Comrades, on May 25th, Sundiata Acoli walked out of prison into the arms of his family and loved ones! We knew this day was coming but wanted to ensure it was official and that we saw it with our own eyes. As you can imagine, after 49 years, Sundiata is finally able to spend time with his family and we want to make sure we respect these precious moments. To that end, we will be asking our supporters to hold off on requesting meetings with him until he can get settled and his family can love up on him by themselves. We’ll announce an official homecoming celebration in the coming weeks.
In prison, there’s no 401k, no savings plan, and no pension. It’s up to all of us to provide that. We ask for your generous support to allow Sundiata to enjoy his years of freedom with the financial stability he deserves.
All donations received will go to Sundiata’s family to care for him.
Fundraiser to Free Political Prisoner
Sundiata Acoli, 83, from 47 Years in Prison
Dear Friends and Supporters of Sundiata Acoli:
The New Jersey Appellate Court denied Sundiata’s release on parole in a decision dated Dec. 27, 2019. He gets a mandatory appeal to the New Jersey Supreme Court.
Sundiata’s attorney must get transcripts and will have other expenses, including printing, and of course his legal fees, as he prepares the next phase of this case. A minimum amount of $20,000 is the fundraising goal. His attorney needs funds now. He has done a great job so far on behalf of Sundiata, and no doubt will continue to do so.
Please give generously to ensure that lack of funds does not contribute to any delay in pursuing freedom for Sundiata, who is 83 years old and has been in prison for 47 years.
Sundiata deeply appreciates the support, and commitment to getting him released. Much thanks in advance, on his behalf.
How we can help FREE SUNDIATA ACOLI
Make checks or money orders payable to Sundiata Acoli Freedom Campaign (or SAFC). Mail them to: Florence Morgan, 147-25 Northern Blvd. #5Q, Flushing, New York 11354.
Editor’s note: In addition to your monetary donation, send our brother some love and light: Sundiata Acoli (Squire), 39794-066, FCI Cumberland. P.O. Box 1000, Cumberland MD 21501.
As poor communities and communities of color continue to wade through a gauntlet of crises, it is encouraging to see movements and organizations building and seeking solidarity to wage a concerted rescue. It is for this reason that we must now, at this moment in our people’s historical arch of resistance and struggle, extend a last ditch lifeline to our movement’s political prisoners who are on their last legs and in many cases literally their last breath; and who as seniors constitute the most vulnerable among us. Our movement’s political prisoners, who, despite surviving countless hostile encounters with the state’s security forces, are on the verge of succumbing to old age and infirmities behind the walls and gun towers of the empire’s Prison Industrial Complex.
It is also encouraging to see one of the main issues of these communities — mass incarceration — come front and center in public consciousness. To see it be recognized as the continuation of slavery, and more folks be proud to bear the mantle of abolitionist, is heartening. We are witnessing a rising tidal wave of consciousness that has the potential of lifting society to a higher level of humanity. The need to reform or outright abolish the current legal system has never been as mainstream as it is today. Just as the abolitionist movement, the suffragist movement, the civil rights movement, and the Black Liberation/Black Power movement, were all thrusts to humanize this society, today’s criminal legal reform and prison abolition movements also have the potential to make this society more humane. This “mainstreaming” of criminal justice reform is the result of the tireless efforts of activists, families, and advocates not abandoning their loved ones and communities to the beast of mass incarceration.
However, today’s prison abolitionist and prison reform movement will fall woefully short of fully humanizing American society if it allows the issue of political prisoners to be perceived as a radioactive idea. Because of this reactionary and unfortunate perception among certain sectors of the reform movement, some of these political prisoners themselves have opted to be excluded from any reform or abolition campaign. They perceive themselves as radioactive to the fight. This is a sad resignation on the part of our greatest living champions of justice. This thinking has as much to do with the graciousness and self-sacrifice of our warriors behind bars as it does to the way the movement itself has allowed the idea of radioactivity, futility, and “lost cause,” to influence and infect its direction and sense of justice.
In Pennsylvania, Russell Maroon Shoatz, Fred Muhammad Burton, Joseph JoJo Bowen and Mumia Abu-Jamalhave languished in prisons for decades. They are now seniors and in poor health. Nationally, Ruchell Cinque Magee, Ramaine “Chip” Fitzgerald, Sundiata Acoli, Dr. Mutulu Shakur, Jalil Muntaquin, Ed Poindexter, Kamau Sadiki, Kojo Bomani Sababu, Leonard Peltier, Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, Veronza Bowers, and Rev. Joy Powellare among the longest interned human political prisoners in the world. These are our Nelson Mandelas. They are all not just our elders, but now our elderly. They resist the passage of time, and the effects of long term solitary confinement, unconscionable abuses, and prison machinations, that have led to terminal illness in many of them. Not just every day that they make it through, but every breath that they take, is an act of defiance and preservation of dignity.
We believe that not seeing the movement to free political prisoners as part of the movement for criminal legal reform is partly the cause of the increased distancing and alienation of political prisoners from the criminal legal reform movement. This all has helped to increase the isolation of the movement to free political prisoners and have led to a costly loss of steam in that movement. There are also many within the mainstream criminal justice reform movement who don’t want it to be associated with the radical politics that define political prisoners. This distancing and alienation of political prisoners from the criminal legal reform and abolitionist movements, which they helped birth and gave thrust and vision to, is unacceptable.
As part of the movement for prison abolition and criminal justice reform the Abolitionist Law Center and Amistad Law Project rejects the idea, whether strategic or tactical, that political prisoners are radioactive to the fight for social and criminal justice. We are committed to a strong thrust to revive the campaign to free US political prisoners. However, we believe that this thrust and campaign must also incorporate a critical collective examination of the previous struggles of the Political Prisoner movement. This would fortify an analysis of contemporary conditions for the purpose of projecting a new vision for the political prisoner movement that is integral to the abolitionist and reform movement at large. This collective examination revolves around a recommitment to Restorative and Transformative Justice centered on healing, accountability, compassion and restoration. It would also recognize the harm suffered and the enduring harm that retribution causes to the families of political prisoners, the injured family’s parties, and our communities. This cycle must be broken.
The Abolitionist Law Center and Amistad Law Project are committed to supporting and helping to lead the fight for the release of Pennsylvania’s political prisoners through whatever legal means available and necessary, be it compassionate release, clemency, or pardons. We encourage prison abolitionists and prison reform movements to prioritize the cases of political prisoners. We will devote resources to the rebuilding of a Jericho Pennsylvania Chapter. Our support for Political Prisoners will not be conditioned upon guilt or innocence, nor will we prioritize or lift claims of innocence.
We believe that prioritizing the innocence of our political prisoners runs the risk of continually miring our efforts to get them released in the never ending retrying and relitigation of their cases. Our position is that our political prisoners have served enough time and it is time to bring them home. They have served over 40 years and are in their 70’s and 80’s. Many are among the longest held political prisoners in the world. Statistically, they are in the age group that poses no threat to the community or society at large. In fact, their continued incarceration serves absolutely no more purpose other than endless retribution. We believe that with over 40 years served we can firmly say retribution has run its course.
We call on the prison abolition and criminal justice reform movements, and supporters of Political Prisoners, to join with us in committing to the following points:
1.) Organize and support efforts for compassionate release of Political Prisoners through executive clemency and/or other means available.
2.) Provide letters supporting clemency for political prisoners from criminal justice reform groups and restorative justice advocacy groups.
3.) Obtain letters supporting compassionate release from state representatives and politicians representing our communities.
4.) Advocate for a reconciliation and restorative justice process between Political Prisoners and the victims in the cases for which they were convicted.
5.) Creation of space for political prisoners in the criminal legal reform campaigns, such as the campaigns to end life without parole/death by incarceration, to release aging prisoners, to include violent cases in the equation of criminal justice reform, and to release those human beings who are most vulnerable to the effects of COVID-19. This would include providing space for political prisoner cases to be represented on every movement organization’s agenda, including rallies and other actions.
6.) Establishment of a Pennsylvania chapter of Jericho to help consolidate and assist all campaigns to free the state’s political prisoners.
A man convicted in the 1973 killing of a New Jersey State Police trooper should not receive parole anytime soon, an appellate panel has concluded.
Sundiata Acoli, now 82, was convicted along with Joanne Chesimard in the shooting death of Trooper Werner Foerster and wounding of Trooper James Harper during a traffic stop on the New Jersey Turnpike in East Brunswick.
A three-judge appellate panel affirmed the state parole board’s denial of Acoli’s latest bid for parole, with one judge dissenting.
Formerly known as Clark Edward Squire, Acoli was sentenced in 1974 to life plus 24 to 30 years in prison for his crimes. Chesimard escaped from prison in 1979 and fled to Cuba. She remains on the FBI’s most wanted list.
Acoli was denied parole in 1994 and 2004, with the parole board citing “continued anti-social behavior” and continued denial of the evidence presented at his trial.
After a two-member parole board panel denied him again in 2010, Acoli appealed and the state appellate court ruled in 2014 that he was wrongly denied parole and ordered his release.
The state attorney general and parole board appealed that ruling to the state Supreme Court, which reversed the lower court ruling in 2016 and ordered that he receive a hearing before the full parole board.
While Acoli previously stated that he blacked out during the confrontation with the troopers because of a graze wound from a bullet and didn’t remember how Foerster died, he speculated during this new hearing that another trooper “probably” shot Foerster with a “friendly fire shot.”
Acoli and Chesimard were members of the Black Panthers and the militant Black Liberation Army at the time of the shooting.
Trooper James Harper stopped their car for a broken tail light just after midnight on May 2, 1973. Harper called Foerster for backup and Foerster discovered Acoli had a gun, according to previous reports.
During a gun battle, Chesimard shot and wounded Harper and Foerster was shot when Acoli’s gun fired during a struggle between the men. The prosecution argued that Chesimard then took Foerster’s gun and shot him twice in the head. The defense argued that Chesimard was too badly injured from her own gunshot wounds to have killed Foerster.
A third man in the car with Acoli and Chesimard, James Costan, was shot and killed at the scene.
In seeking parole, Acoli claimed he led a crime-free life for about 40 years and took “full responsibility” for Foerster’s death. The parole board didn’t buy it, though, calling it “disturbing” that he would raise the friendly fire theory — which is not supported by ballistic evidence — while also claiming he took responsibility for the crime.
The parole board found there remained a “substantial likelihood” he would commit new crimes if released from prison. His bid for parole was denied and a 15-year period of parole ineligibility was set.
In reviewing his appeal of that decision, the appellate court ruled Friday that the parole board’s decision was reasonable and supported by “substantial credible evidence.”
Appellate Judge Garry S. Rothstadt, disagreed with his colleagues’ decision. In a dissenting option, Rothstadt said Acoli had been a model prisoner for decades and that the parole denial included no evidence that he was likely to commit new crimes if released.
He said Acoli’s new speculation about how Foerster was shot doesn’t change the fact that he has expressed remorse for his part in the crime.
Acoli, one of the state’s oldest and longest-serving inmates, is currently housed at a federal prison in Maryland.
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, Kevin Jones-Bey (16)
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!
Mosi-Blog 