In the Advocate May 2025:
Dina Burstein
Somtimes it's Not Sweet in Life, but
Other Times There's Good News
Dina Burstein
Many of you have read in this newsletter about my beloved friend Mohamed, who is incarcerated at Walla Walla State Penitentiary. Now I have amazing news to share with you about Mohamed’s legal case.
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Background: Mohamed is an immigrant from Somalia, now 38
years old. He was convicted in 2014 of charges related to an altercation on the street in which one personsustained minor injuries to his hand. For this, Mohamed was sentenced to 40 years in prison. He has been in prison at Walla Walla since 2015. To get a sense of what Mohamed is like, and what his life is like, you can read the columns Mohamed and I wrote for the Retiree Advocate here: www.psara.org/newsletter-archive
News since our last column: Mohamed completed his AA degree! His college teacher asked permission for Mohamed to become a TA in his classes, but the prison did not allow He has fasted and prayed his way through another Ramadan in prison.
And best news of all: The Seattle Clemency Project spent months investigating Mohamed’s case and has agreed to help represent him in a clemency case. Three attorneys at a Seattle private law firm, in cooperation with the Seattle Clemency Project, are now putting together a clemency case to submit to Governor Ferguson. There are other legal hurdles ahead for Mohamed, but this is a great start.
Mohamed’s legal team has asked for letters of support from people in the community who know Mohamed or who have come to know him from his writings. If you have been moved by reading Mohamed’s columns, and might be interested in writing a letter of support for Mohamed, please email me at dinaburstein@gmail.com
This is how Mohamed explained his perspective on living a 40-year sentence in prison:
Sometimes it's not sweet in life. This is one of those things. The way I was going, drinking, life on the street, I was heading to get killed. Thank God I got a chance to re-live my life in prison. The ones still out there can’t. They’re stuck. As soon as I was in jail, I started praying again. I needed that break (the arrest) to get my life back. I was able to get my life back! Opened my eyes. Once I was pulled out of life on the street, I knew what I needed to do to live the life I wanted to live.
Dina Burstein is a member of PSARA and an activist with the Jewish Coalition