Free Mumia

            On Sunday, November 16, hundreds of people filled the University of California, Berkeley, campus to attend workshops, lectures, and discussions regarding the much disputed case of Mumia Abu-Jamal and prepared to show their support and enlist themselves for the cause of petitioning to government to grant Mumia another trial "a fairer one.
             The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal (formerly Wesley Cook) is far from simple, as explained by Riva Enteen, Program Director of the National Lawyers Guild in the lecture titled "The Trashing of the Constitution and the Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal."" Mumia was an aspiring Pennsylvania-based journalist who sought to expose police brutality directed at minority communities and people. A former member of the Black Panthers (until the group was dissolved), Mumia worked as both a newspaper and radio reporter, publicizing disruptive information about the violence that the minorities suffer at the hands of the law enforcement officers who are supposed to be there to protect them. However, by exposing this hypocritical and controversial state of affairs, Mumia was quickly being blacklisted by those same policemen.
             Mumia, who for financial reasons had to work as a taxi driver at night, subsequently began to be harassed by police officers. Beginning with veiled threats and climaxing beatings, the police clearly expressed their disapproval of Mumia's unveiling of their crimes. .
             The actual scene of the crime occurred one night when Mumia spotted his brother being beaten by the police. As he went to intervene to help his brother, two shots were fired: one killing Officer Daniel Faulkner and the other wounding Mumia himself. His arrest follows.
             Riva Enteen explained in the conference that as of that point there was nothing entirely upright in the proceedings. Comparing Mumia to a political prisoner, he spelled out the subsequent events involved in the trial. The judge who presided over the case is known for having sentenced more people with the death penalty than any other judge in the country.