November 14, 2025
The following is based on a lightly edited post from Zayid Muhammad in support of the Nov. 28-Dec. 9, 2025 March for Mumia:
“Our struggle for freedom, justice and equality has always been a long, hard walk, to put it mildly,” says veteran voice for social justice Zayid Muhammad, chair of the Malcolm X Commemoration Committee.
Muhammad will be among the marchers on Nov. 28 when supporters for [Pennsylvania] political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal will begin an incredible 108-mile walk to protest medical neglect he faces and the medical neglect characteristically facing aging prisoners!
The walk is being simply called ‘March For Mumia’!
Muhammad continued: “It also comes with powerful examples of protest walks in the modern era, such as James Meredith’s courageous March Against Fear, where he survived getting shot trying to march alone through the entire state of Mississippi; and my dear friend from Harlem, Sharonne Salaam, mother of Central Park Five survivor and exoneree Yusef Salaam and now Harlem’s councilman, who marched from Harlem to Albany, New York while simultaneously fighting cancer to dramatize their injustice.
“The incredible Opal Lee who marched from Texas to Washington at 89 years old several years ago to demand the honoring of Juneteenth; locally our own Lawrence Hamm’s March Against Police Brutality from Newark to Trenton, New Jersey, and most recently the American Indian Movement’s Grand Governing Council and their ‘Walk To Justice’ for Leonard Peltier’s freedom after 49 years from Minnesota to Washington, D.C.
“Almost all of them, except the dogged and intractable issue of police brutality, incredibly helped yield some real results and victories. And have we forgotten those Harriet [Tubman] hard North Star walks from those genocidal plantations of our Ancestors. They did that; We’re going to do this!”
This epic action will begin on Nov. 28 at 9:00 a.m. in front of Philadelphia’s popular Uncle Bobbie’s Cafe and Book Shop located at 5445 Germantown Avenue. After a period of twelve 12 days, marchers will end at the Mahanoy State Correctional Facility in Frackville, Pennsylvania, on Dec. 9, the anniversary of the ordeal that landed Mumia in prison.
Muhammad noted: “The ‘sickening of Mumia,’ using the language of radical scholar Johanna Fernandez, who produced the amazing documentary ‘Justice on Trial’ on this case, is the dangerous trigger that inspires the march. The elder revolutionary journalist now in prison for almost 44 years has endured the deterioration of his sight from diabetic retinopathy, a diagnosis he received nearly ten 10 months ago which required immediate surgical treatment.
“After making the diagnosis, prison officials denied that surgery for nine months, and only relented to the first surgical treatment after an international outcry and rallies at the facility. The successive treatments are still at issue. Organizers say that this medical neglect is not just particular to Mumia, but rather that is characteristic of how aging prisoners face medical neglect as they endure age-related illnesses,” Muhammad concluded.
Organizers are outreaching for both marchers, volunteers and the donation of resources to aid the marchers. To participate, contribute, volunteer and follow, go to the website MarchforMumia.org or call 862 240 6589.
