Lock My Body, Can't Trap My Mind: a Study of the Scholarship and Social

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Lock My Body, Can’t Trap My Mind: A Study of the Scholarship and Social Movements Surrounding the Case of Imprisoned Radical Mumia Abu-Jamal

DISSERTATION

Presented in Partial Fulfillment for the Degree Ph.D in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University

Jennifer Black

Graduate Program in Comparative Studies

2012

Committee:

Dr. Maurice Stevens, Advisor

Dr. James Upton

Dr. Anthonia Kalu

Jennifer Black

2012

Abstract

In the thirty years since a death sentence was imposed on Black journalist and former

Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, formations of civil support have organized along the lines of a social movement referred to as the “Free Mumia” movement. The movements which coalesce on his behalf are international in scope and have become foundations upon which to pitch battles for broader issues of economic and racial justice.

Notwithstanding imprisonment, Abu-Jamal has continued his work of advocacy journalism in the form of political commentaries, broadcasted essays and published works. This outpouring of social commentary and academic production provides substance for the movement on his behalf and contributes to the bank of Black political thought. Yet for all the attention Abu-Jamal’s case has provoked, and despite the movements which unite on his behalf, the Free Mumia movement, and the role of Abu-

Jamal’s scholarship remain understudied phenomenon. By using the reflections and experiences of thirteen individuals who have participated on campaigns for his freedom, this project identifies the trajectory of Abu-Jamal’s scholarship and explores the relationship between his academic production and the movements on his behalf. It establishes him as an imprisoned radical intellectual whose voice contributes ii substantively to the formation of our era’s Black radical scholarship and it establishes the

Free Mumia movement as a broad based international movement that advances a twin agenda of economic and racial justice.

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I dedicate this project to mighty, mighty Mumia for his outstanding accomplishments, resolute commitment, steadfast courage, maturity, loyalty, resilience, generosity, and brilliance. He has kept the faith, carried the torch, and he provides an astonishing example of how to maintain dignity, humanity and even a sense of humor in the face of terrorism and viciousness. I dedicate this to Mumia Abu-Jamal because he has never sold out, or compromised his beliefs, and he always sticks up for what he believes is right. I am grateful to be sharing this historical epoch with him.

Acknowledgements

The amount of encouragement and assistance I have received in the process of completing this project is vast. Debts accrued can never be fully paid, but should be recognized. I thank my parents John and Bernice Black. John Black (Presente) loved

Mumia and his own life was a shining example of revolutionary fortitude. John was instrumental in the formation of State College’s Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal.

He was persistent and prescient with the foresight to recognize who Mumia was. He showed me how to organize, and was the first person to teach me about Joe Hill, Sacco &

Vanzetti, and Mumia. Everybody knows that clever Bernice is the source of everything good. My unwavering ally she is also a terrific role model. Bernice completed her doctoral work with three times as many kids, in half the time, and a lot less complaining.

Commenting on the two of them Mumia once reminded me that I have an exemplary intellectual tradition on which to draw from. My oldest brother Mark did not live to see the completion of this project, but he consistently programmed me to attend Ohio State

University, until unbelievably I obeyed. Other brother, Douglass, helped a lot when he gave me a brand new Dell lap top! Thanks to Andy, Monica, Nataki, Karry, Frank,

Gareth, Walidah, Roderick, Jeff, “Darryl”, Pam, Noelle and Catherine who have taught

v me about solidarity, strategy, tactics, courage, and persistence. They graciously consented to be interviewed and then proceeded to gently (and also not so gently) nudge me to complete the work. Additionally I owe mountains of gratitude to all the other brave and intelligent Mumia activists I have worked with over the years, especially Caylor Roling,

Alan Rausch, Tim Fasnacht, Patti Chongolola and Fred Anderson. I cannot thank my

Committee enough. My first adviser, Dr. Tanya Erzen, guided this project from the beginning, and continued to believe in it down to the dirty end. An ordinary individual would have given up on me a long time ago, but she is not ordinary, she is extraordinary and for that, and for her amazing editing skills, I will always be grateful. I am not exaggerating when I say that without adviser Dr. Stevens I would not have gotten very far in the Comparative Studies Department. His presence has been wholly consistent, protective, helpful, and instructive. Dr. Upton, a steady, reliable, and supportive influence has provided continuity from the Masters program to the Ph.D., and Dr. Kalu afforded me an incredible opportunity when she hired me to teach two classes in the African

American and African Studies department. Like all Comparative Studies graduate students I have benefit tremendously from the expertise, knowledge and support of Dr.

Marge Lynd, our program manager. She is the hidden strength of the program and more powerful than weapons of mass destruction. Colleagues in the Comparative Studies

Department also provided significant sustenance. The people responsible for my survival are: Tracy Carpenter, Melanie Maltry, Sande Garner, Carlotta Penn, RaShelle Peck, and

Tanikka Price. Peace to all my sisters. My friends on the outside have been just as crucial: Catherine, Sandra, Tonya, and Natalia have each provided countless acts of kindness, distraction, comic relief, and generosity. I am grateful to my community of vi soothsayers, root workers, and magicians who aided in various ways. When my precious

Dell laptop unexpectedly expired Christine Creagh and Rachel Yoder generously provided another computer so, literally, I couldn’t have written this without them. A great big shout out to Mike, Samson, Thom and the entire Upper Cup family for providing the perfect atmosphere to write in, and for serving the best coffee in C-bus. Saving the best for last, I want to thank my son Shango Black-Smith, a nursling when this graduate school adventure began; he is now a great big fair-minded boy of nine years old who loves justice. Through thick and thin he remains my greatest inspiration. Shango, may you grow up and sincerely understand the sacrifices of those who came before you. And yes, society does need more rebels, but get your education first!

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Vita

1991………………………………………B.A. Anthropology, History, Antioch College

2000………………………………………M.A. African American and African American

Studies, The Ohio State University

2004 to 2010………………………………Graduate Teaching Associate, Comparative

Studies, The Ohio State University

Fields of Study

Major Field: Comparative Studies

Minor Field: African American and African Studies

viii

Table of Contents

Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………ii

Dedication……………………………………………………………………...... v

Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………..…v

Vita………………………………………………………………………………………vii

Introduction…………………………………………………………..…………...………1

Chapter 1: Who am I? and Whose am I?...... 34

Chapter 2: At the Crossroads: Suspect, Defendant, and Prisoner………………..……...67

Chapter 3: “We Are Doing This. We Can Do This”………..………..…………...…….118

Chapter 4: The Voice, Live from Row…………..…………………………...………..169

Conclusion………………………………..……………………………..…………..….195

References…………………………………………….…………………………..……212

Appendix A: List of activists interviewed………………….……………………….…224

Introduction

“The voice of Black Political journalism in the struggle for the liberation of African-American people has always

proved to be decisive throughout Black history. From David Walker’s appeal in 1829, to the political journalism of

Frederick Douglass, to the Black Panther newspaper. When you listen to Mumia you hear the echoes of David Walker,

Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. DuBois, Paul Robeson, and the sisters and brothers who kept the faith with resistance.

And that is why Mumia is so dangerous to the state. That critique of democracy views the state, the society, not from

the top down but from the bottom up. It does not ground itself to the view that reforming an unjust and inherently

undemocratic system is the way to advance the interests of Black or poor people, working class people, or women”

----Manning Marable

In an interview conducted in2008 by the Mexican magazine Desinformémonos,

Mumia Abu-Jamal quotes the words of the great West Indian historian CLR James,

“organizing begins when two people decide to work together.” They each ought to know.

James, hailing from the same generation that produced other standout West Indians such as Marcus Garvey, Aimé Césaire, George Padmore, and Franz Fanon was equally a respected scholar of revolutionary history, a playwright, journalist, professor, and social movement tactician and one whose organizing efforts spanned three continents. Mumia, who has been incarcerated since 1981, the first twenty-nine years of which were spent on

Death Row in Pennsylvania, also dons multiple roles. He is a scholar, broadcast journalist, essayist and is known for his allegiances to militant black politics and anti- capitalist political affiliations. His life’s work has been an integration of each of these roles and has been devoted to identifying and challenging the economic and race-based social ills of inequity.

A violent altercation at the crossroads of Locust and 13th street in downtown

Philadelphia on December 9th, 1981 led to a life threatening injury for Mumia, and the death of police officer Daniel Faulkner. There is debate regarding what actually happened, as eyewitnesses who spoke to police at the scene of the crime identified a heavyset man running from the intersection of Locust and 13th street as the shooter.

Notwithstanding the lack of physical evidence to link him to the crime, Mumia was beaten at the scene of the crime, arrested, charged, and sentenced to death for first degree murder, a crime he insists he is innocent of. Since imprisonment, Mumia has been acknowledged as the most significant and well-known political prisoner of our era, and, until November 2011 when his sentence was commuted, the most notorious Death Row inmate. Extraordinary controversy has marked this case from the day of his arrest, throughout the jury selection, trial and sentencing and in the aftermath of media coverage. The belief that Mumia was unfairly accused, railroaded, and convicted of a crime he was not guilty of has consequently sparked a response in the form of a network of global support broadly referred to in this paper as ‘the Free Mumia movement’.

The introductory chapter “Mapping the Terrain” in The Blackwell Companion to

Social Movements edited by Davis A. Snow, Sarah A. Soule, and Hanspeter Kriesi 2 claims that “Social Movements are one of the principle forms through which collectivities give voice to their grievances and concerns about the rights, welfare, and well-being of themselves and others by engaging in various types of collective action, such as protesting in the streets, that dramatize those grievances and concerns and demand that something be done about them.” (p. 3) Although the various definitions of movements may differ in terms of what gets emphasized, most are based on three or more of the following criteria collective or joint action; change-oriented goals or claims; some extra- or non-institutional collective action; some degree of organization; and some degree of temporal continuity. (p. 3) To this list I would add another point of consideration, that movements including the movement to free Mumia Abu-Jamal can be defined as such because the participants, the political actors, have selected and defined it as one because to do so is efficacious and helps establish solidarity and commonality of goals. The Mumia movement is best considered as a social movement because activists find function, relevance and meaning in the classification.

An excavation of the breadth and depth of his support network extends beyond the perimeters of this paper. In two separate years, 1995 and 1999, a two-page full length advertisement in the New York Times was printed bearing hundreds of names of individuals and organizations that pledged support for him. In May of year 2000, a program co-presented by ‘Millions for Mumia’, and the International Action Center, was hosted in Madison Square Garden in New York City drawing a crowd of several thousand. The brochure printed for this event reflects the widespread foundation of support and the varied political factions represented in the interests of freeing Mumia.

His support can be broadly characterized as including branches of organized labor - unions at home and abroad, educators, various peace and justice groups, large and small human rights organizations, political figures and icons, journalists and other media organizations, famous celebrities, intellectuals, writers, artists, musicians along with committed individuals of no particular notoriety.

The primary group associated with Mumia support work is International Concerned

Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal, headed by Pam Africa of Philadelphia.

According to Pam, ICFFMAJ first coalesced as “West Philadelphians in support of

Mumia” in the days following his arrest in 1981. They quickly renamed themselves as

“Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal” to more accurately reflect the demographics of their membership, and renamed again in 1991, adding “International” when Mumia began to receive a large international following. ICFFMAJ is generally recognized as the chief organization of support, described by one activist interviewed for this project as the “nucleus”. They work in cooperation and collaboration with a multiplicity of others, and function as an information warehouse. In Pam’s words, they strive not to dictate or be prescriptive towards other support groups, and they encourage groups and individuals to do what they feel is best in the service of advancing the goal of

Mumia’s freedom. In addition to ICFFMAJ is the MOVE organization (of which many are also part of ICCMAJ) which has continued advocacy for Mumia since his arrest. The

Partisan Defense League, also referred to by their associated formation ‘Spartacist

League’, has been heavily associated with Mumia support work since the late 1980’s and continues as their primary campaign to agitate on his behalf. The Quixote Center in

Baltimore, Maryland started a campaign of information dissemination and outreach on behalf of Mumia in the late 1980’s. While both the Sparticists and the Quixote Center have a larger foundation of interests beyond Mumia, they were, according to Pam, the first groups with financial backing to donate time and energy to the cause. In addition to

The Sparticist League and the Quixote Center, numerous other political formations have built their foundation upon Mumia support work such as Students and Youth against

Racism (SAYAR), and the International Action Center (IAC). Additionally there is the organization Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal (EMAJ), a network of teachers and educators which initiated in 1995 for the purposes of mobilizing other educators into a broader public movement of Mumia support work. New York City built a large coalition in the early 1990’s, and originating from the West Coast, ‘Millions for Mumia’ is another broad national coalition which serves to unite all the smaller groups into a larger formation for the purposes of organizing mass demonstrations and internationally coordinated events. Some groups are longstanding, such as the ‘Free Mumia

Organization of London,’ others more recent and have come into existence in association with other movements such as ‘Occupy for Mumia’. In addition to these large groups, are smaller city initiatives, such as two that are examined in this project, State College’s

‘Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal’, initiated in 1991, and “Portland Committee to

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal” which started in 1998. Finally, there are the actions and activities of hundreds more, too numerous to mention, of individual actions, those unassociated with any formal organization, as well as other politically associated collections of people small and large. All of these activities, collections, associations and individuals make up the Mumia movement. 5

The term political prisoner, one imprisoned as a result of dissenting political beliefs, is one generally ascribed to Abu-Jamal. I would like to advance another term, additionally locating him as an “imprisoned radical intellectual.” Academic Dylan

Rodriguez, author of Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals forwards the concept of imprisoned radical intellectual by drawing a critical distinction between more familiar terms such as “prison intellectual”, “prison writer”, “political prisoner”,

“prisoner of war”, and “radical prisoner.” Ostensibly Mumia could fit into each of the aforementioned categories and is commonly referred to and understood by his many supporters as a political prisoner. Yet Rodriguez asks us to consider that the usage of such terms “….tend to re-inscribe and naturalize the regime of imprisonment, as if it were a natural feature of the social landscape and an irreducible facet of the prisoners identity and historical subjectivity.” Moreover, such terminology privileges the anti-establishment orientation of the captive prior to their tenure in captivity as if the only cause of their imprisonment is solely due to their political agitation. In contrast, the term imprisoned radical intellectual speaks to the broader implications of how issues of race, class, and culture render some individuals more likely to be imprisoned, regardless of, or in addition to, radical politics. Additionally this term furthers a consideration of how insurgent knowledge is created under the conditions of incarceration and how that knowledge is formed, distributed, and received. In the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal it is clear that while his radical politics preceded his arrest, and certainly played a significant and direct role in the subsequent trial and sentencing process, other factors such as race and culture undoubtedly impacted the jury selection process, the trial, and his image in the media.

Viewing Mumia as an imprisoned radical intellectual in addition to his generally 6 recognized status as political prisoner is important because it more thoroughly reflects his contributions as an educator and public intellectual. It speaks to and validates his venerable productivity, commitment, perseverance, professional development, and talent as scholar, writer, researcher, chronicler of the human condition, and broadcast journalist.

Mumia’s critically acclaimed work in the form of books, broadcast essays, anthologized chapters, and celebrated “letters to the movement” have contributed to an array of fields and disciplines including penal studies, American history, political philosophy, Black Studies, Comparative Studies, popular culture, death penalty abolition efforts, religious studies, and law. His methodological approaches are varied, they include the use of personal experience – his own and those of others, historical research, case studies, literary theory, and philosophical method, combined with measured analysis. This polyvocal approach allows him to be an observer, a witness, a documenter, and an agent of change. He has accomplished extraordinary feats of productivity from what he refers to as “deaths abode”, a “bright shining hell” and what he calls, “America’s fastest growing public housing tract”, his prison cell.

Much has been mentioned regarding the evolution and impact of Mumia’s writing, and the development of his contribution to the field of prison literature. However, his writing career well preceded his conviction and can be traced back to his youth, when, at the age of fourteen he helped initiate a locally based chapter of the Black Panther Party.

Within a year he was identified as having a unique talent with words and phrases.

Mentored and taught to write from a perspective of advocacy with a partisan analysis, by age fifteen he had his own byline in the party paper, a weekly, international publication 7 with a readership of 250,000 people. Filmmaker Stephen Vittorio who along with Noelle

Hanrahan produced the 2012 documentary “Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal” makes the point that his voice from the late 1960’s and early

1970’s is not much different than it is today apart from the developed sophistication of his prose, which in the forty years since has matured.

With attention grabbing baritone vocals, broadcast journalism provided the next stage in Mumia’s professional development as well as a new venue to practice advocacy and political agitation. By 1980, after learning the craft as a student at Goddard College, he won the Armstrong Award for exceptional journalistic work, had been named by

Philadelphia magazine as one of the top ‘people to watch,’ elected president of the

Philadelphia chapter of the Black Journalists Association and was working at four different radio stations in Philly, albeit often with little monetary compensation.

Currently he is the published author of seven books and additionally records an average of two broadcast essays per week which are recorded on Prison Radio website. His first six books were handwritten, transcribed not with a pen, but actually with the inside of one as the hard plastic outside of the pen could potentially be fashioned into a dangerous weapon. Rapper, author, and producer, Chuck D was prompted in an interview with

Alternet.com to comment movingly on the callouses he observed on Mumia’s hands as a result of being forced for almost thirty years to write with the inside parts of the pen.

According to his colleague Noelle Hanrahan, since being incarcerated, Mumia has also become conversationally fluent in German, French, and Spanish and has also taught himself to read music. On the occasion of his transfer off of death row to general 8 population in November 2011 he wrote an open letter of support and encouragement to his fellow Death Row “family” which was reproduced on Prison Radio website and sent out as in a pack of informational materials to Prison Radio supporters. In it he espouses his philosophy concerning the importance of continuing to learn. He writes, “Live each day, each hour, as if it is the only time there is. Love fiercely. Learn a new thing. A language. An art. A science. Keep your mind alive. Keep your heart alive. Laugh!”

Apparently those languages were learned in order to keep up with his growing international support network. Incredibly, according to Andy McInerney, an activist who became acquainted with Mumia’s case in 1990 while living in Central Pennsylvania, just

32 miles from Mumia’s residency in Huntington State Prison, at one point his case had gathered more attention and greater support outside the borders of the United States than within.

From those early days in 1990, until now, Mumia’s support network has extended to vast influence in the form of global attention, notoriety and backing. Groups and individuals such as Amnesty International, the European Parliament, the Japanese Diet,

Nelson Mandela, Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu and others have deemed his imprisonment unfair. Organizing has taken place in many places around the globe but especially in

England, Italy, Germany, France, Brazil and Algeria. To understand why his case strikes such a universal cord we can take as one example the celebrated letter from Sub-

Commandante Marcos, spokesperson of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation, a

Mexican rebel movement fighting for the rights of indigenous people in Mexico. Writing on the occasion of Mumia’s birthday “from the mountains of the Mexican Southeast to

9 the prison of Pennsylvania,” Marcos sends birthday greetings “in the name of the men, women, children and elderly of the Zapatista National Liberation Army.” Creating a

“bridge” of support he draws a parallel between the ignoble conditions of Mexico’s indigenous population: the suffered racism, the genocide, the underdevelopment and marginalization and relates it to the conditions of the United States where Black and

Brown people suffer similar mistreatment at the hands of the powerful elite. Furthermore he extends the “letter-bridge” to include other indigenous people on the North American continent, and South America too, highlighting the case of Leonard Peltier, the Dine people of Arizona and the Mapuche in Chile. The story between the Black and Brown people, he says, is the same.

Reflecting on his various channels of support we can surmise that throughout the

United States and around the globe underrepresented people find relevancy and function in the practice of relating facets of Mumia’s case to their own situations. This facility to link his cause so easily with others, along with an enduring belief in the necessity of transforming economic, social and cultural relations are the driving forces which inform his support. Part of his support can be explained in the fact that Mumia, as a locally celebrated talent in Philadelphia already had established contacts and networks of support with media colleagues prior to his arrest in 1981. Secondly, for clues as to why Mumia strikes a cord of global connectivity, we can look to the content of his numerous broadcast essays, which consistently tie together the interrelated problems of racism and economic injustice in the United States in relation to a larger global reality. For example, in year 2011 thirty out of ninety-three recorded essays focus, and provide advocacy on

10 issues surrounding international concerns such as unrest in the Middle East and North

Africa, commentary on civil unrest in Europe, and observation on South American politics. Even his essays which are more domestically themed also convincingly link associations between oppressed groups emphasizing commonalities of experience rather than differences in regard to geographic borders, language, and religion. Another important factor which contributes to international attention and support on his behalf is due to the ways in which the landscape of activism has shifted to include a more global understanding of the interrelation of oppressions. The fact that activisms have been linked through new understandings of interrelated issues, and through new technologies, is a theme explored by different scholars who seek to identify and articulate how activism has reconfigured to accommodate economic restructuring due to globalization.

(Dellaporta 2007), (McDonald 2006), (Shepard and Hayduk 2002) The term “glocalism”, which embodies this ethos, has been defined as the activism that occurs at the intersections between local and global concerns. (Shepard and Hayduk, 2002) For example, the idea that every local concern has a global component is a concept used to explain the coalition building connections between anti-sweatshop labor activists and the domestic labor movement and also to explain the interrelatedness of these to the private prison industry. (Shepard and Hayduke 2002), (McDonald,2006), (Hallinan 2001)

Mumia’s incarceration and the activist efforts he inspires, has evolved in the context of this shifting terrain of global activism and in fact his incarceration is an embodiment of the intersecting nexus of glocalism.

Not only has he garnered wide range support, respect, and appreciation but also has provoked an intense and vitriolic response from those who believe he murdered

Officer Daniel Faulkner. Labeled as a “Cop Killer”, organizations such as the Fraternal

Order of Police have organized boycotts and attempted to levy influence against the media for airing his broadcasts, printing his picture, or otherwise giving attention to his case. They have done likewise to businesses that support him, and have attempted to disrupt the careers of public figures that stand in solidarity. Yet, for all the focus, both positive and negative, apart from small mention, Mumia remains, curiously, an understudied phenomenon in circles of academia. Moreover, there has never been an academic study focusing on the Mumia movement in any capacity much less one that recognizes it as a significant social movement of historical import.

The aim of this project is to contribute scholarship to an understudied subject and an understudied movement for the purpose of establishing the centrality of Mumia Abu-

Jamal as a significant contributor to the continuum of radical Black political thought in the late 20th and early 21st century, and to establish the significance of the Mumia movement as a campaign which functions to address interlocking oppressions caused by economic, social, and cultural imbalances. Establishing Abu-Jamal as a significant contributor to the shaping of Black political theory is important because via his life story and through his political advocacy he articulates a narrative, though specific to the Black

American experience, also has wider universality and global relevancy. With the injection of his voice he forms a bridge of understanding, between something specific, for example: how a particular public policy has been used to target Black youth for the

12 purposes of incarceration, with something broader and more globally applicable, such as, how states use violence and terror as forms of social control. In this way he identifies, articulates and addresses both the local and global inequalities of our particular historical moment. His voice is also significant and worthy of academic analysis because he is incarcerated and has produced work from within the prison system for the past thirty years, an unprecedented accomplishment. Scholar Joy James suggests in Imprisoned

Intellectuals, published in 2003, that prisons function as intellectual and political sites unauthorized by the State and in this regard imprisoned intellectuals write with “unique and controversial insights into idealism, warfare, and social justice.” (p. 4) His voice emanates from “the inside” and he strives to represent the estimated 2.5 million incarcerated prisoners. He uses his personal experience and critical acumen to expose how the interrelated issues of race, class, politics, economy, crime and punishment have created the omniscience of the prison institution in American culture and particularly in the Black American lived experience. His is a voice rarely heard, rarely represented, but increasingly relevant as the escalating population of incarcerated people in the United

States already exceeds numbers seen before in any other time or place in history. (Abu-

Jamal and Hill 2012) Astonishing statistics, such as one in three Black men between the ages of 20 and 28 are under some kind of criminal supervision and that the United States incarceration numbers are higher than those of Cuba, China, Iraq, and Pakistan combined

(Abu-Jamal and Hill, 2012) reveal the centrality of the penal institution in the lives of

African Americans. Regarding the role prisons play in the psyches of Black America,

Mumia puts it this way, “It shapes your consciousness, your dreams and your aspirations.” (p. 78, 2012) 13

Research Design

I began this project with the assumption that the protest movements spawned by the events of December 9th, 1981 are distinctive because they have been sustained for thirty years, have an international base, and because of the role Mumia plays in producing knowledge and direction for the movement. The research focus of this project deviates from a traditional academic project in that it is exploratory in nature and its purpose is to identify, participate in and advance the process of incorporating Mumia Abu-Jamal as a significant political and cultural figurehead of our era. In the service of contributing to this process of icon creating the following chapters venture to establish these claims: that

Mumia’s case is unique in many ways yet also representative of the experiences of the collective, that the rise of the prison industrial complex provides the context, language and rationale for Mumia to emerge as a spokesperson and leader, that Mumia is both informed by a longer trajectory of Black intellectual tradition and an international left movement while also informing and providing cultural production for such movements, and that Mumia is both an individual actor whose individual agency matters and simultaneously he is part of a collective network that is fueled by the inspirations and imaginations of others.

In order to substantiate and further these claims various materials have been employed as data. Court records, trial transcripts, and police reports provide verbatim evidence of

14 misconduct, bias, constitutional infringement and prosecutorial advantage. They also demonstrate the efforts of the defense and the inconsistency of the majority of eyewitnesses. Newspaper stories are also used as they reflect the atmosphere and tenor of the Philadelphia mindset following the shooting of Mumia and Officer Faulkner.

Additionally it is possible to evaluate them for one-sidedness. The studies and research conclusions based on the works of other scholars that explain and corroborate the rise of the prison industry also function as valuable evidence and have been used to provide perspective and background to Mumia’s case. Lastly and significantly is the role that personal experience plays in the process of establishing Mumia Abu-Jamal as an important and worthy figurehead. Personal experience figures prominently in many ways. Mumia’s own personal experience in the form of interviews and his own written work is used to document and verify the significance of his life story. Also used as evidence are the experiences of others including Maureen Faulkner, wife of slain police officer, Mumia’s family members, and the memories and testimonies of the thirteen activists interviewed for this project. The personal experiences of individuals are evaluated for the weight of their experience, the opinions offered, and the assertions which can be extrapolated from the given testimonies. Included within this category are my own personal involvements as an activist and community organizer which inform the direction and shape of the project.

I promote the idea of Abu-Jamal as a central contemporary voice of Black political thought not just because of the theoretical links he is capable of making between issues of oppression due to his life story, and unique location as imprisoned intellectual, but also

15 because his ideological perspective is connected to, and furthered by, a movement conceived on his behalf. Subsequently, part of what I do in this project is to explore the relationship between Mumia and the solidarity of support that functions as the Free

Mumia movement.

Based on an analysis of the conversations, interviews and testimonies of the activists interviewed for this project, I argue that the Free Mumia movement which formed to address the unfairness evident in Mumia’s case, has become in subsequent years, a foundation upon which to affect change in larger spheres on a multiplicity of fronts including issues of police brutality, the death penalty, biases within the justice system, profit motivated incarceration, political persecution, and global economic and racial inequity. This seems paradoxical as the main objective of the Mumia movement has been a declaration for Mumia’s freedom. Yet, because of the particular racial and political aspects of Mumia’s arrest, trial, and imprisonment, which will be explored in the following chapters, his case follows a familiarly recognized pattern of state inflicted terror and political repression. The ethos of the Mumia movement stretch to address all aspects that are symbolized by his captivity including: a commitment to constitutional principles of equality and equal protection under the law, a validation of the historical racial imbalances of the past, a demand to rectify perceived contemporary racial injustices, the recognition that violence - both physical, and in the form of political terrorism, is frequently used by the state as a method of discipline, the revelation of the ways in which law functions as ideology to the benefit of the ruling class, recognition that prisons function as forms of social control, that oppressions are linked, that marginalized

16 people around the world have common interests and the ability to unite, and that people seeking social change have agency, albeit at times constrained.

Studying the motivations, experiences, strategies, and challenges of the participant’s reveals how the ideological tenets of anti-capitalist, and the overlapping concepts of radical Black thought and theory, are advanced by Mumia and, in turn, how they influence the organizing directions of the activists. General knowledge regarding the formation and sustenance of a social movement, as well as the very specific experiences of Mumia activists are generated by the examination of personal experience. Both the general and specific have the potential to contribute to the field of social movement theory and also to be of utilitarian interest to those interested in organizing movements because they engage the broad questions so often taken up by both scholars and activists: why do people join movements? What inspires them and sustains them? How do regional variances prompt different organizational methods? How does participation in one cause spillover to inform other causes? How do organizational formations contribute to building and sustaining a broad based international movement? How do activists cope with fear, pessimism, intimidation from the police and burnout? What tensions and vulnerabilities exist within the movement? How do technological changes prompt new organizing strategies? Reflections supplied by the experiences of Mumia activists have applicable merit to the broader understanding of social justice movements but they also unveil knowledge specific to the Mumia movement. This information can be applied toward the organizing efforts of those interested in furthering the movement and also contribute to a pool of information not easily found in official records. Specifics such as

17 this are revealed: What is the relationship between Mumia and the participants of the movements? How has race impacted organizing experiences? How and why did specific chapters get formed? What kind of experiences do activists have with police intimidation? Why is organizing on Mumia’s behalf meaningful?

By using the tools of academic inquiry, such as historical analysis with special attention to social and cultural history, qualitative interviews, analysis of court and legal documents, and primary source material written by Mumia, the dissertation focuses on the experiences of activists as pivotal and it seeks to incorporate them in the theorizing process by considering worthy their ideas, suppositions, conjectures and hypotheses about the importance and significance of the strategies, ideas, beliefs, and practices that comprise the movement . Historian Robin D.G. Kelley speaks to the necessity of integrating personal experience into the theorizing process in the forward to his book

Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination with this consideration: “Over time, the subjects of my books as well as my own political experience taught me that things are not what they seem and that the desires, hopes, and intentions of the people who fought for change cannot be easily categorized, contained, or explained.” As such, Mumia is also recognized as part of this process, functioning as more than the object of study, he is upheld as scholar with an important ability to theorize, document and make meaning through his life example and through his scholarship. His work engages the forces of history yet he is also profoundly committed to the exigencies of the moment. He acts as advocate for others and as an active agent of his own liberation.

A Historical approach is necessary because it helps lay out a foundational context for interpreting the Mumia movement, proving that it is inextricably bound to the historical circumstances that created it and which continue to contribute to its relevance. Central to a historical method is an emphasis on social and cultural history for the purpose of establishing a continuum of Black resistance to the circumstances of subordination, or as

Mumia calls it, the “Black roots of resistance.” Also it makes evident and celebrates the collectivity of the Black experience even while focusing on and elevating the experience of a single man. Furthermore through historical comparison of other celebrated examples of court injustice due to political dissent, a pattern is revealed that demonstrates the tendency of the judicial system to be deployed as a disciplinary measure that effectively discourages and silences civil dissention. Law is revealed as ideology, as a barometer of social relations, and a reflection of social hierarchy. Historical comparison provides examples of other celebrated cases of court injustice due to political reasons, permits an assessment of the ways in which Mumia’s arrest, trial and sentencing have commonalities to other celebrated cases of injustice, yet also highlights how his case and the subsequent movement on his behalf are unique and different.

In the course of research thirteen different individuals who are related to the Mumia movement, and/or who know Mumia personally, or worked with him professionally were interviewed. The use of oral testimony serves multiple functions and suggests that authority and expertise come from the process of participating in movements, not just studying them. Also it gives variegated dimension to the field of social movement theory and can aid the ability of the theorist to study the emergence, recruitment, internal

19 dynamics and identity building from the perspective of the lived experience. (Davis

2002) While issues of movement emergence, decline and outcomes, concerns which have frequently dominated the focus of emphasis are important, oral testimony also encourages an exploration of what theorist Deborah Gould refers to as the “force or power of emotions.” (Gould, 2004) She contends that the stories of movement participants “can provide us with important insights, illuminating, for example, participants’ subjectivities and motivations, and helping us to build compelling accounts of a movement’s trajectory, strategic choices, internal culture, conflicts, and other movement processes and characteristics.” (p. 157) Employing the personal experiences, beliefs, motivations, challenges, and inspirations of the activists helps to dissolve the gulf between theory, action, and lived experience. Theorist David Croteau in an article published in 2005 entitled Which Side Are You On? The Tension between Movement

Scholarship and Activism identifies the often contradictory tensions between those whose careers are incumbent upon producing a certain type of academic production which is not always accessible or helpful or easily translatable to those actively engaged in social struggle. He generalizes it as “The creative tension between thinking and action, between theory and practice.” I assert that this research project is meant to be a work of advocacy and the experiences and voices of activists are meant to have applicable value serving the twin interests of organizing and theorizing. I am motivated towards this research due to my own involvement in Mumia support work which began in 1991 in State College,

Pennsylvania, and continued throughout various moves to Guatemala City, London,

Portland, Oregon and Columbus, Ohio. My experiences have guided the direction and

20 interpretation of the project as well as informed the conviction that the utilitarian value of social movement theory lies in practical applicability.

Many overlapping branches of knowledge unite to inform this project. I examine the role of social movement theory as context for considering the historical significance of the Mumia movement. I also utilize the methodological contributions of various social and cultural histories as well as Mumia’s own academic production, including his seven published books, and the content of many hundreds of broadcast essays, to develop the idea that social movement theories have the most instructive potential when intimately connected to the life support system, the movement, which supports them. Of additional relevance are books, both overtly academic and also those geared towards broader public consumption, written about some aspect of Abu-Jamal’s case; his involvement in the

Black Panther Party, his role as an imprisoned intellectual, or in which he is featured as an integral part of a larger story such as the race based bias application of the death penalty. Overlapping this category is the emergent literature that coalesces around prison studies which contributes significantly to the examination of Mumia Abu-Jamal and his role as an imprisoned intellectual. It does so by contributing relevant statistics, identifying and articulating the contemporary phenomena of mass incarceration, and by highlighting the race and class bias evident in the criminal justice system.

Beginning in the 1940’s classical social movement theory developed within the discipline of Sociology as a subset within the larger field of collective behavior. It originally functioned to explain movement participation which was commonly considered deviant behavior by the social scientists who studied the phenomena. Societal 21 strain, or ‘Strain theory’ (Cloward 1959) was considered the catalyst for movements, and the existence of civil unrest was generally presumed to be an indicator of an unhealthy society. After an appraisal of the social upheaval of the 1960’s a new generation of scholars, many of whom were participants and witnesses to political organizing in the

60’s, began to reassess the motivation and development of social movements and determined to conclude that rather than represent deviance and psychological imbalance, social movement participants acted out of rationality. Critiquing the idea that social structures within society may encourage individuals to act against the state, theorists began to reconceptualize ‘societal strain’ as ‘collective action’, explaining it in terms of resources, collective interests and solidarity. Additionally, this emerging wing of literature endorsed the belief that movement success depended on attracting resources such as money, people, networks, media and government support. Referred to as

‘Resource mobilization’ this model of social movements, along with variations and permutations permeated the bulk of American social movement theorizing for several decades.

This general body of theory is important to my project because of the types of questions social movement theorists were able to ask and answer – who joins and why, how movements get built, why they decline and how movements in ‘abeyance’ function to inform other cycles of protest. (Taylor 1989) Concepts such as ‘abeyance’, ‘social movement spillover’, (Meyer and Whittaker 1994) ‘cognitive liberation’ (McAdam 1982) and ‘frame alignment’ (Snow 1986) each provide useful perspective and utilitarian applicability to an analysis of the Mumia movement. The concept of “abeyance” allows

22 us to draw a line of continuity tracing the deep roots of Black radical resistance in

America generally and Philadelphia specifically, thereby framing Mumia as a modern incarnation of a longer lineage. Framing him within the trajectory of this radical narrative helps answer questions as to why his life story is significant, why Mumia is a political activist, how he functions as an iconic figurehead, and why a movement on his behalf is historically significant. Social movement spillover refers to the phenomena that organizing networks, tactics, momentum, and support for one social struggle frequently pour out into other interrelated causes as well. This concept provides the language and the rationale to determine the role the Mumia movement plays in impacting other related movements, and also to assess the ways in which the Mumia movement contributes to the development of an international anti-capitalist movement. Frame alignment has instructive appeal in allowing movement tacticians to better control the construction of the movement’s image and to more effectively engage in outreach and recruitment activities.

The point in which history melds with social movement theory is the source where much of the theoretical framework of the dissertation rests. I draw heavily from the examples of radical social and cultural histories and from the methodologies which construct them. James Goodman’s The Stories of Scotsboro, extends the idea of what a historical narrative is and what kind of work it can do by traversing the boundaries of historical narrative, by moving back and forth through time, allowing characters and their various perspectives to guide our understanding of the Scotsboro incident, by purposely juxtaposing those various perspectives and generally troubling easy answers that search

23 for “the truth.” This approach presents multilayered understanding of the era’s racial relations, regional hostilities, class animosities, gender dynamics, how dissent gets fomented amongst various political sects, and the ways in which cultural power wields influence through the construction of media portrayals and even influences court proceedings. Also, it allows the social movement strategist an in depth exploration to various framing techniques, how alliances are strengthened (also how they dissolve), and how all these factors specific to one movement interact with the outside world and other political struggles. The fact that the Scottsboro incident involves a dramatic high-profile court case, miscarriages of justice, blatant racism in court proceedings and in media portrayals, prostitute witnesses, the collusion of public officials, police and lawyers, as well as the fact that it includes the sentence of the death penalty makes it this book in both structure and content useful to this research project on Mumia Abu-Jamal. My project seeks to contribute similarly by advancing Mumia and the movements which surround him as an illustration of historical forces and qualitative experience bound together in the continuity of resistance.

Investigating the less measurable reflections, the qualitative experiences of those who participate in social movements, and the ways in which issues and causes are woven into our generational activist inheritance is work that has been taken up by scholars who endeavor to expand the idea of social movements and movement building as more than the sum of going to meetings and planning protests. (Denning 1998), (Hunter 1997),

(Boyd 2005), (Kelley 1994) Robin Kelley’s supposition in Race Rebels that movements are not forged solely by group membership have widened the spectrum of what can be

24 considered social movement participation and who can be considered actors in powerfully important ways. He suggests that we must excavate history from “way, way, way below” meaning going to the margins and questioning how certain forms of protest fly under the radar of most academic theorizing. Kelley cites the protest behavior of working class southern Blacks who engaged in organized acts of workplace sabotage such as purposely slowing down the work pace, destroying machinery, appropriating company supplies, and coordinating incipient strikes in the early 20th century as examples of protest tactics that are frequently overlooked by historians and by extension social movemet theorists. Tera Hunter in To ‘Joy My Freedom further advances this with the suggestion that forms of cultural production amongst African American Southern laborers, even socializing and recreational activities, do not conform in predictable or traditional ways to organize rank and file membership yet provide networks of association that can capably function as mobilize-able units when the need arises. The famous Washer Women Strikes of 1886 in which the population of Atlanta’s Black laundresses mobilized a heroic and politically astute campaign to protect their autonomy and raise their wages serves as one example. On one hand the “Washing Amazons” represented a class of uneducated, poorly paid, unskilled workers yet they used the advantage of their kinship networks, neighborhood organizational patterns, and church affiliations to disrupt the economy of the city and sorely inconvenience the households which relied dearly on their labor. Michael Denning in The Cultural Front also devotes time and detail to portraying the social, cultural, artistic flavor of the era which informed leftist politics in the 1930’s. He discusses the pageantry and participation in May Day parades as a ‘cultural front’ which owes its germination in part to avant garde culture and 25 the artists and writers which fueled it. Nan Boyd’s Wide Open Town layers oral history, the memories and personal commentaries along with a more traditionally documented social and cultural analysis of “Queer” communities in San Francisco. Denning, Boyd,

Hunter and Kelley illustrate through these various examples that movement building and movement participation are not always overtly political activities, are not always done in measureable ways, and that theorizing about them can occur outside the realm of social science.

The contribution of Mumia’s own academic work is vital to an understanding of his political breadth, and it illuminates his alliances, values, perspectives, and preoccupations. With titles such as Faith of Our Fathers: An Examination of the

Spiritual Life of African and African-American People, Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners

Defending Prisoners v. the U.S.A., and The Classroom and the Cell: Conversations on

Black Life in America, his published books and anthologized chapters focus on a variety of aspects of Black American culture, prison culture, contemporary issues, and political thought. His vast array of broadcasted essays, available on line, via Prison Radio website, likewise focus on issues relevant to Black politics, economy and culture but additionally they address more universal and international themes such as political repression in other countries, the role of United States imperialism around the world, global poverty, and subjects surrounding education. Referencing this expansive and substantive corpus of work positions Mumia as an important contributor to our intellectual era, reveals his political affiliation and allegiances, demonstrates the breadth of his influence, and helps elucidate his relevancy as an international icon.

Of additional import are the texts in which Mumia is the subject of honor. For example the autobiography, On a Move, written by Terry Bisson, with Mumia’s cooperation, portrays his life story as it interacts with the unfolding drama of the Black

American experience. Also, In Defense of Mumia (1996), edited by S.E. Anderson and

Tony Medina, is a book dedicated to celebrating him through art, prose and poetry. In other cases he is featured in a thematic way such as the chapter “Mobilizing for Mumia” in the book Liberation, Imagination, and the Black Panther Party (2001), a retrospective

‘looking back’ at the Black Panthers, books about various aspects of imprisonment such as editor Joy James’ Imprisoned Intellectuals: America’s Political Prisoners (2003), and

Forced Passage: Imprisoned radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison regime (2006) written by Dylan Rodriguez. Included in this category is the collection of music, prose, poetry, spoken word performances, and art, which address a spectrum of topics: the phenomena of Mumia as a historical figure of significance, aspects of the Mumia movement, and legal specificities of the trial and case. Some examples include the futuristic fictional story written by Touré in A Portable Promised Land (2003), songs by hip hop artists such as Dead Prez, Rage against the Machine, Chuck D and Digable

Planets. Recognizing these forms of cultural production as powerful reflections and transmitters of the ideals and goals of the Mumia movement also strengthens the recognition that movements are not solely created and sustained in traditional activist overtly political going-to-meetings-type ways. Lastly, included in this category, I would like to include the consideration of unpublished material such as leaflets, personal letters, flyers, chants and slogans. These informally produced materials are significant for

27 consideration as they reveal activist genealogies, and provide information on group agendas and structures of organizing.

Finally, this project benefits from the body of literature dedicated to identifying and articulating the ways in which the prison system and the justice system have traditionally operated with structural and historical bias against poor people, against political activists, and against African Americans. This category includes books which are firmly understood as history, such as The Peoples History by Howard Zinn, and, There is a

River by Vincent Harding. These are necessary inclusions because they each champion a detailed, impassioned, big-picture view of history written from the perspective that both subjectivity and objectivity have a place in constructions of history. Also, each work provides the reader a long arc of the past making it possible to survey the pattern of bias evident against marginalized people. As well, they offer proof of the consistent efforts waged by slaves, migrant workers, laborers, labor organizers, and common people to redress these incongruities.

Adding to wide-spanning historical overviews is localized and specialized history such as Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in Philadelphia by Matthew

Countryman, Comrades: A Local History of the Black Panther Party , edited by Judson

Jeffries, and other books which focus on political organizing in Philadelphia or some aspect of the Black Panther Party. These specialized histories add contextual details to

Mumia’s life story and show how his political evolution occurred in relation to, and in coordination with organized political agitation.

Also integral is the work produced by scholars such as Marc Mauer, a representative of the Sentencing Project, and Loïc Wacquant who, beginning in the mid 1990’s, began to identify and articulate the related phenomenon of: prison expansion, disproportionate representation of African Americans in the penal system, private prisons as economic profit and big business, how public policies particularly those surrounding the war on drugs were being used for purposes of mass incarceration, and how media images were impacting public perception of urban youth. Loïc Wacquant in “From Slavery to Mass

Incarceration”, an article written for the New Left review in 2002, establishes the existence of four ‘peculiar institutions’: chattel slavery, Jim Crow, the ghetto, and prison regimes. He asserts these formations operate to define, confine, and control African

Americans. Building on these ideas is scholar and activist Angela Y. Davis whose book

Are Prison’s Obsolete? illuminates the racialized and class history of the penal system as well as the economic impetus for imprisoning hordes of people. Identifying the financial motivations of maintaining imprisoned American workers and connecting it to a larger international economic perspective is an important contribution of this work. Michelle

Alexander’s book the New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness furthers the understanding of how mass incarceration operates as a form of social control by revealing how race bias drives every stage of the justice system, how incarceration disenfranchises swaths of poor Blacks, how public opinion of criminals and crime is often at odds with actual crime statistics, and how private prisons and local police precincts profit enormously from incarceration. Added to these scholarly studies is the consideration of individual experience in the face of police intimidation, brutality, arrest and imprisonment. Collected stories, essays, and published personal testimonies are 29 included as indispensable to the task of establishing the prevalence and persistence of police harassment, the effect it plays on the mindset and psyche of the victims, and the way in which it controls the behavior and movement of those preyed upon.

By positioning the story of Mumia’s life, his experiences, political development, his prolific outpouring of work, as well as the movements he represents including his own bid for freedom, as an embodiment of a long spanning historical arc, and by understanding his story as representative of a grander more widely experienced reality, it becomes not just about him, but about the relationship between history, memory, social movements, the interrelation between them and the representation of each. Moreover it provides a model for how to write about social movements and history from a multi- subject perspective: historical actor, social justice advocate, and scholar.

The following four chapters are organized accordingly: Chapter one, “Who Am I and

Whose Am I?” explores the development of Mumia’s advocacy, his “voice”, and professional career in the context of the dramatic world events that shaped his political awakening. I strive to illuminate the complexity of his various subject positions and varied roles as academic, prisoner, subject, studier, observer and analyst. I position

Mumia as a unique voice, one who writes from a representative location and argue that he contributes originally to the bank of Black political philosophy and critical scholarship.

Chapter two entitled “At the Crossroads: Suspect, Defendant and Prisoner” engages the minutia of details associated with the altercation between Officer Daniel Faulkner, Billy

Cook, and Mumia Abu-Jamal on December 9th 1981. Additionally it takes a careful look at the particulars of his arrest, the media aftermath, and the specifics of his trial in relation 30 to the national backdrop of mass incarceration, the phenomena of racist policing, and the ever-growing penal population. The purpose of this chapter is to establish the points of identification, especially the racialized particulars, around which the dramatic polemics of this case coalesce in order to demonstrate the relevance and historicity of his case.

“We Are Doing This, We Can Do This”, the third chapter animates the voices and experiences of twelve individuals interviewed for this project. Employing activist voices as expressions of authority serve the twin interests of furthering academic objectives, in this case social and cultural history, as well as the field of social movement theory, and movement building. No study has ever been undertaken to determine the role and experiences of activists associated with the Free Mumia campaign and doing so enriches our understanding of what inspired and motivated activists, as well as the challenges, tensions and roadblocks they have encountered. The final chapter “The Voice, Live from

Death Row” engages the content and character of Mumia’s cultural production and scholarship. In so doing it reveals the role he plays in producing scholarship for the movement, and suggests the ways the Free Mumia movement, and by extension Mumia interacts with other movements of social import. Additionally it engages activist voices in the service of deliberating the historicity of the landmark case, Commonwealth of

Pennsylvania Vs. Mumia Abu-Jamal, and provides historical examples in which to compare and contrast how the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal is both similar to, and different from other examples of court injustice, racial terrorization, and political persecution. In tandem, the chapters use personal experience, examples of history, and social movement theory in which to establish Mumia Abu-Jamal as a relevant and significant contributor to the radical political ethos of our era, and to demonstrate the role of the Mumia movement 31 in helping to further a global political platform upon which to identify, challenge, and transform the worldwide realities of inequity.

Mumia is an intriguing and multifaceted subject who embodies and transcends the dichotomy between activist and scholar as he is equally adept in demonstrations of linguistic erudition and colloquial fluency. Through the example of his own body of work, he provides a model that at once bridges the perceived dissonance of theory and practice, chronicles the human condition, constructs history, disseminates insurrectionary consciousness and advances insurgent knowledge. His life remains a work in progress, and the final conclusions of this paper will reflect on, identify, and predict the contributions that his legacy will leave to future generations of activists and academics.

Part of what this project endeavors to do is to capture the essence of a movement that exists in our current moment, for the purposes of contributing to the process of constructing impressions for forthcoming generations.

In addition to the contemporary moment and considerations of the future, this project also wishes to interact with pieces of the past, with interlocking stories which must arc across geographical borders, and trespass disciplinary boundaries in order to reflect and bestow significance upon this particular social movement, and to establish

Abu-Jamal as an important and influential thinker. The knowledge about the Mumia movement is provided primarily by the activists who work within it. They are upheld not just as objects for others to study but as important knowledge makers capable of reflection. As such, I believe this project also has the ability to finesse cooperation between scholars and activists, recognizing that they are not always mutually exclusive 32 categories. This project is encouraged and motivated by the exemplary illustration of

Mumia himself who writes and organizes with consistent resolve, galvanizing under the direst and most depressing circumstances and has managed to guide and inspire an international network of people committed not just to his personal freedom but to altering the circumstances of poverty, racial injustice and power differentials that create the

‘Mumia’s’ of our world. Referred to by the grand scholar Angela Davis as one of the most important public intellectuals of our era, the role of intellectual pursuit in the fluctuating struggles of power around the globe is a subject he is passionate and unequivocal about, a consistent ally of what he terms the ‘scholar-activist.’ Regarding the role of academia in relation to social justice movements in a letter I received from him four years ago he states it like this:

The point is – if scholars have places outside of academia in which to act in the world (as opposed to the world of the mind exclusively) they can stay grounded, engaged, and human. As long as you are clear – committed, and not trippin’

– it can’t hurt you. Think of DuBois – who rocked generations with his head work- not at Fisk, Atlanta or Penn – but in the NAACP, at The Crisis, and in the anti-war organizations . . . because head was united with hands. Dig me?

This project strives to unite “head with hands” and will hopefully convey the unlimited potentialities of social movement action. “Let’s see”, Mumia encourages us,

“what ‘the people – united’ can achieve.”

Chapter One: Who Am I and Whose Am I?

When I joined the Black Panther Party, Huey P. Newton was in prison, Angela Y. Davis was imprisoned shortly thereafter, and the New York panther 21 were in prison and facing zillions of years. So being in prison for one’s political beliefs and resistance was as normal as pancakes for breakfast.

---Mumia Abu-Jamal, from The Classroom and the Cell

When considering the historic thirty year saga of the arrest and imprisonment of political prisoner, and former Black Panther, Mumia Abu-Jamal, one salient question that emerges is what makes the case between Jamal and the state of Pennsylvania so unique and so significant? On the surface it is a remarkably unoriginal account. Inner-city

Philadelphia. Black male. Gun violence. Police. Arrest. Imprisonment. Case closed.

Alluding to a racialized history of guilt, crime, law, and punishment Temple University

Journalist professor states it like this “It didn’t matter whether he was Mumia Abu-Jamal or not. You had a white police officer shot dead in the street and a nigger with a gun sitting next to him. The cops were going to nail his ass whoever he was.” (Lindorff, p.89) To some Mumia has come to represent an eloquent, celebrated hero. He is a crusader and heir to an American legacy of Black political resistance, and a symbol of all

34 that is wrong with our system of capital punishment. For others he epitomizes a dangerous societal element, an anachronistic demonstration of a particularly treasonous variety of hate filled, violent, dangerous Black militancy. Despite the unremarkable banality of the circumstances of his arrest, sentencing and imprisonment, the larger story of what happened on December 9th, 1981, on the corner of Locust and 13th in the early morning hours has developed into a scenario far more momentous than the sum of these common details.

Our nation’s recorded history is replete with ordinary examples of discrimination that for one reason or another enlarge to become symbolic representations of greater societal injustice, in which one person, or one movement, or one incident become emblematic of an era. The violent altercation between Daniel Faulkner and Mumia Abu-Jamal, the hospital aftermath, the contradictory stories, the trial, the sentencing and the resulting waves of protest have created one such historical signpost, a raised plateau from which to reflect our understandings of race, court justice, self-defense, the death penalty and a vantage point from which to study the ways in which citizens in planned coordination, and sometimes in less structured ways, push up against the dictates of society. This chapter sets the stage for understanding how and why the story of Mumia Abu-Jamal and the still-in-progress clash for his release from prison joins the legion of history making protest, and why Mumia takes his position on both a national and global scale as a representation of American injustice. By tracing his life story as it unfolds in relation to the political environment of civil rights and Black power we witness the development of his “voice.” Inherent within his political maturation is the concept he continually

35 espouses, that the identifiers and shapers of ‘self’ is defined in relation to the community from which the self springs. A more important question than ‘Who am I?’ is ‘Whose am

I?’ Mumia, and all he stands for can be traced by the “routes and roots” of his labor, by highlighting the “people, events, traditions, and organizations that inform our work and shape our identities.” (Jamal and Hill, 2012) Quoting a West African proverb, he insists

“I am We.”

By studying his early life experiences, the historical and cultural conditions that molded him and the factors contributing to the development of his political beliefs and the ideas which inform his academic production, we explore his “voice” for the purposes of recognizing how it is possible to use his experience, that of one individual, to study the collective, and to study broader social issues. Also, by excavating Mumia’s induction into the Black Panther Party and exploring his subsequent scholarship on the subject, it is possible to perceive what interventions and contributions he makes to the bank of Panther history, and by extension to the general trajectory of Black political thought. Because his scholarship on the subject of the Panthers is distinctive in that he uses a combination of historical record, personal observation, and analysis he advances a model of scholarly innovation. In turn this provides strategies for ‘academic advocacy’ and widens the way we theorize, organize, write, and research, thus bestowing agency and influence to the actors and recorders of history.

Despite Mumia’s insistence that “the only thing extraordinary about him is his complete ordinariness”, there was, “something about Mumia Abu-Jamal’s voice that was due to make him ‘hot’ in 1981.” So goes the opening sentence to the Philadelphia 36

Inquirer article written on December 10th 1981, the day following his historic arrest.

Noted for his “searing and skillful” interviews, “radio reports on the system”, “incisive stories” and his “passion and eloquence” Jamal’s depth of talent, opines the Inquirer, made him a ‘hot product.’ That calm, rich voice, indisputable well of talent and vast analytical intelligence, which has been recognized by the media, celebrated by his admirers, and admitted to by the prosecution who sought to silence him in court, continues to participate, shape, and create a legacy of global minded Black radical anti- capitalist, anti-imperialist sentiment intent on fomenting complete change, a restructuring of economic, social and cultural global relations, in essence, a revolution.

Much has been said about the eminence, affect, and euphonic timbre of Mumia’s spoken voice as regularly heard on Philadelphia’s airwaves when he worked as a broadcast journalist in the 70’s and early 80’s and currently heard via taped prison broadcasts. In a message of support from Havana Cuba, ex-political prisoner and self proclaimed “20th century escaped slave” Assata Shakur writes this claim, “The first time I heard a tape of one of Mumia’s radio broadcasts, it was the first time I fully understood why the United States government was so intent on putting him to death . . . what he said was so clear, so true, that I had to stop everything I was doing and concentrate on the message.” The notion of his “voice” refers to more than just the affective resonance of the aired sound. In this reflection the term “voice” extends to the power and quality of his thought patterns, to the evolution, development, accumulation, dissemination and proliferation of his writing and taped broadcasts. It reflects the way his personal life experiences have been shaped and molded by historical circumstances coalescing to form

37 a fluid vantage point, capable of occupying various subject positions: observer, object, historian, historical actor, scholar, activist, and social movement theorist. It denotes the ideological loyalties which guide the way he writes, speaks, and acts. And it signifies a skillful, inspirational ability to convey sincerity, dedication and humanity and to speak on behalf of a multitude thusly earning the title, “Voice of the voiceless’, for his singular ability to disseminate his viewpoint, in various arenas, discursively and aurally, in ways that are both scholarly and colloquial.

Since incarceration Mumia has penned seven books, forwarded several, contributed chapters to many, and authored and recorded over one thousand radio broadcasts made in cooperation with Prison Radio, most of which can be accessed on their website.

Additionally he has lectured in various university classes via taped audio and live phone conversations, delivered four college commencement speeches, and earned a Bachelor’s degree as well as a Master’s. He demonstrates an enviable pattern of prolific consistency prompting scholar and activist Angela Y. Davis in her forward to his book, Jailhouse

Lawyers, to proclaim him one of the greatest and most important public intellectuals of our time and a ‘transformational thinker.” Mumia’s unique ability to occupy multiple roles as both object and scholar has been one distinct and crucial factor which has not just shaped the movement on his behalf as will become evident in chapter three, but also has helped promote the constellation of issues, experienced by an oppressed multitude, which have been illuminated by his incarceration. However, he sees himself as ordinary, a perspective corroborated by a comment he wrote in an unpublished personal letter where he refers to himself as a ‘nerd who sits in his cell and reads all day”, and in a more recent

38 interview with online blog producers of Life + Times as simply, a “free Black man living in captivity.” Mumia, echoing the claims of one of his childhood heroes, Huey Newton, one of the founders of the Black Panther Party, upholds the belief that he is not exceptional, save for one factor – he happened to come of age in an extraordinary epoch of history that being the germination and growth of the psycho-cultural Black consciousness and Black power movement which molded his viewpoints, influenced his actions, and subsequently altered the course of his life.

Very little has been written on his early life, the only published accounts are found in his authorized autobiography On a Move and his own 2004 published account of the

Black Panther Party, We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party. This small pool of information reinforces the monumental events and influences of his early life, the defining forces which brought him into the Black Panther movement, and it also demonstrates his reluctance to portray himself as exceptional. Rather than promote a heroic saga of individual exceptionalism he emphasizes shared history and shared experiences specifically with other African Americans. This emphasis on collectivity extends to an understanding of shared responsibility for recognizing, contesting and improving the unequal conditions of Africans in America, and ultimately also extends to a shared fate. This latter belief is mirrored in a quote written in 2008 to students at the

Ohio State University who corresponded with him in the context of a class offered in the department of African American and African Studies. In response to a question posed by a student who solicited his advice as how best to further the cause for his freedom. He responded “It’s to pass the word among others, esp. young people, that my freedom isn’t

39 separate from your own. Because if my constitutional rights get stolen, yours get weakened, and can be ignored at will.”

This emphasis of triumphing collectivity over individual exceptionalism reflects a culturally constructed perception of history, experience, and memory, which is one common way for marginalized communities to represent themselves not as separate, scattered, powerless individuals, but as one collective unified voice, a more powerful embodiment in contestation to the terrorizing, disciplining truths of state power. A vivid example of this practice is that of Guatemalan human rights activist Rigoberta Menchú forced to defend her autobiography I, Rigoberta from detractors who claimed she fabricated aspects of her personal story including atrocious acts of violence against indigenous people that she did not personally witness though her oral testimony implies she did. Her response is to interrogate our culturally influenced concepts of history and memory emphasizing that collective story telling is acceptable and admirable when viewed through a different conceptual framework. She explains, “This book was not an autobiography as you understand autobiographies.” And, suggesting that her interpretation of her life story embodies an indigenous conceptual understanding of the relationship between self and group identity she adds, “For common people such as myself [sic], there is no difference between testimony, biography, and autobiography.

We tell what we have lived collectively, not just alone.” Cultural theorist Linda Alcoff, in an article entitled “The Problem of Speaking for others” encourages us to honor the

“multiple, competing ontologies of truth” rather than privileging the modern Western idea of truth as absolute or measurable, or as being free of unmediated interpretation.

She also suggests there are appropriate instances in which it is right and just for one voice to emerge as representative of a silenced multitude. Menchú’s example provides one potent illustration of how it is possible that one individual testimony can focus attention on the plight of a community and that it is possible to speak collectively even within the boundaries of academic frameworks and media constructs which frequently insist on reifying and elevating the trope of the single hero.

Following Alcoff’s suggestion, and Menchú’s example, and in order to further the aims of altering unequal power relations, I position collective memory, history, as well as the recognition of shared responsibility and shared fate as strategies of survival and also as a potent method for marginalized groups to define their aims and interests in relation to the structures of oppression that mediate their realities. Examples of misrepresentation include how movements get interpreted by the press, and how they are apt to be distorted as objects of academic study. Additionally it provides a space of possibility for the observing analyzer to disrupt the trope of the individual hero – the individual, such as

Mumia, might be the focus of study but the individual is merely representative as he or she speaks to a larger historical experience. Mumia’s unique ability to do this is evident in the reflections of the oral histories, in the fact that both Gareth Miles and Roderick

Franklin cite their initial interest in his cause as being because they, as young Black men related to being in a cultural environment that found them “criminally suspicious.” Andy

McInerney in the course of his interview also speaks to the ability of Mumia, as a symbol, to represent something larger than just him.

Mumia at a particular moment became a personification of the issues of racism, the issues of the criminal justice system, the issues of the death penalty, [and] the issues of political repression. Because he combined so many of those things into the lived experience it became a kind of focal point for a kind of organizing that has taken place in all those arenas. It has a particular sort of combined impact because of that and I believe Mumia has always been aware of this and he has used his position in a way to bring more people, more activity, to raise awareness of the society that we live in and the layers of oppression and exploitation. And so when he was called and when he took up the mantle of the

‘voice of the voiceless’ it was really something that he was uniquely capable to do.

One way Mumia has consistently practiced this strategy of collective story telling has been to emphasize his position as one with the people with the constant reminder that his upbringing is not unique and that “his freedoms are not separate from our own.” By positioning himself as a product of and in relation to the community he was raised in he locates himself as an insider’s voice, a representative voice giving say to the experiences of many. As contributing factors to his cultural environment and political development

Mumia emphasizes the southern roots of his family and the broad cultural impact of transplanted Southerners in Philadelphia, what he refers to as the migration ‘up south’, life in the projects of North Philadelphia, and the growing tide of the multifaceted black consciousness movements which captured him on all levels impacting his sense of integrity, intellect and imagination.

Mumia grew up in the “P.J.’s”, otherwise known as the projects, “where the poor kids live.”(Bisson, 2000) But to really understand where he comes from, writes Terry Bisson

“We could go all the way back to Africa as it was being looted and stripped of its treasure” or, “Back to the South, built brick by brick, barn by barn, by those same

42 kidnapped Africans.” The insistence to recognize the contemporary condition by remembering and honoring the grievances of the past is a persistent element of Mumia’s life experience. It is also how he writes and talks about the African-American condition generally, and is also a consistent theme in the majority of his academic work and political analysis whether he is pondering Black political leadership, the prison industrial complex, or, something as far reaching as the developments of political upheaval in

North Africa, or war in Iraq. Everything must first be evaluated by the circumstances of history, the long tangled roots of creation that lead to the contemporary reality.

Five children all together, raised by two Southern born parents, Edith and Bill, Mumia describes his home life in North Philly as one with “lots of laughter.” He characterizes his mother as determined to create a strong foundation of family, one that she as an orphan had never known, and his father as steady, stable, reliable, hard working, “a rock” and an extremely smart, a quiet man with a dry sense of humor. Southern values and

Southern mores permeated family life and the larger cultural life of Philadelphia, as “the tones, the sounds, the smells were Southern for these were displaced people- twice displaced, first from Africa and then from the South” and as, Bisson writes, “It was Yes

Ma’am and No Sir. It was sit down for breakfast, sit down for dinner. It was homework and lights out. It was hugs and carrot cake too, and board games and TV, and Mr. Bill’s

Phillies, and Edith’s Pall Mall’s, and Coca Cola and comic books . . . .It was family.”(Bisson, p.7)

It was love and it was family, but growing up in Philadelphia, ‘up South,’ meant being exposed to a bleak, gritty, reality, the soured dreams of economic success and 43 hoped for escape of inequality that the migration North had promised but not fulfilled.

“One could argue”, write the triumvirate of authors of “Brotherly Love Can Kill You”: the Philadelphia Branch of the Black Panther Party, “that Philadelphia’s Black community was less well-off during the 1960’s and early 1970’s than it was in the late

1800s when W.E.B. DuBois published his landmark study The Philadelphia Negro.”

(Jeffries, p. 217) In addition to the crime, poverty and social isolation highlighted in

DuBois’ classic, 1960s Philly ‘Negroes’ also had to also contend with the perils of random assaults of police brutality, violent gangs and the proliferation of dangerous drugs, three dangerous component absent from the account of the previous century.

Using the Black owned Philadelphia Tribune paper as yardstick, the authors ascertain that during this epoch, the era in which Mumia came of age, themes of “crime, gang violence, police brutality, and dilapidated housing and other eyesores were given more coverage than any other set of issues.” (p. 217)

Family, community, a sense of dislocation and disillusionment, the experiences of being Black in America generally, and Philly in particular are the formative experiences which Abu-Jamal suggests created the cultural atmosphere and set the foundation not just for his own political development, but for the emergence of an organized revolutionary

Black movement to come into existence despite the discouragingly intimidating tactics of the local police and FBI. In addition to positioning his life story and the development of his political consciousness as part of a grander story of Blackness and the Black

American experience, another way Mumia extends the idea of collective history telling is by practicing it in his own academic production, and his own published material. For

44 example the way he contextualizes the emergence and growth of the BPP is quite different from other accounts. Much of the theorizing that circulates around measuring social movements assumes that movements are issue specific, can be quantified in measurable ways and include starting points and definitive declines. Mumia dispels facile quantification when he discusses the origins of the Panthers. Unlike virtually every other

“I was there when it started” narrative of the inception of the Panthers Mumia does not introduce his book with the familiar “this is how Huey and Bobby started it” stories. No anecdotes about Huey and Bobby meeting, nor legendizing about the stack of little red books they bought for cheap and hawked at profit on the University of California’s campus as their first combination of outreach and fundraising effort venture before the circulation of the Party paper. Rather than advancing a hollow echo of this traditional anecdotal narrative, such as can be seen in the dramatized film “Panther” which came out in 1995, and in other personal accounts such as Bobby Seale’s Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton, Elaine Brown’s A Taste of Power: A

Black Woman’s Story, as well as the scholarship of David Hilliard, Abu-Jamal chooses instead to contextualize the twentieth century phenomena of the Panthers with a historical understanding grounded in centuries of deep resistance. While stories, legends, anecdotes, literature, spirituals, oral history, slogans, and academic production all eventually become layers that contribute to the larger story, recognizing this historical grounding means it is impossible to extricate the Black Panther experience from the larger picture of the Black experience. It becomes impossible to point a finger, to claim ownership, and say, “Here, the Black Panther Party started right here.” Rather, it becomes collectively owned and experienced by all. Moreover, the phenomena of the Panther’s 45 are viewed not as anomalous or outside the typical Black experience but as part of that larger course of history, the current which inevitably flows, like a figurative river, connecting past and present of the American Black experience. In essence, there are parallels to how he writes about the Panthers and how he explains his own life and formative experiences, seeing both as part of a larger shared communal experience.

Mumia became utterly enchanted with Black consciousness as an astute observer to the shifting squalls of transformation not just in America but also around the world.

Interviewed in jail in the late 1980’s by the Sparticist League, a subset of the Partisan

Defense League, he says, “As a youth in the 60’s I was impressed by the Black Power movement that was sweeping Black America and the Black world, in Africa and the

Caribbean”. Also, he was a lover of books, a reader of history, and enjoyed going out and about his community talking to all sorts of people. He has frequently been quoted of saying how lucky he was to come of age when he did, as, “We had Malcolm.” One of the first issues that gripped his focus was when; in 1967 as a junior high school student he participated in the city–wide thrust to force the public school system to include black studies as part of their history curriculum as explicated in chapter three by Up South’s author Matthew Countryman. Culminating in a school board rally on November 17th,

1967 Mayor Frank Rizzo gave the command to attack the peaceful crowd with dogs, clubs, and bloody force. An offshoot of this campaign included the successful changing of “Benjamin Franklin High school” to “Malcolm X”. At age thirteen Mumia was considered one of the leaders of this movement. Black and white pictures from these

46 campaigns show Mumia, then still going by his birth name, Wesley Cook, as a young adolescent, sporting an Afro, with his fist raised, posing with classmates.

Those Black Studies classes fought for by a city-wide initiative in 1967 which demanded “a better and Blacker education” started to impact the education Mumia received and granted latitude to some teachers to pivot the focus of their lessons. He was introduced to influential Black thinkers, philosophers, and writers and began to learn history from a different angle and without the rigid compartmentalization of nationalism, a perspective less typically imparted and one which has clearly remained a central feature of his political analysis. Significantly he took a class in Swahili, taught by a visiting

Kenyan teacher, who bestowed a Kenyan name on each student. On that day, Bill and

Edith’s son “Wesley” became, and remains to the world, “Mumia”.

Mumia has on numerous instances said he was quite literally ‘kicked” into the movement, referring to the vicious beating he and three friends received as youthful protestors during presidential hopeful George Wallace’s visit to South Philadelphia. He makes the point in We Want Freedom that the threat of violence and bodily harm are not, of course, just 20th century urban phenomena, rather, the deployment of public and private violence has always been one organizing principle of maintaining and sustaining social domination. He writes that the general history of Africans in America has been fraught with the promise of physical discipline, and that the counter response has continually been one of “deep resistance-----of various attempts at independent Black governance, of self-defense, of armed rebellion, and indeed, of pitched battles for freedom.” (2006, p.8) While he writes specifically of the Black American experience in 47

We Want Freedom, the larger body of his work, specifically his ‘Live from Death Row’ radio broadcasts are more international in scope. They broadly and persistently critique the global system of economic inequality, and reflect the grim universality of the common truths of social domination, state terror and violence.

This insistence of focus on the brutality of violence and the role it plays in the development of revolutionary cognizance is so common it all but signifies the Black urban coming of age experience, and particularly the Black male experience. The anthology Police Brutality, edited by Jill Nelson repeatedly illuminates this theme as writer after writer testifies to the role violence, police intimidation; fear and terrorization play in their crystalized understanding of race, law, and injustice in America. Referred to as a “crisis” some chapters focus on high profile police violence for example the case of torture and sodomization of Haitian immigrant Abner Louima, by police, in 1997. Other chapters emphasize those which resulted in accidental death, from lesser known names to the highest profile cases, notably Guinea-Bissauan visitor Amadou Diallo, shot 42 times in the doorway of his apartment building.

Some writers rely on the strength of personal testimony such as Robin D.G. Kelley’s recounting of being beaten with a nightstick and detained as he was trying to run to catch a bus one autumn night, Oakland, 1981. He asks, “Why did you stop me? What did I do?” the answer: “You ran nigger! Criminals run.” Reinforcing Mumia’s commitment to exposing the global phenomena and universality of violence as a governing force Kelley writes about attempting to follow up with an official complaint but “I might as well have been in Johannesburg in the days of apartheid or, for that matter, any ex-colonial 48 metropole where the color line keeps the world’s darker people under an omnipotent heel.

Whether we are speaking of North Africans in Paris, West Indians in London, indigenous peoples in Sydney Australia, Black people in Birmingham (Alabama or England), or

Palestinians in the West Bank, relations between the police and people of color have been historically rooted in a colonial encounter.” (p. 24)

Katheryn K. Russell, in “What Did I Do to Be So Black and Blue: Police Violence and the Black Community” presents a historical overview of Police relations and Black communities claiming it an “ever-volatile” relationship. She parallels the predatory nature of the first interactions between Blacks and police, drawing continuity from the slave patrols, to the role of White law enforcement in lynching, to contemporary realities in which Black men have the highest probability of being stopped, detained, harassed

“whether they are driving while Black, walking while Black, running while Black, standing while Black, sitting while Black, bicycling while Black, or just being Black.” (p.

143) She asserts that the disproportionate number of Blacks that have been assaulted and murdered by the police has created a racial link, and that this “racialization of police brutality has come at a high price” as typically what are construed as “Black Problems” get easily ignored by the public at large. In this case not only is police brutality relegated to being mainly a “Black problem”, but it is also one for which Black people are seen as squarely to blame. “Given such violence” she writes, “it is little wonder that for many

Blacks police killings tap into long-held fears of unprovoked, random, brutal attacks, inexplicable except for their being of the wrong race in the wrong place, at the wrong time.”( p. 143) Despite the salient representation of Black male bravado,” swagger”, and

“devil may care” attitude propagated by distorted media representations, Russell states,

“Many whites have no inkling of how afraid many Black people are of the police.”

(p.143)

Fear also plays a prominent role in Flores Alexander Forbes’ “Point No. 7: We Want an Immediate End to Police Brutality and the Murder of Black People, Why I joined the

Black Panther Party”, as he recounts a familiar narrative of humiliation, subjugation, and unnecessary physical harassment all which led the author at the age of sixteen to readily join the BPP for the simple reason “I wanted to help my people and myself by ending the police brutality I had experienced. I wanted to stop the police tendency to murder Black people with impunity.”(p.229) Grounded in his own life experience Flores claims,

“Being under siege convinced me that the only way to gain freedom was to fight and fight hard.”(p. 230) The paradox of this youthful choice was that joining the BPP put him most directly in harms way. Scholar, activist and former University professor Ward

Churchill, contributor to the anthology Liberation, Imagination and the Black Panther

Party asserts that members of the Party were savaged by one of the most repressive and violent crackdown experienced by any other political organization in the history of the country. Despite the relentless abuse Flores suffered during his ten year involvement with the BPP which culminated in the event of his best friend getting killed, and he sentenced to jail, he reflects, “The harassment and brutality that I experienced while in the Black Panther Party was intense, consistent, and severe. However my experiences within the organization were extremely broad and fruitful.”(p. 230)

Moving past the fear; fear of brutality, fear of prison, fear of being separated from loved ones and being held at “the tender mercies of the state” was perhaps the unexpected byproduct of the unrestrained beating Mumia received at the hands of plain clothed police officers. Though beaten “unrecognizable”, to such an extent his own mother looked straight at him at the hospital and walked past, he learned “when you dare to rebel, you may be punished, but you can survive. You can even heal.”(Bisson, p.38)

Also he recognized and internalized that societal change required sacrifice, and that

Fredrick Douglass’ words, which he had learned in school, rang positively true: without struggle there is no progress. These understandings “in spite of the bruises, the contusions, and the confusions” gave him an exhilarating feeling of joy and freedom.

(Bisson, p. 38)

When writing about his involvement into the BPP there are three salient points

Mumia always makes: The bravery and relentless devotion of time and effort its members lovingly gave, that for the most part it was a lot of discipline and “work, work, work”, and above all it was a Party fueled by the “Reign of Youth”. In an unpublished lecture, written in 2008 for a class in the African American and African Studies Department at the Ohio State University entitled “The Black Panther Party: The Reign of Youth”

Mumia writes,

In a way that is increasingly difficult to relate (i.e., to present-day youth) the daily life of a panther was unremitting work, work, work. And given the nominal socialist orientation of party membership, this was work given freely by young men and women, who deeply internalized the principle of ‘working for the people’.

Initially he became introduced to the Black Panther Party when a “radical, dangerous, exciting-looking woman” gave him a copy of a paper, the Black Panther Party paper, which in his fourteen year old enthusiasm he read over and over, treating it like a sacred religious document, until the pages tore along the folds. He learned as much as he could about the group which since its inception in Oakland, in 1966 was swiftly becoming national. He says, “I read an article in Ramparts magazine about the BPP and fell in love with them. The more I read about them, the more I wanted to be part of them. I couldn’t believe they existed!” (Jeffries, p. 220) Since there was no local chapter of the growing national organization, he helped initiate one along with a small group of community activists, intellectuals, and militants whom he met hanging around a local book store that sold left wing literature and books by Black authors. They contacted the national headquarters and set up the first organizational gatherings. Though the group initially encountered stops and starts, along with some skirmishes over power dynamics, they elected a Captain, secured a building, and took up the ideological mantle of the California based movement as they sought to carry out the national program of serving the poor and striving to meet the numerous unmet needs of Philadelphia’s Black underrepresented underclass.

The telling of this history, the details, and Mumia’s involvement in the formation of

Philadelphia’s Black Panther Party chapter is important for a number of reasons. His involvement as a teenager aided prosecutor Joseph McGill to portray him as dangerous by insisting that his politics as expressed by his two year involvement in the Party 52 inclined him towards violence. In addition to being used against him in court, association with the Black Panthers has also colored media portrayals of him. Also, tracing the ideological current of the Panthers demonstrates the evolution of Abu-Jamal’s political maturation, it shows the continuity of violence and why issues such as racist policing and police brutality have become themes in the Free Mumia movement. Lastly, these details reinforce what Abu-Jamal believes are important inclusions and are his attempt to construct an understanding and make a historical intervention towards our understanding of the Black radical politics that shaped the latter half of the 20th century.

Huey Newton wrote and established a lengthy ten point program which had to be memorized word for word by any hopeful recruit, outlining the basic tenets of belief. The objectives, “what we want, what we believe”, targeted issues of land, housing, incarceration, poverty, education, access to healthcare, self-determination, equal protection under the law, and of course point number seven, ‘we want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of black people”. In his lecture “Reign of

Youth” Mumia writes about their commitment to community service,

What that meant in concrete terms, was leadership staffing offices, members giving daily service at the breakfast programs (where Panthers fed hundreds of kids every school day in the mornings), members staffing free health clinics, or gathering the resources needed to keep such programs running. For many panthers it meant spending 10+ hours a day selling The Black Panther, the party’s weekly newspaper, which provided funds to both the local and national offices.

It meant often going to trouble spots, to rap with gang members and leaders, or to protect Blacks threatened by racist violence from white neighbors. It also meant, inevitably, conflicts with the State, arrests, beating, and sometimes death.

This was, for most people, a labor of love, provided by people who saw no other alternative.

Mumia endeavors to convey that the Panthers were tough, disciplined, self sacrificing and incredibly committed to changing the economic and social structure of the nation, and the world. “The days were long. The risks substantial. The rewards were few. Yet the freedom was hypnotic. We could think freely, write freely, and act freely in the world. We knew we were working for our people’s freedom and we loved it. It was the one place in the world that seemed right to be.” Many participants were just out of high school, or in his case still studying, and Party work was a full time job. It was going to bed late and waking early. “We thought”, says Mumia, “in the amorphous realm of hope, youth, and boundless optimism, that revolution was virtually a heartbeat away.”

Devotees were expected to adhere to a list of strict rules which banned the use of drugs and alcohol when doing party business. They were expected to read at least two hours a day, admonished to never steal anything from another Black person, “not even a needle or a single piece of thread”, and to always uphold standards of decency and respect toward females. Also, “Mumia” along with others whom had adopted African names, had to revert back to their official birth names because “Panthers were subjected to such constant surveillance that they couldn’t afford the added hassle of dealing with African names or nicknames when calling the precinct house to try to locate their cadre.” (Bisson, p. 56) His official byline, established by age 15, the same year he became the chapter’s

Lieutenant of information read “Wes Mumia Cook.”

As evidenced by a content assessment of archived copies of the Party paper, “The

Black Panther”, the Panthers were global in outlook and deeply influenced by the anti-

54 colonial struggles happening around he world as well as by the leading anti colonial thinkers and philosophers of the day. In his contemporary writing Mumia frequently draws on and references the philosophical and political foundation he absorbed as a young Panther. Their anti capitalist, anti imperialist ideology sought to redress the social ills of racism, poverty, class warfare, and colonialism, sentiments which are embedded in the plethora of art, music, and literature they produced. Emory Douglas, Black Panther artist and Minister of Culture produced iconic images of Black militancy which commonly feature Black people, both men and women in berets, toting guns and dressed in uniforms of militancy. Frequently using the form of collage his work provided a visual abridgement to the anguish of marginalization experienced by Black communities throughout the country, and also gave nod to the international condition of imperialism.

“Afro-american solidarity with oppressed peoples of the world” reads the text on one iconic poster.

The Party paper, sold weekly, produced stories heralding the international struggles of colonized people, promoted the ideology of the Black Panthers, celebrated the achievements of local chapters, chronicled the condition of African Americans, and increasingly as the FBI and United States government conspired to destabilize them, became a memorial site for those imprisoned and killed. Writes Bisson, “The papers were a way to raise money and raise consciousness at the same time” and increasingly for

‘Wes Mumia’, “A way to discover a new passion. Writing.” (pp. 57-58) In retrospect

Mumia says the Panthers taught him how to write. He learned how to write from a position of advocacy, and to write from a revolutionary perspective. Mumia’s advice to

55 the young intern who interviewed him for a class project in 1980, and whom I interview in chapter three, was to always seek the international perspective and to get the information directly from as many sources as possible. To never settle for the mainstream viewpoint were lessons he learned from writing articles for the Party paper and are dictates he continues to practice in prison. He also received the valuable lesson that it is vital to write in a way that makes it accessible to your target audience. In one case he wrote an article and referred to Mayor Rizzo as an “embryonic Al Capone”.

Reggie Schell, Captain of Philadelphia’s chapter took him to task: “Who are you writing for? We gotta talk the language the people understand! The Panthers serve the people!”

(Bisson, p. 58)

Drawing on his insider status as former member Mumia makes these contributions to the bank of Panther scholarship: they sought not to support or supplement civil rights, but to supplant it. They were in favor of, and deeply, thoroughly, fervently believed in changing society from the ground up, revolution, as there was little faith in the ability of

America to honor the constitution. And, though it defies the typical characterization accorded them by scholars that tend to view them through the usual Marxist-Leninist framework, it was, he insists, above all a “Malcolmest Party.” Referring to the primacy and respect members held for the slain hero Mumia asserts:

Though all Panthers owned and were required to study Mao’s Red Book, and the Party claimed to adhere to the principles of Marxism-Leninism, few Panthers actually pored through turgid, laborious translations of key Marxist texts. They were not required reading, although some advanced cadre chose to do so.

But few Panthers had failed to read (or if illiterate, failed to hear) the speeches of Malcolm X. For Huey and Bobby, the admiration and almost quiet reverence for Malcolm is abundantly clear . . .Malcolm was a hardcore Black nationalist, and the early BPP was a hard-core Black nationalist organization. (Abu-Jamal, 2004, p.67)

We Want Freedom models another scholarly contribution impactful in the study of any historical phenomena or contemporary social movement and his book can thus be recognized as a model for academic research in that it blends historical documentation, scholarly analysis and personal experience allowing his voice to emerge as both substantively scholarly and anecdotally colloquial. He offers an insider’s exploration to the formation of Philadelphia’s BPP, how the party was coordinated nationally, the ideological formations supporting it, and what inspired people to join, relations between males and females, relations between other nationalist organizations, community relations, and the prevalent state terror they endured. As an “insider’ he claims a degree of identification and seeks to illuminate the inner workings and mysteries of a community to “outsiders’ and his uniquely crafted narrative style reflects this insider/outsider status.

Mumia uses lengthy segments of italicized prose which indicate a break from the historical socio-political contextualization and instead reflect the musings of his personal experience. At times he reconstructs conversations between comrades, capturing the tenor and lingo of their discourse, revealing both warmth and tensions. He animates their humanity. His frequent use of colloquial dialogue indicates his insider status and he returns to Standard English, or what one interviewed subject, Noelle Hanrahan, referred to as the “Kings English”, and another interviewee, Jeff Martin called, “educated and ivory tower”, for more formal analysis. 57

The best example of this interplay between scholarship and personal intervention is perhaps his chapter entitled ‘A Woman’s Party’ in which he reflects on and refutes some of the contemporary charges of misogyny and machismo that are alleged to have been prevalent in the BPP. To be sure, the second class status of women nationally was reflected in attitudes and social relations of the group, yet Mumia, based on his own personal experience, on the testimonies of other’s experience, and historical research asserts,

While it may be proper to be sharply critical of the Black Liberation movement generally, it is also proper to give credit where it is due. For the undeniable truth is that the Black Panther Party, for ideological reasons and for reasons of sheer survival, gave the women of the BPP far more opportunities to lead and to influence the organization than any of its contemporaries, in white or Black radical formations. (p. 161)

Citing the leadership of Afeni Shakur and Elaine Brown as the most prominent examples, he also names titles and roles of other prominent females as he extensively quotes various historical sources, position pieces from the era, as well as numerous individual testimonies. He claims, “In the ranks and offices of the Black Panther Party, women were far more than mere appendages of male ego and power, they were valued and respected comrades who demonstrated daily the truth of the adage, ‘a revolutionary has no gender.’” (p. 184) Abu-Jamal also cites a position piece from 1970 that called not just for the Party’s support of Women’s liberation, but of gay liberation as well. He writes, “To be a Panther meant something extraordinary in 1970, and one felt immensely honored to know, work with, and love these tough committed women.” (p. 184) He continues with this,

This writer knows of no other instances of radical groups of the period, especially those projected as having a predominantly male membership, that had women in the leadership to the extent the Black Panther Party did. During its time, the BPP had women in leadership positions in the internal organization and the regional offices, and even as a leader of the total organization. (p. 162)

In an italicized section, reserved for personal recollections, entitled ‘Memories’

Mumia fondly recounts one female comrade in particular:

In the Bronx, Sister Bernice ran the office of the East Coast Ministry of Information with all the tenderness of a drill sergeant. She could be mercurial. At one moment she could be whispering encouragement to you as you worked on a project, but in the next, she would bark out, “drop down and give me twenty!” and stand there, her dark bespectacled face an impressive mask of obsidian, as she counted out the pushups: 1, 2,…17, 17 ½ - give me a real pushup, nigga-

18, 19, 20.” The office was a beehive of Panther productivity, and she, Sister Bernice, was the undisputed queen. (p.

181)

His ability to present the Panthers in such a multidimensional way augments the existing corpus of literature on the subject by adding humor in certain cases, revealing intricacies of interpersonal dynamics, and by encouraging a more variegated historical representation, one that doesn’t rely totally on the sensationalized spectacle of shoot outs and confrontations. Instead, Mumia’s account emphasizes the everyday people he worked with, the routine of work, and the human struggles of negotiating the intimidation and fear associated with high risk political activities. Also, when considering the Panthers as a social movement Mumia’s scholarship on the subject, both in his book We Want

Freedom, and in his multiple re-visitations of them in his broadcasted essays, he carves another path towards recognition of the ideological foundations of the Party as being rooted in the Black political thought of individuals like Franz Fanon, Patrice Lumumba, and Malcolm X, rather than the commonly interpreted Marxist Leninist framework. He

59 demonstrates this through his own observations and experiences which show that personal experience and personal account play a significant role in how we can study, write, talk about, perceive, and understand social movements.

Mumia learned to write as a young Black Panther but it was several years later as a college student at Goddard, a small, experimental college in Vermont that the next important evolution towards the development of his voice occurred when he discovered talk radio. By now, the Panthers had mostly disbanded, torn asunder by the hostile external forces of COINTELPRO, and also Mumia claims, by the damaging effects of internal personality conflicts. Broadcast journalism became a new passion as it combined the strength of his writing with the sparkling show biz drama of presentation. Moreover it gave him the opportunity to connect directly with an audience and allowed him to show off those resonant baritone pipes. The time he spent at Goddard in the 1970’s did not equal to a graduation, but he left with new focus and new determination and by 1974 he was doing commentary at four different Philadelphia radio stations. Writes Bisson,

The skills that Mumia had learned in the panthers and perfected at Goddard – the special voice, the seamless first draft, the probing questions, the who, the Why and Why Not – these skills, which had gotten him published in The Black

Panther at fifteen, were now, at twenty-something, propelling him into the top ranks of radio journalism.

If the Black Panthers instilled commitment, discipline, and dedication while providing an international minded ‘Malcolmest’ ideological perspective, qualities which continue to permeate his work, Mumia’s involvement with the MOVE organization provided fodder

60 for the next stage of his professional development. Mumia likes to say that his first engagements with MOVE were purely professional as their frequent skirmishes with police made them newsworthy, but that little by little he got seduced by the loveliness of the people.

Founded by charismatic leader John Africa, the MOVE organization takes its name from the idea that “movement is the principle of life” and MOVE’s salient belief is simply “Life’. Reflecting this as their guiding principle, they are not as politically scripted as the Marxist/Malcolmest/materialist minded Panthers, but no less committed to their platform of self-professed revolutionary goals. Dedicated to communal living all adherents share a family surname “Africa”, the geographic location where life originates.

MOVE believes all life is equally precious; they make little distinction between hierarchies of species and emphasize the interconnectedness of all life forms. They drew the ire of some community members and law officials by routinely caring for and feeding stray dogs, which according to some of their neighbors contributed to ubiquitous piles of dog feces. Their first act of public protest involved picketing the Philadelphia Zoo in

1973 as they took umbrage to animals being imprisoned. As such they are vegetarians, composters, and gardeners, committed to natural eating habits, proponents of natural lifestyles, and natural hairstyles. MOVE members live communally but support heteronormative family units embracing the concept of man, woman, and children. They do not believe in physical discipline, or in sending their children to public school preferring to homeschool. They are recognizable as they uniformly sport the hairstyle of dreadlocks eschewing “the system’s chemicals, cosmetics, and disposable conveniences”.

They adhere to the concept of ‘Natural Law’, which is self explanatory and self enforcing, as opposed to ‘Man-made’ laws which they point out do not apply equally to everyone, are constantly being amended and need armies, police, and courts to enforce them. They endorse self defense calling it a ‘God-given’ right and they vociferously criticize ‘the system’ which they define as “The government, the military, industry, and big business” because, “they have historically abused raped and bartered life for the sake of money. They have made material wealth a priority over life. Marvels of science and technological so-called advancements all stem from the systems greed for money and disrespect for life.” (On a Move)

Though it was never posed as a formal query, several of the activists I interviewed, such as Karry Koon-Carr, Andy McInerney, Gareth Miles, and Walidah Imarisha, positively reflected on their impressions of MOVE, generally citing them as the force which holds the movement together. Gareth talks about the first time he encountered

MOVE in London in 1995 shortly after Mumia’s first death sentence was halted. Mumia had received such an outpouring of support throughout Europe that MOVE members traveled abroad to better connect with the international swelling of support.

I remember feeling absolutely euphoric when the death sentence was stayed at the last minute – so much for the naysayers! The power of the people could indeed significantly sway public opinion and result in victories. It was shortly after that that I first met MOVE members – Ramona, Carlos, and Sue Africa who were in the U.K. doing a speaking tour. I remember being so impressed by the demeanor and vibes of the MOVE members even if I may not have been in one hundred percent agreement with all of their ideology. These were people who had been through so much hideous oppression and lost so many family members under such brutal circumstances, yet they did not seem at 62 all like bitter obsessed-with-revenge people like I could imagine myself being under those circumstances. Yes, they were angry but in a controlled way, and they were so calm, friendly, and down to earth that I was immediately put at ease with them.

Pam Africa conveys “Our coordinator [John Africa] so loved Mumia.” MOVE’s deep respect for Mumia began when in the line of duty Mumia began to cover their numerous and increasingly violent battles with police. Pam explains that most reporters covered the story for a day or so, and then forgot about them as the story got buried under other city events. But Mumia was consistent and thorough, he would follow them to court, to jail, and even to their hospital beds, willing to cover their side of the story, to quote them directly rather than rely on the official police testimony. The police were frequently and notoriously brutal and as tensions intensified Mumia felt compelled to document the atrocities, an advocacy which cost him several broadcasting gigs as his reports were deemed non-objective and ‘too radical’ even for some of the black stations. As Mumia’s professional career became more and more linked to MOVE advocacy he also gained the attention of the police and Mayor Rizzo who openly threatened him on one occasion.

(Bisson)

Mumia is not a member of MOVE, but he is affiliated with them and International

Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal remains the nucleus of the Free

Mumia movement. In a 2004 interview with ‘Democracy Now’ he classifies himself as a supporter saying, “I support them because they are very inspiring people, deeply committed people.” He is an admirer too and like all MOVE adherents he ends all

63 personal correspondences with ‘LLJA’ and the catchphrase ‘Ona move’, signifying movement and forward progression over stagnation. To explain the significance of LLJA which stands for ‘Long Live John Africa’ he says “It’s an homage to John Africa who was a strong, dedicated, committed, deeply spiritual revolutionary. We think of him. We never want to forget him.” He was also profoundly influenced by the example John

Africa set in his own legal battle in 1978, which Mumia covered by going to the court house each day, in which he successfully defended himself against the weapons charges brought against him. Following this inspiring example Mumia was prompted, in the course of his own trial, to fire his attorney Anthony Jackson and attempt to self-represent.

Also he frequently references John Africa, quoting him, or crediting him for forward thinking ideas that maintain contemporary relevancy. Mumia references MOVE frequently in his writing, he uses them as examples of principled militancy, and extends their basic belief system by continuing to advocate for life sustaining policies and living conditions. In the aforementioned interview Mumia tells the story of Ramona Africa who, in 1981, along with eight other MOVE members were charged with the death of a police officer who died in the crossfire of a shootout. Offered clemency if she revoked her MOVE membership and promised to never affiliate with MOVE again and to renounce their principles, she, though innocent, refused, choosing instead to serve the jail sentence in solidarity with the other eight ‘family’ members. Mumia continues to advocate for MOVE, whether they are engaged in a battle with the police, or for example, in 1995 with children’s services and city officials who were trying to remove their children from the compound. In his broadcasted essays he highlights their altercations with police, writes about imprisoned members, and continually refers to the 1985 64 bombing of their compound as an example of state terrorism. In turn they continue to uphold what Pam Africa explained as their duty to “keep his voice out there” and remain his steadfast collaborators and advocates.

Attending to the details of Abu-Jamal’s life story and the development of his political maturation establishes his voice as one distinctively suited to observe, record, identify, and analyze because he has at various turns been a subject, participant, and scholar. From the southern influenced roots of his “up south” childhood, to his current status as imprisoned commentator, essayist, and author, it is the common experience, the ‘I am we’ that he champions and finds significant. He positions his own political awakening as part of a larger current and maintains that the 20th century activism that he engaged in was part of a longer trajectory of continual resistance. Also, he insists on highlighting the role of violence in shaping insurgent consciousness. Whether it be his own beating as a youth while protesting presidential hopeful George Wallace’s’ appearance in South

Philadelphia, or MOVE members in a standoff with police, a theme he frequently returns to is the persistence of violence as a tool of intimidation and the role it plays in political awakening.

Exploring the biographical details of Mumia’s involvement with the Black Panther

Party, his experiences learning the radio business at Goddard and in Philly, and his association with MOVE makes evident the constancy and the consistency of his advocacy. Examining his experiences indicate why themes of police brutality, and racist policing remain central to his advocacy, and, in turn why they are imperative themes to the Free Mumia movement. 65

Also, Mumia’s scholarship on the Black Panther Party in both his written work, and his numerous broadcasts, affectingly blends a combination of personal experience, historical record and measured analysis which contributes a methodological innovation and a viable model of scholarship for others to emulate. This approach allows him to present the Panthers as disciplined, idealistic, young people who provided important community services but who ultimately allowed petty grievances, egocentric concerns and ideological disruptions to weaken them. Through recreating dialogue he reveals the ways in which race and gender influenced personal relations within the Party, and he also captures the lingo, cadence, and syntax of the era. Accordingly, his scholarship on the subject crosses disciplinary boundaries and can be useful to studies of history, social history, social movements and penal studies. His work extends what is already acknowledged about the Panthers, molds our perception of that particular era, and demonstrates the predictable dialectic of violence, repression and resistance, subjects that continue to shape the terrain of critical black philosophy.

Lastly, mapping Mumia’s life history in relation to the development of his political awakening, and in relation to the unfolding narrative of history illuminates why his case is considered emblematic and representational of a larger Black experience. Mumia asks:

Who am I? Whose am I? He answers: I am a member of a collective, a clan, a community. Our histories, our rights, and our fates are intertwined. Always the reminder, I am we.

Chapter 2: At the Crossroads: Suspect, Defendant, and Prisoner

That Justice is a blind goddess

Is a thing to which we black are wise.

Her bandage hides two festering sores

That once perhaps were eyes.

-----“Justice” by Langston Hughes

December 9th, 1981, a frigid Philly winter morning, downtown at the crossroads of

Locust and 13th. A police officer shot, a Black man arrested, and a social justice movement slowly builds. What happened? This simple question seemingly merits an easy response. According to Maureen Faulkner, wife of 26 year old slain police officer Danny

Faulkner the answer is as simple as it gets. She assures us that “I could write several volumes on the facts of Danny’s murder.” (Faulkner, p.22) For her, the story is an

67 uncomplicated one built on basic indisputable facts: “A cop is murdered by a man he never knew while patrolling the streets in the ordinary course of his duties. Period. End of story. An unfortunate yet simple tale. Or it should have been.” (Faulkner, p. 26) Yet telling the story has never been quite that simple as stories collide and eyewitnesses changed testimony only to recant again. To answer the question of “what happened” a multitude of police, lawyers on both sides, eye witnesses, media accounts, family members, successive waves of troubled activists, and Mumia himself each focus on different facts, selective truths, varied supporting evidence, contrasting stories, and contextualizing details in regards to the details of that desolate frigid morning, December

9th.

Moreover, what transpired on the morning of the incident is but a tier of the tale as the unfolding organized effort for Mumia’s release from jail has grown slowly towards international relevance, and is, as the late Ossie Davis encouraged us nearly twenty years ago to recognize it as the defining challenge of our generation. Perhaps more than the event itself is the messy aftermath – the sentence to death and the symbolic relevance the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal holds for the state of race, culture, crime, punishment and revolutionary anti-capitalist politics in the late 20th and early 21st century. This chapter presents the details of Mumia’s arrest, and the media aftermath, by identifying and examining the controversial points of the trial in relation to the unfolding backdrop of mass incarceration, discriminatory public policies, and race based policing. The importance for establishing these particulars in the context of mass incarceration is multilayered. Excavating the particulars of the incident which led to his incarceration

68 underscores the racialized aspects of his arrest, trial and sentencing as well as the political bias against him. These racialized, and politicized specifics, which include how this case has played out in the media and in the courts, provide points of identification and incentive for the activists who took up his case, a fact which is revealed in the following chapter. The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal vs. the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has risen to notoriety in concert with a dramatic national rise in the prison industry and for the supporters who have engaged in his freedom struggle it has provided apt illustration and evidence of all that is wrong with the criminal justice system. Furthermore much of the Free Mumia Movement has been fought in the legal realm, is predicated on the belief of his innocence, the conviction that he received poor legal representation, the belief that the prosecution, encouraged by Judge Sabo, engaged in misconduct, as well as that he was unfairly penalized for his militant political beliefs. Identifying these points of controversy, in light of the national backdrop of mass incarceration helps explain why his case has received so much attention and support. Finally, as will be further explored in chapter four, the relevance of dissecting the minutia of this case provides a foundation for evaluating how Mumia’s case is similar to other notorious imprisoned radicals, as well as how it differs.

The story is as much about the “facts” of the incident, as it is about the details of his legal case, and, as becomes apparent, the experience of the activists involved in the freedom movement. Additionally, it is the perspectives of those involved that aid in the process of constructing the meaning. Perspectives which include Police, eye witnesses, various family members, activists, media, lawyers, the opinion of the public, the

69 experience of activists, frameworks of academic theory, and pointedly, Mumia himself.

Innovative historian James Goodman perhaps says it best in the preface to Stories of

Scottsboro, an account which focuses on the infamous Scottsboro trial of 1931 in which a jury convicted nine innocent Black men on charges of rape. When he attempts to answer the loaded question of “What happened?” he determines that the query is not easily answered with a reconstruction of factual definitiveness; rather he suggests that real meaning is constructed in relation to and in association with the stories of many.

Therefore ‘what happened’ is told within the framework of various outlooks and a multitude of sources. Hence, veracity depends on the consideration between these numerous accounts - some corroborating, others conflicting. Both truth and significance are understood within the experiences, vantage points and perspective of both participants and bystanders. As explanation he writes this:

“I answer the question “What Happened” with a story about the conflict between people with different ideas about what happened and different ideas about the causes and meaning of what happened – a story about the conflict between people with different stories of Scottsboro.” (xii)

Using a chorus of sources such as personal letters, newspaper articles, editorials, court records, trial transcripts, diaries, oral histories, autobiographies and numerous works of history he attempts to construct an understanding of the conflict as explained in the following quote:

I have tried to convey my sense of the conflict over these facts and their meaning. But I have tried hardest of all to convince readers that we cannot fully understand that conflict or any other, without trying to understand it from many different points of view, without trying to understand – even as we evaluate and cast judgment upon competing points of view, and by those judgments live our lives – how and why other people make sense of their experiences the ways that they do. (xiii)

Goodman’s quote implies that it is not enough to simply challenge the idea of unmediated, objective facts in these multiple interpretations but more importantly, the significance of what the “facts” mean. Therefore, the bulk of Scottsboro Stories does not focus on the gritty details of the alleged train car assault of Victoria Price and Ruby

Bates, rather the central stories of the book help the reader understand why people believed what they believed about the assault, how the cultural atmosphere of Alabama and by extension the United States in the early 1930’s shaped understanding of the incident, the role of media in selling stories, the intricacies of how race, class, and gender determine culpability and innocence, and insight into the efficacy of law and order.

Accepting the value and efficacy of Goodman’s approach, let’s fast forward fifty years to 1981. The setting is large, urban, and northern as opposed to the small, rural, southern atmosphere of Jackson County. Only one defendant Wesley Cooke, who is more famously recognized by his self-appointed nomenclature - Mumia Abu-Jamal, is the sole accused defendant rather than a shocking nine. The Scottsboro “boys” were laborers - unskilled and lacking formal education. They never had access to a platform on which to animate their cause and instead relied solely on a network of support from across the nation. By contrast Mumia is vastly eloquent, a media worker by trade with a tight 71 network of comrades and a background of political activism he was already accustomed to championing stories of injustice. Moreover, throughout his incarceration he has published books, gained worldwide recognition and fame and has helped to create new venues such as Prison Radio, accessible on the World Wide Web, to maintain his political agitation, professional development and career as a broadcast journalist. He has benefit from, as well as contributed to international crusades on his behalf. Yet despite the dissonance of time, place, and social location numerous similarities abound between the case of the State of Pennsylvania against Mumia Abu-Jamal and the accusations lodged against the Scottsboro nine. Social class, race, court injustice, the death sentence, lying witnesses, shifting testimonies, entrenched loyalties and roiling public uproar all veiled with the bitter taint of injustice make these two cases though separated by half a century companionable comparisons.

A straightforward one dimensional answer to the details of the violent incident which occurred at the crossroads of Locust and 13th is just as difficult in the case of Mumia

Abu-Jamal as James Goodman found the Scottsboro case to be. Following his example I suggest that the majority of the meaning is constructed through examining the conflicting and converging sources, opinions, accounts, selective truths, contextualizing details, and activist projects which have been birthed as a result.

Perhaps it’s the benefit of hindsight, where perspectives configure to accommodate a more fantastic recollection, but family members from both sides, that of slain officer

Faulkner, and members of Mumia’s family, swear they felt premonitory warnings, a foreboding of what was to come in the weeks leading up to the violent incident on 72

December 9th. For Maureen Faulkner it was her mother who had a distinctly unsettling dream, the week before the shooting, which left her deeply concerned and anxious certain that one of her own four sons’ was in grave danger. Her dream vision entailed “one of her boys” on the pavement bleeding. “Maureen”, she said, “I don’t like this feeling of doom - I’m sure something is going to happen to one of the boys.” (Murdered by Mumia, p.3)

Mumia’s first wife Fran, and mother of his two oldest children, also talks about the week leading up to his arrest, Mumia’s last visit with his children and specifically his reluctance to put them to bed. He showered them with affection. ‘Just one last hug’ he kept saying. And this: “I miss my kids . . . But I want you to know and to let them know that I’ll always love them.” (p. 175) Fran questioned “Why you talking like that?” “Just want to let you know . . .” (On a Move, p.175) Additionally, Mumia’s girlfriend Wadiya, whom he lived with, had a ‘funny feeling’ watching him leave for work the night he was arrested. Terry Bisson describes it like this, “She had a funny feeling. Not exactly a premonition, but a funny feeling. She went outside to catch him for one last word. But he was already gone.” (On a Move, p.177)

In the months leading up to the night of the altercation Mumia, a celebrated local broadcast journalist, and the regional president of the Association of Black Journalists had been earning a little extra money driving a cab, not something he was ashamed of exactly, but something he didn’t want widely advertised. After all, he joked, he wanted to continue to be known as the “Voice of the Voiceless”, a nomenclature bestowed on him for his championing of the marginalized, not “Wheels for the Wheel-less.” Even 73 though he was landing high profile interviews with the likes of Alex Haley and Bob

Marley, money was tight and he had two families to support. Plus his proclivity for advocacy, crusader style reporting, his untraditional casual dressing style, and his nagging habit of endorsing the activities of the maligned MOVE organization had left him decidedly outside the mainstream world of reporting. When his full time public radio job was pulled out from under him, he was left with mostly low paid or volunteer work with the more outwardly political radio stations. And cab driving.

Center City which encompasses the infamous crossroads of Locust and 13th street, also recognized as downtown Philadelphia, is considered the third most populous downtown in the country, following New York and Chicago. Bustling and populous, the influx of commuters, residents and tourists make it a necessary and lucrative hub for Taxi drivers. It’s also a heavily patrolled area, with three different police districts represented in the urban radius. The history of police misconduct and brutality in Philadelphia is a long, contentious and widely exposed one, dating back to scholar W.E.B. DuBois’ seminal sociological work, The Philadelphia Negro, published in 1899. Mumia, in his published works frequently recalls the persistent and pernicious presence of police force, and police corruption which was a fact of life for Philadelphia residents generally, and

Black residents specifically.

Philadelphia had a notoriously bad reputation in 1899, and also when Mumia came of age in the 1960’s. Yet, arguably, in relation to the criminal justice system and African

Americans it is even worse now. (Abu- Jamal, Hill 2012) While national statistics reflect disquieting statistics, that 1 in 3 African American males between the ages of 20 and 28 74 are under some kind of criminal supervision, for Philadelphia the number edges closer to

1 in 2. (Abu-Jamal, Hill 2012) Author, scholar and activist Lamont Hill says this about growing up in the wake of mass incarceration: “I was born in Philadelphia during the last stages of the Frank Rizzo era. I still hear the stories of how brutal many of those officers were. Hell, the police ran into our house before I was born and beat my father unconscious after he had called them for help!” Hill cites the rise in “criminality” as one factor which caused jails to swell in Pennsylvania. Criminality refers to the practice of criminalizing that which was previously classified as something else such as addiction

(previously considered a disease), mental illness, and poverty. Panhandling, homelessness, public urination, and public drunkenness for example became criminal offences. These, combined with public policies, especially drug laws, designed to target poor communities, have contributed to Philadelphia’s swelling jail cells. Significantly as has been pointed out by others (Alexander 2010), (Mauer and Huling 1995), (Marable

Steinberg Middlemass 2007), (Papachristou and Williams 2011), rates of incarceration skyrocket but crime has not actually increased. In fact in many instances crime rates actually went down while disproportionate numbers of people were going to jail.

(Alexander 2010), (Mauer and Huling 1995) Commenting on the mental effect the omnipotence of the penal system has had on his perception Hill says this, “I grew up during the incarceration era. So many of my friends, family and oldheads went to prison.

When I wouldn’t see someone for awhile, I just assumed they were locked up. It became a regular part of my life. I knew I didn’t want to go to prison, but I never thought it was completely avoidable.”

In telling the story of his arrest and imprisonment Mumia uses as context his numerous experiences with police harassment since his days as a teenager working with the Black Panther Party which continued throughout his involvement with the MOVE organization and rising profile as an activist reporter. Death threats, an FBI file, being followed, beat up, a two week stay at a juvenile detention center in San Francisco for no apparent crime, and verbal insults are tribulations he writes about in Live from Death

Row, published in1995 and We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party, 2004.

“How many people” he asks wryly, “can say they’ve had an FBI file since the age of fourteen?” Mumia captures the continuity of police harassment in experimental autobiographical style in the final chapter of his first published book, Live from Death

Row. Entitled “Philly daze: an impressionistic memoir” he talks about his idealistic earnest youth, the hostile racial climate of the nation and how he began getting involved in social change and confrontational activism. He opens with this, “If Wallace would dare to run for president in Philadelphia, we, four black North Philly teens would dare to protest . . . We must have been insane.” (p. 171) The day ended, as referenced in chapter one, with Mumia beaten and held by two cops while a third kicked him in the face. He writes, “I have been thankful to that faceless cop ever since, for he kicked me straight into the Black Panther Party.” (p. 173)

Notoriously and to the dismay of some, Mumia has chosen over the years to say little about the events of December 9th though he has always vociferously endorsed his innocence. In an interview conducted in 1995 for the making of documentary Case for

Reasonable Doubt he offers this: “I am”, he says “absolutely innocent of all charges held

76 against me.” Prior to the submitting of an affidavit on May 4th, 2001 his decision to remain quiet on the happenings was strategic as he refused to give testimony without the sanctity of a jury of peers. Yet in a legal maneuver designed by his team of lawyers both he and his brother, William (Billy) Cook each submitted written testimony detailing their perspective of the shooting incident and aftermath. In the form of thirty-four succinct points he claims his innocence, emphasizes trial irregularities, and puts forth his perspective of what happened on December 9th.

A complete transcript of Mumia’s sworn testimony and affidavit concisely tells the story in just two typed pages. His trajectory of the order of events is that in the course of performing his cab driving duties he witnessed his brother staggering and disoriented in the street after hearing gunshots and screams. He left his cab, ran across the street to the aid of his brother and was shot by a uniformed police officer.

One of the most incredible details of the story is the involvement of Mumia’s own brother, his twin brother in fact, at the scene of the crime. Billy Cook, often described as

“down on his luck”, was a street vendor in Centre City Philadelphia, who operated a business selling primarily newspapers with partner and childhood friend Kenneth

Freeman. It was the altercation between Cook and Officer Faulkner that drew Mumia’s attention to the corner of Locust and 13th street. The story starts with Cook and the explanation that Officer Faulkner had pulled his car, a white Volkswagen over after trailing it for a block. Why he did this has never been confirmed, though it was suggested in a Philadelphia Inquirer article written in 1982 that Cook pulled out in traffic the wrong way on a one way street. Cook’s affidavit doesn’t conjecture this point, just 77 explains that he and best friend and business partner “Poppi” (Kenneth Freeman), who was riding in the passenger seat, frequently un-winded with a few drinks in that neighborhood after closing up their vending stand. Prior to Officer Faulkner approaching the car he had already phoned his dispatcher and requested backup, first requesting one police car, and then changing his mind asking for a wagon indicating he was already anticipating an arrest. Cook and the officer exchanged angry words, a verbal row which ended with Faulkner assaulting him with a flashlight leaving him bloody. That Officer

Faulkner, assaulted Cook after ordering him into a spread eagle position against the car has never been disputed. Eyewitnesses, Cook, and Freeman have all been in accordance with these particular specifics. Consensus has not been reached regarding whether Cook attacked the officer, with the prosecution claiming Faulkner acted in self-defense and

Cook insisting that he has never hit a police officer in his life. “I am not that stupid” he attests. After being assaulted he was sent back to his car in order to produce paperwork proving his identity and ownership of the vehicle. It was while sitting in the front seat, his body turned around in order to rifle through all the random junk in the back that he heard the first shot. He claims, “When I was in the car looking in the back, I heard shots and saw sparks but I didn’t see him (Faulkner) shot. I saw flashes of a gun out of the corner of my eye. He was standing in front of the car but I didn’t see him shot. I was facing the back of the car.” (p. 232) Regarding Mumia’s involvement Cook says this

“When I first saw my brother he was running. He was feet away from me. We hadn’t made any plans to meet that night or anything like that and I didn’t even realize that he came around that area there to pick up fares. He had nothing in his hands. I heard a shot and I saw him stumble. I didn’t see who shot him. He was stumbling forward.” (p. 232) 78

Other noteworthy details include that Freeman, who was armed, fled the scene of the crime, and that Cook saw a gun lying in the street and kicked it under his own car before police arrived on the scene. Incidentally Freeman was to die under suspicious circumstances four years later. Coroners ruled that he died of a heart attack, but was found handcuffed, gagged, with a syringe in his arm. Coincidentally, his body was found just hours after the infamous MOVE compound, the back to nature group Mumia was in hearty support of, and deeply affiliated with, was bombed in West Philadelphia. This left an entire block of row houses in smolders and killing eleven members of the MOVE organization, including five children.

Cook’s testimony continues to expound on the harassment and intimidation he received immediately after, and in the months following the incident which included being threatened with death, having his newsstand burned to the ground, thrown in jail for a spell, and told he would be tried for murder, he was scared for his life. He ends his testimony by asserting “Mumia was not holding a gun. Mumia never intervened in anything between me and the cop. I had nothing to do with the shooting or killing of the police officer. My brother, Mumia Abu-Jamal, had nothing to do with shooting or killing of the policeman.” (p. 234)

These dovetailing versions of what transpired offered by Cook and Abu-Jamal are in fact two accounts that have remained unwavering and consistent. The third testimony which remains consistent from the morning of the event until today is that of Dessie

Hightower whose testimonial details will be introduced later. The tricky problem with all other versions, for example the police who arrived shortly after Abu-Jamal and Faulkner 79 were shot and the bystanders who witnessed it are that their stories have shifted considerably from the morning of the event, to shortly afterwards, and again at various junctures of the legal process. The two greatest points of controversy and contradiction being the description and actions of the gunman and, the alleged hospital confession which was arguably the strongest evidence presented against Mumia in court.

Of the numerous eyewitnesses available at the scene of the crime, surprisingly only four people, three whom had extensive court records and pending charges, ended up testifying against Mumia six months later by which time each had shifted their original testimonies taken shortly after the event to match the trajectory the prosecution sought to advance. Initial police reports taken shortly after the crime report that most eyewitnesses saw a heavy set black man wearing a green army jacket and sporting an afro shoot

Faulkner and then run from the scene of the crime. This description perfectly matched

Freeman, though incredibly neither Freeman nor Billy Cook testified in court.

Regarding Mumia’s supposed verbal confession, Hans Bennet, co-founder of organization Journalists for Mumia, writes that the first official police account of

Mumia’s alleged hospital bed confession was introduced two months after his arrest by

Police Officer’s Wakshul, David Bell (Faulkner’s partner and best friend), and hospital security guard Priscilla Durham. He was purported to have said: “I shot the motherfucker and I hope he dies.” One fascinating underexposed detail is that Durham had already encountered Officer Faulkner earlier in the evening when in the line of duty he had accompanied a nine year old rape victim through the medical procedure of establishing her assault. Durham and Faulkner have been described as friends, they were at least 80 acquaintances. Approximately two hours later he returned, this time as a gravely injured victim. What is surprising about this claimed verbal confession, and what makes it one of the most controversial aspects of the case is that it was not immediately reported by

Durham or by the other two officers who claimed to have heard it. The “confession” came to light fully two months after the event, during the crucial interval of time when the prosecution was busy building their case against Jamal. This has led Mumia supporters to define it as “manufactured” and “contrived”. Moreover, this alleged confession squarely contradicts the initial police report which was prepared the morning of the event, written and submitted by Officer Wakshul who was the presiding officer that rode to the hospital with Mumia and guarded him until his treatment. His report succinctly states “The negro male made no comment.” Officer Wakshul’s original report is substantiated by the doctor who treated Mumia at the hospital that night. In an interview granted during the production of HBO documentary “A Case for Reasonable

Doubt” Dr. Anthony Coletta, at the time a third year surgical resident at Jefferson

University Hospital, explains that due to the severity of his injuries, in which Jamal, in critical condition having lost an entire fifth of his blood volume due to the lapse in time from when he sustained injuries until he received treatment, was rendered thoroughly unable to talk.

Officer Bell and Officer Wakshul attribute the two month lapse and the contradictory report as to their being mentally fragile and upset over the death of their fellow officer.

Of further interest is that Officer Wakshul was subsequently unable to testify in court, as he was on a prolonged five-month vacation. These details, along with the inconsistent

81 eyewitness reports will be explored more substantively with the details surrounding the trial and conviction of Abu-Jamal.

Just as important as the details of who shot whom are the happenings that transpired after both Mumia and Officer Faulkner were shot. Mumia has always included as significant and worthy of consideration the fact that he was beaten, kicked, racially insulted, and nearly killed once police arrived on the scene. This is something that is completely denied by the prosecution yet substantiated by the medical workers who treated him directly afterwards. “I closed my eyes and sat trying to breathe” he says,

“The next thing I remember I felt myself being kicked, hit and being brought out of a stupor. When I opened my eyes, I saw cops all around me. They were hollering and cursing, grabbing and pulling on me. I felt faint finding it hard to talk.” (p. 228, 229) He continues to describe his beating and the subsequent ride to the hospital in which he heard from the mouths of cops a lot of “Niggers and black mother-fuckers.” (p. 229) He was beaten again at the doors of Jefferson hospital. “Because of the blood in my lungs it was difficult to speak, and impossible to holler.” The severity of his medical condition and the probability of his police beating is substantiated by the emergency room doctor, surgical resident Coletta, who tended to both him and police officer Faulkner.

Since his imprisonment in 1981, Mumia has had several different legal teams representing his case but his most famous attorney, the late Leonard Weinglass, gives a substantive representation of ‘what happened’ in the final chapter of Mumia’s first published book Live From Death Row. For him the story is as much about the subsequent trial and prosecutorial misconduct as it is about the details of December 9th. 82

For example he highlights the inconsistency of eye witness reports, the fact that most eyewitnesses changed their testimony giving a different account in court than they did at the scene of the crime, and citing numerous miscarriages of justice in the courtroom, exposing the judge as biased towards the prosecution. Yet regarding the incident of

December 9th, he begins by establishing common ground:

That the police officer had been shot on a public street at 4:00am on December 9th, 1981, after having stopped Mumia’s brother’s car was undisputed. That Mumia arrived at the scene moments after the officer had pummeled his brother with his flashlight was also undisputed. Mumia was shot, presumably by the same officer, since the bullet taken from his body matched that of the officer’s gun. Mumia remained in critical condition for a period of time following emergency surgery.

This image of the wounded and beaten Mumia contrasts sharply with the defiant image the prosecution with the aid of the police department, and the publicizing help of mainstream media has always tried to promote. “Within hours of Abu-Jamal’s arrest,” writes J. Patrick O’Conner, author of The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal, published in

2008, “the police department offered its version of Faulkner’s shooting, and the media showed no restraint in disseminating it.” (p.21) O’Conner points to the fact that The

Philadelphia Inquirer, the most widely circulated paper in the city, quoted the police the next day as stating that Wesley Cook, known professionally as Mumia Abu-Jamal, shot

Faulkner. They further advanced the police story, and later what became the prosecution’s testimony, that Faulkner in the process of defending himself from Billy

Cook’s attack, struck him at which point Abu-Jamal ran across the street and fired at

Faulkner from ten yards behind him, causing him to fall and then while standing over him shooting him in his face several more times at point-blank range.

It has always been a thought-provoking irony that Mumia, a media worker himself, and one committed to seeking and exposing hard hitting truths would become victim to the distortions and bias of news media. In a 2006 piece written from jail ‘Media is the

Mirage’ a play of words taken from the phrase coined by Marshall McLuhan, “The

Medium is the Message” he writes that “American mass media is a marvel of technology.

It is whiz bang, sparkle glitter, and satellite wizardry . . . .American media” he reminds us

“is a business, and it has a mission, not to inform Americans but to entertain them.” And this: “The mission of the media is to please, to comfort, and primarily to sell.”

A review of Inquirer headlines in the days and weeks following the incident reflect the ability of the police, and later the prosecution to advance their version of events, though clearly there wasn’t complete public consensus as evidenced by the first few articles published after the incident. Articles which appeared the very next day with these headlines “The Suspect: One Who Raised His Voice” and “The Accused: Friends

Can’t Fathom “Brilliant” Newsman as Suspect” include laudatory support from friends and colleagues, often press people themselves. “Jamal’s friends describe him as a gentle man, a good reporter with an excellent radio voice and a social activist who never preached violence . . . .” and “Acel Moore, an associate editor of the Inquirer was quoted expressing this sentiment: “Mumia, whom I have known professionally for several years and as a news source because of his activities since 1970, was a gentle man who I would 84 not consider capable of a violent act.” And this endorsement from colleague Joe

Davidson, “We are going to continue to support Mumia. The policeman’s shooting is a terrible tragedy, but we feel anybody, regardless of the circumstances, is deserving of a complete and fair defense. We feel he is still our brother and we must stand by him.”

While initial reporting reflected the perspectives of Mumia’s family and friends, already by December 12th the headlines and story content shift sharply and undeniably against him. In The death of a policemen strains common trust Mumia’s guilt is never questioned as evidenced in this quote “A decorated young policeman on duty in Center

City’s sleazy Locust Street strip lost his life in an exchange of gunfire with another young man, who happened to be a newsman, a talented radio broadcaster widely known in the black community.” And “Chamber Gives Slain Officer’s wife $1,000” a human interest story detailing the tradition for widowed spouses to be presented with monetary remuneration. Also on December 13th, an editorial entitled A killing put in perspective in which the author, Dorothy Storck, assuming Jamal’s culpability, questions whether

Mumia is getting special consideration in the press due to his high public profile. The following week bring us these: ‘He was one of the best’: respects for slain officer, and bidding farewell to a fallen comrade and even this one: Officer’s widow recalls their last goodbye kiss. This pattern of sympathy and humanization for the friends and family of

David Faulkner and a lack of humanizing depth in the coverage regarding Mumia’s involvement was noticed and of concern to some. The Philadelphia chapter of the

Association of Black Journalists issued this statement in the days following the incident saying that it “supports our president, Mumia Abu-Jamal. He is our leader, our colleague

85 and our brother. We’re concerned about stories that have been printed and broadcasts that portray him in an inaccurate and unfair light. We offer our condolences to both families involved in this tragedy. We will continue to monitor news reports of this incident.” (Faulkner, p.16)

In addition to the written content are the accompanying images. A similar pattern can be detected in which the first couple of days following the shooting a respectable picture of Mumia at work in his WUHY radio station job is displayed along with the article

Jamal: an eloquent activist not afraid to raise his voice. Yet even this picture along with the laudatory statements of his talent is juxtaposed with a ten year old mug shot take of him at age 18 (for unsubstantiated charges that were subsequently dropped). Later in the week, and for weeks and months afterwards the only published pictures of Mumia in the

Philadelphia Inquirer show him in handcuffs, and being escorted by police. In contrast photos of Daniel Faulkner include family members, such as his mother and wife, a bereaved Maureen Faulkner flanked protectively by family and police, funeral scenes including his casket, photos of his wedding, pictures of his fellow police officers, and pictures of him in uniform.

A recently produced documentary, Framing an Execution, narrated by actor Danny

Glover which seeks to “examine the way the mainstream media have chosen to tell the story” characterize the way in which the media, in the months following Abu-Jamal’s arrest and throughout the subsequent trial, sentencing and lengthy appeals process, portray the entire phenomena as being framed as a “widow’s quest for justice.” While abounding quotes reflecting Maureen Faulkner’s perspective, those of Officer Faulkner’s 86 friends, family, and fellow police officers are common staples in Philadelphia Inquirer news articles, rarely is anyone from Mumia’s family mentioned or directly quoted.

Mumia, an articulate man who talked for a living was essentially silenced in that he was never once quoted, and his perspective of the event never reported.

It is impossible to know what affect his perspective may have had on the unfolding drama of his arrest, or to know what he was thinking or feeling in the days afterwards. It is not until years later in his first published book that he talks directly about the incident in the continuation of “Philly Daze: An Impressionistic Memoir.” Describing the night of his arrest and hospitalization his writing is ethereal and his arrangement of words and syntax recreate the sensation of unconsciousness and semi-consciousness he experienced.

He writes:

I’m sleeping, sort of.

It has the languorous feel of sleep, with none of the rest. Time seems slower, easier, less oppressive. I feel strangely light. I look down and see a man slumped on the curb, his head resting on his chest, his face downcast.

“Damn! That’s me!” A jolt of recognition ripples through me.

A cop walks up to the man and kicks him in the face. I feel it, but don’t feel it. Three cops join the dance, kicking, blackjacking the bloody, handcuffed fallen form. Two grab each arm, pull the man up, and ram him headfirst into a steel utility pole. He falls. (p. 190)

Amidst this violence, he describes being both participant and observer. A conversation with his young daughter ensues. She wants to know, “Why are those men

87 beating you like that?” “I don’t even feel it” he assures her. She fades from his consciousness replaced by his elderly deceased father who checks in with his son. “You alright son?” They exchange ‘I love you’s’. His father recedes.

The “I love you” echoes like feedback, booming like a thousand voices, and faces join the calming cacophony: wife, mother, children, old faces from down south, older faces from – Africa? Faces, loving, warm, and dark, rushing, racing, roaring past. Consciousness returns to find me cuffed, my breath sweet with the heavy metallic taste of blood, in darkness. . . I am en route to the Police Administration Building, presumably on the way to die.

If the story of the incident begins with family members experiencing unsettling premonitory hunches it ended for both with the tragic fulfillment of those feelings.

Phone calls for members of Mumia’s family in which Mumia’s girlfriend was the first to receive an unsettling, early morning wake-up call when a voice she reports as being “a white man’s” jeered “Uh-huh! We got you now!”( On a Move, 179) The phone rang again . . . just talking in the background. The third time brought the news; Mumia had been shot, Billy beaten and a policeman dead.

Maureen Faulkner describes her experience as nothing short of a nightmare which began shortly after 4:00 Wednesday morning. “The knock”, she writes. “That rap on the door that is the dread of all the spouses of people who put their life on the line-cops, firefighters, EMT’s, the military, each profession with its own protocol. I got that knock in the early morning hours of a bitter-cold Wednesday, December 9, 1981, when my fitful slumber was interrupted by the thud of destiny.” (p. 4)

The weeks afterward were grim for everyone, as Faulkner, in a fog of grief attempted to make sense of the tragedy. Cook was released from a brief stay in jail, rendered jobless after his newsstand burned down the following week, and was scared to remain living in his Center City apartment. He returned home to live with his mother. After several medical complications, including a collapsed lung, Mumia’s injuries healed and he headed to jail where he has remained for over thirty years. The story continued to play out in the headlines, animating the twists and turns of the legal proceedings.

The contrasts are sharp and startling. From Maureen Faulkner’s assurance that the story can be simply told with a few uncontested facts, to Mumia’s most personal reckoning, an account woefully absent from the historical annals in regards to the nine young men of Scottsboro Alabama who remain, more than eighty years later, essentially mute. From the contradicting police testimony which ranged from “The negro male made no comment” to “I shot the motherfucker and hope he dies.” From the variety of purported claims on how and under what circumstances Faulkner was shot to the fact that not one single eyewitness has ever claimed to see or know how Mumia was shot. From his portrayal in the press as a violent radical bent on destroying the system to the claim that his political background was waved like a bloody banner and held against him.

Meaning is created by Mumia, who insists we must look at the trajectory of retaliatory discipline enacted by government and state against radicals, by the contrasting trajectories offered police, eyewitnesses, and the press. That there are inconsistencies, irregularities, unknowns and mysteries is part of what makes this case so important. The contradictory perspectives are massive however there is one commonality shared by all

89 factions - Everyone knows Mumia’s early life experiences and long involvement with

Black political organizations are significant considerations to providing context to the incident.

Weakened and near death following the events of December 9th, imprisoned by the state, silenced by the strategic framing of the event by the press, sent to a maximum security prison where he spent the first ten years in solitary confinement, Mumia claims it is not just his death that the establishment wants, but his silence. It was twenty years before he provided a sworn affidavit as to what transpired at the crossroads of 13th and

Locust. Concise, merely two typed pages, it is comprised thirty-four numbered points, the final ones being as follows: “I never confessed to anything because I had nothing to confess to. I never said I shot the policeman. I did not shoot the policeman. I never said

I hoped he died. I would never say something like that.”

Posing a simple yet profoundly challenging question, Mumia asks in his book,

Jailhouse Lawyers published in 2009, ‘what is “the law”?’ It depends, he determines, on who you ask, but above all the administration of law must be understood as evolving

“from the spectacle and national drama of slavery.”( p. 51) He says “Now, as then, the law continues to be an instrument of the powerful, morality be damned. For the weak, the powerless, the oppressed, the law is more often a hindrance than a help.” (p. 52)

Mumia went to trial a scant six months after Maureen Faulkner was awakened by the hollow knock on her front door announcing the portend of tragedy. In the interim the weather had turned from frigid to blazing. The Philadelphia Inquirer continued to report

90 the story making headlines thirty eight times in the successive months as details emerged and trial preparations evolved, yet not once was Mumia directly quoted. Before the trial came the preliminary hearing for Abu-Jamal, and his brother Billy Cook, which was followed months later by jury selection and the pre –trial proceedings. The crux of the arguments advanced by Jamal supporters is that the first trial was blatantly unfair as no less than twenty nine separate violations of federal constitutional law have been identified, most significantly that during the penalty phase of the deliberations the Judge gave the jury specific misleading instructions.

The outpouring of support on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal, has consistently revolved around legal imperatives. With rallying cries demanding “A fair trial for Mumia” and scrutinized emphasis on the irregularities and constitutional violations of the trial, this case follows a pattern familiar to an African American history of racialized legal inequity, to those who receive substandard legal representation because they cannot afford better, as well as the courtroom discrimination experienced by individuals who have participated in anti-capitalist protest movements throughout the history of the

United States. Additionally his arrest, trial, sentencing and imprisonment has occurred within a larger context of mass incarceration, prison building, and growth of private prisons which in Mumia’s own words has helped to create “the largest, blackest prison population in the history of the world.” (Abu-Jamal, 2000) Mumia is juxtaposed between these overlapping trajectories. Understanding his case in the context of the prison system in America provides another layer of meaning and significance. The figures are irrefutable and staggering. By the year 2001 over two million people were

91 locked up across the nation with 70% of that population being people of color. (Davis,

1998, 2003) Current statistics position the number at 2.5 million locked up and an astronomical 7.7 million people who are under control of the criminal justice system.

(Abu-Jamal and Hill, 2012) Historical examples, as Mumia puts it “the unfolding drama of slavery”, of economically and racially motivated policies designed to maintain social relations are reflected in the creation of public policy in the south following the abolition of slavery. Upon emancipation a series of laws referred to as Black Codes were created to prevent Blacks from acquiring land, property, from working certain jobs, and generally as a means to regulate and restrict their movement. (Harding 1981) Therefore standing in one area of town, walking at night, congregating with friends, and homelessness got classified and criminalized as “Loitering”, “Breaking curfew”, and “Vagrancy.”

(Goldberg and Evans 1998) Perpetrators were subject to imprisonment where upon under the auspices of the “Convict Leasing Program” they could be auctioned off to the highest bidder – money which was paid to the state, in exchange for the control of the life of the convict. This arrangement provided revenue for the state, profit for the plantation owner or private industries, while simultaneously recreating and maintaining the social relations of slavery. (Goldberg and Evans 1998)

An analogy to Black Codes and Convict leasing exist in the form of contemporary public policy and forced prison labor. Just as Black Codes served the needs of the propertied class in the south, public policies aimed at “getting tough on crime” have been used to incarcerate Black people at an alarming rate. (Oshinsky 1997) (Alexander 2010)

(Abu-Jamal 1995) Just as convict leasing programs created revenue for southern states

92 and conferred profit to industry and land owners, prison labor has developed into a multi- million dollar industry in which prisoners working at extremely low wages create commercial goods and perform services at low operational costs thereby creating a fat margin of profit. Making perhaps $60 a month after taxes and deductions are taken out, prisoners are increasingly expected to pay for their upkeep, including rent. (Davis 2003)

This basic formula of creating a set of laws for the purpose of targeting and criminalizing a population in order to incarcerate for the purpose of using them as a pool of cheap labor continues to leave Black people disproportionately poor, unskilled, and pushed to the margins of the economic market. To the corporate contactor prison labor conveniently represents a Third World labor model in the heart of America as contractors are remarkably untethered by the restraints of equitable pay, the demands of organized labor, health benefits, workmen’s compensation, or unemployment compensation (Goldberg and Evans 1998).

In 1996 Monica Moorehead poses a question to Abu-Jamal in the previously referred to interview produced by Peoples Video Network, she asks, “How do you view the role of prisons in society today?” Mumia responds, “When we were young, back during the

Vietnam War, we used to talk about the military industrial complex. Well now you have the Prison Industrial complex. And you have what is the ultimate solution to America’s economic problem.” Scholar and activist Angela Y. Davis in her 2003 book, Are

Prison’s Obsolete? defines the term as such: “The exploitation of prison labor by private corporations is one aspect among an array of relationships linking corporations ,

93 government, correctional communities, and media. These relationships constitute what we now call a prison industrial complex.”(p. 84)

We learn from the statistics presented in in the 1998 news article “Imprisoning the

American Poor”, by Lois Wacquant, that from 1980 to 1995 the prison population in the

United States tripled and has continued to steadily rise. Aggressive campaigns to imprison people as a reaction to the perceived drug and crime epidemic came to a head when in 1995, the same year Mumia’s first book Live from Death Row, was published,

150 new prisons were built and 171 existing prisons were expanded. Mumia commented sardonically that he was writing from the fastest growing housing tract, the American prison system. 1995 also marked the year in which the Clinton administration passed a crime bill mandating that 100,000 additional police officers be added to the law enforcement establishment, California allocated more money for prisons than higher education, and Alabama reinstated the nationally abolished chain gang (Goldberg, Evans,

1998). According to Angela Davis, in the ten years between 1990 and 2000, 351 new places of confinement were opened. (2003, p.92)

Demographic studies prove that by 1995, Mumia’s fourteenth year in prison, a total of

9.4% of Black adults were somewhere within the clutches of the criminal justice system – either locked up, on probation, or on parole. The corresponding percentage for the white population tops off at 1.9%. This disproportionate representation is considered to reflect the discriminatory nature of the criminal justice system with its propensity to over police

Black neighborhoods, to convict rather than acquit, and to routinely impose longer sentences and stiffer penalties for similar transgressions. (Davis 2000) In his provocative 94 essay “A Nation in Chains” Jamal points out that the United States imprisons Black people at a rate that is four times greater than the South African government did during the heyday of Apartheid. Currently incarceration numbers in the United States are higher than Cuba, China, Iraq, and Pakistan combined. (Abu-Jamal and Hill 2012)

Careful attention to the details of his trial reveal how it engages the themes of prison injustice as well as the race and class bias inherent in it. Terry Bisson’s autobiography sums up the trial in one abbreviated chapter. Comprised in entirety of just four laconic sentences he assures us, “We can be brief.” He continues, “The prosecution witnesses

(even those who changed their stories) were never challenged. Mumia was not allowed to defend himself, and when he insisted, he was barred from his own trial. Guilty.” (p.

186) Those four sentences might be enough to convey the gist of the trial proceedings and outcome but in fact the transcript, including the pre-trial proceedings comprises 2059 pages all of which are readily available for analysis and reflection. However, the written words cannot adequately convey things such as tone, tenor, the impact of silences, and hesitations, volume, and general rhythm of speech all which add nuance and meaning, nor can it illuminate opinions, feelings, and the details of the lived experience. For a more variegated understanding we turn to the additional testimonies of observers and participants including Mumia, which are available in published books, personal interviews, and video recordings.

Maureen Faulkner devotes a short chapter entitled ‘The Trial’ to her recollections of the event, which in her estimation was an open and shut case. The majority of her testimony centers briefly on the disputed details but more on her emotional responses to 95 the happenings and her opinions on the various individuals involved in the trial performance. Character portrayals ensue of Albert Sabo, the judge, prosecution lawyer

Joseph McGill, defense lawyer Andrew Jackson, and Mumia, whom she typifies as cocky, disrespectful, and disruptive.

Speaking to producers of the 1998 HBO documentary A Case for Reasonable Doubt,

Joseph McGill endorses this with his own opinion “He did everything he could to basically disrupt the proceedings.” Citing examples he continues, “Including, not standing, for example . . . . Everybody would stand for the judge as he would come out, uh, and, Mr. Jamal would just sit right here and not move at all.” And, “Even so far as, at some times, what Mr. Jamal said was ‘I don’t recognize you as judge, Sabo, you’re no judge, I don’t recognize you. This is not the law.’”

When asked in a 1996 dialogue conducted by Monica Moorehead and Larry Holmes, produced and videotaped by Key Martin from the Peoples Video Network, in one of the few recorded interviews permitted while on Death Row what was going through his mind at the time of the trial Mumia answers: “Disbelief”, and “Shock.” He reflects his own naiveté and misguided “Pollyannaish” notion that his constitutional rights would be respected and upheld, and that instead they went out the window and he realized he was

“fighting for his life.” He says this with the benefit of retrospect but he also said it numerous times throughout the duration of his legal proceedings as evidenced in the written record with his repeated insistences “This is my life and my trial.” (transcript, p.

128)

Lydia Wallace, Mumia’s older sister, who attended the trial with other members of his family echoes this sentiment in an interview with filmmakers in A Case for Reasonable

Doubt offering this perspective “They always tried to paint Mumia as some wild creature, you know, out of control and in fact Mumia was in control as much as he could be . . . . I mean I’m not gonna be timid when I’m fighting for my piece of bread. We’re talking life here.”

The painted “wild creature” assertion made by Mumia’s older sister sounds metaphorical, and perhaps she meant it so, but courtroom sketches reflect the literal veracity of her statement. Drawn in one picture with a greatly exaggerated forehead, an excessively heavy brow, and overly pronounced jaw and in another with blurred fists indicating a violent pounding motion on the table, the depiction advanced by the artist is not neutral, and substantiates the impression of Mumia as dangerous and intimidating.

Jumping ahead to the closing arguments Joseph McGill went so far as to invoke jungle metaphors by addressing the primarily white jury and saying “ . . . And, if you can at will kill police, ladies and gentlemen, you then make the extra step towards the area which is without law enforcement, which is an outright jungle. We are one step from the jungle . .

. “(p. 61) This belief of Mumia as dangerous and violent, obviously shared and promoted by Judge Albert Sabo, afforded him the opportunity to cite Mumia’s “intimidating” behavior as cause to prevent him from questioning potential jurors, from generally participating in the seven day long jury selection process, to remove him from the courtroom, and to deny him the right to serve as his own defense attorney. According to

Mumia’s very reluctant court appointed lawyer, these decisions, made by Judge Sabo in

97 the jury selection phase, contributed to the “prosecutorial tone” and the “conviction tone” of the trial.

That Albert Sabo might have a penchant towards prosecution should not come as any surprise. Dave Lindorff, author of Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Row

Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal writes this, “During his tenure, Sabo was one of the most pro- death penalty jurists on the bench in America with at the time of his retirement, the greatest number of death sentences of any jurist in the country.” (Lindorff, p. 27) As a matter of detail twenty-nine of the thirty-one men he sentenced to death were Black. In a

1995 news article Terry Bisson writes that Sabo was a life member of the Fraternal Order of Police, the world’s largest organization of sworn law enforcement officers, and branded as a “defendants nightmare.” He notes that a fellow judge once called his courtroom a “vacation for prosecutors” due to his blatant bias towards conviction.

Maureen Faulkner supplies a different viewpoint claiming that throughout the legal proceedings Sabo upheld a reserved, dignified demeanor, was decent and upright, and that he “demanded respect in his courtroom.”(p. 32) She characterizes him as deeply religious, of working class stock, and proud of his Slovak heritage. “I think some people mistakenly believed him to be dull-witted, but anyone who spent the kind of time I did watching him manage his courtroom would assuredly say otherwise.” (p. 32) He was, in her appraisal “a slight man with the heart of a lion.”

In addition to Jackson’s assertion that Sabo set a ‘prosecutorial’ and ‘conviction’ tone to the trial he was also deeply frustrated by the constant thwarting of his legal strategies

98 in which he says “Every motion for the defense was denied, every motion for the prosecution was accepted” However, Jackson’s most profound frustration with Sabo came from his repeated attempts to be excused from serving as Mumia’s Defense

Attorney, a position he never wanted, that Mumia did not want him in, and wasn’t qualified for. On page 135 of the transcript he says this: “May I say something not on my behalf but Mr. Jamal’s? I most respectfully request to be removed from this case.” Sabo’s response: “You can’t be removed. You know that, Mr. Jackson.” This is just one example of several in which he begs to be excused. Mumia’s summation taken directly from the transcript succinctly reflects his enduring belief “You’re no judge Sabo, you’re an executioner.”

One of the few points everyone can agree on is that Mumia was barred from the courtroom and missed a great deal of the trial. In fact, asserts autobiographer Terry

Bisson, he often had to read about the developments of his own trial in the newspapers the following day. In Maureen Faulkner estimate, “I think he ended up missing half the trial because of his unruly behavior in court.” (p. 40) This fact, along with him being prevented from representing himself are both rallying points that contribute to the claim of judicial misconduct on the part of the prosecution. It is clear that McGill did not want

Mumia in a position of self-counsel, and he brought this matter up several times in a circumspect manner with the judge. He referred to Abu-Jamal as the “smartest defendant” he had ever dealt with. Why did Mumia want to represent himself? As interviewee Pam Africa alludes to in chapter three, though Anthony Jackson was considered the go-to lawyer for cases of racist policing, Jamal felt his appointed counsel

99 was not confident enough to withstand the collaborative and cooperative tactics of the judge and the prosecution. Specifically he wanted to represent himself with his trusted friend John Africa to serve as backup counsel. Africa had already proven to be a savvy legal strategist whom successfully defended himself the year prior when he was charged with illegal procurement of weapons and bomb making materials. Mumia, who through his increasing affiliation with the maligned organization, trusted John Africa completely, and lauds him as “A man blessed with wisdom, enormous patience, and powerful passions.” (Abu-Jamal, 1997, p. 111)

If Mumia was estimated to be disruptive in Faulkner’s personal account she had an equally deleterious opinion of Abu-Jamal’s loyal cadre of MOVE supporters whom in addition to being disruptive and loud also in Faulkner’s opinion, stunk. “I remember the stench of their body odor was so bad at one point that they had to lower the air conditioner in the courtroom into the sixties to reduce the nauseating smell.” (p. 31) She takes further issue with their dreadlock hairstyle which she found intimidating, their plant based diet which they consumed in court, and what she perceives as rude behavior.

When judge Sabo threatened to throw members and supporters of MOVE out of the courtroom for not standing when he walked in, they did stand up – with their backs turned to him. Mumia characterizes MOVE members as loving, intelligent, brave, and committed to their communities and families, also as worthy of defense against the civic forces which systematically harassed them. Some chasms seem too wide to bridge.

In some instances it is difficult to extricate which circumstances are specific to the injustices of Abu-Jamal’s trial and which have to do with the unfair administration of the 100 justice system which operates with a biased against the poor, and in particular poor

Black defendants. Talented comedian, the late Richard Pryor perhaps said it best in the

1980’s when he joked about going to court as a Black man in America seeking justice.

“And that’s exactly what I saw --- Just us.” Mumia’s experience being forced to accept inadequate counsel is not atypical for the estimated eighty percent of people accused of crimes who are unable to afford a lawyer to defend them. (Bright, May 2002) In an article entitled “ The Accused Get What the System Doesn’t Pay for” Steven Bright claims that public defenders “work under crushing caseloads, are paid so little that they devote little time to the cases, and lack the time, knowledge, resources, and often even the inclination to defend a case properly.” Jackson, initially hired to provide backup counsel before being thrust in center stage, was only allotted under $1,000 to defend

Mumia, of which $150 was earmarked specifically for identifying and interviewing eyewitnesses. A typical allocation for capital cases, according to research done by A Job is a Right Campaign in 1995, is $6,500. Jackson attests that the amount he received was thoroughly insufficient to hire the ballistic and forensic experts and other expert specialists that would have been useful to build his case. This unwillingness to allocate adequate resources is also typical, according to Bright, as a result defendants are “coerced into guilty pleas or unfair trials, unreliable verdicts, and sentences that do not fit the crime or the person convicted. Reflecting this reality we return to Mumia’s question posed earlier, ‘What is “the Law?”’ He answers with this, “The law is a tool of class domination and, as we have seen, of racial domination as well.” (Abu-Jamal, 2009, p. 62)

The jury selection phase of his trial provides ample evidence of the actuality of this statement. 101

In addition to the overwhelming climate of prosecutorial bias other claims of judicial misconduct stem from the contentious process of jury selection. Because Mumia was potentially facing a death sentence jurors were declared exempt, in a process called

“death penalty qualifying”, based on whether or not they supported the death penalty in general. Therefore each potential juror who did not support the death penalty was, to use

Faulkner’s terminology dismissed “for cause.” Only those who did not object on a philosophical level to the administration of death were allowed to remain. (O’Connor, p.

73)

Starting on June 7th, with a pool of 157 potentials, it took seven days to whittle them down to twelve, the process hastened by Abu-Jamal’s exclusion after day two from participation. As an interesting comparison to another racially charged high profile case, it took nearly two months to select the twelve jurors that eventually declared O.J.

Simpson not guilty. Despite Faulkner’s insistence that the chosen jury was “diverse” (her criteria being their varying professions and that they came from various Philadelphia neighborhoods), only three out of the twelve (one later to be replaced by a Caucasian alternate) were Black despite the fact that demographics reflect that at the time

Philadelphia had a 44% Black population. Additionally, four alternates were chosen, all white, with one being the wife of a police officer. Another alternate, postal worker

Edward Courchain repeatedly admitted that because of all the negative media about Abu-

Jamal he was uncertain whether he could be unbiased. Jackson attempted to have him removed from consideration, “for cause” but this course of action was rejected by Sabo.

102

Jury selection is considered so central to the outcome of a high profile case that expert assistance in the form of jury consultants is routinely utilized. Due to Mumia’s financial limitations, this was not an option for him, or ostensibly for the other 80% of indigent defendants. Andrew Jackson, cognizant of the role race was playing in the highly publicized case had, three months prior, requested that each potential jury member be sent a questionnaire, a common practice in capital cases, used to assist the process of impartial jury selection. On March 18th he argued before Judge Ribner, the judge who oversaw the earliest trial proceedings before Sabo stepped in, “It has been the custom and the tradition of the district attorney’s office to strike each and every black juror that comes up peremptorily. That has been my experience since I have been practicing law, as well as the experience of the defense bar; the majority of the defense bar knows that this occurs.” (Williams, p.86) The judge saw otherwise and responded, “This is a murder case. I haven’t seen any evidence that anybody has turned this into a racial incident.”

(Williams, p. 87)

When proceedings began in June, each side was allotted twenty peremptory challenges, the right to dismiss jurors from the pool without providing an explanation, and Prosecutor McGill used eleven of his to strike Blacks from consideration. The rest were used to exclude younger people, and in one instance a Catholic priest. Jackson primarily used his to dismiss ethnic whites living in inner-city neighborhoods.

(O’Connor, p. 74)

The inclusion of a few of the “right kind of Blacks” is important to ward off claims of overt racism. In 1997 a training video produced by veteran prosecutor Jack McMahon 103

(who was active in District Attorney’s homicide section at the time of Mumia’s trial but has since moved to private practice) surfaced in which practices of race based jury selection as practiced and advanced by Philadelphia prosecutors are explicitly described.

Produced ten years prior and geared at new recruits, McMahon coaches new prosecutors on refining the craft of race conscious jury selection, or, how to surreptitiously exclude most Blacks from the jury process. McMahon, described as a “colleague and contemporary” of Joseph McGill (Williams, p. 89) emphasized “that jury selection is the most important part of the trial.” He elucidates that in a capital case the “right kind of

Blacks” means older southern born females. Those best to exclude, the wrong kind, are pinpointed as young Black women, low income Blacks “The blacks from low-income areas are less likely to convict”, or those with a high level of education. (Williams, p.89).

“People from Mayfair are good” (a white neighborhood) “and people from Thirty-Third and Diamond [a poor black Neighborhood] stink . . . You don’t want any jurors from

Thirty-Third and Diamond” (Williams, p. 89) He goes so far as to advocate keeping a running tally on how many Blacks are in the pool of potential jurors and to take a break , to “invent a reason” and leave the room in order to ascertain how many might be waiting outside in the next pool of potentials. “Because a lot of times what they’ll do is have the next group. . . .sitting right out there in order. So you can say, ‘Judge, I have to go to the bathroom.’ You can go out and see what’s left and check out what’s left.” (Williams, p.90) Forced to make an apology McMahon explained that he was merely summarizing basic unofficial procedures that he had observed throughout his case as prosecutor. The emergence of this video substantiates that race, income levels, and education have clearly

104 a role in determining the demographics of the jury, and by extension the outcome of each capital case tried in the city of Philadelphia. (Lindorff, p. 101)

The sheer level of corruption evident in the Philadelphia police force is both pervasive and well documented. In 1979 Philadelphia became the first city to be sued by the U.S.

Department of Justice for condoning systemic police brutality. (Lindorff, p. 35) The charges were subsequently dropped not for lack of evidence but because the investigation was deemed to be outside the jurisdiction of the Justice Department. Several years later a new probe was afoot, a collaboration between Washington’s Justice Department and the

U.S. Attorney’s office in Philadelphia, investigating the very precinct in which Daniel

Faulkner was killed. Over the course of two years more than thirty officers in the division were convicted of various crimes of corruption “including a deputy commissioner, division commanders, district captains and a number of inspectors and lieutenants, as well as rank-and-file officers” (Lindorff, p. 35) Of the thirty-five officers actively involved with Mumia’s arrest and conviction, over one third of them were exposed one short year later by this investigation, stripped of their badges, and punished for crimes of corruption. (Lindorff, p. 35)

The practice of race based jury selection has not solely been the providence of

Philadelphia prosecutors and nor have accusations about rampant police brutality been relegated to just one particular city but rather it remains an enduring narrative of the

Black experience in America as can be attested by the plethora of literature and narratives of personal experience. Though Congress enacted the 1875 Civil Rights Act to address and eradicate racially discriminatory jury selection a 2010 document produced by the 105

Equal Justice Initiative, a non-profit law organization, declares the practice continues especially in “serious criminal and capital cases.” Closely examining the jury selection procedures of eight different states they found evidence, of racial discrimination in each state. It was determined that 80% of qualifying African Americans were excluded by prosecutors for jury selection. Moreover there were numerous instances of majority-

Black counties where defendants were tried by all-white juries. Additionally, there was confirmation that Jack McMahon’s coaching video was not unusual and that in many instances prosecutors are trained and instructed on the craft of concealing racial bias.

Beyond these blatant practices of race based jury selection are the less recognized practices coined by Robert Owen in a 2002 article entitled “Absolute Power, Absolute

Corruption” , of prosecutorial “overreaching” which he defines as “Oppressive tactics born of systemic institutional arrangements that reward (or fail to punish) prosecutors who ‘cut corners’ in pursuit of conviction.” Examples of this include concealing evidence that might help the accused, overcharging defendants, coercing “cooperation”, failure of mass media to spotlight the phenomena, and the legal systems refusal to punish prosecutors for misbehavior. The best examples of this in Mumia’s case include the intimidating tactics enacted on his brother following their arrests which included threats, improper arrest, and the burning down of his Center City Newsstand, false legal threats, and his own six month sentence in jail all which culminated in him confessing to assault of Daniel Faulkner, and being scared to testify on behalf of Mumia in 1981. Other examples of prosecutorial overreaching, noteworthy since they are significant points of contention by those who support a new trial for Mumia ,is that the prosecution has never

106 linked physical evidence to Mumia in the shooting of Daniel Faulkner. His legally registered .38 caliber gun was never tested to determine if it had been fired, his hands were not tested for remnants of gun fire, and the bullet fragment a .44 caliber , removed by a medical examiner was “lost.”

Over the course of the three week trial the prosecution called four witnesses to directly testify about the shooting, including two eyewitnesses, Robert Chobert and Cynthia

White. However, the prosecutions first witness, Maureen Faulkner, was called not to contribute to the mix of evidence, rather to evoke an emotional response and put a human face on the tragedy of lost life. (Williams, p. 128) Faulkners testimony was brief but strategic and primarily centered on the last day she and “Danny” spent together. In a theatrical touch McGill had her identify her late husband’s police hat and confirm it was the one he wore as he walked out their front door for the very last time. Harvard Law

School graduate and author Daniel Williams writes this about her brief testimony, “The truth is, Maureen Faulkner would continue to “testify” throughout the rest of the trial without ever taking the witness stand. She remained in the courtroom after the questioning was over, a conspicuous presence in the spectator section for the balance of the trial, surrounded by family and friends, and a consistent crew of Police Officers.” (p.

130)

Faulkners experience of the trial as she reports in her book, was difficult. In the throes of grief, she felt intimidated by Mumia’s support network members of which she claims taunted her repeatedly. Though Mumia, much like The Scottsboro men, has gained greater notoriety the longer he has spent in prison. However as he was already a well- 107 known Philadelphia public figure his ensuing trial garnered a lot of attention. In

Maureen’s memory “Every seat in the courtroom was taken every day of the trial, and there was a line to get in.” (p. 31) The only part of the trial she missed was half an afternoon after she was taken to the hospital following a courtroom collapse. For her the entire three week experience was deeply emotional as well as mentally and physically depleting.

In addition to the race based jury selection, Mumia’s being barred from serving as his own counsel, his banishment from the courtroom, the fact that no physical evidence links

Mumia to the murder, lost evidence, and a clear pattern of prosecutorial bias, another factor in the crusade to gain a new trial for Mumia lies in the four testimonies McGill used to develop his case against Abu-Jamal. Two of the primary witnesses were already in legal trouble and subsequently spent abbreviated time in prison; Robert Chobert and

Cynthia White were likewise “compromised.”

In his own assessment McGill discloses that the witnesses in the case were not “priests and nuns.” (A Case for Reasonable Doubt) In White’s case she had thirty-eight prior convictions for prostitution and three pending charges for which she was never prosecuted. She had regularly been arrested repeatedly, with never a gap longer than forty days between arrests. That is until she met with, and cooperated with police on

December 17th, 1981. (O’Connor, p. 90) After that she was never arrested again for prostitution. It took four separate consultations with police and four separate slightly different statements to fine tune the story, a fact that Jackson tried to bring up in court.

However, on the day of her appearance her story supported the one the prosecution was 108 trying to advance and she claimed to have witnessed the murder. “I looked across the street in the parking lot and I noticed [Abu-Jamal] was running out of the parking lot and he was practically on the curb when he shot two times at the police officer . . . then he fell

. . . . then [Abu-Jamal] came over and he came on top of the police officer and shot some more times.” (O’Connor, p. 91)

Fast forward twenty years. In an affidavit filed in 2002, a woman named Yvette

Williams swore that White, on the night of December 9th, was in protective custody with her and revealed that Philadelphia police detectives were coercing her to identify Abu-

Jamal as the killer, though she had not actually witnessed the crime. Williams attests that

White was “nervous and frightened and glad to have someone to talk to . . . she told me she was scared for her life” and that they would send her “up” to Muncy if she did not comply. (O’Connnor, p. 99)

Robert Chobert also provided damaging testimony to the defense when he testified “I heard a shot. I looked up, I saw the cop fall to the ground, and then I saw Abu-Jamal standing over him and firing some more shots into him.” (O’Connor, p. 81) Like White he required multiple meetings with police and provided two separate statements, the second one shifting strategically in sequence and time frame so that eventually, though they initially contrasted, his story coalesced with the other prosecution testimonies.

Chobert was also compromised in that that he had multiple prior arrests, most lately for arson, and was currently on five years of probation. Additionally he had two recent arrests for driving while intoxicated and for driving his cab with a suspended license.

109

What he was up against was the fear that, due to the drunk driving and driving without a license his probation could be revoked and he could face a thirty year sentence. At a post-conviction hearing for Abu-Jamal in 1995 he admitted to outright asking McGill for help, and that McGill said he would look into it. He never was prosecuted for the drunk driving or driving without proper licensure.

Though it did not help in 1982, Chobert has since recanted his courtroom testimony.

A private legal investigator, at the behest of Mumia’s then-attorney Leonard Weinglass, interviewed him and he admitted to that his taxi had been parked on 13th street, north of

Locust, and he had not seen Faulkner shot. (O’Connor, p. 85) Investigator Michael

Newman declared this in his sworn affidavit: “[Chobert] said what actually happened was that he was sitting in his taxi and saw a black man standing next to a police car that was parked on Locust, east of 13th Street. The black man slumped down. Chobert walked toward that area and when he got closer saw a police officer sprawled on his back on the sidewalk and a black man sitting nearby.” (O’Connor, p. 85)

Michael Scanlon, who upon cross examination admitted to have had “a few cocktails”, testified that he witnessed a police man and a Black man in a physical altercation. This corresponds to the defense testimony that Daniel Faulkner was attacking Mumia’s brother, Billy Cook. He also saw a man running up to the scene and that shots ensued and the man slumped down to the curb. Mumia, still trying to lawyer his case, attempted to interject questions about the physical description of the running man, was once again removed from the courtroom. It is important now to remember Kenneth Freeman,

Cook’s friend, and that the description Scanlon gave in a pre-trial hearing on March 29th 110 described that a heavy set man with an Afro wearing a black knit cap stood over the police officer and shot him twice at close range in the head. Remarkably, Jackson does not follow up this line of questioning. Had he done so he may have helped develop a defense, a scenario that many pro Mumia supporters believe to be plausible, which is that

Mumia ran to assist his brother who was being beaten, was shot himself, and another man

– the heavy set one with an afro, shot and killed officer Faulkner, then fled the scene.

Mumia, who always objected to Andrew Jackson because he felt he was incompetent, was quoted as referring to him as “a baboon, a shyster.” (Faulkner, p. 49)

Lastly the court heard the testimony of Albert Magilton who claims not to have seen the shooting but to have witnessed Mumia running across the street right before he heard shots. He also claims to have seen Mumia sitting nearby on the curb shortly afterwards.

He was not a particularly effective witness for the prosecution because his testimony contradicted the details of the previous ones. For example, he claimed there was no one on the southeast corner of Locust which was where Cynthia White was purported to be, and that Mumia was running with his hands behind his back when Scanlon had just asserted the opposite. Lastly, he admitted he had not seen the actual shooting. Taken in conversation with each other, the four witnesses, none of them “priest and nuns” contradicted not just their own individual testimonies, but also each other’s. As author J.

Patrick O’Connor wryly notes, “Unlike credible witnesses, their memory improves the farther away from the event time takes them.” (p. 93)

The defense rested on the testimony of three people: Dessie Hightower, Veronica

Jones, and the attending physician at Jefferson University hospital, Anthony Colleta. 111

Colleta went first and testified that Mumia had been struck by a bullet on a downward trajectory, which completely contradicted the prosecution story that Faulkner shot Mumia as he was falling to the ground (which would have created an upward trajectory). Also he affirmed what Mumia had always claimed, that his wounds were consistent with the beating he experienced at the hands of police. In the estimation of legal authorities

Jackson squandered the potential of Colletta’s testimony and missed an excellent opportunity to render specious the claims of the prosecution by developing an alternate scenario of the murder.

Dessie Hightower witnessed the immediate aftermath to the incident from a catty corner parking lot and immediately stepped forward at the scene of the crime to let police know they were beating up the wrong man. A student with no criminal record his story remained consistent from the night of the event, to the courtroom and to the contemporary moment. Jackson, again, in an unfortunate oversight had neglected to interview Hightower prior to the trial and therefore was unable to capitalize on his testimony. Had Jackson taken the time to interview Hightower he would have been able to reveal that Hightower was taken to the police station and administered a polygraph

(which he passed) the night of the event, the only witness to be subjected to such treatment. Moreover, his testimony which remained unadulterated, substantiates the original testimony of Cynthia White, her testimony that is, before it was modified, that when Officer Faulkner stopped Cook’s VW, another passenger (Freeman) was attempting to get out of the car. Hightower testified that after the shooting sounds he saw a man run away from the scene, and watched as police advanced, carry Faulkner away and

112 commenced to attack Abu-Jamal. Jackson missed numerous opportunities to follow up on the details provided by Hightower’s testimony, including the fact that he was questioned for five hours after the incident, and picked up again a week later at his work place for more intensive questions, and that in his opinion police were intent to pin the crime on Abu-Jamal. Says Hightower, “They never asked me about the guy who ran away. But I can still picture the scene as clear as day. He had on a red and black sweater and he was running as fast as hell.” (Lindorff, p. 147) In an interview conducted years after the event Hightower resolutely declared, “I’ll go to my grave saying Mumia didn’t do it. I’m sure it was the guy I saw running.” (Lindorff, p. 147)

In another astonishing oversight Andrew Jackson also failed to interview Veronica

Jones, neither a priest nor a nun, before she appeared in court. Her courtroom testimony totally contradicted the written statement she produced five days after the incident in which she claimed to have seen two men jogging off from the scene of the crime.

Instead, at court she testified that no one moved after the shots rang out, thereby contradicting her own written statement and being no help whatsoever to the defense.

Except, amazingly, under questioning from the stunned Jackson, she let it loose that upon subsequent “re-interviews” with police “They were getting on me telling me I was in the area and I seen Mumia, you know, do it, you know, intentionally. They were trying to get me to say something that the other girl [Cynthia White] said.” (O’Connor, p. 154)

Jackson followed up with questions about Cynthia White. According to Veronica Jones when Whites name came up during her interview with police “they told us we can work the area if we tell them.” At this unexpected courtroom admission, that police offered the

113 assurance to “work” particular corners in exchange for her corroborating false testimony,

McGill immediately objected, calling for a sidebar conference and he requested that the judge strike Jones’ statement from the record. Sabo acquiesced and ruled that Jackson had to stick to the details of who shot the cop, and who saw anything. As a result, this stunning admission went unexplored and was disallowed as consideration for the jury.

Mumia was unanimously found guilty of first-degree murder and of possessing an instrument of crime. Taking just three and a half hours to deliberate the jury returned their verdict at 5:18 pm, July 2nd. The sentencing hearing, with respect to the Fourth of

July weekend, was held the very next day which veers substantially from protocol in which the defense is generally given at least ten days but sometimes up to a month to prepare for (Lindorff) If Terry Bisson’s chapter regarding the trial was a mere brief four sentences, then his following chapter, the one about the sentencing hearing is even shorter. He guarantees, “We can be even briefer. Mumia’s Black Panther history was waved in the face of the jury like a bloody shirt. Death.” (p. 187)

The expounding of Mumia’s politics, the bloody shirt that was figuratively waved before the jury, played a prominent role in Joseph McGill’s sentencing statements. He conflated Mumia’s political orientation (focusing on his two year involvement with the

Black Panther’s in his teens) with his courtroom demeanor which he characterized as combative, disruptive, disagreeable and disrespectful. Also he guided Mumia to endorse a statement that he had written twelve years prior, at age fifteen, in which Chairman Mao is quoted as saying “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Mumia insisted on elaborating the correct context of the statement that the words, borrowed from Mao, were 114 indicating the marginalized position of Black America, in which the might of state power reigned down against the people. Rather than disavow the statement he said simply, “I believe America has proved it true.” Seizing this, McGill drew the correlation, insinuating that his involvement with the Panther’s inclined him towards violence, particularly towards those who represented the establishment.

Jackson, according to author Dave Lindorff was in tears throughout various stages of the sentencing hearing, but true to form had neglected to do duty in that he had not conferred with his client prior to the hearing. He was “unpersuasive” and rambled unsuccessfully while attempting to convince the jury to consider life in prison as opposed to death. He objected appropriately when McGill brazenly suggested that the jurors weren’t “being asked to kill anybody” in voting for death since no one had been executed in the state of Pennsylvania since 1962. Ironically, Sabo, also true to form, overruled

Jackson’s objection and in a lucky stroke of irony allowed McGill to continue where he made a misleading statement so outrageous, though it worked in the moment, it became the basis for an overturn of Abu-Jamal’s death sentence thirty years later. “Ladies and gentlemen, you are not asked to kill anybody. You are asked to follow the law. The same law that I keep throwing at you, saying those words, law and order, I should point out to you it’s the same law that has for six months provided safeguards for this defendant. The same law, ladies, and gentlemen, the same law that will provide him appeal after appeal after appeal.”( Lindorff, p.174)

In another error, the forms sent with the jury during the sentencing deliberation process had incorrect information on them, and this led to another overturn of Jamal’s 115 sentence, one that staid his death warrant when it was signed by Governor Tom Ridge in

2000. The forms incorrectly stated that unanimity was required to determine mitigating circumstances, but this was untrue, only aggravated circumstances were required to be unanimous in order to count. Therefore, if just one juror were to determine a mitigating circumstance it would be recognized, but due to being misinformed the jury was not aware of this. Subsequently, one unanimous aggravating circumstance was identified ( killing of a police officer while on duty) and one unanimous mitigated (defendant had no prior record) circumstance was declared. Had the jury been made aware that mitigating circumstances did not require their unanimous support it is conceivable that more would have been recognized. The jury deliberated for three and a half hours before reaching their conclusion. Sentenced to death on July 3rd, 1981, Mumia has spent nearly thirty one years in prison and up until a dramatic reversal and an overturning of his death sentence in December, 2011, all were served on Death Row.

Identifying the key points of his arrest, trial, sentencing and imprisonment hold clues as to why individuals and groups of people have found relevance in the polemics of controversy stirred up by his case. From the perspective of Mumia’s supporters, as the interviewed subjects reveal in the following chapter, the central factors are these themes: police misconduct reflected in selective over policing, excessive force, brutality, intimidating, threatening, manipulating, and harassing witnesses. That it all transpired in the backdrop of a national epidemic of criminalization, public policies which target poor

Black people, race bias in the criminal justice system, racist policing, the reinstatement of the death penalty, and the rise of prison industry all which have collaborated to further

116 disenfranchise and impoverish marginalized communities gives his case a particular poignancy and timeliness and points to why the Free Mumia movement includes a wider banner of imperatives beyond “Free Mumia”. Legal scholar Michelle Alexander asserts that this process of disenfranchisement and criminalization of (primarily, but not solely) young Black males is the replacement of the old system of segregation and caste which was challenged by advances in civil rights. “The New Jim Crow” also seeks to establish impermeable structural barriers, legally enforced, to maintain a racially based caste system. Alexander, along with Abu-Jamal, and other scholars have uncovered the statistics, data, and historical patterns that allow them to articulate the deleterious effects of mass incarceration which has in turn contributed to the breadth, scope, and direction of the Free Mumia movement. To answer Mumia query, ‘What is law?’ First, it must be understood within the historical context of slavery. Next, as a tool of class and racial domination. Lastly, he maintains, “it aint about law, it’s about politics by other means.”

(Abu-Jamal, 2000)

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Chapter 3: “We Are Doing This, We Can Do This”

Contrary to popular belief, conventional wisdom would have one believe that it is insane to resist this, this mightiest of empires . . . 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.

------Mumia Abu-Jamal, a statement made in support of the family of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg

“Why did I get involved in the movement to free Mumia? Because the blatant injustice of the case jumped up and slapped me in the face.” So speaks community activist, labor organizer, and Reed College alumnae Gareth Miles on his impetus to join the growing tide of individuals who combined with various coalitions and countless organizations, to encompass an outpouring of support. This broad based support network questioned and opposed the death sentence meted out following jury deliberation on July 3rd, 1982, challenged the conditions of his legal defense, and has also used the example of Mumia as evidence of racist policing and political persecution. Citing the personal experiences he and various family members encountered, of racial injustice in the legal system as the spark which initially drew him to advocate on Mumia’s behalf,

Gareth’s testimony of being forcefully compelled by this specific instance of injustice

118 echoes the sentiments of nearly every individual interviewed for the completion of this chapter. In addition to the role of personal experience and oral history as valid and significant contributions of movement theorizing, I also employ an examination of various models of Social Movement theory as a framework for understanding the emergence of activism in reaction to the injustice of Mumia’s trial, sentencing, and incarceration and in order to demonstrate the continuity of black consciousness in

Philadelphia.

Renowned social movement theorist, Douglas McAdam, author of Political Process and the Development of Black insurgency, asserts that organized social unrest arises out of necessity, as a reasonable reaction to circumstances of oppression. Mumia also claims that movements arise out of a “felt perceived need” and that rebellion is the sane response to insane societal incongruities. And so, it follows that the global disquiet surrounding

Mumia’s arrest, charges, and imprisonment are organic, predictable outgrowths of disgruntlement and manifestations of discontent in the face of perceived racial injustice, prison injustice, and economic inequity. But the question of “Why organize?” is perhaps best answered by those who do, and their voices weave in and out throughout this chapter as personal testimony and as recognition that employing the emotions and diverse experience of social movement participants is critical to an understanding of movement building and in fact can contribute to movement building. The qualitative assessment of who got involved, who stayed involved, and why, is best illuminated by a synthesis of the experiences garnered by these participants in which their motivations, desires, challenges, successes, inspirations and frustrations are laid bare. Significant information was

119 revealed in the course of interviewing the participating individuals. For example, activists reveal why they were inspired to mobilize on Mumia’s behalf, how and why individual branches of organizations were initiated, the role Abu-Jamal’s scholarship plays in galvanizing and directing the course of the movement, and the relationship between

MOVE and other parts of the Free Mumia movement. Activists speak about the tribulations and roadblocks to organizing, and about specific frustrating and intimidating experiences. For activists such as Frank Smith and Gareth Miles who’s initial and primary involvement have been from abroad, and for Monica Sumocurcio who originally hails from Puerto Rico, their testimonies help shape an understanding of why the cause of

Mumia has international support. Also, the interviews show some of the practicalities and mechanics of movement building. In so doing they reveal the genealogy of various activist organizations and their interconnections with other groups, the role organized labor and Universities played in providing funds, community space, and outreach opportunities, some of the evident tensions surrounding race, and how regional variations affect organizing strategies. Oral testimonies have the distinct ability to convey that there is no singular or essential experience; they reveal the tactics, motivations, aspirations and strategies of participants. Oral testimony counts as significant the experiences of those that may otherwise fall outside the parameters of more traditional quantitative measures of activist theorizing and activist organizing, and validates personal experience as the basis for truth and knowledge. (Janesick, 2007), (Davis, 2002), (Solinger et al, 2008)

Speakers of testimony provide voice to those silenced through fear and death, and insist that personal histories be understood within the context of social unrest. (Solinger et al,

2008) 120

Author of many works, including Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black

Working Class, scholar Robin Kelley suggests in order to unearth a more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of the joys and motivations of political actors, and he writes specifically of the black working class, it is necessary to represent the historical struggles from “way below” and to write history “from way, way below.” Part of what this means is the necessity of shifting focus from mainstream narratives of glory in order to“ recover and explore aspects of black working class life and politics that have been relegated to the margins” and that “the so-called margins of struggle, whether it is the unorganized, often spontaneous battles with authority or social movements thought to be inauthentic or unrepresentative of the ‘community’s interests’, are really a fundamental part of the larger story waiting to be told.” (p.4) Since the campaign to win freedom for

Mumia is still an on going event it does not classify as “history” as the tale is still being written. Moreover it cannot claim nor does it even strive to be solely a Black working class struggle. Instead in the words of Pam Africa it strives to incorporate, “all the people”. Yet the essential tenet remains, that representation of this struggle in the myriad of forms it has taken must derive, at least in part, from the experiences of common people, the political actors, told in their own words. While two of the interviewed subjects, Pam Africa and Noelle Hanrahan, are high profile activists known to many, the rest are simply citizens who felt a moral imperative to address what they felt were gross inequities. The irony is that the movement gains esteem from, and coalesces around, an iconic figure, Mumia. This is undeniable; yet, representation of the movement on his behalf should not be equated with its most prominent leaders and instead is best understood as sustained by the contributions great and small of thousands. This approach 121 and this belief remain central to the aims of this project. Capturing the ideas, experiences, beliefs, challenges and frustrations proffered by the individuals interviewed for this project advances the belief that individual stories when pooled, deliver immense collective wisdom, power and influence. This collective clout is a force which helps construct the way we write, understand and construct the intertwined narratives of history and social change. These stories have the power to be integral to how our movement will be represented, understood, analyzed, and interpreted by future generations.

Additionally, based on the experience of conducting these interviews, I submit that the practice of oral history has the potential to be useful not just because it gathers and records information for the annals of history, and for a more nuanced representation of social justice struggles, but because of the transformative power evident (for both interviewer and interviewee) in the experience itself. Setting up each interview required re-connecting. It provided an opportunity to revisit, review, reinterpret, and reflect experiences of the past. In some examples it reinvigorated and empowered, brought people, who had been separated by years and distance, into closer contact with each other which has resulted in increased movement building.

In the course of conducting thirteen different interviews these oral histories have been carefully structured in an effort to standardize yet maintain the elasticity and suppleness that make personal testimony so potentially powerful. Following a foundation laid by

Donald Ritchie in Doing Oral History this method is guided by the principle that no one particular individual or group of individuals has an exclusive understanding of the particular experiences of organizing on behalf of Mumia. Within this framework both

122 interviewer (me) along with the oral author are creating public memory and public history. This work does not purport to reconstruct an official record of the Free Mumia movement but rather to contribute to the body of Social Movement scholarship and to the chronicles of history by using the testimony and experiences of movement participants.

It seeks to expand an understanding of why people join movements, what their specific experiences are like, privileges the qualitative experience of movement organizing, and suggests that not all experiences, emotional responses for example, are quantifiable. This approach supports the idea that narrative study can illuminate social movement emergence, recruitment, internal dynamics, and identity building. (Davis, 2002)

Each interview subject was asked a standard set of five questions and or prompts mixing both open ended questions with more specific ones, a strategy encouraged by oral historian Donald Ritchie as effective in allowing the narrators to include all the information they feel relevant yet also permitting the interviewer to elicit specific information. Beyond the five standard questions followed an unscripted direction based on the particularities of the subject’s movement participation and on their level of engagement on the Mumia freedom cause. The five questions/prompts are as follows:

1. How did you first learn about Mumia and why did you decide to organize in his

behalf?

2. Please talk about some of your experiences organizing for Mumia.

3. What do you think some of the most effective organizing strategies have been?

4. What motivates people to want to organize on Mumia’s behalf, why do you think

he arises as an icon? 123

5. What kind of historical contributions do you think Mumia as an individual as

well as the organized actions on his behalf make to an understanding of our late

20th and 21st century social, racial, political, and cultural realities, in essence?

Pam Africa and Dr. Darryl Smiley were two exceptions to this standard. For Pam,

as Mumia’s closest collaborator, personal friend, and de facto leader of Concerned

Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal since its inception in 1981, the questions

would have been facile. Her interview focused on establishing a trajectory of how the

movement was built as well as her experiences and perspectives regarding effective

strategy. Dr. Smiley, a young college student from Philadelphia interned at WUHY

radio station and worked alongside Mumia while apprenticing the art of broadcast

journalism. He was included not because he is a participant in social movements but

because of his personal and professional connection to Mumia as he was able to

provide detail and depth to an understanding of the social, cultural, and racial

atmosphere of Philadelphia as well as introspective detail on Mumia’s professional

life. He provides useful insight and commentary as to the professional side of

Mumia’s character as well as invaluable firsthand information regarding the response

of the Philadelphia public and more intimately Mumia’s colleagues and cohorts at the

station.

The interviewees collectively represent a notable variety of educational, racial, and occupational backgrounds as well as geographic diversity. In that regard they are a good representative sample of the movement at large. Each interviewee is someone I know personally and apart from Darryl Smiley, have worked collaboratively with in some 124 capacity. Again, with Darryl Smiley as the only exception, each has allowed the use of their real names. Dr. Smiley, a resident of Columbus Ohio and vice president of large high profile public institution, insisted on a pseudonym for the purposes of professional sensitivities. Apart from Dr. Smiley each interviewee has been affiliated, some quite closely, with Mumia support work for at least twenty years and most continue to do the work as part of a larger commitment to social and political change. A complete list of the interview subjects and their affiliations are provided in the Appendix.

One interesting commonality unveiled in the interview process which also serves as an example of how unsolicited information can surface in the process of qualitative inquiry, were the challenges organizers encountered due to regional variations. For example, Gareth Miles, verbal author of the chapter’s opening quote, first became involved with Mumia as a student activist in Portland Oregon, continued work in

London, then Columbus Ohio, Brazil, and New York City. He currently lives in a small city in Wales. The variations he has experienced in regards to public receptivity, race relations in these varying locations, and police backlash was not information tacitly sought yet it was a theme which surfaced in his and many of the testimonies collected, and provides useful lessons in organizing tactics. Nearly every interview subject provided unexpected revelations in regards to the considerations of regional organizing as they collectively have lived and worked in Central America, South America, various

European cities, as well as a multiplicity of cities, states, and towns throughout the

United States.

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In addition to the formal interviews and the informal correspondences, the analysis of Mumia as a social movement is furthered by an examination of certain aspects of

Social Movement theory. In addition to establishing what constitutes a movement, an idea taken up in the introduction, theorists also wrestle with the task of defining a starting point for a particular movement, and in fact with what constitutes a movement to begin with. For example, Aldon Morris, author of the definitive work The Origins of the Civil

Rights Movement positions an understanding of Civil Rights in relation to other movements with to and in association with a larger and longer trajectory of Black protest as evidenced with the assertion that “the larger significance of black protest lies in the fact that it is forever present in some form.” (p. x) Citing the perennial existence of protest from slave revolts to the formation of underground railroad networks, various cultural and political organizations he ascertains that the Civil Rights Movement “fits solidly into this rich tradition of protest.” (p. x) Moreover he is definitive in that he establishes a regional origin, the south, as the birth place of the movement. Further, despite his claim that to date a social movement is “risky” he establishes June 1953 as the month in which Blacks executed a mass boycott against the segregated bus system forcing authorities to make concessions. Aldon declares this first major battle of the

Civil rights movement and its starting point.

Aldon’s emphasis on considering the long arc of black protest, and a historical contextualization as relevant to the examination of the civil rights movement is also advanced by influential theorist and author Douglas McAdam in his explication of the political process model. Writing from the discipline of sociology, McAdam positions the

126 insurgency of Civil Rights as a relationship between state and society, movement organizations and activist networks. He identifies three coalescing factors which must be present for a movement to advance successfully: indigenous organizational strength, shared cognitions within the minority community, and expanding political opportunities.

In turn these three interactive factors work together work together with a fourth factor, the response of the outside world, which thereby positions social movements as products of both internal and external factors. In order to establish the existence of these factors he reaches back one hundred years to examine the existence of fluctuating factors such as economy, migrating patterns, the ebbs and flows of voting participation, imperialist expansion, and the strength of Black institutions . Significantly he not only emphasizes the historical arc but also advances the idea that movements are traceable with definitive starting points and definitive declines as well. According for him the decline of the Civil

Rights movement occurred between 1966-1970, due, in his estimation to growing dissention within the ranks and violent reprisals from the establishment.

Less inclined to establish firm starting dates and definitive declines, Mumia Abu-

Jamal in his own scholarly work We Want Freedom, 2006, troubles the task of establishing a beginning moment by emphasizing that the emergence of the Black

Panther Party is one having “deep, long roots “ forged in the tradition of armed Black resistance. Resonating Aldon’s assertion of the continual presence of protest , in his words the general history of Africans in America is one of “deep resistance - of various attempts at independent Black governance, of self-defense, of armed rebellion, and indeed of pitched battles for freedom.” (2006, p.8) This insistence on historical

127 contextualization makes it difficult and possibly irrelevant to position a precise starting point for the Black Panther Party. Rather he focuses on formative foundational experiences such as family ties, community identity, a sense of dislocation and disillusionment, and the experience of being Black in America generally, and

Philadelphia in particular which he suggests created the cultural atmosphere that allow for the emergence of an organized revolutionary Black movement to come into existence despite the intimidating tactics of the local police and FBI.

From the morning he was initially arrested until our present day there have been individuals and groups, acting independently, and in coordinated effort that have pursued the task of questioning, problematizing, resisting the circumstances of his arrest, the ensuing trial, the death sentence, and seeking to change his legal status and imprisoned circumstance. Simply put there was no “Free Mumia” movement activity prior to his arrest, trial, sentencing and incarceration. However Pam Africa makes the noteworthy point that support for Mumia preceded his arrest because as a reporter committed to reporting truth he was always coming under attack. In one sense the movements on his behalf can be understood as a reaction to the specific injustices of the circumstances yet it would be naïve and unhelpful to leave the analysis at that because as multiple studies by various scholars have revealed (Buechler 1990; McCarthy and Zald 1977; Morris 1984;

Staggenborg 1989) movements are not conceived in vacuums, and, as no movement is founded in isolation all have ties and debts to the formations of the past. The inception of the Mumia movement is no exception and must be conceptualized within a larger

128 framework so we understand it in the historical pattern of local and national police misconduct and court injustices, as well as the resistance to that injustice.

Examples of this entrenched dynamic abound. According to authors Omari L. Dyson,

Kevin L. Brooks, and Judson L. Jeffries of “Brotherly Love Can Kill You” which appears in chapter six of the book Comrades: A Local History of the Black Panther Party, published in 2007, “The Philadelphia Police Department was as oppressive as any department on the East Coast if not more so. Relations between the police department and the Black community had become so volatile that in February 1970 a suit was filed in

U.S. District court on behalf of all Black residents of Philadelphia accusing the mayor and police commissioner Frank Rizzo of violating the constitutional rights of persons by permitting police brutality to persist.” (p 217) In addition just three months later the

NAACP filed a similar case against the mayor, police commissioner and district attorneys office charging them as complicit in not prosecuting cases involving police brutality against Blacks.

Blacks were also disproportionately victimized by poverty, crime, and poor education, which prompted the then editor of the city’s Black newspaper the Philadelphia Tribune to write this:

Dirt, filth, diseases, abandoned automobiles, and houses unfit for human habitation may be found in 80 percent of the area known as the ‘Philadelphia Ghetto’. Thousands of thousands of Negroes live in these sections which have become

‘The Shame of the City’ because police, politicians, and disinterested private citizens have permitted them to become stomping grounds of killers, hoodlums, dope peddlers and gamblers who wouldn’t dare try to operate in Germantown,

Mount Airy, West Oak Lane and the Greater Northeast.. (p. 218)

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Prompted by a number of high profile and dramatic instances throughout the 60’s which involved police using excessively violent force that resulted in riots, injuries, the destruction of businesses and looting, Black residents began to organize a group response. Matthew J. Countryman, author of Up South: Civil Rights and Black Power in

Philadelphia claims that by the 1960’s Black residents of Philadelphia had begun to question the efficacy of government action in the struggle for equality and that it took an increasingly coordinated effort, first in the form of economic boycotts, then acts of civil disobedience which gradually evolved to organizing strategies which reflected philosophies steeped in the tenets of Black Power advocating “Decisions that affected the city’s black communities should be made within those communities, not in government offices.” (p. 9)

In 1967, November 19th, more than four thousand people protested outside the Board of Education office for a “better, Blacker” education prompting the notoriously ignoble mayor Rizzo to give the infamous and widely quoted command for police to “get their black asses.” (p. 219) Organizations such as The Black Coalition, Revolutionary Action

Movement, the Nation of Islam, and the first organizational meetings of the Black

Panther Party began to spring up to alleviate the suffering of Philadelphia’s poor Black residents.

Countrymen makes the point that nationalism was just the starting point for the strategy and politics of the growing Black Power movement:

Black Power in Philadelphia emerged out of the local experiences of the movement activists who became its most avid proponents. These activists drew on the lessons learned in a decades worth of movement activism to build a local 130 movement that fused a black nationalist analysis of the structures of racism in American society with the southern student’s commitment to community organizing and indigenous leadership development. . . . Black Power activists in

Philadelphia sought to build organizations that were accountable solely to the black community and in which leadership was based not on professional degrees or middle class status but on ones proximity to and ability to identify with poor and working class blacks. (p. 8)

It is necessary to trace this history as these historical examples help demonstrate that structures of support and a burgeoning Black consciousness already existed in

Philadelphia. This consciousness and these existing support networks were the foundation upon which a formation of support for Mumia was able to grow. It is also useful to explore the claims of theorists David S. Meyer and Nancy Whittier in “Social

Movement Spillover”(May, 1994) that “social movements are not distinct and self- contained; rather they grow from and give birth to other movements , and influence each other indirectly though their effects on the larger cultural and political environment” (p.2)

Building on the works of others they cite examples from history such as how the Civil

Rights movement influenced the anti-war movement and reaching farther back how abolition struggles inclined Women’s Suffrage. They claim, “Because social movements aspire to change not only specific policies, but also broad cultural and institutional structures, they have effects far beyond their explicitly articulated goals.” The ideas tactics, style, participants, and organizations of one movement often spill over its boundaries to affect other social movements. Not only has the Mumia solidarity work benefit from formations of the past, but, as chapter four will show, it has also in turn influenced other late 20th and early 21st century social movements.

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Two other scholarly works, “Sustaining Commitment among Radical Feminists” by

Nancy Whittier and “Social Movement Continuity: The Women’s Movement in

Abeyance” written by Verta Taylor, both concerned with continuity, collective identity and how movements maintain the threads of assemblage in periods of low activity or non receptive political environments, assist our understanding of how the inception of pro-

Mumia support work can be viewed at least in part as a continuation of the Black Power movement formations on the 60’s and 70’s. Taylor identifies five characteristics: temporality, purposive commitment, exclusiveness, centralization, and culture which she asserts provide “ organizational and ideological bridges” between upsurges of activism.

Her work with it’s specific focus on the United States Women’s movement, seeks to understand and explain the ebbs and flows of feminist political activity but can be broadened to understand how structures of solidarity and networks of support coupled with an already established Black consciousness helped initiate the foundational support for Mumia. Moreover proof of this continuity of protest and Black consciousness troubles the simplistic notion that it is possible or desirable to establish firm starting points for any social movement including Free Mumia solidarity work which is best understood as building on formations of the past while simultaneously impacting the present and the future.

Also focusing on feminism yet with broader implications which can be extrapolated,

Nancy Whittier explores concepts of collective identity and the role identity plays in sustaining interest and commitment among the individuals from Columbus, Ohio whom she interviewed. Her research demonstrates that developing a feminist consciousness,

132 one supple enough to withstand external societal shifts, fluctuating group boundaries, and one able to establish “elaborate and meaningful networks” resulted in the intergenerational survival of feminist commitment amongst her target group. I argue that in a similar fashion, a consciousness of Black Power, based on the examples provided by scholars Countryman and Tyson et al, demonstrate that the ethos of the free Mumia movement, one concerned with issues of racially disproportionate incarceration, police brutality, court injustice, and the death penalty in addition to the specificities of Mumia’s imprisonment existed prior to December 9th, 1981. Recalling the point emphasized by

Pam Africa that support work for Mumia preceded his arrest thirty years ago and actually started when he was a journalist dedicated to exposing the crimes of police brutality, “We were supportive of Mumia prior to December 9th, 1981 when he was being attacked as a journalist because he was an uncompromising journalist. Mumia told the truth and he needed backup and we were that backup for him.” The structures of support that already existed in Philadelphia included not just MOVE, but, as we learn from Darryl Smiley, colleagues at the radio station who recognized his talent and considerable skill.

Dr. Smiley started as a young impressionable nineteen year old college student in

1978 as intern and volunteer at WUHY radio station where he became introduced to, acquainted with and influenced by Mumia. He reflects the impact of the association and emphasizes that Mumia was serious about his craft, that he shunned the commercial side of the radio business, and did not get involved with the seamier aspects of the entertainment field. In his recollection Mumia would be a flurry of constant movement and activity in the newsroom, where all the action was, smoking clove cigarettes while he

133 typed out his reports. When his reports taped and aired Smiley says they generated immense excitement at the station and that his distinct voice was “commanding, profound, crisp, clear” and that it was all “very heady.” When his broadcasts aired says

Darryl, “you had some flavor to the news.” Most impactful was Smiley’s experience interviewing Abu-Jamal which he did for the culmination of a class project on broadcasting. The advice and information Abu-Jamal imparted “always stuck with me” says Smiley. Unable to locate the taped interview Smiley recounts that Abu-Jamal emphasized that in the business of journalism the writer must “get as many sources as you can”, particularly international ones and “don’t ever stop at the first paper you read”.

He strongly emphasized the importance of the international worldview perspective.

Smiley remembers thinking “this guy’s petty heavy” and that “he was serious about his mission and his work. I thought he was serious about his craft, of broadcast journalism and his journalism skills. Politically I didn’t know much about his ideology other than his thirst for international information, but I didn’t know much about his orientation.”

When Mumia was arrested, around the time Smiley was graduating from college it was “a shock to everybody.” Says Smiley:

I was so tempted . . . .I never had the courage to ask Steve [referring to a close personal and professional friend of

Mumia’s E. Steven Collins] how he felt and things like that about it. But there were a lot of news stories, a lot of activity going on at the station talking about it, you know, and I remember KYW doing reports about both sides, the

FOP side and then people who knew Mumia were talking on behalf of him ‘you know how these Philadelphia cops are’ and stuff. So there was a lot of controversy, there was activity going on at the time.

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Referring to the stories and speculation as details got hashed out he continues with these words:

I think for a lot of people we just didn’t know. Because you heard so many stories, and so many speculations, so many sides talking. But you know we thought there was somebody else on the scene. I do know he had a brother and the controversy of whether his brother did it o whether it was Mumia, that was a big discussion I remember going on.

There were rumors around the station you know. We heard Mumia didn’t do it and that it was his brother that did it and that kind of stuff . . . . and I remember reports of Mumia getting beat up by the police on the way to the hospital and things like that.

Dr. Smiley represents a perspective of Mumia from a professional point of view, one prior to his arrest regarding Abu-Jamal’s acceptance and demeanor in the workplace.

Apart from Pam Africa he is the only interviewee who personally knew Mumia prior to his incarceration. Chronologically Karry Koon-Carr is the next person to meet Mumia as she became acquainted with him in the mid 1980’s. State College’s Committee to Free

Mumia Abu-Jamal formed in 1991, while Portland Free Mumia Coalition marks their inception much later, in 1998. When Gareth Miles and Frank Smith speak about their activities in London, they are generally referring to the year 1995 though in each case their involvement spans a much longer time frame, especially Gareth who left London and immediately became active in Portland’s activities.

Thematically the narratives coalesce around these topics: “The call to action” as activists explain why they got involved with the Mumia campaign and what inspired

135 them to work on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal. “Linking the issues” speaks to the ways in which activists interpret the cause for Mumia as part of a larger ideological understanding, how the experience of working on his behalf have provided a political education and contributed to their understanding of how issues are connected. Related to this is the role Mumia’s scholarship plays in this process and we begin to see Mumia’s emergence as an iconic charismatic figure. “Tactics, strategies, and challenges” reveals the encounters, successes, and hardships of movement organizing and activists talk specifically about what they feel have been effective strategies of organizing as well as what hasn’t worked or what has been problematic. “Tensions in the movement” explores the difficulties associated with ideological ruptures, racial tensions, and differences in organizational approaches.

The call to action

Apart from Mumia’s friends, family and community support in the form of IFFMAJ,

Karry Koon-Carr represents the first of the interviewees to contribute to Mumia’s case.

Born and raised in Central Pennsylvania Karry graduated from the State College

Alternative Program high school, then graduated from college, and became active in various movements for social change and social justice including the Committee for

Divestment in South Africa. CJSA was primarily a Penn State student group active from

1984-1987 that challenged Penn State’s economic investments in South Africa through community outreach and education, by linking with the national and international anti-

136 apartheid movement, and through dramatic spectacle oriented campus protests. 1985, the same year a bomb was dropped on MOVE’s compound in West Philadelphia, Karry was just beginning to initiate contact and become involved with prisoner rights groups, and specifically Mumia, who by then had been imprisoned for several years, but at that point his case had garnered very little support or attention and was in fact virtually unknown outside his home town of Philadelphia.

In addition to her political activities with CJSA Koon-Carr engaged in an assortment of social change projects and worked in cooperation with a multiplicity of organizations which is how she came to know Mumia. “I was doing an intern at Women’s

Encampment for Peace and Justice in the summer of . . . right after I graduated from college so it was ’84.” There she met a friend, a woman from Boston whom she kept in contact with after the internship ended. She remembers, “Was it ’85? It must have been shortly after the [MOVE] bombing. She asked me about Mumia when we were talking on the phone and I didn’t know who she was talking about. ‘Woah, so what about

Mumia?’ and I was like, ‘Who? She was like ‘Huh? You don’t know? If you’re from

Pennsylvania . . .”

The implication was that as a lifelong resident of Pennsylvania, and a socially concerned one at that, she had a moral obligation to educate herself on this specific reprehensible case of flagrant injustice. This embarrassed Koon, but more outstandingly it sparked her curiosity and motivated her. She continues her story, “So I looked him up.

I was living in McVeystown at the time. He was in Huntington so that was very close by so I started writing to him and that’s basically how I got started.” 137

It began with letters back and forth. Koon-Carr relays that the content of her letters to him mainly consisted of her asking questions and offering support. She was curious about MOVE, and generally wanted to extend assistance to him. His letters consisted of what prison life was like, what was going on in the world, and about his family. She characterizes his writing and his letters as “Amazing” saying this, “And his letters were so gripping . . . well he writes kind of like he speaks. It’s very compelling”.

At Mumia’s behest she began to write to other prisoners including a youthful friend of his.

He had a younger friend, a man who had been locked up since he was eighteen and he said ‘this guy is having the hardest time adjusting to prison than anyone I’ve ever seen and he doesn’t have anyone to write to him, can you write to him?’ So I started writing to him. I joined the Prison Society sometime after that too and I became more involved with other prisoners, but Mumia was the first.

The exchange of letters soon extended to visits.

I wanted to be put on his visitors list but he had a lot of people on his list. I think he would switch people around because he could only have so many. If he knew someone was visiting he would take someone [else] off and put them on. So I did visit with him a couple of times when I was on his list but then when I became a member of the Prisoners

Society I could visit anyone in Pennsylvania . . . When you have their id you can visit any prisoner in Pennsylvania.

Like you show up and say you want I want to talk to this prisoner’. And prisoners can write to the prison society and say they’re having an issue or that someone in prison is being abused, or is not getting medical care or whatever.

Someone from the Prison Society can go in and talk to them and try to get something done about it . . . .So I became a member of the Prison Society and I would go to Huntington with a list of five or six guys and I would visit them one after another. I’d spend all day at the prison.

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At this time Koon-Carr’s activities were quite isolated. Her involvement preceded formal organizing in Central Pennsylvania, and she was unaware of any other’s in the area who knew about his case. She characterizes her role in these earliest days as striving to be supportive in any way she could such as trying to help him secure books, packages and family visits. “ I offered to send him packages, books, he said ‘No, I can’t get anything’ But he said he really wanted a visit from his wife and she didn’t drive. There was a time that I drove to Philadelphia, picked her up, had her stay at my house a couple days, drove her to visit him and then drove her back to Philadelphia.” She remembers the trip like this, “It was an adventure, I mean, I really enjoyed it. I really enjoyed meeting her, you know, I was glad to do something for him.”

While Karry Koon-Carr says she knew about his MOVE supporters, about Pam Africa, and International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal (ICCFMAJ), “I was sort of on my own. I had a lot of different projects going on but I wanted to do what

I could to support Mumia personally and when he told me about his friends I would help his friend who really had no support, no connection. In fact he’s still in prison. I still write to him.”

During the time Karry Koon-Carr was becoming acquainted with Abu-Jamal, and generally educating herself on prison she continued her work with the divestment movement at Penn State. The Committee for Justice in South Africa was supported by

Karry, and also Andy McInerney and Monica Somocurcio, whom a short five years later,

139 would reconvene with a couple other people to form SAYAR otherwise known as

Students and Youth against Racism, the organizational body which initiated the first

Mumia organizing in Central Pennsylvania. It is worthy to note that in between working with CJSA and helping to found the local chapter of SAYAR, both Andy and Monica were also quite active in another student organization, Friends of Latin America (FOLA).

Also relevant, and which was revealed in the course of conducting interviews, is that numerous networks which were created in the mid eighties, the early days of CJSA organizing, were continued and built upon throughout other peace and justice initiatives, and reactivated for Mumia organizing. For example the local chapter of the hospital workers and health care employees union, 1199P, routinely donated space, supplies, technical support and unlimited use of copy machines. Ron Gruci, a full time employee who did all the printing and graphic design for 1199P donated countless hours of his expertise in graphic design work and printing. The Free Mumia campaign, and for that matter CJSA or FOLA , never paid a dime for leaflets, posters or flyers. Sympathetic

Penn State professors who had been identified in the days of divestment organizing were once again called upon to provide class time for presentations, to assign outreach work as extra credit options for their students, and to generally help promote the cause. Phone lists, sympathetic local businesses, and lists of potential financial donors that already been identified as liberal and lefty were once again activated for the Mumia cause.

Preceding the curve of national and international organizing which didn’t become evident until several years later, the political activities and Mumia solidarity work of

State College, Pennsylvainia which started in 1991, seemed isolated at first but set the

140 framework for a wider national movement. The inception of the Committee to Free

Mumia Abu-Jamal is remembered by Nataki McNeal who recounts that it started unexpectedly in 1991, initially under the guise of SAYAR. It was in the formative inception of SAYAR, in fact the first official meeting, that it was established that Mumia would be the number one cause on the agenda. Nataki says:

There were maybe five of us at that first SAYAR meeting. Some of us had just come back from an organizing conference in NYC and we were excited to build a chapter in State College. But what were we gonna do? What issues would we work on? That was what the meeting was about. Everyone had a turn to give an idea. Someone suggested tuition raises, cause Penn State raised tuition every year. Some one else said housing ordinances because they were discriminating against homosexuality in some publicized cases that year. We were basically just throwing ideas out.

But then John talked and he had obviously planned it all out. He gave us a speech about Mumia, who he was, what happened to him, the fact that he was in jail in Huntington. I think he even had some pamphlets or something about him. And that was it. We were all persuaded. From then on we really were never SAYAR. We just kept that as our campus student group name in order to get their funding. From then on we were the Committee to Free Mumia Abu-

Jamal and that’s all we really ever worked on.

One compelling consensus amongst the interviewees who hail from Central

Pennsylvania regarding what factors motivated them to organize on Mumia’s behalf was the astonishing proximity of State College in relation to Huntington, a distance estimated at thirty two miles. Says Monica Somocurcio, “I decided to work on this campaign because I was in Pennsylvania very close to where he was being held at the time.”

Nataki adds these sentiments,

Getting involved didn’t feel like a choice. Once I learned about Mumia, I could relate to his struggle, I could relate to his issues. And he was so close by, he was so near. I couldn’t sleep at night. Really, sometimes it felt like I couldn’t get any rest. I felt morally compelled to do something about it. In the early days no one knew who he was not even

141 other Black people. We had a lot of energy. We were very motivated to do something about what was going on, that they were keeping Mumia in jail, right in our backyard.

Andy McInerney also remembers that proximity played a prominent role in why State

College activists felt compelled to organize on Mumia’s behalf:

I think the first time Mumia’s case came to the forefront of my thinking was 1991. My close collaborator John Black had just got back from a trip to Europe. I think he was in Germany and he came back talking about how everyone there was talking about this political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal who was in prison just thirty miles from where we were at that point in State College Pennsylvania. And from there, really from his enthusiasm and his persistence you could say, we set out a whole program of at that point widening awareness of Mumia’s case but ultimately building activities and support for him.

Jeff Martin, another student activist from Penn State was compelled to work on the campaign not just because of the proximity of State College to where Mumia resided in

Huntington but also because for him Mumia represented a tangible and specific case of injustice whereas many of the other activist concerns he had been involved in, primarily environmental justice, were more indirect and felt remote. “Instead of being so broad,

‘We shouldn’t cut down trees’, I liked to have specific examples, I like having something to target, and Mumia was a specific example of injustice in the judicial system. And he was in Huntingdon which was close.” His testimony reveals that in addition to proximity, engagement in other human rights related work also can clearly be seen as a

142 motivating factor that predisposed Mumia activists in State College, as far away as

London, and all points in between.

While it certainly wasn’t physical proximity that motivated the international and West

Coast branch of activists whom I interviewed, figuratively it was proximity to the issues that Mumia represented that drew them one by one into the fold. Both Noelle Hanrahan and Catherine Stauffer remarked that it was their own experiences with the judicial system or those of family members that attracted them to work on Mumia’s behalf.

Catherine speaks about the development of her political awareness in regards to issues of court injustice, in which she went from being in her estimation, a naïvely unaffected

“typical middle class White person” to becoming an up close witness of the incongruities present in the legal system:

Growing up as a white American my understanding of the criminal justice system had mostly been formed by television. I watched a lot of shows in which social and cultural issues of importance were being “tried” on primetime

TV. Basically the political message of the shows was vaguely and broadly, you know, “liberal’ so to speak. Things like sexual assault, date rape, the inclusion of people due to disabilities, the acceptance of homosexuality, and in the most superficial way even racism. I believed from these shows that the criminal justice system was not only fair, but rigorous in their unearthing of the truth. Really, to be totally honest my ignorance about this was only broken by the experience of going to trial against the OCA [referring to the Oregon’s Citizen’s Alliance, an anti- gay organization dedicated to introducing anti-gay legislation in Oregon. Catherine launched, and won a court case against leaders Scott

Lively and Lon Mabon in 1991 accusing them of assault] From the trauma of that horrible time I was particularly moved to become a legal worker to help provide emotional support to activists facing grueling legal battles. This was during a large wave of political action in Portland and the police crackdown was brutal and really, really scary. Seeing the criminal justice system close up was illuminating. There are many people like Mumia in prison and the injustice he faces is shared by many men and women. Mumia is a very good symbol of the so called justice that has been metered out to Black activists in the United States and Black Americans in general.

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Frank Smith, who initially became acquainted with the case while living in Central

America and studying the human rights violations there, later returned to his native country England and became involved in support work. He says this:

I first heard about Mumia in 1993 through a friend. I was struck by the injustice of the case and the obstinacy of authorities that did not want to address what seemed to me clear discrepancies . . . . I was also struck by the essential contradictions in American and all Western democratic society. Here was a man facing execution in the country that had emerged from the cold was as the most powerful on earth, founded on the principles of justice, freedom, and equality. Yet all these principles were violated because he was black. The case struck a cord and I wrote a letter to the

U.S. authorities. When back in the UK and my studies over, I reengaged in the campaign and sent more letters to authorities. With a friend we developed a petition and signed people up. We also participated in an activist group and attended events organized by the Free Mumia campaign in Kennington in July and August 2005. These events attracted a number of speakers and local celebrities. Through my engagement in the campaign I felt I was part of something bigger than just my immediate experiences of activism. In retrospect I had spontaneously adopted a prisoner of conscience, to use Amnesty international language, but not within the confines of an institutional bureaucratic setting, or rather not mediated by such a setting, the NGO.

Coincidentally, though they never met, Gareth Miles was also in his birth city of

London during what both he and Frank describe as a volatile, heady, exciting, and scary era of Mumia organizing. Mumia’s death warrant had been signed by the lieutenant governor of Pennsylvania in June 1995 and up until ten days before his scheduled execution, which was scheduled for August 17th, the city was in uproar with constant activities including a 24 hour vigil in front of the American embassy, numerous acts of civil disobedience, presentations, speakers, benefit concerts and both coordinated and

144 uncoordinated acts of solidarity. Gareth describes his introduction to the Mumia campaign:

The cases of Mumia and MOVE have been in my consciousness for so long that I have trouble remembering when I first heard about them, but I think it was in the very early 90’s when I was a newcomer to the US as a teenage student.

If I remember correctly I saw a poster on a bulletin board at university about him and I thought, ‘who is this dread?’ and looked into it further from there.

As Gareth explains, upon acquaintance with Mumia and the specifics of his circumstances, he felt recognition, a sense of solidarity, and his concern for the case grew from a shared sense of unity, camaraderie, and ideological coherence.

It was probably his appearance as a dreadlocked brother in handcuffs that first caught my eye. Maybe because a Rasta family member of mine in Guyana where I grew up was unjustly imprisoned for years there. I had looked up to Rasta’s from a young age as one of the main anti-establishment counter-cultural forces in Guyana, so it was probably Mumia’s

Rasta-like external appearance that first caught my eye though I soon came to realize that he was not exactly a Rasta but still had much in common with them as the more I read about Mumia and MOVE the more it seemed that MOVE were really the American equivalent of the Rasta movement in the Caribbean. Apart from the deification of Haile

Sellasie and the sacrilization of marijuana MOVE seemed to share the basic tenets of the Rastafari culture - pro nature, anti-industrial “civilization”, pro Black –African, pro-animal rights, as well as human rights.

He continues with this:

Why did I get involved in the movement to free Mumia? Because the blatant injustice of it jumped up and slapped me in the face. The answer is simple. I was already far removed from the eight year old who first came to the States to visit family with my parents and was super excited to go to the land of Starsky & Hutch and Kojak! But something about this case really summed it all up. I mean here was this blatantly racist judge who had sentenced more people to death than any other judge in the entire USA, here were witnesses who had been blatantly threatened and bribed to change their testimony . . . . It was plain as day that the prosecution’s case was a blatant pack of bullshit.

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Citing a similar familiarity and recognition of racial injustice, as well as a sense of solidarity, Roderick Franklin, originally from Lubbock Texas, became an active and well known Mumia support worker while living in Portland Oregon in the late 1990’s. He speaks about what motivated him to jump into the Mumia movement,

You know I would like to say that I was aware of Mumia upon his arrest and was involved from the beginning, but it’s not true. I was always involved with the unrighteous and illegal arrests and detainments from the time I was a youth because I had an uncle who always spent time with his nephews and cousins and helping us get ourselves ready to be

African American men in the south. . . .so I didn’t necessarily know about Mumia until I moved to Portland Oregon. I might have heard about him in university but on my college campus there was no Free Mumia coalition it just wasn’t necessarily spoken about there . . . . But when I arrived in Portland and walking he streets I started to see a lot about this guy, they were definitely putting up flyers and stickers and there was a campaign for Mumia there. I don’t know if

I googled it or went to the library but I figured out what he was all about, and MOVE. I even learned about

COINTELPRO from that same research which I really wasn’t aware of either.

For Roderick, learning about Mumia resonated with his own life experiences and with the world as he understood it. One salient detail that is important to give attention to is that his consciousness regarding racial inequity, court injustice, and police brutality and by extension the death penalty, was already there but it took exposure to an organized campaign that allowed him plug in, express his solidarity, develop his profoundly gifted skills of community organizing, providing fertile ground from whence his commitment propagated.

Walidah Imarisha’s oral testimony also confirms the centrality of how important it is to come into contact with an organized campaign, and how the act of joining together with others in formal ways is powerful and inspiring. Also, by tracking the trajectory of her involvement, she demonstrates the ways that political consciousness develops during 146 the course of political struggle. At a mere fifteen years of age when she first became involved in Mumia’s freedom campaign, Walidah was by far the youngest convert to the struggle. Still a teenager when I met her in 1999, she worked along with Gareth (who had by then returned from London), Roderick and many, many other memorably committed activists who sought to widen the growing campaign for Mumia’s freedom in

Portland Oregon.

I first learned about Mumia when I was in Springfield Oregon in high school. I somehow ended up in a Social Justice internship for this organization and there were just so many political things that they were talking about that I didn’t understand at all. They were talking about the Zapatistas, Assata, and you know, Central America and I just had no idea what was happening and so I asked the person who became my mentor whether they had any recommendations for books and that [referring to Live from Death Row] was the book he recommended I start out with.

Commenting on her relative youth she says,

I think I was really lucky to get exposed to it that early. I know a lot of folks that I come into contact with who are politicized often first get exposed to those materials in college. So I feel incredibly lucky to have gone to college sort of with that foundation already and having done some of that preliminary sort of soul searching and the emotional breakdown you have when you find out everything is fucked up.

She continues with this recounting,

The first protest I ever went to was a Mumia protest in Eugene, Oregon, and it was ’94 or ’95, at the University of

Oregon . . .I had seen a flyer for it at the place I had my internship. They sort of had a space where people drop off flyers and pamphlets and newspapers and I would grab everything. I grabbed that and I saw the picture and I said, ‘Oh this is the guy whose book I just read which was amazing’. And I was very prompt then, I got there probably twenty minutes early, I had no idea of ‘activist time’. I was the only one there and I was like ‘Oh no’. So I was just sitting 147 there, and then people started coming up but I had never been to a protest so I didn’t know what to do. I was just a little brown girl sitting there, and they were all, you know, white. And finally one woman came over and said “Are you here for the Mumia protest?’ and I said ‘yes’, and they got incredibly excited. And I think for me at the time it was amazing. In my memory it seems like the protest was really big, but I’m sure it was tiny, being Eugene, Oregon. But you know just marching and shouting with folks, ‘brick by brick wall by wall we’re gonna free Mumia Abu-Jamal!’

My first chant. I just felt – we are going to do it. We can do it – look how many people there are here. You know there were maybe fifty or a hundred people but it just felt suddenly like I wasn’t alone. And I really saw Mumia.

That moment she describes, the ‘we are going to do it, we can do it’ moment which elucidates the way collectivity engendered feelings of hopefulness, euphoria, certainty and efficacy, was pivotal not just in the development of Walidah’s political involvement, but Roderick’s as well. He also talked about the effect produced by attending his first demonstration:

I went down to San Francisco on a bus… I wasn’t going to go but I got pushed to go. And it was an amazing experience to be around tens of thousands of people marching on the street to bring attention to Mumia and political prisoners who were incarcerated wrongly in the United States. I had a chance to see Angela Davis there, and meet

Michael Franti which started a working relationship. But it was just really, for me at least that particular event was powerful in that I was surrounded with other individuals who felt strongly about wrongful incarceration of political prisoners. It was a beautiful thing.

Deborah Gould, author of Moving Politics whose work seeks to reexamine the role emotion plays in the arc of a social justice movement, specifically ACT UP, devotes several chapters of her book to exploring moments like the one Walidah and Roderick recount. Focusing on the central role that emotion plays in movements she states, “ The fact that part of the work of social movements is emotional is infrequently considered by scholars of contentious politics. But consider that in order to attract and retain 148 participants and to pursue a movements agenda, activists continually need to mobilize affective states and emotions that mesh with the movement’s political objectives and tactics, and suppress those that do the opposite.” (p. 213)

Doug McAdam also addresses this concept with the introduction of the term

“cognitive liberation”, a social-psychological term he coined to express the “we are going to do it, we can do it moment” in which the political actor undergoes a shift in consciousness and is imbued with the feeling of efficacy. Moments like this perhaps cannot be predicted, produced or measured but do seem to share certain qualities and produce certain results. Also, importantly, they must be recognized and shared in various forums.

These defining experiences had by Walidah and Roderick produced in each a sense of strengthened commitment to Mumia’s cause and also served as a catalyst for a larger analysis of global issues, and the ability to link Mumia’s cause and the struggle for his freedom with other issues of import Also, as evident throughout the testimonies of all the activists, the centrality of Mumia as an iconic, charismatic, hero figures prominently in their identification with the movement.

LINKING THE ISSUES: Mumia’s scholarship and the dissemination of his scholarship, an icon emerges

Says Walidah,

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I feel like Mumia and his case, but even more the journalism, the work that he has done and is doing, was a gateway for me and a framework for understanding, for beginning to understand the world around me because Mumia’s writings cover so many different subjects and so many different topics and he’s able to link them together and show how systemic oppression is responsible for the War on Iraq as well as for the murder of Troy Davis. And that has been really incredibly useful for me.

Engagement in the movement for Mumia not only was the catalyst for a bourgeoning political development but additionally she has this to say in regards to how instrumental

Mumia has been in regards to the development of her political ethics,

I think one of the things that I felt Mumia kind of taught me before I ever even got the chance to meet him was about standing on your principles. I remember when there was a strike happening when I was going to Portland State

University and we were in the Free Mumia Coalition. There was a strike happening at a television station that wanted to do a piece on him and I cant remember which one it was now, I believe the camera workers, and Mumia had the opportunity to have a segment done on him and our understanding of the segment was that it would be, if not favorable, at least a more objective piece than most of the media coverage that had been done and that it would give him an opportunity to reach a national audience since this was a major network. So it was seen as an incredible opportunity.

And I remember that Mumia turned down that opportunity and issued a statement saying that he would not cross a picket line and he thought doing the interview would be crossing the picket line and that he stood in solidarity with the striking workers and he explained why he felt that was so important and tied it to his case, and prison injustice, and all of these other issues. And it was an incredible learning experience for me to see that Mumia was on death row, and this was literally life or death for him, and yet he would not compromise his principles to be able to access something that might support his case and might save his life.

Mumia’s remarkable ability to find commonality between issues of injustice, to link issues, thereby demonstrating the deleterious effects of systemic oppression, along with

150 the fact that the specificities of his own case straddle the crossroads of many touch point issues was also remarked on by Frank,

The fact that he is an African American with a Muslim sounding name means that the injustice can be articulated using a number of different discourses. Mumia sits at the boundary between different discursive formations that bring to mind the struggle against slavery, against capitalism, against restrictions on freedom of expression, the civil rights movement, and the Bush wars against Muslims.

This ability to relate issues has won him much support, Gareth Miles recalls coalition building efforts in South London,

I remember the Kurdish community organizations were very helpful in letting the pro-Mumia movement use their community space free of charge, and they were always at the demonstrations. Mumia had spoken out about the

Kurdish struggle against oppression in Turkey and Iraq and plainly the solidarity went both ways.

Regarding why Abu-Jamal’s case garners support from beyond the borders of the

United States he furthers his ideas with this reflection,

People all around the world from all walks of life who have faced injustice can identify with him especially because he has devoted so much of his life to using his voice and his pen to speak out on their behalf. He spoke out for MOVE and

MOVE have spoken out for him. He spoke out for the Kurds and the Kurds have spoken out for him. He spoke out for

Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was himself executed by the Nigerian military government and Shell oil for speaking out for his people against Shells destruction of their land and members of Ken Saro-Wiwa’s family have spoken out for him. He spoke out for the Palestinians and the Palestinians have spoken out for him. And so on. In a sense he has become all things to all people who believe in equal rights and justice. And of course the flipside to that is that he has become one of the ultimate bogeymen to those who have an interest in maintaining the system of injustice.

Mumia’s struggle and particularly the way in which he has responded to his personal plight have profoundly inspired each activist I interviewed. Moreover, they critiqued the idea that focusing on one individual is too single minded specifically because of the

151 capacity to address so many other causes through the Free Mumia campaign. Says

Gareth in response to those he came into contestation with in his early days of organizing, those he labels the “naysayers,”

One white community organizer who I had worked on campaigns with called me a ‘Mumia head’ in a disparaging way when I was handing out flyers which really annoyed me. What did that mean – an ‘equal rights and justice head’? A

‘defend my fellow Black people head’? What’s wrong with that? Some people seemed to think that too much focus on

Mumia was taking attention away from other, lesser-known death penalty cases. But in my view, Mumia symbolized them all, especially since he spent most of his time speaking and writing about other victims of justice, more than he did about himself. And if we couldn’t successfully defend someone who by then was becoming a well known iconic figure, then what chance would we have defending lesser known people?

In addition to the political poignancy of his case, in a singular voice the interviewees cited Mumia’s own outstanding talents, strengths, charisma, and intelligence as factors that substantially contribute to why he inspires them personally and as to why he has risen as a global figure of injustice. His personal qualities of warmth, kindness, strength, determination, and selfless ness in addition to that incredible “calm, rich” voice were the salient features mentioned recurrently. “His eloquence, his palpable sincerity, his calmness and grace under extreme pressure, and the fact that he has never stopped doing what he was doing before his incarceration, using his writings to expose all injustice, not just that done to him” says Gareth. Catherine adds, “It is his self advocacy and the near miracle of his persistence that motivates me. I also care about being effective and Mumia is very, very effective.” Roderick references his “perseverance and fortitude” and Jeff

Martin who, as a denizen of State College, still continues to play Mumia’s death row broadcasts on his weekly Central Pennsylvania WPSU radio program adds this, “His voice is eloquent. His voice is soft. It is pleasant to listen to. His vocabulary is large. His 152 critical analysis is intricate. He’s non -threatening. He sounds like a reporter. He sounds ivory tower, like an educated man. You would never believe he was accused of killing a police officer. He makes people ask, ‘Why is that man on death row?’”

The influence and command of his voice as evidenced by Jeff’s statement adds to the significant notion that Mumia has always been instrumental in his own freedom campaign. While the activists seem aware that much of the campaign rests on the belief of Mumia as an exceptional heroic figure, and the promotion of him as a revolutionary icon, there does not seem to be a desire to disrupt or create distance from this conviction.

Walidah referencing his days as a Black Panther refers to him as “an incredible consummate organizer” and she follows with, “so he understands organizing techniques and ideology. It’s not that he’s just sitting back and asking people on the outside to run his campaign for him. He’s very much involved in that he wants to be part of building a mass movement that hopefully will free him but also will move the conditions of oppressed people forward.”

Augmenting these ideas is the testimony provided by Monica Somocurcio as she recounts her visit with Mumia in the early 1990’s,

At the time it was only those in MOVE and their supporters who were mobilizing for Mumia. But Pam [Africa] had the idea to expand that and we were the perfect group, at a campus with some resources like budgets and a radio show, to give it play in the area. We decided to pay him a visit and I was selected as the rep to go in. If my memory serves right, I think it was John, Andy and me driving there and they waited in the car. I went in and went through several security areas which took quite some time. Finally I was brought to a room with a glass partition and a seat on each side. After waiting some time, the door on the other side opened and Mumia was led in, in handcuffs, into this area that was sealed and where he could not touch anyone. My first impression was his big wide smile. I later learned he had to

153 go through a full physical search every time he had a visitor even though he would be in a sealed room without access to the person coming to see him. More harassment for no reason. Nonetheless he looked very happy to see me. He said hello, he asked how everyone was doing, something which struck me because he should be concerned about his own well being, not ours, and yet he really seemed to want to know how people were doing. We talked about initiating the support campaign, how we were working closely with Pam, who we all were, and expressed total support for him of course. My impression was that this was a gentle man, someone of very high intellect, but someone genuine, who exuded goodness – or something very positive and pleasant. His voice was that crisp voice we all know from the radio, but had a softness to it. His smile could melt a room. It would be impossible not to like him.

Walidah Imarisha who visited him more than a full ten years after Monica also speaks affectingly of the experience,

I had the opportunity to go and visit Mumia in prison and speak with him and the brilliance and eloquence of his radio commentaries are just how he speaks everyday. He would just speak and I . . . I would be like, ‘I can just record this right now’. He’s just talking extemporaneously and it is so thoughtful and so poetic and so moving that it sort of shames me a little bit. I think Mumia – the power of his voice is undeniable.

However, as incontestable as his personal power may be she was quick to also remind that Mumia never tries to promote himself as extraordinary and continually reminds the public that his case is actually remarkably ordinary. She says, “He doesn’t want to be separated from other folks from North Philly, from the hood. He doesn’t want to be separated from other prisoners, other death row prisoners, other political prisoners, other oppressed people of color.”

Pam Africa has no difficulty articulating the centrality of Mumia’s importance as well as what makes him worthy of singular attention and support with these decisive words:

It’s because of the work and dedication that Mumia do and it would be the same thing as asking why Malcolm out of all the people? Why Martin out of all the people? Why the brother they call Jesus Christ out of all the people? You

154 know in every era there is someone who is picked and you’ve got to be able to keep that voice out there and that’s what our job is, keeping that voice out.

Noelle Hanrahan, founder of Prison Radio, and part of the initial team of activists who pioneered the ‘Live from Death Row” broadcasts has worked closely and collaboratively with him since the early 1990’s. She sums up his appeal in these words

Mumia is really an interesting voice, an interesting and fascinating writer. He illustrates perspectives with engaging essays, thoughts that are on the verge of being formed in every ones mind. And he just crystalizes them. He is uncompromising in his insistence on the truth. That is very attractive. He is also a really, really warm and wonderful and open person. He is fluent in many languages and dialects that makes it easy to communicate with him . . . .he honors people where they are, and he is not judgmental or vanguardist, but keeps moving. He does not proselytize so much as witness. . . .For the international community and the majority white American he is accessible. He also speaks the Kings English, and he is beautiful. He is a professor, a lover, a revolutionary and sweet man.

TACTICS, STRATEGIES AND CHALLENGES

If it is easy for this group of activists to be specific and detailed in their ability to define the appeal and draw and inspiration of the Mumia campaign they were in general, remarkably unreflective and seemingly stumped by what I deemed a simple query regarding what they thought some of the most effective strategies have been. Part of the problem possibly, was difficulty with the term “effective’. Nataki’s retort summed up her unease, “Have we been effective? He’s still in jail, isn’t he?” she queried rhetorically.

Coherence coalesced amongst activists around the idea that Noelle Hanrahan’s work with Prison Radio, the website responsible for recording and promoting Mumia’s broadcasts to the international world had been pivotal. Hanrahan explains how Prison

Radio and her collaboration came into formation:

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In 1991 I was working at KPFA producing a thirteen part series of one hour documentaries ‘You Can’t Jail the Spirit’ featuring U.S. political prisoners. A number of the men and women I interviewed, specifically from the white anti- imperialist post-weathermen group commonly referred to as the ‘Resistance Conspiracy’, Susan Rosenberg, Laura

Whitehorn, Linda Evans, Alan Berkmen, Marilyn Buck, and Tim Blunk, asked me to look into the case of Mumia Abu-

Jamal. I believe that one of the members had done time in Pennsylvania prisoners. In April of 1992 I was producing national coverage of the Robert Alton Harris execution, and I was given a cassette tape of Mumia Abu-Jamal recorded by phone from death row at Huntingdon State Prison in Pennsylvania. I arranged to visit Mumia at Huntingdon State

Prison in July of 1992 and made the first series of prison radio recordings. Since July 1992 we have recorded and produced Mumia’s essays from prison. As an investigative journalist I believe that in order to cover a story you have to have first person accounts of the facts. You cannot cover prisons without interviewing prisoners. You cannot cover the death penalty without interviewing men and women on death row. …[effective ]strategies [are those] that realize the humanity of individual prisoners, that value their intrinsic worth, and their perspectives and their voices.

When addressing the topic of strategies much of the wisdom reflected by the interviewees was insightful but surprisingly general and broad. For example, Frank, whose previous responses had shown such erudite sophistication with his reflection on discursive formations and points of equivalence talks vaguely of “the organic way the campaign spread” which he describes as “through old fashioned word of mouth.” He does point out quite correctly that at the time (referring to 1995) the internet was just taking off as a medium of mass communication and information exchange. Speaking of this same time frame Gareth reckons that internet technology greatly enhanced the ability of activists in London, to quickly and easily receive updates from around the world but particularly other parts of Europe. Remembering the galvanizing impact of those updates while participating in the three week long 24 hour vigil in front of the American Embassy he says this,

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Every two or three hours someone would come with a printed out report about what was happening in different parts of Europe. A few pages long, it was a long list that would get passed around . . . I remember flipping through it and reading about all the protests happening on Mumia’s behalf. A benefit concert here, a demonstration there . . . . I remember reading that hundreds of Anarchists were marching in Rome that day. It was this incredible circulation of information and now we take for granted, but then, it was fresh. Spain, France, Germany, Italy. It felt so powerful what was happening around the world, but it was scary too, the execution was scheduled for just a few weeks away.

In addition to rousing and motivating the protesters in front of the American Embassy in London, the advance of email and internet has also significantly altered committee organization efforts. For example, in 1995, in preparation for the expectation that a death warrant signing was immanent, State College activists assembled and organized a complex phone tree to be activated on the event of the signing in order to alert regional supporters. This phone tree was followed up with an extensive and costly mailing list.

By year 2000 when the second death warrant was expected the phone tree was still in place, but information was primarily and routinely submitted by email. “Now”, remarks

Nataki, “I’m Facebook ‘friends’ with five different groups associated with Mumia, including Mumia himself and Prison Radio. I get all my info from them on a daily basis.”

Pam Africa seemed somewhat overwhelmed when I asked her which tactics she deemed had been the most effective and responded, “Oh God, so many. So many.” She launched into a lengthy litany and attempted to basically list all the victories and milestones of the past thirty years citing accomplishments such as benefit concerts, meeting with the governor, documentary films, specific demonstrations, Mumia’s reception in Paris where he has been named an honorary citizen, and numerous others.

Other general statements spoken by various interviewees were along the lines of: “The

157 combined work of many, many forces”, “Getting the word out”, and “A variety of different tactics to reach different audiences.”

Considering how effective, talented, intelligent and committed I know this particular group of people to be I was initially perplexed by the seemingly relative lack of reflection in their answers. In the course of conducting Andy McInerney’s testimony I began to believe the problem lay in the question itself which I realized was limited and simplistic.

He reminded me “You know when a movement has a thirty year ebb and flow there’s so many phases and so many stages that it’s almost had to go through and so I wouldn’t necessarily say that there’s one strategy suited to all times.” Andy made another significant contribution to a consideration of strategies in that he referenced ICFFMAJ , as the nucleus that managed to keep whatever was going on, going. Their general philosophy was not to dictate, micromanage, or demand ideological coherence from all the other Free Mumia groups around the country and around the world, but to encourage groups and individuals to do what they felt they could in the effort towards a common goal of freeing Mumia. This pivots the focus off of precise or explicitly defined and coordinated strategies to a more bird’s-eye view of systemic structures of organizing tactics.

Moreover, after culminating the interview process and beginning to categorize and synthesize the gathered information I realized they had addressed the theme of strategies, but often the information came in the service of explaining another point or elaborating an entirely different query. For example activists in both State College and Portland were relating anecdotal information in which their comments revealed that the strength of 158 their respective organizations were deemed in part to incorporating a variety of community members of various ages, skill levels and abilities. Says Nataki,

One great thing about us, about our group was that we weren’t just a Penn State student group, although we had a lot of students in it, even a couple high school students. We also had people in their 70’s. We had a Nazi resister - someone who had actually been part of the anti-fascist resistance in Germany, union organizers, peace people from the 60’s and stuff. People who had been part of lots of different movements. And they taught us so much. They had been through so much. They were so encouraging and always had great ideas about what might work.

This was not perceived, recognized, or related as a strategy so to speak, yet incorporating a multiage foundation can clearly be understood as one. Catherine

Stauffer, also referenced a particular older member of Portland’s free Mumia group, remembering that his experience in the anti-war movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s made him tremendously valuable when it came to creative tactics and also useful when it came to funds, “He actually had a job, remember?” Gareth, part of that same group, waxed on nostalgically when he remembered how inspiring everyone found another group member, a former Black Panther, to be and how beneficial his perspective was.

I would like to point out that my question of strategies was also limited as well as short sighted because I was thinking very narrowly in terms of tactics enacted by Mumia freedom workers. Yet the activists I talked to clearly recognized the subject of

‘strategies’ from “the other side” too and made numerous remarks about how entrenched, committed and persistent the anti-Mumia folks were in advocating for his death. Maureen

Faulkner’s high public profile, Fraternal Order of Police boycotts, and media forces which have managed to control and distort information were regarded as effective strategies employed by those who sought to murder Mumia. 159

Additionally, and equally significant was what frequently got revealed in the course of discussing organizing experiences were not so much explicit strategies but instead, the numerous challenges, roadblocks, and frustrations they experienced, something I had not even thought to specifically ask. A discussion of strategies most frequently prompted an unexpected and unsolicited discussion of these difficulties. Sometimes it was something as basic as “Leafleting sucked”, or “I hated dealing with the ‘fry Mumia’ people”, but there were also significant ideological ruptures, racial divides, instances of physical and political intimidation, and crisis of confidence.

One recurrent theme previously mentioned were the unexpected challenges organizers experienced due to regional variation. Jeff Martin speaks of the incredible resistance he encounters when he visits his small Pennsylvania town where he says the atmosphere is virulently, passionately anti-Mumia. Gareth remarked at length on his frustrations of organizing in subdued Portland after spending a far more thrilling year in a hub of enthusiastic activity in London, and while Monica determined that New York City was stale in comparison to organizing in State College, Andy felt it was a great boon to move to New York City because the average central Pennsylvanian had a very “low level of political awareness or social awareness of the problems facing the Black community.”

Walidah’s account is most dramatic in which she moved from Portland to Philadelphia in order to be closer to the nexus of political organizing, and then after a few years back to Portland. Philly was, for her, “a completely different climate and was a huge shock for me”. In Portland for example, Mumia did not have mainstream notoriety “so the joke we had was like ‘Free Mumia’ and most people were like ‘What’s a free mumia and where 160 can I get one?’” She juxtaposed that to the climate in Philadelphia in which she said the racial polarity of the city shocked her along with how thoroughly mainstream media had tainted perceptions of Mumia and of MOVE, “Black folks by and large were either supportive of Mumia and MOVE or were like ’I don’t know, whatever, but they don’t deserve what’s happening to them’ and overwhelmingly I felt that white folks were very anti Mumia and anti MOVE, even though they knew nothing about them in many cases.”

Also, she experienced significant physical intimidation:

I remember we would do a weekly ‘honk for Mumia’ outside the fraternal order of police headquarters in Philadelphia and people would throw things at us, they would yell at us, they would yell the N word repeatedly and it was all White people who were doing this. And just the impunity with which they felt like they could do this in broad daylight in front of police headquarters. And they felt they could yell and hurt us and assault people and use racial slurs and epitaphs with impunity. I think [this] speaks to the racialized political climate of Philadelphia. It was definitely a learning experience.

Activists also experienced and witnessed intimidation by police. Roderick recounts getting arrested at an action in Portland in which police pushed people around, chased them on horses, tear gassed crowds which included children, and detained peaceful protestors, including himself. Catherine recounting the same event remembers that certain people in particular were targeted, those, like Roderick, deemed to be in leadership positions. She witnessed one set of police goad, provoke and then purposely break a fellow protestors arm while simultaneously across the street his girlfriend was thrown out into traffic by another couple of officers where she narrowly avoided being hit by an oncoming taxi. In State College Nataki talks about the horror of witnessing the 161 security guards of then-governor Casey as they threatened to take a member of the local free Mumia group, a seventy-four year old man, behind the wall out of public view, and

“show him some authority.” He was not being accused of anything and he was clearly within the parameters of the law while holding a banner with the words ‘Free Mumia

Abu-Jamal’ in view of television cameras and news reporters at a Memorial Day event attended by the governor in Boalsburg Pennsylvania.

TENSIONS: race, ideology, and power

Ideological differences within various factions caused other problems for activists.

“We were very careful to distance ourselves from the Sparts even though we played their documentary everywhere,” remembers Nataki, referring to the Sparticist League, a

Trotskyist political organization. Nataki concedes they were committed to Mumia’s cause and in fact were one of the earliest groups to promote Mumia’s case and were even the source of much early written material and a well produced documentary. Yet the Mumia committee wanted little to do with the majority of their political platform which they deemed as sectarian and divisive. In Portland Catherine remembers feeling tormented by a group called ‘Radical Women’ an offshoot of another sectarian political organization which she says came to all the Mumia events, handed out their own flyers, sold their papers, tried to poach members through aggressive recruitment, generally scared people off, and alienated others.

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Catherine also brings up an interesting consideration when she talks about the general organization of Portland’s Free Mumia Coalition as being primarily run by Anarchists and as being run from an “Anarchist sensibility.” Decisions, discussions, and leadership responsibilities were all supposed to be shared and done through consensus. She says,

“This organizational style was very consciously put in place to model the egalitarian dynamics we wanted to reproduce in the world, but, sometimes it took hours just to decide HOW we were going to decide something. It could get pretty ridiculous.” On the other hand, initiated by a group of a different political persuasion, State College’s committee was run much more hierarchically, with a more traditional approach to leadership and decision making.

On the subject of race and organizing Nataki poignantly recounted the thwarting experience of trying to engage Penn State’s Black student organization in the activities of the Free Mumia campaign. “They came to one meeting and didn’t want to come back to anymore because they said we were ‘too white.’ Well if they had joined with us and brought all their people we wouldn’t have been. I didn’t even know what to say. I was so mad.”

Gareth and Roderick each addressed this problem of race dynamics, lamenting how the racial demographics of Portland made African Americans the minority in the Free

Mumia campaign as they were everywhere else in Oregon. However, they sought to address this when they, along with Walidah and several others, formed a Black Caucus within the formation of the larger Free Mumia group. Says Gareth, “This primarily served the purposes of allowing us to support each other better, but we also had an 163 educational program where we did extra studying among ourselves. Also we were able to do recruiting this way, to go out into Portland’s tiny Black community, reach out to other Black people this way and sort of say, ‘hey come be part of this movement.’”

Walidah, speaking broadly and philosophically asserts that the difference between her early starry eyed days as a baby activist and her perspective now is that she has gained a more astute critical lens and recognizes that a number of conversations about race and privilege within the Mumia movement need to be held. She and Pam both spoke about the response of the “left liberal” Mumia supporters who were horrified when Mumia fired his renowned and well liked civil rights lawyer, Leonard Weinglass. Says Walidah,

When he actually asked Leonard Weinglass not to be his lawyer anymore and the reaction from White supporters and

White liberals who supported Mumia was outrage and shock. It was ‘how dare Mumia fire Leonard Weinglass’. First he was ungrateful, and next that he was stupid. And you know I think it was telling about a lot of the tensions around race and power and privilege.

While Walidah brought race considerations into the reflection of the public’s response to Mumia firing Leonard Weinglass, Pam Africa also repeatedly returned to the same subject which seemed one of considerable distress, lamenting how many supporters left the fold, “There was a whole part of the movement that stepped to the side” as a result of that occurrence. “We were able to maintain because we was able to consistently show people the right in what Mumia did.” And, “To fire Leonard Weinglass was Mumia’s choice. That was his lawyer and things was done wrong. And Mumia was right, and he set an example for other prisoners too…When you’re fighting for your life you gotta do just that.” She intimates that Weinglass became intimidated by the police pressure, that

164 he was “terrorized” by police and became scared and started to refuse to put witnesses on trial. Diplomatically she says, ‘when he was good, he was good” and, “He brought him to the next level but couldn’t go on.” The only time race was mentioned was when she correlated the experience to Mumia firing his very first attorney, remembered from chapter two, Anthony Jackson.

So when he fired Tony Jackson the Black community was thoroughly upset with Mumia because Tony was very well known and very well liked because he ran an organization in Philly helping people get legal representation for free.

And people liked him, especially Black folks, but Mumia had to fire him because he [Tony] said, ‘I don’t know man, I can’t do this, I can’t see how we’re gonna win. Not because we don’t have the facts but because the judge is illegal. I can’t touch this, I’m not going to jail for nobody’. People came after us very heavy for all that.

When speaking on the subject of strategies with Pam Africa, more than with any other interviewee, it became clear that there was no neat or tidy compartmentalization.

Strategies, challenges, hardships and victories all became inextricably intertwined into

“movement.” While Mumia firing three different sets of lawyers produced a setback as have various other occurrences and differences of approach have done, she maintains that strategies of consistency, speaking the truth, having the facts, and staying committed to the principles of “working with all the people” have allowed MOVE, ICFFMAJ, the national movements, and international surges of support to continue after thirty long years.

John Africa taught us that the power of the truth is final. . . .the important thing is people. The strategy of consistency, of always telling the truth . . .You work and call all the people together and let them do their thing. Cause you had some that said ‘Only the working class can get Mumia out’ or “only the Black people are going to get Mumia out’ and that’s

165 not true. It’s not true of any movement. When you are fighting this government and have anything resembling a victory it always comes with all the people. . . .It was the people’s movement that made the government move off of their position. And we intend to keep the movement going.

She notes that ICFFMAJ took a lot of flak from activists who disapproved of their tactics of openly confronting the governor claiming that such aggressiveness was going to get Mumia killed, “But” says Pam, “We did it anyway.” Moreover there were challenges in working among so many different factions.

You have a group of people that say ‘I believe Mumia is innocent’. Then you have a group of people that said, ‘Well I don’t think he had a fair trial. . . .Then you had people who said “I don’t think he had a fair trial and I don’t know whether he’s innocent’ Then there’s a group of people who said ‘I believe he’s guilty of killing the police officer but he was justified in doing it, because they knew what had happened with the cop beating Mumia’s brother. Well the people who said ‘I believe he’s innocent’ didn’t want to work with the people who said it the other way….You have to be able to work with people. We always make sure people have the facts and we work with different groups to find out ‘well what do you think ought to be happening?’, and you listen. Don’t ever pretend like you know everything. And by staying consistent. And that’s how this whole thing managed to happen and is still happening.

If Walidah’s explication of the “we are going to do it, we can do it” moment illustrates the social-psychological phenomena of cognitive liberation and reinforces

Gould’s assertion that much of the work of movements is emotional, then on the opposite spectrum, the crisis of confidence, the burnout, and the feelings of futility must also be addressed and considered. Nataki talked at length of the effects that depression and feelings of futility produced when it felt like “Mumia was going to get executed and we had all failed”. However, she also contributes this,

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But every time I got depressed or felt hopeless he [Mumia] came out with another book. Or he got another degree. Or some other major accomplishment, like when he got his Masters degree. I remember hearing that the reason he went back to school and devoted all that time to getting his bachelors degree was because he wanted set a positive example for his grandson and to show him that even when you’re in a tight situation you can still get things done.

Walidah relates that the way she coped with and ultimately overcame the fear she experienced at the aforementioned protests in Philadelphia was to take solace in the strength of Pam Africa, Ramona Africa and the rest of the family who calmly and bravely withstood state terror. Both Gareth and Catherine commented on the uplifting effect one particularly bold exhibition of pro-Mumia graffiti had on them during the depressing days following the second signing of yet another death warrant in year 2000. Catherine remembers seeing it everyday as she rode her bike to work, wondering who had been brave enough to scale such a high building and claims it was a daily pick-me-up on her way to work.

Perhaps not everything can be theorized, measured or proved to have tangible effects.

But it seems the antidote to these inescapable fleeting feelings of futility are often found in witnessing the inspiring acts and courage of others, or in the coming together to find solace and support in the shared experience of struggle.

The social movement tactician can find much value in the synthesized analysis of these testimonies. They reveal the private moments, inner thoughts, the role of emotion, the inspirations, the hardships and also put forward methods to help overcome the numerous inevitable challenges. They reveal that both coordinated action as well as solo

167 acts of bravado are influential and also suggest ways to make our movements stronger and our tactics more potent.

None of the interview subjects are prepared to declare the movement a wholesale success, it is after all, a movement still in progress with its main goal unrealized. We continue in chapter four as their voices combine with a survey and exploration of

Mumia’s political, civil, and educational impact on society, a historical comparison of other celebrated cases of political injustice, and with the consideration of the historical contributions Mumia makes to an understanding of our 21st century social, political and cultural realities. While the “final chapter” of the thirty year saga regarding Mumia Abu-

Jamal vs. the State of Pennsylvania remains unwritten and Mumia’s freedom remains in the balance these words, spoken by Andy McInerney sum up with certainty the efficacious belief in the liberatory potential of collective power. The reminder that we are doing it, we can do it. He says,

The truth is Mumia was supposed to be executed on August 17th, 1995. And so for seventeen years the State has wanted to execute him and has been unable to and that’s been because of the efforts, of all the different strategies that have been employed. The focused attention, the legal work, the journalistic work of getting out his recordings, and his writings, the demonstrations along with the political organizing, the sort of thing that has brought at different times tens of thousands of people into the street in the United States and around the world. It’s the combination of all those things that have really kept Mumia alive until this point and hopefully will ultimately free him.

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Chapter Four: The Voice, Live from Death Row

I been here before

They boxed me in a corner and I came out fighting

They locked me in a cell and I came out writing

I said I came out writin’

Lock my body, you can’t trap my mind

--Jay Wayne Jenkins, AKA ‘Young Jeezy”. From “I’m Back”

“Don’t tell me about the valley of the shadow of death. I live there.” These two sentences introduce Mumia’s first jailhouse recording, and also preface his first book,

Live from Death Row. In what has become his hallmark style he uses his position as prisoner, as recipient of a recent unjust and unconstitutional proceeding, to expound the circumstances of penal correction which he points out has a long, racialized, history, what he terms “America’s long history of legal lynchings of Africans.” Mumia characterizes prisons as warehouses of inhumanity, “a bright shining hell”, and places determined to 169 kill the spirit before the actual demise of the physical body. He supports his claims with examples and facts, and provides an analysis of the situation promising to continue,

“even if I must do so from the valley of the shadow of death, I will.’

As Noelle Hanrahan explained in chapter three, this initial recording from 1992 began as part of a larger prison project which held as primary consideration the prison experience from the perspective of prisoners. Over the period of a couple months Mumia recorded more than a dozen essays, which were arranged on CD and could be purchased by supporters who knew where to get them. As the 90s progressed, the popularization of the World Wide Web meant they could easily be uploaded at any time by anybody with access to internet. Thus Mumia’s broadcast career, stalled since incarceration, was reignited, and a new venue for communication emerged, one which gives him direct access to a global audience. He still continues to tape an average of six essays each month which are available on the Prison radio website. Prison conditions, unfair sentencing policies, laws which target poor people and which disproportionately penalize

African Americans, the effects of poverty, the abuses of history, and the human side of incarceration through the stories and plights of other prisoners are the main themes which inform the content of his first book and continue to influence much of his work, including

All Things Censored, written in 2000, the 2009 published book Jailhouse Lawyers, and a multitude of broadcasts taped since the initial one in the early 1990’s. Currently his work extends beyond issues of incarceration and stretch to every conceivable nuance of our political world. Recurrent themes in his work are the effects of globalization,

American politics, the relationship between mainstream media and government,

170 reflections on inspiring figures from history, the role of youth, and cultural and social issues of relevancy to Black America.

Rather than just focusing on his own case, Abu-Jamal’s scholarship and cultural production function to establish a wider, broader, ideological platform which is anti capitalist, anti-establishment, anti-racist and one which encourages political dissension for the purpose of radical societal change. This chapter explores the content of Mumia’s scholarship, the role it plays in providing direction to the Free Mumia movement, shows examples of the myriad ways in which the Mumia campaign was used as a springboard to engage other social issues and suggests the ways this will influence how history records his political contribution to the era. Part of the project of historicizing the Mumia movement involves reaching back to examples garnered from the past. I explore how law has been used to define the parameters of Black movement, mobility and personhood and also how Mumia sits at the juncture between race based court injustice and anti- capitalist state terror. Throughout, I seek to show the relationship between Mumia and the Free Mumia movement in the belief that recognizing this dynamic better positions

Abu-Jamal as an imprisoned intellectual, as a contributor and shaper of the contemporary political climate, and as a proponent and practitioner of Black critical political philosophy.

When asked to consider what kind of historical contributions Mumia makes to an understanding of our contemporary social, cultural, racial and political realities activists answered stridently, that his scholarship and the wide body of his work will remain as testament to the realities of our era and as scholarly documentation. Walidah says, “I 171 think Mumia’s contribution touches on so many areas. I think his writing is just incredible, his scholarship is just incredible.” As an instructor of Black Studies at

Portland State University she finds his work, specifically We Want Freedom to be a useful classroom text. “I just feel his ability to combine history, and current events, and statistical information in this politicized but incredibly human frame is something that will live on for a long time.”

An observation noted by one of his earliest visitors Karry Koon-Carr, was his interest in current world events and his desire to engage. Regarding her visits with him she remarks, “I don’t know how he’s so informed. I don’t know how many papers he can get in there but he’s always informed about things going on in the world. He would talk about what ever was going on.”

Recalling Martin’s comments from chapter three, that his voice makes people wonder,

“Why is this man on death row?” and that Martin continues to play his essays on his weekly radio program on WPSU, Penn State University’s student radio. The long history of Mumia on WPSU is an interesting example of the reach, affect and role his scholarship has occupied in the Free Mumia movement, and in the world. Recounted in part by Andy

McInerney and also by Nataki McNeal, each ‘Free Mumia’ support meeting in State

College (which happened on a weekly basis for seven years) either began or culminated with the group listening to one of his essays. The purpose was to inspire, inform, educate, and galvanize. To remember the mission, and to keep Mumia, his message and his voice at the helm of the committee’s decision making process. Andy, along with another committee member, happened to also be involved in another project in which 172 they co-produced an hour long weekly radio show entitled ‘View from the Left.’ Along with a great many stories of global import, they regularly featured Mumia and his plight as content on their show. This continued, unhindered, for at least two years until 1994 when National Public Radio announced they were going to air Mumia’s commentaries on their show All things Considered, for the purpose of reporting on the controversy which by this time was beginning to make its way into the arena of mainstream news. After a highly publicized battle with various police groups, most notably the Fraternal Order of

Police, NPR rescinded their decision to air Mumia’s commentaries by saying it was “not appropriate to use someone in the commentator’s role who is the focal point of a highly polarized and political controversy without at the same time providing the context of the controversy and without other voices involved in that controversy.” NPR might have backed down due to police pressure but ‘View from the Left’, whose listenership extended to Huntington, Pennsylvania, and slightly beyond, took the opportunity to stridently do what NPR was unwilling to do. For the next six shows they featured the commentaries scrapped by NPR using them as a jumping off point to gather support for the Free Mumia campaign, to discuss prison issues, police brutality and the public policies associated with mass incarceration. They proudly hailed themselves as the only radio program willing to air Mumia’s commentaries (they may have believed so, but it was an inaccuracy, Pacifica Radio in California also played them). While Penn State allowed the commentaries to finish airing, View from the Left was promptly cancelled immediately afterwards.

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So, what of the content that led to the intense campaign to censor him from NPR and that led to the cancelation of WPSU’s ‘View from the Left’ (and incidentally several years later Temple University’s student radio station underwent a similar censorship of the essays)? Each censored broadcast can be viewed in Live from Death Row, with the audio counterpart available on Prison Radio website. The body of work in total address the realities of prison life, the random punishments, and deprivation of services, laws and policies which work to the disregard of human rights, and the capricious temperaments of the guards. Also, they illuminate the specific experiences of real individuals. ‘Actin’ like life’s a ballgame’ is one such example. Referring to public policies on crime Mumia writes,

When I hear politicians bellow about “getting tough on crime” and barking out “three strikes you’re out” rhetoric, several images come to mind. I think of how quickly the tune changes when the politician is on the receiving end of some of that so called toughness.

I am reminded of a powerful state appellate judge who, once caught in an intricate, bizarre web of criminal conduct, changed his longstanding opinion regarding the efficacy of the insanity defense, an option he once ridiculed. It revealed in a flash how illusory and transitory power and status can be, and how we are all, after all, human. (p. 41)

Continuing the narrative Mumia highlights the life story of a man he calls ‘Rabbani’, a young person who was one of the first waves of people to be imprisoned under the stiffer youth certifications that allowed teenagers to be tried as adults. He describes Rabbani as a

‘tall husky fifteen year old’ when he was arrested for armed robbery. Tried as an adult he was sentenced to fifteen to thirty years for an alleged robbery with CO2 air pistol. Says

Mumia, “He grew into manhood in shackles, and every time I saw him he seemed bigger in size but more bitter in spirit.” (p.42)

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When we took time to converse, I was always struck by the innate brilliance of the young man—brilliance immersed in bitterness, a bitterness so acidic that it seemed capable of dissolving steel. For almost fifteen years this brilliance had been caged in steel; for almost two of these years he tried largely in vain, to get a judge to reconsider his case, but the one-line, two-word denials—“appeal denied”—only served to deepen his profound cynicism.

For those critical years in the life of a male, from age fifteen to thirty, which mark the transition from boy to man,

Rabbani was entombed in a juridical, psychic, temporal box branded with the false promise of “corrections.” Like tens of thousands of his generation, his time in hell equipped him with no skills of value to either himself or his community.

He has been “corrected” in precisely the same way that hundreds of thousands of others have been, that is to say, warehoused in a vat that sears the very soul.

He has never held a woman as a mate or lover; he has never held a newborn in his palm, its heart athump with new life; he hasn’t seen the sun rise, nor the moon glow, in almost fifteen years—for a robbery, “armed” with a pellet gun, at fifteen years old. (pp. 42-43)

He concludes with a referral back to the metaphoric title, “When I hear easy, catchy, mindless slogans like ‘three strikes, you’re out,’ I think of men like Rabbani who had one strike (if not one foul) and are, for all intents and purposes, already outside of any game worth playing.” (p.43)

In the opening segment of the first documentary produced on his behalf by the Sparticist

League, Abu-Jamal introduces himself as such, “My name is Mumia Abu-Jamal. I’m on

Death Row in Pennsylvania. I’m ex-president of the Association of Black Journalists in

Philadelphia. I’m still continuing revolutionary journalism, I’ll write for anyone who asks me to.” In those days before the broadcast essays, and before his published books, there were his letters. And based on Karry’s testimony, Mumia was a consummate letter writer. Even now, though he has far greater scope via internet, he still manages

(according to his estimate) to write to five or six supporters every day. Dr. Marjorie

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Newell of State College Pennsylvania corresponded with Abu-Jamal over the course of twenty years, first beginning in the late 1980’s. Dr. Newell had the distinction of being the eldest member of the Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal and was seventy-nine years old when the committee initiated in 1991. While not formally interviewed for this project she did generously share copies of some of her correspondences with Abu-Jamal before she passed away in December, 2011. The content of his letters are primarily informational, regarding the common interest they each shared in opposing the death penalty and in organizing against it. Abu-Jamal suggests further readings, shares other sources of information, asks her to send regards to other committee members, and waxes philosophically on the subject of law and human rights. In March 1991 he writes this:

My case is one amongst many subjected to the spectacle of an unfair trial. One wonders, if the attempted exercise of purported rights is constantly denied (‘right’ to pick a jury of peers, ‘right’ to represent and defend oneself, ‘right’ to assistance of ones choice, ‘right’ to make argument to jury, etc….) Why call them “rights?”

To quote Thomas Jefferson; “I have the right to nothing, which you have the right to deny”;

I thank you!

Beyond personal correspondences Mumia also writes “letters to the movement” in which he gives updates of legal decisions, encourages organization along certain lines, and often just to express gratitude. While the letters written in recent years are typed by

Mumia, posted on the Prison Radio website and circulated via social media, this letter written in summer 2003 was handwritten, photocopied, and sent through the mail to various supporters and organizations

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Dear Friends:

As we enter an uncertain future, I am heartily pleased that the National Lawyers Guild has elected to assist me in our ongoing efforts in search of justice. As I write this, I am ever mindful that I am merely one out of many; indeed, one among thousands of men and women who live in the shadow of death. Despite what many of you have read in the papers, that reality hasn’t changed; I remain on Death Row, in a Death Row cell, as utterly isolated as ever. As we strive mightily to change that reality, we must first acknowledge it. With your help we shall do so.

As we embark on further appeals in the federal courts, we appreciate any assistance you can give us. With your help, we will succeed.

I thank you, Ona Move

Also, he has frequently been asked to provide specific commentary on behalf of an event, demonstration, conference, or to mark a particular anniversary. The archives of

Prison Radio provide ample examples, too many to individually consider. Amongst the many, these few examples taken from archived material from years 2003 and 2004, demonstrate the scope of his consideration: Statement for Rosenberg Friends for Children

(6/19/2003), Message for the French Delegation (1/19/03), Mumia’s Message to the

French on the Occasion of his Being Awarded an Honarary Citizenship of Paris

(9/27/03), Message to the 10th Annual Rosa Luxemborg Conference (12/26/04), Message to Black Women’s Health Conference (9/22/04), and Statement for 2nd Congress VS.

Death Penalty in Montreal ( 9/25/04).

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Additionally Abu-Jamal has fulfilled requests as a commencement speaker for both

Universities and even high schools. First at Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington in 1999, in a speech themed “a life lived deliberately”, Mumia’s pre-recorded message highlighted the lives of individuals such as Malcolm X, John Brown, Ramona Africa and

Huey P. Newton saying,

These people dared to dissent, dared to speak out, dared to reject the status quo by becoming rebels against it. They lived—and some of them continue to live—lives of deliberate will, of willed resistance to a system that is killing us.

Remember them. Honor their highest moments. Learn from them. Are these not lives lived deliberately? This system’s greatest fear has been that folks like you, young people, people who have begun to critically examine the world around them, some perhaps for the first time, people who have yet to have a spark of life snuffed out, will do just that: learn from those lives, be inspired, and then live lives of opposition to the deadening status quo.

The following year he spoke at both Antioch, in Yellow Springs, Ohio and Merrill

College at the University of California at Santa Cruz. The same year he also spoke at

Brooklyn Friends high school, and in 2002 at Ithaca high school. He addressed the

University of California Berkeley African American Studies graduates in 2004. In 2008 he was honored at his own alma mater (though he dropped out in the 70’s he completed his degree in 1996), Goddard, by presenting their commencement speech. While the content of his messages varied somewhat in relation to the audience, one commonality which unites the various speeches was the intense controversy, intimidation, and heavy police presence which ensued as a reaction. Antioch College professor of media studies, and then-interim president, Dr. Bob Devine wrote about this in a personal correspondence in April 2011:

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In addition to the 400 hate-mail-emails that many of us received daily, we also got personal death threats, anonymous leafleting in the village, and 500 angry FOP [Fraternal Order of Police] members at graduation. I’m currently in the process of writing a piece trying to make sense of the issues involved in that event. My solace during that very disturbing 3 months (I had messages saying, “I know where you live, I’ve seen your bedroom window, if Mumia speaks, you’re a dead man”) was a visit with Mrs. King, who told me that “If an institution doesn’t articulate and act in its values, then it has no values.”

Outside of writing and recording, Mumia has also been invited to guest lecture in classes at the Ohio State University, and Barusch College. In addition to “The Reign of

Youth”, already discussed in Chapter One, his lecture in 2008 to a class taught in the

Comparative Studies Department at OSU is called “Globalization and its Discontents”.

In it he draws a line of continuity between the trans-Atlantic slave trade and contemporary manifestations of globalism asking, “For, what was the trans-Atlantic slave trade, but a global system?” His lectures range from historical recounting, to political analysis, and to weigh in on contemporary issues of relevancy. On a related note he has also been a guest commentator and political analyst for Democracy Now, invited not just to speak on the details of his own situation but as a political commentator reflecting on varied national and international issues.

Beyond illustrations of Mumia’s ideological influence lie examples of his organizational influence. At several critical junctures along the thirty year path of Mumia support work, direct requests have come from Abu-Jamal, via ICFFMAJ, that his supporters put aside the efforts on his behalf for the purposes of directing effort to a more urgent exigency. Gareth Miles remembers that in 1998 Mumia specifically urged his supporters to please take up the defense of the MOVE 9, members of the MOVE

179 organization who have been imprisoned in 1978, on the occasion of their upcoming parole hearings. In June 2000, in the weeks leading up to the execution of Shaka

Sankofa, Abu-Jamal made a similar pressing request for his case to be set aside and for all networks of support to be activated on behalf of Sankofa.

Examples exist to suggest that the Free Mumia campaign has aided the development of other activist projects. Anti- WTO organizing which took place in year 2000, in

Portland Oregon supports this claim. The close proximity of Portland to Seattle made it an extremely important axis of organized resistance in the months leading up to the coordinated activities which comprised to create the public spectacle known as the

“Battle in Seattle.” In the month prior to the street resistance, Portland’s Free Mumia coalition ceased to operate as usual and instead organized solely to help coordinate and facilitate the Seattle protests. Partly because of ideological adherence to the principles embodied in the anti WTO protest and partly because it was understood that WTO protests could raise Mumia’s profile, the phone lists and email lists accumulated for

Mumia outreach purposes were activated on behalf of anti- WTO organizing. Free

Mumia meetings became strategy sessions and planning meetings for Seattle. Non violence resistance workshops were organized, facilitated, and took place in the homes of members of the Free Mumia coalition. Legal support, at least in part, was prearranged by

Mumia activists who had already established these connections, and turned to the service of organizing for Mumia.

Free Mumia activism in Portland, widened, deepened, strengthened, and reinforced the political struggles of other activist organizations which is evident in the shared 180 membership of the organizations and by the projects the Coalition initiated. According to the recollections of Roderick Franklin and Catherine Stauffer, members of the Free

Mumia Coalition also participated in organizations such as “Cop Watch”, “Western

Prison Project”, “Animal Liberation”, “Coalition for Human Dignity”, “Anarchist Black

Cross”, “Workers Organizing Committee”, as well as anti-racist University groups.

Two projects, ‘Hip Hop in the Park’ and a national conference ‘Open to the Truth: addressing the Prison Industrial Complex’, initiated by Portland’s Coalition serve as example that the Mumia campaign used the particular circumstances of injustice surrounding the case of Mumia to address wider issues. Hip Hop in the Park, which blossomed into an annual event, brought together West Coast musical talent and community activists, and sought to engage community involvement, agency, and advocacy to problem solve the challenges facing Portland’s underrepresented but over- policed small Black community. “Open to the Truth” was a nationally coordinated, education-oriented conference, that brought together anti-death penalty activist groups, prison rights organizations, members of MOVE, and local activist groups such as Cop

Watch to educate and inform on issues of prison injustice. In each case, ‘Hip Hop in the

Park, and ‘Open to the Truth’, Mumia activists initiated, coordinated and executed these events as part of a larger commitment to the ethos of the Mumia movement.

From his time spent organizing in London, Gareth Miles offers another example of how Mumia activists linked issues to promote a foundation of what he reckoned was anti capitalist resistance. He explains:

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Although I didn’t make it to this one, the action that really stood out in London was when Mumia supporters invaded the Walt Disney shop in central London and occupied it to publicize his case until they were dragged out and arrested.

I thought that targeting Disney, in addition to the more obvious target like the American Embassy was a stroke of genius since Disney is such an appropriate symbol of America in the sense of being a jolly friendly looking fun façade hiding a reality of exploitation and oppression.

In addition to these tangible examples, Walidah Imarisha brings forth the consideration of the ways in which Mumia furthers philosophical discussions, furthers the cause of the prison abolition movement, and anti-death penalty activism. One way this happens is that working on his case helps to advance important discussions amongst prison activists in regards to issues of ‘innocence’. While it is easy for people to join with Mumia because most of his supporters firmly believe he is innocent she makes the point that Mumia himself does not dwell on whether his fellow inmates, those he advocates on behalf, are guilty or innocent and that this is important because it breaks the guilty/innocent dichotomy and forces necessary conversations. She questions, are only people who are considered “innocent” worthy of the support of the liberal left? She remarks,

I think Mumia has really spent a lot of his time talking about cases of folks who he’s encountered. So many of his stories in Live from Death Row are not focused on ‘did this person do this or not?’” it focused on ‘This person is in a situation where they are either growing despite the dehumanizing degrading situation they are in or they are being crushed and brutalized by that, and is this the world we want to live in?‘” . . . And I think it’s really important to expand the conversation around Mumia beyond innocent and guilty. Yes, Mumia is innocent, the evidence proves that he’s innocent and yet that shouldn’t be the extent of the conversation we have challenging prisons and challenging the death penalty and challenging the theft of people from our communities.

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Walidah insists that part of the inheritance of the Mumia freedom movement are the ways in which Mumia’s case furthers more nuanced discussions of prison issues, including prison abolition. She also encourages other activists to understand the ways in which contemporary struggles are built on the sacrifices of the past, and how these understandings help us better interpret the ways in which law and ideology convene to regulate and mediate our political realities. To illustrate this point it is necessary to reach back into the annals of history in order to recognize the function of law as a form of social control, to establish a pattern and tendency of state terror, and to recognize the ways in which Mumia sits at the critical nexus between customs of racial sub personhood and traditions of political persecution against anti capitalist resisters.

The lives and livelihoods of Africans in America have always been negotiated in part through the administration of legal regulation. The centrality of focus on Mumia’s trial, and the subsequent demand for a new fair trial is an example of how law, perhaps best recognized as a reflection of ideology or even as theorist Noam Chomsky asserts, as a form of social control, is seen paradoxically as both a tool of state enforced inequality and terror which maintains the rule of the rulers yet also has the potential to function as a space of possibility imbued with the power to reinstate denied humanity, personhood and free will. The Slave Trade Act of 1807 passed by the United Kingdom Parliament which used its international might to influence the United States to pass a similar rule didn’t abolish domestic slavery but did staunch the influx of newly captured captives. (Zinn

1998) Other landmark cases such as: United States v. La Jeune Eugenie, 1822, have been cited by legal scholars as significant because it aided in the establishment of an

183 ideological foundation for the supremacy of European rule over incapable slaves.(Patricia

M. Muhammad, 2004). A series of fugitive slave laws, beginning in 1793 and culminating in the most recognized fugitive slave act of 1850, established slaves as property and empowered slaveholders with the ability to reclaim their property across state lines, including non-slaveholding states. And the oft cited and widely quoted famed case of Dred Scott v. Sanford. This court case spanned ten years and culminated when

Judge Taney shot down the efforts of the enslaved Scott who had attempted to use constitutional law to try to secure his freedom. Taney stated that blacks “had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.” As Blacks were not citizens, they therefore had no right to sue or to use the protection of the constitution as leverage. The

Emancipation Proclamation, which necessitated constitutional amendments and the nationally enforced changes made throughout the south during the period of

Reconstruction are also examples of the ways in which the lives and livelihoods of

Africans in America have been structured in part by legal mandates. The famous Plessy v

Fergussen decision of 1896 which heralded the infamous ‘separate but equal’ era of Jim

Crow and state-sponsored segregation was later challenged by Brown v. Board of

Education which was the legal platform upon which civil rights gained esteem, legal recourse, and moral strength. Ironically, legal recourse has been used to both enslave and dominate, but also as a strategy to gain autonomy and manumission.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs. Mumia Abu-Jamal has not necessarily set a precedent for public policy or a massive overhaul of social relations in the same way

Brown v. Board of Education has, yet, his arrest, trial, sentencing, as well as the attention

184 the case garners can be grasped as reflection of our collective social climate, race relations, and civil sensibilities. The legal system is revealed as a supporter and reinforce of the status quo thereby perpetuating the established power relations of society. Law is indeterminate, a veneer of legitimacy, and a collection of beliefs and prejudices.

In addition to recognizing this case as part of the Black experience in America it is also important to recognize another, not wholly separate, arc which has characterized the formation of the nation, that being a radical history, or as the influential historian Howard

Zinn might assert, the “Peoples History” in which law also is used to intimidate, coerce, and control.

Organized labor which has historically forced a renegotiation of capital resources provides rich examples of how the legal system becomes an arena that reflects Noam

Chomsky’s assertion of law as a form of social control. Labor struggles ensued at the turn of the 20th century that directly challenged the growing consolidation of corporate wealth. Howard Zinn writing in A Peoples History estimates that in the final decade of the 19th century there were approximately 1,000 strikes per year which by 1904 had grown in number to four thousand. And he contends “Law and military force again and again took the side of the rich.” (p. 339) Examples abound to substantiate the claim that that organized labor, in events planned and executed by multitudes, was consistently met with violence and imprisonment prompting one member of the international labor organization, Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), upon arrest in 1912 for a free speech issue to declare “To hell with your courts.” (p. 333)

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Though the very nature of organized labor is by necessity and definition a unified coalition of working class factions and varied activities, the retelling tends to focus on particular groups, events, and individuals. IWW founded in Chicago, 1905, comprised of radical trade unionists, socialist, and anarchists and sought through the efforts of political action and direct action in the form of strikes and boycotts to encourage working class solidarity, and collective action in the larger effort to challenge, resist, and reform capitalism. Such efforts were consistently met with harassment, violence, imprisonment and false charges sparking prominent founding member and socialist presidential candidate Eugene Debs to write in an inflammatory article Appeal to Reason, “Capitalist courts never have done, and never will do anything for the working class . . .” (Zinn, p.

344)

“They were”, Zinn specifies, referring to the multitudes of men and women who comprised the early efforts of union building, “attacked with all the weapons the system could put together: the newspapers, the courts, the police, the army, mob violence.” (p.

332) The contributors big and small of the many who advocated for better, safer, more equitable working conditions often through historical reconstruction get distilled and represented as being particular events, places ,and individuals thereby equating “the movement” with its most prominent leaders which does not reflect the breadth, depth, and wide scale support and solidarity. Specifically regarding Mumia, he is the first to point this out with his belief that there are hundreds of ‘Mumia’s’ doing time in

America’s penal institutions. Yet it remains a necessary and helpful exercise to establish a pattern and recurring tendency of state terror enacted upon insurgents using “all the

186 weapons the system could put together” including state sanctioned death. To do this I turn to the poignant examples of specific celebrated radicals such as Joe Hill, Ferdinando

Nicolo Sacco, Bartolomeo Vanzetti, and Ethel and Julius Rosenberg whose political proclivities and actions earned each individual a death sentence. Reviewing these cases allows us to evaluate Mumia’s trial and sentencing in historical context; it illuminates comparisons, and establishes a tendency of the state to persecute individuals for their political beliefs and actions. Yet as much as it illuminates comparisons, it also allows for an evaluation of differences. Mumia as a prolific highly literate subject is unique, as were the tenors of racial partiality which permeated his trial, and the ways in which his trial, sentencing, and imprisonment have unfolded in relation to the emergence of the prison industrial complex all which culminate to create significant differences from the bygone examples of yesteryear.

In the case of Swedish born Joe Hill, nèe Joel Hägglund, executed by firing squad on

November 19th, 1915, it was the murder of a grocery store owner in Utah that triggered his arrest. Despite the fact that there existed no direct evidence to link him to the murder, based on two uncertain eyewitnesses he was sentenced to death by a jury. Hill, a songwriter, itinerant laborer, and enthusiastic committed labor organizer was not unknown. Prior to his execution he had been an active, vocal, committed socialist and member of the IWW. Despite widespread support, including ten thousand letters to the governor, and sympathizers which spanned both his adopted nation and birth nation the

Utah Supreme Court refused to overthrow the conviction. In a letter written directly before his imminent execution to prominent IWW leader Bill Haywood Hill he urged the

187 adoption of this sentiment: “Don’t waste any time mourning. Organize”. This oft quoted and deeply embraced ethos has in the years since been widely espoused and shortened to

“Don’t mourn, organize”, and remains a rallying union cry.

Just six short years following Joe Hill’s assassination, Ferdinando Niccolo Sacco and

Bartolomeo Vanzetti, Italian immigrants with Anarchist political leanings, were arrested in Braintree Massachusetts and charged with the crimes of robbery and murder. Similar to Hill, there was a widespread outcry of public support that focused on trial irregularities, issues of fairness, the belief that the accuser’s politics influenced the court, and the stark absence of concrete evidence to tie the accused to the case. It is also important to note that the case of Sacco and Vanzetti transpired during the “Red Scare” of 1919-1920 in which government and press conspired to whip up fear that the nation would fall to communism, and in which suspicion circulated around foreign born communists in particular. Convicted in 1921, after a six week trial they remained imprisoned for an additional six years while the legal process played out in the form of appeals, separate motions, and petitions to both state and federal courts. Despite evidence of perjury by prosecution witnesses, illegal activities by police, and even a confession to the murder by another man, in the end presided over by Judge Thayer,

Sacco and Vanzetti were executed by electric chair in what remains one of the most controversial and notorious political trials in history. An overview of the trial transcript permits the continued appraisal of specific points of contention and supports the belief that two innocent men were executed primarily because of their political persuasion.

Also parts of the written record are letters written by each man to their families. In the

188 final paragraph of Sacco’s last letter to his son Dante written the night before his execution he reflects on his fate and firmly aligns himself with other members of the marginalized working class thereby showing awareness that his political affiliations contributed to the death sentence he and Vanzetti received. He writes, “The weaker ones that cry for help, the persecuted and the victim. They are your friends, friends of yours and mine; they are the comrades that fight, yes and sometimes fall. Just as your father, your father and Bartolo have fallen. Have fought and fell yesterday for the conquest of joy, of freedom for all. In the struggle of life you’ll find you’ll find more love. And in the struggle, you will be loved also.”

Our third historical example and most recent is that of married couple Ethel and Julius

Rosenberg whom in contrast to the others were charged with espionage rather than murder. Accused of supplying classified military and industrial information about the atomic bomb to Russia, the Jewish American communists were convicted on the weak testimony of individuals who were already in prison or under indictment. Similar to our other cases consideration of the political climate at the time of their arrest is tantamount to an evaluation of the specifics. Commonly referred to as the ‘second red scare’, or simply ‘McCarthyism”, the late 1940’s and beginning of the fifties is stained with the hysteria and fear of anti-capitalism whipped up by government organizations such as the

House Un-American Activities Committee which acted in concert with the Permanent

Subcommittee on Investigations. These organizations instigated a climate of fear and distrust of and made people eager to identify and remove so called communists and their sympathizers from positions of power including the entertainment field and the film

189 industry. Ethel and Julius were self-proclaimed advocates of communism and had deep committed ties to the American communist party as well as affiliations with the labor movement yet the evidence that convicted them, particularly Ethel, was spurious and the trial was riddled with prosecutorial and judicial misconduct. Ironically Julius cited the

Scottsboro case with its overtones of racial inequity and unequal protection under the law as being one of the prime events that radicalized him. By now the pattern is familiar: anti-capitalist politics in a virulent reactionary epoch combines with a misconceived trial.

Subject’s political beliefs get waved like a bloody shirt and the jury often with the judges biased encouragement rush to convict. FBI documents were revealed in the 1970’s proved that Judge Kaufman had privately and secretively conferred with the prosecution as to what the Rosenberg’s sentencing would be. Writing to his lawyer Julius gives frank appraisal regarding his understanding of how the political climate contributed to their sentencing.

This death sentence is not surprising. It had to be. There had to be a Rosenberg Case because there had to be an intensification of the hysteria in America to make the Korean War acceptable to the American people. There had to be a hysteria and a fear sent through America in order to get increased war budgets. And there had to be a dagger thrust in the heart of the left to tell them that you are no longer gonna give five years for a Smith Act prosecution or one year for

Contempt of Court, but we’re gonna kill ya!

As experienced with Sacco, Vanzetti, and Hill, an outpouring of indignant support flooded forth. There was a worldwide campaign of protest with well-known personalities such as Albert Einstein, Jean-Paul Sartre, Pablo Picasso, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo, Pope

Pius XII, and poignantly, Bartolomeo Vanzetti’s sister rallying on their behalf. Two

190 weeks prior to their scheduled execution when asked to confess in exchange for revoking the death sentence the Rosenbergs offered this reply:

Our respect for truth, conscience, and human dignity are not for sale . . . Justice is not some bauble to be sold to the highest bidder. If we are executed, it will be the murder of innocent people and the shame will be upon the government of the United States. History will record, whether we live or not, that we were victims of the most monstrous frame-up in the history of the country.

The veracity of this recognition, reminiscent of the letter Julius Rosenberg wrote to his lawyer almost sixty years ago, that his death sentence ‘had to happen’ in order to justify the political ideology of the epoch, reflects what Mumia calls the “grim reality” of the prisoner. In a letter written 2003 to an event commemorating the lives of Julius and

Ethel Rosenberg Mumia ends with these words, “The Rosenbergs were progressive folks who dared to dream of a world where fascism and racism were no more; and where the state did not use its judicial apparatus for state terrorism. They did not succeed, but that does not mean their noble dream was wrong; it only means that there’s work to be done.

Let our work further their dreams - - into reality.”

The example of Mumia, the fact that he remains imprisoned thirty years after his sentencing was cited by activists as a warning of ‘what happens when you sign up for the kind of politics he signed up for’, and a reflection of our existing racial inequity. Says

Walidah, “It’s clear that this is the penalty for dissent . . . . This is a clear message that resistance and struggle against the system are not to be tolerated.”

Nataki McNeal-Bhatti extended a concept introduced by the scholarly lawyer Lani

Guinier in Miners Canary when she, along with co-author Gerald Torres likened the

191 canaries that signaled distress alerting miners of poisonous, harmful air to issues of race which similarly signal underlying societal conditions capable of causing injury to all.

Mumia, Nataki reasoned, is also like the miners canary, in that his position is a measure, a reflection, and a reminder of how feeble the position of African Americans are in

American society, that Philadelphia prosecutors “got away with putting him away” and that he has yet to be released . Roderick Franklin echoed a similar sentiment with this consideration, “Here we are with evidence that is obviously clear in my mind that Mumia should be free and unfortunately we haven’t come very far at all. What this says about our social issues and about our race issues is that this is a racist and classist world we live in. If you’re poor and if you’re Black you don’t have hurdles, you have mountains to surpass. And if you’re caught up in the judicial system you have a very long road to hoe.”

On another note Roderick, echoing the perspective of each individual interviewed for this project celebrates the example of fortitude, and perseverance Mumia has set not just for those who worked actively on his campaign but as an example which will inspire future generations. Activists admired the breadth and depth of his political contributions, his scholarly contributions and the standard he sets for integrity and principled action.

While the attention he receives is heartening, it is not enough. “He should never have been in prison in the first place” and, “He should be set free.” When asked to surmise the historical significance of his case Karry Koon-Carr conjectures, “Well, I hope it will be one of those things that people look back and say, yeah he really wasn’t treated fairly.

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Like maybe we look back at Sacco and Vanzetti now and say ‘were they really guilty?

Did they really get a fair trial?’ I think it’s gonna be one of those things.”

His voice is euphonic, talented, familiar, consistent and dependable. It is a voice capable of inspiration as it conveys sincerity, dedication and humanity. It is intergenerational, echoing the past yet it escapes being anachronistic because it is firmly rooted in contemporary relevancies. It celebrates heroes, victories and triumphs. It chronicles current events, identifies societal challenges and exposes hypocrisy. It is frank, determined, thorny, persistent, learned, observational, and grounded in personal experience. It is compassionate, accessible, scholarly, and it is capable of effectively code switching. It champions the youth. It eulogizes and chastises. It provides a channel, a bond of continuity connecting not just past to present but unites local considerations in light of global concerns and yokes together the circumstances of those separated by geography, language and religion. He remains true to his youthful Panther roots by projecting a voice of advocacy and he documents the human condition. He writes about the homeless, the imprisoned, the poor, about the deleterious effects of ill conceived public policies. He animates his experiences from the most personal perspective, a place many will never go, private prisons. He critiques capitalism, the shenanigans of politicians and detects patterns of exploitation. He uses his voice to point out the many ill effects that economic and racial inequity has on the majority of the world’s population.

Inherited from the injustices of the past, honed through the discriminations of his life, and refined in captivity his voice is one of Black Nationalism. It is unapologetically partisan and seeks to advance an agenda.

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Speaking in 1996 to representatives of the socialist Workers World Party, in a video produced by the late Key Martin of Peoples Video Network, Mumia calmly, pointedly proclaims, “I’m fighting everyday. Not just for my freedom, not just for my liberation, but for all our liberation. Unabashedly I fight for revolution because I think revolution is the only solution. I’m not shy about using that word. . . . Revolution is my religion.”

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The Conclusion, “From Imprison Nation”

Mumia

They have decided

Finally

Not to kill you

Hoping no blood will

Stain their hands

At the tribunal of the people;

But to let you continue

To die slowly

Creating and singing

Your own songs

As you pace alone, sometimes terrorized, for decades of long nights

In your small cage

Of a cell.

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We lament our impotence: that we have failed

To get you out of there.

From ‘Occupying Mumia’s Jail Cell’ by Alice Walker

Mumia remains incarcerated despite thirty years of organized effort to change his circumstances. Since 1981 support has developed from a small handful of isolated yet fiercely committed members of ‘West Philadelphians in Support of Mumia’ to countless organized cadres such as ‘Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal’, ‘Millions for Mumia’, the

International Action Center, whose primary energy revolves around Mumia support work, the Free Mumia organization of London, “Occupy for Mumia”, “Journalists for

Mumia”, “Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia”, the vast Free Mumia Abu-Jamal

Coalition of New York City, strongholds of support around the globe, especially

England, France, Germany, and interestingly Algeria, as well as countless local Free

Mumia committees scattered around the country. In December 2011 a victory was realized in that a significant change in status occurred when his sentence was officially commuted from Death, to Life in Prison thereby prompting a shift in his signature broadcast sign off “Live from Death Row” to “from Imprison Nation’. Some of the interview subjects whose words had already been recorded and transcribed wanted to add more to what they already said. In fact for some, every new development in his case encouraged accompanying reflections. Comments gathered such as, “I’m glad he’ll

196 never be executed, but it’s not enough’, “It’s a start”, “It’s a small victory”, “I feel like I should be happier”, “He needs to be free’ and ‘Thirty years is long enough.”

Joining this chorus are more celebrated names and personalities such as Cornell

West, who on the thirty year anniversary of Mumia’s arrest joined hundreds at a public event in Philadelphia’s Constitution Center, and referred to Mumia as a ‘revolutionary lover’ and the ‘freest black man in America’, as one who was not afraid to straighten his back and serve the people. The transfer to life in prison warranted another longtime supporter, Arch Bishop Desmond Tutu, to visit Mumia shortly after his death sentence was dropped. Tutu has been a consistent long time supporter and recently publicly condemned his continued imprisonment calling the shift to life imprisonment as ‘another kind of death sentence’. Scholar and activist Angela Davis expressed this, “Mumia has become a symbol for all of us. A symbol of struggle, a symbol of hope. Our final goal is to bring Mumia home. He has spent too many years in those dark chambers of death.”

Perhaps the sentiment is best summed up by words quoted from author and social justice worker Alice Walker, artistically reacting to the update of his imprisonment she writes in two lines of her lengthy poem Occupying Mumia’s Jail Cell, “We lament our impotence: that we have failed to get you out of there”, published in 2011.

That this movement still progresses is evident and the fervor and commitment of

Mumia’s vast assembly of international support which include the activists interviewed for this project who remain resolute even if the exigencies of peoples day to day lives mean they no longer remain as active, or active in the same ways they once were.

Moreover the ethos of the movement which has always stretched to accommodate a 197 wider span of concerns such as opposition to the death penalty, prison injustice issues, police brutality, economic injustice, and global inequality continues to find footage in other efforts such as “Occupy Wall Street”.

This case is unique because it involves a subject capable of participating at many levels of meaning making therefore I have presented the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal and the subsequent bid for his survival and freedom as multifaceted, one of history, of social and cultural history, framed in social movement theory, and augmented by the experiences of his own life and the experiences of those intimately involved in helping to win freedom. Throughout each chapter Mumia’s voice weaves in and out, sometimes due to the authority of his experience and sometimes as a scholarly influence, the result of his academic production. I have sought to incorporate not just the experiences and descriptions of his experiences but to also incorporate Mumia, an imprisoned radical intellectual as part of the theorizing, historicizing, and documenting process which is something he has purposefully and organically always done in the development and evolution of his life’s work.

The research design of this project has employed the relevant data which include court documents, police reports, trial transcripts, newspaper articles, the contributions of literature which exposes prison injustices, and the varied recollections, testimonies and experiences of many individuals including myself. These associated materials combine to provide evidence that work to establish the relationship between the Free Mumia movement and Mumia, and promote Mumia Abu-Jamal as an iconic figurehead and celebrated radical Black theorist, organizer, and scholar. An icon both uniquely capable 198 of making unprecedented contributions yet also one who functions as a representative of the larger trajectory of Black resistance, radical scholarship, and race-based prison injustice.

We understand this as a project of history because it gains relevance and bearing when interpreted in comparison to other historical court cases of racial injustice such as

Scottsboro, and of other celebrated cases of political terrorism such as the assassinations of Joe Hill, Sacco and Vanzetti, and Ethel and Julius Rosenberg. Mumia claims this history and the association with other imprisoned radicals when he makes the point that the names of Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were familiar to most Black Panthers. “I made it my business to know about them”, he comments.(Abu-Jamal, 2000) Referring to the collusion between the Judge and the prosecutors to ensure the conviction and sentencing of the Rosenberg’s and relating it to his own case where the judge and prosecutor similarly met and plotted his fate he writes, “I know the Rosenberg’s in a way many will never know. I know the feeling of being pinpointed for ones political beliefs and associations. I know the profoundest loss that results from being separated from loved ones and sentenced to the gallows.” (Abu-Jamal, 2000) Drawing this cord of connectivity, afforded by historical analysis, permits the ability to cite the obvious similarities between these cases - of prosecutorial bias, weak evidence, compromised witnesses, and distorted media representations. But perhaps more vitally it encourages an assessment of the variances. For example, similar to the Scotsboro ‘boys’ Mumia was crucified in newspaper stories following his arrest and was presumed guilty before his trial began. He was given no opportunity to present his own side and was never quoted

199 directly. Furthermore, in the 1990’s, he endured an organized effort by the Fraternal

Order of Police to bar the image of his face from being reproduced in newspapers because he did not “look like a cop killer” and his image tended to garner an emotionally sympathetic response. “The state would rather give me an Uzi than a microphone” he says, and “They don’t just want my death, they want my silence.” Yet, a skilled media worker himself, Mumia and his support network have managed to create other structures to offset the mainstream “blackout” that have allowed his influence to carry farther than the jail cell he has been confined to. These variances, when recognized, acknowledged and exploited, reveal portals of possibility. After all, Mumia remains alive, functioning, and prolific. Despite the signing of two separate death warrants, one in 1995, the second in 2000, and despite the numerous attempts to limit the scope of his profile and his influence he has neither been executed nor silenced.

A historical approach including an emphasis on social and cultural history is also central to an understanding of this contemporary case for the purpose of establishing a continuum of Black resistance to the circumstances of subordination. This continuum has been acknowledged and explored by numerous scholars but perhaps most effectively by historian Vincent Harding in his opus, There is a River. Harding uses the metaphor of

‘River’ to provide an arching trajectory of Black struggle where he demonstrates that repressive conditions lead to insurgent consciousness a consciousness further reinforced by the ensuing struggle. The river he says is us, and includes past, present, even future generations, containing the collective actions, and aspirations of people which flow continuously, inevitably in endless rhythms with no separable parts. Mumia has

200 consistently, consciously and purposefully reinforced this ideal evidenced by his insistence of his ‘ordinariness’, by the warning he gave students at Ohio State University that “your rights aren’t separate from mine”, and by his ever growing body of work which has always drawn parallels, built bridges and created links between issues. To emphasize his belief in the continuity and interconnectedness of history and struggle and to underscore the “notion that the tribe and the individual are one’’ he quotes a West

African axiom in the acknowledgement page of his first book, Live from Death Row, and declares “I am we.” This stress on being one of the people, one with the people, and the insistence that his case must be recognized as a reflection of the Black American experience is why it is necessary to explore the culture and environment of Philadelphia, the historical forces and economic realities as well as the political environment and social movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s that helped shape his worldview. All of these components coalesce to a more nuanced understanding of how the Mumia movement encapsulates and advances themes and issues from a multitude of social struggles even while the focus is seemingly just on one person.

That Mumia endorses, practices, and advances these philosophies of continuity, interconnectedness of history and struggle, and ever flowing current of the allegorical river is evidenced by his persistent and unswerving championing of the primacy of youth as agents of change. Firstly, by consistently making the point that the Black Panther

Party was primarily a young people’s organization. Also, by the potent example of his own life story as one who had his own byline of an internationally published paper with a

250,000 readership replete with an accompanying 800 page FBI file all by the age of

201 fifteen. In a personal correspondence Mumia reflects on the shared bond of youthful high risk activism while reminiscing on the life of one of his early supporters in State College who passed away in 2006, “….truth be told, he inspired the hell out of me. I loved his stories of a teenaged party member in Germany, putting up anti-Nazi, and anti-Hitler posters, and slogans on the walls! I loved the dissent, but I also admired (and identified with!) being an activist, a rebel, a revolutionary, at so young an age. I saw a light of myself in him; and I hope he saw the same in me.” Mumia has also put focused attention on the consideration of youth as a theme of his radio broadcasts such as in “The Lost

Generation?”, an essay written in 1992 and published in Live from Death Row where he counters the assumption that the current generation of youth is directionless. Rather he says,

This is not the lost generation. They are the children of the L.A. rebellion, the children of the MOVE bombing, the children of the Black Panthers, and the grandchildren of Malcolm; far from lost, they are probably the most aware generation since Nat Turner’s; they are not so much lost as mislaid, discarded by this increasingly racist system that undermines their inherent worth. They are all potential revolutionaries, with the historic power to transform our dull realities.

His belief in the centrality and revolutionary potential of youth is yet furthered by his correspondence with students in the African American and African Studies department at the Ohio State University in which he engages in discussions of mainstream Black pop culture, disparaging it as “consumerist culture in blackface”, the 2008 presidential election, particularities of his trial, and his impressions on contemporary youth. In response to the query “What do you think about youth today? He writes, “Youth are in a wonderful position to change the future, as long as they learn sufficiently from the past.

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This is a generation that longs for a chance to change the sad, ignoble, miserable conditions of millions of people in this country, and beyond. I’ve always felt that this generation has the potential to be a more revolutionary generation than those of the ‘60s.

That’s partly because they can learn from the mistakes of the ‘60s and not repeat them.”

Moreover, he urges the students to realize their own liberatory power evident in this lengthy quote:

I’m not a big believer in remaking the wheel. By that I mean I wouldn’t want young folks today to re-create the movements of the ‘60’s—no matter how wonderful I thought those times were.

That’s because, if we’re honest, this simply can’t be done. This is a new era, although it continues to carry with it much of the detritus of the past.

The great Frantz Fanon (if y’all don’t know who he is, read: The Wretched of the Earth) once wrote: “Each generation must , out of relative obscurity, discover its mission, fulfill it, or betray it” [p. 167}.

That said, there are a thousand issues that are burning in the hearts of Black America today. Huey P. Newton was

24-years-old when he founded the Black Panther Party—not much older than any of you (or perhaps a lil’ younger).

He didn’t ask Martin for permission. He did it.

He read Fanon, Malcolm, and other works, and built a group that was national within 5 years of its founding.

What is important, more than anything—is will.

WE know, more than any people in America (other than Native people) that what’s written on paper, in books, or in constitutions, bears little resemblance to how life is really lived.

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The U.S. Congress passed the 13th, 14th, & 15th Amendments after the end of the Civil War (around 1865), and thus, by the ‘law of the land’, protected the freedom, citizenship and right of African Americans to enjoy citizenship rights, right?

But what Congress and the Constitution giveth, the Supreme Court took away, as did the several states.

They enacted Black Codes, and segregation laws, and anti-Black terrorism (that’s what lynchings were). It took 100 years to get a Voting Rights Act passed that was ‘guaranteed’ by the Constitution.

What does that tell ya?

Rights come from the People, who struggle for it, and work for and make it happen.

Not the goodness of the hearts of some slobs in Washington.

So, join a Black organization—or organize your own!

Ona Move!

Keep Studying!

Social Movement theory provides another framework for studying the phenomena of

Mumia Abu-Jamal. Since the theme of this project remains an in-progress movement, the focus of theory is not to enhance a retrospective evaluative looking-back, but one attentive to a primary short term goal, Mumia’s release from prison; therefore the oral testimonies are offered not merely as evaluative analysis but as having prescriptive merit as well. With Mumia still imprisoned and with swelling numbers of prisoners taking up residency in the ‘fastest growing housing tract in America”, and the assertion by legal scholar Michelle Alexander that mass incarceration is a re-inscription of racial caste, it is a project dedicated to action and I have endeavored to make this exploration of Mumia

204 and the support work on his behalf helpful to those who seek to advance the various causes symbolized by his imprisonment. I contribute to and extend the body of social movement theory by advancing the voices, experiences, and perspective of activists which is valuable because it captures the animus, disposition, spirit, attitude and impetus of the individuals and also can provide documentation of the growth and depth of how the Mumia movement formed and expanded. I contend that the testimonies of the subjects are valuable not just for the details of the experience that they share but also because they contribute their beliefs, hypothesis, suppositions, deductions and conclusions which add critical currency to the consideration of how to organize an international freedom movement. I believe the experiences and perspectives of the varied activists I interviewed are broadly applicable to the consideration of social movements in general and that reading about the experiences of movement building can teach activists how to organize better while also providing substance for academic production.

Recognizing this stretches the perimeter of what social movement theory is, how it gets recorded, and by whom. It advances the ability of activists to be reflective, to occupy simultaneous roles, gives activism and activists a place in the theorizing process and puts to rest the heavily pondered dichotomy between “activist” and “scholar”.

Examples of the utilitarian potential of the oral testimonies are various. It is clear from the examples of Roderick and Gareth that the mere image of Mumia prompts intrigue. Gareth’s immediate recognition of “the dreadlocked brother” and his visceral response was a poignant and memorable moment as he recounts his very first exposure, his very first memory of Mumia. Roderick was similarly stirred, having just moved to

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Portland Oregon and seeing stickers of his image all over, to learn more. Additionally, not forgetting the lengths gone to by the Fraternal Order of Police who sought to erase his visibility from all newspapers, we surmise that the very image of Mumia is commanding

- a viewpoint validated by Cornel West as he referred to an enlarged poster of Abu-Jamal next to the podium he spoke from at the Philadelphia Constitutional Center on December

9th, 2011. Addressing the hollering, cheering crowd he dramatically urges, “Take a look at this picture. Look in his eyes. Look at his face. His spirit has not been broken in thirty years of repression on death row . . .You’re looking at a free Black man who in the face of terror said ‘I’m gonna be a revolutionary lover who organizes and mobilizes and tells the people the truth.’” Clearly the aim of organizers would be to raise his profile and increase exposure of his visage.

One of the salient themes recurrently addressed in the oral testimonies was the transformative power inherent in Mumia’s broadcast essays, linked to the potency of his scholarship. In addition to his image, greater exposure to his voice is plainly an impactful approach to gathering momentum and interest. One plan discussed by Nataki

Bhatti which has not yet come to full fruition is to promote Mumia as a standing guest editor in historically Black newspapers across the country. It is promising to deduct the potential effectiveness of this proposed action as it incorporates all the elements proven to be thus far effective in raising awareness and support on his behalf.

Another lesson and strategy gleaned from the verbal accounts is the importance of maintaining an organized movement. Mumia support work benefits from and is furthered by cyber culture and especially through websites like Prison Radio but it is evident that 206 his cyber presence should never supplant the physical act of joining together with others in great numbers which, gauging from the experiences of activists, is central. Walidah,

Gareth, Frank, and Roderick in particular reflect on how they each gained fortitude, strength, and commitment from the act of joining together, in person, with others. In each case their consciousness on issues of racial injustice, court injustice, and social inequity was already in place but needed an organized movement to activate and illuminate their own inspired actions.

Insight into the formations of organized movements is also something imparted from the oral testimonies. For example, the importance of incorporating the experiences of multi generational activists from different activist traditions and of different era’s, such as discussed by Nataki when reflecting the various strengths of State Colleges’ Free Mumia group is one such important consideration to movement building. The role of Penn State

University, in providing space, funding, and other supplies to the student front group

SAYAR opens possibilities to other organizers who might also consider how to advantageously benefit from the largesse of public institutions. While the Portland Free

Mumia Committee had just several Portland State University students in it the Portland’s campus still provided a central meeting point, and free public space usage for weekly meetings as well as a place to conduct educational conferences.

Also the testimonies can provide helpful consideration on how to overcome organizing difficulties such as those that plagued Nataki when she attempted to recruit members of Penn State’s Black Caucus to the Mumia movement only to be told that while they supported Mumia they wanted little to do with the organization as they 207 deemed it ‘too white’. Portland’s committee facing a similarly disparaging demographic overcame this by forming an intragroup black caucus, a nucleus which then served a multiplicity of purposes, including support, study group, recruitment, and outreach. In short the social movement organizer can learn much about movement formation by learning and reading about the triumphs, strategies, setbacks, practices, and challenges of others.

And so, the movement continues, or as Mumia said in a 2008 interview quoting

Mozambicans, “A Luta Continua”. The movement endures for his freedom, for other prisoners, and for the liberty of all. As always, Mumia remains his own best example in his ability to continue in the face of seemingly insurmountable adversity. He says, “We must build and widen, and deepen and strengthen our struggle, wherever it is . . . It may not be easy but it is necessary.” His legacy, example, scholarship, and influence will continue whether he remains in prison for the remainder of his life or not. His commitment to the regenerative continuity of struggle and his faith in the potential of the future ensures this. He calls out to younger folks and always, a reassuring holler back results. In the case of his embrace by the hip-hop community the response frequently reverberates back in rhythm, rhyme and beat. This excerpt, written by Zach De La Rocha of the popular group Rage Against the Machine, is taken from Mumia 911, a collaboration of twenty different hip hop and rap artists:

You see the capital thugs got nervous

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‘Cause he refused to be their servant

‘Cause he spit truths and shook heads that burned like Black churches.

Pros and Versus

Filled with a million Black hearses

Watch, see the decision of Dred Scott as it reverses

So long as their rope is tight around Mumia’s neck

Let their be no rich white life we’re bound to respect

Cause and effect, can you smell the smoke in the breeze?

My Panther, my brother, we are at war until you’re free.

Both Roderick Franklin and Walidah Imarisha, organizers for Portland’s annual “Hip

Hop in the Park” reflected on this theme. Says Walidah,

One of the really important pieces for Mumia’s case and one of the reasons there has been such an upsurge here especially around young folks is the embracing of Mumia and his case and his cause by hip hop artists. And I think

Mumia has reciprocated that in talking about hip hop in a political context not just demeaning it and denigrating it like many folks do in the mainstream, but really talking about the complexities of hip hop and of hip hop as a complex continuation of the struggle that he and others engaged in in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

Noting that Mumia has done commentaries on various hip hop artists, has been featured on albums, been addressed thematically in lyrical content, supported in the form of numerous benefit concerts, and been interviewed and visited in prison by Public

Enemy’s Chuck D., she says, “Hip Hop has really embraced Mumia as its own, really 209 saying ‘this brother is ours. He is our ideological father and brother and we have a responsibility as a hip hop community to support getting him free’”. Also, she notes that the inclusion of hip hop contributed to a heightened level of radicalism in the Mumia movement. At a time when a common slogan in the Mumia movement was “new trial for

Mumia”, Hip Hop artists, drawing on the Black Panther legacy appropriated the popular slogan of 1968, “Free Huey or the sky’s the limit” and repurposed it to, “If Mumia dies fire in the skies.” This example does much to extend and affirm the idea of the continuity of struggle and Mumia’s faith in the regenerative potential of youth as revolutionary agents of change.

Mumia will be remembered for his singular ability to integrate his own personal suffering along with the discriminations of a nation, and the anguishes of global inequity and transmute it all into something hopeful and peaceful and fair. He will be celebrated also, for the strength and breadth of his scholarship, his intellect, his courageous example, integrity and principles. Nataki Bhatti says this, “We admire him; we can never forget him. His legacy will outlast the injustice done to him.” The Mumia movement is distinguished in that it unites the twin concerns of race and class injustice and it has connected injustice abroad with injustice at home revealing social movements, and the injustice that precipitates them, to be globally interrelated phenomena. It is a movement fluent in varied discourses of dissent and therefore capable of dissolving borders. By approaching this study from the perspectives of history and from the personal, contemporary experiences of activists we recognize that our understandings of this particular tragedy are informed by constructions of the past and re-negotiated through a

210 contemporary lens which, in turn impact our expectations for the future. Regarding the role history plays in the shaping of today and tomorrow, Vincent Harding puts it like this:

“The only history I know is one that drives us into the future, moving like a river toward our best possible evolution.” Walidah Imarisha captures the faith, sentiment and spirit of those interviewed for this project with these words, “I hope that in a hundred years they also remember this because it was a win for the movement that we were able to bring

Mumia home.” In the meantime, like the certain, inexorable flow of a mighty river, we remain, “Ona Move.”

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List of Activists Interviewed for this Project:

Pam Africa, heralded by Abu-Jamal as a ‘dynamo’, and as “General Pam’, she is a member of the MOVE organization in Philadelphia, the coordinator of International friends and family of Mumia Abu-Jamal (ICFFMAJ) and has worked unceasingly on

Mumia’s behalf since his initial arrest in 1981. Pam has traveled extensively throughout the United States and Europe speechmaking and organizing on Mumia’s behalf but also on the related subjects of Prison injustice and on behalf of the MOVE 9.

Roderick Franklin, community activist, first got involved with Mumia’s cause while living in Portland Oregon. He continues his advocacy work and community organizing in North Carolina where he focuses on spoken work, performance art, and theatre presentations.

Based in San Francisco, Noelle Hanrahan has been involved with prison issues since the late 1980’s when she did an internship with the peace and justice based Quixote

Center. She manages the prison radio website which is responsible for recording over one thousand broadcasts Mumia has made since going to prison.

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Walidah Imarisha is a poet, journalist, community activist, and Portland State

University instructor.

Karry Koon-Carr is a community activist and resident of Central Pennsylvania. She began writing, and eventually visiting Mumia in 1985 which initiated her interest in issues of prison injustice.

Dr. Andy McInerney, professor of mathematics and a former Penn State student activist is the editor of Socialism and Liberation magazine. He formerly chaired Students and Youth against Racism and currently lives in New York City.

Originally from Philadelphia, Nataki McNeal-Bhatti became involved in the Free

Mumia campaign while attending Penn State University and was one of the founding members of the Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal in State College. Artist and poet she continues advocacy work in Harrisburg Pennsylvania.

Jeff Martin is a former student activist from Pennsylvania. For several years he chaired State College’s local chapter of Students and Youth against Racism. Currently he hosts a popular radio show in State College where he continues to promote Mumia’s prison broadcasts.

Gareth Miles, a community activist and internationally based free lance journalist has been active in Mumia freedom work in various cities and countries such as Portland,

London, New York City, Columbus and most recently Swansea, Wales.

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Dr. Darryl Smiley* came into professional contact with Mumia as a student intern at

WUHY radio station during the early 1980’s. He currently resides in Columbus, Ohio where he teaches public policy and also is Vice President of a large public institution.

Dr. Frank Smith, formerly of London England, played an instrumental role in organizing events on Mumia’s behalf following the signing of his death warrant in 1995.

Frank spent years researching human rights violations in Central America, worked for

Amnesty International and continue human rights work in Geneva.

Monica Somocurcio, originally from Cuzco Peru and Puerto Rico, conducted one of the first interviews with Mumia in the early 1990’s when he resided in Huntingdon Prison in Central Pennsylvania. A previous Penn State student activist, she has worked on numerous community organizing campaigns, and currently lives in New York City.

Catherine Stauffer, a Portland based legal worker, activist and artist currently manages

Portland’s Indy media website.

*Name has been protected for purpose of privacy

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