The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.59/No.25           June 26, 1995 
 
 
Abu-Jamal's Book Exposes A System Of Injustice  

BY PETER SEIDMAN

Live from Death Row, by Mumia Abu-Jamal. With an Introduction by John Edgar Wideman and an afterward by Leonard I. Weinglass. 215 pages. Reading, Massachusetts. Addison-Wesley Publishing Co., 1995. $20.

PHILADELPHIA - Pennsylvania governor Thomas Ridge is rushing to bring the frame-up of Mumia Abu-Jamal to its ultimate conclusion, ordering that his execution be carried out nine weeks from now, on August 17.

In the same bloodthirsty spirit, cops and politicians howled when Addison-Wesley published Abu-Jamal's Live from Death Row a few months ago. This lynch mob was flush from its recent victory in pressuring National Public Radio into canceling planned commentaries by Abu-Jamal. According to Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police president Rich Costello, the only words the public should hear from Mumia Abu-Jamal are "Good-bye."

After reading the book, I can see why the cops and other death penalty supporters hate Live from Death Row.

The so-called justice system works overtime at dehumanizing those condemned to die. Routine procedures cut the death row inmate off from friends and family, and even from normal communications with the outside world. Many are subjected to humiliating cavity searches, sensory deprivation, and mind-altering drugs. "To such men and women," Mumia Abu-Jamal writes, "the actual execution is a fait accompli, a formality already accomplished in spirit, where the state concludes its premeditated drama by putting the `dead' to death a second time."

Certainly the system has done its best to try to dehumanize Abu-Jamal.

He has been widely vilified in the media as a "cop killer" who supposedly bragged publicly of his crime in the hospital where his alleged victim lay dying. Later, he supposedly smiled when a grieving policeman's widow was shown her husband's bloody shirt in court. All these lies and many more have been disproved by Abu-Jamal's defense committee. They are demolished in a powerful legal appeal filed June 5 for a new trial.

Abu-Jamal has been on death row since 1983, much of the time locked down for 22 hours a day, denied phone calls, refused the use of a typewriter, and subject to shackling and other restrictions.

But in Live from Death Row, Abu-Jamal speaks as a fighter who has stood up to the worst that the rulers had to throw at him and remains unbroken.

His book is a powerful condemnation of the prison system and capital punishment. It denounces a government that responds to deepening social and political crisis by increasing its racism and brutality, "that perceives itself more as a master than as a servant of the people."

Abu-Jamal cites statistics on the way the so-called criminal justice system manages to catch the little fish in its nets while letting the big ones swim away free. He shows how "words like `justice,' `law,' `civil rights,' and, yes, `crime' have different and elastic meanings depending on whose rights were violated, who committed what crimes against whom, and whether one works for the system or against it."

In essays such as "Jury of peers?" and "Expert witness from hell" Abu-Jamal brings to life the final product: nearly 1 million people in prison of whom 2,948 reside (as of October 1994) on death row.

And, he adds, "You will find a blacker world on death row than anywhere else. African-Americans, a mere 11 percent of the national population, compose about 40 percent of the death row population.-

"Does this mean that African-Americans are somehow innocents, subjected to a setup by state officials?" he asks. "Not especially. What it does suggest is that state actors, at all stages of the criminal justice system, including slating at the police station, arraignment at the judicial office, pre-trial, trial, and sentencing stage before a court, treat African-American defendants with a special vengeance not experienced by white defendants.

"This is the dictionary definition of `discrimination.' "
Live from Death Row includes a valuable article by Abu- Jamal's attorney, Leonard Weinglass, that summarizes the facts of his trial.

Weinglass shows how the frame-up of Abu-Jamal was put together. Even though a jury found him guilty of first degree murder, it "was conflicted" over lesser charges, Weinglass explains. Therefore "no one anticipated this same jury would vote the death penalty," as opposed to life without parole, during the penalty phase of the trial.

"In a clear violation of Mumia's constitutional rights," at that point, Weinglass reveals, "the prosecution presented evidence of Mumia's background as a member of the Black Panther Party some twelve years earlier and his political beliefs as reported in a newspaper interview when he was just sixteen years old. Beyond doubt Mumia Abu-Jamal is on death row because of those political beliefs and associations."

Live from Death Row is the story of a Black Panther Party member who was "kicked straight into it" during a brutal beating by a Philadelphia cop; a respected journalist who stood up against the media and political establishment to expose cop brutality against MOVE, a Black organization subjected to harassment and eventually aerial bombardment by the Philadelphia police; the subject of 700 pages of FBI Cointelpro files; a man on death row because of his political views.

Full of insight and information, Live from Death Row will be a big help to all those fighting the government's despicable attempt to silence forever a longtime anti-racist activist and voice in the struggle for social justice. Hopefully, getting out the facts on Abu-Jamal's case and mobilizing the broadest possible public support will help to stay the executioner's hand and win the new trial Abu-Jamal is fighting for.

 
 
 
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