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FOREWORD

Cornel West

The passionate and prophetic voice of Mumia Abu-Jamal challenges us to wrestle with the most distinctive feature of present-day America: the relative erosion of the systems of caring and nurturing. This frightening reality, which renders more and more people unloved and unwanted, results primarily from several fundamental processes. There are, for example, the forces of our unregulated capitalist market, which have yielded not only immoral levels of wealth inequality and economic insecurity but also personal isolation and psychic disorientation. Then there is the legacy of white supremacy, which—in subtle and not-so-subtle ways—continues to produce new forms of geographical segregation, job ceilings, and social tension. We can also see how, in other arenas, oppressive ideologies and persisting bigotries (like patriarchy and homophobia) smother the possibility of healthy and humane relations among men and women. In short, our capitalist “civilization” is killing our minds, bodies, and souls in the name of the American Dream.

As one who has lived on the night-side of this dream—unjustly imprisoned for a crime he did not commit—Mumia Abu-Jamal speaks to us of the institutional injustice and spiritual impoverishment that permeates our culture. He reminds us of things most fellow citizens would rather deny, ignore, or evade. And, like the most powerful critics of our society—from Herman Melville, Theodore Dreiser, and Nathaniel West to Ann Petry, Richard Wright, Toni Morrison, and Eugene O’Neill—he forces us to grapple with the most fundamental question facing this country: What does it profit a nation to conquer the whole world and lose its soul? After decades of nightmarish jail conditions, Mumia Abu-Jamal’s soul is not only intact but still flourishing—just as the nation’s soul withers. Will we ever listen to and learn from our bloodstained prophets?

Cambridge, Mass