An Interview with poet Martin Espada after he visited Mumia in 1997
From an interview by Miguel Sanchez, published in "(sic)vice & verse", Issue Number 7, June-July 1999.

Miguel: Have you talked to Mumia abu-Jamal personally?

Martin: Yes I have. I was, as you know drawn into Mumia's case because my poem about Mumia was first commissioned, then censored by All Things Considered in National Public Radio in April 1997.

A year later May 2, 1998, I found myself sitting on death row across from Mumia Abu-Jamal, as close to him as I am to you. We were separated of course by a Plexiglas screen.

As you know, journalists and writers are banned from that system (prison inmates in Pennsylvania), something that is informally known as the Mumia rule. You can't bring in paper, a pen., a camera, a tape recorder, anything like that.

We had to figure out how I was essentially going to be smuggled into that prison. What we hit upon was the idea of getting me in there as a legal visitor because I am a lawyer and Mumia would have unlimited access to attorney visits.

To remind you, if he doesn't get a visit he stays locked up. He's locked up 23 hours a day. He doesn't come out unless he has a visitor.

When we go into the prison, we wait a long time to be admitted to a visiting area just off death row. We sat and visited with Mumia for a little over two hours. I was really impressed with his physical condition. He seemed to be in very good shape physically. He seemed to be in very good spirits.

The first hour of our conversation was essentially about politics, literature, and a wide range of things as if we were sitting around in a coffee shop, only we were on death row.

I have known my share of political prisoners, I have known my share of people who have gone to prison for political reasons. What was unsettling about this was I had never actually visited such a person in prison, behind the bars, behind the walls and there he was. It was very strange.

At one point I found myself unconsciously pushing on the brick and Plexiglas between us as if somehow I could knock it down and get him out of there.

As we began to talk, Mumia began to reveal some of the immediate circumstances surrounding our visit. Mumia had just come out of a month-long hunger strike. The purpose of the hunger strike was to protest a new regulation passed down by prison authorities that required all inmates to fit all personal possessions into one box: 12"X12"X14". The purpose of this regulation according to Mumia was to retaliate against jailhouse lawyers, who not only have boxes and boxes of legal documents, but also have piles and piles of books.

Mumia has been on death row for 15 years and had accumulated a library. Mumia is also instrumental in helping inmates at SCI Greene to either file legal complaints or get attention from the media.

Remember Mumia is a professional journalist. SCI Greene has been the scene of a wave of repression for the last few years and more that 200 lawsuits have been filed against that institution for brutality of various kinds.

Mumia told us that four guards came into his cell one morning with virtually no notice and carted away 17 boxes of books and papers accumulated over 15 years... gone. He could send some of it back to his home if he could afford it but essentially it was gone.

It was certainly gone from his cell. So we got into a conversation about this and I asked, "What did you choose to keep in your cell? Of all the books you had which one did you keep?" He said, "I chose to keep 'Beloved' in my box."

Then he became very philosophical, he gazed over my shoulder at something, I don't know what, perhaps a vision of his library. He began to speak almost as if to himself, he said, "I'd rather be beaten than have this assault on the life of the mind." He paused and went on to say, "Giving up a book is like giving up a child, like parting with your own flesh. How do you choose between 'Beloved' and 'The Wretched of the Earth'?" He paused again and there was a long silence. I noticed that his eyes had begun to fill up with tears. One tear came down his cheek and then a second tear. As this was going on, I noticed the reflection in the Plexiglas, guards in the distance walking back and forth. The thought occurred to me that they were small blue men patrolling his forehead. Because after all that's what they mean to do, they mean to lock up his mind, they mean to execute his mind, his brain. It's his ideas they want to kill.

So finally someone broke the silence, someone said something and Mumia actually became embarrassed and apologized for blubbering as he put it. I said you have nothing to apologize for.

Shortly thereafter we terminated the visit and the last thing I remember about the visit was we were waiting for the door to open so we could go back into the hallway and into the main waiting area.

We were waiting for this large door to open and as we were waiting, we kept looking back at Mumia. He was still sitting there behind the Plexiglas in the visiting room. Every time we would look back at him, he would wave at us, he would smile. He was trying to keep our spirits up in this devastating and desolate place. This prison, this death row. I thought, what an ironic reversal that was.

What happened during that visit told me everything I needed to know about Mumia Abu-Jamal and told me everything I needed to know about those who want to put him to death... -end-