Mumia Abu-jamal's Radio Essays

This message was delivered at the Opening Session of the 3rd World Congress against the Death Penalty on February 1st. The Congress, held this year in Paris from February 1-3, 2007, gathers hundreds of abolitionists from all over the world: activists, elected officials, legal specialists and others. The Opening Session, an "Overview of the situation of the death penalty worldwide and its abolition," featured Mumia's message and presentations from Sidiki KAaba, President of the International Federation for Human Rights, Piers Bannister, death penalty team coordinator at Amnesty International, Danielle Mitterand, President of France Libertés, Peter Rothen, office of the presidency of the European Union and Emmanuel Maistre, Director of Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort (Together Against the Death Penalty). For more information, go to the website of Ensemble Contre la Peine de Mort (Together Against the Death Penalty), hosts of this year's World Congress.

For years, decades now, folks have celebrated Black History Month, with a plethora of events. There will be movies, book readings, poetry events, concerts and the like. Coming, as it does, on the heels of the nation's celebration of the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., much of what will be heard will no doubt echo that event. But Black History is far richer, and far deeper than King. Rev. Dr. King, who has been edited into a safe, sweet, nonviolent modern-day Christ-like figure and icon of peace, forgiveness and forbearance, has himself been transformed into a one-dimensional figure which ignores his fullness as a growing, thinking, developing man. He was far more radical than many of those who now call his name are ready to admit. There will be little, if any, remembrance of the men and women who fought for freedom in far more aggressive, and militant ways. While some may hear the occasional names, usually they too are softened and sweetened with time, to make them safe historical morsels f

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While media pundits and politicians bum rush the mike about President George W. Bush's plans to "surge" U.S. troop forces in Iraq, little is being said about another army there. By this I refer not to the British, who, as the junior partners in this nefarious occupation, have contributed a significant number of troops to this operation, nor to the other so-called 'coalition of the willing', most of whom have only sent token numbers. I mean the private armies, known best by the term "contractors" -- men (mostly) who work for private corporations, who are often heavily armed, and who number some 100,000. They often wear camouflage fatigues -- and many are paid six-figure salaries! Remember the notorious scandal of Abu Ghraib prison? While the fate of 7 low-level soldiers (and one female general) is generally well-known, there is rarely discussion (and rare still, legal action) on the actions of contractors. Such people played a key role in Abu Ghraib -- and play vital roles everyday in Iraq,

Harold C. Wilson is still fighting -- even though he's been 'free' since November 2005. He's been off Death Row since his acquittal on *three* counts of murder by a Philadelphia jury on retrial. DNA evidence proved his innocence of the crimes, after 17 years on Death Row -- years that have left him almost broken in health, but not in mind. He's fighting these days to teach people what the death penalty really means -- not in theory, but in fact. He's been forced to work to build the Harold C. Wilson Foundation, to create awareness about what it means for people to live on Death Row, how easily prosecutors and judges can railroad people there, and also to impact public policy about how those who are exonerated should be meaningfully remunerated upon their release. Speaking recently at a panel discussion on the death penalty at Philadelphia's Drexel University, Wilson explained: "My life was gone, and no one in the system cared about my innocence. Even when one tries to fight for the rights one

Quite recently, I offered some thoughts on the startling warm winter weather we're having. While I talked about the probable impact of global warming (greenhouse gases), I didn't directly address the sources of much of it. Let's be clear. Much of it, perhaps most, is cars. Some folks may be thinking -- 'uh oh -- here he goes again with that back-to-nature, John Africa talk again. He actually wants us to give up our cars!' But how many of us know that in the good old days -- say, in the 19-teens, and the '20s, cars were electric cars -- run on batteries? In the early third of the 20th century, most American mass transit was an electrical affair -- relatively quiet, with far fewer pollutants being belched into the air. What happened? Greed happened. Corporate crime happened. Then mass pollution happened. Writer and researcher Mark Zepezauer, in his brilliant 2004 book, Take the Rich Off Welfare (Cambridge, Ma.: South End Press) tells the story with brevity and clarity, as he writes: "Th

When I went into the yard several days ago, (OK--cage) I couldn't help but be shocked. It was still dark, as the sun hadn't yet risen, not quite 7 a.m. It was nearly 60 degrees. When I felt how warm it was, I was absolutely stunned. The grass was still green, and it felt like a moist, spring morning. I couldn't help but think of global warming -- the dumping of tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, which traps heat near the earth's surface, like a blanket on a bed. It has been clearer than I've ever seen it in over 50 years of life. I then thought that it was a mixed blessing that Al Gore wasn't elected in 2000, for if he had been it's doubtful that he would've been so outspoken about the causes of global warming, and the consequences for the powerful oil companies. The theft of the election freed him to spend his time and attention on a matter close to his heart, and his resultant filmed lecture (and book), An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and Wha

Waterfront union workers will mark Martin Luther King's birthday Sunday, January 14th, with a special demonstration starting at Hornblower headquarters, Pier 3, at 11am and marching to the Alcatraz ferry at Pier 33. The ten year "exclusive and lucrative Alcatraz ferry contract" was awarded Hornblower Cruises by the Bush Administration last fall and workers have been protesting ever since as Terry MacRae, Hornblower boss, "refuses to hire qualified, trained, professional Inland Boatmen's Union (IBU) and Masters, Mates, and Pilots association (MM&P) workers who have performed this work safely since 1973." For the VERY latest visit: www.alcatrazunion.com.

Soon, every TV station and network, and many of the nation's radio stations, will air stock film footage (or tape) of Martin Luther King, Jr., his handsome dark face shining in a sea of dark faces, captured in his moment of triumph: the "I Have a Dream" speech in Washington. They will gladly air this 'safe' Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who spoke loftily and eloquently of dreams. Few will dare air his remarks made at Riverside Church in New York City, where an older, wiser Martin spoke, not of dreams but of realities -- of social, and especially economic injustice -- of rampant American militarism, and yes -- the nightmare of white racism. One of those with him, who, too, would become a Rev. Dr., was Vincent Harding, a man who loved Martin, and who knew him as a brother, rather than an icon. Rev. Dr. Harding, a leading theologian and historian, wanted others to know the Martin he'd known; so he wrote a book: Martin Luther King: The Inconvenient Hero (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1996 [8th printing]

I did not wait with baited breath for the President's long-anticipated speech on a "new strategy" for Iraq. For I knew, with chilling certainty, that no matter the 'strategy', it would hardly be 'new.' I knew that more didn't mean new -- just more. And I knew that this president was incapable of little more, than more of the same. More troops -- more war -- more death -- more disaster. There may be a new phrase -- but after "Bring 'em on!", "We're winnin'!", or "War Against Terror", what can a new phrase mean, but more b.s.? Wars aren't fought with phrases; they're used to sell wars; to stir the blood; to quicken the pulse; and to enliven the bloodlust in men. This is no different. I fought my journalistic urge to watch the President's press conference. It's a lot like watching Elmer Fudd stuttering something about catching that 'wascally wabbit' (Bugs Bunny). I can actually hear Bugs laughing at Elmer's latest antic, saying, between guffaws, "What a maroon!" Madness! And yet, as is

I have struggled to not write about the passing of U.S. President Gerald Ford. I sought to not do so for days. Yet, the imperial fashion adopted by most of the American press, which praised his administration almost unanimously as "his salvation of the republic," forced me to put pen to paper. Much of the reporting that we have seen has simply been dishonest, historically inaccurate, and a national amnesiac. What I found particularly perturbing was the virtually unanimous official opinion that former President Ford's pardon of Richard M. Nixon was an act of "courage." Why? Because he opposed the will of the majority of the American people? There is something unseemly about issuing a pardon to a man before he was criminally charged with anything, and further, one who built much of his political career on law and order. Ford, to hear the corporate press tell it, simply made a deep, inner decision to save the nation the trauma of a trial against Nixon, by issuing a preemptive pardon. The

Saddam Hussein is gone. The President of Iraq, who fell out with his imperial paymasters in Washington, was hanged for his hubris, amidst taunts by hooded supporters of Muqtada Al-Sadr, head of the Shi'a Mahdi Army. His crime? Surely not the killing of his Shi'a opponents, nor his torture of Iraqis; for in the grim aftermath of these events, US envoys continued to skin and grin with him, shaking his hand (as did the then-Reagan Administration's Donald Rumsfeld), and sending him more tools of war and weapons of mass destruction. If he was guilty of crimes against humanity, what of those many Americans who aided and abetted him? What of those many Western businesses which armed him (and greatly profited from such arms deals)? It is a sign of our cynical times that the nation that egged on and armed Saddam during his long and brutal war with Iran, that looked the other way when he waged his reign of repression against the Shi'a majority, now deigns to punish him for doing their bidding. Saddam w

Within days the Bush regime is expected to announce its so-called "new strategy" in Iraq -- the most talked-about plan being a surge in U.S. forces in Iraq. By 'surge' is meant the significant increase in troop size in that beleaguered country, a plan meant to address the obvious failures in Iraq. In light of the rumored 'surge', one wonders, what does it take for the administration to listen to the voices of the People? In February and March, 2003, the U.S. and much of the world spoke, with millions marching in the streets of cities the globe over, against the scourge of war. The Bush regime ignored them. No -- "ignored" isn't right. President Bush belittled the protests as 'a focus group.' As journalism professor Robert Jensen notes in his book, The Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity (San Francisco: City Lights Publ., 2004) Bush's response to the "single largest public political demonstration in history", was unbelievable: "When asked a few days later about the size

In the last few years, we've all seen nothing but mass violations of virtually every international human rights treaty. Torture, secret prisons, extraordinary rendition, violence against civilians, orders to ignore the Geneva Conventions .... The list goes on and on. How has the American government dealt with this state of affairs? It has virtually ignored it. There have been a handful of military prosecutions against relatively low level people, but there is a steel ceiling, above which the prosecutors dare not go. That's because the violations of international law go to the highest levels of the U.S. government. Writer Lila Rajiva argues, in her remarkable The Language of Empire: Abu Ghraib and the American Media (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2005), that the tortures at Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad shows something deep and ugly in the American state: "The Prometheans of today acknowledge no limits except of their own imagining, and at least for now the world that the

It actually may be too early to tell, but are you getting the vibe that Congress is going to betray you -- again? The Congress -- both the House and the Senate -- are seen as honest and trustworthy by an astonishingly low 14-and-16%, respectively, by most Americans according to a recent poll. The converse of this, of course, is that 84-86% of most Americans don't trust their Congress. A term like that just ended at least partially explains that gap; for Congress routinely sells its collective soul to the lobbyists and corporate powers-that-be. Only these wealthy forces could explain the actions and inactions of Congress in its most recent term; complete servility to the military-industrial-complex; the bankruptcy bill; their unbridled hostility to a minimum wage -- you name it. If you could afford their services -- cool; if you were a regular Joe (or Joanna), working-class, or -- heavens forfend! -- poor -- forget it. The Congress, in violation of the Constitution, ceded its power to the Presi

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(Mumia interviewed by Fred Hampton Jr and Jr Valrey) December 9th marked the anniversary of Black Panther revolutionary journalist and death-row political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal's abduction from the community and his family for political reasons. He is one of thousands if not millions of Black people who are in this situation, either as a political prisoner or as a political victim of Amerikkka's war crimes on the Black community. Mumia sits on death-row for killing a police officer, although evidence shows that the caliber of the bullet that killed the police officer didn't fit Mumia's gun, another man confessed to committing the murder, the presiding judge Sabo said that he was going to "help fry the nigger", as well as police coercion, and some more. Chairman Fred Hampton Jr and myself, Minister of Information JR talked to Mumia about the 25 years that the government took from his life. Check it... Ch. Fred: As we speak we are on the heels of honoring the anniversary of the Black Panther Party, we'