January
28, 2003 9:00 a.m. The
Peace Movement’s Mumia Connection
Why
do antiwar contributions go to Mumia Abu-Jamal’s defenders?
two-page advertisement against war in Iraq that appeared in Monday's New
York Times directed donors to send money to a foundation that for
years has been devoted to the defense of convicted murderer Mumia Abu-Jamal.
The ad, which
features an antiwar statement signed by more than 100 well-known Americans,
including the actors Ed Asner, Martin Sheen, and Susan Sarandon, writers
Kurt Vonnegut, Alice Walker, and Barbara Kingsolver, and musicians Graham
Nash, Bonnie Raitt, and Pete Seeger, was created by the group Not In Our
Name, which has purchased similar ads in other papers around the country.
A box at the bottom of the ad asks readers to send donations to an organization
called the Bill of Rights Foundation. "We suggest a $200 contribution,"
the ad says, "but all contributions large or small help to make the
goal possible."
The Bill of Rights
Foundation is a New York-based group that has for years devoted nearly
all of its funds to the defense of Abu-Jamal, who shot and killed a Philadelphia
police officer in 1981. Abu-Jamal's guilt has been upheld during decades
of appeals, but his case has become a cause célèbre among
some on the Left, who maintain that he was unfairly convicted.
Statements filed
by the Bill of Rights Foundation with the Internal Revenue Service for
the year 2001, the most recent available, show that the foundation spent
a total of $102,152 that year, of which $95,737 went for legal fees (the
rest went for assorted administrative expenses). The documents show that
$66,874 of that amount went to Leonard Weinglass, who was at the time
Abu-Jamal's lead attorney. Abu-Jamal changed lawyers that year, and the
documents show the foundation also paid $21,730 to his new lawyer, Marlene
Kamish.
Weinglass told National
Review Online Monday that the money he received from the foundation was
for work on the Abu-Jamal case. Altogether, the foundation paid Weinglass
and Kamish $88,604 in 2001.
In the year 2000,
the Bill of Rights Foundation listed $75,956 in total expenses, of which
$57,722 was for legal fees. The entire amount went to Weinglass for the
Abu-Jamal defense.
In 1999, the foundation
listed $155,547 in total expenses, of which $139,126 was for legal fees.
That amount, too, went to Weinglass for the Abu-Jamal defense.
The Bill of Rights
Foundation is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) charity, which means that all contributions
to the foundation — and therefore contributions to Abu-Jamal's legal
representation — are fully tax-deductible.
It is not immediately
clear what the two causes, Abu-Jamal's legal defense and opposition to
a war in Iraq, have to do with each other. In a brief interview, Bill
of Rights Foundation president Judith Levin told NRO that "the connection
was the violation of civil rights of people in this country." The
message on Not In Our Name's answering machine in New York seems to support
that contention, saying the group's purpose is "to build resistance
to this war, to say no to the detentions and roundups of immigrants, and
to stop police-state restrictions."
The Not In Our Name
ads have raised a significant amount of money. An article on the group's
website says, "Our biggest problem in managing the statement
has been keeping up with the deluge of e-mail and checks. Well over 4,000
people have contributed for the publication of the statement, with over
$300,000 received so far." A spokesman for Not In Our Name said that
money sent to the Bill of Rights Foundation in response to the Times
ad will be "used exclusively for the purpose" of publishing
the Not In Our Name statement in other publications.
<% dim printurl
printurl = Request.ServerVariables("URL")%>
two-page advertisement against war in Iraq that appeared in Monday's New
York Times directed donors to send money to a foundation that for
years has been devoted to the defense of convicted murderer Mumia Abu-Jamal.
