Watch the interview on Black Power Media here
Pam Africa (advocate/activist), Noel Hanrahan (JD), Ricardo Alvarez (MD) interviewed by Kalonji Changa (BPM/RSTV Founder), Joy James (author/GIU)
February 12, 2024, GIU
Kalonji Changa (KC):
Peace good people. This is Guerilla Intellectual University (GIU), Special Edition. . . . one of our favorite freedom fighters is in a crisis. He’s been in crisis for over 40 years, we know that. But we want to give an update on this crisis. I want to bring on my co host, Dr. Joy James.
Joy James (JJ):
I think we should rename GIU to “Guerilla Intellectual Union,” particularly because of the three guests today given their ability to work collectively under crisis, and also for a beloved. The union is more important than any stamp of university learning. This [GIU] is a learning educational endeavor, but our commitments to each other are really the foundational texts.
KC:
Can you talk about the guests?
JJ: Their model of fighting, resisting, and loving? Resistance to war, to torture, to murder under the guise of “medical care” [really] medical neglect —that is embodied in Pam Africa, Ricardo Alvarez and Noel Hanrahan. Advocates for Mumia Abu Jamal (MAJ). Mumia is a teacher, so we could call ourselves a university. But MAJ is going to be the head scholar, right? He is teaching us about what it means to have compassion, what it means to fight for our rights and our liberation, and to fight against a predatory state. But he is also teaching how we love ourselves and link our intellect or advocacy into a fortress. This Mumia has shown with light and love.
KC:
So we want to get started by bringing on a good sister, who I consider one of my revolutionary mothers out in Philadelphia. We’ve been banging for a long time, and she’s no stranger to not just the platform, but the movement period. I want to bring on the founder of The International Concerned Family and friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, that is Momma Pam Africa.
…………
KC:
We have Dr. Ricardo Alvarez, who is one of our favorite movement doctors, and one of the main physicians when it comes to Mumia. We also have the founder of Prison Radio, a good sister, Noel Hanrahan. . . . Good to have you all here. Thank you all for joining us this morning. We’ve had better occasions, but we’re happy to see you here today.
. . . Noel, if you could, give us some background and context as to why we’re here today.
Noel Hanrahan (NH):
Mumia Abu Jamal has been in prison now for 42 years, and he survived three execution attempts: one on the streets of Philadelphia in 1981 on December 9, and two literal execution warrants. So, his time in prison has been a real struggle, for Mumia to communicate with us and also for Mumia to maintain his health. And in the last number of years, in particular the last eight years, Mumia has had many health struggles. We as a community have rallied to make sure that Mumia Abu Jamal has survived, just like we rallied when he was under an execution warrant, to prevent that.
He had hepatitis C, which was severe, and which there was a cure for, which the prison was preventing him from getting and so the mobilization really literally made sure that Mumia was given that life saving cure in 2017.# Then he had double bypass heart surgery in 2021.# He is suffering from a number of medical conditions, but I’d love it if you could bring in Pam.
KC:
Noel started telling us about Mumia’s medical condition. Mama Pam, walk us back to how we got to this point and how the alarm was rung. . . . Tell us about this particular episode because it ain’t the first time.
Pam Africa (PA):
Right. So, I want to start with when Mumia’s and Wadiya’s [oldest] son, Isa, called me two Sundays ago to let me know he had just come from visiting Mumia.
When he was leaving the prison from visiting Mumia, as he was walking down the hall, tears was flowing down his face. A lady coming down the hall turned to him and she said, “Are you okay?” Before he could say anything else she said, “Was that Mumia that you were visiting?” So he shook his head, Yeah. And she says, “Oh. . . . Okay.”
He went to get in his car, he turned on the ignition and started crying with his head on the wheel, crying uncontrollably.
Earlier, when he was waiting for Mumia to come out for the visit, he saw this old man with a bald head . . . so he knew that wasn’t Mumia. . . . then he heard this voice that said “Isa.” He said he turned and looked, and it was Mumia. He said that he’s trying to get himself together and Mumia said, “Oh, you shocked because I don’t have any hair.” But that wasn’t it. He had never seen him without the hair. But it was his face and his arms. [Mumia’s] face is thin. And he [had] dark splotches on the side of his face. How he described him, he was seeing the tip of his head was another light colored rash. His ears [you] could see that the rash was there too. Isa looked at Mumia’s arms when he hugged him, they were like black snakeskin. Isa sat through the visit . . they talked about personal things.
So, when he told me this, I immediately called Dr. Ricardo Alvarez and Noel Hanahran. I called Johanna Fernandez, Mark Taylor, and I think I called Suzanne Ross.# We started talking about the urgency of what was happening. I just immediately started going on radio shows, and made an appointment to go up and see Mumia.
When he called me— I had Noel tell him to call me— he says, “Hello.” So I say, “Hey, how you doing?” “Oh, you know, I’m doing well.” I said, “What do you call ‘well’?” Mumia said he knew I talked with somebody else. Mumia has a tendency to not talk about himself, when he’s damn near dying. He wanted to talk about other things, but there was no conversation to be had there except his health. [During the visit], I looked at him, his nose shape had changed. His face was really thin. I had to do what I could to maintain myself while talking to him. You know what he wants to talk about? He’s doing a new book. [Beneath the Mountain with co-author XXX].# That’s what he wants to talk about, that . . . and that he’s getting ready to do his dissertation. But that’s Mumia.
Mumia does a podcast with Professor Marc Lamont Hill, “The Classroom in the Cell.” This is why I was so shocked. Because hearing him on the radio/podcast, you think everything is fine with this brother, he just needs to be released from jail. He’s doing this, he’s going that. But it’s the conditions that he’s doing these things in. On my visit, I’m sitting there and I’m watching him start to itch. Just what Issa was saying: he was itching over his entire body. He was just scratching. As the visit went on, he started to scratch more. He scratches, he itches 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And as we’re talking right now, he’s in a torturesome mood because I know he’s itching. And there’s no place, no place that the itch is not covering him.
I’m really upset because what I’m seeing here is the beginning of what I saw a few years ago when his whole body was encased in this substance like cracks. You could see the red on the inside like when a fish is out of water and its gills go up and you see the red inside. That’s how that looked. His ears, and you know, I took pictures back then. You can see where his ears [are] leaving his head; like a chicken neck his legs. The sores are on him from his scratching. He was misdiagnosed, I believe he was purposely left with these conditions.…
KC:
Dr. Alvarez, can you speak to what some of the things that she’s talking about right now?
Ricardo Alvarez (RA):
I always have to begin and frame any discussion of a medical consultation with Mumia in the context of “what is torture”? So, it’s a medical consultation with a brilliant public intellectual, who is a political prisoner, who is in prison by virtue of what he says, and not what he did. And in this context, to do a medical consultation with Mumia in captivity means that there are certain nuances to words that he says that really kind of cue me into concern. One of the words he said, as it relates to the extent of his skin condition, is that it was “unstable”. You can obviously see it, I saw him a little over a month ago in person. And then I have regular video visits. And in the last video visit, is when he shared with me that it was unstable.
Now understand that this skin condition is in the realm of eczema, which are difficult conditions to control. These skin conditions at this point are affecting his sleep, so he’s unable to sleep. And he’s also exhausted, because the institution that operates, as he teaches from a place of seeking to degrade his humanity, and from a place of exerting social control, so that they, they limit his capacity to have books, and he’s up to three in the morning to deal with the demands, of the institutional demands to remove his books. He’s tired, he’s exhausted. He’s telling me that the itching is contributing to his poor sleep.
Now, I want to combine the severity of the itching, which is worse now, combined with the fact that there’s documented weight loss. And we had monitored the weight loss and at a certain point, it stabilized. Now, within medical criteria, when you have a certain percentage of body weight, you look to see are there constitutional symptoms that would alert us to something, an underlying medical process that could be cancerous or something else that would warrant further investigation. And while there was stability of the weight, we remain vigilant and concerned, because in addition to the severity of the itching, for which he shares a word “unstable”, which I take very significantly. Because let me say, and Momma Pam alluded to this, Mumia has for 40 years been described as one who is a source of light! People would come to him, at all times, and he’s the one who will stay positive and bring love. And, you know, he’s the one who everyone will say when you come in, and you know, he’s the one no matter what his conditions, you leave feeling better. So a subtle word like that, as I learned from my colleagues, is like, you pay attention to it. So you combine weight loss, even though it’s stabilized concerning, you combine that increasing severity of the itch that’s affecting his quality of life to the point where he can’t sleep, and he’s telling you that. You combine the language of unstable which is his words, and then you combine that with hair loss. And we’re arguing that needs careful monitoring.
I want to share one other story, and I think we need to get back to Momma Pam, is that in addition to all this, we’re also watching the development of a slight anemia. He has a condition that’s known as anemia of chronic disease, which is a difficult condition to treat, because it is not something that you can simply give iron to. It’s a challenge of the metabolism of the iron, right? But the key to that is it’s related to inflammatory processes. And his hematologist was thinking, and it’s a logical presumption, that the exacerbation of his skin condition may be contributing to this anemia. So that requires monitoring as well.
In addition to all of this, we need to recognize that Mumia was transferred out of the facility to see an outside cardiologist and shares the story with me that he shackled, he asked the prison guards, “why am I shackled?” They said, “We don’t know. We just know we’re taking you to this place.” And he said to me, “that’s probably their protocol. Right? That’s probably how t it works.” He then comes to see this cardiologist, and the cardiologist says to him: “Why are you here?”
Within medical systems— I just want to acknowledge that this happens in outpatient medical systems— medical systems are so broken and stressful right now, for all of the participants in that system. That is with patients, it’s such a hostile system, that we literally describe doing community health work as being on the front lines. That is a language that’s being recognized within primary care, the sense of being on the front line, though, the mindset of warfare, the challenges. So in this regard, we demonstrate a breakdown.
But there’s something relevant here in terms of a story for our audience to understand. The cardiologist who Mumia described as an “old school guy” says, “Your blood pressure is probably high because you were shackled. So before I go, changing your medication, let’s get you back to your, imagine this in his prison setting, that oppressive setting would be what he would say, your baseline environment, your home, so to speak. And then we’re going to check your blood pressures over there.” But it demonstrates to you the level at which the vigilance of the medical team, and the legal team, and his loving inner sort of circle of supporters are so attentive to his well-being, that when we get the call: Hey, we need to now make sure that we put this system on alert. That every single aspect of his surveillance, including the surveillance of the liver cirrhosis, which was induced by the system, by the prison medical system and the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections, which deliberately violated community standards of care to create criteria for giving life sustaining medication, the hepatitis C treatment, which was extremely expensive. They chose to create criteria that were so deviant from the proper standards of care, that the medical legal team, Noel, and Brett #, and Bob [Boyle]#, had to bring in expert testimony to say you have done harm. Because of the delay in the monitoring and the diagnosis, this false criteria, you have done harm. So he’s in a state of harm.
NH:
Just to say, they delayed Mumia’s treatment for two years when they had the cure. And that delay increased his risk of having liver cancer. And so he has to be monitored for that. And that delay, exacerbated his underlying conditions, including the skin condition, and extra hepatic. Your skin is an organ, and it was dramatically affected by the delay, the deliberate indifference. And we went to court and got a third circuit injunction for Mumia to get the fast acting cure, can cure the hep C. And then that was allowed. That was used by other prisoners across the country. It was the first one. So Mumia is one person, but we’re advocating for everyone in this situation.
Mumia had double bypass surgery in 2021. They [state] have never provided him outpatient care, care for his diet and exercise which are the two key ingredients for recovering from cardiac surgery. He has been denied that now for over two years, going on three years. That means he will have another cardiac event because they are denying him adequate care.
KC:
Do you all feel that this is an assassination attempt of Mumia Abu-Jamal? I know that there’s medical neglect, so on and so forth. I don’t buy it that Mumia is just the average prisoner.
PA:
No, he’s not the average prisoner. And yes, they are definitely and in front of our faces attempting to kill Mumia, and all for the blood lust wishes of Maureen Faulkner,# which is Officer Faulkner’s wife, and the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP). The prison is in cahoots with it. Noel, remind them of the day in court that attorney Bob Boyle came across these papers. And, how we winded up in court dealing with the medical issues. The prison didn’t do right by Mumia inside the prison and he filed grievances, and they turned them down. Noel, could you run it down to them, please?
NH:
There are two things that are really outstanding around the medical case around hepatitis C. One is they treated his condition, his skin condition with topical steroid, which put him into a diabetic crisis. They noted he had a high glucose reaction to the steroids that were treating this, while he was having the hepatitis C crisis. They didn’t monitor his glucose, he went into renal failure. He was transported to the hospital near death. That was deliberate. It was in his charts, they should have monitored his glucose as a reaction to the topical steroid to the condition that he had. And they didn’t. They let him go into renal failure. And then he was in the hospital, in the ICU, in a dangerous position. Also, with the hepatitis C, when we went into court, we realized in court when Bob Boyle examined the people on the stand, their medical director had never testified in a case before, Dr. Paul Noel. He said, I have never testified in a case before. That means that prisoners as patients had never been able to challenge the DOC in court. When Bob grilled him on there, he said, “I told the DOC that what they said in the affidavit, that they presented to the court was wrong. I told them that in October, I told them in November, and I told them in the parking lot today that what they are presenting to the court was false.” So maybe he wasn’t willing to lose his medical license, he wasn’t willing to lie for the DOC. But the DOC was willing to lie, to try and to have the court believe this affidavit from Dr. Paul Noel, their Medical Directorthat stated why Mumia was presumably not eligible for treatment.
Now the treatments, the five or six or ten people that they were giving treatments for at that time, that they were not providing to the other 1000 prisoners who had hepatitis C in a chronic stage, was esophageal varices. Where they tested your throat, where you would, your esophagus would explode from your throat and you would die by bleeding through your mouth. That was the ONLY thing that they were treating. And there were maybe two or three people that they were giving the Hep C cure to, so you had to have a, so yeah.
So this system is designed to put our people, our family, our community in crisis, and to kill them. Like it is designed to deny them the basic medical care that we deserve as human beings. And I want to say, I really appreciate Dr. James’s philosophies on when we lwove, we win. When we survive, we win. When we fight, we win. When we stand up for our communities, when we stand up for our family, when we stand up for our people, it is really difficult. We are in a stage of grief. This is Guerilla University, Guerilla Union. But we need to know that when we, when we work with this, when we survive with this, when we love with this, we’re doing it in a place of trauma and grief. And we have to be caring for each other and just keep showing up. Because it’s super painful to see your people in these conditions, and they have total control. Yes, it’s a capitalist, structural, total control, but they’re doing it in front of us to real people that are our fathers, our mothers, our cousins, our kids, and that makes it really difficult.
PA;
And that answers your question about the assassination. They [the prison] are clearly a part of it. It also answers the questions of what happened to other inmates. Mumia, who filed all those papers. Other people had filed [for competent medical care or against medical neglect and harm], but these other people did not have a movement behind them. We kept pushing and pushing until we woundup in court. And when we wound up in court, the world just said, the medical person had never been in a situation where he testified about [the harm that] was happening to these inmates. The first time he does testify, it’s about Mumia. When he was going to testify [it wasn’t] truthfully. [We are] uncovering the [plots] plan all the time. They wrote up false papers; and they thought that Bob Boyle would not catch it. They thought that this person [prison doctor? names] would lie or not gett to court. Mumia could be dead right now, behind their plot and plan.
But it’s the people, it’s the movement, it’s the love that goes into here, the consistency goes in here [and we prevailed]. Mariniani # as the judge was very useful and effective. Mumia is alive today, because the judge made sure that Mumia got this cure. The lawyers, prosecutors for the prison, once the Judge okayed this, they wanted to have a stay on it. They wanted to appeal his decision. And the judge said, “You have the right to do what you want and appeal, but this order is going through.” A year and a half later, the prison attorneys’ appeal went through, but it was turned down. The way they wanted was to keep appealing and appealing and appealing until Mumia is dead. The judge said “Okay, you can appeal, but we’re going ahead with this, Mumia would have been dead.
NH:
We’re talking structurally! We’re talking 17 to 20% of the prison population has active Hep C, which is more contagious than HIV. It’s active in the prison and the prisons are not clean places, right. Then it’s a silent killer. You have it and you can transmit it for decades. One out of seven African American men in the community have it. The culture in the community is not willing to treat this, we need to cure it. It’s like polio, you can completely eliminate it, if you actively treat hepatitis C. But they are allowing it to happen. We’ve seen, and it’s been revealed, that there have been experiments, this is in our lifetime. It’s in our lifetimes, that they have done things like Acres of Skin,# the Holmesburg prison experiments#. If you read Medical Apartheid,# what they’ve done in other ways. We are not imagining what is happening to our people. We can see it with our own eyes. The prison and state are capable of these kinds of unbelievably inhumane patterns and practices.
JJ:
So what comes to mind. Well, first, thank you all for your courage and your consistency. And you’re just making it so plain, as Malcolm says, “keep it plain, you know. In my mind, it reminds me of COINTELPRO. I mean, there are different ways to eliminate. And so within the structure of the prison, which is pretty opaque, it’s not just medical malpractice, right? Or incompetency, because I’m assuming none of the doctors or nurses were stripped of their positions. You know, after inflicting harm. They still have their jobs, and they still have their, you know, health insurance.
I’ve listened to the interview that Noel did on Prison Radio with Momma Pam Jared Ball’s BPM/I Mix What I Like! with Ricardo Alvarez. I learned from those interviews. I am curious about how do you see the strategy of resistance? I’m going to call it “war resistance” or “assassination resistance.” When so much violence is obviously secreted away. Prison is a fortress of pain and intimidation and death. I mean, because first you have to be able to get inside to get the narrative of what’s actually happening. And then fortunately, you bring it back out. What would you like us to do in terms of mobilization, and how do you see that on an international level? Pluto is hosting a journal launch in March 2024 in London for State Crime [which has an article about Mumia Abu-Jamal and Captive Maternals]. There are people across the globe who support Mumia. [There are multiple] attempts of assassination? As Noel points out, political prisoners are targeted, right there in the bullseye, that’s the primary target, but it radiates out to secondary and tertiary, to other people, to people who maybe aren’t organizing as activists trying to resist. How do you see this spread out? What role should we play in the effort to stop medical assassinations and harm within prison walls and also what radiates beyond them?
RA:
May I first address the question of medical assassination? The first thing I want to say is, when Mumia gives his lessons, one of those lessons that helps expand an understanding of “Love Not Phear” is compassion. And an aspect of that requires that we examine there is no monolithic medical prison community, we have to appreciate. And this is something that I need to be really attentive to. They’re people who step into this carceral settings where it’s like, you know, I’m gonna step in here as strong as I can with love and try to do good and are part of change. It’s not monolithic. One of the things we talked about is when Mumia was getting hospitalized and and we mobilized around the four point shackling when he shared that trauma, of imagine, trying to, being in four point shackles, and then you’re unable to scratch yourself this beautiful, brilliant, peaceful man, right? So and then it creates in us a language and an understanding of where you can have the trauma, where it was difficult for him to communicate that. So that can be happening in settings with compassionate medical personnel who are competent. Some of the questions I asked him are: Do you trust? What is your energetic? How do you feel? Mumia describes people who can be loving and caring.
In addition, there is a spectrum, there’s care within prison settings and outside, and they’re competent, caring people who can operate in oppressive systems and do a good job in their narrow job. But where there is a failure, a deep failure is for the professional community in the medical community to basically acknowledge the underlying oppressive violence that our community, our brothers, our sisters, our loved ones are suffering. And in this regard, there is a language called the social determinants of health. That means the determinants that don’t involve you just taking your blood pressure medication, but are looking at poverty, or looking at homelessness, or looking at different variables. One of those variables is violence. And it’s specifically state violence that’s so important. So when we look at medical assassination, on some level, there is medical complicity at the highest levels with these oppressive systems. So it’s important to recognize that, you know, was that high blood sugar that was missed, was it, you know, just missed? Quite possibly, quite possibly. Does that happen in outpatient settings? Absolutely. That happens. We’re not saying that someone necessarily deliberately did it. But what’s important for us to understand is that in a context, where there is objective evidence of an effort to assassinate him, it is important that we all voice that. It’s important that we all, from a place of our professional and medical ethics, come from a place that says this state violence is so gross, it’s so deliberate, that we need to be able to stand from a place of defense of our community. Does that make sense?
NH:
I interviewed Maureen Faulkner. I went right up to her, I look just like her, I’m 100% Irish. I went right up to Maureen and I said, “Yo, Maureen, what’s up like, how are you doing? What do you think about this case?” And she said, she said “We’re gonna lose. He’s gonna get out.” The only thing we can do is appeal and appeal and appeal until he dies in prison. That is the essence of a frivolous lawsuit. And the Pennsylvania Supreme Court privileged her King’s bench petition for standing, and heard it, and now it’s not frivolous. But that was their strategy. They said we can not win. And she said it right to my face. Because she also said, “Oh, you’ve got to hear what his lawyers are saying, you’ve got to go to Prison Radio and listen to what is happening with his lawyers, because he’s gonna get out.”
I almost couldn’t hold it together. I was like: “Really? Oh, God, I’ll check that out. Soon as I get right off the stage, I’ll go check that out.”
RA:
Within prison systems, there are also privatized medical corporations that operate for profit and operate in such an abusive and mean spirited, money oriented way that they behave in collusion with the state in ways that there’s deeply, deeply neglectful care that is not patient centered and loving centered. So there is diversity within the medical community within prisons, outside prisons. But an overall complicity in not acknowledging an overall structure of violence against our community. That’s the message.
NH:
To use an example, Michael Sophia, who helped invent the cure for Hepatitis C lives in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, and he said it should be free, just as Jonas Salk# [made the polio vaccine available to everyone]. But what happened was [the Hepatitis vaccine] became corporatized, it became bought by Gilead. And then it was being charged $80,000 a pop when it costs $1 a pill and you had 13 pills for 13 days and you’re cured. And they were charging $80,000 for that.
Now, what happened in this capitalist reality is that India said no. They said “we are violating your copyrights and your intellectual property packaging. We’re building factories, and we’re making this for our people.”# Egypt said this because they had a large group of people who are infected because they used multiple needles for vaccines before they knew that it was transmitting Hep C.# Some 20% of the people in Egypt were testing positive for hepatitis C, they went to Gilead and they said, We’re breaking your patent. You give us a deal, pennies on the dollar, we’re just going to make this stuff because we need to save our people. So they were international forces pushing Gilead to not, you know, exploit this situation. The US government could have, under the Constitution, gone in as a public health necessity and made this free, they still could do that.
KC:
So you’re saying that, so for our audience, you’re saying that they were talking about charging $8,000
NH:
$80,000.
KC:
And, it costs how much to make?
NH:
$1 a pill.
But they would say there was all this development, we would say that the US government paid for a bunch of the development, we would say it’s a public health necessity, we should eat this cost right up front, because it’s gonna save the state, tons of costs. It’s easier to cure people before they have a manifest of critical disease where they are hospitalized. The whole point of preventive care is so that you don’t have the hospital end game cost which the state absorbs. So it would be more efficient and more effective. It just wouldn’t privilege the capitalist class that had that patent.
PA:
When we found out Mumia had hepatitis C, and it was $1,000 a pill, we wasn’t just seeking a cure, the pill was the cure. We wasn’t just seeking that for Mumia. A lot of people were telling us “You never be able to do it. . . .if you do it for Mumia, you’d have to do it for everybody.” But we’re always talking about the everybody. Not just Mumia.
And over $1,000 a pill, what we found out, Joe Piete# and I went to a meeting, a meeting at the Board of Health. Some people was on a radio and was talking about, you know, you know, doing work around hepatitis C. And what we found out there, I think it was 400 or something, the number is sort of getting away from me right now, you know, that was in the prison in the state of Pennsylvania. When we were at that meeting, we found out that it was 400, no 46,000 people, you know, that actually had his fate. What we had here was an epidemic! And the government was not telling people about the cause. You can look back into the records at the point that we put the pressure on about Mumia and other incarcerated people, and people on the outside. Then you see commercials about Hepatitis C. We wound up working with the Board of Health. We wound up working with an organization that was, gay, lesbian, transgender, people who had paperwork, books, and documents, on what was going on with the Hepatitis C.
We knew Mumia had hepatitis C, we didn’t have the information to put out about what was going on. The Board of Health has books stacked up, hordes of information. We went to the state representatives, in City Hall, the city people. None of them had anything on Hepatitis C. Something as dangerous, as deadly as this, that affected folks inside of the prison, but also was affecting thousands of people on the street, men, women and children. We took that information, and we put it forward and demanded that it be in the press. A lot of them didn’t know a damn thing about Hepatitis C in the state of Pennsylvania or if they were keeping it quiet.
In fact, when state representative Vanessa Brown, and I tried to get what we wanted, what was the criteria for getting the hepatitis C cure. The health department for the prison, supposed to have a book explaining everything to you. We could not get that book, we could not get that book, none of the state representatives. When we got the book of what was going on in that hearing for Mumia before that judge, the one that Robert, Robert Boyle, and the other lawyer, Bret Grote, and they demanded that book. The prison officials trying to stop Mumia didn’t want to give up the book. The book was something that everybody was supposed to have in the prison along with their loved ones. The judge ordered them to give up the book. When the judge looked at the book, sitting on a bench, he took a deep breath. Then he called for a recess. The criteria in order to get the cure was in the book. The [obstruction to medical care] shows the mentality, the murders, the assassination attempts [against] people. The prison was refusing to give us that information until the judge made them give it up in court, or they would have been held in contempt if they did not.
NH:
It was the people that made them give it up because the DOC asked that that document be under seal. And so the judge was considering putting that document under seal even though it was presented as evidence in court. Through to that day, they held it under seal. But we walked out of the courtroom, immediately. We went to the public records request office in Harrisburg. We called them up and we said we’re ordering this right now. And we want it because it’s a public record and we know it is. What happened is they came back in the end of the day and the judge said, Okay, we have to return ,to the we’re gonna put this under seal. And the Department of Correction says, they stood up and they said, “we can’t”. The public records office told us that it’s a public record, and we have to give it to the defense and make it public. They handed it to Brett and to Bob. And as the guy handed it to them, he said “please don’t make copies of this and distribute it to the other inmates because that’s what we’re afraid of”.
JJ:
Wow. Your advocacy for Mumia opens the door for better health for thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people. It seems to me that the public doesn’t quite realize that or the full extent of what you’re sharing right here. Because sometimes they silo political prisoners in their thoughts and advocacy [or define all incarcerated people as “political prisoners” and miss that their agency for justice makes them key targets by the state]? Many don’t see that the fight for [political prisoners who resisted] is really the fight for everybody.
NH:
One more story. So we worked with AIDS activists, and the gay and lesbian community had been doing decades of work around health care access and access. And so there was a hepatitis C committee in New York that we worked with very closely, they were advocating at the American Liver Association meeting. The American Liver Association meeting had said that the previous treatment, Interferon, was not possible, that that was medically not indicated anymore. There was a window where they were not, they were meeting, but they weren’t going to say that the expensive cure was now the new medical standard. We went with the activist to that meeting, Mumia activist disrupted that meeting, and had people in that society demand that the Liver Association say that the hepatitis C cure, which was available at the time and would have cured people, had to be the absolute medical standard. And that passed only because of activist work. And it was because of the work that we had done with these other activists. And it was only because Mumia was in crisis. So we knew that the American Liver Association was going to be really important. And we knew that they couldn’t bury this. And we were loud, we were insistent, and we negotiated with the people behind the scenes to make the Liver Association do what they should have done in the first place, which was to say that the standard for treatment for hepatitis C was the available cure.
JJ:
What, what would be a relationship, or what are your relationships to medical schools like Brown University has Mumia’s papers, right? Jared Ball did a show or a segment on Brown purchasing Mumia’s papers. Noel you were there at the 2023 conference. Brown has a medical school as well. How does your activism radiate out for everybody. [Could] medical schools become advocates [to end medical abuse in prisons and against elders, children, women, LGBTQ+, and men]? There is a murderous widow. . . death cults are moving around in prison (the death penalty, the individual murdered by nitrogen.#) The US has a blood lust around control, death and killing. Even though Mumia is no longer on death row there are different ways to kill the incarcerated, right? How do you see this work linked to anti-death penalty issues? I’m asking largely about coalitions.
RA:
I’m gonna ask permission to try to address that from a perspective, of a message that both Mumia gave me and Jalil Muntaqim Multidisciplinary. Now, I’ve had challenging medical consultations in my life, but I will say that one of the blessings of being in relationship to such inexpensive, spiritual being, is that look who he draws in community: brilliant philosophers, brilliant historians, brilliant lawyers, brilliant, I mean, you know, and brilliant humans and activists. Our capacity, when I spoke to him about multidisciplinary, Mumia said something to me that I’ll never forget. He said yesterday, and I heard that in two ways, one meaning almost like there’s a way he speaks almost feel like we need to have a memory that this has happened before to connect, because it reminds us always to connect with the ancestors. We don’t have to come and try to almost like, you know. We have to come back and recall that there were examples where disciplines work together. Now we have to remember that the construction, the literal manifestation from its roots, hands, the construction of mass incarceration required multiple disciplines coming together. Architects, planners, you know, medical systems, legal systems, it was corporate systems, it was multidisciplinary to put it together. We need to have multidisciplinary to bring it back and deconstruct it, de-engineer it.
When I spoke to Mumia about it, when I spoke with Jalil, we meet regularly, because Mumia said, if it’s going to be multidisciplinary, it needs to be led by a revolutionary. That is Jalil, and recognizing that this is the work, the work that we’re doing, those of us who are in professional capacity, who were speaking to associations, we’re doing the work that has already been done by Laura Whitehorn’s work with RAP# and others. The released elders have been a huge and powerful voice, and what are they saying? There is a clear call, liberate our elders, this is institutional elder abuse.
So, to answer your question, when you say, what can we do? Those of us in a professional capacity can act as a liaison, a byway of connecting with our professional societies, because what has happened is there is a sea change now in our multidisciplinary, professional society, to report elder abuse, if we can come together in a coordinated way, multidisciplinary unity, for mass incarceration abolition. If we can get a Mumia coalition together, and go to our professional societies and hold them accountable, then we can address the identified social determinants of health, specifically, the FOP (Fraternal Order of Police), in Mumia’s case, and address the harms of unqualified immunity, right, or qualified immunity, that gives them permission. If we can address those harms of the code of silence, right? If we can identify this corporation, as an individual, as citizens united, and begin that process of doing a diagnostic analysis of their pathology, and bring that out into the public in concrete ways, then we begin to create a coalition where we put, correctly the culprit, the FOP on trial. And that’s what I believe is going to be the next stage of this. And this is why Mumia has shared with me, that you know, in when we do this, when we address the FOP and I did this with permission with Pam, because we need to be sensitive, that we want to be sensitive to the most vulnerable. Mumia is incarcerated, our strategies are to keep him alive, in transition to freedom immediately, right? If we can do that effectively, including the emerging ethical community, biomedical ethical community, how strongly there’s consensus around abolitionist public health, working communication with the American Public Health Association, the AMA, all these institutions we’re all filled with contradictions. No one’s perfect here and abolition is a humbling journey. But if we can begin that conversation in defense of our communities, I believe we will turn the tide in effect, and honor the call, liberate our elders. And when we bring them back into our community in a loving way, then they give us counsel on how to reverse engineer.
KC:
There are so many different nuggets and jewels that have been dropped during this particular broadcast. We’re absolutely grateful that you all are bringing it to the forefront. Dr. James mentioned earlier about Malcolm’s “making it plain.” You’re making it straight up and down plain. It’s not a whole bunch of legalese or medical terms that go over people’s heads.
You mentioned the FOP. I speak to Momma Pam somewhat regularly. We’ve talked about different issues, from the medical situation to the legal side of things. Pam, you had mentioned to me in the past, about instances where it could have been somewhat a no brainer or it should have been like the victory was won in regards to the prison doctor, and the DOC. In any civilized nation, they would’ve been like, ok, get this man out of here. This is ridiculous: doctors testifying saying that they lied. . . . And I don’t even understand why we’re here talking anymore.
Pam, can you give us a chronological history? We can’t sit here and not address the elephant in the room. We can’t sit here and act like okay, well, we just gonna blame the medical problem. It is an absolute system of corruption. . . from the medical side of things… to the FOP, judges, and lawyers. . . . Pam, bring us home, talk to me.
PA:
Since we are in Black History Month, I’ll start with Judge Tucker. I want to take this time right now and thank Noel [for corrections]. I said it was the LGBT group that we went to, it was the AIDS organization, as she was saying. You [can] get lost in details sometimes. I’m glad that she brought out, because I missed that part about where the judge participation in it and getting that much needed book on how they saying the criteria for hepatitis C would be administered, because they fought it all the way till the end. And that said, ain’t no power, like the power of people, when the power of the people don’t stop.
We didn’t stop there. It’s so important that we all work together, because when one person misses something, the other people are there to catch you and move on. That part got completely past me. It’s very important. Judge Tucker is a Black judge. He’s a Republican in Philadelphia. Mumia’s case wound up in front of him, because of the Williams case. You know, Williams was a brother who had Ron Castille as a DA in his case. And when it went before the Supreme Court, Castille was sitting there. Is that right, Noel?
NH:
He was the DA, and he was sitting on the case as a Pennsylvania Supreme Court judge, so really not his own case.
PA:
Right. So Williams filed a suit against that. And once he filed that suit, doors were opened for other people who have actually gone through that thing, where the DA becomes, you know, when you complain about it, he becomes the person that makes the decision on, you know, the next steps. So Mumia filed as well for it. And it went before Judge Tucker. And it’s very important to understand that Judge Tucker, was the judge who took Castille down and all for the Williams case, in the beginning. Mumia’s case winds up in front of Judge Tucker, and I think it almost took about two years or a year and a half, before he made his decision on what it was going to, you know, about the appeal for Mumia. He granted Mumia an appeal. And he said, I’m not granting this because the DA was saying that our lawyers hadn’t filed papers properly or they hadn’t filed something. And he was trying to throw Mumia’s appeal out there. But Judge Tucker said, I’m not giving it to you on the Williams case, because during that time, there were several boxes of information that was found. And what he said, I’m giving it to you on the letter that Castille wrote to the governor asking that all people who had killed cops be executed. And what had happened with that letter, their response with missing. The thing was to connect in this particular phase Castille to Mumia. The letter itself connected him, because when he said, “all,” Mumia was amongst the “all”. The letter that the governor sent back to Castille suddenly [goes] missing. The fact [is] that evidence was missing. That’s very important. He was granting Mumia an appeal.
Oh, let me tell you about the court. The judge granted Mumia the right to appeal. I’m always outside and make sure that people get in the courtroom and, you know, have good seats. I make sure that what’s going on in the hallway and [I am] monitoring the police making sure they’re not messing with our people, and I monitor the outside bringing information back and forth. This particular day, there were so many, I mean, all retired cops and, you know, cops everywhere. You know, they was in wheelchairs, and suddenly everyone rolling into that courtroom that day. And I didn’t understand what was going on. And but what it was he granted Mumia’s lawyers motion, Maureen Faulkner, she kept going off in the courtroom and the Black judge, said to Maureen that if she continued to act that way she would have to take her out.
Now number one, you do not take [on] the FOP, this government’s golden cow. Because they use the grieving widow to take Mumia [into death]. So when the judge had to actually put her out the courtroom, she came out [and with] the FOP was angry. She walked by, she looks at me, and she called me the B-word. [I had] to calm people down from attacking her. I didn’t find out til later, what had actually [happened in court the judge] had granted Mumia the appeal. [Faulkner and FOP] left court so angry [and saw] us on the corner demonstrating. They got together in a formation to march down the street where we were, like they were going to take the street or run us off the corner or something. So we call for people to take the streets. We holler, “Whose streets, our streets.” When they saw the massive number of people out there from all walks of life, and all chanting. . . they went to the Fraternal Order Police Lodge 5 in the northeast [of Philadelphia]. Noel was brave enough [to go there] as a journalist. She got the information from Maureen that they had lost, and they knew they lost because if that appeal go through, you know, That’s it for Mumia.
When the judge grants an appeal, you should file for appeal bail. None of that stuff happened. I don’t know the legalese and things that go along with that. But that didn’t happen.
But [the cops] they came up with a plan. They talked about a plan that day, and other days in the paper that, you know, they was going to do something to stop that appeal. The words you know, get away from me right now. And, and they did. They came up with what was known as the King’s Bench Petition#, which didn’t apply. They tried it with one judge. And you know, Noel can give more detail on King’s Bench Petition Act, because you know that legal language. They tried it before one judge, the judge turned them down. They had no standing for the King’s Bench Petition. They try the second judge, same thing, turned down. They are judge shopping. They get a third judge to take it on. It stops everything in its tracks. They use the King’s Bench Petition [to assert] that the DA Larry Krasner was a friend of Mumia. And that he didn’t do certain legal things that he was supposed to do. This group of people were desperate. And the judge that took this on, the panel of judges that took this on, they held Larry Krasner because Larry Krasner was not to, he didn’t have a lawyer in this particular thing.??? UNCLEAR None of Mumia’s attorneys were allowed to be in there because this was about Mumia. They came out with a decision, because Larry was not as bad as he was then. UNCLEAR When I’m talking about bad, I’m talking about filthy, low life, stinking with fear. He came out and said Mumia was guilty and there was no evidence [to exonerate him].
What I want to do is what Sister Joy was saying. . . I want to put together a chronology showing, in detailed the names, different things [that happened]t. When they did come up with the decision it wasn’t in favor of Mumia. About this time Judge Tucker [retires]. He’s no longer there. They replaced him. And I’m saying this is Black History Month. And that’s why I’m doing these three black judges. Tucker, who gave me the right to an appeal and laid it out legally how this stuff was supposed to go and have the the FOPFLP with Maureen Faulkner who blocked that, then we get a black judge by the name of Lucretia Clemens Clemens is a black woman judge who was a Catholic, whose claim to faime kind of thing was that he has, you know, members in her family or member in her family that was you know, hung there was lynched. And then she believed in fairness, humanity, you know, and doing the right thing. So she was able to fool some people. Some people believe this woman who was in the courtroom, not acting that way, because she never acted like she was gonna be fair to Mumiame. She called for a few 30 days or 90 days. PCause in between it was she made another decision. And she didn’t already say she wasn’t giving it to me or in between this time a black judge of bad ass black judges from Arkansas, a judge 20 years sitting judge. Judge Wendell Griffin has his own church there, and knows the law. He pointed out the Mumia should have been out long before Judge Clemens # (cite State Crime journal article/Prison Radio in notes) long before Judge Tucker Mumia should have been out there when they found them boxes. In first it turned out to be six then it turned out to be another number. What was the final number in boxes they found what information when they said they had turned over all the information that was in the case?. This is where were Tucker also found the reason to overturn a mean to give Mumia an appeal. How many boxes was that the sound?
NH
There were a lot of boxes.
PA
Alot, way over six.
KC
These boxes contain. . . ?
PA
They contain evidence that was supposed to have been turned over . . . . I do believe there [were a lot more boxes].
NH
Mumia’s lawers looked at them really closely and they found stuff in there and also Judge Tucker found stuff in there. That was really valuable. And what, what the kinds of things that were never given to the defense was a note by one of the key eyewitnesses. And I’ll describe what eyewitness means in a minute. But Robert Chobert, a cab driver said he saw Mumia shoot officer Faulkner, there’s a letter in the files that were never given over to the defense that says, After the trial was over, he wrote to the ADA McGill, and he said, “Where is my money? I am writing for my money. You’ve not been returning my phone calls, I want to know, and when I’m gonna get paid. So that was never turned over. And that you have to be able to talk to that guy and ask him, What did he mean by that? Wasn’t lunch money? It wasn’t boss money, right. And so they prove that in front of Clements, there was other materials that say that they treated favorably Cynthia White, she was never convicted of any other charges. And she was a working prostitute for a number of years. Was that because they put in place special instructions that she would be treated differently? And there is a lot of evidence that corroborates that. Veronica Jones, we know to be one of the people offered deals. In her criminal cases . . . she wasn’t convicted. . . . she was given special treatment that was buried in the files. Well, it’s also buried in the file for handwritten notes by Joseph McGilln saying what color the jurors were marking down the color. But more importantly, he made sure that he would take white jurors over black jurors that had the same status, employment status, relationship to police, whatever. So he was privileging people based on their race. He was striking black jurors. And these were the handwritten notes that had never been turned over. So these are key pieces of evidence that have never been allowed in court. Judge Lucretia Clements said that none of this was “material” that it was procedurally barred because it didn’t rise to she didn’t even get to the merits of any of these issues. She said it didn’t rise to enough to have overturned the jury’s verdict.
We had other evidence that wasn’t involved in this case. Because they don’t allow you to have cumulative evidence. They only allow you to talk about the piece of evidence you found today. But the other pieces of evidence that were discovered that weren’t allowed on the record, and there’s a lot more photos of the crime scene by the Philadelphia Bulletin 10 minutes after the crime occurred before the police photos that show that Robert Chobertwasn’t where he said he was going to be that cab driver. His cab was not on the scene. It was not parked behind the police officers’ car. He was not in the direct line of sight. That evidence is not also in the record. So that the judge can look at it in relation to also “where’s my money” from Robrt Chobert. Robert Chobert who was given favorable treatment on his probation, he was on probation driving a cab without a license. What was he on probation for? throwing a Molotov cocktail into a school for pay. But the original court judge Albert Sabo the hanging judge who said he was going to help them fry the N word. In the first week of the trial, which was by another judge deemed cumulative. You can’t look at all this another judge Pamela Denby, do this not material. This statement didn’t affect the statement overheard by court reporter Terry Maurer Carter did not affect the course of the trial. We can’t look at that now because it’s already been dismissed. But we’re that’s what Robert Chobert. He was given deals on his probation. He was given the ability to drive his cab without getting his license taken away. He was on probation and stable rule. But it wasn’t a crime. False. It wasn’t. You can’t impeach him. You can’t use the fact that he was on probation for throwing a Molotov cocktail under school for pay to impeach his testimony. So we have this very upstanding Robert Gilbert.
KC:
So with all of this overwhelming amounts of evidence [for Mumia’s innocence] …Playing devil’s advocate for folks who believe “I think he did it” … . Why is Mumia Abu Jamal in prison?
RA:
Because we have not effectively identified the elephant in the room, which is putting the FOP on trial, we must be clear that they are defending the 1981 Philadelphia FOP for which you have one of the most corrupt police departments in the history of the nation that warranted unprecedented federal investigation of the level of corruption, for which 1/3 of Mumia is arresting officers were subsequently tried and charged and [perhaps not] jailed for corruption, tampering with evidence, and for which this is really important as a medical provider.
In my statement with Mumia that was stated directly to the state, I stated basically, that the court is illegitimate, in my mind, right. For which they had perjury of multiple police officers, who subsequently remembered Mumia’s hospital confession, which was necessary to nail the coffin and established the death penalty. They remembered it months later. I remembered it in the court documentation to me and commentary. They remembered it in the context of being brought together for an examination of police brutality. And we’re queried by the investigator, “does anybody remember a confession”, and this is in court documentation. At which point they proceeded to raise their hand. Now I want to share with you go on to that. Twenty-nine years ago, I was driving across the Bay Bridge, and I first heard Mumia’s words, and I was struck. I had to inquire “Who is this brilliant man?”
And at that point, that’s when I connected with Noel. And I went and got a press pass and walked into the Fraternal Order of Police. And I met face to face with Gary Belle, who was the partner of the slain officer. And I looked at him, and I asked him, so I could personally understand it energetically and feel spiritually. How could it be this brilliant man is gonna die. What was his response? And I watched him, and I understood, clearly, it is perjury. At that point, I walked out and I saw Costello (FOP head) and I understood that I was stepping into a space where they were complicit in a world of violence. And let me say, I kind of understand this, I mean, you some about you know, this people I’ve known who who roll this way with that kind of that logic of racism, this, this sense, self identification as being a warrior, defending society from that creation of an otherness and dehumanization, the whole internal logic, I felt that energy.
And after that, because Pam actually encouraged me and I was like go I’m gonna go, go. And then we began a relationship of mentorship with Mama Pam around, you know what it means to help defend Mumia.
But let us be clear, we have now established that there is such clarity of a desire to assassinate Mumia from a place of the Fraternal Order of Police, but also the complicity of the department of corrections as it relates to the hepatitis C case as it relates to what amounts to medical assassination. Not just of Mumia and others, that it is a legitimate concern for anybody. It is healthy to have a deep skepticism and be concerned about Mumia’s assassination. In the case right now before us as it relates to the changes, health is the level of our combined relationship— medical and legal— working together; and Mumia instructs us. We are a medical team to be in service. Understanding the court of public opinion is very different from the challenges of the actual court, the actual documentation, the actual strategic efforts. We need your efforts.
JJ:
Thank you for that. I want to follow up with what Kolangi said. You know the Fraternal Order of Police seem to operate as organized crime and you say that we have not successfully or systematically engaged them. But you’ve also said about Mumia’s calling for us: move to spirituality and love, not fear. So how could a loving campaign confront organized crime that we have to pay for with our tax dollars? While prisons/police forces are doing harm, and also facilitating death and assassination? I’m asking from the zone of academia— I’ll just speak from my own zone which has limitations— what would it look like for schools [to challenge this violent corruption]? While listening to all the important things that you’re sharing, I also see the adjacent line of Palestinian prisoners being tortured and murdered, when they’re in custody [of the IDF]. There is medical abuse and neglect [and assassination writ large]. This is a global issue. What will we do specifically, in our engagement with the FOP, under the guidelines that you and Mumia have asserted: 1. Heal in the family; 2. Be compassion; 3. Stay with the ancestors; 4. Love Not Phear.
NH
I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. I go to a lot of prisons and I deal with a lot of prisoners and talk to them all the time. The guards and the prisoners have the same health concerns. The violence and trauma that is endemic within a prison does not stay withinside a prison. So the people at SCI Greene, where Mumia was, were the torturers in Abu Ghraib. They were the tortures of their family members at home through domestic violence, right. We know that prisons are sites of trauma for both the prisoners and the guards. I know that tuberculosis doesn’t care, it’s going to infect guards as well. There is some common cause in the conditions of how people do their work. Harder for me to imagine a common cause with a police force of 6500 jackboot white majority, white occupation forces in Philadelphia. It is hard. But maybe it is possible, because they are victimized by what they have to do every day. They are required to abuse people that are required to treat people, and they have higher incidence of mental health issues. I’m not saying that police jobs are that stressful. [For others] being cabbies [is] worse. I think that they do are exposed to being actors of violence in a way that’s extreme.
Maybe, you know, things you could think about would be you can’t do that job for more than 10 years. You know, you have to cycle other people, and you have to have more than six than eight weeks of training, maybe you shouldn’t be 18 Maybe there should be a flock of social workers and everybody should [advocate for there to] be 6500 social workers and not 6500 armed, you know, jackboot guys it’s hard, hard, hard, hard. I think one of the things we have to really challenge ourselves. How can we challenge ourselves to think outside the box love not fear thought outside the box? Love not Phear, it’s about love. It’s about shared common humanity, they are destroying their own community at the same time that they are the perpetrators. And I don’t know quite how I can, how I can be in bonding with them or or see their pain too when their feet on my neck. I believe in self defense.
The city jails… people are dying. [There is] 40% staffing shortage, Philadelphia State Road, it’s horrific. There’s a place to bond with the people there that are the guards because they are under extreme stress.
So if you put a volunteer table out there once a week, you’re gonna start getting their stories. You know they have stories.There has to be whistleblowers within the culture to undermine their ability to do their work. But it’s difficult because our people are so vulnerable and because what happens to our children is real.
RA:
That’s a very good question, Joy. I think Noel is capturing what I understand to be Mumia’s message around compassion. When he shared that message with me, I may have shared in the other program in the other interview. He was 28 days in a special cell getting ready to be executed. It was at that point that he’s hearing a White Guard talk about committing violence that would have had generational implications. And he says to me, like, you know, almost like, you know, “I guess he didn’t clearly didn’t understand my position”. But he made it clear. I am here to give you this message.
NH:
He counseled the guy.
RA:
He counseled him around the implications and understanding and the moment has told me, he said, I am literally living witness in this hell to watching these correctional officers, generationally, I’m watching their sons come, he says they do not like this. They are in this cycle of violence, they’re suffering. He has that wisdom. An aspect of compassion is to be curious. And we can understand within the movement that it is necessary for many people who have been directly victims of that physical, brutal violence to say they’re all pigs. They’re all this, but the importance of recognizing that they’re not monolithic.
So, for example, within correctional officers there is a rich opportunity, because there’s close engagement of prisoners. I mean, let’s, let’s look at how many times you have, you know, wardens recognizing the upstanding characters of political prisoners. The work we are doing here you know, that happened with Sutala. Just recently, his release here, and the work that we’re doing here, where we engage in the same kind of conversations on the phone, as a medical consultant on consultant with a political prisoner who is a victim of torture.
NH:
It is something about belief and hope. But it’s really hard, because in the presence of the violence, it’s extremely difficult. So there is some level of hope. Not every guard is a sociopath.
RA:
So those of us who are more privileged, who are distance who have a class and professional status, if we can come together, and we can start engaging them, recognizing it does us no service not to be curious and respect that they’re not monolithic, and that there is an internal suffering and tension that break the code of silence by saying we do not believe 330,000 police officers believe that this isn’t perjured testimony.
Also be curious enough, we need to be examining who is the FOP through years of research, we recognize what is their institutional structure? What is their public facing leadership? What are their videos? What are they saying? This is really important, how they are so highly organized, and use nonprofits within especially the black churches. Mama Pam had a really strong story about that. We can start engaging in those places to say, “Do you truly believe” that now and we go through, we go through an exercise where we say, you know, which one of the essences they do sort of like, what is your metaphor? What is your superpower? But imagine saying, Do you truly believe that every single cop killer is guilty? Just that single question, is it possible that a cop killer could be innocent? The idea of exclusion, the special category of cop killer in the law, it opens up rich opportunities for engagement. But we need to be coordinated and multidisciplinary in doing that.
Why? Because they are so violent. We need to buffer the most vulnerable. That’s how I understand a strategy going forward one that is recognizing Mumia’s principles, social determinants of health, and engaging it in a way that’s both respectful, professional, but absolutely clear.
NH:
Nothing will change unless there are millions in the streets. Let’s just make sure we know that too. This is a revolutionary moment. It is not going to change just being nice to these people. I believe in the humanity of them, but I believe that we need to hold them accountable and that we need to demand change and by whatever means necessary because our people should not suffer.
KC:
We have an unjust status. Noel, an Irish Lawyer saying to you that we’re not going to do this by being nice to these people. We have Ricardo as a doctor, MD, Dr. Joy James, a professor, and Pam and I are some raving lunatics.
PA:
I will be that.
KC:
That’s why we own this side [of the screen], right here because we likely to go left.
PA:
You know, there’s lanes that people are in in this warfare. [There’s the] FOP. I agree with Ricardo on these judges you got to deal with; you got these D As; you also have lawyers that historically have done wrong, we have got to deal with all this them all the way across the board. But I’m saying you know, people can do lanes. Some people ain’t going to agree that you should go to the FOP like that, but I agree that, you know, fight them on every level, and in the level that you will fight brings more people in. That wasn’t there before, just like the letter I had got from Dr. Martin Luther King, the third, the black Congressional Caucus, which Dr. Suzanne Ross had got them to write. They wrote a very clear statement that Mumia was innocent. And pressure was put on them. The second one that they put out, I’m talking about the entire black Congressional Caucus. Right. The second one they put out, they said that they believe he could be innocent; that pressure [to change their original statement] came from, I believe, the Fraternal Order police. I’m saying that to see the letter that was written by the Congressional people, the letter that was written by Dr. Martin Luther King, III, Dick Gregory, Reverend Abernathy, and the black civil rights people, and our you know, these things we used to get into churches. It aint what I am saying, it’s what they’re saying. And, then they want to hear what it was that I’m saying. In these different ways, you’re able to bring in more people. I’ll be able to bring in a Ricardo. . . a Noel. I’ll be able to bring in different people to see what it is that we’re saying. And it’s acceptable in the halls of academia.
But we all got to understand that these people are [not] friends of ours. There is the Association of Black policemen, and 100 Black cops. Ron Hampton was the head of the Association of Black policemen, he stood on the front line with his baby in his arms in 1995; standing firmly against the Death Penalty and talking about what was happening with me as well. In 100 Black Cops and Law Enforcement, brother Michael stands and speaks out on all these things. Pull these people into what . . . you’re talking about Dr. Alvarez. They would be helpful. We got to fight all the way across the board, all the way across the board. It’s not one or two things that we can do, and all the support that you know, I can throw into all these different plans for bringing Mumia home. Bringing others home. We got to do it, too. We got to you know, just continue to build and don’t be afraid to stand up. And oh, here’s one thing that Tucker said and Wendell Griffin said about missing evidence. Again, they gave that law. Tucker was saying that he was Grant movie that appeal because that evidence was missing. Okay. He also is missing in this case, and is the piece of the bullet that they claim killed Officer Faulkner. They lost evidence to prove their point.
They also this this was another, you know, profound thing. And I just don’t understand why this was never brought up in court. And if it was, how come it’s not something that is constantly talked about the fact that they said that they forgot to take the paraffin test on Mumia to prove that that he shot that gun. This was in the wintertime, I watch a lot of CSI and police tv shows. When you shoot a gun, you get blowback, this is the winter. Mumia got a one piece Snowsuit on where if he had shot Faulkner, they would have introduced the snow suit with the blowback on it from the gun, but he has never been introduced. There is no one actually talking about that damn, you know, clothes that he had on one,
NH:
They said they forgot to test his hands.
PA:
That is what they say? What about the clothing that he had on one? You know, it should be on there as well. The blowback from shooting the gun? That’s my point.
KC: I mean, how did they forget to test his hands? That’s the first thing you do, especially if you’re introducing evidence, in regards to a killing, of an “officer.” I mean, I’m quite sure that that would have been the first thing they didn’t forget. They knew that they would, they wouldn’t find anything. If they if they if they remembered, you know what I’m saying. I definitely want to invite you all as more information comes up [to] hit us up. I’m a jealous interviewer. So hit me up first.
April 24th is Mumia’s 70th birthday. I was at his 50th birthday in 2004. The FTP Movement is definitely interested in joining you all in whatever programming is going on in Philly. We’d love to assist in co-sponsoring [and supporting any endeavor]. That’s the least we can do.
JJ:
Mama Pam, can you tell us about your February 10, 2024 event with Cornel West and Marc Lamont Hill?
PA:
[I will] tell you definitely about that but the amazement of the activism within the movement. Sister Yahne (in Costa Rica/Colombia)#, and I were contacted by a Cornel West’s campaign managers in Philly. He’s coming in Saturday to do an event in Bethlehem tomorrow afternoon. Yahne said wow we can put something together. This is late Wednesday night. We have no place and nobody. [Yahne says to] call Marc Lamont Hill, Palestinian advocates, and brother Gabe. [Quickly,] this came together. We got a flyer, a place [“Making Worlds”] that holds about 75 people. Got Mark Lamont Hill and will zoom on YouTube.
KC:
Dr. James and I will be at Making Worlds bookstore in Philadelphia on March 28, 2024 [to launch Cultures of Resistance, political education 2024 project with FTP Movement and Common Notions].
JJ: There’s so much unity and collaboration, with FTP and Common Notions also active in freeing Mumia. [Clarity] radiates out. Police violence, state violence is impacting everybody, physically, emotionally, intellectually. [The booklet Beyond Cop Cities# is part of four+ texts and Organizing Is the New Cool documentary in the FTP/CN political study initiative.] There are discussions. . . . hopefully, we might all reconnect.
RA:
Wonderful to recognize that one very readily available arena for advocacy that links multiple disciplines is the mandatory reporting requirement around elder abuse. So, medical links legal, links teachers, links social workers, links clergy. I’m hearing the message to liberate our elders, that they’re perceiving this as institutional elder abuse. . . . we can develop reporting of elder abuse across multiple medical and legal and clergy associations, and we can develop that report fully. It’s a way of honoring the call to liberate our elders. So I just want to share that with you, Joy, in a sense of how we can collectively come together in a way [to offer] a coherent, strategic way of addressing the violence, which is well documented now by the American Public Health Association, and even the American Medical Association.
KC:
We are willing to broadcast the event tomorrow, right here on Black Power Media, if you’d like. So just reach out to us, let us know if you guys plug you in and make it happen. So you know, our thing is to utilize our platform as much as possible.
I can’t speak for everybody. I’m just saying this: I’m not here for the money. . . . Right now, this is about revolution. It is about change. It’s about justice. It’s about love. And, it’s about keeping our movement alive. I appreciate all of you. I have studied your works for years. I’ve been organizing for 38 years. I have children; [now] even my oldest grandchild is organizing. We’re here to rumble, and we got to win. There’s no accepting defeat. We don’t care what FOP says. We don’t care about what cop cities say. We don’t care if you have a black lawyer, black pig, Maureen Faulkner, whoever. Get the hell out the way because we’re here to win. You can be a part of this murder; or, you can go ahead and step aside and allow us to live peacefully.
We thank you all for all that you have given: the sacrifice and the commitment. We’re looking forward to speaking to you more about what it is that we can do as a collective.
RA: Love not Phear.
KC:
This is Guerilla intellectual University.
JJ: Peace to all families. Stay well.
KC: Peace.
