Mumia Abu-Jamal is a former Black Panther and internationally recognized award-winning journalist known as “the voice of the voiceless” for his many years spent writing about racism in Philadelphia, the murder of local MOVE members, people in prison, and more. It is now urgent that we raise our voices for the freedom of Mumia as he faces serious health complications from medical neglect inside prison.
After years of denial of treatment for various chronic health conditions, Mumia had heart pain over last weekend. He was rushed to the hospital, and is expected to undergo heart surgery Monday, April 19, 2021. According to Dr. Ricardo Alvarez, Mumia’s chosen doctor:
There is significant evidence, both legal and medical, that Mumia has suffered severe harm because medical, legal, law enforcement, and judicial professionals have not met proper standards. Mumia has been recently hospitalized for COVID and Congestive Heart Failure and he already suffers from hypertension as well as liver cirrhosis and diabetes, both induced by court documented medical neglect. Freedom is the only treatment.
Due to public pressure, Mumia was able to call his wife last Thursday, but we need to continue the pressure to demand:
Mumia be allowed to call his chosen doctor, Dr. Ricardo Alvarez.
Mumia not be shackled to his hospital bed, as is the rule in Pennsylvania and across the United States.
His immediate release from prison.
Your support with calling and emailing prison authorities today and in the coming weeks is absolutely critical to ensure that Mumia gets the best possible medical care before, during, and after the surgery on Monday.
The it’s ALL OUT FOR MUMIA on April 23-25 – a weekend of action for Mumia’s 67th birthday.
Finally, join us on Monday, April 26th at 6:30pm in Clark Park (stone platform near 45th and Chester) as we gather to write letters of solidarity to Mumia. Move members will provide an update on Mumia’s condition and next steps for the fight to bring him home. If you are unable to make the event, please send him your solidarity at:
We will also send birthday cards to political prisoners with birthdays in May: Xinachtli (the 12th), Kojo Bomani Sababu (the 27th), and Doug Wright (the 30th).
On April 12th grand jury resister Steve Martinez was released from the custody of the Federal Government and has returned home to his partner and community, after over 60 days in custody. Early in Steve’s case, those of us engaged in movement defense and providing support to Steve were in direct communication with his attorneys.
However, since the end of February, neither his attorneys nor Steve himself have been at liberty to speak with anyone about Steve’s legal situation or the court proceedings.
Anti-repression efforts are a crucial tool for our movements and communities. The Federal government is hard at work to repress powerful social and political movements that are working towards the liberation of the earth and all of us who inhabit it. As our movements become more effective or gain power, the government’s tools of repression often become more divisive and cruel. We can look to the hard won lessons of movement elders and ancestors and see this to be true. The Grand Jury is one such divisive and cruel tool
Our power to combat such cruelty is rooted in a deep care for one another and the belief that a more liberatory future is within our collective reach.
We continue to stand in our solidarity with Steve and are working to ensure he can soon share his story with those who have shown their support over the past months of his resistance. We will share future updates through our social media accounts and on the website.
Read the latest PP/POW Updates and Announcements by NYCABC here.
WHAT: Political Prisoner Letter-Writing Dinner WHEN: 7pm sharp, Tuesday, April 20th, 2021 WHERE: your home (or wherever you happen to be) COST: Free
NYC ABC is an anarchist collective that supports political prisoners captured in liberation and anti-oppression struggles from a wide range of political or spiritual traditions. In other words, though we subscribe to anti-authoritarian principles, we don’t only support anarchists behind bars. But the May Day season is one in which we focus on those who struggle for a world without borders or bosses.
So, in remembrance of the Haymarket Martyrs—in whose honor May Day became known as an international workers’ day—we focus this week’s letter-writing on anarchists imprisoned for their beliefs and actions. Instead of getting together to sign and send May Day cards as we have in previous years, this week NYC ABC and Page One Collective are asking folks to to write letters or send books to one or more of the anarchist political prisoners we currently support, including Bill Dunne, Casey Brezik, and Gage Halupowski.
Unfortunately, anarchist political prisoner Eric King is currently on mail ban, so can’t receive letters. But he can receive book and magazines! Here is the link to Eric’s book wish list: tiny.cc/EK_Books
Casey Brezik #1154765 Jefferson City Correctional Center 8200 No More Victims Road Jefferson City, MO 65101
Bill Dunne #10916-086 FCI Victorville Medium I PO Box 3725 Adelanto, CA 92301
Gage Halupowski #21894460 Snake River Correctional Institution 777 Stanton Boulevard Ontario, OR 97914-8335
“As Indigenous justice advocates, we stand with Loren Reed…”, said Morning Star Gali of the Pit River Tribe. Prosecuting Loren Reed is a clear example of the State’s attempts to chill BIPOC voices of dissent. #FreeLorenReed
Have you read Eric King’s detailed account of life in solitary confinement in the Bureau of Prisons? Its called Flipping the Script and you can read it on the Solitary Watch link below.
Eric has now been in segregation over 600 days and is going to trial in October 2021and is represented by lawyers from Civil Liberties Defense Center. You can buy books for him off his wishlist at tiny.cc/EK_Books
FREEDOM!!!! After three years in jails and prisons (in Georgia, Florida, Oklahoma, Nevada and Washington) following the April 2018 Kings Bay Plowshares action, Fr. Steve Kelly, S.J. was given time served this morning in the Tacoma federal courthouse for a 2017 probation violation that he had an outstanding warrant for (from a Bangor Trident base line crossing). As Steve says, “The nukes are not going to go away by themselves” – so onward, everyone, in continuing to work for a nuclear-free world!Photos by Dennis Apel.
BRUNSWICK, GA—More than three years after he and six other anti-nuclear activists entered Kings Bay Naval Base, home to six Trident nuclear submarines, a federal judge sentenced Mark Colville to 21 months in prison.
Over a video conference, Judge Lisa Godbey Wood sentenced Mark to the minimum of the recommended guidelines provided by prosecutors. Mark is the last of the Kings Bay Plowshares 7 to be sentenced. Five are now in prison. Prior to the trial Mark had already served about 15 months of his sentence, which will count towards his 21 months.
Mark told the court that its refusal to recognize the right of his family and community “to live without a nuclear gun on hair trigger alert held perpetually to our heads… (has) placed it firmly in a posture of criminality.”
During our Festival of Hope earlier in the week, Mark announced that he had withdrawn six of his seven motions to the court arguing for vacating his sentence. He told supporters then that he saw no use in allowing the judge to act as if she seriously considered them.
“This government, in its lawlessness, has hidden first strike weapons with enough firepower to kill six billion people,” he read from his sentencing statement today. The court has a responsibility to “to allow the law to be applied beyond the fence at Kings Bay… a fence that I and my loved ones, with much fear and trembling, freely answered the call of faith, the call of conscience, and the call of generations yet unborn, to breach.
“In a very real sense, then, this hearing today is itself irrelevant. The court has already pronounced a sentence on me, on my family, and on my neighborhood. We are hereby condemned to live as members of a rogue state, which, in the face of a global consensus that outlaws nuclear weapons, has budgeted what amounts to $100,000 per minute over the next ten years to upgrade its stockpile of these useless, poisonous idols.”
As with all six of his co-defendants, Mark was also ordered to share payment of restitution of $33,503.51. He was also sentenced to three years of supervised probation.
Mark called on teacher and activist Stephen Kobasa as his sole character witness.
“Mark Colville doesn’t need me here,” Stephen said. “His consistency, his passion, his fierce commitment to hope are completely apparent to anyone who has encountered him.
“There is nothing in the world of more seriousness than what Mark and his companions in the Kings Bay Plowshares demand that we face. The weapons at Kings Bay condemn us to living each and every moment in fear of losing everything we believe matters, everything we have, in a single flash of unbearable light.
“At this very moment there are a number of courtrooms in this country where cases of the most overwhelming importance are being decided. But even George Floyd’s murder in all its horror cannot compare to the truth… about nuclear weapons.
“For, you see, if Mark is right – and he is – then most of the rest of us have failed to tell the truth, even to ourselves about nuclear weapons, because if we did we would have no choice but to do what he and his companions did, and be standing alongside him here.”
Spring the Elders – Caravan of Love to Free Maroon – Sunday, May 2, 2021 On Sunday, May 2, 2021 we will gather together for a peaceful gathering of prayers and libations in Mt. Wolf, PA to celebrate and honor our beloved elder and black liberation freedom fighter, Russell “Maroon” Shoatz. Time persists that we demand the compassionate release of Maroon from prison.
Please bring signs, car banners, instruments, flowers, a letter to the governor in support of the release of Maroon, etc. Wear white.
1:00PM Meet at Conewago Creek Recreation Area in Mt. Wolf, PA – 1098 Wago Road, Mt. Wolf, PA 17347 2:00PM Organized caravan to second location 3:00PM Park and assemble (social distanced) on sidewalk for speaking and celebration 4:00PM Heading home
In episode 27 of our #InjusticeAtHome webinar series, we will be speaking with former Black Panther Jalil Muntatim, recently released from prison after nearly 50 years behind bars, Mauri’ Saalakhan of The Aafia Foundation, and attorney Steve Downs, about how the FBI used COINTELPRO to systematically attack the Black Panther Party through informants, frame-ups, and assassination, and what we can learn from this today, as we are trying to free prisoners preemptively prosecuted and essentially framed by the government as part of the War on Terror.
