By JEFF MACKLER Executions are scheduled at one minute after midnight at San Quentin Prison, just over the San Rafael Bridge in Marin County and overlooking the San Francisco skyline. On the cold winter night of Feb. 10, 2004, death-row inmate Kevin Cooper was being fully prepped for the hereafter, dressed in a new set…
By ERWIN FREED On May 8, CT Bail Fund called a rally outside of York Correctional Institute, a women’s prison in Niantic, Conn. Eleven other groups were listed as co-sponsors on the events facebook page and around 40 people showed up in solidarity. The rally was called in conjunction with the Bail Fund’s successful effort…
By JOHN LESLIE The Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office continues to stonewall in the case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. At a court hearing on April 30, prosecutors failed, once again, to produce a memorandum allegedly signed by former Philadelphia District Attorney and retired Pennsylvania Supreme Court Chief Justice Ronald D. Castille. Under the 2016 Williams v. Pennsylvania…
By KEITH COOK Reprinted from the Philadelphia Inquirer (May 1, 2018). I was stationed in Europe 37 years ago when I received the call that all black families dread. My little brother, Mumia Abu-Jamal, had been shot by the police and was fighting for his life. Mumia was the kindest and gentlest of my five…
By JOHN LESLIE New mobilizations are planned in the case of political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal. The events will take place at a critical juncture in Mumia’s case, which opened up with the Williams v. Pennsylvania decision, presenting an opportunity, after so much struggle, to finally win Mumia’s freedom. This is particularly urgent because Mumia’s health…
By JOHN LESLIE At the beginning of February, the Philadelphia city council passed a resolution appealing to the Pennsylvania legislature to reform the bail system in the commonwealth. In the current set-up, nonviolent and low-risk offenders are often jailed while awaiting trial because they lack the resources to make even the most modest bail. Larry…
By STEVE XAVIER The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections is attempting to ban the Workers World (WW) newspaper for its coverage of the Florida prison strike. According to WW, “The immediate reason given in the DOC’s Jan. 29 letter is that ‘information contained on pages 1 and 6 calls for action that may advocate criminal activity…
By MOBILIZATION FOR MUMIA Mumia Abu-Jamal will have another hearing in open court on Wed, Jan. 17 at 9 a.m. at the Criminal (in)Justice Center, 1301 Filbert Street, Philadelphia before Common Pleas Court Judge Leon Tucker, courtroom 1108. In a court case that could eventually lead to Mumia’s freedom, Judge Leon Tucker has ordered the District Attorney’s…
By JOHN LESLIE In mid-November, federal agents arrested a Philadelphia police officer, Eric Snell, for allegedly acting as a middleman for a drug ring run by a Baltimore police firearms task force. In addition to the drug charges, Snell is accused of possession of illegal firearms and threatening the children of one of the accused…
By the MOBILIZATION FOR MUMIA COALITION In the latest attempt to further deny freedom to Mumia Abu-Jamal, the Philadelphia District Attorney’s office has contemptuously refused to release the files they were ordered to make public by Common Pleas Court Judge Leon Tucker. On April 24, Abu-Jamal’s 63rd birthday, his attorneys presented an appeal before Judge Tucker…
Pressure DA’s office to release documents pertaining to former DA Ron Castille’s handling of Mumia Abu-Jamal’s appeals! PHILADELPHIA—On Tuesday, May 30, The Mobilization For Mumia, a coalition of human rights groups in support of political prisoner Mumia Abu Jamal, will host a 2 p.m. press conference and rally at the Philadelphia DA’s office to demand that the…
By FAROOQ TARIK This is a very urgent call for solidarity signatures. Baba Jan, a dedicated activist from Gilgit-Balistan, north of Pakistan, is appealing against a life sentence. His final review petition will be heard by the Supreme Court May 25, 2017. To have an effect, this international call has to be sent Monday 22,…
By JOHN LESLIE On May 13, Jimmy Dennis was released after more than 25 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. The crime and the frame-up On Oct. 22, 1991, Chedell Williams and her friend, Zahra Howard, went to the Fern Rock Transportation Center in Philadelphia to buy a transpass. Outside of the…
By JEFF MACKLER Memorial meetings for Lynne Stewart took place in New York City on April 22, and in the San Francisco Bay Area on May 5-6. Peoples’ attorney Lynne Stewart died on March 12. Two incidents serve to highlight her extraordinary life in the service of humanity. Charged with “conspiracy to aid and abet…
By JEFF MACKLER On Mumia Abu-Jamal’s birthday, April 24, about 125 demonstrators mobilized outside Philadelphia’s Court of Common Pleas in solidarity with Mumia’s effort to reverse his 1982 frame-up murder conviction and win a new trial that could lead to his freedom. Mumia Abu-Jamal is perhaps the world’s best known political prisoner. He has been…
BY JEFF MACKLER — UPDATED March 7 — A few minutes ago my dear friend and comrade Ralph Poynter called to say that his lifelong companion, Lynne Stewart, passed away. She was 77, of Irish origin, and a born fighter who unswervingly devoted herself to humanity’s cause. Just a few weeks earlier Lynne pledged to meet me in NY…
By JEFF MACKLER “It’s a Knock Out Punch,” says Mumia. “We did something that’s never been done before,” says Pam Africa, chair of International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal. On Jan. 3, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Mariani granted the motion filed by innocent political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal for a preliminary injunction ordering the…
By LUCAS ALAN DIETSCHE As of December, Cesar DeLeon is the only confirmed one out of an initial seven prisoners on a hunger strike that started in Wisconsin in June 2016. Visitors have said he is delirious, underweight, and suffering hunger pains, as well as displaying signs of physical abuse. In letters, DeLeon has also reported on physical…
By RACHEL WOLKENSTEIN Below are excerpts from a report by attorney Rachel Wolkenstein on the fight of Mumia Abu-Jamal to obtain necessary medical treatment. Mumia, a noted political commentator and innocent political prisoner, was convicted in 1982 of killing a Philadelphia police officer. He received the death penalty, a sentence that was later reduced to…
By BILL ONASCH Joe Johnson passed away Aug. 5 in Chippewa Falls, Wis., at age 84. His long life was marked by resolute opposition to war, local and national leadership in the Socialist Workers Party, government persecution, an exceedingly frugal life style, and from middle age, devoted care to his mother during her final years.…
By MUMIA ABU-JAMAL A young white man, barely at the age of his majority, walks into Charleston’s most storied Black church and, before he leaves, a new history is written. Attending the Wednesday night Bible study, he sits for nearly an hour, but his mind isn’t on the life of Jesus nor his disciples. It’s…
By BILL ONASCH The following commentary was posted in early May at kclabor.org/wordpress. “Baltimore: We Have Been Here Before”—that is the title of a perceptive piece by the Rev. Jesse Jackson. Of course, every such uprising like the one sparked by the death of Freddie Gray while in custody of the Baltimore police has some…
By RALPH SCHOENMAN The following talk was given via Skype at a Feb. 20 meeting at St. Peter’s Church in New York City, called to celebrate the first anniversary of the release of civil-liberties attorney Lynne Stewart from prison. Ralph Schoenman is the past general secretary of the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation and a frequent…
By JOE AUCIELLO — BOSTON — “I don’t favor the death penalty, but this case makes me question my beliefs.” “Give ‘im what he deserves—the electric chair!” “There is no way this guy ought to live.” “Let him get the most gruesome death possible.” These are a sample of the comments readily heard in Boston…
By WADIYA JAMAL — With Great Pride — April 11, 2015 — On Thursday April 9, 2015 I visited my husband Mumia Abu-Jamal at SCI Mahanoy, with Rachel Wolkenstein my lawyer and sister. I had seen Mumia in the ICU at the hospital, where he was sitting upright, hand cuffed to a chair. I saw…
