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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
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"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.
© Allen
Hougland,
1997
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