It was 25 years ago that MOVE, a radical back to nature cult, had a violent standoff with the Philadelphia police. While reading a recounting by a reporter who covered MOVE at the time, I came across this:
I was alone in the hall with Louise and LaVerne, 16 other MOVE members and Mumia Abu-Jamal, a radio reporter for WHYY who recently had grown his hair in dreadlocks. I knew I was hated by MOVE, after being on their hit list in 1978.
They surrounded me and began pummeling me with their hands and grabbing at my notebook. I tried to shield my face and moved toward the wall, holding onto the notebook.
Abu-Jamal shouted repeatedly: “Get her! Get her! Get her!”
The MOVE members continued to hit me on the back, as I inched closer and closer to the door to the judge’s chambers.
I was pounding on the door as they were hitting me. Finally, a court officer opened the door, looked around at the MOVE members and saw me and let me inside.
When I returned to the Daily News, I told managing editor Zack Stalberg what had just happened. I didn’t want to stop covering the story, and I didn’t care if Abu-Jamal had a different angle on a story.
But I was upset that another reporter, Abu-Jamal, would incite MOVE members to assault me.
Stalberg called WHYY to file a complaint about Abu-Jamal’s behavior. Apparently, WHYY was having its own problems with him.
The next time I would hear of him was eight months later, when he was charged with fatally shooting Officer Daniel Faulkner at 13th and Locust streets. Abu-Jamal had been driving a taxi after he lost his job at WHYY.
Abu-Jamal was convicted of the murder and sentenced to death. During his time on death row, he became an international cause célèbre…
According to Wikipedia,
Abu-Jamal has been made an honorary citizen of about 25 cities around the world, including Paris, Montreal, Palermo and Copenhagen. In 2001, he received the biennial Erich Mühsam Prize (established in 1993), which recognizes outstanding activism on behalf of a liberatory vision of human society in keeping with that of its anarchist namesake;[102] in particular, most of its awardees have been activists in the cause of social justice for persecuted minorities. In October 2002, he was awarded honorary membership of the Berlin-based Association of Those Persecuted by the Nazi Regime – Federation of Antifascists and Antifascist Groups (VVN-BdA).
On April 29, 2006, a newly-paved road in the Parisian suburb of St Denis was named Rue Mumia Abu-Jamal in his honor
Mumia has always been a violent radical scum-bag. He’s not that difficult to figure out, but what does it say about his supporters. Idiots? Dangerously gullible? Blind partisans? All of the above?
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