At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed. O! Had I the ability, and could I reach the nation's ear, I would, today, pour out a fiery stream of biting ridicule, blasting reproach, withering sarcasm, and stern rebuke. For it is not light that is needed, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake. The feeling of the nation must be quickened; the conscience of the nation must be roused; the propriety of the nation must be startled; the hypocrisy of the nation must be exposed: And its crimes against God and man must be proclaimed and denounced.
What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all the other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciations of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence. [To the slave] your shouts of liberty and equality [are] hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices, more shocking and bloody, than are the people of these United States, at this very hour.
-- Frederick Douglass, July 5, 1852
July 4, 1993, saw ANC president Dr. Nelson R. Mandela in Philadelphia quoting the Honorable Frederick Douglass's speech as he accepted the Liberty Medal, along with South African state president F.W de Klerk. If the joint presence of Mandela and de Klerk were not enough to stir controversy, then the award presenters, Philadelphia mayor Ed Rendell and U.S. president Clinton, certainly stoked controversy among radicals. Hundreds of black Philadelphians, while certainly admirers of Dr. Mandela, took umbrage at de Klerk's presence.
Although the awarders are known as "We the People -- Philadelphia," the actual everyday people of Philadelphia had little say in choosing the Liberty Medal awardees, and less say in rejecting the widely unpopular honoree de Klerk. The choice of Liberty Medalists was made not by the people but by corporate Philadelphia -- big business.
Why? Why were the people, many of whom had worked for more than twenty years against apartheid (and for Mandela's release), frozen out, their protests against de Klerk all but ignored? When, or if, the African majority takes power in South Africa, U.S. big business wants friends there. If one reads the names of corporate sponsors of the award, it sounds like roll call of the Chamber of Commerce: Unisys Corp., Pennsylvania Bell, and the like.
Mandela, who has not voted in a government election in seventy-four years, and de Klerk, president by way of an election counting only minority, non black votes, has only the hope of liberty, no more.
The white minority in South Africa has done its level best to stifle African liberty for three hundred years.
The African majority, even after the awards, still isn't free.
July 1993
***
A house is not a home
She sits in utter stillness. Her coffee-brown features as if set in obsidian; as if a mask. Barely perceptible, the tears threaten to overflow that dark, proud, maternal face, a face held still by rage.
A warm spring day in North Philadelphia saw her on her way home, after her tiring duties as a housekeeper in a West Mount Airy home. On arrival, she was stopped by police, who told her she could not enter her home of twenty-three years, and that it would be torn down as part of a city program against drug dens. "My house ain't no drug den!" the fifty-nine-year-old grandmother argued. "This is my home!" The cops, strangers to this part of town, could care less.
Mrs. Helen Anthony left the scene, to contact her grown children. Two hours later, she returned to an eerie scene straight out of the Twilight Zone. Her home was no more.
A pile of bricks stood amid hills of red dust and twisted debris; a lone wall standing jagged, a man's suit flapping on a hook, flapping like a flag of surrender, after a war waged by bulldozers and ambitious politicians. Mrs. Anthony received no warning before the jaws of the baleful backhoe bit into the bricks of her life, tearing asunder the gatherings and memories of a life well lived. She was served no notice that the City of Brotherly Love intended to grind her home of twenty-three years into dust because they didn't like her neighbors; they just showed up one day, armed with television cameras and political ambitions, and did it. Gone.
When reporters asked politicos about the black grandmother whose home was demolished, they responded with characteristic arrogance: "Well, the law of eminent domain gives us the right to tear down any house we wanna," they said. When coverage turned negative, out came the olive branch:
"We'll reimburse her."
"Oops, honest mistake!"
"... compensation .... "
Left unquestioned is the wisdom of a policy of mass destruction planned over a brunch of Brie and croissants executed for the six o'clock news, with no regard for the lives and well-being of the people involved.
In a city with an estimated thirty thousand homeless people, why does the government embark on a blitzkrieg of bulldozing and demolishing homes, even abandoned ones? Mrs. Anthony, offered a home in compensation by red-faced city officials, is less than enthused. "The way the city treated her," opined her daughter Geraldine Johnson, "she does not want to live in Philadelphia."
Her treatment at the hands of those who call themselves "civil servants" points to the underlying indifference with which black lives, property, and aspirations are treated by the political elite. One would be hard pressed to find this degree of destructive nonchalance in a neighborhood where a white grandmother lived.
Another chapter in the tragicomedy called "The Drug War."
April 1992
***
The lost generation?
Recent published reports have lamented the fact that African-American youth are remarkably resistant and virtually unresponsive to traditional, big-name public relations and big-time sports figures when they use the major media to attempt to communicate with younger blacks. The study found deep and profound alienation among youth, and a fundamental streak of fatalism about the promise of tomorrow -- a sense that "tomorrow may not come, so let's live today."
The youth, while they view large blocks of TV, perceive it from the position of outsiders, knowing that the dramas, comedies, and news programs are not designed for their consumption. Only the urbo-tech musical form known as rap touches them, for it is born of urban youth consciousness and speaks to them, in their idiom, about lives lived on the margins. It is this profound disassociation that forced some nouveau middle-class blacks to lament the youth as "the lost generation."
But are they really "lost," and, if so, to whom?
The Martinican black revolutionary Frantz Fanon once opined that every generation must find its destiny and fulfill it or betray it.
No Fate
-- Terminator 2: Judgment Day, directed by James Cameron
In my father's generation, southern-born of the late 1890s, their destiny was to move their families north, to lands with the promise of a better life away from our hateful homelands in Dixie. The dreams of that generation, sparked by visions of new homes, better education, new cars, and prosperity, were, in relative terms, realized by some, but northbound African-Americans were never able to outrun the stigma of racism.
By the time the 1950s and 1960s generation came of age, during the Nixon-Reagan-Bush eras, race once again defined the limits of black aspirations, and with the shifting of manufacturing jobs back down south and abroad, so went dreams of relative prosperity. The children of this generation -- born into sobering poverty amid shimmering opulence, their minds weaned on Falcon Crestian TV excess while locked in want, watching while sinister politicians spit on their very existence -- are the hip-hop/rap generation.
Locked out of the legal means of material survival, looked down upon by predatory politicians and police, left with the least relevant educational opportunities, talked at with contempt and not talked to with love -- is there any question why such youth are alienated? Why the surprise?
They look at the lives they live and see not "civil rights progress" but a drumbeat of civil repression by a state at war with their dreams. Why the surprise?
This is not the lost generation. They are the children of the L.A. rebellion, the children of the MOVE bombing, the children of the Black Panthers, and the grandchildren of Malcolm; far from lost, they are probably the most aware generation since Nat Turner's; they are not so much lost as they are mislaid, discarded by this increasingly racist system that undermines their inherent worth.
They are all potential revolutionaries, with the historic power to transform our dull realities.
If they are lost, find them.
June 1992
***
Blues for Huey
The blaring trumpet of African exile Hugh Masakela screams out of the speaker, at the door of the storefront on North Philly's Columbia Avenue, soaring, plummeting, slicing a sharp, clear cut through the thick, muggy, midsummer midday mist, playing "Blues for Huey." The author sits, hypnotized by the horn, stiffened into a stupor by the Masakela sound, brassy, acute, clean, powerful, full of the melancholy sounds of tears, pain, and soggy lust crafted in dusty Soweto shabeens, laced with the newfound militance of black U.S. youth, Africa and Afro-America, reunited in Masakela's righteous horn, reignited into one fire.
"Blues for Huey" blared from Philadelphia's Panther office.
That awesome instrumental came, unbidden, into my consciousness when the news burst that Huey P. Newton, the once minister of defense of the Black Panther Party, was found shot to death in an Oakland street. It hit like a Masakela solo -- in the gut -- in the heart! It's amazing that Huey was almost fifty; it's almost more amazing that Huey's tragedy, and ours, could be met by the innocent query of millions of black teens and preteens: "Huey who?"
I had to reach back some twenty summers to summon up "Blues for Huey," that bittersweet set that may or may not have been in homage to Newton.
Some songs mark an era, and this energetic tune does that for me.
Always a small fry in the Panther organization, I met the defense minister only once, when he came to Philadelphia and I was assigned to bodyguard duties. I doubted he knew my name, but I loved him. Huey -- self-taught, brilliant, taciturn, strong-willed -- molded the righteous indignation and rage of an oppressed people into a national, militant, revolutionary nationalist organization. His courageous spirit touched the downtrodden, black America's so-called lumpenproletariat classes, and energized them into a balled fist of angry resistance, prompting FBI director J. Edgar Hoover's observation that the party posed "the most serious threat" to America's internal security. Huey woke up the historically ignored strata of black life and put them in the service of the people via free breakfast programs and free clothing programs, and organized units of community self-defense.
To the U.S. ruling class, this stirring of black life into liberational activity proved too much -- enter the dogs of deception. The government unleashed the FBI, whose function, in Hoover's words, was to "frustrate every effort ... to consolidate ... forces or to recruit new or youthful members" by the party, which at its apex had chapters in forty-five U.S. cities.
Government efforts at disruption were swift and deadly. Setups with regional police became routine, sparked by America's historic phobia about "niggers with guns," and in the aftermath, some thirty-eight Panthers were shot down by racist cops. Party ranks were riddled with FBI-paid agents provocateurs and informants. Paranoia swelled as cop raids grew in frequency and intensity, beggaring the party through bails and legal fees.
By the mid-1970s, the party, split by government disruption and internal strife, suffering from a sharp membership decline, faded from the world's stage. Huey, a supreme commander without a command, a visionary with no outlet for his vision, a revolutionary bereft of a revolutionary party, retrogressed into the fascination of the street hustlers of his Oakland youth; the pimps, the players, the "illegitimate capitalists" (as he called them) called him. It was, to be sure, a fatal attraction.
Huey was, it must be said, no godling, no saint. He was, however, intensely human, curious, acutely brilliant, a lover of all the world's children, an implacable foe of all the world's oppressors. He rapped philosophy with the late Chinese premier Chou En-lai; he met Mao; he supped with North Korea's Kim Il Sung; he was a guest of Castro.
Huey Percy Newton, by his will and great heart, marked his age with militance, making a noble contribution to the black liberation struggle. That he could die at the hands of a crack fiend is sobering testament to how low he, and we, have fallen. The best memorial to such a one is to purge our communities of the poison that plagued, and finally plugged, a truly remarkable man; and to use the highlights of his memory to spark a renewal in revolutionary consciousness.
August 1989
***
Philly daze: an impressionistic memoir
If Wallace would dare to run for president in Philadelphia, we, four black North Philly teens, would dare to protest -- in his white honky face, if need be. So we did, Eddie, Alvin, Dave, and I. We began by boarding the Broad Street subway and riding to the end. Four Afros amid a sea of blonds, brunettes, and redheads, entering the citadel of urban white racist sentiment to confront the Alabaman.
We must've been insane. We strolled into the stadium, four lanky dark string beans in a pot full of white, steaming limas. The band played "Dixie." We shouted, "Black power, Ungowa, black power!" They shouted, "Wallace for president! White power!" and "Send those niggers back to Africa!" We shouted, "Black power, Ungowa!" (Don't ask what "Ungowa" means. We didn't know. All we knew was that it had a helluva ring to it.) "Black power!" They hissed and booed. We stood up in our seats and proudly gave the black power salute. In answer, we received dubious gifts of spittle from those seated above. Patriots tore American flags from their standards and hurled the bare sticks at us. Wallace, wrapped in roars of approval, waxed eloquent. "When I become president, these dirty, unwashed radicals will have to move to the Sovee-yet Union! You know, all throughout this campaign these radicals have been demonstrating against George Corley Wallace. Well, I hope they have the guts to lay down in front of my car. I'll drive right over 'em!" The crowd went wild.
Helmeted cops came and told us we must leave. We protested but were escorted out (perhaps a little relieved). Outside, Eddie, Alvin, Dave, and I saw a few other blacks from Temple University and a group of young whites, also thrown out of the rally. We gathered at the bus station to get on the "C" for North Philly. But before we could board, we were attacked by several white men. One of them had a lead and leather slapjack. Outarmed and outnumbered, we fought back, but four teens were no match for eight to ten grown men.
I was grabbed by two of them, one kicking my skull while the other kicked me in the balls. Then I looked up and saw the two-toned, gold-trimmed pant leg of a Philly cop. Without thinking, and reacting from years of brainwashing, I yelled, "Help, police!" The cop saw me on the ground being beaten to a pulp, marched over briskly -- and kicked me in the face. I have been thankful to that faceless cop ever since, for he kicked me straight into the Black Panther Party.
Summer in North Philly is a little like paradise to a young dude. It's so hot that sweat runs like rain in the Amazon. The air is thick with energy so real that you can smell heartbeats. The heat hangs like a haze, a loving, sticky sweet hug of Motha Nature on black flesh.
Defense captain Reg narrows his eyes in a paternal smile. "Hey, lieutenant -- it's too hot to work, come on and let's get a taste." The two leave the dim Panther storefront and cross Columbia Avenue to Webb's Bar. Johnny Webb, a man born to work with people, serves up a toothy grin and welcomes the two Panthers into his cool dark den; he wipes the glossy bartop and serves up the drinks. The captain takes a shot, and the younger Panther orders a Bitter Dog, a Philly refinement on the West Coast's Bitter Mothafucka -- both composed of red wine and citrus; grapefruit in the MF, lemon in the dog. It's cool and tangy going down, and both the captain and the information lieutenant cool out in their own way. James Brown serves up southern shout from the jukebox, and Mumia screws up enough courage to ask a sister to dance. It's the Bitter Dog dancing, cause the lieutenant can't, his awkwardness causing the whole house to rock with laughter, both at his unique style (if it can be called that) and at his beat-up, scuffed-up, toes-bent-up-to-look-like-Arabian-slippers boots (which don't help much).
Jintz, a dark, lovely sister from California, laughs almost to burst. Mumia, his ears throbbin' from James Brown ("Say it loud, I'm black and I'm proud"), and wanting a breath of fresh air, sticks his head out the front door -- and sees two white men dressed in army jackets kicking in the front door of the Panther office across the street. The buzz from the Bitter Dog evaporates. "Reg! Yo, Reg! Somebody breakin ina office!" The young lieutenant turns back to the street and focuses on a .38 special close enough to touch. "Freeze, nigger! If you fuckin' blink, I'll blow your black goddamn head off your shoulders!"
Red strobes sweep the summer night. Mumia freezes, and the Bitter Dog transforms itself into cold sweat. The man holding the gun smiles -- sort of. His teeth are bared, but his eyes are like blue glaciers. His face and neck glow in a red flash. "This is it," the young Panther lieutenant thinks. The .38 is so close that he can smell gun oil. Across the street, white men are throwing files and papers into the street.
There I was in the 1970s, a bored, slightly petit bourgeois, burnt-out ex-Black Panther who distrusted organizations and still simmered in a stew of generational rebellion. I felt all dressed up with no place to go. The Panthers, to whom I had loaned my life, were sputtering in an internecine, bicoastal, and bloody feud, East Coast against the West Coast: those aligned with the then minister of information Eldridge Cleaver on the East against those siding with once minister of defense Huey P. Newton on the West. Cleaver was an idol to me; Newton, whom I had once served as a bodyguard, a hero. The prospect of us fighting one another sickened me. "I didn't join the BPP to get in a goddamn gang war!" I thought angrily to myself. "Shit! I could've stayed in North Philly for this dumb shit!"
The Panthers had established bona fide, shonuff diplomatic relations with progressive and revolutionary states and movements across the globe -- the People's Republic of China, North Korea, Congo-Brazzaville, the African National Congress, the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Cuba, and the like. The government of Algeria granted land for the Black Panther Party International Section, the first embassy of the African-American people of North America.
By 1974 the state's militia had slaughtered more than thirty militants and jailed many more; had seeded branch offices with informers and agents provocateurs; had tapped phones, covered mail, destroyed party property. Then there was an on-TV feud between Eldridge and Huey (set up by an obliging white newsman) that had resulted in two deaths. Blood for blood. East for West. Panthers croaking Panthers. I knew both men. Frustrated, angry, I drifted away from a party that had drifted away from its moorings in the people. Bitterly, I told myself that I would never join another organization. I would support, send money, write agitprop. But join? Nothin' happening. No suh! Unh unh! Not me! Then I met MOVE.
Philly, like its northern cousin New York, is a talk radio town. The pace, the political life, the sheer size of such cities makes them good breeding grounds for talk radio. Retirees, night shift workers, the unemployed, part-timers, and crackpots, all contribute to the potpourri of talk radio.
Back in the mid-1970s, a veteran announcer and all-round broadcaster named Wynn Moore began talk in Philly in a big way, virtually overnight transforming a jazz outlet into an organ for wordmongers. Tall, meaty, with piercing eyes, a pointed Vandyke, and a bass voice that rolled around the basement -- that was Wynn Moore. As program director for WWDB-FM, he assembled a madcap corps of talk jocks, insurance salesmen, students, and news readers. I was one of them. He juggled us, shook us up until we fizzed, then turned us loose on the Delaware Valley. Ratings grew. Opinions flew like hatchets in a Chinese restaurant. Right-wing hosts had to abide left-wing listeners, and vice versa.
Everything that was anything and everybody that was anybody passed through DB's doors and hit the microphones. Politicians, writers, activists, sports stars, psychics, economists, and assorted loons -- you name them, all were welcome on DB's airwaves. Almost all, anyway. One day I aired a brief cut from an interview with MOVE members demonstrating at the offices of the Philadelphia Tribune, a newspaper written for black Philadelphians. From the day I was first hired at DB I had sought audio from live sources by going to demos, news conferences, events, and incidents. Anyplace, anywhere, anytime for a sound bite: that was me. Except for world news, I never used the wires. For me, a day without audio was like a day without sunshine. And I loved sunshine (still do).
My MOVE cut was brief, and not particularly offensive, unless you happened to be an employee of the Philadelphia Tribune. So after the hourly newscast, I was surprised to hear a familiar voice roaring at me: "Mumia, as long as you're working here, I don't want to ever hear that MOVE shit on my radio station!" Before I could answer, Wynn turned and stalked out of the newsroom. I was shaken. I waited until the day had ended, and the red had left his face, before asking the obvious. He let out with a sigh that was half a blast of anger, and explained.
"A few years ago I was program director of a station up in Chester. Just like now, I also hosted a show. I had the bright idea to invite these MOVE nuts to my studio for an interview. It was a disaster! They took over the show -- wouldn't answer a question, and I couldn't get a goddamned word in edgewise. They were ranting on, pa pa pa pa pa. They wouldn't let me moderate my own show. I couldn't speak on my own show. That was it for me. I swore then, never again." I looked at Wynn, a man I respected as brutally honest and one of the best teachers of my craft. I swallowed my own not inconsiderable pride (it was, after all, my freedom I was concerned about and not MOVE's) and followed his edict. I never aired another MOVE story while I was at his station.
Being news director of WHAT-AM meant doing the morning shift, training new talent, organizing features for the newscasts, and hosting a weekend show. I reveled in it and worked with youthful enthusiasm and energy. In 1975, the Reverend Jesse Jackson brought his show to town, and black Christian Philly erupted in a storm of support for the "country preacher."
Philadelphia PUSH (People United to Serve/ Save Humanity) hosted a national convention at the downtown Sheraton Hotel, and hundreds lined up to get in and hear Jackson. Not only would the event be broadcast live over WHAT, it would be simulcast over a network of black stations all across America. And hosting it would be -- Mumia Abu-Jamal!
I was excited and eager but tried to play it off as no big thing. I worked with the engineers to get the equipment and the airtime right, and in spite of my nervousness, I knew I could handle it -- and did. All went well as I interwove commentary and interviews, gospel singers and live audiences, with the words of Jesse himself. I was as high as a Georgia pine. The second day I arrived before airtime to get set up and found a small picket line in front of the Sheraton. They wore blue denim. Their hair was long, nappy, and uncombed. They were MOVE.
Delbert Africa was on the bullhorn giving Jesse hell. MOVE folks carried signs that read "THIS DUMB ASS NIGGA IS BEGGING FAVORS FROM THE SAME SYSTEM THAT OPPRESSES HIM!" Always hungry for a sound bite, I unslung my trusty tape recorder and approached Delbert. "If Jesse Jackson has gotta solution, why ain't he givin' it to everybody instead a selling it at $25 a seat? What about poor folks from North Philly, why they gotta spend they last dolla, if they got it, to hear this nigga? John Africa teaches us that the truth is free, like the air we breathe. It ain't to be sold." Del went on, as MOVE folks, when they get going, tend to do. I got my sound bite and more, then took the elevator up to the Jackson suite, where I found the Reverend surrounded by mostly black plainclothes cops who were working as his bodyguards.
I found him, as always, game for an interview, and asked him what he thought of the demonstration out front. The Reverend looked at me like I was speaking Javanese and wrinkled his handsome features into a sneer. "I have an agenda for black people in America, young man," he said. "An A-GEN-DA! Who cares about a bunch of dirty, unwashed niggas who don't comb their hair?" Like a fool, I'd turned my Sony off. I turned it on and asked for more. This time Jesse answered, "No comment," and the police (in and out of uniform) around the room smiled.
After I heard Jesse's sincere but off-the-record sentiments, I did my broadcast from the PUSH convention that morning somewhat lacklusterly. As I left the hotel I walked back into the demo, but this time Delbert was haranguing not the air but two large black men whom I recognized from the suite upstairs. They were telling Delbert Africa to take his bullhorn and his demonstration away from the hotel. Delbert was explaining to them about freedom of speech (which is a human, not a constitutional, right for MOVE). There's plenty of freedom of speech on the next block, they said, and then they made the mistake of putting their hands on Delbert. Fists flew, a bullhorn arced, and blood spurted. Sensing news, I flicked on my Sony and dove in, dodging punches.
Within minutes the civil affairs squad was on the scene. Jesse's bodyguards were taken away to be treated for cuts and bruises, while Delbert and the other MOVE men were taken away in handcuffs. I grimaced at the obvious injustice of the whole setup, and at the apathy of the crowd that had gathered. But I had my story. That night I played it as my lead. The grunts, curses, shouts, shrieks, and yells (I always said MOVE was great sound) were the next best thing to being there.
After the broadcast my boss came into the newsroom, looking serious. I knew what he was going to say.
"Mumia, management wants to pull the tape of that demonstration and fight."
"Bernie, I can't do that. When I went to work for you, I promised to do my best to deliver the news truthfully. And you promised to back me up."
"I understand that, Mumia. But this station is cosponsoring the PUSH event. We're simulcasting across the country. We have a responsibility to see that the thing is a success."
"I agree. But let me say this. Wasn't what happened and what I aired the truth? And don't our listeners at WHAT deserve the truth?"
Bernie looked at me sideways with a half smile -- a half "you smart little bastard" smile. Then a full smile broke from his lips.
"You're right, Mumia. I'll stand up to management on your side. You did a good job."
I was never prouder of that man, or of my chosen career. He could have fired me. And I thought of Jesse's haunting words: "Who cares about a bunch of dirty, unwashed niggas who don't comb their hair?"
I did.
Black radio acts as an unofficial feeder system to white radio and TV careers. It's a farm club, where talents are tested, whitenized, and then packaged for general market consumption. When I left Moore's station, I was on this track. You could hear me on the Mutual Black Network, NPR, and the Associated Press. I fancied myself an independent reporter, and I was more independent than most. I never took a story off the wires if I could write it myself.
Proud of my independence, I covered every story, even MOVE. They were no more popular with black reporters than with white; maybe less. Their nappy-headed, aggressive, naturalistic style conflicted with the greased down, "good nigga" image the media was looking for, and most black reporters steered clear of them. I tried to be objective. Not that I went out of my way to chase them down. Not that I had to.
The change came after I read a 1975 story in the papers. It told of a night raid by cops on a MOVE gathering in West Philly. MOVE men, newly sprung from jail (they were continually in conflict with the establishment), arrived at their home early one morning. As they hugged and kissed wives and babies, a noisy, loving celebration filled the streets.
Citing neighbors' complaints, the cops came, clubs swinging. Several MOVE men were beaten, others arrested. MOVE charged brutality. The cops, of course, denied it. Standard stuff. MOVE even claimed that the cops killed a baby. Cops charged that MOVE was lying. Standard stuff. Lies from the cops. MOVE media overkill. Mumia was no green kid; I was too hip to believe either side.
MOVE called to invite me to a press conference. I refused in a friendly manner, telling their spokeswoman (Louise Africa) that I was too busy. She called me a liar. I erupted in anger. "I ain't got time for this bullshit!" "Well, make time. This ain't no game! Stop lying and tell me why you ain't coming!" I was outraged. I had never heard of a group calling a reporter a liar and abusing him for refusing to come to their press conference. As mad as a bee in a wine bottle, I hung up. And that was that. They had their press conference without Mumia.
Two days later I picked up a copy of the Philadelphia Tribune from a newsstand. The story was about the press conference, but a picture at the bottom of the page told the proverbial thousand words.
A black-and-white grainy photo of a light-skinned black baby boy, his tiny bruised body in a cardboard box, with fruit and yams laid beside him. I recognized him!
I must have looked at it twenty times.
Almost asleep, he looked. Peaceful in death.
I cursed myself. A few times. Quite a few times. I remembered my hot anger. I thought of my son, about Life Africa's age. I wept hot tears of shame. I cursed myself some more. Then I went back to work.
After the death of Life Africa, MOVE became more and more militant. Their confrontations with police became more frequent, their assertions of their own rights and way of life more aggressive.
On May 20, 1977, the assertion became total. MOVE men and women were seen on a wooden platform on the outside of their Powelton Village (West Philly) headquarters, armed and uniformed. Shotguns, semiautomatic weapons, dark khaki uniforms ... armed black folks! Niggas with guns!
The city went wild. Front-page photos, live video -- not since the Panthers strolled the streets of Sacramento had a black organization captured the imagination of the people with simple, unapologetic militance.
"We are tired of being beaten, bones broken, and murdered babies. No longer will this system attack us with impunity. From now on, we will defend ourselves." In answer, the cops set up sniper nests around the neighborhood. Mayor (and ex-police commissioner) Frank Rizzo issued an ultimatum: "Starve 'em out!" The paramilitary option included cordoning off the neighborhood so that nothing came in or out, unless sniffed by cops. Even longstanding homeowners had to show ID to enter their own cordoned-off neighborhood. Tensions mounted. Tempers flared. But, miraculously, no shots were fired.
Meanwhile, MOVE was becoming blacker. White members, plus some Spanish and Asian members, were scared off by the police presence. Most of the blacks stood fast, even under constant surveillance, with silenced rifles pointed at them for months, angry policemen looking through the sights. The siege was one year old when MOVE agreed to allow a cop with a metal detector to sweep through the headquarters. The building was pronounced "clean."
Thus emboldened, Rizzo ordered the siege broken by armed force. On the morning of August 8, 1978, before daybreak, a shot rang out. According to then KYW reporter (now Tribune editor) Paul Bennet, the shot came from across the street, not from MOVE. No matter. The police hatred that had been building up for fifteen months was unleashed in a blitzkrieg of bullets. Reporters and firefighters hit the dirt.
By midday, the silence was back. One cop lay dead. Delbert Africa was beaten and pummeled, punched and kicked, into near unconsciousness. Ten MOVE people were charged with murder. I was at Rizzo's press conference. A WCAU-TV reporter, Bill Baldini, who dared to ask if any of the captives had been beaten, was tongue-lashed by the police commissioner and called a liar (even though WCAU-TV had caught it all on video). Officials lying, though, weren't news in Philly. Still aren't.
While walking to work one day, I passed in front of an idling cop car. I glanced at the driver -- white, with brown hair, and wearing dark shades. He "smiled," put his hand out the car window, and pointed a finger at me, his thumb cocked back like the hammer of a gun: bang-bang-bang -- the finger jerked, as if from recoil, and the cop gave it a cowboyish blast of breath before returning it to an imaginary holster. He and his pal laugh. Car rolls. Whatta joke, I thought, as I sat down to type up an interview with three women known as the Pointer Sisters, post-"salty peanuts" phase. But it was hard to concentrate. There was only one kind of pointing on my mind. And it wasn't those glitzy sisters.
On December 9, 1981, the police attempted to execute me in the street. This trial is a result of their failure to do so. Just as the police tried to kill my brothers and sisters of the family Africa on August the 8th 1978. [1]
I'm sleeping, sort of.
It has the languorous feel of sleep, with none of the rest. Time seems slower, easier, less oppressive. I feel strangely light. I look down and see a man slumped on the curb, his head resting on his chest, his face downcast. "Damn! That's me!" A jolt of recognition ripples through me.
A cop walks up to the man and kicks him in the face. I feel it, but don't feel it. Three cops join the dance, kicking, blackjacking the bloody, handcuffed fallen form. Two grab each arm, pull the man up, and ram him headfirst into a steel utility pole. He falls.
"Daddy?"
"Yes, Babygirl?"
"Why are those men beating you like that?"
"It's okay, Babygirl, I'm okay."
"But why, Daddy? Why did they shoot you and why are they hitting and kicking you, Abu?"
"They've been wanting to do this for a long time, Babygirl, but don't worry, Daddy's fine -- see? I don't even feel it!"
The chubby-cheeked child's face softly melts into the features of a broad-nosed, bald, goldtoothed, and grizzled old man, his dark brown skin leathery and nicely wrinkled.
"Boy, you all right?"
"Yeah, Dad, I'm okay."
"I love you, boy."
"And I love you, Daddy."
The "I love you" echoes like feedback, booming like a thousand voices, and faces join the calming cacophony: wife, mother, children, old faces from down south, older faces from -- Africa? Faces, loving, warm, and dark, rushing, racing, roaring past. Consciousness returns to find me cuffed, my breath sweet with the heavy metallic taste of blood, in darkness.
I lie on the paddy wagon floor and am informed by the anonymous crackle on the radio that I am en route to the police administration building a few blocks away.
I feel no pain -- just the omnipresent pressure that makes every bloody breath a labor.
I recall my father's old face with wonder at its clarity, considering his death twenty years before.
I am en route to the Police Administration Building, presumably on the way to die.
_______________
Notes:
1. Commonwealth v. Abu-Jamal 555 A.2d 846 (Pa. 1989). Mumia Abu-Jamal's statement to his jury at his sentencing hearing.