HAVE BLACK LIVES EVER MATTERED? THE FRAMING OF
MUMIA ABU-JAMAL BY DAITHÍ DOOLAN
Mumia Abu-Jamal is the most recognised political prisoner in the US today. Politicians, trade unions, musicians, authors, and activists have added their voices to the campaign demanding that he is immediately released from prison. In December 1981, Mumia Abu Jamal was shot and beaten unconscious by Philadelphia police. He awoke to find himself handcuffed to a hospital bed, accused of killing police officer Denis Faulkner. In 1982, he was convicted and sentenced to death in a trial that Amnesty International has denounced as failing to meet even the minimum standards of judicial fairness. And so began a worldwide campaign to have the sentence overturned and Mumia released from prison. Since then, the Abu-Jamal trial proceedings have come under scrutiny and today his case is one of the most contested legal cases in modern American history. With the passing of years, more and more evidence has come to light that confirms this man’s innocence. So why does the US keep Mumia Abu-Jamal incarcerated? The answer is buried in the very foundations of the USA.
WHO IS MUMIA ABU-JAMAL?
Mumia Abu-Jamal, born Wesley Cook, is a 66 year old political activist from Philadelphia. He has spent nearly 40 years of his life in prison; 20 of which was on death row. Much of that in solitary confinement was a punishment for his writings as an author and journalist. Like many of his generation, Mumia grew up believing the old order of racism and second-class citizenship for Black Americans must be challenged. At the young age of 14, he was, as he said himself, ‘kicked into the Black Panther Party’ after suffering a beating from ‘white racists’ and a policeman for trying to disrupt a 1968 rally for Independent candidate George Wallace, former governor of Alabama, who was running on a racist platform. 32
ISSUE NUMBER 3 – 2020 - UIMHIR EISIÚNA 3 anphoblacht
