Category Archives: Statements and Articles

In America’s Prisons: Mumia and the Nightmarish Hepatitis C Epidemic

by Jack Heyman

[Originally published in Counterpunch here.]

A health crisis of epidemic proportions is raging in this country. Hepatitis C (HCV) has infected 3 million people, including over 700,000 in prison according to the Center for Disease Control. And 170 million people are infected worldwide. The rates of liver cancer because of HCV are growing faster than any other type of cancer.

Medical professionals call it “The Silent Epidemic” because symptoms in those infected by this blood borne disease may not appear for 20 plus years. America’s most prominent political prisoner, Mumia Abu-Jamal, near death in 1981, after being shot by police contracted hepatitis C from a tainted blood transfusion in the hospital. He was not diagnosed with the disease until 2012. If not treated with new life-saving drugs, patients will die from cirrhosis or liver cancer. Mumia is a victim of intentional medical mistreatment by prison authorities, consistent with the state’s attempt to execute him from the beginning.

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OUTRAGE: Judge Proposes DENIAL of Treatment for Mumia!

The following message is from MumiaNYC:

Late in the day on Friday September 18th, United States Magistrate Judge for the Middle District of Pennsylvania Karoline Mehalchick issued a proposed order denying Mumia Abu-Jamal’s  motion for preliminary injunction and his  1st Amended complaint seeking immediate treatment for active Hepatitis C.

In a calculated attempt to deny lifesaving health care and effective arguments on Mumia’s behalf, Judge Mehalchick preemptively issued this “proposed order” before Mumia’s lawyers had the opportunity to respond (as allowed by court local rules) to the  Pennsylvania Department of Correction’s (DOC) opposition.

Bret Grote (Abolitionist Law Center) and co-counsel Bob Boyle (NYC) are expected to quickly file in court with 3rd Circuit Federal District Court Judge Robert Mariani to oppose this proposed order on procedural and substantive grounds.

[See below for information on helping Mumia fight back!]

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Mumia’s Life Is In Grave Danger!

Friends and Comrades:

The Labor Action Committee To Free Mumia Abu-Jamal wants you to know:

Mumia Abu-Jamal’s life is in grave danger, this time not from imminent execution, or the “slow death” of LWOP, but from criminal medical neglect by prison authorities. Like many others in the hell-hole of US prisons, Mumia suffers from a potentially fatal disease which is not being treated by prison authorities.

In Alameda County California recently, a prisoner being held for trial in the county jail died because the for-profit prison medical company refused him a necessary treatment despite numerous requests. The same could happen to Mumia unless we act!

Please read the informational briefs below, and take a few minutes to call the official numbers below to demand competent medical care for Mumia, not transfer to another prison; and for the cure for Hepatitis C to be delivered to Mumia and the other prisoners needing it immediately
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PULITZER PRIZE WINNER ALICE WALKER OPPOSES POLICE CENSORSHIP OF OAKLAND SCHOOLS CURRICULUM

November 8, 2014

I am dismayed to learn that the Oakland School Board has dismantled a website of Social Justice lesson plans because the police objected to it. The Board has a duty to defend students’ right to learn against police interference. I am asking the Oakland School District to repost the Urban Dreams website.

The police attack on Urban Dreams is part of a long campaign to injure and defame political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal, a brilliant journalist and author who is innocent of all charges against him. In October the police obtained a state gag law in Pennsylvania specifically intended to silence Mumia Abu-Jamal. One lesson on the Urban Dreams website in Oakland asked students to compare media suppression of Mumia’s writings with suppression of the radical thoughts of Martin Luther King, and the police call for censorship was meant to shut out the words of both these defenders of freedom.

I hope that the educators of the Oakland School Board will defend free speech and academic freedom by restoring the Urban Dreams website.

In Peace,
Alice Walker

CC: Antwan Wilson, Superintendent
David Kakishiba, School Board President
Oakland Teachers for Mumia
Oakland Tribune
San Francisco Chronicle

Police Censorship Defied! Mumia Speaks at Goddard College

October 7th, 2014 — World renowned revolutionary journalist and author Mumia Abu-Jamal, an innocent political prisoner known as the “voice of the voiceless,” was heard loud and clear Sunday at Goddard College, his alma mater.  Though confined in a Pennsylvania state prison for life without parole for a crime he didn’t commit, Mumia’s recorded commencement address was heard because Goddard College students, having invited him to speak, defied the demands of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) and right-wing politicians and media that his address be cancelled and he be silenced. Goddard’s Interim President, Robert Kenny backed up the students.

 

Mumia’s thought-provoking address was deeply moving, philosophical and generously considerate of the students he was addressing, as he urged them to work for progressive change. It was met with a standing ovation. As Noel Hanrahan, of Prison Radio, the organization that records and makes available Mumia’s commentaries, said in a report from Goddard:

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