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In prison my whole life
(The Great Divide)


Strapped into an electrical execution chair in America.

"In prison my whole life", is a new documentary that reexamines and brings new facts to light on the African American journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal and the anomalies within his trial conviction and his incarceration which has put him on death row for 25 years, for his alleged killing of a young police officer in Philadelphia.


On May 17, 2007, a three-judge panel from the United States Third Circuit Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit heard oral arguments in Philadelphia on four different issues regarding the fairness of Mumia Abu Jamal's original 1982 trial (below)


Mumia protesters at hearings. (below)

Rather than just presenting the story, the documentary deals with William Francome's search for the facts of a case that became more personal to him, as when he was born on 9 December 1981 was the night when Mumia was arrested. William says in the documentary, "...as my mom would often remind me every birthday I have had, has been another year that Mumia has spent in prison..."

Black Panthers groups still exist to this day - holding regular meetings , conferences, conventions and joining other protest groups throughout the world

Mumia Abu-Jamal, an ex Black Panther and radio journalist whose work dubbed him "The voice of the voiceless." These attributes already made him a threat to the authorities in the city of Philadelphia, that was referred to as the closest thing that America has to a police state. For those not familiar with the case there is too much evidence against Mumia that doesn't quite add up; such as no forensic testing of the weapon that supposedly killed the young police officer Daniel Faulkner, the crime scene was never secured, the three witnesses speak of police pressure used against them and changing of stories, amongst other anomalies within the case.
Wall mural of IItalina-American, Frank Rizzo, ex-Chief-of-Police, Mayor of Philadelphia (i.e. City of Brotherly Love), mafphia hero notorious for his private and public hatred of 'Black Americans'

One begins to think not another conspiracy, especially in a country where the President George W. Bush states, "You are either with us or against us!" Trying to be balanced you want to see what the other side has to say, Fraternal Order of Police, FOP, spokesman Richard Costello, "Murder is not a political act, it's a crime of violence! So we have no sympathy with it, when you murder a police officer anything that you may be about you have given up!" The judge preceding over Mumia's trial Albert Sabo a member of FOP, was heard saying by the court stenographer, "I'm going to help them fry the nigger!" One can only switch off at this stage and wonder just how far this American creed has come since the age of slavery to the death of Martin Luther King and the rise of the Civil Rights movement, and sadly it seems in this day and age they have come nowhere. The story then is literally black and white of two worlds two cultures and one country, America.

The emotional impact that the film delivers is one that left me with a lump in my throat, tears in my eyes and rage in my heart. Surreal could not even describe events, and as the adage goes, "Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction." Might sum this up best. The institutional racism that is a part of Philadelphia's history is sad and distressing.The facts involving the revolutionary group known as Move and the way they were dealt with by the authorities. In 1985 after a gun battle with the police where Philadelphia's first black mayor allowed the use of explosives to be dropped from a helicopter on the house where Move were located and the black neighborhood was left to burn to the ground. Preceding that unbelievable footage of a police helicopter dropping explosives,

1979 issue of Zero featuring MOVE families being persecuted by police included article by Mumia on what really happened.

were a sequence of photographs of US soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. Later on in the documentary there were photos shown of the catastrophe of Hurricane Katrina and the help that arrived too late from the Federal Government, for the predominantly black community of New Orleans.

All these atrocities present a case for an even bigger problem within America where an extreme right wing religious gun toting militant mentality seems quite prevalent within the corridors of power. And Mumia, he is the face, the personification of the injustice within a country or beyond its borders, where it seems if you are not a white Anglo Saxon Protestant you are regarded as a second class citizen, if that, or treated with no rights at all.

By Mark A. Silberstein

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CONTENTS fiba 2008
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FILMBANK 2008

Year of the RAT