Welcome

to

Hell

“This is a mean place where bad things are happening.”

A V i s i t t o M u m i a A b u - J a m a l

– Anton Reiner and Michael Schiffmann –

1

“This Is a Mean Place Where Bad Things Are Happening”

A Visit to Mumia Abu-Jamal

– Anton Reiner and Michael Schiffmann –

Om April 29, 2010, the two Mumia activists Anton Reiner (Berlin) and Michael Schiffmann (Hei-

delberg) had the opportunity to visit Mumia Abu-Jamal on death row in the prison SCI Greene in

Waynesburg. They were accompanied by Linn Washington, a friend and supporter of Mumia for

many years. After the visit had become reality after a period of intense preparations, the three

could converse with Mumia for almost six hours on his everyday life, his work as a journalist, his

political interests, his assessments of the coming court decisions in his case, and on the world-

wide Free Mumia movement.

In the following, a report by Anton and Michael.

Entering SCI Greene

After a brief night in a nearby motel which we spent in sur-

prisingly deep sleep despite our excitement, a few minutes

before 9 AM we arrive at a traffic sign with a highly ironic

name, signaling that we have reached the right address: State

Correctional Institution Greene, Waynesburg, Progress Drive

169-175.

Situated in a valley, the prison extends over a large area. There

are bright tiled roofs on low buildings without windows visible

from the outside, two fences with sharp barbed wire glaring in the sun, and a parking lot sur-

rounded by cameras – these are the first signs to greet us. The lobby strikes us as quite unspec-

tacular and somehow reminds us of a hospital, but the bureaucratic procedures that follow quick-

ly bring back to our minds where we actually are.

At the reception, Linn explains the purpose of our visit, we hand in our passports, sign the visitor

list, empty our pockets of all metal (but can keep some

small change for the beverage machines in the visitor

area in a little extra bag). They make us leave behind,

among other things, a pullover sweatshirt, because it

has a hood, and hoods are not allowed. After a little

while we are subjected to the entrance visitations.

Various signs tell us that we are not allowed to take

cameras, taping devices, notepads or pens with us,

and the enforcement officers supplement this by fur-

ther instructions. After this, we are taken further “into

the belly of the beast”: We pass an X-ray gate, are tested for drugs with a sensor, wait once

more in a medium-sized room, go through another X-ray gate, and then reach the first remote

controlled door.

2

A steel door slides open almost inaudibly, and as we

pass through it, closes behind us. A long corridor with

windows towards an inner yard leads us through a steel

door into a room where three officers sit behind bullet-

proof glass and check our passes. Compared to the

relatively easy-going atmosphere during the previous

procedures, the mood and tone of the “supervisors” are

now pronouncedly tenser. Apparently there is some

mix-up in the paperwork for which they seem to think

we are to blame, but the matter is quickly resolved, and

after we have passed yet another steel door, we walk,

through a passageway which many already know from

the films “Behind These Walls” and “A Case for Reasonable Doubt?” and whose armored glass walls

already allow for a view of the aim of our journey, straight towards death row.

During the last meters, we can see the windows of some of the prison cells. It is only later that we

learn that by now, we are already in the interior of death row. The cells belonging to these win-

dows appear to be ready-made steel constructions which are simply stacked on top of each other.

WE see prisoners inside several windows.

Right now we don’t have the time to give more attention to them, since after another steel door

sluice, we are all of a sudden in the visitor entrance hall, and both to the left and the right of us,

we see a line-up of small H-shaped double cabins, where – of course through armored glass pan-

els – we can recognize visitors on the one side of the barrier. Further away, we also spot prison-

ers, but even though they are on the other side, we can see them very clearly: The color of their

jumpsuits is a very bright orange, like in Guantanamo.

The officers in the supervisory office at the gable end of the room tell us to go to cabin 18, and sud-

denly we stand right in front of the man of whom we have talked so often, about whom we have

written so much, for whom we have tried to elicit commitment from so many others – and who, at

this point, we don’t even really know personally in any real sense.

The Human Being Mumia Abu-Jamal

So this is the impossible place where our own anxiety has in-

creased with every door, every sluice, and every hallway, and

where Mumia bids us now welcome – but only after a short

while, we actually feel welcome! Just like the other prisoners, he

wears one of these orange prison overalls, and now he pounds

against the armored glass that separates the much to small visitor

cell into two areas circa 1,5 to 1,5 meters each (where we three

visitors somehow squeeze in on our side, alternately using the

two available chairs and the windowsill in front of the separating

glass whenever we feel tired of having to stand). This joyful loud

reception makes the separating glass swing and move – it is one

of the few possibilities of a prisoner always forcibly isolated from

friends and relatives to initiate any physical contact to the “out-

side” at all.

3

Linn has of course already been here, but when the two of us first see Mumia face to face, we are

very surprised. All known photos of Mumia are already almost 15 years old. We had expected to

meet a man who looks like 56 or perhaps even much older, someone, that is, whose appearance

very clearly shows that he has spent more than half of his life in prison.

But now we meet a big, versatile man who appears

very vibrant, and whose age we would have estimat-

ed spontaneously somewhere in his mid-forties. Dif-

ferent from some of the photos from the mid-

nineties, some of Mumia’s dreadlocks by now al-

most touch the floor. His skin looks, apart from a

scar on his forehead, relaxed and unharmed, his fa-

cial expression is alert and cheerful. Well-tended

teeth, a healthy posture, his unconventionally clip-

ped full beard, and the small amount of

gray in his hair bolster the impression of

a man who looks much younger than he

is.1 From the way he moves, we conclu-

de that Mumia regularly does pushes

and stretches, and a little later, he con-

firms this.

Very many people know Mumia’s voice

from his columns whose originals are

regularly published by Prison Radio.2

But actually, Mumia has much more humor than these recordings mostly devoted to political is-

sues would have made us assume. He laughs often, and loudly. Even though our conversations

about daily prison life and the judiciary system often concern unpleasant things, Mumia still

seems to possess an internal joy that has nothing cynical or macabre in it.

Equally impressive for us is his extremely keen perception. He asks us numerous questions, and

then comes back to them and their answers effortlessly even hours later, almost always mention-

ing the exact details. Especially in his conversation with his friend Linn Washington concerning

legal details and file references it was obvious how precise and well-trained his memory is.

Mumia’s posture is very confident; his mode of expression is clear and to the point. In this, his choice

of language changes – and sometimes oscillates – between proper academic speech (e.g., when dis-

1 After the visit, Linn tells us that he has observed the same phenomenon in many long-term prisoners in SCI Greene:

they all appear much younger than their actual age. According to him “this prison conserves.” This is probably the

result of systematic sensory deprivation – and here, not least the lack of fresh air – that the prisoners are subjected to. 2 Prison Radio is a radio project in San Francisco which supports prisoners in the United States. On the website

http://www.prisonradio.org, it is possible to listen to and to download the original versions of the political columns

Mumia dictates to them per telephone. A large part of the essays is also transcribed by Prison Radio, and a substan-

tial fraction of these appears regularly (i.e., each Saturday) in German translation in the Berlin daily junge Welt.

In the 1980s, SCI Huntingdon

4

cussing legal details) and very ordinary street slang. Even so, compared to many other people we

meet in the course of our journey, it is remarkably how little he swears.

In his previous prison SCI Huntington, Mumia was able to learn some French and German by means

of books and cassettes, but now unfortunately he has to tell us that in the meantime his German really

hasn’t improved all that much. For him, learning a language always also has to do something with

listening to the actual sound of the language concerned. But since – a Kafkaesque detail from prison

life – he is entitled to have a cassette recorder, but is not allowed to have cassettes, for the time being

he has frozen his efforts in this direction. All the same, he knows quite a few German words, which

he continues to throw in throughout the course of our conversation.

While we are trying to talk to Mumia

about all these things, the uncertainty

of being in this insane place has not

yet left us by any means. But fortu-

nately for us, to Mumia this situation

seems very familiar, and he shows us

very quickly that he is glad to meet us

and that we can ask him anything we

want to know.

In the following, we’d like to sketch

three important areas we wanted to dis-

cuss with Mumia and actually did dis-

cuss with him. Naturally, the back-and-

forth of our conversation was chro-

nologically quite different from how we

recount it here. Just as in ordinary life, we began with one story and then first went into a second, a

third, and a fourth, only to finally come back to the point where we started from. This was particularly

true for political themes. Often, they served as points of departure, were then left because of some con-

crete question like daily life in prison, and were then taken up again.

Prison Conditions and Daily Life

We ask Mumia after his daily life in SCI Greene. First, he describes his cell: It is locked by a

steel door without a handle (Mumia laughing: “We have no use for this here”) with a hatch for

food and two longish, narrow bulletproof glass windows towards the hallway. The cell itself is

tubular and around six feet wide and ten feet long. At the end wall opposite the door, there is a

small window which is about 60 to 80 cm in size. The walls and ceiling are all painted in a white

color which by now is already very old and und yellowed.

When you enter, his bed sits to the right of the door after about one meter and stretches right to

the outer wall. To the left, there is a stainless steel unit consisting of a sink, a toilet, and a cloudy

mirror, also made of steel, where you can hardly see anything. But according to Mumia, for 75

cents prisoners can buy a small glass mirror in the prison store; for some reason, we don’t ask

him whether he has done so.

Additionally, on the left side of the cell there is a metal cabinet which ends shortly before the

window, and in which he has to store all his personal belongings. To hang pictures on the walls is

1989, SCI Huntingdon

5

forbidden. Apart from that, the only other piece of furniture is a chair. Mumia doesn’t even have

a table on which to eat or write: he eats and writes sitting on his bed.

The electric ceiling light in on 24 hours per day and is completely controlled from the outside.

Fortunately, at least at night it is dimmed down a little bit.

Mumia has a TV set and a radio in his cell

that allow him to receive two channels of

the institution itself that broadcast annou-

ncements from the administration, religious

services for Catholic, Protestant, and Mus-

lim believers as well as very bad motion

pictures. Since he also has cable reception,

TV has become an important source of in-

formation to him. This, however, costs $ 16

per month, and the institutional minimum

support for prisoners without support from

the outside is no more than $ 17 – causing

Mumia to joke that the ordinary prisoner

can twice a month afford the luxury to sit in front of the TV with a 50 Cent candy bar bought at

the prison store.

In 2005, Mumia eventually got an electric typewriter (a Brother 500), after ten unsuccessful years

of trying to get one. Unfortunately, at the beginning of the year it broke down and is still “in re-

pair,” and he doesn’t know whether and when he will get it back. Since then he once again writes

everything (e.g., his speech for the May 1 demos in Europe) by hand, using a ball point refill.

Apart from the yellowed white and the metallic reflection of the steel furniture, there are no col-

ors in Mumia’s cell. Outside, one can see light blue stripes on the hallway floor through the ar-

mored glass windows of the door. This lack of colors is a big problem for Mumia. He recounts

how at the beginning of spring during the first days of April he was lost for eternities in watching

the few square meters of grass beneath the window of his cell, as he was so delighted by the

strong green and the yellow of the daffodils. (The daffodils were mowed down soon enough, but

reappeared within a few days.)

Of course, we ask him whether there are really no colors whatsoever in the prison. He says that

like all others, he is obliged to wear prison clothes; private clothes are not allowed. They only

have the orange overalls, brown tracksuit pants and pullovers (which Mumia doesn’t have be-

cause he finds them ugly) as well as bright thermo underwear.3 In this connection, Mumia men-

tions the many colored post cards from Germany he has been getting in great number for about

the past two years. He was particularly fond of the yellow in the first edition of those post cards,

but red and green are also among his favorite colors.

And he gets a lot of mail. He says that for approximately one year,4 he’s been getting between

five and ten post cards from Germany. These cards actually get through to him, most of the time

only five days after the date of the postmark. On his birthday, he got more than a hundred cards,

3 In its non-death row part, SCI Greene runs a clothing factory that produces prisoner’s clothing for all of Pennsylvania. In

2009 alone, this plant, which employs almost exclusively imprisoned forced laborers, raked in more than $ 49 million. 4 That is, since the beginning of the German-wide “Mumia-Tour” 2009.

6

among them about fifty from Germany. He alo tells us about the many musicians who often send

him their latest CDs. Unfortunately he then only gets their accompanying letters, because he isn’t

allowed to have CDs in his cell, and he conjectures that the room with things sent to him “taken

to the prisoner’s belongings” must be twice as large as his cell.

We ask Mumia whether the huge amount of mail he receives and his worldwide fame cause envy or

problems with other prisoners. He says that in a big, enforced community like this one, there will

always be people who don’t get along with each other. But he doesn’t see it as his task to judge

this. If there are tensions between prisoners, those ultimately responsible are the authorities who run

the prisons. Personally, he tries to treat each prisoner with respect, and he says that this is also

acknowledged by all, even though there are certainly some prisoners who don’t like him.

But on the other hand, he says he

also has many friends who probably

like him, in part because of his ca-

pacity to cheer people up. He sus-

pects he has the image of an “upbeat

and funny guy,” and this cha-

racterization of his relationship to

other prisoners is confirmed directly

for us since throughout our visit, we

can see repeatedly how other pri-

soners on their way to their own vi-

siting cells bang loudly on Mumia’s

door from the outside and shout

greetings through the steel door and

the armored glass, to which he re-

sponds in the same way.

A day “on death row” begins with breakfast at six o’clock in the morning; it consists of tea or

coffee and a muffin. Sometimes, the prisoners also get cereal. From seven to nine, Mumia, just as

the other prisoners of the wing, has “yard exercise”: Two guards shackle his hand and feet with a

chain connecting the hand and feet shackles and lead him though the steel door locks and on to

the yard. While this happens, the cells of the other prisoners are a locked. Mumia has never seen

the interior of these cells.

In the yard, there are small cages approximately 3 to 4 meters in size, with maximally two pris-

oners being locked into each of them. Previously the whole yard was open for all prisoners, but

after an occasion where several prisoners refused to go back to their cells to protest against an

order of the prison administration, the yard was divided up into many small cages to ensure that

the guards can handle the prisoners one by one, preventing the prisoners from acting collectively.

As the weather in this region is fairly cold in the morning during much of the year, Mumia spends a

lot of his time in the yard with exercises, and he also loves to play handball. Replying to our aston-

ished question how this is supposed to work given the severe space limitations, he says dryly that this

is an excellent physical workout. The time in the yard also offers the only opportunity for serious

conversations with other prisoners, since on account of the deliberate layout of the cell blocks this is

not possible within the prison itself.

Thus, the yard serves as an exchange platform for all vital legal and personal information. It is also

March 1996, und yes, still today!

7

possible to talk to the prisoners in the cages next to one’s own. With regard to all others who are

further away, it is very difficult to communicate with them as there are fairly many prisoners in the

yard and the yard of course is surrounded by a high wall that leads to a lot of reverberation.

At 10 o’clock in the morning (the prisoners have already spent yet another hour in their cells),

lunch is served through the hatch in the cell door. One of the favorite chicaneries on the part of

the guards is to immediately pull back the food should the prisoner not succeed in being at the

door “in time” and then to taunt him by say-

ing: „Ah, I see, you’re not hungry today.”

According to Mumia, this is not at all rare in

the case of prisoners who are sick or who –

and this also happens quite often – were

beaten up before by the guards.

The food itself is of doubtful nutritional val-

ue. The plastic set in which the food is

served practically never contains anything

fresh. Stuff heated by microwave, consisting

of rice and potatoes, overcooked and chop-

ped vegetables as well as some meat, only

rarely supplemented by a “fruit cocktail” (as

they like to call fruit minced to mash) – these

are the recurrent components of the food.

Mumia and some of the other prisoners have

been trying for years – and in vain – to get

things like garlic or fresh fruit at least every

now and then. This is despite the fact that the

Bruderhof Community which is not far from

the prison runs an ecological farm and of-

fered years ago to deliver fresh fruit and vegetables for all prisoners at the same price as the com-

pany that delivers the barely edible ready-made meals. SCI Greene turned the offer down...

Given this background, Mumia talks very fondly about the great garlic campaign of 2003, when

hundreds of supporters from Berlin and all over the world sent him letters containing garlic

cloves as well as accompanying notes to the prison authorities supporting his and many other

prisoners’ demand for a healthier diet. Many of the letters were returned to the senders months

later, stamped “Delivery Refused.” But even though Mumia hasn’t received a single one of these

letters, the problem must have been constantly on the mind of the prison administration as the

strong smell of garlic in its post office was certainly impossible to ignore.

The shift change for the guards is at 2 PM. Dinner is served at around 4 PM, but Mumia doesn’t even

bother to describe it to us. We suppose that here, too, there are no positive surprises. After this, the

day on death row is finished; a few hours later, the light is dimmed down but, as mentioned above,

never entirely switched off.

Death Row and Its Turnkeys

We also ask Mumia anout the general design of death row as a whole, and he patiently gives us a

detailed description. Death Row in SCI Greene consists of four “units” in the middle of which is

Guantanamo

8

a supervisory terminal from which four hallways lead to the units. Everything is separated by

steel doors and supervised by cameras.

Each unit has two floors with a

couple of solitary cells on each

side of the hallway. Mumia is

confined in the G unit. Until a

couple of days before our visit,

Mumia’s unit also housed long-

term prisoners not sentenced to

death; now it’s only those with a

death sentence. Why the other

prisoners were moved, Mumia

doesn’t know. Two other units

had always been reserved for those sentenced to die. In addition, there is the “hole,” where prisoners

are kept isolated 24 hours a day without daylight or any other “privileges.”

Concerning the “hole,” Mumia recounts and episode from the life of his friend Russell “Maroon”

Shoats, who, just as Mumia, was a member of the Black Panther Party in Philadelphia and who was

sentenced to life in prison at the beginning of the 1970s, also for allegedly murdering a cop. 1975

he managed to break from prison but after a while on the run was arrested again. In the nineties, he

came to SCI Greene and was transferred to the wing just described. There, the warden told him that

as long as he, the warden, was in command of SCI Greene’s death row, Shoats would not leave the

“hole” even for a minute. As it turned out, this was the same turnkey who had been beaten down by

Shoats during his jailbreak twenty years earlier…

In the course of his confinement, Mumia has also repeatedly been in the “hole,” but we don’t

address this particular question during our visit.5

From these issues we move more or less seamlessly to

the topic of the relation between the inmates and the

guards. Mumia says that compared to the general penal

system, working on death row must be very must be

very attractive for the guards since they have to do al-

most nothing and are never confronted with more than

two prisoners at any one moment. But that doesn’t mean

by any means that the guards therefore entertain a

friendly relationship to the inmates.

Right at the beginning of our visit when we mention that the almost manic cleanliness in this

prison somehow reminds one of a hospital, Mumia counsels us not to be deceived by such exter-

nal appearances. He say that it would probably indeed be possible to eat from the floor in this

place, but that this would hardly be very sensible since then you couldn’t see who is behind your

back. “This is a mean place where bad things are happening.” After our visit, we understand even

better why Mumia has called SCI Greene so often a “bright, shining hell.”

5 The Pittsburgh Chapter of the Human Rights Coalition, a human rights organization for prisoners in the United

States, regularly documents rights violations against prisoners in the “correctional institutions” of Pennsylvania,

among them SCI Greene. See http://www.thomasmertoncenter.org/fedup/.

Entrance

9

Mumia estimates that around two thirds of the guards in death row are very racist and brutal people.

He recounts that a short while ago, there was a guard who showed him a photo of a “Free Mumia”

mural taken during a holiday in Berlin, but also says that this guy is hardly typical for the majority

of his fellow guards.

All the same, most of the guards know how to work in a formally “correct” way, meaning, among

other things, that differently from the work in the general penal system they will be careful with

racial slurs since they know that the prisoners on death row are there for a long time and will there-

fore know how to write a complaint and to pursue it even though the authorities try to stifle it with

red tape. Too many complaints could end up endangering a very easy job where the guards have

almost no work to do apart from delivering the meals and organizing the yard exercises.

As the authority to deprive prisoners of “privileges” solely de-

pends on the arbitrary decisions of the guards, the latter also

often use their authority to that end. Mumia also reports that the

guards on death often resort to using violence against the pri-

soners – but of course they always try to make sure that they

are not caught, and they avoid committing their abuses in the

presence of witnesses.

When we ask Mumia about Charles Graner, one of the torturers

convicted during the prison scandal of Abu-Ghraib who before

his stint in Iraq had been a guard at SCI Greene, he explains

that he has probably met him at some time or another but hasn’t

come to know him personally. But in Mumia’s assessment, this

guy is not terribly different from most of the other turnkeys.

After Graner was formally indicted in 2005, the prison administration put out a statement whose

gist was that Graner could resume work at SCI Greene anytime should he loose his job with the

army. And according to Mumia, in the nearby village of Waynesburg, where Graner used to live,

he is still a respected citizen whose deeds are subjected to much too much attention in the opinion

of his fellow citizens and whom many would happily invite to a barbecue.

Political Topics

One of the topics, Mumia has occupied himself

with extensively and we proceed to talk about

very quickly, is the development in South Africa

since the end of apartheid. According to Mumia,

after the end of apartheid the left wing of the

South-African liberation movement around the

Communist Chris Hani and other progressive

forces was wiped out. For him, the former ANC

chairman Tabo Mbeki embodies one of the cru-

cial mistakes made again and again by African

liberation movements.

Here is Mumia’s sketch: As an underground rev-

olutionary, Mbeki had been sent to England to

10

study and then came back from there as a social democrat, serving as Mandela’s successor as the

head of state. But in that function, he failed to introduce minimal social standards, pursuing a

neo-liberal agenda instead. Even though the end of apartheid led to a transfer of political power to

the black majority, economic power is still in the hands of the beneficiaries of the apartheid sys-

tem, and the politicians of the ANC see to it that this remains the case.

Mumia very much hopes that the deep disappointment engendered by these developments will at

some time lead to a situation where the African and other Third World liberation movements stop

to take European societies as their guide and rather begin to seek their own solutions.

From his columns, we already know that Mumia knows a lot about Germany, and thus we are not

surprised by the fact that he is eager to learn more about the developments there. He is particular-

ly interested in the war against the former Yugoslavia in 1999, the current participation of the

German army in the war in Afghanistan and the reactions of the German population.

He also poses a number of questions concerning the trans-

ition of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR)

from a state socialist to a capitalist society. When we tell

him that, in our view- the increasing power of the neo-Na-

zis particularly in the eastern part of a reunited Germany is

much less due to the previous social order than to the new-

ly introduced, unchecked capitalist logic of unbridled ex-

ploitation and the exclusion of large parts of the popu-

lation, he is not very surprised. In that connection, we also

try to describe the systematic social and political destruc-

tion of the former GDR after the end of the Cold War.

When we start to discuss political theory, Mumia tells us

that in his youth, he was very impressed by Maoist and

anarchist approaches because they were easily accessible

and often also directly applicable to the work in the Afri-

can American communities. Even though the Black Pan-

ther Party also propagated the thick volume Capital by

Marx, for him as a fifteen-year-old that book was hard to digest, and the much thinner Com-

munist Manifesto also didn’t prove exactly as an easy read. It was only in prison that he started to

read Marx and Engels extensively and changed his opinion about them.

Quite independently of any political theory, during our conversation Mumia repeatedly insists

that the really important thing is to organize. “Nobody should underestimate what even a small

number of organized people can achieve. My own survival is concrete proof for what organized

action is capable of.”

And of course, we also talk extensively about president Obama. Different from many others with

whom we conversed during our voyage through the U.S., Mumia takes it for granted that Obama

is well informed about the continuing discrimination and the grave social problems of African

Americans. The only error, says Mumia, is the assumption that Obama really wants to achieve

fundamental social change. In reality, he was simply the one who was best able to capitalize on

the great dissatisfaction with Bush and his clique.

Illustrating this, Mumia points to the fact that in light of the mass movement supporting him

11

when he was inaugurated, is would have been very easy for Obama to carry through a fundamen-

tal health reform benefiting the disadvantaged strata of the population. At that point, he’d proba-

bly been able to pull through any reform. But instead, he sent his followers home and allowed the

newly awakened interest in political participation to fall asleep again. The reason? The political

and economic groups that actually form his social base.

Thus, says Mumia, Obama is forced to

lead wars in the service of the empire and

to satisfy the demands of his rich and su-

per rich supporters. Even though he will

probably try to mobilize support for his

reelection, this will probably not work.

Mumia characterized Obama as the “nice

brown face of imperialism.” Another ex-

pression he uses in connection with the

disappointment of many African Ameri-

cans with regard to Obama is “a black

man with a white mind.”

Here, Mumia – just like Noam Chomsky and many others – is afraid that this disappointment of

many voters could, of all things, strengthen those forces who are even more rightist that the Repub-

lican Party. He says that a mounting part of the lower middle classes now supports the “Tea Party”

movement, a chauvinist and, in part, openly racist new political current in which the failed vice

president candidate of the Republicans in 2008, Sarah Palin, currently tries to gain a leading role.

Mumia alerts us that even President Obama himself now feels the consequences of the aggressive

mood fanned by this movement, and he thinks that it is possible that parts of the established sys-

tem could proceed to a policy of not only tolerating this movement, but even resorting to using its

dangerous militancy. Just recently the fact that a heavily armed “Tea Party” supporter was able to

totally unhindered attend a public appearance of Obama created quite a stir in the U.S. media.

We also talked for a long while and in detail about the criminal justice system in Philadelphia. Mumia

finds it very interesting that prosecutors and judges apparently have an increasingly hard time in find-

ing juries ready to pass death sentences. On the other hand, one must not overlook the fact that the

will to sentence people to inhumanely long prison terms is still very much in evidence.

Mumia’s Own Case

Of course, we also ask Mumia, where he sees his own case at this moment and where exactly he

hopes for support. The last hour of our visit is essentially devoted to this topic.

Mumia agrees with our view that neither the prosecution nor the 3rd

Court of Appeals are inter-

ested in giving him any opportunity to present his case in front of a jury. But this is exactly what

Mumia is still striving for. Even though in legal terms, a jury trial can “only” be about the sen-

tence, i.e., life in prison or death, Mumia is still doing everything in his powers to be able one day

to present his version of the story in a court of law.

According to Mumia, the 3rd

Circuit Court of Appeals, in theory, has at least two options. For one

thing, it can decide the question that is currently open – whether the District Court for the 3rd

Cir-

cuit was right in throwing out the death sentence against Mumia in 2001 on account of false in-

12

structions to the jury – itself, but it can also

send the case back to the District Court.

In that connection, we also discussed an artic-

le that appeared at the beginning of 2010 in

the Philadelphia Inquirer and which promot-

ed the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Offi-

ce’s assessment that the final resolution of

Mumia’s case could still drag on for a long

time since the judge who threw out Mumia’s

death sentence in 2001 hadn’t even dealt with

a whole number of objections of the defense

against the death sentence, treating them as

moot. The representative of the prosecution

quoted in that article said that the defense

could profit from this and file new petitions

on each of these objections, leading to many more years of appeals.

On this, Mumia says that every public statement coming from this direction must be subjected to very

critical scrutiny as it will always necessarily have a political character and may perhaps only have the

purpose to induce a false sense of calmness in him and the support movement while the prosecution

actually prepares totally different and much faster scenarios.

Before it decides, the 3rd

Court of Appeals can also hold an evidentiary hearing,6 but as Mumia

says all of this is entirely dependent on the discretion of the judges, not the actual legal situation.

The latter, he adds, has been on his own side so

often without, however, ever enabling him to

ever profit from the right he allegedly had. He

holds that exactly as before it is important to pub-

licly stress three points, namely, (1) the fight

against the death penalty, (2) the extremely unfair

character of his trial in 1982, and (3) the fact that

he is innocent and that the prosecution never had

any real evidence against him.

He is of course well aware that this is exactly what

his supporters have been doing for many years,

but he hopes that they won’t lag in their efforts in

this direction but will rather increase them. And Mumia never tires in stressing that this solidarity

work forms the core that potentially enables any positive court decisions in the first place.

Here, we also ask him about the two online petitions to President Obama and attorney General Eric

Holder.7 The latter demands a Civil Rights Investigation in Mumia’s case and has been signed

6 Indeed, on September 21, 2010, the 3

rd Circuit Court of Appeals ordered an oral hearing before a three-judge panel

that took place on November 9, 2010. This was not an evidentiary hearing where witnesses etc. can be brought in,

but one where the defense and the prosecution were allotted ca. 20 resp. 30 minutes to argue their case. 7 For the petition to Obama, see http://www.petitiononline.com/Mumialaw/petition.html; the petition to General

Attorney Eric Holder is at http://www.iacenter.org/mumiapetition/. For the German translation of both petitions,

see http://mumia-hoerbuch.de/petitionen.htm.

13

worldwide so far by about 50,000 people (and

the petition to Obama, which was initiated only

later, has also already garnered 24,000 signa-

tures). Previously, we had repeatedly heard

contradictory opinions concerning these petit-

ions without any explanation for the contra-

diction. The groups in which we are active de-

cided to promote both petitions, and to our

relief, Mumia entirely agrees with this and says

that this is exactly the right approach.

Quite generally, Mumia stresses that a move-

ment such as the one that has clustered around

his own case, and even more generally all mo-

vements have to seek out their own paths and

for their own judgments. The legal struggle

and the political struggle for his life and his

freedom constitute two different levels. La-

wyers, as important as they are, can never

lead movements, and that is also not their

task. To the best of his knowledge, this has

never led to success. His counsel to the mo-

vement is to always first work out its own

analysis and then act accordingly.

Farewell

After we have conversed for almost six hours, we are told that finally we have to go. At first, we

fail to really listen to this order from outside the visitor’s cell, since we are too immersed in our

conversation with Mumia, but the supervisor’s admonition gets quite insistent very quickly. We

join the palms of our hands across the separating glass and Mumia bids us farewell with a smile and

“on a move” and a raised fist. We literally have to wrench ourselves away, and while we start our

way to the outside through the steel door of the visiting area, we see Mumia putting his fist to his

heart. We do likewise.

It seems inconceivable that this very lively human being is now being brought back into the

“bright, shining hell,” while the three of us, after having passed the numerous locks during our

way back, walk out into the spring sun of this early afternoon.

* * *

In the following hours and days, we tape many of our memories with a dictaphone and fill many

pages in our notepads – these notes form the basis of the report you have just read.

The English version of this May 30, 2010 report was translated by Michael Schiffmann with the help

of Anton Reiner and friends in the U.S. and finalized on September 27, revised November 19, 2010

14