Philip Bloch This is Me

Education

 Web References

1. 1. Vanity Fair - The Famous and the Dead

   www.danielfaulkner.com/vanity. - [Cached]

   Published on: 2/4/1999   Last Visited: 8/30/2006

   In the early 1990s, Philip Bloch was an active participant in the Pennsylvania Prison Society. He was also a student at Juniata College in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, the town where Abu-Jamal was incarcerated. Bloch says that he had at least 10 conversations with Abu-Jamal in prison, and that it was during one of them when he asked the inmate, "Do you have any regrets about killing the officer?"
   
   "Yes" was Abu-Jamal's reply, according to Bloch.
   
   When police arrived at the scene, they not only saw Faulkner with blood pouring out of his face, but also saw Abu-Jamal sitting in close proximity, on the curb.
   
   Raised in a housing project in Philadelphia, Abu-Jamal developed his political activist beliefs in earnest in 1969, when, a 15, he co-founded the local chapter of the Black Panther Party and became its "minister of information." Known in high school as a strong student, he was also expelled for his radicalism. Those who knew Abu Jamal say that he never lost his ideological beliefs about the system and the intense degree of oppression against minorities. But Abu-Jamal also became part of the journalistic mainstream, working at a variety of commercial radio stations in Philadelphia. At a certain point in his life, he was highly regarded, with a voice that seemed born for the airwaves-rich, velvety, beautiful. Some saw in him the kind of talent, particularly in his ability to evoke mood and atmosphere, that could have led him as far as he wanted to go in the radio business. Others admired him for the way he had managed to bridge the gap between traditional journalism and social activism by doing stories on the disadvantaged.
   
   But in the months before the shooting, according to colleagues, it was a talent that he had basically jettisoned. His last full-time job had been as a reporter with WHYY, the local public-radio station in Philadelphia. He had started at the station in the summer of 1979, and for some of that time, as a member of a staff putting out a local version of All Things Considered called 91 Report, much of his work had been of high quality.
   
   But he was something of a manipulator, say those who worked with him, particularly since he knew that his talent was in demand.
   ...
   Bloch says he learned of Abu-Jamal as part of his volunteer work for the Pennsylvania Prison Society, through another death-row inmate he was working with at the time. He and Abu-Jamal developed an "mutual friendship" grounded in similar backgrounds in the left-wing movement, says Bloch, and talked on a variety of subjects-philosophy, history, prison life. (Discussion of Abu-Jamal's case never came up, perhaps because Bloch, based on his own examination of the case through newspaper clippings, had concluded that Abu-Jamal was almost certainly guilty.)
   
   It was in the course of one such conversation that Bloch talked to Abu-Jamal about the use of violence and whether it might be an acceptable alternative in the advancement of a cause. It was in that context, Bloch says, that he asked Abu-Jamal if he had any regrets over killing Faulkner, and Abu-Jamal replied with a one-word answer of "yes."
   
   "There was a long pause," Bloch remembers. "I think we probably realized what he had just done."
   
   Bloch did not ask Abu-Jamal to elaborate, and the conversation turned toward other subjects. "It wasn't something I planned in advance," he says of the question. "It was just in the flow of the conversation. The opportunity to ask such a question came up, and I asked it." Even without elaboration, Bloch says he was positive that Abu-Jamal understood precisely what had been asked.
   
   "It was directly implied in my statement that he was the one who did it. I don't think there's any possibility of mis communication."
   
   Bloch, a 47-year-old substitute teacher, kept the contents of the conversation to himself for roughly seven years. But in recent months, he says, the tactics of Abu-Jamal supporters increasingly began to gnaw at him.
   ...
   Combing the Internet one day, Bloch discovered a Web site established by an organization called Justice for Police Officer Daniel Faulkner.
   ...
   In a second E-mail, Bloch revealed his name and phone number, and has since given a statement to a detective from the Philadelphia Police Department. Bloch says that his decision to come forward was not an easy one. He has not spoken with Abu-Jamal in roughly five years after letters he sent to the inmate went unanswered. But, says Bloch, "I still have a lot of respect for him. I don't think by any means he's proud of what he did. I'm sure that if he had to do it all over again he'd be somewhere else that night." But in the absence of that, says Bloch, "It's a lot easier to live the life now as a martyr than as a cold-blooded cop killer."