Mumia Abu-jamal's Radio Essays

I have struggled to not write about the passing of U.S. President Gerald Ford. I sought to not do so for days. Yet, the imperial fashion adopted by most of the American press, which praised his administration almost unanimously as "his salvation of the republic," forced me to put pen to paper. Much of the reporting that we have seen has simply been dishonest, historically inaccurate, and a national amnesiac. What I found particularly perturbing was the virtually unanimous official opinion that former President Ford's pardon of Richard M. Nixon was an act of "courage." Why? Because he opposed the will of the majority of the American people? There is something unseemly about issuing a pardon to a man before he was criminally charged with anything, and further, one who built much of his political career on law and order. Ford, to hear the corporate press tell it, simply made a deep, inner decision to save the nation the trauma of a trial against Nixon, by issuing a preemptive pardon. The