Freedom Socialist • Volume 22, No.2 • July-September, 2001

Dissent & Punishment

How and why justice is denied for political prisoners like Mumia Abu-Jamal

Special to the Freedom Socialist

by Mark Cook

During my 24 years as a political prisoner, I was transferred more than 17 times to various federal and state penitentiaries. This gave me the opportunity to meet many of the 200 political prisoners who are still incarcerated. Their activism and commitment to changing the politics of the U.S. government has not been altered by their confinement.

I felt honored to share the company of those heroes — Veronza Bowers, Herman Bell, Matulu Shakur, Oscar Lopez, Larry Giddings, Bill Dunne, Adolpho Matos, Jaan Laaman, Leonard Peltier, Fawaz Younis, Jihad Abu-Mumit, Phil Africa, Sundiata Acoli, Anlo Chang, the Virgin Island Five, and so many more. I feel obligated to speak on their behalf whenever I can.

Political prisoners in the U.S. are people whose imprisonment results from actions or beliefs that challenge capitalist politics — the program of those who control our government through campaign funding supplied by the bosses. They are also those social prisoners who become politically active while in prison and get hugely extended sentences as punishment for joining the struggle for poor and working people.

One of the most well-known and representative of political prisoners today is Mumia Abu-Jamal. His case raises two critical social and political issues: the political imprisonment of the Left in the United States, and capital punishment.

A fallible legal system, easily manipulated. The death penalty and life behind bars are imposed predominantly on the poor under capitalism. Why? Because those who are impoverished are the most politically volatile faction of the working class. They are unemployed or underemployed and always in the vanguard of economic protests. So it serves the interests of the system to "criminalize" the poor and leftists in order to curb dissent against poverty and discredit organized leadership among the poor.

Canada, like many other nations, rejects capital punishment — not on the grounds that it is a tool of oppression, but because rational law requires an effective process to correct mistakes.

"Legal systems have to live with the possibility of error. The unique feature of capital punishment is that it puts beyond recall the possibility of correction." With these stark words, the Supreme Court of Canada refused to extradite two young Canadians who would face the death penalty in the U.S.

But here in the U.S., Mumia is on death row, falsely accused and convicted of killing Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner, because he is a revolutionary. The case against him is rife with error — error that conceals his innocence.

Another political prisoner, Leonard Peltier, a former member of the American Indian Movement (AIM), stands convicted of killing an FBI agent on a Lakota reservation. Like Mumia, Leonard seeks release based on evidence not presented at his original trial. Although he does not face the death penalty, his case once again demonstrates the legal system’s refusal to face up to its fallibility, because of the capitalist interest in keeping potential organizers of the poor behind bars.

Then we can look at the case of the nine members of the radical group MOVE who have been imprisoned for more than 20 years because Philadelphia cops killed a fellow officer and a civilian in a rampaging attack on MOVE’s collective house. Why are the MOVE members and not the cops behind bars? Because MOVE articulates the degradation of the system and shows how we can enjoy social justice by exercising community political power.

There are hundreds of cases in the U.S. in which innocent prisoner/defendants have had their convictions reversed because of error or deliberate frame-up. This demonstrates that the legal system cannot be allowed to place these injustices beyond correction with capital punishment.

Prisons as political detention centers. Mumia’s trial was held during the early Reagan years of antiradical reaction. Twelve people on a jury found him guilty based on falsified evidence, evidence withheld, the lies of coerced witnesses, the rulings of an infamously pro-police judge, and the poor performance of a sellout public defender.

Even the rules of the current judicial system say that Mumia is innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. And reasonable doubt abounds. Untried evidence, for example, includes a confession by a man named Arnold Beverly, whose recently released affidavit says he was hired by corrupt Philadelphia cops to kill Faulkner, who apparently was a whistleblower.

Today, tens of thousands of people around the world find Mumia not guilty, based on facts and evidence never revealed to the original twelve jurors. Can the state’s twelve jurors have more power than the people’s jury?

The trial jury was no more legitimate than a stacked deck; the evidence they were allowed to consider was full of marked cards.

Mumia should never have been brought to trial and convicted — and given that he was, he should have been freed long ago. Above all, Mumia must not be put to death.

Mumia’s situation puts the spotlight on political prisoners in the U.S., whose very existence the government denies. A powerful journalist, Mumia has attracted massive, widely based support to his cause. This has infuriated several political administrations since his bogus trial in 1982.

Because Mumia refuses to be silenced, he has been harassed unmercifully by authorities in the government and the criminal justice system. They persist in mounting obstacles to keep the truth from being told and to forestall the evidentiary hearing that would, if justice prevailed, free him.

These same official persecutors thwart justice in the cases of more than 200 other political prisoners in U.S. penitentiaries. These prisoners are regularly subjected to corrupt trials and massive sentences because they won’t abandon their opposition to the status quo.

People who advocate for freedom for political prisoners do so for many differing reasons. This should not, however, dissuade them from moving in common to rein in the intimidation and terror this government imposes on its people through imprisonment. The varying interests of grassroots antiwar groups during the Vietnam conflict did not prevent those organizations from coming together and helping to stop an unjust war. The same show of solidarity is necessary to save Mumia and win freedom for all political prisoners.

Society’s obligation to right the wrongs. During the 1950s, the McCarthyism that made antiestablishment politics "un-American" was open and overt. Today’s witchhunting tactics against dissidents are more subtle and refined. But they are just as dangerous to the entire community in the U.S. today as in those bygone days.

Now we face our greatest social obligation, correcting the legal system. To do that, we must replace capitalism with a political system more responsive to the interests of the masses — socialism.

I see politics as the struggle for power over society and the economy. All the political prisoners I have met and talked with agree that the poor and working class must enter into struggle against the corporate bosses, who buy the congressional leaders and legislators who run the country.

Capitalism has no respect for human dignity or human life. It is a barbaric system, and capital punishment and political detention are its barbaric tools. To my sisters and brothers inside, I say stay strong. I salute your sacrifice.

Mark Cook, a former Black Panther, was imprisoned in "20 different gulags" across the United States. Released last year, he is a contributing writer for Prison Legal News and a community activist on many fronts.

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