The Boston Phoenix
March 4 - 11, 1999

[Features]

There's something about Mumia

Mumia Abu-Jamal is the most famous death-row prisoner in the world. As Massachusetts reconsiders the death penalty, will his controversial case make an impact here?

by Jason Gay

Revolution Books When newly elected Massachusetts governor Paul Cellucci took to the podium at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel on the night of November 3, 1998, his victory speech was suddenly interrupted by a protest emanating from -- of all places -- Pennsylvania's death row. As the governor-elect began thanking his well-scrubbed GOP pals, a trio of party-crashers rushed toward the stage, blowing a whistle and shouting, "Free Mumia! Free Mumia!" -- the mantra of the moment for supporters of the country's most famous death-row convict, Mumia Abu-Jamal.


Justice done or justice denied?


Though Cellucci's affection for capital punishment had already made him a target of anti-death penalty activists, the Mumia outburst was surprising. The governor-elect appeared somewhat perplexed by the ruckus, even after the protesters were wrestled to the ballroom floor and led away. Television newscasters didn't know what to make of the scene, and the next morning's papers barely noted the disturbance.

"It was a little bit odd," recalls Cellucci campaign manager Rob Gray. "Those of us on stage just figured it was a protest or some kind of fight. It was just one of those things where there was 30 seconds of confusion."

Amid the confusion, however, the three election-night protesters made their point. Death-penalty proponent Paul Cellucci was the state's new governor, yes. But Mumia Abu-Jamal had officially arrived in Massachusetts, too.


Beastie Boys He's already everywhere else, of course. It's almost hard to remember that Abu-Jamal, an acclaimed radio journalist once hailed as the "voice of the voiceless," actually spent a decade in prison in relative anonymity after being convicted in the December 9, 1981, slaying of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner and sentenced to death. But ever since 1994 -- when National Public Radio, under pressure from politicians and police, pulled the plug on his prison-cell commentaries, thereupon igniting a media firestorm over censorship -- Mumia has become a cause célèbre.

Star power has helped. Left-leaning celebrities, including Ossie Davis, Ed Asner, Paul Newman, Michael Stipe, and Norman Mailer, have flocked to his defense, calling his original 1982 conviction a miscarriage of justice and demanding that he receive a new trial. That sentiment has been echoed by much of the country's liberal-progressive academic and legal establishment. Abu-Jamal's lead attorney is Leonard Weinglass, who has also represented Abbie Hoffman and the Chicago Seven, Jane Fonda, and Amy Carter, among others. Abu-Jamal's two books, Live from Death Row and Death Blossoms, have been critically acclaimed. "Resonates with the moral force of Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'Letter from a Birmingham Jail,' " the Boston Globe exclaimed of the former.

Talking heads

Mumia, Chomsky, and Zinn on CD

by Matt Ashare

Last year, the San Francisco-based independent punk-rock label Alternative Tentacles -- a company founded and run by Dead Kennedys front man Jello Biafra -- did something most record labels do from time to time: it released a CD-sampler compilation featuring tracks by 23 of its current artists. The disc, The Virus That Would Not Die!, includes everything from American punk nuggets by the Dead Kennedys ("Life Sentences") and the Dicks ("Dicks Hate the Police") to tracks by veteran Japanese noisemakers Ultra Bidé and San Francisco dyke rockers Tribe 8. And, as is often the case with compilations of this sort, there are plenty of cuts by lesser-known underground bands that you'd imagine might appeal to, say, a Dead Kennedys fan -- in this case Facepuller, Man Is the Bastard, Dead and Gone, and Biafra's other band, Lard. There is, however, one rather unusual artist featured on The Virus That Would Not Die! -- Mumia Abu-Jamal.

What's the most famous death-row prisoner in America doing on a punk-rock compilation? The simple answer: he's an Alternative Tentacles recording artist. In fact, back in '97, the label released a split CD featuring spoken word by Abu-Jamal (as well as recorded statements about Abu-Jamal by Biafra, poet Allen Ginsberg, and Bob Dole) and music by the art-damaged avant-punk band Man Is the Bastard. And last December, Alternative Tentacles followed that up by releasing All Things Censored . . . , a full-length CD compiling 16 spoken essays by Abu-Jamal and commentary from a diverse cast of 17 celebrities and activists, from actor Martin Sheen to the late, great civil-rights lawyer William Kunstler. The disc's title is an allusion to the NPR news program All Things Considered, which in 1994 contracted Abu-Jamal to provide a series of reports from death row, but backed down from airing his commentaries under pressure from, among others, Dole. Those recordings have remained the unreleased property of NPR, but a number of other recordings by Abu-Jamal -- including the ones released by Alternative Tentacles -- were made in August 1993 and October 1996, before he was prohibited from such activities two years ago.

Mixing politics with punk rock and supplementing songs with spoken-word pieces is nothing new for Alternative Tentacles. For more than a decade now, Biafra himself has been a fixture on the underground lecture circuit. He's also released five volumes of his own spoken-word recordings, the most recent of which, the three-CD If Evolution Is Outlawed, Only Outlaws Will Evolve, came out last fall. And Biafra isn't the only punk veteran who's done time at the podium -- Lydia Lunch and Henry Rollins are two of punk's other notable talking heads.

But Biafra has always favored a more educational approach in his band-less forays, eschewing the internal dialogues, personal reflections, and emotional venting of "spoken-word" entertainment for close analysis of sociopolitical currents, the media, and even statistical data. He's more like an eccentric college professor with strong left leanings than the comedian Rollins has become or the performance artist that Lunch now resembles. So it's fitting to find the names of two bona fide academics bringing new meaning to the term college rock on Alternative Tentacles' new-artist roster in 1999 -- outspoken MIT media critic Noam Chomsky and noted historian and BU professor emeritus Howard Zinn. Zinn's popular and provocative book A People's History of the United States can now be enjoyed on a two-CD set of the same title, which is actually not a "book on tape" but a recording of a lecture he gave at Reed College in 1995. In the lecture, he deals with such rock-and-roll topics as "The Conquest of the Philippines," "Émile Zola's Germinal," and "Machiavelli and Teaching."

Chomsky, however, actually beat Abu-Jamal to the rock punch by recording a split single with the punk band Bad Religion back in 1992. His Alternative Tentacles debut, the two-CD Propaganda and Control of the Public Mind, came out last November. But he really came into his own as a potential punk icon when former Bad Religion guitarist Brett Gurewitz's Southern California indie-punk label Epitaph recently released not one but three Chomsky titles (The Clinton Vision: Old Wine New Bottles, Prospects for Democracy, and, punkest-sounding of them all, Class War: The Attack on Working People).

If nothing else, Chomsky can now tell his linguistics students that he's signed to the same label as Rancid. That should shut them up. Or maybe it'll get them talking, which would probably be more to Chomsky's liking. Because as much money and controversy as a Rage Against the Machine generates, you have to wonder whether anyone goes away from one of their concerts with a better understanding of the issues surrounding something like the incarceration of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

And in recent months -- following the Pennsylvania Supreme Court's rejection of Abu-Jamal's latest petition for a new trial -- Mumia Nation has kicked into overdrive. Rage Against the Machine, the Beastie Boys, and Bad Religion hosted a benefit concert on January 28, which attracted a sold-out crowd of 19,000 to the New Jersey Meadowlands. A punk-rock recording label, Alternative Tentacles, began releasing Mumia's commentaries on compact disc (see "Talking Heads," right). A national college- and high-school-student protest walkout is planned for April 23. And on April 24 -- Mumia's birthday -- comes Millions for Mumia, a one-day rally that is expected to be the single biggest protest to date. À la the Million Man and Million Woman marches, more than a million supporters each are expected to converge on Philadelphia and San Francisco.

Local Mumia activism has been ratcheted up, too. Abu-Jamal has had supporters here for some time, but the case has taken on heightened urgency in the wake of Cellucci's election and his renewed push for the death penalty. In addition to the election-night disturbance, there were pro-Mumia protests at the governor's inauguration and at a February 6 vigil at the State House. A Mumia seminar is scheduled for March 27 at Northeastern University. There is also talk of a Mumia benefit concert featuring Boston-area bands in the near future.

"The movement is gaining a lot of momentum here in Boston," says John Hicks, a Weymouth High School student who has protested on Mumia's behalf in Harvard Square. "We're pushing it to as many people as we can in order to raise awareness. We don't want to see Mumia executed."

Mumia has been famous for some time, but this recent tide of attention has surprised even long-time followers of the American death-penalty debate. "I can't remember a [death-row] case in the past 30 years that has gotten as much publicity as Mumia has gotten," says Tufts University professor and death-penalty scholar Hugo Bedau.

Understandably, there are plenty of people outraged that the convicted murderer of a police officer is becoming a household name. Daniel Faulkner's widow, Maureen, is waging a small but passionate campaign on behalf of her late husband (see "The Other Side of Fame," below right). Police unions continue to stage counter-protests at Mumia rallies. A few prominent names, including shock jock Howard Stern, have voiced their support for Mrs. Faulkner and their belief that Abu-Jamal was justly convicted. A few newspaper columnists have taken up the cause, too. MAY IT RAIN RATS ON CONCERT FOR COP KILLER, read a headline over a column by the New York Post's Steve Dunleavy before January's Rage/Beastie Boys concert.

"Mumia Abu-Jamal has been sentenced to death and exhausted all appeals. He was proven guilty in the most dramatically even-handed way," Dunleavy wrote. "Then a bunch of crazed liberals turned him not only into a celebrity, but also into the victim."

But Dunleavy doesn't have much company in his rabid criticism. Mumia Abu-Jamal is more than a cause these days; he's a pop-culture phenomenon. It's hard to compete with the attention he commands. Right now, the counter-protesters, passionate as they may be, are getting drowned out by the buzz.


It's a chilly night in late February, and a thick crowd -- a gallimaufry of Manhattan-style liberatti representing a rainbow of ages and ethnicities -- is gathering outside the Town Hall theater near Times Square. The theater is the site of this evening's "Town Hall Meeting for Mumia Abu-Jamal," an event to rally support for the April 24 Millions for Mumia march. The incoming audience is peaceful, but the atmosphere is tense. Across West 43rd Street stands a corps of New York City Police officers. Next to them is a plainclothes group of candle-holding protesters, members of the New York Patrolmen's Benevolent Association demonstrating on behalf of their slain colleague, Daniel Faulkner.

It wouldn't be New York without some additional drama, of course, and tonight's tension is escalated by the recent death of Amadou Diallo, an African immigrant who was shot 41 times on the front steps of his apartment by four police officers who suspected him in a series of neighborhood rapes. Diallo was both innocent and unarmed, and the shooting has rekindled long-simmering emotions over police brutality and racism in New York and beyond. Outside the theater, a man hands out copies of the Workers World carrying the front-page headline MUMIA CAMPAIGN DEMANDS STOP COP TERROR AND RACIST REPRESSION -- ALL OUT FOR APRIL 24!

The scent of good old-fashioned '60s radicalism is in the air, even if it seems a bit incongruous here, steps from the Disney superstore and in the shadow of the new Condé Nast skyscraper. Tonight's speakers include Leonard Weinglass, Ossie Davis, Ramsey Clark, and Dick Gregory. Kathleen Cleaver is seated in the audience. The anti-war and civil-rights struggles of the Vietnam era are recalled repeatedly throughout the night. Even Pete Seeger is dragged out of mothballs midway through the meeting to lead a hand-clapping rendition of "If I Had a Hammer."

This fuck-the-system, take-all-comers spirit is characteristic of the Mumia campaign, especially among its most hard-core members. No one is turned away; a banner advertising the Millions for Mumia march reads, MUMIA IS ALL OF US. Abu-Jamal's supporters include everyone from contemporary communists to Black Panthers to trade unionists to gay and lesbian activists. There are people here at Town Hall who could barely scrape together the $10 for a ticket, and others who contribute $1000 checks when Ossie Davis initiates a pass-the-hat drive. A college professor donates $10,000. ("Thank you for giving me the privilege to take my children's money to free Mumia!" he cracks.)

In this spirit, other causes are free to piggyback on the Mumia movement. The cause is a haven for anyone who has a gripe with the establishment (particularly the criminal-justice system), and for political protest of all stripes. Tonight, Ramsey Clark uses a brief speech to condemn US sanctions against Iraq. Attorney Ronald Kuby (the partner of the late criminal-defense attorney William Kunstler) launches into a stern condemnation of New York City Police brutality. Bill Clinton is bashed repeatedly (the crowd hisses any time the president is mentioned). Conversely, Ho Chi Minh's name is affectionately dropped. A member of the John Brown Society presents an award to Mumia, which is accepted on his behalf by Pam Africa, a long-time Philadelphia activist and one of Abu-Jamal's closest associates.

The other side of fame

Daniel Faulkner's widow fights back

Maureen Faulkner tells a story about pulling into a gas station in Southern California a few years back and finding a young man standing next to her wearing a Mumia Abu-Jamal T-shirt.

Faulkner was stunned. She had come to California to try to move on, to escape the increasing publicity surrounding Abu-Jamal's case on the East Coast. In places like Philadelphia and New York, Mumia was everywhere. She had hoped Southern California would be different.

"I couldn't believe it," Faulkner recalls. "Here he was with a 'Free Mumia' T- shirt, right out in California."

Faulkner thought about biting her lip and driving away. But instead, she approached the young man and asked him about his shirt. He said he was a college student at UCLA, and that students had held a rally for Mumia. He explained that Mumia had been railroaded by police because of his controversial political beliefs.

"Your facts are not quite correct," Faulkner remembers responding. "You know what I think? I think you need to get the facts of this case [because] the widow of the officer may walk up to you and ask you the facts of the case."

Faulkner says the student's face dropped. "He just said, 'You're the widow,' " she recalls.

No matter what version of events you believe occurred on that December night in Philadelphia, it is hard not to empathize with Maureen Faulkner. She and her husband were practically newlyweds when he was shot to death more than 17 years ago. She endured a funeral and a murder trial, and steadfastly maintains that the system convicted the right man. She thought her ordeal was over.

But instead, Faulkner watched as Abu-Jamal ascended to international fame in the 1990s. This was particularly difficult, she says. Most widows of murder victims never have to deal with walking out the door and seeing posters advertising rallies for their husband's convicted killer slapped onto signposts. Most widows of murder victims don't have to deal with Web sites that claim their husband's killer is still at large. But she does.

"It has blossomed into this movement," Faulkner says on the phone from her home in Southern California. "Jamal has become almost a folk hero for a lot of people. It's cool for young people."

Instead of ignoring Abu-Jamal's supporters, however, Faulkner has chosen to take them on. She and some associates have established an organization, Justice for Daniel Faulkner, that is dedicated to "setting the record straight" about Mumia Abu-Jamal. A Web site, http://www.danielfaulkner.com, seeks to counter what Faulkner describes as common "myths" concerning Abu-Jamal's case. (Memorably, after the Reading-based publishing company Addison-Wesley published Abu-Jamal's book Live from Death Row in 1995, Faulkner also hired a plane to fly a banner over the company that read ADDISON-WESLEY SUPPORTS CONVICTED COP KILLER.)

"I had a decision to make -- continue on with my life and whatever happens, happens, or fight this," Faulkner says. "I decided I'm a fighter."

Recently, Faulkner played a prominent role in protesting a pro-Mumia concert in New Jersey featuring Rage Against the Machine and the Beastie Boys. She even found herself on Howard Stern's show, debating the case with Rage member Tom Morello and Abu-Jamal attorney Leonard Weinglass. She says she received more than 2500 e-mail messages after the broadcast, including some from would-be concertgoers saying they intended to return their tickets.

Though Faulkner is clearly frustrated that the case has become such a cause célèbre, she has occasionally enjoyed being part of civil exchanges with Abu-Jamal's supporters. She recalls attending a Mumia rally in Santa Cruz, California, where the audience allowed her to speak and present the case from her perspective. She describes the crowd as "very, very respectful."

Still, Faulkner knows the attention surrounding Abu-Jamal's case is only growing more intense. She's aware of the Millions for Mumia rallies planned for Philadelphia and San Francisco on April 24, though she doesn't intend to go. ("I don't want to see any confrontation, and I don't want anyone to get hurt," she says.) There will be a dinner held in honor of her husband the night before, she says, and a month later, on May 23, there will be a Harley-Davidson ride from New Jersey to Philadelphia for Daniel Faulkner.

Faulkner says she intends to keep fighting as long as Mumia's supporters remain vigilant. But she admits that every once in a while, the battle gets to her. "It's very wearing on me," she says. "I'm sick of it."

Taken as a whole, tonight's meeting feels like much more than a protest for one man on death row. It's more like a contemporary revolutionary revival. (Late in the evening, someone even strikes up the old chant "The people united/Will never be defeated.") No one here expects the establishment to release Mumia, so they're busy making other plans. "It's going to take an explosion -- an earthquake of humanity -- to free Mumia!" says one speaker, labor activist Larry Holmes.

Forget Iraq, forget international labor exploitation -- Mumia is the biggest thing in radical politics these days. It's as true in Boston as it is in New York. Jane Sullivan, who volunteers at the Revolution Book Store, on the edge of Harvard Square, says that Mumia business has been steadily picking up in recent months; the Mass Ave store is stockpiled with books, buttons, posters, and T-shirts featuring Abu-Jamal's dreadlocked visage.

"There's a whole new wave of people coming around to this cause," says Sullivan, who points out that most of the newcomers are young people.

Indeed, the most significant current development in the Mumia movement is its growing popularity among high-school and college students. Kids, it seems, see supporting Mumia as hip in a banned-from-MTV sort of way: it's different, dangerous, and something your parents would probably prefer you didn't do. Though reporters at the January 28 Rage Against the Machine/Beastie Boys concert noted that some attendees didn't know Mumia from Mummenschanz ("I just wanted to see the bands," one young woman told the Associated Press), the cause has, in a short time, captured the kind of youthful support that other activist movements covet.

"Young people see Mumia standing up against police and police brutality and getting threatened with death. That speaks to them," says Nick, a 23-year-old Mumia activist in Boston, who declines to give his last name. "[Young people] feel if Mumia is silenced, they'll be silenced, too."

Mumia is already big on Boston-area campuses. Brian Jones, a member of the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia and the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, says that there are Mumia activist groups at almost every Boston-area college, including Brandeis, Northeastern, Wellesley, Mass College of Art, Roxbury Community College, Tufts, Harvard, and MIT.

"It's virtually everywhere right now," says Jones. "Everyone's talking about Mumia."

But it's one thing, Jones says, to raise awareness among students, who have traditionally been drawn to causes -- and the same goes for the radical left. The real question, he says, is whether the public at large can ever embrace Mumia.


At first glance, the Mumia movement would seem to mesh naturally with a cause that has much broader support: opposition to the death penalty. Its recent brush with the klieg lights of celebrity attention aside, the case raises all the classic red flags of an American death-penalty case: an African-American defendant, a meager defense, and a quick and questionable conviction.

"It's a compelling case, just as far as the facts are concerned," says Brian Henninger, the program coordinator for the Washington, DC-based National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. "You're dealing with a case that concerns a lot of issues that young African-Americans have to deal with every day."

Despite this common ground, however, Mumia supporters and mainstream anti-death penalty activists don't always see eye to eye. Part of this is a function of Abu-Jamal's crime, of course: he is convicted of killing a police officer, one of the crimes a civilized society most abhors. Other anti-death penalty activists consider the Mumia movement to be too narrowly focused on one individual.

But it's also true that Mumia's case frightens some people because it raises uncomfortable questions about race and class in this country. Abu-Jamal's supporters believe his incarceration points to the inefficiencies and prejudices not just of the criminal-justice establishment, but of society as a whole. Some of Mumia's supporters aren't just asking for a new trial -- they are condemning a system they find to be historically and chronically corrupt.

And to some, that makes Mumia Abu-Jamal just too hot to handle. "There's a certain kind of Democratic Party liberal person who is good on the death-penalty issue generally, but when it comes to Mumia, they're hands off," says Bill Keach, a Brown University English professor who heads the Boston chapter of the Campaign to End the Death Penalty, a national organization.

Jane at Revolution Books Jane Sullivan of Revolution Books puts it more bluntly. "People are afraid of Mumia," she says flatly. "He's a black guy with dreadlocks."

What's more, Mumia supporters and anti-death penalty activists often have different approaches. Whereas Mumia's advocates tend to work outside the system, many mainstream capital-punishment opponents lobby legislators and court the media. They also have different styles of protest. Keach says that anti-death penalty activists at a recent State House protest didn't seem terribly thrilled when he and some colleagues struck up the chant "Brick by brick/Wall by wall/Free Mumia Abu-Jamal."

"I think a lot of people in the [anti-death penalty movement] don't want to deal with the political side of things, and Mumia is a political issue," says Kazi Toure, the co-coordinator of the American Friends Service Committee's criminal-justice program.

Still, the biggest reason that some anti-death penalty crusaders tiptoe around Mumia is that they are terrified of alienating middle-of-the-road voters, whom they regard as critical to their cause. After all, mainstream-voter support persuades politicians and brings change -- or, as in Massachusetts's case, preserves the status quo of no capital punishment.

"We have to find a way to broaden the appeal of the anti-death penalty movement," says Tom Lowenstein of the Massachusetts Citizens Against the Death Penalty. "And in that context, we need to have everyone against the death penalty under our tent."

At the same time, however, Lowenstein gives high points to Mumia's supporters, whom he describes as "absolutely invaluable organizers and workers and fighters for the cause." Likewise, Brian Henninger of the National Coalition Against the Death Penalty acknowledges that "while there are divisions nationwide" among Mumia supporters and anti-death penalty activists, "we do work together, and we do cooperate."

Few in the anti-death penalty movement disparage Abu-Jamal's bid for a new trial. Peter Elikann, a Boston-based Court TV commentator and author, says the facts of Mumia's case outweigh the concerns about his partisans: "Even if there is criticism of the particular methods of Mumia's activist supporters, I don't know of anyone who doesn't think that his case doesn't have an extraordinary amount of merit."

Indeed, the fact is that the mainstream anti-death penalty movement needs Mumia Abu-Jamal right now. In business terminology, that's where the growth is. "Mumia coalitions have been able to bring into the fold a lot of groups that, quite frankly, [mainstream] abolitionist groups haven't even thought about until this time," says Brian Henninger. "We need to make sure we can benefit from each other's strengths."

And it's fair to say that Mumia needs the mainstream as much as the mainstream needs him. "Folks need to be reaching out to the larger anti-death penalty groups for support," says Steven Hawkins, the executive director of the Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, who has also served on Abu-Jamal's defense team since 1990. "We need to be sharing ideas and finding out what's happening in other parts of the county."

Other Abu-Jamal activists think it's essential, too, for the movement to shake its to-hell-with-the-system image. "The Mumia work has got to break out of the radical left, not because the radical left doesn't have an important case to make, but because the movement has to be defined more broadly," says Bill Keach. Adds Jane Sullivan: "It can't be just the radicals and miscontents. You have to bring in a broader, determined resistance."

Brian Jones of the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia recalls attending a meeting and hearing a speaker say she wanted the Mumia movement to become so big that "Oprah feels she has to do a show about it." After all, Jones says, Mumia supporters aren't just rallying abstractly against the death penalty. They are trying to prevent a specific individual's execution, to win him a new trial and, perhaps, his freedom. To do that, they need the middle-of-the-road people.

"For a long time, the question of Mumia's defense has been in the hands of a brilliant defense lawyer and out in the streets among a small [collection] of left-wing groups," says Jones. "And the problem is to break out of that isolation . . . and into the mainstream."


Of course, it is highly unlikely that Mumia's case will ever become a mainstream cause in the way that world hunger or the environment is. It's simply too controversial. Some people will never get past the fact that Mumia was convicted of killing a cop. Some people believe strongly that Mumia is guilty, and that he received a fair trial. And even those who are sympathetic to his case aren't all going to take to the streets in his defense.

But it's certain that the supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal have an important role to play in the greater anti-death penalty debate, especially here in Massachusetts. Abu-Jamal's advocates have shown a remarkable ability to cultivate support, especially among youth. And as Paul Cellucci pushes to reinstitute capital punishment in coming months, that kind of energetic support will be crucial to the local anti-death penalty effort.

"Mumia matters in Massachusetts because issues of race and class around the death penalty -- not to mention issues of innocence -- matter as deeply here as they do in Texas or Louisiana or Florida or Pennsylvania or wherever else," says Bill Keach.

Indeed, though his case is loaded with a lot of baggage -- and anger on both sides -- Mumia cannot neatly be separated from the death-penalty debate, in Massachusetts or anywhere else. After all, when it comes to the act of capital punishment, there is no separating an execution from an individual.

No one realizes that more, apparently, than the famous man locked on Pennsylvania's death row. "Mumia defines his whole case and struggle as part of the anti-death penalty movement, so there is no separate Mumia movement," says Stephen Hawkins. "Mumia himself doesn't define it as such."

Jason Gay can be reached at jgay[a]phx.com.

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