Transcription of audio essay that originally appeared on The Final Straw.

For anyone who hasn’t heard of the case of Mumia Abu Jamal, he was convicted in the early 1980‘s of killing a cop in Philadelphia and not too long ago his death sentence was reduced to life. Mumia has maintained all along that he did not shoot that cop; and there is plenty evidence to support his claims, but you know what? If I am going to be completely honest, part of me kinda hopes Mumia did shoot him.

I’ve always had a different take on this case than most people. Remember Mumia was found at the scene shot in the chest. He almost died. We can presume the cop shot Mumia before he died, which means he was not shot yet, which means he shot Mumia before getting shot. It’s safe to assume the cop fired first, whoever it is that shot him in response.

And so what if Mumia shot him. What? Are we gonna run out of cops?

Look, we live in a capitalist society. It’s governed by capitalist values.One of the central principals of capitalism is the law of supply and demand.The more plentiful a product, the lower it’s value; the more rare a product, the higher it’s value. That’s why coal is cheaper than diamonds.

Now, lets consider the incredible rate that cops are randomly gunning down black men, and the far slower rate that black men are gunning down cops, and we will easily conclude that we are going to run out of black men far sooner than we’ll run out of cops. By the capitalist system of valuation, that means we have to value the lives of black men much higher than the lives of cops.

It’s a matter of supply and demand. Given the low survival rate of black men, who are the favored target of cops– Mumia’s life is worth at least five cops and a mall security guard to go before we even have to consider some sort of sanctions.

I mean, according to capitalist principles.

So when I argue for Mumia’s release, it’s not based on arguments about his innocence, even assuming for a moment that Mumia was the shooter, does it seem fair that he should have to spend the rest of his otherwise productive life in prison just because one uniformed bozo decided to play hookie at the police academy on the only day they were taught to duck? I don’t know if Mumia shot that cop or not. Doesn’t really matter. As numerous as cops are in black neighborhoods, I don’t even know why it’s illegal to kill them. You can shoot all you want, they’ll make more. No my argument isn’t that black men over the age of 25 are rare, it’s that black men who survive a shooting by police are really rare, and a black man who survived a police shooting and perhaps even shot back at the cops and killed one… that’s about as rare as it gets. That makes Mumia about as rare as the crown jewels.

Who in their right mind would put something as rare as the crown jewels in prison? That does not make any sense. Especially in a world where we know all black men look the same to the cops, and understandably so, when you consider they have that gunsight in the middle of their vision and all that blood-spatter on their Ray Bans. Pretty much everyone looks the same…..after you shoot them in the face.

As an indicator of how crazy things are, consider: Ice T recorded Cop Killer before he started playing a cop on TV. I imagine that was the only strategy Ice T could think up to avoid ending up face down in a pool of his own blood with his hands cuffed behind his back like Oscar Grant. Unfortunately, not every Black man in America can sell out and play a cop on TV to save himself.

I think we should save the next Oscar Grant and the next one…..the thousands of Oscar Grants we know will get gunned down by cops in the next decade. We shouldn’t free just Mumia. We should give him his own shooting academy in Compton. If not, at the rate the cops are shooting black men, we are going to run out.

Then what will cops do with all that ammunition and free time?

Oh well….that just got some white folks attention,huh?

Free Mumia Abu Jamail by any means necessary.

This is anarchist prisoner Sean Swain from Ohio’s supermax facility,if you’re listening…you are the resistance!