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Number
273
October
November 1997
All Things
Censored:
The poem NPR doesn't want you to
hear
MARTíN ESPADA
Copyright ©
1997 Poetry Flash
A version of this article was originally
published in the July 1997 issue of The
Progressive. The revised article has been
published in a book of Espada's essays,
Zapata's Disciple, through South End Press
(Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1998, 144
pages).
I WAS AN NPR POET. In particular, I was an
All Things Considered poet. All Things
Considered would occasionally broadcast my
poems in conjunction with news stories. One
producer even commissioned a New Year's poem from
me. "Imagine the Angels of Bread" aired on January
2, 1994, in the same broadcast as the news of the
Zapatista uprising in Chiapas. But now I have been
censored by All Things Considered and
National Public Radio because I wrote a poem for
them about Mumia Abu-Jamal.
As many readers may know, Mumia Abu-Jamal is an
eloquent African American journalist on death row,
convicted in the 1981 slaying of police officer
Daniel Faulkner in Philadelphia--under extremely
dubious circumstances. Officer Faulkner was beating
Mumia's brother with a flashlight when Mumia came
upon the scene. In the ensuing confrontation, both
Faulkner and Mumia were shot. Though Mumia had a
.38 caliber pistol in his taxi that night, and the
gun was found at the scene, the judgment of the
medical examiner concerning the fatal bullet was
that it came from a .44 caliber weapon. Several
witnesses reported seeing an unidentified gunman
flee, leaving Faulkner and Mumia severely wounded
in the street.
What happened in court was a tragic pantomime.
The trial featured a prosecutor who assailed Mumia
for his radical politics, including his teenaged
membership in the Black Panthers. Witnesses were
coached and coerced in their testimony or
intimidated into silence by police. The trial was
presided over by a judge notorious for handing out
death sentences to Black defendants, or
manipulating juries to do the same, as in this
case. A strong critic of the Philadelphia
police--particularly with respect to their brutal
treatment of the African-American collective called
MOVE--Mumia was condemned by the very system he
questioned.
In August 1995, Mumia came within ten days of
being executed by lethal injection. He is seeking a
new trial. Robert Meeropol, the younger son of
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, says: "Mumia is the
first political prisoner in the U.S. to face
execution since my parents."
Enter NPR. In 1994, National Public Radio agreed
to broadcast a series of Mumia's radio commentaries
from death row. The Prison Radio Project produced
the recordings that April. Suddenly, NPR canceled
the commentaries under pressure from the right,
particularly the Fraternal Order of Police and
Senator Robert Dole. Mumia and the Prison Radio
Project sued NPR on First Amendment grounds.
•
In April 1997, I was contacted by the staff at
All Things Considered, their first
communication since my New Year's poem. Diantha
Parker and Sara Sarasohn commissioned me to write a
poem for National Poetry Month. The general idea
was that the poem should be like a news story, with
a journalistic perspective. They suggested that I
write a poem in response to a news story in a city
I visited during the month. Ms. Parker called to
obtain my itinerary, so that NPR could give me an
assignment relevant to a particular city.
Fatefully, they could think of no such assignment.
But the idea had found a home in the folds of my
brain.
Since April is National Poetry Month, I traveled
everywhere. I went from Joplin, Missouri, to Kansas
City, to Rochester, to Chicago, to Camden, New
Jersey. And then to Philadelphia. I read an article
in the April 16 Philadelphia Weekly about
Mumia Abu-Jamal. The article described a motion by
one of Mumia's lawyers, Leonard Weinglass, to
introduce testimony by an unnamed prostitute with
new information about the case. This became the
catalyst for the poem.
I also visited the tomb of Walt Whitman in
nearby Camden, and was deeply moved. Whitman wrote
this in "Song of Myself":
The runaway slave came to my house and stopt
outside,
I heard his motions crackling the twigs of the
woodpile,
Through the swung half-door of the kitchen I saw
him limpsy and weak,
And went where he sat on a log and led him in and
assured him,
And brought water and fill'd a tub for his sweated
body and bruis'd feet.
In my poem, Whitman's tomb became a place of
refuge for the "fugitive slave," first for a
nameless prostitute, then Mumia. By poem's end,
this place and poet came to represent our sacred
compassion, our ceremonies of conscience, our will
to resist, our refusal to forget.
I faxed the poem to NPR on April 21. On April
24, All Things Considered staff informed me
that they would not air the poem. They were
explicit: They would not air the poem because if
its subject matter--Mumia Abu-Jama--and its
political sympathies.
"NPR is refusing to air this poem because of its
political content?" I asked. "Yes," said Diantha
Parker.
She cited the "history" of NPR and Mumia, a
reference to the network's refusal to air his
commentaries. She further explained that the poem
was "not the way NPR wants to return to this
subject." Such is the elegant bureaucratic language
of censorship. Parker would later admit, in an
interview with Dennis Bernstein of KPFA-FM, that
she "loved" the poem, and that "the poem should
have run, perhaps in a different context." This
comment also debunks the idea that NPR was merely
exercising its editorial descretion. The quality of
the poem was never questioned. The criteria for the
assignment had been met. "He did everything we
asked him to do," said Parker to Bernstein.
A few days later, I met Marilyn Jamal, Mumia's
former wife. I presented her with the poem and
watched her struggle against tears. Then she said:
"I promised myself that I wouldn't cry anymore." I
concluded that NPR's censorship should come to
light.
•
The people at All Things Considered had
expressed indignation that I was aware of their
"history" with Mumia, and still wrote the poem
anyway. Sara Sarasohn, the same producer who
solicited my New Year's poem, told me: "We never
expected you would write this!" Said Parker
to Dennis Bernstein: "He should have know
better."
How could I not write this poem once it came to
me? How could I censor my imagination, making
myself complicit in NPR's muzzling of Mumia?
I had given NPR the proverbial benefit of the
doubt. I had hoped that a sense of fairness--a
respect for opposing viewpoints--would compel
All Things Considered to broadcast the poem,
a broadcast which would address the concerns of
listeners who felt that NPR "sold out" Mumia.
Instead, I encountered a reaction based on
cowardice and self-pity.
Confronted with the fate of a man on death row,
the staff of All Things Considered could
think only of their own discomfort, their own
problems caused by the controversy, their own
political and professional security. Worse, they
insisted on implicitly comparing their suffering to
the suffering of Mumia Abu-Jamal. Diantha Parker
cited "safety concerns" for NPR staff in explaining
the refusal to air a poem about a man facing
execution. When contacted by Demetria
Martínez, a columnist for the National
Catholic Reporter, concerning this story,
executive producer Ellen Weiss moaned that the
NPR-Mumia controversy "will follow me to my
tombstone." Her tombstone. Compare this to
the tombstone of a man who may soon die by lethal
injection. Surely, Weiss deserves the Liberal Media
Sensitivity to Language Award.
Weiss, who at the time of this interview had not
read the poem, also informed Martínez that
NPR has a policy of not airing any commentaries or
"op-ed" pieces about Mumia Abu-Jamal while his
lawsuit against NPR is pending. Note how a poem
became a "commentary," not a work of art, when that
definition justified censorship. Strangely, the two
people who made the decision not to air the poem,
and informed me of that decision--Parker and
Sarasohn--never mentioned such a policy in a
telephone conversation of almost twenty minutes.
Yet, some weeks later, Sarasohn told Dennis
Bernstein: "It's a legal thing." Parker and
Sarasohn also confessed to Bernstein that they did
not consult their supporters or NPR attorneys
before deciding to suppress the poem.
The legal justification for this act of
censorship amused me; apparently, the people at NPR
forgot that I am also a lawyer. As fellow attorney
Bill Newman, head of the western Massachusetts
ACLU, points out, "The reason for silence in the
face of pending litigation does not apply. As a
poet, an independent person, you are not a
corporate spokesperson. You cannot bind the
corporation. The reason corporations like NPR say
'no comment' is because they don't want the
statements to be used against them in court. That
rationale does not apply to a poet reading a poem.
It makes no sense."
Furthermore, the subject of the lawsuit and the
subject of the poem are totally different. The
censored poem is not about Mumia's censored
commentaries, nor about his First Amendment rights.
Mumia's lawsuit against NPR does not concern his
criminal case or his possible execution. Newman
raised a question: "If Mumia were to dismiss his
lawsuit, would they air this poem?" (In face, a
federal district court judge dismissed the suit in
September 1997. That decision has been appealed.)
Dennis Bernstein asked both Sarasohn and Parker if
the poem might be aired following Mumia's
execution, as an elegy. Both times, his question
was greeted by silence.
NPR's policy, even if ex post facto, serves as a
punitive means to perpetuate Mumia's silence by
silencing those who would speak for him. "First
they censor him. Then, because he exercises his
First Amendment right to remedy the violation, NPR
compounds that affront to his freedom of expression
by refusing to allow others to comment on his
behalf," says Newman.
Subsequent to the original publication of this
article in the July 1997 issue of The
Progressive magazine, NPR stopped using the
legal argument publicly to justify its actions.
Producers Parker and Sarasohn were no longer
available for comment. Instead, Kathy Scott,
Director of Communications for NPR, told The
Hartford Courant that "We are a news
organization and we don't take advocacy positions."
Now the problem, apparently, was that "Espada was
attempting to use NPR as an advocate for Mumia
Abu-Jamal," as Scott expressed it in a statement to
WCVB-TV in Boston. At one point, Scott said of
Mumia: "My gosh, the man's life is at stake, and to
influence that decision one way or another just
would not be responsible on our part."
Like a top left spinning too long, NPR's spin
had become wobbly. Newspapers and radio and
television stations take positions, called
"editorials," sometimes with the disclaimer that
the opinions expressed in the editorial do not
necessarily reflect those of management, a concept
seemingly alien to the producers of All Things
Considered.
In fact, NPR takes "advocacy positions" all the
time. The are called "commentaries." Moreover,
All Things Considered had aired my poems in
the past--all poems of advocacy. The ultimate
contradiction, however, was this: In July 1997,
after discussions with NPR in Washington, WFCR-FM,
the NPR affiliate in Amherst, Massachusetts,
elected to air the poem in the context of a news
story about the constroversy. The poem was not used
against NPR in court, nor was NPR's status as a
news organization demolished by the presence on the
air of an advocate for Mumia Abu-Jamal.
•
I once asked my friend David Velasquez, who
worked as a farrier, about shoeing horses. He
replied: "Imagine a creature that weighs 1,500
pounds and is motivated by fear." That's NPR, at
least in terms of Mumia. Of course, the liberal
media is notorious for timidity. To again quote my
wise friend: "A liberal is someone who leaves the
room when a fight breaks out."
Editorial decisions are made for political
reasons on a daily basis: Rarely, however, is the
curtain lifted to reveal the corroded machinery.
Moreover, as a leftwing poet, I expect to be
censored by mainstream media. But when so-called
"alternative media" also censor the left, the
impact is devastating. Ask Mumia Abu-Jamal.
This censorship also manifests itself on the
streets. In November 1997, I gave a benefit reading
with a group of poets for the Western Pennsylvania
Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal. A member of the
organization, a graduate student from Germany named
Gabriele Gottlieb, was posting flyers for the event
when she was attacked and seriously beaten by a man
denouncing Mumia as a "cop-killer." Members of the
Committee speculated that the attacker may have
been an off-duty police officer. In less charitable
moments, I imagine that he was essentially
espressing the same urges as the people at All
Things Considered, albeit more brutally.
Readers can call or write All Things
Considered to urge that the poem be aired. They
can urge, again. that Mumia's commentaries be
aired, or at least released from the vaults of NPR
so that others might have access to them. They can
inform NPR that their financial contributions to
National Public Radio will instead be diverted to
the legal defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal. That address
is: Committee to Save Mumia Abu-Jamal, 163
Amsterdam Avenue, #115, New York, NY 10023. Checks
should be made payable to the Bill of Rights
Foundation ("for MAJ").
Meanwhile, I assume that All Things
Considered has put my name on their blacklist.
I wonder what poems I must write to be allowed on
All Things Considered again. Maybe some
cowboy poetry.
What follows is the poem NPR does not want you
to hear. I have made a few minor revisions, since,
in the midst of this madness, with a poet's
compulsive nature, I was trying to create a better
poem.
Martín Espada is the author of five
poetry collections, including Imagine the
Angels of Bread (Norton, 1996), which recently
won the American Book Award, presented annually by
the Bay Area's Before Columbus Foundation. This
article was originally published in the July 1997
issue of The Progressive.
Another Nameless Prostitute Says
the Man Is Innocent
MARTíN ESPADA
--for Mumia Abu-Jamal,
Philadelphia,Philadelphia/Camden, New Jersey
April 1997
The board-blinded windows knew what
happened;
the pavement sleepers of Philadelphia, groaning
in their ghost-infested sleep, knew what
happened;
every Black man blessed
with the gashed eyebrow of nightsticks
knew what happened;
even Walt Whitman knew what happened,
poet a century dead, keeping vigil
from the tomb on the other side of the bridge.
More than fifteen years ago,
the cataract stare of the cruiser's headlights,
the impossible angle of the bullet
the tributaries and lakes of blood,
Officer Faulkner dead, suspect Mumia shot in the
chest,
the witness who saw a
running away, his heart and feet thudding.
The nameless prostitutes know,
hunched at the curb, their bare legs chilled.
Their faces squinted to see that night,
rouged with fading bruises. Now the faces fade.
Perhaps an eyewitness putrefies eyes open in a bed
of soil,
or floats in the warm gulf stream of her
addiction,
or hides from the fanged whispers of the police
in the tomb of Walt Whitman,
where the granite door is open
and fugitive slaves may rest.
Mumia: the Panther beret, the thinking
dreadlocks,
dissident words that swarmed the microphone like a
hive,
sharing meals with people named Africa,
calling out their names even after the police
bombardment
that charred their black
So the governor has signed the death
The executioner's needle would flush the
down into Mumia's writing hand
so the fingers curl like a burned spider;
his calm questioning mouth would grow numb,
and everywhere radios sputter to silence, in his
memory.
The veiled prostitutes are gone,
gone to the segregated balcony of whores.
But the newspaper reports that another nameless
prostitute
says the man is innocent, that she will testify at
the next hearing.
Beyond the courthouse, a multitude of witnesses
chants, prays,
shouts for his prison to collapse, a shack in a
hurricane.
Mumia, if the last nameless prostitute
becomes an unraveling turban of steam,
if the judges' robes become clouds of ink
swirling like octopus deception,
if the shroud becomes your Amish quilt,
if your dreadlocks are snipped during autopsy,
then drift above the ruined RCA factory
that once birthed radios
to the tomb of Walt Whitman,
where the granite door is
and fugitive slaves may rest.
For updates and history of the struggle to
free Mumia Abu-Jamal:: www.mumia.org and
www.mumia911.org.
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