Philadelphia—On March 12th, an emergency demonstration was organized for political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal by Mobilization4Mumia, after news that the 66-year-old revolutionary journalist had contracted Covid-19 while under torture in a Pennsylvania concentration camp. The rally took place directly in front of Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner’s office to demand the release of Mumia and other ill and elderly incarcerated people currently kidnapped inside colonial prisons.
Present at the emergency call to action was Janine and Janet Africa, two former members of the MOVE organization and MOVE 9. The pigs framed both revolutionaries, and each spent 41 years behind bars after the city of Philadelphia dropped a bomb on the MOVE house that murdered their Comrades and family.
After showing graphic pictures of Mumia in his current condition, how his entire body is covered in painful sores, Janine and Janet Africa laid out the long history of how these colonial prisons kill revolutionaries through inhumane conditions of being fed food that colonizers wouldn’t even feed their dogs, poisoned water, the stress of 23 hours of isolation a day because of COVID, and medical neglect.
They knew this, not through theory or some made-up words on a piece of paper, but through direct experience of going into these concentration camps healthy, innocent, only to be systematically poisoned by these prisons and medically neglected like Merle Africa in 1995, Phil Africa in 2005, and Delbert Africa just last year.
National news station NPR, and sellout reporter Annette John-Hall of WHYY, a local station in Pennsylvania, have already begun circling like vultures, reaching out to commission those close to Mumia for his obituary. Mumia, however, is still very much alive. The colony wants to send our revolutionaries to the grave before they are even gone. The colony wants our revolutionaries dead, but through colonized organization and unity, we will fight for our Revolutionary Heroes. We will Free Mumia. We will free them all!
The Revolutionary Mumia Abu-Jamal
Mumia Abu-Jamal was one of the sole journalistic defenders of the MOVE organization in amerikkka, and an award winner of the “Voice of the Voiceless” for his revolutionary reporting on police brutality and other colonial contradictions that Colonized people faced. He served as a reporter for NPR and would become the President of the Association of Black Journalists.
However, no matter the title the colony tried to attach to Mumia, he followed the path of a revolutionary in all aspects of his life. Even before all the journalistic success, Mumia, as a teenager, served as a founding member of the Philadelphia Chapter of the Black Panther Party.
This foundation would serve as a guide for Mumia as no matter his journalistic position in the colony, Mumia told of the atrocities that poor and working-class people face. He told of the power of Colonized unity, organization, and leadership. He showed and helped educate the Colonized masses on that power, the power that we have to build and liberate ourselves.
And for that, for being a servant of the colonized masses and using his platform as a journalist to be a true revolutionary voice for the unheard, all his positions were pulled from him, forcing him to drive a taxi to be able to survive.
Mumia continued being a champion of the people—giving them revolutionary hope. The hope of a world outside of colonialism, not a reformation of it. A world where no one lives at the expense of another, but the colony did to Mumia Abu-Jamal what it fights tooth and nail to do to all of our revolutionaries who preach of that hope.
The colonial state seized their opportunity to take another one of our revolutionaries on December the 9th in 1981. Mumia was parked near the corner of 13th and Locust street after a night of working as a cab driver to supplement his income to survive. After hearing gunshots and seeing his brother William Cook, he got out of the cab and ran towards the scene only to be shot by a uniformed pig.
He was shot, kidnapped, and later put on death row under false charges by Judge Sabo, who carried the nickname the “Prosecutor in Robes”.
Jenine Africa mentions that this all took place two days after Mumia called into a radio program. He interrogated the judge who sentenced the MOVE 9 to jail for 30-100 years for allegedly killing a pig. Fighting for his comrades, he asked who killed the cop, and the judge wouldn’t answer, so he kept pressing until the judge finally yelled, “ I don’t know who killed the cop, but they said they were a family, so I sentenced them as a family.” Just 48 hrs later, the state attempted to take Mumia’s life.
All aspects of the trial: evidence, witnesses, and sentencing were full of contradictions, lies, coercion, and conflicts of interests. This was never about justice. It was an attack by the colony to steal, enslave, and genocide Mumia from the people, from spreading revolution, and that is the only thing he was guilty of.
And even under the hell that colonial concentration camps are, Mumia has done what all revolutionaries do, continuing to organize, continuing to educate, and above all continuing to further revolution no matter where he is!
Freedom, the destruction of colonialism, is the only condition Mumia Abu-Jamal, Russell Maroon Shoatz, Assata Shakur, and all Colonized people and political prisoners deserve. The only thing they need. And Black Hammer is organizing, building, and fighting to achieve that goal every single day.
The systematic genocide of colonial concentration camps
The colony kills with more than just bullets and bombs. They systematically kill our people with medical neglect. In the same way that the revolution doesn’t stop fighting for our liberation, the colony doesn’t stop trying to genocide our revolutionaries and our people.
Not only was Mumia healthy before being enslaved by the state on false charges, but Janine and Janet mention at the demonstration that Mumia was also healthy for the most part through the first 30 years of his sentence. Only after the continuous pressure from the Masses organizing and demanding that Mumai be taken off of death row that the colonial state in 2011 dropped the charge from death to life with no parole.
A few years after organizers successfully overturned Mumia’s death row conviction, the pigs saw to it to force him into Diabetic shock and deny him medical treatment for Hepatitis C, but it doesn’t stop there.
On top of all of this, the press release yesterday mentions that Abu-Jamal has now contracted COVID in this colonial concentration camp. On March 3rd, he was hospitalized to remove excessive fluid from his lungs. During this treatment, his legs and arms were brutally shackled to the hospital bed for four straight days—impacting open and bloody wounds from his unrelenting skin ailment.
Mumia has developed sclerosis, organ failure of the skin, and congestive heart failure. His medical consultant, Dr. Ricardo Alveraz, who rarely gets to talk to Mumia, says, “of people diagnosed with congestive heart disease, 50% don’t live past 5 years. To live past five years, CHD patients require proper meds, physical therapy, and other life-altering changes. The Pennsylvania Department of correction’s anti-humane policies make it impossible for anyone to change their diet, exercise more, get fresh air, reduce stress, or receive the right medicines. That is why Mumia and other incarcerated people who suffer from similar life-threatening ailments must be released…The only acceptable treatment for Mumia Abu-Jamal is his freedom.”
Janine and Janet explain how the colonizers expected to kill Mumia with lethal injection, but whenever the death sentence was dropped, the colonial powers took it into their own hands to use their colonial concentration camp to systematically poison Mumia in the same way they did Merle Africa, Phil Africa, and Delbert Africa. The same way they do so many of our revolutionaries once they kidnap us into their modern-day plantations, but they don’t just enslave us. They poison us, then neglect our health until it kills us, just as they are trying to do right now with Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Now NPR has commissioned Anne John-Hall to write the obituary of our revolutionary elder. The same NPR who fired Mumia for staying true to being a journalist who placed the bias of the poor and working-class colonized people above all else, just like Black Hammer Times. But this concentration camp hasn’t taken our revolutionary elder yet, and, damn it, the colonized masses aren’t gonna be silent. We will organize and fight till the day Mumia is free!
The colony can kill a revolutionary, but Revolution will never die.
The state has consistently tried to assassinate Mumia because they are trying to make an example of him for any Colonized person who recognizes the duty to join a revolutionary organization and who spreads the idea of revolutionary hope. Mumia is a shining beacon of that hope.
That is why the colony is trying to genocide the revolution through an individual, but what the pigs don’t realize is that anti-colonial revolution doesn’t lie with one person. The revolutionaries in Black Hammer have internalized this well: touch one, touch all! When the colonial system tries to assassinate one of us, it’s because it tries to assassinate us every day. And so when one of us organizes to smash Colonialism, we ALL unite and organize.
We unite and organize to build power for the Colonized masses. To build a world where all of our people are free from the colony’s lies and atrocities. Colonialism isn’t the land of milk and honey as it tries to make us believe. It’s poisoned water, food that is destroying our bodies, prisons that enslave and genocide our people like Mumia Abu-Jamal, sterilization of our women, racism, bullets, and bombs like they dropped on the families in the MOVE home.
That’s why we are building Hammer City, a safe haven with no rent, ‘Rona, kkkops, or yt people. A community under the dictatorship of poor and working-class colonized people, a place where all our people can thrive. Join Black Hammer today because it is only through Colonized leadership, organization, and unity that we will bring the dream of hammer city to reality and, ultimately, destroy the root of all problems for Colonized people—Colonialism
Black Hammer unites with the International Concerned Friends and Family of Mumia Abu-Jamal, and we have a call to action listed below to show that unity materially and demand the release of Mumia Abu-Jamal, all political prisoners, the elderly and ill at risk from COVID, as well as the release of ALL colonized people from the concentration camps.
Land Back!
Call to Action
DA Krasner, Gov. Tom Wolf, and PA DOC Secretary John Wolf are responsible for the healthcare for Mumia and all those incarcerated. Their refusal to release Mumia and to deny him and other ill and elderly incarcerated people proper healthcare amounts to nothing less a death sentence.
Make the following calls:
Gov Tom Wolf: 717-787-2500
PA DA Larry Krasner: 267-456-1000
Prison SCI Mahanoy: 570-773-2158
PA DOC Secretary John Wetzel: 717-728-2573
Script:
My name is _____, and I demand:
1. The immediate and unconditional release of Mumia Abu-Jamal, who has C*VID-19 and is vulnerable.
2. The immediate release of all political prisoners.
3. The immediate release of all elders, aging prisoners over the age of 50, people who have contracted C*VID, and all others who are especially vulnerable to death through C*VID-19.
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