Building support for Mumia

'Don't let them kill an innocent man'

By Betsey Piette, Workers World May 13, 2007

Philadelphia - Hot off the presses and flying off the shelves! With the bold
banner headline "Don't let them kill an innocent man," a new four-page
newsletter, designed to raise awareness about Mumia Abu-Jamal's 25-year-long
struggle to win freedom from Pennsylvania's death row, is being
enthusiastically received all over Philadelphia.

"I never had people take papers like this before," sister Pam Africa from
International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal told Workers
World. "You go into a place and put down a stack of papers. Before you get
home, people are calling asking for more!"

Africa reported that the newsletter is particularly popular at the North
Philadelphia office of the Universal Negro Improvement Association, where
they were excited to see that it includes an article on UNIA founder Marcus
Garvey focused around the struggle for immigrant rights. The Honorable
Marcus Garvey was an immigrant worker from Jamaica who was deported in 1927.

"The newsletter provides facts about Mumia's case, but it also covers a lot
more issues including the war, police brutality, the elections, and it has
articles in Spanish." Africa noted: "It makes the point that all these
struggles are really one. People especially liked the 'Peoples' Ballot'
mail-in coupon where they could check off 'I vote for a NEW TRIAL for Mumia
Abu-Jamal'.

"When I went to visit Mumia at SCI-Green I handed them out to family members
of other death row prisoners on the bus who all wanted more copies to take
back home."

Thanks to the volunteer efforts of just a few individuals, over 15,000
copies of the newsletter were given out in New York City and Philadelphia in
less than a week. Now calls are coming in from other cities asking for the
papers.

Throughout Philadelphia wherever papers have been dropped off, at
laundromats, barber shops, delis, beauty parlors, pizza or Chinese take-out
shops, the response has been the same. One west Philly pizza shop owner told
a volunteer, "You know the cops won't like this, but you can leave a big
stack right here on the counter."

At a nearby beauty salon on 52nd Street, customers got out of their chairs
to get papers, excited to hear that Abu-Jamal's case was finally going to be
heard in the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, but angry that the state has
never released him from death row.

Further down the street at the corner of Baltimore and 52nd, one man told of
growing up listening to Abu-Jamal's radio commentaries. He'd already given
away his first copy of the newsletter to his father so he took another, and
then took a stack that he started handing out on the spot.

When an elderly African-American man with limited vision received the paper
and learned what it was about he asked the volunteer to repeat the details
of Abu-Jamal's upcoming hearing on May 17 at 9 am at the federal courthouse
at 6th and Market Streets several times so he could remember it. "I'll be
there!" he promised.

At Market and 11th Streets in Center City, one man out shopping with his
children took a paper and commented that he wished he could still hear
Abu-Jamal's radio commentaries. He was thrilled to learn that they are
available on line through www.prisonradio.org.

With less than two weeks before Abu-Jamal's critical hearing on four appeals
of his 1982 conviction, getting out information on his case and letting
people know about the May 17 hearings is the number-one priority. The
Fraternal Order of Police has been on a neo-fascistic rampage trying to
silence support for Abu-Jamal as the court date draws closer. Just like Bush
administration cover-ups around the war in Iraq, the FOP is trying to stop
the truth about Abu-Jamal from getting out.

When the Third Circuit Court of Appeals reviews the case it will decide
whether Mumia Abu-Jamal gets a new trial, life in prison without parole, or
execution. The whole world is watching how the Third Circuit will rule.

We must let them know where we stand: Only Mumia's release or a new trial is
acceptable! Go to www.millions4mumia.org to download the "Don't Let Them
Kill an Innocent Man" newspaper, the May 17 leaflet and poster. To buy New
York bus tickets to go to Philadelphia on May 17, call 212-633-6646.

---

Source : Workers World

http://www.workers.org/2007/us/philadelphia-0517/