@BYLINE = <T><T><T>BY MUMIA ABU-JAMAL
@DROP CAP = NO ONE WAS MORE SURPRISED THAN I AT THE 
eruption of protest at New York City's Cooper Union on October 2, 
1992, following Pennsylvania Governor Robert Casey's aborted address 
on his pro-life positions.
The subsequent editorials denouncing the protesters for their affront to 
the First Amendment have a distinctly hollow sound, especially to one 
who has found the First Amendment, as applied, equally hollow; for 
although it is undoubted that feelings were hurt by the protest, none of 
the people at Cooper Union face death for their words or past affiliations  
perhaps the ultimate affront to the First Amendment.
@SUB HEAD LG = ABU-JAMAL 'S TRIAL

@BODY INDENT = Prosecutor: Mr. Jamal, let me ask you if you can 
recall saying something sometime ago and perhaps it might ring a bell as 
to whether you are an executioner or endorse such actions.
@BODY INDENT = Black bothers and sisters  and organizations  which 
wouldn't commit themselves before are relating to us Black people that 
they are facing  we are facing the reality that the Black Panther Party has 
been facing which is  
@BODY INDENT = Now listen to this quote. You've often been quoted 
as saying this:
@BODY INDENT = Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
@BODY INDENT = Do you remember saying that sir?
@BODY INDENT = Jamal: I remember writing that. That's a quotation 
from Mao Tse-Tung.
@BODY INDENT = Q: Do you recall making that quote, Mr. Jamal, to 
Acel Moore [then a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer  ed]?
@BODY INDENT = A: I recall quoting Mao Tse-Tung to Acel Moore 
about 12 to 15 years ago.
@BODY INDENT = Q: Do you recall saying All power to the people.? 
Do you recall that?
@BODY INDENT = A: Yes.
@BODY INDENT = Q: Do you believe that your actions as well as your 
philosophy are consistent with the quote Political power grows out of the 
barrel of a gun ?
@BODY INDENT = A: I believe that America has proven that quote to 
be true.
@BODY INDENT = Q: Do you recall saying that The Panther Party is 
an uncompromising party, it faces reality ?
@BODY INDENT = A: (nods head affirmatively) Yes.
@BODY INDENT = [Text taken verbatim from testimony, 
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania vs. Abu-Jamal, pp. 21-22.]
@BODY INDENT = Prosecutor: This is what this is all about, law and 
order. How do we avoid it if we don't like it, we don't just accept it, and 
we don't try to change it from within, we just rebel against it. And maybe 
that was the siege all the way back then with political power, power 
growing out of the barrel of a gun. No matter who said it, when you do 
say it and when you FEEL it, and particularly in an area when you're 
talking about police or cops or shootings and so forth, even back then, 
this is not something that happened overnight. [From argument by the 
prosecutor to the jury in favor of the death penalty, verbatim - ibid, p. 
68.]
@SUB HEAD LG = CASEY SHOUTED DOWN
@BODY INDENT = 
<%4>It is all very well to opinionate about free speech, but it ain't free if 
it's used to kill you. Seen in this light it can hardly be said that the 
Cooper Union protestors were, as their critics contended, fascists   they 
demonstrated for the fullest expression of free speech - for the life of one 
who was, literally, damned for words uttered over a decade before.<%0>
It is both curious and revealing that none (not one) of the free speech 
defenders who raged over the desecration of our hallowed First 
Amendment at Cooper Union made a peep of protest when Philadelphia 
police darkly threatened to put supporters to death on an electric sofa for 
daring to exercise their rights of free speech in my defense. Such a threat, 
coming from those who bombed MOVE men, women, and babies, an 
entire neighborhood, into oblivion with impunity on May 13, 1985, 
surely seems a bit closer to the fascistic model than those who spoke out 
at Cooper Union, but, to date, no single newspaper of general circulation 
condemned the chilling death threats as fascistic.
<%6>It is precisely this piecemeal application that allows the 
Commonwealth of Pennsylvania to ignore the full dictates of the First 
Amendment when it forbids the freedom of MOVE people who have 
been eligible for parole for years, because they refuse to denounce their 
religion; MOVE people like Carlos Africa and Consuela Africa, who 
could be free <MI>today<D> - if they but renounced their religious 
convictions.<%0>
<%4>The First Amendment must become more than the shield of the 
powerful and politically entrenched; to use it as the editorialists suggest 
is to denigrate and implicitly devalue the speech, the faith, the alleged 
guarantees of the powerles<%0>s and politically outcast.
It works for all, or for none.
The dry, formulaic parceling of the First Amendment which makes it a 
cudgel of the strong and a truncheon against the weak; a platform for the 
established and a trapdoor for the poor; loses any significance when not 
read in its wholeness, or applied equally.
@SUB HEAD LG = I KNOW NOTHING !

It has been written that I was surprised, displeased, shocked, and 
saddened, which is true  but not for the reasons given.
Surprised  at the occurrence of the demonstration.
Displeased and shocked  at the governor's statement that he knew nothing 
of the case (except what he'd read in the papers!) even though an 
estimated 40,000 people signed petitions on my behalf and forwarded 
them to his office, at least four congresspersons wrote letters to the 
governor, international and American PEN wrote letters; an avalanche of 
letters from Germany, France, etcand he knew nothing. Nothing.
@SUB HEAD LG = SPIRITUAL DESCENDANTS OF WHOM?

Saddened-initially at what was thought to be a lost opportunity, but what 
was clearly no opportunity, for after the governor professed ignorance, 
that he knew nothing of my case, what would a bunch of questions have 
produced? Nothing  for he knew nothing. One critic, First Amendment 
maven Nat Hentoff [columnist for the Village Voice], likened the anti-
death penalty professors to fascists, and called them the spiritual 
descendants of the dreaded bookburners of nazi infamy.
When the liberal press can depict people who are literally pro-life as 
fascists, while people who threaten those people with death are lauded as 
defenders of law, then words have lost their meaning, and political 
relationships or power vs. powerless have no relevance.
<%-1>Until the baby-burners of Osage, the death-threateners of Philly, 
the state officers who utilize past political persuasions as indicators<%3> 
of death sentences are named fascists for their acts, then the term should 
be retired from the arena of rhetoric.<%0>
@END MARKER = 

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