Mumia Speaks

Mumia Speaks



“Black & Blue: Race, Violence & American Policing”  



Since July of 1992 broadcast journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, in
collaboration with Prison Radio, has delivered searing and impactful
commentaries that challenge the complacency of a prejudicial status quo
and probe the consciousness of our society. 



We would be hard pressed to identify a journalist more committed to the
exposure of racial injustice in American policing practices, or one
quicker to champion the resistance to such inequity.



Esteemed scholar Jonathan Kozol affirms “Mumia refuses to allow his spirit to be broken by the forces of injustice; his language glows with an affirming flame.” Written
and recorded from within the American prison system it is testimony to
Mr. Abu-Jamal’s fortitude and talent as writer, and Ms. Hanrahan’s
energy and consistency as producer, that the span of his illustrious
career including this submission series has been able to transcend
prison walls.



From the Empire’s Death Row, over the course of thirty-three years
political prisoner Abu-Jamal has written eight books, including
“Writings on the Wall” published in 2015, and recorded more than 2,000
broadcast commentaries. Abu-Jamal is a writer of considerable talent and
impact, a broadcast journalist with a global following, and a human
rights activist whose life’s work has been dedicated to identifying,
documenting and exposing pernicious persistent patterns of
exploitation. He is a media worker whose life story documented in the
acclaimed film "Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary" has fatefully become the embodiment of unjust contradictions he seeks to address.



This selection of essays by Mumia has been submitted to the Dupont
Awards at Colombia University: “Black and Blue: Race, Violence and
American Policing.”  Each of these short essays addresses an aspect of
our nation’s most recent violent clashes in which dissonance of
inequality is expressed through racist policing and violence.



The skill of the commentator is repeatedly revealed in the careful
sophistication of his word choices, his ability to deploy historical
references as well as personal experience, and in the professionalism of
his delivery - all the more remarkable because these were recorded off
of prison phone lines.



Abu-Jamal's compassionate reporting is all the more poignant with the
recognition that his own life story closely parallels the
discriminations he reports. Shot, arrested, and beaten until nearly
dead; charged and convicted of a horrible crime following a mockery of a
trial, Mumia spent 28 years on Death Row until his sentence was
overturned in 2011. Sentenced to slow death, life in prison, he knows
well of what he writes and reports.



Due to a rule denying journalist access with recording equipment to
Pennsylvania inmates, radio engineer Noelle Hanrahan built a signal path
which maximizes the potential of recorded Prison phone calls.  Prison
regulations and sometimes the caprice of a guard dictate phone calls and
whether one gets them or not.  Therefore out of necessity this
submission had to be recorded as a series over the course of many phone
calls and numerous months.



While each commentary stands capably alone, as a whole they give voice
to the brutalities associated with racist policing and extrajudicial
violence.  Despite the enforced structural parameters we believe this
contribution is significant - especially when one considers the subject
position of the journalist who writes and delivers the
commentaries. What makes this submission significant is precisely this
unique vantage point, the multiple fluencies of discourse, his ability
to at once be many things: observer, reporter, historian, broadcaster,
writer and theorist.



Voices such as Abu-Jamal's are rarely heard but profoundly relevant. His
work furthers the national discourse surrounding police violence and
state terror and does so from the unique vantage point of one who has
experienced the brunt of brutality first hand.  We see this series as
furthering public discourse on the subject of prejudicial policing and
believe that Mumia Abu-Jamal’s pertinent reporting contributes
substantively to the rising wave of movement intent on advancing the
creed ‘Black Lives Matter’ beyond elusive aspiration and toward a
tangible recalibration of the status quo.



- Submission to Columbia University Dupont Awards



Prison Radio is committed to seeing Mumia Abu-Jamal receive the
recognition he deserves. Please forward us any awards you think we
should apply for: info@prisonradio.org.

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