Twenty-three students graduate from Goddard College this Sunday. The school will hand out diplomas in a small, intimate ceremony — one of 20 held each year — at the Haybarn Theatre on its Plainfield campus. The graduates chose for a speaker a 1996 alumnus who has written six books and has been an outspoken advocate for racial justice and prisoners’ rights.
Yesterday, Vermont cops requested that Goddard rescind its invitation.
The commencement speaker, Mumia Abu-Jamal, is a convicted murderer who is sending his speech, prerecorded, from the Mahanoy State Correctional Institution in Frackville, Penn. That’s causing a stir — in Vermont and beyond.
Jamal was originally sentenced to death for killing a police officer in Philadelphia in 1981. The sentence was later amended to life in prison without parole. While behind bars, Abu-Jamal, 60, who claims to be innocent, has been speaking and writing extensively about his experience on death row and the criminal justice system in general. While in prison, he earned his bachelor of arts from Goddard in 1996.
The officer’s widow has condemned Goddard’s decision. Fox News ran a story yesterday with the headline “Decision to let cop killer Abu-Jamal give commencement speech ‘despicable,’ widow says.” John Wetzel, the Pennsylvania corrections secretary, was quoted calling the decision “very troubling.”
Vermont cops are upset, too. Michael O’Neil, president of the 280-member Vermont Troopers’ Association, penned a strongly-worded letter requesting that the college’s interim president, Bob Kenny, rescind its offer. “Your invitation to this convicted murderer demonstrates an absolute disregard for the family of Danny Faulkner and the families of other police officers who have been killed while serving their communities,” O’Neil wrote on Tuesday, referring to the police officer Abu-Jamal is convicted of killing.
In a written statement, Kenny commended the students’ choice. “Choosing Mumia as their commencement speaker, to me, shows how this newest group of Goddard graduates expresses their freedom to engage and think radically and critically in a world that often sets up barriers to do just that.”
Goddard isn’t the first college to ask Jamal to speak at graduation — Evergreen State College in Washington invited him in 1999, which created a similar backlash, and Antioch College in Ohio invited him the following year.
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And yet, despite the fears & vitriol of the police unions and the murdered officer’s wife, the speech was in no way an invective against police, hate-filled, or a rant. Seemed like a thoughtful speech of a radical to radicals. That someone was convicted of murder doesn’t mean he was actually a murderer. Admitting you shot someone and admitting it’s *murder* are two different things. Has a police officer never been guilty of harassing someone? Has a white police officer never been guilty of racial motivation? His successful sentencing appeal showed prejudice on the part of the court that tried him.
Imagine if all the families and supporters of all the outraged, incorrectly incarcerated, shot-and-killed, improperly arrested, improperly beaten, or improperly tazed people who suffer these injustices at the hands of police, as happens thousands of times per year in the U.S., and disproportionately to blacks and Hispanics (and organized anti-government groups)showed up at the State Police commencement to protest, or wrote letters of “disappointment” to the commanding officer for every one of its commencements that glorifies the every-growing police state in the U.S. It would be chaos.
This is just another attempt by social conservatives to limit freedom of speech. And of course to tell people what’s “right” and “wrong”.
Facts:
Daniel Faulkner was executed while making what seemed to be a routine traffic stop.
He pulled over the brother of Mumia Abu-Jamaul, William Cook, who was driving his Volkswagen the wrong way on a one way street.
Abu-Jamal was then an out of work journalist who was driving a cab. His revolutionary ideas were well documented.
He saw the police stop from across the street.
Four, I repeat FOUR eyewitnesses testified at trial as to what happened next. Their testimony portrayed a horrific sequence:
Abu-Jamal ran across the street, shot Faulkner in the back, and finally between the eyes. Before that final fatal shot, Faulkner has discharged his gun, hitting Abu-Jamal in the stomach. With that bullet, you could say he confirmed the identity of his executioner.
When police arrived quickly on the scene, Abu-Jamal was still wearing his holster.
The murder weapon was registered to Abu-Jamal. He’d purchased it at a local sporting goods store. The five -shot Charter Arms revolver contained five spent shells. Ballistic tests verified that the shells found in Abu-Jamals gun were the same caliber, brand, and type as the fatal bullet removed from Faulkners brain.
Both men were taken to a local ER, Faulkner was pronounced dead. Abu-Jamal was heard by witnesses to say, “I shot the motherf-and I hope the motherf-dies.”
So the case had eyewitnesses, a ballistics match, and a confession.
Abu-Jamals own brother, William Cook, saw it all. It was his car stop that set in motion the chain of events. His words to police upon their arrival were, “I ain’t got nothing to do with it,” and he has NEVER testified on his brother’s behalf. Let me say that again-the BROTHER of the man convicted of killing Daniel has never taken the stand to tell a different story, and he was there.
In 1982 a multi racial jury heard the case. It convicted Abu_jamal and then sentenced him to death.
In 2011, he death sentence was overturned on a technicality-whether the jury was properly instructed on aggravating vs. mitigating circumstances-but not his conviction. The district attorney, in consultation with Faulkner’s widow, decided not to appeal that ruling. Doing so might have begun another three decades of appeal.
Know your facts. The pos shot a police officer and killed him. There is evidence that proves this and yet there are still those that protest in behalf of this murderer.
This is McCarthy-style orchestrated outrage
operating without intellectual integrity:
http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/27…
Mumia was convicted, but his trial was a sham.
I myself have often fantasize about taking the law into my own hands. At the same time I’m thankful I don’t live in a lawful vigitantee system.
Before commenting on Mumia Abu Jamal, ask yourself the following questions:
1. Who is Mumia Abu Jamal?
2. Why is his conviction and continued imprisonment controversial?
3. Why don’t I know the facts of his prosecution and conviction?
4. Why am I commenting about something I know nothing about?
Then, google search Mumia Abu Jamal innocent.
Then google search Knee jerk reaction.
Very good.