Mumia Abu-Jamal embraces LGBTQIA2S+ Liberation

By Bob Lederer

Workers World heard the Dec. 12 coverage on WBAI of an exclusive, extended interview with the Black Liberation leader Mumia Abu-Jamal on LGBTQIA2S+ Liberation with Bob Lederer and recommends people tune in. The following release, dated Dec. 4, in which WW retains the italics of the original, serves as an introduction to the recorded interview, found at outfm.org. 

Mumia Abu-Jamal, an imprisoned heterosexual Black liberation leader and author of 13 books and thousands of broadcast essays, has strongly endorsed LGBTQ+ liberation. Dec. 9 will mark his 43rd year of incarceration. Abu-Jamal recently granted an exclusive phone interview from prison with journalist Bob Lederer of the queer progressive program Out-FM on listener-sponsored, noncommercial radio station WBAI in New York. 

The 70-year-old explained his decades-long evolution from a Black Panther using homophobic language in the 1970s to a queer/trans ally today. He is serving life without parole after his death sentence was ruled unconstitutional for the murder of a Philadelphia police officer. 

Abu- Jamal has insisted on his innocence. His conviction came in a trial that Amnesty International and numerous human rights groups said showed extensive evidence of prosecutorial, judicial and police misconduct and “effectively stripp[ed] Mumia Abu-Jamal of any meaningful legal representation,” all seriously violating international legal standards.

In the interview, Abu-Jamal commented on the 1970 statement by Black Panther Party (BPP) leader Huey Newton, just a year after Stonewall and pressure from queer liberationists, giving groundbreaking public support to the then-strong movements for women’s and gay liberation. Newton called for building an alliance with both movements and for stopping the then-common use among leftists of homophobic language as epithets for repressive government officials. 

At the time, Abu-Jamal was the 16-year-old Lieutenant of Information of the Philadelphia Chapter of the BPP. Abu-Jamal told Lederer:

When you think about what Huey said … about gay folks and lesbian and queer folks, I must be honest with you, it was not well received by members of the party. … But as usual, this was Huey at his finest.

Abu-Jamal went on to praise Newton’s tactical brilliance in seeking to build larger coalitions to advance the BPP’s goals of Black freedom. He also labeled the women who were two-thirds of BPP members as “the glory of the Party, the hardest workers, the most disciplined.”

How Abu-Jamal’s thinking evolved

Abu-Jamal explained how his thinking on queer issues has evolved since 1991, when he thanked Queers United in Support of Political Prisoners (QUISP) for planning a lesbian/gay forum in New York to support him, while noting his belief that, “Heterosexual hookups [are] natural and inherently right.” His exchange of letters with QUISP started a long-term dialogue with LGBTQ+ activists nationwide that played a role in his later change of views. Speaking of his post-1991 evolution, Abu-Jamal commented:

What we learn when we study revolution is that all things change and that means perceptions, it means perspectives, it even means vision. We see and experience things differently.

Abu-Jamal reflected that new awareness in his widely-distributed commentaries in 2000 and 2019, decrying the murders of white gay men (including Matthew Shepard) and Black trans women, respectively, putting both in the context of a violent, racist society.

Abu-Jamal cited the emergence in the 2010s of the queer-led Black Lives Matter movement as a major spur for straight Black liberation leaders to embrace LGBTQ+ liberation:

Some of the most advanced sectors of the Black liberation movement began to think about it far more broadly and deeply than even when Huey made his call.

Abu-Jamal also spoke movingly of the lessons he has learned from gay and trans prisoners in the institutions where he has been incarcerated:

I’ve seen people — literally seen them — try to commit suicide by jumping off of a rail onto the floor. … Prison, by its nature, breeds isolation in human beings and atomizes them to the extent that it further isolates and separates them. And for trans [people] and gay men in prison, it’s a hell in a hell, you know? They get the worst of it.

In the radio documentary produced by Out-FM’s Lederer based on his interview with Abu-Jamal, he included an account of the prisoner’s evolution on queer issues by Noelle Hanrahan, a lesbian journalist who has recorded 3,000 of Abu-Jamal’s radio essays through the group she co-founded, prisonradio.org, which airs the voices of incarcerated people. 

Hanrahan is now an attorney and private investigator working with Abu-Jamal’s criminal defense and medical defense teams. She came out to him on her second recording visit in 1992 and began educating him on queer issues. Hanrahan commented, “Mumia Abu-Jamal’s instinctual curiosity and warm wonder, his lack of judgment or distance and harshness, kept me coming back.”

Abu-Jamal has again appealed his conviction based on new evidence discovered recently that had been illegally withheld from his defense attorneys for 41 years. 

For more information on a campaign seeking proper health care and nutrition for Abu-Jamal (who had open-heart surgery in 2021) and all incarcerated Pennsylvanians and to contact Governor Josh Shapiro to support executive clemency for Abu-Jamal and all elderly prisoners, visit prisonradio.org.

For background on Abu-Jamal’s criminal case, see “Manufacturing Guilt – A Short Film About Mumia Abu-Jamal’s Case,” produced by Stephen Vittoria and Noelle Hanrahan for Street Legal Cinema/Prison Radio.

Contact: Bob Lederer,
[email protected], 917-376-9933