American Bullshit

03/06/13 10:44 Filed in: Inside Look

Written by Stephen Vittoria
(Los Angeles)

A few years ago, Bob Dylan wrote: “All the truth in the world adds up to one big lie.” Well if that doesn’t fit the horrific incarceration of Mumia Abu-Jamal, then nothing does. Like the late great George Carlin reminded us time and time again: America’s leading industry, its most profitable business, is the manufacture, packaging, distribution and marketing of bullshit. And it’s been that way for 500 hundred years. This is a country founded in genocide, nurtured through slavery, and fortified by perpetual war. Think about it: a country founded by “enlightened” slave-owners on the premise that all men are created equal. Remember: high-quality, grade-A, prime-cut, pure, American bullshit.

The city was Philadelphia – conveniently called “The City of Brotherly Love.” In that city we find a young man named Wesley Cook… and at fourteen-years old, this dude had a major league bullshit detector… and that precious device was immediately focused on the insidious corruption, oppression, and overt racism that was pulsing through the veins of that city – a city some folks called “up south.” Wesley Cook became Mumia Abu-Jamal… a fiercely independent journalist, critic, and long distance revolutionary who called the American Empire out on all their bullshit… and he still does, stronger than ever, under harsh and inhuman conditions. This reality is a testament to his undying spirit… and “Long Distance Revolutionary” is the story of that spirit.

But there’s another story, a tragic story, the story regarding the theft of Mumia’s life… a theft that has denied his family a son, a brother, a father, a grandfather, a husband, and of course a loving friend. The theft perpetrated by the repressive apparatus that runs this country also denied Mumia all of the same joys of life with his family, with his friends, and with his colleagues. Indeed, Mumia’s career and his body of historic journalistic work is well-documented and embraced around the world as powerful and immensely inspirational, but we still must ask ourselves the tough question: what could have been?

The theft of Mumia’s freedom, and the destruction of his life, began in the early morning hours of December 9, 1981 when the Philadelphia Police Department – and later the District Attorney’s office – began to literally manufacture Mumia’s guilt… and in the wake of their nefarious and reprehensible actions we find his innocence, concealed and buried beneath a mountain of lies. Working closely with Mumia’s long-time attorney, legal consultant, and his sister-in-arms Rachel Wolkenstein, I made this short film, Manufacturing Guilt, for one reason and one reason only: to counter the fabrications, the myths, the oft-repeated falsehoods, and of course the outright lies regarding this wicked and despicable miscarriage of justice.

Based on the actual record of investigations and court filings from 1995 to 2003 - evidence denied in the courts and ignored by the press - Manufacturing Guilt details the astonishing efforts of the Philadelphia Gestapo along with Ed Rendell’s DA's office to frame him for a crime he clearly did not commit – the murder of Daniel Faulkner.

Mumia Abu-Jamal doesn’t deserve a new trial. Mumia Abu-Jamal deserves to be set free immediately, right now. Yesterday in fact… because the facts of this case will make a dumb man smart. To paraphrase Bob Dylan – all the facts in this case add up to one big truth: that Mumia Abu-Jamal is an innocent man existing in a living hell. The film is unequivocal in its force regarding Mumia's innocence because the facts are equally unmistakable. It is truly an eye-opening experience.

Back to Carlin, who once quipped, “If honesty were suddenly introduced into American life, the whole system would collapse.” Well, I say “amen” to that.