Second, the book characterizes the movement as completely ignorant of the facts, as made up of people unable to weigh arguments. Mumia Abu-Jamal’s defenders are just “Mumidiots” (47). In fact, the commitment to weigh arguments, to follow the evidence, to get more of the evidence heard, has been the continuous concern of Abu-Jamal’s attorneys, of International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, of various authors writing on the case, and of scholar advocates from schools, colleges and universities.

It is telling in this regard that the Faulkner/Smerconish book makes no mention at all of two of the most measured and reasoned studies, the 2000 study by Amnesty International which called for a new trial, and the 2003 book by Dave Lindorff which remains one of the most exacting and thorough treatments of the case. I stress, there is not one attempt by Smerconish and Faulkner even to mention these works.

Nor do Faulkner and Smerconish make a single reference to the organization on Abu-Jamal’s behalf, of hundreds of educators from all levels of education, especially from colleges and universities. Through their organization of “Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal,” these educators from the 1990s mobilized many press conferences, press releases, and also financed a full-page ad in the New York Times on May 5, 2000, to call for a new trial.[6] Faulkner and Smerconish repeatedly circulate the myth that only uninformed “Hollywood celebrities” have stepped forward to speak in Abu-Jamal’s defense.

The third mode of caricature of the movement involves saying that the movement only thrives outside Philadelphia. Smerconish repeats the mantra: “what’s notable about Abu-Jamal’s support is that it grows in strength the farther one gets from Philadelphia” (x). In response, let me refrain, here, from commenting on what historians establish as Philadelphia authorities’ heavy repression of community supporters of black dissidents, of dissidents in general, and also of black communities in the city, especially from the time of Mayor Frank Rizzo.[7]

In spite of that repressive history, which can account for why dissent over the years in Philadelphia has often been beaten down, there has been resistance. As a coordinator of EMAJ, I can easily point to one way in which this caricature is wrong. The educators who spoke out for a new trial and for the removal of Judge Sabo from Abu-Jamal’s case during the 1990s PCRA hearings, were not only from around the nation and the world, they were also from Philadelphia. Faculty signed their first ad in support of Abu-Jamal in 1995, and it was in the Philadelphia Daily News – not abroad, not outside of Philadelphia. They represented many of Philadelphia’s schools: Temple University, the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia University of the Sciences, Philadelphia Community College, Drexel University, Swarthmore College, and various secondary schools. In 1995, faculty from these schools, some eight in number, in fact, held a press conference in Philadelphia, to call for Sabo’s removal and for a new trial. The event was barely covered in the Philadelphia press.

Faulkner and Smerconish are as silent about all this work of local educators in their own city, as they are about the reputable and careful studies of the case by Amnesty International and Lindorff. Instead, they circulate a caricature of a misinformed and ignorant movement of non-thinkers, duped people in Paris, France, for example, or the “Mumidiots” everywhere, as they prefer to write (49).

No wonder these authors have shown themselves inept in responding to recent radio debates with Dave Lindorff, or with Pam Africa of International Concerned Family and Friends, or in showing themselves to have even a basic familiarity with the important recent studies by Michael Schiffmann concerning the repressed photos of Daniel Faulkner’s crime scene, taken by Pedro Polakoff.[8]

Rhetorical Strategy No. 4 – Demonize Mumia Abu-Jamal

Having set up an approach to the book in the ways described above, it will not be surprising that Faulkner and Smerconish demonize Mumia in various simplistic ways.

At times, readers will find Faulkner and Smerconish guilty of shameless hyperbole, as when they characterize Abu-Jamal’s court protest actions as those of a “latter-day Charles Manson” (35), or summarize the graduation ceremony at Antioch College, which featured Mumia as commencement speaker by way of audio-tape, as “like one of the rallies the Nazis staged in Nuremburg” (262).

Beyond this hyperbole, there is a continual demonization of Abu-Jamal as ominous specter. He is not simply guilty of a crime of murder, he is also “heartless executioner” (57), an “evil man” (82) with a “haunting grimace” of face (262) and an “unmistakable snarl” of voice (85), who bought the gun he was carrying as a Taxi driver “fully resolved,” say the authors, “to shoot and seriously injure or kill someone,” intending “the execution of anyone who crossed his path” (87).

As is usually the case with such a demonization of others, there is also a near complete idealization of one’s own group and life. I will not here seek to list off any flaws in the character of Daniel Faulkner, his family or supporters. In fact, I can imagine and see some virtues. But as this book recounts Faulkner’s life there is not one down-side, not one complex ambiguity mentioned by the authors. In the chapter, “Danny and Me,” the dominant story-line is about how Mumia cut short the life of Daniel Faulkner, a hard-driving, adventurous, goal-setting, blue-eyed Irish achiever in army life, then as prison guard, and later as a police officer frequently-awarded for “aggressive patrol procedures” (57-8).

The reference to Mumia as “heartless executioner” occurs at the end of a paragraph in this chapter where Daniel and the Faulkner family are presented as “good people…They went to church. They loved one another and looked out for one another. They worked hard. Nothing was handed to them. They stayed out of other people’s business and kept within the law. They were ‘good people’” (56)

I am not here proposing any reverse demonization of Faulkner, just some ambiguity, some freedom from the book’s all-too-easy polarization of hero-Faulkner versus demon-Mumia. The book does not give that complexity and thus sews some suspicion about its other claims, too.

Rhetorical Strategy No. 5 – Avoid Serious Reflection on Substantial Issues

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