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	Workers Vanguard No. 1006	3 August 2012

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!

(Class-Struggle Defense Notes)

July 2 marked 30 years since a nearly all-white jury declared class-war prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal guilty in the killing of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner on 9 December 1981. One day later, on the eve of the 4th of July, the jurors sentenced Mumia to death, based explicitly on his political views and activities as a champion of black freedom and an eloquent voice for the oppressed. Beginning in the late 1960s, Mumia was targeted by the police as a Black Panther leader and later as a MOVE supporter and journalist renowned for his searing exposés of cop brutality and racist oppression.

For three decades, police, prosecutors and government officials of both the Democratic and Republican parties screamed for the head of this innocent man. That effort finally ran aground on 7 December 2011 when Philadelphia district attorney Seth Williams announced that he would not pursue the death sentence for Mumia. This announcement came in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision last October rejecting the D.A.’s petition to reinstate the death sentence, which was overturned in 2001 (see “Drive to Execute Mumia Halted,” WV No. 993, 6 January). Mumia is now left to languish in prison without possibility of parole. Finally removed from death row, Mumia was transferred to Mahanoy prison in Frackville, Pennsylvania, where he was vindictively thrown into solitary for seven weeks before finally being released into the general prison population at the end of January.

Mumia’s conviction and death sentence were the result of a political and racist frame-up. Cops, prosecutors and “hanging judge” Albert Sabo ripped to shreds every single one of Mumia’s trial rights—from the right to an attorney of his choice to the right to even be present in the courtroom where his life and freedom hung in the balance. Black people were summarily excluded from the jury. Witnesses were terrorized by the cops. Exculpatory evidence was concealed from the defense. Court after court refused to even consider the mountains of evidence proving Mumia’s innocence, including the confession of the actual killer. In this, the courts are joined not only by the right-wing tabloids but also by anti-death penalty liberals like those at the New York Times and Philadelphia Inquirer who are hopeful that Mumia will now be a forgotten man left to rot in prison for the rest of his life.

During the decades of his unjust imprisonment, Mumia has remained unbowed, speaking out for the oppressed and the impoverished through his death row commentaries (which can be heard on prisonradio.org). Mumia has published a number of books, including collections of his commentaries and essays in Live From Death Row, Death Blossoms and All Things Censored, the autobiographical We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party and Jailhouse Lawyers: Prisoners Defending Prisoners vs. the U.S.A.

On July 9, PDC representatives visited Mumia. Dating back to 1987, our comrades have visited him on many occasions, first at Huntingdon prison and later at SCI Greene in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. In those previous visits, Mumia was separated by a thick wall of Plexiglas, and until a couple of years ago his hands were manacled. Mumia’s life on death row also meant that he was confined in an eight-by-twelve-foot cell almost 24 hours a day, with severe restrictions, including on phone calls.

With the restraints of death row finally lifted, Mumia is allowed six hours a day outdoors and is getting all the exercise and soaking up all the sun that he can. Mumia told how a number of fellow inmates had read his books and expressed their solidarity. He has been able to reacquaint himself with MOVE comrade Eddie Africa, also imprisoned at Mahanoy. For the first time, Mumia and our comrades could embrace, sit side by side and even break bread together (or at least the stale fare from the overpriced vending machines). At one point, a woman visiting another inmate came over to hug Mumia and tell how she has followed his case for 30 years. Noticing one particularly playful little girl, Mumia—who for decades could not touch his wife or bounce his children or grandchildren on his knee—expressed how much he appreciated being able to actually see children.

Compared to the death row conditions under which Mumia lived for 30 years, the more ordinary hell of America’s prisons is an improvement. But it is a crime that this innocent man has spent even a day behind bars. We remain dedicated to searing the cause of Mumia’s fight for freedom into the consciousness of the working class, radical youth and opponents of black oppression. Free Mumia now!