To Protect and Serve Who? Organizing a Movement to Abolish Police Violence

By Mumia Abu-Jamal

In this limited edition 16-page pamphlet, Mumia Abu-Jamal offers the post-Ferguson generation his advice on how to address the chronic problems of police violence and impunity in the United States today.  

 Published as part of the City Lights/Open Media Series, and typeset by Mumia himself on his prison typewriter, the pamphlet examines the history of an institutionalized police force in the United States, with its origins in the white slave patrols of the antebellum South and an explicit mission to terrorize and subjugate the country’s black population.

Touching on lessons learned during times of rebellion and revolt, Mumia points to the growing networks for justice against police violence and calls on young people to channel their energy and indignation to organize and rise up through movement building. “This is their time,” writes Mumia, “their hour; their Selma—their Civil Rights Movement….” It’s our time too. Read this pamphlet to find out why.