On Feb­ru­ary 5, Zuni­ga gave her third grade stu­dents at For­est Street Ele­men­tary in Orange, New Jer­sey, a writ­ing assign­ment as a part of Black His­to­ry Month: ​“What is the main idea of this quote? — ​‘So long as one just per­son is silenced, there is no justice.’ ”

New Jersey’s Orange Board of Edu­ca­tion fired a first-year lan­guage arts and social sci­ences teacher named Marylin Zuni­ga on May 13 after lob­by­ing from police union offi­cials angered that Zuni­ga allowed her stu­dents to write let­ters to jailed black activist Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Lat­er in April, Zuni­ga men­tioned to her stu­dents that the man behind the quote, Abu-Jamal, was very ill. Zuni­ga says that her stu­dents asked if they could write get-well cards once all their school work was finished.

Mumia Abu-Jamal is cur­rent­ly serv­ing life in a Penn­syl­va­nia prison, and was on death row until 2011, after being con­vict­ed for the mur­der of a Philadel­phia police offi­cer in 1981. A for­mer Black Pan­ther, Abu-Jamal was a jour­nal­ist through­out the 70s and 80s, but since his incar­cer­a­tion — the result of what sup­port­ers call a faulty tri­al—his case has become a cause célèbre among much of the Left. He has been a promi­nent voice on mat­ters of crime and pun­ish­ment, with sev­er­al books of his writ­ings pub­lished, despite appar­ent attempts by prison and state offi­cials to lim­it that work. (Abu-Jamal has con­tributed to In These Times in the past.) He was hos­pi­tal­ized in late March after suf­fer­ing from what activists describe as untreat­ed dia­betes.

“Just dropped off these let­ters to com­rade Johan­na Fer­nan­dez. My 3rd graders wrote to Mumia to lift up his spir­its as he is ill,” Zuni­ga tweet­ed on April 5.

Fer­nan­dez, a pro­fes­sor at New York City’s Baruch Col­lege, deliv­ered the let­ters to Abu-Jamal. ​“It had been a long time since we had seen Mumia smile,” Fer­nan­dez wrote on her Face­book page, accord­ing to NJ​.com. ​“He chuck­led as he read excerpts from these touch­ing letters.”

Then, on April 9, Fox News ran a seg­ment on Zuniga’s let­ters. Richard Costel­lo, the for­mer pres­i­dent of Philadel­phi­a’s police offi­cers union, served as the sole guest dur­ing the seg­ment for his take on what Fer­nan­dez men­tioned in her Face­book post.

“I think the school sys­tem needs to imme­di­ate­ly fire any teacher involved in this,” Costel­lo told Fox and Friends’ Bri­an Kilmeade. ​“And fail­ing that, all the par­ents who have chil­dren in that school sys­tem need to reeval­u­ate their fur­ther involve­ment, because these chil­dren are now placed in dan­ger by the very peo­ple charged with their edu­ca­tion.” Police offi­cer asso­ci­a­tions and unions have long insist­ed that Abu-Jamal is guilty, and that any defense of him is a defense of a mur­der­er of police.

Zuni­ga was sus­pend­ed indef­i­nite­ly with pay the next day, April 10, after dis­trict offi­cials learned about the let­ters through Fox News’ coverage.

Chris Bur­gos, pres­i­dent of the New Jer­sey police offi­cers’ union, applaud­ed the deci­sion that day, but remarked that it was not ​“enough.” ​“With these actions, it is clear that Zuni­ga has lost any ben­e­fit of the doubt that she can ever con­tin­ue to teach our young peo­ple, with­out insert­ing her anar­chy dri­ven agen­da going for­ward,” Bur­gos said in a let­ter to dis­trict officials.

The next month ​‚promi­nent edu­ca­tors from across the coun­try decried what they say is the inter­fer­ence of police unions in mat­ters of pub­lic education.

On April 13, in a state­ment released with a let­ter of sup­port signed by an activist orga­ni­za­tion called Edu­ca­tors for Mumia Abu-Jamal, famed black intel­lec­tu­al and Prince­ton Pro­fes­sor Dr. Cor­nel West called Zuniga’s actions ​“exem­plary.”

“Edu­ca­tors in black and brown com­mu­ni­ties today are tak­ing a dou­ble-hit; first, they are denied fund­ing for qual­i­ty pub­lic schools in their neigh­bor­hoods, and then a grow­ing police pres­ence locks down a des­per­ate and dis­pos­sessed peo­ple,” West says. ​“Police should not tell us what or whom to teach.”

Anoth­er peti­tion in sup­port of Zuni­ga, signed by edu­ca­tors and schol­ars such as Noam Chom­sky and Marc Lam­ont Hill, insist­ed that she be returned to the class­room with sup­port­ive men­tor­ship rather than face fur­ther discipline.

“The ques­tion that lurks in this sit­u­a­tion is whether teach­ers who have taught one per­spec­tive of oth­er con­tro­ver­sial fig­ures such as Christo­pher Colum­bus or Andrew Jack­son faced the same lev­el of scruti­ny as Ms. Zuni­ga,” the peti­tion declares. ​“Is this a prece­dent that your school board is tru­ly inter­est­ed in setting?”

Lois Wein­er, a social jus­tice activist and pro­fes­sor of edu­ca­tion at New Jer­sey City Uni­ver­si­ty who signed this peti­tion, told In These Times she sup­ports Zuni­ga because teach­ers unions need ​“to go to bat” for fam­i­lies of col­or on issues that will show that teach­ers are on their side.

“It’s urgent for us to [sup­port fam­i­lies of col­or] now because of the re-emer­gence of a civ­il rights move­ment around Black Lives Mat­ter,” Wein­er says. ​“Mumia, and this case with Mar­i­lyn, can­not be sep­a­rat­ed from the grow­ing impa­tience, frus­tra­tion, and anger at the way peo­ple of col­or are treat­ed by the police.”

Wein­er also notes that the case may have strong impli­ca­tions for teach­ers that face polit­i­cal pres­sures. ​“If the union is not going to fight on cas­es like this, it’s going to become hard­er to fight on” oth­er major teacher pro­tec­tion dis­putes, she says. Zuni­ga had not yet earned tenure.

Accord­ing to Zuniga’s legal rep­re­sen­ta­tive Alan Levine, although the New Jer­sey Edu­ca­tion Asso­ci­a­tion (NJEA), the teach­ers union that Zuni­ga is a part of, has pri­vate­ly assured her that they will be meet­ing with her soon to dis­cuss rep­re­sent­ing her dur­ing the griev­ance process, the union has not pub­licly stood with Zuni­ga in this conflict.

“Gen­er­al­ly, the pub­lic debate has been dom­i­nat­ed by her sup­port­ers and the Fra­ter­nal Order of Police, and the [teach­ers] union has not par­tic­i­pat­ed in that pub­lic debate,” he says.

Levine told In These Times that while dis­cus­sions regard­ing legal action against the school dis­trict are ongo­ing and no deci­sion has been made, he has dis­cussed with Zuni­ga the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a fed­er­al civ­il rights law­suit that would raise fed­er­al and state con­sti­tu­tion­al claims relat­ed to vio­la­tions of due process in the case of her termination.

“Most of those claims would grow out of the school district’s fail­ure to give her any for­mal notice of what mis­con­duct she was accused of,” he says, alleg­ing that the school dis­trict has neglect­ed require­ments to pro­vide a writ­ten out­line of mis­con­duct to teach­ers accused. ​“Pub­li­cal­ly the school board has talked about the let­ters her chil­dren wrote to Mumia, but they’ve nev­er said that’s the basis of their charges.”

A pos­si­ble law­suit, Levine says, would raise the infer­ence that the dis­trict made its deci­sion ​“under pres­sure from an out­side orga­ni­za­tion that has noth­ing to do with edu­ca­tion but rather has its own nar­row polit­i­cal agen­da with regards to Mumia.”