(The College Fix) – Little did Mumia Abu-Jamal know that when he murdered Philly cop Danny Faulkner and said “I shot the mother f**ker and I hope the mother f**ker dies,” that one day Brown University might hold a celebration of his life.
Yet, Brown University will honor cop murderer Abu-Jamal (real name Wesley Cook) with a special exhibit highlighting his life and how it fits into concerns about “mass incarceration.”
The special exhibit this weekend at the John Hay Library is part of a three-day-long “symposium” on “mass incarceration” which in reality will celebrate Abu-Jamal, who killed Faulkner in 1981, and place his story into the broader context of the alleged victims of “mass incarceration.” The university acquired Cook’s papers last year, as previously reported by The College Fix.
The exhibit “will give scholars and members of the public a sense of the sweeping impact the American carceral system has had on millions of lives, including the family and friends of those who have spent time in prisons and jails,” according to the university.
Cook is just a “journalist who was convicted of murder” and is “serving a life sentence (his death sentence was overturned in 2011), Abu-Jamal’s incarceration has stirred fierce national debates about racial injustice and the ethics of the death penalty.”
It’s not clear what the sides of the debate are, but there must be one side that believes it was wrong to shoot police officer Danny Faulkner multiple times and another that argues it was good to shoot Faulkner multiple times. There are those who think “I shot the mother f**ker and I hope the mother f**ker dies,” is an admission of guilt and those who think it’s just a figurative phrase.
The Brown student newspaper largely copied over the fawning language into its reporting, writing that Cook’s “death sentence was overturned in 2001 [and] he is now serving a life sentence in Pennsylvania, raising questions about racial injustice and the ethics of the death penalty.”
The celebration of the cop murderer is part of other programming at Brown under the headline of “Voices of Mass Incarceration.”
The university will also host black Marxist Angela Davis, the granddaughter of a white slave owner, to discuss “The Feminist Fight to Bring Mumia Home.”
The celebration will also include the alleged racist history of Philadelphia and “its links to the present-day social problems related to white supremacy, censorship of Black scholarship/thought, and the persistence of mass incarceration and its corollaries.”
Other events include a panel on “reimagining and creating public spaces of healing, reflection, and renewal for and by incarcerated person” and “the first public performance of original music by Mumia Abu-Jamal.”
But I have another suggestion for music that should be played – the music from Faulkner’s Catholic funeral, to remind the professors and activists at the event who the real victim is.
