Here are the opening lines of a piece by Marc Cooper, Nation writer and
radio correspondent, in the New York Press, a free weekly newspaper. “I
make no New Year’s resolution. Instead, I have a simple plea: Oh Lord,
please make 2000 a year free of Mumia. That’s right. That’s no typo. I
said free of Mumia. Not Free Mumia.” This is so disgusting that it is hard
to comprehend how it can have left the pen of someone who calls himself
progressive. It doesn’t get better as Cooper calls Mumia “a  flaky cult
member,” makes an analogy between Mumia and Charles Manson, and tries to
portray those fighting for Mumia as mindless toads in thrall to a “wigged
out” phony, blinded to the plight of others facing the death penalty or
other legal injustice, without benefit of comparable counsel.

Cooper decries those who call Mumia a political prisoner for sullying the
anti-death penalty movement, apparently privy to more wisdom on such matters
than the rest of us. We thought by way of comment we would provide just
a few contrasting views, made public in the same period in January as Cooper
saw fit to express himself on the matter. Here, for example, is Martin
Luther King III speaking for the SCLC, “Conscience compels me to unite
with Nelson Mandela, Catholic Bishop Thomas Gumbelton, elected representatives
of the European Parliament, the Congressional Black Caucus, Amnesty International,
Harry Belafonte, Paul Newman, Ossie Davis, Danny Glover, Arch Bishop Desmond
Tutu, and millions of others around the globe to fight for the life of
our brother in ‘the struggle,’ Mumia Abu- Jamal.” The folks listed are
among those deceived by Mumia’s dreadlocks into believing he is worthy
of support, at least according to Cooper’s grandstanding denunciation.
King continues, “We must stand by Abu-Jamal’s side just as we stood by
the sides of Nelson Mandela, Angela Davis, Ben Chavis, and Joann Little…
We must come together as a family in the spirit of my father who said,
‘the arc of the universe is long but is bent towards justice,’ and never
give up until we save the life of our brother, Mumia Abu-Jamal.” Cooper’s
cult member becomes King’s brother.

Here’s actor and activist Ossie Davis on the matter, at a meeting with
federal officials in Washington, DC at the same time as Cooper’s piece
appeared: “I join in urging you to investigate the abundant record of the
violations of the rights of Mumia Abu-Jamal. In doing so, I represent a
tradition of artists and cultural figures who seek to give voice to a larger
social conscience. We reflect a deep and broad concern about the injustice
so clear and egregious in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. This case rises
to a level symbolizing a history of such abuse. The fact that so many artists
of prominence have raised their voices is a measure of the importance of
this case.” Cooper, however, says that to fight for Mumia Abu Jamal is
to degrade the fight against the death penalty.

Here is Sam Jordan, the Director of the Program to Abolish the Death Penalty
for Amnesty International USA at the same federal meeting: “I wish to point
out that the Justice Department has already investigated the conduct of
the police in many cities. Statistics concerning the death penalty establish
that it is a weapon against the poor and overwhelmingly against African
Americans and people of color. The record shows that while only 4% of the
population of Pennsylvania, excluding Philadelphia, are Black or Brown,
70% of death row inmates are Black or Brown. If Philadelphia is included,
the percentage increases to 90%. We also wish to point out that the U.S.
Justice Department has obtained a Consent Decree in the wake of its investigation
of the Pittsburgh Police Department. Other such Consent Decrees have been
obtained by the Department of Justice where police brutality, corruption,
and the violation of citizens’ rights have been endemic, institutionalized,
and sustained over years.

“The evidence before the U.S. Department of Justice establishes a pattern
revealing the targeting and persecution of Black and Brown citizens, the
overwhelmingly poor, and the disadvantaged. This clear pattern is itself
a violation of the civil rights statutes. It requires a systematic investigation
and it bears directly upon the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. These are the models
for the investigation required here. We seek to make the case for U.S.
compliance with its own strictures about the violation of basic rights
which are present here.”

Jordan, in Cooper’s eyes, is presumably not really concerned about the
death penalty, given his concern for Mumia.

Jacquiline Petitot, a representative from Martinique was at that meeting
too, and said, “I am the spokeswoman here for over 1,000 people who signed
the Open Letter to President Bill Clinton, among them Aime Cesaire, the
great poet of Negritude, mayor of Fort de France and honorary MP of Martinique;
for several Martinique MPs at the French Parliament; for local officials;
and for a great number of students, pupils, artists, trade union and political
leaders of our island. I also bring the endorsement of Georges Odlum, minister
of the independent island of Saint Lucia, and of the general secretary
of the National Workers’ Union of Saint Lucia. Guadeloupe trade union leaders
also endorsed the letter. The people of Martin- ique, Guadeloupe, Caribbean
islands are more and more concerned by the situation of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
We wish you to know that African-Caribbeans and people of conscience in
our region are anguished by this terrible injustice. We struggle for the
life of Mumia Abu-Jamal and we appeal to you to defend democratic rights
and the principle of equal justice before the law.” But Marc Cooper knows
better.

On the home front, at this same meeting was Lindsay Mclaughlin who said:
“I come here mandated by the rank and file membership of the International
Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). This is not the result of resolutions
passed, although there are many of these. This reflects a considered belief
that an injustice is taking place here of the gravest nature. A man who
fights for the disadvantaged and who exposed police brutality and police
corruption in Philadelphia has been singled out for reprisal in a replay
of exactly what he himself so long exposed. Members of the ILWU know what
such injustice means. We have a long experience of it and a history of
resistance to it. We know that those in positions of power use the authority
of the legal system to attack the rights of working people. A manifestation
of our concern and our determination to see justice done in the case of
Mumia Abu-Jamal was the ILWU shut- down of the ports on the West Coast
of the United States on April 24 of last year. I am here to tell you that
this case touches working people and affects their vital interests. Our
union will continue to take measures and to urge others to join us in demanding
justice for Mumia Abu-Jamal.” Apparently, for Cooper, the ILWU is confused,
too.

Among many others to offer comments for a section of Z’s online system,
Howard Zinn writes: “When Sacco & Vanzetti faced death, and their lawyers
came to them with hopeful new legal strategies, Vanzetti would answer:
it won’t help—they are determined to kill us—the only thing that will work
is if a million people take to the streets and frighten the hell out of
the system. That did not happen, and they were executed. When Mumia’s death
warrant was signed, there was a world-wide campaign (I saw signs on the
buildings of Bologna, Italy) of protest, and the execution was stayed.
Now it will take more. If a million black men could assemble, as they did,
in Washington for a less-focused objective, certainly a million persons,
black and white, men and women, could assemble in Philadelphia, for a clearly
focused aim, to stop the murder of Mumia Abu-Jamal.”

The Nation, thankfully, doesn’t offer only Cooper. Here is an excerpt from
a guest editorial they ran by Angela Davis, June Jordan, and Alice Walker:
“Even though these United States detain the world’s largest death row population—Even
though these United States lead the industrialized world in numbers of
people incarcerated and, correlatively, in total expenditures for prison
construction, prison maintenance and prison personnel—Even though these
United States maintain a more aggressive, and growing, commitment to the
imprisonment of their citizens than to public education of their peoples—He
must not die.

“Even though close to 70 percent of America’s prisoners are people of color—Even
though more than 90 percent of those on death row are poor—He must not
die. As the state cannot take away what it has not given—He must not die.
As the state cannot retract what it has never conferred—the state cannot
kill this man. He must not die.

“As he still lives, a black man sentenced to death among so many millions
of his brothers and sisters sentenced to penury, contempt and tragic short
circuitries of choice and aspiration—As he still lives— so he ennobles
the rest of us to deepen, enlarge and improve our political opposition
to a state gone mad with greed and the pathologies of uncontested, supremacist
might. We begin here, where we can win. We can do this. We can keep him
alive. He must not die.”

All people of good will should care about Mumia’s case and lend their support
to the effort to win him a new trial. Mumia is an eloquent voice for a
more just world. But more, his case has evolved into a decisive contest
in the struggle against the death penalty, racism, police brutality, and
police-state frame-ups.

As to Marc Cooper, his role in the Pacifica conflicts was damning, but
his New York Press essay is beneath contempt. Whether Cooper is running
to the right looking for lucre or just confused doesn’t matter a lot. Like
Cooper, we, too, have a simple plea: let’s make 2000 a year free of Cooper’s
kind of garbage.             Z