From Death Row: This is Mumia Abu-Jamal; Part 2

My name is Mumia Abu-Jamal. I'm a journalist, a husband, a father, a grandfather and an African-American, I live in the fastest growing public housing tract in America. In 1981, I was a reporter for WUKY and president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. Currently, I'm a writer and a public radio commentator. I've been a resident on Pennsylvania's death row for 11 years. Tune in to hear my regular reports from death row. This is Mumia Abu-Jamal on your public radio station. Many Americans have a skewed perception of Japan as skewed, perhaps as many foreigners have of America, many of whom seem to expect cowboys and Indians of Japan, the image arises of the feudal samurai, the ritual hari-kiri, visions of what Westerners like to call the inscrutable Orient. From such a martial warlike history, one wonders what kind of justice system has evolved.

Rates of homicide, rape, robbery and theft are far, far lower than other industrial societies such as the U.S., England and Germany. Why are these rates so low in Japan if America's conventional wisdom holds true? Japan must be building plenty of prisons, levying increasingly harsh sentences and subjecting prisoners to draconian conditions. Right? Wrong. University of Washington Law and Eastern Asian Studies Professor John O'Reilly, author of Mediation and Criminal Justice, opines that the Japanese veer away from retribution and revenge and towards restoration and social reconciliation. According to statistics published by the Supreme Court of Japan, the following median prison terms were returned for the following offenses. One homicide, five to seven years to robbery, three to five years, three arson, three to five years for rape, two to three years.

The median term for all criminal offenses combined was one to two years. Person sentenced to prison rarely serve over one term. In Japan, for example, in nineteen eighty four, sixty four thousand nine hundred ninety persons were sentenced to prison. Of that total, 56 percent received suspended sentences, with less than thirteen percent being subjected to prison terms exceeding one year. More surprisingly, twenty five percent of those with suspended sentences were convicted of homicide or robbery and of those convicted of arson or rape. Thirty five percent of the sentences were suspended. Only about 45 percent of all imprisoned persons serve full terms. American critics view the Japanese penal practice with incredulity, if not outright amazement, and hastened to note the sharp distinctions in culture between the U.S. and Japan. Curiously, American industrialists and economists raise few cultural barriers when attempting to incorporate Japanese business and

managerial wisdom to the U.S. workplace. Seemingly, what works in a factory environment becomes unmanageable in the present context. But truth be told, US prisons are themselves in a state nearing physical, social, ideological collapse as over a million persons serve sentences, many set to expire, if at all, far into the next century. US prisons, far from being a place of restoration, are social sinkholes, of despair, of degradation, of spiritual death. We could learn much from the Japanese more than how to build a better mousetrap from death row. This is Mumia Abu-Jamal. For more information about my case, racism and the death penalty and what you can do. Contac Equal Justice USA at three oh one six nine nine oh oh four to. My name is Mumia Abu-Jamal.

I'm a journalist, a husband, a father, a grandfather and an African-American, I live in the fastest growing public housing tract in America. In 1981, I was a reporter for WUKY and president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. Currently, I'm a writer and a public radio commentator. I've been a resident on Pennsylvania's death row for 11 years, tuned in to hear my regular reports from death row. This is Mumia Abu-Jamal on your public radio station. That justice is a blind goddess is a thing to which we blacks are wise, her bandage hides to festering sores that once perhaps were eyes, a poem called Justice by Langston Hughes Ilma Geronimo Pratt City, sweltering in a Northern California prison, no doubt angry over his latest judicial mugging by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which refused to reconsider Pratts appeal solely because it was filed

a few days too late. Pratt, a former high ranking Black Panther leader, has endured almost 20 long years in prison for a crime, which even an FBI agent insists he did not and indeed could not have done. Why is Geronimo still caged? Because in his youth nearly two decades ago, he dared stand up against the white racist power structure and attempted to lend a hand to militant efforts to defend black communities from racist cop terror. As party deputy minister of defense, Geronimo did his job only too well, as evidenced by the fiery, genocidal police raid on the Los Angeles chapter headquarters of the Black Panther Party in 1970, an onslaught that left much of Central Avenue in smoldering ruin, but from which every Black Panther emerged alive. Geronimo's true crime then was and is resistance,

a crime for which Africans have historically paid the supreme penalty and for which Pratt has paid with almost 20 years in California dungeons. In a word, the reason why Geronimo was still caged can be summed up with a sinister acronym COINTELPRO. FBI speak for the Shadowy Militias Counterintelligence Program, which shadowed, harassed, silenced and set up black activists from the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. to Geronimo. COINTELPRO files show Geronimo could not have committed the December 18th, 1968 murder of MS's Kenneth Olsen in L.A. for the simple reason he was under FBI surveillance some 400 miles away in Northern California on the date and time of the crime. California Congressman Ron Dellums has introduced the resolution in the U.S.

House, calling for Geronimo's immediate release and an investigation into the circumstances surrounding his arrest and conviction. The resolution noted in part Federal Bureau of Investigation wrongdoing in the case of Elmas Geronimo Pratt has been established through exhaustive examinations of thousands of pages of official FBI documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and subsequently corroborated by the sworn testimony of a retired FBI special agent who has personal knowledge of the wrongdoing. The three judge panel of the 9th Circuit, composed, incidentally, of Nixon and Reagan appointees, close the courthouse door on Pratts appeal, citing the attorney's failure to file Pratts papers promptly in a move that black Supreme Court jurist, the late Thurgood Marshall, might call exalting form over substance. The 9th Circuit panel has apparently decided that innocence is irrelevant, just as surely as the U.S. Supreme Court careens rightward.

So to do other federal courts like the 9th Circuit fast in lockstep, that a kind, decent, committed man's life sifts away like sands through an hourglass is of no judicial concern. Raised in the bayou country, Morgan County, Louisiana, untempered in the steaming jungles of Vietnam. In youthful service to this government, one wonders on the irony of protecting the polluted status quo that now denies him his rightful day in court. It was a youthful, idealistic Pratt who emerged from the hills of Nam only to behold the hills of Compton, California. That he chose to serve his people as a member of the Black Panther Party is a fact of which he can justly be proud that he is denied the most fundamental rights to be free of government. Prosecution without deception, to be heard by an impartial judge based solely upon his BPP membership is a fact

of which Americans should be ashamed. Even 3000 miles away, I hear his soft yet strong country voice saying Come together, fight together and rally together to see justice done. Free Geronimo now for. Death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal, the resolution noted in part Federal Bureau of Investigation wrongdoing in the case of Elmer Geronimo Pratt has been established through exhaustive examinations of thousands of pages of official FBI documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act and subsequently corroborated by the sworn testimony of a retired FBI special agent who has personal knowledge of the wrongdoing. The three judge panel of the 9th Circuit, composed, incidentally, of Nixon and Reagan appointees, close the courthouse door on Pratts appeal, citing the attorney's failure to file Pratts papers promptly.

In a move that black Supreme Court jurist, the late Thurgood Marshall, might call exalting form over substance, the 9th Circuit panel has apparently decided that innocence is irrelevant, just as surely as the U.S. Supreme Court careens rightward. So to do other federal courts like the 9th Circuit fast in lockstep, that a kind, decent, committed man's life sifts away like sand through an hourglass is of no judicial concern. Raised in the bayou country, Morgan County, Louisiana, tempered in the steaming jungles of Vietnam in youthful service to this government, one wonders on the irony of protecting the polluted status quo that now denies him his rightful day in court. It was a youthful, idealistic Pratt who emerged from the hills of Nam only to behold the hills of Compton, California.

That he chose to serve his people as a member of the Black Panther Party is a fact of which he can justly be proud that he is denied the most fundamental rights to be free of government. Prosecution without deception, to be heard by an impartial judge based solely upon his Black Panther Party membership is a fact of which Americans should be ashamed. Even 3000 miles away, I hear his soft yet strong country voice saying Come together, fight together and rally together to see justice done free Geronimo. Now from death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal. For more information about my case, racism and the death penalty and what you can do, contac equal justice USA at three oh one six nine nine oh oh four to. My name is Mumia Abu-Jamal.

I'm a journalist, a husband, a father, a grandfather and an African-American, I live in the fastest growing public housing tract in America. In 1981, I was a reporter for WUKY and president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. Currently, I'm a writer and a public radio commentator. I've been a resident on Pennsylvania's death row for 11 years, tuned in to hear my regular reports from death row. This is Mumia Abu-Jamal on your public radio station. The name Eddie Hatcher is widely known and respected by the people, it is hated by the system for Hatcher, a Tuscarora Lumbee native. Along with his fellow Tim Jacobs, brought national attention to the plight of native and African-Americans battling local governmental corruption in Robeson County, North Carolina, when they occupied offices of the Robeson newspaper demanding that the governor investigate a string of murders

and suspicious deaths of Indians and African-Americans there in 1988. The occupation, an act of desperation on a two Tuscarora part, mark them both for government vengeance. Hatcher, after a full acquittal of federal charges arising from the takeover, was improperly and illegally reindicted on state charges despite their presumed double jeopardy rights and convicted of kidnaping sentenced to 18 years in prison. Recently, Hatcher has learned he is HIV positive. His fight for freedom has become, in a real sense, a fight for his very life. Several years ago, Hatcher and the Ropes and Defense Committee fought for the right to decent health care and justice for an African-American prisoner who suffered from AIDS. James Hall Jr.. Now the bitter Barel spins and Hatcher finds he is

HIV positive. There are a few things in life that can make such undeniably bad news even worse, and that's probably for one to be HIV positive and in prison for people who, like Hatcher, are HIV positive faced denial of medical treatment, abominably poor medical treatment, vicious discrimination and constant abuse from staff and prisoners alike. Eddie Hatchers principled actions in occupying the offices of the Robeson Ian were reflective of courage and caring, not criminality. He acted to draw the light of exposure upon a county rank with corruption which denied the black, the red and the poor Robeson County the barest hint of justice. How many of us would have borne the injustices in silence before Hatcher and Jacobs dared act? How many did Hatchers, federal acquittal

and subsequent state prosecution for the same acts shows the rapid political character of his case, Eddie Hatcher. Like former prisoner Dr. Alan Burkeman, Bashir Hamid of the New York Three and Sylvia Baldini is a political prisoner fighting for his very life. And like Dr. Burkeman, the efforts of many may help Hatcher make parole, thereby extending a good life of service to others. Every day is vital. Please write to the Roberson Defense Committee Post Office Box one three eight nine Pembroke, North Carolina two eight three seven two. For more information, help make Hatchers dream of a long, productive life. A reality from death row. This is Mumia Abu-Jamal. For more information about my case, racism and the death penalty and what you can do. Contac Equal Justice USA

at three 01 six nine nine oh four to. My name is Mumia Abu-Jamal. I'm a journalist, a husband, a father, a grandfather and an African-American, I live in the fastest growing public housing tract in America. In 1981, I was a reporter for WUKY and president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. Currently, I'm a writer and a public radio commentator. I've been a resident on Pennsylvania's death row for 11 years. Tune in to hear my regular reports from death row. This is Mumia Abu-Jamal on your public radio station. George Jackson was my hero. He set a standard for prisoners, political prisoners, for people, he showed the love, the strength, the revolutionary fervor that's characteristic of any soldier for the people. He inspired prisoners whom I later encountered to put his ideas

into practice. And so his spirit became a living thing. A quotation from Dr. UEP, new Ph.D., former minister of defense at the Black Panther Party at the Revolutionary Memorial Service for George Jackson in 1971 August. In both historic and contemporary African-American history is a month of meaning. It is a month of repression. August 16 19, the first group of black laborers called Indentured Servants landed at Jamestown, Virginia. August 25th, 1967. Classified FBI memos went out to all bureaus nationwide with plans to, quote, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize, unquote, black liberation movement groups. August 1968, the Newark, New Jersey Black Panther Party office was firebombed. August 25th, 1968, L-A Black Panther Party member Steve Bartholomew, Robert Lawrence and Tommy

Lewis were murdered by the LAPD at a gas station August 15th, 1969. Sylvester Bell, San Diego Black Panther Party member murdered by the US organization. August 21st, 1971, Black Panther Party Field Marshal George L. Jackson assassinated at San Quentin Prison in California. Three guards and two inmate turncoats were killed, three wounded. It is also a month of radical resistance. August 22nd, 1831, Nat Turner's Rebellion Rock, South Hampton County, Virginia, and the entire South when slaves rose up and slew their white masters. August 30th, 1856, John Brown led an anti slavery raid on a group of Missourians at Osawatomie, Kansas. August 7th, 1970, Jonathan Jackson, younger brother, a field marshal. George raided the Marin County courthouse in California,

arming and freeing three black prisoners, taking the judge, prosecutor and several jurors hostage. All except one prisoner were killed by police fire that perforated the escape vehicle. John was 17. And then an instance of resistance and repression. August 8th, 1978, after a 15 month armed police standoff with a Philadelphia based naturalist move organization, the police raided move, killing one of their own in police crossfire and charging nine move people with murder. The move nine and prisons across Pennsylvania are serving up to 100 years each August, a month of injustice and divine justice of repression and righteous rebellion of individual and collective efforts to free the slaves and break the chains that bind us. August saw slaves and the grandsons of slaves strike out for their God given right to freedom, as well as the awesome price, the ultimate

price always paid by those who would dare oppose the slave masters will like their spiritual grandfather, the blessed rebel Nat Turner. Those who oppose Massa in this land of unfreedom met murder by the St.. George and Jonathan Jackson, James McClain, William Christmas, Bobby Hutton, Steve Bartholomew, Robert Lawrence, Tommy Lewis, Sylvester Bell all suffer the fate of Nat Turner of the Slave daring to fight the slave master for his freedom. Rachelle McGee, for the crime of surviving the Marion County courthouse massacre, has been consigned to a life in California slave castles, modern day dungeons called adjustment centers, where he has languished since August 1970. He is a political prisoner guilty of the unpardonable set of insurrection and though not executed by hanging like his ancestor Nat Turner, nor executed by firing squad like his coal rebels, he endures a cruel

living death in the bowels of Babylon. Their sacrifice, their despair, their determination and their blood has painted the month black for all time. Let their revolutionary sacrifice not be forgotten nor taken in vain from death row. This is Mumia Abu-Jamal. For more information about my case, racism and the death penalty and what you can do. Contac Equal Justice USA at three 01 six nine nine oh. For two. My name is Mumia Abu-Jamal. I'm a journalist, a husband, a father, a grandfather and an African-American, I live in the fastest growing public housing tract in America. In 1981, I was a reporter for WUKY and president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists.

Currently, I'm a writer and a public radio commentator. I've been a resident on Pennsylvania's death row for 11 years, tuned in to hear my regular reports from death row. This is Mumia Abu-Jamal on your public radio station. It has been eight years now since the massacre, eight years since the carnage on Osage Avenue, eight years since an urban holocaust which sold 11 human lives, eight years since the unjust engagement of Ramona, Africa for daring to survive, eight years since the government committed premeditated mass murder of members of the Africa family, men, women and children. And still, justice is a ghostly illusion. To date, no judge, no jury, no judicial nor law enforcement officer has condemned the May 13th bombing of move. In fact, several, including former U.S. attorney Edwin Meese and former Los Angeles police chief Daryl

Gates, have applauded it for over 17 years now. I've written of the ongoing battles between move and this system. I have seen every substantive so-called constitutional right twisted, shredded and torn when it comes to move. Since the early 1970s, I've seen male and female move members beaten to a bloody and bones broken, locked beneath the jails, caged while pregnant, beaten into miscarriage, starved by municipal decree, sentenced to a century in prisons. Homes demolished by a bomb, by crane, by cannon, by fire. But I've never seen them broken throughout this vicious state campaign. The government, the prosecutors, the police, the courts have had one central aim. Renounce, move, renounce your allegiance to John Africa and we'll leave you alone. This has been proven.

In 1978, a phalanx of 500 heavily armed cops laid siege to move headquarters and Powelton Village in an alleged attempt to enforce a civil eviction order. During the shoot in, a cop was killed in all adult move. Members inside were charged with murder. Before trial, two women told investigators they would resign from the organization, even though they, too, were arrested inside the house. All charges, including murder, were dropped. At trial, nine move. Men and women were convicted of third degree murder and all were sentenced to 30 to 100 years in prison. The May 13th, 1985, action was an attempt to draw attention to the earlier injustice suffered by move members and demand their release as to their innocence. One need go no further than the trial judge

of the August 8th case, who told listeners of the popular Frank Ford talk show in Philadelphia just days after their conviction that he hadn't, quote, the faintest idea, unquote, who killed the cop, adding, quote, They were tried as a family. So I convicted them as a family, unquote. Move members then were convicted of being move members had Ramona Africa emerged from the sea of flames wrapped in fear. Had she not instead escaped with her aura of resistance intact, she would have been free long before the seven years she spent in a hellhole. Her prosecutor, describing move as a cult of resistance, demanded jury convict her of a range of charges that if they did so, would have exposed her to over fifty years in prison. Only her Naturaliste faith, the teachings of John Africa, allowed her to competently defend herself where she beat the majority of the charges.

Ramona is, quote unquote, free today from death row. This is Mumia Abu-Jamal. For more information about my case, racism and the death penalty and what you can do, contac equal justice USA at three oh one six nine nine oh oh four to. My name is Mumia Abu-Jamal. I'm a journalist, a husband, a father, a grandfather and an African-American, I live in the fastest growing public housing tract in America. In 1981, I was a reporter for WUKY and president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. Currently, I'm a writer and a public radio commentator. I've been a resident on Pennsylvania's death row for 11 years, tuned in to hear my regular reports from death row.

This is Mumia Abu-Jamal on your public radio station. The muted public response to the mass murder of Move members some eight years ago has set the stage for a lower level of acceptable state violence against radicals, against blacks and against all those deemed socially unacceptable. In the 60s and 70s, the Black Panther Party defined the relationship between the police and the black community as one between an occupying army and a colony. The confrontations between move and this system's armed domestic forces has given that claim credence. In an article in the Village Voice in 1991, quoting an anonymous white cop giving his prescription for bringing law and order to Los Angeles. Consider the following cop one. You want to fix this city? I say you start out with carpet bombing levels. Some buildings poorly get under and start all over again.

Cop to Christ, you drop a bomb on a community cop three. Oh yeah, there'd be some innocent people, but not that many. There's just some areas of L.A. that can't be saved. The twisted mentalities at work here are akin to those of Nazi Germany or perhaps more appropriately, of Lai, a Vietnam of Baghdad, the spirit behind the mindlessly murderous mantra that echoed out of Danang. We had to destroy the village in order to save it as abroad. So here at home, for as the flames smothered life on Osage Avenue, police and politicians spoke of destroying the neighborhoods surrounding the Move House in order to save it. Now, just eight years later, cops patrolled neighborhoods across America armed like storm troopers with a barely disguised urge to destroy the very area they are sworn to serve and protect,

or perhaps we should say sever and dissect as they sit and sup and smoke. What animates their minds? Are they an aid to the people or a foreign army of occupation? May 13th, 1985 should have answered that question decisively. Move founder John Africa wrote over a decade ago. It is past time for all poor people to release themselves from the deceptive strangulation of society. Realize that society has failed you for. To attempt to ignore this system of deception now is to deny you the need to protest this failure later. This system has failed you yesterday, failed you today, and has created the conditions for failure tomorrow for society is wrong. The system is really the courts of this complex

are filled with ballots. Cops are insane. The judges enslaving the lawyers are just as the judges they confront. They are Harvard and Princeton and Cornell and Yale and trained as the judge to deceive the impoverished, trained as the judge to protect the established, trained by the system, to be as the system to do for the system, exploit with the system and move and going to close our eyes to this monster, unquote. From John Africa's judge's letter. It was true that it's even truer now. This system has failed all of us. Indeed, it is the problem. Organize this very day to resist it, to oppose it, to go beyond it, demand that all in prison, move members be released and all political prisoners be freed.

That is a beginning. That is a first step we can all take today on a move. Long live, John Africa from death row. This is Mumia Abu-Jamal. For more information about my case, racism and the death penalty and what you can do. Contac Equal Justice USA at three oh one six nine nine oh oh four to.