Mumia Abu-Jamal: After 100,000

What happens when the counter strikes 100,000? Nothing. 

One hundred thousand American dead; that means, for all intents and purposes, nothing much. For does the counter stop counting? Or does it continue rolling on like the mighty Mississippi River?

Is 100,000 an end or just another number? And then summer begins to emerge and people rush out-of-doors to get some socializing in. What happens in the next two weeks — a spike, a dozen spikes?

It must be said that even as the official number strikes 100,000, the official number isn’t the real one, for the U.S. is so stingy with testing that thousands of people, some who died at home, were never tested. How many homeless people have died, and do you really think they get tested?

In times like these, all people are not created equal. For Black folk, this has been a time of ineffable loss. For many workers — cleaners, nurses, orderlies, bus drivers, cab drivers and the like — their work was on the front line of the contagion of the coronavirus.

As America now opens its doors, what will they find: a new day or more death?

From Imprisoned Nation, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Listen to Mumia’s commentary on Prison Radio.