That is not to say that most Americans or American prisoners have heard him or heard of him. His books can be read in seven languages. Despite the constraints of 23-hour lockdown and Plexiglas sound barriers, he became a preeminent “voice of the voiceless,” framing the modern prison abolition movement.Ību-Jamal’s commentaries, a rich baritone echoing off the walls of a maximum-security visiting room, air regularly on 185 radio stations around the world. In the decades since, the former radio and print journalist has authored five books and written and recorded hundreds of articles and speeches criticizing his captors and the government that imprisons more than two million of its people. What white woman, however lonely, was ever captive or insulted by me? Yet they say I am a bad Indian.Half a lifetime ago, Mumia Abu-Jamal was sentenced to death for killing a rookie cop on the streets of Philadelphia.

Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them? What white man can say that I ever stole his lands or a penny of his money? Yet they say I am a thief. They sent ten thousand horsemen to battle. When I was a boy the Sioux owned the world. What treaty that the whites ever made with us red men have they kept? Not one. “What treaty that the whites have kept has the red man broken? Not one. They dwell in neighboring, whiter counties and towns. They work there, they kill there, but they don’t live there.

Let us look at the cops, almost 98 percent of whom are outsiders to Ferguson. If media were doing their job, reporting on the vicious violence launched against young Blacks the nation over, perhaps Michael Brown would be alive today. Were it not for these protests, let us be frank, the mass media would’ve ignored the crimes police committed against Michael Brown, against his family, against his community, and against his fellow citizens-us. Their job is to report what is happening, period. Do all citizens have the right to protest, or just some? Is what happened to Mike Brown a local matter, or is his unjustifiable killing actually a national issue? It’s not the job of media to police protests-deciding who are “good” demonstrators, who are “bad” ones. King’s organization, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference? When it staged marches in Alabama, that state’s governor, George Wallace, called the organization’s members “professional agitators with pro-Communist affiliations.” Sound familiar? How close to “outside agitators”! The phrase begs the question: outside of what? The state? America? This country is called the United States of America, founded upon a national Constitution.

Live from Death Row by Mumia Abu-Jamal