Socialist Action /March 1999
Build April 24 Marches for MUMIA ABU-JAMAL!
By JEFF MACKLER
The Feb. 12 issue of the popular supermarket magazine stand publication
Entertainment Weekly carried a half-page article on January's Rage
Against the Machine benefit concert for Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The New Jersey event, despite numerous threats to cancel by local and
state politicians, and the concerted efforts to discourage attendance orchestrated
by the Fraternal Order of Police, attracted some 20,000 youth.
Rage performer Tom Morello states: "This is as mainstream as human
rights cases get. The case is simple and unambivalent: Mumia Abu-Jamal is
an award-winning journalist and political dissident who did not receive
a fair trial. There's a mountain of doubt about his guilt."
Just a few short months ago, the corporate media ignored the mounting
calls from every quarter of the country and internationally for a new trial
for Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was framed up on charges of murdering a Philadelphia
policeman in 1981.
Today, publications from The New York Times and Daily News
to the San Francisco Chronicle and Oakland Tribune, as well
as the major television networks, are compelled to accept the reality that
Jamal's case is reaching increasing millions who believe that the criminal
"justice" system failed miserably in providing even a semblance
of fairness in Jamal's case.
In February, 81 members of the Danish Parliament signed a declaration
for a new trial for Mumia. Similar resolutions have been issued by scores
of members of the French, Italian, Swedish, and other European elected bodies,
as well as by the European Parliament.
In the United States, resolutions demanding a new trial have been approved
in recent months by the San Francisco and Alameda County central labor councils,
as well as the Seattle Central Labor Council and scores of trade unions
across the country.
Dozens of union buses have already been chartered in New York City for
the April 24 mass action in Philadelphia.
On the West Coast, a March 6 regional conference at the University of
California at Berkeley titled "Race for Justice" is slated to
be the largest such event in U.S. history.
Fifty-two workshops, including some 250 speakers, are set to participate
in this kickoff event designed to educate about the case and organize for
the April 24 mass demonstration in San Francisco.
March 6 conference workshops have been initiated by Amnesty International,
the Northern California American Civil Liberties Union, major trade unions,
representatives of local churches, and an unprecedented array of civil rights
groups, youth organizations, legal organizations, and feminist groups.
Don Harmon, conference organizer and staff member of the sponsoring organization,
The Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal, told Socialist Action that more
than 2000 are expected to participate.
A Feb. 28 Town Hall rally in New York City attracted 1700. The rally
featured, among others:
Actor Ossie Davis; folksinger Pete Seeger; comedian Dick Gregory; former
U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark; former political prisoner Geronimo ji
Jaga; Dennis Rivera, president of Hospital Workers Union Local 1199; and
Pam Africa of the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The rally heard Jamal's chief legal counsel, Leonard Weinglass, give
an update on the case. A collection raised over $20,000 for the legal defense.
A few weeks earlier a Mumia educational conference at the City College
of New York attracted 250 activists. A similar event in Washington, DC.,
drew 200 participants.
March 20 has been set for a Midwestern conference called by Jamal supporters
in Chicago.
Mumia legal update
At the end of February, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to a defense team
request for an extension until April 24 in regard to Jamal's filing for
a hearing on two critical constitutional issues.
These are Sixth Amendment violations that the defense team has raised,
thus far unsuccessfully, in lower courts.
The 1982 trial was fundamentally flawed, according to the defense, when
Pennsylvania Judge Albert Sabo denied Jamal's request to represent himself,
and when this "hanging judge," who has sentenced more people to
die than any other in the country, removed Jamal from the courtroom for
most of his trial.
Should this request for a Supreme Court review be denied, a second warrant
for Jamal's execution is expected to be signed by Pennsylvania Gov. Thomas
Ridge. This will immediately be appealed to the Federal District Court,
where a critical decision will be rendered.
Should the court rule against Jamal and invoke the 1996 Effective Death
Penalty Act, Mumia Abu-Jamal faces a grave state of affairs from a legal
standpoint. This reactionary Clinton-signed legislation, designed to expedite
executions, requires federal courts to accept as valid the finding of fact
of lower courts.
The new standard of "justice" reverses the entire body of law
that was extracted from racist America during the mass civil rights struggles
of the 1960s and '70s. It reverts back to segregation era law wherein "states
rights" statutes enacted by overtly racist state bodies were immune
to federal court review.
Jamal's supporters have long insisted, however, that his fate rests less
with the corrupt and racist criminal justice system than it does with the
collective capacity of human rights supporters to build the kind of mass
social struggle that will make the price of Mumia's legal murder too high
to pay.
This kind of movement is in gestation in the United States today. On
Feb. 26, for example, hundreds of student protests across the country were
organized in response to a national call for coordinated actions supporting
a new trial for Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Mass rallies, teach-ins, leafleting, and other forms of protest mushroomed,
for the first time, in a majority of the nation's states.
The struggle for justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal has inspired a new generation
of youth to become involved in politics for the first time.
These youth, many of whom are members of oppressed nationalities, have
learned from bitter experience to distrust a criminal "justice"
system that has often meted out injustice to their families and friends.
We must build a mass struggle
The growing movement for justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal faces several key
challenges in the months ahead.
In the short time before a final decision is rendered, perhaps some 18
months, it must transform itself from a movement that was initiated by small
groups of dedicated radicals and socialists to a mass movement that fuses
the aspirations of working people of all races into a mass struggle that
cannot be denied.
The rapid growth of this movement today, including the inclusion of key
sectors of the labor movement, organizations of oppressed nationalities,
faith-based groups, youth-and all those concerned with basic democratic
rights-is a product of the current crisis of capitalist society itself.
Increasing numbers are learning from experience that truth and justice,
whether at the workplace, in the mass media, in the government, or in society
in general, is subordinate to the profit system.
The decline of American capitalism in relation to its international competitors
has resulted in a generalized assault on American workers. Wages, hours,
job security, conditions of work, as well as health care and other forms
of social insurance that were won by past generations, are increasingly
subject to attack and erosion.
This has been accompanied by an onslaught in the legal arena on social,
political, and civil rights legislation that had been the product of previous
decades of struggle.
In a significant sense, Mumia Abu-Jamal's fight for life has energized
and united many of the social struggles that have been dormant for decades.
The outcome of this case will determine the political landscape of the human
rights movement for years to come.
A defeat will inevitably stimulate a further growth in the forces of
social regression. A victory, however, is an outcome well within our reach.
A victory will embolden the new social movements to take the next steps
forward to exercise their new-found power in arenas of combat that go far
beyond this critical battle for the life of an innocent and courageous fighter
who has come to represent what is best in all of us.
Socialist Action /March 1999 |