Collected Prose

Every time I pick up my pen, I want to thank him.

    1993

Appeal to the Governor of Pennsylvania

    I am not here today to argue the pros and cons of the death penalty (I am fervently against it) nor to talk about the question of race relations in America (surely the central, burning issue of our culture) nor to get sidetracked into a discussion of free speech and first amendment rights. I simply want to address some words to the Honorable Thomas Ridge, Governor of Pennsylvania, who is the only person whose opinion counts anymore in the whole miserable and tragic case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.
    *

    As one American citizen to another, I would like the Governor to stop and consider the enormous power he has been given: the power to kill a man or to allow that man to go on living. Whatever the jury has decided about what Mumia Abu-Jamal did or didn’t do, whatever laws might support the state of Pennsylvania’s right to put Mumia Abu-Jamal to death, you have been designated by those same laws as the one person in that state with the authority to nullify the decision of the jury and save Mumia Abu-Jamal’s life. That is because the law knows it isn’t perfect. The law understands that it makes mistakes, that the men and women who carry out the law are imperfect creatures, and therefore the power to nullify the decisions of the law must be written into the law itself. In no instance is this more important than when the law proposes to take a man’s life. That is why the appeals in such cases go directly to the governor—because the governor is assumed to be wise and just, even if the law isn’t always wise and just.
    *

    Governor Ridge, you have been asked to take on the largest, most terrible task a man can be given: to decide another man’s fate. Mumia Abu-Jamal’s life is literally in your hands. Considering the enormous power and responsibility that have been thrust upon you, I take it for granted that you are intimately familiar with the facts of the case. Even I, an ordinary citizen with no power at all, have read endless amounts of material concerning the trial, and every report has indicated numerous irregularities and discrepancies with regard to jury selection, evidence, and the testimony of witnesses—enough for even the most cynical observer to conclude that there is far more than just a shadow of a doubt as to whether Mumia Abu-Jamal actually committed the crime he was accused of. And as long as there is a doubt, as long as a plausible argument can be made that Mumia Abu-Jamal did not do what he has been found guilty of doing, then it strikes me as monstrous that his life can be taken from him—monstrous and shameful, a sin against the laws of man and God.
    *

    Governor Ridge, we all want to live in a country we can be proud of. We all want to believe that America is a country in which there is, truly, justice for all. That is the single most important idea we have ever produced, and now it is your turn to uphold that principle and prove that America is indeed a great country worthy of the respect and admiration we want to give it. All eyes are on you, Governor Ridge. I am watching you, my fellow writers at PEN are watching you, tens of thousands of people around the world are watching you, and we are all praying that you will do what is wise and just.
    Do us all proud, Governor. Save Mumia Abu-Jamal’s life.

    1995

The Best Substitute for War

    When I was asked to write something about “the millennium,” the first word that came to me was “Europe.” The millennium is a European idea, after all, and it makes sense only if one refers to the European calendar, the Christian calendar. Most of the world keeps time by that calendar now, but go back a thousand years, and no one in Asia, Africa, or the Americas would have known what you were talking about if you had told him he was living in the year 1000 AD . Europe is the only place on earth that has experienced this millennium from beginning to end, and when I cast about in my mind for a single, dominant image or idea that might sum up the past ten centuries of European history (when someone asks you to talk about “the millennium,” you tend to take the long view), the word that kept coming back to me was “bloodshed.” And by that I mean the metaphysics of violence: war, mass destruction, the slaughter of the innocent.
    This is not to denigrate the glories of European culture and civilization. But in spite of Dante and Shakespeare, in spite of