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National Task Force Established to Free Mumia
by Jeff Mackler
Twenty-five prominent leaders of a broad range of
human and civil rights organizations and other
progressive groups met in New York City on Oct. 2 to
establish the National Task Force to Free Mumia
Abu-Jamal. Jamal, the victim of a racist Philadelphia
police/prosecution frame-up trial in 1982, has been on
Pennsylvania’s death row for 22 years.
The meeting, held at the Center for Constitutional
Rights, saw a reunification of activists who had
worked for Mumia’s freedom over the past decade and
longer. It also included new forces critical to
building a powerful social movement capable of making
the political price of Mumia’s continued incarceration
too high to pay.
Robert Bryan, Mumia’s lead counsel, accompanied by
co-counsel Steven Hawkins, outlined for the meeting
the legal status of the case. Currently before the
U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit, at the time of
the meeting a stay of proceedings was in place as two
lower court jurisdictions had yet to complete various
appeals filed by the defense. The Third Circuit had
also been awaiting a decision in a critical case
before the U.S. Supreme Court, Banks v. Beard.
Since the Oct. 2 meeting, in light of the recent
resolution of the Banks case, the Third Circuit has
lifted the stay of proceedings, once again putting
Mumia’s appeal process on the “fast track.” While
Mumia’s attorneys clearly interpret the Banks decision
as making it impossible to execute Mumia, the state of
Pennsylvania has adopted the opposite view and has
filed papers with the court insisting that the Banks
decision opens the way for Mumia’s execution.
The complicated set of legal procedures includes at
the highest level, the Third Circuit, Mumia’s
challenge to a Federal District Court ruling that
upheld the racist exclusion of Black jurors from
Mumia’s original trial. The defense will also request
that the Third Circuit grant “certificates of
appealability” in regard to more than a dozen critical
issues that the Federal District Court had rejected.
With a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision in the
Miller El case liberalizing aspects of the reactionary
1996 Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act,
Mumia’s chances of broadening the issues that the
court must consider has improved. These include many
of the 29 points raised in the original federal habeas
corpus brief.
Pending before the lower courts is Mumia’s challenge
to the original trial itself. This is based on the
affidavit filed on his behalf by court stenographer
Terri Maurer Carter, who overheard the “hanging” judge
who presided over his trial, Albert Sabo, state in the
court’s antechambers in reference to Mumia. “Yeah, and
I’m going to help ‘em fry the n•••er.”
The legal update at the New York meeting was followed
by a series of reports and discussion designed to
bring Mumia’s case before ever broadening audiences
and to raise funds for the legal and political defense
efforts.
A number of national speaking tours were set in motion
as well as the expansion of the present national
fundraising list for legal defense from its present
outreach of 2000 to over twice that number. Plans were
also made to raise funds for the political defense of
Mumia, headed by the International Family and Friends
of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
A team of internet specialists was established to
bring the national communications effort to tens of
thousands of people across the country.
The meeting initiated a campaign to generate newspaper
and magazine ads detailing the history of Mumia’s
case, as well as a major effort to secure resolutions
of support from hundreds of national and local
political, humans rights, and labor organizations, and
from city and state governments.
The resolution approved at last summer’s NAACP
national convention demonstrated to participants that
the myriad of organizations that had previously
supported Mumia’s struggle for justice and freedom
must be recontacted and re-engaged in the struggle.
The NAACP had urged that all of its affiliate chapters
become engaged in Mumia’s defense.
The Task Force was designed to accomplish specific
organizational tasks requiring the common efforts of a
broad range of groups and individuals. While it will
work in close collaboration with Mumia’s formal
defense committee, the International Concerned Family
and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal (ICFFMAJ), it was not
seen as a replacement for this committee. The latter
works in direct collaboration with Mumia and his legal
team and determines the strategic line of Mumia’s
defense effort.
The Task Force will meet regularly in light of the
likelihood that the case will now proceed through the
courts at an increasingly rapid pace.
Task force participants include ICFFMAJ leader Pam
Africa; Robert Meeropol, Rosenberg Fund for Children;
Sundiata Sadiq, past president, Ossining, N.Y. NAACP,
Robert R. Bryan and Steven Hawkins, part of Mumia’s
legal team; Jeremy Syrop, Free Mumia Coalition NYC
youth coordinator; Iyaluua Ferguson, Malcolm X
Commemoration Comm.; Heidi Beghosian, Dir., National
Lawyers Guild; Linda M. Thurston, social justice
activist; Monica Moorehead, Millions for Mumia;
Suzanne Ross & Gwen Debrow, N.Y. Free Mumia
Coalition; Herman Ferguson, Jericho Amnesty Movement;
Anne Lamb, Peoples Video Network; Frank Velgara,
Latinos por Mumia, Pam; Suzanne Ross & Gwen Debrow,
co-chairs, Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition, NYC; Clark
Kissinger & Debra Sweet, Refuse and Resist; Michael
Tariq Warren, former member Mumia’s legal team; Mark
Taylor, Educators for Mumia & Princeton Theological
Seminary, Iglesia San Romero de las Américas-UCC, NYC;
Frances Goldin, social activist and Mumia’s literary
agent; Cleo Silvers, Labor for Mumia; attorney Leslie
Jones & Jason Corwin, upstate New York reps., ICFFMAJ
& Native Youth Movement; and Jeff Mackler,
representing the Northern California-based
Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The article above first appeared in the November 2004 issue of Socialist Action newspaper.
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