Prison view

The documentary film Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey With Mumia Abu-Jamal is an emotionally charged and moving examination of the life of a now-30-year imprisoned American journalist. The film touches on issues of racism and legal injustice and was presented in a one-time free screening at the Pageant Theatre Aug. 27. That presentation was not random—turns out there is a connection between the theater and the subject of the film.

Noelle Hanrahan, the founder of Prison Radio, was on hand at the screening to answer questions about the film and introduced Chicoan Miles Montalbano, who had worked with her recording Abu-Jamal’s commentaries via telephone. Montalbano is the son of Pageant co-owner Roger Montalbano, which explains the film being shown in Chico after debuts last year in New York City, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

During Abu-Jamal’s stay in a Pennsylvania penitentiary—most of that time on death row for the 1981 slaying of a police officer—he has written and published a number of books and continued his career as a radio journalist with the help of an organization called Prison Radio.

The books he’s penned—all originally scribed in long-hand—include Live From Death Row, Death Blossoms, All Things Censored and the recently released Jailhouse Lawyers.

Abu-Jamal began his journalistic career at the age of 14, when he joined the Black Panther Party and soon after helped found the Black Panther newspaper.

He said he was “kicked” into the Black Panther Party after he was beaten by whites for trying to disrupt a presidential rally in 1968. That rally was in support of George Wallace, the governor of Alabama who was known for his support of segregation. The film includes Wallace’s infamous inauguration speech as governor in which he says, “In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say, segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever.”

The film reminds viewers of this country’s relatively recent racist past and uses Abu-Jamal’s current incarceration to suggest that racism is still alive and well in America. It is interspersed with testimony about Abu-Jamal by people like writer Alice Walker, journalist Amy Goodman, attorney Angela Davis and one-time boxer and wrongfully convicted Rubin “Hurricane” Carter.

In the film, Abu-Jamal notes that many people would deprecate his early work as a newspaper journalist.

“They’d say, ‘Well, you weren’t a professional journalist,’ or ‘Well, you weren’t a mainstream journalist.’ But consider this: The Black Panther newspaper at its height of publication, when I was working for it, sold over 250,000 newspapers every week, all across the United States. And we sold internationally. How can you write for or edit a newspaper that sells over 250,000 copies and not be considered utterly professional?”

After leaving the Black Panthers, Abu-Jamal got a job at a National Public Radio affiliate station in Philadelphia¸ where he worked under the tutelage of William Simering, who was one of NPR’s founders as well as the creator of radio shows All Things Considered and Fresh Air.

“He was a mentor to Mumia,” Hanrahan said, “which put [Abu-Jamal] on the cusp of becoming a very prominent broadcaster. He had this immense level of talent and the black newsrooms of the 1970s were some of the most amazing places where people could learn their skills.”

In 1982, Abu-Jamal was convicted of killing a Philadelphia police officer. The film touches on the matter and notes that Abu-Jamal, who was driving a taxi cab at the time to help make ends meet financially, was shot by the officer after seeing him pull over his brother for going the wrong way on a one-way street.

The film does not go into great detail about the case, focusing instead on his fight against injustice. In 2011, Abu-Jamal was released from death row and joined the general prison population.

In May 1994, Abu-Jamal was contacted by the producers of NPR’s All Things Considered and asked to deliver monthly three-minute commentaries on crime and punishment. But the show was canceled the day before its scheduled first airing because of complaints and threats from the Fraternal Order of Police and then-U.S. Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kansas). This led Abu-Jamal to pen the book All Things Censored.

Prison Radio’s mission, according to its website, “is to challenge unjust police and prosecutorial practices which result in mass incarceration, racism and gender discrimination. We do this by bringing the voices of men, women and kids into the public debate and dialogue on crime and punishment.”

The station began broadcasting Abu-Jamal in the mid-1990s, when he was also an occasional guest on Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now. His short broadcasts, which continue to this day, are for the most part editorial comments on current events as seen from a man long sequestered from society.

Hanrahan said she had spoken with Abu-Jamal that morning just before she drove to Chico from San Francisco

“He is amazing and I’ve had the immense privilege of listening to him,” she said. “Mumia is a lover, not a fighter. He is just emotionally crushed because his ability to interact with his family and his ability to engage with people was so limited for many years.”

She said that while the film has seen success, it was difficult to get it into theaters.

“Once we did, we found there is an audience for this material,” she said. “We just had a hard time getting there. He’s got a lot to say and I think it’s really important.”

Miles Montalbano was at the Pageant as well, though he no longer works for Prison Radio.

“I guess my title was recording engineer, but basically what I did was go down to our studio in San Francisco and waited,” he explained. “At the time, Mumia was still on death row and he had very limited phone calls. He could call twice a week for 15 minutes each time.

“I would sit and wait and at some point between 3 and 6 o’clock he would get to call and we would record his commentary. As you’ve seen in the film, he’s a pro. It was almost always just one take. He had it down really easy. I’d record it and do some minor editing and we’d send them off to radio that night and they would get played the next day.”

Montalbano called the film an inspiration.

“He is a really important journalist, philosopher and thinker and it was my real pleasure to work with him and help get his words out there.”