A-Infos (en) NPR CENSORS Martin Espada POEM ABOUT MUMIA

[Katia Roberto <roberto@alexia.lis.uiuc.edu>]

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Martin Espada spoke Tuesday night in Tucson on his
experience with  censorship, Mumia's case and his opportunity
to visit Mumia. He gave some facts about the case as well as
future legal actions that will be taking place. Below is an 
article about Espada including his poem that  
was censored. It was a great opportunity to meet with 
Espada and hear him speak.  
     
           NPR censors poem on Mumia 
 
Staff persons for National Public Radio's "All Things  
Considered" show commissioned award-winning Latino poet
Martín Espada to compose a poem as part of NPR's April
observance of National Poetry Month.  
  
Espada obliged.  
  
NPR had suggested a poem focusing on a news story in
one of the cities  Espada was visiting during a 
reading tour.  
  
Espada chose Philadelphia, and submitted an offering entitled
"Another  Nameless Prostitute Says the Man Is Innocent." The
man referred to is Mumia Abu-Jamal, the African American
journalist on death row in Pennsylvania.  
  
Abu-Jamal is widely believed to have been framed in the
death of a  Philadelphia police officer because of his strong
defense of the oppressed-particularly the MOVE group whose house was
bombed 12 years ago by the Philadelphia police.  
  
When NPR saw what Espada's poem was about, it balked.   
"Everyone around me in Philadelphia was talking about
Mumia's case,"  Espada says. He read an article in the
Philadelphia Weekly of April 16 reporting that those who
have come forward with testimony that might clear Mumia 
seemed to vanish.   
This news item became the basis of Espada's poem.   
Espada faxed his poem to NPR on April 21. Four days later, he
was  informed by the radio network that it would not
broadcast the poem because of its subject matter and political content.  
  
NPR had previously bowed to pressure and refused to air
Mumia's radio  commentaries from death row. In refusing to
broadcast Espada's poem, it told him that his piece was 
"not the way NPR wants to return to this subject."  
  
"I expect to be censored or ignored by the mainstream
media, but these  people, who admit they liked 
the poem and style themselves as progressives, wouldn't
broadcast it.  Their cowardice is really impressive."  
  
Espada met Abu-Jamal's wife, Marilyn Jamal, on April 26 and
gave her a  copy of the poem. She supports his efforts to
make NPR's suppression of the poem widely known.  
  
Espada said that those who in the past have
contributed  money to NPR should send their pledges of
financial support to the International Family and Friends of
Mumia Abu-Jamal.  
  
  
  
           'Another Nameless Prostitute Says The Man 
           Is Innocent' 
  
           For Mumia Abu-Jamal 
  
           Philadelphia, PA/Camden, NJ, april 1997  
  
           By Martín Espada  
  
           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 nameless witnesses who saw a gunman  
           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 putrifies 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,  
           singing out their names even after the police
           bombardment  
           that charred their black bodies.  
           So the governor has signed the death warrant.  
           The executioner's needle would flush the poison  
           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 prostitues 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 open  
           and fugitive slaves may rest.  
  
           About Martín Espada: 
  
 Called "the Latino poet of his generation," Martín
Espada as born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1957. His fifth book of poetry, Imagine
the Angels of Bread (W.W. Norton), won the American Book Award
and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Another
volume of poems, Rebellion is the Circle of a Lover's Hands (Curbstone),
won both the Paterson Poetry Prize and the PEN/Revson Fellowship. The
PEN/Revson judges were unanimous: "The greatness of Espada's art, 
like all great arts, is that it gives dignity to the insulted and
the  injured of the earth."  
  
Espada's poems have appeared in such publications as The
New York Times  Book Review, Harper's, The Nation,
Ploughshares and The Best American  
Poetry. Many of his poems arise from his work experiences,
ranging from bouncer to tenant lawyer. He is also the editor of Poetry Like
Bread:Poets of the Political Imagination from Curbstone Press, 
and the forthcoming El Coro: A Chorus of Latino and Latina Poets
(University of Massachusetts). A recipient of fellowships from 
the NEA and the Massachusetts Cultural Council, Espada is currently an
Associate Professor in the Department of English at the University of  
Massachusetts-Amherst.  
______________________________________________________________________
 Source: agnes leaf@hotmail.com (slightly edited for brevity)
POSTED BY:
WORKERS UNITED TO FREE MUMIA
PO Box 23306
Detroit MI   48223-0306  USA
(313)730-5213 (voice mail)
email:  wufm@angelfire.com
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JOIN NON-SECTARIAN MUMIA LIST:
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