A visit with Mumia

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Comrades, Brothers and Sisters: Heidi Boghosian [executive director, National Lawyers Guild] and I [Jo­ hanna Fernandez, Educators for Mu­ mia] just returned from a very moving visit with Mumia. We visited yesterday, Thursday, Feb. 2. This was Mumia’s second contact visit in over 30 years, since his transfer to General Popula­ tion last Friday, Jan. 27. His first con­ tact visit was with his wife, Wadiya, on Monday, Jan. 30.

Unlike our previous visits to Death Row at SCI Greene and to solitary con­ finement at SCI Mahanoy, our visit yesterday took place in a large visitor’s area, amidst numerous circles of fami­ lies and spouses who were visiting other inmates. Compared to the intense and focused conversations we had had with Mumia in a small, isolated visiting cell on Death Row, behind sterile plexiglass, this exchange was more relaxed and in­ formal and more unpredictably interac­ tive with the people around us ... it was more human.

There were so many scenes of affec­ tion around us, of children jumping on top of and pulling at their fathers, of en­ tire families talking intimately around small tables, of couples sitting and quietly holding each other, and of girl­ friends and wives stealing a forbidden kiss from the men they were there to visit (kisses are only allowed at the start and at the end of visits). These scenes were touching and beautiful, and mark­ edly different from the images of pris­ oners presented to us by those in power. Our collective work could benefit great­ ly from these humane, intimate images.

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

He looked young, and we told him as much. He responded, “Black don’t crack!” We laughed. He talked to us about the new­ ness of every step he has taken since his release to general pop­ ulation a week ago. So much of what we take for granted daily is new to him, from the microwave in the visiting room to the trem­ or he felt when, for the first time in 30 years, he kissed his wife. As he said in his own words, “The only thing more drastically different than what I’m ex­ periencing now would be freedom.” He also noted that everyone in the room was watching him.

The experience of breaking bread with our friend and comrade was emotion­ al. It was wonderful to be able to talk and share grilled cheese sandwiches, apple danishes, cookies and hot choco­ late from the visiting room vending ma­ chines.

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

When the time came to leave, we all hugged and were promptly instructed to line up against the wall and walk out with the other visitors. As we were exiting the prison, one sister pulled us aside and told us that she couldn’t stop singing Kelly Clarkson’s line, “some people wait a lifetime for a moment like this.”

She shared that she and her parents had followed Mumia’s case since 1981 and that she was overjoyed that Mumia was alive and in general population de­ spite Pennsylvania’s bloodthirsty pur­ suit of his execution.

We told her that on April 24 we were going to launch the fight that would win

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A Conference to Challenge the Wars of the 1% Against the 99% at Home and Abroad—this banner heads the call for the United National Antiwar Co­ alition Conference, which will be held in Stamford, Conn., on March 23-25.

Addressing this theme will be international guest speakers that include Xiomara Castro de Zelaya, the wife of the former Honduran president ousted by a U.S.-backed coup and the just named presidential candi­ date of the new party of the Honduran resistance known as Libertad y refundación; Fignole St. Cyr of the Haitian Autonomous Workers Confederation; and Andrew Mur­ ray, a member of the British Trades Union Congress Ex­ ecutive Council, a leader of the Nov. 30 general strike over pensions, and the head of the UK Stop the Wars Coalition from 2002-2011.

On hand to help draw the links between the potential of the Occupy Movement and the fight against U.S. wars Parallels between ancient Greece and and austerity will be Clarence Thomas, a longshoreman from Oakland, Calif., who helped to lead the campaigns in defense of the Longview ILWU strikers against the union-busting company EGT, and Scott Olsen, the Iraq war veteran and occupier whose injury by the Oakland police alerted the nation to the connections between the wars at home and abroad.

The war at home on the Black community will be ad­ dressed at a major lunch-time plenary panel headlined by Glen Ford of Black Agenda Report, Dr. Khalilah BrownDean of Quinnipiac College, Pam Africa, and the hip-hop scholar-agitator Jared Ball. Imam Abdul Malik Mujahid of the Muslim Peace Coalition, Monami Maulik of Desis Rising Up and Moving, James Yee, who once served as a Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo, and Cyrus McCormick of the New York City chapter of the Council of Ameri­ can Islamic Relations will help orient attendees to the centrality of the fight against Islamophobia, preemptive prosecution, and indefinite detention.

In short, the new political possibilities and new chal­ Aris Messinis / AFP / Getty Images lenges opened by the autumn explosion of the Occupy Movement, the mass protests against austerity occur­ ring worldwide, and the U.S. government’s drive toward new and deepening military interventions in Iran, Af­ rica, and East Asia have shaped the politics and organi­ zation of the conference dramatically. Unlike previous national antiwar conferences that focused more exclu­ sively on the occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the UNAC conference is necessarily organized around pro­ viding education and space for analysis of the new geo­ graphic scope of imperialism’s increasingly desperate belligerence.

The opening session on Friday night, entitled “Shifting Strategies of Empire: Analyzing the Military and Eco­ nomic Plans of the 1%,” will allow experts and activists such as Col. Ann Wright, David Swanson, BAYAN leader Bernadette Ellorin, Abayomi Azikiwe of the Pan-Africa Newswire, Kazem Azim of Solidarity Iran, Adaner Us­ mani of the Labor Party of Pakistan, Jeff Mackler, and others to explain the manner in which the U.S. threats against Iran and Syria are linked to the so-called “Return to Asia” and the step up of operations on the African continent.

The major Palestinian leaders Lamis Deek of Al Awda NYC and Andrew Dalack of the U.S. Palestinian Commu­ nity Network will be on hand to discuss the relationship between Israel’s dramatic new war moves inside Pales­ tine and those they are threatening on Iran. A major ple­ nary panel on Sunday will facilitate a discussion among leading environmentalist Bill McKibben, well-known