Death Blossoms. Mumia Abu-Jamal
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As he writes in another letter:
. . . Loneliness is but an illusion. One man, “living” on one of the most damned sites on earth, is not truly alone. The death chambers of America are not as tightly sealed as many may suspect, for how can Spirit be kept out?
It is often said that when a writer bares his soul in a book, a small part of it travels to every reader. Here, then, from the heart and soul of Mumia Abu-Jamal to yours, are the flowers of his spirit.
New Meadow Run Bruderhof
October 1996
A Write-up for Writing
ON JUNE 3, 1995, one day after being served with a death warrant, I was served with a “write-up,” a misconduct report for “engaging actively in a business or profession,” i.e., as a journalist. So strongly does the state object to me writing what you are now reading that they have begun to punish me, while I’m in the most punitive section that the system allows, for daring to speak and write the truth.
The institutional offense? My book, Live from Death Row. It paints an uncomplimentary picture of a prison system that calls itself “correctional” but does little more than corrupt human souls; a system that eats hundreds of millions of dollars a year to torture, maim, and mutilate tens of thousands of men and women; a system that teaches bitterness and hones hatred.
Clearly, what the government wants is not just death, but silence. A “correct” inmate is a silent one. One who speaks, writes, and exposes horror for what it is, is given a “misconduct.” Is that a correct system? A system of corrections? In this department of state government, the First Amendment is a nullity. It doesn’t apply.
No one—not a cop, nor a guard—can find one lie in Live from Death Row; indeed, it is precisely because of its truth that it is a target of the state and its minions—a truth they don’t want you to see.
Consider: Why haven’t you seen, heard, or read anything like this on TV, radio, or in the papers? Newspapers, radio, and TV are increasingly the property of multinational corporations or wealthy individuals and therefore reflect the perspective of the rich and the established, not the poor and powerless.
In Live from Death Row, you hear the voices of the many, the oppressed, the damned, and the bombed. I paid a high price to bring it to you, and I will pay more; but, I tell you, I would do it a thousand times, no matter what the cost, because it is right! To quote John Africa:
“When you are committed to doing what is right, the power of righteousness will never betray you. . . .” It was right to write Live from Death Row, and it’s right for you to read it, no matter what cop, guard, prisoncrat, politician, or media mouthpiece tells you otherwise.
Every day of your life, no doubt, you’ve heard of “freedom of speech” and “freedom of the press.” But what can such “freedom” mean without the freedom to read, or to hear, what you want?
As you read this, know that I am being punished by the government for writing Live from Death Row, and for writing these very words. Indeed, I’ve been punished by the United States government for my writings since I was fifteen years of age—but I’ve kept right on writing. You keep right on reading!
BOOKS
AND THE STATE
The writer who is endorsed by the state is the writer who says what everyone wants to hear: the allowable things. It is noteworthy that even at this time in world history, those who write satire, social commentary, or works of opinion can be damned, threatened, and marked for death because of their words. Take Salman Rushdie. How many people have actually read his works? I have read The Satanic Verses, also Haroun and the Sea of Stories. I cannot speak for a Muslim, of course, yet I found him fascinating, funny, and an extremely good writer. I can understand why the state felt threatened by his work. What I don’t understand is why they would think of doing something that will only immortalize it.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned in two thousand years, it’s that you cannot kill a book. One of the greatest science-fiction films I have ever seen, Fahrenheit 451 (that’s the point at which paper combusts spontaneously), which is based on a Ray Bradbury novel, portrays a futuristic society in which books are banned and people cannot hold unorthodox ideas. In this society there are subversives—people who read books. The subversives keep their books hidden in attics, in basements, and behind false walls. And this old lady in the film tells a young girl that she likes books and has some hidden in her attic. Somehow the word gets out, and when it does, the alarms start ringing and they call the fire department. The fire brigade rushes to the house, axes the doors, and starts a fire: they burn the house to the ground. Finally all the subversives or rebels flee the country to a place where people become books. In a sense, the film tries to show how far the state will go to ban books, or anything it perceives to be dangerous, for that matter. But it also shows how useless all those measures are.
You cannot kill a book.
Capitl Punishment
THE DEATH PENALTY is a creation of the State, and politicians justify it by using it as a stepping stone to higher political office. It’s very popular to use isolated cases—always the most gruesome ones—to make generalizations about inmates on death row and justify their sentences. Yet it is deceitful; it is untrue, unreal. Politicians talk about people on death row as if they are the worst of the worst, monsters and so forth. But they will not talk about the thousands of men and women in our country serving lesser sentences for similar and even identical crimes. Or others who, by virtue of their wealth and their ability to retain a good private lawyer, are not convicted at all. The criminal court system calls itself a justice system, but it measures privilege, wealth, power, social status, and—last but not least—race to determine who goes to death row.
Why is it that Pennsylvania’s African-Americans, who make up only 9 percent of its population, comprise close to two-thirds of its death row population?1 It is because its largest city, Philadelphia, like Houston and Miami and other cities, is a place where politicians have built their careers on sending people to death row. They are not administering justice by their example. They are simply revealing the partiality of justice.
Let us never forget that the overwhelming majority of people on death row are poor. Most of them cannot afford the resources to develop an adequate defense to compete with the forces of the state, let alone money to buy a decent suit to wear in court. As the O.J. Simpson case illustrated once again, the kind of defense you get is the kind of defense you can afford. In Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, in Florida, in Texas, in Illinois, in California—most of the people on death row are there because they could not afford what O.J. could afford, which is the best defense.
One of the most widespread arguments in favor of the death penalty is that it deters crime. Study after study has shown that it does not. If capital punishment deters anything at all, it is rational thinking. How else would it be conceivable in a supposedly enlightened, democratic society? Until we recognize the evil irrationality of capital punishment, we will only add, brick by brick, execution by execution, to the dark temple of Fear. How many more lives will be sacrificed on its altar?
1. See Abu-Jamal, Live from Death Row, xvii.
Remembering Moser
RECENTLY I CAME across words from Gibran, one of my boyhood heroes, and reflected on them as I hadn’t in more than a generation. What reader of this passage from The Prophet can but pause for thought?
Oftentimes have I heard you speak of one who commits a wrong