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By Jay Nordlinger, NR managing editor |
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On Tuesday, at noon, the Mumiacs staged a high-profile event. It is hard to know what to call this event: It was not exactly a press conference; it was not exactly a pep rally; it was sort of what we used to call a "teach-in"; mainly, it was a hate session, designed to paint America ("Amerika," they would write) as a fascist country whose Hitler is that fierce ideologue George W. Bush. The event was held at the First Reform Church in Philadelphia, which seems to be a church only in the sense that Alcove 6 was an eating area. Journalists jammed the place. There was no air conditioning in the building, and the humidity was through the roof. To listen to the Mumiacs was a special challenge, even at the physical level. Their message was clear: The state is a murderer, George Bush is a murderer, America's claim to be a democracy is a sham. "Stop State Killing," said the big banner behind the speakers. Posters showed a police-style picture of Bush, with the words, "Wanted for Murder." Jamal's image was everywhere, as Che Guevara's used to be, so long ago. Jamal is this Left's christ; he is the emblem of their awful hopes and dreams. The gang was decked out in their inimitable dress: They sported Nader buttons; one man had a T-shirt that said, "Socialism Has the Answers"; a young woman wore a shirt reading, "The Failure of Communism Does Not Equal the Success of Capitalism" (given that "Failure of Communism" remark, it is somewhat surprising she wasn't lynched); a young man had a shirt decrying sanctions against Iraq (no one asked what he had thought of sanctions against South Africa). On fliers were quotations from Ramsey Clark. The Republican convention was labeled an "Executioners' Ball." The paraphernalia of the hardest Left were thick and suffocating. The first speaker was a professor from the University of Pittsburgh, who declared that, if they were alive today, "the founders" would be trembling. By "founders," he meant — not John Hancock and the boys — but the Quakers, or at least the most radical of them (the professor also noted that there were bad Quakers, i.e., ones he dislikes). He said the usual things about capital punishment: It is racially biased, a form of racism, blah, blah, blah. But he also went a little farther than most. Over and over, he emphasized what he imagined to be the death penalty's links to slavery. Indeed, capital punishment is "a legacy of slavery," you see, which is why it is so prevalent in the South. Follow him for a second: Slavery featured "black men in chains," kept in "inhuman conditions"; our prison system features "black men in chains," kept in "inhuman conditions." They are the same thing, as any fool can see. Certainly, the Mumiacs in the hall had no trouble seeing it. According to the professor, the death penalty is as potent a symbol of slavery as the Confederate flag. He pointed out that, just as opponents of slavery called themselves "abolitionists," so do some of today's opponents of the death penalty. (No mention of opponents of abortion — that may well have caused a riot.) Next up was another professor, this one from the University of Pennsylvania. She leaned on the phrase "prison-industrial complex" and said that capital punishment was no more than "the murder of the poor, the black, and the Latino." (But what about Karla Faye Tucker?) Then the stars came out — the first in the form of Jonathan Kozol, the self-saying champion of poor black children. He attacked the emptiness of the Bushian slogan "Leave no child behind." This was the truest criticism of the entire day. Repeatedly, Kozol boasted that he has always "worked and written" in the poorest and blackest neighborhoods, which was an interestingly precise way to put it, suggesting that he does not actually live in those places. He is now, apparently, "working and writing" in the South Bronx, which is grossly "medically underserved," and where 25 percent of children go to school with pumps for asthma, because of "environmental racism." According to Kozol, businesses locate there in order to sic their pollution on the poor and black. This was confusing: Such activists are usually assailing businesses for refusing to come into the ghetto (as is the Reaganite Right, which also offers tax breaks). Well, which is it? At Colin Powell's alma mater, said Kozol, only a tiny percentage graduate. And kids, if you can believe, are "held accountable for their performance." (Just to be clear, Kozol meant this as a bad thing.) Yet the only remedy he could think of was . . . socialism, in a word, and the mildest one possible. Riker's Island, he continued, is the largest penal institution in the world (could this include China?), as also the country's "largest barred ghetto." Prisons, he declared, are "postmodern plantations." From everything he said, he seemed to favor the immediate and mass release of all prisoners — certainly black ones — in America, on grounds that they are immorally incarcerated. In probably his most chilling moment, Kozol referred to black crime as (presumably justifiable) "revenge on our society," which he does not hesitate to brand "evil." You get the impression that Kozol would excuse his own rape or murder. Following him to the lectern was one of the starriest stars of the Left: Robert Meeropol, son of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. He is an interesting, and, of course, tragic, figure. He referred to Gov. Bush as "Governor Death." Who can argue with a man both of whose parents were executed by the state? No one should — it is queasiness-making, to say the least. Following the Rosenberg boy was another "child of": Julia Wright, daughter of Richard Wright, who has lived most of her life abroad, chiefly in Paris. She is obviously a spiritual sister of Bigger Thomas. At the beginning of her remarks, she apologized, not for her jet lag, but for suffering from "human-rights lag": She had just flown in from Paris, and France, that infinitely superior country, has no death penalty. She then uttered a prayer of thanks to her father for taking her outside the United States, enabling her to see this land clearly — as the illegitimate and murderous entity that it is. In quick succession, she hit every traditional note: McCarthy, the "witch hunts" — even Coca-Cola. America, she feared, by embracing and accelerating the death penalty, was entering an era of "throwback." As I was leaving, I spotted a T-shirt hailing the National Lawyers' Guild, the old Communist front. "Throwback," I thought, was exactly the word for this day, this session. The event confirmed a couple of things: first, that imprisonment and capital punishment are the Left's going cause — their slavery, as they see it; and, second, that the bad old Left is still . . . the bad old Left. We may complain about Donna Shalala or Bill Bradley. But as I looked around this room, and heard these people, and smelled this atmosphere, I had a grim thought: They would put us in camps, had they the power. They really would. It was a nauseating hour. |
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n the land of the
Mumiacs, Philadelphia is the capital. Who are the Mumiacs? They are, in
essence, the hardest American Left. Mumia Abu Jamal, the cop-killer on
Death Row, is their central cause, or at least their central symbol. It
was in this city that Jamal murdered Officer Daniel Faulkner. The Mumiacs
care not a fig for Faulkner; they jeer at and spit on his widow, Maureen
(who is an extraordinarily brave woman).
