MOVE Bombing: The Day the Police Burned Down a Black Philly Neighborhood

(Atlanta Blackstar)  Never could one imagine the police doing this in a white neighborhood.

On May 13, 1985, the Philadelphia police engaged in a race riot when they dropped a bomb on the roof of a row house in a Black section of West Philadelphia. It was Mother’s Day, and Black mothers and children were killed that day, intentionally burned and shot to death by police. Eleven people, including five children ages 7 to 13 — all members of the radical Black liberation group MOVE — died.

In the end, 61 homes in this Black residential neighborhood were burned to the ground. Most of all, all of it was done on purpose because the officials in charge said their intent was to let the fire burn.

Philadelphia Congregations Lead in the Struggle for Social Justice

(HuffPost Black Voices)  The recent events in Baltimore -- including the killing of Freddie Gray in police custody, and the protests and unrest that followed -- point to the need for community-based movement building. Baltimore, like many other cities in America, is hurting, and black people in particular are feeling the pain.

Meanwhile, a little over 100 miles to the north, Philadelphia -- the City of Brotherly Love and Sisterly Affection -- is offering a model for communities of faith to seek justice and transform the place in which they live. POWER (Philadelphians Organized to Witness Power and Rebuild) is a grassroots interfaith coalition of congregations across the city. Part of the #BlackLivesMatter movement, they are dedicated to bringing people together around social justice issues such as jobs with a living wage, fair funding and democratic, local control of the public schools and an end to police practices such as "stop and frisk."

POWER is an example of the type of coalition building that cities need.

Echoes of Baltimore at a Philly Mayoral Forum

(Progressive Philly Rising)  Could Philadelphia become another Baltimore? This question was asked at an important forum that was nearly as much about current events in Baltimore as who will become the next mayor of Philadelphia, and how that mayor will handle the policing and criminal justice challenges facing this city.

The event, called “Transparency Now: The Philadelphia Mayoral Forum on Police and Criminal Justice Reform,” was held at the Catalyst for Change Church in the Powelton Village section of West Philly. And the forum was sponsored by two news organizations—Tech Book Online and The Declaration.

Seth Williams, Philly’s Frank Underwood, is a sad disappointment

(Progressive Philly Rising) In his attempt to make it to the U.S. Senate, Seth Williams is looking a lot like the devious Senator Frank Underwood from House of Cards,a man who will do anything and ruin anyone for higher political office. But there will be no positive outcome for him, if progressive voters are paying attention.

Some people are trying to portray the Philly district attorney as a courageous public servant who has stood up to leading Democrats in the state. For example, in a February 20 article in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Christine Flowers wrote that as “Philly’s top enforcer,” Williams stood up to a rogue Attorney General named Kathleen Kane on an ethics investigation of state legislators, and challenged executive overreach by calling Gov. Tom Wolf’s death penalty moratorium a “lawless act by the governor.” Flowers further argued that Williams, like death penalty proponents Ed Rendell and Williams’ predecessor Lynn Abraham, will not face any political consequences for his actions.

Jimmy Dennis: A System Not Designed for Innocence

(Huffington Post) Jimmy Dennis has been a prisoner on Pennsylvania death row for 23 years. Dennis was convicted of the 1991 fatal shooting of Chedell Ray Williams, 17, a student at Olney High School in North Philadelphia, at a bus stop over a pair of $450 earrings. He was sent to death row in 1992. And his case reveals a great deal about a hopelessly broken system that administers the law, but does not necessarily dispense justice.

On August 21, 2013, the City of Brotherly Love witnessed one of those rare moments in time when the criminal justice system was forced to confront itself, its flaws and abuses, the corruption of public servants that send the innocent to prison, sometimes for decades, and sometimes to death. Judge Anita Brody, a federal district judge, wrote a damning 46-page opinion in which she granted Dennis' petition for habeas corpus. Throwing out his conviction and death sentence and ordering the state to retry Dennis within 180 days or release him, Judge Brody declared that Dennis "was wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to die for a crime in all probability he did not commit."

Jimmy Dennis and Pennsylvania's Grave Miscarriage of Justice

Jimmy Dennis has been on Pennsylvania's death row for two decades, and a federal judge calls it a "grave miscarriage of justice" by the Commonwealth.

Dennis was convicted of murder for the October 1991 fatal shooting of Chedell Ray Williams, 17, a student at Olney High School, at a SEPTA stop over a pair of $450 earrings. He was sent to death row in 1992.

Granting Dennis' habeas petition, Judge Anita Brody threw out his conviction and death sentence, and ordered the state to retry him within 180 days or set him free.

In a scathing and damning 46-page opinion, the judge concluded that Dennis "was wrongfully convicted of murder and sentenced to die for a crime in all probability he did not commit." Brody noted that Dennis had no criminal history, other than a single conviction for possession of a controlled substance.

His defense counsel provided a paltry defense, and didn't interview a single eyewitness -- including a witness who pointed the finger at Dennis, and whose felony assault charges against his pregnant girlfriend in another case were miraculously dropped. And a girl who was with the victim said she knew the killers and their nicknames.

The prosecution failed to disclose evidence pointing to his innocence, including statements implicating three other men in the murder, and evidence undermining the reliability of the police investigation.

"Dennis' conviction was based solely on shaky eyewitness identifications from three witnesses, the testimony of another man who said he saw Dennis with a gun the night of the murder, and a description of clothing seized from the house of Dennis' father that the police subsequently lost before police photographed or catalogued it," the judge said.

According to Judge Brody, the prosecution of Jimmy Dennis was based "on scant evidence at best." As a result, the Commonwealth covered up evidence that pointed to someone other than Dennis. "It ignored Dennis' own explanation for where he was at the time of the murder. ... It allowed a witness who saw Dennis on that bus to give incorrect testimony about what time that interaction occurred. Police never recovered a weapon, never found the car that witnesses described, and never found the two accomplices," she added.

The jury deliberated fewer than five hours, with only over three hours for the presentation of evidence in the penalty phase of the trial.

Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams, who has not decided whether he will appeal, said he was disappointed in Judge Brody's "acceptance of slanted factual allegations" and "a newly concocted alibi defense."

Death row exonerations are far more common than one would think. Jimmy Dennis would become the 143rd innocent person in the U.S. released from death row since 1973, and the seventh in Pennsylvania. With 1,348 people executed since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, one innocent person has been freed for every nine that have been executed. The stakes are so high -- literally life and death -- and yet the error rate is so high as well. Certainly a factory would be shut down if every ninth or 10th product coming off the assembly line was defective. And we're not including the countless innocent people who may still languish on death row, or even worse, were already executed.

This year marks the 10th anniversary of Witness to Innocence, the only national organization of exonerated death row survivors in the U.S. On October 8, in WTI's home base of Philadelphia, Sister Helen Prejean and Danny Glover will help the organization celebrate a decade of leading the charge against the death penalty. And the death penalty is costly, arbitrary, unjust and unevenly applied, with prosecutors exercising broad discretion to seek death, with accountability only to the voters.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Philadelphia County has the third largest death row population in the nation. Yet, it ranks lowest in the state in paying attorneys who represent death row inmates. According to a new report from DPIC ("The 2% Death Penalty: How a Minority of Counties produce Most Death Cases At Enormous Costs to All"), a small percentage of counties in the U.S. -- only 2 percent -- account for a majority of America's death row population and recent death sentences.

Only 15 percent of the counties have provided all state executions since 1976, and the 3,125 inmates on death row come from a mere 20 percent of the counties.

Further, those counties with the most death penalty usage -- such as Philadelphia -- suffer the most reversals and abuses. For example, Maricopa County, Ariz., which had four times the number of pending death penalty cases per capita as Los Angeles or Houston, recently had its district attorney disbarred for misconduct. And when a particular New Orleans prosecutor was in charge, four death row prisoners were exonerated due to misconduct in the D.A.'s office, resulting in repudiation from four U.S. Supreme Court justices.

Meanwhile, more Jimmy Dennises are created when bad lawyering, human error and malfeasance prevail, all in the name of rushing people to their deaths. The exonerated death row survivors of Witness to Innocence have called on the Philadelphia D.A. to issue a moratorium on new death penalty prosecutions. After all, you can release an innocent man or woman from prison, but not from the grave.

Race and the Philly abortion doctor trial

From theGrio:

Dr. Kermit Gosnell is accused of running a house of horrors.  And we can all agree that the crimes for which he is accused are horrific, gruesome and unspeakable. But there is a story behind the story that some are missing in this case, and that is the issue of race.

As it turns out, Gosnell allegedly treated his patients of color—his regular clientele— differently from his white patients.  White suburban women are said to have been brought into a separate area that was cleaner than the facilities reserved for poor, minority and immigrant patients.  Gosnell reportedly provided better, more hygienic conditions for his white clients because they were “more likely to file complaints” about receiving second-rate care.

Read more HERE.

Why is Anthony Fletcher on Pennsylvania's Death Row?

There was no movie made about Anthony Fletcher, but there should be one.

Although we don't know for certain how many innocent people sit on Pennsylvania's death row, we do know that six innocent men have exonerated in the Keystone state over the past 30 years.  Those who are condemned to death in Pennsylvania are disproportionately from Philadelphia, and overwhelmingly black and Latino, with the highest proportion of racial minorities of any death row population in the U.S.

One of those Philadelphians is Anthony Fletcher, prisoner #CA1706, who has been on death row for two decades.  Fletcher should be a free man today.  And if there is justice, he will be a free man.

An honorably discharged Army vet who had learned to box in Germany and became a lightweight prizefighter, Anthony "Two Guns" Fletcher came from a boxing family.  His uncles were fighters, and his mother Lucille was the first African-American female boxing judge in Philadelphia.  Anthony was the sparring partner for Sugar Ray Leonard in preparation for his win over Marvin Hagler, and made a name for himself by beating such greats as Ray "Boom Boom" Mancini, Harry Arroyo, Johnny Bumphus, Jimmy Paul and Livingstone Bramble.  But a detached retina and a bout with Bell's Palsy slowed down his career.

Now Fletcher is in the fight of his life, a fight to prove his innocence, and a fight against an out-of-control justice system.  And for years in Fletcher's hometown of Philly, under the reign of the infamous district attorney Lynne Abraham, that system kept tallies on expendable black men, aiming to win rather than seeking true justice.

Fletcher, then 37, was sentenced to death in 1993 for the robbery and murder of Vaughn Christopher.  Christopher, 26, a crack addict, suffered two gunshot wounds.  Fletcher does not deny that he was at the scene, but maintains he was railroaded.  The devil is in the details, and those details point to a grave injustice.

Based on the account by Fletcher and people close to the case, Christopher had robbed Fletcher at gunpoint for $50.  Weeks later, Fletcher saw Christopher from a distance while driving in his car, confronted him regarding the stolen money and punched him.  Vaughn pulled out a gun from under his shirt.  Fletcher quickly placed his hands on Vaughn's forearm in an act of self-defense.  The gun discharged, two bullets struck Vaughn in the thigh and abdomen and he fell to the ground.    

Christopher's injuries were not life-threatening.  Yet he bled for hours in the University of Pennsylvania Hospital, and died because his mother, a Jehovah's Witness, refused a blood transfusion.

The D.A. said it was a homicide, and sought the death penalty for Fletcher.  Lynne Abraham, who was known as "America's Deadliest D.A." for her overzealous use of the death penalty, did not pass up the opportunity in what was at best a case of self-defense, and as worst a simple assault if not an accident.

Fletcher maintains this was payback, given that Abraham wanted Fletcher to testify at a murder trial, in which a member of the Junior Black Mafia was tried for firing into Fletcher's car and killing his cohort.  Anthony--who ducked to save his life and says he never saw the shooter-- attended the trial but changed his mind about testifying.  

The prosecution painted Fletcher as a coldblooded drug dealer who murdered Christopher over a drug debt.  Their case rested on the eyewitness testimony of Natalie Renee Grant, a self-professed addict who had a long criminal record.  She testified that the incident stemmed from a drug deal and that Fletcher murdered Christopher execution-style and fled the scene.  Anthony's bungling defense failed to challenge Grant's unsubstantiated hearsay testimony.  Meanwhile, Grant--who faced with prostitution and theft charges--was given probation in exchange for her testimony.

Fletcher's witnesses were barred from testifying.

No gunpowder test was performed on Christopher's clothes, which the police misplaced, and his weapon was never admitted as evidence to prove it contained Anthony's fingerprints.  Surely, had there been fingerprints, the prosecution would have used such evidence against him.

There were other problems with the case.  For example, Fletcher and his supporters maintain the prosecution used as evidence falsified hospital records and an autopsy report containing photos of two African American men purported to be Vaughn Christopher.

In addition, the prosecutor claimed Anthony's nickname was "Two Guns' because he carried two guns on the street, a fallacious claim his defense lawyer failed to challenge.  The defense also declined to allow his client to take the stand.

Further, the prosecution claimed Fletcher shot Christopher once in the thigh and once in the back, which does not square with the autopsy report.  And Hydrow Park, the Chief Medical Examiner who conducted the autopsy, did not testify because the D.A. said he was unavailable and failed to notify him of the trial date.

Park's underling Ian Hood-- who was unlicensed in Pennsylvania and disciplined by the state board for pretending he was a licensed medical doctor- took the stand instead.   Hood, who testified there was no physical struggle despite the bruise on Christopher's chest, recanted his testimony in 2003.

Meanwhile, Common Pleas Judge John Milton Younge vacated Anthony's sentence in 2004 and ordered a new trial, citing as prejudicial the failure of Dr. Park to testify, Dr. Hood's erroneous testimony-- which was contradicted by the autopsy report that proves Fletcher's innocence-and ineffective defense counsel.  But the retrial never occurred, as Judge Younge pursued a Superior Court seat and the court failed to find a replacement judge.  The D.A. appealed the decision, and four years later, the state Supreme Court ruled against Anthony Fletcher.  

Allegations of missing and fabricated evidence, sketchy witnesses, prosecutorial misconduct and crappy lawyering.  Don't forget racial overtones.  These are some of the essential ingredients of the death penalty.  And this is what put Anthony Fletcher and others on death row in Philly and elsewhere around the country.    

America’s racism runs deeper than a Philly pool

When a suburban Philadelphia swim club kicked out a group of black and Latino kids on June 29 because of their skin color, the incident generated much outrage throughout the country.

But it would be a mistake to think that such incidents and attitudes are a rare exception.

The Valley Swim Club — located in Huntingdon Valley, Pa., a mostly white suburb of Philadelphia — turned away 65 children from a day camp called Creative Steps. The day camp had paid the club $1,950 for the use of the pool for the summer. In a released statement, the president of the swim club said, “There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion … and the atmosphere of the club.”

The Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission opened an investigation into the matter, and the day camp is suing the club in federal court for discrimination.

The Valley Swim Club incident forced me to remember my own painful and humiliating experiences with racism, growing up as a black youth in America in the 1970s and 1980s. Almost 30 years ago, I accompanied my cousin, then a budding teen golf player, to one of his tournaments at a white country club in the South. One of the patrons of the country club told me, “You know what? You can shine my shoes.”

Looking at the nation today, there is no denying that some things have changed. After all, unlike 40 years ago, I will not face arrest or imprisonment because of my interracial marriage. And the United States has elected its first black president.

Yet racism persists.

Black Philadelphia police officers have sued their police department for creating a hostile work environment by allegedly allowing white officers to maintain and use a racially offensive website called Domelights.com at work. The lawsuit also alleges that the website featured a poster that read, “Guns Don’t Kill People, Dangerous Minorities Do,” set with images of white officers and mug shots of black men.

Even Ivy League professors apparently aren’t out of reach of the sting of racism. In Cambridge, Mass., a white police officer arrested Henry Louis Gates Jr., a distinguished black Harvard professor, for disorderly conduct. Gates, who had difficulty getting his own front door open, finally got in. But someone had called the police, and an officer arrived at his home. Gates showed the officer his driver’s license and Harvard identification to prove he was a Harvard professor and lived at the address, but the officer continued to question him and Gates became upset and was finally arrested. (The local prosecutor has agreed to dismiss the case.)

Some racist sentiment reflects a backlash against having a black president in office.

Gary Frago, an Atwater, Calif., city council member, sent racist e-mails to city staff and community leaders, including one that said, “Breaking News Playboy just offered Sarah Palin $1 million to pose nude in the January issue. Michelle Obama got the same offer from National Geographic.” 

Audra Shay, the newly elected chair of the Young Republicans, responded to a Facebook friend’s comment that said, “Need to take this country back from all of these mad coons” with, “You tell em Eric!”

In a recent speech, former Sen. Zell Miller, D-Ga., said that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel should put “Gorilla Glue” on President Obama’s chair to keep him in the Oval Office.

We do not yet live in a post-racial society.

Like the members of the Valley Swim Club, there are many other Americans, I fear, who would have kicked those children out of the pool. 

And that’s a sad commentary for America in 2009, even with our first black president.

(From The Progressive)

After 30 Years, the MOVE 9 Must be Paroled

By David A. Love
Published by The Black Commentator
April 10, 2008

Seven years before the 1985 bombing of the radical Black collective MOVE - in which the Philadelphia police firebombed a block of Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia, killing five children and six adults, and destroying 61 homes - there was the first MOVE siege.

On August 8, 1978, officers of the Philadelphia Police Department were involved in a confrontation with MOVE members at their Powelton Village headquarters in West Philadelphia. Officer James Ramp was shot and killed. Nine MOVE members were convicted of third degree murder, conspiracy and other lesser offenses, and sentenced to 30-100 years.

Now the eight remaining members are up for parole. They have been exemplary prisoners, and should be released. But many would argue that they should not have been imprisoned in the first place.

The judge said that he had “absolutely no idea” who killed Officer Ramp. Moreover, he reasoned that since the MOVE defendants called themselves a family, he decided to sentence them as a family.

Some observers have concluded that the officer was a victim of police gunfire. While the ballistic report claims that the officer was shot from a downward trajectory, the MOVE members were in their basement at the time of the incident. “But let’s think about this for a minute. You don’t have to be a ballistician to figure this one out. It’s just common sense,” said Linn Washington, Jr., veteran journalist with the Philadelphia Tribune and professor at Temple University.

In an interview with journalist Hans Bennett, Washington - who was on the ground reporting on the 1978 siege - noted that according to police sources, Ramp was killed by police. “You’ve got four male MOVE members in the basement allegedly armed, according to police testimony. A basement by its very nature means it’s below ground level.… So, anything they’re shooting out of the windows has to be at an upward trajectory. They would have to shoot up to get out the window. Ramp was directly across the street at ground level. So how could something hit him, in what was said to be a downward type angle, when MOVE members were firing upward from that basement?”

There were other problems with the case, including the destruction of evidence by police. The police destroyed the MOVE house after the siege, despite a court order barring them from doing just that. Unfortunately, although this act of official misconduct is reprehensible, it is not surprising. After all, this was the Philadelphia of the 1960s and 1970s, under the racist regime of police chief-turned mayor Frank Rizzo. And Philly’s Finest were the perfect picture of corruption, brutality, obstruction and frame-ups, particularly regarding their treatment of the city’s residents of color, and political activist organizations such as the Black Panthers.

Throughout the nation during this period, in Philadelphia and elsewhere, political prisoners such as the MOVE 9 were created.

To the untutored, the term political prisoner conjures up images of the old Soviet Union, of Communist China or some far-flung dictatorial regime. But the concept of the American political prisoner is very real, one which makes a mockery of the spoon-fed narrative of a fair, blind and equitable justice system. Under that narrative, those who swear to uphold the law always do so with vigor, while all of those who are behind bars are dangerous individuals who certainly did something wrong to get there, but nevertheless received due process.

In reality, prisons are America’s foremost method of social control, providing cover to a regime of failing schools, systemic economic inequality and joblessness among poor communities and communities of color. Secret offshore prisons provide the backdrop for the bogus U.S. war on terror. And on the domestic front, imprisonment serves as a potent tool to quell political dissent and neutralize burgeoning social movements. Moreover, prison stocks are traded on Wall Street.

Meanwhile, no efforts imaginable would allow the MOVE 9 to regain the 30 years they have lost languishing behind bars. However, parole would be a step in the right direction. Their supporters are signing an online petition, and contacting the Pennsylvania Board of Probation and Parole to make their voices heard.

Mumia Abu-Jamal: Evidence of Innocence and an Unfair Trial

By David A. Love
Published by The Black Commentator
COVER STORY - December 6, 2007

[The following are remarks made at a December 4, 2007 press conference held in Philadelphia by The International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal (ICFFMAJ), and Journalists for Mumia. The purpose of the press conference was to discuss newly discovered crime scene photos in the Mumia Abu-Jamal death penalty case, which were not seen by the jury, yet point to his innocence and the need for a new trial. Abu-Jamal, journalist, former Black Panther and death row inmate, was convicted of the 1981 murder of Police Officer Daniel Faulkner. Participants in the press conference included Hans Bennett of Journalists for Mumia, Philadelphia journalists Linn Washington, Dave Lindorff, Pam Africa of ICFFMAJ, and David A. Love of Black Commentator. In its October 18, 2007 cover story, titled Photos Bolster Claims of Mumia’s Innocence and Unfair Trial, Black Commentator broke the story regarding the photos.]

My name is David A. Love, editorial board member of BlackCommentator.com, a weekly online magazine covering issues affecting the Black community, with a monthly readership of 300,000. My Color of Law column appears weekly. I wrote an article in the October 18, 2007 edition of the Black Commentator entitled “Photos Bolster Claims of Mumia’s Innocence and Unfair Trial.” The piece re-printed for the Independent Media Center, and the San Francisco Bay View, a national Black newspaper, which published the photos. In the article, I discussed these new photos of the crime scene where Officer Faulkner was killed, but also analyzed the larger implications for the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the problem of racism in the criminal justice system, and the disturbing application of the death penalty in the United States.

To be sure, these photos are important because they suggest that someone, presumably the police, tampered with evidence at the crime scene, removed evidence and switched evidence around, perhaps out of incompetence, perhaps in order to subvert justice and bring about a particular desired outcome. We can only speculate. But we would be misled if we were to believe that these photos are the only evidence pointing to a setup, pointing to Mumia’s innocence and the need for a new trial. The photos, when viewed in combination with the other problems with the case, bolster an already convincing argument that official misconduct took place. For example:

The prosecutor had a history of excluding African American jurors, and struck 10 of 14 Black potential jurors, but only 5 of 25 whites.

In a sworn statement, a court stenographer said she overheard the trial judge, Albert Sabo, saying he would help the prosecution "fry the nigger."

For twelve years, prosecutors withheld evidence that the driver's license of a third man was found in Faulkner's pocket at the crime scene.

Defense witnesses who testified that someone other than Abu-Jamal killed Faulkner were intimidated.

Five of the seven members of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which denied his appeal, received campaign contributions from the Fraternal Order of Police, the primary group that has advocated for the execution of Mumia, whom they regard as an unrepentant cop killer.

It should also be noted that in 1981, the year Mumia was arrested, five men were framed by the Philadelphia Police Department for murder and exonerated years later. Two of the innocent men spent as much as 20 years in prison before their release, and one man spent 1,375 days on death row before he became a free man. A legacy of police corruption, brutality and intimidation of poor people, communities of color and political activists haunts the city to this day, at a time when better police-community relations are needed to stem a tide of gun homicides.

The case of Mumia Abu-Jamal sheds light on the racial inequities in the law. Pennsylvania’s criminal justice system is unfair and unequal. An Associated Press investigation in 2000 revealed that Blacks in Pennsylvania are more likely to receive prison sentences, or longer ones, than white defendants accused of the same crimes. Further, the black incarceration rate is 14 times that of whites, the greatest racial disparity in the nation. African Americans, 10 percent of Pennsylvania's population, are 56 percent of the inmates, with most of them coming from the city of Philadelphia.

And we cannot discuss Mumia without looking at the death penalty, given that he is the most well known death row inmate in America and the world, and his case demonstrates all that is wrong with the death penalty, a system that was not meant to be fixed because it was not meant to be fair and just. Executions are a violation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment, whether they take the form of beheading, stoning, gas chamber, electric chair, lethal injection, what have you. Like lynching, the death penalty is barbaric, arbitrary and infected with racism, placing an emphasis on expediency over due process. In fact, capital punishment is lynching brought into the court system, in an effort to legitimize the practice.

It is no accident that 90 percent of executions take place in the South, where Jim Crow lynchings and racial violence were the norm. It should not be surprising that the most important factor that determines whether someone will get the death penalty is the race of the victim. Over the past 30 years, an overwhelming majority of people executed in the United States - more than 80 percent - were convicted of killing a white victim, according to Amnesty International. African-Americans, however, are about half of all murder victims. And one-third of America's death row is black. And according to a study published in the Journal of Empirical Legal Studies in March 2004, a black person convicted of murdering a white victim is two and a half times as likely to be sentenced to death as a white person convicted of murdering a white victim.

And there are other inherent flaws in capital punishment. Each locality has its own standards, and each prosecutor decides whether to seek death. Only 2 percent of those who are eligible for a death sentence actually receive death. Codefendants may receive different sentences for the same crime, with one receiving death and the other receiving jail time.

Ninety-five percent of death row prisoners cannot afford an attorney and must take a court-appointed attorney, who often is overworked, underpaid, lacks experience in capital cases or, in extreme cases, falls asleep in court.

And since 1973, according to Amnesty International and the Death Penalty Information Center, 124 people in 25 states have been released from death row because they were wrongfully convicted. And we will never know how many innocent people have been sent to their deaths.

Moreover, the death penalty offends international human rights standards. Only six countries carry out 91 percent of the world’s executions: China, Iran, Pakistan, Iraq, Sudan and the United States. Indeed, you are judged by the company you keep. And we should note that Amnesty International and many others in the international community condemn capital punishment, and have called for a new trial for Mumia, based on the mountain of evidence.

In conclusion, I think of the words of Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who said, “Publicity is justly commended as a remedy for social and industrial diseases. Sunlight is said to be the best of disinfectants; electric light the most efficient policeman.” I believe that journalism is at its best when it seeks to get to the bottom of the matter, not regurgitate the official line and shut down the discussion. This is what is necessary for democracy and a free society. As we know in this country, accepting as fact everything that is told to us, and refusing to dig deeper, has cost lives, whether in a senseless war in Iraq or here at home. We are here to discuss the photos that demand a new trial for Mumia. But this is also bigger than Mumia, because Mumia’s case shines the light on official corruption and racism in America’s justice system, and the judicial form of lynching that is the death penalty.

Copyright © 2007 By David A. Love

***FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE***

Was Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner really "Murdered By Mumia"?
--Journalists and activists present evidence of innocence and an unfair trial in the death-penalty case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

The news conference organized by Journalists for Mumia Abu-Jamal featured an exclusive slide-show presentation of newly discovered crime scene photos, as well as presentations by local journalists David A. Love and Dave Lindorff, and Pam Africa of The International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

INVITATION: This week marks the 26th anniversary of the December 9, 1981 shooting death of Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner and the arrest of radical journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal. December 6 will mark the release of a new book titled "Murdered By Mumia," written by Maureen Faulkner and Michael Smerconish. The Philadelphia Inquirer has already begun a three-part series that features excerpts from "Murdered By Mumia." The media-attention will continue this week with "Murdered By Mumia" scheduled to be featured on such news programs as The Today Show, The O'Reilly Factor, Hardball with Chris Matthews, and many more.

In light of this significant week, the news conference was organized to present "the other side of the story," to the media so that it can be fairly balanced alongside the story presented by Faulkner, Smerconish, and others who argue that Mumia does not deserve a new trial and should be executed. Come and hear from activists and award-winning journalists who have thoroughly researched the case and concluded that Abu-Jamal's 1982 trial was blatantly unfair, and that there is considerable evidence suggesting that Abu-Jamal is innocent, as he has always maintained.

For the national media, and others unable to make it to the news conference, audio and video documentation has been made available via the internet.

CONTACT US: For more information, email: hbjournalist@gmail.com

This news conference featured:

SLIDESHOW PRESENTATION OF NEWLY DISCOVERED CRIME SCENE PHOTOS

Philadelphia journalist Hans Bennett presented a slideshow displaying the crime scene photos recently discovered by German linguist, Michael Schiffmann (University of Heidelberg). Dr. Schiffmann has disclosed his discovery of 26 photographs (never seen by the 1982 jury), taken by press photographer Pedro P. Polakoff, which suggest more evidence that basic investigative protocol was violated by police from the earliest moments of the killing. Schiffmann and Bennett's website, Abu-Jamal-News.com, displays four of the photos to make these key points about the new evidence:

1. Mishandling the Guns - Officer James Forbes holds both Abu-Jamal's and Faulkner's guns, his bare hand touching the metal parts, suggesting perjury when he testified to properly preserving the guns' ballistics evidence.

2. The Moving Hat - Faulkner's hat is moved from the roof of Billy Cook's VW and placed on the sidewalk, where it remained for the official police photo.

3. The Missing Taxi - Robert Chobert testified to parking directly behind Faulkner's car, but the space is empty.

4. The Missing Divots – On the sidewalk, where Faulkner was found, there are no large bullet divots, or destroyed chunks of cement, which should be visible in the pavement if the prosecution scenario was accurate, according to which Abu-Jamal shot down at Faulkner – and allegedly missed several times – while Faulkner was on his back. Dr. Michael Schiffmann writes: "It is thus no question any more whether the scenario presented by the prosecution at Abu-Jamal's trial is true. It is clearly not, because it is physically and ballistically impossible."

DAVID A. LOVE

In October, 2007, Philadelphia-based lawyer and journalist, David A. Love, wrote about the new crime scene photos for The Black Commentator news website. Love's article titled "Photos Bolster Claims of Mumia's Innocence and Unfair Trial" was featured in the national Black newspaper, The SF Bay View, where one of the photos was published for the very first time in the US. Love spoke at the news conference about why the new crime scene photos are an important and worthy story for the media to cover. (see above)

DAVE LINDORFF

Dave Lindorff is the author of "Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal" (Common Courage Press, 2003), an independent examination of this important capital case. In his December 2, 2007 article titled "Maureen Faulkner and Mumia: Vengeance Isn't Sweet," Lindorff responds to the first in a three-part series in The Philadelphia Inquirer, that features experts from Maureen Faulkner's new book, written with Michael Smerconish, titled "Murdered By Mumia." He writes that Faulkner "is entitled to her anger and her grief," but "we are all diminished when justice is so willingly cast aside in the wrongheaded name of vengeance, as has clearly happened in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. No amount of sympathy for Faulkner's widow should be permitted to sway society or the courts from a commitment to justice, and there has been no justice in this case."

At the press-conference, Lindorff addressed the summary of evidence against Abu-Jamal, presented at the "Murdered By Mumia" website, that "Mumia Abu-Jamal was unanimously convicted of the crime by a racially mixed jury based on: the testimony of several eyewitnesses, his ownership of the murder weapon, matching ballistics, and Abu-Jamal's own confession."

--Award-winning investigative reporter Dave Lindorff has been working as a journalist for 34 years. A regular columnist for CounterPunch, he also writes frequently for Extra! and Salon magazine, as well as for Businessweek, The Nation, and Treasury & Risk Magazine. Over the years he has written for such publications as Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, Village Voice, Forbes, The London Observer and the Australian National Times.

LINN WASHINGTON JR.

Linn Washington Jr. has been covering the Daniel Faulkner / Mumia Abu-Jamal case for over 25 years. In this presentation, he presents why he thinks Abu-Jamal deserves a new trial, and more.

Linn Washington, Jr. is currently a columnist for the Philadelphia Tribune newspaper and a freelance journalist for publications nationwide. He writes extensively on matters involving the criminal justice system and racism. An Associate Professor in the Journalism Department at Temple University in Philadelphia, he holds a Master Degree from the Yale Law School and a B.S. in Communications from Temple University.

PAM AFRICA

Pam Africa is the head of The International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal (ICFFMAJ). Africa will provide an update on the current media-activist campaign to "ensure fairness" for Abu-Jamal on the December 6 NBC Today Show, which spotlighted the release of the book "Murdered By Mumia." Africa and ICFFMAJ are asking that the The Today Show fairly show both sides of the Abu-Jamal / Faulkner story, and give equal time to an expert sympathetic to Abu-Jamal's case for a new trial.

--Journalists for Mumia Abu-Jamal (Abu-Jamal-News.com) was co-founded in May, 2007 by Philadelphia journalist Hans Bennett and German linguist Dr. Michael Schiffmann (University of Heidelberg), who is the author of the new German book about Abu-Jamal's case, "Race Against Death." For more information, please email: hbjournalist@gmail.com

You can download the 50 page PRESS PACK at the link below:

http://www.abu-jamal-news.com/pr/PressPackNov07.pdf

Philly’s 10,000 Men Must Join a Broader Movement for Social Justice

By David A. Love
Published by The Black Commentator
October 25, 2007

On Sunday, October 21, 2007, Philadelphia Police Commissioner Sylvester Johnson and local community groups teamed up to stem the tide of gun violence and the city’s ballooning murder rate, and to take control of the streets.

Thousands of men gathered at Temple University’s Liacouras Center in an effort called “A Call to Action: 10,000 Men — It’s a New Day.” Volunteers are being asked to patrol the streets for 90 days in some of the city’s most violent neighborhoods. They will receive training in community outreach, including directing residents to educational, job, and drug treatment services. And they will be divided into small platoons headed by an off-duty volunteer officer, and directed by a district captain to patrol an area for three-hour shifts.

As a Philadelphia resident and prisoners’ rights advocate who sees the daily manifestations of a broken city, I hope that those bearing good intentions will succeed in making the city whole. Black men are killing each other and filling up the prisons, and something must be done — yesterday.

I believe, at the outset, the 10,000 men movement has good intentions, but I have some misgivings. My first concern is that the police department, in virtually deputizing a multitude of people, is creating and controlling a volunteer force with the potential to engage in acts of vigilantism, a recipe for disaster. My second and more important concern is that such a call to action gives the impression that with catchy slogans, symbolism and a magic wand — in the absence of a larger justice movement that seeks to replace a host of policies that are crippling us — society can ignore our systemic problems and still make everything better, now that thousands of men are marching through the streets.

And the systemic problems are numerous, chronic and interrelated. Philadelphia is but a microcosm of America, and the dire straits in which we find ourselves are being played out in urban centers throughout the nation.

The 10,000 men are not the first attempt at community control in this country. Following the urban rebellions of the 1960s, the government embraced and funded some community empowerment initiatives, then pulled the plug and vilified their efforts. In other cases, the government actively destroyed community empowerment movements it could not control. We must remember the attempts by the first 10,000 Black men and women — the Black Panthers — to empower the people through their ten-point plan. With their free clinics and breakfast programs for children, the Panthers in Philadelphia and other cities were branded as a dangerous terrorist organization by the federal government and local police. Their offices were raided, their leaders imprisoned, assassinated or otherwise neutralized. Had the Black Panthers succeeded, or more specifically, had they been allowed to succeed, one can only imagine what the Black community would have looked like today.

And in Philadelphia, with its especially troubling history of police-community relations, there have been years of conditioning in which police view communities of color as a criminal element, and these communities rightly perceive the police as an occupying force. There is the memory of police commissioner-turned mayor Frank Rizzo’s reign of terror against African Americans in the 1960s and 1970s. There is the memory of the 1985 bombing of the radical Black collective MOVE, in which the police, under Philadelphia’s first Black mayor, Wilson Goode, firebombed a block of Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia. Five children and six adults died, and 61 homes were destroyed. Given such events, it is no wonder that many refuse to cooperate with the police, opting for a “no snitching” policy.

Bad public policy, with even worse intentions, has played an insidious role in poor communities and communities of color that even an army of thousands of volunteers cannot eradicate. “Tough on crime” and the “war on drugs” are code names for the criminalization of Black men. The school-to-prison pipeline does its job well, as some of the more under-performing schools in Philadelphia program children for failure, and prepare them for a life of few opportunities outside of Pennsylvania’s state correctional system. Prisons scattered throughout the Commonwealth are warehoused with Black men from Philadelphia, providing increased revenue and higher census figures for rural White areas. Meanwhile, the inner city is depleted of resources, economic activity and hope, and emptied of thousands of Black men who have been murdered or shipped off to prison camps and gulags across the state, no longer available to build their communities and support their families. Perhaps it is not surprising that Philadelphia is a city that is 25 percent in poverty, the highest of the major U.S. metropolitan areas.

10,000 men in the streets cannot begin to undo the harm caused by years of regressive conservative economic policies, initiated by Reagan’s trickle-down on America, and perfected by Bush Jr.’s war-profiteering kleptocracy. As the wealthy received tax breaks, corporate subsidies and other rewards, the poor and working poor witnessed the erosion of the social safety net, and critical social welfare programs. After all, the reverse-Robin Hood crowd viewed poverty as a moral deficiency, and the poor had to learn to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and stop depending on the government.

Moreover, wealth inequality, exacerbated by depopulation and the erosion of the city’s economic base, has crippled Philadelphia and other places. Suburbanites, who left the city for a better life, see their future as separate and distinct from the fate of the neighborhoods they left behind. Philly’s population has decreased substantially over the years as a result of White flight, a ten percent loss between 1980 and 2000. However, the trend has reversed and the city is now repopulating. For example, many New Yorkers, priced out and crowded out, are flocking to the easier life, the new frontier 90 miles to the South. Gentrification is transforming neglected urban blight into chic, trendy neighborhoods for young hipsters and affluent professionals. But what will become of the poor residents who remain, yet will be crowded out of the communities they can no longer afford?

And without jobs, a living wage and life choices, those in poverty will remain frustrated and desperate. Oddly, though, although Philly’s neglected neighborhoods are deprived of many things, the last thing they need — guns — never are in short supply. Philadelphia is held hostage by the NRA, and while the 10,000 men hopefully will help stop the violence, they have no control over the grip that the gun lobby has on Harrisburg. Unable to enact its own gun control ordinances, unlike New York City, Philadelphia is subject to the interests of suburban and rural lawmakers who are rewarded handsomely by the arms manufacturers. John C. Sigler, the president of the NRA, recently told an audience at Widener University Law School in Wilmington, Delaware that Philadelphia does not need new antigun laws, and that gun control only serves to hamstring law-abiding citizens. Sigler’s statement came a day after a march led by wheelchair-bound gunshot victims in Philadelphia, those who obviously are not a part of Sigler’s constituency.

So, given the historical and political context in which we find ourselves, any attempt to solve Philadelphia’s crime problem must include a greater call for social, economic and racial justice, the eradication of redlining and predatory lending in communities of color, a living wage and viable schools, universal healthcare and childcare, affordable housing, the decriminalization of drugs, an end to the incarceration boom, and the reunification of families separated by prison bars. Anything less is more of the same old story.

Copyright © 2007 by David A. Love

Photos Bolster Claims of Mumia's Innocence and Unfair Trial

By David A. Love
Published by The Black Commentator
October 18, 2007 - Cover Story

A group of journalists is determined to seek a fair retrial of death row prisoner, noted journalist and former Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal, and they point to evidence they say provides further proof of his innocence: photos from the crime scene that the jury never had the chance to see.

The group, Journalists for Mumia, was founded by Hans Bennett, a Philadelphia journalist, and Dr. Michael Schiffmann, German linguist at the University of Heidelberg, to challenge what they characterize as "the long history of media bias against Abu-Jamal's case for a new trial."

Abu-Jamal, formerly known as Wesley Cook, was arrested and convicted of the 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner. He has been on Pennsylvania's death row since then, although a federal judge affirmed his conviction but vacated his death sentence in 2001. A three-judge, federal appeals court panel is reconsidering the case for his retrial, and heard oral arguments on May 17, 2007.

Faulkner was killed on the corner of Locust and 13th Streets in Philadelphia, on the morning of December 9, 1981. Abu-Jamal and his brother, Billy Cook, were found lying on the sidewalk when police arrived at the scene to find Faulkner dead. In addition, Abu-Jamal, who also had been shot, was beaten by police when they came to the scene. And he was arraigned at his hospital bed while recovering from life-threatening injuries.

This case has been one of the most contentious, most widely observed and most thoroughly critiqued cases of our times, as it has put a spotlight on the contagion of police brutality, racism and corruption in the criminal justice system, and the capricious application of the death penalty. Amnesty International has called for a new trial for Abu-Jamal. "It's shocking that the US justice system has repeatedly failed to address the appalling violation of Mumia Abu-Jamal's fundamental fair trial rights," said Amnesty International UK Director, Kate Allen.

Through prodigious research, Schiffmann has located a number of photos taken by press photographer Pedro Polakoff. Polakoff, who arrived on the scene 12 minutes after Faulkner's killing, produced at least 26 photos before the arrival of the Philadelphia Police Department's Mobile Crime Unit. Some of the photos are highlighted in Schiffmann's new book, Race Against Death. Mumia Abu-Jamal: A Black Revolutionary in White America. The book — an expansion of Schiffmann's doctoral dissertation — was recently released in Germany, and has yet to be published in the United States.

Polakoff told Schiffmann that the crime scene was poorly managed and unsecured, "the most messed up crime scene I have ever seen." Polakoff attempted to hand his photos to the D.A.'s office on two occasions — before the trial in 1982 and in 1995 during Mumia's post-conviction relief hearing — but to no avail. Apparently, they weren't interested in what he had to show them. (And Schiffmann and Bennett say that Polakoff, who until very recently assumed Mumia was guilty, and that Mumia was the passenger in his brother's car, had no interest in contacting Mumia's lawyers regarding the photos.)

Perhaps this was because his photos presented some damning truths. In his book, Schiffmann makes a number of important arguments:

• The police manipulated the evidence that was provided to the trial court. For example, Polakoff's photo shows Faulkner's cap resting on the roof of Billy Cook's Volkswagen. Yet, in a police photo taken 10 minutes later, the cap is on the sidewalk in front of 1234 Locust.

• Police officer, James Forbes, testified at trial that he had secured Faulkner's and Abu-Jamal's weapons, and did not touch the metal parts in order to preserve the fingerprints. Yet, Polakoff's photos show that Forbes had touched the metal parts of the weapons, destroying valuable evidence in the process.

• Polakoff told Schiffmann that officers at the crime scene said they believed the shooter was sitting in the passenger seat of Billy Cook's Volkswagen, supporting the argument that a third person was at the crime scene.

• One of the prosecution's key witnesses, a cab driver names Robert Chobert, claimed he was sitting in his cab behind Faulkner's police car during the shooting. Yet, there is no taxicab in Polakoff's crime scene photos.

• The prosecution asserted that Mumia killed Faulkner by standing over the already wounded officer and unloading several shots from a .38 revolver. However, the Polakoff photos show a clean trickle of blood on the pavement, not the splatter of blood or cement damage that one would expect from the firing of such a weapon.

Journalists for Mumia are providing a valuable public service in the honored tradition of the First Amendment. Linn Washington, Jr., veteran journalist who worked for the Philadelphia Tribune at the time of Mumia's arrest, was on the case at a time when most of the Philadelphia press corps were asleep on the issues of race and criminal justice. Washington recently reflected on the role of the press in the U.S. Constitution: "One of the reasons why we have this First Amendment is [the framers] said, they knew that power corrupts absolutely. So they had this check and balance, you know, where the executive had a check on the legislative, and the legislative and a check on the courts, and the courts had a check on both of them. But who is going to check the checkers? Well that was supposed to be the press. So, the press had a watchdog role to look at what government is doing, and more specifically, look at what the government is doing wrong to who? We the people."

And the Philadelphia of 1981, on the heels of the brutal reign of police-chief-turned-mayor Frank Rizzo, was a time of rampant official corruption and misconduct, racism, and police brutality. Washington noted that during the year of Mumia's arrest, five men were framed by the Philadelphia police for murder and exonerated years later. Two of the innocent men spent as much as 20 years in prison before their release, and one man spent 1,375 days on death row before he became a free man. This legacy of police corruption haunts the city to this day, at a time when better police-community relations are needed to stem a tide of gun homicides.

There is much in Mumia's case that is troubling, and points to a dysfunctional system in dire need of repair.

• The prosecutor had a history of excluding African American jurors, and struck 10 of 14 Black potential jurors, but only 5 of 25 whites.

• In a sworn statement, a court stenographer said she overheard the trial judge, Albert Sabo, saying he would help the prosecution "fry the nigger."

• For twelve years, prosecutors withheld evidence that the driver's license of a third man was found in Faulkner's pocket at the crime scene.

• Defense witnesses who testified that someone other than Abu-Jamal killed Faulkner were intimidated.

• Five of the seven members of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, which denied his appeal, received campaign contributions from the Fraternal Order of Police, the primary group that has advocated for the execution of Mumia, who they regard as an unrepentant cop killer.

All of this is about Mumia, yet far more than just Mumia, for Mumia's case marks a part of the continuum that represents the tortured, tragically consistent narrative of people of color in America's justice system. Decades before Abu-Jamal, there were the Scottsboro boys. In 1931, nine black teenagers in Scottsboro, Alabama — ranging in age from thirteen to nineteen — were accused of raping two white women. Tried without adequate representation, they were sentenced to death by all-white juries, despite a lack of evidence. And one of the women later recanted.

In more recent years, there were the Central Park Five, the five Black and Latino men convicted of raping and beating a female jogger in Central Park, N.Y., in 1989, and later found to be railroaded. Donald Trump had spent $85,000 on full-page newspaper ads calling for the death penalty for the five youths, who were characterized as a wolf pack. And of course, today we have the Jena Six, arrested and prosecuted in a Louisiana town for fighting against nooses dangling under their high school's "White tree," while the White students who planted the nooses and committed other acts of violence were given a pass.

We will never know how many innocent people in this country — those who could not afford to buy justice — were sent to their deaths or forced to languish in prison for the rest of their lives, all on a lack of evidence or doctored and cooked-up evidence, served up by police officers who wanted to make a name for themselves, and prosecutors who aspired to higher office on a tough-on-crime stance.

Society cannot help those who were victimized by kangaroo justice, but no longer live among us and are now but a fleeting memory. But we can still help Mumia Abu-Jamal, and in doing so we begin to repair this system of "justice" and save ourselves in the process.

Copyright © 2007 by David A. Love

Black Men are Dying in Philly

By David A. Love
Published in BlackCommentator.com
September 6, 2007

Black men in Philadelphia are an endangered species, murdered at an alarming rate by gun violence.

The city's murder rate is the highest of America's ten largest urban centers. Although Philadelphia has only one-sixth the population of New York City, it has more murders. In 2006, 406 people were murdered in Philadelphia, a trend that shows no sign of relenting through 2007. So far, as of September 4, there have been 279 murders this year.

In fact, the situation is so alarming that Philadelphia City Council members Darrel Clarke and Donna Reed Miller have sued the Pennsylvania legislature, accusing it of placing a stranglehold on the city's ability to enact tougher gun laws.

Unlike New York City, Philadelphia cannot pass its own gun laws. The City Council would like to pass legislation limiting gun purchases to one a month, and strikes at purchasers who buy multiple guns for those who cannot do so because of a criminal record. But the Pennsylvania legislature will not give any municipality that authority. With no waiting period to purchase a gun other than a background check, and police unable to restrict who can carry a concealed weapon, Pennsylvania has one of the country's most lax gun laws. In fact, the Brady Campaign to Stop Gun Violence gave the state a D+ on laws shielding families from gun violence.

Many would suggest that the Philadelphia murder crisis is being ignored for the same reason that the U.S. and the West ignored the cries for help in Rwanda, and continue to do so today, amidst the genocide in the Darfur region of Sudan.

The people who are dying are black.

"I stand here today as an outraged black man," said Michael Nutter, who is poised to become the city's next mayor. "And I'm outraged that more people of more races are not outraged." Nutter noted that of the 406 people murdered in Philadelphia last year, 296 were black adult men.

Miami Police Chief John Timoney seems to agree. "There's also some inherent racism. I can guarantee you ... that if 85 percent of the people in big cities getting killed were white, there'd be a different approach to this whole thing. ... They'd be screaming for more federal legislation. They'd be demanding it, and to hell with the NRA," he recently told CBS News.

The NRA is one of the nation's most powerful lobbyists, and its grip on Pennsylvania is apparent. It seems to have more clout than the families in North and Southwest Philly who are being strangled by gun violence. "This legislature, for too long, has been in the control of the NRA," Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell said, noting that criminal penalties for receiving a stolen television are harsher than for a stolen gun. "This legislature, for too long, has done things favored by lobbyists, not things favored by people."

The NRA and the power it wields have little to do with freedom, liberty, or constitutional rights, and everything to do with profiting on a myth about the Second Amendment. The amendment says "A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Somehow, the gun lobby has ignored the first part of the amendment, and uses the second part of the amendment as a justification for a limitless gun supply. Common sense should dictate that the proliferation of such weapons — now numbering about one for every American — is incompatible with a stable democracy.

In 1991, former Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger called the Second Amendment "the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word 'fraud,' on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime...[the NRA] ha(s) misled the American people and they, I regret to say, they have had far too much influence on the Congress of the United States than as a citizen I would like to see - and I am a gun man." Burger also noted, "The very language of the Second Amendment refutes any argument that it was intended to guarantee every citizen an unfettered right to any kind of weapon...[S]urely the Second Amendment does not remotely guarantee every person the constitutional right to have a 'Saturday Night Special' or a machine gun without any regulation whatever. There is no support in the Constitution for the argument that federal and state governments are powerless to regulate the purchase of such firearms..."

The only gun control law to be struck down on Second Amendment grounds was that of the District of Columbia, which was overturned this year by a federal appeals court. One can only hope that this misguided decision, which D.C. will appeal in the Supreme Court, is only an aberration.

And the U.S. must come to terms with the historical role of gun violence in American society. Whether it was the massacre of native populations, the maintenance of slavery, the reign of terror during Jim Crow segregation, or the suppression of free speech and labor unions, the gun was there. It has been a bloody history, not one to be romanticized. And even today, the use of state-sponsored gun violence in a senseless war in Iraq has cost thousands of lives, and only worsened America's reputation in the international community.

At the same time, for Philly and other urban centers, guns are not the only problem, although they are part of a vicious cycle. Philadelphia is mired in poverty — about 30 percent — in spite of the conspicuous signs of prosperity downtown. Many poor, uneducated and unemployed men with lots of spare time and little or no hope make a perfect recipe for disaster. And communities of color often refuse to cooperate with law enforcement, and understandably so, because of a long history of police brutality and shooting first and asking questions later.

Great cities such as Philadelphia cannot fight this battle alone, blocked every step of the way by suburban and rural legislators whose constituents love their guns. Gun violence touches every part of society, big city and small town alike. And suburbanites, who believe their responsibility to the cities ended with the onset of white flight, must realize that we will rise or fall based on our cities. For example, if Philadelphia is consumed by gun violence and unable to attract new residents and business, the entire region will suffer.

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania state legislature recently passed a bill that would compel police departments to trace illegal guns confiscated from minors and report them to a state police registry, and expand the definition of firearms to include rifles and shotguns. Gun control advocates say the legislation, which was backed by the NRA, is not enough.

Ultimately, Philadelphia must be freed from the grip of the state legislature and the gun lobby so that it is can develop solutions to stop this bloodletting. The lives of these black men and their families must take priority over the profiteering of arms manufacturers and high-priced lobbyists in Harrisburg.

Copyright © 2007 by David A. Love