[Peace-discuss] Gang signs

[C. G. Estabrook]

[The following is from South End Press, which publishes the book in
question.  --CGE]

On April 20, 2004, a copy of Mumia Abu-Jamal's We Want Freedom: A Life in
the Black Panther Party (2004) was confiscated by the Security Threat
Group Coordinator of the Indiana Department of Correction (Pendleton,
Indiana). The official refused to allow Zolo Agona Azania, a politically
conscious activist currently on death row, delivery of the book.

According to State Form 11984 the book was confiscated in accordance with
executive directive 9625 and specifically cited "'The Empire Strikes Back:
COINTELPRO,' Chapter Six, page #117" as the reason.

The page in question begins with a quotation from Hugo Black, Associate
Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, which reads, "History should teach
us... that in times of high emotional excitement, minority parties and
groups which advocate extremely unpopular social or governmental
innovations will always be typed as criminal gangs and attempts will
always be made to drive them out." Officer Cornwell of the State of
Indiana Department of Correction, when asked to explain why We Want
Freedom was confiscated, said, "Probably because it has gang signs."

The irony continues. In the suppressed chapter, Mr. Abu-Jamal, who, like
Mr. Azania, is on death row, writes about the perils of the government
using secrecy to hide their crimes against the people and the
Constitution. Drawing on documents made public in the famous Church
Committee congressional hearings of 1976, Mr. Abu-Jamal reveals the hidden
hand of COINTELPRO. Apparently for the State of Indiana, COINTELPRO, which
officially ended in 1974, is a state secret in 2004 and access to such
information is a "security threat."

This is not the first time people have tried to silence what Alice Walker
describes as "a rare and courageous voice speaking from a place we fear to
know."  For the past 35 years (the last 22 of them from death row) Mr.
Abu-Jamal has sought to use his voice in the struggle for freedom. The
world's most renowned political prisoner, Mumia (as he is known throughout
the world) was only 15 when he helped found the first Philadelphia branch
of the Black Panther Party. Now in his latest and most political book to
date, We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party, this incisive
social commentator reexamines his days in one of the most misunderstood
revolutionary groups in U.S. history.

With a poetic voice and critical gaze, We Want Freedom combines memories
of day-to-day life in the Party with rigorous analysis of the Black
liberation struggle. Mr. Abu-Jamal challenges historians who claim that
only the civil rights model was authentic, positioning the BPP as an
ahistorical aberration. He brilliantly locates the Party in a
centuries-long tradition of Black resistance, a legacy articulated in
Kathleen Cleaver's sharp introduction as a "disfavored history." The roots
of today's struggles are brought to the surface time and again as Mr.
Abu-Jamal examines the long history of resistance to slavery, racial
politics in Philadelphia, and the FBI's subversion of justice through
COINTELPRO and earlier operations.

In an open, conversational style Mr. Abu-Jamal also remembers his personal
experience as a Party member, placing the reader in the life of the
average Black Panther. While many books on the BPP focus on the icons of
the Party, We Want Freedom conveys the everyday grit, love, and dedication
of the tens of thousands who called themselves Panthers. As Amy Goodman of
Democracy Now! puts it Mr. Abu-Jamal's powerful memoir "forges from the
furnace of death row a moving, incisive, and thorough history."

An award-winning journalist, Mr. Abu-Jamal began his writing career as
Lieutenant Minister of Information for the Philadelphia branch and for the
Party's national newspaper. He is regularly heard on a network of over 150
radio stations and at www.prisonradio.org. In 2003 Mr. Abu-Jamal was
declared a Citizen of Paris, an award not accorded since the city bestowed
it upon Pablo Picasso in 1971.

After years of international protests, on December 18, 2001, the U.S.
District Court overturned Mr. Abu-Jamal's death sentence, but upheld his
conviction. This decision is being appealed from both sides. As of October
2002, Mr. Abu-Jamal's appeal is on hold pending the state Supreme Court's
ruling.

	***