From the Desk of Noelle Hanrahan

Prison Radio • PO Box 411074, San Francisco, CA 94141 • www.prisonradio.org • info@prisonradio.org

May, 2014

Dear Friend,

Seeing Lynne Stewart return home to her family from a Texas prison,and Marshall Eddie Conway walk out of prison after 44 years was areminder that freedom is sweet!

Thank you each and every one of you who keep hopealive, who write, work and careabout these prisoners, and allprisoners. Our stand togetherand our action together make a difference.

There was nothing compas -sionate about either release.Both were targeted for their political work in support of nationalliberation struggles in the United States. Words cannot mask the harmdone by their arrests, and the years lost.

Prison Radio reporters are on the front lines. Our correspondents aresending in their dispatches from prisons across the country, from deathrow, solitary confinement, immigration detention, jails—in many casesafter decades inside. These unique voices provide first-person expertanalysis that is missing from the daily news cycle.

Prison Radio NewsThe first quarter of the year has gotten off to a roaring start. Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey withMumia Abu-Jamal (now airing on the Starz Cable Network) had screenings in dozens of cities includingAmherst, MA, Philadelphia, PA, Austin, TX, and was picked up by Telesur and will be broadcast in Venezuela.While traveling to Texas I visited Kevin Rashid Johnson in Amarillo as an investigator and I will return toAmarillo in a few days. We are documenting the conditions in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice andproviding support to Rashid’s chilling exposés of prison conditions.

We are also pursuing various media strategies in Ohio, seeking to tell the story of the Lucasville defendants.Currently the Ohio DOC is banning in-person media visits with these men based on the proposed content oftheir speech. Prison Radio has also joined with the attorneys Staughton and Alice Lynd and the ACLU of Ohio,and become the lead plaintiff of “Hanrahan v. Mohr.” This suit is a petition by Chris Hedges, James Ridgewayand Derrick Jones and the prisoner plaintiffs Keith Lamar, Siddique Abudullah Hasan, Jason Robb, Greg Curry,and George Skatzes that challenges the censorship of the Lucasville defendants who have languished on deathrow and in solitary since 1993. Summary judgement arguments will be set soon.

In the next few months we are expanding our coverage to include voices such as a female juvenile lifer inCalifornia, an immigrant detainee, and prisoners in long-term isolation.

Baltimore Black Panther Marshall Eddie Conwayreleased after 44 years in prison.

Lynne Stewart greets her grandson at LaGuardiaAirport 1/1/2014 www.lynnestewart.org

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To Our Supporters

On thismy sixtieth year of lifeI am compelled to share with youall my supportersa sense of thanks beyond anything you have ever heardand anything I have ever saidFor I am here among the livingbecause of each and every one of youAll of you known and unknownwho have joined us in this battle for life liberty and justiceSome of you have been beatenSome of you have been jailedMost of you have been threatenedYet you have continued the struggle no matter what for years for yearsWe are not where we want to beBut we are here because you are thereYour struggle has become our struggleand it has touched many many people the world overMake no mistakeI breathe today because you fought for my breathThe state hates you and attacks you because you fought for mewith me every step of the wayI am humbled by your support and energized by itStruggles like this prove the possibleAnd we are not doneThey have had to rewrite laws for usBut like sunshine like rainwe just keep on movingkeeping on coming I thank you all for what you have done and what we have yet to doI love you all.On the MoveLong live John AfricaFor freedom

From InPrison Nation, this is Mumia Abu Jamal (audio available at www.prisonradio.org)Layout by poet Aya de Leon

“Mumia’s essays from prison are positive proof of the human spirit and evidence of the greatness thathas sustained Africans in America for hundreds of years. Every essay is a miracle.” Jennifer Black

Get the Word. Pass it On. Buy books, DVDs, from

www.prisonradio.org We send $1 directly to Mumia for his postage & phone fund

with every single purchase.

U.S. Incarceration Rates The United States has the highest

incarceration rate in the world. 1 in 32

people in the United States will do

time in prison. 1 in 99 are in prison.

1 in 36 (7.3 million folks) are under

correctional control, in prison, jail, or

probation. Racism makes the impact

on people of color vastly dispropor -

tionate. “The degree of civilization in

a society can be judged by entering its

prisons.” —Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Radical engaged Stanford students came by Prison Radio’s San Francisco Studios3/30/2014 & spoke with Mumia (posted at www.prisonradio.org).

The Fraternal Order of Police Use Mumia to Derail Obama DOJ NomineeThere is a story that lies behind the flash mob partisan attack on Obama’s Debo Adegbile, who was nominatedto head the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department

This is it: Debo Adegbile’s nomination was up for a senate vote after clearing the Judiciary Committee.According to an OP ED in The Wall Street Journal,Adegbile’s representation of Mumia Abu-Jamal, when heheaded the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, was reason enough to derail his nomination. Outlet Fox newsinflamed the story, and Pennsylvania Senators Tommey and Casey, and six democratic senators took thenomination down. The Voting Rights Act and Police Oversight by the DOJ are at stake.

Senators railed from the floor deploring that Mumia was not executed. They attribute this result to NAACP LDFadvocacy lawyers who put forward a fabricated tale. Come now, really? Racial bias in the U.S. Criminal Justicesystem and Philadelphia is a fairy tale?

Just one fact: When Terry Maurer Carter, a court reporter came forward and said in a sworn affidavit that AlbertSabo, the original judge, said during the first week of Mumia’s trial, “I am going to help them fry the nigger”, a Philadelphia judge ruled it “irrelevant.”

The pundits ignore that Mumia’s death sentence was overturned by the U.S. Third Circuit Court and thatdecision was upheld by the U.S. Supreme court—hardly a liberal bastion by any means.

The attack underscores Mumia’s relevance, and why the Fraternal Order of Police want the truth silenced.

The California Legislation recently held hearings on last year’s state-wide hunger strikers but they did not allow the prisoner protesters, who put their lives on the line, to testify. Please read Todd Ashker’s recent letterwww.sfbayview.com/tag/todd-ashker. Prison Radio will “Go to Where the Silence is” and we will broadcast the voices of those left out of the news.

“In a world so ruled by lies, Mumia Abu-Jamal’s truth is a lightning rod.”Stephen Vittoria

Supporters outside the trial of Marshal EddieConway in the 1970s.

Hundreds rally in Philadelphia on April 26th “Resistance and Celebration of Life”www.freemumia.com; www.bringmumiahome.com

Prison Radio Reporters 2014Mumia Abu-Jamal Ayyub Abdul-Alim Bryant Arroyo

Kerry Shakaboona Marshall Keith Bomani Lamar Jaan Laaman Kevin Cooper

Khalfani Malik Khaldun, Lorenzo Cat Johnson Kevin “Rashid” Johnson

Shaka Zulu

Mumia Abu-Jamal is an internationally acclaimed intellectual whowrites in the tradition of Franz Fanon and Noam Chomsky. That he hasdone his work from a Pennsylvania prison cell for over 33 years (30 ofwhich were spent in solitary on death row) is remarkable. His weeklyworldwide radio broadcasts and bestselling books have been translatedinto nine languages. Nelson Mandela, the European Parliament, MayaAngelou, E.L. Doctorow, Amnesty International, Danielle Mitterrand,and Danny Glover have all called for a new trial.

Abu-Jamal, through his radio essays and writing, directly challenges thefalse but convenient “we have realized the dream narrative”. Mumia Abu-Jamal is the conscience of America. And the backlash is swift. The levelof vitriol and outright demands for his death/silence reminds one of theterrorist label put on Nelson Mandela for a quarter of a century. Certainrevolutionary ideas were not meant to survive the U.S. state-sponsoredprogram that targeted Black freedom leaders such as Martin Luther Kingand for the last fifty years, black life in America.

Mumia Abu-Jamal survives. And he is one of the many U.S. political prisoners who are the participants in thestruggle to realize the dreams of freedom and justice. The United States government through Cointelpro andother repressive means has consciously and deliberately attempted to suppress the hopes and dreams of manyAfrican Americans.

Support the Work of Prison RadioPrison Radio keeps the phones on and available for Mumia and our other prisonercorrespondents. We share our resources with our correspondents so they can call andwrite to us. Please consider making a contribution so that we can “top up” their accountsand help them reach the world consistently. We are asking you to support our work andhelp us expand our reach. More voices need to be heard.

This mailing has an envelope. We are asking you to keep Prison Radio’s phone turned onand recorders going. If you listen and are inspired, help Prison Radio continue to bringthese amazing voices to the airwaves. Jump on board and help this freedom train run!Please join us as a donor and a sustainer. $35 is the yearly membership. A gift of $50will get you a beautiful tote bag. A gift of $300 will bring one essay to the airwaves.

This work is critical—for the prisoners and for all of us. Freedom will depend on our independence, the depth ofour courage, and our will to organize. Join us. Each gift is an inspiration to the staff and volunteers at Prison Radio.

Luchando por la justicia y la libertad,

Noelle Hanrahan, Director Prison RadioProducer “Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary”

P.S. With a gift of $1000, (or 83.83 per month) become a Prison Radio member of our Freedom Circle.

The mission of Prison Radio is to record and distribute voices from prison to over 1,000 radio stations worldwide. In 2013, werecorded over 150 essays from nearly two dozen prison correspondents. We maintain two state-of-the-art recording studios, oneon the West Coast and the other on the East Coast. We place a premium on the quality of the recordings and the signal path andequipment. It is not sufficient to just record prisoners, they have to be heard clearly. High quality recordings go a long way toeliminating initial barriers to broadcast. www.prisonradio.org

In Durham, NC at UNC Keith Cook (Mumia’soldest brother) and Jamal Hart (his oldest son)speak out in defense of Mumia. Visit Freedom4Mumia.org.

KWTF Station Manager Ben Saari models tote bag.

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