Quick Biography: Mumia Abu-Jamal

I heard about Mumia Abu-Jamal during my time working with the AFSC in Atlanta. Thanks to Desmond for turning me on to J Dilla as well as important issues of today, like Abu-Jamal's story.

Mumia Abu-Jamal is well known in large part because he's on death row for the murder of a cop in Philadelphia. Real briefly: Abu-Jamal's brother had supposedly been pulled over as part of a traffic stop. Abu-Jamal walked by the scene and saw the cop harassing his brother. The next few minutes are disputed. Long story short, he's been convicted of fatally shooting the cop but that ruling has been appealed many times (Abu-Jamal may have an appeal still pending).

Abu-Jamal was a cab driver and still is a Black Panther Party member, father, and journalist, at one point working for the National Public Radio chapter in Philly (according to Wiki).

The irony of Abu-Jamal's conviction and time on death row is that he always opposed the death penalty and spoke out about the evils of a prison-industrial complex. This irony reminds me of a movie I saw a couple weeks ago, The Life of David Gale.

Abu-Jamal, in his journalism, reading, and speaking, tackles issues usually hostile to his city and country's power structure. He reports on the war on the poor... how California's prisons alone hold more people than the entire population of France... the racist and classist institution of the death penalty... and others.

This website has many voice recordings of his as well as recordings of others about him. I think knowing Abu-Jamal's story, life, and message is important, as important as understanding the less-well known characters of the civil rights movement and others. Other websites on him are easy to find through google. Here's a picture of him I got off wiki:





Post scriptum: today, I felt like doing a biography. I may make a series of biographies on movers and shakers who don't get much air time on gchat away messages or the front page of google news. Feel free to recommend people for me to write about. Or write about them yourselves. There are 15 contributors to this thing. Write on!

Personal note: y'all know I have studied Arabic for nearly a decade (started at age 14, I'm now 24 -- though I've been out of classes for a couple years). My travels during this time, particularly in Morocco and Egypt, helped open my eyes to a more balanced view not only of Islam, but also of America's force domestically and in the world.

In 2003, I was finishing up a meal in the living room of a Moroccan family I met in Azrou. We were eating apple the American way (just chomping on it) as my hosts took a knife to it (to slice it up). Saddam Hussein's face pops up on the screen as captured by American forces in Iraq. The Bassidi family I was visiting with was as critical of Saddam as they were of the U.S. invasion! I certainly would not have heard that coming from the Spears family.