{"id":186400,"date":"2025-08-30T04:36:10","date_gmt":"2025-08-30T04:36:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/186400\/"},"modified":"2025-08-30T04:36:10","modified_gmt":"2025-08-30T04:36:10","slug":"mumia-abu-jamal-says-eyesight-deteriorating-needs-surgery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/186400\/","title":{"rendered":"Mumia Abu-Jamal says eyesight deteriorating, needs surgery"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? <a href=\"#Section1\">Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n<p>Advocates for Mumia Abu-Jamal say that he is at risk of going blind and blame Pennsylvania corrections officials for delaying surgery to address the issue.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe fought back against impossible conditions and we have to say the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections has entirely abandoned its duties and it has to be held accountable,\u201d said Dr. Johanna Fernandez, at a virtual news conference Friday evening.\n<\/p>\n<p>Abu-Jamal, an award-winning journalist and co-founder of the Philadelphia chapter of the Black Panther Party, was convicted of the 1981 murder of white Philadelphia police Officer Daniel Faulkner. The case received international attention and Abu-Jamal maintained his innocence, calling himself a political prisoner. He was highly critical of what he called systemic racism in the city\u2019s police department.\n  <\/p>\n<p>Courts have upheld the convictions through years of appeals. A federal appeals court in 2008 overturned his death penalty sentence, citing improper jury instructions.\n<\/p>\n<p>According to Dr. Ricardo Alvarez, Abu-Jamal\u2019s personal doctor, his eye condition resulted from complications from a 2019 cataract surgery and diabetic retinopathy, caused by overadministered steroids by corrections officials for a skin condition. The overdosing <a href=\"https:\/\/whyy.org\/articles\/family-mumia-abu-jamal-treated-for-diabetes-complications\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">elevated his glucose levels<\/a>, medical professionals said at Friday\u2019s news conference.\n<\/p>\n<p>Now, as his eyesight continues to deteriorate, supporters of Abu-Jamal said that prison officials delayed the 71-year-old\u2019s corrective laser surgery by sending him for unnecessary evaluations.\n<\/p>\n<p>\u201cDespite knowing the urgency, the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections waited until this past July \u2026 to act and then pushed surgery, the surgery he needed for a cataract complication, to an unspecified date in September,\u201d Fernandez said.\n        <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":186401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,104472,1448,2830,104473,1311,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-186400","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-mumia-abu-jamal","10":"tag-pa","11":"tag-pennsylvania","12":"tag-pennsylvania-department-of-corrections","13":"tag-philadelphia","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-united-states-of-america","16":"tag-unitedstates","17":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","18":"tag-us","19":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115115863800090693","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=186400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/186400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/186401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=186400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=186400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=186400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}