Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Story

11 Mar, 2003 by John Hawkins

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Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Story: Many of you have probably heard left-wingers saying that we should free Mumia Abu-Jamal, but you may not know his story. Well, Ralph R. Reiland did a column yesterday that gave a pretty good synopsis of why this cause celebre of the left is in jail. I thought it was worth sharing since Abu-Jamal has been getting a lot of anti-war movement related attention of late…

“Writing from death row, ex-Black Panther minister of information Mumia Abu-Jamal, convicted murderer of 25-year-old Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner, adds another colorful analysis, saying that America’s impending war in Iraq is simply a case of white capitalists killing for oil: “The U.S. really could care less for the people of Iraq, its Kurdish minority, ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ or any other pretexts it offers as justification for war. It cares about the dark, slippery ooze beneath the sands of Iraq, and it wants to wage war to control its flow and distribution. Human blood for the long-dead remains of dinosaurs!”

…Back when he was a Panther, Mumia Abu-Jamal wrote, “I for one feel like putting down the pen. LET’S WRITE EPITAPHS FOR PIGS.” Political power, he explained, “grows from the barrel of a gun.”

On the night of Dec. 9, 1981, five eyewitnesses said within minutes of the shooting that they saw Abu-Jamal run from a parking lot and shoot Faulkner in the back as he attempted to arrest Abu-Jamal’s brother. Eyewitnesses said Faulkner got one shot off and then Abu-Jamal repeatedly fired at the fallen and unarmed officer from point blank range. The final shot, testified one eyewitness, was fired into the wounded officer’s face from a few inches away, and that Faulkner’s “whole body jerked” when the shot hit.

Officer Faulkner died from a bullet to the brain, a bullet from Abu-Jamal’s registered pistol. At the crime scene, Abu-Jamal was apprehended a few feet away from Faulkner’s body, a bullet fired from Faulkner’s gun in his chest.”

You may not think that the left will ever have any luck getting this piece of human debris out of jail, but they have done it before. Many of you may not have heard of Jack Henry Abbott, but his story is similar to Abu-Jamal’s in many ways.

Abbott was in jail for a bank robbery & the murder of another inmate. But, he started sending missives from jail to Norman Mailer who published the letters in a book called, “In the Belly of the Beast: Letters from Prison.” I read that book many years ago and even I will admit that it was brilliantly written. However, after Mailer and others managed to get Abbott paroled, he stabbed someone to death six weeks after he was released from jail. Abbott’s story ended last year when he hung himself in his prison cell.

I hope the left won’t “succeed” with Abu-Jamal the way they did with Abbott, but then I’m more concerned with the rights of victims and their families than I am about giving cop-killers a second chance.