In his first interview since being taken off death row, Mumia Abu-Jamal spoke with Russian Television on April 11. In the wide-ranging interview, Jamal speaks of what it’s been like spending more than half his life on death row, where in the world he’d like to visit and the Occupy Wall Street Movement — which he says, if it wants to make a real impact on American society, has “to be deeper, has to be broader [and] it has to address issues that are touching on the lives or poor and working class people…I think it’s a damn good beginning.”

Speaking on the passage of the Patriot Act and other national security measures in recent years, like the NDAA, Jamal claimed, “Big brother is legalized, nationalized,” and “they’ve legalized the very things that FBI agents and administrators knew was criminal back [in the 60s and 70s]” all “in the name of national security.”

He also claims that, being we’re in an election season, Americans have little choice at the polls. We get to choose, he says, “between two major political parties and when they talk all I hear is a  kind of madness, an unreasonableness, a wish to return to days of yore, the 1950s. Or they talk about the perpetuation of the American empire, imperialism. My God. I mean, what is there to vote for?”

He continued, saying the American people often vote for a family member to become “a mass murderer, a bomber or a victim,” by voting for a war president.