The Sundiata Acoli Reader

We Must Spread The Campaign To Free Sundiata All Over The World!
– Assata Shakur

For more information about Sundiata Acoli and how to support him visit SundiataAcoli.Org. You can read Acoli's profile on the Jericho Movement website here.

This ePub was arranged by Ian Schlom in September 2020 with texts retrieved from the aforementioned website.

This is a collection of the articles by Sundiata Acoli that are made available on Sundiata Acoli's website. I decided to arrange this ePub because I considered that it would be help to raise awareness and allow people to read his work.

At times I insert notes at the end or beginning of works, generally as IWS or Ian. Last updated 18 September 2020.

Free Sundiata Acoli Now!
Black Lives Matter!
Power To The People!
Free All Political Prisoners & POWs!

Selected Writings of Sundiata Acoli

These texts were taken from Sundiata Acoli's website.

Assata Birthday Statement

By Sundiata Acoli

Written 16 July 1998

Posted on the website 5 July 2008

Happy Birthday Assata!- and solidarity greetings to you who are commemorating her birthday. I'm sure all of you are aware of the vicious campaign being waged by Whitman against Assata and Assata’s eloquent defense of herself. It’s time for us to step up our defense of Assata.

Whitman is bankrupt politically, barely won her last election and can’t run for governor again. One of the best ways to defend Assata is to expose the Whitman attack for what it really is. She’s using Assata to distract attention from her horrendous governor’s record and to keep herself in the headlines~and hopeful in position for a vice-presidential nomination or cabinent post.

Whitman’s corrupt, racist, gubernatorial record needs to be exposed. At every turn during her administration, she provided benefits to her rich white constituency while fleecing the poor and scapegoating people of color. Whether it was urban removal in Newark under the guise of building an opera house for the rich; or maintaining the highest car insurance rates in the nation for the benefit of Prudential Insurance whose headquaters are in Newark; or troopers targeting people of color on the Turnpike; or the rise in gasoline taxes, property taxes, AIDS in New Jersey cities and prisons, police murder and brutality, prison administration corruption, unemployment, forcing mothers off welfare, and the overwhelming Black and Latino prison population; you name it.

The message needs to be brought home by organizing demonstrations at her office, home, and public appearances, and by joining others who demonstrate against her, and by videotaping the demonstrations to deter police brutality or at least record it for later lawsuits. Groups need to be assigned to regularly write letters to newspaper editors, call in to talk radio shows, spray paint slogans in the neighborhood and highways denouncing her racist corrupt record and exposing her attempt to cover it up by scapegoating Assata, people of color, and the poor.

That’s one of the best defenses and birthday presents you can give Assata. Last, I urge you to send letters to “The Honorable Justices of the Supreme Court, PO Box 970, Trenton, NJ 08625 and urge them to render a just decision in the case: Sundiata Acoli vs. the New Jersey State Parole Board, Docket No 45,901, which is an appeal of the 20 year hit given to me by the Parole Board even though I am 61, have done 25 years, have satisfied all requirements for parole and should be released. i thank you.

Sundiata Acoli~ New Afrikan POW

A Brief History of the Black Panther Party and Its Place In the Black Liberation Movement

“The Black Panther Party for Self-Defense was founded in October, 1966, in Oakland, California by Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale. The name was shortened to the Black Panther Party (BPP) and it began spreading eastward through the Black urban ghetto colonies across country.

In the summer of ’68, David Brothers established a BPP branch in Brooklyn, New York, and a few months later Lumumba Shakur set up a branch in Harlem, New York. i joined the Harlem BPP in the fall of ’68 and served as its Finance Officer until arrested on April 2, 1969 in the Panther 21 Conspiracy case which was the opening shot in the government’s nationwide attack on the BPP. Moving westward, Police Departments in each city made military raids on BPP offices or homes in Philadelphia, Chicago, Newark, Omaha, Denver, New Haven, San Diego, Los Angeles, and other cities, murdering some Panthers and arresting others.

After i and most other Panther 21 members were held in jail and on trial for two years, We were all acquitted of all charges and released. Most of us returned to the community and to the BPP but by then COINTELPRO had taken its toll. The BPP was rife with dissension, both internal and external. The internal strife, division, intrigue, and paranoia had become so ingrained that eventually most members drifted or were driven, away. Some continued the struggle on other fronts and some basically cooled out altogether. The BPP limped on for several more years, then died what seemed a natural death.

History will be the ultimate judge of the BPP’s place in the Black Liberation Movement (BLM). But in these troubled times Afrikan people in the U.S. need to investigate both the positive and negative aspects of the BPP’s history in order to learn from those hard lessons already paid for in blood. In particular We need to learn the reasons for the BPP’s rapid rise to prominence, the reason for its ability to move so many Afrikans and other nationalities, and the reason for its demise during its brief sojourn across the American scene. It’s not possible in this short paper, on short notice, to provide much of what is necessary, so this paper will confine itself to pointing out some of the broader aspects of the BPP’s positive and negative contributions to the BLM.

The Positive Aspects of the BPP’s Contributions

1. Self-Defense: This is one of the fundamental areas in which the BPP contributed to the BLM. It’s also one of the fundamental things that set the BPP apart from most previous Black organizations and which attracted members (particularly the youth), mass support, and a mass following. The concept is not only sound, it’s also common sense. But it must be implemented correctly, otherwise it can prove more detrimental than beneficial. The self-defense policies of the BPP need to be analyzed in this light by present day Afrikan organizations. All history has shown that this government will bring its police and military powers to bear on any group which truly seeks to free Afrikan people. Any Black “freedom” organization which ignores self-defense does so at its own peril.

2. Revolutionary Nationalist Ideology: The BPP was a nationalist organization. Its main goal was the national liberation of Afrikan people in the U.S., and it restricted its membership to Blacks only. It was also revolutionary. The BPP theories and practices were based on socialist principles. It was anti-capitalist and struggled for a socialist revolution of U.S. society. On the national level, the BPP widely disseminated socialist base programs to the Afrikan masses. Internationally, it provided Afrikans in the U.S. with a broader understanding of our relationship to the Afrikan continent, the emerging independent Afrikan nations, Third World nations, Socialist nations, and all the Liberation Movements associated with these nations. Overall the ideology provided Afrikans here with a more concrete way of looking at and analyzing the world. Heretofore much of Black analysis of the world, and the society in which We live, was based on making ourselves acceptable to White society, proving to Whites that We were human, proving to Whites that We were ready for equality, proving We were equal to Whites, disproving racist ideas held by Whites, struggling for integration or equal status with Whites, theories of “loving the enemy”, “hating the enemy”, “they’re all devils”, spookism, and other fuzzy images of how the real world worked.

3. Mass Organizing Techniques: Another fundamental thing that attracted members and mass support to the BPP was its policy of “serving the people”. This was a policy of going to the masses, living among them, sharing their burdens, and organizing the masses to implement their own solutions to the day to day problems that were of great concern to them. By organizing and implementing the desires of the masses, the BPP organized community programs ranging from free breakfast for children, to free health clinics, to rent strikes resulting in tenant ownership of their buildings, to Liberation School for grade-schoolers, to free clothing drives, to campaigns for community control of schools, community control of police, and campaigns to stop drugs, crime, and police murder and brutality in the various Black colonies across America. For these reasons, and others, the influence of the BPP spread far beyond its actual membership. Not only did the BPP programs teach self-reliance, but years later the government established similar programs such as free school lunch, expanded medicare and day care facilities, and liberalized court procedures for tenant takeovers of poorly maintained housing, partly if not primarily in order to snuff out the memory of previous similar BPP programs and the principle of self-reliance.

4. Practice of Women’s Equality: Another positive contribution of the BPP was its advocating and practice of equality for women throughout all levels of the organization and in society itself. This occurred at a time when most Black Nationalist organizations were demanding that the woman’s role be in the home and/or one step behind the Black man, and at a time when the whole country was going through a great debate on the woman’s liberation issue.

5. Propaganda Techniques: The BPP made significant contributions to the art of propaganda. It was very adept at spreading its message and ideas through its newspaper The Black Panther, mass rallies, speaking tours, slogans, posters, leaflets, cartoons, buttons, symbols (i.e., the clenched fist), graffiti, political trials, and even funerals. The BPP also spread its ideas through very skillful use of the establishment’s t.v., radio, and print media. One singular indication, although there are others, of the effectiveness of BPP propaganda techniques is that even today, over a decade later, a large part of the programs shown on t.v. are still “police stories” and many of the roles available to Black actors are limited to police roles. A lot of this has to do with the overall process of still trying to rehabilitate the image of the police from its devastating exposure during the Panther era, and to prevent the true role of the police in this society from being exposed again.

The Negative Aspects of the BPP Contributions

1. Leadership Corrupted: COINTELPRO eventually intimidated and corrupted all three of the BPP’s top leaders: Huey P. Newton, Bobby Seale and Eldridge Cleaver. Each, in their own way, caved in to the pressures and began acting in a manner that was deliberately designed to destroy the BPP, and to disillusion not only Party members but Afrikan people in America for years to come. COINTELPRO’s hopes were that Afrikans in America would be so disillusioned that never again would they trust or follow any Afrikan leader or organization which advocated real solutions to Black oppression.

2. Combined Above and Underground: This was the most serious structural flaw in the BPP. Party members who functioned openly in the BPP offices, or organized openly in the community, by day might very well have been the same people who carried out armed operations at night. This provided the police with a convenient excuse to make raids on any and all BPP offices, or members homes, under the pretext that they were looking for suspects, fugitives, weapons, and or explosives. It also sucked the BPP into taking the un-winnable position of making stationary defenses of BPP offices. There should have been a clear separation between the above ground Party and the underground armed apparatus. Also small military forces should never adopt, as a general tactic, the position of making stationary defenses of offices, homes, buildings, etc.

3. Rhetoric Outstripped Capabilities: Although the BPP was adept at the art of propaganda and made very good use of its own and the establishment’s media, still too many Panthers fell into the habit of making boisterous claims in the public media, or selling “wolf tickets” that they couldn’t back up. Eventually, they weren’t taken seriously anymore. The press, some of whom were police agents, often had only to stick a microphone under a Panther’s nose to make him or her begin spouting rhetoric. This often played into the hands of those who were simply looking for slanderous material to air or to provide possible intelligence information to the police.

4. Lumpen Tendencies: It can be safely said that the largest segment of the New York City BPP membership (and probably nationwide) were workers who held everyday jobs. Other segments of the membership were semi-proletariat, students, youths, and lumpen-proletariat. The lumpen tendencies within some members were what the establishment’s media (and some party members) played-up the most. Lumpen tendencies are associated with lack of discipline, liberal use of alcohol, marijuana, and curse words loose sexual morals, a criminal mentality, and rash actions. These tendencies in some Party members provided the media with better opportunities than they would otherwise have had to play up this aspect, and to slander the Party, which diverted public attention from much of the positive work done by the BPP.

5. Dogmatism: Early successes made some Panthers feel that they were the only possessors of absolute truths. Some became arrogant and dogmatic in their dealings with Party members, other organizations, and even the community. This turned people off.

6. Failure to Organize Economic Foundations in Community: The BPP preached socialist politics. They were anti-capitalist and this skewered their concept of building economic foundations in the community. They often gave the impression that to engage in any business enterprise was to engage in capitalism and they too frequently looked with disdain upon the small business people in the community. As a result the BPP built few businesses which generated income other than the Black Panther newspaper, or which could provide self employment to its membership and to people in the community. The BPP failed to encourage the Black community to set up its own businesses as a means of building an independent economic foundation which could help break “outsiders” control of the Black community’s economics, and move it toward economic self reliance.

7. TV Mentality: The 60’s were times of great flux. A significant segment of the U.S. population engaged in mass struggle. The Black Liberation, Native American, Puerto Rican, Asian, Chicano, Anti-War, White Revolutionary, and Woman’s Liberation, Movements were all occurring more or less simultaneously during this era. It appears that this sizable flux caused some Panthers to think that a seizure of state power was imminent or that a revolutionary struggle is like a quick paced TV program. That is, it comes on at 9 p.m., builds to a crescendo by 9:45, and by 9:55 Victory! all in time to make the 10 O’Clock News. When it didn’t happen after a few years, that is, Afrikans in the U.S. still were not free, no revolution occurred, and worse, the BPP was everywhere on the defensive, taking losses and riddled with dissension, many members became demoralized, disillusioned, and walked away or went back to old lifestyles. They were not psychologically prepared for a long struggle. In hindsight it appears that the BPP didn’t do enough to root out this TV mentality in some members, but did in others, which is an aspect to ponder on.

Although the BPP made serious errors, it also gained a considerable measure of success and made several significant new contributions to the BLM. The final judgment of history may very well show that in its own way the BPP added the final ingredient to the Black Agenda necessary to attain real freedom: armed struggle and that this was the great turning point which ultimately set the Black Liberation Movement on the final road to victory.”

Solidarity Statement From Sundiata Acoli

Date written unknown
Posted on the website 8 July 2008

Just a brief note to send my warmest solidarity and thanks to you all … for your show of concern and support for Black political prisoners and prisoners of war, and political prisoners and prisoners of war in general, over the years.

Your continued support is needed today, just as much as it was needed twenty or more years ago at the height of the COINTELPRO era when many of us first entered prison. COINTELPRO continues, just as strong today, although by some other name, as witnessed by the recent entrapment of Qubilah Shabazz, the naive, easily-misled middle-daughter of Malcolm X. COINTELPRO-like programs continue in the prisons, too. Obviously, there’s a need for the formation of a legal clinic or group that’s dedicated to exposing COINTELPRO-like programs, past and present, both in the streets and in the prisons. Its “dirty tricks” and slanderous reports set up outside people for arrest or worse, and similar unchallenged tactics in the prisons keep many of today’s political prisoners and prisoners of war from being released.

There are various ways to support political prisoners and prisoners of war, but one of the better ways is to write one, or write them, and ask how you can best support them. Another way is to send them a donation towards their commissary. Most political prisoners and prisoners of war can always use commissary support although they don’t always like to admit it, or ask for it.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to this brief message, and I hope you enjoy the program.

Sundiata Acoli

A Brief History of the New Afrikan Prison Struggle (Parts 1 and 2)

For the updated version of this essay, see An Updated History Of The New Afrikan Prison Struggle below.

Part 1

This article was first written at the request of the New Afrikan Peoples Organization (NAPO). Its original title was “The Rise and Development of the New Afrikan Liberation Struggle Behind the Walls.” The New Afrikan liberation struggle behind the walls refers to the struggle of Black prisoners, “behind the walls” of US penal institutions, to gain liberation for ourselves, our people, and all oppressed people. We of the New Afrikan Independence Movement spell “Afrikan” with a “k” because Afrikan linguists originally used “k” to indicate the “c” sound in the English language. We use the term “New Afrikan”, instead of Black, to define ourselves as an Afrikan people who have been forcibly transplanted to a new land and formed into a “new Afrikan nation” in North America. But our struggle behind the walls did not begin in America.

The 16th Century Through The Civil War

The Afrikan prison struggle began on the shores of Afrika behind the walls of medieval pens that held captives for ships bound west into slavery. It continues today behind the walls of modern US penitentiaries where all prisoners are held as legal slaves – a blatant violation of international law. The concept of prison ideology began to take form as far back as the reign of Louis XIV of France (1643-1715) when the Benedictine monk Mabillon wrote that: “…penitents might be secluded in cells like those of Carthusian monks, and there being employed in various sorts of labor.” In 1790, on April 5th, the Pennsylvania Quakers actualized this concept as the capstone of their 14-year struggle to reform Philadelphia’s Walnut Street jail. No longer would corporal punishment be administered. Henceforth prisoners would be locked away in their cells with a Bible and forced to do penitence in order to rehabilitate themselves. Thus was born the penitentiary. In 1850, approximately 6,700 people were found in the nation’s newly emerging prison system. Almost none of the prisoners were Black. They were more valuable economically outside the prison system because there were other means of racial control. During this time most New Afrikan (Black) men, women, and children were already imprisoned for life on plantations as chattel slaves. Accordingly, the Afrikan struggle behind the walls was carried on primarily behind the walls of slave quarters through conspiracies, revolts, insurrections, arson, sabotage, work slowdowns, poisoning of the slavemaster, self maimings, and runaways. If slaves were recaptured, they continued the struggle behind the walls of the local jails, many of which were first built to hold captured runaways. Later they were also used for local citizens. Shortly after 1850, the imprisonment rate increased, then remained fairly stable with a rate of between 75 and 125 prisoners per 100,000 population. The Afrikan struggle continued primarily behind the slave-quarter’s walls down through the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. This was a declaration issued by President Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the height of the Civil War. It declared the slaves free only in those states still in rebellion and had little actual liberating effect on the slaves in question. Their slavemasters, still engaged in war against the Union, simply ignored the declaration and continued to hold their slaves in bondage. Some slavemasters kept the declaration secret after the war ended following Lee’s surrender on April 9, 1865. As a result, news of the Emancipation Proclamation did not reach slaves in Texas until June 19, 1865. This date, called “Juneteenth” is celebrated annually by New Afrikans in Texas and outlying states as “Black Independence Day.”

Post-Civil War To The 20th Century

Immediately after the Civil War and at the end of slavery, vast numbers of Black males were imprisoned for everything from not signing slavelike labor contracts with plantation owners to looking the “wrong” way at some white person, or for some similar “petty crime.” Any “transgression” perceived by Whites to be of a more serious nature was normally dealt with on the spot with a gun or rope…provided the Black was outnumbered and outarmed. “Black-on-Black” crime was then, as now, considered to be “petty crime” by the US Justice system. But petty or not, upon arrest most New Afrikans were given long, harsh sentences at hard labor. Within five years after the end of the Civil War, the Black percentages of the prison population went from close to zero to 33 percent. Many of these prisoners were hired out to whites at less than slave wages. Overnight, prisons became the new slave quarters for many New Afrikans. Likewise the Afrika prison struggle changed from a struggle behind the walls of slave quarters to a struggle behind the walls of county workhouses, chain gang camps, and the plantations and factories that used prisoners as slave laborers.

The 20th Century Through World War Two

From 1910 through 1950, Blacks made up 23 to 34 percent of the prisoners in the US prison system. Most people, conditioned by the prison movies “The Defiant Ones” (starring Sidney Poitier, a Black, and Tony Curtis, a white), or “I Escaped From the Chain Gang” (starring Paul Muni, a white in an integrated chain gang), or “Cool Hand Luke” (starring Paul Newman, a white, in a Southern chain gang) erroneously assume that earlier US prison populations were basically integrated. This is not so. The US was a segregated society prior to 1950, including the prisons; even the northern ones. Most New Afrikan prisoners were sent to county workhouses, Black chain gangs, and obscure negro prisons. Thus, the early populations of the more well-known or “mainline” state and federal prisons: Attica, Sing Sing, Alcatraz, and Atlanta were predominantly white and male. Whenever New Afrikans were sent to these “mainline” prisons they found themselves grossly outnumbered, relegated to the back of the lines, to separate lines, or to no lines at all. They were often denied outright what meager amenities existed within the prisons. Racism was rampant. New Afrikans experienced racist suppression by both white prisoners and guards. All of the guards were white – there were no Black guards or prison officials at the time. The Afrikan prisoners continued to struggle behind the walls of these segregated county workhouses, chain gang camps, and state and federal prisons, yet prison conditions for them remained much the same through World War II. Inside conditions accurately reflected conditions of the larger society outside the walls, except by then the state’s electric chair had mainly supplanted the lynch mob’s rope.

Post-World War II To The Civil Rights Era

Things began to change in the wake of World War II. Four factors flowing together ushered in these changes. They were the ghetto popes. They returned home eager to join the fight to make segregated America democratic too. But the US had witnessed Marcus Garvey organize similar sentiments following World War I into one of the greatest Black movements in the western hemisphere. This time the US was more prepared to contain the new and expected New Afrikan assertiveness. Their weapon was “King Heroin.” The US employed the services of the Mafia during World War II to gather intelligence in Italy to defeat Fascist Mussolini. “Before World War II, Mussolini embarked on a major campaign against the Mafia which enraged the group’s leaders. Fascism was a big Mafia so it couldn’t afford another Mafia to exist. Mussolini’s activities turned Mafiosi into vigorous anti-Fascists, and the American government cooperated with the Mafia both in the US and in Sicily. In the eyes of many Sicilians, the US helped restore the Mafia’s lost power. The Americans had to win the war, so they couldn’t pay much attention to these things. “They thought the Mafia could help them, and perhaps they did”, said Leonard Sciascia, perhaps the best known living Sicilian novelist and student of the Mafia. During World War II, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), helped to commute Lucky Luciano’s sentence in federal prison and arrange for his repatriation to Sicily Luciano was among the tom dons in the Mafia syndicate and a leading organizer of prostitution and drug trafficking. The OSS knew that Luciano had excellent ties to the Sicilian Mafia and wanted the support of the organization for the Allied landing in Sicily in 1943.” When Luciano left the US, numerous politicians and Mafia dons were together at the Brooklyn docks to wave him goodbye in what was the first of many occasions that the international drug dealers were recruited by the US government to advance its foreign policy interests. After the war, in return for “services rendered”, the US looked the other way as the Mafia flooded the major US ghettos with heroin. Within six years after World War II, due to the Mafia’s marketing strategy, over 100,00 people were addicts, many of them Black.

The Emergence Of Independent Afrikan Nations

Afrikans from Afrika, having fought to save European independence, returned to the Afrikan continent and began fighting for the independence of their own colonized nations. Rather than fight losing Afrikan colonial wars, most European nations opted to grant “phased” independence to their Afrikan colonies. The US now faced the prospect of thousands of Afrikan diplomatic personnel, their staff, and families, coming to the UN and wandering into a minefield of incidents, particularly on state visits to the rigidly segregated DC capital. That alone could push each newly emerging independent Afrikan nation into the socialist column. To counteract this possibility, the US decided to desegregate. As a result, on May 17, 1954, the US Supreme Court declared school segregation illegal. In its landmark “Brown v. Board of Education” case, which heralded the beginning of the end of official segregation in the US, the Supreme Court had been made fully aware of the relations between America’s domestic policies and her foreign policy interest by the federal government’s amicus curiae (i.e., friend of the court), brief which read: “It is in the context of the present world struggle between freedom and tyranny that the problem of racial discrimination must be viewed… (for) discrimination against minority groups in the US has an adverse effect upon our relations with other countries. Racial discrimination furnishes grist for the communist propaganda mills, and it raises doubts even among friendly nations as to the intensity of our devotion to the democratic faith. Malcolm X provides similar insight into the reasoning behind the US decision to desegregate. During his February 16, 1965, speech at Rochester, New York’s Corn Hill Methodist Church, he said: “From 1954 to 1964 can easily be looked upon as the era of the emerging African state. And as the African state emerged… what effect did it have on the Black American? When he saw the Black man on the African continent taking a stand, it made him become filled with the desire to also take a stand… Just as the US had to change their approach with the people on the African continent, they also began to change their approach with our people on this continent. As they used tokenism… on the African continent,… they began to do the same thing with us here in the States… Tokenism… Every move they made was a token move… They came up with a Supreme Court desegregation decision that they haven’t put into practice yet. Not even in Rochester, much less in Mississippi.

Origin Of The Civil Rights Movement

On December 1, 1955, Ms. Rosa Parks defied Montgomery, Alabama’s bus segregation laws by refusing to give her seat to a White man. Her subsequent arrest and the ensuing mass bus boycott by the Montgomery New Afrikan community kicked off the Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King, Jr., a young college-educated Baptist minister, was chosen to coordinate and lead this boycott primarily because he was a new arrival in town, intelligent, respected, and had not accumulated a list of grudge enemies as had the old guard. His selection for leadership catapulted him upon the stage of history. The 381-day-long boycott toppled Montgomery’s bus segregation codes. A year later, in 1957, Ghana became the first of a string of ub-Saharan Afrikan nations to be granted independence. As northern discrimination, bulging ghettos, and the drug influx were setting off a rise in New Afrikan numbers behind the walls, Southern segregation, the emergence of independent Afrikan nations, and the resulting Civil Rights Movement provided those increasing numbers with the general political agenda: equality and antidiscrimination.

Civil Rights Through the Black Power Era

Religious Struggles In Prison

Meanwhile, behind the walls, small segments of the New Afrikan population began rejecting Western Christianity; they turned to Islam as preached by Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam (NOI) and Noble Drew Ali’s Muslim Science Temple of America (MST). The NOI preached that Islam was the true religion of Black people and that Blacks in America were a nation needing land and independence. The MST preached that the Asiatic Black people in America must proclaim their nationality as members of the ancient Moors of Northern Africa. These new religions produced significant success rates in helping New Afrikan prisoners rehabilitation themselves by instilling them with a newfound sense of pride, dignity, piety, and industriousness. Yet these religions seemed strange and thus threatening to prison officials. They moved forthwith to suppress these religions, and many early Muslims were viciously persecuted, beaten, and even killed for practicing their beliefs. The Muslims fought back fiercely.

Civil Rights Struggles In Prison

Like American society, the prisons were rigidly segregated. New Afrikans were relegated to perform the heaviest and dirtiest jobs – farm work, laundry work, dishwashing, garbage disposal and were restricted from jobs as clerks, straw bosses, electricians, or any position traditionally reserved for white prisoners. Similar discriminatory rules applied to all other areas of prison life. New Afrikans were restricted to live in certain cell blocks or tiers, eat in certain areas of the mess hall, and sit in the back at the movies, TV room, and other recreational facilities. Influenced by the anti-discrimination aspect of the Civil Rights Movement, a growing number of New Afrikans behind the walls began stepping up their struggle against discrimination in prison. Audacious New Afrikans began violating longstanding segregation codes by sitting in the front seats at the movies, mess hall, or TV areas – and more than a few died from shanks in the back. Others gave as good as they got, and better. Additionally, New Afrikans began contesting discriminatory job and housing policies and other biased conditions. Many were set up for attack and sent to the hole for a year, or worse. Those who were viewed as leaders were dealt with most harshly. Most of this violence came from prison officials and white prisoners protecting their privileged positions; some violence also came from New Afrikans and Muslims protecting their lives, taking stands and fighting back. From these silent, unheralded battles against racial and religious discrimination in prisons emerged the New Afrikan liberation struggle behind the walls during the ’50s Civil Rights era. Eventually the courts, influenced by the “equality/anti-discrimination” aspect of the Civil Rights Movement, would rule that prisons must recognize the Muslims’ religion on an “equal” footing with other accepted religions, and that prison racial discrimination codes must be outlawed.

Black Power Through The Black Liberation Era

As the Civil Rights Movement advanced into the 60’s, New Afrikan college students waded into the struggle with innovative lunch counter sit-ins, freedom rides, and voter registration projects. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was formed during this period to coordinate and instruct student volunteers in nonviolent methods of organizing voter registration projects and other Civil Rights work. These energetic young students, and the youth in general, served as the foot soldiers of the Movement. They provided indispensable services, support, and protection to local community leaders such as Mississippi’s Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, and other heroines and heroes of the Civil Rights Movement. Although they met with measured success, white racist atrocities mounted daily on defenseless Civil Rights workers. Young New Afrikans in general began to grow increasingly disenchanted with the nonviolent philosophy of Martin Luther King. Many began to look increasingly toward Malcolm X, the fiery young minister of NOI Temple No. 7 In Harlem, New York. He called for self-defense, freedom by any means necessary, and land and independence”. As Malcolm Little, he had been introduced to the NOI doctrine while imprisoned in Massachusetts. Upon release he traveled to Detroit to meet Elijah Muhammad, converted to Islam, and was given the surname “X” to replace his discarded slavemaster’s name. The “X” symbolized his original surname lost to history when his foreparents were kidnapped from Afrika, stripped of their names, language, and identity, and enslaved in the Americas. As Malcolm X he became one of Elijah Muhammad’s most dedicated disciples, and rose to National Minister and spokesperson for the NOI. His keen intellect, incorruptible integrity, staunch courage, clear resonant oratory, sharp debating skills, and superb organizing abilities soon brought the NOI to a position of prominence within the Black ghetto colonies across the US In ’63 he openly called the March on Washington a farce. He explained that the desire for a mass march on the nation’s capital originally sprang from the Black grass roots: the average Black man/woman in the streets. It was their way of demonstrating a mass Black demand for jobs and freedom. As momentum grew for the March, President Kennedy called a meeting of the leaders of the six largest Civil Rights organizations, dubbed “The Big Six” (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Congress Of Racial Equality , National Urban League, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund) and asked them to stop the proposed march. They answered saying that they couldn’t stop it because they weren’t leading it, didn’t start it, and that it had sprung from the masses of Black people. If they weren’t leading the march, the president decided to make them the leaders by distributing huge sums of money to each of the “Big Six”, publicizing their leading roles in the mass media, and providing them with a script to follow regarding the staging of the event. The script planned the March down to the smallest detail. Malcolm explained that government officials told the Big Six what time to begin the March, where to march, who could speak at the March and who could not, generally what could be said and what could not, what signs to carry, where to go to the toilets (provided by the government), and what time to end the event and get out of town. The script was followed to a “T”, and most of the 200,000 marchers were never the wiser. By then SNCC’s membership was also criticizing the March as too moderate and decrying the violence sweeping the South. History ultimately proved Malcolm’s claim of “farce” correct, through books published by participants in the planning of the march and through exposure of government documents on the matter.

Origin Of The Five Percenters

Clarence 13X (Smith) was expelled from Harlem’s Nation of Islam Temple No. 7 in 1963 because he wouldn’t conform to NOI practices. He frequently associated with the numerous street gangs that abounded In New York City at the time and felt that the NOI didn’t put enough effort into recruiting these youth. After being expelled he actively recruited among these street gangs and other wayward youth, and by ’64 he had established his own “movement” called “The Five Percenters”. The name comes from their belief that 85 percent of Black people are like cattle, who continue to eat the poisoned animal (the pig), are blind to the truth of God, and continue to give their allegiance to people who don’t have their best interests at heart; that 10 percent of Black people are bloodsuckers – the politicians, preachers, and other parasitic individuals who get rich off the labor and ignorance of the docile exploited 85 percent; and that the remaining 5 percent are the poor righteous teachers of freedom, justice, and equality who know the truth of the “Black” God and are not deceived by the practices of the bloodsucking 10 percent. The Five Percenter movement spread throughout the New York State prison system and the Black ghettos of the New York metropolitan area.

Origin Of The New World Nation Of Islam

In December 1965 Newark’s Mayor Hugh Addonizio witnessed a getaway car pulling away from a bank robbery and ordered his chauffeur to follow with siren blasting. The fleeing robbers crashed into a telephone pole, sprang from their car and fired a shot through the Mayor’s windshield. He screeched to a halt, and police cars racing to the scene captured Muhammad Ali Hassan, known as Albert Dickens, and James Washington. Both were regular attendees of Newark’s NOI Temple No. 25, headed by Minister James 3X Shabazz. Ali Hassan and Washington were members of the New World Nation of Islam (NWI). Ali Hassan, its leader and Supreme Field commander, dates the birth of the New World Nation of Islam as February 26, 1960. He states that on that date Elijah Muhammad authorized the New World Nation of Islam under the leadership of Field Supreme Minister Fard Savior and declared that the Field Minister had authority over all the NOI Muslims. Ali Hassan and Washington were convicted for the bank robbery and sent to Trenton State Prison. The NWI’s belief in the supreme authority of Fard Savior was rejected by NOI Minister Shabazz, and thereafter an uneasy peace prevailed between the followers of Shabazz, who retained control of Newark’s NOI Temple No. 25, and the followers of the NWI who sought to gain control. Meanwhile, Ali Hassan published a book titled “Uncle Yah Yah” and ran the NWI from his prison cell. Along with the more established and influential NOI, the influence of the NWI spread throughout the New Jersey state prison system and the metropolitan Jersey ghettos. The NWI began setting up food co-ops, barbershops, houses to teach Islam, and printing presses; and purchased land in South Carolina, all in furtherance of creating an independent Black Nation.

The Black Liberation Era

Black Panthers Usher In The Black Liberation Movement

Midstride the 60’s, on February 21, 1965, Malcolm was assassinated, but his star continued to rise and his seeds fell on fertile soil. The following year, October 1966 in Oakland, California, Huey P. Newton and a handful of armed youths founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense on principles that Malcolm had preached – and the Black Liberation Movement (BLM) was born. Subsequently the name was shortened to the Black Panther Party (BPP) and a 10-point program was created which stated:

We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black community.

We want full employment for our people.

We want an end to the robbery by the CAPITALIST of our Black community.

We want decent housing, fit for the shelter of human beings.

We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present day society.

We want all Black men to be exempt from military service.

We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALlTY and MURDER of Black people.

We want freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.

We want all Black people when brought to trial to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.

We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the Black colony in which only Black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate, for the purpose of determining the will of Black people as to their national destiny.

The Panthers established numerous programs to serve the Oakland ghetto – free breakfasts for children, free health care, free day-care, and free political education classes. The program that riveted the ghetto’s attention was their campaign to “stop police murder and brutality of Blacks”. Huey, a community college pre-law student, discovered that it was legal for citizens to openly carry arms in California. With that assurance the Black Panther Party began armed car patrols of the police cruisers that patrolled Oakland’s Black colony. When a cruiser stopped to make an arrest, the Panther car stopped. They fanned out around the scene, arms at the ready, and observed, tape recorded, and recommended a lawyer to the arrest victim. It didn’t take long for the police to retaliate. They confronted Huey late one night near his home. Gunfire erupted, leaving Huey critically wounded, a policeman dead and another wounded. The Panthers and the Oakland-Bay community responded with a massive campaign to save Huey from the gas chamber. The California Senate began a hearing to rescind the law permitting citizens to openly carry arms within city limits. The Panthers staged an armed demonstration during the hearing at the Sacramento Capitol to protest the Senate’s action, which gained national publicity. That publicity, together with the Panthers’ philosophy of revolutionary nationalism, self-defense, and the “Free Huey” campaign, catapulted the BPP to nationwide prominence. But not without cost. During August 1967 J. Edgar Hoover issued his infamous Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) memorandum which directed the FBI (and local police officials) to disrupt specified Black organizations and neutralize their leaders so as to prevent “the rise of a Black messiah”.

Attacks Increase On Revolutionaries

The Panthers rolled eastward, establishing offices in each major northern ghetto. As they went, they set up revolutionary programs in each community that were geared to provide community control of schools, tenant control of slum housing, free breakfast for school children, free health, day-care, and legal clinics, and free political education classes for the community. They also initiated campaigns to drive dope pushers and drugs from the community, and campaigns to stop police murder and brutality of Blacks. As they went about the community organizing these various programs they were frequently confronted, attacked, or arrested by the police, and some were even killed during these encounters. Other revolutionary organizers suffered similar entrapments. The Revolutionary Action Movement’s (RAM) Herman Ferguson and Max Stamford were arrested in 1967 on spurious charges of conspiring to kill Civil Rights leaders. In the same year Amiri Baraka (the poet and playwright LeRoi Jones) was arrested for transporting weapons in a van during the Newark riots and did a brief stint in Trenton State Prison until a successful appeal overturned his conviction. SNCC’s Rap Brown, Stokely Carmichael, and other orators were constantly threatened or charged with “inciting to riot” as they crisscrossed the country speaking to mass audiences. Congress passed so-called “Rap Brown” laws to deter speakers from crossing state lines to address mass audiences lest a disturbance break out, leaving them vulnerable to federal charges and imprisonment. And numerous revolutionary organizers and orators were being imprisoned. This initial flow of revolutionaries into the jails and prisons began to spread a revolutionary nationalist hue through New Afrikans behind the walls. New Afrikan prisoners were also influenced by the domestic revolutionary atmosphere and the liberation struggles in Afrika, Asia, and Latin America. Small groups began studying on their own, or in collectives, the works of Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, The Black Panther newspaper, The Militant newspaper, contemporary national liberation struggle leaders Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Frantz Fanon, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, and Mao Tse-tung, plus Marx, Lenin, and Bakunin too. Increasing numbers of New Afrikan and Third World prisoners became more conscious of national liberation politics. The percentages of New Afrikan and Third World prisoners increased while the percentage of White prisoners decreased throughout US prisons. Under this onslaught of rising national liberation consciousness, increased percentages of New Afrikan and Third World prisoners, and decreased numbers of white prisoners, the last of the prisons’ overt segregation policies fell by the wayside.

The New Afrikan Independence Movement

The seeds of Malcolm took further root on March 29, 1968. On that date the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika (RNA) was founded at a convention held at the Black-owned Twenty Grand Motel in Detroit. Over 500 grassroot activists came together to issue a Declaration of Independence on behalf of the oppressed Black Nation Inside North America, and the New Afrikan Independence Movement (NAIM) was born. Since then Blacks desiring an independent Black Nation have referred to themselves and other Blacks in the US as New Afrikans. That same month, March ’68, during Martin Luther King’s march in Memphis, angry youths on the fringes of the march broke away and began breaking store windows, looting, and firebombing. A 16-year-old-boy was killed and 50 people were injured in the ensuing violence. This left Martin profoundly shaken and questioning whether his philosophy was still able to hold the youth to a nonviolent commitment. On April 4th he returned to Memphis, seeking the answer through one more march, and found an assassin’s bullet. Ghettos exploded in flames one after another across the face of America. The philosophy of Black Liberation surged to the forefront among the youth. But not the youth alone. Following a series of police provocations in Cleveland, on July 23, 1968, New Libya Movement activists there set an ambush that killed several policemen. A “fortyish” Ahmed Evans was convicted of the killings and died in prison ten years later of “cancer”. More CIA dope surged into the ghettos from the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia. Revolutionaries stepped up their organizing activities on both sides of the walls. Behind the walls the New Afrikan percentage steadily increased.

COINTELPRO Attacks

In 1969 COINTELPRO launched its main attack on the Black Liberation Movement in earnest. It began with the mass arrest of Lumumba Shakur and the New York Panther 21. It followed with a series of military raids on Black Panther Party offices in Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Haven, Jersey City, Detroit, Chicago, Denver, Omaha, Sacramento. and San Diego, and was capped off with a four-hour siege that poured thousands of rounds into the Los Angeles BPP office. Fortunately Geronimo ji Jaga, decorated Vietnam vet had earlier fortified the office to withstand an assault, and no Panthers were seriously injured. However, repercussions from the outcome eventually drove him underground. The widespread attacks left Panthers dead all across the country – Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, Bunchy Carter, John Huggins, John Savage, Walter Toure Pope, Bobby Hutton, Sylvester Bell, Frank “Capt. Franco” Diggs, Fred Bennett, James Carr, Larry Robeson, Spurgeon “Jake” Winters, Alex Rackley, Arthur Morris, Steve Bartholomew, Robert Lawrence, Tommy Lewis, Nathaniel Clark, Welton Armstead, Sidney Miller, Sterling Jones, Babatunde Omawali, Samuel Napier, Harold Russle, and Robert Webb among others. (21) In the three years after J. Edgar Hoover’s infamous COINTELPRO memorandum, dated August 25, 1967, 31 members of the BPP were killed, (22) nearly a thousand were arrested, and key leaders were sent to jail. Others were driven underground. Still others, like BPP field marshal Donald “D.C.” Cox, were driven into exile overseas. Also in ’69, Clarence 13X, founder of the Five Percenters, was mysteriously murdered in the elevator of a Harlem project building. His killer was never discovered and his adherents suspect government complicity in his death. The RNA was similarly attacked that year. During their second annual convention in March ’69, held at reverend C.L. Franklin’s New Bethel Church in Detroit, a police provocation sparked a siege that poured 800 rounds into the church. Several convention members were wounded; one policeman was killed, another wounded, and the entire convention, 140 people, was arrested en masse. When Reverend Franklin (father of “The Queen of Soul”, singer Aretha Franklin) and Black State Representative James Del Rio were informed of the incident they called Black judge George Crockett, who proceeded to the police station where he found total legal chaos. Almost 150 people were being held incommunicado. They were being questioned, fingerprinted, and given nitrate tests to determine if they had fired guns, in total disregard of fundamental constitutional procedures. Hours after the roundup, there wasn’t so much as a list of persons being held and no one had been formally arrested. An indignant Judge Crockett set up court right in the station house and demanded that the police either press charges or release their captives. He had handled about fifty cases when the Wane County prosecutor, called in by the police, intervened. The prosecutor promised that the use of all irregular methods would be halted. Crockett adjourned the impromptu court, and by noon the following day the police had released all but a few individuals who were held on specific charges. Chaka Fuller, Rafael Viera, and Alfred 2X Hibbits were charged with the killing. All three were subsequently tried and acquitted. Chaka Fuller was mysteriously assassinated a few months afterwards. Revolutionaries nationwide were attacked and/or arrested: Tyari Uhuru, Maka, Askufo, and the Smyrna Brothers in Delaware, JoJo Muhammad Bowens and Fred Burton in Philadelphia, and Panthers Mondo Langa, Ed Poindexter, and Veronza Daoud Bowers, in Omaha. Police mounted an assault on the Panther office in the Desiree Projects of New Orleans which resulted in several arrests. A similar attack was made on the Peoples Party office in Houston. One of their leaders, Carl Hampton, was killed by police and another, Lee Otis Johnson, was arrested later on an unrelated charge and sentenced to 41 years in prison for alleged possession of one marijuana cigarette.

The Rise Of Prison Struggles

Like the Panthers, most of those arrested brought their philosophies with them into the prisons. Likewise, most had outside support committees to one degree or another so that this influx of political prisoners linked the struggle behind the walls with the struggles in the outside local communities. The combination set off a beehive of political activity behind the walls, and prisoners stepped up their struggle for political, Afrikan, Islamic, and academic studies, access to political literature, community access to prisons, an end to arbitrary punishments, access to attorneys, adequate law libraries, relevant vocational training, contact visits, better food, health care, housing, and a myriad of other struggles. The forms of prison struggle ranged from face-to-face negotiations to mass petitioning, letter-writing and call-in campaigns, outside demonstrations, class action law suits, hunger strikes, work strikes, rebellions, and more drastic actions. Overall, all forms of struggle served to roll back draconian prison policies that had stood for centuries and to further the development of the New Afrikan liberation struggle behind the walls. These struggles would not have been as successful, or would have been much more costly in terms of lives lost or brutality endured, had it not been for the links to the community and community support that political prisoners brought with them into the prisons. Although that support was not always sufficient in quantity or quality, or was sometimes nonexistent or came with hidden agendas or was marked by frequent conflicts, on the whole it was this combination of resolute prisoners, community support, and legal support which was most often successful in prison

The Changing Complexion Of Prisons

As the 60’s drew to a close New Afrikan and Third World nationalities made up nearly 50 percent of the prison population. National liberation consciousness became the dominant influence behind the walls as the overall complexion neared the changeover from white to black, brown, and red. The decade-long general decrease in prisoners, particularly whites, brought a drop of between 16,000 and 28,000 in total prison population. The total number of white prisoners decreased between 16,000 and 23,000 while the total number of New Afrikan prisoners increased slightly or changed insignificantly over the same period. Yet the next decade would begin the period of unprecedented new prison construction, as the primary role of US prisons changed from “suppression of the working classes” to “suppression of domestic Black and Third World liberation struggles inside the US.

Part 2

Enter The 70’s

A California guard, rated as an expert marksman, opened the decade of the 70’s with the January 13th shooting at close range of W.L. Nolen, Cleveland Edwards, and Alvin “Jug” Miller in the Soledad prison yard. They were left lying where they fell until it was too late for them to be saved by medical treatment. Nolen, in particular, had been instrumental in organizing protest of guard killings of two other Black prisoners – Clarence Causey and William Powell – at Soledad in the recent past, and was consequently both a thorn in the side of prison officials and a hero to the Black prison population. When the guard was exonerated of the triple killings two weeks later by a Board of Inquiry, the prisoners retaliated by throwing a guard off the tier. George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo, and John Cluchette were charged with the guard’s death and came to be known as the Soledad Brothers. California Black prisoners solidified around the chain of events in the Soledad Brothers case and formed the Black Guerrilla Family (BGF). The Panthers spearheaded a massive campaign to save the Soledad Brothers from the gas chamber. The nationwide coalescence of prisoners and support groups around the case converted the scattered, disparate prison struggles into a national prison movement. On the night of March 9, 1970, a bomb exploded killing Ralph Featherstone and Che Payne in their car outside a Maryland courthouse where Rap Brown was to appear next day on “Inciting to Riot” charges. Instead of appearing, Rap went underground, was captured a year later during the robbery of a Harlem so-called “dope bar”, and was sent behind the walls. He completed his sentence and was released from prison. On August 7, 1970, Jonathan Jackson, younger brother of George, attempted to liberate Ruchell Cinque Magee, William Christmas, and James McClain from the Marin County courthouse in California. Jonathan, McClain, Christmas, and the trial judge were killed by SWAT teams who also wounded the prosecutor and paralyzed him for life. Miraculously, Ruchell and three wounded jurors survived the fusillade. Jonathan frequently served as Angela Davis’s bodyguard. She had purchased weapons for that purpose, but Jonathan used those same weapons in the breakout attempt. Immediately afterward she became the object of an international “woman hunt”. On October 13, Angela was captured in New York City and was subsequently returned to California to undergo a very acrimonious trial with Magee. She was acquitted on all charges. Magee was tried separately and convicted on lesser charges. He remains imprisoned to date. On August 21, a guard shot and killed George Jackson as he bolted from a control unit and ran for the San Quentin wall. Inside the unit lay three guards and two trustees dead. The circumstances surrounding George Jackson’s legendary life and death, and the astuteness of his published writings, left a legacy that inspires and instructs the New Afrikan liberation struggle on both sides of the wall even today, and will for years to come. September 13, 1971, became the bloodiest day in U.S. prison history when New York’s Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered the retaking of Attica prison. The previous several years had seen a number of prison rebellions flare up across the country as prisoners protested widespread maltreatment and inhumane conditions. Most had been settled peaceably with little or no loss of human life after face-to-face negotiation between prisoners and state and prison officials. At Attica black, brown, white, red, and yellow prisoners took over one block of the prison and stood together for five days seeking to negotiate an end to their inhumane conditions. Their now-famous dictum declared “We are men, not beasts, and will not be driven as such.” But Rockefeller had presidential ambitions. The rebelling prisoners’ demands included a political request for asylum in a nonimperialistic country. Rockefeller’s refusal to negotiate foreshadowed a macabre replay of his father John D’s slaughter of striking Colorado miners and their families decades earlier. Altogether 43 people died at Attica. New York State trooper bullets killed 39 people, 29 prisoners and 10 guards in retaking Attica and shocked the world by the naked barbarity of the U.S. prison system. Yet the Attica rebellion too remains a milestone in the development of the New Afrikan liberation struggle behind the walls, and a symbol of the highest development of prisoner multinational solidarity to date.

New World Clashes With The Nation of Islam

In 1973 the simmering struggle for control of Newark’s NOI Temple No. 25 erupted into the open. Warren Marcello, a New World member, assassinated NOI Temple No. 25 Minister Shabazz. In retaliation several NWI members were attacked and killed within the confines of the New Jersey prison system, and before the year was out the bodies of Marcello and a companion were found beheaded in Newark’s Weequahic Park. Ali Hassan, still in prison, was tried as one of the co-conspirators in the death of Shabazz and was found innocent.

The Black Liberation Army

COINTELPRO’s destruction of the BPP forced many members underground and gave rise to the Black Liberation Army (BLA) – a New Afrikan guerrilla organization. The BLA continued the struggle by waging urban guerrilla war across the U.S. through highly mobile strike teams. The government’s intensified search for the BLA during the early 1970s resulted in the capture of Geronimo ji Jaga in Dallas, Dhoruba Bin-Wahad and Jamal Josephs in New York, Sha Sha Brown and Blood McCreary in St. Louis, Nuh Washington and Jalil Muntaqin in Los Angeles, Herman Bell in New Orleans, Francisco and Gabriel Torres in New York, Russel Haroum Shoats in Philadelphia, Chango Monges, Mark Holder, and Kamau Hilton in New York, Assata Shakur and Sundiata Acoli in New Jersey, Ashanti Alston, Tarik, and Walid in New Haven, Safiya Bukhari and Masai Gibson in Virginia, and others. Left dead during the government’s search and destroy missions were Sandra Pratt (wife of Geronimo ji Jaga, assassinated while visibly pregnant), Mark Essex, Woodie Changa Green, Twyman Kakuyan Olugbala Meyers, Frank “Heavy” Fields, Anthony Kimu White, Zayd Shakur, Melvin Rema Kerney, Alfred Kambui Butler, Ron Carter, Rory Hithe, and John Thomas, among others. Red Adams, left paralyzed from the neck down by police bullets, would die from the effects a few years later. Other New Afrikan freedom fighters attacked, hounded, and captured during the same general era were Imari Obadele and the RNA-11 in Jackson, Mississippi, Don Taylor and De Mau Mau of Chicago, Hanif Shabazz, Abdul Aziz, and the VI-5 in the Virgin Islands, Mark Cook of the George Jackson Brigade (GJB) in Seattle, Ahmed Obafemi of the RNA in Florida, Atiba Shanna in Chicago, Mafundi Lake in Alabama, Sekou Kambui and Imani Harris in Alabama, Robert Aswad Duren in California, Kojo Bomani Sababu and Dharuba Cinque in Trenton, John Partee and Tommie Lee Hodges of Alkebulan in Memphis, Gary Tyler in Los Angeles, Kareem Saif Allah and the Five Percenter-BLA-lslamic Brothers in New York, Ben Chavis and the Wilmington 10 in North Carolina, Delbert Africa and MOVE members in Philadelphia, and others doubtless too numerous to name.

Political Converts in Prison

Not everyone was political before incarceration. John Andaliwa Clark became so, and a freedom fighter par excellence, only after being sent behind the walls. He paid the supreme sacrifice during a hail of gunfire from Trenton State Prison guards. Hugo Dahariki Pinell also became political after being sent behind the California walls in 1964. He has been in prison ever since. Joan Little took an ice pick from a white North Carolina guard who had used it to force her to perform oral sex on him. She killed him, escaped to New York, was captured and forced to return to the same North Carolina camp where she feared for her life. Massive public vigilance and support enabled her to complete the sentence in relative safety and obtain her release. Dessie Woods and Cheryl Todd, hitching through Georgia, were given a ride by a white man who tried to rape them. Woods took his gun, killed him, and was sent to prison where officials drugged and brutalized her. Todd was also imprisoned and subsequently released upon completion of the sentence. Woods was denied parole several times then finally released. Political or not, each arrest was met with highly sensationalized prejudicial publicity that continued unabated to and throughout the trial. The negative publicity blitz was designed to guarantee a conviction, smokescreen the real issues involved, and justify immediate placement in the harshest prison conditions possible. For men this usually means the federal penitentiary at Marion, Illinois. For women it has meant the control unit In the federal penitentiary at Alderson, West Virginia, or Lexington, Kentucky. In 1988 political prisoners Silvia Baraldini, Alejandrina Torres, and Susan Rosenberg won a D.C. District Court lawsuit brought by attorneys Adjoa Alyetoro, Jan Susler, and others. The legal victory temporarily halted the practice of sending prisoners to control units strictly because of their political status. The ruling was reversed by the D.C. Appellate Court a year later. Those political prisoners not sent to Marion, Alderman, or Lexington control units are sent to other control units modeled after Marion/Lexington but located within maximum security state prisons. Normally this means 23-hour-a-day lockdown in long-term units located in remote hinterlands far from family, friends, and attorneys, with heavy censorship and restrictions on communications, visits, and outside contacts, combined with constant harassment, provocation, and brutality by prison guards.

Effect Of Captured Freedom Fighters On Prisons

The influx of so many captured freedom fighters (i.e., prisoners of war – POWs) with varying degrees of guerrilla experience added a valuable dimension to the New Afrikan liberation struggle behind the walls. In the first place it accelerated the prison struggles already in process, particularly the attack on control units. One attack was spearheaded by Michael Deutsch and Jeffrey Haas of the People’s Law Office, Chicago, which challenged Marion’s H-Unit boxcar cells. Another was spearheaded by Assata Shakur and the Center for Constitutional Rights which challenged her out-of-state placement in the Alderson, West Virginia, control unit. Second, it stimulated a thoroughgoing investigation and exposure of COINTELPRO’s hand in waging low intensity warfare on New Afrikan and Third World nationalities in the U.S. This was spearheaded by Geronimo ji- Jaga with Stuart Hanlon’s law office in the West and by Dhoruba Bin- Wahad with attorneys Liz Fink, Robert Boyle, and Jonathan Lubell in the East. These COINTELPRO investigations resulted in the overturn of Bin-Wahad’s conviction and his release from prison in March 1990 after he had been imprisoned 19 years for a crime he did not commit. Third, it broadened the scope of the prison movement to the international arena by producing the initial presentation of the U .S. political prisoner and prisoner of war (PP/POW) issue before the UN’s Human Rights Commission. This approach originated with Jalil Muntaqin, and was spearheaded by him and attorney Kathryn Burke on the West Coast and by Sundiata Acoli and attorney Lennox Hinds of the National Conference of Black lawyers on the East Coast. This petition sought relief from human rights violations in U.S. prisons and subsequently asserted a colonized people’s right to fight against alien domination and racist regimes as codified in the Geneva Convention. Fourth, it intensified, clarified, and broke new ground on political issues and debates of particular concern to the New Afrikan community, i.e., the “National Question”, spearheaded by Atiba Shanna in the Midwest. All these struggles, plus those already in process, were carried out with the combination in one form or another of resolute prisoners, and community and legal support. Community support when present came from various sources – family, comrades, friends; political, student, religious, and prisoner rights groups; workers, professionals, and progressive newspapers and radio stations. Some of those involved over the years were or are: the National Committee for Defense of Political Prisoners, the Black Community News Service, the African Peoples Party, the Republic of New Afrika, the African Peoples Socialist Party, The East, the Bliss Chord Communication Network, Liberation Book Store, WDAS Radio Philadelphia, WBLS Radio New York, Radio New York, Third World Newsreel, Libertad (political journal of the Puerto Rican Movimiento de Liberacion Nacional [MLN]), the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, the May 19th Communist Organization, the Madame Binh Graphics Collective, The Midnight Express, the Northwest Iowa Socialist Party, the National Black United Front, the Nation of Islam, Arm the Spirit [ATS note: When we started in 1990 we were unaware of the existence of this prisoner publication which had ceased publishing in the early 80’s – there is no connection between us and them except for shared politics., Black News, International Class Labor Defense, the Real Dragon Project, the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee, the National Prison Project, the House of the Lord Church, the American Friends Service Committee, attorneys Chuck Jones and Harold Ferguson of Rutgers Legal Clinic, the Jackson Advocate newspaper, Rutgers law students, the Committee to End the Marion Lockdown, the American Indian Movement, and others.

The End Of The 70’s

As the decade wound down the late 70’s saw the demise of the NOI following the death of Elijah Muhammad and the rise of orthodox Islam among significant segments of New Afrikans on both sides of the wall. By 1979 the prison population stood at 300,000, a whopping 100,000 Increase within a single decade.The previous 100,000 increase, from 100,000 to 200,000, had taken 31 years, from 1927 to 1958. The initial increase to 100,000 had taken hundreds of years. Since America’s original colonial times. The 60’s were the transition decade of white flight that saw a significant decrease in both prison population and white prisoners. And since the total Black prison population increased only slightly or changed insignificantly over the decade of the insurgent 60’s thru 1973, it indicates that New Afrikans are imprisoned least when they fight hardest. The decade ended on a masterstroke by the BLA’s Multinational Task Force, with the November 2, 1979, prison liberation of Assata Shakur – “Soul of the BLA” and preeminent political prisoner of the era. The Task Force then whisked her away to the safety of political asylum in Cuba where she remains to date.

The Decade Of The 80’s

In June 1980 Ali Hassan was released after 16 years in the New Jersey state prisons. Two months later, five New World of Islam (NWI) members were arrested after a North Brunswick, New Jersey, bank robbery in a car with stolen plates. The car belonged to the recently released Ali Hassan, who had loaned it to a friend. Ali Hassan and 15 other NWI members refused to participate in the resulting mass trial which charged them in a Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization (RICO) Indictment with conspiracy to rob banks for the purpose of financing various NWI enterprises in the furtherance of creating an independent Black Nation. All defendants were convicted and sent behind the walls. The 80’s brought another round of BLA freedom fighters behind walls – Basheer Hameed and Abdul Majid in ’80; Sekou Odinga, Kuwasi Balagoon, Chui Ferguson-El, Jamal Josephs again, Mutulu Shakur, and numerous BLA Multinational Task Force supporters in ’81; and Terry Khalid Long, Leroy Ojore Bunting, and others in ’82. The government’s sweep left Mtyari Sundiata dead, Kuwasi Balagoon subsequently dead in prison from AIDS, and Sekou Odinga brutally tortured upon capture, torture that included pulling out his toenails and rupturing his pancreas during long sadistic beatings that left him hospitalized for six months. But this second round of captured BLA freedom fighters brought forth, perhaps for the first time, a battery of young, politically astute New Afrikan lawyers – Chokwe Lumumba, Jill Soffiyah Elijah, Nkechi Taifa, Adjoa Aiyetoro, Ashanti Chimurenga, Michael Tarif Warren, and others. They are not only skilled in representing New Afrikan POWs but the New Afrikan Independence Movement too, all of which added to the further development of the New Afrikan liberation struggle behind the walls. The decade also brought behind the walls Mumia Abu-Jamal, the widely respected Philadephia radio announcer, popularly known as the “Voice of the Voiceless.” He maintained a steady drumbeat of radio support for MOVE prisoners. While moonlighting as a taxi driver on the night of December 9, 1981, he discovered a policeman beating his younger brother. Mumia was shot and seriously wounded, the policeman was killed. Mumia now sits on death row in greatest need of mass support from every sector, if he’s to be saved from the state’s electric chair. Kazi Toure of the United Freedom Front (UFF) was sent behind the walls in 1982. He was released in 1991. The New York 8 – Coltrane Chimurenga, Viola Plummer and her son Robert “R.T.” Taylor, Roger Wareham, Omowale Clay, Lateefah Carter, Colette Pean, and Yvette Kelly were arrested on October 17, 1984, and charged with conspiring to commit prison breakouts and armed robberies, and to possess weapons and explosives. However the New York 8 were actually the New York 8+ because another 8 or 9 persons were jailed as grand Jury resisters in connection with the case. The New York 8 were acquitted on August 5, 1985. That same year Ramona Africa joined other MOVE comrades already behind the walls. Her only crime was that she survived Philadelphia Mayor Goode’s May 13, 1985, bombing which cremated 11 MOVE members, including their babies, families, home, and neighborhood. The following year, November 19, 1986, a 20-year-old Bronx, New York, youth, Larry Davis, now Adam Abdul Hakeem, would make a dramatic escape during a shootout with police who had come to assassinate him for absconding with their drug-sales money. Several policemen were wounded in the shoot-out. Adam escaped unscathed but surrendered weeks later in the presence of the media, his family, and a mass of neighborhood supporters. After numerous charges, trials, and acquittals in which he exposed the existence of a New York police-controlled drug ring that coerced Black and Puerto Rican youths to push police-supplied drugs, he was sent behind the walls on weapon possession convictions. Since incarceration, numerous beatings by guards have paralyzed him from the waist down and confined him to a wheelchair. On July 16, 1987, Abdul Haqq Muhammad, Arthur Majeed Barnes, and Robert “R.T.” Taylor, all members of the Black Men’s Movement Against Crack, were pulled over by state troopers in upstate New York, arrested, and subsequently sent to prison on a variety of weapon possession convictions. Herman Ferguson at 68 years old voluntarily returned to the U.S. on April 6, 1989, after 20-year’s exile in Ghana, Afrika and Guyana, South America. He had fled the U.S. during the late 60’s after the appeal was denied on his sentence of 3 1/2 to 7 years following a conviction for conspiring to murder civil rights leaders. Upon return he was arrested at the airport and was moved constantly from prison to prison for several years as a form of harassment. The 80’s brought the Reagan era’s rollback of progressive trends on a wide front and a steep rise in racist incidents, White vigilantism, and police murder of New Afrikan and Third World people. It also brought the rebirth and re-establishment of the NOI, a number of New Afrikan POWs adopting orthodox Islam in lieu of revolutionary nationalism, the New Afrikan People’s Organization’s (NAPO) and its chairman Chokwe Lumumba’s emergence. From the RNA as banner carrier for the New Afrikan Independence Movement (NAIM), the New Orleans assassination of Lumumba Shakur of the Panther 21, and an upsurge in mass political demonstrations known as the “Days of Outrage” in New York City spearheaded by the December 12th Movement, and others. The end of the decade brought the death of Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party, allegedly killed by a young Black Guerrilla Family adherent on August 22, 1989, during a dispute over “crack.” Huey taught the Black masses socialism and popularized it through the slogan “Power to the People!” He armed the Black struggle and popularized it through the slogan “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” For that, and despite his human shortcomings, he was a true giant of the Black struggle, because his particular contribution is comparable to that of other modern-day giants, Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. AIDS, crack, street crime, gang violence, homelessness, and arrest rates have all exploded throughout the Black colonies. The prison population on June 30, 1989, topped 673,000, an incredible 372,000 increase in less than a decade, causing the tripling and doubling of prison populations in 34 states, and sizable increases in most others. New York City prisons became so overcrowded they began using ships as jails. William Bennett, former U.S. Secretary of Education and so-called Drug Czar, announced plans to convert closed military bases into concentration camps. The prison building spree and escalated imprisonment rates continue unabated. The new prisoners are younger, more volatile, have long prison sentences, and are overwhelmingly of New Afrikan and Third World nationalities. It is estimated that by the year 1994 the U.S. will have over one million prisoners. Projections suggest that over 75 percent of them will be Black and other people of color. More are women than previously. Their percentage rose to 5 percent in 1980 from a low of 3 percent in 1970. Whites are arrested at about the same rate as in Western Europe while the New Afrikan arrest rate has surpassed that of Blacks in South Africa. In fact, the U.S. Black imprisonment rate is now the highest in the world. Ten times as many Blacks as whites are incarcerated per 100,000 population.

The 90’s And Beyond

As we begin to move through the 90’s the New Afrikan liberation struggle behind the walls finds itself coalescing around campaigns to free political prisoners and prisoners of war, helping to build a national PP/POW organization, strengthening its links on the domestic front, and building solidarity in the international arena. Although the established media concentrates on the sensationalism of ghetto crack epidemics, street crime, drive-by shootings, and gang violence, there has been a long quiet period of consciousness-raising in the New Afrikan colonies by the committed independence forces. This heightened consciousness of the colonies is just beginning to manifest itself through seemingly random sparks and the rise of innovative cultural trends, i.e., Rap/Hip Hop, “message” music, culturally designed hair styles, dissemination of political/cultural video cassettes, resprouting of insurgent periodicals, and the resurrection of forgotten heroes; all of which presage an oppressed people getting ready to push forward again. The New Afrikan liberation struggle behind the walls now follows the laws of its own development, paid for in its own blood, intrinsically linked to the struggle of its own people, and rooted deep in the ebb and flow of its own history. To know that history is already to know its future development and direction.

STATEMENT TO THE HUMAN RIGHTS CONFERENCE ON TORTURE

April, 2005

Greetings IHRI Conference! First i want to congratulate the Keynote Speaker and Honorable Congresswoman, Sister Cynthia McKinney, on her triumphant return to Congress. But moreso i want to personally thank her as being the only Congressional official who had courage or concern enough to make a determined effort toward my release when i was rounded up on September 11, 2001, and held *incommunicado* from my family, my attorneys and the entire outside world.

Meanwhile prison officials torturously interrogated me, looking for *any* connection on my part to the destruction of the WTC or the later spread of anthrax thru the postal system. They openly threatened to hold me in total isolation for the rest of my life and their implied threat was to seek the death penalty. So torture is nothing new to u.s. PP/POWs, nor to everyday people of color and others oppressed in the ghettoes, barrios, reservations, towns and cities thru out amerika.

They don’t call the Bronx’s 44th Precinct, “Fort Apache,” for nothing; or because they serve “tea and cookies” there. They call it “Fort Apache” because they whip heads there, bust lips, knock out teeth, blacken eyes, break ribs and even rape and kill there .. and it goes on to one degree or another in every police station across country, big or small. Abu Ghraib is not an aberration. Most u.s. prisoners instantly recognized amerika’s fingerprints all over Ghraib; they match its prints in u.s. police stations, jails and prisons. The Ghraib perversions trace a straight line back home to white amerika’s psychotic obsessions with the genitals of Blacks it lynched.

The same perverted grins seen at Ghraib can be found in the faces and photos of white lynch mobs in the u.s. swarmed around Black bodies hung from trees. It’s a perversion born in this country’s racial-sexual degradation of its Black slaves and others of color since its beginning, and the lies told since then to cover it up. That same “cover-up” mindset also keeps most of the amerikan press silent about the manyIraqi women and children, young boys and girls who were also raped, and probably still are being raped, at Abu Ghraib. Photographic proof exists and *The San Francisco Bayview* newspaper has it. For those adults who have legitimate need for such proof, the photos are available upon e-mail request for them at editor@sfbayview.com.

Now for some of my personal experiences with torture: In 1969 NY cops kicked in my door for two other Panthers, Sekou Odinga and Kuwasi Balagoon, and without saying a word beat and stomped me unmercifully. Then they took me to the 32nd Precinct, Harlem, and threw me in the holding tank with Joan Bird, another Harlem Panther, whose lip was so busted and swollen, and eyes so blackened and swollen shut that i barely recognized her. She said that at one point during her beating they hung her out of the 3rd-floor window by the ankles, made sexual taunts and threatened to drop her if she didn’t tell the whereabouts of Sekou and Kuwasi. They didn’t find them and after holding us in jail for a month they released us. In 1970 during the New York Panther-21 trial we defendants were assaulted numerous times while cuffed, by Riker’s Island jail guards who transported us back and forth to court each day.

In 1973, after my arrest in the New Jersey Turnpike case, i was held in strict isolation at Middlesex County Jail, NJ. Because of my placement there, and even tho i was allowed no visitors except my lawyer, the jail implemented harsh visiting rules on all visitors which caused the prisoners to protest by refusing to lock in their cells. New Jersey state troopers came in with shotguns, shot prisoners in the face and torso with bean-bags that broke noses, blackened eyes and bruised ribs, shot teargas that choked, blinded and burned, and drove prisoners back into their cells. i was already under 24/7-lockdown so they simply shot teargas into my cell, turned the water off and heat on, in mid-summer, which left me and similar prisoners to wallow in pain from thesweat-reactivated tear gas which we had no means to wash off.

In 1976 at Trenton State Prison (TSP), NJ, i and other Management Control Unit (MCU) prisoners were subjected to two-hours of gunfire by Jersey state troopers raking the Unit back and forth, trying to shoot into our cells. John Andaliwa Clark was killed by a double-ought shotgun blast to the chest and another prisoner, “Gunner,” who came out with his hands in the air was shot by an M-14 rifle aimed at his head but tore thru his elbow instead. i and numerous other MCU prisoners were hit by shrapnel from bullets that ricocheted off the bars into our cells.

In 1977, MCU guards suddenly began demands to probe the anus of random MCU prisoners during their normal strip-search of us each time we were taken out or returned to our cells. And of course, we refused to submit willingly to such a degrading and asinine demand. All who resisted were jumped by the guards, beaten, wrestled to the floor and anus probed, then charged with assault on the guards which carried an additional 7-year sentence upon conviction.

To avoid further anus probes, for the next seven months we refused all family visits, attorney visits, doctor, dental visits or anything else that required us to leave our cells. Prison officials then instituted a policy of “random” mandatory cell-changes so that they could continue to subject selected prisoners to “random” beatings, abuse and forced anal probes under the guise of changing our cells. The situation became so volatile and our families, attorneys and friends were so alarmed that a federal judge stepped in, forbade the prison to continue anal-probes, declared that a metal detector was just as effective as a search tool and that it be used instead of the anal probe and then summarily dismissed all assault charges that had been filed against us MCU prisoners.

In 1983, at USP Marion, Il, a federal penitentiary, guards locked down the prison and went on a six-month rampage, roaming the prison and beating prisoners at will and randomly subjecting some to forced anal probes. During that period i was sent to “the hole” whose floor and walls were covered with feces thrown by prisoners who had been beaten and anal probed. It was mid-summer, the heat was intense, the smell incredible, the windows were closed and i was confined sixty-days there without fresh air or relief.

Later in the summer of ’83 i was taken by bus in chains to testify at Sekou Odinga’s trial in New York where he and other comrades were charged with robbery of a Brinks armored truck and with liberating Assata Shakur from prison. After i dressed-out for the bus ride, the guard put a black-box over my handcuffs which is supposedly for high security prisoners. Any prisoner who’s ever worn it will tell you that after a half-hour the box gnaws into your wrists and sets them on fire with pain.

I had to endure the three-day bus ride with the black-box gnawing into my wrists all day, plus no smoking was permitted on the bus nor at any of its stopovers along the way, which in itself was also torture to me with a then thirty-year cigarette habit. At MCC-NY, the City’s federal jail, they put me in isolation wearing only a T-shirt, pants and shower shoes, then turned the air-condition to near-freezing level so that i had no choice but to do push-ups day and night to keep warm.

After three days of freezing and going without cigarettes, i testified in Sekou’s defense and was immediately put back on the bus, cuffed in the black-box, for another agonizing three-day trip back to Marion, Il. In 1988, at USP Leavenworth, Ks., as happened on several occasions during my sojourn in prison, i was caught-up as an innocent bystander during a major prison disturbance. In such situations bystanders and participants alike suffer the same abuse by the intervening guards.

This time it happened in the yard when a gang-war broke out between the Texas-Syndicate and the EMEs: two Mexican street organizations. In the ensuing melee, Rene, leader of the Syndicate, was stabbed to death and both groups sustained numerous stab wounds. Tower gunfire stopped the carnage as guards moved in to teargas and handcuff everyone, including me and other bystanders, facedown on the blistering summer-asphalt, then lifted us by the cuffs and threw us in the dilapidated and condemned “Building-63” without food or water until the whole thing was sorted out days later.

And last, in 2001, September 11th, at USP Allenwood, Pa., i was rounded up, held *incommunicado* and tortured four months with interrogations about the WTC and the spread of anthrax before being released back into prison population due to the efforts of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, my attorneys and many other concerned peoples.

REQUIEM FOR SUSAN BURNETT

My sincerest condolence to Ali Bey Hassan and family on the passing of his wife, Susan Burnett.

i and almost everyone who knows her will dearly miss her and the constant many-faceted ways she contributed to the struggle to free all oppressed people.

Susan was a founding member of the Sundiata Acoli Freedom Campaign. She led it thru its formative years and well into its later development ~ and i’m forever indebted to her for doing so.

During our sojourn together we encountered both good times and rough times, harmony and friction, joys and sorrows ~ but thru it all i never had a moments doubt that she had my and oppressed people’s best interest at heart. Overall i’m convinced that a bigger heart and a more dedicated comrade than Susan can not be found.

May Susan Burnett rest in peace, assured that her spirit lives on, cherished by us who loved her so.

Effects and Uses of Control Units

Posted on 8 July 2008

The following interview was conducted by Bonnie Kerness with Sundiata Acoli from Allenwood’s federal prison for the hearings on Control Units held on Apri 27, 1996 in Philadelphia.

Bonnie: Sundiata, how are you?

Sundiata: I’m doing fine, Bonnie. How are you?

Bonnie: Good. Sundiata you were one of the earliest people in a control unit in the United States in Trenton State prison and then again at Marion. Can you tell us about your experiences, both the impact of the experiences on you, and your asessment of how control units are used in this country.

Sundiata: Yes. At Trenton State Prison they created a control unit over night by rounding up two hundred-fifty prisoners. They cleared out an entire unit and began to pile us up in this unit. We had to leave all our property in the old cell and we were put in a new cell. Trenton was built before the civil war, I think 1835, so the cells were very small. You could outstretch your arms and touch both walls, you could reach over your head and touch the ceiling and they had fold-up bunk beds and in order to walk around in the cell you had to fold the bunk bed back into the wall. The space was actually smaller than the space requirement for a ninety-pound German Shepherd dog.
Anyway they rounded two-hundred-fifty of us up and it was really a smoke screen to round up about fifty or sixty either Political Prisoners or prisoners that were involved in African study classes, because within a month of rounding all of us up they had let everyone else out except for about fifty or sixty of us who were more politically inclined.
We had no contact visits. They immediately took our contact visits. We had no access to the law libraries or any programs, and recreation was cut to two hours twice a week in an alleyway between two buildings. The only equipment there was one parallel bar, one basketball and one basketball hoop.
And there was a tremendous amount of uproar. The main question the prisoners were asking was “why were we rounded up,” and they never sufficiently answered that. And that’s the nature of control units, that they never do answer that, because it’s built to be able to select which prisoners they want to round up, you know, which prisoners they want to put in there and hold them in there for an indeterminate amount of time.

Bonnie: Did anyone have any charges?

Sundiata: No. None of us had charges.

Bonnie: I know now in Trenton State Prison the control unit is pretty much a brand new state of the art sensory deprivation unit. Was the control unit at that time, and I think you’re talking about the early 70’s?

Sundiata: Yeah, 1975.

Bonnie: Was it also a sensory deprivation unit?

Sundiata: Definitely sensory deprivation. Because we had to spend 231/2 hours a day, really 23 hours and 50 minutes in these cells all day, 10 minutes out to shower. And to be cramped in a cell that small is definitely sensory deprivation. But also there is a tremendous amount of noise in the cells because prisoners are hollering up and down the range. You have to holler up to one range to the other and there is concern about why they’re locked up, you know, uproars. And in the meantime the guards are harassing and instituting provocations on prisoners. So it’s a continuous uproar and confusion going on.

Bonnie: Which is very much the opposite of what it is today. The folks say the silence there is eerie.

Sundiata: Yeah, it’s deafening, right.

Bonnie: Can you talk a little about the time you spent in the Marion (IL) Control Unit?

Sundiata: Marion was basically the same way. When I first went to Marion, it was a general population prison, you had the control unit but the prisoners in the Marion facility itself was a general population. The same thing happened while I was at Marion that happened at Trenton State Prison. In 1983, they locked Marion down completely and turned the entire prison into a controlled prison and instituted the same basic measures. Recreation twice a week, no programs and provocations and harassment and beatings. The same thing happened at MCU (Trenton). They begin to arbitrarily implement rules that were geared to put you in a position where they could brutalize you. At Marion-the same thing. They locked down the unit and began to take prisoners out of the cells and beat them and throw them in the hole and the same thing.
There's a report on the whole Marion thing where for nine months they roamed the prison beating prisoners at random.

Bonnie: One of the things they did in the Management Control Unit (MCU) in Trenton was they spent one entire summer, waking folks up dressed in full riot gear with the dogs. They’d wake them up at one o’clock in the morning, make them pack up and switch cages. Then two weeks later, they would do the same thing.

Sundiata: When I was in MCU (Trenton) they started that same procedure. See, what it was is that when we used to go to the yard first, they would pat search us, and we would go to the yard and come back they would pat search us and we would go back to the cell. That was for recreation. One day arbitrarily in the middle of bringing people back from the yard they told a guy to strip search. And he stripped, and they said “spread your anus”, and he spread his cheeks, and they said “not your cheeks, your anus.” And naturally he was concerned at why he was the only one stripped searched and he didn’t do it fast enough so they jumped him and forcibly spread his anus. Behind that, prisoners stopped going to the yard in protest against them beating him and the institution of an anal search.
Then they instituted a rule where every time you change your cell you had to be stripped searched. Since they couldn’t do it to prisoners going to the yard, because we all stopped going to the yard. And then anytime they would change a cell (they would just arbitrarily changed your cells) and say “you’re going to go from cell 16 to cell 20,” you had to strip search and the same thing happened. They would demand that you spread your anus and if you didn’t do it fast enough they’d jump on you and do it forcibly. And they did that to so many prisoners because they could select the prisoners that they wanted to change cells just arbitrarily. And then they would forcibly spread your anus and then they would charge us with assault on them.
All this happened to so many prisoners and caused such an uproar between prisoners’ families in the street and prisoners being charged with assault, which carries a 7 year sen tence, that a federal judge finally stepped in and said you could do the same type of search with a hand held metal detector.

Bonnie: Sundiata, people are going to be listening to this interview all over the country. One of the things we’re hoping is that the panels of listeners which will be listening to testimony like this will form conclusions and be willing to write those conclusions. Is there any comment that you specifically want to address to the panel of listeners about the uses of control units?

Sundiata: Yes, in particular the human control and psychological control measures that they use. First, control units were created so that prison officials could select particular people to put in those units. Then they create programs that are designed to punish you physically and terrorize you psychologically. And when all is said and done, it’s an experiment in human control, how to change entire populations into informers or collaborators. Or either to break your spirit or to destroy your image and possibly destroy your person. So that’s what it does, they are practicing all these experiments on prisoners& in settings where they can manipulate it whichever way they want. But these techniques that they are practicing and learning in the control units, they eventually export these same techniques to manipulate,control and divide communities in the street. So that people in general can never get together to unite against their common oppressor.

Bonnie: I always think of Angela Davis' quote "if they come for me in the morning, they going to come for you in the night."

Sundiata: Right. That’s the real sinister part about these control units. That they’re experimentation factories. And that they really take these techniques, once they get them perfected and apply them in the street. And the other danger, is when people think the control units only pertain to prisoners, but it doesn’t work like that.

Bonnie: Sundiata, thank you so much.

Sundiata: Thank you.

On Marcus Garvey’s Birthday Celebration

AUGUST 1998
SPEECH AT MARCUS GARVEY'S BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION

In my opinion, Marcus Garvey was the greatest organizer of Afrikan people ever in the western hemisphere, meaning the Americas. The only person who has come close since is Minister Farrakhan of the Nation of Islam and if he continues he may exceed Garvey.

Marcus founded and led the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA) in 1914. At its peak it had over 2 million members worldwide, 700 chapters in the united states, 74 chapters in Louisiana alone and its headquarters in Harlem, New York had 35,000 members. All this at a time when the Black population in Harlem and the u.s. was less than half of what it is now. It also had chapters in the Caribbean, Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, etc. and in Central America, Costa Rico, Panama, Honduras, Cuba, Belize, etc. and in Latin America and Afrika.

When Marcus’ wife, Amy Jacques Garvey, met the King Of Swaziland in Afrika he told her he had heard of only 2 Afro-Americans in his life: Jack Johnson, the 1st Black heavyweight champion and Marcus Garvey. The early members of the ANC, the organization that later came to power in South Africa and freed Nelson Mandela, were Garveyites. The UNIA also had chapters in Australia, Europe and Canada; in other words almost where ever there were Black people in the world in significant numbers who had heard of Garvey there was likely to be Garvey sympathizers, supporters, or a UNIA chapter.

UNIA had a Negro Factories Corporation that one time employed up to 1000 people. It owned restaurants, groceries, laundries, a Black doll factory, hotels and trucking businesses. Its Negro World newspaper was the most widely distributed Black newspaper in the world. Besides English, it also published a Spanish and a French edition. Black long shoremen/merchant seamen helped distribute Garvey’s newspaper around the world and smuggled it into countries where banned. One of Garvey’s most stunning achievements was the founding/ownership of the Black Star Steamship Line. He named his 1st ship the Frederick Douglas. His 2nd ship was an excursion boat, the Shadyside, which took Blacks on cruises up/down the Hudson River of New York. His 3rd steamship was named the Antonio Maceo, after the great Black Cuban revolutionary who fought for the independence of Cuba.

For a Black organization to own a steamship line in the 1920s is comparable to a Black person today owning an airline, railway or car manufacturing plant. He planned to purchase/rename his next ship, the Phyllis Wheatly, after an early Black poet, but he was arrested, framed, sent to prison and afterwards deported in order to derail him, the UNIA and Black people from the path of freedom.

These are just a few of the material accomplishments of Marcus before he was struck down by the u.s. government who then used everything in their power to wipe out the record of his phenomenal career. As a result, whole generations of Afrikan children grew up and never knew of him or saw his name in history books. They could wipe him out of the history books but they couldn’t wipe out the impact of his work, his spirit, and the influence he had on the many people he met, touched, inspired and influenced. Many later became world leaders of their people, like Kwame Nkrumah,

1st President of Ghana, who said Garvey’s Philosophy & Opinions had a greater impact on him than any other book, and who named his country’s steamship line the Black Star, in honor of Garvey. Jomo Kenyatta, leader of the Mau-Mau and 1st President of Kenya, met Garvey and was influenced by him during their earlier days together in London. Garvey had similar effects on Godfrey Binasia who later became President of Uganda and on Ho Chi Minh, the great Viet Nam nationalist, who as a young merchant seaman attended UNIA meetings in Harlem whenever his ship docked in New York; also Ida B. Wells, the courageous two-gun toting sister, who crusaded against Black lynchings in the u.s., and many, many more.

They could wipe him out of the history books, even wipe out his physical accomplishments, but they couldn’t wipe out his greatest contribution which was to the spirit, mind, psyche and soul of Black folks. At a time when we were despised throughout the world and ashamed of Afrika, he taught us to love ourselves, to be proud of ourselves and Afrika, to believe in ourselves and to depend on ourselves. Tony Martin, Black scholar/author, breaks Garvey’s philosophy down into the following three main tenants:

Race First – which stresses that as Blacks, we are oppressed because of race and should strive to put our racial self-interest first. We should support our own businessmen, professionals, writers, athletes, etc., first, provided they have our people’s interest at heart. See beauty in our own kind, stop idolizing and mimicking Whites, bleaching our skin, processing our hair, etc. Black writers, artist, musicians, dancers, etc., should use their creative talents to push forward the struggle of our people.

Self-reliance – We should not rely on others for liberation but “Do For Self” to become strong and independent. In this regards one of my favorite statements of his is “If we mush have justice, we must be strong, if we must be strong we must come together, if we must come together we can only do so thru the system of organization” – meaning everyone doing their own thing “ain’t gonna get it.” To be effective we must join/build organizations.

Nationhood – We must strive to build up a strong independent Black nation. Afrikans the world over will never really be respected until we build a strong Black nation, preferably on the Afrikan continent, that can offer economic, diplomatic, military and moral support to Afrikans wherever they might be in the world. His long-term dream was of a strong independent United States of Afrika.

They could wipe him of the history books but they couldn’t wipe out the great legacy he left us, which was the proven blueprint, a master plan, he laid out for successfully organizing Afrikan people for freedom. He proved that it works because he used it to organize more Afrikan people in the western hemisphere than any other person since and you can see this thread, Garvey’s handprint, running thru every Black nationalist organization that’s been effective/successful in organizing large numbers of Afrikan people for freedom and this holds true from the Moors, to Rastas, Nation of Islam, SNCC, All-Afrikan People’s Revolutionary Party, Republic of New Afrika, The Black Panther Party to the Black Liberation Army but that’s another topic to be explored another day.

In closing I’d like to give a small example of Garvey’s influence on me and members of the Panther 21, which was a case back in 1969 when we were on trial for conspiracy. We were on trial for 2 years, the longest trial in NY history to that date and were acquitted in 2 hours. During the trial we wrote a collective biography which contains biographies of Lumumba Shakur, lead defendant, his wife Afeni, Tupac’s mom, Sekou Odinga who was here at USP Allenwood earlier and was convicted of liberating Assata; and others on trial you perhaps don’t know, Jamal Josephs, Dhoruba binWahad, etc. We passed around the mike, spoke into a tape recorder and the publishers, Vintage Press or somebody, transcribed the tape into a book. Frankly, everybody spoke but me. Each time my turn came my mind would go blank, so they let me write mine out and read it into the tape recorder. They didn’t hold it against me too much because they adopted my suggestion for the book’s title which is “Look For Me in the Whirlwind”. I got the title of the book from a letter that Marcus Garvey wrote to his supporters right after arriving at Atlanta penitentiary. I’d like to read that letter to you so that you can get a taste of the type of man that Garvey was:

FIRST MESSAGE TO THE NEGROES OF THE WORLD FROM ATLANTA PRISON[1]

“February 10, 1925 – My work is just begun, and when the history of my suffering is complete, then future generations of Negroes will have in their hands the guide by which they shall know the “sins” of the twentieth century. I, and I know you, too, believe in time, and we shall wait patiently for two hundred hears, if need be, to face our enemies through our posterity.

After my enemies are satisfied, in life or death I shall come back to you to serve even as I have served before. In life, I shall be the same; in death, I shall be a terror to the foes of Negro liberty. If death has power, then count on me in death to be the real Marcus Garvey I would like to be. If I may come in an earthquake, or a cyclone, or plague, or pestilence, or as God would have me, then be assured that I shall never desert you and make your enemies triumph over you. Would I not go to hell a million times for you?

If I die in Atlanta, my work shall then only begin, but I shall live, in the physical or spiritual (sense) to see the day of Africa’s glory. When I am dead, wrap the mantle of the Red, Black and Green around me, for in the new life I shall rise with God’s grace and blessing to lead the millions up the heights of triumph with the colors that you well know. Look for me in the whirlwind or the storm, look for me all around you, for with God’s grace, I shall come and bring with them countless millions of Black slaves who have died in america and the West Indies and the millions in Africa to aid you in the fight for Liberty, Freedom and Life.

The civilization of today is gone drunk and crazy with its power and by such it seeks through injustice, fraud and lies to crush the unforunate. But if I am apparently crushed by the system of influence and misdirected power, my cause shall rise again to plague the conscience of the corrupt. For this I am satisfied, and for you, I repeat, I am glad to suffer and even die. Again, I say, cheer up, for better days are ahead. I shall write the history that will inspire the millions that are coming and leave the posterity of our enemies to reckon with the hosts for the deed of their fathers. With God’s dearest blessings, I leave you for a while.”

[1]From The Philosophy & Opinions of Marcus Garvey, Amy Jacques Garvey, ed., Atheneum, New York 1969.

Palestinian Solidarity Message

Posted July 8th, 2008 on the website

Greetings, Bros, Sisters and Comrades,

It’s good to see you all honoring Palestinian freedom fighters. They have long borne the main brunt of the fight against u.s. imperialism in the Mid-East. They are doing there what we who want freedom should be doing here—and one day will do here. Meanwhile i send my warmest solidarity to the Palestinian political prisoners and may we continue to struggle in solidarity until we and all oppressed people are free worldwide!

In struggle and solidarity,

Sundiata Acoli

The Meaning of Attica 25 Years Later

Posted on the website 8 July 2008

Twenty-five years ago, Sept, 14, 1971, the bloodiest prison rebellion in U.S. history took place. Four days earlier, prisoners had taken over Attica and demanded more humane treat-ment and better prison conditions. Now, realizing that an assault to retake was imminent, the prisoners marched their 9 guard-hostages to the top of the prison walls and held a knife to each guard’s throat. Sharpshooters zeroed their rifles’ scopes between each prisoner’s eyes, and opened fire.

Forty people, 31 prisoners and 9 guards, died during the retaking of Attica. Forty-three died in total. Immediately after the assault, State officials flooded the media with lurid accounts of prisoners cold-bloodedly slitting guards’ throats in the midst of the sharp-shooter’s barrage.

It was all a “Big Lie.” About a week later the coroner announced that all guards and prisoners killed during the retaking of the prison had been killed by state troopers’ bullets. A 10th guard died probably at the hands of other prisoners.

The Attica rebellion occurred during the era of the nationwide prison reform movement. It was part of the cost that prisoners, their families and supporters, paid to roll back the inhumane prison policies that had stood for centuries. Prison struggles during that period, led mainly by politically conscious prisoners, gained the rudimentary privileges of contact visits, adequate law libraries, the right to a disciplinary hearing before punishment; college courses; Black, Hispanic and Native American Studies; religions and cultural programs with participation by outside community representatives; more humane treatment; and numerous other privileges that are taken for granted today.

Now, many of these same privileges are being taken away. Prisoners everywhere are being harshly repressed. Control units and control complexes abound, mass arrest, mass imprisonment, building more and harsher prisons, the death penalty, more police, more guards, and the “lock ’em up and throw away the key” mentality, is the order of the day. Prison guards’ unions have grown as powerful as the policemen’s PBA in bankrolling law-and-order politicians to pass more repressive crime legislation. Nothing is too cruel to be done to prisoners today, particularly since most prisoners are Black, Brown, or other people of color.

The “Big Lie” reigns supreme. Nobody wants to hear about Reagan’s use of the CIA to flood the ghettoes, barrios, and reservations, with cocaine to create the “crack”/crime epidemic in the first place-in order to fund the Contra War. Nor does anyone want to hear about Clinton’s passage of NAFTA and other corporate legislative schemes that send U.S. jobs overseas to be done at cheap wages, creating massive underemployment here. And definitely no one wants to hear of the current rush by transnational corporations to make even bigger profits by opening factories in U.S. prisons to replace overseas labor.

Prison slave labor is even cheaper than overseas workers, plus there’s no overseas shipping costs, no health insurance, unemployment or retirement costs, and most of all, prisoners can’t strike. Everyone is profiting off the law-and-order “Big Lie” that scapegoats prisoners and people of color. Everyone, that is, except the underemployed U.S. worker who must now work two jobs to make ends meet and is expected to cheer because the stock market goes through the roof, as the transnational corporations laugh all the way to the bank.

If Attica represents a high point of the unity and consciousness of the prison struggle movement, then today represents a low point in prison conditions, consciousness, solidarity, and struggle. The real lesson of Attica is that it serves as a beacon to remind us of where we were, and how we got there.

Today’s prisons are filled with mostly younger, less politically aware, but rebellious prisoners who were swept up during the Big Lie “War on Drugs.” Actually it was, and is, a war on people of color. We changed the prisons before and we can again, even further this time. To do so it’s necessary to politically educate and activate a whole new generation of prisoners, and community and legal supporters. Building a National Prison Organization (NPO) is as good a place to start as any.

Statement of Sundiata Acoli to Demonstrations Against House Resolution 254

Greetings! Thank you all for coming to the Nation’s capitol to demonstrate your opposition to, anger and disgust at Res. 254 called for the extradition of Assata Shakur from Cuba. The resolution states “Assata and the driver [i.e. me] opened fire with automatic pistols, striking Trooper Werner Foerster

twice in the chest and Trooper James Harper in the left shoulder…then turned Trooper Foerster’s own weapon on him firing an additional two bullets into his head execution style…”

Those are very emotional words, but to any humane person all such deaths are tragic. Zayd Shakur the other passenger and our companion also died from trooper gunfire during the same incident. His death is equally tragic but these tragedies are compounded by Gov. Whitman’s attempt to use Assata and the trooper’s death to whip up hysterics solely to revive her faded-out political career. And its particularly tragic that many Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) members meekly went along with Whitman’s charade. Some didn’t and I commend all those who did not.

Those CBC members who did vote for the resolution acted as though they have forgotten the real history of African people in this country or the real way African motorists and other people of color are treated on the New Jersey Turnpike even today. It was worst in 1973 when Assata, Zayd and I were stopped there.

In the same manner, New Jersey State Troopers recently opened fire without provocation, on three basketball try-out students, two Blacks and one Puerto Ricans, in a van: Trooper Harper opened fire on Assata sitting in the car with her hands in the air. Trooper Foerster opened fire on me and shot me in the hand as I struggled to prevent him from killing me. It does not take a rocket scientists to figure that since he fired one bullet into my hand, and his weapon which was recovered at the scene was found to have been fired only twice, that its mathematically impossible for two bullets from his own weapon to be found in his head. They did find two bullets in his head, though, and both were revolver bullets. They only two revolvers on the scene belong to Troopers Foerster and Harper. The other three weapons recovered at the scene and attributed to me and my passengers were each semi-automatic pistols.

The continuing tragedy is the twenty five years of lies, hysterical and cover-up to hide what really happened on the turnpike in May 1973. But truth crushed to earth will rise again. Assata, Zayd and I were only three of many Black Panther Party (BPP) members and other political activists of the 1960s, 1970s and beyond who were targeted by COINTELPRO, then branded as criminals so that we could be hunted down, shot and killed like animals; or if we survived, imprisoned for life. But that is a price many of us willing paid during that era to struggle for our people’s freedom. Its because of the struggle and sacrifices of people like Assata that many CBC members and

other middle-class blacks are where they are today.

Instead of voting for a resolution demanding Assata’s extradition, the CBC should be sponsoring a resolution demanding that the charges against Assata be dropped and calling for a congressional investigation, not only into the 1973 turnpike incident, but also into an investigation of COINTELPRO’s dirty hands in setting up so many political activists of that era: many who are still in prison today and must be freed if we ever to bring a principled closure to the 1960s. Anything less is a sell-out.

And last, Assata has given and gives so much to us. It was recently brought to my attention how little we give back to Assata. So I want your participation in an upcoming national fundraiser to give something back to Assata. The details of this fundraiser will be provided you. The gist of it involves a national fundraiser to provide Assata’s daughter and her family with funds to travel frequently to see Assata and to maintain frequent telephone contact with her when away. I know its a gift that’s dear to her heart and I urge you to give the max so that Assata can see/talk with her children and her grandchild as often as possible. It will make her very happy. I thank you.

Hands Off Assata! Free Mumia and All Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War! Sundiata Acoli 10/3/98

ALL OUT TO DC 10/5/98 KEEP ASSATA FREE!

Truth is a Virus

By Sundiata Acoli and Walidah Imarisha

Guerrilla plague
Brought from bastard tongues
Blood from a burst blister
Blood on the legs of a sister
We are the fever that heals as it burns
Our rage purifies
Harbingers of chaos and construction.

Living virus running through your system
Resurrecting those you hit at but missed em
We are the war coming home
The second coming of Rome
Defeated abroad and destroyed from within
Never to terrorize or rise again.

Revolutionaries birthed and homegrown
Smeared on cheeks like ash
He smiles at all his grandchildren
He knows the inside of vaccination needles
And sterilization pills
His heart bursting with so much love
And so much fear
Hoping his strong arms
Can build a shelter
Against the coming epidemic.

He smiles at his grandchildren, loving them so,
But still must send them where angels fear to go
Grossly unprepared because they haven’t been trained
Their schools long ago razed, teachers routed and cadre maimed.

Eyes so wide
You can see the future in em
And deep as a new york sewer drain
This child has my eyes
And they are too old for this polished apple face.

A pug nose
And a wide grin mouth
Eyes searching the landmarks for 95 south
Think you can make it thru
That’s easy to do…
Once, twice but how about the rest of your life?

You can not hope to understand
Infinity
But 33 years starts to stretch
Farther than forever
As the blood slows
In our collective veins
In stasis
Mosquitoes in amber
With the lifeblood
Of ancestors
Suspended inside us.

33 years and more
is just a meatball
compared to foreparents
who did cradle to grave
and still stood tall.
That same blood
Yet courses our veins
Their same message drumbeats
Over and over again.
The solutions to a problem
Lie in its origin.
Human history is long
Ours goes back
To the beginning,
Before the spread of false images
That keep the world lamenting.
So the call of the Ancients
Who had the strength of 10
Will forever remind us when
Once we were free,
And that we, and the world,
Shall be
Free again.

Note From Sundiata Acoli

Just a brief note to send my warmest solidarity and thanks to you all … for your show of concern and support for Black political prisoners and prisoners of war, and political prisoners and prisoners of war in general, over the years.

Your continued support is needed today, just as much as it was needed twenty or more years ago at the height of the COINTELPRO era when many of us first entered prison. COINTELPRO continues, just as strong today, although by some other name, as witnessed by the recent entrapment of Qubilah Shabazz, the naive, easily-misled middle-daughter of Malcolm X. COINTELPRO-like programs continue in the prisons, too. Obviously, there’s a need for the formation of a legal clinic or group that’s dedicated to exposing COINTELPRO-like programs, past and present, both in the streets and in the prisons. Its “dirty tricks” and slanderous reports set up outside people for arrest or worse, and similar unchallenged tactics in the prisons keep many of today’s political prisoners and prisoners of war from being released.

There are various ways to support political prisoners and prisoners of war, but one of the better ways is to write one, or write them, and ask how you can best support them. Another way is to send them a donation towards their commissary. Most political prisoners and prisoners of war can always use commissary support although they don’t always like to admit it, or ask for it.

Thank you for taking the time to listen to this brief message, and I hope you enjoy the program.

Sundiata Acoli

MLK Day Celebration Statement

by Sundiata Acoli-New Afrikan POW

Thank you SCLC for again selecting me as a Co-Chair of the Kansas City MLK Day Celebration whose theme this year is “Adversity or Diversity: Which Will You Teach?”

MLK said, “I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final say in reality.” He was also fond of quoting James Russel Lowell’s “Truth crushed to earth will rise again.” i agree, so with respect to the question “Adversity or diversity, which will you teach?”, my response is “Teach truth.”

The unadulterated truth is that the only solution to the problems we’re faced with today is to change the structure of the system we live under or break away to form our own independent nation(s).

Diversity generally means an “inclusive” process that provides people the opportunity for meaningful participation in all aspects of society that determine the quality of their lives. The problem is that we live under a racist capitalist system. Its very nature/existence dictate that there always be a certain percentage of people who are “excluded,” locked-out and without access to decent jobs, schools, housing, healthcare, etc. Otherwise the system couldn’t keep us competing and fighting with each other instead of it. There always has to be enough poor, hungry and wretched people living hand to mouth so that those of you who are a little better off can exploit, despise and persecute them in order to feel good about yourselves because you’re not them.

You see it happening daily in the whipping up of hysteria about Blacks, immigrants, crime, welfare, terrorism and who knows what tomorrow. And you know it’s a con game, a little truth mixed with a lot of lies, to cover the fact that a war is being carried out against people of color and increasingly against the poor period. Yet many of you and our leaders keep quiet about it because none or few have the heart to stand up to the government like MLK did against the Viet Nam war and say that it’s wrong. So even though Diversity’s aims are noble, it’s not possibe to obtain a truly “inclusive” society under a racist capitalist structure. It’s a contradiction in terms — if a society is truly inclusive then it’s not, or can’t be, racist capitalist.

Does that mean i’m anti-diversity? No, because it’s a move in the right direction, and where successful it will provide selected benefits to selected areas. But the powers that be will never let a Diversity Movement include all the people who would benefit from it because that in itself would change the structure of the system.

MLK warned that “Structures of evil will not crumble by passively waiting. If history teaches anything it is that evil is recalcitrant and determined, and never voluntarily relinquishes its hold short of almost fanatical resistance.”

So what i’m really saying is that if Diversity plans to extend until it includes all the people then at some point it must be prepared to confront this evil structure we live under with “almost fanatical resistance.” And if that be true, then either way it comes down to revolution as the solution, or breaking away to form our own nonracist noncapitalist and humane independent nation(s).

Free Mumia and all PP/POWs!

Sundiata Acoli – New Afrikan POW
USP Allenwood, White Deer, PA
January 15, 1999

YOUTH: TODAY’S CHALLENGE, TOMORROW’S HOPE

©1997 by Sundiata Acoli

Again, i’m honored to be selected as a Co-Chairperson of this year’s SCLC’s Kansas City Martin Luther King Celebration and that the theme is: “Youth: Today’s Challenge, Tomorrow’s Hope.”

Our youths are confronted with a situation in the U.S. today where more Afrikan men are in prison than in college, Afrikan women are being imprisoned at twice the rate of Afrikan men, and young Afrikan males lead the nation in death rates from AIDS, from homicides by each other, and from being shot and killed by the police who are almost always White. Yet, when have you heard, if ever, of a Black policeman shooting and killing a White youth? It doesn’t happen often.

Our young Afrikan women have the highest death rate by AIDS among women, the highest rate of HIV infection, and the highest rate of babies born with HIV virus. Afrikan youths lead in teenage unemployment rates and in children taken from their mothers by courts and put up for adoption. More and more frequently these Afrikan youths are adopted by Whites, and recent high court rulings have made it even easier to do so. But when have you heard, if ever, of a Black family being permitted to adopt a White child? It doesn’t happen often.

These are only a few of the challenges facing our youth today. In fact, it is our challenge, as an Afrikan people, and one we must overcome if we are to have hope for tomorrow, or a tomorrow period. No youth, no future; no women, no future; it is as simple as that. To have 1000 men and 1 woman spells the death/genocide of a nation. The one woman can only produce 1 baby per year and the nation will be unable to sustain or rebuild its population. To have 1000 women and 1 man is life/perpetuity. One man can impregnate 1000 women to produce 1000 babies per year. He’ll be a little tired, but you get the point: with youth and women a nation can perpetuate itself or rebuild. Without them it is already extinct, no matter how many millions of men or old people exist in its society. And it’s why one saves “women and children first” in any life threatening situation.

So when our youths and women are challenged, by its very nature, that challenges our survival as a people. Our response must be to provide an environment where our women and children can survive, and prosper. To ensure that, we, as a people, need control over our own life and destiny. It’s not possible for us, as a racial minority, to do so in a White racist society. In any vote necessary to pass laws that we feel are needed to solve our particular problems, we will always be outvoted and overruled by the racist White majority. Thus we will never be able to implement our own solutions to our own problems, or control our own destiny, because we will always be subjected to the solutions dictated by the White majority. It’s also why democracy in a racist society is nothing but a dictatorship to the racial minorities in that society. The recent Supreme Court ruling that outlawed Black-majority voting districts is a case in point.

To control our own lives and destiny we need REPARATIONS, LAND AND INDEPENDENCE. And what would MLK say about such a demand for reparations and land? Let’s listen to his Sunday morning sermon at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., taken from the Oct. 27, 1996 Los Angeles Times article by Peter H. King titled: “Dr. King: Quote, Unquote”

“. . . Now there is another myth that still gets around; it is a kind of over reliance on the bootstrap philosophy. There are those who still feel that if the Negro is to rise out of poverty . . . . out of slum conditions . . . Out of discrimination and segregation, he must do it all by himself. And so they say the Negro must lift himself up by his own bootstraps.”They never realize that no other ethnic group has been a slave on American soil. The people who say this never stop to realize that the nation made a Black man’s color a stigma; but beyond this THEY NEVER STOP TO REALIZE THAT THEY OWE A PEOPLE WHO WERE KEPT IN SLAVERY 244 YEARS.

“IN 1863 THE NEGRO WAS TOLD THAT HE WAS FREE AS A RESULT OF THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION BEING SIGNED BY ABRAHAM LINCOLN. BUT HE WAS NEVER GIVEN ANY LAND TO MAKE THAT FREEDOM MEANINGFUL. It was something like keeping a person in prison for a number of years and suddenly discovering that the person is not guilty of the crime for which he was convicted. And you just go up to him and say, ‘Now you are free,’ but you don’t give him any bus fare to get to town. . .

“And the irony of it all is that at the same time the nation failed to do anything for the Black man through an act of Congress it was giving away millions of acres of LAND in the West and the Midwest. . . . Not only did it give the LAND, it built land-grant colleges to teach them how to farm. Not only that, it provided county agents to further their expertise in farming. Not only that, as the years unfolded it provided low interest rates so that they could mechanize their farms. And to this day thousands of these very persons are receiving millions of dollars in federal subsidies every year not to farm.

“And these are so often the very people who tell Negroes that they must lift themselves by their own bootstraps. It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps.

“We must come to see that the roots of racism are very deep in our country, and there must be something positive and massive in order to get rid of all the effects of racism and the tragedies of racial injustice.”

“These were King’s last public words on the subject. Four days later, he stepped onto a balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tenn., and was shot dead.”

I urge you to work toward ensuring our tomorrow, and our hope for tomorrow by making the focus of our struggle one for REPARATIONS, LAND, AND INDEPENDENCE.

Sundiata Acoli
U.S.P. Allenwood
White Deer, PA 1/15/97

Sundiata Jericho Speech

Thanks to all of you for coming out, to Jalil Montaqim for his overall leadership of the Jericho project, to Geronimo ji jaga, Sekou Odinga, Mutulu Shakur, and Jalil for their “founding POW” role in NALF whish in conjunction with the RNA and Jericho 98 Organizing committee made this March a reality.

Today marks a true turning point in the struggle to free all PP/POWs and in turn all oppressed nations and people in the u.s. The government has buried us PP/POWs in its dungeons for 25 years or more and said we didn’t exist. Well you and I are here today to say loud and clear: “We exist! We’re alive and kicking! and we’re going to keep on kicking until together we kick these walls down – in the prisons and the streets.”

But to do that we need your support in building a mass movement so that the nexot stage will actually free PP/POWs. And it can happen here. Just a few years ago the world’s #2 super power, the Soviet Union, looked invincible, then crumbled in the twinkling of an eye, and the Berlin Wall came tumbling down.

The same scenario awaits the u.s. It looks strong, but like the Roman Emipre it’s internally weak because it’s built on injustice, genocide, slavery, oppression, lies and hypocracies – all in pursuit of the almighty dollar – and it’s still going on today.

The u.s. obsession for profits has thrown a whole generation of youths to the dogs and now the government is so terrified of these youths that it’s locking them up in record numbers. I hope that many of these youths, the so-called “Lost Generation,” have found there way here today because the overriding message I get from these youths is that they hate hypocracy in any form, whether it’s from the government, society, their own parents or anyone who says one thing but does another; who speaks of lover, righteousness, sister- brotherhood, sharing and looking for each other but practices hatred, falsehood, selfishness, indifference toward their fellowman and only cares about what they can get for themselves.

Mass hypocracy forced many of our youths to say “To hell with it and you!,” and set out to find their own truth, along the way becoming the embodiment of defiance, rebelling in their own way against anything untrue, false or antagonistic to the true essence of love – usually personified, as they see it, by their own circle of peers, set or street organizations – even while misguidingly attacking their own communities.

The one message that I want to convey to these youths, and to all here today, is that the u.s. government is the world’s #1 hypocrite – and that the real fight against hypocracy begins with fighting against government oppression, not in fighting your own brothers, sisters, and neighbors.

So I ask you to make a commitment today to fight against real hypocracy and to join with others fighting to build a mass people’s movement with the political force necessary to not only free PP/POW’s but also youths, oppressed nations and oppressed peoples.

Free Mumia and all PP/POWs!

Sundiata Acoli – New Afrikan POW

USP Allenwood
White Deer, PA

Help Sekou Odinga

The Bureau of Prisons has not given up its assault on the human rights of New African Freedom Fighter Sekou Odinga. Although he had not disciplinary infractions, Sekou was moved last Fall from USP Lompoc to USP Marion for “greater supervision.” As long as the BOP characterizes it’s “punitive” transfers as “administrative,” the Courts will not intervene and the prisoner has no due process rights. At Marion he was under 23 hour lockdown.

Suddenly last week Sekou was taken from Marion in the middle of the night and eventually brought to Los Angeles where a grand jury is investigating and incident which occurred at USP Lompoc last year. Sekou’s former cellmate was accused of killing a corrections officer and the prison administration took the position that Sekou and some other inmates were responsible for this act. This is not true. At the time of this act, Sekou and the other inmates were in isolation.

Sekou was being held in the general population of the San Bernadino County Jail until Wednesday afternoon (February 11) when he was moved on, without any warning, by a squad of corrections officers and placed in an isolation cell. Sekou says that the cell is damp, dirty, has no running water and is totally isolated from all other inmates. He has now been told the cannot have any visits and he can only have legal calls.

Sekou Odinga is a Prisoner of War who takes the political position of non- collaboration with the grand jury. He will not testify before any secret proceeding. Protest Sekou’s conditions! Contact:

US Atty. Gen. Janet Reno . 202-514-2000 – 202-514-4371 (fax)

BOP Dir. Kathleen Hawk 202-307-3250 202-514-6878 (fax)

US Marshal’s Office, Los Angeles 213-894-4495 213-894-4955 (fax)

Call the US Attorney’s Office in Los Angeles 213-894-2434 to protest this waste of taxpayer’s money. Include Sekou’s registration number (05228-054) in any correspondence.

1999 JUNETEENTH UNITY MEETING SPEECH

AT USP ALLENWOOD – JUNE 19, 1999
by Sundiata Acoli

Thank each of you, the Nation of Islam, the Moorish Science Temple, the Sunni Muslims, the Rastafarians, the Five-Percent Nation, the Puerto Rican Independistas, the Latin Kings, Crips, Bloods, Gangster Disciples, revolutionaries, the Native Americans and other representatives for participating in this event.

Juneteenth originated from the Emancipation Proclamation sent out by telegraph by then president Abraham Lincoln on January 1st, 1863, during the height of the Civil War. To emancipate means to free from bondage, oppression or restraint. A proclamation is the act of announcing something officially and publically. Basically the proclamation stated that all slaves in the states still in rebellion were henceforth and forever more free. But those states still in rebellion, North and South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, Texas and others were at war against the Union, so they simply ignored the proclamation, didn’t inform the slaves about it – and kept on fighting. So the slaves in the rebelling states remained in bondage until the end of the Civil War around April, 1865, and for a short time after.

There are many stories about how slaves in Texas learned of the Emancipation Proclamation. One of the more colorful ones is that a Black man left Washington, D.C. on a mule on January 1st, 1863 spreading the word thru the South that the slaves had been freed and he didn’t reach Texas until June 19th, 1865. But the only documented occurrence seems to be the one in which General Gordon Granger landed at Galveston, Texas on June 19th, 1865 and proclaimed the slaves free and the Civil War over. Since then Blacks in Texas have celebrated June 19th, eventually contracted to “Juneteenth,” as Emancipation Day. i was born and raised in Texas, and during my youth i remember Whites frequently asking me and Blacks in general whether we were going to celebrate “Juneteenth.” i always replied “yes.” Many middle class Blacks were ashamed of “Juneteenth” amd most told Whites they didn’t celebrate “Juneteenth” but celebrated July 4th instead. They were lying, they celebrated Juneteenth along with the rest of the Black communities in Texas but simply denied doing so to Whites. The point is that Juneteenth was kept alive by the common Black man/woman who embraced it and were proud of it as a Black Holiday to be celebrated with Bar-B-Q’s, picnics, fish frys, dances, track and field, baseball games, entertainment and cultural events — and over the years Juneteenth Celebration spread throughout the Southwest, the Midwest and eventually evolved coast to coast as a celebration of “Black Independence Day.”

Now a word about unity. Everybody talks about it, it’s always desired but seldom achieved because few of us practice it where it really counts, that is, in our political life. Politics is simply the working out of power relationships among people concerning issues that effect their lives. Usually the most powerful group among them is represented as the government – so politics is generally the working out of power relationships between the people and their government or authorities.

Who is the government or the authorities as far as we prisoners are concerned? It’s the administration. So when we talk about unity we’re mostly talking about unity in the face of the administration. As i said, we talk about unity but seldom practice it due to dislike of the person, or their cause or methods; or distrust, laziness, spite – “he didn’t support me, so i’m not supporting him” – or we’re too busy with other activities, etc. … but the greatest deterrent to unity is “fear” of punishment. So the real key to unity when dealing with the administration, and the cause is right, is to show a little courage and stand with your brothers. It’s as simple as that concerning unity. Nothing to it but to show a little courage and do it.

Sundiata Acoli

REVIVE THE FEDERAL PAROLE SYSTEM

By Sundiata Acoli – 1/06

Under the present system most federal prisoners must serve 85% of their sentences before being released. Almost no provisions exist for federal prisoners to earn early release thru good behavior, superior work performance, outstanding achievements and the like. A federal prisoner sentenced to 10 years today must serve 8 1/2 years before being released; one sentenced to 20 years must serve 17 years before release, no if, ands or buts.

Under the old Federal Parole System all first-offenders were eligible for parole after serving 1/3, or 33%, of their sentence. Also, most were actually paroled after completing 1/3 of their sentence and all reached *mandatory release* upon serving 2/3, or 67%, of their sentence. A federal prisoner sentenced to 10 years under the old laws was usually paroled after doing 3 1/3 years and reached mandatory release at 6 2/3 years; one sentenced to 20 years was normally paroled after 6 2/3 years, or mandatorily released after 13 1/3 years.

Now Congressman Danny Davis (D-IL) has introduced to the House, HR 3072, a bill To Revive the System of Parole for Federal Prisoners. In order to get this bill passed he needs the support of other congresspersons nationwide.

WHAT YOU CAN DO

Write and/or call *your* Congressperson (*contact info provided below) and urge him/her to “co-sponsor HR 3072, a bill *To Revive the System of Parole for Federal Prisoners[2],” so that:

Your family member, loved one or friend in the federal prison may be released early and reunited with you earlier;
and/or

Billions of tax dollars being spent to confine mostly non-violent drug offenders can be saved or diverted to better and proven methods of solving drug abuse and addiction problems;
and/or

A safer society can be built by promoting rehabilitation, shorter incarceration times for deserving prisoners, relief of dangerous prison overcrowding, prohibition of another wasteful and futile spree of prison-building and promotion of a better use of public funds to strengthen needed social programs;
and/or

Whatever other reasons you feel the old Federal Parole System should be reviewed.

After you write and/or call your Congressperson, get your family members and friends to write/call their Congressperson.

[2] To get your Congresspersons address(es) and telephone numbers access http://www.visi.com/juan/congress and click on *your* state; it will give you all contact info for your Congressperson. Write your Congressperson at her/his local office. It will reach him/her faster. Letters to his/her Washington D.C. address will be delayed several months while being checked for anthrax.

~~ END ~~

The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org

History of Gangs (Revised 1/11)

by POW Sundiata Acoli

There were gangs since the earliest of times
This is some of their history made into rhyme
Their real name is Street Organization: a band of Brothers
With their own rules, signs, sister sets and their own colors.
In the ’40s Chicago’s King David and Latino jail-mates
Started the Latin Kings which spread thru the Midwest to Northeastern states.
New York in the ’50s had Black gangs, White gangs, Puerto Rican and Chinese.
Each had their own turf, all fought each other in the streets.
Blacks were Chaplains, Bishops and Corsair Lords, Puerto Ricans were Dragons
And Kings and Whites were East Side Kids.
By the ’60s most of them had succumbed to drugs,
They were either chasing scag or were doing prison bids.
In ’68 Lumumba Shakur, ex-War Lord of the Bishops,
Opened the Harlem Panther office for which he’s remembered, even worshipped.
So whenever you hear the name Afeni, Tupac, or Mutulu Shakur,
Know they all trace their names back to Lumumba for sure.
The GDs began in the ’60s by that same King David.
Their colors are the same as the Panthers,
Blue and black, like they’re the one who gave it.
In ’68 the Panthers offered L.A. gangs a new direction:
Combatting injustice and representing their hood.
Bunchy Carter of the feared Slausons answered the call,
He was tired of destroying his people and was ready to do them good.
Raymond Washington and Tookie Williams hung out
At the Community Relations for Independent People (C.R.I.P.) youth center.
In ’69 they formed the CRIPS,
Took Blue as their color and the Panthers as their mentor.
But the government hit the Panthers
And stomped them in the mud.
Without guidance the CRIPS made their foe the PIRUS
And BRIMS who became in ‘ 70 the citywide BLOODS
Their colors are RED and they spread and grew,
Using guns and rocks, Rap cds and their crews.
Other set grew too
And the gangwar and violence is giving the Black Community the Blues.
Slowly some sets are trying to change for the better,
Others are still set on just getting the cheddar.
Black people are calling for Stop the Violence,
Thug Codes, Black Agendas or whatever will do.
We’ve got to find a solution to this problem
Else the Black Community is through!

(end)

Send some love to our Brotha!

Bro. Sundiata Acoli (Squire)
#39794-066
P.O. Box 1000
FCI Otisville
Otisville, NY 10963-1000

An Updated History Of The New Afrikan Prison Struggle

By Sundiata Acoli

Written December 1998

Posted on the website 6 September 2008

[Prefatory Section]

This article was first written at the request of the New Afrikan Peoples Organization (NAPO). It’s original title was “The Rise and Development of the New Afrikan Liberation Struggle Behind The Walls.” It was first published as “A Brief History of the New Afrikan Prison Struggle” and then updated several years later to its present form.

Although this work focuses almost exclusively on New Afrikan prisoners and their struggle, it is by no means intended to discount the many long heroic prison struggle and sacrifices by all other nationalities – the Puerto Ricans Native Americans, Mexicans, Whites, Asians and others. ‘Raphael Cancel Miranda, who led the work stoppage of the USP Marion (United States Penitentiary in Marlon, Illinois) in 1972 in response to the beating of a Mexican prisoner, has been one of my heroes and role models since I first became aware of him, long ago. The same can be said of Lolita Lebron whom Assata Shakur did time with the Alderson Women’s Penitentiary – and of numerous other prisoners of all different nationalities whom I’ve done time with and struggled together with during the long years of my imprisonment.

There are so many deserving prisoners of all nationalities that it would extend this article indefinitely to include them all – and I did not feel justified in including some if I couldn’t include all. Nor did I feel presumptuous enough to write a prison history of other nationalities who are best suited to record their own history. My main intent is to chronicle the history of the New Afrikan prison struggle which for too long has been written by others who often took it upon themselves to read out of history those Black prisoners and Black prison organizations who did not fit their molds as fit to print about in the history of Black prison struggle.

The New Afrikan liberation struggle behind the walls refers to the struggle of Black prisoners, “behind the walls” of U.S. penal institutions, to gain liberation for ourselves, our people, and all oppressed people. We of the New Afrikan Independence Movement spell “Afrikan” with a “k” as an indicator of or cultural identification with the Afrikan continent and because Afrikan linguists originally used “k” to indicate the “c” sound in the English language. We use the term “New Afrikan” instead of Black, to define ourselves as an Afrikan people who have been forcibly transplanted to a new land and formed into a “new Afrikan nation” in North America. But our struggle behind the walls did not begin in America.

The 16th Century Through The Civil War

The Afrikan prison struggle began on the shores of Afrika behind the walls of medieval pens that held captives for ships bound west into slavery. It continues today behind the walls of modern U.S. penitentiaries where all prisoners are held as legal slaves – a blatant violation of international law, as is the present U.S. policy of executing minors and the mentally impaired.

The conception of prison ideology began to take form as far back as the reign of Louis XIV of France (1643-1715) when the Benedictine monk Mabillon wrote that: “…. Penitents might be secluded in cells like those of Carthusian monks and there being employed in various sorts of labor.” In 1790, on April 5th, the Pennsylvania Quakers actualized this concept as the capstone of their 14-year struggle to reform Philadelphia’s Walnut Street Jail. No longer would corporal punishment be administered. Henceforth, prisoners would be locked away in their cells with a Bible and forced to do penitence in order to rehabilitate themselves. Thus was born the penitentiary.

The first prison physically designed to achieve total isolation of each prisoner was the Eastern State Penitentiary, better known as Cherry Hill, in Philadelphia, constructed in 1829 with cells laid out so that no prisoner ever saw another person but his guards. This “separate system” represented by Cherry Hill was being rivaled by an alternative, the “silent system,” which was designed specifically for exploiting mass convict labor. Under the latter system, prisoners were housed in solitary cells but worked together all day as an ideal source of cheap reliable labor, under rigorous enforcement of the rule that all convicts must maintain total silence. The model for this system was set up at Auburn, New York, in 1825, where they initiated the “lock step” so that guards could maintain strict control as the prisoners marched back and forth between their cells and their industrial workshops.

By 1850, approximately 6,700 people were found in the nation’s newly emerging prison system. Almost none of the prisoners were Black. They were more valuable economically outside the prison system because there were other means of racial control. During this time most New Afrikan (Black) men, women, and children were already imprisoned for life on plantations as chattel slaves. Accordingly, the Afrikan struggle behind the walls was carried on primarily behind the walls of slave quarters through conspiracies, revolts, insurrections, arson, sabotage, work slowdowns, poisoning of the slave master, self maiming, and runaways. If slaves were recaptured, they continued the struggle behind the walls of the local jails, many of which were first built to hold captured runaways. Later they were also used for local citizens.

Even before the end of the Civil War, a new system had been emerging to take the place of the older form of slavery – the convict lease system. Thus, shortly after 1850, the imprisonment rate increased, then remained fairly stable with a rate of between 75 and 125 prisoners per 100,000 population. The Afrikan struggle continued primarily behind the slave quarter’s walls down through the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. This was a declaration issued by President Lincoln on January 1, 1863, during the height of the Civil War. It declared the slaves free only in those states still in rebellion and had little actual liberating effect on the slaves in question. Their slave masters, still engaged in war against the Union, simply ignored the declaration and continued to hold their slaves in bondage. Some slave masters kept the declaration secret after the war ended following Lee’s surrender on April 9, 1865. As a result, news of the Emancipation Proclamation did not reach slaves in Texas until June 19, 1865. This date, called “Juneteenth” is celebrated annually by New Afrikans in Texas and outlying states as “Black Independence Day.”

Post Civil War To The 20th Century

Immediately after the Civil War and at the end of slavery, vast numbers of Black males were imprisoned for everything from not signing slave – like labor contracts with plantation owners to looking the “wrong” way at some White person or for some similar “petty crime”. Any “transgression” perceived by Whites to be of a more serious nature was normally dealt with on the spot with a gun or rope… provided the Black was outnumbered and out armed. “Black-on-Black” crime was then, as now, considered to be “petty crime” by the U.S. justice system. But petty or not, upon arrest most New Afrikans were given long, harsh sentences at hard labor.

Within five years after the end of the Civil War, the Black percentages of the prison population went from close to zero to 33 percent. Many of these prisoners were hired out to Whites at less than slave wages. This new convict lease system appeared to have great advantages for the landowners: they did not own the convicts, and hence could afford to work them to death. (The movie “Gone With The Wind” actually uses this new form to glorify the older system by comparison.) The President of the Board of Dawson, discovered that in 1869 the death rate among leased Alabama Black convicts was 41 percent. Some restraints were obviously necessary; Mississippi managed to reduce its annual death rate for leased Black convicts between 1882 and 1887 to a more 15 percent. Overnight prisons had become the new slave quarters for many New Afrikans. Likewise, the Afrikan prison struggle changed from a struggle behind the walls of slave quarters to a struggle behind the walls of county workhouses, chain gain camps, and the plantations and factories that used leased convicts as slave laborers.

The 20th Century Through World War 2

From 1910 through 1950, Blacks made up 23 to 34 percent of the prisoners in the U.S. prison system. Most people conditioned by the prison movies ‘The Defiant Ones’ (starring Sidney Poiter, a Black, and Tony Curties, a White) or ‘Escape From The Chain Gang’ (starring Paul Muni, a White in an integrated chain gang), or ‘Cool Hand Lake’ (starring Paul Newman, a White, in a southern chain gang) erroneously assume that earlier U.S. prison populations were basically integrated. This is not so. The U.S. was a segregated society prior to 1950, including the prisons; even the northern ones. Roger Benton’s 1936 overview of Louisiana’s Angola prison and its historical background states.

There were actually six camps at Angola, five of which were composed of men and one for women. Only in the women’s camp were whites and coloreds mixed. Camps A, B, C, and D were all colored and constituted by far the bulk of the population, furnishing the state with the cheap convict labor so sorely needed to raise and harvest the mammoth sugar cane crop necessary to satisfy the hungry maws of the gigantic and profitable grinding and refining plant. Once you saw the operation of the plant, the terrific busyness of everybody during grinding time – once you leaned what the plant meant to the state in dollars and cents profit, yo [sic] understood why it was so easy to convict and imprison a Negro in the South, and gained a new understanding of the whole basis for the subjugation of the Negroes. Although only 40 percent of the entire population of Louisiana at this time was colored, 83 percent of the prison population was made up of Negroes.

Blacks were always, at least from the time of Emancipation, the majority population in the southern state prisons, but elsewhere, the early populations of the more well known or “mainline” state and federal prisons – Attica, Auburn, Alcatraz, and Atlanta – were predominantly White and male. Whenever New Afrikans were sent to these “mainline” prisons they found themselves grossly outnumbered, relegated to the back of the lines, to separate lines, or to no lines at all. They were often denied outright what meager amenities existed within the prisons. Racism was rampant. New Afrikans were racisly suppressed by both White prisoners and guards. All of the guards were White there were no Black guards or prison officials at the time.

In the period between the Civil War and World War 2, the forms of convict labor spilled over and intermingled with “free” labor. Thus, we find Virginia convicts being worked by a canal company. Tennessee worked a part of its convicts within the prison walls, a apart on farms, and the rest were leased to railway companies and coal mines. North Carolina and South Carolina employed a portion of their convicts within the walls. The rest were scattered under various lessees. Much of the tunneling of the Western Carolina Railroad through the Blue Ridge was accomplished by convict labor. Georgia convicts were leased to lumber camps and brick yards. Alabama employed hers in railroad building, in mines and saw mills. Mississippi convicts were leased to railway contractors and planters. Until 1883, the leasees of Texas convicts employed a portion of them in a cotton mill and at other times within the walls of the penitentiary and placed the remainder in railway construction camps. Arkansas convicts were let to plantation owners and coal miners. In Florida, the majority of the convicts were leased to turpentine farms – a smaller number were employed in phosphate mines.

The Afrikan prisoners continued to struggle behind the walls of these segregated convict lease system, county workhouses, chain gangs camps, and state and federal prisons, yet prison conditions for them remained much the same through World War 2. Inside conditions accurately reflected conditions in the larger society outside the walls, except by then the state’s electric chair had mostly supplanted the lynch mob’s rope.

Post World War 2 To The Civil Rights Era

Things began to change in the wake of World War 2. Four factors flowing together ushered in these changes. They were the ghetto population explosion, the drug influx, the emergence of independent Afrikan nations, and the Civil Rights Movement.

The Ghetto Population Explosion

Plentiful jobs during the war, coupled with a severe shortage of White workers, caused U.S. war industries to hire New Afrikans in droves. Southern New Afrikans poured north to fill these unheard of job opportunities, and the already crowded ghetto populations mushroomed.

Drug Influx

New Afrikan soldiers fought during the war to preserve European democracies. They returned home eager to join the fight to make segregated America democratic too. But the U.S. had witnessed Marcus Garvey organize similar sentiments following World War 1 into one of the greatest Black movements in the western hemisphere. This time the U.S. was more prepared to contain the new and expected New Afrikan assertiveness. Their weapon was “King Heroin.” The U.S. employed the services of the Mafia during World War 2 to gather intelligence in Italy to defeat Fascist Mussolini.

Before World War 2, Mussolini embarked on a major campaign against the Mafia which enraged the group’s leaders. Fascism was a big Mafia so it couldn’t afford another Mafia to exist. Mussolini’s activities turned Mafiosi into vigorous anti-Fascists, and the American Government cooperated with the Mafia both in the United States and in Sicily. In the eyes of many Sicilians, the United States helped restore the Mafia’s lost power. The Americans had to win the war, so they couldn’t pay much attention to these things. “They thought the Mafia could help them, and perhaps they did” said Leonard Sciascin, perhaps the best known living Sicilian novelist and student of the Mafia.

During World War 2, the Office of Strategic Service (OSS), the forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), helped to commute Lucky Luciano’s sentence in federal prison and arrange for his repatriation to Sicily. Luciano was among the top dons in the mafia syndicate and the leading organizer of prostitution and drug trafficking. The OSS knew that Luciano had excellent ties to the Sicilian mafia and wanted the support of that organization for the Allied landing in Sicily in 1943. When Luciano left the U.S., numerous politicians and mafia dons were together at the Brooklyn docks to wave him goodbye in what was the first of many occasions that international drug dealers were recruited by the U.S. government to advance its foreign policy interests.

After the war, in return for “services rendered,” the U.S. looked the other way as the Mafia flooded the major U.S. ghettos with heroin. Within six years after World War 2, due to the Mafia’s marketing strategy, over 100,000 people were addicts, many of them Black.

The Emergence of Independent Afrikan Nations

Afrikans from Afrika, having fought to save European Independence, returned to the Afrikan continent and began fighting for the Independence of their own colonized nations. Rather than fight losing Afrikan colonial wars, most European nations opted to grant “phased” independence to their Afrikan colonies. The U.S. now faced the prospect of thousands of Afrikan diplomatic personnel, their staff, and families, coming to the U.N. and wandering into a minefield of racial incidents, particularly on state visits to the rigidly segregated D.C. capital. That alone could push each newly emerging independent Afrikan nation into the socialist column. To counteract this possibility, the U.S. decided to desegregate. As a result, on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court declared school segregation illegal.

In its landmark Brown Vs. Board of Education case, which heralded the beginning of the end of official segregation in the United States, the Supreme Court had been made fully aware of the relations between America’s domestic policies and her foreign policy interest by the federal government’s amicus curiae (i.e., friend of the court) brief, which read:

It is in the context of the present world struggle between freedom and tyranny that the problem of racial discrimination must be viewed … [for] discrimination against minority groups in the United States has an adverse effect upon our relations with other countries. Racial discrimination furnishes grist for the communist propaganda mills, and it raises doubts even among friendly nations as to the intensity of our devotion to the democratic faith.

Malcolm X provides similar insight into the reasoning behind the U.S. decisions to desegregate. During his February 16, 1965, speech at Rochester, New York’s Corn Mill Methodist Church, he said:

From 1954 to 1964 can be easily looked upon as the era of the emerging African state. And as the African state emerged…. What effect did it have on the Black American? When he saw the Black man on the [African] continent taking a stand, it made him become filled with the desire to also take a stand…. Just as [the U.S.] had to change their approach with our people on this continent. As they used tokenism… on the African continent,… they began to do the same thing with us here in the States… Tokenism… every move they made was a token move… They came up with a Supreme Court desegregation decision that they haven’t put into practice yet. Not even in Rochester, much less in Mississippi. [Applause.]”

Origin of the Civil Rights Movement

On December 1, 1955, Ms. Rosa Parks defied Montgomery, Alabama’s bus segregation laws by refusing to give her seat to a White man. Her subsequent arrest and the ensuing mass bus boycott by the Montgomery New Afrikan community kicked off the Civil Rights Movement. Martin Luther King, Jr., a young college-educated Baptist minister, was chosen to coordinate and lead this boycott primarily because he was a new arrival in town, intelligent, respected, and had not accumulated a list of grudge enemies as had the old guard. His selection for leadership catapulted him upon the stage of history. The 381 day boycott toppled Montgomery’s bus segregation codes.

Revered Joseph E. Lowery was part of a group of young activist ministers who had begun to test segregated public transportation laws in addition to Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Abernathy in Montgomery, Alabama; Fred Shuttlesworth in Birmingham, Alabama; Theodore (“T.J.”) Jemison in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Charles K. Steel in Tallahassee, Florida. “The earliest boycotts were in Baton Rouge and Tallahassee, but they were unsuccessful,” says Lowery. “We used to meet monthly in Montgomery to share our pain….” After the success of the Montgomery bus boycott, the ministers met in New Orleans in February 1957 and formed the Southern Christian Leadership Conferences (SCLC) with Martin Luther later nominated as chairman of the board. Months later, in 1957, Ghana became the first of a string of sub-Saharan Afrikan nations to be granted independence.

As northern discrimination, bulging ghettos, and the drug influx were setting off a rise in New Afrikan numbers behind the walls, Southern segregation, the emergence of Independent Afrikan nations, and the resulting Civil Rights Movement provided those increasing numbers with the general political agenda; equality and anti-discrimination.

CIVIL RIGHTS THROUGH THE BLACK POWER ERA

Religious Struggles in Prison

Meanwhile, behind the walls, smart segments of New Afrikans began rejecting Western Christianity; they turned to Islam as preached by Elijah Muhammad’s Nation of Islam (NOI) and Noble Drew Ali’s Muslim Science Temple of America (MST). The NOI preached that Islam was the true religion of Black people, that Blacks were the original people on earth, and that Blacks in America were a nation needing land and independence. The MST preached that the Asiatic Black people in America must proclaim their nationality as members of the ancient Moors of Northern Africa. These new religions produced significant success rates in helping New Afrikan prisoners rehabilitate themselves by instilling them with a new found sense of pride, dignity, piety, and industriousness. Yet these religions seemed strange and thus threatening to prison officials. They moved forthwith to suppress these religions, and many early Muslims were viciously persecuted, beaten, and even killed for practicing their beliefs. The Muslims fought back fiercely.

Civil Rights Struggles in Prison

Like American society, the prisons were rigidly segregated. New Afrikans were relegated to perform the heaviest and dirtiest jobs – farm work, laundry work, dishwashing, garbage disposal – and were restricted from jobs as clerks, straw bosses, electricians, or any position traditionally reserved for White prisoners. Similar discriminatory rules applied to all other areas of prison life. New Afrikans were restricted to live in certain cell blocks or tiers, eat in certain areas of the mess hall, and sit in the back at the movies, TV room, and other recreational facilities.

Influenced by the anti-discrimination aspect of the Civil Rights Movement, a growing number of New Afrikans behind the walls began stepping up their struggle against discrimination in prison. Audacious New Afrikan began violating longstanding segregation codes by sitting in the front seats at the moves, mess hall, or TV areas – and more than a few died from shanks in the back. Others gave as good as they got, and better. Additionally, New Afrikans began contesting discriminatory job and housing policies and other biased conditions. Many were set up for attack and sent to the hole for years, or worse. Those who were viewed as leaders were dealt with most harshly. Most of this violence came from prison officials and White prisoners protecting their privileged positions; other violence came from New Afrikans and Muslims protecting their lives, taking stands and fighting back. From these silent, unheralded battles against racial and religious discrimination in prisons emerged the New Afrikan liberation struggle behind the walls during the ‘50 Civil Rights era. Eventually the courts, influenced by the “equality/anti-discrimination” aspect of the Civil Rights Movement, would rule that prisons must recognize the Muslims’ religion on an “equal” footing with other accepted religions, and that prison racial discrimination codes must be outlawed.

Black Power Through The Black Liberation Era

As the Civil Rights Movement advanced into the ‘60s, New Afrikan college students waded into the struggle with Innovative lunch counter sit-ins, freedom rides, and voter registration projects. On April 15, 1960, a student conference was called under the auspices of Ms. Ella Baker, a field worker for the SCLC. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) was formed during this period to coordinate and instruct student volunteers in nonviolent methods of organizing voter registration projects and other Civil Rights work. These energetic young students, and the youth in general, served as the foot soldiers of the Movement. They provided indispensable services, support, and protection to local community leaders such as Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, Septima Clark, Bob Moses, Amzie Moore, Daisy Bates, and other heroines and heroes of the Civil Rights Movement. Although they met with measured success; Whites racist atrocities mounted daily on defenseless Civil Rights workers.

Young New Afrikans in general began to grown increasingly disenchanted with the nonviolent philosophy of Martin Luther King. Many began to look increasingly towards Malcolm X, the fiery young minister of NOI Temple No. 7 in Harlem, New York. He called for “self defense, freedom by any means necessary, and land and independence.” As Malcolm Little, he had been introduced to the NOT doctrine while imprisoned in Massachusetts. Upon release he traveled to Detroit to meet Elijah Muhammad, converted to Islam, and was given the surname “X” to replace his discarded slavemaster’s name. The “X” symbolized his original surname lost to history when his fore parents were kidnapped from Afrika, stripped of their names, language, and identity, and enslaved in the Americas. As Malcolm X he became one of Elijah Muhammad’s most dedicated disciples, and rose to National Minister and spokesperson for the NOI. His keen intellect, uncorruptable integrity, staunch courage, clear resonant oratory, sharp debating skills, and superb organizing abilities soon brought the NOI to a position of prominence within the Black ghetto colonies across the U.S.

Origin the Revolutionary Action Movement

During the fall of 1961, an off campus chapter of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) formed at Ohio’s Central State College, called Challenge. Challenge was a black radical formation having no basic ideology. Part of its membership was students who had been expelled from southern schools for sit-in demonstrations; students who had taken freedom rides and students from the north, some of whom had been members of the NOI and Afrikan nationalist organizations. Challenge’s main emphasis was struggling for more students’ rights on campus and bringing a Black political awareness to the student body. In the year long battle with the college’s administration over student rights, members of Challenge became more radicalized. Challenge members attended student conferences in the south and participated in demonstrations in the north. Donald Freeman, a Black student at Ohio’s Case Western Reserve College maintained correspondence with Challenge’s cadre who discussed the ideological aspects of the civil rights movement.

In the Spring of 1962, Studies on the Left, a radical quarterly, published Harold Cruse’s article “Revolutionary Nationalism and the Afro-American.” Freeman wrote a letter to Challenge cadre telling them to seriously study the article. He also said Black radicals elsewhere were studying the article and that a movement had to be created in the north similar to the NOI, using the tactics of SNCC but outside of the NAACP and CORE.

After much discussion, the cadre decided to form a board condition to take over student government at Central State. Meetings were held with representatives from each class, fraternities and sororities. A slate was drafted and a name for the party was selected. It was called R.A.M, later to be known as the Revolutionary Action Movement. The Challenge cadre met and decided to dissolve itself into RAM and become the RAM leadership. RAM won all student government offices. After the election, the inner RAM core discussed what to do next. Some said that all that could be done at Central State had already occurred, while other disagreed. Some of the inner core decided to stay at Central State and run the student government, while a few decided to return to their communities and attempt to organize around Freeman’s basic outline. Two of the returning students were Wanda Marshall and Max Stanford, now name Akbar Muhammad Ahmad, who transplanted RAM from Cleveland to the ghettos of Philadelphia, New York, and other urban areas.

The March on Washington

In 1963, Malcolm X openly called the March on Washington a farce. He explained that the desire for a mass march on the nation’s capital originally sprang from the Black grass roots: the average Black man/woman in the streets. It was their way of demonstrating a mass Black demand for jobs and freedom. As momentum grew for the March, President Kennedy called a meeting of the leaders of the six largest Civil Rights organizations, dubbed “The Big Six” (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People [NAACP], Southern Christian Leadership Conference [SCLC], Congress of Radical Equality [CORE], National Urban League [NUL], Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee [SNCC], and the National Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters [NBSCP] and asked them to stop the proposed march. They answered saying that they couldn’t stop it because they weren’t leading it, didn’t start it, and that it hand sprung from the masses of Black people.

Since they weren’t leading the march, the President decided to make them the leaders by distributing huge sums of money to each of the “Big Six,” publicizing their leading roles in the mass media, and providing them with a script to follow regarding the staging of the event. The script planned the March down to the smallest detail. Malcolm explained that government officials told the Big Six what time to begin the March, where to march, who could speak at the March and who could not, generally what could be said and what could not, what signs to carry, where to go to the toilets (provided by the government), and what time to end and most of the 200,000 marchers were never the wiser. By then SNCC’s membership was also criticizing the March as too moderate and decrying the violence sweeping the South. History ultimately proved Malcolm’s claim of “farce” correct, through books published by participants in the planning of the march and through exposure of government documents on the matter.

Origin of The Five Percenters

Clarence 13X (Smith) was expelled from Harlem’s Nation of Islam Temple No. 7 in 1963 because he wouldn’t conform to NOI practices. He frequently associated with the numerous street gangs that abounded in New York City at the time and felt that the NOI didn’t put enough effort into recruiting among these street gangs and other wayward youth, and by ’64 he had established his own “movement” called “The Five Percenters.” The names comes from their belief that 85 percent of Black people are like cattle, who continue to eat the poisoned animal (the pig), are blind to the truth of God, and continue to give their allegiance to people who don’t have their best interests at heart; that 10 percent of Black people are bloodsuckers – the politicians, preachers, and other parasitic individuals who get rich off the labor and ignorance of the docile exploited 85 percent; and that the remaining 5 percent are the poor righteous teachers of freedom, justice, and equality who know the truth of the “Black” God and are not deceived by the practices of the bloodsucking 10 percent. The Five Percenters movement spread throughout the New York State prison system and the Black ghettos of the New York metropolitan area. Meanwhile the New York City Police Department’s Bureau of Special Services (BOSS), who kept their eyes on radicals and dissidents, put Clarence 13X at the top of their list of “Black Militants.”

Origin of the New World Nation of Islam

In December 1965 Newark’s Mayor Hugh Addonizio witnessed a getaway car pull-in away from a bank robbery and ordered his chauffeur to follow with siren blasting. The fleeing robbers crashed into a telephone pole, sprang from their car and fired a shot through the Mayor’s windshield. He screeched to a halt, and police cars racing to the scene captured Muhammad Ali Hassan, known as Albert Dickens, and James Washington. Both were regular attendees of Newark’s NOI Temple No. 25, handed by Minister James 3X Shabazz. All Hassan and Washington were members of the New World Nation of Islam (NWI). Ali Hassan, its leader and Supreme Field commander, dates the birth of the New World Nation of Islam as February 26, 1960. he states that on that date Elijah Muhammad authorized the New World Nation of Islam under the leadership of Field Supreme Minister Fard Savior and declared that the Field Minister had authority over all the NOI Muslims. Ali Hassan and Washington were convicted for the bank robbery and sent to Trenton State Prison.

The NWI’s belief in the supreme authority of Fard Savior was rejected by NOI Minister Shabazz, and thereafter an uneasy peace prevailed between the followers of Shabazz, who remained control of Newark’s NOI Temple No. 25, and the followers the NWI who sought to gain control of it.

Meanwhile, Ali Hassan published a book title Uncle Yah Yah and ran the NWI from his prison cell. Along with the more established and influential NOI, the influence of the NWI spread throughout the New Jersey state prison system and the metropolitan Jersey ghettos. The NWI began setting up food co-ops, barbershops, houses to teach Islam, and printing presses; and purchased land in South Carolina, all in furtherance of creating an independent Black Nation.

James Meredith was shot on June 6, 1966, while on his march against fear in Mississippi. A civil rights group decided to complete the march. One night during the march’s rally, SNCC organizer, Willie Ricks (“Mukassa”) raised the cry of Black Power. Stokely Carmichael, SNCC Chairman repeated the slogan the next night at a mass rally and the Black Power Movement began to sweep the country.

The Black Liberation Era

Black Panthers Usher in The Black Liberation Movement

Midstride the’60s on February 21, 1965, Malcolm assassinated, but his star continued to rise and his seeds fell on fertile soil. The following year, October 1966, in Oakland, California, Huey P. Newton and a handful of armed youths founded the Black Panther Party for Self Defense on principles that Malcolm had preached – and the Black Liberation Movement (BLM) was born. Subsequently the name was shortened to the Black Panther Party (BPP) and a 10 point program was created which stated:

1. We want freedom. We want power to determine the destiny of our Black community.
2. We want full employment for our people.
3. We want an end to the robbery by the CAPITALIST of our Black community.
4. We want decent housing, fit for the shelter of human beings.
5. We want education for our people that exposes the true nature of this decadent American society. We want education that teaches us our true history and our role in the present day society.
6. We want all Black men to be exempt from military service.
7. We want an immediate end to POLICE BRUTALITY and MURDER of Black people.
8. We want freedom for all Black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails.
9. We want all Black people when brought to trail to be tried in court by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities, as defined by the Constitution of the United States.
10. We want land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice, and peace. And as our major political objective, a United Nations supervised plebiscite to be held throughout the Black colony in which only Black colonial subjects will be allowed to participate, for the purpose of determining the will of Black people as to their national security.

The Panthers established numerous programs to serve the Oakland ghetto – free breakfasts for children, free health care, free day-care, and free political education classes. The program that rivaled the ghetto’s attention was their campaign to “stop police murder and brutality of Blacks.” Huey, a community college pre-law student, discovered that it was legal for citizens to openly carry arms in California. With that assurance the Black Panther Party began armed car patrols of the police cruisers that patrolled Oakland’s Black colony. When a cruiser stopped to make an arrest, the Panther car stopped. They fanned out around the scene, arms at the ready, and observed, tape recorded, and recommended a lawyer to the arrest victim. It didn’t take long for the police to retaliate. They confronted Huey late one night near his home. Gunfire erupted, leaving Huey critically wounded, a policeman dead and another wounded. The Panthers and the Oakland/Bay community responded with a massive campaign to save Huey from the gas chamber. The California Senate began a hearing to rescind the law permitting citizens to openly carry arms within city limits. The Panthers staged an armed demonstration during the hearing at the Sacramento Capitol to protest the Senate’s action, which gained national publicity. That publicity, together with the Panthers’ philosophy of revolutionary nationalism, self defense, and the “Free Huey” campaign, catapulted the BPP to nationwide prominence.

But not without cost. On August 25, 1967, J. Edgar Hoover issued his infamous Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) memorandum which directed the FBI (and local police officials) to disrupt specified Black organizations and neutralize their leaders so as to prevent “the rise of a Black messiah.”

Attacks Increase on Revolutionaries

The Panthers rolled eastward, establishing offices in each major northern ghetto. As they went, they set up revolutionary programs in each community that were geared to provide community control of schools, tenant control of slum housing, free breakfast for school children, free health, day-care, and legal clinics, and free political education classes for the community. They also initiated campaigns to drive dope pushers and drugs from the community, and campaigns to stop police murder and brutality of Blacks. As they went about the community organizing these various programs they were frequently confronted, attacked, or arrested by the police, and some were even killed during these encounters.

Other revolutionary organizers suffered similar entrapments. The Revolutionary Action Movement’s (RAM) Herman Ferguson and Max Stamford were arrested in 1967 on spurious charges of conspiring to kill civil rights leaders. In the same year Amiri Baraka a.k.a. LeRoi Jones (the poet and playwright) was arrested for transporting weapons in a van during the Newark riots and did a brief stint in Trenton State Prison until a successful appeal overturned his conviction. SNCC’s Rap Brown, Stokely Carmicheal, and other orators were constantly threatened or charged with “inciting to riot” as they crisscrossed the country speaking to mass audiences. Congress passed so-called “Rap Brown” laws to deter speakers from crossing state lines to address mass audiences lest a disturbance break out leaving them vulnerable to federal charges an imprisonment. And numerous revolutionary organizers and orators were being imprisoned.

This initial flow of revolutionaries into the jails and prisons began to spread a revolutionary nationalist hue through New Afrikans behind the walls. New Afrikan prisoners were also influenced by the domestic revolutionary atmosphere and the liberation struggles in Afrika, Asia, and South America. Small groups began studying on their own, or in collectives, the works of Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, The Black Panther newspaper, The Militant newspaper, contemporary national liberation struggle leader Kwame Nkrumah, Jomo Kenyatta, Frantz Fanon, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Ho Chi Minh, and Mao Tse-tung, plus Marx, Lenin, and Bakunin too. Increasing numbers of New Afrikan and Third World prisoners increased while the number of White prisoners decreased throughout U.S. prisons. Under this onslaught of rising national liberation consciousness, increased percentages of New Afrikan and Third World prisoners, and decreased numbers of White prisoners, the last of the prisons’ overt segregation policies fell by the wayside.

The New Afrikan Independence Movement

The seeds of Malcolm took further root on March 29, 1968. On that date the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika (RNA) was founded at a convention held at the Black-owned Twenty Grand Motel in Detroit. Over 500 grassroots activists came together to issue a Declaration of Independence on behalf of the oppressed Black Nation inside North America, and the New Afrikan Independence Movement (NAIM) was born. Since then Blacks desiring an independent Black Nation have referred to themselves and other Blacks in the U.S. as New Afrikans.

That same month, March ’68, during Martin Luther King’s march in Memphis, angry youths on the fringes of the march broke away and began breaking store windows, looting, and firebombing. A 16-year-old-boy was killed and 50 people were injured in the ensuing violence. This left Martin profoundly shaken and questioning whether his philosophy was still able to hold the youth to a nonviolent commitment. On April 4th, he returned to Memphis, seeking the answer through one more march, and found an assassin’s bullet. Ghettos exploded in flames one after another across the face of America. The philosophy of Black Liberation surged to the forefront among the youth.

But not the youth alone. Following a series of police provocations in Cleveland, on July 23, 1968, New Libya Movement activists there set an ambush that killed several policemen. A “fortyish” Ahmed Evans was convicted of the killings and died in prison ten years later of “cancer.”
More CIA dope surged into the ghettos from the Golden Triangle of Southeast Asia. Revolutionaries stepped up their organizing activities on both sides of the walls. Behind the walls the New Afrikan percentage steadily increased.

The Street Gangs

There were numerous Black, White, Puerto Ricans and Asian street organizations, i.e., “gangs,” in New York City during the 1950s. Among the more notorious Black street gangs of the era, were the Chaplains, Bishops, Sinners, and Corsair Lords; also there was the equally violent Puerto Rican Dragons. All warred against each other and other gangs that crossed their paths.

By the 1960s, the post- World War 2 heroin influx had taken its toll. Most of the New York street gangs faded away. Their youthful members had succumbed to drugs, either through death by overdose, or had ceased gang activities in order to pursue full time criminal activities to feed their drug habit or were in prison because of drug-crime activities or youth gang assaults and killings.

Lumumba Shakur, warlord of the Bishops and Sekou Odinga, leader of the Sinners, were two such youths who had been sent to the reformatory for youth gang assaults. They graduated up through the “Gladiator Prisons” –Woodburn and Comstock – to mainline Attica, became politicized by the stark brutal racism in each prison and at age 21 were spit back upon the streets. When the Panthers reached the east coast in 1968, Lumumba and Sekou were among the first youths to sign up. Lumumba opened the Harlem Chapter of the Black Panther Party as its Defense Captain. Sekou opened the Queens Chapter as a Lieutenant and later transferred to Harlem to co-head it with his boyhood pal, Lumumba.

Origin of the Gangster Disciples Street Gang

The Gangster Disciples were founded in the 1960s in Chicago under the name “Black Disciplines” by the late David Barksdale, known historically in gang circles as Kind David. The group’s name was later changed to “Black Gangster Disciplines” and later still the name was shortened to “Gangster Disciplines,” or simply as ”GD.” Its gang colors and blue and black.

COINTELPRO Attacks

In 1969 COINTELPRO launched its main attack on the Black Liberation Movement in earnest. It began with the mass arrest of Lumumba Shakur and the New York Panther 21. It followed with a series of military raids on Black Panther Party offices in Philadelphia, Baltimore, New Have, Jersey City, Detroit, Chicago, Denver, Omaha, Sacramento, and San Diego, and was capped off with an early morning 4 hour siege that poured thousands of rounds into the Los Angeles BPP office. By mid morning, hundreds of angry Black residents gathered at the scene and demanded that the police cease fire. Fortunately Geronimo ji-Jaga, decorated Vietnam vet, had earlier fortified the office to withstand an assault, and no Panthers were seriously injured. However, repercussions from the outcome eventually drove him underground. The widespread attacks left Panthers dead all across the country – Fred Hampton, Mark Clark, Bunchy Carter, John Higgins, John Savage, Walter Toure Pope, Bobby Hutton, Sylvester Bell, Frank “Capt. Franco” Diggs, Fred Bennett, James Carr, Larry Robeson, Spurgeon “Jake” Winters, Alex Rackley, Arthur Morris, Steve Bartholemew, Robert Lawrence, Tommy Lewis, Nathaniel Clark, Welton Armstead, Sidney Miller, Sterling Jones, Babatunde Omawali, Sameul Napier, Harold Russle, and Robert Webb among others. In the three years after J. Edgar Hoover’s infamous COINTELPRO memorandum, members of the BPP were killed, nearly a thousand were arrested, and key leaders were sent to jail. Others were driven underground. Still others, like BPP field marshal Donald “D.C.” Cox, were driven into exile overseas.

The RNA was similarly attacked that year. During their second annual convention in March ’69, held at Reverend C.L Franklin’s New Bethel Church in Detroit, a police provocation sparked a siege that poured 800 rounds into the church. Several convention members were wounded; one policeman was killed, another wounded, and the entire convention, 140 people, was arrested en masse. When Reverend Franklin (father of “The Queen of Soul” singer Aretha Franklin) and Black State Representative James Del Rio were informed of the incident they called Black Judge George Crockett, who proceeded to the police station where he found total legal chaos. Almost 150 people were being held incommunicado. They were being questioned, finger printed, and given nitrate tests to determine if they had fired guns, in total disregard of fundamental constitutional procedures. Hours after the roundup, there wasn’t so much as a list of persons being held and no one had been formally arrested. An indignant Judge Crockett set up court right in the station house and demanded that the police either press charges or release their captives. He had handled about fifty cases when the Wayne County prosecutor, called in by the police, intervened. The prosecutor promised that the use of all irregular methods would be halted. Crockett adjourned the impromptu court, and by noon the following day the police had released all but a few individuals who were held on specific charges. Chaka Fuller, Rafael Vierra, and Alfred 2X Hibbits were charged with the killing. All three were subsequently tried and acquitted. Chaka Fuller was mysteriously assassinated a few months afterwards.

On Friday the 13th of June 1969, Clarence 13X, founder of The Five Percenters was mysteriously assassinated in the elevator of a Harlem project building by three male Negroes. His killers were never discovered but his adherents suspect government complicity in his death. News reports at the time hinted that BOSS instigated the assassination to try to ferment a war between the NOI and The Five Percenters.

Revolutionaries nationwide were attacked and/or arrested – Tyari Uhuru, Maka, Askufo, and the Smyrna Brothers in Delaware, JoJo Muhammad Bowens and Fred Burton in Philadelphia, and Panthers Mondo Langa, Ed Poindexter, and Veronza Daoud Bowers, Jr., in Omaha.

Police mounted an assault on the Panther office in the Desiree Projects of New Orleans which resulted in several arrests. A similar attack was made on the Peoples Party office in Houston. One of their leaders, Carl Hampton, was killed by the police and another, Lee Otis Johnson, was arrested later on an unrelated charge and sentenced to 41 years in prison for alleged possession of one marijuana cigarette.

The Rise of Prison Struggles

Like the Panthers, most of those arrested brought their philosophies with them into the prisons. Likewise, most had outside support committees to one degree or another so that this influx of political prisoners linked the struggle behind the walls with the struggles in the outside local communities. The combination set off a beehive of political activity behind the walls, and prisoners stepped up their struggle for political, Afrikan, Islamic, and academic studies, access to political literature, community access to prisons, an end to arbitrary punishments, access to attorneys, adequate law libraries, relevant vocational training, contact visits, better food, health care, housing, and a myriad of other struggles. The forms of prison struggle ranged from face-to-face negotiations to mass petitioning, letter writing and call-in campaigns, outside demonstrations, class action, law suits, hunger strikes, work strikes, rebellions, and more drastic actions. Overall, all forms of struggle served to roll back draconian prison policies that had stood for centuries and to further the development of the New Afrikan liberation struggle behind the walls.

These struggles would not have been as successful, or would have been much more costly in terms of lives lost or brutality endured, had it not been for the links to the community and the community support and legal support that political prisoners brought with them into the prisons. Although that support was not always sufficient in quantity or quality, or was sometimes nonexistent or came with hidden agendas, or was marked by frequent conflicts, on the whole it was this combination of resolute prisoners, community support, and legal support which was most often successful in prison struggles.

The Changing Complexion of Prisons

As the ‘60s drew to a close New Afrikan and Third World nationalities made up nearly 50 percent of the prison population. National liberation consciousness became the dominant influence behind the walls as the overall complexion neared the changeover from White to Black, Brown, and Red. The decade long general decrease in prisoners, particularly Whites, brought a drop of between 16,000 and 23,000 while the total number of New Afrikan prisoners increased slightly or changed insignificantly over the same period. Yet the next decade would begin the period of unprecedented new prison construction, as the primary role of U.S. prisons changed from “suppression of the working classes” to suppression of domestic Black and Third World liberation struggles inside the U.S.

Origin of Crip

There existed street organizations in South Central, Los Angeles, before the rise of the Black Panther Party. These groups, criminal in essence, were indeed the wells from which the Panthers would recruit their most stalwart members. Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter, who chartered the first L.A. Chapter of the Party was the leader of perhaps the most violent street organizations of that time – The Slausons, James Carr, former cell mate of Comrade George Jackson, and author of BAD, was a member of the Farmers. There were the Gladiators, the Businessmen, the Avenues, Blood Alley, and the Rebel Rousers to name but a few.

After the 1965 rebellion in Watts, there came an unsteady truce of sorts that caused the street organizations to focus on a larger, more deadly enemy. – The Los Angeles Police Department. So, by the time the Black Panther Party came to L.A., in 1968, a shaky peace existed among the direction in which the vent their anger, respond to injustice and represent their neighborhoods.

By and large, the Party usurped the youthful rage and brought the street organizations of that time to an end. Of course, the U.S. government also did its share by drafting young brothers into the Vietnam War.

These, however, were the storm years of COINTELPRO and the Party was the focal point. Thus, by late ’69, the above ground infrastructure of the BPP was in shambles due to its own internal contradictions and subsequently the weight of the state. Confusion set in among the people creating, if you will, a window of opportunity of which both the criminals and the counter revolutionists in the government took advantage.

Community Relations for an Independent People (CRIP) was a city funded team post (meeting place) on the east side of L.A. that played host to some of the area’s most rowdy youth. One such brother was Raymond Washington, who at the time belonged to a young upstart click called the Baby Avenues. The team post became center ground to an ever widening group of youth who eventually took its title, CRIP, as a name and moved westward with it. With the vanguard in shambles and the local pigs turning a deliberate deaf ear, the CRIPs flourished rapidly. In its formative years, the Party’s influence was evident. For the same uniform/dress code of the Party’s was that of the CRIPs. Yet, a sinister twist developed where as New Afrikan people were targets of the young hoodlums. And with no vanguard forces readily available to teach and train these youth, they spiraled out of control, taking as their nemesis the Brims who later developed into the city wide Bloods. The founding of the CRIPs is established as 1969. Their gang color is blue, and sometimes also the color white.

Enter The ‘70s

A California guard, rated as an expert marksman, opened the decade of the ‘70s with the January 13th shooting at close range of W.L. Nolen, Cleveland Edwards, and Alvin “Jug” Miller in the Soledad prison yard. They were left lying where they fell until it was too late for them to be saved by medical treatment. Nolen, in particular, had been instrumental in organizing protest of guard killings of two other Black prisoners – Clarence Causey and William Powell – at Soledad in the recent past, and was consequently both a thorn in the side of prison officials and a hero to the Black prison populations. When the guard was exonerated of the triple killings two weeks later by a Board of Inquiry, the prisoners retaliated by throwing a guard off the tier.

George Jackson, Fleeta Drumgo, and John Cluchette were charged with the guards death and came to be known as the Soledad Brother. California Black prisoners solidified around the Soledad Brother case and the chain of events led to the formation of the Black Guerrilla Family (BGF). The Panthers spearheaded a massive campaign to save the Soledad Brothers from the gas chamber. The nationwide coalescence of prisoners and support groups around the case converted the scattered, disparate prison struggles into a national prison movement.

On August 7, 1970, Jonathan Jackson, younger brother of George, attempted to liberate Ruchell Cinque Magee, William Christmas, and James McClain from the Marin County courthouse in California. Jonathan, McClain, Christmas, and the trial judge were killed by SWAT teams who also wounded the prosecutor and paralyzed him for life. Miraculously, Ruchell and three wounded jurors survived the fusillade. Jonathan frequently served as Angela Davis’s bodyguard. She had purchased weapons for that purpose, but Jonathan used those same weapons in the breakout attempt. Immediately afterward she became the object of an international “woman hunt.” On October 13, Angela was captured in New York City and was subsequently returned to California to undergo a very acrimonious trial with Magee. She was acquitted on all charges. Magee was tried separately and convicted on lesser charges. He remains imprisoned to date; over three decades all total, and is our longest held political prisoner.

Origin of the Bloods

Most South Central street organizations, commonly called “gangs,” “sets,” or “orgs.,” take their names from prominent streets: Slauson, Denver Lane, Piru, Hoover, etc., that run thought their neighborhood. The CRIPs had already formed, were massed up and rolling together. Their strength attracted other sets to become CRIPs. As they moved into territories occupied by other South Central organizations they clashed with a met stiff resistance from those neighborhood sets who did not want to align with or be taken over by them.

Among those gang leaders resisting the CRIP invasion were Peabody of the Denver Lanes, Puddin of the Westside Pirus, Rooster of the 30 Pirus, and the Westside Brims, perhaps the most well known and respected of the lot, although their leader is unknown today. Using their prestige and influence, the Brims families and to recruit other sets to join their side in opposition to the CRIPs. As the various sets began hooking up with each other neighborhoods to start other Brim families and to recruit other sets to join their side in opposition to the CRIPs. In the early 1970s, the federation solidified and formally united into the citywide Bloods. They adopted the color red as their banner; they also use the colors green or brown.

Prison is a normal next stop for many gang members. The first Bloods sent to Chino, a mainline California prison, are commonly referred to in Blood circles as the “First Bloods to walk the line at Chino.” To increase their prison membership and recruitment, they created a Bloodline (BL) Constitution patterned after the constitution of the BGF: a Panther influenced group already established in the California prison system at the time. The BL Constitution contained the Blood’s code of conduct, history, and by-laws and was required reading for each new recruit. To speed up recruitment, the older “First Bloods” made reading the constitution an automatic induction into their ranks and thereafter began tricking young prisoners into reading it. Once read, the new recruit could only reject membership at the risk of serious bodily harm.

The press-ganging of young recruits at Chino set off ripples of dissatisfaction and breakaways among Bloods in other California prisons. Those disaffected centered around Peabody at Old Folsom prison who took parts from the BL and the BGF constitutions and created a new United Blood Nation (UBN) Constitution designed to unify all Bloods in prison. Since then, Bloods have chosen which constitution they would come under

Blood member under either the BL or UBN Constitution held to a higher standard than other members; they hold positions and are similar to the Officer’s Corp of a military organization. Those Bloods not under a constitution are the foot soldiers. The BL and UBN organization spread throughout the California prison system, and are strictly prison organizations. Once a Blood leaves prison he returns to his old neighborhood set. From South Central, the Bloods spread to Pasadena, Gardenia, San Diego, Sacramento, Bakersfield, and throughout the state and its prison system.

California Bay Area Gangs

San Francisco’s Bay Area gangs or “clicks” can be traced back to the early 1960s and are usually identified by, or named after, their neighborhoods or communities. Most of those functioning today came from splinter groups of the BPP after it broke up.

In Oakland, the 69th Street Mob, founded by Felix Mitchell in the early 1970s, still exists despite the government’s best efforts to derail it. In East Oakland the Rolling 20s and the 700 Club, along with the Acorn Gang in West Oakland, are the powerhouse clicks on the streets.

In San Francisco, there is Sunnydale and Hunters Point, the city’s largest street gang which is divided into several clicks – Oakdale, Harbor Road, West Point, etc. East Palo Alto is the home of the Professional Low Riders (PLR) who are a major influence in the South Bay Area – and in Vallejo there is the North Bay Gangsters and Crestview.

Most Bay Area gangs don’t have colors but align primarily on the basis of money and hustling endeavors. Many are associated with the Rap music industry and with various prison groups – the 415s, BGF or ANSARs.

Growth of the Gangster Disciples

In 1970, Gangster Discipline (GD) Larry Hoover was convicted for a gang related murder and sentenced to a 150 to 200 year state sentence. He’s the current leader of the GD’s and runs the syndicate from an Illinois prison cell.

As drugs flooded into the Chicago ghettoes, young black men flooded into the Illinois prisons where they were give GD application forms to fill out. If their references proved solid, they were indoctrinated into the gang. Everyone who joined had to memorize the GD’s 16 rule code. The GD’s spread throughout the Illinois and Midwest prison systems. The flow of GDs back into the streets enabled them to expand their street network which is an intricate command and control structure, similar to a military organization.

Comrade George Assassinated

On August 21, a guard shot and killed George Jackson as he bolted from a control unit and ran for the San Quentin wall. Inside the unit lay three guards and two trustees dead. The circumstances surrounding George Jackson’s legendary life and death, and the astuteness of his published writings left a legacy that inspires and instructs the New Afrikan liberation struggle on both sides of the wall even today, and will for years to come. September 13, 1971, became the bloodiest day in U.S. prison history when New York’s Governor Nelson Rockefeller ordered the retaking of Attica prison. The previous several years had seen a number of prison rebellions flare up across the country as prisoners protested widespread maltreatment and inhumane conditions. Most had been settled peaceably with little or no loss of human life after face-to-face negotiation between prisoners and state and prison officials. At Attica black, brown, white, red, and yellow prisoners took over one block of the prison and stood together for five days seeking to negotiate an end to their inhumane conditions. Their now-famous dictum declared “We are men, not beasts, and will not be driven as such.” But Rockefeller had presidential ambitions. The rebelling prisoners’ demands included a political request for asylum in a nonimperialistic country. Rockefeller’s refusal to negotiate foreshadowed a macabre replay of his father John D’s slaughter of striking Colorado miners and their families decades earlier. Altogether 43 people died at Attica. New York State trooper bullets killed 39 people, 29 prisoners and 10 guards in retaking Attica and shocked the world by the naked barbarity of the U.S. prison system. Yet the Attica rebellion too remains a milestone in the development of the New Afrikan liberation struggle behind the walls, and a symbol of the highest development of prisoner multinational solidarity to date.

New World Clashes With the Nation of Islam

In 1973 the simmering struggle for control of Newark’s NOI Temple No. 25 erupted into the open. Warren Marcello, a New World member, assassinated NOI Temple No. 25 Minister Shabazz. In retaliation several NWI members were attacked and killed within the confines of the New Jersey prison system, and before the year was out the bodies of Marcello and a companion were found beheaded In Newark’s Weequahic Park. Ali Hassan, still in prison, was tried as one of the coconspirators in the death of Shabazz and was found innocent.

The Black Liberation Army

COINTELPRO’s destruction of the BPP forced many members underground and gave rise to the Black Liberation Army (BLA) – a New Afrikan guerrilla organization. The BLA continued the struggle by waging urban guerrilla war across the U.S. through highly mobile strike teams. The government’s intensified search for the BLA during the early 1970s resulted in the capture of Geronimo ji Jaga in Dallas, Dhoruba Bin-Wahad and Jamal Josephs in New York, Sha Sha Brown and Blood McCreary in St. Louis, Nuh Washington and Jalil Muntaqim in Los Angeles, Herman Bell in New Orleans, Francisco and Gabriel Torres in New York, Russel Haroum Shoats in Philadelphia, Chango Monges, Mark Holder, and Kamau Hilton in New York, Assata Shakur and Sundiata Acoli in New Jersey, Ashanti Alston, Tarik, and Walid in New Haven, Safiya Bukhari and Masai Gibson in Virginia, and others. Left dead during the government’s search and destroy missions were Sandra Pratt (wife of Geronimo ji Jaga, assassinated while visibly pregnant), Mark Essex, Woodie Changa Green, Twyman Kakuyan Olugbala Meyers, Frank “Heavy” Fields, Anthony Kimu White, Zayd Shakur, Melvin Rema Kerney, Alfred Kambui Butler, Ron Carter, Rory Hithe, and John Thomas, among others. Red Adams, left paralyzed from the neck down by police bullets, would die from the effects a few years later.

Other New Afrikan freedom fighters attacked, hounded, and captured during the same general era were Imari Obadele and the RNA-11 in Jackson, Mississippi, Don Taylor and De Mau Mau of Chicago, Hanif Shabazz, Abdul Aziz, and the V1-5 in the Virgin Islands, Mark Cook of the George Jackson Brigade (GJB) in Seattle, Ahmed Obafemi of the RNA in Florida, Atiba Shanna in Chicago, Mafundi Lake in Alabama, Sekou Kambui and Imani Harris in Alabama, Robert Aswad Duren in California, Kojo Bomani Sababu and Dharuba Cinque in Trenton, John Partee and Tommie Lee Hodges of Alkebulan in Memphis, Gary Tyler in Los Angeles, Kareem Saif Allah and the Five Percenter-BLA-lslamic Brothers in New York, Ben Chavis and the Wilmington 10 in North Carolina, Delbert Africa and MOVE members in Philadelphia, and others doubtless too numerous to name.

Political Converts in Prison

Not everyone was political before incarceration. John Andaliwa Clark became so, and a freedom fighter par excellence, only after being sent behind the walls. He paid the supreme sacrifice during a hail of gunfire from Trenton State Prison guards. Hugo Dahariki Pinell also became political after being sent behind the California walls in 1964. He has been in prison ever since. Joan Little took an ice pick from a white North Carolina guard who had used it to force her to perform oral sex on him. She killed him, escaped to New York, was captured and forced to return to the same North Carolina camp where she feared for her life. Massive public vigilance and support enabled her to complete the sentence in relative safety and obtain her release.

Dessie Woods and Cheryl Todd, hitching through Georgia, were given a ride by a white man who tried to rape them. Woods took his gun, killed him, and was sent to prison where officials drugged and brutalized her. Todd was also imprisoned and subsequently released upon completion of the sentence. Woods was denied parole several times then finally released.

Political or not, each arrest was met with highly sensationalized prejudicial publicity that continued unabated to and throughout the trial. The negative publicity blitz was designed to guarantee a conviction, smokescreen the real issues involved, and justify immediate placement in the harshest prison conditions possible. For men this usually means the federal penitentiary at Marion, Illinois. For women it has meant the control unit In the federal penitentiary at Anderson, West Virginia, or Lexington, Kentucky.

Effect of Captured Freedom Fighters on Prisons

In 1988 political prisoners Silvia Baraldini, Alejandrina Torres, and Susan Rosenberg won a D.C. District Court lawsuit brought by attorneys Adjoa Alyetoro, Jan Susler, and others. The legal victory temporarily halted the practice of sending prisoners to control units strictly because of their political status. The ruling was reversed by the D.C. Appellate Court a year later. Those political prisoners not sent to Marion, Alderman, or Lexington control units are sent to other control units modeled after Marion/Lexington but located within maximum security state prisons. Normally this means 23-hour-a-day lockdown in long-term units located in remote hinterlands far from family, friends, and attorneys, with heavy censorship and restrictions on communications, visits, and outside contacts, combined with constant harassment, provocation, and brutality by prison guards.

The influx of so many captured freedom fighters (i.e., prisoners of war – POWs) with varying degrees of guerrilla experience added a valuable dimension to the New Afrikan liberation struggle behind the walls. In the first place it accelerated the prison struggles already in process, particularly the attack on control units. One attack was spearheaded by Michael Deutsch and Jeffrey Haas of the People’s Law Office, Chicago, which challenged Marion’s HUnit boxcar cells. Another was spearheaded by Assata Shakur and the Center for Constitutional Rights which challenged her out-of-state placement in the Alderson, West Virginia, control unit.

Second, it stimulated a thoroughgoing investigation and exposure of COINTELPRO’s hand in waging low intensity warfare on New Afrikan and Third World nationalities in the U.S. This was spearheaded by Geronimo ji- Jaga with Stuart Hanlon’s law office in the West and by Dhoruba Bin- Wahad with attorneys Liz Fink, Robert Boyle, and Jonathan Lubell in the East. These COINTELPRO investigations resulted in the overturn of Bin-Wahad’s conviction and his release from prison in March 1990 after he had been imprisoned 19 years for a crime he did not commit.

Third, it broadened the scope of the prison movement to the international arena by producing the initial presentation of the U .S. political prisoner and prisoner of war (PP/POW) issue before the UN’s Human Rights Commission. This approach originated with Jalil Muntaqim, and was spearheaded by him and attorney Kathryn Burke on the West Coast and by Sundiata Acoli and attorney Lennox Hinds of the National Conference of Black lawyers on the East Coast. This petition sought relief from human rights violations in U.S. prisons and subsequently asserted a colonized people’s right to fight against alien domination and racist regimes as codified in the Geneva Convention.

Fourth, it intensified, clarified, and broke new ground on political issues and debates of particular concern to the New Afrikan community, i.e., the “National Question,” spearheaded by Atiba Shanna in the Midwest. All these struggles, plus those already in process, were carried out with the combination in one form or another of resolute prisoners, and community and legal support. Community support when present came from various sources – family, comrades, friends; political, student, religious, and prisoner rights groups; workers, professionals, and progressive newspapers and radio stations. Some of those involved over the years were or are: the National Committee for Defense of Political Prisoners, the Black Community News Service, the African Peoples Party, the Republic of New Afrika, the African Peoples Socialist Party, The East, the Bliss Chord Communication Network, Liberation Book Store. WDAS Radio Philadelphia, WBLS Radio New York, Radio New York, Third World Newsreel, Libertad (political journal of the Puerto Rican Movimiento de Liberacion Nacional [MLN]), the Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, the May 19th Communist Organization, the Madame Binh Graphics Collective, The Midnight Express, the Northwest Iowa Socialist Party, the National Black United Front, the Nation of Islam, Arm the Spirit, Black News, International Class Labor Defense, the Real Dragon Project, the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee, the National Prison Project, the House of the Lord Church, the American Friends Service Committee, attorneys Chuck Jones and Harold Ferguson of Rutgers Legal Clinic, the Jackson Advocate newspaper, Rutgers law students, the Committee to End the Marion Lockdown, the American Indian Movement, and others.

The End of the ‘70s

As the decade wound down the late ’70s saw the demise of the NOI following the death of Elijah Muhammad and the rise of orthodox Islam among significant segments of New Afrikans on both sides of the wall. By 1979 the prison population stood at 300,000, a whopping 100,000 Increase within a single decade. The previous 100,000 increase, from 100,000 to 200,000, had taken 31 years, from 1927 to 1958. The initial increase to 100,000 had taken hundreds of years. Since America’s original colonial times. The ’60s were the transition decade of white flight that saw a significant decrease in both prison population and white prisoners. And since the total Black prison population increased only slightly or changed insignificantly over the decade of the insurgent ’60s thru 1973, it indicates that New Afrikans are imprisoned least when they fight hardest.

The decade ended on a masterstroke by the BLA’s Multinational Task Force, with the November 2, 1979, prison liberation of Assata Shakur – “Soul of the BLA” and preeminent political prisoner of the era. The Task Force then whisked her away to the safety of political asylum in Cuba where she remains to date.

The Decade Of The ‘80s

In June 1980 Ali Hassan was released after 16 years in the New Jersey state prisons. Two months later, five New World of Islam (NWI) members were arrested after a North Brunswick, New Jersey, bank robbery in a car with stolen plates. The car belonged to the recently released Ali Hassan, who had loaned it to a friend. Ali Hassan and 15 other NWI members refused to participate in the resulting mass trial which charged them in a Racketeering Influenced Corrupt Organization (RICO) Indictment with conspiracy to rob banks for the purpose of financing various NWI enterprises in the furtherance of creating an independent Black Nation. All defendants were convicted and sent behind the walls.

The ’80s brought another round of BLA freedom fighters behind walls – Basheer Hameed and Abdul Majid in ‘80; Sekou Odinga, Kuwasi Balagoon, Chui Ferguson-El, Jamal Josephs again, Mutulu Shakur, and numerous BLA Multinational Task Force supporters In ‘81; and Terry Khalid Long, Leroy Ojore Bunting, and others in ‘82. The government’s sweep left Mtyari Sundiata dead, Kuwasi Balagoon subsequently dead in prison from AIDS, and Sekou Odinga brutally tortured upon capture, torture that included pulling out his toenails and rupturing his pancreas during long sadistic beatings that left him hospitalized for six months. But this second round of captured BLA freedom fighters brought forth, perhaps for the first time, a battery of young, politically astute New Afrikan lawyersÑChokwe Lumumba, Jill Soffiyah Elijah, Nkechi Taifa, Adjoa Aiyetoro, Ashanti Chimurenga, Michael Tarif Warren, and others. They are not only skilled in representing New Afrikan POWs but the New Afrikan Independence Movement too, all of which added to the further development of the New Afrikan liberation struggle behind the walls.

The decade also brought behind the walls Mumia Abu-Jamal, the widely respected Philadelphia radio announcer, popularly known as the “Voice of the Voiceless.” He maintained a steady drumbeat of radio support for MOVE prisoners. [While moonlighting as a taxi driver on the] night of December 9, 1981, [he] discovered a policeman beating his younger brother. Mumia was shot and seriously wounded, the policeman was killed. Mumia now sits on death row in greatest need of mass support from every sector, if he’s to be saved from the state’s electric chair.

Kazi Toure of the United Freedom Front (UFF) was sent behind the walls in 1982. He was released in 1991.

The New York 8 – Coltrane Chimurenga, Viola Plummer and her son Robert “R.T.” Taylor, Roger Wareham, Omowale Clay, Lateefah Carter, Colette Pean, and Yvette Kelly were arrested on October 17, 1984, and charged with conspiring to commit prison breakouts and armed robberies, and to possess weapons and explosives. However the New York 8 was actually the New York 8+ because another 8 or 9 persons were jailed as grand Jury resisters in connection with the case. The New York 8 were acquitted on August 5, 1985.

That same year Ramona Africa joined other MOVE comrades already behind the walls. Her only crime was that she survived Philadelphia Mayor Goode’s May 13, 1985, bombing which cremated 11 MOVE members, including their babies, families, home, and neighborhood.

The following year, November 19, 1986, a 20-year-old Bronx, New York, youth, Larry Davis, now Adam Abdul Hakeem, would make a dramatic escape during a shootout with police who had come to assassinate him for absconding with their drug-sales money. Several policemen were wounded in the shoot-out. Adam escaped unscathed but surrendered weeks later in the presence of the media, his family, and a mass of neighborhood supporters. After numerous charges, trials, and acquittals in which he exposed the existence of a New-York police-controlled drug ring that coerced Black and Puerto Rican youths to push police-supplied drugs, he was sent behind the walls on weapon possession convictions. Since incarceration, numerous beatings by guards have paralyzed him from the waist down and confined him to a wheelchair.

On July 16, 1987, Abdul Haqq Muhammad, Arthur Majeed Barnes, and Robert “RT..” Taylor, all members of the Black Men’s Movement Against Crack, were pulled over by state troopers in upstate New York, arrested, and subsequently sent to prison on a variety of weapon possession convictions.

Herman Ferguson at 68 years old voluntarily returned to the U.S. on April 6, 1989, after 20-year’s exile in Ghana, Afrika, and Guyana, South America. He had fled the U.S. during the late ’60s after the appeal was denied on his sentence of 3 1/2 to 7 years following a conviction for conspiring to murder civil rights leaders. Upon return he was arrested at the airport and was moved constantly from prison to prison for several years as a form of harassment.

The ’80s brought the Reagan era’s rollback of progressive trends on a wide front and a steep rise in racist incidents, White vigilantism, and police murder of New Afrikan and Third World people. It also brought the rebirth and reestablishment of the NOI, a number of New Afrikan POWs adopting orthodox Islam in lieu of revolutionary nationalism, the New Afrikan People’s Organization’s (NAPO) and its chairman Chokwe Lumumba’s emergence. From the RNA as banner carrier for the New Afrikan Independence Movement (NAIM), the New Orleans assassination of Lumumba Shakur of the Panther 21, and an upsurge in mass political demonstrations known as the “Days of Outrage” in New York City spearheaded by the December 12th Movement, and others.

The end of the decade brought the death of Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party, allegedly killed by a young Black Guerrilla Family adherent on August 22, 1989, during a dispute over “crack.” Huey taught the Black masses socialism and popularized it through the slogan “Power to the People!” He armed the Black struggle and popularized it through the slogan “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” For that, and despite his human shortcomings, he was a true giant of the Black struggle, because his particular contribution is comparable to that of other modern- day giants, Marcus Garvey, Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King.

AIDS, crack, street crime, gang violence, homelessness, and arrest rates have all exploded throughout the Black colonies. The prison population on June 30, 1989, topped 673,000, an incredible 372,000 increase in less than a decade, causing the tripling and doubling of prison populations In 34 states, and sizable increases in most others. New York City prisons became so overcrowded they began using ships as jails. William Bennett, former U.S. Secretary of Education and so-called Drug Czar, announced plans to convert closed military bases Into concentration camps.

The prison building spree and escalated imprisonment rates continue unabated. The new prisoners are younger, more volatile, have long prison sentences, and are overwhelmingly of New Afrikan and Third World nationalities. It is estimated that by the year 1994 the U.S. will have over one million prisoners. Projections suggest that over 75 percent of them will be Black and other people of color. More are women than previously. Their percentage rose to 5 percent in 1980 from a low of 3 percent in 1970. Whites are arrested at about the same rate as in Western Europe while the New Afrikan arrest rate has surpassed that of Blacks in South Africa. In fact, the U.S. Black imprisonment rate is now the highest in the world. Ten times as many Blacks as whites are incarcerated per 100,000 population.

The ‘90s And Beyond

As we began to move through the ‘90s, the New Afrikan liberation struggle behind the walls found itself coalescing around campaigns to free political prisoners and prisoners of war, helping to build a national PP/POW organization, strengthening its links on the domestic from, and building solidarity in the international area. 1991 brought the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. It freed many of the CIA’s Eastern Europe personnel for redeployment back to American to focus on the domestic was against people of color. In the same manner that COINTELPRO perfected techniques developed in the infamous Palmer raids at the end of World War 1 and used them against Communist Party- USA, SCLC, NCC, BPP, NOI, RNA, and other domestic movements; repatriated CIA operatives used destabilization techniques developed in Eastern Europe, South Africa, Southeast Asia, etc., to wreak havoc in New Afrikan and other domestic communities of color today.

Although the established media concentrated on the sensationalism of ghetto crack epidemics, street crime, drive by shootings, and gang violence, there was a parallel long, quiet period of consciousness rising in the New Afrikan colonies by the committed independence forces. The heightened consciousness of the colonies began to manifest itself through apparent random sparks of rebellion and the rise of innovative cultural trends, i.e., RAP/HIP “message” music, culturally designed hair styles, dissemination of political/cultural video cassettes, resprouting of insurgent periodicals, and the resurrection of forgotten heroes; all of which presaged an oppressed people getting ready to push forward again. Meanwhile, the U.S. began building the ADX Control Prison at Florence, Colorado, which would both supersede and augment USP Marion, Illinois. ADX at Florence combined, in a single hi-tech control prison complex, all the repressive features and techniques that had been perfected at USP Marion.

In 1992, Fred Hampton, Jr., son of the martyred Panther hero, Fred Sr., was sent behind the walls. He was convicted of firebombing of a Korean “deli” in Chicago in the aftermath of the Simi Valley, California, verdict that acquitted four policemen of the Rodney King beating which set off the Los Angeles riots.

In 1994, Shiriki Uganisha responded to the call of POWs Jalil Muntaqim, Sekou Odinga, Geronimo Ji Jaga, and Mutulu Skakur, by hosting a national conference in Kansas City, Missouri, where various NAIM organizations discussed forming themselves into a National Front. After a year of holding periodic negotiations in various cities, the discussion bored fruit in Atlanta, Georgia. On August 18, 1995, NAPO, the December 12th Movement, MXGM, The Malcolm X Commemoration Committee (MXCC), the Black Cat Collective (BBC), International Campaign to Free Geronimo, the Sundiata Acoli Freedom Campaign (SAFC), and various other POW and grassroots organizations formally unified under the banner of the New Afrikans Liberation Front (NALF), headed by Herman Ferguson.

The mid 90s brought the World Trade Center bombing which signaling the success of the U.S. strategy to substitute Islam for the former Soviet Union as the world’s new Bogeyman. It produced the first foreign Islamic PP/POWs – Amir Abdelgani, Rasheed ClementEl, Sheik Omar Eahman, and others.

The mid decade also brought forth a growing right wing White militia movement that had obviously studied the guerilla tactics and political language of the ‘60s left wing movements but not its philosophy of avoiding innocent deaths – and which culminated in the bombing of the Okalahoma City Federal Building causing 168 deaths. Upon arrest, Tim McVeigh, a right-winger and by then the chief suspect usurped the language of the left by claiming POW status. He was subsequently convicted but largely overlooked in the media coverage of his case was McVeigh’s first hand verification of U.S. government’s involvement in bringing drugs into this country (and the ghettos) and it use of the police in carrying out assassinations, notable because the overwhelming majority of people killed or assassinated by police in this country are people of color.

Timothy McVeigh had been an ALL-American boy, a blond haired, blue-eyed patriot who enlisted in the army to defend the American way of life that he so fervently believed in. he rose rapidly through the military ranks (private to sergeant) in two years, and was accepted into the Special Forces: the elite, top 4 percent of the military’s forces. There he learned something that average thinking persons of color have known most of their lives but found difficult to prove. McVeigh’s own words provide the proof.

In an October 1991, letter to his sister and confidant, Jennifer, McVeigh disclosed his revulsion at being told that he and nine other Special Forces commanders might be ordered to help the CIA, “fly drugs into the U.S. to fund covert operations” and “work hand in hand with civilian police agencies” as “government paid assassins.”

Disillusioned and embittered with the U.S. government, McVeigh soon afterwards left military service, gravitated deeper into the right wing militia service, surfaced four years upon his arrest in the Oklahoma City bombing case.

The mid ‘90s found White anarchists Neil Batelli and Mathias Bolton collaborating with Black POWs Ojore Lutalo, Sekou Odinga, and Sundiata Acoli which resulted in the transformation of their local New Jersey Anarchist Black Cross into an ABC Federation (ABCF) which now serves as a role model of the proper way for organizations to provide political and financial support to PP/POWs of all nationalities. The period also witnessed the resprouting of Black revolutionary organizations patterned after the BPP the Black Panther Collective, the Black Panther Militia – along with the NOIs Minster Louis Farrakhan’s emergence at the October 16, 1995 Million Man (MMM) in Washington, D.C., as an undeniable force on the New Afrikan, Islamic and world stage. In the meantime, the U.S. moved further to the right with the passage of a series of racist, anti-worker legislation. The government passed the NAFTA bill to legitimize the private corporations’ policy of sending U.S. jobs overseas. California passed Proposition 209 which killed Affirmative Action programs throughout the state. Then, it floated Proposition 187, whose purpose was to implement statewide racist anti-immigration legislation but failed to pass. The Federal government killed Black voting districts and passed Clinton’s Omnibus Crime Bill which greatly increased the number of crime statutes, death penalty statutes, policemen and armaments; arrest of people of color; youths tried as adults; 3-strike convictions, and prison expansion projects.

The so-called “War on Drugs” sent Blacks and other people of color, more commonly associated with crack cocaine, to prison in droves while allowing white offenders to go free. Five grams of crack worth a few hundred dollars is punishable by a mandatory 5-year prison sentence, but it takes 500 grams, or $50,000 worth of powered cocaine, more commonly associated with wealthier Whites, before facing the same 5 years. In the mid ‘90s, 1600 people were sent to prison each week, every three out of four were Black or Latino, with the rate of Afrikan women imprisonment growing faster than the Afrikan men.

Blacks were 90 percent of the federal crack convictions in 1994. the normal assumption follows that Blacks are the majority of crack users. Wrong! Whites are the majority of crack users but were less than 4 percent of the crack convictions and no White person had been convicted of a federal crack offense in the Los Angeles area since 1986 or ever in Chicago, Miami, Denver, or 16 states according to the 1992 survey. As a result, there are now more Afrikan men in prison than in college and 1 out of every 3 Afrikan men aged 20-29 are in prison, jail, or on probation or parole. Most of the convictions were obtained by an informant’s tainted testimony only, no hard evidence, in exchange for the informant’s freedom from prosecution or prison.

After lobbying Congress for a few years, Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM), a predominately White lobby group, succeeded in getting harsh mandatory sentences lowered for marijuana and LSD convictions. Both drugs are more commonly associated with White offenders and FAMM’s success resulted in the release of numerous White offenders from long prison sentences.

Blacks and other prisoners of color patiently waited for similar corrections to be made to the gross disparity between crack and powered cocaine sentences. Several years passed before the answer came during a 1995 C-SPAN TV live broadcast of the Congressional session debating the disparity in sentencing. Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) member, Maxine Waters’ summation speech, typical of those made by Congresspersons in favor of correcting the disparity following:

Mr. Chairman, we have been before this body this evening pointing out the disparity, pointing out the inequality, pointing out the injustice of the system as it operates now. I am surprised at much of the rhetoric and all of these so-called conversations that my friends on the other side of the aisle have been having in minority communities. I am glad to know that my colleagues are going there. I am glad to know that they communicating. But let me tell my colleagues what the mothers in my community say where I live.

They say: Ms. Waters, why do they not get the big drug dealers? What is this business under Bush that stopped resources going to interdiction? Why is it large amounts of drugs keep flowing into inner cities? Where do they come from and why do not they get the real criminals, Ms. Waters, why is it 19-year olds who wander out into the community and get a few rock crack cocaine. Why it they end up the Federal system why is is it they end up with these 5- year minimum mandatory, up to 10 years mandatory sentences? Why can you not get the big guys?

They say: We believe there is a conspiracy. This is what mothers in these communities say. We believe there is a conspiracy against our children and against our communities. They do not understand it when policymakers get up and say, Oh, it is not interdiction that we should be concern about. As long as we say there is a desire for drugs, they are going to continue to flow and what we have got to do is just concentrate on telling them, Just say no.

They say: Ms. Waters, we do not understand that and we do not know why a first time offender, who happens to be black or Latino, ends up with a 5 year sentence. And why is the Federal Government targeting our communities? They are not targeting white communities who are the major drug abusers. They are targeting our communities from the Federal Level. Thus, our kids go into the Federal system and the whites, who are drug abusers and traffickers, go into the State systems. They get off with their fancy lawyers with probation, with 1 years, with no time and our kids are locked up.

Mr. Chairman, for those of my colleagues who say, well we know it is unfair but just keep letting it go on for a while and we will take a look at it are they out of their minds? How can they stand on the floor of Congress pretending to support a Constitution and a democracy and say, “We know it is not fair, but just let it continue and we may take another look at it?’

When I give them the facts and they know them to be true, and I will say it again. In Los Angeles, the U.S. District Court prosecuted no whites, none, for crack offense, between 1988 and 1994. and my colleagues tell me that they think it may be applied unequally? This is despite the fact that two-thirds of those who have tried crack are white and over one-half of crack regular users are white. This is a fairness issue and it is a race issue.

Mr. Chairman, I do not care how they try and paint it. I do not care what they say. This is patently unfair. It is blatant and my colleagues ought to be ashamed of themselves. It is racist, because their little white sons are not getting up in the system. They are not targeted. Our children are. Mr. Chairman, they are going into the Federal system with mandatory sentences and it is a race issue. It is a racist policy.

Despite the best arguments and passionate please of CBC member Waters, Jackson-Lee, Conyers, Watts, Fattah, Flukes, Lewis, Mfume, Payne, Rush, Stokes, Scott, and similar speeches by non-CBC members Clayton, Baker, Frank, Schroeder and Traficant, the Congress voted 316 to 96 to continue the same 100 to 1 disparity between crack and power cocaine sentences. Instantly, prison exploded in riots, 28 in all, although most were whited-out of the news media while across the country, prison officials instituted a nation wide federal prisons lock down. The disparity in crack/powder cocaine sentencing laws remains to date; the only change made was the removal of the C-SPAN TV channel from all federal prisons’ TVs.

Only two prison elements grew faster than the Afrikan prison population. One was the number of jobs for prison guards and the other was prison slave labor industries. A California guard with a high school diploma makes $44,000 after 7 years which is more than the state pays its PhD public university Associate Professors and is $10,000 more than its average public school teacher’s salary. The national ratio for prisons is one guard for each 4.38 prisoners, usually Black or others of color, they hire another prison guard, usually White, since most prisons are built in depressed, rural White areas to provide jobs to poor, unemployed White populations.

After decades of the U.S. loudly accusing China of using prison labor in their export products, the U.S. sells prison products to the public. It set off a stampede by Wall Street and private corporations – Smith Barney, INM, AT&T, TWA, Texas Instruments, Dell Computers, Honda, Lexus, Spalding, Eddie Bauer, Brill Manufacturing Co., and many others – to shamelessly invest in prisons, set up slave labor factories in prisons and to exploit every facet of the prison slave labor industry for super profits while callously discarding civilian workers for prison slave laborers.

From 1980 to 1994, prisoners increased 221 percent, prison industries jumped an astonishing 358 percent, and prison sales skyrocketed from $392 million to $1.31 billion. By the year 2000, it is predicted that 30 percent of prisoners (or 500,000) will be industry workers producing $8.9 billion in goods and services.

Although crime has been decreasing for 5 straight years, as we approach the new millennium, we find that prison expansion has continued at record pace and that the prison population has mushroomed over the last decade to an astonishing 1.75 million souls – the majority of whom are Black period — not counting the 675,000 on parole and the 3,400,000 on probation for a grand sum of 6 million people under the jurisdiction of the Criminal “Justice” System. The prisons/jails have been majority Black since 1993 when Blacks ascended to 55 percent. Other prisoners of color made up 18 percent and Whites shrunk to 27 percent of the prison population. There are now over 2 Blacks for every White prisoner, and the ration increases daily.

The incarceration of women continues to accelerate. There are over 90,000 women in prison today, 54 percent are women of color and 90s percent of women in prison are single mothers. Upon imprisonment they lose contact with their children, sometimes forever. There are 167,000 children in the U.S. whose mothers are incarcerated.

The term “crime” has become a code word for “Black and other people of color.” The cry for “law and order,” “lock ‘em up and throw away the key,” and for “hasher prisons” is heard everywhere. Nothing is too cruel to be done to prisoners. Control units and control prisons abound across the landscape and prison brutality and torture is the order of the day. The “War on Drugs" continues apace, by now transparent to all as a “war, actually a pre-emptive strike, on people of color” to knock out our youth – our warrior class – and to decrease our birth rate, destabilize our families, re-enslaves us through mass imprisonment, and ultimately to eliminate us. The threat is serious and real. To ignore it would be at our own peril.

Despite government mass imprisonment of our youth and covertly fomenting deadly internecine wars among Black street gangs, the abhorrence of the Afrikan community and persistent “Peace Summits” sponsored by Afrikan spiritual, community, and prison leaders have produced, somewhat positive, although checked results.

As we begin to move through the ’90s the New Afrikan liberation struggle behind the walls finds itself coalescing around campaigns to free political prisoners and prisoners of war, helping to build a national PP/POW organization, strengthening its links on the domestic front, and building solidarity in the international arena. Although the established media concentrates on the sensationalism of ghetto crack epidemics, street crime, drive-by shootings, and gang violence, there has been a long quiet period of consciousness-raising in the New Afrikan colonies by the committed independence forces. This heightened consciousness of the colonies is just beginning to manifest itself through seemingly random sparks and the rise of innovative cultural trends, i.e., Rap/Hip Hop, “message” music, culturally designed hair styles, dissemination of political/cultural video cassettes, resprouting of insurgent periodicals, and the resurrection of forgotten heroes; all of which presage an oppressed people getting ready to push forward again.

The New Afrikan liberation struggle behind the walls now follows the laws of its own development, paid for in its own blood, intrinsically linked to the struggle of its own people, and rooted deep in the ebb and flow of its own history. To know that history is already to know its future development and direction.

Sundiata Acoli
USP Allenwood
White Deer, Pa
December 7, 1998

My sincere appreciations to Zakiyyah Rashada, Nancy Kurshan, Steve Whitman, Joan McCarty, and Walce Shakur, for providing prison source data used in this writing. Any incorrect interpretations of the data are strictly mine. Also my warm gratitude to Mtumwa Iimani for her typing, editing and helpful suggestions in the updating of the original version.

Kasen Renga : Silent Explosions 1

By: Sundiata Acoli and Joan Payne Kincaid

Hokku

explosions of life
animals and plants re-born
in bird choruses jpk

season cycles back anew
coming forth in restlessness sa

gardens bloom
sunflowers stretch
too fast to believe jpk

slowly noticed yet intense
swallows harken thoughts of it sa

under a shady tree
night heron listens
in rising light jpk

she sees shining stars
and sings a song of sighs jpk

the sea is calling
stronger than a lover’s charm
deeper wading waits sa

shining surfboards and wetsuits
magic tunnels spin jpk

candlelight and cake
casting shadows to and fro
fireflies dart about sa

listening to cricket songs 2
sleigh-bell crescendo jpk

iron dialogues
discourse bars in flesh and blood
white deer fades to blue sa

coolness of dawn
reading truth in clouds jpk

silver disk above
tolls the years gone by encaged
summers hot and long sa

lives circle a vigil
Sunday bells will gong jpk

vistas of the soul
peer into the pains of yore
heat rides in the wind sa

powerful visions appear
swirling on silent dew jpk

scent of daffodils
waft into the room upstairs
vernal spells return sa

down on the lawn
petals of violets vibrated purple jpk

nodding by the temple
a violent need of sleep
sipping dandelion wine jpk

couples glide to trumpet’s bleat
begging joiners to the floor sa 3

in his gilded coupe
floating along the concourse
listening to iPod music jpk

pomp disturbs the starving hordes
moving to a birthday beat sa

arriving at Mardi Gras
eat drink and be merry
order more of everything jpk

ice reigns all around the globe
work-call breaks the interlude sa

the doors slide back
on a single signal
hear a sudden lute and cello concert jpk

love is key to the new world
sharing hurt and joy alike sa

kissing her wish- ring
she leaves the yellow lounge
dressed in an olive velvet gown jpk

racist war haunts New Orleans
killing color and the poor sa

in the round pale light
near a scenic lake
listen to high pitch katydids jpk

Blackwater brings Halloween
shooting survivors on sight sa

a slip of the mask 4
exposes disaster plans
fall arrives early sa

softly sliding psychedelically
posed in dark re-entry jpk

chickens scratch in the mud
earthworms laze above the ground
in receding gales sa

global warming scorcher
dull haze surrounds the sails jpk

morning glories sprout
nature’s eternal cycle
begins once again sa

creatures come and go
turning returning ornaments jpk

Date started: 5.24.01
Date finished: 10.8.06

Painting of Iyaluua Ferguson, 4/07
Acrylic on 24 x 36 canvas

(Painted as a 75th birthday gift for Sis. Iyaluua)

[Ian Schlom: I'm not sure how we can remove that Photobucket watermark, unfortunately.]

Some Effects of Long-term Lock-down Facilities

Long-term Lock-down Facilities usually come in two forms: Lock-down Units and Lock-Down Prisons.

A Lock-down Unit is basically a hi-security housing unit for specified prisoners within a prison that also has other, regular housing units for its general-population prisoners.

Most prisons have two forms of Lock-down Units, one for short-term detentions and another for Long-term Lock-downs. “The Hole”, formally called a Disciplinary Segregation Unit, is normally used for short-term detentions of 30 to 90 days or so. The CU, or Control Unit, is usually used for long-term detentions of years and decades.

A Lock-down Prison is one in which each and all of its housing units are high-security Lock-down Units. It contains no regular housing units nor does it have an open or general population where prisoners circulate freely. Typical Lock-down Prisons are USP (U.S. Penitentiary) Marion, IL, and the ADX (Administrative Maximum) at Florence, CO. Both are federal prisons and both are Long-term Lock-down Prisons.

The defining feature of a Lock-down Unit or Prison is that you are usually locked in your cell for 23 hours or more each day. This brings you into unavoidable direct and constant contact with guards whom you are totally dependent on for everything – from food and clothing to toothpaste and toilet paper – and who have total control over everything you need. The frequent contact with guards makes the likelihood of clashes higher and their absolute-control status makes the clashes more intense. As a result, Long-term Units (LTLU) generally inflicts serious physical and psychological damage upon their prisoners.

Physical Damage

The physical damage done by LTLUs is more noticeable because you can actually see, with the naked eye, the result of its injuries: scars from wounds, burn marks from mace, missing teeth or eyes, crooked fingers, walking limps, trick knees or elbows, separated shoulders and other injuries that flow from assaults by guards, fights with other prisoners, or sometimes even the self-inflicted razor-blade cuts of psychologically disturbed prisoners.

Other visible results are facial tics or twitches, bald patches in the scalp where hair has fallen out due to long-term intense stress; also skin rashes from mites in contaminated mattresses and/or the yellow jaundiced eyes of those infected with Hepatitis contracted from overflowing toilets that flood feces throughout the crowded unit.

Prisoners recently released from LTLUs are easily identifiable by their pale, ashy skin caused by lack of sunlight and skin lotion; also by their heavy hair dandruff due to lack of shampoo and hair dressing.

Less visible physical injuries are the bad backs caused by physical assaults or by years of confinement in strip-cells that lack chairs to sit in or by sleeping on iron or concrete beds or bunks with weak springs that curve the spine. Other such injuries are poor eyesight due to dim cell lighting or nearsightedness from years of close confinement with little opportunity to focus the eyes beyond the cell walls; chronic hoarseness due to the constant need to shout above the high noise level or from smoking loose or harsh pipe tobacco rolled in notebook paper or whatever other paper available; loss of voice volume from lack of speaking for long periods; hard of hearing due to the constant high noise level that echoes throughout the closed unit; flat feet from years of being forced to wear only shower shoes or deck-tennis shoes; ill-health from lack of fresh air, sunshine and fresh exercise in a crowded, unsanitary environment that breeds and spreads contagious diseases; infertility due to sleeping on fireproof asbestos-laced mattress covers; and other yet-to-surface maladies due to the many Lock-down Units and Prisons that are located on lands that were previously toxic dumps.

Psychological Damage

The psychological damage done by LTLUs is often less noticeable than the physical damage because most of the psychological injuries are internal: to the mind and psyche. An exception is those LTLU prisoners who were forced to take psychotropic drugs (Thorazine, Prolixin, Haldol, etc.) while confined there. Their easily detected symptoms are the vacant stares, tendencies to drift into trances, short attention spans, inabilities to focus at length, shuffling gaits, slurred speech, foam at the corners of the mouth, general muscle weaknesses, and tendencies to tire easily.

The psychological damage is harder to detect in those not medicated. Often the prisoner him/herself is not fully aware of the damage done; the LTLU experience being similar to someone injured during a fight. The adrenalin flow often keeps them from feeling or noticing the injuries until the fight is over; then the aches, pains and, awareness of injury set in.

Although the psychological damage is harder to detect because of the absence of physical scars, some indicators of the damage are the temporary difficulty the released prisoner has in adjusting to normal prison routines that require being on time, remembering and keeping appointments, talking with strangers, keeping one’s voice loud enough to be heard in normal conversations, holding normal conversations with members of the opposite sex, shaking off feelings of tension or confusion when confronting new but ordinary situations, and ridding oneself of the insomnia, if one turned into a night-owl in LTLU, that comes from having to suddenly revert to a daytime schedule. Frequently, one finds that his or her temper is shorter than usual, paranoia is higher, dislike for authority figures is stronger and s/he temporarily engages in daydreaming and diversion fantasies more than previously.

Also some psychological damages are difficult to distinguish from the normal or accelerated effects of aging that bring on a noticeable loss of short and/or long-term memory that makes it difficult at times to recall names, people, time, place, and circumstances. Some damages are subtle, others are more pronounced. Some prisoners are totally destroyed by LTLUs while others survive, and some even thrive in LTLUs.

Those who survive or thrive are usually those who use the seclusion of LTLU, despite its constant all-around chaos, to strengthen and develop themselves (and others) in areas they are deficient through reading, writing (essays and letters), studying, and researching new topics or increasing their knowledge in familiar ones: politics, history, culture, law, martial and military arts, meditation, spirituality, religion; learning new hobbies in arts and crafts, chess, learning new lifestyles, new eating habits, and engaging in regular exercise and athletics to keep the body, mind, and spirit as fit as possible under the circumstances.

In a nutshell, whether one emerges stronger or weaker, LTLUs inflict serious physical and psychological damages on their occupants and no one escapes unscathed from their effects.

UN 10/10 March

Greetings Sisters, Brothers and Comrades,

My name is Sundiata Acoli, and i’m a 71 year-old New Afrikan PP/POW who’s been down for the last 35 years in maximum security prisons. A few months ago i was transferred to FCI Otisville, New York (a medium security prison) and I’m coming up for parole again in 2010.

That’s the update on my case. It’s not that different from many other New Afrikan PP/POWs or exiles, some who have been down just as long or longer than i have: Ruchell Magee, Hugo Yogi Pinell, Romaine Chip Fitzgerald, D.C. Cox, Russell Maroon Shoatz, Jalil Muntaqim, Herman Bell, Assata Shakur, Nihandi Abisodun and others. The one thing we all have in common is that we’re Black and no Black u.s. PP/POW has ever been granted amnesty or a pardon. So we still have a lot of work to do as a u.s. PP/POW movement.

But it can be done: the Puerto Rican movement has shown us how to do it, and the anti-imperialist movement did too, to a lesser extent. i’d like to congratulate Ashanti, Paulette, Kazi and the rest of the crew for the great job they’ve done in re-invigorating Jericho and moving it in a direction it needs to go.

As for what’s happening today? i think the PP/POW movement is in a transition stage. By that i mean Bush woke a lot of people up. He was the wolf, arrogantly riding roughshod over people of color and the poor at home and abroad. Our people and movement suffered setbacks but Bush’s arrogance, bluster and blunders brought the imperialist many military, political and economic setbacks too (except for “Big Oil” corporations) so generally it’s “Good riddance, Bush!” and “Hello, Obama!”

Frankly, should Obama win, most revolutionaries won’t expect anything to change other than the Black masses finally realizing their long-held dream of a “Black President” and various sectors using that fact to declare the race issue solved. But i do think an Obama tenure would leave people of color and the poor with a more realistic interpretation of how “color doesn’t really matter,” how racism and exploitation are embedded in the system and how the only way the masses will ever get a break is the revolution.

Just as Bush’s harshness, arrogance and blunders intensified the struggle from the right, i think Barack’s non-change would do the same from the left. Our job is to organize in a manner to take advantage of the non-change that’s sure to come. i thank you.

Sundiata Acoli (C. Squire) #39794-066
USP Otisville
P.O. Box 1000
Otisville, NY 10963 USA

HAPPY BIRTHDAY! MUMIA

For April 24, 1999

Upon entering middle-age birthdays normally become mundane affairs that are acknowledged gracefully for its recognition from a few loved ones, close comrades/friends and one's children, if they remember. But i suspect that on Death Row it's different, with each birthday becoming a cherished milestone reached, a desperate battle won in an unending war for survival and with only a moment's respite to reflect on having beat back the hand for one more year that's even now thrusting forward again, intent on taking one's life.

So it's with profound respect and love that i join the MILLIONS 4 MUMIA in wishing Mumia Happy Birthday! -- and for many many more birthdays to live out his life in freedom, peace and enjoying the company of his grandchildren; having taught the world how to struggle, and to win.

And it will happen if we are determined to make it so. If we forget for one moment that the enemy is determined to take Mumia from us and is only waiting for the proper time, for things to cool down, for our attention to wander and for us to tire of demonstrating, marching, petitioning, calling-in, writing-in and boycotting. The enemy is waiting.

So we have to show the enemy that he can wait til hell freezes over but he's not taking Mumia from us and that we're just as determined, and moreso than he, to keep on building the pressure, to keep adding and bringing new forces to the fray in wave after wave of innovative ways that step up the pace, increase civil disobedience and show that we will not relent, and that we will accept nothing less than Mumia's total and complete freedom. That calls for more sweat and sacrifice but the more sweat in peace the less blood in war.

Free Mumia and all PP/POW's

Interview With Sundiata Acoli & Letter to Washington Heights High School Students

Available as a scanned zine PDF.

Interview With Sundiata Acoli
Including,

Letter to Washington Heights High School Students

I was born, Clark Edward Squire on January 14, 1937, in Decatur, Texas to Naomi Squire and Rosevelt Johnson. I have on sister, Alice Squire who is two years older than I am. A year after my birth, my mother migrated with us children 150 miles west to Vernon, Texas, located at the mouth of the Texas Panhandle.

There my mother met and married our step-father, Jesse Walker, and there my sister and I were raised and schooled. Texas was segregated at the time and life in general was very hard for Blacks, Mexicans, and poor Whites too, although most of them were just as racists, or more so, as the better off Whites. Alice and I graduated from Booker T. Washington High School together in 1956: Alice with a B.A. in English and me with a B.S. in math.

After graduation, my sister married her college boyfriend and they moved to Los Angeles, CA. After an unsuccessful interview with a large electronic corporation in New York City, I landed a job with NASA as a computer programmer and began work at their Edwards Air Force Base, CA, installation in the Mojave Desert. I liked computer work but didn’t like the desert, nor did my boss, a Southern White woman from North Carolina, care much for me and would not give me a raise. So, after a year I resigned and returned to Harlem, which I liked much better.

It was 1957, I was classified 1-A, and no commercial corporation would risk hiring or training me just to see me soon after become drafted into the military. So I worked for various military bases and Defense Contractors in upstate New York and on Long Island, NY until I reached the age of 26 ½ and no longer eligible for the draft. At that time I moved back to NYC, on the Lower East Side and began working for commercial computer corporations in the City.

The Civil Rights struggle was going full blast with sit-ins, Black voter registration drives, pickets and demonstrations for equal rights and attacks on Black Civil Rights workers and their multi-national supporters by police, Klansmen and irate White citizens, all of which was played out on TV new casts each night. The U.S. began to escalate the Viet Nam War and an incipient Anti-War Movement began to take root.

A Similar incipient movement began among women for equal rights and among students for student rights. Then, John F. Kennedy was assassinated and Barry Goldwater, the far right-wing conservative was nominated by the Republicans to run against Lyndon B. Johnson, the VP who succeeded JFK.

During that 1964 presidential campaign, Goodman, Cheney and Schwener, 3 Civil rights workers, were brutally murdered in Philadelphia, MS, by the Neshoba County Sheriff, Klansmen and White Citizen Council members. Several news casts implied that the murders would drastically curtail the number of volunteers from the North, many of whom were White, who were going South to help Blacks register to vote.

The tone of the news casts made me decide to volunteer to go South to register votes. I called COFO, the Council of Federated Organizations and volunteered. They accepted me provided that I could pay for my own ticket. I did and flew into Jackson, MS where I was met at the airport by a 2-car convoy of Black men with concealed weapons and I was driven to Batesville, MS that night and housed with a 40-something year old Black woman who was the local community leader. The next morning I went to the local Community Center to meet the other voter registrants/community organizers and was assigned to go to the Court House with Joe, a young white guy, to help him register Black voters.

As soon as we reached the Court House’s back steps where 10 or so Blacks were lined up to enter, the County Sheriff descended the steps and began cursing and screaming at Joe at the top of his lungs. Joe screamed right back and it looked as though a fight would break out at any moment. It didn’t; things settled down and Joe began assisting the Blacks with answers to their questions, requests for water, seats, sample voter forms or whatever they needed to prepare them to register. After standing in line in the hot sun all day, about 3 Blacks would be let inside the Court House to apply for registration and sometimes one, but mostly no one would pass the test. The rest would have to return to try it again another day.

This process, including the Sheriff and Joe starting each morning with a loud, vociferous argument, repeated itself each day along with some unforeseen emergency: someone fainting or having an epileptic fit from prolonged standing in the sun, or a drunken White having to be restrained by his buddies from approaching the line of Black registrants, or a dead snake, raccoon, cat or whatever on the back steps where Blacks lined up to register, or Whites making rebel yells from their cars while circling the Court House, etc., but no violence ever broke out. On weekends we worked the outlying plantations, county churches, community meetings, rallies etc., urging Black people to come to Court House and register. At the end of my vacation I returned to my computer job in NYC.

My political consciousness grew over time to the point where I felt the only solution to Black and (world) problems was revolution and I look for a way to contribute to the Black Revolution. When the Black Panther party arrived in Harlem in the summer of ’68, I joined them that fall fight after the birth of my youngest daughter, Sunni. A few years hence, I would learn that I had another daughter, Rita, older by 12 years, who lived in Texas.

I was elected Finance Officer of the Harlem Chapter and was soon engrossed in community organizing: community control of schools work, tenant organizing, campaigns to stop drug pushers, police brutality and the murder of Black people. Suddenly, on April 2nd, 1969, we were hit with the panther 21 Conspiracy Indictment/roundup in which the entire Harlem leadership was arrested and most of us were held in jail and on trail for 2 years before all defendants were acquitted on all counts in less than 2 hours of jury deliberations.

Most of us returned to the Party which was now rife with dissension and paranoia, plus COINTELPRO’s police, FBI etc. had stepped up their harassment and provocations a hundredfold such that it became almost impossible to struggle effectively, avoid frame-ups or stay alive aboveground. So, one by one, many of us were eventually forced underground where most of us joined the Black Liberation Army, including me.

I had been underground and organizing in rural Alabama for over a year when during one of my periodic roundtrips to NYC, I was ambushed by state troopers on the New Jersey Turnpike. My comrade/passenger, Zayd Shakur was shot and killed by the troopers and my other comrade/passenger, Assata Shakur was shot, wounded and captured by the troopers. Werner Foerster was shot and killed in the crossfire and the other trooper, James Harper, was shot and wounded. I was also shot and lights wounded but escaped the scene only to be captured in the woods 40 hours later.

Both Assata and I were sentenced to life + 30 years in separate trials and 6 years later, on November 2nd, 1979, Assata was liberated by the BLA Multi-National Task Force and was given political asylum in Cuba, where she lives free to this day.

After 6 years in Trenton State prison, New Jersey, I was forcefully transferred into the federal prison system in September of 1979 and sent to USP Marion, IL, the highest security prison in the nation at the time. Since then, I’ve continued to be held in the federal system at USP Leavenworth, KS, then USP Allenwood, PA and FCI Otisville, NY where I remain to this day.

Anthony Rayson Interviews Sundiata Acoli

Question #1

In my mind, we’re all New Afrikans, even the Europeans and Native Americans can trace their origins back to Mother Africa. So, let’s start there. Please sketch this history from the advanced societies, through the monstrous centuries of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, the subjugation by European colonialism and the National Liberation struggles that sent them packing.

Unfortunately, capitalism and racism and imperialism were never finally defeated. Africa is again in agonies’ throes. What happened in Rwanda, the Congo, etc.?

Answer:

Yes we are all Afrikans, or New Afrikans so to speak, because humans originated in Afrika several million years ago. Frankly earlier scholars worldwide had known and publicized the 100’s of years that humanity and civilization began in Afrika, so it raises questions about where many of the European founders of contemporary socialism were coming from when they dismissed Afrika as a vast wasteland unworthy of study and research in the creation of modern socialist/communist theory and practices.

Naturally we knew where the capitalist/imperialist scholars were coming from when they ignored/denigrated Afrika, its history and contribution to world civilization. They were and still are doing it to justify their subjugation, robbery, murder and rape of the Afrikan people and continent.

A short sketch of Afrikan history, the rise and fall of its civilization and its recent liberation through independence struggles goes like this:

Millions of years ago the human race began in Afrika as a Black people. Many years later some spread to other continents where long separation, different climates, inbreeding and other factors changed their appearances to the general racial and ethnic features we recognize today.

Generally, Afrika was the land of the Blacks, the East was the land of the Arabs and other Asians, North America was the land of the Reds, South America and the West were the land of the Browns and Europe was the land of the Whites. On each continent great civilizations rose and fell, perhaps many times, with Afrika being the first and perhaps longest lasting civilization. It reached its zenith during the era of the Black Dynasties in Egypt. They built the pyramids, discovered the elements of the arts and sciences, math, reading, writing, philosophy, medicine, astronomy, chemistry, engineering etc. and they founded those civil and religious systems which still govern the universe today. Great Afrikan civilizations also rose and fell in Timbuktu, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Mali, Songhay, and other parts of the continent.

The Europeans, or Whites, rise to power began a few centuries before Christ through contact with and repeated invasions and temporary occupations of Afrika/Egypt from the North. These attacks, invasions and transient occupations of Egypt were often combined with Arab or Asian invasions. Afrika had beat back these invasions many times over the centuries/millenniums. Between invasions and during occupations, Europeans came to Afrika to study at its universities. The Greeks, Plato, Aristotle and other Whites, spent many years studying under Afrikan priests at Alexandria University in Egypt to learn philosophy, art, science and other aspects of Afrikan culture.

Afrika was last overthrown when it failed to beat back the invasion of Egypt in 650 BC. Over time, Europeans looted Egypt ‘s temples, tombs, and libraries carrying many of its books and other treasures back to Greece, Rome, and other European centers and burned the rest of the books along with the library to the ground. Europeans used Christianity to unify themselves under its banner and to create a mandate to go out and conquer other people and lands under the guise of spreading Christianity.

Europeans carried out further invasions along Afrika’s northern coast, captured its seaports and cut Afrikans off from the East, conquering in the name of Islam displaced the European occupiers in northern Afrika and at the same time, blocked Afrika from its eastern seaports. Afrikans were now cut off from direct contact with Europe and Asia and access to its latest superior weapon – firearms. As such, Afrikans were never able to rest or rebuild their societies for long before slave hunters crashed down on their heads again and kept them on the run and circling the interior for centuries. Meanwhile, Europeans rewrote history claiming every Afrikan discovery as their own.

About 500 years or so ago, Europeans found themselves cut off by the Turks from East India and its trade goods. They began sailing around the coast of Afrika hoping to find a new route to India and on each failed attempt went ashore and captured or invited Afrikans to return to Europe with them. From these Afrikans, they learned of navigation by the stars to cross the great Sahara and Sinai deserts; they also learned of Afrikan seamen who had sailed to distant new lands and back. Columbus put it all together to become the first European to reach the Americas. He brought the Bible and the gun with him.

Europeans began kidnapping Afrikans and enslaving them in the Americas. They set up the harshest color caste system the world has ever seen which had Blacks at the bottom, reds, Browns, and Yellow (or Asians) in the middle with Whites at the top. Worldwide, slavery ended circa 1865. In 1865, Europeans divided up Afrika among themselves as colonies and in 1957, Ghana finally regained its independence which set off a chain reaction of independence victories in other sub-Saharan colonies. Ghana’s independence, along with the Montgomery Bus Boycott victory, set off the Civil Rights Movements in the United States.

So, by 2000, the Afrikan continent had regained nominal independence and New Afrikans in the United States had defeated legal segregation, although the Afrikans and New Afrikans at home and abroad still have a long way to go to regain their independence, equality and control of our own destiny as can be seen in the oppression, control and domination visited upon Darfur, Zimbabwe, the Congo, etc., New Afrikans in the U.S. and other people of color and the poor throughout the world, by the U.S. and its imperialist allies.

Question #2

Culture and religion play such huge roles in a peoples’ sense of identity, cohesion and outlook. New Afrikans were stripped of their heritage and had the “White man’s” Christianity to fill their throats. How have New Afrikans adapted Christianity to fill their needs and that of other religions – Islam, Afrikan ones, etc. How has religion affected political developments?

Answer:

Amilcar Cabral said in effect that no people can be fully conquered as long as they retained vestiges of their culture. Blacks still unconsciously maintain much of their Afrikan culture and some are in process of reviving lost Afrikan cultures, traditions and religions. Afrikans also substituted Afrikan deities for many of the Christian deities that Europeans forced down their throats plus they formed separate Christian churches that were more fitting to their Afrikan spirit. They also adopted and modified the Christian Religion to fit their needs for liberation. Marcus Garvey used Christianity and Black Nationalism to build a pan-Afrikanist consciousness among New Afrikans. Malcolm X used Islam and Black Nationalism to foment a Revolutionary Nationalist consciousness and Martin Luther King used Christianity and Nonviolence to defeat racial segregation in the U.S.

Question #3

Drugs also play a huge role in this whole social nightmare. New Afrikans don’t take illegal drugs at any higher a rate than so-called “Whites” (or anybody else.) Yet, they are repressed for it, many times more than others, for longer periods and under hasher conditions. Trace the role of the government in all this – from “King Heroin” in the wake of WWII, to the drugs flowing from Southeast Asia, during the Vietnam War, the cocaine coming up from the South America (crack) Afghani heroin, crystal meth, etc., etc. Also, touch on the drugs in prison to subdue prisoners. How does the government used drugs to control communities, create laws, devise policy, build prisons, in short, criminalize New Afrikans and kill hope?

Answer:

Well, I think during the World War I era that opium and opium-based products were legal in the U.S. Still, during that era, Marcus Garvey raised Black consciousness to a very high level and organized a phenomenal number of Blacks in the U.S. and worldwide toward the goal of Afrikan liberation at home and abroad. So following WWII, after Blacks in the U.S. and Afrika had fought the Axis “Supermen” and seen them bleed and die, the U.S. government knew that Blacks would fight for their freedom when they returned home. So the U.S. government collaborated with the mafia (which had helped defeat Italy’s Mussolini) to flood the major urban ghettoes with heroin in order to forestall or dampen the impending Black drive for freedom. Within a few years there were 100,000 heroin addicts in the U.S. most of them Black.

The same general pattern was followed during the Vietnam War which set off a massive anti-war movement amidst a huge Civil Rights, Women and Student’s Movement. The U.S. again flooded the ghettoes with heroin from the Golden Triangle via the CIA’s Air America airline and the thousands of addicted veterans returning home.

And now during the Iraq/Afghanistan War the U.S. has permitted the Afghanistan farmers to grow opium again (after the Taliban had eradicated it) so that the U.S. could resume smuggling heroin from the area to help finance the war and drug the amerikan populace, especially New Afrikans, and others of color so as to smother their revolutionary potential, control their communities and criminalize their populations.

Question #4

Another hugely important factor in social and political development is culture – specifically, music. From traditional Afrikan storytelling, to the lamentations of slaves, to gospel, blues, jazz, rock and these days, hip-hop, New Afrikans have been at the fore front of all the innovations of cultural expression.

You spoke of Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka) in your Updated History of the New Afrikan Prison Struggle – (which I carry in my distro.) How have politically conscious musical militants affected the struggle, back in the day and nowadays?

Answer: Writers and playwrights like Amiri Baraka, author of Blues People, The Dutchman and other cultural/political works and musicians like John Coltrane, Ella Fitzgerald, Gill Scott Heron, Marvin Gaye, The Temptations, James Brown, Ray Charles, etc., all had a very profound effect on the struggle back in the day, i.e. the insurgent ‘60’s/’70’s and they had a much greater effect then many of us were able to discern at the time. I think popular artists and musicians in particular have a way of breaking down complex political entities so that they are easily grasped by the masses and I think they do the same thing in reserves, that is, they gather the general political thoughts and aspirations of the people and put them in concentrated from in a song, poem, play or whatever to popularize and send it back among the people. We can also see the same thing going on today as musicians, poets, playwrights, etc. create songs, movies, poems, etc., about Katrina, the Iraq/Afghanistan War, Darfur, Bush, Cheney, Barack, etc.

Question #5

Another point you made in your terrific history was the creation and development of NAIM (New Afrikan Independence Movement) founded in 1968. Who were the driving forces behind this development, what are the basic tenets and goals of the New Afrikan Independence Movement? Also, who’s been carrying the banner since then and what have they added?

Answer:

Well, the main driving forces behind the New Afrikan Independence Movement (NAIM) when it came into existence in 1968 was the Republic of New Afrika and its founding president Imari Obadele I, other founding members at the time: Gaidi Obadele, Queen Mother Moore, Herman and Iyaluua Ferguson, Max Stamford (now Mahammad Ahmad) of RAM and numerous other Black and Revolutionary Nationalists in the New Afrikan struggle. Later, I think came Chokewe Lumumba who eventually broke away and formed the New Afrikan Peoples Organization (NAPO) and perhaps Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXM). And lastly, there was the Black liberation Army which was also a driving force behind NAIM.

The basic tenet of NAIM is the formation of an Independent New Afrikan state in the five Southern states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and North Carolina. Since inception the banner has been carried by the Republic of New Afrika plus later groups sucha as NAPO, MXGM, BLA, N’COBRA and others. They’ve basically added more structure and ideology to NAIM as well as members and supporters.

Question #6

These days, I guess you’re considered one of the elder lions of the struggle. You were active at a very tumultuous time – the sixties and early seventies. So, this question and the next are about your contemporaries. First, please place these sort of “larger than life” icons into historical perspective – Martin Luther King, Jr., Elijah Muhammad and Malcolm X, and how and why have we degenerated to the likes of Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton and the latest creation, Barack Obama?

Answer:

With regards to my personal perspective, my respect for MLK has grown considerably over the years, meaning that, I, like a lot of young or revolutionary-minded people at the time, didn’t have a lot of respect or sympathy for King. I, and we, respected what he had done in the Montgomery Bus Boycott but we simply couldn’t wrap our minds around, or embrace, nonviolence and for that reason we too often looked upon Martin with scorn. When you’re young, aggressive and militant you often think like that which as an elder now, I look back somewhat in shame, particularly since history has proven that martin was sincere, which is the first and often main quality you look for in a leader.

Elijah Muhammad we respected because he preached/practiced Black self-reliance and wanted us to be an independent and proud people instead of obsequiously suffering all sorts of humiliation and violence to gain token integration into a corrupt amerikan society. Malcolm X was our premier leader because he expressed precisely our great longing for “freedom by any means necessary” and the fact that our struggle was not for integration or separation but for human rights: the right to live on this earth as a human being.

We’ve degenerated to the likes of the present day leaders you named because the government, COINTELPRO or whichever you want to call it, killed off most of leaders at that time plus they destroyed many of our most effective organizations of that era: the Black Panthers, SNCC, BLA, RAM, SCLC, etc. Thus today we have leaders like Jessie Jackson, who preferred the “publicity” (and profit) of running for President on the Democratic ticket instead of struggling for real “power” (after being scorned at the convention) by next time forming/running on an Independent Black and Poor Peoples Party. Instead he slavishly ran on the Democratic ticket again with similar results.

As for Barack Obama, I don’t he presents himself as anything other than a standard amerikan politician with agenda for “CHANGE,” what that means. Regardless, I don’t think he could or would change much of anything if he should win. I must admit that I am surprised at how well he has handled himself and his campaign and at how many (young) White people who have voted for him so far. Frankly it has changed my perspective on the ability of Whites to purge themselves of racism and on the progress this country had made against racism since the defeat of segregation. I think if Obama wins it will push Blacks, Whites, and other of color in this country (and perhaps the world) to the position that Blacks and non-Whites leadership in a capitalist society is neither the solution nor freedom and instead we must destroy capitalism and build a new non-oppressive society to attain freedom.

Question #7

You worked with some of the real dedicated revolutionaries in all our history! Please talk about each of these freedom fighters – and any others you feel deserve mention – Stokley Carmiahael, H. Rap Brown, Assata Shakur, Fred Hampton, Angela Davis and Russel “Maroon” Shoatz.

Answer:

Both Kwame Toure (fsn Stokely Carmichael) and Iman Jamal Amin (fsn Rap Brown) were leaders before I became politically active by volunteering to go South to register Black voters in ’64. I didn’t work directly with them, only with some local SNCC personnel, community organizers and Eastern College students after which I returned to my computer job in NYC. By the time I joined the BPP so that I never got to events as I canvassed various organizations while looking for one to join before settling on the Panthers. But basically I remember that both Stokely and Rap had already joined and resigned from the BPP so that I never got to work directly with them, although I did attend a lot of their NYC speaking events as I canvassed various organizations while looking for one to join before setting on the Panthers. But basically I remember that both Stokely and his SNCC successor, Rap, were very powerful, dedicated leaders of the struggle whom COINTELPRO pulled out all the stops in their attempt to neutralize them. The dirty tricks ranged from fomenting strife between them and the Panthers in hopes that Panthers would eliminate them to printing articles in the New York Times (the flagship newspaper of the U.S.) that published Rap and Stokely’s names and photos which boldly claimed they were CIA operatives. Never mind that the CIA never publishes the names or photos of its agents.

Naturally, I did work shoulder to shoulder with Assata Shakur, who’s a giant of our struggle and who I have undying love and respect for, but we didn’t work together in the party. Assata came into the BPP after I had been arrested in the Panther 21 case. By the time I/we were acquitted two years later, Assata had gone underground and joined the Black Liberation Army (BLA), which is where I met her, when in joined BLA.

Fred Hampton was a Chicago Panther and obviously one of the most respected and dynamic Panther leaders of the time whom I and Panthers nationwide had the greatest love and respect for. I never got to work with him directly and I most of the Panther 21 were jail when he as assassinated on December 4th, 1969.

Angela Davis is obviously a lion and legend of the Movement whom I love, adore and have every respect for because she earned it. I never worked with her directly before I was imprisoned but have work with some of her assistants at UCLA since my imprisonment. Angela has also singed petitions, made other efforts which supported my release.

As for Maroon, Russel Shoatz, he my heart and I have no greater love and respect for anyone over him.

We first made contact when I was at Trenton State Prison and contacted him at Dallas State Prison, near Pittsburgh, to congratulate him on his temporary escape from the prison there. He and several companions had broken out and escaped into the surrounding mountains, where all were soon recaptured – except for Maroon, who evaded capture for 30 days while trying to breakthrough the encirclement that state troopers and prison guards had thrown around the valley he was trapped in. Naturally we, and I imagine prisoners all over the country, tuned in daily to follow his episodes: reported sightings by farmers, troopers, etc. and especially non-sightings which we hoped meant he had broken through their net.

But that was not the case after a month he was recaptured. Afterwards we kept in contact and worked together on the consolidation of the numerous BLA comrades who had recently been captured/imprisoned across country and we worked on other prison movement events of the era.

Later, I was transferred into the federal prison system and sent to USP Marion, IL, which somewhat interrupted our normal correspondence. Years later I was transferred to USP Leavenworth, KS, where BLA comrade Kojo Sababu, I and other good brothers there ran its Afrikan Cultural Society to politicize its prisoners.

Soon Kojo was transferred out but luckily it happened right around the time Maroon tried another escape at Camp Hill, PA that devolved into hostage situation. When the news broke across the airwaves I could tell Maroon was involved although no names were mentioned. The situation was resolved peaceably and Maroon was forthwith transferred into the federal system along with a rack of other Camp Hill prisoners. They ended up at Leavenworth where Maroon and I hooked up again, this time in person, and worked shoulder to shoulder in the Afrikan Cultural Society until all Camp Hill prisoners were returned to Pennsylvania after a fight with the D.C. prisoners.

It was a pure pleasure and an honor to work with Maroon as it was with Kojo, Assata, Angela, Sekou Odinga, Jalil Muntaqim, Afeni Shakur, Dhoruba bin Wahad, Soffiyah Elijah, Lumumba Shakur, Mutulu Shakur, Safiya Bukhari, Imari Obadele, Herman Bell, Nuh Washington, Geronimo, Jaan Laaman, Herman and Iyaduua Ferguson, Nancy Kurshan and Steve Whitman, Chinosole, Omali Yeshitela, Bonnie Kerness, Jamal Josephs, Joy James, Florence Morgan, Atiba Shanna, Joan Gibbs, Ashanti Alston, Fayemi Shakur, Neil Batelli, Walidah Imarsha and numerous other ‘rades too numerous to name whom I’ve worked with over the years including you, Anthony Rayson.

Question #8

I’m 54, so I was around in the sixties too, but I was just a kid. I do remember what a huge deal it was to “Free Huey!” Later, the whole world was riveted by the drama unfolding at Attica, before Governor Nelson Rockefeller sent his killers in. Shortly before that, the brilliant George Jackson was murdered. Can you talk about the prison struggle at that time, why it was so conscious and organized (relatively) and the government’s response – the ratcheting up of repressive measures, the whole control unit prison phenomenon and the exploding of the prison population in general?

Answer:

The upsurge in the prison movement of the ‘60’s was basically due, I think, to the dramatic increase of prisoners of color in the prison population combined with the influence of the Civil Rights Movement and other political movements that the era spawned. Before the ‘60’s, except for the South, the prison populations were majority White as were most of the recognized political prisoners, usually White communist or anarchist such as Big Bill Haywood, Sacco and Van zetti, Ethael and Julius Rosengerg, etc. Some exceptions were Cinque, the Scottsboro Boys and later, Martin Sostre and particularly the 5 Puerto Ricans Nationalists in the ‘50’s who set the stage for the political prisoners and prisoners of war (PP/POW’s ) of the ‘60’s although at the time of their arrest, I had not the slightest idea of who they were or what they were about.

Blacks and others of color began to find the Northern/Western prisons after WWII when the government via Mafia, flooded the urban centers with heroin. The Civil Rights Movement together with the Black Power and various liberation movements provided political consciousness to the increasing number of prisoners of color and other wise who were influenced by the struggles going on in the street and through the growing number of NAACP, CORE, SNCC, RAM, NOI, BPP, BLA, WVO, FLN, SLA (Symbionese Liberation organizations’ PP/POW’s who were steadily being arrested and sent to jail and prison where they spread their politics to the prisoners around them.

So the prison struggle mirrored the struggle in the street and vice versa. The Civil Rights Struggle spawned a struggle for equality and en end to segregation in the prisons, the Black Power Movement accentuated the move toward Black Nationalism and nationalism in prison to combat the virulent White racism endemic there and Black Liberation and other Liberation Movements spawned a nascent Prison Movement with the coalition of the “Free Huey” campaigns which saved Panther Huey P. Newton from the California gas chamber. The Prison Movement developed into a full blown movement around the defense of renown San Quentin revolutionary George Jackson and reached its highest point at the Attica rebellion which as was multi-national prisoner revolt against inhumane prison conditions and a protest against the assassination of George Jackson. The prison struggles of those times were so dynamic and progressive specifically because of the great influx of prisoners of color, extremely harsh and racist prison conditions and lastly, the resisting prisoners had been politicized by exposure to the current struggles going on in the street and by the influx and influence of political prisoners from these struggles.

The government’s COINTELPRO measures neutralized the Liberation struggles in the street; meanwhile it ratcheted up its repressives measures in the prisons by greatly increasing the number of control units, control prisons by greatly increasing the number of control units, control prisons and the brutality and murders within them and filling them with PP/POW’s and other standup/influential prisoners to cut off their influence on the general prison population and the same time it went on the greatest prison building spree that this country, and perhaps the world, has ever seen and filled them all through mass incarceration of people of color and the poor over the last 3 decades or so. That basically cooled out the revolutionary struggle in the streets and the prisons to a certain extent while the movement goes through the process of rebuilding itself.

Question #9

I liken the murder of Fred Hampton to the Mossad’s hit on Abu Jihad – very damaging. Fred was only 21, but like Abu Jihad, he had the powerful weapons – charisma and a penetrating insight, like Malcolm X and Abu Jihad. I believe he was executed because of his energetic work – genuine programs that helped the community and his efforts to politicize the gangs in Chicago. I know for a fact that some of these “gangs” were being funded by Springfield, because at that time, they were legitimate organization doing positive things for their communities that the government wanted to co-opt.

We know now the tactics they decided to take were much more sinister than mere monitoring and economic manipulation. These would be murder (Fred and Mark) and criminalization. They would rather they be drug-dealing “gangstas” than genuine freedom fighters. Please trace this history.

Answer:

Yes, Fred Hampton’s death was an out and out hit, primarily, I think, because his revolutionary brilliance and the success he was having in politicizing the Chicago gangs. As for the fact that some of the earlier gangs were legit neighborhood organizations funded by Springfield, the state capitol, well was a standard method they used in the urban centers, especially in NYC, during the insurgent ‘60’s. Almost anyone could get their neighborhood project funded by writing the proposal on notebook paper, attaching a dollar figure at the bottom, submitting to the City Hall or the State Capitol and it would be approved almost on the spot. This was a trick the state used to draw out the hidden leaders and the real leaders of the community. Once they were heading up or employed by their chosen neighborhood organization, they could be surveilled, set up or corrupted or rounded up or hit at will.

I remember that I was at USP Leavenworth when the El Rukn Brothers of Chicago came in. They were good brothers who seemed to have gotten caught up in the net where the good things they were doing for the community might have been augmented with some illegal activities and the stated used that and snitches who supplied with drugs and sex with their girlfriends and prostitutes to convict the El Rukn. It was blatantly illegal and I never found out whether they overturned their convictions or not.

Anyway, it seems that the main thing that always split street organizations was whether to be about the people or about the money; to be freedom fighters or gangsters. Sadly, to the detriment of our people and the struggle, most street organizations can’t resist opting to “get paid,” and in a way that becomes detrimental to their own people and the struggle in general. Thus the state will always prefer that they be drug dealing “gangstas” than freedom fighters, revolutionaries or anyone who strives to uplift their community. But slowly some street organizations are changing for the better, although there’s still a long way to go.

Question #10

Now, we come to today. Instead of conscious community organizations, we’ve got a disgusting collection of pro-capitalist preachers, pimps, pushers and young gun-wielding punks. Those with money (the elite athletes and the Jay Z’s of this world) flash bling, cruise around in a fleet of high-priced vehicles, exploit women- and cower in the face of political reality.

What needs to be done to energize the young ones coming up to transcend this misery and achieve genuine liberation? I want to thank you Brother, for your lifetime example of a true revolutionary. You’ve always been cordial and patient, even in the face of the horrific suffering you’ve been forced to endure. Your life work and your example will never be forgotten, nor will you ever stop teaching “the young ones coming up.”

Answer:

What needs to be done is obviously the question of our time – all times really – and if we look back over the history of slavery, segregation and racial and class and other oppressions etc., we see that nothing gets done unless the masses become involved. So for slavery there were slave revolts, the Abolitionist Movement and the Civil War, for segregation there was the Civil Rights Movement and thus the elimination of racial, class and other oppressions will require mass movements, either serial or combined, or in other words, revolution. Mass movements don’t spring up out of the clear blue sky. Someone or some ones must organize them. Thus there’s a need first for an organization that can move the masses in the direction they need to go to achieve true liberation.

Naturally, we don’t have such organization in existence today but we’ve seen various aspects f such in the past: Abolitionist, Wobblies, Anarchist, Communist, Garvey Movement, Civil Rights Movement and the Panthers and other Liberation Movements. None have been perfect, some were more successful than others but all contained essential elements that we can learn from and seek to emulate.

The first thing we need is an organization that has ideology and a plan for true liberation. Then, it must find a way to disseminate this ideology among the masses and draw them to its cause. Naturally the best way to draw the masses to one’s cause is to solicit their desires/wishes and incorporate those wishes in one’s plans. If an organization shows success in reaching the masses it will surely be attacked by the government with a vengeance, so it must be prepared to defend itself by whichever means necessary in order to carry out its plan for mass liberation and true liberation, which in the end can be nothing other than total revolution.

Write to Sundiata:

Sundiata Acoli #39794-066

(Clark Squire)

FCI Otisville

P.O. Box 1000

Otisville, NY 10963

Letter to Washington Heights

High School Students (2000)

Hello Youngsters,

What’s up? Que Paso? Your teacher, Ms. T., tells me that you all have a lot of questions about racism, police brutality, prisons, oppressions and so forth. She asked me to write a letter to the class about it and run it down to you.

Well, I’m Black, so I know racism. I was a member of the Black Panther Party that fought against police brutality in the ‘60’s/’70’s, so I know about that. I’ve been in prison for the last 26 years, so I know prisons. And I’ve been oppressed all of my life and have fought against it all of my life, so you know I know about oppression.

Racism, police brutality, prisons and oppression are all connected. They all work together to keep people of color down in particular and poor down in general. Let’s see how this operates.

Racism

What is racism? My dictionary says it’s “the belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.” Well, that sounds slick but it is a bunch of crap.

Racism is not about what a person believes about another race; it’s about what a person, or race, does to another race. Beliefs are simply things in people’s heads- their thoughts, ideas, opinions, etc. A person can believe or think anything they want and it wont hurt or help you in anyway – as long as they don’t do anything to you.

You can think or believe that Aisha is pretty. No problem, as long as you don’t try to do anything, like kiss Aisha. That would be a problem… unless she wants to kiss you, too. If so, you and Aisha can then kiss with no problem because both of you want to and she consents (aggress by word or action) to kiss you.

But let’s say Aisha doesn’t want to be kissed by Goeffrey. Yet he throws her down and kisses her anyway. He likes it, kidnaps her, takes her home, names her “Beatee,” beats her every night and locks her in the closet. He keeps her Half-naked and half-stared and only lets her clean the house, cook, or wash clothes. He never pays her a dime nor lets her go to school, nor does he teach her to read or write. And this goes on for 40 years until she no longer remembers her real name, or how she came to be in his house.

At that point Geoffrey stops chaining “Beatee” in the closet, begins paying her $1.00 a week for her work, and even lets her go outside to do his grocery shopping, laundry, and take his grandkids to the park. When his friends come over, he tells them that “Beatee” is a slut whom he found homeless on the streets at a young age, ragged, starving, barely human, unable to read and write, and hardly speaking English. He took her in, gave her a happy, grateful and stay on his maid. His friends repeated his story to their friends and over time everyone came to believe it.

So one day you’re bopping down 5th Avenue. At 72nd Street you see “Beatee” sitting in Central Park with Geoffrey’s grandkids. You call out, “Yo, Sistah!” and she clutches her purse, grabs the kids and flees across the street Geoffrey, who’s waiting for the doorman to bring the limousine around.

You step up to Geoffrey and say, “Yo! Man, what’s happening with her?” He repeats his story of “Beatee” that he’s often told his friends. They stand around nodding agreement. He ends saying, “I did the best I could do for her but she wasn’t able to make something of herself like the White kids of this neighborhood did. I believe in her character or ability and the White kid’s superiority to her.”

You might believe his story unless you knew the story of Aisha or remembered your grandparent’s telling of her kidnapping and disappearance from the hood long ago. If so, you’d probably reply, “That’s a bunch of crap!” Being Black has nothing to do with it, nor do beliefs. Beatee’s the way she is because of what you’ve done and what you’re still doing to her.”

Well racism works the same way. It’s not about what one race believes about another race, it’s about what one race…(fill in the blank)… does to another race. When one race consistently, time and again, violates another race’s will, consistently does that race harm, and consistently uses force to take advantage of that race for the benefit of their won race – that’s racism.

When you know the origin, or the true history, of a problem, you are much better able to understand it and come up with a solution to it. Millions of years ago the human race began in Afrika. They were Black people. Many years later some spread to other continents. Over time, the separation, different climates, inbreeding and other factors changed their appearance to the general racial and ethnic features we recognize today.

Afrika was the land of the Blacks, the East was the land of the Arabs and Asians, North Amerika was the land of the Reds, South America and the West were the land of the Browns, and Europe was the land of the Whites. On each continent great civilizations rose and fell, perhaps many times, with Afrika being the first and perhaps longest lasting great civilization. It reached its zenith, or highest stage, during the era of the Black dynasties in Egypt.

They built the pyramids, discovered the elements of the arts and sciences, math, reading, writing, philosophy, astronomy, medicine, chemistry, and engineering. Moreover, these same people founded, based on the laws of nature, those civil and religious systems which still govern the universe. Great civilizations also rose and fell in Timbuktu, Zimbabwe, Ghana, Mali, Songhay, and other parts of Afrika.

The Europeans, or Whites, are new comers and the latest arrivals to civilization. Their rise began a few centuries before Christ through contact with a repeated invasions of Egypt from the north, often combined with Asian invasions. Afrika had beat back their invasions many times over the previous centuries, in addition to earlier and ongoing Asian invasions. At this time race had no bearing on slavery. Slaves were generally those prisoners captured during wars, which has how slavery began. Whites, Blacks, Browns, and Yellows were all made slaves, if captured. A slave or ex-slave could and often did, rise to the highest position in society.

Between invasions and during occupations, Europeans came to Afrika to study at its Egyptians universities. The Greeks, Plato and Aristotle, and other Whites spent many years studying under Afrikan priests at Alexandria’s University to learn philosophy, art, science, and other aspects of Afrikan culture.

Afrika was over thrown when it failed to beat back the circa 650 B.C.E. invasion of its crown jewel – Egypt, sitting at the northeast corner of the continent. Over time the Europeans looted the Egyptian temples, tombs, and libraries, carrying many of its books and other treasures back to Greece, Rome and other European centers, and burned the rest of the books along with the library to the ground. They used Christianity to unify Europeans under a single banner with a mandate to go out and conquer the world under the guise of spreading Christianity.

Europeans carried out further invasions along Afrika’s northern seacoast, captured the seaport cities and thereby cut Afrikans off from the Mediterranean Sea, the world’s trading center at that time. The invaders occupied the northern seacoast and drove Afrikans deeper into the interior where land was less fertile and they were less able to provide food and other basic necessities for life for large populations.

Afrika never fully recovered due to further invasions, this time mainly from the east as Arabs swept out of Asia and across northern Afrika, conquering in the name of Islam and displacing the European occupiers, but at the same time blocking Afrikans from its eastern seaports.

The Arabs made a practice of creating strong slave armies, both Black slave armies and White slave armies. The White slave armies were the Mamelukes. When stationed in Egypt, they revolted against their Arab masters in the 14th century, overthrew the government, and slaughtered so many Arabs, that it ended the enslavement of Whites from that day forward. Thereafter, Afrika became the only hunting grounds for slaves.

Now hemmed in from the north and east, blocked from its commercial seaports, and pursued by both Europeans and Arabs, Afrikans fleeing enslavement were driven deeper into the center of the continent and broken up into smaller groups. The Arabs gained complete control of the Trans-Sahara trade routes which, combined with their control over the economic life of Afrika, and therefore Afrika itself. Afrikans were now cut off from direct contact with Europe and Asia and access to its latest superior weapons – firearms. As such, they were never able to establish themselves or rebuild their society for long before warring invaders and slave hunters crashed down on their heads again, forcing them to flee once more deeper into the interior in a circular movement that ultimately kept them on the move for centuries.

In the meantime, Europeans rewrote history to hide the Afrikan origins of World Civilization. They claimed every previous Afrikan discovery as their own. They said that Afrikans were and always had been heathens and savages who gave nothing to the world, and that it was the Greeks and Romans who laid the foundation to White Western Civilization.

About 500 years ago Europeans found themselves cut off by Turks from the land route to East India and its trade goods. They began seeking a sea route to India. Thinking the world was flat, they hoped to sailed around Afrika, keeping near to its coastline, to reach India. They wanted to avoid sailing too far out into the ocean for fear of dropping off the end of the Earth.

On each failed attempt to circle Afrika they sailed part of the way along its western coast, gave up, and went ashore to capture or invite Afrikans to return to Europe with them. From these captives or guests, the Europeans learned of navigation by the stars, which Afrikan caravans had used for centuries to cross the great Sahara and Sinai deserts, two vast seas of sand. They also learned of ancient Afrikan sailors who had sailed across the ocean to a distant land and back – which was probably why they took the Afrikans back to Europe in the first place. Columbus put it together – navigation by stars and known voyages to distant lands – to become one of the first Europeans to reach the Americas. Also, years earlier the Europeans had been introduced to fire crackers in China. They used the technique to make gun power and the gun – and it was on!

Europeans began kidnapping Afrikans and bringing them and European convicts to the Americas as indentured servants. As first they released both European and Afrikans upon completion of their servitude or sentence, but over time the slave owners passed laws that made Afrikans indentured, or enslaved, for life.

At the same time, colonial Whites waged war against the indigenous people of the Americas, the Indians, or Red race, and began killing them off with guns and blankets infected with small pox, in order to take possession of their land. While massacring the Reds and enslaving the Blacks in the Americas, they turned their cannons on the Brown races in the Caribbean islands, killing most of the Taino of Puerto Rico and the other indigenous peoples of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, the Virgin Islands, Barbados, and other islands, so as to occupy and possess their land.

Everywhere Whites went in the Americas, they made war on the indigenous Red and Brown races. Often those not killed or driven deeper into the forest were enslaved alongside the kidnapped Afrikans. Whites took control of the land of indigenous peoples, stole their crops, and forced them to dig for gold and grow sugar cane to make rum to sell in the colonies and Europe. In Europe, they bought more ships which built up the ship industry, bought more guns and supplies to kidnap more Afrikans to bring to the Americas to sell as slaves to work on plantations to produce more tobacco, cotton, sugar, and rum to sell to Europe. With the money earned they then bought more Europeans to the Americas to build up their population to fight the Red and Brown races and take more of their land. And this vicious circle continued for centuries.

Everywhere Whites went, they spread their racism by setting up the most vicious racial caste, or category, system the world had ever seen. All people were ranked by color – Whites at the top, then Yellow, Brown, Red, and Blacks at the bottom. They fanatically forbade any sexual relations between White Women and men of other races. The rule did not, however, apply to White men having sexual relations with women of color had little or no say or choice in the matter. Sexual relations among races of color were mostly a matter of choice, preference, or cultural tradition – the Whites looked down on any woman having sexual relations with Black men.

Social relationships between Whites and other races were mostly forbidden. The only use most Whites had for other races was their labor, their land, and their women. Whites took first preference of anything they liked, and shunned anything they disliked. They lived on the best land, in the best houses, and ate the best food, wore the best clothes, and held all positions of authority.

Communities of color have been pleading for such changes for quite some time. The changes could decrease police abuse of people of color and the poor, although not eliminate it. The latter could only be accomplished by changing the structure and nature of the system altogether.

Prisons

Prisons are also part of the system, or government. Just as there are city, state, and federal police, there are city prisons, called jails, as well as state and federal prisons. The police serve the government by arresting people. The prisons serve by holding, punishing, and making money on those convicted. The latest trend is the move toward private prisons owned by corporations, which make fortunes off the slave labor of prisoners. Private ownership also helps the government hide its hand in the back door move to re-enslave people of color through mass imprisonment.

There are currently almost two million people in prison, the majority of whom are Black. People of color make up over 80% pf the prison population. Does that mean Whites commit fewer crimes than others? No, its simply means that the government and police concentrate on arresting and sending, people of color to prison, while letting most Whites go free or on probation for similar violations.

Prisons are brutal places. They serve the same purpose as brutal police acts. They spread fear, keep the poor and communities of color submissive and afraid to resist for fear of imprisonment. Once imprisoned, the intent is to break the prisoners, just as in days of slavery, so as to return them to the streets, old, broken, and willing information on their communities.

Prisons are racist. Most are located deep in rural White communities, far from the hood. They provide jobs and a better life for poor rural Whites. It keeps them solid defenders of government policies regardless of how these policies wreak havoc upon communities of color and other poor Whites.

After segregation was outlawed, prisons began employing more people of color. Most of those accepted such jobs did so to better their own lives and staunch defenders of government policies. Their positions in the prisons include wardens, captains, guards, and everything in between. But that doesn’t change the racist. They remain an arm of the government, a color-caste system whose basic structure and function remain unchanged. That function is to maintain a White elite and their cohorts in power, over people of color and the poor.

Private corporations are investing in prisons in droves to reap fortunes off its cheap slave labor. This gives corporations additional motives to have the government step up even further the mass arrest and imprisonment of people of color, and give them even longer sentences to create a greater supply of slave labor on which to amass even greater fortunes. The time has long since arrived where prisoners have no choice but to go on nationwide strike to break this vicious cycle. All prisoners have to do is to “do nothing” lay down and refuse to work. The government will react harshly, but in the end, it and the corporations will have to withdraw their siege on our communities, both inside and out.

Oppression

According to my dictionary, to “oppress” is to “keep down by severe and unjust use of force or authority.” That is a good description of the system we live under. It keeps people of color and the poor down by severe and unjust use of force and authority. It’s unjust because its racist and exploitative. It’s kept in place by unjust force and authority. It’s unjust because it’s racist and exploitative. It’s kept in place by unjust force of the police, prisons, and the armed forces. Despite all the sweet talk of freedom, democracy, equality, free enterprise and so forth, when you look behind the mask, it is all based on the unjust use of force and authority.

The rulers, the White elite owners of the giant corporations, set policies that will make them trillions of dollars. The government uses its authority to carry out the policies. The police at home and the Armed Forces abroad use force on anyone or any country that wont fall in line with the dictated policies. That’s what the recent protest importance, or ease. The positions of governor, legislator, businessman, skilled professional, shop owner, plantation owner, overseer, boss, and straw boss, as well as all other demonstrations against the WTO (World Trade Organization) in Seattle, Washington, and elsewhere, were all about.

People of color are kept down, or oppressed, as a race. That’s racial oppression. Poor Whites are oppressed because they do manual labor; that’s class oppression. Women have historically been oppressed because they are female; that’s sexual oppression. There are many other forms of oppression.

Naked forms of oppression, such as police murder and brutality, or the National Guard patrolling the streets during a rebellion, are easy to see.

Other forms of oppression may be just as harsh and longer lasting, but are harder to see. The latter category includes racism, poverty, low pay, bad housing, schools, and hospitals, as well as drugs and diseases, particularly genocidal once such as AIDS today, or the small pox infected blankets given to the Native Americans during colonial times which killed many, many more indigenous people than all the cavalry battles, combined.

History shows that this racist, capitalist system cannot be reformed, or adjusted, to make it work for all people. When resistance gets too costly, it only changes its methods, then it continues down the same path – the unbridled pursuit of riches through world domination of people of color and the poor.

The entire system must be destroyed. It has failed humanity miserably. And even now it’s rushing headlong down the path of world destruction. The greatest fight that young people can take today is the fight to save yourself, your people, other oppressed people and the World itself. You do that by fighting to destroy this racist, capitalist system.

Sundiata Acoli

Sundiata Acoli #39794-066
(Clark Squire)
FCI Otisville
P.O. Box 1000
Otisville, NY 10963

South Chicago ABC Zine Distro
P.O. Box 721
Homewood, IL 60430

Edited by Anthony Rayson/ Published August 9th, 2008 www.abezinedistro.org/ donation/ free to prisoners DePaul University Libraries *retyped by Abena Ash’e 11/2/08

Life, Health Care, Prisons and Cutting Costs

Also published in the San Fransisco Bay View 4 October 2009.

Health care costs are soaring and have become unaffordable for many families. It is no different for the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC), except they’re required by law to provide medical care to their wards.

Although much of prison health care is inadequate, many of its youthful captives can at least squeak by on what’s presently provided. Not so for those over 50 years of age, most of whom are beset by the common old age infirmities: high blood pressure and cholesterol, diabetes, clogged arteries, heart disease, cancer and the need for body part replacements.

California has the largest prison population in the U.S. plus the highest health care costs and spends $98,000 to $138,000 per year for each prisoner over 50. (See “Study Finds Record Numbers of Inmates Serving Life” by Solomon Moore, New York Times, July 2009, page A20.) An Aug. 11, 2009, New York Times editorial noted that just days before a Chino, California, prison riot, a three-judge panel ordered the state to reduce its 150,000-plus prison population by about 40,000 in the next two years as the only way to bring its prison health care system up to constitutional standards.

The editorial concluded: “The riot at Chino and the federal court’s ruling contain the same message for states everywhere: They must come up with a smart way to reduce prison populations and they must do it quickly.”

More prisoners today are serving life sentences than ever before. They are called “Lifers,” their numbers have quadrupled since 1984 to over 140,000 and they’ve become a major driving force behind the explosion of health care costs in prisons. Many Lifers are over 50 and most are parole eligible, while the remainder are doing life without parole (LWOP.)

One reason for the ballooning of life sentences is the Three Strikes You’re Out mandatory minimums, 100 to 1 ratio of crack to powder cocaine sentences, children sentenced to LWOP – in clear violation of international law – and other harsh edicts of the law and order climate of the last several decades.

The other reason for the balloon is the unrectified racial residue that has accompanied America’s justice system since antebellum days. Two thirds of prisoners serving life sentences are Latino and Black and nearly half of those serving life are Black. In 13 states Blacks make up 60 percent of the Lifers. In New York state, only 17 percent of prisoners serving life are White.

Many Lifers over 50 have already done 20, even 30 years or more and some are 60, even 70 years old and more. Crime has been decreasing for the last decade or two and ALL indicators show that elderly prisoners, once released, rarely commit another crime and are least likely to return to prison.

So it is self-evident that the smartest and quickest way to begin reducing prison health care costs and prison overcrowding is to release aged and infirmed Lifers and LWOPs whose age plus years served equal a fixed number – say 70 years, for example – which could be further reduced in proportion to the seriousness of the Lifer’s illness.

Such a release process would not only be smart but ethical and prisoners’ families, loved ones and the public would be even wiser to urge their Congress member to put such a prison cost cutting bill into effect immediately.

About Sundiata
Sundiata Acoli is a 72-year-old prisoner at FCI Otisville, New York, who is sentenced to life with the possibility of parole, afflicted with common old age infirmities and has been imprisoned 36 years to date. He was arrested for the May 2, 1973, New Jersey Turnpike shooting incident in which he shot no one but merely managed to survive but in which his passenger, Zayd Shakur, and a New Jersey trooper, Werner Foerster, were killed and another trooper, James Harper, was wounded as was Sundiata’s other passenger, Assata Shakur, who was at the time the object of a nationwide “woman hunt” and she was captured. Sundiata was also wounded, then captured 40 hours later. Sundiata and both his passengers were members of the Black Panther Party at the time.

Sundiata has endured some of the harshest treatment a prisoner could experience. Still, he maintains a favorable prison record. He is a talented painter and has written numerous published articles about the prison industrial complex. He is a beloved father, grandfather, brother and elder to many with a rich history of making invaluable contributions to his community.

In the ’60s Sundiata left a promising career at NASA as a computer programmer to travel to the South to help register Blacks to vote. During his activism with the New York Chapter of the Black Panther Party, Sundiata contributed to various programs providing the city of Harlem with community control of schools, tenant control of slum housing, free breakfast for school children, free health care, legal clinics and political education classes. He also worked on community programs against drug dealers and police brutality. Numerous Panthers are still languishing in prison and have repeatedly been denied parole despite clear support for their release.

For those reasons and because Assata escaped prison long ago, the Parole Board has twice denied Sundiata parole claiming he’s likely to commit another crime. Sundiata comes up for parole hearing again in February 2010 and people concerned about justice are urged to send letters, cards and signature petitions.

As the attorneys will present your letters formally and keep record of the number of letters received, please do not mail them to the Parole Board directly. Instead mail your letters to: Attorney Florence Morgan, 120-46 Queens Blvd., Kew Gardens, NY 11415.

Letters should be addressed to: Chairwoman Volette C. Ross, New Jersey State Parole Board, P.O. Box 862, Trenton NJ 08625, saying in effect that 36 years is enough. Sundiata Acoli, New Jersey No. 54859 and federal No. 39794-066, has long ago fulfilled all requirements for parole and is too old, infirm and highly unlikely to commit another crime, so I urge you to release Sundiata Acoli on parole.

To join the Sundiata Acoli Freedom Campaign (SAFC) email list or request additional information, feel free to contact SAFC by email at TheSAFC@gmail.com.

1/2010 Statement From Sundiata Acoli To Supporters

Note from EPUB Guy: This is a link to a YouTube video where hip hop artist Hasan Salaam reads a statement by Sundiata Acoli set to music.

SUNDIATA DENIED PAROLE

Sundiata via e-mail to Supporters
Posted by Sis. Kiilu

Hi All,

My parole was denied 2day after a 2 hr to 3 hr hearing and my case was referred 2 a 3-member panel 2 determine the size of my next ‘hit’ which may b outside the normal 3 yr guideline…in other words they will probably set my future parole-hearing date at more than 3 yrs away. i thank all of u 4 the fine effort u made n trying 2 get me released and know that u did all that was humanly possibe under the circumstances. Love, and Struggle, Sundiata

CHECK IT: 4/11/10 WRITER/DIRECTOR DAWN MCGHEE ON BLOGTALK RADIO!

This will surely be a treat, please support our Sista Dawn McGhee, writer/director of “A Power Sun” and so much more (visit http://www.fieldup.com), she sez: “Please join me in a radio program on 4.11.10 at 5:00pm. Call in 347-850-8519,” and we need YOU to tune in and spread the word to help to make it a wonderful show! Just go to http://www.blogtalkradio.com/innercity/2010/04/11/a-ndepth-conversation-with-director-dawn-mcghee-ab at the appointed time and check it out!

The host at Inner City writes: Join N as we speak with the daughter, director, and documenter of the REVOLUTION! Hear this
impassioned sista tell her-story about filming the story of political prisoner Sundiata Acoli & find out how you can HELP support
by donating to the cause! Also catch the BLACK.light as we feature a poet from the “SpokenWORD EVOLUTION!”

Please check it out and spread the word, she is fantastic and struggling to do a mighty, mighty work!!

4/24 DAWN MCGHEE ON ASSATA RADIO – PLEASE TUNE IN AND SUPPORT!

Black Unity is all about construction and work, we need your help tune in to our broadcast, Assata Radio….Pan-Afrikanism in Action!!!!
http://www.blogtalkradio.com/assata-radio

Time: April 24, 2010 from 5pm to 7pm
Location: worldwide web
Organized By: Black-Unity (bka) moorbey/Rev. Majadi Baruti

Event Description:
YOU are the donors making A Power Sun and Wrack 21 film projects come possible. This is truly an exciting time for Field Up Productions because this is our way of giving back to the community. It’s with pride and honor that we highlight YOU in this section. Not only does it signify your commitment to our mission with the film projects; it is YOUR action to fulfill the promises of our goals.

Freedom fighters and legendary figures like Sundiata Acoli, The Shakur’s Assata & Afeni, (Zayd & Lumumba-posthumously), Dhoruba bin Wahad, Joan Bird, and countless others are included in the film and are on the roll of supporters. These champions gave of themselves to advance the cause of liberation and freedom to oppressed nations.

Field Up Productions, through film, is trying to carry on that tradition. We need more people like YOU to get involved and assist us with this mission. YOU help strengthen our bond of solidarity as we break the chains of traditional pre and post civil rights documentary films. YOU help us continue to tell our story and claim our own victories.

Contributions are being put to work NOW! Our work depends on the support of conscience and principled people like YOU. Thank you for answering our call to action.

Dawn McGhee
Producer, Director, Writer

Event Description:
Sundiata Acoli s/n Clark Edward Squire, was reared in a small town in Texas, worked as a Computer Systems Analyst for NASA with astronaut Neil Armstrong, and became known as one of the loyalist activists during the Civil Rights Movement and beyond. With a home front war brewing, a people allegiant to educating and liberating the oppressed was the goal. Former Black Panther Party (herein BPP) member and current prisoner, Sundiata Acoli shares his story via vocal narration and dramatic elements about his journey through the depths of hell and back in the Liberation Movement in America.

A POWER SUN tells of a courageous man, who served as the Party’s Lt. of Finance, and blatant cover-ups by a government who turned its back on justice; taking viewers on an expedition of realism, unveiling the untold experience that stunned Americans in the past…and many people around the world today, making this film – history in the present.

A POWER SUN shares diverse and independent voices that have never been heard, but written about in many books and periodicals. Acoli joins his comrades, family and friends in a chilling, yet true testament of his life from childhood to his current struggles as a prisoner.

A POWER SUN is an extraordinary dramatic documentary exploring the many aspects of the BPP Movement and the climate of the times in New York (herein NY), including the states’ longest and most expensive trial in its history and the Liberation Movement, with direct accounts, historical context and critical perspectives from former BPP NY Chapter members and others while learning the about the New Jersey Turnpike tragedy and life as a prisoner. The film’s plot is navigated by the conversation between a grandmother, Eartha ”Mama Earth” Kahn, played by Irma P. Hall (Meet the Browns, Soul Food) and grandson, Cinque Kahn, played by Omar Wiseman (Disney Channel), as “Mama Earth” teaches Cinque about the BPP NY Chapter using a unique game of chess on a recreational park set. As Cinque learns chess, a by-stander in the park, Sun, listens to the instructions and applies the lessons to his life. An exploration of Acoli’s life is revisited. The audience experiences the surreal life of Acoli while hearing thought provoking testimonies and learning about a select cadre of leaders in the Party, as well as, learning the art of chess.

A POWER SUN is produced and executed with the highest professional and ethical standards. The film’s director, writer and producer, Dawn McGhee says, “This film combines the true history of a dynamic movement, while re-creating the accounts of his story.” Through the narratives, A POWER SUN joins the past and the present within an innovative film structure guided by accuracy and strong conviction that will change the lives of all people from the four corners of this world.

Raffle Fundraiser For “a Power Sun” Sundiata Acoli Biopic!

Field up Productions in Association with Sundiata Acoli Presents a Raffle Fundraiser!

RAFFLE TICKETS ONLY $2.00 EACH!

A $2.00 Raffle Ticket can win a $25.00 Visa/Mastercard Gift Card! Your card can purchase gas, lunch, dinner, groceries, clothing, etc.

PLUS…. You will be participating in a fundraiser for Sundiata Acoli’s biopic film, A Power Sun!!

There is no limit to the amount of raffle tickets one can purchase. All entries must pay for their ticket with money order/cashier’s check, payable to Field Up Productions. Winner will be contacted via email. Winner will be announced on Facebook. Winner will be mailed gift card. All entries must be received by May 18, 2010. All entries must have a legible contact with their entry fee. This raffle proceeds will go towards the Sundiata Acoli biopic film, A Power Sun. All interested parties will mail their fee to Field Up Productions, POB 41329 Dallas, TX 75241. Make sure you include your name, address, e-mail when you send your payment. Drawing will be May 19, 2010!

It doesn’t get much easier or cheaper than this to support this groundbreaking effort!

http://www.fieldup.com for more info on Field Up film projects!

Sundiata Acoli Given A 10-year Hit By The Parole Board

From Sundiata:

July 14, 2010
Greetings All,

Received a letter today from the Board advising that the 3-Member Panel gave me a 10 year “hit.” The basis for the hit will be explained in the Notice of Decision which will be forwarded to me upon its completion. I’ll forward copies of the Decision to the Attys and SAFC when I receive it.

Stay strong, I will too.

L, S, Su

‘Why Black and Afrikan History?’ by PP Sundiata Acoli

Black History Event at FCI Otisville (Submitted by PP Sundiata Acoli)

After having the approved date for the first Black History Event at FCI Otisville in 12 years moved from Feb. 10, 2011, to Feb. 17, to Feb. 21 and finally to Feb. 24th, the frustrated 5 potential outside guests regrettably but understandably ran into scheduling conflicts which forced them to cancel their appearances. As a result the Black History Event was done with prisoners only.

Akbar Pray opening remarks energized the audience. Raheem acted as moderator and introduced the following events: A skit by Boo, Al-Tariq, Shane, Jaws, T.I. and Tim in which the youngsters learned the importance of Black History from the O.T.’s (Old Timers,) T.I. then recited a inspiring poem:”God, Why Did You Make Me Black?,” Shane and Jaws Jason did a sizzling conscious rap song and would reappear several times during the later program to do other raps, Sebastian Abu Williams did a great Call and Response poem: “Because You Already Know,” Melvin did an impromptu introductory speech, Rauf did 3 of his classic poems, the main one being “Uncle Sam’s Dope Habit,” Joe Gerald held the audience spellbound with his story: “My Life: Why I Became Interested in History,” Supreme Magnetic enlightened all on the “History of Clarence 13X of the 5% Nation,” Sundiata spoke on “Why Black and Afrikan History “(printed below,) Black Warrior spoke on the “Life of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad” and Righteous Born Everton closed the program out with and very conscious and rousing oration on “The History of the Elders Passing Knowledge Down to the Youth!”

Why Black and Afrikan History?

by Sundiata Acoli

There’s an Old Proverb that asks: “What happened to the people of Sumer, for ancient records show that these people were Black.” And the answer was: “They lost their history, so they died.”

Is that just talk or can a people really die from losing their history?- and how do they lose it? Well it usually happens when a people have been invaded, conquered and subjugated in war…and we all know that TRUTH is the first casualty in war …and that history is always written by the victors who usually portray themselves as noble, courageous and wise while slandering the defeated as cowardly and stupid savages — or they simply write them out of World History altogether. Those missing pages are a defeated peoples’ lost history until they regain knowledge of it. Marcus Garvey said: “A people without knowledge of their history, origin or culture is like a tree without roots.”…and a tree without roots dies!

So the question is: Have we, Blacks in the u.s., lost our history?…and could we die as a result? Afrika was invaded and overthrown 2500 years ago from which it/we have yet to recover. Our libraries at Alexandra, Egypt, in Afrika, were looted, books taken back to the western world and Library burned to the ground. Our history was rewritten to make our conquerors look noble and us look like ignorant savages – and our real history was left out of World History altogether. Thus we have lost our history ….so the other question is:” Can we die from it?”

We’re told we’re free and equal yet we continue to be discriminated against . Also we continue to be hit with every lethal affliction in the book: AIDS, crack, abortions (now the #1 killer of Blacks, i’m told,) gang warfare, police, prisons, death penalty, obesity-diseases, Katrina, you name it…. and both you and i know it’s only a matter of time before there is an outbreak of some new affliction more deadly than the ones before… and that it will “just happen to” kill more Blacks than anyone else. That’s just too many coincidences; they look more like “campaigns” to me than “coincidences”. And frankly there’s no guarantee that we can keep surviving these deadly attacks, the next affliction may wipe us out completely. So yes, it’s possible that Blacks in the u.s. could die just as the people of Sumer did…unless we do something.

SANKOFA, an Old Afrikan Proverb, says “Go forward by going back to fetch it.” Fetch what? Our lost Afrikan history!: our collective memory, our mind! We use Our History, and History period, as a starting point to go forward, to go where we still must go, to get free and be whatever we choose to be.

Malcolm X said: “Of all our studies, history is best qualified to reward our research.” It’s also best qualified to provide solutions to our problems. Again Malcolm: “And when you see you’ve got problems, all you have to do is examine the historic method used all over the world by others who have problems similar to yours. Once you see how they got theirs straight then you know how you can get yours straight.”

History is where a people go to learn, research or regain past knowledge about themselves and the world, to find solutions to problems in their lives, and go forward. That’s why we need History, why we study History and how we use History.

If you would like to write Sundiata please send your letters to:

Sundiata Acoli #39794-066 (Squire)
FCI Cumberland
Federal Correctional Institution
P.O. BOX 1000
Cumberland, MD 21501

Funds supporting his legal defense are always appreciated and can be sent to:

SAFC
PO Box 766 Harlem Station
New York, New York 10027

Checks and money orders should be made out to The Sundiata Acoli Freedom Campaign

http://sundiataacoli.org

Book Review of “Facade…In Every Mortal Lies a Dormant God!” by Sanford S. Shuman

“Facade…In Every Mortal Lies A Dormant God!,” by Sanford S. Shuman, 2011, 180 pgs., Trafford Publishing , www.trafford.com, email orders@trafford.com or tel. toll free 1 (888) 232-4444, price $16.04.

“Facade…In Every Mortal Lies A Dormant God!” is a good book of poetry. It is an honest days work, attractively packaged and worth the price. And it can be a constant source of spiritual and emotional inspiration to the reader.

Sanford Shuman himself is a very spiritual person and his poems expound on a range of topics:

PASSIONS & EMOTIONS: comprised mostly of love poems;

NOTIONS and MOTIVATIONS: inspirational poems for facing life’s challenges and mastering them;

DIVINE and FRAME OF MIND!: revels in praise of Jah, Yahweh, Zion, Allah, Brahma, Lord of Lords or God by whatever such name and petitions him for help in ones earthly endeavors;

REBELLION and UNREST: a call to arms against oppression, injustice, racism, neglect and unjust practices against Africans at home and abroad. Shuman dedicates various parts of the chapter to Bob Marley, Malcolm X, Huey P. Newton, Marcus Garvey and other contributors to the struggle of Black Liberation and World Liberation. Altho he states several times thru out the book that all Whites are not the oppressor he still lapses from time to time into a a broad brush painting of “Europeans” or “the white man” as the culprit. That is wrong and he shouldn’t do so.

One of his best poems, “Youth’s Plight,” is inspiring for it’s capture of our youths condition precisely!…after which he blasphemes the rapper, in his poem “Reproach,” for destroying youths.

“Facade…” is a good book of poetry that could be a great one if it’s tone was a little less didactic and it’s rhyme scheme a little less monotonous but nevertheless its insights, spirit and content more than make up for any foibles.”

Sundiata’s Emergency Survival Bag!

by Sundiata Acoli and Pinky
(Updated 10/11)

Store the following items in a backpack, carry-on bag or duffle bag(s) so that in the event of a natural or man-made disaster there’s no need to think; simply grab the bag(s) and go to a safe place in the house or away from the danger area.

Water

– Store fresh water in a canteen can, wineskin bag or in one-gallon plastic, tin or glass bottles. Refill containers with fresh water every six-months. In a last minute emergency, fill the bathtub and sinks with water and/or use the water standing in the toilet’s flush tank, the hot-water heater’s tank, and the toilet bowl. Treat the water in the toilet bowl as contaminated water.

– Store clear plastic bag(s) or plastic sheets and duct tape for use in catching rainwater or collecting dew mist and condensed water in the outdoors or at sea. Because a tree holds an enormous amount of water, if you place a clear plastic bag over a ‘leafy green’ branch you’ll force it to cough up some of the water through condensation. But it’s important to make sure the bag is tightly sealed around the branch or it won’t produce any water at all. Plastic bags/sheets are also useful as makeshift rain gear and for temporarily sealing off (with duct tape) items, rooms and other interiors from seepage by water or gas.

– Store water purification tablets which may also be used and are available in drug stores and sporting goods stores. Four tablets will purify one quart of water.

– Store iodine (should be 2% United States Pharmacopoeia strength). Household iodine from the medicine chest of first aid kit will purify water. Add 20 drops per gallon of clear water, and 40 drops per gallon of cloudy water. Seal the container and let stand for 30 minutes. The water supply will be safe for an indefinite period.

– Store regular Clorox bleach (contains 5.25% sodium hypochlorite, no additives) for use in purifying contaminated water. Purify contaminated water as follows:

Purifying Water Using Liquid Clorox Bleach — When the tap water stops flowing, Regular Clorox Beach isn’t just a laundry-aid, it’s a lifesaver. Use it to purify water, and you’ll have something to drink. First let water stand until particles settle (12 to 24 hours), then scoop the water out and strain it through a paper towel or several layers of clean cloth. Pour the clear water into an uncontaminated container and add regular Clorox bleach per the chart below. Mix well. Wait 30 min. Water should have a slight bleach odor. If not, repeat dose. Wait 15 min. Sniff again.

Store an eyedropper by taping it to your emergency battle of Clorox bleach, since purifying small amounts of water requires only a few drops.

Ratio of Clorox Bleach to Water for Purification:
2 drops of Regular Clorox Bleach per quart of water
8 drops of Regular Clorox Bleach per gallon of water
1/2 teaspoon Regular Clorox Bleach per five gallons of water
If water is cloudy, double the recommended dosages of Clorox Bleach.

Don’t pour purified water into contaminated containers. To sanitize water jugs first, mix 1 tablespoon Regular Clorox Bleach with one gallon of water. Always wash and rinse items first, then let each item soak in Clorox Bleach Sanitizing Solution for 2 minutes. Drain and air dry.

Purifying Water by Boiling – Boil water for 2 to 3 minutes, and then pour the water back and fourth between sanitized containers to restore the air and fresh taste to the water.

Purifying Water by Distilling – Although boiling water or mixing Clorox, etc. in it will purify most water, neither method will remove microbes that resist boiling, heavy metal, salts or most other harmful chemicals. To remove these harmful microbes and chemicals the water must be distilled. This means boiling the water so that its steam vapors can be recovered. The collected steam vapors that condense back to water is the distilled water.
To distill water pour it into a pot which has a cover or lid. Only fill the pot half way with water. Then use wire or string to suspend an empty cup in the pot over the water (but not touching the water) so that when the cover is closed over the pot and the cup, the steam from the boiling water will drop from the cover into the cup. Boil the water for 20 minutes. The water in the cup is distilled water and is free from most harmful chemicals or other contaminants.

Communications

Store as many of the following as possible in your emergency bag:

-MICROLINK FR 160 Hand-cranked/Solar powered combination radio and flashlight, plus cell phone charger. Generate power to this compact hand-held unit with a few turns of the hand crank or by simply setting it in the sun. The radio is AM/FM with a NOAA Weather band for weather broadcasts, alerts and other emergency messages. The flashlight has 3 built in LEDs to light your way thru the dark and the USB phone-charger charges virtually any cell phone or other small electrical device. Various makes and models are available for $15 to $35 by going to Amazon.com and typing in: hand crank flashlight/radio/phone charger or by searching for the same or similar items at costco.com or homedepot.com.
– A portable radio (AM/FM, shortwave bands, etc.) with extra assorted batteries (C, AA, AAA, D)
– Address/telephone book with ball-point pen and pencils
– Everlight flashlight (no batteries required, operates by motion/shaking, lasts a lifetime, water and shock proof, floats, call 1-800-679-1416 to order at $19.95 for 1 regular Everlight and 1 Pen Everlight flashlight).
– Stainless steel mirror to signal by land or sea (tape the Morse code to the back of the mirror)
– Referee’s whistle
– Extra pair of eyeglasses
– Maps of adjacent states
– Hand compass
– Canned spray paint or ribbon rolls to mark trails or locations
– Hand held GPS unit (Global Positioning System – accesses satellites that orbit the planet so you can determine your exact position on the planet)
– Adapter for car cigarette lighter to plug in electrical units
– Phone card
– Cell phone
– Lap top

(Morse Code Alphabet is available here)

Protection

Store as many of the following as possible in your emergency bag:

– Handgun, rifle, shotgun or pellet/BB gun and ammo for each weapon
– Boy Scout knife, Bowie knife or hatchet
– In a ziplock plastic water proof bag store xerox copies of your birth certificate, passport, drivers license, social security card, titles to property, bank statement, marriage license, and other important papers
– Blanket, sleeping bag or tent, disposable cigarette lighters
– Coat, boots, gloves, socks, jeans, thermal underwear, cap
– Antibiotics (ciprofloxacin or doxycycline are anti-anthrax drugs), first-aid kit, personal prescription medicines
– Painters mask or gas mask, Home Depot’s plastic Tyvek painters suit to use as an improvised anti-chemical/bio warfare (CBW) suit
– Potassium iodide tablets to be taken as an antidote after exposure to nuclear radiation.
– Geiger counter

Food

Store power bars, ready-to-eat meals and packages of dried fruits, nuts, vegetables, meats, crackers and drinks (Tang, powdered milk), honey, all purpose camping skillet-pot, portable camp stove and fuel.

geronimo ji Jaga

geronimo ji Jaga was a true “Top Soldier,” highly skilled in warfare, tested and proven on the battlefields of Viet Nam, he returned stateside to put his expertise at the service of the Black Panther Party, the Black Liberation Army and other select organizations of the era. He saved many lives. He made many soldiers.

geronimo, or “G” as we called him, was our much beloved comrade, brother, hero and leader. He was also a father and husband who literally gave his entire life over to the liberation of Afrikans, here and abroad, and other oppressed people worldwide. He was all that – and yet he was one of the most forgiving persons i’ve ever known. It was part of his makeup, and his enigma.

G fought to the end, he gave all that he had and we, Afrikans and others oppressed, are all the better for it. We are forever in his debt.

May the Ancestors receive him with their proudest salute to a returning soldier.

In Struggle,

Sundiata Acoli

JUNETEENTH

Sundiata Acoli, 7/8/11

Juneteenth

The Juneteenth Celebration was put on by the younger Bros at FCI Otisville so that they might gain experience and improve their skills. They designed a program format in which anyone could stand and speak on any topic they desired and afterwards stand ready to answer questions about it from the audience.

Black Warrior opened the event with a brief history that Juneteenth was a holiday created by Blacks to celebrate the end of their and all chattel enslavement in the u.s. It dates from the June 19, 1865, announcement by Gen. Gordon Granger following his landing at Galveston TX, that the Civil War had ended and that the enslaved were now free. This was 2 1/2 years after President Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation of Jan. 1st, 1863 (which was ignored by the slave owners still at war) and about 2 1/2 months after Lee’s surrender on April 9th, 1865 which ended the Civil War.

The Emancipation Proclamation had declared slaves free in Confederate states still in rebellion but there were not enough Union forces in those states to enforce the declaration. With the arrival of Gen. Gordon and his regiment at Galveston the Union Army had enough forces on the ground in Texas to enforce Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation and Granger’s General Order No. 3 that the enslaved were indeed free. Since then Juneteenth is looked upon as Black Independence Day by many in Texas and the states to which it spread.

Black Warrior also explained among other things that he had never heard of Juneteenth until a couple of years ago and he made the point that that’s why it’s important that we hold events like this in order to educate ourselves and others concerned.

Righteous Born followed with an oration on why Black people should stop using the word “nigga” and then threw the floor open for volunteer speakers from the audience.

Ra’uf Abdullah took the floor and and read four of his poems: (1) Unity (printed below), (2) History, (3) Skag and (4) Convict.

Heru acknowledged the Ancestors and poured libations in their honor.

Abdullah Muhammad spoke on the topic of “There Is No Mystery God.”

Broadway Cole spoke on “The Enemy Is Self.”

And Redemption held the audience enraptured with his speech on “Sine Dine” and it’s application to the u.s. Constitution ,the dissolution of the Union on March 9th, 1860 and President Lincoln declaring himself Commander n Chief.

Time expired and that ended the Event.

UNITY
A condition of harmony,
The quality or
State of being made one.
Its true essence:
“One for all; and all for one!”

Unity,
Is something which has to be nurtured:
“In order to bring about true Unity,
Everyone has to put forth an effort!”

With Unity you form a union:
“Oneness,
An act or instance of Uniting,
Which is a unified condition.”

With Unity you become like family,
You become Brothers.

Likewise,
With true Unity:
“You become a Brotherhood”

You have many forms of:
“Brotherhood”
Such as the Mafia,
Syndicate;
La Cosa Nostra!”

When we break Brotherhood down,
We know that a Brother:
“Is one of the male members of a family!”
We know that a Hood:
“Is a protective covering!”
Like a Hood on a coat:
Protects your head from the elements!
Or the Hood on a car:
“It protects the vital parts of a car from the elements!”

None of us are true Brothers:
“Until you want for your Brother,
That which you want for yourself!”

In order to establish a strong Brotherhood:
“You must have sincere love,
For one another!”
You must develope:
“A closeness,
That no out-sider can penetrate!”

If your Brother had a bowl of soup:
“Half of it,
Was Yours!”

In closing:
“You are supposed to be so close,
That you can hear each other breathing!”

You must be so close”
“That if one of you have a tooth ache,
You all go get your tooth pulled!”

THE END!
(c) Ra’uf Abdullah
(aka William Christian) 7/13/06

Black August But for Irene

The following is the outline (fleshed out) of a speech i would have delivered for BLACK AUGUST had not Hurricane Irene shut down the Compound.

1. BLACK AUGUST originated in the California prisons to honor the fallen FREEDOM FIGHTERS: GEORGE JACKSON, JONATHAN JACKSON, WILLIAM CHRISTMAS, JAMES McCLAIN and KHATARI GAULDEN. All/most were killed in the month of AUGUST, in California in the ’70s.

2. BLACK AUGUST is rooted in the wanton killing of Black prisoners by California prison guards and in those prisoners’ resistance to that lethal repression. On Jan 13, 1970, a prison guard shot down W.L. NOLEN, CLEVELAND EDWARDS, and ALVIN “Jugs” MILLER in the SOLEDAD PRISON yard then let them lay where they fell until they bled to death.

3. NOLEN was a prison leader who had agitated and protested the recent past killings of WILLIAM POWELL and CLARENCE “Dopey Dan” CAUSLEY, who was a friend of GEORGE JACKSON’S.

4. So what we had in California in the ’70s was a history of Blacks being blatantly shot down by prison guards with impunity. And when it came across the radio, 2 weeks afterwards, that the guard had been exonerated of the triple killing of NOLEN, EDWARDS and MILLER, the prisoners retaliated by throwing a guard off the tier.

5. Enter GEORGE JACKSON, as he, FLEETA DRUMGO and JOHN CLUCHETTE were charged with the guard’s killing and came to be known as the SOLEDAD BROTHERS.

6. California prisoners solidified around the defense of the SOLEDAD BROTHERS and created the BLACK GUERILLA FAMILY (BGF) which was co-founded in 1970 in the SAN QUENTIN Adjustment Center by BIG JAKE, ULYSSES and LITTLE JAKE GORDON, who were all BLACK GUERILLAS who GEORGE JACKSON had spoken of that he met. JAMES “DOC” HOLIDAY was an early BGF member. Also the BLACK PANTHER PARTY spearheaded a massive Defense Campaign for the SOLEDAD BROTHERS that united the many local, separate and disparate Defense Committees across country into a massive NATIONAL PRISON MOVEMENT.

7. Enter JONATHAN JACKSON, younger brother of GEORGE, on AUGUST 7, 1970, when he brought a duffle bag of weapons into a Marin county court and distributed them to trial prisoners: RUCHELL MAGEE, JAMES McCLAIN and WILLIAM CHRISTMAS. They bound the judge, prosecutor and 3 jurors as the media took photos, then herded their hostages into a van and headed out of the court complex. A SWAT team was waiting and riddled the van with bullets. JONATHAN, McCLAIN, CHRISTMAS, and the JUDGE were killed, the PROSECUTOR was paralyzed and MAGEE and 3 wounded JURORS survived.

8. JONATHAN’s weapons were traced to ANGELA DAVIS: a striking, Afro-ed, PhD Prof at UCLA , open member of the COMMUNIST PARTY and regular visitor and companera to GEORGE JACKSON. ANGELA had purchased guns for JONATHAN’S use as her bodyguard but he had used those same guns at the Marin County Courthouse which triggered an immediate nationwide “womanhunt” for ANGELA. Months later she was captured in NYC and returned to Marin County to face a Capital Murder trial with RUCHELL MAGEE. The COMMUNIST PARTY initiated and orchestrated a colossal Defense Campaign on behalf of ANGELA.

9. GEORGE JACKSON took about a year to finish his book: “BLOOD IN MY EYE” and on AUGUST 21, 1971, at SAN QUENTIN prison he returned from an ATTORNEY visit with a gun supposedly concealed under his wig which the guard discovered but he was taken back into the CONTROL UNIT by GEORGE and there 3 guards and two trustees (inmates who worked for the guards) were then killed.

10. GEORGE knew the officials were mainly gunning for him so he took a vial of liquid, purported to be nitroglycerine, and bolted from the CONTROL UNIT toward the wall. A tower guard shot him in the heel and the bullet was said to have traveled thru his artery to his head, killing him instantly. The vial of liquid turned out to be battery acid. A nationwide “manhunt” went out for the young White-radical ATTORNEY, STEPHEN BINGHAM, who was suspected of providing a gun and wig to GEORGE JACKSON.

11. GEORGE’S assassination stunned and outraged the revolutionary world. His legend was such that less than 3 weeks later ATTICA PRISON erupted in rebellion, partly in protest of GEORGE JACKSON’S assassination, in which they took 10 guards hostage. NY State Troopers killed 9 guards and 31 prisoners in retaking ATTICA; 43 people died altogether.

12. Meanwhile back at SAN QUENTIN, six prisoners: FLEETA DRUMGO, DAVID GIAPPA JOHNSON, HUGO “YOGI” PINELL, LUIS BATO TALALMANTEZ, JOHNNY SPAIN AND WILLIE SUNDIATA TATE, were charged and later tried as the SAN QUENTIN 6 for the killings and assaults that arose out of the takeover of the SAN QUENTIN CONTROL UNIT. SPAIN was convicted of murder and the rest were either acquitted or convicted of assault. Of the 6, only HUGO “YOGI” PINELL remains in prison; 40 years later.

13. ANGELA and MAGEE started trial together on Capital Murder charges but couldn’t set horses on a trial strategy and their cases were severed. ANGELA was represented by an attorney at trial and was acquitted. MAGEE represented himself at trial and was convicted of lesser charges.

14. Thirteen years after the fact, ATTORNEY STEPHEN BINGHAM surfaced, stood trial on the gun/wig smuggling charges and was acquitted.
15. Over the years the Commemoration of BLACK AUGUST has spread to prisons all across the u.s., outside to the streets and even into other countries. Today BLACK AUGUST is used to honor those original Californian fallen FREEDOM FIGHTERS plus notable Black events that occurred in the MONTH OF AUGUST plus other deserving FREEDOM FIGHTERS who fell at different times and places thru out our long struggle for BLACK LIBERATION and SELF-DETERMINATION. Prison observances during the MONTH OF BLACK AUGUST include fasting during the daylight hours, studying revolutionary works, especially those of GEORGE JACKSON’S, working out, wearing black arm/wrist bands and refraining from boisterous and frivolous activities. But wherever BLACK AUGUST is observed: whether inside, outside or overseas, it is a time to embrace the PRINCIPLES OF UNITY, SELF-SACRIFICE, POLITICAL EDUCATION, PHYSICAL TRAINING AND RESISTANCE.

My sincerest appreciation to San Quentin 6, David Giappa Johnson, for his Oct, 2011 S.F. Bayview article, “The 40th anniversary of the Assassination of George Jackson,” which enabled me to correct some inaccuracies in my original script.

—END—

Birthday, Transfer and OWS

by Sundiata Acoli – 1/14/2012

Thank each of you for such warm Birthday (Jan. 14th) greetings, they brightened my day immensely but frankly it’s hard for me to fully comprehend that i’m actually 3/4 of a Century old. That is old by any standard!

i was transferred from FCI Otisville, NY because they’re supposedly converting it into a “Sex-Offenders and Debriefed-Gang-Members” prison. Otisville population stands at around 1200 prisoners. Staff said they planned to transfer out 500 prisoners, mostly gang members and replace them with sex offenders and debriefed gang members, i.e., prisoners who have gotten out of the gang and off the prison’s gang list as a result of them debriefing by telling what they know of their gang’s operations and pointing out other unknown gang members to the staff.

Otisville had transferred out approximately 20 gang members (1 bus load) each week for a month or more when they added “convicted murderers” to the transfer list. i departed Otisville on the 2nd busload of prisoners convicted of murder. At each stop along the way, MDC Brooklyn, NY and FDC Philly, PA the prisoners there were very welcoming and helpful altho federal men’s prison are so overcrowded that there’s a widespread chronic shortage of the most basic supplies, prisoners are literally stacked atop each other and as soon as any prisoner transfers out, another moves into his bed space that same day or the next.

At MDC Brooklyn i received a much welcomed visit from each of my long time attorneys: Florence, Soffiyah, Marisa and Joan. Attorneys can simply show up at the Detention Center and visit. Not so for family or friends, they must be on a new visit list created at the Center. None of my family or friends were able to get on my list before the week or so lapsed by which time i was long gone to the next detention center.

The same visit rules were in effect at FDC Philly, PA. After a week or so there our bus departed on a round-about trip to FCI Schuykill, PA, our final destination. The first stop was Harrisburg International Airport, PA which looked every bit like a modern day slave market. 40 to 50 bus and van loads of prisoners, mostly Black and Brown with a splash of White and smaller splashes of Red and Yellow, chained hand and foot, sat along the runway of a “Con Air” transport jet disgorging hordes of cuffed hobbling prisoners from it’s entrails. Empty, and refilling its belly with just as many new prisoners from the buses/vans until finally sated, it turned, waddled down the runway , belched, and lurched into the horizon.

Other buses and vans mixed and matched, switched and swapped prisoners till each bus was loaded only with prisoners going to the same destinations across the Northeast: NY, NJ, PA, DE, MD, VA, WV; the whole operation was surrounded by a cordon of federal marshals, prison guards, state troopers and county sheriffs.

It was here that all the prisoners on my bus were switched to a bus bound for FCI Schuykill…except me. Shortly, a guard i vaguely recognized from long ago came, took me off the bus and escorted me to another filled with different prisoners. Once seated i asked where they were headed. They said “Cumberland.” My property and traveling papers continued on to Schuykill. We arrived at FCI Cumberland and i was immediately put in SHU (the Hole) because they had no papers for me. I did 10 days semi-incommunicado in “the hole” until my papers arrived and was then let out into general population. i thank all those who expressed concern about my welfare during the transfer, particularly Mumia Abu-Jamal, Pam Africa, the Jericho Movement and numerous others. i’ve since learned that at least 5 convicted murderers who left Otisville on the bus with me were rerouted back to FCI Otisville before reaching their transfer destination. They were all White.

i and SAFC support the OWS/OCCUPY MOVEMENT and i thank them for the evolving mutual support they’ve shown at various times and places for the Jericho Movement, the Black Movement and other Movements of People of Color and the Oppressed.

–END–

Why you should support Black PP/POWs

By Sundiata Acoli
May 13, 2011

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 U.S. and the world is going – and if you want to see the U.S. 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 because 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.

Parole Hearing Scheduled for June 15, 2012

To contact the SAFC to receive a form letter that you can use to write-in on behalf of the release of Bro. Sundiata, please write to TheSAFC@gmail.com.
5/24 Note from Sundiata:

Greetings All,

The NJ Parole Board notified me 2day that my Parole Hearing will be conducted by teleconference at FCI Cumberland, MD on Friday, June 15, 2012. They say it will be a teleconference hearing becuz my previous parole hearing was only a short while/2 years ago.

Political Prisoners, Mass Incarceration and What’s Possible for Social Movements

The following article by PP/POW Sundiata Acoli was written to accompany Dan Berger, author, anarchist and college professor on his January, 2013 book tour thru Germany. Dan is author of Outlaws in America: The Weather Underground Organization and is the editor of The Hidden 1970s.
Also published in the San Fransisco Bay View 7 February 2013.

America has millions of prisoners locked away in its dungeons, many for 20, 30 and 40 years or more – yet astonishingly, it claims there are no Political Prisoners or Political Prisoners of War (PP/POWs) in its prisons – and that it has no PPs.

That makes the u.s. the only country in the world that has MASS INCARCERATION, has more prisoners period than any other country – and has prisoners locked in secret CIA prisons around the world, but no PPs.

Since it has no PPs it obviously has no masses of poor, hungry, homeless or unemployed people, nor does it have hordes of oppressed nationalities and lower classes herded into reservations, barrios, ghettoes, ‘hoods, trailer parks and housing projects who are daily subjected to various forms of discrimination, racial profiling and police brutality, murder and mass imprisonment.

If the u.s. has no PPs, then apparently there’s no MASS INJUSTICE in america because that’s where MASS INCARCERATION and PPs come from. MASS INCARCERATION is the barometer, the main indicator of MASS INJUSTICE in society.

PPs are those in every land and thru out every era, who are imprisoned for fighting INJUSTICE in their societies and the same holds true today for the relationship between MASS INJUSTICE, MASS INCARCERATION and PPs in u.s. society – and who must be freed! Not only PPs – but ALL those imprisoned by unjust policies.

The latest 30-year prison-building/mass-incarceration spree has left the land dotted with thousands of new prisons overfilled with millions of prisoners – all of which has convinced state legislators that they cannot incarcerate their way out of the defects in this political system and that the current budget-busting levels of incarceration are too costly to sustain any longer.

So at this moment it seems very possible for social movements to succeed in reducing prison populations. But any reductions under the present policy would only postpone the next INCARCERATION binge to some more cost-efficient time in the future altho MASS INCARCERATION itself is the problem! Not crime, not drugs nor violent offenders per se, but MASS INCARCERATION itself is the problem. Crime rates, for serious crime, were as low in 2011 as they were in 1964. Rates for violent and nonviolent crimes have been declining for at least five years but the national prison population is functionally the same size. So it’s clear that incarceration rates are “policy” driven, not “crime” driven. And history shows that america’s incarceration is driven primarily by “unjust racial/class” policies.

The 1st instance of america’s unjust racial policy occurred at inception with its incipient genocide against Indigenous american, theft of their land and Chattel Slavery – unjust on its face – became racially so when it switched to enslaving Blacks ONLY. Confinement of Indigenous americans on reservations, their captured Chiefs and Braves in military prisons and the enslaved Afrikans on plantations for 300 years was the first MASS INCARCERATION committed by the colonial nation. Every slave confined on a plantation or runaway detained in jail was a POW. So was every Indigenous american forced onto reservations or detained in military prisons – as was any other person detained for resisting american genocide, enslavement, rape and robbery of their lands and nations.

The 2nd instance, which began at the end of the Civil War and continued until the 1970s, was the use of Black Codes and Jim Crow segregation laws to re-enslave the newly freed Blacks and people of color in general thru mass imprisonment in the penal system. At the time Whites were the overwhelming majority of the nation’s prison population when the percentage of Blacks in the southern prisons jumped from near zero to 33% within 5 years. Others imprisoned during the ensuing 100 year struggle against Jim Crow segregation and other racial/class oppressions were the increasing number of poor immigrants and other such agricultural and industrial workers, union organizers, war resisters, ghetto heroin addicts and the rising number of Civil Rights workers and revolutionaries of all stripes: Black Panther Party, Puerto Rican Young Lords, Anti-imperialist Weather Underground Organization, Chicano Brown Berets, American Indian Movement, the Asian I WOR KUEN and numerous others which resulted in the defeat of Jim Crow (de jure) segregation during the mid-’60s. By 1975, Black and other people of color made up nearly half of the 250,000 prison population. The between 1865 and 1975 produced a great number of PP/POWs, including Big Bill Haywood, Sacco and Vanzetti, Sitting Bull, Marcus Garvey, and Pedro Albizo Campus; George Jackson, Angela Davis, Marilyn Buck, Huey P. Newton, Assata Shakur and many others.

And the 3rd instance of unjust racial/class policies began around 1975, a decade after the defeat of Jim Crow (legal, not actual) segregation. In that intervening period and beyond, numerous revolutionary organizations who were fighting injustice–the Black Liberation Army, FALN of Puerto Rico, American Indian Movement, Weather Underground Organization, the United Freedom Front, MOVE and others– were attacked by the police who killed or imprisoned several of their members. Those imprisoned joined the ranks of other unrecognized PP/POWs already in prison. Ronald Reagan set widespread injustice in motion by flooding South Central L.A. with “crack” cocaine to secretly finance the Nicaraguan Contra War in the early 1980s, and incarceration rates skyrocketed. “Crack” spread quickly, devastated ghettoes nationwide and escalated the racist hypocritical War on Drugs and racial profiling schemes that mainly targeted people of color, White hippies and the poor as crime suspects and targeted communities of color for saturation with Street Crime Units to terrorize, mass imprison and paint its inhabitants with felony convictions later used to deny their right to vote, deny their right to work jobs/trades requiring certain licenses and certificates, deny the right to live in public housing, deny food stamps, deny student loans for college/trade course etc., all of which relegated felons to a permanent 2nd-class status, exploded the prison population from 250,000 in the mid-’70s to 2.3 million today and so aptly verified noted author Michelle Alexander’s statement that: “MASS INCARCERATION is the New Jim Crow.” This era produced PP/POWs Oscar Lopez Rivera, Kuwasi Balagoon, Mumia Abu Jamal, David Gilbert, Leonard Peltier, Move 9, Susan Rosenberg, Carlos Alberto Torres, Tom Manning, Jaan Laaman and numerous Muslim, Earth Liberation Front, Animal Liberation Front, Environmentalist and Occupy Wall Street PPs, plus Sekou Odinga and the liberation of Assata Shakur followed by her political asylum in Cuba. Blacks had become the absolute majority of the prison population at about 55% but the number is even higher since approximately 5 to 10% of the Black population is hidden in under the “Hispanic” ethnic category in the census, which often omit racial designations so that the “official” percentage of Black prisoners is listed at about 45% followed by a fast growing number of Browns: Latino/as, Hispanics, Indigenous americans and Asians, with Whites declining to less than 20%.

Since america’s MASS INCARCERATION is driven by unjust racial/class policies then the real solution to MASS INCARCERATION is MASS “DECARCERATION.” In other words, drastic cuts to ALL prisoner’s TIME, since TIME is the currency, the legal tender, the great equalizer and righter of wrongs in prison.

Many prison and human rights activists are in agreement with a position forwarded by Michelle Alexander, which calls for incarceration rates to be reset to 1980 levels, or even to the post-Jim Crow level of the 1970s, which are levels before Ronald Reagan flooded South Central and set off the “Crack” epidemic in america. Decarceration opens the door to struggle over the life and scope of the system more generally; it can be shrunk well beyond its earlier levels! To “DECARCERATE,” many activist advocate some form of time-served plus prisoner-age combination that automatically put a prisoner out the door when the combination adds up to a certain number. The main proposal for this strategy, advocated by POWs like Russell Maroon Shoatz, calls for 25/50 and out: that is, if a prisoner is over 50 and has served 25 years or more, than s s/he is “automatically out the door” or discharged immediately. This strategy will free those imprisoned by, or long held for, biased and unjust policies – including many PPs as well.

Thank you for your attention – and i hope we can find ways to work together in support of PPs, prison struggles and progressive movements in both our countries. Our main PP organization is The Jericho Movement at nycjericho@gmail.com. Feel free to contact them on any issue regarding solidarity work for PPs in the u.s.

i also bring you solidarity greetings from those who have been on a rolling on hunger strike in the California state prisons. They’re joined in a fierce struggle to end solitary confinement, some of whom have been held in solitary 20 years or more; 20 years in conditions described by their outside representative thusly:

“The long-term (indeed life long) indefinite isolated solitary confinement in 7′ 7″ x 11′ 7″ concrete boxes for 22 1/2 hours per day in California’s Pelican Bay and Corcoran Secure Housing Units (SHUS) is torture. It is cruel. Without phone calls, without human touch, degrading and humiliating routines, bad food, insufficient clothing, no fresh air and they NEVER see natural sunlight, terrible mattresses… without hope of ever escaping, all this most often for reasons that have nothing to do with behavior, or even disciplinary matters. This is unprecedented in the history of the United States. Isolated for life for alleged associations, for what books you read, what art you draw or for what you believe in…. this is commonplace in the California system – a system which takes up more than half of California’s budget.”

They’re also struggling against an insidious gang debriefing program that requires them to “give up” or “make up” info (i.e., “snitch”) on another prisoner as their only ticket out of solitary. As expected, or designed, the program creates or greatly aggravates hostility between prison gang members and ethnic groups. In return the Hunger Strike leaders have initiated a Truce Movement among the various gangs and ethnic groups that’s well worth your support and worth emulation by other states. To find out how you can support the California Prisons’ Hunger Striker contact their outside representatives at:

Anne Weills and Carole Travis
Siegel and Yee
499 14th St. Suite 300
Oakland, CA 94612

and/or contact any of the following prisoner Hunger Strike leaders:

Todd Ashker, C58191, D1-119
Arturo Castellanos, C17275, D1-121
Sitawa Nantambu Jamaa (Dewberry) C35761, D1-117
Antonio Guillen, P81948, D2-106
Paul Redd, B72683, D2-117

Pelican Bay mail to prisoners is addressed to:
P.O. Box 7500
Cresent City, CA 95532

Thank you.

In Struggle,
Sundiata Acoli

Happy Birthday Assata!

May you have many many more – and may the support of people everywhere be strong enough to ensure that you have many more despite the declaration of war on you, the Black masses and other oppressed people by the sitting u.s. President.

It is well known that u.s. Presidents carry out both public and private agendas on behalf of their voting-constituencies as well as their rich powerful private benefactors.

Much of Richard M. Nixon’s Welfare Reform policies and “War of Drugs” campaigns were simply covers for his private low-intensity “War on the Black masses” and other people of color as portrayed in notes by his White House Chief of Staff in The Haldeman Diaries:

“Monday, April 28, 1969 – [Nixon] emphasized that you have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the Blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to. Problem with the overall welfare plan is that it forces poor Whites into the same position as Blacks. Feels we have to get rid o the veil of hypocrisy and guilt and face reality.

Pointed out that there has never in history been an adequate Black Nation, and they are the only race of which this is true. Says Africa is hopeless, the worst is Liberia, which we built.” p. 53

Bill Clinton used the slogan, “To change welfare as we know it,” as his cover for continuing the “War on Blacks” and other oppressed masses. By the time he left office, Clinton had kicked more Black women off welfare and put more Black men in prison than any other u.s. President, before or since. Also by then, the terms “crime,” “drugs” and Ronald Reagan’s “Welfare Queen” had long been crystalized in the Amerikan psyche as code words for “Black.”

The War in Iraq represented George “W.” Bush’s overt War on Terror and his treatment of the New Orleans’ flood victims adequately represented his covert “War on Blacks.”

Barack Obama took office, ended the War in Iraq and shifted the focus to the War in Afghanistan and the Pakistani Border Regions – on Al-Queda and the Taliban – and on the Islamist in the Mideast and Afrika. He now proclaims an end to the Global War on Terrorism by bringing the troops home from Afghanistan (actually a retreat from the Mideast) to “pivot toward Asia” while fomenting fratricidal wars throughout Afrika and shifting focus again, this time, to the War on Domestic Terrorism with special emphasis that it will be “a return to the status of the ’70s.” But in the ’70s the word “terrorist” was also just another code word for “Black.”

The problem today is that most perpetrators of u.s. domestic terrorism – lethal public bombings, mass-murder shootings in schools, colleges, religious sites, theaters, etc – are White or of Mideastern extraction. Still, less than 3 weeks after 2 young White men bombed the Boston Marathon, Obama put Assata Shakur, a 66 year old Black woman in Cuba 29 years, on the Most Wanted Terrorist list, the same list from which he selects his drone-kill targets. So for all who have been debating, waiting and wondering when and what, if anything, Obama will do for the poor neglected and needy Black masses, he has just given his answer! Obama’s War on Domestic Terrorism, like previous Presidents’ Reform of the Welfare system and their War on Drugs, War on Crime, War on Terror campaigns etc., will be nothing less than the resurrection of an amped-up COINTELPRO and the continuation of a stepped up covert War on the Black masses, others of color, the poor and oppressed in attempt to keep us suppressed, impoverished, mass imprisoned and in a permanent state of dependency and second class status.

WHEN YOU TOUCH A WOMAN, YOU STRIKE A ROCK

The “up” side is that Obama’s’s declaration acted as a wake-up call to masses of Black and other oppressed. People of all nationalities and walks of life, both hi and low, are holding teach-ins on Assata’s life and and the National Conference of Black Lawyers (NCBL) has a public online petition (printed below) calling for the “Most Wanted Terrorist” designation and the $2 million bounty on Assata to be rescinded.
On July 16, 2013, Assata Shakur’s Birthday, prisoners at FCI Cumberland MD, enthusiastically signed NCBL-like Petitions for Assata and sent the list of prisoners’ signatures to NBCL’s NYC office.
We ask and strongly urge other prisoners to do likewise. Show our Sistas and fellow rades some Love. NBCL’s address is:

National Conference of Black Lawyers
P.O. Box 240583
Borough Hall, New York 11424

Thank you,

Sundiata Acoli,

July 16, 2013
FCI Cumberland

NCBL’s Petition For Assata

NCBL’s Petition For Assata
On July 16th, 2013, Assata Shakur’s Birthday, FCI Cumberland’s prisoners spontaneously showed their strong support for her and the National Conference of Black Lawyers’ (NCBL) online petition calling for Assata’s removal from the government’s “Most Wanted Terrorist” List and revocation of the $2 million bounty on her.

The prisoners signed petitions similar to “NCBL’s Petition for Assata” and forwarded the lists of signatures to NCBL’s NYC office. We ask and strongly urge other prisoners to support NCBL’s online petition (printed below) by collecting their own list of prisoners signatures’ calling for Assata Shakur’s removal from the “Most Wanted Terrorist” List and revocation of the $2 million bounty on her – and sending the list of signatures to:

National Conference of Black Lawyers
P..O. Box 240583
Borough Hall, New York 11424

Thank you,

Sundiata Acoli,
Aug. 1st, 2013
FCI Cumberland MD

NCBL’s Petition For Assata

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear President Obama:

We write to urge you to overrule the FBI s decision to put Assata Shakur, aka Joanne Chesimard, on the “Most Wanted Terrorists List, with $1 Million FBI Reward Offered for Information Leading to Her Capture and Return,” as phrased by the FBI s May 2, 2013 announcement.

This $1 million combines with the $1 million bounty already offered by New Jersey. We know of no support for the claims by the FBI in making the announcement that Ms. Shakur has used her asylum in Cuba to “promote” “terrorist ideology” and espouse “terrorism.” We ask that the FBI be directed to publicly produce documentation to support these claims, and that until and unless this is done, its officials be directed to withdraw these assertions.

The FBI s accompanying actions should also be immediately withdrawn for the following additional reasons:

President Obama, commenting on the Boston Marathon bombings last month, you declared, “Anytime bombs are used to target innocent civilians, it is an act of terror.”

This is consistent with the generally accepted view of terrorism as “the calculated use of violence or threat of violence against civilians for the purpose of intimidation or coercion or changing government policy.”

There is no evidence that Ms. Shakur has taken part in any violence or threats of violence against civilians to intimidate or coerce changes in government policies.

Going back 40 years, the May 1973 incident, which led to her only criminal convictions, was initiated by the New Jersey State Police. They pulled the vehicle she was in off the highway based on an allegedly defective tail light.

This type of police action was consistent with tactics used to harass Black people generally, particularly Black males; and sometimes provoke incidents, particularly against members of Black militant organizations during that period.

The loss of life on both sides ensuing from that stop was clearly regrettable; and, we do not intend to retry here her controversial trial and conviction before an all white jury.
We know that there were serious questions of fairness sufficient to draw international attention, and for Ms. Shakur to be granted political asylum in Cuba nearly 30 years ago, even though Cuba has returned others wanted by U.S authorities.

We believe putting Ms. Shakur s name on the FBI s “Most Wanted Terrorist List,” and increasing the $1 million bounty to a total of $2 million, 40 years after the fact, only makes sense in light of recent press reports regarding your administration s consideration to take Cuba off the U.S. list of nations that allegedly sponsor terrorism, a designation which is so unfounded that it has become an embarrassment to our country. Opponents of steps towards normalization with Cuba have seized on this aged and disputed case in what we view as a transparent attempt to recast this history into today s fears, using Assata Shakur as a pawn in their political maneuvering.

The FBI s participation in this political maneuvering by joining with New Jersey to offer a $2 million bounty is a dangerous act, encouraging someone to try to kidnap her, breaking Cuban law as well as being in violation of International Law. Should the offer be taken seriously by someone, the foreseeable result would be bloodshed, if not also a major international incident.

The FBI s stated rationale for these actions is also regrettable and dangerous because it equates radical beliefs favoring fundamental social and economic change, with “terrorism.” This serves to intimidate and chill others who dare to speak out against United States domestic and international policies. In this regard, these actions directly undermine the protections given all citizens under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.

Finally, this decision continues to racialize the United States criminal punishment system, a system that since the enslavement of African peoples has targeted Africans and African Americans for harsher punishments than those given particularly to similarly situated whites.

The accusation of terrorism has fallen prey to this continuing travesty of making the color of “crime,” now the color of “terrorism,” black. One needs only recall the early reports of who was suspected of the Boston Marathon bombing to support this conclusion: the first reports were of a darker-skinned male, possibly African-American. This message scrolled continuously on CNN for a number of hours and then “African-American male” was deleted, leaving darker-skinned male. But the alleged perpetrators were far from “darker-skinned.”

In conclusion, we ask that you stand behind the statements made by Attorney General Holder when he took office in 2009, addressing assistant U.S. attorneys, and make those statements applicable to the FBI:

“Your job is in every case, every decision you make, to do the right thing. Anybody who asks you to do something other than that is to be ignored.” The FBI s recent actions are far from the “right thing” for this country and we urge you to reverse them.

Sundiata’s Review of Number 13

Number 13
A comic book by Robert Love and David Walker
Dark Horse Books, 10956 SE Main St., Milwaukee OR 97222
Darkhorse.com
First Edition: August 2013
58 pages of full color

i don’t know much about comic books tho naturally i read them as a kid in the ’40s/’50s. Back then there were no or few people of color in comics, and certainly no Black people.

Superman, the first comic, came along in ’36. He was a White Superhero, and as i remember, one man with super powers fighting enemies in the Metropolis – and worldwide. His enemies just happened to be America’s enemies too: petty criminals at home and foreign terrorist from abroad. His friends were the Metropolis police commissioner, the mayor; reporter: Lois Lane, and everyday working stiffs: construction workers, shop keepers, etc., encountered in passing.

The monthly comic was colorful, 10 cents a copy, 10 pages or so and entertained a circulation life of about 6 months. It was also a boon to those with poor reading skills. They could almost teach themselves to read or greatly enhance their reading ability thru careful study of the pictures, actions and word balloons of the characters.

Superman and similar comics of the era taught basic purported American values: fair play, don’t lie, cheat, steal or kill; work hard and one can make it in America – and any boy can grow up to be President.

Number 13 is obviously a new and different comic. It’s about all people: those of color, non-color and hybrids too. 13 is a Science Fiction comic that begins after the world ended. The earth has been devastated and is now populated by humans, mutants, ogres, cybernetics: part human-part machine and similar survivors of the plague. The planet is divided into those who are immune or those who are infected, now at war with each other and forming alliances with others of like mind or predicament.

The protagonist is a lone cybernetic boy with hidden superpowers, a broken memory system and the number “13” stamped into his head. He stalks a desolate and hostile landscape searching for his daddy.

This is a short trailer for a film version of Number 13 available here.

The artwork for the graphic novel is astounding, the action scenes fierce, some festive while others are outright bloodcurdling and cruel. The passive scenes are more subdued but just as arresting. The color scheme is primarily soft luxurious earth tones contrasted with splashes of brilliant pastels. The results allow one to simply brose thru and enjoy the pictures, the colors and actions without reading the words, if one chooses, but still “get” the story… which is as old as the universe: good vs. evil, tolerance vs. intolerance, freedom vs. tyranny and a principled peace vs. unjust wars; all done in a way that holds the fascination of those from 8 to 80 (plus, spoiler alert, the good guys win!)

Number 13 is 58 pages of action, color, fun and suspense. The cover and each page is highly polished, glossy finished, thick, durable and made to last for decades; more like a collector’s item than transitory reading. It makes for an excellent treat to oneself or gift to a family member or friend.

Price is 15.99 USA, $17.99 CAN.

Sundiata Acoli’s Statement to the 18th Annual Family Political Prisoner Tribute Dinner

Tribute to Herman and Iyaluua Ferguson

It is an extreme honor, and pleasure, to pay tribute to Herman and Iyaluua Ferguson, husband, wife and leaders of our struggle for the liberation of Black people – and all other oppressed people. They blazed a trail together -sometimes Herman led, at other times Iyaluua – and they set examples for all of us who came after, to follow.

One such occasion was Herman’s leading role in the struggle for community control of NYC schools in the late ’60s. It spanned 3 years and 3 designated school districts: Ocean-Hill Brownsville, Harlem and the Lower East Side – and over time the predominantly White teacher’s union opposed community control by shutting down all the schools in NYC thru a teacher’s strike.

Black and Puerto Rican communities, teachers and leaders – and progressive White teachers – banded together in the three designated school districts to keep their schools open. Herman, as school principal, set up new teaching curriculums, helped solicit substitute teachers of color to replace the striking White teachers and helped recruit community parents to work as teacher’s aids and hallway monitors to keep their schools open and operating.

The late Jitu Weusi and the late Sonny Carson played prominent roles in the school struggle as did the NYC Black Panther Party (BPP.) The u.s. government brought into the fray, the FBI, the NY Police Dept., CIA and the various Military Intelligence services, plus the Ford Foundation was there from the beginning orchestrating intrigue and other underhanded schemes. Herman was arrested/convicted on spurious conspiracy charges and the NYC Panther leadership was arrested on the Panther 21 Conspiracy Case – all as part of the government’s collateral attack leading up its ultimate use of overwhelming force to crush the community control school board and movement. It could not have ended otherwise considering the great imbalance of forces between the government and the community at the time.

But it is axiomatic that one learns more in defeat than in victory. Many important lessons were learned that are applicable to future struggles for community control. Many examples were set that are worth following today – and Herman was instrumental in setting many of those examples.

And now ……Sister Iyaluua, who saw a glaring lack of financial support for Black Liberation Army (BLA) Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War (PP/POWs) and boldly stepped forward to fill the void. She came up with the brilliant idea of holding a dinner to honor BLA PP/POWs and their families – and to use the funds raised by the dinner for distribution into the prisoner’s commissary accounts. Then she, her daughters, Herman and other family members and supporters worked long hours over hot stoves cooking fabulous meals and doing all the other work to make the dinner a most memorable occasion. And it was an astounding success, so much so that it has become an annual tradition of our movement.

So i give special honor to Sister Iyaluua for creating the vehicle that broke decades, yes DECADES, of hand to mouth existence for me and some other BLA PP/POWs, by providing substantial and consistent annual donations to our commissary accounts. Frankly, the Anarchist Black Cross Federation (ABCF), also raises funds for BLA and other PP/POWs commissary accounts but Sister Iyaluua’s example also inspired other Black organizations to make similar commitments though economic hard times have made most drop by the wayside.

Still MXCC, the originator of the PP/POWs’ Family Dinner, marches on –the gift that truly keeps on giving – and for that i and other BLA PP/POWs are eternally indebted to the incomparable Sister Iyaluua – and her steadfast husband, Herman – for leading the way. Thank you.

In Struggle,

Sundiata Acoli

Saturday, January 18th 2013

Haikus for Sundiata Tumblr Page and Statement

Haikus for Sundiata, held May 2nd, was a social media campaign asking folks to share haikus they had written for Sundiata Acoli. The response was overwhelming in the best way possible. There were hundreds of haikus written. We are still working on compiling, so check back to the tumblr for updates:

http://haikus4sundiata.tumblr.com/

Sundiata wanted to send his personal thank you to everyone who participated to make the event such an incredible success:

Greetings Comrades,

Thank each of you for your tremendous support. Frankly, i’m truly astonished, honored and humbled by the outpouring of Love, Social Consciousness, Artistic Genius and Serious Fun you’ve shown me in your “haikus 4 Sundiata.”
i deeply appreciate your Solidarity – and may it continue til we all get free!

With Love, and Struggle,

Sundiata Acoli

Senses of Freedom: A New Poem by Sundiata Acoli

image courtesy of Vanessa Huang/haiku by Vanessa Huang

Senses of FREEDOM

Freedom FEELS sublime
like a slow Sunday morn in the springtime
of your lover.
The kids are outside
delighting in the new turn of the tide
and each other.
Children are priceless again,
women are liberated.
All races are respected
and the people placated.
SOUNDS of a Sax Supreme,
riffs of laughter, Salsa and Country themes
all syncopate with the Trane.
Indigenous drums toll:
“The Long War’s Over” as soft wind chimes knoll
in matching refrain.
No “Shots fired!” today.
No mother crying for her child.
No stroll thru the morgue tonight.
Just the best night’s sleep in a long while.
Aromas of fine wines
and SCENTS of baked breads draw the masses to dine
outdoors in the street.
The Haves share freely
with the Nots now as both have equally
when they meet.
No need for snatching, grabbing
or fighting to be first.
There’s enough for all now
in this wisely-shared universe.
A TASTE honey
on earth, sweeter than the sweetest pastry,
milk, or sugar tea.
People living free,
controlling their own lives and destiny,
as it should be.
Looking back, SIGHTING
ahead to a legacy of lightings
delayed by theft.
But back on path at last,
seeking keys from the present past
to the age old mysteries of LOVE & JOY, LIFE and DEATH.

Sundiata Acoli,
August 31, 2014
FCI Cumberland MD

A Message from Sundiata: Thank you for Senses of Freedom

See below for photos of the Poetic Day of Action for Sundiata Acoli.
Posted 4 November 2014

Greetings Senses of Freedom (SOF) Participants, Attendees, Special Guest and other Contributors,

i hope this finds each of yor as happy and pleased as i am with your amazing response to the National Day of Poetic/Hip Hop Action for me, Sundiata Acoli. i couldn’t have asked for a more successful outcome.

My warmest appreciation to all those who contributed online and via snailmail and a special thanks to those who held public Senses of Freedom events in the cities of Newark NJ, Portland OR, New Orleans LA, Brooklyn NY, Philadelphia PA, Oakland CA, Houston TX, Baltimore MD, Detroit MI, Washington DC, and my highest praise to their Special Guest/Participants/Sponsors: The Venerable Sis Amina Baraka, Hakim Green, Jerry Gant, Sean Battle, DJ Darrin Dee, Zayid Muhammad, Margie “Mia X” Johnson, Bre “Blkbrry Molassez” Knight, Fayemi Shakur, inspiration for the online “Senses of Freedom” logo and flyers; Oba Akin, The Student Entertainment Club, The Hip Hop Students Association, The ECC Africana Institute, Peoples Organization for Progress, The Newark Anti-violence Coalition, The Washington DC National Black United Front, Salim Adofo: Oregon Jericho, Rochell Rodeezy Hart, Renee Mitchelll, Mic Crenshaw, Blacque Butterfly, Ahjamu Umi, Kashea Kilsonn-Anderson, Walidah Imarisha, Glenn Waco, Jaime Limon-Guzman, Enjoni Restaurant, Marie Shepard-Glenn, KBOO Radio, All Africans Peoples Revolutionary Party, Critical Resistance Portland; RAE House, Jackie Sumell, Mwalimu Johnson, FreeQuency, A Scribe Called Quess?, Truth Universal, Hasan Salaam, Sis Dequi Kioni-Sadiki Odinga, Mogadisha, Sophia Dawson; Sundiata Bookstore in Oakland; Houston’s National Black United Front & their long time always faithful Comrade Bros & Sis; Maryland State’s Jericho Eddie Conway, Abdul Jabbar, Caliph, Ameejill Whitlock, Lultho Kwame and participating Poets…and many others.

Thank you one and all for your tremendous support. Let us march on till victory is won.

In Struggle

Sundiata

Ride and Denied

Published 4 July 2016 in San Fransisco Bay View
Posted 12 July 2016.

This is a brief recap of my parole hearing and denial.

Background

Almost two years ago, Sept. 29, 2014, the New Jersey Appellate Court ordered the New Jersey Parole Board to “expeditiously set conditions” for my parole. The Parole Board appealed the order on grounds that I had not undergone a hearing before the full Parole Board prior to securing the order for release.

Almost two years ago, Sept. 29, 2014, the New Jersey Appellate Court ordered the New Jersey Parole Board to “expeditiously set conditions” for my parole.

The New Jersey Supreme court reversed the Appellate Court’s order and remanded the case to the full Parole Board for completion of the administrative process, which, for a convicted murderer like me, requires a full hearing before the Parole Board prior to securing release from incarceration.

The process further requires that the victim be given the opportunity to address the board and to witness the full board’s interaction with the incarcerated murderer prior to his or her release.

The Ride

So on June 6, 2016, I was transported by van to Trenton, N.J., for a parole hearing – without my attorney present – before the full New Jersey State Parole Board. Upon arrival at New Jersey State Prison (NJSP), formerly Trenton State Prison (TSP), the driver of the van reported that he had “inadvertently” left my legal valise, containing ALL my legal material, at FCI Cumberland, Maryland.

New Jersey and the FBI are caught in a time warp and can see Sundiata Acoli only as a cop killer, not the brilliant mathematician, computer analyst, intellectual and humanitarian known and loved by the rest of the world, who registered voters in Mississippi in 1964, worked in Harlem with the Panthers, and has educated, mentored and counseled countless younger prisoners over the years; he is their hero. Imagine the term “killer cop” branding someone and burying him behind bars for life. – Photo: Star-Ledger

Most importantly, the valise contained my speech, “Why I Should Be Paroled,” co-written by my dear comrade-daughter Fayemi Shakur and me, which I planned to deliver before the full board two days hence. I asked the driver to call R&D at FCI Cumberland and have them mail my valise overnight.

NJSP immediately mug shot me, gave me a Sundiata Acoli NJSP photo ID with my height reset from 5 feet 9 inches to 5 feet 5 inches by a spiteful guard, took me to lockdown and cut off all communications and contact between me and the outside world: NO incoming or outgoing mail, telephone, telegram, email, visitor, money transfer, commissary, pen, paper, pencil, eraser, stamps, envelopes, towel, face cloth or pillow.

I told them I was from a medium security federal prison with no reason to be locked down. They ignored me. My attorney, Bruce Afran, was scheduled to visit me the next day, the cell was freezing cold, it was near sundown so I called it a night and slept in my jumpsuit.

Next day I arose at sun-up, stiff necked, showered and shook myself dry like a wet dog. I was given two-thirds of my normal medication dosage at FCI Cumberland and when I asked why, I was given no reason but simply told “No.”

I told them I was from a medium security federal prison with no reason to be locked down. They ignored me.

I was four-man escorted to Health Services for a Hep-C blood test and returned to my cell when I noticed they had written “PC” and “NO-CON`” (i.e., “Protective Custody” and “NO CONTACT” respectively) on my cell ID card. I told the escort sergeant that I was not PC, had not requested PC and would sign any release form necessary to remove myself from PC custody.

He said “No,” nor would he summon a lieutenant or the captain to that effect, so I resigned to put my attorney on the matter when we met. A prisoner overheard my complaint to the sergeant and sent me a stub pencil with no eraser. I was most thankful and sat down to write what I could remember of my “parole” speech when the guard called out that my attorney is here.

Bruce’s father had died the previous week, but he was holding up well. He shared some youthful photos of his father and family with me, I expressed my condolences and we got off into the work.

I told him they had lost my legal material, they have me in “total” lockdown, have a “PC” sign on my cell door and have cut my meds to two-thirds of the dosage I received at FCI Cumberland. Bruce said he’d look into it and that meanwhile we needed to focus on the parole hearing tomorrow.

Hearing day

On June 8, 2016, I arose and told the guard I had no clean clothes and no (safety) razor but I did have a parole hearing today and I’m NOT going to the hearing unless I get a shower, razor and clean clothes. He produced all three within the hour except he substituted a barber for the razor.

The U.S. Cold War with Cuba is thawing, whetting the appetite of New Jersey and the FBI to throw Assata Shakur back in a U.S. prison. They’ve labeled her a “terrorist” – she’s the first woman on the FBI’s terrorist list – and raised the price on her head to $2 million. That is a measure of the same officials’ attitude toward her co-defendant, Sundiata Acoli. This photo is from a New Jersey State Police-FBI press conference on May 2, 2013. – Photo: Ed Murray, Star-Ledger

I noticed that my ankles had begun to swell from water accumulation due most likely to the change in my medication. I was escorted to take a TB x-ray and returned to put the finishing touches on my speech when the guard said, “Parole Board’s calling!”

The hearing lasted from about 9 a.m. until about 4 or 5 p.m. It reached a new level of examination, cross-examination and recrimination.

Again they questioned me primarily about the events on the turnpike and almost nothing about my many positive accomplishments. They also asked: “Aren’t you angry that they broke Assata out of prison instead of you?” My response was: “No, I don’t or wouldn’t wish prison on anyone.”

Again they questioned me primarily about the events on the turnpike and almost nothing about my many positive accomplishments.

At the end, they again denied parole and plan to go outside the guidelines to give me an “extended” (longer than usual) “hit” (time until next parole hearing.) Since Blacks, others of color and the oppressed are the overwhelming majority of people in prison, we need to seriously think about creating parole boards that mirror the people in prison, that is, “People Parole Boards.”

My remaining two weeks at NJSP were spent in almost complete isolation from the outside world, except my last night there the Inmate Legal Association (ILA) sent me a free permit for an outgoing legal letter. By then my ankles were almost continually swollen from excess water buildup. I wrote my favorite attorney and next morning they packed me out for the return trip to FCI Cumberland.

Send our brother some love and light:

Sundiata Acoli #39794-066 (Squire)
FCI Cumberland
Federal Correctional Institution
P.O. BOX 1000
Cumberland, MD 21501

Carotid Surgery

They took me to an outside hospital for surgery on my right carotid artery which carries blood thru the neck to my brain. Blockage of these arteries can lead to brain damage called a stroke.

The surgery was done to remove deposits or plaque from my neck artery. The deposits/plaque can slow or even stop blood flow thru the artery.

An opening was cut in my neck, clamps placed above and below the plaque in my carotic artery where sometimes a temporary bypass is used to maintain blood flow around the area being operated on. The artery was opened, cleared of plaque and sewn back together. The clamps and any bypass tubes were removed and the neck incision was closed with stitches. The operation lasted 1 and 1/2 hour.

I was returned to FCI Cumberland, MD that afternoon or the next and full recovery is expected in 2 weeks.

Awakening Resistance by Sundiata Acoli

Published in 2018 Certain Days Political Prisoner Calendar

Writing this piece is like writing on beach sand …in a windstorm. The facts change with every news cycle. But fortunately there remain real facts that stand the test of time.

May 27th, 2017 was a day that Amerika lost it’s innocence. Jared Kushner, son-in-law of Donald Trump, was reported that day to have set up back channel (secret) communications to hold secret talks and discuss secret projects between the Russians and the Amerikans.

i have long suspected that some countries hold back channel communications with their adversaries during certain confrontations to prevent misinterpretations of their actions. At such times each side can show themselves bold and courageous in the face of terrifying threats, plus test their citizenry’s resolve to follow their leaders to the Gates of Hell, if necessary. In other words, to shadow box on the world stage.

Otherwise, the U.S. is a dying superpower. It has won only one war (Iraq I) in the last 70 years. All others were either lost: Vietnam, a draw: Korea, still raging and yet to be decided: Iraq II, Afghanistan, Syria, and Somalia or the opponent was too small (Grenada) to rate as a super power “win.” If the U.S. is to continue it must hitch it’s star to a legitimate power, either Russia or China, or forfeit its superpower status.

Trump is a White nationalist who seemingly prefers to hook the U.S. to Russia as opposed to China – and in that way extend U.S./Russian/European global rule for a generation or so more before the inevitable sets in.

Trump apparently proposed some type of back channel scheme in which he and Russia’s, President Putin, would become partners but at times appear to be enemies who would earn the eternal adulation of their people by keeping them proud, patriotic and prosperous inside-traders of fake war scares, fake sanctions and fake wars with few real casualties while inducting the winning nation into a fake White world.

The Russian ambassador publically exposed Trump’s back channel proposal which Putin publically and promptly rejected. Where we go from here in the next few years is anybody’s guess but that was your central question so the following are my best answers/observations.

My view is that Trump is likely to serve his full term in office after creating an irreconcilable constitutional crisis in the government’s investigation of him or in the government’s inability to function effectively.

That being said he’s likely to use his remaining time in office to enact racist right-wing legislation that enhances the rich, negotiates safe passage for him, his family and cronies, whips up hysteria and deadly police violence against targeted racial, religious, gender, drug and class groups, and that keep the Republican Party alive.

Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ public shoutouts for all-maximum sentences is a recipe for mass imprisonment, constant declarations of martial law and for the eventual embrace of a minority White supremacist government in the U.S.

In turn the U.S. would likely use Trump’s “unpredictability” to the same advantage that the Chinese use North Korea’s Kim Jong-un which could easily trigger Russia to seek it’s own “rouge” nuclear partner: Iran, Turkey, or to nuclearize Syria to more level the playing field.

The long term domination/exploitation of Black and other communities of color by racist, bloodsucking and corrupt police, businesses and politicians keep our communities in turmoil, our families and schools dysfunctional and little more than conveyor belts to prison where cheap slave labor wages are transformed into subsidies that help keep White worker’s wages high, production cost low and U.S. products competitive on the global market again.

The only solution for people of color and all other oppressed people is to unite against our common oppressor for the freedom of all oppressed people.

Sundiata Acoli
June 7th, 2017

"Affirmation" by Assata Shakur Read by Sundiata Acoli

Hear Sundiata read the poem Affirmation by Assata Shakur!

http://www.prisonradio.org/media/audio/affirmation-project/affirmation-read-sundiata-acoli

IWS: I suggest that you go ahead and visit the link to listen to this moving poem. If I had made this an EPUB 3.0 I would've included it.
You can hear Sundiata Acoli's other recordings submitted to Prison Radio on their website here.

Correspondence

Sundiata Acoli Question #1 From Jalili

Bro. Jalili: What’s your view on this whole Presidential fiasco?

Bro. Sundiata: Well, first i wonder why you call it a fiasco (meaning a “complete failure”)? Also a fiasco for who? For Black people? For Obama? The Clintons? McCain, the u.s. or who? Any way, i assume you’re asking for my view on “this whole BLACK Presidential thing?” and if so, then i think it’s a normal progression (or next step) in the struggle for power between Blacks and other oppressed people, and our enemy.

Most political people are familiar with neo-colonialism (Black mask/White skin) and know that our enemy needs Obama to present a Black face to the world to help White imperialist and their allies hold on to world power a little longer.

But that in no way changes the fact that the Black masses fervently want Obama to win, and so do a lot of other nationalities (especially youths) here and abroad. Nor does it change the fact that Blacks see Obama (or a Black President) as a concrete symbol of progress, hope and success in our long struggle for freedom, equality and justice in the u.s.

So now i guess you’re also asking what do i want to see happen? i want to see Obama win. Not that i think he’s going to “part the waters” for Blacks or do much that’s different from what any other White politician would/could do. And frankly, some of his positions stated in his AIPAC and other speeches scare me to death.

But mainly, i think his Presidency would serve to push the Black masses (and others oppressed) past their long held belief that a “Black President” means we’ve achieved freedom. If Obama wins i think his tenure will eventually show Blacks (and others oppressed) in a positive way that “color really doesn’t matter,” that a Black (or non-White) President in itself makes no difference, that the system itself must be changed and the only way that’s going to happen is that we, the oppressed, band together to change this racist imperialistic system ourselves.

Now if Obama doesn’t win (due to foul deed or not) it’s going to anger and radicalize a lot of Blacks and other oppressed people and move them beyond relying on conventional politics alone as a means to bring about real change.

So my view on the whole matter is that it’s generally a win-win position for Black and oppressed people. Whether Obama wins or loses, it will eventually push us forward and unite us for real change. But that also means our greatest challenge, as oppressed peoples, will be to overcome the deluge of sinister divisive tactics that the enemy has in store for us in attempt to continue his rule over us.

Struggle.

Sundiata

Sundiata Acoli Answer #2 From Sourakhata

Bro. Sourakhata: What do you think of French and European neo-imperialism in Afrika?

Sundiata: Well, i think the French and European neo-imperialist basically play the role of the fox or “good cop” in Afrika and elsewhere while the u.s. plays the role of the wolf, cowboy, policeman and “bad cop” in Afrika and the rest of the world. But whether the neo-imperialists play the role of wolf or fox or good cop or bad cop you can bet your life they all are united in their aim which is to maintain their rule over Afrika and the rest of the world by whatever means necessary.
Struggle,

Sundiata

Sundiata Acoli Question #3 From DreadedBliss

Sister nattyreb, I would love to hear Elder Acoli’s thoughts on integration and what he feels it has done, both positive and negative, for our people. Lately especially I’m really feeling like the whole integration thing has helped to wipe out the unity we once felt as a people, something I can only get a feel for most of the time ‘less I’m around my Brothers and Sisters who are on the same kind of vibe.

See I was born down south in the late ’70s and growing up I just don’t recall much of that unity and pulling together that I’ve read/heard about. I was listening to WRFG the other day and they were saying how back in the day, when times got hard we used to watch out for one another and rely on each other way more. Not just family but friends, neighbors, all that.

Maybe I’m just feeling mighty sensitive about it all ’cause times are hard and I look around and it’s just, I don’t know, seems like it’s every man/woman for himself/herself.

When I’m walking down the street I try and greet my Brothers and Sisters and look them in the eyes and smile and we’re just not vibin’ like that. I don’t know why.

Anyway, I’ve got some thoughts on this but this is all for now . I hope my question isn’t too obtuse. I’ve got a problem with tangents

Sundiata Answer #3

Sundiata: Well there's integration – and there’s equality, desegration, anti-discrimination, etc. Black people were/are struggling for “equality,” (Black equality, if you will) which is a human right, a universal right for Black people to be treated equal to all other people on earth. In fact, we were/are struggling for the right of all people to be treated equally. White racists, White liberals and Bourgeoise Blacks called our struggle for “Black equality” a struggle for “integration” to put the focus on privileged Whites instead of oppressed Blacks and others of color. White racists used “integration” as a buzz word to spread hostility against Blacks by implying that our main goal was to integrate, mix and “miscegenate” with Whites. White Liberals called our struggle “integration” out of their paternalistic need to deem which Blacks were/are acceptable for mixing and associating with Whites. The Black bourgeoisie accepted perpetuated the term “integration” because their main goal actually was/is to mix with and be accepted by Whites as equals, which is there definition of equality.

Some positive things “integration” (or rather, our struggle against segregation/discrimination and for equality) did is that it got rid of legal segregation and much of the open discrimination against Blacks, others of color and even oppressed Whites in public and many private facilities: buses, trains, hotels, restaurants, recreation facilities, hospitals, schools, universities, workplaces, housings, voting booths/politics etc; so that there are many more opportunities open to Blacks and others oppressed than previously.

Obviously people of color still don’t have full equality in this country and i doubt we ever will as long as the u.s. remains a capitalist society. Capitalism was built on private property and racial and class exploitation.They are part of its foundation and can’t be rooted out unless capitalism itself is destroyed.

Some negative things “integration” did was that it stunted, corroded and destroyed many of the Black institutions, businesses and facilities that previously existed in our community. It closed many Black High Schools, demoted Black school administrators to regular teachers or retired or fired them and sprinkled Black High School students among the White High Schools. Integration saw Blacks flock to patronize White businesses; Black businesses couldn’t compete, didn’t grow and closed up shop or remained 4th rate enterprises. Integration saw Blacks flock to White suburbs, Whites moved out and are now flocking back to the cities thru gentrification projects that buy abandoned buildings etc in Black communities. The gov’t used “integration and beyond” to increase the Black middle class and create the beginning of a true Black Bourgeoise class. There’s also been a sizeable increase in the Black underclass who are suffering from poverty and racism but are getting little (or not enough) help from the Black upper classes and this has eroded a lot of the Black unity that was present prior to “integration.” And last “integration” has caused some Blacks (and many Whites) to think we are free and no longer need Black unity and struggle.

As for Sis Dreaded Bliss being born in the ’70s and not recalling all of the Black unity that folks say existed then; well, i find that many older people, or those who were there at the time, tend to exaggerate a little when they reminisce about the good ole days or the good things during their generation or times. Often the exaggerations are basically true but just magnified somewhat to stress a point, boost their own ego or to show what people should be doing now. But even considering the exaggerations, it’s clear that more Black unity and struggle existed in the past (especially during the Civil Rights, Black Power and Black Liberation era of the mid-’50s, ’60s and early ’70s) than exist now. i think it was because we knew as a people that we were all in it together, our backs were to the wall and we had nowhere to go but forward or remain slaves.

There’s no doubt that “integration” has increased the Black middle/upper classes, made some Blacks prosperous and made others feel they are free; yet there are still masses of poor underclass Blacks among us such that an overall effect of integration is that it’s increased the class divisions among us. So what many see as a decrease in Black unity is really the increase in class divisions (both actual and ideological) among us: the Black upper classes separating from (some say “abandoning”) the Black underclasses. It’s probably the first sign that the Black struggle will be forced to move more toward class struggle.

Struggle,

Sundiata

Sundiata Acoli Question #4 From Majadi

Majadi: “My question is dealing with strategy! Please ask the elder, if it is better that one large organization for our movement be established or should we organize as small independent groups to pursue our liberation goals?…I think it comes down to one extremely large Grizzly Bear versus 9 small Grizzly Bears. Which organizational structure works better? I am of the mind that the smaller groups can move faster.”

Sundiata: As with most questions of choices, the answer is “It depends…on what your circumstances are.” If you are operating in an orthodox political environment and put a premium on strength, power and size then ONE-LARGE organization (1 Grizzly) is probably the best choice. It allows for the greatest unity, thus greatest strength – and the greatest power because an organization by nature makes a group greater than the sum of its individual members. For example, it’s self-evident that a United States of Afrika would be much stronger and much more effective than the present Afrika that’s divided into 51 separate independent states.

But if you’re in an unorthodox environment: outnumbered, severely repressed, constantly surveilled and/or short on basic resources like personnel, money and material etc., then these are the type of circumstances that usually call for the speed, flexibility, diversity and stealth that SMALLER-GROUPS (9 Grizzlies) provide.

The remaining choices of structuries/strategies fall somewhere between the two extremes:ONE-LARGE GROUP or a number of SMALLER-GROUPS. They are a matter of putting together the proper mix of size, speed, strength, flexibility, stealth and power (medium, small and/or midget sized Grizzlies) to establish the type of organization that’s best suited for the job at hand.

And last, being ever mindful of the dialectical relationship between the two extremes in which the SMALLEST-GROUP(S) can turn into the LARGEST-ONE or vice versa, i personally think it would be best if ONE-LARGE organization could be established for our movement provided that we always remain committed to using SMALL, LARGE or WHICHEVER-SIZED GROUPS, structures or strategies that prove most effective in dealing with the problems confronting us.

Struggle,

Sundiata

.

Sundiata Acoli Question # 5 From Tanya F. Baby

Tanya F. Baby: Uhuru ! I would like to ask Bro. Sundiata for some guidance on how would I go about organizing the youth in my community to help them to stop all of the counter-productive behavior that is being displayed throughout New Orleans. How can I do my little part to kick the truth to the young black youth? I don’t want to go the route that’s currently being done here by a few local churches. In my opinion their methods of trying to get them to come to church is NOT WORKING! The youth here in N.O. are not feeling that. I’m just looking for some ideas on what I could do to reach them

Sundiata: First, pardon my delay in responding Sis. Tanya Baby but i got tied up in some other matters/deadlines that i had to get out of the way first.

Second, you asked a very important question; one that’s on the mind of most conscious Black people and many other people.

Third, i know you know that all our youths are not engaging in counter-productive behavior so i assume you’re more concerned about our many “lost sheep/prodigal sons” which is as you should be.

And next, all i really know is that: “A race is like a [person,] until it uses its own talents, takes pride in its own history and loves its own memories, it can never fulfill itself completely.” -John W. Vandercook, Tom-Tom, 1926

i also know that to reach our wayward youth you must first be willing to go among them, engage them and began some sort of dialogue with them. i say this because so many of our people are afraid of our youths, particularly youths of the street organizations or gangs, and frankly some have a right to be afraid but i don’t think progress will be made without first a willingness to engage Black youths face to face.

That’s what Fred Hampton of the Chicago Panthers did in the ’60s with the Black P Stone Nation and he made good headway with them before he was assassinated. It’s what Geronimo and the L.A. Panthers did to recruit Bunchy Carter of the Slausons and other street gang members. Then this government used its counter-intelligence program, COINTELPRO, to assassinate Bunchy Carter, frame Geronimo (27 years for a crime he did not commit) and did the same to other Panthers to destabilize the BPP which loosened its influence on the L.A. gangs. They then began to prey on each other , mainly Crips and Bloods, through gang wars that spiraled out of control.

Politics And Changing Mind Sets

So what was the difference between the Panthers and the gangs? Politics! The Panthers were political, the gangs weren’t/aren’t. They say there were only 5000 to 8000 Panthers during their peak in the ’60/70s. There are about 500,000 gang members today. Can you imagine where we would be if those 5000 Panthers had been able (or allowed) to survive until today or to grow to 500,000 members? If so, we would be FREE today! And Obama would be a revolutionary president in the mold of Malcolm X or Patrice Lumumba instead of mostly a conventional Democratic Party politician.
But instead of half a million revolutionaries or Panthers we have 500,000 gang members who are more dangerous to themselves and the Black community than they are to our enemies. The main reason is because of their mindset and their lack of politics. SO ONE GUIDELINE FOR YOU, SIS. TANYA BABY, IS: FOCUS ON FINDING WAYS TO CHANGE OUR WAYWARD YOUTHS MINDSET FROM ANTI-BLACK TO PRO-BLACK AND FROM APOLITICAL TO POLITICAL.

Any success you achieve in changing youths mindset in that regards will go a long way in changing their counter-productive behavior for the better. Changing mindset means teaching Black youths to “Know Themselves:” to know their true history, place and future in the world and how to love and respect Black people instead of hating them, and to do the same to all people who do likewise to them. Changing mind sets from apolitical to political means helping to politically educate our youth in the revolutionary thoughts of Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, Kwame Nkrumah, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara, Mao Tse-tung, Lenin, Marx and other progressive thinkers and in the revolutionary aspects of Pan Afrikanism, Socialism, Anarchism and other progressive philosophies, so that our youths know their real friends from real enemies and how to get real power for our people and all oppressed people to control our own lives. That is what real politics and real freedom is all about.

Subbing One For The Other

Now, no one is naive enough to think an introduction to Afrikan/Black history & culture and politics alone will sway most youths to change their counter-productive behavior. That would almost be like copying the local church’s method which is not working.

Many youths gravitate to street gangs because of the comradery, substitute-family, peer pressure, protection, sex, fast money and other material benefits, excitement and action that they find there.Youths love action and are going to do something one way or the other, either positive or negative, because it’s their nature to act. And they will act even tho their present behavior is mostly harmful to the Black community. Still, most youths want to do the right thing but many simply don’t have/ haven’t had proper direction in how to do so. Also it’ a well known principle that if you want to effectively stop an action, say a counter-productive behavior, then you had best have some alternative, say a productive behavior, to take it’s place.

SO SIS. TANYA BABY, THE OTHER GUIDELINE IS: FOCUS ON FINDING WAYS TO HELP COUNTER-PRODUCTIVE YOUTHS SWITCH TO PRODUCTIVE ACTIVITY.

Drug selling is the most difficult to switch/replace because the profits are greater/quicker than most other enterprises despite its harsh penalties of almost certain imprisonment or death. Still, instead of their selling drugs you might help show them ways to use their strength to open legit businesses that provide self-employment and jobs for them and their crews. The hip hop/internet industry seems to have opened the door to such opportunities for Blacks altho there are many other professions: light construction, real estate, lawn care, building/office cleaning, health care providers, soul food restaurants, cd/video shops, etc., that lend themselves to Blacks carving out a stronghold in the industry the same way Italians have done with the docks, longshoremen, unions, etc., the Irish have done with the police department, pubs, and as politicians, Asians have done with science/technology, Viet-Namese Gulf coast fishing and Asian restaurants, etc., Jews have done in medicine, science, media, law, banking,etc, and Mexicans are doing with common labor, farm labor, Mexican restaurants etc.
Instead of drug abuse you might help youths pursue a college education, technical training and a professional career.

Instead of Black-on-Black violence you might help show them the benefit of setting up Community Self-Defense Units to deter vigilantes, Black Water mercenaries and other racist elements from driving thru the N.O. Black community shooting and killing Blacks again as they did during Katrina.
And since the government’s standard response to ANY/ALL disasters occuring in the Black community has been to immediately send in the National Guard and nationwide police forces then for our youth’s own protection you might help show them the need to be well schooled in Community Survival Tactics under Martial Law. And the same holds true for N.O.’s need in particular for Community Flood Evacuation and Rescue Teams for anyone left behind during future floods. Many feel that government attitudes toward Blacks have somewhat changed for the better recently, and hopefully that’s so, but until proven true it’s better to hope for the best and stay prepared for the worst. Besides, for any oppressed people, Collective Self-Reliance is almost always the best policy.

i know there are organizations already engaged in some of these endeavors and have been doing so since Katrina hit. They deserve our highest appreciation, respect and support because they can’t do it alone. And it goes without saying that it would also be a tremendous benefit to them and to our progress as a people if street organizations would assist in such efforts instead of engaging in mostly Black-on-Black violence.

Sis. Tanya Baby that’s basically the gist of my ideas/thoughts on what you can do to reach/help our youth. It basically boils down to doing what you can to help politically and culturally educate our youth and to get them engaged in our people’s struggle for control of our own community and ultimately for complete control of our own lives: which is true freedom!

i hope something i’ve said is useful to you and i thank you for posing the question.

Love, and Struggle,

Sundiata

If you have a question for Sundiata Acoli go to the link below to Ask Sundiata

For Sundiata Acoli Answers
Sundiata Answers

Writings By Others About or Supporting Sundiata Acoli

These texts were also taken from Sundiata Acoli's website.

Systematic Injustice Against Sundiata Acoli – by Stephen Lendman

In her book titled The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness, Michelle Alexander cites Martin Luther King in 1968 highlighting the need to shift from civil to human rights advocacy, saying initiatives for it just began. In fact, it’s truer now than then with Blacks and Hispanics comprising two-thirds of America’s prison population, by far the world’s largest at around 2.4 million, most incarcerated for nonviolent or political reasons.

Focusing on the war on drugs, Alexander characterizes the New Jim Crow as a modern-day racial caste system designed by elitists who embrace colorblindness. Believing poor Blacks are dangerous and economically superfluous, America’s gulag became an instrument of control. According to Alexander:

“Any movement to end mass incarceration must deal with (it) as a racial caste system, not (a method) of crime control. We need an effective system of crime prevention and control in our communities, but that is not what the current system is. (It’s) better designed to create crime, and a perpetual class of people labeled criminals, rather than to eliminate crime or reduce the number of criminals.”

Overall, America’s most vulnerable are victimized by judicial unfairness, get tough on crime policies, a guilty unless proved innocent mentality, three strikes and you’re out, racist drug laws, poverty, and advocacy for social justice issues challenging repressive state policies.

As a result, figures like former UN ambassador Andrew Young believes “(t)here are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people (in America incarcerated as) political prisoners.” Including undocumented Latino immigrants and other aliens, it’s tens of thousands, an April 2011 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report saying Washington annually spends over $1.5 billion imprisoning them.

Currently, around 55,000 are in federal prisons, another 75,000 in state facilities. At a November 2010 Workers World Party conference, International Action Center organizer Gloria Verdieu said:

“Freeing all political prisoners, prisoners of conscience and prisoners of war” tops America’s social justice struggle, “because the state uses the criminal justice system to lock up those who sacrifice their livelihood for freedom and justices for the masses.”

In fact, international precedent recognizes releasing them. France freed anarchists, Germany Baader-Meinhof figures, and Britain IRA members. Not America, however, in contrast to notorious criminals pardoned, including Iran-Contra conspirators Caspar Weinberger, Elliott Abrams and John Poindexter, as well as others convicted of serious offenses warranting long internments.

Unlike them, today in America, heroic activists are incarcerated unjustly, including Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, Ramsey Muniz, Oscar Lopez Rivera, the Cuban Five, lawyers Lynne Stewart and Paul Bergrin, and, among many others, Sundiata Acoli (born Clark Edward Squire) for 38 years.

Access his complete profile at:

http://www.sundiataacoli.org/

Born in January 1937, it calls him a New African political prisoner of war, mathematician, and computer analyst with a BA in math from Prairie View A & M College. In summer 1964, he did voter registration work in Mississippi. In 1968, he joined the Harlem Black Panther Party, doing community work relating to schools, housing, jobs, child care, drugs, and police brutality.

In 1969, he and others were arrested in the Panther 21 conspiracy case, jailed for two years without bail, then acquitted and released. Afterward, FBI pressure denied him professional employment, and COINTELPRO harassment and surveillance drove him underground.

Driving on the New Jersey Turnpike in May 1973, he and others were accosted by state troopers. Zayd Shakur was killed, Assata Shakur wounded and captured. One state trooper was killed, another wounded. Acoli was captured days later. In a highly charged, “sensationalized and prejudicial” trial, he was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life plus 30 years.

Initially for five years at Trenton State Prison (TSP), he was confined to a special Management Control Unit (MCU) solely for political reasons, given only 10 minutes daily for showers and two hours weekly for recreation.

The International Jurist (TIJ) “publishes perspectives and opinions on the current state of international law and its future,” especially international humanitarian law, human rights law, transitional justice and international criminal law, and comparative law.

After interviewing Acoli in September 1979, TIJ declared him a political prisoner. Days later, he was secretly transferred to solitary confinement at maximum security US Penitentiary, Marion, IL despite no outstanding federal charges. In July 1987, he was sent to Leavenworth, KS federal prison.

Eligible for parole in fall 1992, he was denied permission to attend his own hearing, permitted only to participate by prison phone. Despite his exemplary prison work, academic and disciplinary record, hundreds of supportive letters, and numerous offers as a computer professional, he was denied in a 20 minute proceeding, giving him “a 20-year hit, the longest in New Jersey history,” minimally requiring him to serve another 12 years before again becoming eligible for parole.

Reasons given were his Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army membership, as well as hundreds of “Free Sundiata” form letters calling him a “New Afrikan Prisoner of War” and that he hadn’t been sufficiently rehabilitated. At issue, however, is forcing him to renounce his social justice advocacy and admit wrongdoing for struggling to liberate his people.

On March 4, 2010, the New Jersey State Parole Board (NJPB) denied him for the third time, again calling him “not rehabilitated” despite over a 1,000 supportive letters and petitions from noted figures, including lawyers, clergy, academics, psychologists, community members, and journalists.

Then in mid-July, with no explanation, he got written notice of a 10-year hit, requiring at least another six years imprisonment before parole eligibility at which time he’ll be 79 years old or perhaps dead.

On August 27, 2010, an administrative appeal to the New Jersey Parole Board was filed, his legal advisers saying his case is strong based on NJPB procedural errors.

Throughout his incarceration, he’s endured harsh treatment yet maintained an exemplary record, as well as becoming a talented painter and writer on prison industrial complex issues. He’s also a father, grandfather, and both brother and mentor to fellow inmates besides making invaluable community contributions before incarceration.

In the 1960s, after years as a skilled computer programmer, he participated in southern civil rights struggles. Moreover, his New York chapter Black Panther Party activities involved him in numerous social justice struggles, including education, slum housing, school breakfasts, healthcare, legal help, and politics. He also worked on anti-drug and police brutality initiatives, an admirable record overall deserving praise, not incarceration for nearly four decades.

A Final Comment

On April 17, 2011, Acoli’s latest article headlined, “Sundiata Acoli: Why You Should Support Black Political Prisoners/POWs and How,” saying:

“My name is Sundiata Acoli….and am now a Black Political Prisoner and Prisoner or War (PP/POW) who’s been (incarcerated) for the last 37 years.”

“So why should you care,” he asked? “Why should you support Black PP/POWs? Well, maybe you shouldn’t. If you’re happy with (how America) and the world is going, and if you want (Washington and Western powers) to dominate and oppress the rest of the world, then (don’t) support Black PP/POWs (and it agenda to end predatory) capitalism, sexism, (racism), and all unjust oppressions of people and life (on) earth.”

That advocacy got Acoli and many others imprisoned for supporting and doing the right thing. Now it’s up to mass activism no longer to tolerate it.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

10/2011 Sundiata Acoli Freedom Campaign Update

PLEASE SUPPORT!
From: Sis. Fayemi

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 13th, 2011 at 6:11 pm

Many of you know, after serving over 38 years in prison, former Black Panther member Sundiata Acoli was denied parole for the third time on March 4, 2010. But he was also given a ten year hit by the New Jersey State Parole Board. Last December, an administrative appeal was denied by the NJ Parole Board and a letter affirming the denial of Sundiata’s parole was received.

Considering Sundiata’s age and his right to freedom, Sundiata’s legal team is focused on pursuing his appellate remedies through the courts, seeking to appeal his repeated denial of parole. His legal team has expanded over the years and currently in the process of raising the 10 thousand dollars needed to file the appeal.

The good news is, the Appellate Court is ready to set a briefing deadline in spite of the State’s improper delays and callous disregard for Sundiata’s rights. Keep in mind, Sundiata will be 74 years old in January.

People who are interested in the parole and release efforts should contact SAFC @ thesafc@gmail.com to inquire about ways to assist us with this urgent fundraising need. We believe the film, A Power Sun, is important and should be supported. Monies raised on Sundiata’s behalf should go towards his appeal. We still believe that he can and will receive his freedom with the right support.

The SAFC is a 501c3 organization. All contributions go directly towards Sundiata’s legal fees. Volunteers of SAFC are not paid and do not request or receive any of the contributed funds.

If you would like to write Sundiata please send your letters to:

Sundiata Acoli (#39794-066)
(Squire)
P.O. Box 1000
FCI Otisville
Otisville, NY 10963-1000

Funds supporting his legal defense can be sent to:

FLORENCE MORGAN
120-46 QUEENS BLVD.
KEW GARDENS, NEW YORK 11415

(Florence Morgan has served as one of Sundiata’s legal advisors for over 10 years and is the Chairperson of the New York City Chapter of the National Conference of Black Lawyers)

Checks and money orders should be made out to The Sundiata Acoli Freedom Campaign

To all those who continute to show love and support to Sundiata and all political prisoners, here’s my favorite poem I share with you…

Like You

(a poem by Roque Dalton, a Salvadorian poet and guerilla fighter for freedom in the 60s and 70s. He was killed for revolution.)

Like you I
love love, life, the sweet smell
of things, the sky blue
landscape of January days.
And my blood boils up
and I laugh through eyes
that have known the buds of tears
I believe the world is beautiful
and that poetry, like bread, is for everyone.
And that my veins don’t end in me
but in the unanimous blood
of those who struggle for life,
love,
little things,
landscape and bread,
the poetry of everyone
Love & Respect.

“Obama Redux 12” by Jalil Muntaqim

America’s Blacks, Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans and poor whites resurrected the ideal of “HOPE” espoused by Barack Hussein Obama. For the most part, the color divide in the country raised their collective voice in the form of participatory democracy by re-electing Obama to the Presidency. Some pundits say the election gave Obama a mandate, others say it is a referendum opposing the extreme right. In either case, there is an overarching question to be asked of the Obama Presidency—“What Have You Done for Me Lately?”

This question begs the question, in accord with the maxim by Frederick Douglass, that “power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has and it never will …” What demands have been made of the Obama Administration in the last 4 years? It is easy to come to terms with this reality. Void a national political determination or agenda, the ideal of “HOPE” evolves into a mystical presumption.

For example, the young Hispanic community became vocal and mobilized demanding the implementation of the Dream Act. They petitioned, demonstrated and lobbied for immigration reform on this issue. While they did not accomplish everything they wanted during the competitive election year, Obama did sign into law a compromise immigration law giving immigrant children greater opportunity to not be deported. Similarly, the disproportionate disparity between the criminal penalty of possessing small amounts of crack cocaine compared to powder cocaine was narrowed, modifying the sentences of many Black and Hispanic prisoners who were suffering long prison sentences for crack cocaine convictions.

These examples indicate that, when an issue is made part of the national public political debate, the potential exists to influence and change public policy. Given this understanding, what should be made part of the national Black agenda when 13 percent of Blacks are unemployed compared to 7 percent of whites? This has created a greater drop in income since 2007 than any other racial group. Hence, Black household wealth, which had been concentrated in home ownership, had dropped to its lowest level in decades. This has led to 28 percent of Blacks as a whole and 37 percent of Black children poor, compared to 10 percent of whites as a whole and 13 percent of white children.

Although Obama managed to pass the Affordable Care Act into law, Blacks account for 44 percent of new HIV infections since 2009. Just as disturbing, according to a New York Times article titled “How Prisoners Make Us Look Good” by Sam Roberts:

“According to federal data, 3.1 percent of Black men were in state and federal prison at the end of 2010, compared with 0.5 percent of non-Hispanic whites and 1.3 percent of Hispanics. Among Black men 30 to 34, 7.3 percent were serving a sentence of more than a year. (A total of 748,000 adults were in local jails, 1.5 million were in state or federal prisons, 840,000 were on parole and 4 million were under supervised probation.)”

These facts speak directly and specifically to significant problems confronting a substantial portion of the general voting population that re-elected President Obama. But without a national political determination and agenda, there will not be a comprehensive and sustained demand made of the Obama Administration. Therefore, the answer to the question “What have you done for me lately?” is “What have you demanded I do for you?!”

President Obama has made it explicitly clear he does not represent Black America, despite overwhelming support and expectations of him. I believe he no longer deserves a pass, if he ever did. It is more than time for a Black national agenda to forge public policies that address the myriad problems that continue to keep Black Americans at the bottom of socio-economic development and prosperity, and in the disastrous throes of marginal existence.

Respectfully submitted,

Jalil A. Muntaqim
Attica 11/13/12

Update on End to Hostilities, prisoners’ demands, hunger strike

by Arturo Castellanos
Originally published 18 November 2012 in the San Fransisco Bay View.

I’m one of the Pelican Bay State Prison SHU (Security Housing Unit) prisoner representatives. I write this to touch on a couple of issues of immediate importance.

First, we have received a lot of questions regarding the “End to All Hostilities” paper, via prison publications, attorneys etc. I will answer the most important ones here.

No, it was never meant to be a call for a hunger strike on Oct. 10. Those that did go on one, no biggie. I’m sure it was good practice.

Yes, it’s also between all groups (all good solid Southern, Northern, Eastern, Western, up and down, back and forward). And since it involves all CDCR and county jails, it also involves all Youth Authority, YTS (Youth Training School), and all juvenile halls, camps etc. across the state.

We hope that this now clarifies the document to everyone’s satisfaction. Of course there are always going to be groups and individuals who feel that it does not apply to them and act accordingly in an adverse manner under that false belief. Well, the only thing that we can say to those is to repeat an old convict/prisoner common sense saying, “Don’t ever falsely assume one’s hands are tied, where one expects all others to just stand still and take it.” Therefore, it’s vital that this End to Hostilities holds for all races and groups, as I will briefly explain.

The documents the Short Corridor Collective have been putting out since our March 2012 rejection of CDCR’s STG-SDP (Security Threat Group, Step Down Program) 5.5 Program and will continue to put out are in the following order:

1. The Open Letter to Gov. Jerry Brown

2. The Agreement to End Hostilities between all races and groups

3. Our Rejection/Response to CDCR’s STG-SDP 7.0

4. Our Demands/Notice giving CDCR a “deadline” to meet all of the demands, or else we are going to resume our peaceful hunger strike (HS) and work stoppage (WS) starting on July 8, 2013.

It’s vital that the End to Hostilities holds for all races and groups.

Note that we only agreed to “temporarily” suspend the July and October 2011 hunger strike after CDCR agreed to change a lot of SHU policies and practices in a positive manner. Since then, CDCR has failed to honor their end of our prior agreements. Instead, they gave us STG-SDP 7.0 that will only put a lot more in SHU.

July 8, 2013, will be two years. That’s CDCR’s deadline. Stay tuned for the last two documents. The last document should be out on the web by the end of this year. And we will also serve a copy of it on all CDCR officials. But I will give a sneak preview here in a couple of paragraphs.

We are giving CDCR a deadline to meet all of the demands, or else we are going to resume our peaceful hunger strike and work stoppage starting on July 8, 2013.

Since July 2011, we have read in prison publications how prisoners all across the state and the U.S. are also being deprived and tortured in different ways, including women prisoners. We knew we were not alone in this.

So our Demands/Notice will contain, among others, the list of Orders/Demands listed in The Rock newsletter, Volume 1, No. 10, October 2012 (which are a part of our original five core demands); as well as our statement about how CDCR must abolish “intelligence” based SHU/Ad-Seg (Administrative Segregation) confinement, as stated in The Rock newsletter, Volume 1, No. 9, September 2012.

We will also call on [prisoners in] GP (general population), Ad-Seg, death row and SHU representatives, including women (I’m also personally including here all YA and YTS), to draft up their own demands tailored to their own individual institutional needs to be served on CDCR and their prison wardens – I would get started on them now – as well as a call for all prisoners across the U.S., state and federal, to join us July 8, 2013, for a national hunger strike and work stoppage to protest solitary confinement and the continued deprivations and conditions in their individual prison systems.

We will also encourage reps from each U.S. prison to formulate their own separate demands, now tailored for their individual state and institutional needs, also setting July 8, 2013, as their deadline to meet their demands or else they will also go on hunger strike and work stoppage, which we will support. And for those interested as to acceptable strategies, have family and friends send you free download copies of The Rock newsletter Volume 1, No. 7, July 2012.

We will also call on [prisoners in] GP (general population), Ad-Seg, death row and SHU representatives, including women (I’m also personally including here all YA and YTS), to draft up their own demands, tailored to their own individual institutional needs, to be served on CDCR and their prison wardens – I would get started on them now.

In closing, we know a lot of prisoners are wondering why we did come up with a date so far away. As individuals from each group, we are always itching and ready to act; however, because this involves many different groups, ideas, opinions, as a collective we had to restrain our urges of going at it now and instead we had to exercise patience in order to obtain a mutual agreement between all of our groups which we now have.

That was the most important aspect of our own negotiations, to set a deadline for CDCR that we all agreed on. And to fully understand our vision, where we are not only thinking of our state, one must stand back and see thebig picture of this upcoming main event, where all U.S. prisoners are asked to pick up the flag of solidarity and also volunteer and join us on that national hunger strike and work stoppage starting on July 8, 2013.

We are basically also opening the door and giving all U.S. prisoners a forum to put forward their own demands for change. This all takes a lot of time to do, plus, it’s less than a year away, which is nothing for those of us who have already spent decades in SHU. And for those who do not wish to participate, that’s fine with us. Just like all the past ones, this is going to be on a pure voluntary basis; however, it is now time to stand up on July 8, 2013, and be counted among those standing on the line that we have already drawn in the sand!

All U.S. prisoners are asked to pick up the flag of solidarity and also volunteer and join us on that national hunger strike and work stoppage starting on July 8, 2013.

Always in solidarity!

Arturo Castellanos, C-17275, PBSP-SHU Prisoner Representative

Mail to Arturo is severely restricted.

“Settle your quarrels” is from the famous passage in “Blood in My Eye” by George Jackson, written just before he was assassinated while he was locked in solitary confinement at San Quentin Prison and published posthumously: “Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are dying who could be saved, that generations more will die or live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution. Pass on the torch. Join us, give up your life for the people.”

Photos from Day of Poetic Action for Sundiata

Below are photos from some of the 10 events in 10 cities nationwide that happened Sept. 22nd for the National Day of Poetic/Hip Hop Action for Sundiata Acoli.
Posted 20 October 2014

There are some items that were missing from the website.

A photo of Sundiata's painting of Iyaluua Ferguson with no watermark

Sundiata Acoli’s Letter In Support Of A P.O.W.E.R. SUN Film