Political Prisoners in the USA - Mumia Abu Jamal

Christoph: Today is March 7th, 1996. We are here in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania.

Mumia Abu-Jamal: The death penalty is a political creation. It is creation of the state and a creation by politicians to obtain political power and higher office. that politicians use the death penalty as a stepping stone for higher political office. And they project, using people's cases, what people are about on death row, and that's deceiving. It's untrue, it's unreal, in the sense that You will hear politicians talk about people on death row are the worst of the worst and they're this and they're that and they're monsters and so forth. But what you will not hear is that there are many people serving lesser sentences, life sentences, or a term of years, who have been convicted of similar, if not the same kinds of things. Or there are other people who are, by virtue of their wealth, were not convicted at all. So what we're really talking about is a system that calls itself a justice system that uses the injustice of wealth, power, rank, status, race, privilege to determine who comes on death row, you see. Why is it that 9% of this state's population is close to 70% or 75% of death row's population? And I speak here of African Americans. And that's because, you know, the city of Philadelphia like the city of Houston, like the city of Miami and Dade County, are cities where politicians have built their careers on sending people on death row. They're not making people any safer. You see, they're not showing people by their example justice, what they're showing is the partiality of injustice. Because for most of the people on death row, the overwhelming majority of people on death row were poor, could not afford the resources to develop a defense, could not begin to combat the forces of the state, the government, And as we saw very recently, that is all of us across America, if not around the world, in the O.J. Simpson case in California, well, the kind of defense you get is the kind of defense you can afford. Most of the people who are here on death row, in Pennsylvania, in New Jersey, in Florida, in Texas, in Illinois, in California, are on death row because they could not afford what O.J. Simpson could afford, which is the best defense.

Christoph: Could you once again say a word what you feel about violence? Is violence needed or do you believe in a different way?

Mumia Abu-Jamal: I believe that violence violates the self. That what the system believes in, what the system practices, what the system preaches is violence. And what the one thing that we don't want to do is do the same thing that the system is doing every day. If that were the case, why replace the system, you see? We want a new system where people are free and free of the violence of the system. We would hope for a day when there are no bombs, whether of any kind, you know, thermonuclear or conventional so-called, no guns, no weapons, no prisons, no poverty, because all of these things are tools and weapons of violence. And we reject that.

Christoph: Now, Mumia, what do you feel are several of the most serious problems confronting the children of our present-day society, and what effects could these problems have in the future?

Mumia Abu-Jamal: Well, I think, just as Consul demonstrated in his book Amazing Grace, the most positive thing that all children have, innate within them, is hope. those children living in the worst possible conditions in the world, in poverty, in slums, surrounded by drugs and so forth, still have an innate hope. So that's the positive part of it. The negative part, in terms of the problems that they face, and more directly to your question, is that they are, for the most part, ignored. and opposed by the social order, by the system. I remember what probably touched my heart was reading about the little boy, David, who talked about how he looked at TV and he saw the mayor of New York City and he said, I don't like him. And Coswell says, well, why do you say that? He says, Because when I look in his eyes, all I see is coldness. And he doesn't understand how poor people have to live. That is the way that most politicians and most people who are wealthy in this system look at those children. They see coldness. They sense that coldness. from these people who literally control their circumstances, whether they live or die, the conditions of the neighborhood, the state of their education, all of the very important variables. So those are very serious problems. In terms of hope, I think children are born in hope. Children are our only hope for the future, a future. Children are the future. It's like Kahlil Gibran says, they are not of us, even though they come from us, that they are like arrows that we shoot towards infinity, you know, and where they go, we cannot see. Children are tomorrow. They are hope. They are the closest Human beings can come to immortality because they come from immortality and they carry every hope with them from us to a future that we can't see. I think in terms of the best thing for them is to nurture that hope, to give them reasons to hope. and to feed that hope so that it grows into something stronger and that sustains them through their life. And the highest form of love is to pay attention to them. It's almost like Elie Wiesel says, the greatest hatred is not the anger of hatred, but the indifference of hatred. And the opposite of that, the greatest love is the attention that we can pay to our young people, our children.

Christoph: Now, I believe, Momir, that you have read the manuscript of my book, Leading Your Child to God.

Mumia Abu-Jamal: I have read your book. I have read the full manuscript, every word. And I agree that it does have very, very significant value. to children of the world because children come fresh directly from the divine source from what we call mama from life itself from the god of all creation that's why none of us i don't care what our race creed religion politics are None of us can look at a child and not feel joy. And that's every child on the planet. We look at them and just something thrills us, you know, in the basis of our heart. They are living miracles. And, you know, when we look at them, we know that there is a God, that all is possible, that life itself is a miracle. There is no father that looks at his child and doesn't feel awe at the source that brings this creation through mother, through life. Because children are the fruits of our love, of human love and divine love. And they show us with their innocence, with their clarity, the very face of God in human form, you know. So, in that very sense, I find a lot of good in value and positive information in your book.

Christoph: Can my book, A Plea for Purity, be of assistance and help to concern troubled and struggling parents?

Mumia Abu-Jamal: i think so and i think so in this sense that what your book a plea for purity does very clearly is it praises the concept of marriage i mean um it embraces it in a way that is not really embraced i mean when you hear these politicians talk it's kind of cold, distant, lifeless. I mean, you sense, just like that little boy David did when he looked at TV and saw this politician, you sense not caring, not affection, not love, but coldness, you know, because politics is a cold art. They don't care about people, they care about power. I don't sense that in your book. I sense a deep caring about people wanting to put together what is fundamental in life. A loving, caring family. A loving, caring marriage and a loving, caring community. I mean, isn't that really what we all want in this world, in life? That's the foundation.

Christoph: Mumia, it would be wonderful if you could say a few words how our country needs to rediscover what family means and also expand a bit. In the last decades, the primary responsibility for educating children has shifted from the family to the school. What is your input on that?

Mumia Abu-Jamal: I would say that when you look at education, generally in this country and perhaps around the world, but specifically in this country. What you'll see is from the very earliest years when a child goes to school and comes back home, the child perceives mom and dad differently than he did before he went to school.

Christoph: He senses

Mumia Abu-Jamal: The parents, his parents, are somehow not as smart as his teacher. And that means stupid, unintelligent, ignorant, uninformed. He gets that sense that when he needs to learn something, he goes to his teacher. He doesn't go to his mother. He doesn't go to his father. Because his teacher knows, his parents don't. I think that at that point what you develop is a kind of alienization or an alienation of the child from his family unit, his fundamental family unit, mom and pop. And while educators will talk about the school experience as socialization, and this is a good thing, I think what you're really looking at is de-socialization because he is alienated and de-socialized from his family unit and put into a secondary unit that he looks at as of worth, of value. And he begins to rank. Well, the teacher knows such and such and such. Well, the parents don't know. You see what I'm saying? And so that family as a unit suffers, you see. I do think that this is precisely because the social order has developed, I'm talking about the social economic order, has developed in such a way that in America, and perhaps in other industrialized societies in this world, in order for a family to make enough material resources and money to support the family. But you have to have the father working and the mother working. You need two income families. We do what we're taught to do in the social order. And a lot of what we do is not necessarily good for us. It's just customary and traditional. And, you know, We need to develop the community that can truly educate the children without alienating them from their parents who brought them into this creation.

Christoph: Now, one of my topics in the book, Leading Your Child to God, is about the movement of homeschooling which is rapidly growing in our country. Now, do you see this as a positive movement, or a negative, or a mixture of both? What do you know about homeschooling?

Mumia Abu-Jamal: Well, I've read some things about it, and my family, the MOVE organization, has been involved with it. So, I look at it with both positives and some negatives. There are some people who utilize this for, frankly, very racist reasons to try to exclude children from contact with other cultures, other people. But fundamentally, I think, it is a positive thing. You see, I mean, because For the same reasons I said about how a child tends to look at his parents or her parents after he leaves the home and enters that school situation. I think it can be positive if people look at it consciously and work towards those ends. But I think it's fundamentally positive. It can be negative and it depends on the family and the reasons why they do that.

Christoph: To me, and I agree with you, but to me the most negative thing is that a child is stopped from relating to his peers if he is schooled at home and children need to learn to relate with other children their age.

Mumia Abu-Jamal: Well, I think also that it should be noted that the Bruderhof your family, your community. You have your own, you know, primary schools. So, because you have your own schools, you're conscious of who teaches and what is taught and how it's taught and in what spirit that happens, you see. Many people who live in the city have nothing even remotely close to that, you see. In fact, they have no idea what is being taught. They have no idea who the teacher really is. They don't know who that person is. So I think that the experience that the Bruderhof have is very different from the average person in the city or even in a rural setting where they don't know who those persons is. They don't know who that teacher is. They don't know what's being taught. They don't know the spirit. And they don't know how that person really relates to that child, you see. You know, you hear it very often when you read the papers or you look at TV about how parents in general society are just so glad when summer is over. Because when summer is over, they can take their kids and put them back in school and their day is kind of free again.

Christoph: You see what I'm saying?

Mumia Abu-Jamal: In that sense, the hots have an advantage that a lot of people don't have.

Christoph: During the past year, the Bruderhof communities have become deeply involved in your case and in the lives of the MOVE members and in the death penalty question in general. Would you have a message to relay to the brothers, sisters and children of the Bruderhof?

Mumia Abu-Jamal: First of all, of course, a heartfelt thank you to every member of the Bruderhof, from the smallest, the youngest, to the oldest, the eldest, here in America and abroad, in England and all around the world. We are very, very grateful that the Bruderhof came to our attention for existing and making just human contact between people.

Christoph: A week ago, We had a class from Columbia University, the journalism class in the Lidgen. Count us, there were about 30 students. We had a communal mealtime and the children sang and then they asked questions. That's the second time they have come. You know, Ari Goldman used to be the Lidgen editor of the New York Times. Now he teaches journalism at Columbia University. And he wants to make it a yearly thing to have his students come and experience community.

Mumia Abu-Jamal: That's great.

Christoph: I think it could be quite helpful for the future. What do you think?

Mumia Abu-Jamal: I think it could be helpful, not so much for the community, but for those journalists. Because journalists tend to be, you know, dyed-in-the-wool, cynical. They believe in the worst of people, not the best of people. They believe in the negative, not the positive. They really do. And when you think about middle-of-the-world journalism in America, mainstream journalism, very rarely Does spiritual matters or religious matters or even deep social issues really penetrate to the core of that science or that craft of journalism? Because it's kind of, it's corny from a journalistic perspective. And I think that any thinking, sensitive human being who sees and hears this out of the mouth of babes, from children, cannot help but be touched in their heart by that.

Christoph: I think they were touched. I mean, sad to say, you tell me if you... disagree. To me, the mainline media has been bought up by large corporations and through that it's also being highly censored. That's my impression of the mainline media today. Of course, to everything there are also exceptions.

Mumia Abu-Jamal: That's exactly, I believe you're absolutely true enough. To give you some examples, if I may. Very, when I was down in Philadelphia at my petition hearing, I was being brought back to the prison, and the sheriffs had turned the radio on. I was listening to the news. And the newscaster said, this just in, there's a bulletin, ABC, American Broadcasting Corporation, has just been acquired by Disney Corporation. And I laughed. And I was in the back, and I was just laughing. I said, well, I guess we're going to have Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck on the news tonight, right? But that's just one out of many, you know. We used to talk about almost the same way I said earlier about politicians. We used to talk about the media being in the hip pocket of big business and being controlled by big business. Well, today, the major media are big business. They are part of these multinational huge corporations. and if you think they don't control what comes into that camera lens and out on that tv screen well come on if i own you i control you if i pay you i tell you what to say and what not to say and when you look at the news today i'm talking now about a national network newscast the similarities between think about this crystal The similarities between a national network newscast and what used to be a local newscast are astounding. Local crime stories become national news stories, not because of anything extraordinary about that, but that's the stuff that they're feeding out there. They don't feed pieces that talk about the fundamental relationships of power and rank and status in this country. They talk about sensation, you know. It's almost as if the average newscast is produced by hard copy or one of these other, you know, shows like that. Just, it's trash. But it's trash that's designed to attract you emotionally, to touch you sensationally, to get you looking, but not to get you thinking. Not to question the fundamental relationships of power, of wealth, of justice, of injustice. Those issues, they don't apply, you see. They do not question the relationship and the rightness of power. They take that for granted, you see. And when you ally that and you put that in concert with the political machinery that's in place today. I'm talking about the right-wing shift in American politics. Well, you have a dangerous and a deadly and a malevolent concoction. That's what you have. That's what you have. You know, you have a guy who can run for president and be best friends with, you know, a Klansman and, you know, have Klansmen and Aryan nation brethren on his staff. Oh, well, that's not important. We're not him. And they can brush it off and he goes on and he goes on. Just like in the 30s and 40s in Germany, when you know, obviously, intimately much better than I, when you talk about the Nazi experience, when you talk about the Hitler phenomena in Germany, You could not have that kind of political explosion of Nazi organization without the undercover but significant support the crows and so forth, the Fords here in America. They were supported by people of wealth. They just didn't spring out of the, you know, one day they were here and one day they weren't. They were supported by financial interests because in the last analysis, they protected their interests. You know, when you read books that talk about how this government through its CIA and its FBI, supported and paid and protected mafia hitmen and stuff like that so that they could knock off and destroy socialists and communists. That's not just by coincidence, because they knew that would protect the interests of the wealthy. Fundamentally, what we're talking about is how the US government has allied itself with some of the darkest forces in history for economic gain, for economic interest, to protect the status quo and continue to do so, you know, continue to do so. None of this stuff that's happening in America is in a vacuum. When you have David Dukes running for governors, or Buchanan running for president, Klansmen on his staff, and everybody talking about, well, it's okay to forget the poor. What we need is more executions. Poor people are having too good in this country. What we need to do is start chopping people's heads off. I mean, the kind of, the level, the political level of discourse is anti-life. It's death-centered. And that's not by coincidence.

Christoph: I have probably a good chance to speak to many college campuses this year about these two books. And my message to the young people is, one life can make a difference. Would you have a message to the American young people how they can make our country a better nation?

Mumia Abu-Jamal: Yes, Christoph. I would say first of all that children and young people, well not children, but young adults who are college students should recognize that at this exact point in life This is the freest they'll ever be in their life, however they want to look at that. I mean, because marriage imposes obligations, one's career and job imposes obligations. When they're at a point in life where they're able to study, to learn, to grow in the life of the mind, they're free. They're at a level of freedom that they cannot and will not probably experience for decades. So, they should take this opportunity to feed their minds, you know, not just with information, but, you know, information that feeds the spirit and the deeper inner self. I would invite them to read your books. I would invite them to read my books as well. and to ask themselves questions about what they see there and because they are at this freedom phase of their lives to not underestimate the worth and wealth of that phase because now at this time when they're free is the time when they can move to change the world you know, worlds are changed in people's minds, in their perception. And this is the time for them to do that, the proper time.