Action by the steering committee of the Philadelphia Local of the National Writers Union (UAW/AFL-CIO) on behalf of Mumia Abu-Jamal

At a meeting on Feb. 1, the steering committee of the Philadelphia Local of the National Writers Union (UAW/AFL-CIO) passed the following resolution, which is also being sent to Gov. Tom Ridge:

As Pennsylvania area writers we find it deeply troubling that the prosecutors in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, during the penalty phase of the 1982 trial, made use of out-of-context quotes from the writer's youthful work of more than 10 years earlier, when he was an editor of the Blank Panther Party paper, in order to sway the jury in favor of the death penalty. These quotes could not fairly be seen as a current reflection of Abu-Jamal's thoughts, however, as they were written so long before his trial. This is a terrible misuse of a writer's work.

The great lengths to which the state and the Fraternal Order of Police have gone to silence Abu-Jamal during his 17-year incarceration, which have included barring him from obtaining literature in prison, confiscating his writings, and pressuring the Temple University public radio station to drop his commentaries from the air, make us worry that his prior journalistic activities may have led prosecutors and the state court to cut corners and circumvent a fair trial in order to convict him.

The fact that the Black Panther Party is now known to have been a prime target of President Nixon's notorious Cointelpro campaign, and that a number of former Panthers have had their convictions overturned on appeal, makes us doubly skeptical about the fairness of this trial, and about the integrity of the state's appeals process.

For the above reasons, the steering committee of the Philadelphia Local of the National Writers Union (UAW/AFL-CIO) calls on the U.S. Federal District Court to order a new trial for the condemned Philadelphia journalist and writer Mumia Abu-Jamal, now on Pennsylvania's Death Row. We also call on Governor Tom Ridge not to sign a new death warrant in this case, or to attempt to block a habeas corpus review by the Federal Court.

Signed,
The Steering Committee
Philadelphia Local National Writers Union
(UAW/AFL-CIO)

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