Mumia Abu-Jamal: Report Back to New York City and Next Steps

Mon., Jan. 25, 6:30 to 9 pm, Riverside Church

Room 9T (Tower Building), 91 Claremont Avenue between 120th and 121st Streets. Free and Open to the Public.

Come to a report back on the three days in December that shook the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC)’s refusal to provide the appropriate and curative treatment available for Mumia and at least 7,000 other Pennsylvania prisoners infected with the hepatitis-C virus. Those dramatic three days, December 18, 22, and 23, marked a turning point in exposing the DOC’s policy of negligence and malevolence in denying available cures for this deadly disease. A new DOC protocol for treating hep-C patients, something that both activists and legislators had been clamoring for, was secretly issued on November 12, 2015. The DOC attorney was now insisting that Mumia’s attorneys agree not to publicize this document. Mumia’s attorneys refused to agree to this attempt at hiding the horrendous truth in this new document.

Supporters traveled from around the northeast to Scranton, PA, for hearings in federal court that included expert testimony from independent physician Dr. Joseph Harris, who saw Mumia in SCI Mahanoy’s visiting room, and from Mumia himself through video- conferencing. On the third day, DOC medical and legal personnel were caught in a shocking lie when the Chief of Clinical Services, Dr. Paul Noel, was asked if a sworn declaration that bore his signature was ac- curate. He quickly agreed that the signature was his but immediately added that the text attributed to him was not what he had said. It became clear that the DOC’s attorney, Laura Neal, had illegally altered what Dr. Noel had put in writing. He clarified what she had distorted, and the attorney had to reluctantly acknowledge her falsification.

A hearing that was initially scheduled for one day as a preliminary injunction suit aimed at getting Mumia the urgent medical care he needs for his hepatitis-C infection became a three-day, in-depth examination of the DOC response to its high-profile inmate and his prolonged health crisis.