MUMIA ABU-JAMAL is an African-American writer and journalist who has spent the last 24 years on Pennsylvania’s death row. His demand for justice and a new trial is supported by heads of state from France to South Africa, by Nobel Laureates, the European Parliament, city governments from Detroit to San Francisco to Paris, France, scholars, religious leaders, artists, scientists, the Congressional Black Caucus and other members of U.S. Congress, and by countless thousands who cherish democratic and human rights the world over.
Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on September 11, 2001, Jamal’s journalistic skills, historical analysis and eloquent pen have only confirmed his reputation as “voice of the voiceless.” With judicious historical insight and pointed probing of the issues, he continues to question and enlighten his readers through scores of columns, illuminating such issues as U.S. empire, terrorism, poverty, the U.S. support of Pakistan during the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. war and occupation of Iraq, and so much more. (See the “
Mumia Index” on this site.) His columns and essays continue to find place in scholarly books as well as in the street newspapers of the homeless.
Working people have expressed their support for Jamal through their leading regional, national and international trade union bodies. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union closed down West coast ports for the day of April 24, 1999, to support Mumia’s bid for a new trial.
Jamal’s books and over 500 published columns have been adopted as resource material for the teaching and inspiration of a growing number of students, youth, and educators who have come to see their futures as intimately tied to the outcome of this case. The 1982 trial that convicted Jamal of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner has been challenged by leading legal analysts and scholars, from Stuart Taylor writing in the prestigious American Lawyer magazine, to Per Walsoe of the Supreme Court of Denmark, to Amnesty International which issued a special report in February 2000, claiming that “justice would best be served by the granting of a new trial…” to Jamal.
While Jamal has worked while confined as an advocate for so many others, he has maintained his own innocence from the beginning, and does so in ever clearer and more emphatic tones to the present day. His attorneys have presented compelling evidence that key witnesses were intimidated or coerced to provide false testimony, that a purported “confession” by Mumia was likely fabricated by police, and that vital evidence pointing to his innocence was withheld from the defense. A key eyewitness has now recanted critical court testimony she gave under police intimidation and which was used against Jamal.
The confused and flagrantly-biased character of the prosecutors’ case against Mumia has only mushroomed over the years: yet another affidavit has been offered that casts doubt on the original witnesses’ claims that Mumia had confessed to the murder; another man now has even stepped forward to claim that he is the one who killed the officer Mumia was convicted of killing; and a court stenographer swears in another affidavit that she heard Mumia’s original judge, Albert Sabo, say during a court recess, “Yeah, and I’m gonna help ’em fry the nigger.” (Up to the time of his death just a few years ago, Judge Sabo maintained he had been racially unbiased throughout Mumia’s trial.)
Jamal was forced to appeal his conviction before this same judge who had sentenced him to death in 1982. Judge Sabo was notorious for presiding over capital cases resulting in 33 people being sentenced to death (all but two, people of color), more than twice the number of any sitting judge in the United States.
So confused and biased is the case against Mumia that a U.S. District Judge finally had to acknowledge just one of the problems of Mumia’s conviction, and in 1999 he thus vacated the death sentence against Mumia. The prosecution, however, with the help of police unions like the Fraternal Order of Police, are still working tirelessly and vigorously to see that he is executed. Mumia remains on death row while the prosecution appeals the suspension of a death sentence. Meanwhile, Mumia’s attorneys press on to gain an overturning of the judgment of guilt against Mumia toward the end of achieving his freedom. His life still hangs in the balance, with death just a few callous and cruel decisions away.
WE EDUCATORS ARE UNITED IN SAYING NO TO JAMAL’S EXECUTION. We invite you to study this web site, explore the case and the issues – for Mumia’s sake and that of so many others on U.S. death row.
■ Jamal has long been a POLITICAL TARGET as a prominent journalist critic of police brutality and racism in Philadelphia since the days of Mayor Frank Rizzo.
■ Jamal is made more vulnerable by sweeping JUDGMENTS AGAINST DISSENTERS as “terrorists,” and he has become less protected today, as many progressive activists in post-9/11 USA turn more of their attention and energy toward the war in Iraq, tensions in the Middle East and general surveillance issues in the U.S.
■ Jamal’s life is increasingly put at risk because even in post-9/11 USA he remains a vigorous critic of POLICE REPRESSION AND LAW ENFORCEMENT USE OF EXCESSIVE FORCE. Whether writing about the outrage of torture at the Guantánamo Base detention center, or in the jails and lockups of Brooklyn, New York, and Austin, Texas, Mumia’s as “voice for the voiceless” puts him at ever greater risk.
■ Jamal has challenged the present political priorities of SPENDING MORE FOR WAR AND PRISONS THAN FOR EDUCATION. The youth who increasingly rally to Mumia’s cause in the name of justice and fair play know that we build jailhouse cell blocks more rapidly than schoolhouse classrooms.
AS EDUCATORS, IN PENNSYLVANIA, ACROSS THE UNITED STATES AND THE WORLD, WE STRONGLY OPPOSE THE EXECUTION OF MUMIA ABU-JAMAL. While there are those who believe Mumia is innocent and should be FREED NOW, and others who have no opinion about his innocence, we are all united in viewing Mumia’s 1982 trial as a travesty of justice, and affirm that he MUST have a NEW TRIAL!
Last Update: Jun 15, 2009
Why Naming Streets for Mumia Makes the Powers Rage (Mark Lewis Taylor)
Outrage over the French city of St.-Denis, for naming a street after Mumia Abu-Jamal, has poured forth from the City Council of
Philadelphia , from some in the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate, and, of course, from the Fraternal Order of Police. The Philadelphia City Council passed a resolution condemning St.-Denis’s action. PA representatives in the U.S. House followed suit with a similar resolution.
Why have authorities in Philly and the U.S. gone ballistic over a suburb in
Paris that names a street after Mumia?
This is all the more interesting a question because the outrage has not helped the movement to execute Mumia. In fact, it has reignited the steady advocacy of human rights groups and people of conscience worldwide who have not gone away, who will not allow Mumia’s life to be taken. It has forced the press to lift Mumia’s struggle back into the public eye.
Official rage has prompted some new and unfounded claims about Mumia and the death of
Philadelphia officer, Dan Faulkner. Officials are exposed as all the more clouded by an unreasoning rage. The resolution in the U.S. House, for example, suggests that Mumia struck Officer Faulkner “four times” in the back before shooting him. Not even the prosecutors against Mumia claimed at trial that such an action transpired.
Mumia’s accusers now stand exposed in their rage. And just what now is exposed? The answer is this: there is a drive to execute Mumia that runs roughshod over evidence and facts, and that will invent any new “fact” that officials think will help rationalize Mumia’s execution. The killing rage is exposed as the unreasoning rage it has been since Mumia's apprehension in 1981.
But how did naming a street in France unleash this rage of
Pennsylvania powers? We do well to understand the reasons.
My interpretation is that when citizens of St.-Denis inscribed Mumia’s name onto a street sign, they helped pull Mumia out of his cell, setting him loose, as it were, into the valued, everyday existence of people of their municipality. To be sure, Mumia is still in
Waynesberg, PA ; not yet greeting his friends in St.-Denis (dare we dream!). Mumia’s accusers have always had success when they can cordon him off, deny him presence everywhere save that 8 x 10 cell in a far west corner of PA. In so doing, they seek to put him outside the daily to-and-fro of everyday life, make him less a human being by removing him from our memory, from our thoughts. Hence he becomes “other,” demonizable, executable.
But comes now St.-Denis. All of a sudden there’s a street sign with Mumia’s name on it. It names a thoroughfare. People see the name, they know he must be important if the street bearing his name is also the place where many walk each day. The powers rage because they cannot stand that. They cannot tolerate Mumia’s name and life having reference outside his 8 x 10 cell, being a name that directs part of the daily flow, part of people’s routine coming and going, their meaningful life and work.
There’s a lesson here for those of us in the movement for Mumia. We should inscribe Mumia’s name in all the places where we have common interchange and habitation. True, many have already done this. You’ll find Mumia’s name carved in wet cement, in telephone poles, on walls of prisons and streets throughout the land, in the organizations of campus, labor and more.
But I’m thinking of a still more challenging way to inscribe his name. Let us make his name a commonplace in the transactions and dealings we all have – at work, at home, in church, at whatever club or society we frequent. A street-naming does that kind of work.
It is of course true that our movement work, our participation in rallies for Mumia, are crucial; but just as important, if not more so, are the ways we talk-up Mumia, inscribing his name, into our everyday places of life and labor.
It has been a baseline truth for Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal that we must etch Mumia’s name into our teaching, our writing and our reading. We regard him as an educator. He is a teacher. He is a colleague in education and writing. And so when we write and publish, especially on criminal (in)justice in the U.S.
, or about a wide array of human rights and justice issues in this country, we should reference Mumia’s name, his writings, his struggle. When we inscribe his name in the academic literature, we post his name on the signposts of the academic thoroughfares. We let him live outside that cell where Mumia’s accusers would like to keep him, and from which they hope some day to take him to death, in hopes of erasing his name, repressing his insights.
We do this not to make Mumia “poster boy” of anti-death penalty struggle or of justice work in the U.S., but because he has routinely exposed the struggles of so many others in similar situations, beyond his case. It is this that has made him the special target of officials who don’t want systemic injustice addressed.
People in
Harlem want to name a street for Mumia. I say let’s support it. It will make the powers rage even more, to have a street named for Mumia right here in the U.S. But remember, when the powers rage, they show their addiction to hiding evidence, their inventiveness of new lies, and so they undermine their case and help us build ours.
Let’s help the powers rage some more. Now, I wonder if there’s a way to get a street here in
Princeton named for Mumia.
