-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: Wednesday, 10 March 1999 16:00
Subject: Interview with Mumia Abu-Jamal
February 1999
The Dispatcher
[newspaper of the International Longshore Workers Union (ILWU)]
Interview With Mumia Abu-Jamal
Introduction
Black political prisoner and radio journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal has
been on Pennsylvania's death row since 1982, falsely convicted of the
killing of a Philadelphia policeman. Racism and frame-ups are nothing
new to the "City of Brotherly Shove", as comedian Dick Gregory calls
it. During the Civil War, black abolitionist Frederick Douglass
wrote: "There is not perhaps anywhere to be found a city in which
prejudice against color is more rampant than in Philadelphia." Not
far from the Mason-Dixon Line, Philadelphia has remained a tightly
segregated city with a police force dedicated to maintaining the
racist status quo.
In 1978 600 police attacked the black MOVE communal house in
Philadelphia. Like the Rodney King videotape of police brutality,
television cameras captured police stomping one of its wounded
occupants, Delbert Africa, who had surrendered. One year later, the
federal government charging "widespread, arbitrary, and unreasonable
physical abuse," filed a civil rights suit against the city and its
police department.
In 1985 MOVE's house was firebombed in a coordinated attack by
police, the F.B.I. and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in
which eleven people were killed, including five children,
incinerating most of the black neighborhood.
Once again in 1995 the Philadelphia police department scandal was
front-page news across the country: framing-up of innocent people,
corruption, police brutality. In all, 300 convictions were thrown out
and many innocent victims set free. This expose was followed by the
Philadelphia District Attorney revealing that juries had routinely
been rigged to exclude blacks.
In Mumia's frame-up the prosecution's chief witness Cynthia White, a
prostitute, told a friend and prostitute, Pamela Jenkins, a key
government informant in the 1995 investigation of police corruption,
that "she was in fear for her life from the police". After police
intimidation, White testified that Mumia, who'd been shot and lay
seriously wounded, had shot the cop. Five eyewitnesses from five
vantage points told police they saw the shooter flee the scene. None
of this evidence was allowed in court. Police claim they never did
the standard nitrate test for Mumia's hands to prove he'd fired a gun
and scientific ballistics tests that could prove Mumia's innocence
were not permitted to be introduced. Such travesties of justice go on
and on, but the police got "their" man, Mumia Abu-Jamal, who they had
been targeting since he was a 15 year-old member of the Black Panther
Party.
The ILWU, through resolutions from its organizational divisions and
letters from its International Presidents, has been supporting the
case of Mumia Abu-Jamal for ten years. Mumia, in turn, from death
row, was one of the prominent endorsers of ILWU's victorious Neptune
Jade case.
Time and appeals are running out for Mumia. On Oct. 29, 1998 the
Pennsylvania state Supreme Court upheld his conviction and Governor
Tom Ridge has vowed to sign his death warrant.
Prison authorities made a face-to-face talk with Mumia nearly
impossible. So at his suggestion The Dispatcher submitted him a list
of questions to which he made written responses.
A View from Death Row
A written interview with political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal
by ILWU Local 10 longshore worker Jack Heyman
January 15, 1999
The Dispatcher: West Coast maritime employers attempted by the use of
cops and courts to intimidate labor activist picketers and the ILWU
from demonstrating international labor solidarity in the Neptune Jade
case. In the end we won by organizing a broad united front of
individuals concerned with the erosion of democratic rights and the
labor movement, mobilizing maritime and other workers for action here
and around the world. Do you think similar tactics could be applied
in your defense?
Mumia: I think a "broad united front" may prove effective in labor
actions and in human rights movements on broader social issues. Can
it be applied in my case? Yes. For the efforts of the State are
designed to isolate us, to construct barriers between us. All that we
can do to demolish those walls is to the good.
The Dispatcher: During the recent ABC-TV lock-out of NABET/CWA
workers, you refused to be interviewed by strikebreakers on the news
program "20/20" despite the fact that publicity may have helped your
case. Why?
Mumia: I had to ask myself, "Would I cross a picket line if I were
living in quasi-freedom, and walking to the studio?" The answer was
an irrevocable, 'no.' How could I do less, even under these
circumstances? I felt an intense affinity for the people of NABET,
and felt it was an important opportunity to express and dramatize my
solidarity with them. In any event, it did give the NABET folks a
"shout out" that they perhaps otherwise would not have received. So
it wasn't a total loss. Moreover, I had received, several days prior
to the airing, in the process of civil discovery, a xerox of the
first letter written to the DOC [Dept. of Corrections], from the
producers of 20/20. The bias of that letter was palpable as they
expressed an overt intention to do a show that would present the
position of the FOP (Fraternal Order of Police). How could such a
program have helped my case? It could, however, aid in some small way
those folks battling for their well-deserved health benefits on the
picket line.
The Dispatcher: You joined the Black Panther Party (BPP) in the 1960s
at the age of fifteen and held the position of Minister of
Information. Some ten years later you were an activist in and elected
president of the Association of Black Journalists in Philadelphia. As
a working journalist you exposed racism and police brutality. Do you
think the police targeted you because of your work as a journalist?
Mumia: I think that there is no question that I was known and hated
[by the police] for my work as much for my history. Moreover, the
District Attorney fought frantically -- and the clever judge denied
him every time, saying it threatened a reversal -- to introduce, at
every phase of the trial, my BPP background to the predominantly
white jury.
The Dispatcher: Did the release from prison of former Black Panther
leader Geronimo ji Jaga [Pratt] and the exposure of the F.B.I.'s
Counter- Intelligence Program of frame-ups and killing of black
activists give you some hope for justice?
Mumia: I have to admit that it did, as for all in the movement. It
truly was a glorious breath of fresh air. But if that be so, what
about the vicious, continued state campaign to encage him again?
Geronimo ji Jaga was admittedly imprisoned, in the words of state
parole officials, because he "is still a revolutionary." If that's
the case, is it logical to suggest that he was the only one? The MOVE
9 were encaged over twenty years ago because they were and remain
revolutionaries. There are scores of ex-Panthers and others who
remain so encaged, all across America.
The Dispatcher: Judge Sabo who presided over your trial was known as
the "King of Death Row" for having handed down more death sentences
than any other judge in this country. Since he has been forced into
retirement has this increased your chance for a fair trial?
Mumia: Unfortunately, no. The state system allowed him to do his
damage, and then retired him. As a life member of the FOP, he was
well placed to do their bidding. The courts have found that my
membership in the BPP justified my death, but when Sabo was
challenged by defense counsel about his membership in the FOP, his
defense was that he was only a member "for a few years." Well, I was
only a member of the BPP for "a few years," but it was sufficient to
form an unofficial aggravating circumstance to demand my death.
The Dispatcher: In 1995 the scandal of the Philadelphia police
department was front page news across the U.S. -- framing up of
innocent people, corruption, police brutality. 300 convictions were
thrown out and many innocent victims set free. This was followed by
an expose of routine jury rigging by the Philadelphia District
Attorney's office to exclude blacks. Tell us a few of the more
egregious violations during your arrest, imprisonment and trial?
Mumia: The police department has said, and the DA's office has
seconded, that neither I nor my brother were beaten. That flies in
the face of logic. They then constructed, out of whole cloth, a false
"confession," claiming that they forgot it for a few months. They
rejected almost every potential black juror that came into the door.
They assembled a jury composed of friends and family of cops, tried
before a member of the FOP in black robes, and arranged an appeal
before an appeals court where one "justice" -- the same one who
served as DA on my direct appeal -- admitted at least five other
judges had accepted FOP "support" in their election campaigns.
The Dispatcher: In San Francisco ILWU Local 10's constitution cops
are barred from becoming members of our union because of the
murderous role they played in the 1934 West Coast Maritime Strike,
killing six workers. When a benefit was held for your defense in July
1995, at the Philadelphia Hospital and Health Care Workers Union
Local 1199C, 300 armed cops besieged the union hall screaming for
your execution. Do you think that police brutality, particularly
against blacks, is part of a larger system of repression?
Mumia: Police brutality against African-Americans has an historic
component that can be traced to the 1800's, after the civil war.
"Paddy-rollers" was the term fugitive slaves used to describe the
vicious slave-catchers who dogged their trails. A century later,
police wagons were called "paddy wagons": an allusion to their common
histories, and roles. Police are agents of the ruling class, and, as
such, soldiers who serve their interests. They exist, not to protect
the people, but to protect capital. What role do they perform when
workers strike? What role do they perform when the people demonstrate
against any social injustice? What function did they perform when
young brothers like Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were building the
Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party? What role were they
playing when they bombed men, women and children in the MOVE House in
South-West Philadelphia on May 13, 1985? Their job is to wage war
against the people, and to instill terror against anyone -- anyone --
who resists against the system.
The Dispatcher: Twenty-five percent of young black men are under the
control of the so-called criminal justice system, either
incarcerated, paroled or on trial. Is this phenomenon related to the
polarization of capitalist society with the rich getting richer, the
poor poorer, increased joblessness, homelessness, the "War on Drugs" -
- in short a social disenfranchisement of part of the working class?
Mumia: When I read Frances Fox-Piven's "The New Class War: Reagan's
Attack on the Welfare State and Its Consequences," I learned some
important things about how the fate of the poor, the desperately poor
folks barely surviving on welfare, were closely linked with the fate
of the workers. She explains: "...income- maintenance benefits
[welfare] support wage levels despite high unemployment. The reason
is simple. If the desperation of the unemployed is moderated by the
availability of various benefits, they will be less eager to take any
job on any terms. In other words, an industrial reserve army of labor
with unemployment benefits and food stamps is a less effective
instrument with which to deflate wage and workplace demands." The
state understands that if it can divide labor against the poor, it
can cut the legs off both groups. It is actually an attack on the
working class, hidden under an attack on the poor. And many workers
can't really recognize that their interests are allied to theirs. The
War on Drugs is also a justification for what really is a War on the
Poor. Most drugs are used by people of means -- and for them there is
the Betty Ford Clinic. For the poor, there is a prison cell. A grim,
deadly end that punishes the poor for their flight from the horror of
their daily existence at the bottom of the social order.
The Dispatcher: Why is the United States the only industrialized
power remaining that uses capital punishment and is it implemented in
a racist fashion?
Mumia: The U.S. is distinct from many of their contemporaries because
of their distinct history. When one examines the history of say,
Canada, one views a prison system that is drastically different from
that of the U.S. Why is that? Their history differs in the crucial
area of slavery. And the American criminal (in)justice system is
lineally descended from that horrific history. It taints the system,
just like it taints consciousness.
The Dispatcher: Where does your struggle go from here?
Mumia: The struggle goes on, as it must for freedom, for liberation,
for a peoples' justice that only they can give. Ona Move! Long Live
John Africa!
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