ALL THINGS CENSORED
Espada, Martin
All Things CEN SORED The poem NPR doesn't want you to hear BY MARTI'N ESPADA Iwas an NPR poet. In particular, I was an All Things Considered poet. All Things Considered would occasionally...
...every black man blessed with the gashed eyebrow of nightsticks knew what happened...
...They can urge, again, that Mumia's commentaries be aired, or at least released from the NPR vaults so that others might have access to them...
...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 bodies...
...Suddenly, NPR canceled the commentaries under pressure from the right, particularly the Fraternal Order of Police and Senator Robert Dole...
...Checks should be made payable to the Bill of Rights Foundation ("for MAJ...
...That litigation is pending...
...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 witnesses who saw a gunman running away, his heart and feet thudding...
...Their faces squinted to see that night, rouged with fading bruises...
...The executioner's needle would flush the poison down into Mumia's writing hand so the fingers curl like a burned spider...
...In the ensuing confrontation, both Faulkner and Mumia were shot...
...Since April is National Poetry Month, I traveled everywhere...
...To again quote my wise friend: "A liberal is someone who leaves the room when a fight breaks out...
...since I am also a lawyer...
...This became the catalyst for the poem...
...How could I not write this poem once it came to me...
...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.* Another Nameless Prostitute Says the Man Is Innocent —for Mumia Abu-Jamal, Philadelphia, PAJCamden, NJ, ApriM/H The board-blinded windows knew what happened...
...The veiled prostitutes are gone, gone to the segregated balcony of whores...
...One producer even commissioned a New Year's poem from me...
...They were explicit: They would not air the poem because of its subject matter—Mumia Abu-Jamal—and its political sympathies...
...rarely, however, is the curtain lifted to reveal the corroded machinery...
...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...
...They can inform NPR that their financial contributions to National Public Radio will instead be diverted to the legal defense of Mumia Abu-Jamal...
...But now I've been censored by All Things Considered and National Public Radio because I wrote a poem for them about Mumia Abu-Jamal...
...In my poem, Whitman's tomb became» place of refuge for the "fugitive slave,* first for a nameless prostitute, then M# mia...
...Yes," said Diantha Parker...
...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 weakj And went where he sat on a log and led him in and assured him, And brought water and fill'd a tub fot his sweated body and bruis'd feet...
...Mumia and the Prison Radio Project sued NPR on First Amendment grounds...
...That's NPR, at least in terms of Mumia...
...Compare this to the tombstone of a man who may soon die by lethal injection...
...Furthermore, the subject of the lawsuit and the subject of the poem are totally different...
...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...
...I concluded hat NPR's censorship should come to ght...
...In August 1995, Mumia came within ten days of being executed by lethal injection...
...The legal justification for this act of censorship amuses me...
...Parker called to obtain my itinerary so NPR could give me an assignment relevant to a particular city...
...What happened in court was a tragic pantomime...
...The trial featured a prosecutor who tried Mumia for his radical politics, including his teenaged membership in the Black Panthers and his journalistic defense of MOVE...
...They suggested I write a poem in response to a news story in a city I visited during the month...
...I went from Joplin, Missouri, to Kansas City, to Rochester, to Chicago, to Camden, New Jersey...
...The censored poem is not about Mumia's censored commentaries, nor about his First Amendment rights...
...Officer Faulkner was beating Mumia's brother with a flashlight when Mumia came upon the scene...
...Though Mumia had a licensed .38 caliber pistol in his taxi that night, and the gun was later found beside him, the initial judgment of the medical examiner who removed the fatal bullet was that it came from a .44 caliber weapon...
...He is seeking a new trial...
...Diantha Parker cited "safety concerns" for NPR staff in explaining the refusal to air a poem about a man facing execution...
...Her tombstone...
...First they censor him...
...So the governor has signed the death warrant...
...What follows is the poem NPR does not want you to hear...
...Instead, I encountered a reaction based on cowardice and self-pity...
...Mumia's lawsuit against NPR does not concern his criminal case or his possible execution...
...But when so-called alternative media also censor the left, the impact is devastating...
...She further explained that the poem was "not the WW NPR wants to return to this subject...
...NPR's policy, even if ex post facto, perpetuates Mumia's silence by silencing those who would speak for him...
...I presented her with he poem and watched her struggle against ears...
...Sutl is the elegant bureaucratic language of censorship...
...Weiss also informed Martinez 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...
...He replied: "Imagine a creature that weighs 1,500 pounds and is motivated by fear...
...Beyond the courthouse, a multitude of witnesses chants, prays, shouts for his prison to collapse, a shack in a hurricane...
...But the newspaper reports that another nameless prostitute says the man is innocent, that she will testify at the next hearing...
...Note how a poem became a "commentary," not a work of art, when that definition justified censorship...
...Enter NPR...
...Editorial decisions are made for political reasons on a daily basis...
...The reason corporations like NPR say 'no comment' is because they don't want the statements to be used against them in court...
...Parker would later admit, to an interview with Dennis Bernstein of KPFA-FM, that she "loved" the poej* and that "the poem should have bapnWrjfc perhaps in a different context...
...When contacted by Demetria Martinez, 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...
...You cannot bind the corporation...
...I asked...
...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...
...NPR is refusing to air this poem be1 cause of its political content...
...Of course, the liberal media is notorious for timidity...
...over by a judge notorious for handing out death sentences to black defendants...
...In 1994, National Public Radio agreed to broadcast a series of Mumia's radio commentaries from death row...
...Sara Sarasohn, the line producer who solicited my New Year's poem, told me: "We never expected you would write thisV Said Parker to Dennis Bernstein: "He should have known better...
...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...
...Maybe some cowboy poetry...
...The nameless prostitutes know, hunched at the curb, their bare legs chilled...
...I had given NPR the proverbial benefit of the doubt...
...Surely, Weiss deserves the Liberal Media Sensitivity to Language Award...
...Imagine the Angels of Bread" aired on January 2, 1994, in the same broadcast as the news of the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas...
...As most readers of this magazine are aware, Mumia is an eloquent African American journalist convicted in the 1981 slaying of police officer Daniel Faulkner in Philadelphia—under extremely dubious circumstances...
...That rationale does not apply to a poet reading a poem...
...I read an article M the April 16 Philadelphia Weekly aboiijt Mumia Abu-Jamal...
...She cited the "history" of NPR asi Mumia, a reference to the network's re1 fusal to air his commentaries...
...I faxed the poem to NPR on April 21i On April 24, All Things Considered staff informed me that they would not air the poem...
...the pavement sleepers of Philadelphia, groaning in their ghost-infested sleep, knew what happened...
...The Prison Radio Project produced the recordings that April...
...But the idea had found a home in the folds of my brain...
...How could I censor my imagination, making myself complicit in NPR's muzzling of Mumia...
...Diantha Parker and Sara Sarasohn commissioned me to write a poem for National Poetry Month...
...Witnesses were coached in their testimony or intimidated into silence by police, and the trial was presided Martin 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 Before Columbus Foundation in Berkeley, California...
...All Things Considered would occasionally broadcast my poems in conjunction with news stories...
...Now the faces fade...
...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...
...Newman raises an ominous question: "If Mumia were to dismiss his lawsuit, would they air this poem...
...Ionce asked my friend David Velasquez, who worked as a farrier, about shoeing horses...
...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...
...Fatefully, they could think of no such assignment...
...Then she said: "I promised myself bat I wouldn't cry anymore...
...Readers can call or write All Things Considered to urge that the poem be aired...
...Moreover, as a leftwing poet, I expect to be censored by mainstream media...
...I wonder what poems I must write to be allowed on the radio again...
...Ask Mumia Abu-Jamal...
...It makes no sense...
...The general idea was that the poem should be like a news story, with a journalistic perspective...
...AaJ then to Philadelphia...
...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...
...A few days later, I met Marilyn Jamal, Mumia's former wife...
...Worse, they insisted on implicitly comparing their suffering to the suffering of Mumia Abu-Jamal...
...The people at All Things Considered Spressed indignation that I was aware of teir "history" with Mumia, and still wrote ke poem anyway...
...As a poet, an independent person, you are not a corporate spokesperson...
...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...
...Yet, some weeks later, Sarasohn told Dennis Bernstein: "It's a legal thing...
...his calm questioning mouth would grow numb, and everywhere radios sputter to silence, in his memory...
...That address is: Committee to Save Mumia Abu-Jamal, 163 Amsterdam Avenue, #115, New York, NY 10023...
...Several witnesses claimed to see an unidentified gunman fleeing the scene, leaving both Faulkner and Mumia severely wounded in the street...
...This April, I was contacted by the staff at All Things Considered, their first communication since my New Year's poem...
...Meanwhile, I assume that All Things Considered has put my name on their blacklist...
...even Walt Whitman knew what happened, poet a century dead, keeping vigil from the tomb on the other side of the bridge...
...I also visited the tomb of Walt Whitman in nearby Camden, and was deeply moved...
Vol. 61 • July 1997 • No. 7
