[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----PENN.

[Rick Halperin]

Jan. 19



PENNSYLVANIA:

What Mumia Abu-Jamal Never Learned


On the eve of the United States premiere of In Prison My Whole Life at the
Sundance Festival on January 20-25, the battle for the life and freedom of
Mumia Abu-Jamal heats up in the news media and the streets of far-flung
cities while he awaits a crucial appellate court ruling and prepares to
publish his 6th book from death row. Media activists present photographic
evidence disproving the case against him.

Mumia Abu-Jamals life on death row, still seen as a threat by the State
that intends to kill him, poses a challenge to the movement seeking his
freedom. Right now a critical court decision is awaited in the case of
this political prisoner unjustly found guilty and sentenced to death for
killing police officer Daniel Faulkner on December 9, 1981.

26 years behind bars and almost 25 on death row! 26 years of not being
able to hold his loved ones! 26 years defying attempts to punish,
intimidate, isolate, and humiliate him! 26 years! A lifetime for many of
the young people who support him today. Thus, the title of the new
documentary In Prison My Whole Life, in which William Francome, born on
the night Faulkner was killed and Mumia jailed, speaks with Ramona frica,
Angela Davis, Noam Chomsky, Alice Walker, Pam Africa, Robert Bryan, Amy
Goodman, Mos Def, Snoop Dog, Steve Earle, and others about their support
for Mumia Abu-Jamal and their opposition to the death penalty. After its
premier in London and Rome in October, the film will be shown for the
first time in the United States at the Sundance Festival on January 20-25.

This is 2 of 3 new documentaries and six new books (some favorable, others
hostile) mentioned by journalist and journalism professor Linn Washington
in a recent article published on Counterpunch. Banners demanding Mumias
freedom are seen at marches, meetings, and cultural events in different
parts of the world, while media activists pressure the major news media to
cover photos that destroy the prosecution's case against him.

In the cold of winter in 1981, the policemen who arrested and framed the
African-American journalist for murder were the same cops who had kept him
under surveillance since the 1960s when he was a young Black Panther and
the same ones he had criticized during the 70s for their violence against
the Black community and, particularly, the MOVE organization. The district
attorneys and judges responsible for framing and condemning Mumia to
death, always working with the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), have built
their political careers on this case. The honest words of Mumia Abu-Jamal
expose crimes of power in the city of Philadelphia, the state of
Pennsylvania, and the United States as a whole. (For more information
about his case, see the sites of the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC),
the San Francisco based Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, Abu-Jamal
News and, in Spanish, Kaosenlared, Libertad Mumia Abu-Jamal of Barcelona
and Auditorio Che Guevara, Regeneracin Radio, Radio Zapote, and Centro de
Medios Libres of Mxico.)

In his essay Christmas Cage, published in the Community Newspaper of
Philadelphia in February of 1982, Mumia wrote: "I ponder my first
Christmas in the Hospital Wing of the Detention Center. Christmas in a
Cage.... It is nightmarish that my brother and I should be in this foul
predicament, particularly since my main accusers, the police, were my
attackers as well. My true crime seems to have been my survival of their
assaults, for we were the victims that night... My cell is reasonably
close to the place where Pedro Serrano was severely beaten and strangled
to death.... I covered a press conference called by the Puerto Rican
Alliance and members of the Serrano family. I saw photographs of Pedro
Serrano, his face swollen even in death. I saw a body riddled with
swellings, bruises, and welts. "Mr. Serrano was not beaten by any member
of my staff", [prison superintendent] Owens would later proclaim to my
radio listeners....My jailers, the men who decide whether I am to leave my
cell for food, for phone calls, for pain medication, for a visit for a
loved one, are the very same men who are accused [by the prisoners] of
murdering Pedro Serrano!....I have been shackled like a slave, hands and
feet, for daring to live."

Mumia Abu-Jamal was found guilty and sentenced to death in a farce called
a trial presided over by the "hanging judge" Albert Sabo, a lifetime
member of the FOP, who had sentenced 32 people to death, more than any
other judge in the country, only 2 of whom were white. According to a
declaration signed by the court stenographer Terri Maurer-Carter, the
judge told 2 of his colleagues that he was "going to help them fry the
nigger."

The jury was made up of 10 white and 2 Black jurors, when the population
of Philadelphia was over 40% Black. As a matter of fact, the District
Attorney's office under Ron Castille produced a training video in 1987, in
which Jack McMahon instructs young attorneys on how to eliminate potential
Black and other undesirable jurors. He says: "Let's be honest. People who
live in North Philadelphia have a different perspective on law enforcement
and the government..." "The blacks from the low-income areas are less
likely to convict...There's a resentment for authority...You dont want
those people on your jury." "People from Mayfair are good, but people from
33rd & Diamond stink". "The law" calls for a "competent, fair, and
impartial jury. Well, that's ridiculous. You're not trying to get that."
At the end of the video McMahon says that the video contains "the wisdom
of the ages," in other words, long-time, accepted practices that would
have been common when Mumia was on trial. (For further analysis of the
training video by Journalists for Mumia, see Abu-Jamal-News.)

In some ways, the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal is typical of those of 900,000
Black people held in United States prisons. According to The Sentencing
Project, in 2007, more than 41% of the country's 2.2 million prisoners and
42% of those on death row were Black, although they represent only 12.3%
of the countrys total population. Moreover, in Pennsylvania, as the lawyer
and editor of The Black Commentator David A. Love has pointed out, the
black incarceration rate is 14 times that of whites. African Americans are
10% of the states population, but 56% of the prisoners. Of the death row
prisoners from Philadelphia, 83% are Black. The overwhelming majority are
poor, and 95% dont have competent lawyers; that was the case with Mumia
Abu-Jamal in his 1982 trial.

These disparities, along with the 500% increase in the prison population
in the United States over the last 30 years, have been topics of several
essays written by Mumia Abu-Jamal and of interviews with him, as well. In
a conversation with JR of the POCC Block Report he tells him that he
considers all Black people behind bars to be political prisoners because
of their status in the country. He adds that its commonplace for a lawyer
to tell a white client, no matter how poor he may be, "Well, at least
youre not black."

Such issues will surely be dealt with in his forthcoming book (his 6th) on
jailhouse lawyers. These (usually) self-educated legal experts have helped
get many prisoners released from jail and are often the only recourse of
those who lack money to hire a lawyer. Mumia himself has helped other
prisoners prepare their appeals.

Throughout his own trial, Mumia argued with Judge Sabo over his right to
represent himself with the assistance of John Africa, of the MOVE
organization. As a correspondent for several different radio stations in
the '70s, Mumia got to know this organization that considers all life
sacred and the government as an unnatural imposition. (See the MOVE
documentary narrated by Howard Zinn.) Although his coverage of government
attacks against this organization cost him his job in at least one radio
station, Mumia continued to make sure that MOVE voices were heard. He
covered the police siege that lasted over a year and the attack by 500
policemen against MOVEs collective home on August 8, 1978.

When nine of their members were sentenced to 30-100 years in prison for
having fired one bullet that killed one policeman, Mumia asked Judge
Malmed: "Who killed James Ramp?" The judge answered: "I don't have the
slightest idea. They were a family and I convicted them as a family." At
the time, Mumia was threatened by Mayor Frank Rizzo for asking too many
embarrassing questions. (See Hans Bennett's article Attention MOVE! This
is America!.)

This coming August, the MOVE prisoners will have been held captive 30
years, and there is a campaign to demand their release. John frica was
burned alive along with 10 other MOVE members on May 13, 1985, when the
Philadelphia police bombed and burned their house and the entire block,
using C-4 explosives provided by the FBI. Although the judge never
accepted him as a courtroom advisor, he continues to be a spiritual guide
for Mumia.

District Attorney Joe McGill convinced the jury of Mumia's guilt,
presenting contradictory ballistic evidence that never proved that the
killing bullet was fired from Mumia's gun or that Mumia had fired the gun;
a confession supposedly made by Mumia in the hospital the night of the
killing but, incredibly, not reported until two months later; and
witnesses who were threatened and bribed to give false testimony about the
events.

According to the District Attorney's office under Ed Rendell, Jamal shot
Faulkner in the back at close range, and Faulkner shot Jamal as he fell;
then Jamal stood over him and fired four times, hitting the officer once
between the eyes. This version was discredited in Rachel Wolkenstein's
2001 declaration, which speaks of the absence of divots (holes or chunks
of concrete) on the sidewalk that would have existed according to this
scenario, a finding that has been further explored by the German professor
Michael Schiffman. (See Michael Schiffmans website Against the Crime of
Silence.)

Photos taken by Pedro Polakoff 12 minutes after the incident, recently
discovered by Schiffman and published in his new book Race against Death
are physical evidence of the absence of divots on the sidewalk. Given that
3 State witnesses Cynthia White, Robert Chobert, and Michael Scanlon
followed the prosecution's scenario in their testimony, the photos are
also evidence that they lied. Furthermore, the photos reveal the absence
of Robert Chobert's taxi behind the police car, the point from which he
saw the shooting, in part, according to his sworn testimony.

The Polakoff photos also show officer James Forbes, one of the first
policemen to arrive at the scene, carrying both Faulkner's and Mumia's
guns in his bare hand, thereby affecting the ballistic evidence and
revealing that he did not preserve the crime scene, contrary to his court
testimony. This evidence corroborates the report given by Linn Washington,
who said that the scene was totally unprotected when he arrived at 8:30
a.m., suggesting that the police had no intention of conducting an
investigation to find out who killed Faulkner because theyd already made
the decision to frame Mumia.

The photos have been on the Abu-Jamal-News site since May of 2007 and are
the subject of an extensive press conference moderated by Hans Bennett on
December 4 and a slide show presented on December 8. The 1st newspaper in
the United States to publish these photos was the San Francisco Bay View
National Black Newspaper, along with an article written by David A. Love.
As mentioned in the Bay View article, the official police photo also shows
that there are no divots on the sidewalk.

The thoroughly discredited prosecution scenario is repeated in 2 recent
books. In Mumia Abu-Jamal. The Patron Saint of American Cop Killers, the
criminal lawyer John Hayden alleges that Mumia received a fair trial
before a racially mixed jury and that it is obvious that he killed
Faulkner because the police found his pistol that had been fired 5 times
at his side; because 5 witnesses said he did it, and because he confessed
in the hospital.

The same lies are repeated in the book Murdered by Mumia, written by the
widow Maureen Faulkner and the ultra-right talk show host Michael
Smerconish. The central point of this book, widely promoted in the
Philadelphia Inquirer and other major news media, is the widows suffering
and her personal need to see Mumia executed. She says that she will have
no closure as long as the "cold-blooded killer" is alive. The widow also
feels a sacred obligation to protect all the honorable policemen who
protect and serve the public (and as everyone knows, they are all
honorable and protect and serve the public). It should be noted that for
all these years the 2 authors have worked closely with the FOP and the
corporate news media to eliminate Mumia.

Little is known about the documentary 13th and Locust now being made by
Tigre Hill.

In the 1982 trial, McGill utilized Mumia Abu-Jamal's political ideas and
activities to convince the jury that he deserved the death penalty, asking
if he remembered saying things like "all power to the people" and
"political power comes out of the barrel of a gun." Mumia replied: "That
was a quotation from Mao-Tse-Tung of the Peoples Republic of China. It's
very clear that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun or else
America wouldn't be here today. It is America who has seized political
power from the Indian race, not by god, not by Christianity not by
goodness but by the barrel of a gun."

McGill was also hostile towards the poet Sonia Snchez, who stated that
Mumia "has always been viewed by the black community as a creative,
articulate, peaceful, genial man." The prosecutor used a foreword that she
had written for the autobiography of former Black Panther and Black
Liberation Army member Assata Shakur [who escaped from prison in 1979 and
lives in exile in Cuba] and the poet's support for three other
revolutionary political prisoners Albert "Nuh" Washington, Jalil Muntaquim
and Herman Bell to persuade the jury that she was biased in favor of
alleged "police killers." He also asked her if it was her purpose to
criticize the police in her writings. Sonia Snchez responded: "I have
written about many facets of America. I have written about the oppression
in a place called America. I also teach at Graterford Prison. I teach
young men in prison and have also talked to the guards there. You cannot
talk about America without talking about oppression and the Police
Department and the courts. (The complete trial transcripts can be read at
the Daniel Faulkner website.)

Far from distancing himself from the Black Panther Party, Mumia Abu-Jamal
has written essays in support of former members including Jalil Muntaquim
and Herman Bell, who are still targets of the United States injustice
system and are now among those charged in the case of the the San
Francisco 8.

Mumia also wrote his 5th book about this organizationWe Want Freedom: A
Life in the Black Panther Party, recently translated into Spanish in Cuba,
in which he places the Party in the context of numerous rebellions of
African slaves that took place for over 300 years. He says that 2
centuries after the American Revolution, fought to see "who would hold
Africans in bondage," and in the midst of urban rebellions in all the
major cities in the United States between 1964-1968, the party was born
with books. Mumia says that party founders Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale
and other Panthers read Robert Williams, W.E.B. du Bois, Kwame Nkrumah,
Amilcar Cabral, Lenin, Dostoievski, Ch Guevara, Bakunin, Nietzsche, James
Baldwin, Camus, Mao, but above all Frantz Fanon and Malcolm X. They
combined the anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist perspective of Fanon
with the black nationalism of Malcolm X, or in other words, with the
struggle of the African American people for independence and freedom.

For J. Edgar Hoover, FBI tsar for half a century, the Panthers were the
greatest threat to the internal security of the country and the target of
an extermination program called COINTELPRO. In his book, Mumia analyzes
the revolutionary party that set up and ran community survival programs in
more than 40 cities, practiced self-defense against police violence, and
showed their solidarity with national liberation struggles in the world.
He tells about his own experiences as a young Panther and underscores the
tremendously important contributions of women in the Party, such as Safiya
Bukhari, Rosemary Mealy, Kiilu Nyasha, Kathleen Cleaver, Ericka Huggins,
Joan Gibbs, and many others.

The movement in support of Mumia is the theme of a documentary now being
made by Ted Passon. The main base of support has always been the
International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal (ICFFMAJ) in
Philadelphia, founded by John Africa and headed up by Pam Africa. With an
open attitude to people with different points of view, a broad movement
was built of thousands of leftists, Black Liberation activists, death
penalty opponents, celebrities, anti-corporate globalization activists,
abolitionists, workers, unemployed people, feminists, lesbians and gays,
students, media activists, musicians, poets, writers, and political
prisoner defense groups, who mobilized to stop the execution of Mumia
Abu-Jamal in 1995 and again in 1999, when then Governor Tom Ridge (later
named the head of Homeland Security by Bush) had signed death warrants.

The breadth of the international movement is seen in a document released
by the Bureau of Diplomatic Security of the State Department of the United
States, falsely titled Political Violence Against Americans, 1999, with an
entire section at the end on the movement in support of Mumia Abu-Jamal
containing brief descriptions of mainly peaceful actions in Montreal, Ro
de Janeiro, Sao Paulo, Buenos Aires, Toronto, Mexico City, Paris, Oslo,
Athens, Berlin, Vienna, Frankfurt, Dublin, Stockholm, Madrid, Bath,
Prague, Rennes, Zurich, Barcelona, Lyn, Leipzig, Bern, Copenhaguen,
Johannesburg, and Calcutta. The document reports 98 arrests at the march
and rally of December 11, 1999 in Mexico City during the student strike.

Messages of support for Mumia have also come from Subcomandante Marcos and
Lieutenant Colonel Moiss of the EZLN, as well as many other Zapatistas,
whose communities are once again under attack by paramilitary groups
trying to take away their lands recovered in 1994.

In a series of appeals hearings between 1995 and 2003, the courts rejected
much new evidence favorable to Mumia Abu-Jamal, including the confession
of Arnold Beverly in 2001, in which he says that he and another person
were hired by the mafia to kill Faulkner because he stood in the way of
illicit dealings. In 2001, Judge William Yohn, revoked the death penalty
but upheld the guilty verdict.

Although the movement declined in 2001, Mumia Abu-Jamal continued to
attract support with his own writings and his spirit of struggle. With a
sharp intellect and a strong social commitment, he knows how to put an
event in a broader historical context in just a few words. His weekly
essays, circulated by Fatirah and recorded by Noelle Hanrahan for Prison
Radio, are read or heard in far corners of the world. Whatever the topic
may be a particular prisoners story, the Acteal massacre, the war in Irak,
the governments scorn for Black people during Katrina, torture at
Guantnamo and in United States prisons, the rebellion in Oaxaca, a victory
of Venus Williams, the white tree in Jena, youth without a future in the
United States, the case of Leonard Peltier, jazz, or the disaster iin
Kenya his words attack the system of the powerful, provide clarity
regarding social conditions, and reveal our strengths. He always insists
on the need to build strong social movements. He expresses a deep love for
the African American people while he struggles for a world that is free
and just for everyone.

It's important to mention that Mumia has received strong support from many
other political prisoners including the Move 9, the San Francisco 8,
Marilyn Buck, Mutulu Shakur, and Daniel McGowan, as well as ex political
prisoners Dhoruba Bin Wahad, Ashanti Alston, and Assata Shakur, whose
beautiful voice can be heard on recordings of the Fire This Time,
including the video I Love Tha Future along with the music of Michael
Franti. (For further information about political prisoners in the United
States, see the pages of The Jericho Movement, Anarchist Black Cross, and
the Prison Activist Resource Center. A Spanish language radio interview
with Ana Mara Lamb of the Jericho Movement can be heard on Radio La
Primersima from Managua.)

Neither is prisoner support for Mumia limited to the United States. Word
gets around that there are many current and former Palestinian, Puerto
Rican, South African, Chilean, Peruvian, Spanish, and Italian political
prisoners who know about his struggle for justice and identify with him.
In Mexico, for example, many of the 900 prisoners jailed for political
reasons during the last 7 years have expressed their desire to see their
brother Mumia free. Some recent words of support on behalf of the Peoples
Front for Defense of the Land and all their prisoners, three of whom are
serving 67 year sentences, came from Atenco leader Trinidad Ramrez at a
demonstration in front of the United States Embassy on December 10, 2007.

On May 17, 2007, hundreds of activists from different cities in the United
States, Europe, and Africa marched, sang, rapped, and shouted in the
streets of Philadelphia. A lot of fresh, youthful energy comes through in
the video of the demonstration, outside the Third Circuit Court of
Appeals, where a critical hearing was going on.

Prosecuting attorney Hugh Burns argued against the revocation of the death
penalty, and the lawyers Robert Bryan, Judith Ritter, and Cristina Swarns
presented arguments regarding the violation of Mumia's constitutional
rights to a fair trial due to: racism in jury selection (known as the
Batson claim); the deceptive instructions given to the jury by prosecuting
attorney Joseph McGill, when he told jurors to disregard questions of the
presumption of innocence and reasonable doubt because Mumia would have
many appeals in case the jury gave an erroneous guilty verdict; the
deception of the jury by Judge Sabo when he prohibited the jury from
considering extenuating evidence (of good character, etc.) unless all the
members of the jury agreed on a particular circumstance; and the racism of
Judge Albert Sabo.

The 3 judges on the panel (Scirica and Cowan, appointed by Reagan, and
Ambro, appointed by Clinton) have 3 main options: 1. to reinstate the
death penalty; 2. to order a new trial only for the purpose of determining
the sentence, in which case the best option would be a life sentence; or
3. to order a new trial to determine innocence or guilt. The 3rd option is
the one sought by Mumia Abu-Jamal and his lawyers in order to present all
the evidence never heard by a jury and walk out free with a verdict of
innocence. In an interview with Margaret Prescod last July 7, Mumia
indicated that he plans to present evidence that has never been heard and
to refute the false allegations made against him in Judge Sabo's court.
(Listen to the interview on Pacifica Radio.)

Meanwhile, outside the courtroom, people continue to fight for a new trial
and Mumias freedom. Upon hearing the news that Maureen Faulkner and
Michael Smerconish would be on the Today Show to promote their new book on
December 6, 2007, Journalists for Mumia, Educators for Mumia, and the
ICFFMAJ were successful in pressuring NBC to question the guests about the
crime scene photos and to present information regarding Mumia's innocence.
Although NBC didnt agree to invite knowledgeable journalist Linn
Washington and Dr. Suzanne Ross of the NYC Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition
to appear on the program, as proposed, the actions represent an advance
against the corporate power of the media and serve as an example that
sometimes even something so simple as writing a letter can make a
difference. If it hadn't been for the media campaign and the spirited
demonstration outside NBC at 7:00 a.m., this program, seen by millions of
people, would only have presented one side of the story.

The Polakoff photos are really an addendum to the book written by Dr.
Schiffman, who puts Mumias case in a socio-historic context, describing
certain aspects of the Civil Rights Movement and Black Liberation Struggle
after World War II and analyzing tendencies in the United States criminal
justice system, especially in Philadelphia. He also analyzes the ballistic
evidence in the case, including the trajectory of bullet fragments found
at the scene, and comes to the conclusion that Mumia couldnt have fired
first and that its highly improbable that he drew his gun that night. He
says that in the unlikely event of an act of self-defense, Mumia would
only have fired after having been shot, but he thinks it is likely that a
third person, Kenneth Freeman shot and killed Faulkner to protect himself
and defend his friends after the policeman savagely beat Billy Cook and
shot Mumia in the chest. (See interview with Michael Schiffman by Hans
Bennett.)

This theory is supported in another new book scheduled to come out in May,
2008, The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal, written by J. Patrick OConnor, who
also examines the evidence and concludes that Faulkner shot Abu-Jamal
while he was running to help his brother Billy Cook, and that Faulkner was
shot by Kenneth Freeman, the passenger in Billy Cooks car. OConnor
describes the Philadelphia power structure from the times of the notorious
Frank Rizzo and argues that the Philadelphia police and District Attorneys
office framed Mumia for the murder.

The careers of three Philadelphia District Attorneys began during the
Rizzo regime and were built on the repression of Mumia Abu-Jamal and
MOVE--those of the ex Mayor and current Governor of Pennsylvania Ed
Rendell, Supreme Court Justice Ron Castille, and the current District
Attorney Lynn Abraham. All work closely with the FOP. (See C. Clark
Kissinger's article, "Philly's Killer Elite," in Revoultionary Worker. For
example, when the Pennsylvania state Supreme Court rejected Mumia Abu
Jamal's appeal and his petition for a new trial in 1998, 5 of the 7 judges
had received campaign contributions from the FOP. At the December 4, 2007
press conference, Linn Washington explained that this came out when the
defense demanded that Ron Castille recuse himself because he had received
money and support from the FOP. He defended himself saying: Well, I'm not
the only one. 4 other Supreme Court judges took money from them, too.

These masters of repression fear that a new trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal
would be an international forum for exposing their criminal acts, leading
to the loss of what they value most: money and power. Moreover, they fear
that a victory for Mumia would lead young rebellious people to get
organized and fight the powers that be, especially in the Black
communities. Thats why they stop at nothing to make sure this doesnt
happen. The FOP bribes senators, representatives, mayors, governors, and
presidents of the United States (both Clinton and Bush) and threatens any
group or individual that supports Mumia, whether it's a politician who
favors the idea of a new trial, like Chaka Fattah; the owners of the Clef
Club and the Remote Lounge, who cancelled events after receiving threats
last April; or the citizens of Saint Denis, France, who refused to back
down in the face of threats they received after naming a street for Mumia
in their town in April, 2006. On the contrary, last spring they celebrated
the anniversary of the street naming.

And Mumia? After spending 26 years in a cage, his rebellious spirit has
never died down and his commitment to the total ttransformation of society
is as strong as ever. After a recent visit with him, Fatirah reported:
"He's in good health and high spirits, and during the visit, many times he
flashed that smile, and when someone said something funny, (often it was
Mumia himself), the room echoed with his booming laughter." In interviews,
people have asked him: How do you do it? How do you keep your spirits up
in these conditions? To Margaret Prescod, he replied: "I guess I can best
be described as a busy person....I've always been the kind of person who
feels like there are not enough hours in the day....I read, quite a bit,
good, interesting books on political subjects, sometimes history books. I
try to read several newspapers, and also try to keep my eye on what's
happening here, around me...." He's always writing something, and
commented to Sonali of Uprising Radio that he sees books as "flights of
freedom and perhaps one of the last free media around." He spoke with JR
of the Block Report about the refusal of the United States government to
recognize that it holds political prisoners and of the potential impact of
hip hop in world resistance when artists speak whats in their hearts and
are conscious of their own power and influence. He says that the struggles
going on in the world encourage him and that he's thankful to everyone who
is trying to win his freedom. He hopes these efforts will help other
political prisoners, too. He once explained that, fortunately, he learned
how to be a revolutionary journalist working for the Black Panther
newspaper and that later on he learned to polish his work. In his 1999
essay, "Words from an Outcast of the Fourth Estate," published in All
Things Censored, he wrote: "I learned the craft quite well, except for one
thing: I never learned how to kowtow to state power. I wrote and reported,
not from the perspective of the privileged, not from the position of the
established, but from the consciousness of oppression and the awareness of
resistance."

(source: Indybay.org----The title of a biography recently published by Dr.
Claude Guillaumaud-Pujol describes Mumia well: Un homme libre dans le
couloir de la mort (A Free Man on Death Row). Except for one thing. We
want this man free in the streets)