In Black America; National Association of Black Journalists, Mumia Abu-Jamal Case, Part 1

as many impressions as possible. From the Longhorn Radio Network, the University of Texas at Austin, this is in Black America. We hope all of you will leave this convention richer than when you can. We in NABJ are on the move.

We are on the move and we will continue to make with the progress that we have made in the past. We know that this year there are some special controversies surrounding our organization. We will be talking about those. We will be dealing with them straightforwardly. Now is the time for us to open our convention on a proper celebratory note because we have all worked very hard all year long and this is a special time for us to come together as friends, as families, as truth seekers and we are planning to have one of the best conventions in the history of this organization. Dorothy Gillam, immediate past president, National Association of Black Journalists. This past summer, NABJ held its 20th Annual National Convention in Philadelphia founded on December 12, 1975, the organization is the largest minority journalists organization in the world.

NABJ was created to unify African American journalists, bring recognition to their achievement in the newsrooms of America and to threaten ties between black and white media. What began with only 44 members in the beginning, operating with no staff, little capital and no national office, now has grown to over 3,000 members and an operating budget in excess of $500,000. Besides celebrating 20 years of momentum, the National Convention had to deal with the controversy surrounding the Mamiya Abu Jamar case. I'm John L. Hanson, Jr. and welcome to another edition of In Black America. This week, the National Association of Black Journalists and Mamiya Abu Jamar case in Black America. This week, the National Association of Black Journalists and Mamiya Abu Jamar case in

the beginning, the National Association of Black Journalists and Mamiya Abu Jamar case in the beginning, the National Association of Black Journalists and Mamiya Abu Jamar case in the beginning, the National Association of Black Journalists and Mamiya Abu Jamar case

the demonstrators were in disagreement with the way NABJ had involved itself in the Mamiya Abu Jamar case. For those of you who are not aware of this case, here's a little background. On December 9, 1981, Officer Daniel Faulkner stopped a green Volkswagen on Locust Street, located in a red light district of night clubs and bars. Abu Jamar's brother, William Cook, got Oliver's car and subsequently got into a fight with Officer Faulkner, Abu Jamar then president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists who was driving a cab at the time, came upon the struggle and ran towards the officer and shot him in the back, according to the prosecution's case. Responding Officer found a dying Faulkner and Abu Jamar sitting nearby on a curb in a pool of blood. Three witnesses identified Abu Jamar as the killer. Abu Jamar is a former member of the Black Panthers who came on the FBI surveillance before he

was old enough to drive. Now he sits on Pennsylvania's death row after winning a stay of the original execution date August 17, 1995 as he seeks a new trial at the time of this production. In the first of a three-part series, we hear from Mamiya Abu Jamar as he sits on death row. To discuss the case today, we have three people who know it well. First on my left is Lynn Washington. Lynn is a long-time journalist in this town. He is now editor of the Philadelphia new observer. He has worked for the Philadelphia Tribune and the Philadelphia Daily News and he has kept in touch with Mamiya over the years. He will talk with us about some first amendment issues related to Mamiya Abu Jamar case and also give us some sense of who Mamiya is having recently met with him. Next to him is Joseph McGill.

Mr. McGill is the person who was the prosecutor in the case of Mamiya Abu Jamar. He is now a lawyer in private practice. Next to Mr. McGill is Leonard Wineglass. Mr. Wineglass is currently the chief defense counsel for Mamiya Abu Jamar and also a well-known lawyer in cases involving people whose rights have been trampled by the system. One of the things we are going to focus on or the thing we are going to focus on during this period of time concerns the tragic death of officer Faulkner and the life and the planned execution of Mamiya Abu Jamar. This case has been a very controversial one for this organization but that is a controversy that we are going to deal with at another time, specifically at the board meeting on Friday, I mean the general membership meeting on Friday.

As important as NABJ's position is to those of us who are taking an interest in this case, what NABJ does or doesn't do is not nearly as important as the events surrounding the death of officer Faulkner or the life and the planned execution of Mamiya Abu Jamar. So I am going to attempt to keep this discussion focused on those truly life and death events. To begin with, I am going to play a couple of commentaries that Mamiya recorded while in prison and I want to thank Equal Justice for providing these commentaries to us today. She sits in utter stillness, her coffee-brown features as if set in obsidian as if a mask, barely perceptible, the tears threatening to overflow that dark, proud maternal face, a face held still by rage.

A warm spring day at North Philadelphia saw her on her way home after her tiring duties as a housekeeper in a Westmount area home. Upon arrival she was stopped by police who told her she could not enter her home of 23 years and that it would be torn down as part of a city program against drug dens. My house ain't no drug den, the 59 year old grandmother argued, this is my home. The cops, strangers to this part of town, could care less. Mrs. Helen Anthony left the scene to contact her grown children. Two hours later she returned to an eerie scene straight out of the twilight zone. Her home was no more. A pile of bricks stood a bit hills of red dust and twisted debris, a lone wall standing jagged, a man's suit flapping on a hook, flapping like a flag of surrender after war waged by bulldozers and ambitious politicians.

Mrs. Anthony received no warning before the jaws of the bale foe backhoe bit into the bricks of her life, tearing us under the gatherings and memories of a life well-lived. She reserved no notice that the city of brotherly love intended to grind her home of 23 years into dust because they didn't like her neighbors, they just showed up one day, armed with television cameras and political ambitions, and did it gone. When reporters asked politicals about the black grandmother whose home was demolished, they responded with characteristic arrogance. Well, the law of imminent domain gives us the right to tear down any house we want to, they said. The coverage turned negative, out came the olive branch. Will reimburser, whoops, honest mistake, a compensation, they said. Left unsaid is the wisdom of a policy of mass destruction planned over a branch of debris and croissants executed for the six o'clock news with no regard for the lives and well-being

of the people involved. In a city with an estimated 30,000 homeless people, why does the government embark on a blitzkrieg of bulldozing and demolishing homes even abandoned ones? Mrs. Anthony offered a home in compensation by red face city officials is less than enthused. The way the city treated her, opined her daughter Geraldine Johnson, she does not want to live in Philadelphia. Her dreadful treatment at the hands of those who dare call themselves civil servants points to the underlying indifference with which black lives, property, aspirations are treated by the political elite. One would be hard pressed to find this degree of destructive noshalans utilized in a neighborhood where a white grandmother lived. Another chapter in the tragic comedy called The Drug War. From death row, this is Mumia Abu Jamal.

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 WUHY, and president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. Currently, I'm a writer and the public radio commentator. I've been a resident on Pennsylvania's death row for 11 years. Come in to hear my regular reports. From death row, this is Mumia Abu Jamal on your public radio station. I'm going to play one more, and I encourage you to listen closely to this one, because in this commentary, he takes a position that may surprise some of you. The federal trial of four Los Angeles cops forced by the public orgy of rebellion and rage which rocked the city a year before, in response to acquittal stemming from the brutal Rodney King beating, ended in a jury compromise, two guilty, two acquitted.

While observers may be dispirited by the fact that two cops who brutalized, traumatized, and pummeled King were acquitted, the trial itself raises some serious and disturbing questions. While no one would call the writer a cop lover, it is my firm opinion that the federal retrial of the four LA cops involved in King's legalized brutality constituted a clear violation of the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution which forbids double jeopardy. The Fifth Amendment provides, in part, quote, "...nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb." Like millions of Africans in America, Chicanos, and a host of Americans, the acquittals of the LA cop four in the Semi Valley State Assault Trial was an outrage that solidified the conviction that there can be no justice in the course of this system for black people. Although not a reason for the LA rebellion, it certainly was a psychic straw that broke

the camel's back. The Semi Valley trial, like the King beating itself, was both an obscenity and a commonality. But neither all white-properly juries nor state-sanctioned brutality are rarities to those who live in U.S. tombs as opposed to reading above them. The point is, the federal LAPD King civil rights trial was a political prosecution spurred by international embarrassment stemming from the raging flames of LA, without which no prosecution would have occurred. It also reveals how the system under the pressure of an outraged people will betray the trust of their own agents, so one need not ask how they will treat or do treat one not their own, especially when there is public pressure to support it. The same system that denied the four LA cops their alleged constitutional rights, denies the rights of the poor and politically powerless daily with impunity, and will further utilize

the Koon case to deny others. To be silent while the state violates its own alleged constitutional law to prosecute someone we hate is but to invite silence when the state violates its own laws to prosecute the state's enemies and opponents. This we cannot do. We must deny the state that power. The National ACLU is also of the opinion that the second federal prosecution violated the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, a position that seemed sound. I believe it is upon that basis that the convictions will later be reversed by an appellate court. It is ironic that many of those who did not oppose the federal civil prosecutions feel it inappropriate for the federal system to review state convictions under habeuse court statutes. All this second federal civil rights violation case has done is provide the system with camouflage to give the appearance of justice.

The illusion is never the real. From death row, this is Momiya Abu Jamal. For more information about my case, racism, and the death penalty and what you can do, contact Equal Justice USA at 301-699-0042. I wanted to play the commentaries because they are relevant as it relates to some of the first amendment issues that Lynne Washington will talk about shortly. These were commentaries that were originally planned to be aired on all things considered on national public radio and that Lynne will discuss what happened there. We also have an interview, a videotape interview that was done, actually not quite sure when, but by Lamar Williams, who is a member of our organization. It is about 10-13 minutes long and if we could have that videotape now, then we will go to the panel.

My name is Momiya Abu Jamal. I am on death row in Pennsylvania, ex-president of the Association of Black Journalists of Philadelphia, I am still continuing revolutionary Germans right for anybody who wants me to rightful. I am fighting my conviction, fighting the sentence, fighting for my life. Yes, I am a political prisoner. As a youth in the 60s, I was impressed by the black power movement that was sweeping black America and the black world and Africa and the Caribbean. This was 1968 and it was the presidential nomination of George Corley Wallace III, I think that isn't it? He was running for president on the American independent party. In retrospect, it was kind of crazy to think that we would go down to a demonstration in South Philadelphia, which is predominantly white and protest against George Wallace coming to Philadelphia.

But at that time, we believed that it was our city as well. So we did it. You probably heard the tale, I beat you so bad, you don't mind, I don't know yet why. It has a particular relevance to me because as I was laying in the hospital, charged with a soul and aggravated a soul, beating a police officer, my mother walked by me and looking at me dead in the eyes and kept walking because she couldn't recognize it and was being unrecognizable. From that period, from those experiences, from me having to go through the hell of that and seeing the complete lack of power of people to resist that, I was attracted to the black path of the party. So because there was not a functioning active black path of party at that time, we found it one and built one in Philadelphia, I was the lieutenant of information. The Coentel Program was a terroristic program. Its function was to terrorize radicals, revolutionaries, opponents of government programs and to stigmatize and isolate them from the general population.

My career as a journalist began with the black path of the newspaper. There is where I learned how to write. In fact, I got into broadcasting because I enjoyed writing so well. It is the media that gives people the reflection and the perception of changes and political movements changing. What you have now, more than any other time in America's history, is more corporate, international control, immediate. So when a media gives a certain slant and a certain perspective that is always pro-government, the government is right. They don't do anything wrong or the only time they really get investigated is if dealing with someone else's sexual foibles, instead of a real, basic, economic, social, political breakdown on what's happening in America, then you can easily slant it. Move is a family revolutionaries committed to resisting this system.

As a reporter, covering them, I became exposed to, as opposed to reading about them and found out that what I read about them had no relationship to the kind of people they were and what they were about. But that every published report was tinned with prejudice and hatred. A real threat, when you take a beating up, close the 50 steady path to the people in America. Yeah. I'm not a real. Get away from the country. I didn't know what it was.

Get away from the country. You're not a real threat. You're not a real threat. You're not a real threat. You're not a real threat. You're not a real threat. You're not a real threat. You're not a real threat. What if it's not hard to put an end to the world? If the country is still looking forward over it? forward. At that time in late 1981 what you have was you just had nine members of the move organization being sentenced to 3200 years for a crime that everybody knew they did not commit. Nine people cannot kill one man. It's impossible for me to say what my feelings were at that time. Sitting in a court room seeing that kind of naked injustice. It wrinkled me to the core. You know I say the minute a gun was seduced into the move organization by the lovingness and goodness of its people and its members. I was probably enraged as

well. Sitting in a trial in an official capacity objective as a journalist and seeing that the law really didn't matter. It didn't matter whether a man was innocent or guilty. It didn't matter what the law says your rights were. The press is responsible for what's happening in this city. A North Green Journalism that doesn't want both sides. Jamal, a local newspaper and radio reporter. He is under guard in Jefferson Hospital with a bullet wound of the chest. Detectives say Jamal appeared apparently from across the street and gunfire erupted. The backup officer found Faulkner lying fatally wounded. I was charged with homicide of a police officer in Philadelphia. I really quote by Thomas

Jefferson. He says, I have no right which another can take away from me. But when I was on trial and I exercised a purely constitutional right to defend myself and it was denied it went through me like a thunderbolt. The prosecutor introduced an article from the Philadelphia Inquirer which was an interview with me when I was a young team when I was in the tentative information at the Black Panther Party. If the jury were not predominantly white, middle class, older, in their 50s, Black Panther would not have had the kind of impact or negatively if they were young people, Blacks, Puerto Ricans who had knowledge of the current and contemporary history of Philadelphia. The word Black Panther means different things to different people depending on their respective. The prosecutor knew that exceedingly well.

I was convicted of murder in the first degree and sentenced to death. Independence weekend celebration at JFK Stadium. The first, the big story in action news is the sentence of death will convicted cop killer Mubia Otto. Every prosecution is a public and symbolic act, a political act by the state to show the populace, the illusion of control. When you look at the prisons anywhere in America, you're looking at a burgeoning population, busting out of walls, you know, just growing, growing, growing. People are being put to a cell and doing life sentences, you know what I mean? The Census Bureau says something like 31 million people were in poverty. They can't eat, they can't have shelter, they can't have clothing. And you have an infusion of drugs from Central America, which provides an economic incentive. You have a lot of these people coming into these prisons. You know,

they find this is an empty hole. You know, there's nothing, nothing, corrective being done to people in these jails. Huntington as an institution reflects Huntington, the valley of rural, maybe 98 percent white. The rural area is like an appendage of the jail. The prison is a green economic resource for this area. People on staff here come here at a young age and retire from here and their sons come here and their grand sons come here. There are generations of people working here from the same background. The only blacks they may see are that in Bill Cosby on TV or blacks in handcuffs, you know, so it tends to get one kind of skewed perception of who black people are, you know. So it's a perfect breeding ground for racism. When you talk about symbols, the death penalty comes readily

to mind. Historically, and according to statistics published by the same government, the death only was found to be of the greatest utility for controlling blacks. Here in Pennsylvania, blacks are about 9 percent of the national population. Here in Pennsylvania's death row, we approach 53 percent on death row. Nationally, the population of blacks in prison period are something like 47 percent when we're 13 percent of this nation's population. Clearly, just looking at the numbers, looking at the amount of blacks in prison on death row, they must address the racist nature of the criminal justice system.

I'd like to thank Lamar for that tape. He's given me some additional information about it. The interview was done in December 1989 at Huntington Correctional Institution by Annie Goldson and Chris Bratton. Is that enough? Bratton. Mr. Bratton and Lamar are co-producing a feature length documentary on Lumia Abu Jamal, I guess on his case. The other supporting material in the interview was done by Lamar and associates, particularly Hugh King. This material is from their co-production of the film Black and Blue on police and minority communities in Philadelphia, and it was released in 1987. Joe Davidson reported the Wall Street Journal. Next week, we present the two attorneys involved with Lumia Abu Jamar case. If you have a question or comment or suggestions asked to future in black America programs, write us. Also, let us know what radio station you heard us over. Views and opinions expressed on this program

are not necessarily those of this station or the University of Texas at Austin. Until we have the opportunity again for IBA production assistant Chris Paulson and technical producer Cliff Hargrove. I'm John L. Hansen, Jr. Thank you for joining us today and please join us again next week. Cassette copies of this program are available and may be purchased by writing in black America cassettes, communication building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. That's in black America cassettes, communication building B, UT Austin, Austin, Texas, 78712. In the University of Texas at Austin, this is the Longhorn Radio Network. I'm John L. Hansen, Jr. Join me this week on in black America. This case has been a very

controversial one for this organization, but that's a controversy that we are going to deal with at another time. The National Association of Black Journalists and the Mamiya Abu Jamar case this week on in black America. I'm John L. Hansen, Jr. Welcome to the Law Show, a national production made possible by a grant from the Fairfax

Group, providing litigation support to law firms and corporations and specialized security services worldwide. I'm John L. Hansen, Jr.