Media Bows to Power

Will Mumia's Voice be Silenced Forever?

by Noelle Hanrahan, October 1997

from the book

The Celling of America

edited by Daniel Burton-Rose

with editors of Prison Legal News
Dan Pens and Paul Wright

Common Courage Press, 1998

The promise of death is not enough; the state of Pennsylvania wants to still Mumia Abu-Jamal's voice and enforce his silence. The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections has banned journalists access to the entire PA prison population, in what prisoners have labeled the "Mumia Rule."

A prolific writer and author of a searing compilation of essays, Live From Death Row, for 16 years Mumia has not only been fighting to stay alive, he has been waging a battle for the freedom to write and speak. In August of 1995 he came within 10 days of being executed by lethal injection.

The stark reality of a place where men and women wait for death is a secluded and secretive world. What happens behind these walls is restricted, censored, and suppressed. Over 3,000 men and women live under a death sentence in 38 American states. 40% of America's death row inhabitants are Black. Censorship can be lethal.

Just days before the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections ban on interviews went into effect, the Prison Radio Project/Quixote Center recorded the only essays by Mumia in over two and a half years. Armed with a digital audio tape machine and cameras, recording engineer Janice Leber and photographer Nolen Edmonston came away with thirteen recorded essays. Amidst a torrent of lockdowns, investigations, torture, and the banning of reporters, Mumia's voice will be heard. These recordings could prove to be the very last images and recordings of Mumia in prison.

Democracy Now!, Pacifica's cutting edge radio show hosted by Amy Goodman, premiered these essays. Although over one million people were able to hear Mumia's voice throughout the United States, broadcasts across Pennsylvania were censored. WRTI, Temple University's radio station, and its affiliates pulled broadcasts of Mumia's essays and canceled all of Pacifica's programming just moments before the essays were to air.

As the United States gears up for assembly line executions, it must dehumanize its victims. A key component of this strategy is to make these men and women invisible. In an ominous trend, in December 1995, the California Department of Corrections-the largest prison system in the U.S.-eliminated all media access to prisoners. The public's right to know has been sacrificed to protect California's 3 billion-dollar-a-year, and ever expanding, prison industry.

It is our job as journalists to reach behind the iron curtain as it falls across the American landscape so we may hear prisoners' voices; voices of dissent and voices of those we condemn.

The State Correctional Institute (SCI-Greene), a new super-maximum security prison in Waynesburg, PA, is designed to eliminate human contact. Isolated in the farthest reaches of rural southwestern Pennsylvania, it is eight hours from the homes and families of eighty five percent of its captives. Men are held in solitary confinement, allowed out of their cells one hour a day, five days a week, to exercise in a small, barren wire cage.

Prisoners on death row are allowed just one, two-hour non-contact visit per week, and two strictly-timed ten-minute phone calls a month.

If prisoners are under investigation for a disciplinary infraction- such as "engaging in the profession of journalism"-all visits and phone calls are denied. A date with death in the form of a death warrant means complete isolation as well.

As they entered, Leber and Edmonston passed electrified gates topped with coiled layers of gleaming concertina razor wire. Once inside the ultra-modern control unit prison, the antiseptic sterility and bright white lights presage a regimen of psychological and physical torture.

At the guard station, Janice Leber had to disrobe, taking off her dress to pass through a metal detector. The visiting area for death row just outside the "D" pod housing unit holding eight cells, is recessed deep in the complex. In the non-contact visiting cubicles, they are separated from Mumia by a thick wall of plexiglass.

Guards admonished Leber and Edmonston not to speak to Mumia until "that woman"-as they referred to a prison administrator-was present. Negotiating with bored, yet nervous guards revolved around the guards' constant internal calculation: "Will granting this request cost me my job?" When the prison administrator arrived, she remained in the cramped 4' by 5' foot cubicle to monitor every word.

Intimidation and humiliation are used to discourage visits. Mumia is forced to submit to a full cavity strip search before and after each completely non-contact visit. There is a price exacted to see and talk with another human being. During the interview Mumia remained handcuffed, and at times also shackled at the waist.

Mumia's deep baritone voice, palpable humanity, and wry laugh illuminates his surroundings and the lives of the men with whom he shares his life. Images give us a glimpse of a man whose humanity remains intact, having endured 15 years of brutal solitary confinement.

This battle with censorship is not the first. It is part of an ongoing struggle to make Mumia's voice be heard. On Sunday May 15th, 1994, the New York Times ran an AP article "From Death Row: A Radio Show," which highlighted the next day's premier of Mumia Abu-Jamal's radio commentaries on All Things Considered. Most major dailies ran the article. That same day, NPR News managing editor Bruce Drake (who was left in charge while his boss was on vacation) stunned NPR weekend staff by canceling the debut. This was after the Prison Radio Project and NPR staff had selected, recorded, and NPR had launched a nationwide publicity campaign highlighting the debut of these "unique" commentaries. In fact, NPR does not usually set an air date for commentaries, but the press interest was so high they scheduled an air date of Monday, May 16th.

Since July of 1992, as the director of the Prison Radio Project, I have been recording and producing Mumia's commentaries for public radio. In February, 1993, I went to Washington D.C. and scheduled auditions of Mumia's demo tape with Gail Christian, executive director of Pacifica National Programming, and Ellen Weiss, executive director of All Things Considered. I was accompanied by Jane Henderson of Equal Justice U.S.A./Quixote Center. NPR was immediately interested. Ellen Weiss was very impressed with Mumia's work. She said "I am honored. Let's make this happen....My audience needs to hear about these issues, this is a unique perspective...Thank you."

In May 1994, Mumia's battle to be heard intensified when Robert Dole (former Republican senator and 1996 presidential candidate and senator) and the National Fraternal Order of Police forced National Public Radio to censor Mumia's regularly scheduled commentaries on All Things Considered/NPR. These essays would have reached 17 million people on 500 stations across the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Europe, and South Africa.

The state in effect has confiscated these new recordings of Mumia, and it has been able to compel NPR to keep them from being aired. Ten unique and irreplaceable essays, some of the last recordings of Mumia, remain under lock and key. Although under great pressure, NPR has refused to air or release them.

"The state would rather give me an Uzi, than a microphone," commented Mumia. And the major network journalists are complicit in this censorship. No recordings of Mumia's voice have ever been aired on a national network news broadcast. "My offense is painting an uncomplimentary picture of a prison system that eats hundreds of millions of dollars a year to torture and maim tens of thousands of men and women, a system that teaches bitterness and hones hatred." Why is the simple truth of life in prison perceived as such a threat? The answer lies in the fact that Mumia's words, spoken in the King's English, if heard, would threaten the smooth and orderly function of both state-sanctioned murder and modern slavery.

Mumia Abu-Jamal's perspective is a serious threat to the hegemony of the "corrections industry." He humanizes over one-and-a-half million prisoners in America. Disclosure of torture and human rights abuses would slow productivity and expansion in one of the U.S.'s Iargest growth industries: human storage and slave labor.

Five million one hundred thousand American citizens are under correctional control of prisons, jails, parole and probation; the highest per capita rate of imprisonment and state control in the world.

At the current rate of incarceration, by 2010 the majority of all African-American men between the ages of 18 and 40 will be in prison: the state as their captor and their labor on the auction block.

Whether Mumia Abu-Jamal's voice will reach the airwaves, and ultimately whether he lives or dies, will be a true test of whether freedom of the press exists. It will also depend on our independence, the depth of our courage, and our will to organize.

Celling of America