Why
Mumia Abu-Jamal Must Be Free
by
Alice Walker
Read
at the April 24, 1999
Millions for Mumia demonstration,
San Francisco
Why
should we care that Mumia Abu-Jamal's life is spared?
Why
should we care that he should be set free?
It is because he, like Nelson Mandela before him, reminds us of
our irreducibility as human beings. He shows us our best self,
what we are capable of remaining, under the most oppressive, humiliating,
and soul shattering conditions. Mumia has refused to be reduced.
He remains a full human being.
Thoughtful,
compassionate, intelligent, loving, and fierce. This is no small
accomplishment. From his tiny cell at SCI Greene he manages to
inspire and encourage the world.
In
this time, which is so filled with grief; when we see our own
destruction as a species looming just ahead of us; when we see
there is little unpoisoned grass and almost no pure water to drink;
when our children follow in their elders' footsteps and bomb and
murder other children; when no one is safe anywhere on earth anymore;
where does a voice of sanity seem to be coming from? From a small
cell on death row. IsnŐt this amazing?
Mumia
must be saved to help heal us. To show us the beauty of resistance
and compassion that is also our own. The last time I saw Mumia
Abu-Jamal was about two years ago. I cried as I was leaving him
behind the thick glass wall that separated us in SCI Greene prison
in the backwoods of Pennsylvania. I said to him: I do not want
to leave you here. He said, smiling: But I am going with you.
We
are all about to be launched into a new century whose benchmark
appears already to be disruption, pain, and acute anxiety about
the trustworthiness of leaders and of life itself.
We
are about to leave everything that has been familiar to us, and
to go off into the unknown. Who do we want to go with us? The
so-called wise ones who believe you can stop a war by dropping
a bomb?
Or
do we want, instead, to be holding the hand of our brother who
clearly loves us, Mumia Abu-Jamal?
We
demand the opportunity to walk into the future with this man.
Free
Mumia Abu-Jamal!
haz
