Prison Radio
Mumia Abu-Jamal

Hello. This is Mumia Abu-Jamal, and I’m here to introduce you to Murder Incorporated, a new book on anti-imperial history written by Mumia Abu-Jamal and Stephen Vittoria. This is volume one, and from chapter six, I’m reading from the chapter called “The American Revolution: Who Won, Who Lost?”

Americans of every stripe and fashion were always a pretty radical bunch. When you really consider it, only a radical bunch of folks could even think that the widely accepted idea, the divine right of kings, was bogus.

Indeed, the poor and working people of the country, before there was a United States of America, were far more radical than those we today hail as revolutionaries and founding fathers. They were radical because they had to be. They were oppressed by an obscene rich oligarchy which thought of them as the unthinking multitude and the dregs of society.

Those were the thoughts of the patriots too: wealthy men like Washington, Jefferson, Adams, Robert Morris, and Alexander Hamilton. Adams too looked down upon women, even if he looked up to his Abigail. But more importantly, he had personal thoughts of the revolution that no school child in America has ever heard. Adams said, “The history of our revolution will be one continued life from one end to the other.” That’s John Adams.

It was not a revolution in support of freedom, not for those most in need of freedom, captives teased in Africa. It was not a revolution to give Liberty to the millions of masses who had no wealth; it took hundreds of years before they could even vote. It was not a revolution for nearly half of the country, women; only in the first quarter of the twentieth century could one seriously discuss their right to vote. It was not a revolution to do anything for Indians except exterminate. It was not a revolution for those immigrants who swarmed this land to escape the class and religious wars that raged against them.

Indeed, it wasn’t really a revolution at all. It was a baron’s revolt, a change of management from the British lords and ladies of empire. It was a fight among who would rule this land, who would be master, George the Third or George Washington? Who would profit?

This is Mumia Abu-Jamal for Murder Incorporated: Book One – Dreaming of Empire written by Mumia Abu-Jamal and Stephen Vitoria.

These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.