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Noelle Hanrahan: Updates from A Visit with Mumia Abu-Jamal at SCI Mahanoy

Yesterday I drove a couple hundred miles round-trip on the PA turnpike to SCI Mahanoy in Frackville, PA.

Let me share some welcome news from the visit: Mumia looked the best I have seen him since August 2023. He is stable, his health is slowly improving. And the advocacy that you have engaged in for a healthy diet is making an impact. Your calls and letters have made a difference.

He is getting his prescribed medicines and advocating for alternatives as well! Yesterday he said “In the last week they served wheat bread 3 times! Usually, it is a rare Sunday, maybe once a month when I see anything but white bread… this week there was a heaping pile of salad in the middle of my tray, I was shocked.”  

He is vibrant, alert, and solid.  This is in sharp contrast to all of my visits since September, when I have wanted to wheel him to the ER. I visit every two weeks in person, sometimes more, because Mumia is extremely vulnerable: he is being denied cardiac rehabilitation, at risk of complications from historic lack of Hep C care, managing raging psoriasis, and bearing the the stress of living in prison for 42 years (29 years in solitary).  

The simple truth is that every single one of you has kept Mumia Abu-Jamal alive.  
When you picked up the phone or sent a postcard, put a magnet on your fridge, read and listened to his work, wore a t-shirt, gave a gift, or marched, it mattered.  

Thank you for making a connection with him, to his smile, his resilience, his intellectual leadership and unfaltering integrity. Every single word Mumia puts to paper, he writes in response to your efforts to reach across the prison walls.

Mumia

will be 70 on April 24th, 2024. Prison ages you. The lack of enough
exercise, a healthy diet and adequate medical care is directly linked to
failing health. Trauma only adds to the risk. Mumia was shot by police,
lived on death row for three decades, and survived two death warrants.
This combined with the losses of Samiya ‘Goldii’ Davis Abdullah, his
daughter, and just over a year ago, the loss of his wife of 42 years
Wadiya Jamal makes Mumia’s health precarious. 

Mumia needs your solidarity now more than ever. 

His
diet is still not heart healthy and we must continue to advocate for
cardiac rehabilitation. Mumia told me that exercise is still very
limited: “Today they shut down the yard after 15 minutes because snow
started falling and the wind was biting so the shift commander shut it
down.” As we are talking about outdoor exercise, Mumia noted that only a
handful of folks go out. Prior to Covid and the prison lockdowns, there
were hundreds of guys in the yard. 

Before
2021, everyone had the chance to walk to the cafeteria and congregate,
but now all the food is taken on trays to each cell. They locked
everyone down for 72 hours last week because a water main broke.
Recently SCI Mahanoy banned walking in the day room. So when Mumia
buzzes out to the day room, it is a room he is forbidden from walking
in. Prison officials have parked an elliptical there, but the machine
has no outlet near it. Mumia can use it because he “bought an adapter in
Huntingdon over 25 years ago. He explained “I am geeky, and kept it.”
But, every single other prisoner is out of luck, as the machine will not
work without power. Mumia is one among many lifers who are being
subject to, as he says, “slow death row” and “Death by Incarceration”
(DBI). 

Yesterday,
I pushed open the heavy metal doors, after being buzzed through, and
walked down the cold long hall to the visiting room with Natalie, a
woman who was visiting for the first time. She had not seen her brother
in 23 years. Freddy, 52 years old, is serving a life sentence and has
metastasized cancer with just months to live. He received a terminal
diagnosis after being in severe pain and misdiagnosed. This is all very
rough, but we are not alone.  

Join
us as we advocate for Mumia and all of the people inside, for justice
and freedom. Take a moment to honor the connection Mumia shares with us,
by continuing to take action, and by giving when you can.


When we love we win,


When we survive we win,


When we fight we win,



Noelle Hanrahan P.I. Esq

P.S. –

Thanks
to everyone who has contributed to Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Legal and Medical
Defense Fund (Official 2024) Organizing for Mumia takes resources. $7
pays for a salad for him, $50 pays for a tank of gas to visit him (about
200 miles round trip.) Thanks to your gifts we can continue with our
medical and legal investigations. Please help: bit.ly/mumia-fund