Mumia Abu Jamal

In his youth Mumia Abu-Jamal helped found the Philadelphia branch of the Black Panther Party, wrote for the national newspaper, and began his life-long work of exposing the violence of the state as it manifests in entrenched poverty, endemic racism, and unending police brutality and celebrating a people's unending quest for freedom. In We Want Freedom, Mumia combines personal experience with extensive research to provide a compelling history of the Black Panther Party--what it was, where it came from, and what rose from its ashes. Mumia also pays special attention to the U.S. government's disruption of the organization through COINTELPRO and similar operations. While Abu-Jamal is a prolific writer and probably the world's most famous political prisoner, this book is unlike any of Mumia's previous works. In We Want Freedom, Abu-Jamal applies his sharp critical faculties to an examination of one of the U.S.'s most revolutionary and most misrepresented groups. A subject previously explored by various historians and forever ripe for "insider" accounts, the Black Panther Party has not yet been addressed by a writer with the well-earned international acclaim of Abu-Jamal, nor with his unique combination of a powerful, even poetic, voice and an unsparing critical gaze. Abu-Jamal is able to make his own Black Panther Party days come alive as well as help situate the organization within its historical context, a context that included both great revolutionary fervor and hope, and great repression. In this era, when the US PATRIOT Act dismantles some of the same rights and freedoms violated by the FBI in their attack on the Black Panther Party, the story of how the Party grew and matured while combating such invasions is a welcome and essential lesson.

More than 75 essays—many freshly composed by Mumia with the cartridge of a ball-point pen, the only implement he is allowed in his death-row cell—embody the calm and powerful words of humanity spoken by a man on Death Row. Abu-Jamal writes on many different topics, including the ironies that abound within the U.S. prison system and the consequences of those ironies, and his own case. Mumia's composure, humor, and connection to the living world around him represents an irrefutable victory over the "corrections" system that has for two decades sought to isolate and silence him. The title, All Things Censored, refers to Mumia's hiring as an on-air columnist by National Public Radio's "All Things Considered," and subsequent banning from that venue under pressure from law and order groups.

Sentenced to death in 1982 for allegedly killing a police officer named Daniel Faulkner, Mumia Abu-Jamal is the most famous death row inmate in the United States, if not the world. This book is the first to convincingly show how the Philadelphia Police Department and District Attorney's Office efficiently and methodically framed him. It takes you step-by-step through what actually transpired on the night Faulkner was shot, including positioning each of the witnesses at the scene and revealing the identity of the killer. It also details the entire trial and fully covers the tortuous appeals process. The author, a seasoned crime reporter, writes in the language of hard facts, without hyperbole or exaggeration, unfounded accusation or finger-pointing, to reveal the truth about one of the most hotly debated cases of the twentieth century.

Mumia Abu Jamal’s essential perspectives on black experience, race relations, freedom, justice, social change, and the future of American society.

The author, a prisoner on death-row for killing a police officer, presents a series of essays and reflections on his life and his spirituality.

Here for the first time are the prison writings of Abu-Jamal--including the censored commentaries from NPR--an unflinching account of the brutalities, humiliations and actrocities of prison life. Articulate and compelling, the work is certain to fuel the controversy surrounding capital punishment and freedom of speech.

From the knowledgeable perspective of 25 years as a criminal lawyer (mostly appeals like murder, rape, robbery, etc.), a former co-editor of Gilbert's Criminal Law & Procedure, and a free lance writer for over a decade, the author writes incisively about the remorseless cop killer described by America's newspaper of record as: "Perhaps the best known Death-Row prisoner in the world." (Page 1, New York Times, Dec. 19, 2001, the day after a federal court nullified a racially mixed jury's July 3, 1982 unanimous sentence of death.) Mumia Abu Jamal - The Patron Saint of American Cop Killers exposes the Hollywood backed "Free Mumia! Free All Political Prisoners!" movement's claims of "racism" in jury selection, "police frame-up," and "police intimidation of defense witnesses" as a transparent fraud. With the same precision and insight he devoted to a three part article in the East Hampton Independent (and the Southampton Independent) on the tragic carbon monoxide death of his friend, tennis star, and CBS TV commentator, Vitas Gerulaitis, Hayden takes the reader through the pre-trial, trial, and absurdly lengthy post conviction proceedings. Now that the chances of the cop hating ex Black Panther ever being executed for killing a 25 year old cop are about the same as his chances of ever being found "innocent," Hayden predicts that the middle aged Death-Row prisoner will, like Dr. Martin Luther King's cowardly assassin, racist James Earl Ray, die of old age in a 6 X 9 steel cage in a super max prison somewhere in rural America.

A powerful indictment on the history of police violence against people of color, from slavery to today's Black Lives Matter.