Mumia Abu-Jamal Remains the Voice of the Voiceless

By Abayomi Azikiwe
Editor, Pan-African News Wire
Black August Series No. 2

After 40 years of incarceration the “voice of the voiceless” remains a focus of international attention

Mumia Abu-Jamal speaks at a memorial for Fred Hampton in Philadelphia. Source : commonnotions

During the late 1960s, Mumia Abu-Jamal became a youth activist in the city of Philadelphia where a succession of racist police chiefs engaged in widespread abuse against the African American community.

Philadelphia has a centuries-long history of African self-organization dating back to the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries when the Free African Society, African Methodist Episcopal Church (AME) and other institutions were formed by Richard Allen, Sarah Allen and Absalom Jones.

During mid-19^th century, the Philadelphia Anti-Slavery Society provided avenues for men and women to build support for the Underground Railroad and the movement to completely eradicate involuntary servitude in the antebellum border and deep southern states. By the 1960s, the city became known as one of the first municipalities where African Americans would rise up in rebellion on the north side during the late August 1964.

Max Stanford (later known as Muhammad Ahmed), a co-founder of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM) in 1962, was from Philadelphia. RAM proceeded the Black Panther Party (BPP) and sought to form an alliance with Malcolm X (also known as El Hajj Malik Shabazz), a leading spokesman for the Nation of Islam and later the Organization of Afro-American Unity (OAAU). RAM advocated for the development of a revolutionary movement in the U.S. and consequently became a target of the Justice Department.

In 1969, Mumia joined the Black Panther Party at the age of 15 when the organization was deemed by the then Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) J. Edgar Hoover as the “greatest threat to national security” in the United States. The Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO) had a special division which was designed to monitor, disrupt, imprison and kill various leaders and members of African American organizations from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the BPP as well as a host of other tendencies. Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) since the mid-to-late 1970s indicate that the BPP was a principal target of the U.S. government and local police agencies.

Why was the BPP considered so dangerous by the leading law-enforcement agency inside the country? In order to provide answers to this question it must be remembered that between 1955 and 1970, the African American people led a struggle for civil rights and self-determination which impacted broad segments of the population in the U.S. helping to spawn movements within other oppressed communities.

The Black Panther Party was first formed in Lowndes County Alabama in 1965. Its origins grew out of the organizing work of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), whose field organizer, Stokely Carmichael (later known as Kwame Ture) was deployed to the area in the aftermath of the Selma to Montgomery march in late March of the same year. Working in conjunction with local activists, an independent political party was formed known as the Lowndes County Freedom Organization (LCFO). The group utilized the black panther as its symbol while rejecting both the Republican and Democratic Party. 

In subsequent months, there were other Black Panther organizations formed in several cities including Detroit, Cleveland, New York City and other urban areas. In Oakland, California during October of 1966, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. 

This movement represented an emerging phase of the Black liberation struggle where there were calls for armed self-defense, mass rebellion and the political takeovers of major municipalities by those who had been excluded from the reins of official power. Thousands of African American youth flocked to the Black Panther Party viewing the organization as a symbol of uncompromising resistance to racism, national oppression and economic exploitation.

Mumia and the BPP

Although the BPP was projected in the national corporate media as gun toting militants willing to use weapons against the police when they were threatening the Party and the community, most of the work of the organization revolved around distribution of its weekly newspaper, the establishment of free breakfast programs for children, community health clinics for the people in the most oppressed areas of the African American community while building alliances with revolutionary forces among other sectors of the population including, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans, Asians, Native Americans and whites committed to fundamental change within U.S. society.

Mumia noted the diversity of programmatic work during his tenure in the BPP of the late 1960s and early 1970s in his book entitled “We Want Freedom”: “As the Breakfast program succeeded so did the Party, and its popularity fueled our growth across the country. Along with the growth of the Party came an increase in the number of community programs undertaken by the Party. By 1971, the Party had embarked on ten distinctive community programs, described by Newton as survival programs. What did he mean by this term? We called them survival programs pending revolution. They were designed to help the people survive until their consciousness is raised, which is only the first step in the revolution to produce a new America.… During a flood the raft is a life-saving device, but it is only a means of getting to higher ground. So, too, with survival programs, which are emergency services. In themselves they do not change social conditions, but they are life-saving vehicles until conditions change.” (https://www.commonnotions.org/blog/tag/Mumia+Abu-Jamal)

On December 4, 1969, the Chicago police under the aegis of the Illinois State’s Attorney Edward V. Hanrahan and the Chicago field office of the FBI, raided the residence of BPP members on the city’s west side. Two Panther leaders, Fred Hampton and Mark Clark were killed while several other occupants of the house were wounded. 

These police actions along with hundreds of other attacks on BPP chapters across the country resulted in the deaths of many Panther members and the arrests and framing of hundreds of cadres. Numerous BPP members were driven into exile as others were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. 

The Voice of the Voiceless from the Streets to Death Row

On December 9, 1981, Mumia was arrested in Philadelphia and charged with the murder of white police officer Daniel Faulkner. He was railroaded through the courts and convicted on July 3, 1982. The following year, Mumia was sentenced to die by capital punishment. He remained on death row until 2011 after an international campaign to save his life proved successful.

However, his death sentence was commuted to life in prison without parole. Mumia and his supporters have maintained that he is not guilty of the crime of killing a police officer. 

After his sojourn in the BPP, Mumia utilized his writing and journalist skills learned in the Party to become a formidable media personality in Philadelphia. He was a fierce critic of police brutality and a defender of the revolutionary MOVE organization which emerged during the 1970s in the city. 

Mumia was a co-founder of the Philadelphia chapter of the National Association of Black Journalists (NABJ) in the 1970s. He worked as a radio broadcaster and writer exposing the misconduct of the police surrounding the attack on the MOVE residence in August 1978. In 1979, he interviewed reggae superstar Bob Marley when he visited Philadelphia for a concert performance.

While behind bars Mumia has become an even more prolific writer and broadcast journalist. He issues weekly commentaries through Prison Radio where he discusses a myriad of topics including African American history, international affairs, political economy, the deplorable conditions existing among the more than two million people incarcerated in the U.S. along with police misconduct. (https://www.prisonradio.org/correspondent/mumia-abu-jamal/)

A renewed campaign entitled “Love Not Phear” held demonstrations around the U.S. and the world during the weekend of July 3 marking the 40^th anniversary of his unjust conviction in 1982. Love Not Phear says that it is committed to the liberation of all political prisoners including Mumia Abu-Jamal.

An entry on their website emphasizes that: “The landscape has changed over the last 40 years, a time frame that also marks the years Mumia has been incarcerated. The fight for the release of political prisoners requires a recalibration in order to challenge police corruption and racism as they have evolved in this new landscape. We cannot deny the racism, corruption, and misconduct that permeated the so-called ‘Halls of Justice’ during Mumia’s arrest and unjust kangaroo court trial. The people today know the truth; commonplace bribed witnesses, suppressed evidence, biased judges, and backroom deals put Mumia behind bars.” (https://lovenotphear.com/)

Mumia through his attorneys have filed another appeal based upon evidence related to prosecutorial misconduct which has been further revealed over the last four years. The hearing will take place on October 19 in Philadelphia. Supporters of Mumia and other political prisoners will attend the hearing in this latest attempt to win the long-awaited freedom for this activist who is now 68 years old

source: https://borkena.com/2022/08/17/mumia-abu-jamal-remains-the-voice-of-the-voiceless/

While Claiming to Defend Freedom Around the World, the U.S. Has Dozens of Political Prisoners—and the Majority are People of Color

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[Source: newblackmaninexile.net]

Racism is still the driving force behind U.S. political imprisonment

Political imprisonment in the United States exists primarily as a tool of racist repression. It is aimed disproportionately at people of color, as well as others engaged in anti-racist struggle. Whether in the fight against racism at home or against racist foreign policies, wars, occupation and colonialism, the overarching purpose of political imprisonment is to intimidate and try to crush militant forms of anti-racist struggle.

By treating U.S. political prisoners as “common criminals,” the criminal justice system individualizes each case as if they are somehow separate from their social contexts. This ignores root causes and impedes the development of political solutions to the underlying issues for which people have been arrested.

Readers can discern for themselves what is revealed in the findings presented here, and in the US Political Prisoner list this article analyzes. The large number of people of color and others involved in the anti-racist struggle arrested for their activities is sadly predictable. Our entire history and existing political and economic institutions are founded and advanced squarely on the foundations of racism.amertkan political prisoners

The problem is the entire U.S. social, political and economic apparatus. It’s the system that must change. Only when that happens will political prisoners find justice and true liberation in the U.S. We fight for the liberation of Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu Jamal. But as wonderful as winning freedom for individuals may be, without a political solution, little is accomplished regarding the causes for which these prisoners have sacrificed their freedom.[Source: syracuseculturalworkers.com]

Not all U.S. political prisoners are in jail for explicitly anti-racist struggles. There are those in prison for opposing the whole fabric of militarism and war, women who have defended their bodies from abuse, striking blows against patriarchy, and eco-defenders.

Recognizing the racism that permeates U.S. political imprisonment does not diminish the validity of the struggles for which they were arrested. Without exception, racism and anti-racism is a factor in every facet of U.S. popular movements. For instance, all anti-war and anti-imperialist struggle has a fundamentally anti-racist aspect. The one existing imperial power in the world today is the U.S./NATO Empire, an Empire centered among mostly White nations, in service to global capitalism and western geopolitical hegemony. That Empire is the primary global purveyor of the exploitation and dispossession of Black, Indigenous, and other colonized peoples in the nations of the Global South.

We further recognize that we can and must look to anti-racist struggles, especially Black and Indigenous liberation, for guidance, lessons, and leadership, regardless the area of activity. The Alliance for Global Justice analysis published August 5, 2020 (which this paper updates), explains that,

“…We are convinced that African people, including the African diaspora, play a leading role in all revolutionary and transformational struggles. African and Indigenous peoples have been specially targeted for repression and exploitation from the very beginning days of the global spread of capitalism. Today, in the U.S., the movement for the rights and self-determination of Black people has, above all else, shown that it is not a temporary struggle but that it has staying power.

There is a thread that connects the struggles of the very first enslaved people through the historic Civil Rights Movement to the… Black Lives Matter uprisings today. The struggle for Black liberation in the U.S. is huge, mature yet young: multigenerational, experienced, politically savvy, and enduring. The successes of Black liberation struggles have always, in every instance, opened the way for other struggles. The struggles against slavery and for Black voting rights led directly to the women’s suffrage movement. The Civil Rights Movement was a foundation for an endless list of struggles, including anti-war, anti-poverty, women’s rights, Latin American and Asian liberation movements, disability rights, gay rights, and more. (Indigenous defense of the land and its people is, of course, the oldest movement in resistance to Empire in the Americas.) Thus, we can say that the prominence of African heritage political prisoners in the U.S. is a situation that concerns all of us.”

AFGJ has maintained a list of U.S. Political Prisoners since 2013, when Stan Smith of the Chicago Committee to Free the [Cuban] Five put that list together for the first time, counting 38 U.S. Political Prisoners. Due to a lack of capacity at the time, we did not undertake an update again until 2018, when we were able to hire Nasim Chatha to help us organize a new comprehensive and updated list. Nasim had been our intern in 2012 and had written some of our pioneering work on the related theme of Prison Imperialism. (Prison Imperialism focuses on the export of the US mass incarceration model to other countries.)

Ours is not the only political prisoner list, and we have always consulted the work of others while augmenting those with our research. We have especially relied heavily on the advice and feedback of Claude Marks from the Freedom Archives and have regularly referenced the Jericho Movement, the Nuclear Resister, Earth First!, and the Anarchist Black Cross.

How we define who is a “political prisoner” is a classification always open to debate. We note that some organizations, such as the Jericho Movement, do not list people as political prisoners unless they have asked or agreed to be so listed. As we noted in our 2020 report,

“There is a concern that prisoners may experience further targeting and harassment as a result of attention brought by well-meaning supporters. We very much respect that. For our purpose, we are trying to build a comprehensive list that reflects the overall extent and reality of politically motivated arrests in the United States. We are not involved in direct advocacy. For political prisoners who have specific solidarity campaigns, we have tried to provide links. If there are no advocacy organizations linked, they may not exist or be wanted.”

We are not attempting to maintain a complete list of all U.S. political prisoners. Instead, our list is of U.S. political prisoners who are also prisoners of Empire (PP/POEs). There are, for instance, animal rights activists whom we do not include. A person arrested for direct action against the inhumane conditions suffered under the conditions of factory farming, or to liberate animals from pens where there is no freedom of movement, is not included, unless there is some element directly related to the struggle against the underpinnings of Empire.[Source: thejerichomovement.com]

Even under socialism, under nations in resistance to Empire, sometimes even under locally autonomous communities, there are animals kept and exploited under conditions that can only be described as cruel. But one cannot simply blame Empire for this, even when and if it exacerbates the problem.

How, then, do we define political prisoners who are also prisoners of Empire? Our August 5, 2020 report on political prisoners states:

“Our definition of political prisoners refers to people who are incarcerated for alleged crimes related to resistance and liberation from repression. We believe that these cases should not be treated as isolated, ‘common’ crimes, but [cases that] require a political solution. In many cases, those in jail are there because of false allegations or because they were framed and railroaded through the courts. Our list is not only of political prisoners, but also of what we term “prisoners of Empire.” By that, we mean people who are jailed because of activities that constitute a direct challenge to the national and international dominance of U.S., NATO, and transnational capitalist imperialism.”

We also note in our listing that,

“…political prisoners […] require a political solution […] Whether the circumstances of the alleged crimes are true or false, we strenuously reject the individualized and out-of-context treatment of these cases as simply ‘common crimes.’ Our listing of these prisoners does not constitute an endorsement of the tactics or immediate goals of every individual. We also recognize that people have a right to resist oppression, and the failure to do so can be, itself, a crime against the people. In many cases, those arrested have been set up, falsely accused, railroaded, and/or denied adequate defense and basic human rights. More often than not, they have received harsher sentences than usual because of the political nature of their activities.”

Although the origins of our PP/POEs list date back to 2013, this is only the second comprehensive analysis we’ve published. The first analysis was in response to the 2020 uprising sparked by the extrajudicial killing of George Floyd. We admit that what we have could be significantly augmented.

We need another major and exhaustive review of the definitions, criteria, and categories we employ. Towards that end, we’ve established a committee that will spend the next year revising all aspects of the list. This is an ongoing process, and if you have suggestions for improvements, we want to hear what you have to say. Feel free to send your suggestions to James@AFGJ.org.

One must also look at the back stories behind the numbers and trends. For instance, in 2018, we listed 50 political prisoners. After several minor revisions in the interim, in which the total was steady, we published a major update in August of 2020, following the peak of the 2020 uprising. We found that after the 2020 uprising, the number of PPs/POE had risen by 12.28% to 57.

As of the present moment, the number has diminished to a count of 55 U.S. PP/POEs, as of August 10, 2022. The decline in the overall number can be attributed to paroles, completed sentences, as well as deaths, of several PP/POEs. Especially, over the past two years, several Black PP/POEs arrested in crackdowns during the previous century have died in prison or been released after decades behind bars. These include the MOVE 9 and participants in historic Black liberation struggles, both armed and unarmed.

In 2020, we found 38.60% of PPs/POE were Black, and just over 72% were people of color. Today, the percentage of Black PP/POEs has dropped to 34.55% (19), while the overall number of people of color who are PPs/POE has dropped to 69% (38). Of the other PP/POEs who are people of color, 10.9% (6) are Latino; 5.45% (3) are North “American” Indigenous; 3.64% (2) are Asian-American (non-Arab, Middle Eastern, or Central Asian); and 16.36% (9) are Arab, Middle Eastern, African Muslim, or Central Asian (one PP/POE is of Pakistani heritage, and one PP/POE is included under both Latino and Arab, ME, etc.-heritage categories).

As for the last category, we have included these together because we’ve found it difficult to find statistics related to these specific ethnic groups. Instead, we find the closest readily available statistics have to do with Muslims in prison—and Muslim is not an ethnicity and can include people from all over the world, including those who are not necessarily people of color.

Although Muslim or perceived-as-Muslim peoples are not ethnicities, they are discriminated against as if they were, targeted as a class because of their actual or perceived religious identification. Similarly, prison population statistics regularly confuse the count of Latino prisoners by counting most of them simply as “white.”

To understand the racism revealed in these percentages, we must compare them to the demographic percentages of the US population as a whole. Respectively, we find that the U.S. general population is 13.6% Black, 18.9% Latino, 1.3% Indigenous, and 1.1% “Muslim.”

The racist application of the “criminal justice” system is a feature of the entire system, not just of political imprisonment, which itself reflects a larger reality. For instance, we find that Black persons are incarcerated at a rate 3.5 times higher than that of Whites.[Source: benjerry.com]

We need to place the differences and the total number of PP/POEs within context. Among the U.S. PP/POEs, it is significant that just over 14.55% (8) of the total are those incarcerated for their activities during the 2020 Uprising. There are also still two PP/POEs that remain in jail for activities related to the Ferguson uprising in 2014, following the extrajudicial killing of Michael Brown. If we add those together, we find that 18.18% of U.S. PPs/POE have been jailed in relation to charges stemming from the birth and continued growth of the Black Lives Matter movement.[Source: cnn.com]

How do we determine who and how many are PPs/POE because of anti-racist struggle? We count 22 of 55 PPs/POE, or 40%, arrested for domestic anti-racist actions. As an international solidarity organization, AFGJ is keenly aware that U.S. foreign policies and international relations are extensions of the same policies, attitudes, and actions that drive domestic racism. U.S. wars, sanctions, blockades, and Prison Imperialism are overwhelmingly wielded against nations with a large majority of people of color, countries of the Global South. We find that 11 PPs/POE are in jail for actions of international solidarity with specific nations targeted by Empire (as Noam Chomsky defines it, “an integrated policy of U.S. military and economic supremacy”).

Another 8 are people involved in activities of self-determination, liberation, and defense of their territories from occupation, war, sanctions, and blockades.

Among them are Simon Trinidad from Colombia, Ivan Vargas from Colombia, Alex Saab from Venezuela, the Virgin Island Three, Mun Chol, Myong, and Leonard Peltier (in defense of the Lakota nation in occupied South Dakota). Together, these represent 34.55% (19) of those engaged in struggle directly against the international application of U.S. racist and political repression. When we combine those arrested for domestic and international resistance to U.S. racism, we find that 42 of 55 PPs/POE, 76.36%, are incarcerated for acts of anti-racist resistance.

In other words, more than three quarters of US/POEs are in jail for activities that can be described as anti-racist.Simon Trinidad [Source: prenasural.com] Michael “Rattler” Markus [Source: unicornriot.ninja]

We also count 5.54% (three) PP/POEs jailed for eco-defense. 7.27% (four) were arrested for activities generally or directly opposed to U.S. militarism and wars. 7.27% (the Cleveland Four) are in prison for generalized resistance to the U.S. political system and global capitalism. 3.64% (two) women are in jail for defending themselves from their abusers or rapists.

As for the last category, the reality is that there are hundreds if not thousands we might include in that category. We need to pose several questions and investigations to determine who and how many of these there are and who, if not all, could be considered Prisoners of Empire. We ask the reader to be patient with us as we delve into this complex and challenging area of research for next year’s report.

For now, we include Maddesyn George and Fran Thompson as emblematic cases for which we know there is a much higher total.Maddesyn George. She is a native woman sentenced to six and a half years in prison on manslaughter charges after she defended herself against a white man who raped and threatened her life. [Source: freemaddesyn.org]

We also note that there is overlap in some of these categories. For instance, Fran Thompson is included as a woman arrested for self-defense and an eco-defender, exacerbating her prosecution and sentencing. There are other cases where people are counted in more than one category.

At the 2013 Tear Down the Walls conference in Tucson, Arizona, Margaret Prescod of Global Women’s Strike argued that all those interned under the inherently racist and classist U.S. model of mass incarceration are political prisoners. That may not be our definition, but who can honestly claim she was wrong? Ana Belen Montes [Source: tutorialathome.in]  Fran Thompson [Source: kansascityabc.wordpress.com]

In our list of classes of political imprisonment, we include those held in immigrant detention centers and those still held in occupied Cuba at the Guantánamo prison. But they are not counted among the 55 PPs/POE that we document.

We do know this—even if we added the 36 inmates in Guantánamo, the thousands held in immigrant detention centers, the many women jailed for defending themselves against their rapists and abusers, and, therefore, in resistance to the patriarchal underpinnings of the Empire, these inclusions would only underscore what we already know: political imprisonment in the U.S. is a tool of racist as well as other easily identified forms of repression both at home and abroad, and all of these cases require political solutions, not individualized and decontextualized punishment.

Ultimately, systemic change is needed, which is another way of saying revolution.

source: covertactionmagazine.com

After almost 50 years, former Black Panther Sundiata Acoli to be released from prison

Sundiata Acoli, a former Black Panther member who was convicted of murder in 1974 and has been denied parole multiple times, will now be released from prison. The New Jersey supreme court has granted parole to Acoli, ruling that he was no longer a threat to the public.

85-year-old Acoli has been serving a life sentence for the 1973 murder of a New Jersey state trooper during a shootout in which Assata Shakur, the self-exiled aunt of Tupac Shakur, was also arrested. Shakur escaped in 1979 and fled to Cuba, where she was granted political asylum. Acoli had been eligible for parole since 1992 but had been denied so many times.

In the 1970s when the Black liberation fighters’ struggle was at its peak in the United States, it gave birth to militant groups like Philadelphia-based MOVE founded by John Africa in 1972 and the Black Panther Party founded in late October 1966 by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. The Black Panthers’ militant wing was called the Black Liberation Army.

Acoli, a member of the Black Liberation Army, was on May 2, 1973, driving just after midnight when a state trooper, James Harper, stopped him for a “defective taillight”. Acoli was then in the vehicle with two others — Assata Shakur and Zayd Malik Shakur — who were also members of the Black Liberation Army. Harper was joined by another trooper, Werner Foerster, at the scene. Foerster then found an ammunition magazine for an automatic pistol on Acoli. A shootout ensued; Foerster died in the process and Harper was wounded.

Assata Shakur was arrested while Zayd Malik Shakur was found dead near the car. Acoli fled but was caught some hours later. Acoli and Assata Shakur were convicted of the murder of Foerster in separate trials. Acoli said he did not remember what happened as he passed out after being hit by a bullet. In 1974, Acoli was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life with the possibility of parole after 25 years. Acoli became eligible for parole in 1992 but was not allowed to take part in his own parole hearing.

All in all, he has been denied parole eight times. His lawyer, Bruce Afran, said each time he is denied, the reason given is the same — “he hasn’t done enough psychological counseling; he doesn’t fully admit to his crime, or he hasn’t adequately apologized for it,” according to the Post. In 2014, a state appellate panel ruled that Acoli should be released, citing good behavior since 1996. The state Attorney General’s office however contested and the case was sent back to the board. Again, it denied Acoli’s request. Acoli started appealing that decision.

After being repeatedly denied parole, New Jersey’s Supreme Court has now voted 3-2 to overturn a parole board ruling, according to BBC. Acoli’s prison record has been “exemplary”, the judges said, adding that he had completed 120 courses while in prison, received positive evaluations from prison officials, and participated in counseling. The parole board had “lost sight that its mission largely was to determine the man Acoli had become”, the judges said.

Activists now hope that Acoli’s release would bring attention to other elderly members of the Black Panthers who are still imprisoned in the U.S

SOURCE: https://face2faceafrica.com/article/after-almost-50-years-former-black-panther-sundiata-acoli-to-be-released-from-prison?

Products Sold by Companies using Prison Labour

Other side of the walls! Several months ago, i received this powerful copy of a hand-written graphic from a young incarcerated brother. Please take a good read, act in truth and with justice and share with others. Amen. Asé. – Photo: Baba Jahahara

AUGUST 21, 1831 & AUGUST 21, 1971: NAT TURNER SLAVE REBELLION & PRISON ASSASSINATION OF BLACK PANTHER FIELD MARSHAL GEORGE JACKSON

    

The Nat Turner rebellion.

In 1831 a slave named Nat Turner led a rebellion in Southhampton County, Virginia. A religious leader and self-styled Baptist minister, Turner and a group of followers killed some sixty white men, women, and children on the night of August 21. Turner and 16 of his conspirators were captured and executed, but the incident continued to haunt Southern whites. Blacks were randomly killed all over Southhampton County; many were beheaded and their heads left along the roads to warn others. In the wake of the uprising planters tightened their grip on slaves and slavery. This woodcut was published in an 1831 account of the slave uprising.

RBG-GEORGE JACKSON TRIBUTE FILM| “Death of a … – youtube.com

www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKh-agZxePM

Protest Police Terror & Tribute to Delbert Africa

August 1 is Emancipation Day, but are Black people truly free?

We are a collective of incarcerated Black people – political prisoners held hostage by the state – and our supporters on the outside who are making this statement on Emancipation Day.

On August 1, African people across the globe celebrate Emancipation Day. This marks the day the Abolition of Slavery Act was passed freeing enslaved Africans across the British colonies, including Canada.

Slavery may be over, but are Black people truly free?

We have learned that there are more Black people in prisons in the United States today than were held in enslavement. We learned that Black women are one of the fastest growing global prison populations, and that our sisters are being put in prison largely because of the war on drugs. We learned that Black incarceration goes up every year in Canada. We have lived out the laws passed that give longer and longer minimum sentences to Black men accused of gun crimes or accused of being in gangs, while white bankers and killer cops and CEOs who don’t give their workers PPE during a pandemic – the real gangsters – are never charged at all.

Are Black people free when prisons and jails across this country are filled with Black people? Is slavery even over when Black people clean and work in the kitchens for less than two dollars a day inside federal prisons? When our mothers and grandmothers come to visit us and are turned away and accused of bringing in contraband. When we are transferred across the country against our will when we stand up against unjust conditions. When we have to go on hunger strikes to demand basic human rights.

Are we free when police taser, and shoot, and kill Black people when they are called for wellness checks? Are we free when the off-duty police officer who beat Dafonte Miller with a metal pipe until he lost an eye is convicted only of assault, while his brother was acquitted of all charges? And while they are acquitted, white juries sentence Black men on no evidence for the crime of only having Black skin.

Are we free when there are police stations on the corner of our communities, but no grocery stores? Are we free when Black families can be evicted from public housing and when there are no safe places for our mothers to live? Are we free when our daughters and sisters can’t walk on the street in their own neighbourhoods without being propositioned by white men?

Are we free when little girls are handcuffed in school and arrested? When we can’t even get the tools to educate ourselves and free our minds and make a life for our families?

Are we free when we have no community or home to be released to because the land has been taken by gentrification or bulldozed or there’s a garbage dump in our community?

Are we free when the legacy of slavery is still being lived out by us every day, when those of us incarcerated still have overseers, when we are called n****r and other racial slurs, when generation after generation we are kicked out of school, kicked onto the streets, denied mental health treatment, and then warehoused in prisons where we can’t get parole?

Are we free when the skin we are born with still defines our condition?

In August 2018, prisoners in Burnside began a prison strike during “Black August.” Black August began in the prison system in California in the 1970s in commemoration of the freedom struggles of incarcerated people of African descent. The month was used to honour the deaths of revolutionaries like George Jackson, to create political awareness, and to build the emancipation struggle among prisoners.

In our research, we found that the original BLM – the Black Liberation Movement – adopted Black August as a radical month focused on the liberation struggles of Africans across the globe. Jonathan Jackson was gunned down outside the Marin County Courthouse on August 7, 1970. The first enslaved Africans were brought to Jamestown, Virginia in August of 1619. Marcus Garvey, Fred Hampton, and other revolutionaries were born in August.

The Underground Railroad started on August 2, 1850. In 1843, Henry Highland Garnett called a general slave strike on August 22. Gabriel Prosser’s slave rebellion was on August 30, 1800. Nat Turner’s slave rebellion began on August 21, 1831. In August of 1965 the Watts rebellion rose up. The Philadelphia police bombed the MOVE family on August 8, 1978. These are just some of the significant events that mark this month as a time of resistance and struggle.

August 10 in Canada is Prisoner Justice Day. Prisoner Justice Day was started in the 1970s to remember all the people who died in custody. On this day, prisoners across the country fast and strike for all our fallen comrades.

We say again, if this is freedom, we have not seen it, we have not felt it, and we have not lived it.

Emancipation Day is only meaningful if we use the day to organize for our continued freedom struggle. Any celebration of this day without commitment to ending punishing, policing, and prisons rings hollow and does not honour the labour of our ancestors.

This Emancipation Day is taking place while Black people in Canada are calling for defunding the police. On the news, we see people showing how much money goes into the police budget and how that money could be spent on safe housing or clean water on reserves or on beds to treat addiction.

We also want to add that defunding the police also means defunding prisons which in turn means abolition. On this Emancipation Day, we call upon every community where a new prison is being built to say no to more incarceration. It costs over 100, 000 dollars a year to keep the average person in prison, and even more for women. Over 20 billion dollars a year is spent on “corrections” in Canada, but we say that no-one is being corrected.

Black people will never be free while there are cameras on the corners of our communities, while police stop us whenever they want, when they drive around the streets of our communities, while prisons get more and more beds, while lockdowns and segregation have become the new normal, and while white defence lawyers, crowns, judges, juries, parole officers, C.O’s, and parole boards control our lives and freedom.

We cannot be free while prisons stand on stolen Indigenous land.

Black people will never be free while people believe some few small reforms are enough to stop the brutalizing of Black bodies. Black people will never be free when we can’t be safe and happy and feed our families and dream of the future.

On this Emancipation Day, we are still crying out for freedom. The whips and the chains might have been abolished, but until the bars are gone, we are not free, and neither are you.

source: https://www.halifaxexaminer.ca/featured/august-1-is-emancipation-day-but-are-black-people-truly-free/

 

Demand Freedom for Ed Poindexter!

You can read more about Ed here: https://prisonersolidarity.com/prisoner/edward-poindexter

The “Carceral State” is the Enemy

The current wave of protest is correctly “targeting the commodification of Blackness by the state,” said Dr Brittany Friedman, a Rutgers University sociology professor at the Program in Criminal Justice. “We do not need the carceral state to save us, because the carceral state is the one that is killing us,” said Friedman.

NEW YORK STATE WON’T GRANT TEMPORARY RELEASE TO FORMER BLACK PANTHER HOSPITALIZED WITH COVID-19

 

‘This ruling is a particularly terrible blow because it comes at a time when people are taking to the streets en masse to protest state violence against Black people,’ said Nora Carroll, an attorney for Jalil Muntaqim, who has been imprisoned since 1971.

During a pandemic, does a state’s refusal to release medically vulnerable people from prison constitute deliberate indifference and a violation of the Eighth Amendment?

On Thursday, a New York appellate court decided that it did not. Its ruling reversed an earlier decision that would have allowed for the temporary release of 68-year-old Jalil Muntaqim, a former Black Panther who has been incarcerated since 1971. As of June 3, Sullivan Correctional Facility, where Muntaqim is incarcerated, had 22 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with one test still pending. Across the state’s 52 prisons, 511 people have tested positive and 16 have died.

On April 13, as COVID-19 was spreading throughout prisons in New York State and across the nation, Muntaqim had filed a writ of habeas corpus requesting relief in the form of immediate release. In his petition, he argued that his age, race, and serious health conditions heighten his vulnerability to the virus. During his nearly half-century behind bars, Muntaqim has developed high blood pressure, which led to a stroke, chronic bronchitis, sinusitis, and lung scarring. Furthermore, 81 percent of deaths in New York prisons since the start of COVID-19 have been people of color; 59 percent have been African American.

Two weeks later, on April 29, Sullivan County Supreme Court Judge Stephan Schick ordered Muntaqim’s temporary release, ruling that the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision was not in a position to address the health risks posed to him by his continued incarceration during the pandemic. The judge ordered Muntaqim’s temporary release, though he would continue serving his sentence under DOCCS supervision.

Attorney General Letitia James, representing DOCCS, appealed, blocking his release. James’s office argued that Muntaqim had failed to show that prison officials had been “deliberately indifferent to Muntaqim’s substantial risk of serious harm.” Her office also argued that habeas corpus—and a request for temporary release—was the wrong mechanism to address Muntaqim’s “claim of unconstitutional punishment based on prison conditions.”

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Since then, Muntaqim has been hospitalized with COVID-19. Three days after his hospitalization on May 28, attorneys for both sides presented their arguments in a virtual appeals court.

Frank Brady, representing the attorney general, argued that Muntaqim never established that prison officials were deliberately indifferent to his health. He also argued that the facts of the case had changed dramatically—that Muntaqim’s petition had hinged on his vulnerability to COVID-19 and that he has since contracted the virus. Furthermore, he repeatedly stated that a habeas petition for release was not the appropriate method to challenge prison conditions or unconstitutional medical care.

Nora Carroll, Muntaqim’s attorney, disagreed. A habeas request for release is “absolutely appropriate in these circumstances,” she argued, noting that conditions of confinement during this pandemic are unconstitutional, and the only appropriate remedy is release from these conditions. Noting that social distancing is impossible in a prison setting, she stated that Muntaqim is housed in a cellblock with 50 other individuals, some of whom had contracted the coronavirus. Although he had a cell to himself, and, according to Carroll, “tried to stay to himself and wear a mask every time he left his cell,” he still had to share telephones, showers, and meals with others. These measures had not prevented him from contracting the virus.

She added that researchers don’t know whether a person develops immunity after recovering from COVID-19. “If he does recover and is sent back, it seems very likely that he’ll be put in the exact same position. We don’t know if he can catch it again. It’s not all over because he got COVID,” she told The Appeal.

Carroll argued that the state has a responsibility to care for the people whom it incarcerates, and that it didn’t fulfill that responsibility when it failed to identify and release medically vulnerable people during the pandemic. “They’re creating a hotbed of viral spread,” she stated in court, noting that the 162 people released at that point represent less than half of one percent of its state prison population.

In his rebuttal, Brady presented another argument: By releasing Muntaqim, the court was setting itself up for granting parole. He noted that a court may choose to annul a decision by the parole board, but does not order a person’s release. Instead, the court orders that the parole board conduct another hearing.

“This is not parole,” Carroll told The Appeal. “This is merely a temporary release to alleviate an unconstitutional situation inside of the prison.” She noted that Judge Schick carefully worded his decision to specify a temporary release while under DOCCS supervision and that others, such as Trump aides Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen, have been released from prison to serve their sentences under home confinement during the pandemic.

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Law enforcement opposition to Muntaqim’s release is nothing new. In 1971, Muntaqim, then 19 years old and a member of the Black Panther Party, was arrested with two other Panthers for the fatal shootings of two police officers. In 1975, he was convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life.

Now 68, Muntaqim is the last of the three in prison. In 2000, his co-defendant Albert Nuh Washington died in prison. In March 2018, his other co-defendant, Herman Bell, was granted parole. Despite opposition, including a court challenge from the Policemen’s Benevolent Association, Bell was released from prison in April.

Muntaqim became eligible for parole in 2002 and has appeared before the board 12 times. Each time, the PBA has deluged the parole board with letters opposing his parole. Each time, Muntaqim was denied parole. Jose Saldana, now the director of Release Aging People in Prison, has served time with Muntaqim and has witnessed Muntaqim act as a teacher and a mentor to others in prison. Muntaqim also established several prison programs, including a therapeutic group, an African American studies program, and classes in computer literacy, poetry, and sociology.

But, adds Saldana, the issue is less whether Muntaqim has transformed from a reckless 19-year-old than whether the parole board “has the integrity to free a man who should have been freed a long time ago and whether they will continue to allow the PBA to dictate and influence their decision-making process.” Muntaqim’s next parole hearing is in September.

DOCCS has also deemed Muntaqim ineligible for medical parole. He has been returned to Sullivan, where he is now in the infirmary with COVID-19.

In its decision, the Appellate Court found that Muntaqim failed to demonstrate prison officials’ deliberate indifference. Instead, the appellate decision noted that the prison superintendent had submitted an affidavit listing the steps taken to prevent COVID-19 spread, including stopping visits, halting new intakes and transfers between prisons, and requiring staff and incarcerated kitchen workers to wear masks. The court chose not to comment on whether a habeas petition was the appropriate remedy.

“We are devastated at the Third Department’s decision in Mr. Muntaqim’s case,” Carroll stated. “This ruling is a particularly terrible blow because it comes at a time when people are taking to the streets en masse to protest state violence against Black people. Yet this and other pleas to protect Black lives in New York State prisons are being turned away. All we can do now is hope Mr. Muntaqim recovers, as he is still in the hospital.”

source: https://theappeal.org/new-york-state-wont-grant-temporarily-release-to-former-black-panther-hospitalized-with-covid-19/