"All Things Censored"

By LAUREN LALONDE

Staff Writer

Prison. Police. The nation’s war on drugs. According to death-row prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, these sectors of the United States are steeped in injustice.

As Abu-Jamal emphasizes in "All Things Censored," prisons are havens for mistreatment.

For example, a Pennsylvanian prisoner taking Dilantin, an anti-seizure medication, was transferred to another unit after a dispute with his inmate. After the transfer, he began having seizures powerful enough to put him into a coma. He began to monitor what he ate and question his medication, but it was not until he sought outside medical treatment that he received sufficient answers. It was revealed that three additional drugs – Loxitane, Artane and Haldol – had been added to his medicine, nearly killing him.

"That’s shocking," said elementary-education major Julie Groh, 21, of Woodhaven. "It’s apparent that prisoners need more [health care]. While I think that we should give more attention to people who are going to get out of prison and still have a chance, we can’t ignore people on death row either. Death row doesn’t mean the same as dead."

"All Things Censored" by Mumia Abu-Jamal

Prisoners are not denied adequate health care everywhere, however. Organizations in some states are making an effort to improve medical attention in prisons. For example, Massachusetts Correctional Legal Services, the American Civil Liberties Union and representatives of private law firms have teamed up to form the Prison Health Legal Project, a plan aimed at exploring methods to improve prisoners’ access to adequate health care.

In one instance, according to Abu-Jamal, seven guards at Pennsylvania’s Graterford Prison were charged with violating the rights of nearly 20 shackled prisoners by badly beating and terrorizing them. One prisoner suffering from AIDS – and therefore less able to recover from the physical and psychological trauma – died after the incident. The guards had acted on the assumption that the detainees were part of rioting crews when they were, in fact, non-rioters who had just been transferred to the prison. Despite the officers’ guilty pleas, says the author, a civil jury acquitted them of virtually all charges.

"That’s ridiculous," said chemistry major Charles Bowman. "It just goes to show how biased the judicial system is towards officers, and that has to change.

"Aren’t these officers supposed to be protecting us?" he questioned.

Incidences of police brutality surface outside prison walls, as well. In 1999, several organizations collaborated to publish "Stolen Lives: Killed by Law Enforcement." The project compiled cases of over 2,000 American citizens killed by police officers within a 10-year period. But it is believed that there are still a substantial number of additional, unreported cases.

A vast majority of the victims described in the book were minorities – particularly African- Americans and Hispanics – Abu-Jamal points out.

"I think we spend too much time exploiting minority groups," said Paula Lepping, a 37-year-old occupational-therapy major from Plymouth. "You don’t see or hear about police killing the white, middle-class population. They assume the minorities are more dangerous. The police department needs to do less racial profiling and treat everyone involved in a crime equally."

Abu-Jamal also brings to light possible lapses in the nation’s current war on drugs. For example, he stresses an incidence in which a retired Methodist minister died of a heart attack when his apartment was invaded by Boston’s SWAT team. The team targeted his residence because they suspected he possessed marijuana, cocaine and guns.

However, the minister was innocent. Due to misinformation, the SWAT team had attacked the wrong apartment.

Abu-Jamal notes that there are approximately 6,000 to 7,000 deaths annually attributed to cocaine, an illegal substance in the United States. But cigarettes, which are legal, are blamed for approximately 400,000 deaths a year.

"It seems like we should be concentrating more on the larger killers," said Brian Prince, 25, a business major hailing from Redford. "The illegal drugs are still out there regardless, and it makes more sense to focus our attention on cigarettes because they’re causing so many deaths. The government needs to straighten out its priorities."

Abu-Jamal encourages readers to thoughtfully examine the country’s current method of capital punishment, too. In 1984, the lethal injection replaced electrocution as a "more humane" form of the death penalty. However, Newsweek revealed that the test subject, James Autry, took at least 10 minutes to die and was conscious throughout much of that time, moving around and complaining of pain.

"This doesn’t change my stance on the death penalty," said L. A. Wheeler, a 22-year-old art major and Ypsilanti resident in favor of capital punishment. "I believe it’s an eye for an eye. However, it does make me question the procedures involved. This is the kind of information that should be given more readily to the public."

Even Abu-Jamal himself has been at the center of legal controversies. His writing of several articles and essays brought a misconduct report against him because it was viewed as engaging in a business occupation – an activity prohibited in his prison. Although Abu-Jamal immediately took the case to court, University of Michigan architecture student Jason Roberts, 19, felt that he shouldn’t have been punished for that.

"Regardless of who or where he is, the First Amendment gives him a right to free speech, and he should be able to write his articles," Roberts said.

Abu-Jamal received the death sentence in 1991 after a jury deemed him guilty of the murder of a police officer during his intervention in a street incident. His judge, Albert Sabo, had sentenced more people to death than any other sitting judge in the country.

Alice Walker, author of "The Color Purple," wrote: "Millions of people around the world believe he is innocent. In every generation there is a case like Mumia’s: a young black man is noted to be brilliant, radical, loving of his people, at war with injustice… the ‘authorities’ decide to keep an eye on him."

In fact, the FBI began compiling a 600-page file on Abu-Jamal when he was a 15-year-old high school activist.

In addition to Walker, other advocates of Abu-Jamal’s innocence include Toni Morrison, Barbara Kingsolver, Maya Angelou, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Susan Sarandon, several United States representatives and the European Parliament. Friends, family and supporters have launched a nationwide campaign to promote his release from prison.

Abu-Jamal comes from a background of reporting. He spent part of his youth on the national staff of the Black Panther newspaper. He also worked as a news assistant for a Philadelphia radio station, writing articles about the oppressed people of the area.

Abu-Jamal moved on to deliver radio reports under the assumed name William Wellington Cole because his superiors deemed his real name "a bit too ethnic." Eventually, however, Abu-Jamal’s idea of news sources – the Palestine Liberation Organization and the South West African People’s Organization – clashed with those of the station management, and he was fired.