Mumia Abu-Jamal is one of the longest-serving political prisoners in the world and is globally recognized as a victim of state terror and a symbol of American repression. He is a human rights activist, an award winning broadcast journalist, a former member of the Black Panther Party, former death row prisoner, and is currently serving a death by incarceration (DBI/life without parole) sentence in Pennsylvania at the SCI Mahanoy correctional facility.

In 1981 he was convicted of killing a police officer in a trial replete with constitutional violations, prosecutorial bias, a racist judge, and witnesses who lied. ALC is actively pursuing all avenues of relief while also galvanizing an international groundswell of support for Mumia and for all prisoners serving DBI sentences in Pennsylvania.

In addition to his criminal case, Mumia’s legal team continues to work to secure his right to health care. Currently his legal team has sought to restore  his vision after the prison administration failed to provide a routine surgery for a post-cataracts condition which left him blind for 8 months in 2025. Diagnosed with additional serious vision problems, the loss of vision remains a great risk. This example reflects a pattern of unconstitutional deprivation of health care.

In 2017, Mumia had a near-fatal hospitalization for renal failure due to untreated diabetic complications from reactions to steroids and untreated chronic Hepatitis C. In 2019 public pressure and the legal work of Abolitionist Law Center and Prison Radio won a 3rd Circuit preliminary injunction in Abu-Jamal v. Kerestes to provide Mumia and many others throughout the country the fast-acting antiviral treatment for Hepatitis C. In March 2021, he had double-bypass heart surgery, yet he is being denied proper food and exercise needed for cardiac rehabilitation.

The battle for Mumia to receive care, can and does bring the spotlight onto the lack of access to health care in prison.  When Mumia wins relief  it extends these protections for all prisoners.

In December 2022, Mumia lost his wife of 41 years, Wadiya Jamal. At 71 years old his health remains precarious. He has served 43 years of a life sentence—29 years on Death Row in solitary confinement; it is clear freedom is the only cure.

ALC Legal Strategy Update

Mumia’s legal team is pursuing all avenues of relief: Legislative, commutation, parole, compassionate release and a criminal appeal which requires a full reinvestigation of his original 1981 case. Please join us to help find a collective path to freedom for Mumia Abu-Jamal.

Here are ten things you can do:

1) Join or start a Free Mumia group: Join a worldwide army of activists. Reach out to your communities: campus, faith groups, activists, friends.

2) Make Mumia visible everywhere you go and on social media: wear something that says FREE MUMIA; make bumper stickers, postcards, bookmarks, etc. and short videos on your socials declaring your support.

3) Host teach-ins, a public discussion, and organize community film screenings of Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary and Manufacturing Guilt: Educational outreach is crucial. Link today’s struggles and rising forces of fascism to mass incarceration, police brutality, and state violence and use his writings as the centerpiece.

4) Use art and culture as resistance: Follow and support cultural projects that connect art to abolition. Organize poetry readings, exhibits, or murals inspired by Mumia’s writings and the broader freedom struggle. Let your imagination sketch blueprints to worlds that don’t exist yet, but must.

5) Donate money and raise money for his Legal Defense: If you have funds donate to ALC and Prison Radio by making a one-time or recurring gift here, or by emailing nhanrahanlaw@gmail.com for help with other ways to give.

6) Read and study his work! Mumia has published 15 books. Study each of them and make sure to get the new anthology Beneath the Mountain: An Anti-Prison Reader (City Lights, 2024), edited by Mumia Abu Jamal and Jennifer Black. Buy a copy for a prisoner too! Find His books here.

7) Connect with Youth and Students: Encourage student groups, educators, and campus activists to study Mumia’s work and organize around his case. His writings open deep discussions on justice, freedom, and resistance.

8) Link his case to global anti-colonial struggles,  prison movements, and human rights movements: Mumia is part of an international system of political repression, not just an isolated example of injustice. Encourage solidarity from global human rights movements and organizations and support international struggles for liberation.

9) Write Mumia: Organize a letter-writing party. Let him know how much he means to the world.

Smart Communications/PADOC
Mumia Abu-Jamal, AM 8335
SCI Mahanoy
c/o PO Box 33028
St Petersburg, FL 33733

10) Write and contact officials such as SCI Mahanoy prison administration:

Contact SCI Mahanoy prison administration and demand health care for Mumia.

• Prison SCI Mahanoy: 570-773-2158
• Superintendent Bernadette Mason: 570-773-2158
• PA Department of Corrections Secretary Laurel Harry: 717-728-2573, email: ra-crpadocsecretary@pa.gov
• Central Office of PA Department of Corrections: 717-728-2573, email: ra-contactdoc@pa.gov
• PA Attorney General David W. Sunday Jr.: 717-787-3391

Contact Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and ask him to free Pennsylvania’s elderly prisoners. Flood his phone, email, and mailbox.

• www.pa.gov/form/governor/contact.html
• Call: 717-787-2500
• Send letters: 508 Main Capitol Building, Harrisburg, PA 17120

Contact Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner urging commutation and also ask him to investigate the dirty cops in Mumia’s case — Alfonso Giordano and Gary Bell as well as ADA Joseph McGill. Demand truth, justice, and accountability for police and prosecutorial misconduct.

• Email: phillyda.org/contact/
• Call: 215-686-8000 | Larry Krasner, Three South Penn Square, Philadelphia, PA 19107-3499
• Sign and spread this Petition to Krasner: bit.ly/DropCaseAgainstMumia

 

More Info

Mumia’s Radio Essays on Prison Radio

The Classroom and the Cell Podcast – Mumia Abu-Jamal & Marc Lamont Hill (YouTube)

Beneath the Mountain: An Anti Prison Reader, Ed. Mumia Abu-Jamal & Jennifer Black, featuring Robert Saleem Holbrook (City Lights, 2024)

Death by incarceration: Abolitionists at UN call for end to “the other death penalty” (Tag24, Oct. 2023)

UN Human Rights Committee Calls for Moratorium on Life Without Parole in U.S. (ScheerPost, Nov. 2023)

United Nations Human Rights Committee testimony by Robert Saleem Holbrook (YouTube)