Pam Africa: "Our Revolutionary Daughter of the Dust" Reception

OCCUPY FOR JUSTICE: OCCUPY THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT

OCCUPY FOR JUSTICE: OCCUPY THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
April 24, 11AM
950 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW Washington, DC -- at the Dept of Justice (DOJ)

Pledge to Occupy the DOJ

ENDORSED BY:
International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu Jamal : Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal : New York Coalition to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal : Occupy Philly : Occupy DC Now : Occupy DC Criminal Injustice Committee : Occupy the Hood : Decarcerate PA : Supporting Prisoners and Acting for Radical Change [SPARC] : Millions for Mumia : Dead Prez (Sticman and M1) : T alib Kweli : Immortal Technique : Angela Davis : Danny Glover : Alice Walker : Francis Pixen : Amiri Baraka : Marc Lamont Hill : Cornell West : Vijay Prashad : Norman Finkelstein

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NEXT STOP -Mumia's Freedom 

Now that the celebrated, radical journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal, is off death row, many dare to imagine the next step--his release from prison. On December 9, 2011 at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, where over 1,100 people gathered to mark the 30th anniversary of Mumia's incarceration, Archbishop Desmond Tutu asked our nation to "rise to the challenge of reconciliation, human rights, and justice" and called for Mumia's "immediate release." And when Frances Goldin--Mumia's literary agent--called on the audience to OCCUPY the Justice Department, the call was met with a roar of excitement.

On April 24, 2012, Mumia's 58th birthday, we will gather at the Department of Justice (DOJ) in Washington, DC. A large-scale, vibrant and colorful rally will amplify our formal request that Eric Holder immediately meet with a delegation to discuss police corruption and civil rights violations in Mumia's case and in the cases of hundreds of other defendants in Philadelphia. Some demonstrators will engage in acts of civil disobedience to draw greater attention to these injustices.


I pledge to occupy the DOJ

On April 24, consider joining a group of renowned citizens in an act of civil disobedience, among them Danny Glover, Frances Fox Piven, Norman Finkelstein, and M1 of Dead Prez. Your pledge to engage in an act of civil disobedience will be critical to reaching our goals of enlisting the participation of other activists and ensuring news coverage of the case and of our broader demands. If you cannot commit to civil disobedience, you can pledge to be at the demonstration.

Because Mumia's removal from death row coincides with the dramatic shift in consciousness brought by the Occupy Wall Stree t movement and the execution of Troy Davis, we now have a unique window of opportunity to fulfill one of the most important moral assignments of our time: to build a movement that will link all of the violations in Mumia's case and his fraudulent trial to the crisis of mass incarceration, so as to win this innocent man's freedom. Short term goal: release Mumia. Long term goal: end mass incarceration.

Attorneys will be available to answer questions and to support this important demonstration.
CLICK HERE TO TAKE THE PLEDGE AND SIGN-UP!

"there is something in the soul...

...that cries for freedom!" Twenty-first century social movements around the world are illuminating the root ca uses of social crises, class inequality, bigotry, human rights violations, and environmental degradation. Here in the U.S. we have seen how, in the face of the growing OCCUPY movements, the state has intensified its campaign to restrain people and silence dissent. From the incarceration of state critics and whistle blowers (Bradley Manning), the pepper spraying of peacefully protesting students in California and the passage of repressive legislation (HR 347 & NDAA) to the warehousing of millions of poor Black and Latino people in American prisons and the increased scapegoating and detention of immigrants -- the state is ramping up repressive measures.

On April 24, we will breath life into the old labor slogan: "an injury to one, is an injury to all." On that day we will say that we are all Mumia, we are all immigrants, we are all Bradley Manning, we are all poor, we are all Palestinian, and we are all Troy Davis.

For 30 years, in a death row cell, Mumia has offered a radical critique of power and injustice through his regular radio commentaries and seven published books. His defiant voice in the face of state repression has taught us all something about courage and the human spirit's inclination toward freedom. His message articulates our highest aspirations as a society. On April 24, make a placard and write on it all of your grievances. They will be welcomed. Above all, on that day, bring your fighting spirit and your desire to live in and create a decent and different world.

WHY THE DOJ

The police who shot, brutalized, and arrested Mumia Abu-Jamal in 1980 -- for the shooting death of Officer Daniel Faulkner -- were under scrutiny by a Department of Justice investigation of the Philadelphia Police Department. The probe, which began in 1979, marked the first time in United States' history that the federal government sued a police department for civil rights violations and charged an entire police department, rather than individual officers, with police brutality. The DOJ suit maintained that the Philadelphia police's practices of "shooting nonviolent suspects, abusing handcuffed prisoners, suppressing dissension within its ranks, and engaging in a pattern of brutal behavior `shocks the conscience.'" Only days after the end of Mumia's fraudulent trial and conviction, 15 of the 35 police officers involved in collecting evidence in his case would be convicted and jailed, as a result of this federal investigation, on charges which included graft, corruption, and tampering with evidence to obtain a conviction. Chief among these officers was Alfonzo Giordano, the police inspector who led the crime scene investigation in Mumia's case. The DOJ investigation remains unfinished: it did not provide relief for defendants like Mumia who were convicted by the testimonies and work of these corrupt an d convicted cops.

OUR DEMANDS

• Release Mumia Abu-Jamal
• End mass incarceration
• Jobs, Education, & Health Care. NOT JAILS!
• End solitary confinement & stop torture
• End the racist death penalty
• Hands off immigrants
• Free all political prisoners

For more info on the case:
http://www.freemumia.com
http://www.emajonline.com/category/mumia-faqs/
http://www.bignoisefilms.com/films/tactical-media/114-justice-on-trial
http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/001/2000
Dave Lindorff, Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal (Common Courage Press, 2002)
Patrick J. O'connor, The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal (Lawrence Hill Books, 2008)

To donate:
Mail tax-deductible checks to National Lawyers Guild Foundation, 922 Nassau Street #922, New York, NY 10009 (write A24 in subject line)

Stay tuned for pre-event "Teach-Ins" in Philadelphia and Washington, DC.


For more info on A24
email: info at occupythejusticedepartment.com
call: 215-600-6626


To get on the bus:
Philadelphia: 215-600-6626
Occupy the Hood, NY: 718-600-5857
New York Coalition to Free Mumia: 212-330-8029
www.megabus.com
www.boltbus.com 

--Mumia is Innocent!  Stop the Frame Up!  Free Mumia!--

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition, NYC
P.O. Box 16, College Station, NY, NY 10030
212-330-8029, www.FreeMumia.com, info@FreeMumia.com

Mumia Receives 2012 Frantz Fanon Prize

From freemumia.com

We are proud to announce that this past Sunday, February 26, Mumia received the 2012 Frantz Fanon Prize in Paris.  Mumia's brother, Keith, accepted the prize at the ceremony on behalf of Mumia.  Below is the link to the powerful 17 minute statement that Mumia recorded for the occasion and which was played for those who attended the ceremony.  

Congratulations, Mumia, on your getting yet another well-deserved honor!  We look forward to the day when you can receive these honors in person.

http://www.prisonradio.org/media/audio/vision-fanon-mumia

Mumia's Letter to Princeton Seminary students

From Mark Lewis Taylor of EMAJ –

The commentary/letter by Mumia, below, needs a brief explanation. Mumia sent this to me for my students at Princeton Theological Seminary, in a class I teach, “Incarnation and Incarcerated Bodies.” He wrote it while in “the hole” (Restricted Housing Unit - RHU) at SCI-Mahanoy, before being transferred – after 50 days! – to general population. Before I knew he was going to be in the hole, I had invited him to phone in a spoken commentary to my class, as he has done on two other occasions. Once Mumia went into the hole, I expected to hear nothing. It is testimony to his indomitable spirit and political commitment, that Mumia got this five-page handwritten text, and discerning analysis, out to my class – while in the hole!  Below, you’ll find my typed-out version of the text.

Then, on one of his first days out of the hole, he recorded the letter onto audio tape, only slightly altered from the handwritten text. I found this audio version in my online Dropbox, as “a surprise,” he said. This was made possible, also, by the good efforts of Prison Radio’s Noelle Hanrahan. That audio version will be posted soon this week. His audio tape arrived just in time for me to play to my classes this past week – to great effect!

Enjoy – everyone; post and send as you wish! And now – let’s get Mumia free, so that he is teaching live in our classrooms, helping us all to dismantle “Incarceration Nation.”

Keep on!
Mark

INCARCERATION NATION
[lecture 1/19/12] © 2012 M.A. JAMAL

Fellow students, Dr. Mark Lewis Taylor; I think you for this rare opportunity to join you, if only on paper. For the first time in nearly 3 decades, I join you, free from a death sentence; yet, I write from the nation’s growing public housing population: its prisons.

As Michelle Alexander, Angela Y. Davis, and a plethora of scholar-activists have more than aptly demonstrated, we are in the throes of an imprisonment fever, holding millions of men, women and children in shackles. It is what I call, “Incarceration Nation.”

As I am now in the “hole,” and thus in transition to population (or so I’m told), my access to phone is restricted, so my words and paper must suffice. No matter, I am a writer, and am fully able to use this medium to press my points.

As this is both an academic as well as a theological setting, I intend to share with you voices that may not necessarily be commonly heard or expressed here, but are vital to the mission of institutions such as these, as they arise from the very heart of Black religious practice, albeit of various spiritual traditions. Indeed, the first is drawn from a uniquely artistic tradition, and is therefore, a performance of a performance (you’ll understand more, shortly, I trust).

For the Black preacher has been, since Africans arrived in the nation, the central voice of Black yearning, Black hope and yes, Black resistance to the system of white supremacy and racist terror against black life.

Acclaimed Black dialect poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar, in his 1896 poem, “An Antebellum Sermon,” brings out the soul and the satire inherent in the traditions of Black preachers, thus:

                We is gathahed hyeah, my brothahs,
                    In dis howlin’ wildaness,
                Fu’ to speak some words of comfo’t
                   To each othah in distress.
                An’ we chooses fu’ ouah subjic’
                   Dis – we’ll ‘splain it by an’ by;
                “An de Lawd said, ‘Moses, Moses,’
                   An’ de man said, ‘Hyeah am I.’”

                Now ole Pher’oh, down in Egypt,
                   Was de wuss man evah bo’n,
                An’ he had de Hebrew chillun
                   Down dah wukin’ in his co’n’
                ‘Twell de Lawd got tiahed o’ his foolin’,
                   An sez he: “I’ll let him know –
                Look hyeah, Moses, go tell Pher’oh
                   Fu’ to let dem chillun go.” . . .
                But fu’ feah some one mistakes me,
                   I will pause right hyeah to say,
                Dat I’m still a-preachin’ ancient
                   I ain’t talkin’ ‘bout to-day.

                But I tell you, fellah christuns,
                   Things’ll happen mighty strange;
                Now, de Lawd done dis fu’ Isrul,
                An’ his ways don’t nevah change,
                An’ de love he showed to Isrul
                   Wasn’t all on Isrul spent;
                Now don’t run an’ tell yo’ mastahs
                   Dat I’s preachin’ discontent.

                ‘Cause I is n’t; I’se a-judgin’
                   Bible people by deir ac’s;
                I’se a-givin’ you de Scriptuah,
                   I’se a-handin’ you de fac’s.
                Cose ole Pher’oh b’lieved in slav’ry,
                   But de Lawd he let him see,
                Dat de people he put bref in,-
                   Evah mothah’s son was free.  . . .
              
                But when Moses wif his powah
                   Comes an’ sets us chillun free,
                We will praise de gracious Mastah
                    Dat has gin us liberty;
                An’ we’ll shout ouah halleluyahs,
                   On dat mighty reck’nin’ day,
                When we’se reco’nised ez citiz’ –
                   Huh uh! Chillun, let us pray!

Paul Laurence Dunbar mined the rich mother-lode of Black speech and oration to fund his poetry, and while it may sound somewhat new to some students here, I assure you – as someone who accompanied my mother to a Black Baptist church in his childhood – the rhythms and intonations of Dunbar are as familiar as an old relative.

That said, it was penned over a century ago, and new deliveries, new attitudes and even new religions were inevitable.

By the ‘60s, voices such as Malcolm X’s would ascend to the pulpit, in the name of an American-born Islam (specifically, the Nation of Islam) which would use new cadences and a different message to give voice to the Black spirit.

The following text of one of his sermons is typical:

My brothers and sisters, our slave masters’ Christian religion has taught us black people here in the wilderness of North America that we will sprout wings when we die and fly up into the sky where God will have for us a special place called heaven. This is white man’s Christian religion used to brainwash us black people! We have accepted it! We have believed it! We have practiced it! And while we are doing all of that, for himself, this blue-eyed devil has twisted his Christianity to keep his foot on our backs…to keep our eyes fixed on the pie in the sky and heaven in the hereafter…while he enjoys his heaven right here…on this earth…in this life.

Of course, the differences in tone, in structure, and even in language, are, to say the least, striking. Yet, both forms are reflections of the central concern of Black people. Freedom. Liberty. Here. Now.

(It is noteworthy, too, that both saw America as ‘wilderness.’)

And it might also be said that both forms resulted in the frustration of hopes dashed, for, in Dunbar’s era, Black people were experiencing the Great Betrayal of Reconstruction, where all the promises of the constitution’s 13th, 14th and 15th amendments were sacrificed on the profane altar of white supremacy and Ku Klux Klan terrorism, and ignored for most of the 20th century.

In Malcolm’s time, meanwhile, we were in the opening innings of the mass incarceration period, where, despite declining crime rates, prison populations, with predominantly Black incarcerees, would, literally rise a hundred-fold between 1970 and the 1990s.

Little wonder that the tones would change, until today, when we’re in “Incarceration Nation,” with millions behind bars.

Malcolm knew something of this, for he did nearly a decade in prison, where he experienced his conversion to the Nation of Islam’s teaching. I think that experience steeled him, and made him the outstanding minister he would later become. It deepened and sharpened his critique.

And yet, we’re still in Incarceration Nation, the Prison Industrial Complex – where prisons are America’s sole remaining growth industry.

Thank you!

From Incarceration Nation, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.


END NOTE

BERRY, Mary Frances and BLASSINGAME, John W.  Long Memory: The Black Experience in America. New York/London: Oxford University Press, 1982), pp. 104-5; 102.

Legal Update on How Mumia Got Removed From the Hole

Note below how at the final stage of this protracted battle with the state to get Mumia out of the hole, Mumia was pressured to sign an outrageous agreement he refused to sign.  He was then told he would therefore not be released into general population. But with the escalating struggle of the movement he was nonetheless released the following ay.  The powers that be had to back down.  All Power to the People!


The Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition


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PA Department of Corrections Gives Up, For Now!

Mumia Abu-Jamal Moved Out of Administrative Custody!

Free Mumia from the Hell Hole of Prison!

By Rachel Wolkenstein

Fifty days after the Philadelphia District Attorney conceded defeat in its attempt to legally lynch Mumia Abu-Jamal, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) was compelled to abandon its efforts to keep Mumia in the tortuous conditions of Administrative Custody (AC) (more commonly known as solitary or "the hole"). In the face of an ever-growing international protest campaign, the threat of legal action and Mumia's courage and political integrity, on Friday morning, January 27, 2012, Mumia was moved into general population at SCI Mahanoy.

For weeks the DOC insisted that Mumia would be held in AC until it received the "paper work" stating he is resentenced to life imprisonment. This bogus rationale is representative of the arbitrariness and abuse of power exercised by the DOC, since its own documents state that the District Attorney agreed Mumia no longer had a death sentence. When Philadelphia District Attorney, Seth Williams, with the backing of the FOP, agreed to life imprisonment rather than trying again for an execution, they threatened to make Mumia's life imprisonment as restrictive and difficult as possible.

Once Mumia was taken off death row on December 8, 2011, he should have been transferred to general population. Instead, days later, Mumia was taken from his cell at 4 a.m. shackled and driven for seven hours across the state with rifles pointed at him and then thrown into the hole at SCI Mahanoy. This precipitous transfer was in response to the howl of rage by the FOP to Mumia's address to an over 1000-strong gathering at Philadelphia's Constitution Center, at which supporters vowed not to accept a life sentence for Mumia, but instead demanded his freedom from prison.

As soon as it was learned that Mumia was in the hole at Mahanoy, without phone calls, his writing materials, books and other property, or adequate commissary, protests flooded the phone lines, fax machines and emails at DOC, SCI Mahanoy and the District Attorney's office.  Mumia appealed his AC confinement stating that the conditions were worse than what he suffered on death row. Legal demands to immediately transfer Mumia to general population were sent to the DOC Secretary John Wetzel stating that Mumia's AC confinement violated his protected liberty interests and his human and civil rights.  Preparation was made to file a federal civil rights lawsuit on Mumia's behalf challenging his continued imprisonment in Administrative Custody.

On Thursday January 26, unbeknownst to each other, two separate struggles were taking place, one inside and the other outside the prison.  Mumia had his weekly Program Review Committee (PRC) hearing, headed up by a Deputy Superintendent at SCI Mahanoy. Before that morning review, Mumia was informed that he would be released into general population. But then a last minute condition was tacked on: signing a "security agreement" that stated (1) Mumia is a former capital case prisoner and therefore an institutional security risk and (2) consent that Mumia would go straight back to the hole if a disciplinary complaint is filed against him.

Mumia rejected this latest coercive measure. Instead he countered that he was being labeled a security risk based on his politics and exercise of constitutionally protected activities.  He maintained that during 30 years of incarceration his only prison infractions were based on his exercise of First Amendment rights. Mumia fought those disciplinary actions using what legal redress was available in the prison and in the courts. In Jamal v Price (1998), the Third Circuit Court of Appeals held that Mumia has a constitutional right publish his writings from death row free for censorship of its content.  Additionally, during his last five years on death row Mumia was a block worker, given and using tools like shovels in the yard. This would not have been allowed if Mumia was considered a "security risk."  Nonetheless, prison officials told Mumia at the morning PRC meeting and again at a second specially convened meeting in the afternoon that his counter agreement was not acceptable and he would not be moved into general population unless he signed the "security agreement."

During the course of that same day, Mumia's supporters held a Philadelphia press conference demanding his release into general population and highlighting the condition of tens of thousands of prisoners in these torture blocs in the U.S.  Then a delegation drove to DOC headquarters in Camp Hill, PA to present Secretary of Corrections, John Wetzel over 5500 petitions and notice of a complaint filed with the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture. Despite previous notice of the delegation, Secretary Wetzel refused to meet with them. But the presence of the delegation—and the international support they represented— was unquestionably felt.

The DOC did a complete about-face.  Early Friday morning, January 27, Mumia was brought in from the yard and without being given any explanation, was moved into general population.

This was a confirmation, by the DOC's own actions, that Mumia's confinement in AC, under daily conditions more onerous than death row, was punitive and retaliatory, fed by the Philadelphia District Attorney's office and the FOP, for defeating his death sentence and not bending as "the voice of the voiceless."  It is also confirmation, in the words of Frederick Douglas, that "power cedes nothing without a demand, it never did and it never will."

Book Party, Celebration & Tribute to Pam Africa

On Sunday February 5 the first book party for the Classroom and the Cell was held in Philadelphia, where both authors, Mumia and Mark Lamont Hill, were born and grew up.  This important book party was held in combination with a celebration of our collective victory in getting Mumia not only off Death Row but out of the hole in which the state and prison authorities wanted him to stay in for as long as possible.  The room sizzled with excitement at our recent victory and the remarkable coming together of two such talented and inspired writers and revolutionary intellectuals as Brothers Mumia and Marc.  The three task forces gave presentations on their work, a legal update was presented, family, and friends spoke.  When the program and signing of books were over, people were still talking each other, not wanting to leave the warmth of the event, the moment of victory, and the stimulating discussion.  

One of the highlights of the evening was the chairing of the panel consisting of Ramona Africa,  Michael Coard, and Mark Lamont Hill by Professor Tony Monteira who chose to use that opportunity to pay a very special tribute to Pam Africa.  We say "Que Viva!" to that tribute which follows below:  

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ALL PRAISE AND REVOLUTIONARY HOMAGE TO PAM AFRICA: OUR DAUGHTER OF THE DUST

By Anthony Monteiro

It's about time AfroAmerica recognized Pam Africa as the great freedom fighter, organizer and Civil Rights heroine that she is. No one has contributed more to the struggle to free Mumia Abu Jamal than she, or worked more consistently and tirelessly than she. No one has more consistently rallied Mumia's supporters worldwide to his defense. Pam Africa by all accounts is a force to be dealt with, a person the ruling class and white supremacist cannot underestimate. As a strategist and tactician of struggle she cannot be taken lightly. She is a modern day Civil Rights icon on par with the likes of Fred Shuttlesworth and Ralph Abernathy, both of whom were leaders of the Montgomery, Birmingham and other civil rights campaigns in the South. As a fearless organizer she is the equal of  Diane Nash and Ella Baker of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Fannie Lou Hamer of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. Her accomplishments in fierce battles against police repression, mass incarceration and the death penalty are unsurpassed and in the heroic tradition of the Black Panther Party.

Pam believed when others doubted that Mumia was innocent and that we could win his release from death row . She is convinced  we will win his complete freedom. She stood up to Philadelphia's dreaded and fascist Fraternal Order of Police. She fought several Philadelphia Mayors, District Attorneys, especially the lethal and racist Lynn Abraham (called by the New York Times in 1995 the nation's "most deadly DA" because of the numbers of Blacks and Latinos she put on death row) and at least four Pennsylvania Governors. She fought, cajoled and ultimately won over a good part of the Philadelphia Black establishment. Pam brought moral critique upon Black preachers because of their refusal to condemn the unjust imprisonment of Mumia, as they preached what passed for the Christian doctrine of justice and the sanctity of life. In the course of fighting  civil rights leaders and politicians she redefined the civil rights struggle in the so-called post civil rights era. She preceded by at least two decades Michelle Alexander's recognition of the racist prison industrial complex and the centrality of the death penalty to it. She faced off against that part of the white anti-death penalty movement who wanted to exclude Mumia from their campaigns and not acknowledge the death penalty's racist essence and its roots in slavery and lynchings of Black folk.

Pam is a self identified revolutionary holding no regard, respect or trust in the existing legal and governmental systems or bourgeois institutions period. She is a humble woman who seldom when talking about the movement uses the "I", but always refers to the "we". It's always what "we" have done, or what Mumia said. Never what "I" did or what "I" said. She fought several of Mumia's lawyers whose liberalism and belief in the system inhibited their capacity to fight for his freedom and to see the possibilities of connecting what goes on in the courts to what goes on in the streets.

Most Black preachers, intellectuals, politicians and civil rights leaders are invested in keeping leaders and fighters like Pam Africa unknown to the people and their contributions unrecognized. It seems that to recognize Pam is to draw attention to what they have not done and in fact their ties to the establishments they claim to be fighting. The other thing is  Pam Africa doesn't fit the image they have of African American leaders. She's not a Christian; she follows the teachings of her murdered and prophetic leader John Africa. She believes in life, all life, and not God. The other thing, she's a freedom fighter in a time when too many of us think we're free. Pam Africa is a mother, grandmother and great grandmother. While white media recognized and appointed Black leaders' world views and strategies of struggle are based on the lesser of evils among white folk and the mantras of gradual reform and "git in where you fit in". Pam's world view begins with the belief that evil is evil is evil and that evil in all its forms has to be fought.

They say she's not ready to come into the circles of leadership.She's just too radical, too outside the mainstream, too loud, she curses too much, she doesn't straighten her hair, she doesn't dress right, eat right or live in the right neighborhood. She's not part of petty bourgeois and professional networks, clubs and associations. However, the breadth and significance of her life and work is  a judgement upon their narrowness and hypocrisy. She has led a movement that has won a victory few thought possible, getting Mumia off death row and having his death penalty overturned. This legal victory  would have been impossible without the movement and without Pam Africa herself. Consider the tragic fate of  Troy Anthony Davis and Shaka Sankofa to name just two who were executed although they were innocent.

Overturning Mumia's death penalty might be the signature civil rights victory in several decades. However, the epic struggle to win his complete victory and overturn the system of mass incarceration continues and Pam continues in the vanguard of this struggle. She is a tribute to the Black proletariat of North Philadelphia where she and Mumia's roots are ( Mumia grew up and was socialized and experienced his rites of passage in that part of Philly called the "Original Tenderlines")and where her hatred of injustice was nourished. She is a tribute to the revolutionary leaders and movements that emerged from the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements. Pam Africa is a figure that history must and will recognize; increasingly the world acknowledges this daughter of the Black working masses. Pam has never betrayed her roots in Black Philadelphia as she has become an international leader in the fight for human rights. Hopefully in the not too distant future her own people and the city and nation where she was born will also acknowledge her as a great human rights and civil rights leader.
ALL PRAISE AND GRATITUDE TO PAM AFRICA OUR REVOLUTIONARY DAUGHTER OF THE DUST

Mumia Abu-Jamal: The Picture

Mumia greets visitors Johanna Fernandez and Heidi Boghosian with a hug

by Dave Lindorff

Something very small and yet enormous happened this past week.

On Feb. 2, two women who have been fighting for the freedom of Mumia Abu-Jamal, filmmaker/professor Johanna Fernandez and National Lawyers Guild Executive Director Heidi Boghosian, visited Abu-Jamal, as each has done in the past, but this time, because he has been moved off of death row, for the first time since 1995, he was able to greet them with a hug--free of the leg shackles and handcuffs gratuitously attached to him during his visit sessions on death row at SCI Greene prison.

For the first time too, since 1995, there is a photo to record that seemingly mundane and deceptively ordinary-looking event.

Read more at thiscantbehappening.net

Our Contact Visit With Mumia

Comrades, Brothers and Sisters:

Heidi Boghosian and I just returned from a very moving visit with Mumia. We visited yesterday, Thursday, February 2. This was Mumia’s second contact visit in over 30 years, since his transfer to General Population last Friday, Jan 27. His first contact visit was with his wife, Wadiya, on Monday, January 30.

Unlike our previous visits to Death Row at SCI Greene and to solitary confinement at SCI Mahanoy, our visit yesterday took place in a large visitor’s area, amidst numerous circles of families and spouses who were visiting other inmates. 

Compared to the intense and focused conversations we had had with Mumia in a small, isolated visiting cell on Death Row, behind sterile plexiglass, this exchange was more relaxed and informal and more unpredictably interactive with the people around us…it was more human.  There were so many scenes of affection around us, of children jumping on top of and pulling at their fathers, of entire families talking intimately around small tables, of couples sitting and quietly holding each other, and of girlfriends and wives stealing a forbidden kiss from the men they were there to visit (kisses are only allowed at the start and at the end of visits). These scenes were touching and beautiful, and markedly different from the images of prisoners presented to us by those in power. Our collective work could benefit greatly from these humane, intimate images.

When we entered, we immediately saw Mumia standing across the room. We walked toward each other and he hugged both of us simultaneously. We were both stunned that he would embrace us so warmly and share his personal space so generously after so many years in isolation.

He looked young, and we told him as much. He responded, “Black don’t crack!”  We laughed.

He talked to us about the newness of every step he has taken since his release to general population a week ago. So much of what we take for granted daily is new to him, from the microwave in the visiting room to the tremor he felt when, for the first time in 30 years, he kissed his wife.  As he said in his own words, “the only thing more drastically different than what I’m experiencing now would be freedom.” He also noted that everyone in the room was watching him.

The experience of breaking bread with our friend and comrade was emotional. It was wonderful to be able to talk and share grilled cheese sandwiches, apple danishes, cookies and hot chocolate from the visiting room vending machines.

One of the highlights of the visit came with the opportunity to take a photo. This was one of the first such opportunities for Mumia in decades, and we had a ball! Primping the hair, making sure that we didn’t have food in our teeth, and nervously getting ready for the big photo moment was such a laugh! And Mumia was openly tickled by every second of it.

When the time came to leave, we all hugged and were promptly instructed to line up against the wall and walk out with the other visitors. As we were exiting the prison, one sister pulled us aside and told us that she couldn’t stop singing Kelly Clarkson’s line “some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this.” She shared that she and her parents had followed Mumia’s case since 1981 and that she was overjoyed that Mumia was alive and in general population despite Pennsylvania’s bloodthirsty pursuit of his execution.  We told her that on April 24 we were going to launch the fight that would win Mumia’s release: that on that day we were going to Occupy the Justice Department in Washington DC. She told us that because she recently survived cancer she now believed in possibility, and that since Mumia was now in general population she could see how we could win. She sent us off with the line from Laverne and Shirley’s theme song – “never heard the word impossible!”- gave us her number, and asked us to sign her up for the fight.

We’re still taking it all in. The journey has been humbling and humanizing, and we are re-energized and re-inspired!!

In the words of City Lights editor, Greg Ruggiero:”

“Long Term Goal: End Mass Incarceration.
Short Term Goal: Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!”

–Johanna Fernandez

Mumia: ‘[We've] made one step. We have one more to go'

By Nayaba Arinde
Amsterdam News

"Getting Mumia moved into general population is a victory, but the real victory-and what we are working toward-is to bring him home. We are steadily working on that," said Pam Africa from Philadelphia's MOVE organization.

While supporters mull over the victory of getting Mumia Abu-Jamal off death row and into the general population of the medium-security facility SCI Mahanoy in Frackville, Pa., it is as Abu-Jamal himself said: "One step. We have one more to go."

For almost two months, the worldwide army of supporters of the iconic "political prisoner" waited for news about the Mahanoy prison authority's ultimatum that Abu-Jamal must cut his decades-old locks in order to enter general population.

The movement, being what it is, refuses to be predictable but is always strategic. And so, after having endured nine years in solitary confinement in protest and refusing to cut his hair, Abu-Jamal decided to trim his hair to the shoulder-length requirement and indeed come out of solitary.

"We pick our battles," said Africa, speaking to the AmNews at the 16th annual Political Prisoner Dinner held at 1199SEIU's Martin Luther King Jr. Labor Center in Midtown on Saturday. "They had him for nine years in the Restrictive Housing Unit-we got him out of solitary confinement in just seven weeks this time around."

The development came in the wake of prosecutor Seth Williams' decision seven weeks ago that he would no longer pursue the death penalty against Abu-Jamal 10 years after federal Judge William H. Yohn originally overturned his death sentence.

Speaking to Noelle Hanrahan of PrisonRadio.org on Sunday, Abu-Jamal declared, "You know, it's back to the drawing board, as the old saying goes. We have to work and take the next step, which is, of course, not this. So that's the job that has to be done.

"I trust we will do it," he said. "I believe we will do it. Give my love to everybody and tell them I'm thankful for all of our people. They've made one step. We have one more to go. On the move."

Supporters were thrilled that he was able to hug his wife for the very first time in 30 years earlier this week.

"The ideal is to get him home and out of the prison, where he never should have been to begin with," said Herman Ferguson, 91, a former political prisoner and prisoner in exile in Guyana. "Mumia is in prison for a crime they know he did not commit. The real victory would be to get him out of there altogether."

A former Black Panther and journalist, Abu-Jamal has always maintained his innocence and has said that it was his political convictions and writing that really had him convicted and sentenced to death for the 1981 murder of officer.

Meanwhile, for years, witnesses have recanted their initial "coerced" statements against Abu-Jamal, and an alleged mafia hitman, Arnold Beverly, has even admitted to shooting the officer.

At the dinner on Saturday were families like those of Russell Shoats and Sekou Odinga, who went in to prison as young men and remain behind the wall as grandparents.

Supporters and family members call them political prisoners because they believe that the only reason they are in prison is because of their political beliefs or membership in organizations like the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army, MOVE or even Malcolm X's Organization of Afro-American Unity.

"We have to remain forever vigilant for Mumia," said Iyaluua Ferguson, wife of Herman Ferguson. "In many ways, they have greater access to him now, and we have to make sure that they understand that nothing can happen to him."

"John Africa taught us that you never allow the government to misuse your religion against you," said Pam Africa.

"The desire of this government is to keep Mumia in restrictive housing under its tortuous conditions-where he is subjected to body searches and has to sleep under blinking lights so you have no idea what time it is, where they tried to block his communication, where he couldn't do the radio. For nine years, he was in a worse hell than death row-in restrictive housing. They just knew the position would be the same."

Surrounded by the families and supporters of political prisoners, Africa continued proudly, "Mumia has proven his point. He is strong in his religion. He is strong in his beliefs. He is still fighting for all life, and we will not allow the government to use his religion against him. Long live strategic revolution!"

'People Power' Pries Abu-Jamal from Punitive Administrative Custody

by: Linn Washington Jr.

He's out!

Credit `people power' for getting internationally known inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal sprung from his apparently punitive, seven-week placement in `The Hole.'

For the first time since receiving a controversial death sentence in 1982 for killing a Philadelphia policeman, the widely acclaimed author-activist finds himself in general population, a prison housing status far less restrictive than the solitary confinement of death row.

Inmates in general population have full privileges to visitation, telephone and commissary, along with access to all prison programs and services, all things denied or severely limited to convicts on death row waiting to be killed by the state.

In early December 2011, Pennsylvania Department of Corrections officials, after the federal courts had removed his death penalty and the Philadelphia District Attorney opted not to attempt to re-try the penalty phase in hopes of winning a new death sentence, placed Abu-Jamal in Administrative Custody (a/k/a `The Hole').

Administrative Custody is confinement in a Spartan isolation cell where conditions are more draconian than even death row.

The release of Abu-Jamal from Administrative Custody into general population on Friday, January 27, 2012 followed with a multi-layered protest campaign by his supporters worldwide that included flooding Pennsylvania prison authorities with telephone calls, collecting petitions containing over 5,000 signatures and a complaint filed with United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture.

Public pressure to release Mumia Abu-Jamal from the "Hole" trumped the pressure from those trying to keep torturing him.

Supporters condemned the Administrative Custody placement, calling it retaliation for Abu-Jamal's having successfully defeated the state's efforts to execute him. Abu-Jamal, a model prisoner, did not meet any of the 11 specific circumstances listed in Pennsylvania DoC regulations dictating administrative custody placement.

Prison staff evaluations of Abu-Jamal since his December death row removal, sources said, listed him as "polite [and] respectful." Those positive evaluations did not evidence any of the incorrigibility or other serious misbehaviors that usually trigger AC placement.

"When people are united around an issue they have power. This is the power of the people all races in many places," said Pam Africa, director of the Philadelphia-based International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Abu-Jamal, in a statement released through his wife Wadiya Jamal, thanked his supporters for their hard work. "I am no longer on death row, no longer in the hole, I'm in population," Abu-Jamal's statement noted. "This is only Part One and I thank you for the work you've done. But the struggle is for freedom!"

Media reports quoted Pennsylvania DoC spokespersons confirming Abu-Jamal's placement in general population at Mahanoy Prison, a medium security facility about 100 miles from Philadelphia in central Pennsylvania where he was transferred last December from another prison in western Pennsylvania that houses the state's death row.

DoC spokespersons had previously declined comment on Abu-Jamal's Administrative Custody placement, citing regulations covering inmate privacy.

Prison officials advanced ever-changing rationales for keeping Abu-Jamal in AC at Mahanoy, including the curious claim of that they were waiting for legal clarification that the courts had formally replaced Abu-Jamal's death sentence with life in prison.

That Kafkaesque claim contradicted the DoC's own documents specifically acknowledging that federal courts had vacated the death sentence (thus requiring a default life sentence) and Philadelphia's DA having dropped appeals to reinstate the death sentence.

Typical of the way that Abu-Jamal's long-running case has shone a bright light on grievous abuses within the criminal justice system, his AC placement exposed what independent prison monitors have long contended is a dirty secret of Pennsylvania's prison system: authorities using Administrative Custody isolation to maliciously penalize inmates who are not violating prison rules.

Bret Grote, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Human Rights Coalition, said during a media interview that prison authorities misuse Administrative Custody as repression against inmates for their political activism, their complaining about poor conditions in prison, their roles as jailhouse lawyers and often for racist reasons.

Grote said Pennsylvania's DoC holds approximately 2,500 of its fifty-thousand-plus prisoners in solitary confinement on any given day. That's five percent of the total.

"Andre Jacobs and Carrington Keys, two members of a group of prisoners known as the Dallas 6 [Dallas is a Pennsylvania prison] have been held in solitary for approximately 11 and nine years respectively as a result of their speaking out against torture and other human rights violations inside the state's control units," Grote said during an interview with Prison Radio.

Philadelphian Russell "Maroon" Shoats, a former Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army member, has spent 30 of his 40 years in prison inside an isolation cell despite not having any prison infractions, said his daughter Theresa Shoats during a press conference in Philadelphia held one day before Abu-Jamal's release.

"Prison officials keep my Dad in solitary instead of releasing him into general population because they say he is a leader. My Dad turns 70 this year and he has medical problems, some from being in solitary for so long. Keeping him in solitary is unfair," Shoats said about her father, who was convicted of killing a Philadelphia policeman.

"My Dad says he encourages young inmates to read to stay sane. Why does that make him too dangerous for general population? He told me that 15 young men hung themselves in SCI Greene during a one-year period."

King Downing, director of the American Friends Service Center's Healing Justice Program, said prison authorities nationwide misuse solitary confinement to "silence political prisoners." Downing hosted the press conference where Shoats spoke alongside other speakers representing Abu-Jamal.

Last October, Juan Mendez, the UN's Special Rapporteur on Torture, called on all countries worldwide to ban the use of solitary confinement of inmates as punishment and/or an extortion technique, except in very exceptional circumstances.

Mendez cited scientific studies establishing the mental and medical damage arising from prolonged isolation. His report stated that an estimated 20,000-to-25,000 persons regularly occupy solitary confinement cells across America.

Recently a federal jury awarded a New Mexico man $22-million for violations of his constitutional rights arising from his having spent two years in solitary confinement in a county jail in Albuquerque following a drunk driving arrest. Although during that entire time he was never even charged or brought to trial, authorities in Dona Ana County New Mexico vow to appeal that verdict, one of the largest damage judgements in history for illegal incarceration.

Message from Mumia and Wadiya

Mumia's Message to Supporters in call
from General Population, SCI Mahanoy
to his wife, Wadiya Jamal:

My dear friends, brothers and sisters -- I want to thank you for your real hard work and support. I am no longer on death row, no longer in the hole, I'm in population. This is only part one and I thank you all for the work you've done. But the struggle is for freedom!

From
Mumia and Wadiya
Ona Move. Long Live John Africa!

BREAKING NEWS: Mumia Transferred to General Prison Population

From freemumia.com

As of 1/27/12, Mumia Abu-Jamal has officially been transferred to General Prison Population after being held in Administrative Custody ("The Hole" or Solitary Confinement) at SCI Mahanoy, Frackville, PA for seven weeks.  This is the first time Mumia has been in General Population since his arrest in 1981.

This comes within hours of the of delivery of over 5,500 signed petitions to Department of Corrections headquarters in Camp Hill, PA and a compliant filed with United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture, Juan Mendez.

PLEASE NOTE that while this is a victory in transferring Mumia out of the torturous Restricted Housing Unit (RHU), we call upon the closure of ALL RHU's!  Furthermore, we call upon the IMMEDIATE RELEASE of Mumia Abu-Jamal and are not disillusioned by this transfer.  FREE MUMIA NOW!

More at: http://www.freemumia.com/?p=867


Write to Mumia to send him some love!

MAILING ADDRESS FOR MUMIA ABU-JAMAL:
Mumia Abu-Jamal
#AM8335
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932

Correction: Rare Admission of Mistake in Mumia Case

From : http://www.thiscantbehappening.net/node/1021

by Linn Washington Jr.

I made a mistake.

An article I wrote recently for TCBH about the Pennsylvania prison system’s latest punitive assault on now ex-death row inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal (unnecessarily continuing his solitary confinement) contained a factual misstatement.

Most journalists consider any inaccuracy an error, regardless of how small.

The Code of Ethics of the Society of Professional Journalists calls for admitting “mistakes” and correcting them promptly.

This journalist’s inaccuracy-as-error standard contrasts with court systems, where appellate courts too often dismiss mistakes made during trials by prosecutors and judges without correction by using the court-invented legalistic term: harmless error.

The Abu-Jamal case is fraught with such misconduct and mistakes that appellate courts have not only not corrected, but have allowed to fester and get worse. But you won't see the courts or the prosecutors ever admitting those things.

In my article, I inaccurately listed Pennsylvania state prison officials as being the prime movers in keeping Abu-Jamal on death row instead of transferring him into general prison population after a federal judge had voided his death sentence in a December 2001 ruling converting that sentence to a life in prison.

In that article I stated prison authorities kept Abu-Jamal on death row in 2001 “as a courtesy to Philadelphia’s District Attorney’s Office…”

Yes, keeping Abu-Jamal on death row arose from a courtesy…a courtesy that kept him on death row ten years after that 2001 ruling.

And yes, Philly’s DA (and others) did want Abu-Jamal to rot on death row.

But, no, Pennsylvania prison authorities did not extend that "courtesy."

That "courtesy" came from William Yohn, the federal District Court judge who voided Abu-Jamal’s death sentence after finding errors in the 1982 jury deliberations resulting in Abu-Jamal receiving the death penalty.

Yohn granted a request from Philadelphia’s then District Attorney Lynne Abraham, who wanted to keep the outspoken author/activist in solitary death row confinement during her appeal of Yohn’s ruling.

Author J. Patrick O’Connor, in his probative book “The Framing of Mumia Abu-Jamal, wrote that Abraham, “in a particularly spiteful maneuver,” requested that Yohn stay his order lifting Abu-Jamal’s death sentence and, “incredibly,” Yohn agreed.

With that "courtesy" Yohn allowed Abu-Jamal to suffer death row deprivations despite his judicial determination that Abu-Jamal had unjustly spent nearly twenty-years in solitary confinement due to that legally flawed sentence.

Abraham, in the wake of Yohn’s ruling, had blasted him.

An angry Abraham, in December 2001, said she was “completely dismayed” that Yohn had granted “any relief whatsoever.”

Abraham’s reaction ignored the fact that federal district and appellate courts in Philadelphia had cited penalty phase errors (the same failing Yohn found in Abu-Jamal’s case) in two of the four death sentences those courts voided between May and November 2001.

Maureen Faulkner, the widow of slain Officer Daniel Faulkner, had also blasted Yohn, calling him a “sick and twisted person,” despite Yohn dismissing 28 of the 29 appeal claims raised by Abu-Jamal, including all claims regarding his conviction, which if accepted could have led to a new trial for Abu-Jamal, possibly leading to his release.

While my article inaccurately assigned that "courtesy" off keeping Abu-Jamal on death row to prison authorities instead of Yohn, the article did accurately account for the wasted costs of that "courtesy."

Keeping Abu-Jamal on death row for an additional decade cost Pennsylvania taxpayers at least $100,000 because the state's prison system spends at last an extra ten thousand dollars per year over the cost of incarcerating ordinary prisoners to handle each death row inmate.

In early December 2011, prison authorities finally shifted Abu-Jamal from death row into more harshly restrictive Administrative Custody (a/k/a The Hole) hours after Philadelphia’s DA announced he would not seek reinstatement of a death sentence.

Yohn’s 2001 ruling required the DA to either hold a mini-trial in an effort to obtain a new death sentence from a new jury, or to accept a sentence of life imprisonment. The federal Third Circuit Appeals Court twice upheld Yohn’s ruling and the U.S. Supreme Court finally ended appeals of Yohn’s ruling last fall.

One of the many problems with the Abu-Jamal case is the refusal of police, prosecutors, prison authorities and judges to acknowledge mistakes or worse, misconduct -- both things that are not harmless.

Yohn, for example, made “several” mistakes in that 2001 ruling “on questions of constitutional rights central to commonly held concepts of justice,” as my TCBH colleague Dave Lindorff put it in his seminal book Killing Time: An Investigation Into the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Lindorff presented a disturbing, thorough analysis of Yohn’s flawed dismissal of Abu-Jamal’s jury selection discrimination appeal claims in his 2003 book.

The Third Circuit rejected Abu-Jamal’s jury discrimination appeal in 2008 despite the Third Circuit's having granted relief to other death row inmates he had raised identical jury discrimination claims.

In another mistake by Yohn that escaped scrutiny and correction by federal appellate judges, the respected jurist brushed-off Abu-Jamal’s claims that his attorney during the 1982 trial was legally ineffective because that lawyer was inexperienced in death penalty law, undercapitalized and lacked adequate support staff during that 1982 trial.

Yohn seized upon erroneous state court findings that attorney Anthony Jackson “had tried approximately twenty” first-degree murder cases. Pennsylvania state courts had twisted the exact testimony Jackson gave during a 1995 Post-Conviction Relief Actl hearing about his capital case experience.

During three days of testimony in July 1995, Jackson had repeatedly told Abu-Jamal’s appellate attorney Leonard Weinglass that he had tried "one or two" capital murder cases, serving as lead counsel only once.

According to transcripts from 1995, Jackson first told Abu-Jamal’s appeal attorney that he had tried one or two first-degree murder cases. On cross-examination by the prosecutor, Jackson did say he tried twenty murder cases but stressed that only “one or two” of those cases were death penalty cases…testimony the prosecutor did not challenge with contrary evidence. On re-direct from Abu-Jamal’s attorney, Jackson again said he had only handled one or two capital cases.

Jackson, also during that 1995 testimony, said he had received inadequate funding from the courts for his defense efforts, that he had no paralegals and investigators to assist him, that a Philadelphia judge rejected his request for another lawyer to assist him and at the time of Abu-Jamal’s trial he only had a part-time secretary because he had returned to private practice only months earlier.

Yohn and lower Pennsylvania state court judges rejected Jackson’s admission that he was “ineffective” during Abu-Jamal’s 1982 trial, arguing that Jackson’s defense effort was legally sufficient.

Yohn asserted that “even were I to assume that Jackson was inexperienced, undercapitalized and lacked adequate support, [Abu-Jamal did not] demonstrate that there is a reasonable probability that but for these [conditions] the result of the proceeding would have been different.”

While Pennsylvania prison officials kept Abu-Jamal in solitary confinement for ten unnecessary years on Judge Yohn’s orders, his current continued solitary confinement is solely the responsibility of those prison officials.

As I reported in my article, the draconian Administrative Custody confinement rammed on Abu-Jamal by prison authorities evidences violations of the prison system’s own written regulations, because that placement does not meet any of the 11 specific circumstances listed in Pennsylvania Department of Corrections regulations used to justify administrative custody placement.

The “current rationales offered by prison officials for [Abu-Jamal’s] placement in solitary confinement do not withstand scrutiny, which lends further support to the inference that he is continuing to be targeted,” said Bret Grote, spokesman for the Pennsylvania Human Rights Coalition, during a recent interview.

Typical of Abu-Jamal’s selflessness, he directs his supporters to fight not just against his unjust confinement but also to assist the scores of other people the state's Department of Corrections unjustly holds in solitary confinement on a daily basis, according to data from HRC, a prison-monitoring organization.

Grote said prison authorities improperly use Administrative Custody to penalize inmates for their political activism, for complaining about conditions, for their roles as jailhouse lawyers and often simply for racist reasons.

Occupy The U.S. Justice Deptartment on Mumia's Birthday - April 24th, 2012

From Ramona Africa:

ONA MOVE, Everybody!  It's time to step up our actions on behalf of our brother freedom fighter, Mumia Abu Jamal.  We need to make it crystal clear that we the people won't stand for this vindictive sadistic torturing of Mumia by those that are furious at not being able to legally murder him.  You are being strongly urged to demonstrate your outrage at the torture being done to Mumia specifically and to all freedom fighters generally, by participating in an occupy for Mumia and against mass incarceration action. 

We (The Occupy For Mumia Committee) are calling on people internationally to occupy The U.S. Justice Dept. on April 24th, 2012.  

April 24th is Mumia's birthday, his 58th birthday.  There is no better day or place to stand up for Mumia and and against the sadism of this system.  There is plenty of time to prepare for it, plenty of time to organize buses, raise money for airfares and train fares, etc.  People from France and Germany are already preparing to be here, so let's do this, for ourselves  as much as for Mumia. 

I need individuals and organizations, worldwide, to respond to this call, this email, and tell me if you are serious about being in Washington DC. on  April 24th for this action.   I'm looking for strong positive responses from you, ASAP

Ramona
ONAMOVELLJA@aol.com

Sunday, Feb. 5th, Philly: Book Party for Mumia's new book with Marc Lamont Hill

Sunday, February 5th
5:00-7:30 pm
Dowling’s Palace - 1310 N. Broad St.

Featuring:

Marc Lamont Hill
Ramona Africa
Tony Montero
Michael Coard
Mumia’s daughter, Goldi
A Legal Update
A Movement Report-back

Free jazz begins after this event. If you enter after 7pm the jazz show is $5

Come celebrate this profound work from the brilliant minds of Mumia Abu-Jamal and Marc Lamont Hill. The DA’s office has been lying about Mumia’s character for decades. Come meet the real Mumia in his own words. Join the movement to free this innocent man and oppose the “New Jim Crow” - the Prison Industrial Complex!

To see Marc Lamont Hill's powerful speech at the December 9th Mumia event, go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7_dPZk6pfxI

To read a review of "The Classroom and the Cell," go here:
http://truththroughstruggle.wordpress.com/2011/12/12/the-classroom-the-cell-and-the-street/

Sponsored by International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, the MOVE Organization, Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition (NYC), Educators for Mumia, the International Action Center

freemumia.com 267-760-7344 icffmaj@aol.com

Philly Press Conference to Demand an End to Mumia's Torturous Isolation!

UPDATED

Thursday, January 26, 2012

There will be a press conference this Thursday, January 26, at  the  AFSC, at 1501 Cherry Street (Philly) at 10 AM (note new time).   Our focus will be to call for Mumia's immediate transfer into general population.

There will be a second press conference at Camp Hill, headquarters of the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, and where Secretary John Wetzel has his office, at 2 PM.  We will be delivering letters from lawyers' organizations and from Mumia supporters to John 0Wetzel at the press conference. 

PLEASE NOTE THAT THE PRESS CONFERENCE AT CAMP HILL WAS ORGINALLY SCHEDULED FOR FRIDAY, JANUARY 27.  BOTH PRESS CONFERENCES ARE NOW SCHEDULED FOR THE SAME DAY, THURSDAY JANUARY 26. 

*Please alert your media contacts*

Since Mumia's death sentence was dropped on December 7th he's been held in isolation under conditions far worse than those on death row. On Friday, 1/27 a delegation of supporters and prison rights activists will travel to Camp Hill prison to take our demands directly to the Department of Corrections. We will deliver our letters and petitions to demand an end to these conditions for Mumia and all prisoners being tortured in isolation.

Go here to sign the petition:
https://www.change.org/petitions/transfer-and-assign-mumia-abu-jamal-to-general-population

Mumia was held in solitary confinement on death row for over ten years despite a standing court order declaring his death sentence illegal. He is now being punished because the District Attorney and Fraternal Order of Police are defeated in legally lynching him. Now the state is trying to silence Mumia by other means. He is currently being held in degrading, torturous Adminstrative Custody (AC) at SCI Mahanoy, a medium security prison. The Department of Corrections has bogus excuses for why Mumia is not in general population with contact visits, phone calls, and his legal, reading, and writing materials. Instead Mumia is in "the hole,” shackeled whenever he's outside his cell (even to the shower), glaring lights 24/7, no regular phone calls, restrictive visits, inadequate commissary, no access to his materials and denied his typewriter. The Department of Corrections is subjecting Mumia to daily conditions that are more onerous than death row!

These are the conditions in the Restricted Housing Units called Administrative Custody, Disciplinary Custody, and Special Management Unit. They are designed to torture and we demand that they be shut down!

This issue is critical to the fight to free Mumia from prison. Mumia is innocent. He was framed up by the police, District Attorney, and a racist judge for being a political opponent of the government. Mumia will not be silenced. Stop the torture!

267-760-7344 icffmaj@aol.com freemumia.com

Mumia Abu-Jamal and the Crime of Solitary Confinement

From Prison Radio Project:

There is no dream too big and no action too small, let's keep at it till the walls crumble. 
– Bret Grote, Human Rights Coalition

An interview with Bret Grote by Hans Bennett of Prison Radio
In this interview we speak with Bret Grote from Human Rights Coalition (HRC), who's website describes itself as "a group of predominately prisoners' families, ex-prisoners and some supporters," whose "ultimate goal is to abolish prisons." HRC seeks "to empower prisoners' families to be leaders in prison organizing, while at the same time reduce the shame of having a loved one in prison or being formerly incarcerated," and "to make visible to the public the injustice and abuse that are common practice throughout our judicial and prison systems across the country, and eventually end those abuses." Learn more at www.hrcoalition.org.

Prison Radio:         Supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal argue that his current time in the hole is a form of retaliation for his being a longtime political activist. In his recent article entitled, "Sadism in the Cell: Thanks to a Vindictive Prison System, Abu-Jamal is Still in `The Hole,'" Linn Washington Jr. contextualizes recent events by documenting a long history of repression, ultimately arguing that "while Abu-Jamal detractors indignantly dismiss all claims of his being a political prisoner, his post-arrest ordeals provide a compelling case of a person specifically targeted by authorities for who he is politically more than for the crime he is supposedly serving time for." Why do you think it is that Mumia is currently being held in "Administrative Custody?"

Bret Grote:    In regard to Mumia, the inference should always be that the government is targeting him because of his politics due to the more than forty years that federal agents, Philadelphia police and prosecutors, governors of Pennsylvania, and prison officials have been conspiring to silence him. The current rationales offered by prison officials for his placement in solitary confinement do not withstand scrutiny, which lends further support to the inference that he is continuing to be targeted.

First, they asserted that they were waiting for the filing of paperwork by the District Attorney's office of Philadelphia so that his sentence would be formally changed from death to life without the possibility of parole. According to information available on the DOC's website, however, all death-sentenced prisoners are held on death row at State Correctional Institution (SCI) Greene or SCI Graterford. Abu-Jamal was removed from death row virtually as soon as Philadelphia DA Seth Williams announced he would not seek to re-impose the death penalty. If the prison were in fact waiting for a formal re-sentencing prior to placement in general population, Mumia would still be on death row.

Second, they have recently decided that his hair exceeds the regulatory length and that he needs this cut. It took them five weeks to notify him of this. Obviously, the length of Mumia's hair was not unknown to prison officials. In fact, he was held on disciplinary status while on death row earlier during his confinement for eight years, although he was removed from that status-without cutting his hair-in the early-90s at some point.

The shifting rationales indicate that they are digging their heels in and seem prepared to try to continue subjecting Mumia to solitary confinement torture, which has been his fate for thirty years.

It is important to note that the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture has recently declared that, in his opinion, prolonged solitary confinement of more than fifteen days violates article 1 (prohibiting torture) or 16 (prohibiting other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment) of the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment. He further stated that the Convention is violated when solitary confinement is imposed as punishment. These standards applied to U.S. prisons renders the overwhelming majority of solitary confinement practices criminal.

PR:     Can you please tell us more about how PA Prisons use solitary confinement and what are called "Restrictive Housing Units." How is it used? Against whom? Are there other examples of solitary confinement punishment being used to retaliate against political activists?

BG:     While the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PA DOC) operates in a seemingly arbitrary nature, there are some factors that place prisoners at high-risk for being kept in long-term solitary confinement: 1) political activism and jailhouse lawyering; 2) race; and 3) mental illness.

To start with, those who file grievances about staff misconduct and abuse, or file lawsuits about civil and human rights violations, are routinely subjected to repressive treatment. Pennsylvania is far from alone in this practice. Professor of Corrections and Correctional Law at Minnesota State University, James Robertson, has stated that "Retaliation is deeply engrained in the correctional office subculture; it may well be in the normative response when an inmate files a grievance, a statutory precondition for filing a civil rights action." He also refers to a survey of Ohio prisoners that found "that 70.1% of inmates who brought grievances indicated that they had suffered retaliation thereafter; moreover, 87% of all respondents and nearly 92% of the inmates using the grievance process agreed with the statement, `I believe staff will retaliate or get back at me if I use the grievance process.' [FN18] Among staff supervisors, only 21% believed that retaliation never happened, with one warden characterizing it as `commonplace' when inmates resort to the grievance process." As Robertson says, guards who retaliate "cannot be regarded as rogue actors. They act within the norm." ("One of the Dirty Secrets of American Corrections": Retaliation, Surplus Power, and Whistleblowing Inmates, 42 U. Mich. J.L. Reform 611 (2009)).

Russell Maroon Shoats, a former Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army member who has been incarcerated in PA prisons for almost 40 years is a prominent example of a political prisoner targeted for repression via placement in long-term solitary. Maroon has been held in the hole for more than twenty years and has not had a misconduct citation during that time. Although it is true that he escaped in the late 70s and early 80s, prison officials have told supporters and family that he is being kept in solitary because he is an organizer and a leader.

Andre Jacobs and Carrington Keys, two members of a group of prisoners known as the Dallas 6, have been held in solitary for approximately 11 and 9 years respectively as a result of their speaking out against torture and other human rights violations inside PA's control units.

Damont Hagan is another who has been continually targeted for his outspokenness, including a recent incident where he was assaulted and placed in a cell with nooses at SCI Huntingdon. He was recently held in the solitary units at SCI Cresson, a prison that the Justice Department has announced an investigation into, in part due to the guard-encouraged suicide of John McClellan in May 2011.

Caine Pelzer, Ravanna Spencer, Rhonshawn Jackson, Michael Edwards, Jerome Coffey, Andre Gay, Kerry Shakaboona Marshall, and countless others have been thrown into solitary for the sole purpose of breaking their spirit. Look them up on the PA DOC inmate locator and send them a letter.

Regarding race, the disparities within the solitary confinement population may be the most extreme in the entire criminal legal system, which is saying a lot. We do not know the exact figures because the demographics are not public, but reports of solitary units overwhelmingly comprised of people of color in PA prisons are common.

Over the last thirty-plus years there has been a national trend of warehousing those with mental health needs inside prisons. These people often end up in prison because of their difficulties in adapting to life outside the walls, often because of experiences of childhood trauma and substance abuse, and their challenges in navigating social life is even more difficult inside the walls. The stresses of prison can lead to them getting in trouble with prison authorities due to an inability to follow the rules, which leads them to solitary, which leads to a worsening of their underlying psychological state. This cycle of dysfunction is a normative feature of prison systems across the U.S.

This nexus of retaliation, racism, and abuse of the mentally ill is widespread in PA prisons, and there is no shortage of examples to be found by reviewing the weekly PA Prison Reports on our website.

PR:     Besides solitary confinement, what other aspects of PA prisons does HRC identify as human rights violations?

BG:     Some of the obvious examples include physical abuse, medical neglect, racial discrimination, and sexual violence, all of which are chronic issues in prisons within Pennsylvania and beyond. In regard to the latter, a guard at SCI Pittsburgh was recently indicted on about 100 counts related to his rape and torture of prisoners at that facility. This is also being investigated by the Justice Department. This story has been suppressed in the national media, a phenomenon commented on by Mumia (1,2), in what can only be understood as yet another example of the corporate media's complicity in enabling torture in U.S. prisons.

Of course, race-based policies of mass incarceration violate the human right of equality under the law and the right to be free from racial discrimination. Michelle Alexander refers to this aspect of the U.S. prison nation as "the new Jim Crow." Under international law it is known as apartheid, and it is prohibited under the International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid. The United States has never signed or ratified the convention for reasons that should be obvious enough.

Pennsylvania is the world leader in another egregious human rights abuse: sending children to prison for the rest of their lives. There are more than 400 people in PA prisons who were sentenced for crimes allegedly committed when they were younger than 18. In this state, life means life, an utterly despicable practice that makes a cruel mockery of any pretense that the society we inhabit is humane, enlightened, or fair.

Also of great importance in any discussion of the criminal legal system is the series of laws that enable "legal" discrimination against formerly incarcerated people, prohibiting them from obtaining access to food, housing, employment, stripping people of their right to vote in many states (though not PA) and setting them up for a life of poverty that guarantees high recidivism rates. This should be understood as a matter of deliberate policy, as it has been going on so long that it cannot plausibly be an unintended consequence of an otherwise sound system.

The system works to violate human rights in such a comprehensive manner, from the socio-economic conditions that give rise to property and drug crimes and related acts of violence to the damaging and anti-human conditions inside the walls, and then to be  released into a life of second-class status, enforced poverty, and political disenfranchisement, that it is hard to see how it is `legal' in anything but pretense.

PR:     How is Human Rights Coalition working with PA prisoners and their families to improve conditions for PA prisoners?

In Pittsburgh and Philly we have weekly letter-writing to prisoners nights. Visit our website (Pittsburgh or Philly) to learn more and email us at hrcfedup@gmail.com or info@hrcoalition.org. We are constantly receiving phone calls and emails from people looking to advocate for their loved ones. In 2011 we initiated a Political Action Committee in order to be better organized through the building of a membership base and engaging in consistent acts of advocacy, education events, and building other campaigns. The PAC is in real need of some committed organizers to help us build momentum.

One of the campaigns we've been increasingly involved with here in Pittsburgh is Decarcerate PA, which was started in Philadelphia. While the broader vision is to push for decarceration – shrinking the prison population, closing prisons, redirecting social resources to programs that care for people and communities – the immediate objective is to push back against planned prison expansion. The state of Pennsylvania is sinking some $685 million into building two new prisons and expanding a host of others. If more people are continually sent into these hellholes, then our efforts to improve conditions in any given situation will be futile.

PR:     What is HRC doing specifically to challenge the use of solitary confinement?

BG:     Aside from public education and advocacy, we are working to develop a legislative campaign with allied organizations such as the American Friends Service Committee, the NationalReligious Campaign Against Torture, and the ACLU. While it is still in the planning stages, this campaign can be useful as a means for furthering political organizing objectives.

Ultimately, any efforts to push back against torture and get people out of prison is contingent upon the wholesale removal from power of both corporate-backed imperial parties, the redistribution and redefinition of political power, and the elimination of an economic system with its roots in the market, replaced by one that has its roots in the earth. Anything less spells certain doom for our specific efforts to abolish solitary confinement, mass incarceration, and prisons, as well as our very survival on this planet.

PR:     HRC is also now starting a campaign to have Russell Shoats transferred out of solitary confinement at SCI-Greene. How can our readers support this?

BG:     Russell Shoats, discussed above, is a co-founder of HRC who has spent 20 years in the hole as a consequence of his principles and resistance to the inhumanity and criminality of this system. He is a 68-year-old revolutionary who has taught and inspired countless other prisoners and activists inside and outside the walls.

Along with HRC, the Center for Constitutional Rights and the National Lawyers Guild have submitted letters to the PA DOC requesting that Maroon be released into general population.

Supporters can visit a recently-created website and click the "Follow" link at the bottom right to receive email updates when new postings are available. There is a sample letter on the site, and soon more material will be added. A new interview was just posted where Maroon discusses his thoughts on the importance of democracy and self-determination to movement building, the power of the feminist movement and matriarchal politics, Occupy Wall Street, and the imperative of centering food security (and square-foot gardening) in our movements.

PR:     Anything else to add?

BG:     It is absolutely critical to the fate of movements for social justice in this country that the situation of prisoners and the function of prisons in the social order take a central role in our analysis and practice. Everybody can correspond with a prisoner, help out a local group, get on email lists, and research the reality of the prison nation. It is not the land of the free, never was, never was intended to be, and the sooner we disabuse those around us of that notion the better chance there is to win some badly-needed victories. There is no dream too big and no action too small, let's keep at it till the walls crumble.

KEEP CALLING AND WRITING  JOHN WETZEL,  PENNSYLVANIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS SECRETARY

John Wetzel, Secretary Department of Corrections 
2520 Lisburn Road
P.O. Box 598, Camp Hill, PA 17001-0598
(717) 975-4928
Email: ra-contactdoc@pa.gov

Urgent Message Regarding Mumia

As most of you already know, Mumia was transferred to SCI-Mahanoy in upstate PA. more than a month ago, directly after Phila. prosecutor Seth Williams announced that he wasn't pursuing the death penalty in Mumia's case.  This meant that Mumia's sentence went from death to life in prison without parole.  Since arriving at SCI-Mahanoy, Mumia has been in the hole, on AC (administrative custody) status, solitary confinement, even though there is no valid reason for him to be in the hole.  The conditions are tortuous and much worse than the conditions on death row.  These conditions have been condemned by the United Nations as tortuous.  Since arriving at Mahanoy, Superintendent John Kerestes and his staff have gone from one thing to the next to vent their fury and racism on Mumia.  First they claimed to be waiting on paperwork that Mumia's sentence is a life sentence and not death, but Mahanoy has no death chamber so Mumia would never be sent there if he still had a death sentence. When people saw right through that, Kerestes said that Mumia has to cut his hair before going into general population, now he's saying that Mumia has to let them take his blood (something Mumia really doesn't want to do) before he can be in general population.  Mumia has been in prison for 30 years so why this sudden demand for his blood now.  It is crystal clear that Kerestes and his staff are doing everything they can to keep Mumia in the hole under these tortuous conditions, and it's all rooted in racism and their fury at all the world-wide attention that stays focused on Mumia, after all these years.  They're furious that their plan to legally kill Mumia ain't working.  They're torturing Mumia for the same reason the Romans tortured Jesus Christ, because he won't go along with the lies of the system and racism.  Prison policy has nothing to do with what they're doing to Mumia and everybody should be clear on this.  We must be vigilant over Mumia, including organizations that can visit him on an official basis.  We must continue to flood Supt. Kerestes with calls and emails.  Mumia is up in serious racist KKK territory and we must have his back.  We've brought Mumia too far to get lax now.  Remember, the power of the people is a force to be reckoned with when the power of the people stays consistent and united.

International Concerned Family And Friends Of Mumia Abu Jamal and

The Move Organization


HOW TO TAKE ACTION:

Write, Phone, and Email the Secretary of Corrections. Demand that Mumia be transferred to General Population! And demand the shutdown of RHU (Restricted Housing Unit) Torture Blocks!

John Wetzl, Secretary Department of Corrections
2520 Lisburn Road, P.O. Box 598 Camp Hill, PA 17001-0598
(717) 975-4928
Email: ra-contactdoc@pa.gov

Write, Phone, and Email the Superintendent:

John Kerestes, Superintendent
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932
(570) 773-2158 - Fax: (570) 783-2008

Write, Phone, and Email the Philadelphia DA. Demand that they petition the court to free Mumia, based on suppression of evidence. They have buried evidence and the truth for 30 years. The police corruption and the frame up of Mumia must be exposed.

Seth Williams, DA Philadelphia
Three South Penn Square
Philadelphia, PA 19107-3499
(215) 686-8000
Email: DA_Central@phila.gov

Finally, send Mumia a note or a card:

Mumia Abu-Jamal
AM 8335
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932

There also is a petition up at: https://www.change.org/petitions/transfer-and-assign-mumia-abu-jamal-to-general-population

Department of Corrections claims Mumia is in solitary because of his dreadlocks

From Prison Radio Project:

Mumia and supporters renew request to close torture units in PA prisons

In a statement issued late Thursday, January 12, an attorney for Mumia Abu-Jamal reported that he has been given a new reason for his continued solitary confinement - his long dreadlocks.

Prison authorities at SCI Mahanoy claim Abu-Jamal will be held in the Restricted Housing Unit on disciplinary custody until he cuts his hair. This is an old tactic that was used against Mumia when he was a death row prisoner. He spent 8 years on disciplinary status in death row until he was removed from that status--without getting a haircut--in the early 1990s.

It has taken prison officials five weeks to invent this new pretext for continuing the  30-year-long solitary confinement torture of Abu-Jamal. Mumia and his supporters are calling for his immediate release to general population and the shut down of all of the solitary units in PA.

Sign a petition to transfer Mumia out of the hole.

Read and forward this press release from the National Lawyers Guild: "After death row transfer, NLG VP Mumia Abu-Jamal languishes in solitary"


Contact Department of Corrections officials and let them know you are not fooled and will not tolerate efforts to silence and torture Mumia:

1) Write, Phone, and email the Secretary of Corrections: Demand that Mumia be transferred to General Population! And demand the shutdown of RHU (Restricted Housing Unit) Torture Blocks!

John Wetzl, Secretary Department of Corrections
2520 Lisburn Road, P.O. Box 598, Camp Hill, PA 17001-0598
(717) 975-4928  Email: ra-contactdoc@pa.gov

2) Write, Phone, and email the Superintendent:
John Kerestes, Superintendent
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932
(570) 773-2158  Fax: (570) 783-2008

3) Write, Phone, and email the Philadelphia DA. Demand that they petition the court to free Mumia, based on suppression of evidence. They have buried evidence and the truth for 30 years. The police corruption and the frame up of 
Mumia must be exposed.

Seth Williams, DA Philadelphia
Three South Penn Square
Philadelphia, PA 19107-3499
(215) 686-8000  Email: DA_Central@phila.gov
 
and finally, send Mumia a note or a card:

Mumia Abu-Jamal
AM 8335
SCI Mahanoy
301 Morea Road
Frackville, PA 17932


Visit Prison Radio to listen to Mumia's radio commentaries

Visit HRC's website to learn about the reality of solitary confinement torture in PA.

The Classroom and the Cell: Conversations on Black Life in America: A Review

From: http://www.dominionofnewyork.com/book-review/the-classroom-and-the-cell-conversations-on-black-life-in-america-a-review/#.TxdkFiPRA7A


By Terrenda White

More than 10 years ago, I first heard someone speak of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His name wasn’t spoken really, as much as it was chanted, by a chorus of others who displayed large banners reading, “FREE MUMIA!”

It was 2001 and I was in Durban, South Africa attending the World Conference Against Racism. At the time, I thought it odd that one man had galvanized so many, and on such an international scale—I was literally on the other side of the planet learning about the unjust conviction, incarceration, and looming death of a Philadelphia journalist and former Black Panther, Mumia Abu-Jamal.

But while many supporters continue to speak out, or chant passionately, on behalf of Abu-Jamal’s freedom and the cause he represents, there is nothing more powerful than the words he speaks himself.

In The Classroom and The Cell: Conversations on Black Life in America, Abu-Jamal dialogues with Columbia University Professor Marc Lamont Hill, a scholar-activist and eloquent speaker himself, on matters of politics, culture, love, and black liberation.

Together, the two men seem to vibe on almost every aspect of contemporary life in America—pushing the reader beyond renderings of Abu-Jamal as a slogan or symbol for a single cause, and inviting us to engage with him on matters which extend beyond the prison cell.

There are important chapters on incarceration and the specter of execution which Abu-Jamal has faced until recently.  (In December, after 30 years on Death Row, Abu-Jamal’s death sentence was commuted to life without parole.) But, the majority of this book –eight chapters in all—touches on identity, race in the age of Obama, hip-hop and black cultural politics, education, black love, and masculinity.

Despite Abu-Jamal’s more than 30-years of incarceration, he shares with Hill remarkably current, empathetic, and courageous thoughts on life. He also shares hope.  In many instances, the older Abu-Jamal affirms the younger Hill, encouraging the professor to work through the unique challenges of being a public intellectual. An interesting exchange occurs, when Abu-Jamal, responding to Hill’s existential question of ‘Who are you?’ responds, ‘I am a free Black man living in captivity.’ With powerful irony, Hill replies:

When I think about myself, all sorts of words come to mind. Depending on the situation, I would say things like “father,” “activist,” “writer,” or “professor.” But “free” is one thing I wouldn’t say for myself. In fact, I would describe you as being far freer than me. I can’t avoid seeing the irony that you’re in prison but somehow still free, while I’m out here feeling profoundly un-free.

Though coming-of-age a generation apart, the two men share a deep knowledge of black revolutionary politics which continues to shape their activism and scholarship today. Both natives of Philadelphia, they are two men whom W.E.B Dubois might call Philadelphia Negroes of the 21st century. Abu-Jamal was influenced by the Black Panthers and the writings of Huey P. Newton, and Hill by the cultural nationalism of black religious groups and later by hip-hop culture. Those experiences enrich their debate over black cultural politics and the changing notion of revolution.

Abu-Jamal reminds us that revolution in the late 60s was more than a metaphor for innovative cultural forms and represented an impending sense of real political change. While Hill agrees that youth culture today,
such as hip-hop, deserves serious critique and that much of its content is commercial, he says its form is revolutionary nonetheless. Hill argues, moreover, that it’s misguided to expect today’s black art forms to bear so much responsibility for change, particularly since real political struggle and black organized revolutionary change (characteristic of Abu-Jamal’s generation) are woefully absent.

One particularly insightful conversation between Abu-Jamal and Hill is their discussion of incarceration and prison reform. They attribute the explosion in incarceration over the past thirty years, for example, not only to problematic public policies such as the war on drugs, but also to postindustrial macroeconomic shifts that have reduced the employment prospects of black men in urban areas. 

Though Abu-Jamal and Hill are deeply reflective on racism and its dehumanizing impact on black men and women, they equally share a strong critique of black bourgeoisie society. Indeed, the men ponder the social-spatial and cultural distance of poor blacks (the “lumpen-proleteriat”) from the rest of middle class black community. The eradication of the prison industrial complex, they acknowledge, will require the mobilization of an otherwise complacent professional group of middle class blacks (a point they recognize is highlighted by Michelle Alexander in The New Jim Crow).

As the book moves to its end, both men reveal personal aspects of their individual struggles and limitations, letting down the walls of their public personas, as they discuss issues of love, sex, and masculinity. Hill argues – somewhat to Abu-Jamal’s surprise — that the construct of “masculinity” may be unsalvageable, because it is rooted too deeply in patriarchy and violence.

Throughout the book, the discussion between the two men is constructive, not combative. They seem to genuinely learn from one another and build on each other’s ideas.  Through their candid and rigorous conversations, the reader learns a lot. Plus, each chapter ends with a recommended reading list of critical books that have informed their perspectives.

While Jamal will avoid execution, he is experiencing what Desmond Tutu calls “yet another form of death sentence,” life without parole. The movement to free Abu-Jamal wages on, therefore, until his wrongful conviction is overturned completely.

Paradoxically, despite the daunting struggle which lies ahead for Abu-Jamal, the book ends with Hill leaning on him for guidance and hope. Having faced the threat of death for what amounts to my total years living on earth, Abu-Jamal reminds Hill, and thus the reader, of the incredible resilience of our ancestors and their sustaining powers of love and joy.

From his cell,  Abu-Jamal reminds us that, “Whether it’s making jokes while sitting on death row, singing sorrow songs while working on a slave plantation, or everyday Black people living under hellish conditions, we’ve always managed to retrieve joy from a pile of misery.” I have no doubt that Abu-Jamal will be legally and physically liberated from his hellish misery one day—hopefully in the near future.  Ironically, he is as mentally free in consciousness as any of us are now, perhaps more so.