This was predictdable, of course. He's managed to overcome, so far. But this
may be too much for him. What they have done to this man is a terrible
injustice.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
<blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> On Behalf Of Roger Loran Bailey
(Redacted sender "rogerbailey81" for DMARC)
Sent: Wednesday, March 24, 2021 12:38 PM
To: blind-democracy <blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: [blind-democracy] Mumia Abu-Jamal, Now in His 40th Year as an
Incarcerated Prisoner, Has Covid-19
Mumia Abu-Jamal, Now in His 40th Year as an Incarcerated Prisoner, Has
Covid-19
https://socialistaction.org/2021/03/22/mumia-abu-jamal-now-in-his-40th-year-as-an-incarcerated-prisoner-has-covid-19/
March 22, 2021
By Dave Lindorff
Internationally known US political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal has reported to
friends and family on the outside that he has contracted Covid-19 in the
Pennsylvania prison where he is incarcerated, and says he is having difficulty
breathing. His life is in immediate danger and he is in urgent need of hospital
care.
This latest outrage was sadly predictable. Prisons across the US have for years
been allowing serious illness to serve as a form of “silent execution” of
prisoners, many of them certainly innocent of the crimes they were convicted
of. Many prisoners in the system, guilty or not, are serving unfairly punitive
terms that keep them confined into an old age meaning they are particularly
vulnerable to potentially fatal illnesses, whether that is flu, cancer,
hepatitis, pneumonia or now Covid-19.
Noted journalist and political activist Abu-Jamal, now 66 years old and
entering his 40th year in prison, is serving a sentence of life in prison
without possibility of parole following his 1982 conviction of murder of a
white police officer.
As I have written in my book on his case, Killing Time, his conviction followed
a trial that featured coached and lying prosecution witnesses (including police
officers), prosecutorial misconduct, withheld exculpatory evidence, racial bias
in jury selection and a racist pro-prosecution judge overheard saying at the
start of the trial that he would “help fry the nigger.” His appeal process was
just as badly corrupted. Significantly, it was fatally tainted by the refusal
of a former Philadelphia DA, Ron Castille, who during his tenure oversaw the
legal effort to defeat Mumia’s appeals, to recuse himself later when, as a
state supreme court justice he ruled on those same appeals he had overseen.
The entire legal process in Abu-Jamal’s case has been a grotesque atrocity and
an epic scandal.
Already suffering from cirrhosis of the liver because, like virtually all
prisoners in American jails, Mumia was, until a federal court ordered it,
denied timely access to medication known to be 95% effective in treating the
Hepatitis C virus endemic in US prisons. This was done by prison officials who
were well aware that the disease, if left untreated, usually leads predictably
to cirrhosis, then to liver cancer and eventually to death. In Mumia’s case,
legal challenges by state attorneys for the prison system intentionally delayed
that court order until he his disease had already advanced to cirrhosis of his
liver.
Now Mumia has predictably caught Covid-19. I say predictably again because US
prisons, overcrowded and impossible to maintain safe separation in, are known
to be breeding grounds for epidemic disease, and yet have not been declared
priority locations for early access to the vaccines that protect against the
spread of this deadly virus that has already killed half a million Americans.
This denial of vaccination to a captive population of 2.3 million people is
nothing short of a crime against humanity. It is a crime made all the more
outrageous because, thanks to the excessive sentences so common in this
vindictive, racist, classist and deliberately cruel society, many US prison
inmates are old. The Bureau of Prisons reports that 20% of its prisoners, for
example, are over 50. State prisons may be even worse, with many of them
routinely sentencing felons to as much as 40 years, or, in case of rapes and
murders, life without parole. Compare that to most civilized nations which
limit sentences to 10-12 years even for the most serious of crimes.
Given the current pandemic medical crisis facing the US and the world, the US
and all 50 states should immediately order the release of all older prisoners
over the age of 50 unless a solid case can be made in individual instances that
some older prisoner poses a grave risk of committing a violent act if released.
Mumia Abu-Jamal is not such a prisoner, having been a non-violent model
prisoner for his entire 39 years of incarceration.
Free Mumia and all older inmates in Pennsylvania’s prisons immediately!
Dave Lindorff is author of “Killing Time: An Investigation into the Death Row
Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal” (Common Courage Press, 2003)
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--
Charles Bukowski “For those who believe in God, most of the big
questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the
God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to
new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a
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and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.” ―
Charles Bukowski