On Monday, May 4th, we traveled to Harrisburg, PA with Decarcerate PA to protest the silencing of prisoners and other legally entangled people. We gave the following speech:
We are from the Amistad Law Project and were on the legal team that helped to overturn the Silencing Act.
In early October 2014, imprisoned journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal gave a prerecorded commencement address at Goddard College in Vermont.
The Fraternal Order of Police seized on this moment and whipped up a media frenzy leading up to the commencement speech.
PA Representative Mike Vereb introduced the Silencing Act, inaccurately named the Revictimization Relief Act and through some tricky procedural maneuvering, the bill was passed in both houses in than three weeks.
Jennifer Storm, Pennsylvania’s Victims Advocate, and Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams both publicly supported the bill.
The Silencing Act allowed individual victims, county District Attorneys, and the Attorney General to sue people who were convicted of personal injury crimes for “revictimization” of victims, defined as anything that caused temporary or permanent mental anguish.
We sued a few weeks later, along with the Abolitionist Law Center and the MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University, in Abu-Jamal v. Kane. Our clients were prisoners and organizations that disseminated the voices of prisoners—Mumia Abu-Jamal, Robert Saleem Holbrook, Donnell Palmer, Anthony Chance, Kerry Shakaboona Marshall, Prison Radio, Human Rights Coalition, and Educators for Mumia Abu-Jamal.
A few months later, the Pennsylvania American Civil Liberties Union filed suit, representing formerly incarcerated people, journalists, and advocates.
On the morning of March 30th, both lawsuits had a combined trial at that federal courthouse right there. Afterward the legal team was feeling cautiously optimistic. Then later that day we found out that Mumia Abu-Jamal had been hospitalized. His blood glucose level was dangerously high and he was rushed to the hospital in diabetic shock. He has since been sent back to the prison and the infirmary and doctors who took months to diagnose him while he lost a significant amount of weight, suffered from painful eczema, and became weaker and weaker.
Mumia’s medical condition is still urgent. His lawyer from the Abolitionist Law Center, Bret Grote, his doctor, and his family are still not receiving complete information about his condition and care. Further, we know that the medical treatment, or lack thereof, that Mumia has received is not unique. Prisoners across Pennsylvania have been denied appropriate medical care.
We were glad when we learned that this law was overturned last week but we must still fight for Mumia and other victims of medical neglect. We were glad but our hearts are with the organizers and activists on the ground in Baltimore fighting for justice for Freddie Gray. We were glad but we know that this is only one of the many ways Pennsylvania has found to silence and oppress people in prison.
We are here today because we don’t believe liberation will come from a courthouse or this capitol building. We believe we must fight injustice not just with lawsuits but with our bodies, not just in courtrooms but in the streets.
When our loved ones, family members, and friends in prison are targeted by laws and policies that seek to oppress them, we must stand beside them. When people inside are beaten and brutalized, we must stand beside them. When people come home and continue to face discrimination, we must stand beside them.
Representative Vereb introduced the Silencing Act to supposedly protect victims. When Representative Vereb and other politicians talk about victims, they mean something very specific. They are not talking about the Black and Brown young people who are the majority of murder victims in Pennsylvania and across the United States. They are not talking about the mother who’s lost one son to gun violence in Philadelphia and another son to death by incarceration. They are not talking about the countless victims of police brutality and other forms of state violence. They parade out victims who fit into their narrative of superpredators and thugs. They are talking about young people of color as the offenders and any and everyone else as victims.
Even though this law was overturned, Representative Vereb has said that he will rewrite this bill if Attorney General Kane doesn’t appeal the decision. Representative Vereb, I want you to know, we ready!
We will not be content until the state of Pennsylvania closes its prisons, until our people come home, until we deal with harm and violence in ways that are restorative and transformative, until all of our needs are met and we are all treated with dignity and humanity.
We know that the movement to end mass incarceration and the Black Lives Matter movement are connected. We know that we cannot have prison abolition without Black liberation. We cannot have abolition without queer liberation. We know we cannot have abolition until we create a different world.
We can create that world. We can rely and depend on each other instead of on the state. We can meet each others’ needs and keep each other safe.
As Mumia Abu-Jamal said, “So long as just one person is silenced, there is no justice.“
I want to close with the words of Assata Shakur, “It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love and protect each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.”
