|
EDITOR'S NOTE: On
Tuesday,
a judge threw out cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal's death sentence.
During the 2000 Republican convention, Jay Nordlinger gave us a
look at what Mumia and his supporters are all about.
 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).
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.
|
