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Tag: Dr. Mutulu Shakur
URGENT Week of Action for Dr. Mutulu Shakur
Join the URGENT WEEK OF ACTION February 21st-28th!
Day 1: Friday, February 21st
* Send cards and letters of love, support and healing energy to Mutulu! Given his medical situation, Mutulu may not be able to respond, but he appreciates mail. Send printed articles and/or tell him what you are doing in your community. Show the Bureau of Prisons a flood of support for him, so they know people are watching!
Dr. Mutulu Shakur #83205-012
FMC Lexington
P.O. Box 14500
Lexington, KY 40412
Day 2: Monday, February 24th
* Post your strong support for compassionate release for Dr. Shakur on social media! Use hashtags #MutuluisWelcomeHere, #FreeDrShakur, #StraightAhead and tag us on:
Twitter – @freedrmshakur
Instagram – @freedrmshakur
Facebook – Join the ‘FreeMutuluShakur’ group, create a post, & share it on your timeline
Day 3: Tuesday, February 25th
* Urge your member of Congress to sign a letter supporting Dr. Shakur’s compassionate release for humanitarian reasons. For routing to your Representative, go to https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative. Most Members of Congress provide email contact information on their websites. For telephone contact information, call the U.S. Capitol switchboard, (202) 224-3121. Please use the cover letter, compassionate release support request flyer, and sample letter below to ask them for a letter of support to send to Dr. Shakur’s attorney:
Brad Thomson, Attorney
People’s Law Office
1180 N. Milwaukee
Chicago, IL 60642
Cover Letter for Requests to Support Compassionate Release
The Compassionate Release Support Request
Sample Letter to Edit in Writer’s Own Words
Day 4: Wednesday, February 26th
* Sign and share the petition for compassionate release for Mutulu!
Day 5: Thursday, February 27th
* Donate whatever amount you can for family visits, medical records analyses and experts, legal visits.
Please send financial donations to Family and Friends of Dr. Mutulu Shakur on Paypal.
Source: http://mutulushakur.com/site/
MESSAGE TO THE PEOPLE FROM THE SON OF DR. MUTULU SHAKUR
Truth & Reconciliation Project: Dr. Mutulu Shakur
We are raising funds for the production of a documentary on the life of Dr. Mutulu Shakur.Please Click Below To See The Video, Donate & Then Share Widely To Help Bring Mutulu Home
A LETTER TO THE PEOPLE
Peace and blessings to you all,
My attribute is Talib ‘Tyrone’ Shakur. I am the executive director of “Truth & Reconciliation: Dr. Mutulu Shakur”.
I was born and raised in South Jamaica, Queens. All my life I was told that someone else was my father. A man I had never seen nor heard his voice before. As a kid, I was constantly told I looked like a man named Jeral. Fast forward to 2015, more than 40 years later, I was riding the train in 2015 when a man wearing an African garment looked to be in his late 60s or early 70s approached me and asked, “excuse me young man, are you Dr. Mutulu Shakur’s son?” I told the man “no, I don’t know the man I’m sorry.”
After that encounter, I finally decided to ask my mother who my father is. When I asked my mother she hesitated then said, “yes son, that is your father, Jeral, now known as Dr. Mutulu Shakur. I’m sorry for keeping it from you all these years.”
Jeral was my father’s slave name before he legally changed it to Dr. Mutulu Shakur. Immediately, I typed his name in Google in order to find the address of the prison he was being held in. I wrote to him right away. A week later I got a letter in the mail from Dr. Mutulu. In the letter he said, “I finally found my son, here are your family names, addresses and phone numbers.” First on the list was Afeni Shakur, Set Shakur, Mopreme Shakur and the list kept going. Those moments of initial contact and greetings with my father are etched into my heart and soul.
Now, I have the opportunity to visit and speak with him frequently. I tell him that I’m going to do my best to show the world the real you, the passionate you, the healer, educator, mentor, the family man, community leader and so much more.
To you, my beloved readers, I share with you my story knowing that you all have many stories with my father as well that help to shape not only his legacy, but the Shakur legacy. To find out more about being featured in this documentary contact Talib Shakur. I ask that you join us to raise the funds so we can make this documentary a global success and finally bring Dr. Mutulu Shakur home!
For questions, comments or to inquire about being featured in the documentary leave a voice message or text your name, contact number and your reason for reaching out to the contact info below.
What We Need & What You Get
We are undertaking the project of producing an Expository and Participatory Documentary for Dr. Mutulu Shakur’s biography and achievements. However, creating a documentary of this fashion is finance sapping. We are faced with several financial challenges to meet all the requirements for this project.
Our goal is to raise $45,000.00 in 60 days. We need all hands on deck! Our primary goal is to ensure that a factual, well-articulated and compiled documentary is created for the sake of Dr. Mutulu Shakur’s life and freedom. The funds raised will go directly to providing all the required equipment and human resources to complete our project.
The Impact
This documentary aims to push forward the ongoing work of others who support the release of Dr. Mutulu Shakur from federal prison. We are striving to reach new networks of people locally and internationally, people who actively push for change, progress and are aware of our political climate and are taking a stand to see change in our criminal justice system. We present to you the unparalleled impact and positive work of Dr. Shakur as an acupuncturist, political prisoner and human rights activist, who has fought for the betterment of African American people and communities across the country.
For our documentary, the following will be done:
1. Gathering of facts (pictures, videos, interviews, testimonies, and stories) about Dr. Shakur
2. Crystallizing all the information gathered to enhance precision
3. Creating an informative and educative documentary about Dr. Shakur’s biography and achievements
4. Promoting this documentary on several TV channels in the USA
5. Sharing this documentary on social media platforms for global awareness
6. Creating a YouTube Channel where the documentary will be posted for public viewing
7. Creating an international impact
Risks & Challenges
We are on a strict deadline to complete this project before February 21st, as you can imagine we feel like we are fighting against time, especially since we are raising funds from the ground up. As Doc would say, “take no easy victories, the victory must be earned and the task understood.” We set the deadline for February 21st because he has a parole hearing soon after that and we would like to launch our film before his parole hearing. Our challenge is to raise the funds, complete the documentary and publish it to bring awareness and an uproar for action.
Other Ways You Can Help
We are asking folks to get the word out and make some noise about our documentary. Use the INDIEGOGO share tools to help us spread the word!
*This Truth and Reconciliation project is officially approved by Dr. Mutulu Shakur
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Mutulu Shakur – Kwanzaa Greetings and New Projects in the Works
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New Film in DevelopmentCrowdfunding now open for a new film highlighting Dr. Shakur’s community impact: With the support of my father, I am producing a film to aid in bringing him home and I’m reaching out today to ask for support to bring our film full circle. Those who know my father may know of his long term work to bring a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to the United States. In an effort to support his work and bring him home, I’ve set out on a mission to reach out to many of the men my father has mentored and impacted over the past 30 years of his incarceration. These men tell the stories of their experience with my father and show how a Truth and Reconciliation can be applied to his life – for his freedom. To date, we’ve produced the trailer to our film that you can view on our fundraising campaign page. There you can read more about our project, the impact your donations will make and view the perks we are offering for donations as well as how to be featured in our film as well. On behalf of everyone who has worked around the clock to bring us this far, THANK YOU for your continued love and support! Donate to the Crowdfunding Campaign »
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December 2019 Medical and Legal Update
Dr. Shakur received a diagnosis of life-threatening bone marrow cancer in October, 2019. Until now, he has requested that this information be kept private. For over a year he had experienced pain in his bones, but he was not even x-rayed until April 2019. Although the prison doctor probably suspected cancer and called for a CT scan, the scan was delayed for four months. After a year of delay, we know now that Mutulu is suffering from extensive painful bone lesions, caused by a rapidly growing bone marrow cancer. He is 69 years old, and aging in prison after 33 years of incarceration. In 2014, he suffered from a stroke, which required several months for recovery. He has high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, and vision problems from glaucoma. We fear for his survival and his life.
Dr. Shakur’s legal team has filed a compassionate release petition, because now Dr. Shakur’s very survival depends on his release. He meets the conditions for compassionate release under federal law. He is a recognized advocate for human and civil rights who poses no danger of committing any crimes against anyone. As evidenced by widespread support for his parole, he will be welcomed back into a community that will also provide for his financial and medical support. However, on December 5th he was denied compassionate release by the Central office of the BOP. He is currently receiving chemotherapy, but the BOP has not told him or his lawyer the exact type of treatment he is getting. He has been able to talk with his newest lawyer Mark Kleiman and may receive a family visit from his son. Most importantly, Mutulu says that he is managing the treatment and his spirit is strong.
Our next steps are two-fold: Mutulu will petition his original judge, Judge Haight in the Southern District of New York, to modify his sentence so he can be released immediately based on his current medical condition. Dr. Shakur also has a habeas petition in front of Judge Wilson in federal court in Los Angeles, detailing the parole commission’s abuse of discretion through their politically-driven denials of parole. We will move to expedite that petition based on the newest information about his life-threatening medical condition.
What you can do to help:
Please send letters of support and love to Mutulu at Victorville:
Dr. Mutulu Shakur #83205-012
Victorville USP
P.O. Box 3900
Adelanto,CA 92301
We are asking his comrades and supporters to give money for medical, legal defense, commissary, and more. The quickest way to send financial support is through the Family and Friends of Mutulu Shakur paypal (go to mutulushakur.com and click on the red and white DONATE button in the right sidebar if this direct link doesn’t work). For your contribution to be tax deductible, FFMS has a partnership with Community Aid and Development (CAD) (cadnational.org) that allows for tax deductible donations via the Paypal button on their website. For a check or money order to be tax-deductible, make it payable to CAD, P.O. Box 361270, Decatur, GA 30036-1270 with “FFMS” in the memo line.
At Dr. Shakur’s request, we are not creating a public campaign for his release at this time. We will update this information as we move into federal court.
— Family and Friends of Dr. Mutulu Shakur
Healing & Justice: A Fundraiser feat. Holistic Treatments
We are pleased to announce the first Philadelphia-based Healing & Justice benefit event: a day of rejuvenation and inspiration in honor of Dr. Mutulu Shakur!
Saturday, December 7th – 1-6pm
Six Fishes Neighborhood Acupuncture – 2308 Grays Ferry Ave
Prisoners, mass incarceration and freedom
by Valerie Haynes
Who are prisoners?
A prisoner can be someone’s father, grandfather, mother, brother, sister or child. It could be you – though you’re more likely to be a prisoner if you’re Black, another person of color, or poor. Under the 13th Amendment, if you’re a prisoner in the U.S., you’re a slave – which is against international law because slavery has long been outlawed worldwide.
Why are so many Blacks and others of color in U.S. prisons?
There were very few Blacks in prison when we were slaves. That’s because the majority of Black men, women and children were already imprisoned on plantations at the time as slaves for life.
Now that we’re supposedly free, Blacks have become the majority of the U.S. prison population. And that is because the free labor of Black slaves built this country into a profitable, prosperous enterprise for whites who are trying to keep it that way.
The Civil War ended slavery and replaced it with segregation, but slavery’s racist, imperialist core still drives U.S. ambitions today. Thus, at slavery’s end we see white slave patrols morph into a white police force, and segregation’s laws, Black Codes, white judges, juries and police force morph into a rudimentary criminal in-justice system.
Blacks began to be arrested for everything, from refusing to sign slave-like work contracts to looking the wrong way at some white man. Black prison rates shot up from 0 to 33 percent. Most arrests were due to sundry attempts to force Blacks to work for free (slavery) or for nearly free (servitude) and always at cheaper wages than whites, who were the main beneficiaries of cheaper Black labor.
This meant higher white profits. So, the reason so many Blacks are in prison is ultimately due to their resistance, in one way or another, to being re-enslaved – at which point the real criminal is brought into the dispute and the innocent Black is shipped off to prison.
Segregation and civil rights
The Civil Rights Movement (CRM), along with the NAACP and Thurgood Marshall, defeated legal (de jure) segregation when the 1954 Supreme Court outlawed school segregation. Though the actual practice of (de facto) segregation continued, the ruling did open the door to attacks on segregation in general.
Enter Rosa Parks, MLK Jr., SCLC and the Montgomery Bus Boycott into the CRM, which ran strong, broke much ground, won many victories, suffered its share of setbacks and was eventually eclipsed by the Black Liberation Movement (BLM) in the latter half of the 1960s.
Now that we’re supposedly free, Blacks have become the majority of the U.S. prison population. And that is because the free labor of Black slaves built this country into a profitable, prosperous enterprise for whites who are trying to keep it that way.
The BLM and ‘serving the people’
The Black Liberation Movement: Black Panthers Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale, Eldridge Cleaver, Lumumba Shakur, Sekou Odinga; Assata, Afeni, Mutulu (RNA) and Zayd Shakur; Sundiata Acoli. Plus the various contributing movements: Puerto Rican (FLN), American Indian Movement (AIM), Weather Underground Organization (WUO, a white anti-imperialist group), Chicano Liberation Front, and I WOR KUEN, an Asian group.
The Panthers were about “Serving the People: Free Breakfast for School Children,” helping people solve their day to day problems and fighting for control of the institutions in their communities, like schools, hospitals and medical clinics. The Panthers had very good community support, particularly among the youth, other people of color, other liberation movements, progressives, the poor and other oppressed who wanted liberation.
COINTELPRO defeats the BLM
In response to the BLM’s growing support in the community and solidarity with other liberation movements, the U.S. government launched a Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) against the Panthers and defeated them. The Nation of Islam was attacked by COINTELPRO and survived. Other domestic liberation groups were attacked; some survived, some didn’t. Others just melted away. Some of today’s aged prisoners are among those who fell during COINTELPRO’s attack on the BLM in the 1960s and ‘70s.
Crack and the mass prison-building spree
The defeat of the BLM was followed immediately by the flooding of communities of color with more drugs: heroin, cocaine and the new drug of the Reagan era – crack. While inundating urban Black and Brown centers with crack, the government was quietly conducting mass prison-building sprees in white rural mountainous and other remote areas to provide jobs for local citizens and cells for the coming prisoners of the “crack scourge.”
War on Blacks and mass incarceration
Then came the “War on Blacks,” others of color and the poor disguised as the “War on Drugs,” or “War on Crime.” Strategies included the 100-to-1 “crack” cocaine (associated mostly with Blacks) vs. “powder” cocaine (associated mostly with whites) sentencing disparity; no more parole (one had to complete 85 percent of a sentence); Bill Clinton’s 50 new “Tough on Crime” death penalty offenses; “three strikes” life sentence for stealing a candy bar; life without parole (LWOP) sentence for “acquitted conduct,” where the jury acquits the defendant but the judge overrules and sentences “acquitted” defendant to LWOP anyway.
The Black community was targeted for constant patrols, higher arrest quotas, zero-tolerance crime enforcement, disproportionate stop and frisk and shoot and kill, harsher charges filed, higher bonds set, longer sentences given out, more paroles denied or revoked – more prison for Blacks than whites.
Equalizing crack and powder cocaine sentences
Colleagues of Congressional Black Congresswoman (CBC) Maxine Waters admitted to her that the current drug laws were often excessively unfair when applied to Blacks, others of color, poor and oppressed. Other CBC colleagues pled with the organization to bear with them until they could pass adequate sentence reduction laws. Congress passed laws that reduced sentences and freed large-scale marijuana growers and methamphetamine manufacturers (crimes usually associated with whites) as people of color patiently waited year after year for the 100-to-1 crack and powder cocaine sentencing disparity to be equalized.
Finally came the day! C-Span televised the congressional debate for equalizing crack cocaine and powder cocaine sentences. It never happened! Crack was only reduced to an 18-to-1 ratio to powder, though cocaine is the only active drug in either crack or powder cocaine. Even the 18-to-1 sentencing disparity was not made retroactive to those with prior convictions.
People of color felt betrayed by Congress. Prisons erupted in riots. The Bureau of Prisons (BOP) instantly shut down C-Span and locked down the prisons that flared up. Today the 18-to-1 disparity remains, as does the racist overkill tactics of the Criminal Injustice System against Black and Brown communities in particular and the poor in general.
Where do we go from here?
Our Black families, communities of color and poor people have been torn asunder by one racist scheme after another to keep Blacks and other oppressed in subservient roles for the benefit of an imperialistic white supremacist system.
Sundiata Acoli
Quite simply: We want our imprisoned parents, grandparents, teachers, leaders, brothers, sisters, political prisoners, exiles, students and children freed and exonerated to help rebuild our families, communities, lives and Black Nation now, not at some vague future date that will allow most of our loved ones to slowly die off in prison – as is the case with 82-year-old Black Panther political prisoner Sundiata Acoli, held at FCI Cumberland, Maryland. (His full address is Sundiata Acoli (Squire), 39794-066, FCI Cumberland, P.O. Box 1000, Cumberland MD 20501; please write. – ed.)
Kevin Jones-Bey
Or: the case of Kevin Jones-Bey, who’s doing LWOP for an “acquitted conduct” sentence. Along with Sundiata Acoli, Kevin Jones-Bey is a brilliant co-teacher of the Critical Thinking course that is tasked, inter alia, with teaching younger prisoners to control their emotions in critical situations so that they think and act rationally to avoid the revolving door recidivism (like parole violations) that return so many young parolees to prison. (Kevin’s address is the same as Sundiata’s, except his number is 32567-037.)
Tony Lewis Sr.
Or: the case of Tony Lewis Sr., former kingpin, doing LWOP, who deliberately steered his son, Tony Lewis Jr., nicknamed “Slugg,” away from drugs and crime and toward the best schools and love of self, family, community and people – but taught him never to forget where he came from. Tony Lewis Jr. did not disappoint, going on to write an inspiring double biography of father and son, “Slugg: A Boy’s Life in the Age of Mass Incarceration.”
He heeded his father’s caution not to glamorize drugs or street life but to save Black lives and inspire Black men to be better than they are – and he did indeed! Tony Lewis Jr. is now a member of the Washington, D.C., City Council, serving and representing his people well and moving on up the ladder.
We want freedom
“It is our duty to fight for our freedom. It is our duty to win. We must love each other and support each other. We have nothing to lose but our chains.” – Assata Shakur
Valerie Haynes, who can be reached at Valerie_Haynes@Hotmail.com, describes herself as a “Black woman, mother, community organizer, activist from Brooklyn, New York. I’ve been organizing with and advocating for u.s. held Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War since 2010.
“I joined the Sekou Odinga Defense Committee (SODC) in 2013 and when Sekou came home, he co-founded, with other former PPs/POWs, activists, organizations, the North East Political Prisoner Coalition (NEPPC). I’ve been with NEPPC since 2015. We educate the masses on the existence of u.s. held PPs and POWs, particularly focusing on the forgotten ones from the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army movement of the 1960s. We share their stories so we can change and correct the narrative on our history of Black Resistance while the powers that be continue to criminalize Black Resistance. FREE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS! FREE ’EM ALL!
Our 11 Black Panther or BLA PPs/POWs are:
- Sundiata Acoli, 82
- Russell Maroon Shoatz, 75
- Imam Jamil Al Amin, 75
- Ed Poindexter, 74
- Veronza Bowers, 73
- Ruchell Magee, 72
- Romaine Chip Fitzgerald, 70
- Dr. Mutulu Shakur, 68
- Jalil Muntaqim, 67
- Kamau Sadiki, 67
- Mumia Abu-Jamal, 65
Learn more at http://www.northeastpoliticalprisonercoalition.wordpress.com.”
source: https://sfbayview.com/2019/06/prisoners-mass-incarceration-and-freedom/
Mosi-Blog 