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PERRY FINELLI: Good morning with news from Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Perry Fanelli. Big news involving two companies with headquarters in the Twin Cities suburb of Eagan today. West publishing is being sold to the Thomson Corporation, a Canadian legal publishing company, for almost $3.5 billion. And a majority stake of Cray Research is being purchased by California-based Silicon Graphics for nearly $600 million.

Former State Senator Joe Bertram will serve no jail time following a guilty plea for a second shoplifting offense. Bertram has been in treatment since his arrest for stealing two shirts from a Saint Cloud JCPenney store. Bertram resigned his seat following his conviction on the first shoplifting offense in his home town of Paynesville.

A proposed $0.05 hike in the state gas tax is foundering in the legislature. The bill's author, Crookston DFLer Bernie Lieder, withdrew the measure for lack of support. Many rural lawmakers say the tax is badly needed to help repair crumbling highways and bridges outside the Twin Cities. Lieder says election year politics is responsible for holding up the bill.

BERNIE LIEDER: I think many of the candidates and one of the political parties has pretty much gone out in the previous campaign and said, no increase in taxes. And it's pretty hard for a lot of those people to accept that we do need increase in transportation funding. So there's a general reluctance not to want to raise gas tax, although they recognize we should.

PERRY FINELLI: Despite that, Lieder says the gas tax hike is not dead yet for this session. A winter storm watch tonight and tomorrow for much of Minnesota, including the Twin Cities. For the state today, mostly cloudy skies, highs from the teens near Fargo-Moorhead, 30s in Winona. For the Twin Cities, increasing clouds today, a high temperature right around 30 degrees North to Northeast, winds 10 to 20 miles per hour.

In Thief River Falls, it's 4 below. In the Twin Cities, now cloudy and 23 degrees. And that's the news from Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Perry Fanelli.

PAULA SCHROEDER: It's six minutes past 10:00 o'clock. This is Mid-Morning on the FM News Station.

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Racism is a deep, abiding, and defining fact of life in America. That's the view of Mahmoud El-Kati a lecturer at Macalester College in Saint Paul. Today on Voices of Minnesota, we hear a conversation with El-Kati Every Monday on Mid-Morning, we bring you Voices of Minnesota, an interview with the Minnesota resident who has an interesting life story.

El-Kati was born and raised in Savannah, Georgia deep in the segregated South. Blacks and whites were separate. Laws defined most of the segregation. Social customs defined the rest. El-Kati has lived in the Midwest for over 30 years. He told Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson he clings to his roots in the South because of what it teaches about racism.

MAHMOUD EL-KATI: I knew then that whatever was hovering over us, Black people, was not personal. I mean, I must have known that when I was seven or eight years old, that people it was something bigger than me that people were reacting to when they call you out of your names and so forth. The first time I heard the epithet "nigger" came from a child about three years old. I was about eight or nine.

I'm sure that's not the first time I was called that, but I heard it for the first time. And it was devastating to me. And I didn't know why that I should shudder when a three-year-old child repeatedly at the behest of her mother, of course, who told her to do that.

And she walked me down the block-- I was on the wrong side of the street-- and just kept repeating that term. And I got so shook up and so nervous, I couldn't figure that out because it wasn't me. What was she talking about?

Well, later after a few more times, you get the picture that it is what Margaret Walker talked about, an omniscient presence hovering over you. By that, what is obvious is that you had this state-sponsored racism. You had this profound belief on the part of a so-called white people that they were inherently better than you in every respect-- intellectually, morally, physically, any way you can think of it, that was the reality.

This socially-structured reality that we are pleased to call race, which is really a social construction. It's not really real. I mean, racism is real or what I mean.

DAN OLSON: You mean skin color, the difference between you and me.

MAHMOUD EL-KATI: Yeah. Well, they make the most insignificant thing about a human being is the color of his or her skin. But you can do anything.

You symbolize stuff and structure it with laws reinforced by customs and habits, you begin to think it's natural. It's real. It's supposed to be this way. These were Negro jobs, and these were white jobs and the Negro schools and white schools.

Well, all that structure, people are not born that way. Negro library, white library, that was created by people. Malcolm X used to point out that the most segregated hour in the middle-- of the week is on a Sunday morning between 11 and 12. More segregated than any other institution is the Christian church. And it's not because African people demanded that they be segregated from whites.

Let me just say this what I really think about what people call racism and race. Frederick Douglass said it best. He said that "I've penetrated the secret of slavery and of all oppressions, and I've ascertained it to be the pride, power, and avarice of men."

The whole question is about avarice, greed, and power. And stuff like race or what we call race are convenient handles to use to exercise power, to exploit situations. And that is, in fact, what has happened around being Black and white in this country.

DAN OLSON: There's been a very heavy judgment put on the current generation of especially young Black men saying that it's a lost generation. That's a very hard thing to say about them.

MAHMOUD EL-KATI: Oh, it's a hard saying, but there's a great deal of truth to it. And I would argue that all young men, African-American or so-called white people are in trouble because they like a genuine moral leaders in this country and people with moral courage. And it's really these people might bring about the demise of America sooner than it should be.

All things rise and fall. But I think it's been especially difficult on the Black American male because we have become really the built-in scapegoats of the society. Not just the Black people, that's a general reality, but more specifically because African men are so outstanding in certain ways and so easy to exploit in certain ways because much of what is called a race problem is an economic problem.

We know that a generation ago, the Black youth who are in the street now or in so-called gangs, their fathers were working in Detroit and Cleveland and Pittsburgh and Gary and these so-called the industrial belt where the Black people are located. They had fairly good jobs. We know that the economy has shifted. Politicians won't talk about this. And of course, Black people have been hurt the most.

Other people have, too, but the jobs that dealt with heavy industry-- steel, automobile, meatpacking, railroads-- this is where the economy has been most damaged, so to speak, in terms of loss of jobs. And the new evolving work structure is not around making things. It's not around hourly wage. It's service industry, salary oriented, and the whole computer, cybernetic culture that's being created has pretty much pushed African people further to the margin.

And some of the jobs that they could have are leaving this country at the rate of 5,000 every year. It's not all of that much of an enigma to me if people were more honest about this. African-American males are also make up about one third of the army-- armed forces. People don't talk about that. They go to college, and some of them do quite well, not nearly enough of them because more college-aged black men are in prison than in college. And that's another index to tell you how bad it's been.

DAN OLSON: So you've tied a lack of moral leadership in this country now to an economic explanation for why some people of color are at where they're at. So I draw from your comments the fact that we are not in much of a mood to share in this country, to share our wealth.

MAHMOUD EL-KATI: No.

DAN OLSON: I wonder if that's a gross generalization, though, because people in this country seem to be everywhere at all different points on the economic spectrum, if you will, with what we hear, the gap growing-- rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer.

MAHMOUD EL-KATI: Well, that's happening in the society at large. It's even more dramatic in the African-American community. It's what I call the two-escalator syndrome.

One escalator goes up, and it's going up. It's not at a very rapid rate, but it's going up. And there's some spectacular success stories on the up escalator. There are people who've made money that you couldn't even imagine or making money in places that we couldn't imagine a few years ago, African-Americans.

You know what I'm talking about the Cosbys and the Oprah Winfreys and the Colin Powells and the Franklin Thomases and the people who head universities and hospitals. And that should happen. Individuals should be rewarded for their labors.

But at the same time, there's a down escalator where the critical mass of African people are, and that escalator is being filled with younger and younger people. When you consider that most people on welfare, 75% of them are women and children under 12 years old. That's an incredible statistic.

So we have a new gulf taking place in the African-- a new schism that nobody wants to talk about, a new class formation of a new-- I don't know how to say this-- black middle class who are not grounded in cultural clothing as the previous generations, who are not grounded in a sense of history about obligation and your duty. You have to tell people what their duties are. When you have to tell people their duty, you're in trouble, because as Du Bois says, "You do your duty because you know it's your duty."

PAULA SCHROEDER: Mahmoud El-Kati talking with NPR's Dan Olson. You're listening to Voices of Minnesota heard every Monday as part of Mid-Morning. I'm Paula Schroeder. We'll continue our conversation with Mahmoud El-Kati in just a moment.

Programming on Minnesota Public Radio is supported by Bendix, a front-loading washer dryer combination with water and energy conserving capabilities new at Independent Appliance Dealers. There is a winter storm watch in effect for our state tonight and tomorrow through the southern part of the state. Today, it's going to be mostly cloudy with highs from the teens in the Northwest to the 30S in the Southeast.

And snow will be spreading from Southwest Minnesota to the Northeast with periods of heavy snow possible. We could see a mixture of sleet, freezing rain, and snow in the far southeastern corner of Minnesota. Snow will be heavy at times tomorrow. It's going to become windy with blowing and drifting snow, likely with highs from the teens in the Thief River Falls area to the 20s in Rochester.

That forecast holds for the Twin Cities as well, with periods of snow expected tonight. Look for a high temperature today around 30 degrees. And the high tomorrow should be in the middle 20s.

Well, Mahmoud El-Kati is a lecturer at Macalester College in Saint Paul, and he also teaches history to young people at other colleges and in high schools. He's always been active in working with young people, and his commitment to youth work grew just before and after his attending the Million Man March in Washington, DC. We return now to the conversation with Mahmoud El-Kati. Here's Dan Olson.

DAN OLSON: You don't paint a very uplifting picture of those of us who call ourselves Americans. And you do focus many of your remarks on the intense greed that we see at almost every turn in our society and culture. Of course, it does sound to me, too, as though our conversation is ignoring the intense compassion that a lot of people are showing in our culture one towards another. I have the feeling, though, that you think the intense greed vastly outweighs the intense compassion.

MAHMOUD EL-KATI: Good point. You can't say all of anything when you talk about people. I know better than that. I'm emphasizing where the alarm should be. As Frederick Douglass would say, "Where is the situation most desperate?"

You don't deal with what is well because it's well. You deal with where the illnesses are. And the so is, of course, American people, there's a very interesting phenomena about the United States of America. And I think it's emblematic in the life and times and spirit and beliefs of Thomas Jefferson, who said, "All men are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights. Among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness."

And I think he meant that when he said that. At that time, he was a slave owner, and he also meant that. It's schizophrenic. And I think that American people are extremely generous, particularly when you send care packages to India.

But somehow or another, that generosity is a kind of transcendent generosity. You can't see that in Harlem. Why should the life chances of people who live in Harlem, New York, be the same as those in Bangladesh? What is that about?

So, yes, Americans are generous. They can even be generous to African-Americans, I mean, the so-called white people, if it's in a paternalistic lift you up in a state of evolution upper animal relationship, yeah, generous.

But in terms of the generosity that we need is for people to respect human personality, to respect and see a man as a man, a woman as a woman, and a child as a child. And that seems to be hard to do because of the heritage which we deny, the heritage of an antithesis between slavery and freedom. We deny the unfolding drama of our background, that that's what the struggle is about. The basic struggle in America is over democratic rights.

Richard Wright said it best from these two perspectives, the bird's eye view and the frog's eye view, "White and Black Americans have a difference in what they call reality." They see reality from a different perspective, bird's eye versus frog's eye.

We define what passes for life differently because we have very different experiences because of this crazy background of white supremacy, and people have to prove that they're human beings and so forth over and over. And that's deeply ingrained in our psyche. I think that's the problem.

If you wanted to really get down to what makes people change is a struggle within themselves. You have to change. Look, you and I changed for the most part based on what we perceive from social reality, based on what goes in our heads, what we compute. You and I cannot change unless we have new information in our heads. We can't see the world differently.

Now, you can have new information in your head and still not change. It doesn't mean you will change, but you can't change without it, without having something new, new perspective, looking at old things and new ways. Insofar as our psyche is concerned, our belief system is still gripped by the ideology of racism, of the old idea of people being innately superior to others because of their skin color and so forth.

That's what keeps people from changing, even when they know better. Cognitively, intellectually they know, but emotionally, they can't accept it. They, in fact, reject a kind of equality.

DAN OLSON: You went off to the Million Man March. And where in American history do you place that event? What is its significance?

MAHMOUD EL-KATI: I think it's beyond category. We haven't been able to do that yet. I don't think anybody knows quite what it means, except for my own subjective point of view. We've not been able to put a historical-- everybody does it, but I mean, in an accepted historical meaning, historical value to it yet. And perhaps we're too close to it.

DAN OLSON: It was a big deal.

MAHMOUD EL-KATI: I think so. It was a bigger than a big deal. It was extremely communal in terms of a shared feeling and understanding an unspoken reality pervaded that the whole question. And I happen to think that the Million Man March came about as a result of some fairly objective conditions that people felt all over.

And it's like certain forces in history called involutional forces, they are impersonal. It's like a cultural drift stuff is happening. You're a part of it before you're a part of it. You're just doing that.

And for instance, before the Million Man March, a group of men in this community had been working together, had been trying to speak to questions of what would amount to, I guess, conciliation, what would amount to certainly a sense of responsibility and atonement without those words being there. And so the march happened to coincide. And I suspect this happened all over the country.

People were concerned about objective conditions, primarily about what's happening to the children, which is the question that the society has to have, had to address-- what is happening to the children? If we don't save the children, then we are finished. We got to stop being hypocrites.

Do as I say, not as I do. I mean, it's a different era. You can't do it quite like my grandmother did it. Children can't be raised like that. No, children are like-- see, I grew up in a very disciplined environment, not just your home, but the environment was conservative, and everybody said the same thing in a self-contained, segregated community.

We don't live in those communities anymore. And so Black children are exposed to all kinds of crazy things, which violates our value system. The whole pop culture syndrome is insanity. I don't know how they find their way around because it's dominated by greedy people who are after $1, who don't respect your culture or anything else.

If it's worth $1, they will exploit it, pervert it, do anything they can to make a $1. This is the saddest thing about the United States of America is Dr. Du Bois said the greatest fear that he had of Black people, he that they would betray their messianic mission and allow the dollar to become the be all and end all of life. That is, in fact, what has happened in the larger community, as is happening to us, that people actually think god is a Cadillac, and it's not true.

DAN OLSON: When you talk and work with young people-- you've got a couple gray hairs sprouting.

MAHMOUD EL-KATI: Yeah.

DAN OLSON: How are you doing--

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

How do you reach them? What do you say to them?

MAHMOUD EL-KATI: You begin with whatever you have from where you are and try to make it better. I just think you meet people where they are. I don't just teach in a college environment.

I do it in high school too, because I want to be in that environment. And I want to learn from yes, learn from younger people, because I don't know everything. I don't understand--

DAN OLSON: What reception do they give you when you start talking about names of history some of them have heard about, some haven't? What kind of reception do you get?

MAHMOUD EL-KATI: Well, it varies, but one of the things I know about dealing with young people, if you can convince them that you're honest, you're going to get over it. But that's very difficult because there's a suspicion. They don't even understand it themselves that everybody's like TV and everybody's got a double-value system and nobody is genuine and so forth.

So you really have to be around them for a little while to convince them that I'm really what I say I am. I believe what I say I believe. I will do what I'm saying. I'm trying to do it. And it doesn't work out that way all the time, but you can convince them that if you get to young people, if you interact with them enough, they will-- because that's the real deal after all, are people who they really say they are?

DAN OLSON: But if we don't have young people paying attention to the church, regardless of their color, if they don't have enough parental guidance at home, if they're getting messages from the culture which say Cadillac, the god is Cadillac, it becomes very, very difficult task, it seems, to reach them short of some kind of cataclysmic event which for an individual happens by being arrested and sent off to prison, or which for a society is represented maybe by the downfall of the society. So I don't want to be too pessimistic with the phrasing of that question, but you do draw a very pessimistic picture when you start talking about the absence of values.

MAHMOUD EL-KATI: And a pessimist, a pessimist I'll let you in on a little secret is really an informed optimist. [LAUGHS] So I'm not pessimistic. This is realism I'm dealing with here.

There are answers to these questions. These are answerable questions. I'm saying, yes, you need a moral leadership, people who respect other people as human beings. Now we got all the great ethical systems.

Western people have been exposed to them all. They tried everything but Christianity. [LAUGHS] I'm just kidding. Gandhi said that-- he said that Gandhi said that Christianity is a marvelous religion. He adopted a Christian child.

He said it's a great religion. It had great life-giving values. He said, "I wish Christians would try it." [LAUGHS] But look, for me, all the great ethical systems says essentially the same thing

Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Zoroastrian, whatever they say, look, they said, don't hurt your fellows. Nobody wants to be hurt. They all teach unity in the community. We don't have to make that mystery anymore. All the people need to do who claim these great ethical systems is the need to respect them and practice them.

Now what I think is the most urgent thing facing the African-American community you can't have this moral renewal unless you have some basis of organizing people. And that comes through institutional structures. What African people need more than anything else are institutions that will meet their life needs to meet them where they are. That's anybody.

But African people have built some marvelous institutions in spite of the world. The church is a great institution which socialized African-Americans, gave them a common consciousness, newspapers, civic and lodges, civil rights organizations, the whole welfare agencies, which has waxed and waned, we have waxed and waned in the Black community. They're many.

But see, one of the bad things about integration is that when you solve one problem, you create another. And that's what happened, that the integration was the-- what they call integration, I'm not quite sure what that is. But the question is don't be black anymore integration really kind of means.

And so African people actually threw the baby out with the bathwater. They deserted their historic institutions instead of making them stronger. And so now we're faced with the questions of youth out in the street, and we can't absorb them with any structures.

So the number one thing facing the country in general, but I'm speaking specifically about the most desperate aspect of America, but because the cancer that they call the Black community is intrinsically related to the larger community. And for people to think-- this is really borders on stupidity, for people to think that the Black American community, the so-called ghetto, is somewhere in Mars, that it's not going to affect them. Everything that affects African people affects America just as well everything affects America affects African people.

Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. We can't get out of that. The point is that we are inseparable, and we are one family. We are related no matter what we are told about skin color and class and all these other things that represent a false consciousness of who people really are.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Mahmoud El-Kati talking with Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson. Our Voices of Minnesota interview series is heard every Monday as part of Mid-Morning.

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It's 10:30. This is Mid-Morning on the FM News Station. I'm Paula Schroeder. Well, we are expecting winter to be back with us once again. We are, excuse me, have a winter storm watch in effect for tonight and tomorrow in most of Minnesota.

But tomorrow, particularly in the southern part of the state, it will be mostly cloudy today with highs ranging from the teens in the Northwest to the 30s in the Southeast. And then snow will be moving in tonight, spreading from the Sioux Falls area to Duluth with periods of heavy snow possible. That does include the Twin Cities area as well. Blowing and drifting of snow is possible tomorrow as the winds pick up. So spring time will be delayed for a few days anyway.

In news today, Cuba asked the Security Council to defer consideration of the downing of two Miami-based light planes belonging to a Cuban exile group until Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina Gonzalez arrives in New York on Tuesday. That request was made by Cuba's deputy UN representative at a meeting with US Ambassador Madeleine Albright in her capacity as council president for February. So still no decision on what the ramifications of the downing of those planes will be.

Police in Jerusalem say at least 11 people are injured after a car driven by a Palestinian smashed into Israelis standing at a bus stop today. Paramedics report two people dead. It comes one day after Muslims carried out suicide bombings in Israel, killing 27 people. Again, Shimon Peres, the prime minister of Israel, says the peace process will continue despite these latest attacks. He has sealed the West Bank and Gaza strip and suspended contacts with Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority until the dead are buried, however.

In local news, the Thomson Corporation will pay almost $3.5 billion to buy Eagan-based West Publishing. Thompson, based in Toronto, and West are both leading companies in the legal publishing business. West employs about 7,000 people.

Neither company is commenting yet on whether there will be layoffs. The deal is expected to be completed by the middle of the year. And Cray Research has announced the end of its existence as an independent company.

Time now is 27 minutes before 11:00. Well, every Monday, we introduce you to somebody who has kind of an odd job. And that's what we call this series, The Odd Jobs File. And Monday, of course, is the day that many of us dread as we put on the same old work clothes and go to do the same old things.

But what would be life be like if you had to spend much of your day in a rubber suit hooked to an airline under water while people stare at you? Would you want to spend the rest of your day mixing bizarre concoctions to feed 700 fish? Well, that's exactly what Jon Provost does as one of the Marine biologists who run the 80,000 gallon tropical reef aquarium at the Minnesota Zoo.

He seems to quite enjoy it. Minnesota Public Radio's Euan Kerr talked to Provost as part of our Odd Jobs Series. The tour began in a rather large and full freezer deep in the bowels of the zoo.

All of the frozen foods for the animals we have, the majority of the space is for the Marine mammals. We have frozen fish. We also have for some of the tropics and Minnesota crew, a nice assortment of frozen rats, frozen mice.

EUAN KERR: You ever get kind of peckish when you come in here? Hungry?

JOHN PREVOST: Hungry? [LAUGHS] No. [INAUDIBLE] Good morning, and welcome to the Minnesota Zoo. My name is John. I'm your driver today, and I'll be [INAUDIBLE] 700 fish. [INAUDIBLE]

EUAN KERR: What's it like while you're in there feeding the fish and you're trying to relate to people who are-- they're only feet away, but in a way, they're kind of an entire ecosystem away.

JOHN PREVOST: The first trick is to convince people that I am actually talking to them. The way the mask fits over our head, they can't see my mouth moving. So I'll usually find either a child that's up against the window, and I'll put my hand up against her hand and try to let them realize how thick those windows really are.

Would you like to help me? Can you put your hands up on the window? Would you like to help me? Oh-oh, we've got some shy ones here. Would you like to help me? There we go. Both hands.

The closest analogy to our diet that we're making up right now is a 12-course meal that you put in a blender and set with jello. We start with the fish meal. When we prepare the diets, you'll probably hear someone come in and groan. It smells a bit strong. It's like cat food.

[SPLASHING]

Next one is our algae, very green--

EUAN KERR: It looks a bit like AstroTurf.

JOHN PREVOST: We used to get the finely ground grade. We got away from that because when we turn on the beta, this green cloud would rise up and coat everything. My mother used to make a spinach soup that looked very much like that and oh, but it smelled better. It did, but I still didn't like it.

[LAUGHTER]

EUAN KERR: So this is the gear?

JOHN PREVOST: This is the gear. We use surface-supplied air. I have two air hoses and a comm line, which is basically a rope with a phone line running through the center of it.

EUAN KERR: Are we annoying this bird?

JOHN PREVOST: I think the bird is annoying us.

There's a volunteer in the back with a wireless microphone. If any of you have any questions, feel free to ask. You get to try and stump the diver.

It's fun. It is the fun part of the day, especially when we have children the age group that's around us right now. They're just always amazed at what's going on.

EUAN KERR: I suppose it makes up for the smell of the preparation.

JOHN PREVOST: Yes, that it does, that it does.

[? [INTERPOSING VOICES] ?]

PAULA SCHROEDER: Euan Kerr are finding out about the odd job of feeding fish at the Coral Reef Aquarium at the Minnesota Zoo. Time now is 22 minutes before 11:00. This is Mid-Morning on the FM News Station. I'm Paula Schroeder.

Well, a little bit earlier today, we were talking to George Lakey, who is a resident of Philadelphia. And now we have another person associated with Philadelphia on the program-- not very often that happens, I have to say. But this is about a totally different type of subject.

In December of 1981, a 26-year-old Philadelphia Police officer named Daniel Faulkner was killed, shot on the Philadelphia streets. The following year, Mumia Abu-Jamal was convicted of that murder and sentenced to death. In the intervening years, his case has grown into an international cause for supporters of Jamal, who contend he was framed by police for the murder because of his radical political views publicized in his writing and in his commentaries on radio.

This past September, or rather, yes this past September, Judge Albert Sabo rejected a defense appeal for a new trial, meaning Jamal remains on death row. Philadelphia's District Attorney, Lynne Abraham, called the appeal a waste of the court's time, calling those who support Abu-Jamal as a political prisoner, hypocrites and hucksters who don't know a thing about the case. But his lead attorney, Leonard Weinglass of Pentagon Papers and Chicago Seven Game, says Abu-Jamal never got a fair trial back in 1982, arguing that his attorney at that time was incompetent, evidence was withheld, and new witnesses have recently come forward to testify on his client's behalf.

Leonard Weinglass is in the Twin Cities today to address law school classes and the public at the University of Minnesota and William Mitchell College of Law. He will also speak at Macalester College, and he joins us in our studios this morning. Thank you for coming in, Mr. Weinglass.

LEONARD WEINGLASS: All right. Thank you for having me, Paula.

PAULA SCHROEDER: It's interesting, you were telling me before we went on the air that you're just back from Europe talking about this case. Here you are in the Twin Cities where we technically have nothing to do with this. This happened in Philadelphia. The case was decided in a Philadelphia courtroom, and yet you are talking to people all over the world about Mumia Abu-Jamal. Why?

LEONARD WEINGLASS: Well, I'm talking about Mumia Abu-Jamal who did not receive a fair trial, but we're also talking about larger issues than his case. We're talking about the death penalty. And 56 countries in the world now have outlawed the death penalty. The United Nations has outlawed it even for genocidal and mass murder. And the United States is the one country, together with Japan, which has a death row population of 32 compared to our 33,000, which still carries on with the death penalty.

PAULA SCHROEDER: So you are more concerned about getting your client off of death row or getting him a new trial?

LEONARD WEINGLASS: Getting him a new trial. In his particular case, the evidence and the record clearly calls for it. We filed a 120-page brief on February 9 with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, citing 26 separate claims of a constitutional nature which were violated in his trial and on his appeal. We're relatively confident that eventually some courts somewhere will give him a fair hearing and his due, which is a new trial.

PAULA SCHROEDER: The prosecutor and well, the district attorney, rather, Lynne Abraham, calls some of your efforts, well, this is a quote from an opinion column that she wrote in The Philadelphia Inquirer. "A well-oiled, well-financed propaganda machine bent on perverting justice as it subverts the facts of the trial. The effort has been aided by lawyers who will say anything, no matter how false, to attract publicity." I assume she's talking about you.

LEONARD WEINGLASS: Yes, and I've offered to debate her publicly, and she has accepted and then she didn't show up. I have debated the prosecutor four times, twice nationally, once on Larry King live, once on Charlie Rose Show. They don't debate me anymore. The fact of the matter is that when lawyers who confine their remarks and their debate arguments to the record find that the prosecution is very handicapped, because in those instances, they are confined by an adversary and by the record itself, it's rather Lynne Abraham and the district attorney's office that rather put out puff pieces like that one, unfortunately, which the New York Times allowed to be published. We have constantly said, we are willing to debate in a courtroom or outside of a courtroom on the basis of the record with any of our adversaries, but they don't show up anymore.

PAULA SCHROEDER: It's interesting that when you look at-- and I'm not saying that I'm an expert on this case by any means whatsoever, but reading through some of the evidence in the case and what the prosecution had said was evidence, it looks an iffy case for a defense attorney to take on and make a public international cause. Five spent cartridges from Abu-Jamal's gun. He himself was shot in the abdomen by the policeman's weapon. His brother, William Cook, who he was coming to assist, never testified on his behalf. Why this case?

LEONARD WEINGLASS: Well, let's talk about the spent shells. The gun that Mumia Abu-Jamal was carrying that night, which was a legal weapon licensed to him, because he was a cabdriver and he had been robbed, was a 38-caliber gun. The bullet that was removed from the officer from his brain, which was the fatal bullet, the forensic pathologist for the state who removed the bullet said that the bullet was a 44-caliber bullet.

PAULA SCHROEDER: OK, now, he said this in a pre-autopsy report. And then he went on to say that he was not a ballistics expert.

LEONARD WEINGLASS: That's interesting. No, he said it in his formal report on page 1 of the official protocol that the bullet he removed was a 44-caliber bullet. You cannot fire that bullet from a 38-caliber gun.

Now, they went on to say that he's not qualified, which is an interesting claim they make, because in the trial back in 1982, the prosecution qualified him as a ballistics expert. It's something that Judge Sabo conveniently overlooked when he wrote his opinion in September. Their case is filled with contradictions and filled with misstatements of facts, such as the ones that Lynne Abraham made in that article.

They said they had a confession, but oddly enough, no one reported it for 64 days. But the officer who guarded Mumia that night filed a report that night saying the male Negro made no comment. The jury never heard that because when Mumia called that officer to testify in his defense, the police said he was on vacation.

We found the officer. We put him on the stand last summer. He said he was in the city of Philadelphia 20 minutes from the courthouse and would have come on a phone call. This is what infects the entire proceeding.

They say they have a confession, in fact, they don't. They say they had the murder weapon, in fact, they don't. They say they have eyewitnesses, and their eyewitnesses have all been benefited by things that were given to them so that they could testify. And the other witnesses who would have testified for Mumia were intimidated.

So clearly, this case, although they claim they have a case, falls apart when you examine it closely. And we want another jury to look at it closely. We're confident that any jury that does will acquit Mumia.

PAULA SCHROEDER: So much of the public support that is behind him has to do with the theory of conspiracy, that he was set up. He was framed because of his radical political views. Is that going to be a part of your case, if you do, in fact, get a new trial?

LEONARD WEINGLASS: It definitely is, because in the penalty phase of Mumia's case, where the jury had to decide between life and death, the prosecution produced a 12-year-old newspaper article which quoted Mumia when he was 16 years old, a teenager, and a member of the Black Panther Party, saying that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun, having absolutely nothing to do with this case. And they used it, and they used his background, his political background, his radical politics, and his political statements to gain the death penalty that the United States Supreme Court said you cannot do because it violates the First Amendment, yet they did it. It's part of the record. And that's why people rightly claim that Mumia is a political prisoner on death row, a man who got the death sentence because of his politics. It shouldn't happen in the United States.

PAULA SCHROEDER: The Free Mumia Movement, even though he was convicted in 1982, never really got off the ground in a big way, in an international way with the celebrity support that it has now, et cetera, until you came on the case. Was this a recommendation of yours that there be more publicity about his predicament?

LEONARD WEINGLASS: No, it was a matter of fact a response to the governor of Pennsylvania signing a death warrant and setting an execution date of August 17, 1995. When people realized that Mumia faced for real an execution date, then there was a massive mobilization. And many people point to the fact that there were celebrities who came on board.

There weren't just celebrities. There were some, to be sure, but there was also Nelson Mandela. There was the president of Germany, the foreign minister of Belgium, 44 members of the Diet in Japan, 100,000 signatures on petitions in Rome, 40,000 in Paris, the parliament in Italy, the parliament in Denmark, all calling for a new trial. Obviously, people who have learned about this case, who understand it, who are high government officials and ordinarily responsible and diplomats have responded to this case, and there is a good reason for it.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Does Mumia continue to write and to publish? He does have a book out.

LEONARD WEINGLASS: Yes, he has a book out which has sold 60,000 copies hardcover in the United States. It's is now out in German, French, Italian, and Dutch, and about to be published, as I understand it, in Spanish. And there enquiries from China to have it out in Chinese. His book has been extraordinarily successful. And he does continue to write and publish.

PAULA SCHROEDER: And yet he doesn't talk about the night of the crime. Why?

LEONARD WEINGLASS: He doesn't because he hopefully will have a new trial. And like anyone facing a new trial, he's under the advice of his attorneys not to tell his story until we get that new trial. And when we do get that new trial, he will.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Do you think that, of course, you're representing Mumia Abu-Jamal. And I understand that we don't necessarily get personal opinions from attorneys when there are cases pending. Do you think that there is a conspiracy against radical political activists in this country, particularly if they are African-American?

LEONARD WEINGLASS: I think in Mumia's case, the evidence does indicate that. And I think if historically you look at what happened in the United states, when those who have stepped forward and taken an active part, even a militant and radical part, they have either been imprisoned, assassinated, or executed. I mean, you only have to look at Medgar Evers, Malcolm x, Martin Luther King, 26 Black Panthers. The history is replete with killings of people who stepped forward.

And it doesn't happen on the right. It doesn't happen in the center. It only happens to those who are either a minority background or of left-wing political persuasion. There has to be an explanation.

This isn't a matter of chance. I don't think it's random. I think people have to understand that this is what happens in the United States if you're on the side of protest, dissent, or on the left or an activist in support of a minority community.

PAULA SCHROEDER: As you said, you filed papers on February 9 asking for a new trial from the Pennsylvania Supreme Court. There was a stay of execution from that August 17 date. What is the status of Mumia Abu-Jamal now?

LEONARD WEINGLASS: Mumia remains on death row now into his 14 year. He's not under immediate peril of an execution because the warrant has been stayed. He has approximately one year to 1 and 1/2 more years of appeals through the state and the federal system. If all those appeals fail, and we fail to get a new trial, the governor of Pennsylvania has already gone on the record as saying that he will sign a new death warrant and Mumia will be executed.

You, mentioned why do we bother building support? We bother building support, because the final decision, if we lose in court, and I'm hopeful we'll win, but if we lose in court, the final decision is made by a politically-elected leader who does it on the basis of politics, unfortunately. And that's why anyone defending a death penalty case, faced with the fact that his client's fate will rest in the hands of an elected leader, had better be sure that there is sufficient support at the end of the line to neutralize the impact of those who are seeking his execution. And they have a well-oiled campaign, the Fraternal Order of the Police. So I am pursuing, in Mumia's defense, a defense that includes both a courtroom defense and a support network defense because the final decision is made by a governor.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Leonard Weinglass, thank you so much for coming in today on this busy day. I want to tell listeners that you are going to be speaking at three different locations where they can hear you, if they're interested. And that is 7:00 tonight at the William Mitchell College of Law, 11:30 tomorrow at Macalester College in Saint Paul, and 7:00 tomorrow night at the University of Minnesota Law School. Leonard Weinglass, thank you.

LEONARD WEINGLASS: All right. Thanks for having me.

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GARY EICHTEN: Black radio has done more than just entertain. In the '50s and '60s, it served as a messenger from the Civil Rights Movement. Hi. This is Gary Eichten inviting you to join us for Midday on the FM news station.

We'll continue our series on the history of Black radio with a look at the disk jockeys who brought listeners the early word about the struggle for civil rights. Midday begins weekdays at 11:00 on the FM news station KNOW-FM 91.1 in the Twin Cities.

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PAULA SCHROEDER: Midday goes funky. All right, Gary, we'll be talking to Duane Benson of the Minnesota Business Partnership during the 11 o'clock hour of Midday about the announcement today of the sale of Cray Research and West Publishing. Gary will also be talking to the Chairman of the Republican Party in North Dakota about tomorrow's presidential primary. But first, we are going to hear from Garrison Keillor.

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GARRISON KEILLOR: And here is the Writer's Almanac for Monday. It's the 26th of February, 1996. The moon enters its first quarter phase this morning. Today is the birthday of a great French author, a poet as well, though better known to us for his novels. Victor Hugo was born in Besancon, France in 1802.

He was a popular writer in France in his day for his novels Notre-Dame de Paris, published in 1831, Les Misérables in 1862. His 80th birthday was celebrated as a French national holiday. And when he died in 1885 at the age of 83, his funeral procession through the streets of Paris was watched by more than a million people. Victor Hugo, who said, "An invasion of armies can be resisted but not an idea whose time has come."

It's the birthday in Scott County, Iowa, 1846, of William Frederick Cody, Buffalo Bill, who got his nickname from all of the animals that he killed when he was a hired hunter for the Kansas Pacific Railroad crews in the 1870s. He became a successful showman and took his Wild West Show on the road across the United States and to Europe. It was in 1848 on this date in London, Karl Marx, at the age of 29, published the Communist Manifesto.

The first subway line in New York City opened to the public in 1870 on this day. It's the birthday of the critic and teacher of English at Harvard, I.A Richards, born in 1893. The Grand Canyon National Park was established on this day in 1919 by an act of Congress, a park which hosts 3.5 million visitors every year.

It's the birthday in New Orleans in 1928 of pianist Fats Domino, Antoine Fats Domino, a self-taught musician who was playing at the Hideaway Club in New Orleans in 1949 for $3 a week when he was discovered by Imperial Records and became a big rhythm and blues star. And Johnny Cash was born in Kingsland, Arkansas, on this day in 1932. Here's a poem by Gavin Ewart entitled "Young Blondes," a religious poem.

"Young blondes are tempting me by day and night, young blondes in dreams trouble my restless sight. With curly heads, they rampaged through my thoughts full bosomed in their sweaters and their shorts. Or lie sunbathing on an impossible beach naked, aloof, continually out of reach. On the mind's promenade above the rocks, young blondes go sauntering by in cotton frocks or flatter cameras with their negligent poses or drenched in moonlight gather midnight roses.

While I am eating, smoking, working, talking through long romantic gardens, they are walking. Protect me, lord, from these desires of flesh. Keep me from evil in thy pastures fresh so that I may not fall by lakes or ponds into such sinful thoughts about young blondes." A poem by Gavin Ewart, "Young Blondes" from his selected poems, 1933 to 1988, published by New Directions and used by permission here on the Writer's Almanac Monday, February 26th, made possible by Coles Magazines, publishers of figurines and collectibles and other magazines. Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.

PAULA SCHROEDER: Well, that's Mid-Morning for today. Midday coming up next. Be sure to stay tuned for that. And tomorrow, you will hear another in our series of specials campaign connection.

Tomorrow is primary day in several states, including North and South Dakota. We'll find out what some of the issues are there as the candidates focus their attention more on Arizona and Georgia. But, again, you will hear all the latest about what's going on in the campaigns tomorrow on Mid-Morning.

We'll also begin a series of specials about the history of rock and roll. So lots of good stuff coming up tomorrow on Mid-Morning. Tune in then. I'm Paula Schroeder. Thanks a lot for joining us today.

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ROBERT MACNEIL: I'm Robert MacNeil. Now that I'm no longer on the Newshour, I'm going to have a lot more time in the afternoons to listen to All Things Considered.

SPEAKER: Afternoons at 3:00 on the FM news station KNOW-FM 91.1.

PAULA SCHROEDER: You're listening to Minnesota Public Radio. 23 degrees under cloudy skies at the FM news station. KNOW-FM 91.1, Minneapolis, Saint Paul. Twin cities weather calls for a winter storm watch with which is in effect tonight and tomorrow. Look for a high today around 30 degrees and snow moving in tonight.

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GARY EICHTEN: Good morning. It's 11:00. And this is Midday on the FM news station. I'm Gary Eichten.

In the news this morning, two of Minnesota's best-known companies, Cray Research and West Publishing, are being sold. Cray is being bought by a California-based company, West by a Canadian company. Both Cray and West are currently based in Eagan, Minnesota.

US is asking the United Nations to condemn Cuba's shootdown of two unarmed Cuban exile planes. Funerals are being held in Israel today for some of the victims of yesterday's suicide bombings in Israel. Israeli police say a third incident, meanwhile, one that left two more Israelis dead, was apparently an accident.

And Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan says if he wins tomorrow's primary election in Arizona, he will win the Republican presidential nomination. Bob Dole is expected to win tomorrow's primaries in North and South Dakota. Those are some of the stories in the news today. Coming up over the noon hour, we'll continue our documentary series on the History of Black Radio.

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