Mumia Abu-Jamal is one of those revolutionaries. Held in a Pennsylvania dungeon for nearly 40 years, Mumia is the perhaps the most internationally renowned political prisoner in U.S. history. While still in his teens, he joined the Philadelphia chapter of the Black Panther Party. He distinguished himself as a savvy and fair-minded reporter and became the president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. He befriended and defended the stalwart revolutionaries of the MOVE Organization. For his reporting and activism, he drew the ire and contempt of the Fraternal Order of Police and arch-reactionary cop mayor Frank Rizzo, who publicly denounced Mumia and swore vengeance upon him. And in December of 1981, Mumia Abu-Jamal was shot by Philadelphia police and framed for murder.
Within the story of Mumia Abu-Jamal’s frame up are all the elements of the current struggle, decades later: police lies and police violence; a crooked and racist justice system that is structurally incapable of bringing killer cops to justice; and the mafia-like racket and dictatorship that police hold over our political institutions.
Today’s hyper-militarized Philadelphia Police Department is the terrorist fantasy of former Commissioner Frank Rizzo, who once boasted that his cops could “invade Cuba and win.” A line can be traced from the riotous tear-gas attacks on 52nd street and the Vine Street Expressway earlier this month, to the murderous assaults on the MOVE Organization in Powelton Village and on Osage Avenue, to the despicable and dehumanizing arrests following police raids on various Black Panther offices. These are the pigs who framed Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The Fraternal Order of Police is powerful enough to keep Mumia Abu-Jamal behind bars, despite an international campaign spanning decades that has saved Mumia from execution and murder by medical neglect. There is only one way to end the police dictatorship in our cities. The prison gates must open, and Mumia Abu-Jamal — the most famous political prisoner in the world and a living symbol of the struggle against racist police repression and for the Black Liberation movement — must walk through to freedom. And it must happen now!
There can be no further real discussion in Philadelphia about reining in police racism until Mumia is free. If the system fails to do that, then the system is the enemy of those marching everywhere for justice.
