Socialist Action /September 1999
Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Radicalization of a Generation
The following speech, edited for space, was presented by Jeff Mackler
to the Socialist Action National Educational Conference in San Francisco
on Aug. 20.
Mackler is the Co-Coordinator of the Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal
and a member of the National Committee of Socialist Action.
By JEFF MACKLER
The state powers in Pennsylvania and nationally are preparing to execute
by lethal injection the innocent Black political prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal.
This individual, incarcerated in a tiny cell 23 hours each day for the
past 18 years, revered by a growing layer of radicalizing youth, has come
to represent a major threat to the legitimacy of capitalism's democratic
pretenses.
The forces arrayed against Mumia include the president of the United
States, who made it a point to invite Maureen Faulkner, the wife of the
police officer Mumia is accused of killing, to be prominently seated near
Clinton at a Fraternal Order of Police gathering he addressed some months
ago.
When 20,000 youth attended a Rage Against the Machine benefit concert
for Mumia in New Jersey earlier this year, virtually all the major media
carried the frenzied demands of police and state elected officials for the
concert's cancellation.
The Philadelphia Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) followed up their full-page
New York Times ad of last year, which demanded Mumia's execution, with an
unprecedented and dangerous action a few days ago.
Three thousand FOP delegates, representing some quarter of a million
cops nationwide, approved a resolution to publish the names of all businesses,
groups, and "individuals" who support Mumia. The national FOP
computer web site will provide cops and other interested parties with an
instant list of individuals and groups, who will now be subjected to the
whims of the new witch hunters.
Make no mistake, there is an immediate threat to Mumia's life. We are
in the midst of a daily war of contending social forces over the most important
individual civil and human rights case in recent memory.
Not since the federal government threw the switch that electrocuted Julius
and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953, propelling the McCarthyite witch hunt into
full gear, have so many eyes been riveted on a single victim of capitalist
frame-up and injustice.
But we have progressed to the point that Mumia's life cannot be taken
easily. If he is executed, a major portion of today's radicalizing youth
will be compelled to draw conclusions far more radical than their initial
democratic inclinations upon entering this struggle.
If we win and Mumia is free, the ruling class similarly loses, as a man
who has been tortured, framed, and falsely imprisoned for 18 years will
be among us, an integral part of the coming mass struggles for fundamental
human and democratic rights and social equality, not to mention socialism.
In either case, the ruling powers are confronted with a serious dilemma.
They are carefully calculating what decision to make to minimize the damage
to their credibility already inflicted by the broad and united forces that
are fighting for Mumia's life and freedom.
Theirs will be political decision, having little or nothing to do with
facts of the case and formal legalities. They will bend, twist, and mutilate
the law to meet their political needs, no matter what their final decision.
What Mumia's struggle confirms
Support for Mumia's case is fueled by a multi-racial generation of radicalizing
youth who are rapidly learning that there is no future in defending this
status quo. There is nothing to defend when wages stand at an all time low,
amidst the exploding wealth of the one percent who plunder at the expense
of the vast majority.
Today's youth flock to Mumia's banner because his struggle confirms what
they are learning every day in their own lives, that there is no justice
in capitalist America.
The ruling class establishment has trotted out their intellectual elite
to prettify and justify their failing system. These scholarly professors
"prove" through their statistical manipulations and twisted arguments
that unemployment in the U.S. stands at an all-time low of some 4.4 percent.
But since they define the unemployed as only those receiving unemployment
insurance, they leave out of their computations an additional 8 percent
of the population-whose 26 weeks of unemployment insurance has expired but
who still have no jobs. And their statistics also exclude the millions of
part-time workers who labor at humiliating wages, if there is work at all.
When they are compelled to admit the truth about the job market, their
racist and sexist ideologues argue that the real source of unemployment
is not the capitalist system, but foreign workers who supposedly take our
jobs; or women, who instead of rearing children at home and providing free
child care for the bosses, are entering the workforce and taking, through
affirmative action, the so-called good jobs from men.
The paid propagandists for capitalism tell us that it is a definite advantage
to be Black in America, since affirmative action decrees of the past, unless
repudiated, give all the good jobs to Blacks, to Chicanos, and to others
who-they imply with a racist twist-are really not qualified in the first
place.
"I wish I were Black," they sometimes have their duped defenders
say to the obliging media. "Then I would be able to get the good jobs!"
A product of his times
Mumia has rejected this ideology. He stands, despite his death row status
and the severe limitations placed on him, among the most published critics
of capitalist war, racism, sexism, and social inequality. Mumia's voice
today represents the radicalizing millions of youth who see in him the best
in humanity, and in his tormentors, the worst.
But there is another side to the Mumia equation. He too, is a product
of his times, ever growing with the rising consciousness of the youth and
all the oppressed.
Mumia is both an exceptional individual and a shining example of the
new fighters produced by our changing times. History requires both elements
for successful struggle, the aroused masses and conscious, courageous leadership.
Mumia's audio-taped speech to the graduating class at Evergreen State
University last June was a perfect example of the power of an individual
who has the good fortune to live when ideas are in flux and social forces
are in motion.
A lesser person might have moderated his remarks for an obvious national
audience. Fearing a possible rejection from students at one of Washington
State's most prestigious universities, another person might have stressed
the fundamental injustice in his case, the denial of his basic rights under
the law, and the lies of those who bore false witness against him.
Mumia rejected this route. He appealed to the best instincts in today's
youth. He proclaimed his revolutionary identity, and urged the 800 assembled
graduates to look to the example of their own revolutionary heritage in
the United States, to the two revolutionary wars that were fought against
tyranny and slavery in this country.
This was too much for the bourgeois order, whose lying media reported
the Evergreen event nationally as a victory for Maureen Faulkner-who was
present at the graduation ceremonies with placards against Mumia and police-paid
full-page ads in the student press.
The multitude of newspapers and other media covering the story reported
that three students walked out of their own graduating ceremonies to protest
Mumia's address. Another 13 turned their backs.
But they neglected to report that the remaining 800 rose in a standing
ovation to signal their approval of Mumia's call to challenge the prevailing
powers. Mumia cast his fate with the truth and the youth, and won the day.
Another example of Mumia as a revolutionary with a keen sense of the
times came with ABC-TV's effort to interview him while its National Association
of Broadcast Engineers and Technicians (NABET) union members were on strike
for a better contract.
In fact, the ABC workers had been locked out following a one-day work
stoppage. ABC wanted to make an example of them, to break their union, to
humble them by rejecting their every demand and inflicting major damage
on their union contract.
A lesser person might have opted for the national coverage that an ABC
broadcast could have brought. Mumia chose otherwise. With his life on the
line, he said "No!" to ABC and proclaimed that he would not cross
a union picket line, or to be more exact, would not allow himself to be
interviewed by an anti-union scab crew.
Again, Mumia gauged right. The union technicians were shocked to learn
when they listened to Sam Donaldson's 20/20 Mumia hit-piece that Mumia had
refused to cross their picket line to be interviewed. Prior to that moment,
ABC had refused to even acknowledge that its employees had been locked out.
Donaldson's admission was ABC's first public admission that workers were
in struggle for their rights. And the workers gave Mumia the credit.
Our conclusions are obvious. Mumia placed his very life in the hands
of working people, as opposed to the possible gains to be derived from the
corporate media. He trusted in the good judgment of today's radicalizing
youth.
He stands in solidarity with all the oppressed. And in the process, he
advances and broadens the struggle for his own life. He deepens the unity
in action of all who seek justice in this country.
Bloch's "confession" story is exposed
Mumia's tormentors were singed by the Evergreen victory but rapidly responded
with the newly-discovered "confession" story of former Pennsylvania
Prison Society volunteer Phillip Bloch.
Bloch, with the assistance of the mass media, Maureen Faulkner, and the
major government advocates of Mumia's execution, loudly claimed a few weeks
ago that Mumia had confessed to him in late 1992 while Bloch was visiting
Mumia in prison.
Bloch's Mumia "confession" story was touted in Vanity Fair
magazine in an article by editor Buzz Bissinger that repeated the discredited
lies and half truths long promoted by the FOP. Vanity Fair neglected to
inform its readers that Bissinger was a chief publicist and campaign worker
for Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell and that Rendell had been the chief prosecutor
in Mumia's 1982 frame-up trial.
Bloch's "confession" fabrication was repeated again in an updated
broadcast on Mumia's case engineered by ABC's Sam Donaldson of the 20/20
"news" show. The "confession" became the subject of
national news coverage, with the media promoting the thesis that the case
was now over, that Mumia had confessed, and that-all the hype of his supporters
aside-there was nothing left but to carry out his execution.
Mumia immediately labeled Bloch's fabricated confession story a lie,
but at first glance it appeared that the damage had been done, that his
lone voice and denial would be overwhelmed by the thunder of his detractors.
But again, Mumia would have the last word.
He found among the voluminous letters sent to him over the years, a July
13, 1992, letter from Phillip Bloch. It was dated six months after the alleged
confession, and in it Bloch proclaimed Mumia's innocence.
Meanwhile, the executive director of the 200-year-old Pennsylvania Prison
Society reported that Bloch had been fired for misconduct six months before
the date of Mumia's so-called confession to him. Therefore, Bloch could
not have had access to Mumia in prison at the time of the alleged confession.
In addition, the official list of all Mumia's visitors, including all
persons visiting Mumia through March 1993, six months after the "confession,"
did not include Bloch's name. And finally, Phillip Bloch's name was found
among the signatories of a 1995 full-page advertisement in a Philadelphia
newspaper proclaiming Mumia's innocence.
While Bloch's story stands discredited, the same corporate media that
promoted it stand mute, refusing the retraction that would further expose
Mumia's frame-up.
The battle over Mumia's life is entering its final stages. The 50,000
people who demonstrated for his freedom in the nationally-coordinated rallies
in Philadelphia and San Francisco on April 24 represent additional millions
who have entered the struggle on his behalf.
In the months ahead they will be called upon to mobilize again and again
to free Mumia from the clutches of capitalist injustice and its racist and
classist killing machine.
Mumia's struggle is our struggle! We proudly stand among his best defenders.
We want him with us, alive and well, taking his place as a free man devoted
to the liberation of humankind.
And we want you to be part of this struggle. It goes far beyond the life
of one person. It is a struggle over our own lives and future as well.
Socialist Action /September 1999 |