Stop the medical execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal!

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SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 2015 3 Hundreds of San Francisco Bay Area ac­ tivists rallied on the weekend of Oct. 1618 to save the life of Mumia Abu-Jamal, perhaps the world’s best known political prisoner and an innocent victim of a rac­ ist and government-orchestrated 1981 frame-up trial that initially imposed the death sentence.

Following decades of denied appeals, a federal district court finally decreed that the death penalty had been improperly imposed, and ordered that Pennsylvania authorities either conduct a new trial or impose a sentence of life-imprisonment without possibility of parole. Fearing that the mountain of evidence of Mumia’s innocence might reverse his conviction in another new trial and grant him free­ dom, Pennsylvania authorities, who had previously and repeatedly pledged to im­ pose nothing less than the death penalty, opted for life imprisonment.

Mumia is now serving his 34th year of a life sentence at SCI Mahoney prison in Frackville, Pa. His fight for freedom and a new trial has been supported by Amnesty International, the European Parliament, some 17 national U.S. trade unions, and millions of anti-racist activ­ ists, human rights, and social justice or­ ganizations around the world.

Mumia has been denied medication that essentially cures active hepatitis C, a liver disease that he contracted when he received a hospital blood transfusion in 1981 after being shot by Philadelphia po­ lice officers. Today his long dormant Hep C has flared up with a vengeance, leav­ ing him hospitalized a few months ago— barely able to stand for more than a few moments, his body and hands swelled to enormous proportions, unable to speak, dazed, and essentially incoherent.

While the worldwide campaign initiat­ ed by the International Concerned Fam­ ily and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal has forced the Pennsylvania Bureau of Pris­ ons to render Mumia a modicum of care, his struggle for the readily available antiviral medication is today a top priority.

Robert Boyle, Mumia’s attorney in this matter, told Bay Area audiences via a telephone hookup that “Mr. Abu-Jamal’s hepatitis C can be cured—and the pain­ ful and dangerous consequences allevi­ ated—if the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections would administer the di­ rect acting anti-viral medication that has now become the standard for treatment for hepatitis C infections.”

“According to the American Associa­ tion for the Study of Liver Disease,” said Boyle, “this hepatitis C treatment ‘results in sustained virlogic response which is tantamount to virologic cure.’”

Shockingly, 10,000 Pennsylvania pris­ oners today suffer from hepatitis C. None receive this cure. Undoubtedly, this kind of statistic is repeated with regard to prisoners across the nation! In Penn­ (Left) Mumia in 2013.

sylvania, and in capitalist America more generally, we hear the claim that life-saving medications “cost too much money.”

Mumia’s Bay Area tour featured Pam Africa and Ramona Africa, long-term Free Mumia and MOVE Nine leaders, representing the In­ ternational Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal and the MOVE Organization, both tour co-sponsors. The MOVE Organiza­ tion, founded by lay attorney and social justice fighter John Africa, is a revolutionary humanist social movement and serves as the defense organization fighting for the release of the MOVE 9 (now six), victims of a police and government 1985 frame-up, who are serving long-term sentences and repeat­ edly denied parole.

The Bay Area tour represented an im­ portant step forward in re-invigorating Mumia’s freedom struggle and in win­ ning support for critically necessary medical treatment. The tour was initi­ ated by the Northern California-based Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal and the United National Antiwar Coali­ tion (UNAC), the latter a longstanding antiwar and social-justice coalition that has long championed Mumia’s freedom.

Over $4000 was raised for the Interna­ tional Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal in the course of four successful meetings in San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, and Sacramento. Some two-dozen prison-rights, social-justice, socialist, and radical organizations sup­ ported the tour and sent speakers to ad­ dress the enthusiastic rallies.

The Oakland rally was addressed by former political prisoner Angela Davis, who has been raising funds in speak­ ing engagements across the country for Mumia’s freedom. Messages of solidarity from freed political prisoner and frame-up victim Lynne Stewart and from Pulit­ zer Prize novelist Alice Walker were read at all meetings.

Speakers presenting greetings to the various rallies included Diane Block, California Coalition for Women Prison­ ers; Claude Marks, director, Freedom Archives; Barbara Blong, Coordinating Committee, Northern California Com­ mittees of Correspondence for Socialism and Democracy; Walter Riley, National Lawyers Guild; Judith Mirkinson, Na­ tional Boricua Human Rights Network; Jack Heyman, Labor Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal; and Judy Greenspan, Workers World Party.

Additional speakers included Tom Lac­ ey, chair, S.F. Peace and Freedom Party; Steve Willet, CCDS Nor Cal Coordinating Committee; David Welsh, Haiti Action Committee; Larry Shoup, Green Party and System Change Not Climate Change; Nick Baker, Socialist Action; Mary Proph­ et, delegate, Alameda County Central Labor Council; Gloria LaRiva, ANSWER Coalition; Carol Seligman, Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia; and Kim Ser­ rano, Speak Out Now.

The four rallies were chaired by this writer, representing the Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal and the United National Antiwar Coalition.

For further information, contact the Mobilization to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal at (510) 268-9429.

Donations for Mumia’s freedom and for the fight for medical treatment can be made payable to International Con­ cerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal and mailed to Pam Africa, 5329 Catharine Street, Philadelphia, PA 19143. n

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OAKLAND, Calif.—As the 21st United Nations Confer­ ence of Parties (COP21) approaches, climate-crisis activists in the U.S. and around the world are gearing up for massive protests both before and after the Nov. 30–Dec. 12 UN meeting set for Paris. Some 40,000 government, corporate, and “civil society” representa­ tives are expected to accomplish little or nothing with regard to binding agreements to qualitatively reduce carbon emissions or to rapidly move to a 100 percent place eight-foot billboards at seven key Bay Area Rap­ id Transit (BART) stations and on BART trains. Several buses have been chartered to bring outlying activists from Santa Clara, Sonoma, and Sacramento counties.

Nov. 21 was chosen by NCCM leaders, as opposed to the internationally scheduled date of Nov. 29, to maximize participation and avoid the usual difficul­ ties associated with organizing mass events over the A global agreement to implement dramatic and Thanksgiving weekend.

As compared to last year’s Sept. 21 mobi­ lization here, which was essentially limited politically to the rather vague entreatments of the New York City event, NCCM meetings, following some months of discussion and debate, adopted a rather comprehensive set of points of unity and demands.

The demands reflect the growing aware­ ness that to win in this existential struggle to literally save humanity from the horrors of fossil fuel-induced climate catastrophe, a mass worldwide movement is necessary, which includes all struggles for social and environmental justice.

NCCM demands are listed in the box on this page.

Over the past year, NCCM has emerged as a leading united front and ongoing coalition aimed at the education and broad mobiliza­ tion of working people in all their diverse manifestations to challenge the undeniable evidence of climate catastrophe. With each passing day, increasing layers of the world population have come to understand that immediate, drastic, and unprecedented mea­ sures are now required to defend all life on earth from those who would subordinate it to fossil-fuel interests and corporate profi­ teers and their governments.

The fact that international and U.S. climate crisis activists and organizations have called for continued mass mobilizations through COP21 is a crystal clear statement that few, if any, of the organizations currently engaged in this vital struggle have any confidence in the abil­ ity of world “leaders” to fundamentally change their present doomsday course. 350.org and other leading groups have already begun discussions of follow-up mass mobilization in the spring of 2016. n For information about NCCM see: NorCalClimateMob. net or contact: [email protected].

Billions of dollars for energy efficiency and con­