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Co-editors: Seán Mac Mathúna • John Heathcote
Consulting editor: Themistocles Hoetis
Field Correspondent: Allen Hougland

E-mail: editors@fantompowa.net

Mumia Abu-Jamal: Final appeal process is almost over
Allen Hougland
Mumia Abu-Jamal Web Links

Best site: The COINTELPRO Papers

COINTELPRO: FBI Activities in Hollywood

Cointelpro Revisited - Spying & Disruption

COINTELPRO STILL LIVES!

Armies of Repression: The FBI, COINTELPRO and Far Right Vigilante Networks

COINTELPRO: The Sabotage Of Legitimate Dissent

"There's a difference between peace and liberation. You can still have injustice and have peace. You can have peace and still be enslaved. So peace isn't the answer - liberation is the answer. There will be no peace until everybody is equal"- Stokely Carmichael, 1967

Photographs by Tom Filmyer

Background to the case of Mumia Abu Jamal

At four o'clock on the cold, windswept morning of December 9, 1981, African-American sidewalk jewelry vendor William Cook, 25, drives his Volkswagen Beetle the wrong way down 13th Street in downtown Philadelphia, a one-way strip lined with sex shops and streetwalkers. White police officer Daniel Faulkner, a newlywed and also 25, spots Cook's car and stops him after the Beetle makes a left onto Locust Street. On the police force five years, Faulkner, alone in his patrol car, somehow senses trouble and radios in a request for backup. Cook pulls over and gets out of his car. Faulkner approaches him. A quarrel ensues on the dark corner, illuminated by flashing pink and blue neon signs. Faulkner attempts to spread-eagle and search Cook. Punches fly. Faulkner manages to subdue the belligerent Cook by holding him down on the hood of the patrol car and hitting him across the head with a flashlight.

Enter Cook's brother, Wesley - better known as Mumia Abu-Jamal. The 27-year-old award-winning journalist and activist, moonlighting as an all-night cab driver, happens to be in a parking lot across the street after getting a flat tire and sees Faulkner striking his brother. Jamal runs toward the two men and tries to stop the officer . . . .

Minutes later, Daniel Faulkner's reinforcements arrive too late. By then, William Cook shudders on the sidewalk. The officer, fatally shot in the face and back, lies flat on the pavement. And Mumia Abu-Jamal, also critically wounded by a gunshot to his chest, sits slumped on the curb in a pool of blood. Nearby lies his licensed pistol, which he carried for protection after being robbed in his taxi three times. Police take their fallen colleague to nearby Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, where he is pronounced dead shortly after arrival. They arrest William Cook on assault charges. Thirty minutes later, during which time witnesses say the officers beat Jamal, police take Jamal to Jefferson. His older sister, Lydia Wallace, says that when she comes to the emergency room, Jamal wakes from unconsciousness and tells her: "I'm innocent - they're trying to kill me." Wallace persuades her brother to permit doctors to remove the bullet that perforated his liver and lodged near his spine. He survives. Recovering on a hospital bed and protesting his innocence, Jamal is charged with Faulkner's murder and ordered held without bail.

NEXT: Mumia Abu Jamal: The Voice of the Voiceless

© Allen Hougland, 1997

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