Free Mumia Abu-Jamal! Mumia to Start Hep C Treatment, Finally

Workers Vanguard No. 1109	7 April 2017

Free Mumia Abu-Jamal!

Mumia to Start Hep C Treatment, Finally

After a two-year battle, class-war prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal is scheduled to begin lifesaving treatment for hepatitis C. On March 27, the United States Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit denied a motion by the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) to block a January 3 order that the DOC begin administering antiviral drugs to Mumia. That order had declared that the prison authorities’ “protocol” of withholding treatment from all but those with advanced cases of liver damage was unconstitutional. On March 31, the DOC announced that Mumia would begin treatment the following week.

Mumia is an innocent man who is the victim of a decades-long vendetta by the capitalist state that began in the 1960s when he was a teenage spokesman for the Black Panther Party in Philadelphia. Mumia went on to become an award-winning journalist, known as “the voice of the voiceless” for his searing commentaries on the crimes of the racist American ruling class. He was also a prominent supporter of the largely black, back-to-nature MOVE organization, which was also on the receiving end of a murderous, racist campaign by the capitalist state. Framed up for the 1981 killing of a Philadelphia policeman, Mumia was sentenced to death explicitly for his political views. In 2011, the state abandoned its efforts to legally lynch him, but Mumia remains locked up on the “slow death row” of life without parole.

Prison officials have made clear that providing the medication does not mean they accept the appeals court decision. Rather, due to their denial of treatment, Mumia’s liver damage is now so severe that he qualifies under the DOC’s own protocol. Recent medical tests revealed that Mumia has clear signs of cirrhosis of the liver caused by hepatitis. As Mumia bitterly noted: “My first reaction was really shock, anger, disbelief. If I had been treated in 2015, if I had been treated in 2012 when they say they first diagnosed it, I wouldn’t be this far advanced.” There is good reason to believe that the antiviral treatment will reverse the cirrhosis and return Mumia to health, although he will be more susceptible to liver cancer. However, the DOC may use the slightest improvement in his condition to declare that he no longer qualifies under their inhumane criteria and pull the plug on his treatment.

The DOC has also filed a motion to dismiss Mumia’s lawsuit demanding antiviral drugs, claiming that, since he will now be receiving treatment, his case is moot. Prison authorities fear that Mumia’s case could set a precedent and that they will have to provide the medications to all those afflicted with hepatitis C behind bars—where the disease is endemic.

In a March 31 commentary on prisonradio.org (“The Illusion of Correctional Medicine”), Mumia pointed to his racist jailers’ harsh economic calculus: “The DOC said it will cost them $600 million. It may only cost me my life.” The ghouls who lord it over the largely black and Latino prison population prefer that their victims just rot and die, with a bit of torture thrown in for good measure. The prisons are a central component of the capitalist state, which exists to protect the rule and interests of the bourgeoisie against the working class and the oppressed. Only a proletarian socialist revolution that sweeps away the capitalist order can get rid of the bourgeois rulers’ barbaric institutions and torture chambers.

Unlike the anonymous millions suffering in America’s dungeons, Mumia is relatively well known. After he nearly fell into a diabetic coma two years ago, which could have led to his death, thousands signed petitions demanding he receive treatment from the doctors of his choice. Protests outside Philadelphia City Hall helped to throw a spotlight on the nightmare of “medical care” in prison. While advocating the pursuit of all possible legal avenues in Mumia’s case, we place no faith in the capitalist courts and the bourgeoisie’s injustice system. Rather, we look to the power of the multiracial workers movement, which has every interest in fighting for Mumia’s freedom and must be mobilized independently of the forces of the capitalist state and its political representatives.

In response to Mumia’s medical crisis and the life-and-death struggle for curative treatment, the Committee to Save Mumia Abu-Jamal has issued an urgent fundraising appeal to cover legal expenses. The Partisan Defense Committee, a class-struggle legal and social defense organization whose purpose is in accordance with the political views of the Spartacist League, has made a donation to this fund and encourages others to do likewise. Checks should be made payable to National Lawyers Guild with “For Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Defense” on the memo line. Mail your check to Johanna Fernandez, 158-18 Riverside Drive W., Apt. 6C-50, New York, NY 10032.