Look at footage or photos from just about any protest gathering of left-wing radicals – from the anti-Iraq War rallies to the Occupy movement – and chances are you’ll see it: a T-shirt or a sign scrawled with “Free Mumia.”
Since his 1982 conviction for the murder o Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner made him a cause célèbre, Mumia Abu-Jamal has basked in the adulation of the left. Mumia’s politics – he was a radical ex-Black Panther “journalist” and rabid supporter of the cultish black liberation group MOVE – caused many liberals to believe he’d been set up.
Many still do. Liberal Hollywood and the media are notorious for opposing capital punishment, and with their support Mumia cheated death and now serves a life sentence. Prosecutors, frustrated by his endless appeals, recently gave up seeking the death penalty. Nevertheless, the George Soros-funded Alternet ran an article in January complaining that the killer’s continued stint in solitary confinement is a result of the government conspiring to silence Mumia.
And lefty filmmaker Stephen Vittoria now plans to chronicle Mumia’s life and actions in his new documentary “Long Distance Revolutionary,” which is set to be released in 2012.
Asked about Vittoria’s documentary, Dan Flynn, author of a report from Accuracy in Academia called “Cop Killer,” said, “The main point that should be taken away is that the far-left is more persuaded of a murderer’s innocence by his political positions than by the facts of the case.”
“When there was a specter of capital punishment and threat of execution, that’s what spiked the news media’s interest in Mumia’s case,” Flynn said.
According to Flynn’s report Mumia is intensely admired by the left who believe him to be a “martyr for his cause,” and because of their constant spotlight he became death row’s most famous inhabitant. Other lefty extremists labeled Mumia “the Nelson Mandela of the United States.”
“Long Distance Revolutionary” has the Hollywood left buzzing. Huffington Post raved about Vittoria’s filmmaking repertoire, dubbing him a “rare commodity in Hollywood” because he is “a filmmaker with strong political conscience.” It published a two-part interview hailing Mumia’s revolutionary cause and Vittoria for giving Mumia a platform to spread his “message.”
Other high-profile lefties are on board.
Radical Princeton professor Dr. Cornel West, who told Herman Cain to "get off his symbolic crack-pipe" , supports the film along with Occupy Wall Street sympathizer and former Communist party candidate Angela Davis. Another Mumia supporter, Whoopi Goldberg hasn’t run for office as a communist, presumably because she only believes “communism is a great concept that makes perfect sense on paper," not in practice.
Unsurprisingly, film writer Tariq Ali added himself to Mumia’s rag-tag bunch of followers. Ali previously collaborated with Oliver Stone on a documentary about “warmhearted” dictator, Hugo Chavez.
And what wrong-headed liberal cause would be complete without Susan Sarandon? The actress lavished praise on Mumia’s campaign while simultaneously defaming the pope, a man she said is a "Nazi."
Incidentally, there’s another recent documentary called “The Barrel of a Gun” examined the case and determined that Mumia had killed Faulkner in a pre-meditated act. Funny, but deep-pocketed liberal celebrities haven’t fawned over that film.
