Mumia and the Madness that Follows

by Tony Allen

It seems that the quarter century legal saga of Mumia Abu-Jamal will continue on with no apparent end in sight. According to the Philadelphia Inquirer:

Death row inmate Mumia Abu Jamal, convicted of the 1981 murder of Officer Daniel Faulkner, was granted the right to appeal his conviction to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals based on two constitutional issues, in addition to one granted earlier in 2001.

His defense attorneys called Tuesday's order "the most important decision" since 2001, while the district attorney's appellate chief Hugh Burns called it a "major blow."

The three issues include whether Abu Jamal's constitutional rights were denied in connection with the prosecutor's summation, preemptory challenge and alleged judicial bias in post-conviction proceedings.

The remnants of the Jamal cult are cautiously optimistic while Jamal’s detractors are responding with understandable frustration.

For nearly a quarter of a century the family of slain Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner have waited for the punishment that the jury Jamal himself helped to chose, be carried out.

But they have done more than sit in silent frustration awaiting the imposition of the verdict.

They, themselves, have been targeted for vicious rhetorical attacks by Jamal’s morally bereft legions of supporters. Maureen Faulkner, Danny’s widow, has been specifically singled out for abuse at the hands of the “Free Mumia” crowd. She has been spat upon and threatened, she has been accused of using the death of her husband to enrich herself, and she has had to endure the demonization of her husband who was killed so long ago.

As if killing Faulkner was not enough, Jamal’s supporters also sought to tarnish the reputation of Officer Faulkner with lurid accusations of police brutality and inappropriate contacts with prostitutes. While Jamal sits in a death row cell for the murder of Officer Faulkner, his devotees on the streets were seeking to kill the spirit of the Officer’s family with a spiteful and vindictive campaign of personal and oftentimes vulgar assaults.

It was if the Jamal foot-soldiers were making the case that even if Jamal was not the killer, that Faulkner deserved what was coming to him.
And what was it exactly that Daniel Faulkner got from Mumia Abu-Jamal, the failed journalist, MOVE cult apologist, and long-time police hater?

A cold blooded and merciless execution.

Mumia came up behind Officer Faulkner and in a fired one shot into the Officers back. Faulkner was spun around by the blast and managed to get off a shot of his own that struck Jamal in the abdomen. Faulkner, at this point was on the ground and virtually helpless. Jamal, although wounded had sufficient murderous intent to straddle Officer Faulkner and began blasting away at the fallen Officer. Jamal’s final and fatal shot struck Faulkner in the face killing Faulkner instantly. Jamal, tried to escape, but weakened by his own wound could only make it a few feet before he collapsed, where arriving Officers found him still struggling to reach the gun that had fallen from his hand.

People who knew Jamal upon hearing news of what had transpired reacted with disbelief. Mumia was a gentle man they would say, a compassionate man, a man who loved life and loved people. These were, however appraisals of Mumia that precluded the one thing in Jamals life that was starting to matter most to him.. The ultra-extremist MOVE cult. By the time that Mumia killed Faulkner, his life had started to unravel. Due to Jamal’s slavish determinism to cross the line from journalist to MOVE cult-apologist, his career had unraveled to the point that he was having to drive cabs late at night to make ends meet. At the time of the murder Jamal didn’t have much left. He wasn’t really a reporter anymore. He really wasn’t much of a family man anymore. What he was headed for was the dark world of the MOVE cult. A world that I am all to familiar with, having spent nearly a decade in it. It is a world where murder is easily justified and where lying isn’t really lying so long as done in the name of “revolution”. It is a world where you are supposed to sacrifice in order to be accepted. In order to succeed in MOVE you had to renounce those things which might allow you the chance to walk away from the sect, a job, a family, a true sense of morality.

Just how deep Mumia had fallen into the moral abyss that the MOVE cult offered when he assassinated Officer Faulkner is not clear. What is clear, is that over the years, Jamal has internalized MOVE’s disdain for truth and utter lack of remorse for the crimes that the groups members commit

For it was only three years the killing of Faulkner, that MOVE members, Mumia’s heros gunned down another Philadelphia Police Officer. Several other officers and firefighters were also shot that day while as they were attempting to extricate the MOVE cult members from their fortified, Powlehoton Village headquarters. Mumia watched the trial of the nine MOVE members charged from the incident intently. And when it would come time for Jamal to have his own trial he would repeatedly attempt to emulate his mentors attempts to turn the court proceedings into a three ring circus.

Has Jamal ever expressed any sense of sympathy or empathy towards Daniel Faulkner’s widow, Maureen? Hardly. In fact, and it has been proven to be a fact, that when Faulkner’s blood soaked shirt was held up in court, Jamal looked at Maureen and smiled. A brazen and callous act from a man who knows not shame or compassion. Qualities that also seem lacking in those that chose to make Jamal’s cause, that of their own.

The Mumia legal and organizing stratagems seems to revolve around the notion that if one flings enough excrement against a wall, that eventually something might stick.

When one conspiracy theory hits the wall of inevitable diminishing returns, the “Free Mumia” leadership is right there to conjure up more nonsensical and cynical schemes in order to con the public into believing that there is some kind of “justice” to be had for Mumia, a “voice of the voiceless”, a courageous “journalist”, a man who has been “railroaded” by a hopelessly corrupt judiciary.

But, Mumia, is none of those things. He is, and was, a master manipulator, who is the chief apologist for a cult that forces it’s illiterate twelve year old girls to be impregnated by not much older teenage boys. He is a murderer and a coward and a hack who can be expected to parrot whatever far-left political view is in vogue in order to pander to the still faithful.

And still Mumia has a few friends out there in the world. People like journalist Dave Lindorff who writes for the openly pro-Iraqi insurgent Counterpunch online journal and who dances like a fool to avoid the bevy of witnesses who saw Jamal slaughter Police Officer Faulkner.

People like Amira Baraka who had this to say about the catastrophic events of 9/11:

Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed
Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers
To stay home that day
Why did Sharon stay away?

So what does Jamal really have left at his side?

Aging Marxists who can’t accept defeat, much less that world as it truly is? Open anti-semites poets?

The usual band of Stalinists, Maoists, and other assorted imbeciles who live in a world where facts don’t matter only political affiliations?

The whacked out and murderous MOVE cult?

Why should we “Free Mumia” they say? Because he is a good leftist. That is all of the reason they need. Far leftist, faith based justice, armed with ignorance and a sickening disregard for the man that Mumia slaughtered and the Faulkner family that was broken and left behind is all that seems to be needed for the "Free Mumia" recipe.

Would there be books written by the likes of Lindorff if Jamal was just plain old "Wesley Cook", the cab driver? We all know the answer to that. People like Lindorff are much like proponents of creationism, who proceed from conclusion to evidence and assuming what should have to be proved. In his pro-Jamal tracts, Lindorff is offering our own leftist version of faith based idiocy. Because Jamal is of the left, he is therefore somehow good, or so the infantile mind might have one think. I think it just might be time for some of these people on the "Free Mumia" side of the table to start considering growing up and accepting the facts as they are and not how our political affiliations would like them to be,