It was after the first major MOVE confrontation, August 8, 1978, when John Africa dictated the judge’s letter. Fifteen pages of outrage, not only of MOVE’s treatment by the government, but of corporate and state pollution of the natural world. His words came back to me in the aftermath of one of the biggest oil spills in history, the tens of thousands of barrels of oil boiling into the Gulf; the direct result of corporate greed and government collusion, deregulation in everything but name.
In the very beginning of his letter, John Africa wrote, “The courts are the tools of industrial plague, granting big business privilege to poison our Earth, taking our water, familiar and clean, and turning it into a potion that’s poison.” These words brought to mind the recent Supreme Court case, which greatly lessened damages on Exxon for its role in the 1989 leak of the Exxon Valdez in Alaska, destroying shore land that has still not recovered.
In light of the great and continuing disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, John Africa could have written these words yesterday, especially given the announcement that British Petroleum is now pumping tons of chemicals into the Gulf waters to clean up the oil, the effects of which no one can predict, for no one knows. This is a massive catastrophe, an experiment on the living that may have effects that we may come one day to rue. From death row, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are recorded by Noel Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
