“My name is Mumia Abu-Jamal. I’m a journalist, a husband, a father, a grandfather, and an African American. I live in the fastest-growing public housing tract in America. In 1981 I was a reporter for WUHY and president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists. Currently I’m a writer and a public radio commentator. I’ve been a resident on Pennsylvania’s death row for 11 years. Tune in to hear my regular reports from death row . . . on your public radio station.”
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But the series won’t be running on WBEZ, as Abu-Jamal’s tag might suggest. Instead it’s being broadcast starting this weekend by the Peace and Justice Radio Project, which was founded in 1991 with the goal of starting a community radio station in Chicago. The group hasn’t reached that goal yet, but it does broadcast a half-hour show called Real World Radio, produced by volunteers and covering a wide range of issues and events, on three stations each week: WLUW, WXAV, and WZRD. Topics covered in the past year include the Tenants’ Bill of Rights, CHA lockdowns, NAFTA, the Chiapas rebellion, and various other struggles for self-determination. Currently the group’s also working on a women’s radio project.
Then suddenly the day before the first broadcast, NPR canceled the series, stating they had misgivings about having a convicted murderer as a commentator. Many observers believe that NPR was actually bowing to pressure from Philadelphia’s Fraternal Order of Police and feared losing congressional support for funding after Bob Dole made a speech to the Senate denouncing the series. WBEZ’s Gary Covino broadcast one of the Prison Radio Project’s commentaries and summarized the text of one of the NPR tapes on his show The Wild Room one week after the cancellation, a decision supported by WBEZ management, says Ira Glass, Covino’s cohost. Meanwhile, Henderson says, NPR has refused to release the tapes, even to the Prison Radio Project.
The Peace and Justice Radio Project will play 10 to 15 of the tapes Friday, September 16, at 7 PM at the Center for Inner City Studies, 700 E. Oakwood; cosponsoring the free event are the Prison Radio Project, Equal Justice USA, the Chicago Conference of Black Lawyers, the Illinois Coalition Against the Death Penalty, and the Crossroads Support Network, which provides support for people in prison. There’ll be breaks between tapes for discussion, moderated by Salim Muwakkil, Sun-Times columnist and senior editor of In These Times, and attorney Elizabeth Whitaker, who is on the board of directors of the Chicago Conference of Black Lawyers and has worked building support for Abu-Jamal’s defense.
