RW: A lot of people were deeply moved by your 1992 commentary on
"The Lost Generation." You talked about the intense alienation of
today's youth, and made the striking remark that they are yet the
most aware generation since Nat Turner's. Could you talk about
your views of today's youth and their revolutionary potential? I
Mumia: I think their revolutionary potential is greater than my
own, and our own, of our generation. Because in a sense they have
access to more information. The former Minister of Education for
the Black Panther Party, Eldridge Cleaver, said, "Information is
the raw material for new ideas. If you get misinformation, you
get some pretty fucked-up ideas." The point is, because of the
profusion of Afrocentric radical books out there, information is
available that was not available years ago.
Black youth are using their life experience, how they live
today in the real world, and molding a form of art, rapping - an
art of their own creation, a music that comes from their spirit,
their beat, their syncopation, their lived reality, instead of
recreating something that happened before. And talking about in
real clear graphic terms their lived reality. The only thing
lacking is organization. But as consciousness rises, the
necessity for organization must arise as well. Their potential is
almost unlimited, because for many of them their fathers and
mothers and grandmothers and grandfathers were the Panthers, were
the people with the RNA [Republic of New Afrika], and so forth. I
have pretty good hopes for those kids. I really do. That's why I
wrote in the piece "The Lost Generation" that they're not "lost."
They are lost to the extent that they have been shoved aside by
those of their fathers' and grandparents' generation who are too
bourgeois to give them what they need. To equip them with the
tools which they need to rebel against this state.
But also this is a far more repressive time than the '60s
were. The '60s represented a moment of opening. What the generals
would like to call "a window of opportunity." But it was a window
of opportunity for those who resisted the system. That window has
been all but shut in this age. I mean that's what the Crime Bill
represents. That's what the death penalty represents. That's what
the incarceration of Black America represents. That's what the
imprisonation of the poor represents. That's what homelessness
represents. So the threats against them are greater, and
therefore they have a sense and perception of this system that is
more real than ours was.
Before our generation really came to consciousness, we
believed, "Our country tis of thee, sweet land of liberty", you
know, the whole nine yards. We believed because we were taught
and told to believe. And it was only when reality, cold reality
of a blackjack or a pistol slapped into our faces, that we were
able to see, well, it's not like that. Well, this generation of
the young now have almost been born into that brutal reality. And
they know what this thing is about. They don't have the
information, they don't have the organization, but they have a
potential right now of turning their lived reality into a
revolutionary reality. They really do.
RW: And the repression going on right now actually comes from a
strategic weakness and fear of the other side...
Mumia: Yeah.
RW: My impression is, having lived through both periods, that the
system is actually weaker today than it was in the 1960s.
Mumia: I think so. I think that when the state erects the edifice
of security, when they build the wall higher and higher, that is
a testament to its insecurity as opposed to its security. I think
that when politicians have to run on death and run on iron houses
and jail cells, that is a testament to the ruling class fear of
what the poor, what the discontented, what the alienated will do
if repression continues. So when a state has to run on threat and
terrorism, then those are the seeds of destruction of that state.
RW: To come back to your case, the demand of your supporters is
for a new trial - really, for a first trial. This is obviously a
political as well as a legal struggle, with the government
seeking to extend the death penalty to political dissenters. The
courts are even arguing that people who have used up their
appeals should be executed, even if new evidence comes forward
that shows they are absolutely innocent.
Mumia: What the courts of America are showing is that there is no
law, there's only process. There's only process. There's only the
stage and showmanship of law, not its essence. Because there's no
justice. There's no balance. There is not even a scent of an
equation. I remember making the point to a lawyer friend of mine.
We were talking about the L.A. cops, and the same system that
says you can have only one appeal and the presumption of
finality, this is the same system that when it wants to prosecute
someone will prosecute you in state court, and if they don't get
what they want, they'll do what they did with Lemrick Nelson in
New York. They'll come with a federal prosecution, and tell you
through its mouthpieces that this is not double jeopardy. When
clearly the person being prosecuted is in jeopardy by two
entities, by the state and by the federal government. But this is
the same entity that talks about finality, but they don't want it
to be final if you win in state court, if they get enough
pressure to try to take you under again.
RW: This December [1994] will be the 13th anniversary of your
incarceration and the 25th anniversary of the police
assassination of Fred Hampton, who was Chairman of the Black
Panther Party in Illinois. A lot of people now see the "informal
executions" of the '60s turning into the formal executions of the
'90s. What is your message to those organizing to stop the legal
lynching of Mumia Abu-Jamal?
Mumia: My thanks to them, first of all, for their good and
radical work. Second of all, don't give up the fight. I continue
to write. I continue to resist. I continue to speak truth to
power. I continue to rebel against the system that tried to kill
me 13 years ago, and continues to try to kill me today. I know
that for some people 13 years ago, depending on your age of
course, is an eternity ago. For others it seems just like
yesterday. What should be clear to everyone, no matter what your
perspective, is what happened about a year ago, the NPR flap,
should make it very clear to anyone that this government that
tried to kill me in December of 1981 still wants me silent and
dead today. So the struggle continues. The fight continues. As
Fred would say, "The beat goes on."
Notes:
(1) MOVE is an organization of predominately Black radical
utopians in Philadelphia. MOVE refuses to respect present-day
America and its prevailing values. Its members openly defy,
official power and preach against a system they consider utterly
corrupt and destructive of life on this planet. Since its
inception in 1972, MOVE has been viciously attacked by the cops,
various authorities and the mass media. Before dawn, on May 13,
1985, the Philadelphia Police Department launched a massive
assault on a MOVE house on Osage Avenue in Philadelphia. At
5:25pm, 11 MOVE people were murdered - six adults and five
children - when a Pennsylvania state police helicopter dropped a
bomb on the house. Only 30-year-old Ramona Africa and 13-year-old
Birdie Africa managed to survive.
Send contributions for the legal defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal to
either.
Bill of Rights Foundation (marked "Jamal")
740 Broadway
New York, NY
10003 USA
or
Black United Fund
Mumia Abu-Jamal Defense Fund
419 S. 15th Street
Philadelphia, PA
19146 USA
