Transcript:

This photograph was taken in July of 1995, 30 years ago during the National Governors Association conference held in Burlington, Vermont and hosted by Vermont Governor Howard Dean. In this photo are two people that have been arrested and thrown to the  pavement and being handcuffed for attempting to blockade President Bill Clinton’s motorcade that was on the way to the conference. Attending the conference was Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge.

Prior to the conference, Ridge signed the execution order for Mumia  Abu-Jamal. Abu-Jamal was and still is a political prisoner and journalist. This all occurred during five days of militant protests in the streets of Burlington. Many people were arrested during these five days and it caused utter chaos I think in the city of Burlington and surrounding areas because all the media was captured by what was going on, from banner hangs to people rushing police lines, to more banner hangs and more marching in the street and many things were happening. The media was totally captured. You could not go anywhere and turn on a tv or turn on a radio and not hear about the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

I believe the militant protests in Burlington, Vermont and many that happened across the United States were reasons that Mumia was not executed the next month in August. Many of those years in prison he’s been on death row.

And now for some of the backstory: goes to just very simply a big huge banner. It said “Free Mumia,” that’s all it said. And it was used quite a lot during this time. It had hung off the University of Vermont water tower. When the activist came down who hung it the police arrested him. And other activists, I think, asked the police if they could have the banner back. I think, at least not knowing much about protest at the time, gave the banner back and to the activists.

And one of the times the banner was used was during a big gala for the governors. And that was on Lake Champlain’s waterfront. And people were going to eat there and see the beautiful sunset over the mountains. All water traffic was closed in Burlington Harbor off a lake on Lake Champlain. Like I said, no boat traffic, no anything could go over on the lake except except a ferry. And so a ferry was going by the the gala celebration and all of a sudden a banner just from the upper deck kind of was dropped it said, “Free Mumia.”

And at that time the police came in the in boats and they told the captain that he had to make the people remove the banner. And the banner continued to hang because the captain refused the order. He said it’s his boat and his ship and he’s the captain and it can stay.

All of this came about. At the end to that Governor Howard Dean, Vermont Governor Howard Dean said that the protests were an embarrassment to the state. Several anarchists replied that that was a compliment. One of the anarchists said to me (actually, she was quoted in a newspaper of saying) “We not only rained on Howard Dean’s parade, we pissed on it.”

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Field Notes is a new video series featuring award-winning photojournalist and documentary photographer Orin Langelle, co-founder of Global Justice Ecology Project and author of Portraits of Struggle.