Death Blossoms: Reflections From a Prisoner of Conscience

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Violence

Violence violates the self.

Yet that's exactly what the system believes in, what the system preaches, what the system practices: violence. Certainly I believe in the necessity of fighting the system, but one thing I'm not going to do is employ the same tactics and methods the system uses every day. Why replace the system with the same thing?

We need a new system, one where people are free of all violence of the system. I would hope for a day when there are no bombs, no guns -- no weapons whatsoever -- no war, poverty, or other injustices; no social and class hatreds; no crime and no prisons.

I reject the tools and weapons of violence.

[admin]

God-talk ON PHASE II

Then Almitra spoke, saying, We would ask now of Death.

And he said:

You would know the secret of death.

But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?

The owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.

If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life.

For life and death are one, even as river and the sea are one.

-- Kahlil Gibran, The Prophet

ON DEATH'S BRINK, men begin to see things they've perhaps never seen before. Like those around them, and especially those who share their fate. Men on Phase II -- men whose death warrants have been signed, men with a date to die -- live each day with a clarity and vibrancy they might have lacked in less pressured times. In the state's ice-box, behind the clear plastic shield that separates death row proper from Phase II, sounds from the six death warrant cells are muffled from the rest of the block.

Men on the "Faze" spend their precious hours doing whatever concerns them most, and for many that means talking and learning about each other, their depths, their heights, their human uniqueness.

It is midnight, the end of a long, humid July day, yet conversation continues in earnest:

"You ever think of outer space?"

"Hell, yeah!"

"Really?"

"Yeah, man -- alla time."

"No shit? Like what kinda stuff?"

"All kindsa stuff -- like the vastness of space, black holes, how impossible a lotta that stuff they show on sci-fi movies is; inner space... a lotta stuff, Scott."

"Humph. Well, tell me summa the stuff you be thinkin' of, Mu -- break down what you mean."

"Well, you know how in alla star wars and star trek-type joints, when a ship gets hit, you hear these huge KA-BOOM! explosions, and see fire balls and shit?"

"Uh-huh."

"That's impossible."

"Why you say that?"

"Coz. Dig -- in space, there's a vacuum -- no oxygen -- so how can sound travel? To the extent there'd be an explosion, it would be silent."

"OK. What other stuff?"

"Well, you know how dudes ina movie talk about lightspeed, 'warp factor seven,' and all that?"

"Uh-huh."

"Dig this, Scott. The smallest sub-atomic particle in light is the photon; that's what's movin' atta speed of light, and it moves so quickly 'coz it got no mass. Once you add mass, a ship, provisions, human bodies, you slow everything down -- so all that warp seven, faster-than-light stuff is impossible."

"Damn, Mu -- how'd you get into that shit?"

"I read. Science. Einstein. Stephen Hawking. Science fiction. Asimov. Herbert. Bisson -- alla them dudes."

"No shit, Mu! All right. Here's one for ya: What, or who is God? Whoa! Do you believe in God?"

"Absolutely."

"Well?"

"Each man, based on his own understanding, creates his own gods. Every person in creation has his own idea of God. Now, are they all wrong? Yes -- and no. "Everybody worships somethin'. They might not give it the name 'God,' but what they spend their time, their minds, their consciousness on -- that's their God. It might be money; drugs; sex. The communists in Russia wouldn't say it in those words, but Marx and Lenin were gods to them, even though they claimed to renounce religion.

"God is divine intelligence. God is life. God is the force that keeps this creation in existence."

"But who is God? What's his name?"

"Why his?"

"What you mean, man?"

"I mean -- dig this ... There's hundreds of names for God, right?"

"Yup -- "

"Man gave God these names, based on culture, history, their own perceptions -- so, how dya think 'God' got sex -- a God that created both sexes?"

"You sayin' God's a female?"

"Now, man -- I ain't saying God is a woman; I'm saying God is beyond man or woman -- beyond sex, and therefore as much mother, if not more so, as father."

"How can you say that, man? You just said 'beyond woman.' How can God be beyond woman, and also mother?"

"Well -- I mean, in terms of function. Dig this. In all cultures, among almost all of nature, the mother is she who truly cares, who feeds, cleans, hugs -- y' know? -- for all her children. Think of mother earth: all that we know, that we see, that we eat, that we wear, comes from mother earth. Man might combine things, mix things up, but he don't create nothin.'

Mama -- God -- creates or brings into creation all that is. Think of it this way, Scott ... "

"I'm wicha, Mu ..

"Of all the planets in this entire solar system, why is Earth just right for us? Mars and Venus? Too hot. Jupiter? Too gaseous. Pluto? Too cold. This Earth is just right! That ain't no coincidence, man."

"Hey, man. I was just checkin' you out. I've often thought those exact, same things -- I didn't know you wuz into that, man -- I had no idea!"

"Why not?"

"Well, I knew you was into nature -- but this stuff?"

"Hey -- ain't God 'natural'? Ain't Earth? Ain't all of creation -- all that is?"

"I know that, man -- but -- hey! I'm surprised!"

"Well, to be perfectly honest, I'm surprised too!"

"Yeah? Now don't go off on me, but... "

"I ain't -- why?"

"Well, I thought you wuza bona-fide nut!'' Scott erupts ina fit of laughter --

"I'm serious, man."

His laughter continues ...

"See, down Huntington, guys said you wuza secret squirrel-type dude -- talkin 'bout spies 'n' shit, real crazy stuff ...When you told me 'bout gov'ment files, I looked to my own experience. Y'know, the gov'ment bugged me for years and years, when I was in my young teens -- "

"Oh yeah?"

"Yup -- If I told dudes about it, they'd be whisperin' the same stuff 'bout me -- 'that nigga's crazy; he into some secret squirrel-type shit. .. ' Y'know the rap."

"Yeah, I do."

"Coz they don't know -- unless they hadda experience."

"That's it! Now, let's get into black holes -- you into that?"

"Well, I read some stuff 'bout it -- "

"Do you think a human could survive in it?"

"Nope."

"Why not?"

"Well ... "

The men talk on -- hour after hour, late into the night, early into morn. Days, hours away from a date with death, they finally see each other.

They see the miracles of life, the miracle of each other.

Lawd, Lawd, I look at you and see a man on a cross who don't look like me.

I wonder if you can truly be God of all eternity --

maker of earth, the wind, the sea, maker, even, of lil' old black me?

[admin]

Meditations on the Cross
by Rufus, a slave

Lawd, Lawd, I look at the cross and pray --
Can you hear the words I say?
Can you see the things I do?
Things done by folks
who look like you?
Can you snap these chains offa my feet?
Can you make it so's I don't get beat?
Can you bring my wife,
son, daughter back to me!
Can you bring an end to slavery?
Lawd, O Lawd -- can you truly make us free?

Come to think of it, why am I
asking you?
What I mean to say is --
what can you do?
Your hands is nailed to this here cross --
How could you ever be the Big Boss?

Also nailed is your two feets --
you cain't even walk the streets!
And on your head, that crown
of thorns,
Will it stop new ideas
from being born?

Lawd, I don't mean to sound too smart,
it's just that these things be in my heart;
The last time I thought of you,
was when they lynched my daddy, Lou --
They tied his hands and bound his feet,
lashed him, slashed him like a piece of meat,
cut him, burned him, and just before they let him die,
they hung him from a tree, swingin' high.
How could your people do this, Lawd?
How could you give them the Power of the sword?
How could you let 'em hang Daddy on a tree,
when that's the very same thing they did to thee?
How could you let 'em bring us here as slaves
over roiling miles of ocean waves?
How could you do this, Jesus,
Weren't you king of the Jews --
Weren't they themselves broken and beaten,
battered and abused?

Lawd, O Lawd, I ain't tryin' to be
no big man,
I'm just tryin' to understand.
And if you don't wanna speak to me,
can't you at least let me see?
Ol' preacher say you died for the poor;
Does that mean we won't be poor no more?
I'm not try'na run things in heaven above,
I just wan' freedom, my family, Love.
They say it's compassion
your life demonstrated,
but I wonder, if that's so,
why am I hated?

Well, Lawd, I guess I gotta go,
It's just that I'd like to be more in the know.
Just think of this as my personal letter,
asking how things could be made better --
Finally, Lawd, lemme say I Love You,
'cause you went through the same
hell as we still do.

[admin]

Holiday Thoughts



IN EACH YEAR'S wintry season comes the great festival in the West alleged to celebrate the birth of Jesus of Nazareth some two thousand years ago. To many, however, it is a time of utter hypocrisy. To those many millions mired in poverty, it is a time of bitter cold, a time of no respite from the hours spent huddled in windswept alleys. It is, they say, "the season to be jolly," but for far too many it is a season of need, an hour of aching loneliness.

The faceless millions sing of cheer and charity, but I, who sit among the hopeless and the living dead, among those who populate your prisons and dungeons of death, see neither cheer nor charity, but rather falseness, gaudiness, and empty flash. The only things not empty are the tills of the merchants, because for most, Christmas is celebrated not in remembrance of the Christ, but to fill the coffers. Who remembers that the carols are sung in praise of a prisoner, indeed, a death row prisoner destined to face crucifixion? What mean cheer and charity to those who face more modern methods of execution?

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The Wisdom of John Africa

... You judges are confusing God's right of self-defense with your way of legal destruction because you are confused about the meaning of right, the purpose of defense, the existence of true freedom, the law of God. A person's defense is a God-given power that must not be tampered with; this is God's law ...
-- John Africa, The Judges' Letter

UNTRAINED, UNTAUGHT, AND UNTAMED, John Africa attracted a wide range of people to a small room in West Philadelphia; men and women who had one thing in common: need. Their needs were as various as were their personalities. Some sought a respite from the social storms that raged across America in the late sixties; some, answers to the Great Questions that plagued their minds; others sought the healing of denatured, weakened bodies; still others the security of a family to replace their shattered birth-families. In a sense, all of them sought that most illusive of quarries -- Truth.

All found their various needs addressed, answered, and met in one way or another by this most remarkable of men. For John Africa was a man blessed with shimmering wisdom, enormous patience, and powerful passions.

He did what healers do: he healed. He did what teachers do: he taught. He did what carpenters do: he built. Using neither nails nor lumber, he constructed from the fabric of the heart a tightly knit, cohesive body of brothers and sisters called MOVE. [1]

Bold beyond belief, and so fearless they seemed reckless, these men and women burned with the zeal of a new, rebellious faith, and spread the revolutionary teaching of John Africa far and wide. Living as they did in a land of un-freedom -- in a city whose past may well be marked by a legacy of free thought, but whose present stands on the legs of repression -- it was only natural that they were labeled public enemies even as they fought for freedom. It was predictable that their path should take them into the eye of the storm.

Yet nothing could stop them as they confronted and battled the forces of the State: not broken bones, not police bullets, not jail cells, not government bombs. Not even death -- witness the urban holocaust of May 13, 1985, when Philadelphia police and federal government agents massacred eleven MOVE men, women, and children. Despite this premeditated mass murder, MOVE is still alive and well, still spreading its teaching -- and still doing what its founder-carpenter did: building.

Bombs have not stopped them. Nine hundred years in cages have not stopped them. [2] Repeated acts of police-sponsored terrorism have not intimidated them. After such remarkable resilience, the question must be asked, "How?" Who united this disparate group of people; what inspired these ordinary folks to feats of extraordinary commitment in the face of the most repressive government assaults in contemporary history? The answer can only be, "John Africa." Consider his words:

... 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. The system has failed you yesterday, failed you today, and has created the conditions for failure tomorrow ...

The brave and beautiful men and women of MOVE took these words and translated them into action. They knew them to contain power, wisdom, and a shattering truth.

_______________

Notes:

1. Not an acronym, the name MOVE simply expresses it's members' belief that life is movement; that all things exist "on a move."

2. On August 8, 1978, after a brutal police assault on MOVE during which their home in the Powelton Village section of West Philadelphia was destroyed, nine members of the organization were arrested for allegedly killing James Ramp, a police officer. These "suspects" were in the basement of their home at the time of the shooting; Ramp, who was facing the house on the street above them, was shot from the back. Several MOVE sympathizers were arrested too but released after agreeing to renounce their ties to MOVE. Convicted and sentenced (30-100 years each) in a trial marked by blatant racial and political bias, the "MOVE 9" remain incarcerated in Pennsylvania prisons. They, and growing numbers of supporters across the country, continue to maintain their innocence.

[admin]

Untitled

What power governs the stars above,
Which makes them be,
Which pours the sea,
Which stirs the cup of eternity?
What can this force be -- but Love?

Why fight over a name?
For who can win this deadly game?
Why battle over religion,
When we stand on the brink of perdition?

Who rolls the dice?
Who grows the rice?
Who brings us into being twice,
Made earth and water, fire and ice?

Who plants the seed of the flower of life,
Creates and carves with a living knife,
Brings oneness by joining husband and wife
'Mid human turmoil, hatred, strife?
What can this force be -- but Love?

[admin]

More War For the Poor

The very development of American society is creating a new kind of blindness about poverty. The poor are increasingly slipping out of the very experience and consciousness of the nation.
-- Michael Harrington, The Other America

IN A MOVE THAT was as chilling as it was Malthusian, President Bill "Bubba" Clinton signed a so-called welfare "reform" (read "destruction") bill that neither Reagan nor Bush, even in their finest hours, could have succeeded in passing.

In this one act, by affixing his name to this legislative obscenity, the Man from Hope dashed the hopes of millions of the poor, all in order to protect his political ass.

In this age of triumphant capitalism, "poor" has become synonymous with "bad," which is rather ironic for a President who trumpeted his own poor Arkansan origins, though carefully re-styling them as New Age Lincolnesque.

Masked by promises of "helping the poor" and emboldened by the Bruderbund of fellow Republicans, the Democrats have sacrificed poor men, women, and children upon the fiery brazier of political ambition.

In Frazer's classic The Golden Bough (1890), the Scottish anthropologist and classicist describes an ancient sacrifice:

When the Carthaginians were defeated and besieged by Agathocles, they ascribed their disasters to the wrath of Baal; for whereas in former times they had been wont to sacrifice to him their own children, they had latterly fallen into the habit of buying children and rearing them to be victims. So, to appease the angry god, two hundred children of the noblest families were picked out for sacrifice ... They were sacrificed by being placed, one by one, on the sloping hands of the brazen image, from which they rolled into a pit of fire ... (236)

Let me tell you: that was a nobler sacrifice than is this! For the sacrifice of those in antiquity occurred under the belief -- albeit a misapprehension -- that such an act would allay worse chaos from a vengeful god.

Why are the poor among us today to be sacrificed? To satisfy a mere misapprehension? To balance a national budget? Hardly. Less than two percent of the nation's budget pays for welfare, so it is not likely to bust under its weight. Then why?

In the past, whenever reports of higher employment levels surfaced, the news sent Wall Street into a panicked fall. Good news to most of us, it caused a sea of frowns on financial markets. It is these very markets, the power centers of capital, that dictate the actions of politicians, including their abolition of social safety nets such as welfare.

When millions starve, workers duly fall to silent acquiescence for fear of losing what little they have. Fear creates a cowed labor force which, when faced with givebacks, won't even whimper. High poverty signals capitalism triumphant.

[admin]

Of Becoming



RECENTLY I WAS asked to send a statement for a youth conference, something that would be read at an opening gathering or something. When I thought about it, a question arose in my mind. This is the question: What is the difference between an oak tree and an acorn? I've been thinking of this as I think of you -- of young people from various paths of life converging in search of what is real, what is whole, and what is worthy of your time and attention.

At first, the differences between a mighty oak and the tiny green acorn seem humongous. But upon reflection, one sees that the only real difference between them is time. You are living acorns in the forest of life, with all the potential, all the powers of the most massive oak tree that ever grew. You are, in your seeking, in the process of becoming.

In my memory, at least, youth is a most difficult time. It is a time of emotions, of tossing and turning, of grappling with questions that bore to the very heart of existence, and with the unsatisfactory answers often given in return.

But this is your time -- your time to delve, to dig, to plow the rich, fertile earth of yourselves. There you will find every answer worth giving. You are at that place in time when you have learned one of the most powerful truths: that sometimes we older folks just don't have the answers.

I therefore urge you to dig on, until the treasure of truth is unearthed in each of you, and once gained, is brought to life. Your task is not easy, but it is necessary. For tomorrow's forests must be treed by you.

ANOTHER THING that comes to mind: you young adults should recognize that however you look at it, you will never again be as free as you are now, in this phase of life. Marriage, for example, poses obligations, and so does a career. So if you have the opportunity to study, to row in the life of the mind, use it. You are at a level of freedom you may not and probably will not experience for decades. Feed your mind, not just with information, but with knowledge that feeds your deeper, inner self. Ask questions about what you see, hear, and read -- also of yourselves.

Again, this is the freedom phase of your life. Do not underestimate the worth and the wealth of this phase. Now is the time you can best move to change the world. And worlds can change, even if the change starts only in your mind, in your perception.

[admin]

A Call to Action

The choice, as every choice, is yours:
to fight for freedom or be fettered,
to struggle for liberty or be satisfied with slavery,
to side with life or death.

Spread the word of life far and wide.
Talk to your friends, read, and open your eyes --
even to doorways of perception you feared
to look into yesterday.

Hold your heart open to the truth.

[admin]

Interview with Mumia Allen Hougland



Pennsylvania's new "control unit" prison, the State Correctional Institution at Waynesburg (SCI Greene), hides in rural hills just fifteen miles from the West Virginia border. Its low earth-toned block walls blend into the grassy clearing where it furtively crouches, surrounded by multiple layers of green metal fences ringed with double-edged razor wire.

Once inside, video producer Thomas Filmyer and I follow a genial female administrator through the stark bright corridors, passing through a series of sliding metal security doors to a cubicle where we will spend 90 minutes with Mumia Abu-Jamal.

As we enter the little cinderblock room, the official places herself outside; the door remains open during the interview Mumia is already seated, wearing a blue cotton shirt and steel handcuffs, long dreadlocks hanging over his shoulders. Appearing healthy and relaxed, he seems eager to begin talking. His deep voice echoes as it filters through narrow strips of screen at the ends of the thick Plexiglas barrier that separates him from us.

AH: Can you tell us who you are, in your own words?

MAJ: My name is Mumia Abu-Jamal. I'm in my early forties. I've been on death row since July of 1982 -- in fact, I've been on several death rows in Pennsylvania, in the United States of America. Despite my penal status I'm a writer, a journalist, a columnist, and a professional revolutionary.

AH: And you grew up in Philadelphia?

MAJ: I spent much of my youth in Philadelphia. As part of my membership in the Black Panther Party, I also spent time in other cities, working in other chapters of that organization. The bulk of my most formative years were spent in North Philly, in the heart of North Philadelphia.

AH: How would you describe your childhood there?

MAJ: Average -- absolutely unremarkable. Except, one would have to admit, for my exposure to the Black Panther Party, there's nothing remarkable about my childhood that distinguishes me from millions of other young kids of my generation. I grew up in a poor neighborhood, in what's commonly called the "peejays" or the projects, and spent most of my educational years in Philadelphia, in elementary schools, junior high schools, and high schools. What makes it really unremarkable is the context of the times we're talking about -- the late sixties and early seventies, which was the explosion era of the black liberation movement. So there were many people of my generation who were active in the Black Panther Party, the Republic of New Africa, the Southern Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the Nation of Islam, and other organizations that were overtly active at that time.

AH: You were born with a different name -- not Mumia Abu-Jamal, but Wesley Cook, right?

MAJ: Yes.

AH: When and why did you change your name?

MAJ: It was a change that took place over a transition of years -- not one day it was one name, and another day the next. Again, in the context of the times, in the years when the black liberation movement was growing and attracting the adherence of people who believed in that movement, many of us took African names. One of my teachers in a black high school in Philadelphia was actually a Kenyan who had come to teach Swahili. And it was his practice in his Swahili class to give names to students that were African. So that was my name: Mumia.

AH: And then the Abu-Jamal?

MAJ: Well, I'm actually named after my first son. It means "father of Jamal," and my first son is named Jamal. It's kind of a mix, in that my first name is Swahili, and my middle and last names are Arabic.

AH: How did your involvement with the Panthers go, and how did it not go, and how did it come to an end?

MAJ: I remember -- and of course we're talking about decades ago now -- but I remember it was probably one of the most exciting and liberational times of my life. Of course, for most people, their teen years are a time of freedom. Mine were a time of ultra, super freedom. It was a tremendous learning experience. The very fact that I, even from this place, am a journalist who writes and communicates with thousands and thousands of people every week -- its embryo can be found in the fact that I worked as a Panther in what's called the Ministry of Information. That means I worked filing reports to the national Black Panther Party journal called Black Panther -- Black Community News Service based in San Francisco and Oakland, California. But we also had regional papers that came out, like throw-aways or give-aways. I worked for the Ministry of Information in Philadelphia, in New York, and in other cities. So I was trained as a revolutionary journalist, trained to present the positions of the Black Panther Party from that revolutionary -- black revolutionary -- perspective.

I should add that many times, people will talk about that experience of mine, not from a position of knowledge, but from a position of opinion, and say, "well, that wasn't 'mainstream' journalism" or "when did you get into 'mainstream' journalism?" Of course, I hold that that experience was one of mainstream journalism. What does mainstream journalism mean if it does not mean that someone writes, edits, does graphic arts -- because in the Party we learned to do everything -- for a newspaper that is read by over 250,000 people a week? How many papers have a circulation that expansive? It was an international circulation. We covered international news, we made international news. Because at one point, at the Party's highest point -- before COINTELPRO ripped it asunder -- came the establishment of the Party's international office in North Africa, in Algiers. It was called the Inter-communal Section, under the former Minister of Information, Eldridge Cleaver. In essence, it was African-America's first international embassy -- an independent embassy of revolutionary African-America, where people allover the world could come and talk without the intercession of the United States Government.

And I say "without the intercession of the United States Government" because it is only fair, it is only honest, it is only accurate to point out that the function of the United States Government at that time and before and since has been to retard, destroy, disrupt, and tear asunder the black liberation and black nationalist movements of that period. That's proven by FBI files that have been released after the fact. How many people who celebrate the memory of the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. know that the FBI hounded him relentlessly, tapped his phones and hotel rooms, worked through snitches, with the full blessings of the United States Government at the highest levels -- I mean in the White House? How many people know that's true of A. Philip Randolph, the African-American labor leader who helped create the march on Washington back in the early sixties? Or Marcus Garvey? Or Malcolm X? The list can go on and on. There's also Adam Clayton Powell, who was a Congressman from Harlem. Here he was, a Congressman, and he was under complete and total surveillance by the government of which he was a member. The late J. Edgar Hoover made it very clear that the function of the FBI was to prevent the rise of a black Messiah: anyone who could unite black America into one cohesive force.

AH: Where did he say that?

MAJ: He said that in his COINTELPRO papers, in his files. That's in the FBI files. If anyone finds that what I'm saying is in the least incredible, I would invite them to read a book written by a professor of political science named Kenneth O'Reilly. The book is called Black Americans: The FBI Files [Carroll & Graf, 1994].

AH: And so you felt the need for black revolution?

MAJ: Absolutely.

AH: What do you mean by that exactly, when you say "black revolution?"

MAJ: The word revolution means transformation; it means change. When one considers from any objective perspective the condition of African-American people in this country -- if you didn't find the need to change that condition for the better, then your interest was to keep things as they were, to preserve the status quo. If you look at the condition of African-Americans today, we're at the bottom of every social indicator -- in terms of educational attainment, in terms of work income, in terms of our life expectancy, in terms of our health. Every indicator of social well-being and status. Why are we at the bottom of those lists? I would say that it isn't a reality that could be isolated in 1970. It is a reality that continues to this day. Revolution is a necessity. Change is necessary -- to change a situation that is deadly to us.

AH: I have two quotes I want to read you. One of them from Frederick Douglass, saying: "Power concedes nothing without a demand." And the other, which you are quoted as having once said: "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." I'd like you to talk about those two statements.

MAJ: Frederick Douglass may have said that over a hundred and fifty years ago, but that truth is certainly evident today, and will be evident for as long as men live. "Power concedes nothing without a demand." To the extent that African-Americans have moved out of de facto segregation and slavery in this country -- that didn't happen because one day America woke up and said, "I think we should give African-Americans their voting rights; we should stop discrimination against them in jobs and housing and so forth." No, it didn't happen like that. It happened because of the actions, the strategies, and the pains and the deaths, finally, of people like Dr. Martin Luther King, like Malcolm X, like Dr. Huey P. Newton -- people from a wide range of philosophical and ideological positions, people who made those demands on power. Had there not been a Malcolm X, there would not have been the effectiveness of a Dr. Martin Luther King, because both of them, in their different roles, communicated to the power structure: "We'd better go this way, or this way there'll be a consequence."

To the latter quotation, which -- I should say -- is from Chairman Mao Zedong of the Chinese Communist Party -- that was something that was used in my case, as a justification to give me the death penalty. In the case Dawson vs. Delaware, in which the prosecutor introduced the defendant's Aryan Brotherhood membership, the U.S. Supreme Court found that violated his First Amendment right of association. Well, in the penalty phase of my trial, the prosecution introduced my membership of over a decade before, as a teenager, in the Black Panther Party. To a predominantly white jury, some of whom were relatives of police officers -- come on! What about the membership of the judge in the Fraternal Order of Police? That's irrelevant? When we raised that he said "Well, I was only a member for a few years." Well damn, I was only a member of the Black Panther Party for a few years. There's not even the appearance of balance here.

I think it only fair at this point to respond to the quote as I did then, when it was raised: how did Americans (or people who call themselves Americans) -- how did they acquire political power here in this country, if not through a gun? How did they prevail over the forces of the Crown, of Britain, in the so-called Revolutionary War, if not through the power and force of arms? How did they prevail over the native peoples of this country in the so-called Indian Wars, if not through force of arms? So one does not have to say this is a communist sentiment or a radical sentiment. It is a sentiment that arises from history, and is undeniable. It's very curious how people will talk about how proud they are to be an American, and ignore the very roots of what being American came from. If Americans did not fight with all the tools at their command -- including guns -- against the British, we'd all be speaking with a British accent and saying "God save the Queen."

AH: Mumia, about your later journalism work. Your work was guided by, you said, "the principle that we are oppressed black human beings first." As a result of the work you did in Philadelphia and in the U.S. in general in the seventies, you became known as "the voice of the voiceless," especially as regards the group MOVE. Can you talk about your later journalism work, and also tell us who MOVE is?

MAJ: Sure, that would be my honor. MOVE is a family of revolutionaries, of naturalist revolutionaries, founded in Philadelphia in the late sixties/early seventies, who oppose all that this system represents. For years in Philadelphia, there's been continual and unrelenting conflict between the MOVE organization and the city -- that is, the police, the judiciary, and the political arm of the system. They have fought it bitterly. We reporters have a herd mentality. Reporters tend to do what other reporters do -- it's almost like herd instinct. The "herd" in Philadelphia was describing MOVE in frankly animalistic or sub-human terms. I remember an editorial that appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer that used, I think, precisely those terms: it said they were "sub-human." Wow! That was an editorial that just expressed a tone that was reflected in the coverage. Based on what I had read in the newspapers, I could not say that MOVE were my favorite people -- probably the opposite was the truth.

But I found something out that was very interesting when I began covering MOVE as part of my work as a reporter for a radio station that's now known as WWDB, WHAT at that time: I found out they were human beings. That doesn't sound like an earth-shattering revelation now, but it was then, because the complete dehumanization of them was almost total in terms of how local and regional media projected this group -- as though they were literally beyond the pale. What I found were idealistic, committed, strong, unshakable men and women who had a deep spirit-level aversion to everything this system represents. To them, this system was a death system involved in a deathly war. To them, everything this system radiated was poison -- from its technological waste to its destruction of the earth, to its destruction of the air and water, to its destruction of the very genetic pool of human life and animal life and all life. MOVE opposed all this bitterly and unrelentingly, without compromise.

I remember the first time I heard about MOVE -- perhaps it was a television report -- in the early seventies. Some of the MOVE people had gotten busted, and the gist of the television broadcast was: "These nuts, these crazy people, were protesting outside the zoo for no reason." Of course they didn't explain what MOVE's position was. Well, what you found later, when you got closer and began examining the reality, was that according to the teachings of MOVE's founder, John Africa, all life -- all life -- is sacred and has worth, and should not be exploited for money and profit. MOVE people were busted because they were protesting the reality of the zoo, which they called a "prison" for animal life. Today you have groups like Earth First and so forth, across the world, who embrace many of those same positions that were once called bizarre. MOVE did it twenty years ago. What I found was a remarkable and incredible family that continues to thrive, to grow, to grow stronger, to build, and to touch bases with people. I mean, if someone told me twenty years ago that there would be MOVE support groups in London and Paris, I'd have said: "Get out of here, you're out of your mind!" Today that's a reality.

AH: Do you consider MOVE founder John Africa to be your spiritual leader?

MAJ: Yes, absolutely, without question.

AH: When you talk about faith, your faith -- because you do bring up faith -- what do you mean?

MAJ: Faith simply means belief. People can put all kinds of tags and clothing on it and call it whatever they want to call it. But what you believe in, what has resonance for you, in your deepest self -- that's truly your faith. To some people that's money. To many, I guess, millions in America -- they will talk about "In God We Trust," but guess what -- they really trust money. Their faith, their real self, revolves around currency, money, wealth, status -- those kinds of things. I found in the teachings of John Africa a truth that was undeniable, that was powerful, that was naked, that was raw. And it talked about this system in a way that I wish I had the guts to talk about it and I wish I had the clarity to talk about it. MOVE members talked about it uncompromisingly, and not just talked about it, but lived it every day. In America we talk about religion. If you're Christian, you talk about Sunday. That's your religion: Sunday you go to church, Monday you do your thing. And the next Sunday you go back to church, and the next Monday you do your thing again. If you're Jewish, then Saturday is your Sabbath, and you go to temple and you say your prayers. If you're Muslim, then Friday is your day Juma'at. And what all of these religions really suggest in these days and times is a kind of compartmentalization of faith -- "this is your holy day." To MOVE, all days are holy days, because all life is holy. When you're out fighting for your brothers and sisters, you're practicing your religion. Faith means what you truly, absolutely believe. If you ask a MOVE person, "What is your religion?" he'll say "life."

AH: What would you say to the critics of MOVE and to people in the neighborhoods where they lived who have said that they were a disruption, a nuisance; that they were dirty, that they were noisy, that they were constantly proselytizing to the neighborhood and violating their neighbors' right to live in peace?

MAJ: I would say this -- and assume for the sake of argument that all of those criticisms were absolutely true: How noisy is a bomb? How disruptive is the destruction of sixty-one houses by fire? How alienating is massacre and mass murder? Because that's what the city gave people who said: "These MOVE nuts are a pain in our ass."

AH: Of course we're talking about the bombing of the MOVE house on Osage Avenue in Philadelphia in 1985.

MAJ: Yes. On May 13, 1985, the city of Philadelphia literally shot tens of thousands of rounds into that house on Osage Avenue, and dropped a bomb, and let the fire burn for ten or twelve hours. And it consumed sixty-one houses, at last count. Was that disruptive of their neighborhood rights? Was that disruptive of life itself? Was that disturbing? I think that many people found themselves suckered by a political and police system that used neighborhood conflict and intensified it into urban war and almost Armageddon. I've lived in several parts of that city and in other cities. I've had neighbors who were pains in the ass -- I've had people play their music, and no matter what you said, you couldn't get them to turn it down, not unless you wanted to go down there and get into a fistfight or something. In many neighborhoods, in southwest Philadelphia today, you can't stick your head out the door without hearing submachine gun fire. Is that disruptive? Is the neighborhood alarmed when some drug-addicted punk pulls out an Uzi and shoots at a competitor? You got crack dealing, you got prostitution -- you have all the ills of society. But you know what you don't have? You don't have the government come down as if in a war as they did on May 13, 1985. You don't have that. Unless you have MOVE rebels and revolutionaries in their homes ...

AH: Mumia, about the death penalty -- with which you're well acquainted -- you have said that, "where the death penalty is concerned, law follows politics." And we have seen a change, an evolution -- if you want to call it that -- in death penalty law over the last twenty or twenty-five years.

MAJ: It might best be called a "devolution."

AH: Yes -- from the U.S. Supreme Court case Furman v. Georgia, which declared the death penalty unconstitutional as it was being applied at that time, 1972; through Gregg v. Georgia in 1976, which declared the death penalty would be constitutional if "guided discretion" were used in sentencing, requiring "objective standards" to be followed. Since then there has been a new tide of capital punishment in this country, with over three thousand condemned now. And the current Supreme Court seems inclined to curb the rights of appeal of the condemned. This is happening at the same time that other industrialized nations have all backed away from capital punishment. Can you talk about why you think it is that this country has devoted itself so wholeheartedly to executions at this point in time?

MAJ: I think the impetus for that reality arises from the same source from which arises the impetus for the unprecedented levels of incarceration of African-Americans, as compared with other sectors of the American population. I don't think it's a coincidence that this is happening in the United States of America. If you look at another North American society that is very, very similar in its history, you find a completely different reality. The society I'm speaking of, of course, is Canada. We share the same temporal space, the same continent, for the most part (except for Quebec) the same language, the same general Anglo-oriented legal traditions. Yet there you find no capital punishment. There you find a completely different perspective when one talks about the penal system -- the so-called correctional system. There it's almost unheard of for a man to be sentenced to more than twenty years in prison -- it has to be a mass ax-murder type of situation. And when you look at Canada and you examine it, and you look at the United States and you examine it, the elements that differ between those two societies cohere, I think, around the issue of race, around the issue of this country's history as a slave society, who relegated an entire people to a sub-human status.

In the infamous Dred Scott opinion of 1857, U.S. Chief Justice Roger Brooks Taney said: "A Negro has no rights that a white man is bound to respect." In that seminal case, the Supreme Court denied a petition of a slave for his freedom. He said: "I live in a free state, where there is no slavery, and therefore my slave status should be invalidated as a matter of law." The overwhelming majority of the United States Supreme Court, of Justice Taney's court said: "Uh-uh, you're wrong." What they said was:

When the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence were written, Africans were perceived as three-fifths of a person. When one speaks of 'we the people,' we were certainly not speaking of you. And therefore we cannot now give you the rights and appurtenances that apply to 'we the people.' The Constitution has no relevance to you and your kind, or to your descendants should they ever become free.

That's in the words of the Dred Scott opinion. And that spirit continues to resonate throughout American law.



People who are sticklers would say: "Well, the Fourteenth Amendment surely overruled that case." But if you look at that case and you examine its precedent, you will find that to this day, that case has yet to be judicially overruled. And where humans actually come in contact with their government is not in the voting booth -- I mean, that's an empty formality for many -- but it's in the courtroom. That's where most people literally meet their government. And it's in that courtroom where people find whether the rights they're told about truly exist. or don't exist. And for all intents and purposes, if one is poor, if one is African-American, if one lacks influence and power, then you come into that courtroom without the hope that you will walk out a free man. That is the undeniable reality in America.

The death penalty is unique in American law, in that if you really examine the process, you'll come away with a lot of curious ideas about how it works in reality, as opposed to how it's supposed to work in theory. I'll tell you why. In capital case law, unlike any other law, from the very beginning, under the case Wainright v. Whit, a juror can be excluded if he or she has any opinion against capital punishment. So therefore you have what's called a pro-prosecution jury -- from the beginning -- who must swear that they can give the death penalty before they hear one word of evidence. Studies have shown this jury is prone to convict, that it is pro-prosecution and anti-defendant in the extreme, compared to any other jury in American jurisprudence. That's how you begin the process.

Isn't it also odd that at this stage of the process, where you're under the threat of having not just your liberty but your life stolen by the State, you're equipped with the worst counsel the system provides -- court-appointed counsel, with no financial resources. Often, while they may have good hearts, they have the least training, because capital case law is distinct from any other kind of law. In Philadelphia, if a person is charged with a capital offense, he gets a court appointed lawyer. At the time of my trial, the fee for the lawyer was only $2,500. Out of that, he was supposed to provide investigators, ballisticians, forensic experts, psychologists, whatever. He was a sole practitioner -- he had no investigator, no paralegal -- he had a secretary and himself. We had absolutely no resources. We had nothing. I didn't have to be a wild-eyed, raving, Black Panther or MOVE maniac to say: "Fuck, I'll represent myself." If all he could do was get a motion denied, I could do that. But the court denied me my constitutional right to represent myself. They insisted this guy take over my defense, first as backup counsel and later as lead counsel. I didn't want him as lead counsel -- or backup counsel, for that matter.

AH: Do you think he really cared?

MAJ: I think that he cared at the beginning, but our relationship as client and counsel really deteriorated -- when he was put in the position of backup counsel, all that went out the window. Because he testified under oath that for four or five weeks he sat on his hands. He later got up at a hearing and said: "I was ineffective." And the District Attorney said: "No, you weren't ineffective. You were a great lawyer -- it was just that your client was really difficult, right!" And he said: "No, I was ineffective. I didn't do what I should have done. I should have done this, I didn't do that." And he's asked why he didn't do it and he says: "I didn't think of it" or "I forgot" or "I was too busy." Damn, isn't that ineffective? Can you say I had effective representation? And now you have the judge saying this guy was a great lawyer, that he had extensive law enforcement experience, that he had handled twenty-seven capital cases. That's a lie. Literally, my case was the first case he'd handled in private practice -- he had just left a public interest law firm.

Well, as a result these lawyers prepare very little -- thanks to such small resources with which to prepare. Isn't it odd that you get that kind of lawyer at that point, appointed by the court! The court decides when that lawyer gets paid, if that lawyer gets paid, and how much that lawyer gets paid. So you have a lawyer who's beholden to the court for his fees. You get the worst possible legal help at the beginning of the process, but months or years later, after you're under a death warrant, you might be appointed three or four high-caliber Harvard-trained lawyers from one of the biggest law firms in the state -- along with paralegals, investigators, psychologists? Does it strike you as an ass-backwards system? Well, that's the system that exists. That has been the lived experience of most men on death row. Is that a fair system? Why can't a man go to trial with the best lawyer if he's faced with death, rather than wait until he's under a death warrant?

AH: Tell us about a typical day here.

MAJ: A typical day begins at 6:25 a.m. A guard enters a "pod" of twenty-four men and announces "yard." "Yard list! Yard list!" If you're up, you can sign up by shouting out your number or your name. By 6:35, the morning meal arrives -- a tray is delivered to your door. By 7:05, "yard" is allowed. "Yard" is a euphemism -- it actually means" cage," because men go out into the cages here, being counted. You can go one, two, three, four at a time. That "yard" or "cage" period lasts for one hour. Then one goes back into his cell, and unless you have a visitor, you don't leave that cell until 7:05 the next morning. It's twenty-three hours lock-in, one hour outside, five days a week. On weekends, it's twenty-four hours lock-in. If you don't have a visitor, if you don't go to the law library -- which is two hours, once or twice a week -- you're in that cell.

AH: And nothing happens?

MAJ: Nothing happens unless you make it happen. Other than that, you're in that cell.

AH: So what do you do to hold up under those conditions?

MAJ: I'm an addicted writer and reader. I try to read everything I can get my paws on. I just finished reading two books by Alice Walker -- The Temple of My Familiar; and her most recent book. I've read Toni Morrison's Jazz. I've also read Strange Justice by Jane Mayer and Jill Abramson, on the confirmation hearings of Justice Clarence Thomas. I try to read as much as I can.

AH: How do you deal with the fact that you may be executed?

MAJ: I deal with it day to day. I mean, you can't, obviously, just dwell on that reality. You do the best you can every day to transform that reality into a new reality. Luckily, thanks to my book Live from Death Row, I have lawyers, very good lawyers, working on my case for the first time. So, you do your daily thing to keep well, to keep sane, to keep strong -- to stay human.

AH: Do you feel that you've had an unusual share of bad luck?

MAJ: No, I really don't.

AH: Why have you attracted this fate, if I may put it that way?

MAJ: I think that I have a certain history, and because of my history, I have my share of enemies -- political, governmental. How many people can brag -- and I use that term with a little humor -- about having an FBI file from the time they were fourteen? I have. Phone calls, mail, the whole deal -- I've been tracked by the FBI since I was a child. Dogged by them for my political beliefs, my political expressions, my political associations. If you were to review my FBI file, of course you'd find a lot of nonsense in it because that's what FBI files have in them. But you'd find an attempt by the government, when I was perhaps seventeen or eighteen years old, to frame me for two murders in another country. What saved me was my work record -- my hourly work record showed that I not only wasn't in that country, but that I was at work doing what I was supposed to be doing. They also tried to frame me when I went to college in Vermont for a robbery of some sort. And I'm finding this out reading these records years later.

AH: Are these publicly available records?

MAJ: Oh, yeah -- through the Freedom of Information Act. You can contact my lawyers, and I'm sure they can give you summaries or even copies of some of them. We found roughly eight-hundred pages of FBI files -- some blacked out, with whole pages edited out. They wrote letters to people in my name, signed them, sent them -- letters that were complete lies. This is what the government admits to doing. And ultimately, what that record says -- not what I say, but what that record testifies to -- is a history of aggression. Not by me -- you can't look at that record and find any evidence of any crime. But you can find lots of evidence of government crimes against one of their so-called "citizens" because of his political beliefs and associations. Because as a young man I spoke out as part of the Ministry of Information of the Black Panther Party. And I spoke about black liberation. That made me part of their target.

AH: Mumia, some would say you have the best of all possible worlds being in the United States. That you have the right to a representative jury, and you have the prohibition of the use of race as a bias in judicial proceedings. They'd say, go anywhere else in the world and you won't find it as good as you find it here.

MAJ: On some level, that's probably true. It's certainly true that that is the law as it is written. The question is, not what the law says, but what the law does -- what the law is in application, not in just theoretical formulation. In the very real world -- in the city of Philadelphia, with perhaps a 45% African-American population, many people like myself on death row have had an overwhelmingly white jury determine guilt or innocence, life or death. The U.S. Supreme Court has said countless times: "You can't do that." Well, they did that. They did it in my case, they did it in a number of people's cases. So it appears you can do that, because it happens every day. It happens every day because prosecutors routinely remove African-Americans from juries when they want a white jury, when it's a cross-racial case. So what it says on the books and what it actually means when one walks into the courtroom is often two different things.

In the famous case Batson v. Kentucky (it's relatively recent -- 1986, I believe) the Supreme Court required trial judges to assess a prosecutor's reasons for striking a minority juror, in order to determine whether he intended to discriminate. For years and years and years the late Justice Thurgood Marshall had been fighting for that principle. Justices across the country and lawyers had been fighting for that principle. Well, they won it in terms of that opinion; it's published in law books and sent to and taught in law schools. But what does it mean in the courtroom? It means next to nothing. Because you still have a predominantly white judiciary that protects the power class, that looks at the situation and looks the other way. About fifty miles from here in the city of Pittsburgh, there's a case that's stirring a great deal of controversy, because of a Judge Manning of the Court of Common Pleas of Pittsburgh, Allegheny County. Five witnesses have testified that Justice Manning -- in a nonjudicial setting, but a public setting nonetheless -- spoke to a woman who was a security guard at an airport thusly: "That's what happens when you give a fucking nigger a job." These are white people who claim this guy said that. I don't know if he said it or not but you have five eyewitnesses who swore in statements that this judge of the Court of Common Pleas said it. My point is: What does that translate to when that judge is sitting in office, in his robes, and he has a defendant in front of him who looks like me, and he has to decide what his jury looks like? What does it mean if that judge becomes a Supreme Court justice? And what does it really mean, and what does it matter, what is written in the books -- if what's written in the hearts and minds and souls of people is still, in the words of Justice Taney, that a black man "has no rights that a white man is bound to respect?"

In terms of Batson, the evidence in my case is just so clear, so insurmountable. In the context not so much of what happened at the trial, but what happened at last summer's Petition for Post-Conviction Relief hearings in Philadelphia, where we found out that the Commonwealth agreed that the jury numbers they presented to the Supreme Court on direct appeal were wrong. They said eight African-Americans were removed from my original jury; my lawyer on appeal said eleven were removed. Well, we found two of those persons. We couldn't find the third one, but we found two. So they had to admit, "OK, we were wrong, ten were removed." So it was ten out of fourteen. Now, my math is very poor, but I think it's at least 71% of potential African-Americans that were excluded on the basis of race. There are cases that say if you can show a 56% removal rate, you have a prima facie Batson claim ...

AH: You have said that you "live in the fastest-growing public housing tract in America."

MAJ: I do.

AH: You've described torture, theft, terror, humiliation, degradation, brutality. Do you stand by all that?

MAJ: Absolutely. A lot of people who don't know this reality have perhaps read my book Live from Death Row and reacted to it with complete incredulity. The reality is that my book is a toned-down, stripped, bare-bones, objective version of the reality I'm living on death row, in the hole -- of what I've seen, what I've smelt; the bodies I've seen carried out of here.

If I wrote pure stream of consciousness, no publisher would publish it, and any reader would say it's fiction.

The reality is that this is a world that is, by design, closed. Were it not for a court order and our civil action, this very interview would not have transpired. Six months ago, it would not have been allowed. As we speak, the state of California has announced a moratorium on all interviews with all prisoners throughout the penal system. There's a reason for that. It's to keep people in the dark.

AH: Mumia, thank you for talking with us today.

The prison official signals that our time is up; then a guard comes into Mumia's side of the cubicle and motions for him to follow. Mumia raises his cuffed hands in a kind of salute, his eyes fixed on us, and says in a loud, cheerful voice: "Ona move!" He then turns and goes out. As do all Pennsylvania death row inmates before and after a visit, Mumia will endure a body-cavity strip search before returning to the isolation of his cell. Meanwhile, we banter with the prison administrator as we pack up our gear and walk back through the quiet, lonely corridors. She tells us of her twelve-year-old son, and how she does not want him to ever work in prisons.

Waynesburg, PA February 8, 1996