I read that former Pennsylvania governor Robert Casey had never heard of Mumia Abu-Jamal, despite the thousands of letters and petitions for Abu-Jamal’s release that were sent to his office. Now that the new governor, Tom Ridge, has signed Abu-Jamal’s death warrant for August 17, I suspect he also has no idea who Mumia is. Who pulls the governor’s strings? Is this state murder of a liberal reporter a further COINTELPRO operation, or is some hateful petty bureaucrat to blame? As time is running out for Mumia, it is vital that the calls for mercy reach the appropriate ears. –Andres Musta, North York, Ontario
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Can’t speak for the governor of Pennsylvania. But the fact is that until quite recently the plight of Mumia Abu-Jamal, a black radical facing execution for killing a cop, hadn’t shown up on the radar screen of virtually anybody outside Philadelphia except for members of the left, for whom it has been a cause celebre. Abu-Jamal, a freelance radio reporter, was a founding member of the Philadelphia Black Panthers and later supported MOVE, the black group massacred in the 1985 firebomb fiasco. His death sentence has provoked protests around the world plus the now-inevitable Web page on the Internet.
The prosecution says Mumia shot first, hitting Faulkner in the back. Faulkner returned the fire, seriously wounding Mumia. Mumia leaned over the now-prostrate officer and shot him in the face, killing him, then collapsed himself. Two eyewitnesses said that they saw this occur, more or less, and two others offered corroborating evidence.
