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My name is Lexter Almagro. I'm calling from Donovan State Prison. The title of the poem is called "Death Around the Corner." Got half my anger received and I'm overcome by self control. Replace my ignorance with the lightning. The IQ may be able to break the mold or will not die young at the hands of a cop and never get to make your own like George Floyd. I can't breathe. Will all of my dirty laundry be exposed, to rationalize his decree, actions and cold, or will I die at the hands of one of my own Black brothers as I attempt to make it home?  Will I be still with bullet holes? Or, will I die of natural causes or drown from water dripping from a facet or die behind bars from COVID-19? Tattooed teardrop marked down my face to express the pain that I've been crying for. Nothing in my past can be washed away. But after the rain comes a brighter day as the sun rises to its highest peak. I did not survive gang feuds and the brutality of the police just to come to the unsanitized prison and die from COVID-19. I am

Comrade Pitt, Peter Kamau Mukuria, calling in from Red Onion State Prison. This one is titled "Misinformation, Lies, and Conspiracy Theories and Making a Right-Wing Extremist." I be there. It'll be wild. Quote, unquote, you'll never take our country back with weakness. You have to be strong, quote, unquote, fight like hell, quote, unquote, these inflaming rhetorics weren't hyperbolic in nature but rather designed to incite a mob. These were words tweeted out about President Trump prior to and during the January 6th, 2021 rally: a day which will forever be marked by history as the day of sitting president incited his base to storm and seize the U.S. Capitol building. This act, which has been described as a failed coup d'etat, aimed at the heart of the symbolic American democracy was ironically committed by a political party or rather a cult which claims to be the party of quote, unquote law and order. An unprecedented attack of the nation's Capitol was the first in history which the country's own citizens seiz

My name is Philip Alvin Jones. I'm calling for Washington state at the Washington State Penitentiary. The name of this piece that I'm going to speak about is called "In Our unity Is Our Strength." After witnessing all of the uprisings from the backlash of George Floyd and many other unarmed black people, what I came to learn is that protest alone won't end systemic racism. The protest highlighted the injustice, brought attention to it. But there was no shift in social justice. What we witnessed was a response to our call for equal protection. Which was those who would like to see the status quo remain in tact, come out into daylight, more determined to maintain white supremacy emboldened by Donald Trump. They were not just more vocal. They were incited to hate crimes. Now, back to the point I was making about the need for more than just protest. First, we organize. Then we show our outrage and finally we empower with our numbers by endorsing or fielding candidates all across the country. The result will be so

My name is Peter Mukuria. I'm calling in from Red Onion State Prison here in Virginia. Um, so I'm calling in, um, in regards to my dear friend, um, who I recently learned passed away. Um, so last November, um, at the beginning of the month, I spoke to a comrade and a great close friend of mine, whom I spoke to quite often. So she was on her way back from the hospital and, instantly, I inquired about what was wrong and was she okay? Um, she started to tell me that she wasn't feeling well. So she went to the hospital to be checked out and to have some tests done. Um, but the doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong. As she was telling me this, [inaudible] started to cry and I immediately became alarmed. I tried to comfort her, but her being this selfless self, she attempted to shift the conversation onto me by asking me how I was doing. And I wouldn't let her switch the topic this time, because I knew something was seriously wrong that she wasn't disclosing to me. Yes, she continued to tell me not to worry. U

20th Anniversary of CUAPB (4:22) Mumia Abu-Jamal

Hello, this is Taylor Conley here, and I'm currently incarcerated in Washington State Prison. I would like to talk a little bit about my experience with COVID. Currently, I have been, uh, tested positive with, with the COVID-19, and I've had it for about a week and a half now. Um, you know, I haven't had a lot of the symptoms and different, um, health effects that a lot of other people have, but at the facility I'm currently at, there has been a COVID outbreak. And the thing is, is it's crazy because I don't think that they really understand how to deal with it. And that's why. Inside of prison, we're so enclosed and everything travels quickly. If somebody gets a cold, everybody gets a cold in the unit eventually without the facilities like people that travels fast. So with this COVID-19, as soon as it hit in here, it was a huge wave. And we've been on lockdown for the last six weeks, like I was locked in my cell for, um, you know, all day I would get to come out for 45 minutes a day. We'd get our out time to

Hey everybody, it's Uptown Serg. And I just want to start by thanking everybody for all of the love and support that you were sending my way as I sat in the prison infirmary suffering from COVID-19. It was an experience that I'm grateful to have survived. Also, it was and continues to be an experience that has worked to sharpen my perspective on what prisoners are really up against on the inside. So I'm still recovering physically. COVID-19 has left me with many invisible scars as I had no choice, but to sit back and watch several of my elders die in a prison cell or an infirmary bed or in a hospital room. Often compare life in prison to life in the ghetto, in both cases, we wake up knowing that today could be our last on Earth. It's a sad conclusion to accept, but accept it, we do. Especially because we'd likely believe that death is inevitable and it's the same in prison, but what's unacceptable is when we face a certain death on the inside, knowing that it was preventable, that's what's taking place inside

With the rise of the Trump Presidency, few events were more remarkable than the 2017 white nationalist rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia. Here we saw the naked face of white hatred, fear and anxiety, seemingly inspired by a presidency brought lately into being. In part, by the false claim that the nations’s first Black president wasn’t born in the U.S. Who could guess that less than four years later, another white riot would erupt, this time at the nations’s Capitol, the halls of Congress, where yet another false claim, that of a stolen election, would provide the spark to a flame of insurrection? These two furious events form bookends of time, a four-year period of a presidential term, marking malice unleashed by Trump. They also provide insight into white entitlement, the deep-seated belief that public space is white space. They attacked the Capitol in the light of day, shattering windows and crashing through doors. They beat cops like drums; whipped them with sticks, stolen batons and flagpoles; and dra

"Lucky This Time." I was 16 when I started driving and, um, I was 16 the first time I was pulled over. I remember it was about 2:00 AM on a Saturday. I don't remember where I was coming from. It was 2:00 AM. Um, so the officer shined his light on my rear view mirror. He jumped out of his car with his hand over the, on his weapon and looked at me the same way a tsunami would look at a beach house. Instantly I had a flashback of the talk which unfortunately every Black kid in America is taught how to respond when confronted by police. I could definitely tell that this man was the kind of man who brings a gun to a pool party. He called me son. And I thought to myself. Huh? That's an interesting way you're pronouncing boy. He asked for my license and registration, what I was doing in that nice neighborhood, where the console is, did I have drugs. And most days I know how to grab my voice by a handle like a pen. But instead I picked it up, like he shot a glass. You're scared of what might happen if I didn't hold i

Boys are tough, um, boys don't cry. And when it comes down to it, you fight not flight. So I was six and I was taught how to punch. It was the anti-bullying movement back then, um, the first time one of my classmates, um, took a "your mama" joke just little to far. I remember all my training and I hit the boy square in the face. I turned his nose into a fountain. My skin horrified [inaudible]. I closed my eyes. I made a wish. I came home with bloody knuckles and it was the first piece of art work we hung on the fridge. Yeah. I remember staring at my hands they same way you stare at a mid term, you know, when all your answers are correct. And I had no idea what class this was, but I did know something. I was actually acing this class and isn't that what masculinity has become, um, you know, a bunch of dudes afraid of their own feelings, terrified of any emotion other than anger, um, yelling at shadows on the wall. But still haven't realized that we're the ones standing in front of the light. So we learned how

THE TRUMP MOBS ATTACK AMERICA[col. Writ. 1/7/21 (c)’21 Mumia Abu-Jamal]It was a sight that will be long remembered: hundreds, then thousands of men scaling the walls of the U.S. Capitol like soldiers on a web.Then ripping, tearing, shredding all they could touch, all that they hated and all that they feared: the ruling wealthy powerful politicians in the Capitol, senators and representatives alike.This nest of spiders was unleashed and directed by the fiery tongue of the Imperial President, Trump, designed to stop his congressional enemies from formally confirming his successor.This Trump mob seemed to be of working class origins, which suggests they’ve probably spent most of the last year jobless, probably food insecure, and seeing their country fall apart from a failing economy and a deadly virus.That hunger and fury was fed by Trump propaganda, and before long, they were ready. And when they struck, they were all but greeted by Capitol Hill police, who took selfies with them, and opened gates to them.For t

Anything worth fighting for is worth killing for, and everything worth killing for is worth dying for. [Inaudible] I have made myself responsible for all of my actions and my decisions. But if you will, change yourself in one of my shoes for nothing more than just a second and allow yourself to feel the unjustifiable abuse of being pre-judged upon your first impression, to turn around and meet the stares of a delusional, misconcepted [inaudible] stereotype, [inaudible] negative thoughts of a skin complexion. Prejudice is simply the equivalence of ignorance: the act of not knowing what our capabilities of understanding, to be incompetent, makes you a fool, and to given enough time in my other shoe is to brace yourself for the many questions that shall receive no answers. Why did my [inaudible] fall victim of watching my mother being stabbed nine times by her spouse in the fetal position and cuddled next to her was my baby sister who suffered a puncture wound to the head while being breastfed in the fetal posit

My name is Hakim Kikongo Akbar. I'm a prisoner in the state of California calling from Salinas Valley State Prison. Just calling to really check in on an update: they had me underneath the pen for a minute. In the shoe locked down in transition due to my activism. So I'm back out on the mainline, I'm able to get on the phone and reach out to the people. My health is good, I'm staying strong.  I did catch the COVID-19, and everything went wrong. I experienced the hardships from the after-effects. The side-effects almost made me lose my breath. I'm watching other people around me get sick, sad—they got mental health issues. Wherever I go, I'm gonna shine a light on them: issues to help people find their way. I'm still standing strong; I've been down for too long. Everything in my life went wrong, but I'm still standing strong.  I expect people to stay strong and not live wrong, but live right. Keep shining that light. I'm still standing strong.

 There is a certain sense in the minds of millions in the aftermath of the U.S. presidential election, that we have reached the promised land.    The imagery and oratory of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is invoked, to suggest that his Dream, as articulated in his epic "I Have a Dream" speech, has been realized.    There is a deep sense that freedom is here, as we all live in a 'post-racial America'.    Or do we?    To be sure, we are all on the brink of history, for this has never happened before.    But there was a time, quite a while ago, when similar feelings swept the nation, and especially Black hearts, that a new day was breaking, and the old ways had fallen away, when freedom was as real as rain.    I speak of the Reconstruction era, when the nation formally extended civil rights to millions of Black men (not to women, notably) and scores of  Black people took office in state and federal  legislatures, beginning a wave of progressive legislation to better the abominable living conditions of mill

Listen in to the voices of folks like Dennis McKeithan and Mumia Abu Jamal as they walk us through the realities of COVID-19 behind bars.

These commentaries are a collection of voices that described COVID-19 as it began in March, 2020.

On Death Row he’s known as "Roddy," short for Roderick—Roderick Johnson, in fact. For the last 23 years, "Roddy" has been on Pennsylvania’s Death Row, a co-defendant charged with 2 homicides: a drug deal gone wrong. But now, after two trials, two convictions, and two death sentences each for two co-defendants, a trial judge in Berks County Court of Common Pleas, Judge Eleni Dimitriou Geishauser ordered the charges dismissed, and citing double jeopardy, ruled Roddy could not be retried. Roddy was originally tried in 1997. In her October 29, 2020 opinion, Judge Geishauser found that the former DA hid evidence that a witness was in fact a “quasi-informant” who was allowed to deal drugs because of his value in this case. This meant the jury had no real way to judge the witness’s truthfulness. Judge Geishaser condemned Roddy’s earlier trials, calling them products of prosecutorial misconduct that she described as “egregious.” Roddy is being held at the county jail in Reading, PA.

Maroon Fights Two Battles (2:26) Mumia Abu-Jamal

"Cold Days on Death Row." Every place where death row stands is, by its very nature, a cold place. For what is colder than a government killing its own citizens? Especially after years of psychological and mental torture and the isolation of solitary confinement. But now I speak not only of psychological coldness, but of the physiological: cold air blowing into Pennsylvania's death row cells, where men imprisoned by COVID-19 spent 23 and a half hours in a chilly cell around the sounds of coughs and depression—the mental wages of COVID-19 and winter.  According to a source on the row, the minds of men are pretty grim these days given the grip of COVID. Several years ago, a civil suit changed the conditions dramatically. Granting men hours out of cell weekly, then COVID-19 struck and the cold wind blows through the cells of Pennsylvania's death row. From in Prison Nation, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal. These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.

This is a report by Dennis Solo McKeithan, SCI Phoenix, Collegeville, PA, pertaining to the second surge of COVID-19 in the state prison system. You know, I reported about the first surge and how frightening it was. Well, when we were given a little bit more leniency, uh, coming out three times a day, you know, being able to make more phone calls, have more exercise in the gym. But then suddenly a second surge came and, once again, we had locked back down 23 hours, 15 minutes a day. It was reported that 1700 staff people across the state, COVID. Also was reported that 40 prisoners died and two staff. That's reported: that could be much higher. Thing that everyone was concerned about is how? We live in a bubble. Every pod is a bubble of its own, and we had no cases on our pod and our bubble, it was clean. The only ones that go in and out of the bubbles is staff. So it was, so it was reported by an anonymous source amongst the staff that filed a complaint. It was reported that staff, that test and find out they