This article first appeared in the December 2006 issue of Socialism and Liberation magazine.
What began as a traffic stop in the early morning hours on Dec. 9, 1981, instead turned into a life-and-death battle for Philadelphia journalist and political activist Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was railroaded into Pennsylvania’s death row. That battle continues today, 25 years later.
In the intervening years, Abu-Jamal’s case has generated a militant and dedicated international movement against the
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Twenty-five years ago, Abu-Jamal was arrested for the murder of a police officer. He had been driving a cab on the Philadelphia streets when he came upon cops beating his brother. When he stopped to intervene, he was shot and wounded. A cop was also shot and killed.
Abu-Jamal’s fingerprints were never found on the gun that killed the cop. Witnesses saw the shooter running away from the scene. Abu-Jamal himself has always maintained his innocence.
Despite evidence pointing to his innocence and coerced testimony by prosecution witnesses, an overwhelmingly white jury convicted Abu-Jamal in July 1982. During the sentencing phase, prosecutors brought up Abu-Jamal’s past membership in the Black Panther Party as evidence of premeditation, and he was sentenced to death. Philadelphia was 40 percent African American at that time. The police department and court system were notoriously racist.
Abu-Jamal’s supporters charge that the award-winning radio journalist was framed for his activism as a Black Panther and later as one of the few journalists who exposed the first police attack on the MOVE organization—a primarily Black communal activist group in West Philadelphia.
MOVE had been attacked by the police in 1978. Nine MOVE members were arrested and given long jail terms in that attack. The MOVE organization was attacked again in 1985, when Philadelphia police launched an all-out assault on the MOVE home, dropping a bomb on the house and firing 10,000 rounds of ammunition. Eleven MOVE family members—six adults and five children—were killed by the police attack.
Abu-Jamal’s political activism goes back to the 1960s. At the age of 14, Abu-Jamal joined the Black Panther Party in Philadelphia, and one year later rose to serve as the branch’s lieutenant of information. At the time of his arrest, Abu-Jamal was serving as president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists.
A focus of struggle
Since his arrest, activists have worked tirelessly for his freedom. The International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal formed in 1981, led by Pam Africa of the MOVE organization.
Thanks to the work of Pam Africa and the Concerned Family and Friends, committees to free Abu-Jamal began to form in communities and college campuses around the country and around the world. When then-Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge signed a death warrant to execute Abu-Jamal on Aug. 17, 1995, this network sprang into action.
“Mumia was set to be executed on Aug. 17, 1995,” Pam Africa told Socialism and Liberation. “We set a demonstration for Aug. 12. That demonstration was so massive, we shut down the city.”
In fact, the mobilization leading up to that demonstration forced the state back. Three days before thousands took to the streets in Philadelphia, the same racist judge who presided over the conviction of Abu-Jamal granted a stay of execution to allow his legal team time to appeal.
A second death warrant for Mumia Abu-Jamal was signed in 1999. That one, too, was overturned by mass mobilization.
Then, in December 2001, federal district court judge William Yohn overturned Abu-Jamal’s death sentence after months of protests, due to the trial judge’s error in jury instructions. However, the district attorney immediately appealed, and the matter is before the Third Circuit Court of Appeals.
Abu-Jamal remains on death row. His attorney, Robert Bryan, explains that the danger of his death sentence being reinstated remains.
Another issue on appeal before the Third Circuit, is the systematic and racist exclusion of eleven prospective African American jurors in the trial jury selection.
These appeals and the struggle for a new trial on the part of Abu-Jamal’s legal team and closest supporters are not based on hopes in the racist U.S. court system. They are an effort to widen the terrain for the struggle to win Abu-Jamal’s freedom, to focus on his case, and to add pressure on the state.
Many groups and international organizations have come to the defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, the NAACP, the National Lawyers Guild and the European Parliament have issued statements condemning the judicial misconduct and racism that surrounded Abu-Jamal’s trial and sentencing. Using its extensive media network, Cuba initiated a campaign of education and support throughout the island for Mumia in the summer of 2000.
Support continues to build. In 2006, a Paris street was named after Abu-Jamal. Abu-Jamal has been an honorary citizen of France since 2003, when then-mayor of Paris Bertrand Delanoë said that the award was to be a reminder of the fight against the death penalty, which France abolished in 1981—the year Abu-Jamal was arrested.
Building on victories
Nationally, the movement to save Mumia Abu-Jamal has won many victories. Those include the overturning of his death sentence in December 2001, though his conviction still stands. Today, most activists and politically conscious individuals are aware of the struggle to free Abu-Jamal, or at the very least are familiar with his name.
But the gains of the movement to free Abu-Jamal go beyond his case alone. Abu-Jamal himself has always pointed out, in his many books and radio broadcasts, that his case represents thousands of cases of political and racist repression.
Coinciding with the movement to free Abu-Jamal in recent years is the strengthening of campaigns and sentiment against the racist death penalty. By the year 2000, the annual increase in executions had been reversed—for the first time since 1980. While 37 states still have the death penalty and its application is as racist and arbitrary as ever, support for the death penalty continues to drop and death sentences are at an all-time low. This is undoubtedly due in part to the unprecedented mobilizations against the death penalty and for freedom for Abu-Jamal.
The struggle to free Mumia Abu-Jamal continues. He is still being held in a death row cell in the State Correctional Institution at Greene, Pa.
Currently, his defense team is appealing to have a complete new trial. If the prosecution’s appeal to reinstate the order of execution wins, Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell will likely sign the third death warrant to execute Mumia Abu-Jamal within 90 days.
“We’re relentless in our fight for Mumia,” Pam Africa said. “We’re not going to let happen what happened to Tookie [Williams] and Shaka Sankofa,” she warned, referring to two victims of the racist death penalty executed in 2005 and 2000, respectively.
The International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal is calling for supporters to mark the 25th anniversary of Mumia’s arrest with a demonstration in Philadelphia on Dec. 9. The group can be contacted at 215-476-8812.
