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Mumia Abu-Jamal's New Book Banned in Indiana (From South End Press) FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE On April 20, 2004, a copy Mumia Abu-Jamal's We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party (South End Press, 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. For more information, contact Alexander Dwinell at alexander@southendpress.org or (617) 547-4002. We Want Freedom: A Life in the Black Panther Party by Mumia Abu-Jamal; introduction by Kathleen Cleaver 320 pages / April 2004 ISBN: 0-89608-718-2 paper $18 / ISBN: 0-89608-719-0 cloth $40 |