‘Freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal’

On Dec. 9, supporters of political journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal marked the 28th year of his incarceration on Pennsylvania’s death row, more determined than ever to fight for his exoneration.

At 4 p.m. a demonstration was held in front of the regional governor’s office on South Broad Street. Protesters held “Honk for Mumia” signs and blew whistles on the state’s protracted campaign to deny justice to an innocent man. The demonstration and whistle blowing then moved to District Attorney Lynne Abraham’s office near the Philadelphia City Hall.

Photo: Kelly Valdez

Later in the evening, an organizing meeting scheduled at the American Friends Center was expanded to include a special tribute to Veronica Jones, who died on Dec. 8.

On Dec. 15, 1981, Jones, a sex worker who was in the area where Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner was shot in the early morning hours of Dec. 9, 1981, told police she had seen two men running away from the crime scene before police arrived. Later, facing charges that could have meant 10 years in prison and the loss of her children, Jones was pressured into recanting her eyewitness account, even denying making the original statement, after police visited her in jail.

But called to testify at Abu-Jamal’s Post Conviction Relief Act hearing before Judge Albert Sabo in 1996, Jones made a courageous decision. She took the stand and explained how she had been coerced by police threats to lie about what she had seen that fateful night 15 years earlier. Whatever the consequences, she had come to the hearing to set the record straight. Her testimony was not welcomed by the racist judge. It further discredited the 1982 testimony of the District Attorney’s star witness Cynthia White. The DA responded by announcing that Jones would be arrested on an outstanding warrant for writing a bad check. Jones refused to back down, declaring, “This is not going to change my testimony!”

The organizing meeting also took up plans to expand a campaign to demand an investigation into violations of Abu-Jamal’s civil rights during his 28-year legal ordeal, and to gather more signers on petitions to U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder for a Justice Department investigation. Plans for a special Black History Month tribute to Abu-Jamal in February 2010 were also announced.