Assassination attempts against Mumia Abu-Jamal

(In Conversation) Assassination attempts on Mumia Abu-Jamal

4WardEverUK • 1 March 2024

published: 26 February 2024

Image Credit: Sura Nualpradid at www.FreeDigitalPhotos.net

[The following are] excerpts from Guerrilla Intellectual University’s interview with Pam Africa, Noel Hanrahan and Ricardo Alvarez on Feb. 12, 2024, by Kalonji Jama Changa and Joy James.

Kalonji Changa: [We have on Guerrilla Intellectual University] the founder of the International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, Pam Africa; Dr. Ricardo Alvarez, physician to Mumia; and the founder of Prison Radio, attorney Noel Hanrahan. Good to have you all [share important information about Mumia Abu-Jamal].

Noel Hanrahan: Mumia Abu Jamal has been in prison now for 42 years. He survived three execution attempts: one on the streets of Philadelphia in 1981 and two literal execution warrants. [It] has been a real struggle for Mumia to communicate with us and to maintain his health. In the last eight years, Mumia has had many health struggles. We as a community have rallied to make sure that Mumia Abu Jamal has survived, just like we rallied when he was under an execution warrant.

Noel Hanrahan also said; "He had [severe] hepatitis C, which there was a cure for, [but] the prison was preventing him from getting [the medicine] … [M]obilization literally made sure that Mumia was given that life-saving cure in 2017. Then he had double bypass heart surgery in 2021. He is suffering from a number of medical conditions."

Pam Africa: Mumia has a tendency to not talk about himself when he’s damn near dying.

He wanted to talk about other things, but there was no conversation to be had there except his [deteriorating] health. You know what he wants to talk about? He’s doing a new book, 'Beneath the Mountain: An Anti-Prison Reader.'

Ricardo Alvarez: I frame any discussion of a medical consultation with Mumia in the context of “What is torture”? A medical consultation with a brilliant public intellectual, a political prisoner … in prison by virtue of what he says, and not what he did … in this context, to do a medical consultation with Mumia in captivity means that there are nuances to words that he says that cue me into concern. One of the words he said, as it relates to the extent of his skin condition, is that it was [is] “unstable.”

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