For over three decades, beginning in July of 1992, Prison Radio, an independent production studio, has taken on the prison industrial complex with a simple, direct, and potent mission: "include the voices of incarcerated people in the public debate."
Creating multimedia content for radio, television, and films, "We stream our high-quality audio material to media outlets and the general public in order to add the voices of people most impacted by the prison industrial complex."
Prison Radio was founded and directed by Noelle Hanrahan, a dedicated, creative, and prolific writer and producer of "over 3,500 multimedia recordings from over 100 prison radio correspondents, including the critically acclaimed work of Mumia Abu-Jamal. In 1995, she brought out of prison his first book, Live From Death Row (Harper Perennial), which became a best seller. In 2013, she co-produced the theatrically released feature documentary Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary (Street Legal Cinema/First Run Features)."
You can view the trailer for Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary here. This video has a clip from the film and an interview with Noelle Hanrahan and Steve Vittoria, the film's writer, producer, and director.
As Hanrahan wrote in a 2017 postcard,
"Since I first recorded Mumia Abu-Jamal's prolific commentaries in July of 1992, Prison Radio has worked tirelessly to ensure that all people in prison have a voice. Prison Radio's correspondents [from jails and prisons across the USA and now in Germany] are rising up, speaking out, and resisting the dehumanizing effects of incarceration in a terrifying time ahead of us."
For the most in-depth and well-researched project on Mumia Abu-Jamal, check out the documentary Justice on Trial: The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal with Johanna Fernández, an associate professor of history at CUNY's Baruch College, as researcher, writer, and executive producer.
In late 2022 a new issue emerged, as Democracy Now reported,
"a decision by a Philadelphia judge on Friday [December 16, 2022] to order the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office to share all of its files on the case with Abu-Jamal's defense team. Judge Lucretia Clemons gave prosecutors and the defense 60 days to review the files, including many that Abu-Jamal's team has never seen. The judge is then expected to rule on whether to hold a new trial for the former Black Panther, who has been imprisoned for over 40 years for his 1982 conviction in the murder of police officer Daniel Faulkner. His supporters have long claimed prosecutors withheld key evidence and bribed or coerced witnesses to lie, and documents found in the DA's office in 2019 show Abu-Jamal's trial was tainted by judicial bias and police and prosecutorial misconduct."
The Democracy Now clip contains an interview with Dr. Fernandez, who works with the Campaign to Bring Mumia Home.
