Queer Cuba: New Book and Film; Mumia Abu-Jamal Medical Emergency
Details
Aired on Out-FM Tues., Aug 26, 2025
Press play to stream or green down arrow to download mp3 file.
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LGBTQ+ Cubans have made huge strides in obtaining their rights and societal acceptance over the past few decades. In 2022, a new Families Code, which greatly expands the rights of women, queer and trans people, was adopted by a two-thirds vote in a popular referendum.
Gregory Williams, Editor
Kyung Lee & Kim Anno
Out-FM will have three guests:
•Gregory Williams is editor of the new book Love Is the Law: Cuba's Queer Rights' Revolution, which includes many essays on the history of these struggles and advances, including the full text of the late iconic trans radical Leslie Feinberg's 2009 book Rainbow Solidarity in Defense of Cuba.
•Kim Anno is director and Kyung Lee is editor/co-producer of the new film "¡Quba!." This film tells the story of the struggle for LGBTQ marriage equality by the activists who have been working on it for 40 years, but also chronicling the key young activists across the island from five cities.
Excerpt from the film's promo: "¡Quba! is a testament to the power of human connection. In streets where the shadows of UMAP prison camps [where gay men and others were held in the late 1960s] once fell, watch as fierce love and relentless courage transform a nation’s heart."
•¡Quba! film: https://www.qubafilm.com/ To get the screening times and locations, sign up on their mailing list on www.wildprojects.org. For information: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
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From the Free Mumia Abu-Jamal Coalition regarding Black journalist and political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal serving life in a Pennsylvania prison, and a public ally of the LGBTQ community:
Mumia Abu-Jamal's Medical Emergency: His Eyesight Endangered
Mumia’s eyesight is deteriorating at an alarming rate. An independent expert ophthalmologist has confirmed the progression of his eye disease by analyzing Mumia’s most recent eye exams. She reports that he needs surgery and medically necessary treatment “immediately” or faces the possibility of “permanent blindness.”
Mumia’s vision has plummeted from 20/30 with glasses in 2024 (near normal) to 20/200 today—legally blind—because the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PA DOC) failed to adequately monitor his vision and delayed his urgently necessary medical treatment and surgery. The PA DOC has known since at least March of 2025 that Mumia needed eye surgery. Exams from 2024 – 2025 showed a sharp deterioration, demanding immediate intervention. Despite knowing the urgency, they waited until July to act and then pushed surgery off to an unspecified date in September.
Mumia believes he now suffers from “diabetic retinopathy” stemming from a diabetic coma that he endured after being given an improper and unmonitored dose of steroids for a skin disease in 2015. Mumia asserts that the PA DOC is “slow-walking [him] to blindness” in 2025 – another egregious case of the prison’s medical neglect, medical harm, and inability to treat Mumia’s medical needs.
Court records already document this pattern: (a) negligence in monitoring lab reports that led to the diabetic coma, and (b) deliberate denial and delay of his hepatitis C treatment that left him with cirrhosis.
Release Mumia now – unconditionally – into the care of his own doctors, family, and friends. The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC) has, once again, shown it cannot monitor or provide the timely, corrective care he urgently needs.
Schedule Mumia’s eye surgery and medically necessary treatment immediately, under the supervision of his independent ophthalmologist, and have it performed by the nearest outside provider approved by that physician.
Provide Dr. Ricardo Alvarez, Mumia’s chosen physician, with all the medical reports from the prison and any other outside examiners who have seen him in 2025.
People are urged to call and email the Pennsylvania prison authorities demanding that he get his urgently needed eye treatment immediately.For the prison contact phone numbers, emails, and more information, as well as to follow future activities to defend Mumia’s life, visit freemumia.com.
Out-FM's 2024 Documentary on Mumia and LGBTQ Liberation:
To hear our documentary we did based on my interview with Mumia last year -- or to read the transcript -- click here.
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Out-FM is a weekly progressive, intersectional queer show by and for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, two-spirit, non-binary, gender non-conforming, intersex, queer, and questioning communities. Our program originates from listener-sponsored, noncommercial WBAI/Pacifica Radio in New York, 99.5 FM and wbai.org. Our programs are archived at outfm.org. You can also follow us on Facebook, X, and Instagram.
