leader MOUMIA ABU-JAMAL has been on death row for 11 years, in Huntingdon prison Pennsylvania, after being convicted on a trumped-up murder charge. This is a letter he sent to the French magazine Politis explaining his situation. THERE IS NO life on death row. There is but existence where one eats. siceos ao exercies, wierconcicaves a room of brick to enter a cage of steel, to receive visits from ones screen, unable to touch or be touched.
Death row is not an abstraction, but a surtung reaisy where about era perpic await death ordered by the state by a myriad of means. These include hanging. electrocution, the gas chamber, lethal inson to choose their method of extinction. In Pennsylvania, where lethal injection was recently adopeed, aproximately 147 men and two women by the state. I say 'approximately, because the number rises steadily, sometimes by two a week The city of Philacounts for 55 per cent of all death sentences in Pennsv vania: 82 per cent of all those accused of murder are black, despite blacks being only nine per cent of the population of Pennsylvania. The population of death row is 60 per cent black. The state of Pennsylvania can pride itself on there being three communities where the black population is the majority: Philadelphia, Pittburgh - and death row.
Conditions in death row are much worse than people imagine. Twenty two hours in one's cell (often 23), and then a couple of hours in a steel cage of 8 feet by 14 - sarcastically called by the inmates the 'greyhound track".
Meals are taken in your cell; there are no special facilities for study or religious services, or for educational activities of Visits are an exercise in mutual humibation. Each time I enter the visiting room I find my daughter Samiya in tears because of the cruel window which divides the room in two. She puts he little hands on the glass and shouts 'smash it". her. The glass is unbreakable: our hearts arc noi. All three or us samiya, ner mother and me, try not to cry.
Inhuman conditions
Because of these inhuman conditions. visits are hellish for those who visit and those who receive them. And because of that many of those on death row refuse putting their names on the list of authorised visitors.
As a prelude to the destruction of the flesh, the authorities try to destroy the spirit of the condemned with daily denials of the most elementary decencies.
My request to do a correspondence course in psychology was routinely rejected despite not costing the state a Moumia Abu-Jamal with his daughter Samiya penny - as a 'security risk'.
Because I have refused to renounce my beliefs in the teachings of John Afsubject to an even more restrictive regime than the others on death row. I'm not allowed to buy food at the prison shop, use the telephone (on death row you are entitled to one 10 minute call a month) and I'm not allowed any books, with the exception of legal books and a book on religion.
Also I'm not allowed the prison "ware" (those on death row get Si5 a month to compensate for the fact they' re stand pace work for which a small sum is paid).
At the end of October 1992 a new regime took effect for those on death row, much more restrictive than before:
- 23 in your cell, no more purchases in the shop with the caception of two packets of cigarettes a month, no papers, magazines - nothing.
The new regime is a retum to the politically repressive system of the 1950s. The judicial system is becoming more reactionary than in the ReaganBush era. In general the judges think the state is incapable by definition of committing injustices in its prisons, and that the courts must suomit to the prores sional judgement" of the prison authorities.
The state has its hands more and more free in its campaign of repression against black bureaucrats): it is more and more free to do anything it wishes against members of unpopular partics - or against those sentenced to death. ated as the founding document of great liberties, remains a far-off and untouchable talisman, accessible only to those capable of conducting the rituals (includ- FIGHTING RACISM ing the financial ones) necessary to invoke it.
Persecuted
In the state where this document which proclaims universal liberties was drawn up, those who even demonstrate once for unpopular causes are persecuted.
Members of MOVE, the movement who have been free on parole for several years, have been thrown back in prison solely for refusing to renounce their beliefs and political convictions.
The retired judge Thurgood Marshall. an advocate of 'humanist law", once said pose rights is the equivalent of not having any rights at all.
In Pennsylvania on paper people have a plethora of rights - to practice the religion of their choice, the right to freedom association and of the press, and the right not to be subject to cruel and inhuman treatment.
In the prisons of Pennsylvania these 'rights" are semi-invisible, or on the point of disappearing. "Rights' are the whims of the state and its power. As far as the Constitution is concerned, it's worth no more than a tom page in a magazine or a piece of toilet paper.
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK No. 47, July-August 1993. Page 12