4strugglemag

Check out the new poster for political prisoners with birthdays in June – and don’t forget to write them!

Click here to download the poster (pdf)

Please join us on Saturday, June 11th for the sneak peek Bay Area screening of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival award winning documentary If a Tree Falls: A Story of the Earth Liberation Front. The documentary tells the story of Daniel McGowan, a political prisoner who is currently serving out a seven year sentence at the Control Management Unit at FCI Terre Haute in Indiana for his role in two multi-million dollar arsons against Oregon timber companies.

This screening will be done in conjunction with the International Day of Solidarity with Political Prisoners Marie Mason and Eric McDavid. Cities worldwide will be holding events to highlight the cases of Marie and Eric, who share the unfortunate distinction of having the longest standing sentences of any persons imprisoned for their environmental advocacy in the United States. Both are serving sentences of 20 years or more as a result of the government’s sweeping campaign against earth and animal liberation activists.

In addition to the film screening, we will have scrumptious treats for sale and amazing items up for auction. All proceeds from this event will go directly to Marie’s and Eric’s support funds.

Come out to learn more about Marie and Eric’s cases and to show them that we have not forgotten them.

Free Marie and Eric!

Saturday, June 11th – 7 pm sharp!
$15.00
The Women’s Building
3543 18th St (in between Valencia and Guerrero St.)
San Francisco

http://www.june11.org/
http://supportmariemason.org/
http://supporteric.org/

BY JOHAN THOMAS
http://newsone.com/nation/rap-sessions/jothomas/remembering-geronimo-pratt/

By Bakari Kitwana

Political activists around the country are still absorbing the news of Geronimo ji Jaga’s death. For those of us who came of age in the 80s and 90s, the struggles of the late 1960s and early 1970s were in many ways a gateway for our examination of the history of Black political resistance in the US. Geronimo ji Jaga (formerly Geronimo Pratt) and his personal struggle, as well as his contributions to the fight for social justice were impossible to ignore. His commitment, humility, clear thinking as well as his sense of both the longevity and continuity of the Black Freedom Movement in the US all stood out to those who knew him.

I interviewed him for The Source magazine in early September 1997 about three months after he was released from prison, having served 27 years of a life sentence for a murder he didn’t commit. Three things stood out from the interview, all of which have been missed by recent commentary celebrating his life and impact.

First that famed attorney Johnnie Cochran was not only his lawyer when ji Jaga gained his freedom, but also represented him in his original trial. They were from the same hometown and, according to ji Jaga, Cochran’s conscious over the years was dogged by the injustice of the US criminal system that resulted in the 1970 sentence. Second, according to ji Jaga, he never formally joined the Black Panther Party. As he remembered it, he worked with several Black activist organizations and was captured by the police while working with the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. And finally, his analysis of the UCLA 1969 shoot-out between Black Panthers and US Organization members that led to the death of his best friend Bunchy Carter and John Huggins is not a simple tale of Black in-fighting. Now is a good time to revisit all three.

Misinformation is so much part of our current political moment, particularly as the 24-hour news cycle converges with the ascendance of Fox News. In this climate, the conservative analysis of race has been normalized in mainstream discourse. This understanding of racial politics, along with the election of Barack Obama and a first term marked by little for Blacks to celebrate, makes it a particularly challenging time to be politically Black in the United States. Ask Jeremiah Wright, Shirley Sherrod, and Van Jones­all three serious advocates for the rights and humanity of everyday people whose critiques of politics and race made them far too easily demonized as anti-American.

If we have entered the era where the range of Black political thought beyond the mainstream liberal-conservative purview is delegitimized, Geronimo ji Jaga’s life and death is a reminder of our need to resist it.

EXCERPTS FROM THE 1997 INTERVIEW:

How did you get involved with the Black Panther Party?

Technically I never joined the Black Panther Party. After Martin Luther King’s death, an elder of mine who was related to Bunchy Carter’s elder and Johnnie Cochran’s elder requested that those of us in the South that had military training render some sort of discipline to brothers in urban areas who were running amuck getting shot right and left, running down the street shooting guns with bullets half filled which they were buying at the local hardware store. When I arrived at UCLA, Bunchy was just getting out of prison and needed college to help with his parole. We stayed together in the dorm room on campus. But we were mainly working to build the infrastructure of the Party.

You ended up as the Deputy Minister of Defense. How did that come about?

They did not have a Ministry of Defense when I came on the scene. There was one office in Oakland and a half an office in San Francisco. I helped build the San Francisco branch and all of the chapters throughout the South­New Orleans, Dallas, Atlanta, Memphis, Winston-Salem, North Carolina and other places. We did it under the banner of the Panthers because that’s what was feasible at the time. Because of shoot-outs and all that stuff, the work I did with the Panthers, overshadowed the stuff that I did with the Republic of New Afrika, the Mau Mau, the Black Liberation Army, the Brown Berets, the Black Berets, even the Fruit of Islam­but I saw my work with the Panthers as temporary. When Bunchy was killed, the Panthers wanted me to fill his position [as leader of the Southern California chapter]. I didn’t want to do it because I was already overloaded with other stuff. But it was just so hard to find someone who could handle LA given the problems with the police. So I ended up doing it, reluctantly. And this is how I ended up on the central committee of the Black Panther Party. I never took an oath and never joined the Party.

What was your role as Deputy Minister of Defense?

The Ministry of Defense was largely based on infrastructure: cell systems in the cities; creating an underground for situations when you need to get individuals out of the city or country. When you get shot by the police, you can’t be taken to no hospital. You gotta have medical underground as well. That’s where the preachers, bible school teachers and a lot of others behind the scenes got involved. When Huey got out of prison in 1970, this stuff blew his mind.

What were the strengths and weaknesses of the Party?

The main strength was the discipline which allowed for a brother or sister to feed children early in the morning, go to school and P.E. classes during the day, go to work and selling papers in the afternoon, and patrol the police at night. The weak points were our naiveté, our youth, and the lack of experience. But even at that I really salute the resistance of the generation! I have a problem saying it was just the Panthers `cause that’s not right. When you do that you x-out so much. There was more collective work going on than the popular written history of the period suggests. And when you talk about SNCC you are talking about a whole broader light than the Panther struggle. So you have to talk about that separate­that’s a bigger thing. They gave rise to the intelligence of a whole bunch of Panthers.

What was Bunchy Carter like?

He was a giant, a shining prince. He had been the head of the Slausons gang. He was transforming the gangbangers in Los Angeles into that revolutionary arm. He was my mentor. Such a warm and lovable, brainy brother. At the same time he was such a fierce brother. He was very dynamic­he was an ex-boxer, and he was even on The Little Rascals probably back in the fifties. His main claim to fame was what he did with the gangs in the city. And that was a monumental thing. All that was before Bunchy became a Panther.

Because of the death of Bunchy Carter as a result of the Panthers’ clash with Maulana Karenga’s US organization, even today rumors persists that Dr. Karenga was an informant. . .

Not true. Definitely not true.

What was the Panther clash with US all about?

We considered Karenga’s US organization to be a cultural-nationalist organization. We were considered revolutionary nationalist. So, we have a common denominator. We both are nationalist. We never had antagonistic contradictions, just ideological contradictions. The pig manipulated those contradictions to the extent that warfare jumped off. Truth is the first casualty in war. It began to be said that Karenga was rat, but that wasn’t true. The death of Bunchy and John Huggins on UCLA campus was caused by an agent creating a disturbance which caused a Panther to pull out a gun and which subsequently caused US members to pull out their guns to defend themselves. In the ensuing gun battle Bunchy Carter and John Huggins lay dead.

What’s your worst memory of the 27 years you spent in prison?

I accepted the fact that when I joined the movement I was gonna be killed. When we were sent off to these urban areas we were actually told, “Look, you’re either gonna get killed, put in prison, or if you’re lucky we can get you out the country before they do that. Those are the three options. To survive is only a dream.” So when I was captured, I began to disconnect. So it’s hard to say good or bad moments because this is a whole different reality that had a life of its own.

Many people would say that during those twenty-seven years that you lost something. How would you describe it?

I considered myself chopped off the game plan when I was arrested. But it was incumbent upon me to free myself and continue to struggle again. You can’t look back twenty-seven years and say it was a lost. I’m still living. I run about five miles every morning, and I can still bench press 300 pounds ten times. I can give you ten reps (laughter). Also I hope I’m a little more intelligent and I’m not crazy. It’s a hell of a gain that I survived.

What music most influenced you during that time?

In 1975 I heard some music on a prison radio. I hadn’t seen a television in six years until about 1976, and it was at the end of the tier. I couldn’t see it unless I stood up sideways against the bars. When I really got to see a television again was in 1977. So, I was basically without music and television for the first eight years when I was in the hole. When I was able to get on the main line and listen to music and see T.V., of course the things I wanted to hear were the things I heard when I was on the street. But by then those songs had to be at least nine years old. So, I would listen to oldies. And the new music it was hard to get into, but I slowly began to get into that. But when hip-hop began to come around, it caught on like wildfire. It reminds me how the Panthers and other groups started to catch on like wildfire. It reminded me of Gil Scott-Heron. He would spit that knowledge so clearly and that was the first thing that came to mind when I heard Grandmaster Flash, KRS-One, Paris, Public Enemy and Sista Soldier­the militancy.

What type of books were you reading?

We maintained study groups throughout when I was on main line. Much of the focus was on Cheik Anta Diop­He was considered by us to be the last Pharaoh. We also read the works compiled by Ivan Van Sertima. Of course, there were others.

In terms of a spiritual center, what helped you to get through?

Well the ancestors guided me back to the oldest religion known to man­Maat. We also studied those meditations that were developed by all of our ancestors­the Natives, the Hispanics, the Irish­not just the ones that were strictly African.

The youngest of seven children, Ji Jaga was born Elmer Pratt, in Morgan City, a port city in southwestern Louisiana, two hours south of New Orleans, on September 13 1947. 120 years earlier marked the death of Jean Lafitte, the so-called “gentleman’s pirate” of French ancestry who settled in Haiti in the early 1800s until he was run out with most other Europeans during the Haitian revolution. Lafitte’s claim to fame was smuggling enslaved Africans from the Caribbean to Louisiana during the Spanish embargo of the late 17th & early 18th centuries, often taking refuge in the same bayous that were Pratt’s childhood home. Pratt was dubbed Geronimo by Bunchy Carter and assumed the name ji Jaga in 1968. The Jaga were a West African clan of Angolan warriors who Geronimo says he descends from. Many of the Jaga came to Brazil with the Portuguese as free men and women and some were later found among maroon societies in Brazil. How Jaga descendants could have ended up in Louisiana is open to historical interpretation, as most Angolans who ended up in Louisiana and Mississippi and neighboring states entered the US via South Carolina. Some Jaga were possibly among the maroon communities in the Louisiana swamplands as well. According to the Pratt, the Jaga refused to accept slavery­hence his strong identification with the name.

What were some of your earliest early childhood memories?

Well, joyous times mostly. Morgan City was a very rural setting and very nationalistic, self-reliant, and self-determining. It was a very close-knit community. Until I was a ripe old age, I thought that I belonged to a nation that was run by Blacks. And across the street was another nation, a white nation. Segregation across the tracks. We had our own national anthem, “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” our own police, and everything. We didn’t call on the man across the street for nothing and it was very good that I grew up that way. The worst memories were those of when the Klan would ride. During one of those rides, I lost a close friend at an early age named Clayborne Brown who was hit in the head by the Klan and drowned. They found his body three days later in the Chaparral River. And, we all went to the River and saw them pull him in. Clayborne was real dark-skinned and when they pulled him out of the river, his body was like translucent blue. Then a few years later, one Halloween night, the Klan jumped on my brother. So there are bad memories like that.

Does your mother still live there?

She’s gone off into senility, but she’s still living­94 years old this year. [She died in 2003 at 98 years-old] And every time I’ve left home, when I come back the first person I go to see is my mama. So, that’s what I did when I got out of prison. Mama has always stood by me. And, I understood why. She was a very brainy person. Our foreparents, her mother was the first to bring education into that part of the swampland and set up the first school. When I was growing up, Mama used to rock us in her chair on the front porch. We grew up in a shack and we were all born in that house, about what you would call a block from the Chaparral River. She would recite Shakespeare and Longfellow to us. All kind of stuff like that at an early age we were hearing from Mama­this Gumbo Creole woman (laughs). And she was very beautiful. Kept us in church, instilled all kinds of interests in us, morals and respect for the elders, respect for the young.

What about your father?

My father was very hard working. He wouldn’t work for no white man so he was what you could call a junk man. On the way home from school in Daddy’s old pick-up truck we would have to go to the dump and get all the metal that we could find as well as rope, rags, anything. When we got home, we unloaded the truck and separated the brass, copper, the aluminum, so we could sell it separate. That’s how he raised an entire family of seven and he did a damn good job. But he worked himself to death. He died from a stroke in 1956.

With an upbringing so nationalistic, what made you join the US military?

I considered myself a hell of an athlete. We had just started a Black football league. A few years earlier, Grambling came through and checked one of the guys out. So initially my ambition was to go to Grambling or Southern University and play ball. Because of the way the community was organized, the elders called the shots over a lot of the youngsters. They had a network that went all the way back to Marcus Garvey and the days when the United Negro Improvement Association (U.N.I.A.) was organizing throughout the South in the 1920s. My uncle was a member of the legionnaires, the military arm of the U.N.I.A. Of the seventeen people in my graduating class, six of us were selected by the elders to go into the armed forces, the United States Air Force. The older generation was getting older and was concerned about who would protect the community.

Many of the brothers that went to Vietnam have never gotten past it. You seemed to have made a progressive transition. How have you done that?

I’ve never suffered the illusion that I was aligned to anything other than my elders. And my going to Vietnam was out on a sense of duty to them. When I learned how to deal with explosives, I’m listening at that training in terms of defending my community. Most of the brothers that I ran into in the service really bought into being Americans and “pow” when they were hit with the reality of all the racism and disrespect, they just couldn’t handle it.

What was it like to be a Black soldier in the US military in 1965?

This was my first experience with integration. But I was never was a victim of any racial attack or anything. During the whole first time I was in Vietnam­throughout 1966­I never heard the “N” word. And all of my officers were white. When I went back in 1968 that’s when you would see more manifestations of racial hatred, especially racial skirmishes between the soldiers. But first off there were so many battles and we were getting ambushed so much. Partners were dying. We were getting over run. I mean it was just madness. If you were shooting in the same direction, cool.

You were very successful in the military. Why did you get out?

On April 4, 1968 Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed. I was due to terminate my service a month later. I wasn’t gonna do it. I was gonna re-up ‘cause I had made Sergeant at a very early age, in two tours of combat, so I could have been sitting pretty for the rest of my life in the military. I was loyal and patriotic to the African nation I grew up in who sent me into the service. And after Martin Luther King was killed, my elders ordered me to come on out of the service. King was the eldest Messiah. Malcolm was our generation’s Messiah. And now that their King was dead, it was like there’s no hope. So they actually unleashed us to do what we did. This is why when Newsweek took their survey in 1969, it was over 92% of the Black people in this country supported the Black Panther Party as their legitimate political arm. It blew the United States’ mind.

Reprinted from Kersplebedeb

On July 1, 2011, between 50 and 100 prisoners at Pelican Bay State Prison in the Security Housing Unit (SHU), Corridor D, are going on an indefinite hunger strike.  The D corridor (also known as the “short” corridor) has the highest level of restricted incarceration in the state of California and among the most severe conditions in the united states.  The rules of their confinement are extremely harsh in order to force them to “debrief” or offer up information about criminal or prison gang activity of other prisoners.  Most inmates in the SHU are not members or associates of prison gangs, as the PBSP staff claims, and even those who are put their lives and the lives of their families and other prisoners at risk if they debrief.

Using conditions of severe mental and physical harm in order to force prisoners into confessing is torture!  Many debriefers simply make up information about other prisoners just to escape the isolation units.  This misinformation is then used to validate other prisoners as members or associates of prison gangs who in reality have nothing to do whatsoever with gang activity.

These are the five core demands of the hunger-striking prisoners:

1. Eliminate group punishments. Instead, practice individual accountability. When an individual prisoner breaks a rule, the prison often punishes a whole group of prisoners of the same race. This policy has been applied to keep prisoners in the SHU indefinitely and to make conditions increasingly harsh.
2. Abolish the debriefing policy and modify active/inactive gang status criteria. Prisoners are accused of being active or inactive participants of prison gangs using false or highly dubious evidence, and are then sent to longterm isolation (SHU). They can escape these tortuous conditions only if they “debrief,” that is, provide information on gang activity. Debriefing produces false information (wrongly landing other prisoners in SHU, in an endless cycle) and can endanger the lives of debriefing prisoners and their families.
3. Comply with the recommendations of the US Commission on Safety and Abuse in Prisons (2006) regarding an end to longterm solitary confinement. This bipartisan commission specifically recommended to “make segregation a last resort” and “end conditions of isolation.” Yet as of May 18, 2011, California kept 3,259 prisoners in SHUs and hundreds more in Administrative Segregation waiting for a SHU cell to open up. Some prisoners have been kept in isolation for more than thirty years.
4. Provide adequate food. Prisoners report unsanitary conditions and small quantities of food that do not conform to prison regulations. There is no accountability or independent quality control of meals.
5. Expand and provide constructive programs and privileges for indefinite SHU inmates. The hunger strikers are pressing for opportunities “to engage in self-help treatment, education, religious and other productive activities…” Currently these opportunities are routinely denied, even if the prisoners want to pay for correspondence courses themselves. Examples of privileges the prisoners want are: one phone call per week, and permission to have sweatsuits and watch caps. (Often warm clothing is denied, though the cells and exercise cage can be bitterly cold.) All of the privileges mentioned in the demands are already allowed at other SuperMax prisons (in the federal prison system and other states).

This widespread hunger strike has the potential to become the most significant event in California prison reform in the last decade.  Public support is crucial. Outside support work will be coordinated by California Prison Focus and other groups – visit their website here!

If you are in contact with any California prisoners it is urged that you let them know that outside support groups are drafting litigation to contest the constitutional validity of certain CDCR practices inside California’s Security Housing Units. And that any prisoner having information on this subject, or who is seeking to learn more about this law suit, should use confidential legal mail to contact:

Marilyn McMahon
Attorney at Law
PO Box 5187
Berkeley, CA
94705-0187

For inquiries and most up to date information, please contact California Prison Focus or visit the section of their site devoted to the hunger strike.

Original Content at http://www.opednews.com/articles/Palestinian-Solidarity-Act-by-Kevin-Gosztola-110509-493.html

By Kevin Gosztola

Right before Mother’s Day weekend, the US government froze the bank accounts of Hatem Abudayyeh, a long-time Palestinian solidarity activist and organizer, and his wife, Naima. Abudayyeh is one of twenty-three activists from the Midwest in the US, who has been the subject of an FBI Grand Jury investigation since September of last year.

Hatem and Naima Abudayyeh have both been charged with no crimes. Naima Abudayyeh has not even been subpoenaed and is not the subject of an investigation.

The Committee to Stop FBI Repression in a statement on this development declare:

The persecution of the Abudayyeh family is another example of the criminalization of Palestinians, their supporters, and their movement for justice and liberation. There has been widespread criticism of the FBI and local law enforcement for their racial profiling and scapegoating of Arab and Muslim Americans. These repressive tactics include infiltration of community centers and mosques, entrapment of young men, and the prominent case of 11 students from the University of California campuses at Irvine and Riverside who have been subpoenaed to a grand jury and persecuted for disrupting a speech by Michael Oren, Israeli Ambassador to the US. The government’s attempt to conflate the anti-war and human rights movements with terrorism is a cynical attempt to capitalize on the current political climate in order to silence Palestinians and other people of conscience who exercise their First Amendment rights in a manner which does not conform to the administration’s foreign policy agenda in the Middle East.

I spoke with Joe Iosbaker, another one of the twenty-three who have been subpoenaed to appear before a Grand Jury. Iosbaker is a twenty year civil service employee at the University of Illionis at Chicago (UIC) and chief steward for the 1300 clerical workes in the Service Employees International Union Local 73.

To hear the interview, click on the play button on the widget below or click here . You will see an “episode” titled “Bank Accounts Frozen, Activists Targeted for Political Action.” Either click “listen” or “download.” You can also download this off of iTunes by searching for “CMN News.” The file with the above mentioned title should appear.

For those who do not want to or cannot listen, here’s a transcript covering the ongoing criminalization and suppression of activists by the US government.

TRANSCRIPT — BEGIN

KEVIN: Hello, my name is Kevin Gosztola and I’m a writer for OpEdNews.com. I’m a writer for WLCentral.org. I also am serving as an intern for The Nation magazine right now. And, I’d like to present to you an interview that I have done with Joe Iosbaker. He is a lead organizer in Chicago. He is one of twenty-three who have been targeted by the FBI, targeted because he is engaging in political action. And, I’ve been tracking this story since October when it began. You’ll hear from Joe background on what he and twenty-two other people have been facing at the hands of a Grand Jury investigation, a fishing expedition. This might remind you of McCarthyism or maybe if you know your history the Palmer Raids. Joe, will remind you of that. But, really, I am bringing you this interview because over the weekend the activists were hit with another attack, an escalation on one of their own. Hatem Abudayyeh, a Palestinian solidarity activist, he had his bank accounts frozen. Frozen. No charges. No real apparent legal reason to have his bank accounts frozen. But they were frozen. And so, listen to this interview here. This is Joe Iosbaker from Chicago discussing cases of FBI repression in Chicago, Minneapolis and the greater Midwest right now.

JOE: I think the last time I talked with you we had of the original 23 people who had been subpoenaed to the grand jury–I think the last time I talked to you three of them had been approached by the US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald or by his office telling them that they were going to be called back to the Grand Jury. You know, all twenty-three of us have refused to testify, refused to cooperate with the Grand Jury. And then, those three were re-approached. And, while they were never given dates, there were meetings between our lawyers — each one of them had a separate lawyer that each met with the US Attorney’s office. And in those, the assistant US attorneys made it abundantly clear that they intended to go forward with this case. They had multiple indictments they were preparing to issue and that they intended to bring it to trial and that they are after convictions.

I think the last of those meetings was in early February. There were a few other visits to other activists that were related by the FBI, related to our case, in February and we figured we had no contact through the month of March. But, starting in February, our legal team said to us that they anticipated that the US Attorney’s office would move on us April or shortly after.

Because we were anticipating an attack from them, we launch our “Pledge of Resistance” campaign. And if you go to StopFBI.net there are over a thousand public signatures on the “Pledge of Resistance” statement. And the “Pledge of Resistance” simply states that in the event of one or some of us are indicted or there’s the possibility too of being jailed for refusing to cooperate with the Grand Jury that there would be emergency protests and the person who pledges pledges to show up at the emergency protest. We have more signatures than are on the website. We’ve been gathering them on paper and data entry is slow. We have several thousand people who’ve signed that pledge.

What happened last Friday, Hatem Abudayyeh is one of the 23, Hatem Abudayyeh, whose home was raided. He’s one of the main community leaders among Palestinians in Chicago. His bank accounts were frozen. So, apparently Hatem had gone to the bank on Friday and the ATM didn’t work. He went to the bank on Saturday morning and he learned that not only is his joint account with his wife, their checking account and saving account, not only had they been frozen but his wife has a bank account that is separate from his and her bank account has been frozen by them. I have to tell you I don’t know under what law they could be doing that because she is not a target of this investigation.

KEVIN: Now, have you been able to talk to anyone like a lawyer who can say why this might be happening and explain if there is any legal justification for what is happening to Hatem and Naima right now?

JOE: I have not spoken with a lawyer. And, I’m not a lawyer. For me, it just seems like there’s no charges against Hatem or anyone. There’s not even an investigation of Nema. For them to freeze her bank account, an account that doesn’t even bear his name, I just — I can’t believe that there’s a legal statute that allows them to do this. And to me it just sounds like more of the racist treatment that the Palestinians, that the Arab and Muslim communities receive at the hands of the FBI.

KEVIN: When Hatem goes out and speaks in public, what is it that he tells people the FBI or this Grand Jury alleges he is guilty of doing?

JOE: It’s the same thing that is alleged of all of us. That we have “conspired to provide material support for foreign terrorist organizations.” And what we have said is when this is over there will be no evidence of any funds having gone to any foreign terrorist organization. What the US Attorney’s office has said to our lawyers in those discussions back in January and February is that delegations of human rights activists and Palestine solidarity activists traveled to the West Bank, made small contributions to the women’s committee of Palestine — I think their name is the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committee.

My wife is a member of a group called the Palestine Solidarity Group. Every year for a decade or more they have sponsored human rights delegations to the West Bank (earlier, they had also gone to Gaza but not in recent years) to meet with the organizations of victims — Human rights organizations, political prisoners, support groups, student organizations, unions, women’s organizations, people who could describe living under occupation. And, the women’s committee had served as the host. They provide the transportation. They provide falafels. They provide interpretation. They provide schedule of events and meetings. They are an NGO registered with the Palestinian Authority. They are not on the State Department’s foreign terrorist organization list. They are not illegal in Israel. US Attorney is really fixated on small amounts of money paid to that committee to host these delegations.

KEVIN: I suspect that a number of people might be hearing about this story for the first time. I’m wondering if you could give some people some background. What should people know about your case, about the FBI repression activists have been going on. This goes on and there’s not a lot of media attention. So, what should people know?

JOE: Alright, there’s three things that we have to tell you.

The first one is that on September 24th, seven homes in Chicago and Minneapolis and one office of an antiwar committee in Minneapolis were raided by the FBI. The warrants and the subpoenas all indicated that they were looking for evidence of “material support for foreign terrorist organizations.” The fourteen people that were subpoenaed in that group really has one thing in common: all fourteen of them, including my wife and I (our home was raided by the FBI), all fourteen of them had been key organizers in the protest at the Republican National Convention September 1, 2008. The Coalition to March on the RNC and Stop the War, what it was called. Marches that were held were permitted marches.

We didn’t know this on the morning of the raid and it took some time to learn this fact. In fact, we learned it from the office in Chicago, the office of the US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, that the antiwar committee in the Twin Cities had been infiltrated by a law enforcement agent, had been infiltrated the FBI starting in April 2008 in the months organizing for the protest for the RNC. That protest was the largest antiwar protest in the history of the Midwest of the United States. Thirty thousand marched on the RNC on September 1st.

Apparently, that police agent and professional liar didn’t find anything that was indictable. But then, she stuck around for two more years as an undercover cop spying on the antiwar movement. And we believe that it is her lies about us that were the basis for the raids in September and the subpoenas for a Grand Jury.

The second thing to tell you is that the Grand Jury — all twenty-three of us, there were fourteen subpoenaed in September — All fourteen of us refused to appear at the Grand Jury. The US Attorney then subpoenaed nine more people, mostly Palestinian Americans, in December. And those nine all refused to appear at a Grand Jury because we learned that the Grand Jury can indict a ham sandwich. It is not an unbiased process. It is a prosecutor’s dream. You have no right to have your lawyer present. You have no right to see the evidence being presented against you. You have no right to cross-examination of the witnesses. In fact, you have no right to see the witnesses.

We all realized it was just a witch-hunt and refused to participate in it. And there are consequences for that. All twenty-three of us for refusing could actually be imprisoned on contempt of court for refusing to participate in that grand jury. So that’s the second part of this.

The third part is to say that the FBI has a long history of suppressing people’s movements in this country. From the Palmer Raids in the 1920s to the McCarthyite period, COINTELPRO in the 1970s, the repression of the animal rights movement, the repression of the environmentalist movement, the repression of Puerto Rican independence movement up til today — actually just before we were raided — the Department of Justice released a report about the department’s spying on peace organizations in the United States over the years 2001-2006. We are the latest chapter in that.

The new element is the Department of Justice has a new tool, a weapon, that was given to them in June 2010. The Supreme Court in a decision called Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project determined that some speech is no longer protected by the Constitution. Any speech that is, and this is the trickiest language, “coordinated with, directed to or directed from an organization that is on the State Department’s foreign terrorist organization list can be construed to be material support for a foreign terrorist organization.” As if someone who is doing solidarity for an organization, struggling against a brutal dictatorship, as if they provided guns or money to that organization or expert training on combat, something that sounds like material support for an organization.

Those are the elements for the case. We understand that is what is being used to charge us with material support.

KEVIN: What do you have to say about Hatem’s case in particular? I can’t get past the fact that I wouldn’t know what to do if my bank account was frozen and that this is happening to Americans in this country. I think people should really find this to be a gross injustice. What can you say to bring in the human element? To let people know what the impact will be for Hatem?

JOE: The case of Hatem Abudayyeh and his wife Naima they have a five-year old daughter. This is Mother’s Day weekend. Hatem’s not a doctor or a businessman. He’s a community activist. If I was him, I would be panicking about the loss of not being able to write checks. You know, I have all of my bills, all of them, plugged in to automatic bill pay. All of my bills will no longer be paid if I was in his situation. And, it’s Mother’s Day for goodness sake. It’s supposed to be a weekend where families –

I just want to tell you, my wife and I, Stephanie Weiner, have known Hatem since he was a college student. We’ve known his family for twenty years. Hatem and his parents were founding activists in the Palestinian community organizations forty years ago. Hatem is a family man. In fact, a lot of people don’t know this: Hatem and his wife, Nema, are the subject of a documentary called The New Americans” It was made by Kartemquin Films, the people who made Hoop Dreams. And it’s the property of PBS.org.

Hatem was born and raised in the US. He went back home to his village ten or twelve years ago to take a bride and met Nema and they came back here and were married here and they’ve living here all these years and they hav a six year old daughter. Hatem is an upstanding leader in this community. This can happen to a public activist, a public Palestinian activist. There’s nowhere to hide for any Arab American. This is such a terrible chilling acting by our government. It is the new McCarthyism. This is what the “war on terrorism,” this is what it means. It means any Arab American or Muslim in the United States, you are viewed by the FBI as the enemy within.

KEVIN: Just in the past two days, we’ve seen two Muslim scholars actually removed from a plane. No good reason at all. It just made people uncomfortable. It seems like what you are having to face here, your entire group, is people who are uncomfortable with people. Or not even that. It’s the use of the security apparatus against people because they can, basically. They don’t even have to justify using the apparatus against you.

JOE: I think it goes a step further than that because all twenty-three of us are activists. In fact, the first fourteen whose homes were raided, we’re lifelong activists. I’m fifty-two years old. I’ve been extremely active since I was eighteen years old, since I got to the university in 1977. That’s how I met my wife. We were movement college students. In fact, this is one of the most ironic elements of this. This Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project decision –

Every decade there has been an antiwar movement and within the antiwar movement there have been organizations of people who have stood in solidarity with the people who are suffering under that war or under that occupation. The first movement that I was involved in that was a solidarity movement and my wife too was the movement against apartheid in South Africa. Well, in the mid-1980s, Ronald Reagan’s administration put the African National Congress on the State Dept’s list of foreign terrorist organizations. Do you know what year the organization came off that list?

KEVIN: It was recently.

JOE: 2008. They were on the list fifteen years after there was a government in South Africa. And think about this. In 2009, Barack Obama wrote the foreword for Nelson Mandela’s autobiography. In the foreword, Obama said he was as a college in the early “80s was motivated to political activity by the example of Nelson Mandela’s resistance to apartheid. If this Supreme Court decision was in place just two years earlier, he could have been accused of providing material support to a foreign terrorist organization. This is nothing more than an attempt by the US government, by the FBI and the Department of Justice, to suppress antiwar and international solidarity. And no wonder they’re doing it. We now have not one, not two but three wars, unpopular wars, they are fighting against Muslim countries. Anybody who is in this country working against those wars and especially if you’re working to put a human face on the Muslims and the Arab peoples that are being targeted by the United States and its closest ally, Israel, then we are subject to being criminalized and in fact now they have taken it to it’s logical conclusion. People who are activists can actually be imprisoned for political action.

***

You just heard an interview with Joe Iosbaker, who is one of the twenty-three activists subpoenaed, called upon to appear before a Grand Jury. Today is demand US Attorney Fitzgerald unfreeze the bank accounts of the Abudayyeh family. So, for your information, if any of this story would compel you to be of assistance to fellow Americans who are being targeted for exercising their rights, rights that I happen to think are protected under a Constitution or rights that I think culturally and in this society we all think people should be able to use and engage in protest, activism. This is the number if you would like to call and demand the unfreezing of these bank accounts call US Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald at – here’s the phone number:

312-353-5300

Dial 0 (zero) for the operator and ask to leave a message with the Duty Clerk. Demand Fitzgerald unfreeze the bank accounts of the Abudayyeh family and stop repression against Palestinian, anti-war and international solidarity activists.

You can find more details on this case at StopFBI.net .

END

Author’s Bio: Kevin Gosztola is a multimedia editor for OpEdNews.com and a writer for WLCentral.org. He is currently serving as an intern for The Nation Magazine. And, he follows all things related to WikiLeaks, media, activism, the unfolding revolutions in the Middle East and North Africa and sometimes writes movie reviews for OEN. He is a 2009 Young People For Fellow and a documentary filmmaker who graduated with a Film/Video B.A. degree from Columbia College Chicago in the Spring 2010. In April 2010, he co-organized a major arts & media summit called “Art, Access & Action,” which explored the intersection of politics, art and media and was supported by Free Press. Chicago. His work can be found on Open Salon, The Seminal, Media-ocracy.com, and a personal blog he started on Alternet called Moving Train Media.

http://www.escambray.cu/Eng/Special/cubanfive110509145

The website www.reportersforhire.org will reveal more evidence of the U.S. government´s payments to Miami journalists to create a atmosphere of hysteria and bias against the five Cuban antiterrorist fighters unjustly imprisoned in that northern country.

The website, an initiative by the National Committee to Free the Cuban Five, will publish additional documents exposing the White House´s illegal propaganda operation and manipulation of the justice system.

Gerardo Hernandez and Antonio Guerrero, two of the Cuban Five, have filed habeas corpus appeals arguing that their constitutional rights to due process were grossly undermined by the government’s media operation.

More than 2,200 pages of contracts between Miami journalists, including those from Radio and TV Marti, have been released thus far to Liberation newspaper through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) petition.

The Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), an official U.S. government agency, and its Office of Cuba Broadcasting (OCB) have operated Radio Marti since 1985 and TV Marti since 1990, according to a Free the Five release broadcast on Monday.

With an annual budget nearing 35 million USD, the OCB and BBG put on their payroll domestic journalists to broadcast the same message inside and outside the United States on Cuba-related issues, effectively violating the law against domestic dissemination of U.S. propaganda.

A multi-year effort by the Liberation newspaper, the Committee and the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund has uncovered those materials that saturated the Miami media and that was prejudicial to the Cuban Five.

The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948, which regulates U.S. public diplomacy abroad, prohibits funding activities to influence and propagandize domestic public opinion.

Gerardo Hernandez, Ramon Labañino, Antonio Guerrero, Fernando Gonzalez and Rene Gonzalez, detained on September 12, 1998 in Miami, are currently serving harsh sentences ranging from 15 years to double life terms.

The Cuban Five, as they are universally known, infiltrated terrorist organizations based in southern Florida to warn about their plans against Cuba.

NOII Toronto, Vancouver, Halifax, Montreal, and Ottawa joint statement in support of a member of No One Is Illegal, Jaggi Singh, pleading guilty today to counseling to commit mischief and is facing six months in prison, for rightfully asserting that the G20 security fence was illegitimate and courageously calling for it to be torn down!

Details on Jaggi’s charges and plea agreement:
http://www.clac-montreal.net/en/jaggi

NOII Joint Statement: On the Justice of Tearing Down Fences and Dismantling Borders

http://noii-van.resist.ca/?p=3694

A Joint Statement of No One Is Illegal Toronto, No One Is Illegal Vancouver, No One Is Illegal Halifax, No One Is Illegal Montreal and No One Is Illegal Ottawa – April 28, 2011

No One Is Illegal groups continue to struggle on the streets for migrant justice across North America against increasingly repressive and racist immigration controls. We join together once again this year with workers around the world during May Day demonstrations to assert our dignity and affirm international solidarity with those who dare to challenge borders and capitalism. We also take our struggle to the courts where a member of No One Is Illegal, Jaggi Singh, is pleading guilty to counseling to commit mischief and is facing six months in prison, for rightfully asserting that the G20 security fence was illegitimate and courageously calling for it to be torn down!

Details on Jaggi’s charges and plea agreement: http://www.clac-montreal.net/en/jaggi

Close to one year ago, No One is Illegal joined with thousands on the streets of Toronto and dared to dream of a world without borders and fences. We marched with Indigenous people, migrants, poor people, people of colour, queer and trans people, feminists, disabled people, anarchists, anti-poverty activists, rank and file labour activists, anti-capitalists, environmental justice activists, and community organizers to confront the
G20 leaders in Toronto.

We dared to challenge the illegitimate fence that separated the rich and powerful elite conspiring to an agreement of global austerity at the G20 from the people on the streets who inevitably are meant to bear the brunt of these policies. We reclaimed power, we shook the fence, and we broke through the police lines. We then went back to our communities and continued building our movements for social, economic, and environmental justice and autonomy.

Today, we unite again in solidarity with our friends and allies who challenged the validity of the G20 security fence and are facing state repression. Those facing charges, including members of No One Is Illegal Toronto and Montreal, have been targeted and persecuted because of their work struggling for self-determination in our communities. The state’s
attempt to criminalize these individuals is a targeted attempt to silence our movements. 
 But we have not allowed the courts, the police, or the media to divide our solidarity. We demand the immediate release and dropping of charges of all those still facing criminal charges.

The Crown and the courts are alleging it is a crime to challenge and call for the dismantling of the fence. We collectively stand by the public statements made by various members of No One Is Illegal and our allies at the People’s Summit, the press conference at the fence, and our joint release. We asserted then, and we assert now, that the militarized fence – another physical and ideological symbol of global apartheid, corporate
greed, and a way to keep the elite separate from the people – should have come down.

We recall that the same things were said of the acts of those who built the Underground Railroad, of those who dared to challenge slavery. We recall that the same things were said of those who tore down the walls of the Woomera detention camp, who dared to challenge racist and xenophobic borders. We recall that the same things were said of those who tore down the fences of Bantustans, who dared to resist Apartheid in South Africa. We reassert that the G20 fence among all other barriers that prevent ordinary people from making meaningful decisions about their lives must be torn down!

And we will tear the fences down. While the security state may have weapons of destruction, we too have weapons: weapons of hope, weapons of unity, weapons of solidarity – and they will overcome these fences!

The type of repression that has followed the G20 is symptomatic of the broader policies of exploitation that are the daily reality for Indigenous, poor and racialized communities. The G8 and G20 leaders and their corporate masters erect borders, manufacture weaponry, pillage the earth with industrial projects, and profit from war. The repression of migrants in Canada has steadily increased – we have seen unprecedented powers transferred to the Immigration Minister and enforcement officers to determine who can come into Canada and who is left out; we have seen major cuts to family reunification programs, to work visas, to avenues for permanent residency. New regulations mean that temporary migrant workers are permanently temporary, exploited and indentured, while thousands of refugees and asylum seekers remain behind bars in detention centres.

Daily, we stand in solidarity with those who are deemed “illegal” by the colonial state and are forced to live under the threat of detention and deportation. And daily, we organize against the racism and xenophobia that defines the history of colonization and displacement in Canada. We are growing and building as movements, and on May 1st thousands will take to the streets to assert that our dreams don’t fit in ballot boxes. That
tangible political changes will only happen through the grassroots mobilization of our communities. We call on everyone residing on these occupied Indigenous lands to join us on the streets, in community centres, in schools, in work places, in parks and all other places where we are building resistance everyday.
 No One is Illegal unites with all of those around the world who are resisting austerity measures – from Greece to Egypt, from Chiapas to Six Nations, from Haiti to Palestine.

We understand that revolution at its root is driven by people’s dreams and desires. No Fences, No Borders! No One Is Illegal, Canada Is Illegal!

www.nooneisillegal.org

* June 19 Videos, courtesy NOII-Toronto, of No One Is Illegal and allies at the People’s Summit “Colonialism, Capitalism, and Migration”: http://noii-van.resist.ca/?p=2870

* June 22 Statement “No One Is Illegal at the G8/G20 Mobilizations in Toronto”: http://toronto.mediacoop.ca/newsrelease/3703

* June 24th Video of No One Is Illegal and Indigenous Defenders of the Land at “No Fences, No Borders” press conference at the G20 fence in Toronto: http://bchannelnews.tv/?p=5690

* July 3rd Statement “No One Is Illegal Solidarity with the anti-G20 Resistance”: http://noii-van.resist.ca/?p=2108

From the Blacklist Pub

My name is Sundiata Acoli (Soon-dee-AH’-tah  Ah-COH’-lee). I’m a former member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army (BPP/BLA) who was captured on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1973 and am now a Black Political Prisoner and Prisoner of War (PP/POW) who’s been held by the government for the last 37 years.

So why should you care about any of this or particularly, why should you support Black PP/POWs? Well, maybe you shouldn’t. If you’re happy with the way the US, and the world is going ~ and if you want to see the US, and the West continue to dominate and oppress the rest of the world ~ then you shouldn’t support Black PP/POWs. If you want to see one country, or one race or the capitalist system continue to dominate other countries, other races and the world, then you shouldn’t support Black PP/POWs. And if you, yourself, are about trying to dominate, manipulate or exploit other peoples, and organizations for personal benefit then you definitely shouldn’t support black PP/POWs, or any other revolutionary PP/POWs, because we’re about ending racism in all its forms and wherever it exists, plus we’re about ending capitalism, sexism and all unjust oppressions of people and life in general on earth and throughout the universe.

Now if you can relate to that ~ and are about freedom, equality, human rights and self-determination for all people; creating a non-exploitative, non-oppressive society and economic system; making the world a better place and living in harmony with other people, the environment and the universe ~ then you should support Black PP/POWs cause that’s what we’re about and have been about for generations, centuries and millenniums. But mostly you should support Black PP/POWs, and all revolutionary PP/POWs, because it’s the right thing to do.

And last, how should you support them? Well, you should support Black and all PP/POWs by supporting organizations that support them and by contacting PP/POWs individually to ask how you can best support them.

How you can support Sundiata Acoli

Contact the Sundiata Acoli Freedom Campaign at TheSAFC@gmail.com, http://www.sundiataacoli.org/

Contact Sundiata:
Acoli, Sundiata #39794-066
FCI Otisville, P.O. Box 1000, Otisville, NY 10963
Birthday: January 14, 1937

Sundiata is also receiving support from the Jericho Amnesty Movement and from the Anarchist Black Cross Federation. www.abcf.net and Malcolm X Commemoration Committee -http://malcolmxcommemorationcommittee.com/  also the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement  http://mxgm.org/

Ramallah, 17 April 2011

Every year, Palestinian Prisoners’ Day provides an opportunity to reflect on the continuing incarceration and ill-treatment of Palestinians who have been detained, sometimes without charge or trial, for their resistance to the Israeli occupation and its illegal policies and practices.

Although the total number of political prisoners held in Israeli prisons has decreased again this year from over 6,600 in April 2010 to 5,716, this overall amelioration conceals some troubling trends and as such should not be interpreted as an indicator of improved Israeli policies. Particularly worrying is the fact that although Israel’s practice of administrative detention is widely recognized as violating international human rights and humanitarian law and has been repeatedly condemned by Palestinian human rights organizations and members of the international community alike, 218 Palestinians remain in this form of detention without charge or trial, only 19 fewer than a year ago. Moreover, Israel continues to hold Palestinians from Gaza under the Unlawful Combatants Law, whose implementation results in grave violations of international law.

Furthermore, this year Palestinian Prisoners’ Day comes in the midst of a wave of mass and arbitrary arrests by the Israeli Occupying Forces (IOF) in the village of Awarta, following the murders of 5 family members in the nearby settlement of Itamar on 11 March 2011. So far more than 500 men, women and children have been rounded up, taken for questioning and asked to sign statements in Hebrew, a language they do not understand. While most villagers were released within hours of their arrest, 50 still remain in detention without charges, including two children. These arrests demonstrate Israel’s alarming continuing willingness to resort to disproportionate measures targeting an entire community, echoing its detention practices during the first and second intifada.

Israel also persists in its attempts to undermine the Palestinian civil resistance movement and deter activism against the Wall and settlements by targeting movement leaders, as well as children from the villages engaged in these kinds of popular struggle. Children have increasingly become the target of arrests in occupied East Jerusalem too, particularly in neighborhoods like Silwan and Issawiya, which have emerged as focal points of tension as Israel continues to escalate its policies of repression, Judaization and settlement expansion in the city.

Finally, Israel continues to sanction the torture of Palestinian prisoners by allowing for unrecorded interrogations and affording interrogators involved in torture impunity under Israeli law. Moreover, despite the existence of a complaint mechanism for victims of torture, the Israeli authorities have systematically failed to open criminal investigations into these cases, thus furthering the prevailing culture of impunity.

Despite the slight decrease in the number of political prisoners held by Israel, attention to their cause should not wane. Instead, the illegitimacy of Israel’s detention policies, the gravity of the manifold violations that prisoners and detainees are subjected to and the extent of Israel’s impunity in this regard should be exposed afresh to spur renewed and more effective action. As Palestinian human rights organizations, we stand in solidarity with the Palestinian political prisoners and detainees currently in Israeli jails and their families, and urge all members of the international community, including civil society, national governments, the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross, to seize Prisoners’ Day as an opportunity to redouble their efforts in the pursuit of the immediate and unconditional release of all Palestinian political prisoners.

Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights Association
Aldameer Association for Human Rights
Al-Haq
Al Mezan Center for Human Rights
Badil Resource Center for Palestinian Residency and Refugee Rights
The Civic Coalition for Defending Palestinians’ Rights in Jerusalem
Defence for Children International – Palestine Section
Ensan Center for Human Rights and Democracy
Jerusalem Center for Legal Aid and Human Rights
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
Ramallah Center for Human Rights Studies
Women’s Centre for Legal Aid and Counselling

by Erin Seatter with files from Andy Crosby →Ottawa Working Group of the Media Co-op

This article originally appeared in the April 2011 edition of The Leveller.

Police violence is a systemic issue and not a series of isolated incidents, according to the Mar. 18 opening panel of the Forum on Police Violence, Incarceration, and Alternatives.

“On a daily basis police harass, they profile, they abuse people, they injure, they assault, they intimidate, they kill. This is police impunity. This is something that people live day to day,” argued community organizer Jaggi Singh.

Subsequent speakers described in detail three separate cases of police violence in Canada and the resultant deaths of Anas Bennis, Gladys Tolley, and Ben Matson.

They illustrated the issues faced by families of the victims, including difficulties in accessing information on the cases, the near impossibility of getting an independent inquiry called, and the lack of available options.

They also noted discrepancies in police reports and the problem of having another police force investigate incidents of police violence, so that the police are effectively investigating themselves.

Samir Shaheen-Hussain discussed the 2005 death of Anas Bennis, a practising Muslim who was shot by Montreal police after morning prayers in the working-class neighbourhood of Côte-des-Neiges.

Police were in the area because of a fraud investigation that had no relation to Bennis. They claim Bennis attacked an officer with a kitchen knife and that the shooting was in self-defence.

It remains unclear why Bennis would have had a knife or been provoked to use it.
The crown prosecutor decided that no criminal charges would be laid against the officer, based on an investigation by the Quebec City Police.

Bennis’ family and a coalition of supporters have spent years fighting for a coroner’s inquiry, which may finally occur this spring. It was announced in 2008 but stalled due to police opposition.

“So long as justice doesn’t respect people, injustice prevails, and as long as injustice prevails, people must fight against it,” concluded Shaheen-Hussain.

Bridget Tolley of the Kitigan Zibi First Nation explained how her mother Gladys died in 2001 after being struck by a Quebec police cruiser on a highway in the reserve.

Although an agreement gave authority over the highway to the Kitigan Zibi police force, the Sûreté du Québec maintained control of the scene. The subsequent police investigation was led by the brother of the officer who had hit Gladys Tolley.

With the help of a lawyer who cost almost a thousand dollars, Bridget Tolley managed to obtain the coroner’s report. It revealed that the coroner had not even seen the body, and yet had indicated that negligence and alcohol on the part of Tolley’s mother had led to her death.

Tolley’s request to the Quebec government for an inquiry was rejected.
According to Tolley, the police look out for themselves and do not serve all members of the public equally. “We are paying them to protect their families, not ours,” she said.

Julie Matson detailed how her father Ben Matson was beaten to death by a group of police officers in downtown Vancouver in 2002.

Ben Matson was in a bar with friends when he was told that someone was moving his parked motorcycle. He went outside and engaged in a verbal argument with an off-duty RCMP officer, who was attempting to park a car. A call was then made to 911, claiming that a member of the Hell’s Angels had a knife.
The situation was eventually defused and Ben Matson returned to the bar. The police then arrived and entered the bar with Tasers in hand. Matson exited out the back and was chased by police, who then kicked him repeatedly. Within hours, he died in handcuffs.

Ashanti Alston, a former Black Panther Party member and political prisoner, noted that for marginalized communities “police violence is a constant; it’s a regular. It’s not an exception to the rule; it’s the rule. And it’s the rule for those of us who are locked in the bottom of society because of who we are, whether it’s because we’re of African descent, we’re indigenous, or poor white folk.”

The event raised questions about reasons for reliance on the police, as well as the abolition of the police force and the establishment of community self-regulation as a long-term goal.

Leading up to the forum, rallies were held on Mar. 15, the International Day Against Police Brutality, in several Canadian cities. In Ottawa, over 100 marched from the Human Rights Monument to the police station on Elgin Street.

*****CALL FOR ART SUBMISSIONS*****

For: Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar, 2012

Deadline: May 20^th 2011

Theme: COINTELPRO, then and now, repression and resistance

The Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar collective (www.certaindays.org) will be releasing its 11th calendar in fall 2011.  Over the years, we’ve turned our attention to various themes: grassroots organizing, the legacy of the Black Panther Party, and indigenous resistance.  This year we are looking at the legacy of COINTELPRO, both historically and in contemporary contexts, and how movements have resisted state repression. (more information on COINTELPRO below)

We are looking for 12 works of art to feature in the calendar, which hangs in more than 2,000 homes, workplaces, and community spaces.  We encourage artists to submit both new and existing work.

THEME GUIDELINES

While repression can be a heavy theme, we are mindful that people will have the calendar hanging in many contexts, and each image will be on people’s walls for a month. So while we are thinking of instances of repression, we also want to encourage art that is hopeful and features resistance and strength.

We are looking for art that relates to these themes: surveillance, the importance of building strong communities, the trial process as punishment, security culture, accountability, infiltration, grand juries, repression of prison organizing, how repression takes advantage of (or reflects) group power/gender dynamics, campaigns for freedom, and other examples of state repression and resistance mounted against it.

Art may also be depictions of struggles and communities that faced state repression (without depicting the repression itself), such as the American Indian Movement, the RNC8, the New York 21, eco-prisoners (and the Green Scare), the Black Liberation Army and the San Francisco 8 (to name a few)

FORMAT GUIDELINES

1. The calendar is 11” tall by 8.5” wide, so art with a ‘portrait’ orientation is preferred. Some pieces may be printed with a border, so it need not fit those dimensions exactly.
2. The calendar is printed in colour and we prefer colour images.
3. You may send as many submissions as you like.
4. Send images smaller than 10 MB.  You need not send a high-res file as a submission, but if we choose your piece, we will need a high-res version of it to print.
5. Send your submissions by May 10 to kesuurtamm@hotmail.com and cc info@certaindays.org.
6. Chosen artists will receive a free copy of the 2012 calendar. Because the calendar is a fundraiser, we cannot offer money to artists.
7. Art will be chosen by May 30^th.

ABOUT COINTELPRO

COINTELPRO (acronym for Counter Intelligence Program) was a program conducted by the FBI to survey, infiltrate, discredit and disrupt domestic political organizations. Counterintelligence programs have been used against those fighting for race and class justice, anti-war activists, communists, environmentalists, anarchists, and others deemed a ‘threat’ to the state.  While the government claims that COINTELPRO ran from 1956-1971, we all know that they continue to use covert and illegal means to disrupt domestic groups. According to the Freedom Archives, who have recently released an excellent film on the topic, “ COINTELPRO may not be a well-understood acronym but its meaning and continuing impact are absolutely central to understanding the government’s wars and repression against progressive movements. COINTELPRO represents the state’s strategy to prevent movements and communities from overturning white supremacy and creating racial justice. COINTELPRO is both a formal program of the FBI and a term frequently used to describe a conspiracy among government agencies—local, state, and federal—to destroy movements for self-determination and liberation for Black, Brown, Asian, and Indigenous struggles, as well as mount an institutionalized attack against allies of these movements and other progressive organizations.”  For more information, see www.freedomarchives.org/Cointelpro.html

ABOUT THE CALENDAR

The Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar is a joint fundraising and educational project between outside organizers in Montreal and Toronto and three political prisoners being held in maximum-security prisons in New York State: David Gilbert, Robert Seth Hayes and Herman Bell. We are committed to doing work grounded in an anti-imperialist and anti-racist perspective. We work in solidarity with anti-colonial struggles, Political Prisoners and the rights of undocumented citizens and immigrants. We are queer and trans positive. We raise awareness of Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War in the United States and abroad, many of whom are now in or approaching their 30th year of imprisonment. People on the streets should understand the history of today’s social justice movements and how that history is linked to solidarity for PPs/POWs. In addition to building that historical awareness, we emphasize the ongoing involvement and continued commitment of PPs/POWs in these same movements.

Proceeds from the calendar will be used for direct support work for Political Prisoners and anti-colonialist and anti-imperialist struggles in the U.S. and Canada.
certaindays.org

Audio: Jaan on Upcoming April Anti-War March.

Attention – beginning July 1^st, 2011, several inmates housed indefinitely in PBSP-SHU, short corridor isolation will begin an indefinite hunger strike in order to draw attention to, and to peacefully protest 25 years of torture via CDCR’s arbitrary, illegal, progressively more punitive policies and practices, as summarized in the accompanying “Formal Complaint.”

PBSP-SHU, short corridor inmates hunger strike protest is to continue indefinitely until the below changes are made.

1. End group punishment (individual accountability)
2. Re: active/inactive gang status
   1. End the use of innocuous association to deny inactive status
   2. End the use of informant/debriefer allegations of involvement in illegal gang activity to deny inactive status – unless such allegations are supported by other corroborating evidence, in which case CDCR will follow their regulations by issuing a rule violation report and affording the due process required.
   3. End the illegal-debriefing policy
   4. Re: Indefinite SHU program and privileges
      1. Made similar to Federal-Florence Colorado/Ohio supermax systems
      2. End abusive use of “safety and security” to restrict/deny programs and privilege.
      3. Allow the following: Expanded visits (amount of time, and added day)/one photo per year/a weekly phone call/install pullup and dip bar on years/two packages a year (30lb packages based on item weight – not packaging and box weight)/expanded canteen (and pkg) items (and cost of cosmetics, stationary, envelopes – not count towards max. draw amount)/more T.V. channels/T.V. and radio combo (or T.V. and small battery operated radio)/art paper and colored pens (or small pieces of colored pencils, water colors, chalk)/ sweat, watch caps/wall calendars. And, be allowed to take correspondence courses, that require proctored exams.

We need all the support we can get

In solidarity, from the bowels of California’s gulag

March 2011

____________

Download the handwritten letter and formal complaint here

By Jordan Flaherty
From the SF Bayview
March 25, 2011

Race and politics in a rural Louisiana town attract national attention

Mayor Bobby Higginbotham

A legal dispute in the rural Louisiana town of Waterproof has attracted the attention of national civil rights organizations and activists. Color of Change, an online activist group that helped garner national attention for the Jena Six Case, recently rallied their members in support of Waterproof Mayor Bobby Higginbotham, who has been held without bail since May of 2010. Advocates say the town’s mayor and police chief, both African American, were targeted by an entrenched white power structure, including a parish sheriff and district attorney, who felt threatened by newly organized Black political power in the town and are seeking to use the court system to undo an election.

While the mayor and police chief were both found guilty last year, their defenders say the trials have not resolved the conflict. Rachel Conner, a lawyer representing Higginbotham in his appeal, says she has never seen a case with so many flaws. “Essentially, every single thing that you can do to violate someone’s constitutional rights from beginning to end happened in his case,” she says.

The charges and counter charges are difficult to untangle. At the center of the case is a state audit of Waterproof that found irregularities in the town’s record keeping. The parish district attorney says the audit shows mayoral corruption. The mayor says the problems pre-date his term, and he had taken steps to correct the issues. The mayor’s opponents claim he stole from the town by illegally increasing his salary. His supporters say he received a raise that was voted on by the town aldermen.

The mayor initially faced 44 charges; all but two were dropped before the trial began. Those charges – malfeasance in office and felony theft – were related to the disputed raise and use of the town’s credit card. Miles Jenkins, the police chief, faced charges related to his enforcement of traffic tickets.

The mayor was quickly convicted of both charges but lawyers have raised challenges to the convictions, bringing a number of legal complaints. For example, in a town that is 60 percent African-American, Mayor Higginbotham had only one Black juror.

Higginbotham’s counsel was disqualified by the DA, and the public defender had a conflict of interest, leaving the mayor with no lawyer. Two days before trial began, the DA gave Higginbotham 10 boxes of files related to his case. Higginbotham’s request for an extension to get an attorney and to examine the files was denied.

There’s more: During jury selection, when Higginbotham – forced to act as his own lawyer – tried to strike one juror who had relationships with several of the witnesses, he was told he could not, even though he had challenges remaining. There was also a problem with a sound recorder that the court reporter was using, and as a result there is no transcript at all for at least two witnesses’ testimony. Finally, during deliberation, the judge gave the jury polling slips that had “guilty” pre-selected and then later hid the slips.

When Higginbotham was convicted, the judge refused to set bail in any amount. Although a possible sentence for the crime was probation and despite former mayor’s obvious ties to the community, Higginbotham has spent the last 10 months in jail while his lawyers have worked on his appeal. “He’s not a flight risk,” says Conner. “He’s tied to Waterproof and he’s got a vested interest in clearing his name.”

Civil rights and Black political power

Waterproof, Louisiana, is a rural town near the Mississippi border best known for holding an immigration detention center. The town – population approximately 800 – sits in Tensas Parish, a mostly agrarian region of the state. Community members say the civil rights movement came late to Tensas; it was the last parish in the state where Black residents were able to register to vote, and the Klan was active until late in the 20th century.

The current troubles began in September of 2006, when Higginbotham was elected mayor of Waterproof. Soon after, he appointed his associate, Miles Jenkins, as chief of police. Jenkins, who served in the U.S. military for 30 years and earned a master’s degree in public administration from Troy University in Alabama, immediately began the work of professionalizing a small town police department that had previously been mostly inactive.

Police Chief Miles Jenkins

While both Jenkins and Higginbotham are from Waterproof, both had also spent much of their adult lives working in other places and brought a professional background to their new positions. Allies of Higginbotham and Jenkins say this threatened parish Sheriff Ricky Jones and DA James Paxton. Annie Watson, a school board member and former volunteer for the mayor, says officers working for Jones told her, “As soon as you people learn that the sheriff controls Tensas Parish, the better off you’ll be.”

The charges against Higginbotham come in a context where many African Americans in Louisiana feel that Black political power in the state – and in the country – is under attack. Tens of thousands of African-American, mostly Democratic, voters remain displaced from the state post-Katrina.

For the first time since the post-Civil War era, both houses of the legislature have Republican majorities, and every statewide elected official is Republican. The newly-dominant Republican majority will oversee the state’s legislative redistricting as well as passage of Gov. Bobby Jindal’s agenda, which includes large cuts to public education and other services, including the elimination of Southern University of New Orleans, a historically Black state university.

The allegations also come at a time of corruption investigations around the state that many civil rights activists say have disproportionately targeted Black elected officials. Tommy Nelson, the Black mayor of the Louisiana town of New Roads, recently filed a motion in U.S. District Court that accuses government investigators of exclusive targeting of Black elected officials, beginning with a National Conference of Black Mayors gathering in New Orleans in June 2008. The investigation Nelson refers to resulted in racketeering charges against him, as well as Black elected officials in the Louisiana towns of White Castle and Port Allen. While the Waterproof case is not connected to these other corruption investigations, the cases add context to the charges from allies of Higginbotham that Black political power is the real target of the investigations.

Black political power is the real target of the investigations.

For Conner, the fact that the former mayor remains locked in jail awaiting appeal is the most shocking part of this case. “The vindictiveness and whatever else is going on under the surface – I think that’s where it shows itself,” she says. Pointing to much more high-profile cases, with much more money involved, Conner asks why Higginbotham is still locked up. “William Jefferson is out on bail. Tom Delay is out,” she says. “And then you’ve got a guy with errors in his trial from A to Z. They didn’t even set $3 million dollars as his bond. They set no bond.”

The mayor and his allies have filed legal appeals and are hoping for the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate or for national media to come in. Tens of thousands of people have signed a petition, initiated by Color of Change, asking Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal to intervene. Chief Jenkins, who still has pending charges, believes that once word gets out, justice will come to Waterproof. “People need to see exactly what is going on in these little Southern towns around here,” he says.

Jordan Flaherty is a journalist and staffer with the Louisiana Justice Institute. His award-winning reporting from the Gulf Coast has been featured in a range of outlets including the New York Times, Mother Jones and Argentina’s Clarin newspaper. He has produced news segments for Al-Jazeera, TeleSur and Democracy Now and appeared as a guest on CNN Morning, Anderson Cooper 360 and Keep Hope Alive with the Rev. Jesse Jackson. For Flaherty’s previous coverage of this story, see “Did a White Sheriff and District Attorney Orchestrate a Race-Based Coup in Northern Louisiana?”His new book is “Floodlines: Community and Resistance from Katrina to the Jena Six.” He can be reached at neworleans@leftturn.org. For speaking engagements, see communityandresistance.wordpress.com.