Democracy Now:

…AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to ask you about Mumia Abu-Jamal —

DAVE ZIRIN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: — who’s been imprisoned in Pennsylvania for 44 years, a number of those years on death row. You visited him last week, just after the Abolitionist Law Center and other groups submitted a petition to a United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, seeking relief.

DAVE ZIRIN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us about your visit.

DAVE ZIRIN: An incredible visit to Mahanoy State Prison in Frackville, Pennsylvania, where I sat with Mumia and his attorney, the incredible Noelle Hanrahan. And what we did was we talked about the United Nations plea and what it could possibly produce for him in terms of, finally, earning his freedom after 44 years as a political prisoner.

But that’s not all we did. I mean, we also talked politics. He’s incredibly sharp on contemporary politics. He follows everything on a day-to-day basis. He’s working on his Ph.D. for Cal Santa Cruz on the life of Frantz Fanon. If that gets published — and there’s no reason to think it wouldn’t be, because publishers are already asking about it — that would be his 16th book that he has written behind bars.”

view the interview