Revictimization Relief Act. The law permits crime victims and prosecutors to go to court to prevent prisoners from making public statements that cause mental anguish. Governor Corbett was surrounded by police officers, victims’ advocates, and Faulkner’s widow, Maureen Faulkner, at the signing. He said that Mrs. Faulkner “has been taunted by the obscene celebrity that her husband’s killer has orchestrated from behind bars. This unrepentant cop killer has tested the limits of decency, while gullible activists and celebrities have continued to feed this killer’s ego at the expense of his victims.” In November 2014, Abu-Jamal and supporters filed a federal lawsuit in an attempt to overturn the law. 5
“I was punished for communicating,” Abu-Jamal said.
Philosopher Cornel West says in the documentary, “The state is very clever in terms of keeping track, especially [of] the courageous and visionary ones, the ones [who] are long-distance runners. You can keep track of them, absorb ’em, dilute ’em, or outright kill ’em—you don’t have to worry about opposition to ’em.
“If you tell them the truth about the operation of our power, this is what happens to you,” he goes on. “Like Jesus on the cross. This is what happens to you.”
I was not permitted a pencil or paper during my four-and-a-half-hour conversation with Abu-Jamal. I wrote down his quotes immediately after I left the prison. These restrictions mirror the wider pattern ofa society where the poor and the destitute, and especially those who rise up in rebellion, are rendered invisible and voiceless.
The breadth of Abu-Jamal’s reading, which along with his writing and 3,000 radio broadcasts has kept his mind and soul intact, was staggering. His own books are banned in the prison. In conversation he swung from discussions of the Opium Wars between 1839 and 1860 to the Black Panthers to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to the series of legislative betrayals of the poor and people of color by Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and the Democratic Party.
He quoted Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Huey P. Newton, Assata Shakur, Eric Foner, Gore Vidal, Cornel West, Howard Zinn, James Cone, and Dave Zirin. We talked about Nat Turner, Gabriel Prosser, Joseph Cinqué, Harriet Tubman, Charles Deslondes, Denmark Vesey, and Sojourner Truth. He was simultaneously reading
Masters of War
by Clara Nieto,
How the World Works
by Noam Chomsky,
The Face of Imperialism
by Michael Parenti, and
Now and Then
by Gil Scott-Heron. He wondered what shape the collapse of empire will take. And he despaired of the political unconsciousness among many incoming prisoners, some young enough to be his children.
“When I first got out in the yard,” he said, “and I heard groups of men talking about how Sarah was going to marry Jim or how Frank had betrayed Susan, I thought,
Damn, these cats all know each other and their families. That’s odd
. But after a few minutes I realized they were talking about soap operas. Television in prison is the great pacifier. They love
Basketball Wives
because it is ‘T and A’ with women of color. They know how many cars Jay-Z has. But they don’t know their own history. They don’t understand how they got here. They don’t know what is being done to them. I tell them they have to read, and they say, ‘Man, I don’t do books.’ And that is just how the empire wants it. You can’t fight power if you don’t understand it. And you can’t understand it if you don’t experience it and then dissect it.”
Abu-Jamal’s venom is reserved for liberal politicians such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, whom he excoriates for callously disempowering the poor and the working class on behalf of their corporate patrons. And he has little time for those who support them.
“It was Clinton that made possible the explosion of the prison-industrial complex,” he said, speaking of the 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill.
He looked around the visiting area
“I was punished for communicating,” Abu-Jamal said.
Philosopher Cornel West says in the documentary, “The state is very clever in terms of keeping track, especially [of] the courageous and visionary ones, the ones [who] are long-distance runners. You can keep track of them, absorb ’em, dilute ’em, or outright kill ’em—you don’t have to worry about opposition to ’em.
“If you tell them the truth about the operation of our power, this is what happens to you,” he goes on. “Like Jesus on the cross. This is what happens to you.”
I was not permitted a pencil or paper during my four-and-a-half-hour conversation with Abu-Jamal. I wrote down his quotes immediately after I left the prison. These restrictions mirror the wider pattern ofa society where the poor and the destitute, and especially those who rise up in rebellion, are rendered invisible and voiceless.
The breadth of Abu-Jamal’s reading, which along with his writing and 3,000 radio broadcasts has kept his mind and soul intact, was staggering. His own books are banned in the prison. In conversation he swung from discussions of the Opium Wars between 1839 and 1860 to the Black Panthers to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict to the series of legislative betrayals of the poor and people of color by Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, and the Democratic Party.
He quoted Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Huey P. Newton, Assata Shakur, Eric Foner, Gore Vidal, Cornel West, Howard Zinn, James Cone, and Dave Zirin. We talked about Nat Turner, Gabriel Prosser, Joseph Cinqué, Harriet Tubman, Charles Deslondes, Denmark Vesey, and Sojourner Truth. He was simultaneously reading
Masters of War
by Clara Nieto,
How the World Works
by Noam Chomsky,
The Face of Imperialism
by Michael Parenti, and
Now and Then
by Gil Scott-Heron. He wondered what shape the collapse of empire will take. And he despaired of the political unconsciousness among many incoming prisoners, some young enough to be his children.
“When I first got out in the yard,” he said, “and I heard groups of men talking about how Sarah was going to marry Jim or how Frank had betrayed Susan, I thought,
Damn, these cats all know each other and their families. That’s odd
. But after a few minutes I realized they were talking about soap operas. Television in prison is the great pacifier. They love
Basketball Wives
because it is ‘T and A’ with women of color. They know how many cars Jay-Z has. But they don’t know their own history. They don’t understand how they got here. They don’t know what is being done to them. I tell them they have to read, and they say, ‘Man, I don’t do books.’ And that is just how the empire wants it. You can’t fight power if you don’t understand it. And you can’t understand it if you don’t experience it and then dissect it.”
Abu-Jamal’s venom is reserved for liberal politicians such as Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, whom he excoriates for callously disempowering the poor and the working class on behalf of their corporate patrons. And he has little time for those who support them.
“It was Clinton that made possible the explosion of the prison-industrial complex,” he said, speaking of the 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill.
He looked around the visiting area
Similar Books
