Long live John Africa. On the MOVE, y’all.
I greet you all from slow death row. We join you today in memory of Lynne Stewart Esq., a people’s lawyer in the finest tradition of that grand appellation. But before I begin, let us greet our host Jeff Macklin for this invitation. Thanks, Jeff. Good to be with you again. Brother Ralph Pointer, who fought like a panther for his wife’s freedom and won, to our luminous sisters, Angela and Alice, goddesses of resistance and the divine words of prose, oration, and poetry. To them. I say, Ashe.
But this is about the remarkable Lynne Stewart who fought harder for decades for others in the black communities and Latino barrios of Harlem and Brooklyn than she did for herself. To Ralph, of course, she was his wife and his comrade. But to this system and the architects of the demonic disease of mass incarceration, the authors of the obscenity of juvenile life sentences, remember superpredators, Lynne Stewart was a traitor to her class, to her race, and yes, to her profession.
For one cannot have mass incarceration on this vast monstrous scale without an awful lot of lawyers going along with the tidal wave of repression that is America today. Let me state one fact that should stun all of us: one state, Pennsylvania, has more juvenile lifers than any other jurisdiction on earth. Do you hear me? Pennsylvania holds more juvenile lifers under life without parole than any jurisdiction, any state, any other country, China, Iran, Russia, on this planet. And we wonder how we got mass incarceration.
Well, Lynne resisted this tide from the front end in court where she waged legal wars against that repression. She swam upstream. She fought for decades and she should be lovingly remembered for it by all of us. She saw black kids and saw her kids. She saw brown kids and saw her kids. She saw kids. May she long be remembered and loved. I thank you all.
From imprisoned nation, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
![Prison Radio is sharing an abbreviated version of a press release covering recent racist incidents at SCI Rockview in PA and the organizing to demand accountability. We are reaching out to people incarcerated at Rockview as well as recently transferred folks, inviting them to call, in hopes of hearing commentaries from them.
Benner Township, PA.-
On November 24th, 2023, imprisoned people at SCI Rockview found two nooses hanging in the CO’s office, displayed visibly for many prisoners to see. When the prisoners asked the staff why the nooses were hung, they were told it was a joke.
By December 4th, prisoners filed a grievance to document what they saw, noting that the hanging of the nooses was “unethical, racially motivated, hateful, [a] deliberate debasement of black inmates" and “unsafe for inmates, staff, [and] the whole prison in general.” In the grievance, they demanded that Sgt. Mosser and CO Richard be fired and investigated for a hate crime, and for CO Kirchner to get therapy. Captain Andrews, the head of security, denied the grievance.
The sergeant and COs are still working in the prison to this day, with no repercussions...
As of March 10th, prisoners have reached out to Pennsylvania officials at the Dept. of Corrections in a letter campaign, sending 100 copies of the grievance. Copies of the letter also were mailed to Governor Shapiro, Senator Fetterman, Senator Street, and various advocacy groups. The demands for relief in the original grievance have now become the platform of demands for this campaign. About 20 of the 100 letters were withheld by the prison.
Activists on the outside are joining forces with prisoners to elevate their demands, flooding the phone lines of DOC offices, assisting with outreach to media, and circulating the stories of prisoners who have found unity in opposition to the facility's virulent institutional racism.
In any other workplace, hanging a noose would be grounds for immediate termination. However, Nicki Paul, the superintendent's assistant and "grievance coordinator" informed the public that they self-investigated their staff and found they did nothing wrong.
Read the full article at i
https://conta.cc/4ayDxlB](https://www.prisonradio.org/wp-content/plugins/instagram-feed/img/placeholder.png)