Since there has been hardly any critical voice raised about this person
or case - at least on the left, and in a public forum - I think we
should all consider this article...I don't agree with the red-baiting
and other stuff, but I do agree that many of us have run off,
uncritically and without consideration...thoughts?...fyi....
What's Mumia Got to Do With It?
Marc Cooper is a good leftist who thinks Mumia Abu-Jamal
is a
bad choice for poster-boy of the anti-death penalty
movement.
We invite you to hear his argument and discuss
it with Cooper
himself, here on the MoJo Wire.
by Marc Cooper
Feb. 9, 2000
Nowadays, whenever I
see a Free Mumia banner or leaflet, I start
thinking how much
more I'd just rather just be Free of Mumia.
What collective affliction has overcome
my fellow leftists? We
haven't had enough defeats and embarrassments these past two
decades? Now, you want to take the deathly
serious issue of
capital punishment and tie it to some politically dubious
cult-groupie like Mumia Abu-Jamal?
Full-page ads in major metro dailies,
international petition campaigns,
protest caravans and nationwide days of
protest to set Mumia free. Grass-addled
students at Washington state's Evergreen
College wildly applauding his
tape-delivered commencement speech.
Activists buying up his two books from
death row and huddling to pore over His
Words. Regular lionizations of Mumia on
Pacifica Radio (for whose LA affiliate I
do a daily talk show).
I haven't seen such madness since
December 1969 when the SDS Weatherman
faction staged a "National War Council" ,
in Flint, Mich. and toasted Charlie
Manson by repeatedly stabbing three
fingers in the air, symbolizing the
forks that Comrade Manson and his
girlfriends plunged into his
victims' entrails.
It's madness because the death penalty and its copious
application in modern America is a barbaric outrage.
It's also
one of the toughest political fights we
can imagine, given its
approval by about 80 percent of the
population. Its abolition
requires a protracted, tenacious
organizing and moral
offensive. And, unfortunately, by
turning Abu-Jamal into the
icon of the movement, the professional
Mumiacs are, frankly,
muddying the waters.
They are tying together four separate
questions. Let's look at
them one by one:
1. The political lionization of Mumia
as a "political
prisoner." This is both absurd and
insulting. Though he
briefly passed through the Black
Panthers as a young man,
Mumia's latest political
incarnation is as supporter of
the Philadelphia-based group known
as MOVE. No serious
political analyst can conclude that
MOVE is anything more
than an off-keel personality cult
built around its now
deceased guru John Africa. Yes,
MOVE gives lip service to
the rhetoric of social justice. But
that's when it's not
arguing that humans and insects
exist at the same
spiritual level and when it's not
demanding that all
group leaders change their last
name to "Africa" and
devote their lives to the study of
the eternal words of
John.
To suggest that Mumia is some sort
of black-liberation
hero is to sully and dishonor the
memory and sacrifice of
the entire pantheon of authentic
civil-rights leaders.
Listening to Mumia's bizarre
commencement speech given
last year to Evergreen makes
Minister Farrakhan's Million
Man discourse on numerology sound
as stirring, by
comparison, as the Emancipation
Proclamation.
Neither is Mumia in jail as a
political prisoner. There
is no question that the
Philadelphia police may have very
well manipulated and even
fabricated some of the evidence
against Mumia. And it's true that
Mumia had a checkered
career in both mainstream and
alternative journalism. But
Mumia's own personal and
psychological crisis before his
arrest had reduced him to working
as a taxi cab driver.
That is what he was doing the night
of his arrest. Mumia
was NOT busted and framed because
he was a political
threat to the establishment. He was
arrested because he
was found, wounded, with his gun
drawn and resting near
his hand, a few feet from a
murdered cop.
But little wonder Mumia has been
lionized. The most
prominent leader of the Free Mumia
movement, C. Clark
Kissinger, is a longtime worshipper
of politically
suspect heroes. As one of the top
Maoist dogmatists in
America, Kissinger has veteran
experience in apologizing
for the various atrocities carried
out by the Great
Helmsman and his acolytes (Gosh, I
can't ever remember
Comrade Kissinger protesting the
generous application of
the death penalty in China).
2. Did Mumia get a fair trial? That
answer seems to be
probably not. I agree that he
should be given another
trial. As Debra Dickerson -- no
admirer of Mumia's --
recently pointed out in Salon.com,
Mumia's supporters
have a good case to make when they
argue his trial was
tainted by concocted confessions,
unreliable eyewitnesses
and a biased judge. But it's also
true that during his
trial, Mumia contributed to a
carnival atmosphere with
disruptive antics described by the
Philadelphia Inquirer
"as bizarre as it was suicidal."
3. Is Mumia innocent? I don't know. I
doubt it, though. I am
certainly not prepared to simply
conclude: Free Mumia.
Recently, left-of-center journalist
Enzo Di Mateo wrote
in the Toronto-based alternative
weekly NOW of "The Holes
in Mumia's Story."
Indeed, Di Mateo's account of the
incident that landed
Mumia on death row is among the
best on record:
"It was in the early morning
hours of Dec. 9, 1981
that Mumia Abu-Jamal came upon
his brother, William
Cook, being hit with a
flashlight by police officer
Daniel Faulkner had pulled
over the Volkswagen Cook
was driving. What happened
next depends on who you
listen to. The version put
forward at trial by the
prosecution is that Abu-Jamal
shot Faulkner in the
back, and a wounded Faulkner
turned as he was
falling and got off a shot of
his own that hit
Abu-Jamal in the chest. The
prosecution says
Abu-Jamal gathered himself,
stood over Faulkner and
pumped more bullets, one
practically between the
eyes, into him as he lay on
the sidewalk. The police
arrived on the scene to find
Abu-Jamal slouched on
the curb with a .38 caliber
revolver registered to
him on the ground beside him,
and empty holster
slung under his arms."
The police bungled and perhaps
tampered with the
ballistics and in so doing gave
Mumia's advocates a thin
reed to which to cling. Conversely,
there is nothing in
the ballistics evidence that
definitively exonerates
Mumia. Worse, as Di Matteo writes:
"Five spent bullet
casings were found in Abu-Jamal's
revolver, the same
hollow type removed from Faulkner's
forehead." Mumia,
meanwhile, has never offered an
explanation for that
evening's events. Perhaps a wise
legal strategy, but
politically it leaves much to be
desired.
4. What does Mumia's possible
innocence or guilt got to do
with ending capital punishment?
Nothing, per se. I write
this column because I am a staunch,
unmovable death
penalty abolitionist. I believe we
should all oppose
capital punishment -- for the
innocent, obviously, and
also for the guilty. And that's the
central point.
Whether Mumia is innocent or not is
as irrelevant to the
future of the death penalty as is
the case of any one of
the other millions of Americans
currently ensnared by the
behemoth criminal justice system.
I have no problem with people who
wish to spend their
time submitting to the political
leadership of C. Clark
Kissinger and arguing for Mumia's
innocence. But I deeply
resent and regret that they are
trying to make political
support for Mumia's dubious case
into a pre-requisite
litmus test for joining the death
penalty movement.
Just in case there is something in
the above that is not
clear, let me re-state it in simple
terms: A principled
person can both reject the call of
Free Mumia and still
be a committed opponent of the
death penalty. In the same
sense, it's quite possible that
Mumia can be both guilty
and framed by the police. Such
outrages happen every day
in America.
So to those of you who are beating
the drum for Mumia's
innocence, those of you who are
elevating this guy to the
status of political prisoner, those
who are demanding
Free Mumia, well, those of us who
would rather fight to
abolish the death penalty for all
say to you: (to
paraphrase the late, great Phil
Ochs) please find another
movement to be a part of! Until you
do, you are confusing
the issue of the death penalty
itself with the rather
flimsy case of a pretty wigged-out
hero.
The truly tragic element in the
Mumiamania is that while his
supporters swoon over his dreadlocks and
his empty political
posturing some 3,500 other nameless
souls are wasting away on
America's death rows -- forgotten and
abandoned. And while
Mumia is being ably represented by the
admirable legal talents
of Leonard Weinglass, a staggering
number of these other
condemned men and women have no legal
counsel whatsoever. Here
in California, as the heroic group Death
Penalty Focus
reports, almost a full-third of the 556
death row inmates are
lawyerless.
Most death row prisoners aren't so
cuddly, so politically
correct, as Mumia. Many are illiterate,
brutal and repeat
killers. Some are members of racist
gangs. They make no claim
to either political leadership or
political persecution. But I
have to wonder how many of their names
are even known by those
still marching in circles with their
Free Mumia signs. It's
about time they learned. [Image]
Marc Cooper is a Los Angeles-based
contributing editor to The
Nation magazine.
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