Free Mumia! Free Them All! is a political film screening event about abolition and political prisoner liberation, focusing on the movement to free Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Leading with a teach-in by Campaign to Bring Mumia Home organizer, Johanna Fernandez, we will screen two short films—I’m Free Now, You Are Free (director Ash Goh Hua, producer Arielle Knight, creative producer Mike Africa Jr) and By Your Side (directors Mike Africa Sr & Debbie Africa)—followed by a conversation between the filmmakers and Kazembe Balagun about the importance of cultural work to support political organizing.
By screening short films made by members of the political community and hosting a powerful teach-in by movement leaders, the event will make the urgency of abolition and freedom accessible through a lens of culture.
Event will begin promptly at 3pm and end at 6pm. Please only RSVP if you're 100% sure you can attend. Space is limited due to COVID restrictions. This event requires participants to be fully vaccinated and must show a vaccine card, in accordance with NYC law.
REGISTER HERE: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/free-mumia-free-them-all-tickets-177409575817
Location
Mayday Space is a multi-story organizing center and social hub in Bushwick. Mayday is both a neighborhood resource and a citywide destination for engaging programming, a home for radical ideas and debate, and a welcoming gathering place for people and movements to work, learn, celebrate and build together.
Bios
Johanna Fernández teaches 20th Century US history and the history of social movements in the Department of History at Baruch College (CUNY). Fernández is also the author of the award winning book, The Young Lords: A Radical History (UNC, 2020). The Organization of American Historians presented Fernández with not only the Frederick Jackson Turner Award, which recognizes a first scholarly book dealing with American history, but also two others: The Merle Curti Social History Award and the Liberty Legacy Foundation Award. In 2014, Dr. Fernández sued the NYPD for its failure to honor her research-driven Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request. Her suit led to the recovery of the “lost” Handschu files, the largest repository of police surveillance documents in the country, namely over one million surveillance files of New Yorkers compiled by the NYPD between 1954-1972, including those of Malcolm X. Professor Fernández is the editor of Writing on the Wall: Selected Prison Writings of Mumia Abu-Jamal (City Lights, 2015) and an organizer with the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home.
Kazembe Balagun is a writer, cultural historian and activist from the Bronx, New York City. He was involved in the movement to Free Mumia Abu Jamal and to end the prison industrial complex during the 1990s as a member of the Student Liberation Action Movement.
I'm Free Now, You Are Free is a short documentary about the reunion and repair between Mike Africa Jr and his mother Debbie Africa—a formerly incarcerated political prisoner of the MOVE9. In 1978, Debbie, then 8 months pregnant, and many other MOVE family members were arrested after an attack by the Philadelphia Police Department; born in a prison cell, Mike Africa Jr. spent just three days with his mother before guards wrenched him away, and they spent the next 40 years struggling for freedom and for each other. “I realized that I had never seen her feet before,” was a remark he made when he reflected on Debbie’s homecoming. This film meditates on Black family preservation as resistance against the brutal legacies of state sanctioned family separation.
By Your Side highlights the story of Mike Sr. and Debbie — how they maintained their relationship through the harsh Rizzo era, and the 40 years they spent in prison separated from each other, their children, families, and freedom. This story tells of their determination and commitment to never giving up.
For any questions about the event please email us at jcarrera90@protonmail.com.