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Within the merciless walls of the
Third Court of Appeals, estranged from the passionate chants of hundreds of
anti-death penalty demonstrators in search of freedom at last for their “voice
of the voiceless", Mumia Abu-Jamal’s defense team presented oral arguments on
Thursday, May 17th to a three-judge panel in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. Absent from the hearings, Mumia remained locked in his solitary
cage, awaiting his fate. Unwavering in his claim of innocence despite nearly a
quarter century of imprisonment which he has described as “highly mechanized
hell," Mumia continues to paint in his memoirs an abrasive portrait of the
injustice, racial inequality and brutality plaguing the American “justice"
system; all this despite limited resources, various gag orders and countless
attempts at censorship. Though his majestic dreadlocks, for many an icon of
hope, have only recently begun to gray, his writing suggests a long-standing
wisdom carved from twenty-five hard years of shackles. Poetic like
Solzhenitsyn, Mumia writes “prisons are repositories of rage." Regardless, his
fate lies in the hands of the same racist court system that expedited his trip
to death row so many years ago, in July 1982. Barring a miracle, without any
more opportunities to appeal, the award-winning author Mumia Abu-Jamal has a
date with a needle and five grams of sodium thiopental.
Jamal’s life has been nothing less
than a self-fulfilling prophecy. He was a founding member of Philadelphia’s
Black Panther Party, where he passionately spoke out against America’s bloody
disenfranchisement of non-whites, non-rich and dissenting voices. Screaming
“All Power to the People," he exposed the failure of the United States government
to meet the healthcare needs of its people, housing and living wage jobs for
its lower class in light of the gentrifying powers in control, and food for its
children, mobilizing a socialist movement that would take back the streets and
redistribute them to oppressed and powerless. Yet the Panthers’ Black
Nationalist rhetoric and militant image was met with intense resistance by the
white elites in Washington and became the number one bane for the FBI and city
police nationwide. According to Kathleen Cleaver, a memo regarding Mumia sent
to the FBI in 1968 read “if this young Negro wishes to be a revolutionary, it’s
our job to make him a dead revolutionary." Yes, as a Panther, Mumia armed
himself in self-defense from police brutality, the very police brutality that
found him running over to his brother William Cook and Officer William Faulkner
in the early hours of December 9, 1981.
As Catholics, we mustn’t forget
that Daniel Faulkner, the police officer murdered, was not only a casualty of
his murderer but also of unjust American system. It was the American system
that relied on armed militia to keep civil order, as the social inequality
between whites and non-whites prevented neighborly communion. It was the
American system during the COINTELPRO era that perpetrated a racial dichotomy
of hatred rather than equal embrace. It was the cultural esteem for violence,
embraced by the government during the Vietnam War that shaped the worldview of
an impressionable Daniel. It was these pressures of an imprudently formed
worldview that taught him use excessive force with William Cook. Daniel’s
tragic death illustrates violence begetting violence. In the same way,
Catholics mustn’t forget the tragic and hardened heart of Maureen Faulkner,
married less than five years, a woman in her middle twenties banished to an
all-too-early loneliness. Unfortunately, due to a cultural ideal of eye for eye
type “justice" and violent vengeance, the void left by Daniel’s death has been
filled with hatred without compassion, as illustrated in her articles on
prodeathpenalty.com.
Thus, the Free Mumia movement
provides three opportunities for action, as there are truly three immediate
victims of December 9, 1981. So far the movement to Free Mumia has been built
on secular grounds, with groups ranging from neo-Black Panthers to anti-death
penalty coalitions as the head contractors. Still, as Catholics engaged in a
personalist movement towards a non-violent society, the campaign to Free Mumia
offers an opportunity to work in solidarity with those hoping to share in
humanitarian revolution.
For Catholics, state-sponsored
killing holds a special place, as Jesus died in Rome-occupied Palestine so
mankind may live, and respect the gift of life. Thus, while our Catholicism
does not afford us any special insight into Mumia’s guilt or innocence, our
acknowledgement of life as made in the image and likeness of God must inspire
us to work in solidarity get him off death row either way. Certainly the
contemporary hierarchy of the Catholic Church, including the American bishops’
criticisms of the death penalty as recently as 2005 and Pope John Paul II’s
declaration of the death penalty as “cruel and unnecessary" has offered a
resolute condemnation of such state-sponsored murder. Yet, the most convincing
denunciation of the death penalty comes from the Bible and the example of
Jesus. Whether Romans 12:14, which promotes peaceful actions towards
aggressors, Luke 6:27-37, which emphasizes loving thy enemy and the importance
of forgiveness or the ever-famous John 8:2 “whoever’s without sin cast the
first stone," our tradition is forged in the love and compassion. Certainly the
violent eye-for-eye type retribution of capital punishment does not reflect Mt
7:1-5 or Mt 18: 21-22, which emphasizes, again, the absolute importance of
forgiveness. If the United States wishes to adorn itself the title “Christian
Nation," it must avoid such a sorry, neolithic attempt at “justice." Indeed,
the death penalty and such enthusiastic armament celebrated in the American culture
of war make the idea of “Christian Nation’ nothing more than a dupe for the
unassuming and an all out blaspheme.
Our works are works of mercy, not
judgment. If our code is truly the Sermon on the Mount, then Our Christian
appreciation for Jesus’ love and for a personalist movement require our efforts
to abolish the death penalty and for drastic rethinking of the prison system.
Guilty or innocent Mumia has inked valuable testimonies regarding the
deplorable treatment of the human beings the judicial system casts away as
“criminals," as well as the morally base prison-industrial complex of the
United States government. Though Mumia’s militancy as a Panther does not mesh
with Catholic/Christian Pacifism, we must unite in solidarity with his vision
of social change, as Catholic/Christian radicals working on behalf of the oppressed and
homeless find themselves equally subject to the “Harrenvolk" and other factions
of American leadership hell-bent on affluent white hegemony.
Though our culture of violence
celebrates it as a proper punishment and just deterrent for future crimes, the
death penalty disregards human life as made in the image and likeness of God,
as well as any respect for God’s all-powerful embracing forgiveness. It places the state, an arbitrary social structure,
at a higher level than humanity. As Catholics, we must take the United Statesto task,
emphasizing the importance of Christian practice rather than simply the
flaunting of documents written in Christian principle. We must fight for the
life of Mumia Abu-Jamal, because though the Eighth Amendment protects against
state infliction of cruel and unusual punishment, he may endure it very soon. |
