[Ppnews] Building a Political Prisoner Support Movement

[Political Prisoner News]

Building a Political Prisoner Support Movement
By Dan Berger

 From Left Turn Magazine issue 20
http://www.leftturn.org

Political prisoners, if largely unacknowledged, are at the crux of 
debates over incarceration. Their presence testifies to the ongoing 
legacy of social problems, which in itself is central to the cycle of 
crime and punishment. As the anti-prison movement continues to grow 
in strength and stature, the question of political prisoners demands 
attention because these movement veterans remain part of current 
endeavors for social justice. Their lengthy incarceration, including 
many with life sentences, speaks to the vengeful mindset governing 
imprisonment in the US. Parole is almost uniformly impossible even 
after decades of incarceration and despite their having met all the 
requirements for release.

Supporting and working for the release of political prisoners is at 
the heart of building movements where activists look after one 
another and accept collective responsibility. The state uses the 
imprisonment of political leaders as a bludgeon against movement 
victories. Their incarceration is a reminder of the strength of 
radical mass movements. As a result, political prisoners serve 
collective prison time, for all those who participated in the 
movements from which they emerged.Now is a critical time for the 
political prisoner movement. The end of 2005 brought several 
setbacks. White anti-imperialist Richard Williams, who had been 
facing severe harassment since 2001, died after twenty years in 
prison on December 8. Five days later, in a sobering reminder that 
the state neither forgets nor forgives, California governor Arnold 
Schwarzenegger denied clemency to Crips founder Stanley Tookie 
Williams, based largely on the fact that Williams found redemption in 
politics and dedicated one of his books to a series of radicals, 
mainly Black people who had served time in prison like George Jackson.

The US continues to fight for the extradition of Gary Freeman, an 
African-American man arrested in Canada in 2004. Although Freeman had 
been living there for decades, the US government maintains Freeman is 
a former Black Panther Party member wanted for the attempted murder 
of a Chicago police officer in 1969. The rational used against 
Freeman is similar to that used against five former Panthers in the 
San Francisco Bay Area, who all served time in jail in 2005 for 
refusing to cooperate with a grand jury investigating 
thirty-five-year-old crimes. Several of the men were tortured as 
Panther activists in the 1970s by the same police officers now 
overseeing the resurrected murder investigation.

Sobering reminders

Federal authorities arrested seven people in four states on December 
7, in conjunction with Earth Liberation Front actions dating back to 
1998. Three of those arrested are cooperating with police to lessen 
their sentences, one was found dead in his cell of an apparent 
suicide, and the remaining three face life imprisonment in a 65-count 
indictment that named eleven activists all but three of whom are in custody.

With no release date in sight for ex-Panthers, former members of the 
American Indian Movement, and others still in prison after more than 
thirty years, these new arrests should prove a sobering reminder of 
the states willingness to incarcerate political prisoners forever. 
Without a vibrant movement to free those who have already been 
imprisoned for decades, new political prisoners are likely to suffer 
a similar fate.

Despite these setbacks, 2005 also brought some victories and renewed 
protests. December saw a long-awaited victory for Mumia Abu-Jamal, 
who will now have a hearing in front of the US Third Circuit Court of 
Appeals but Mumia remains on death row even after his death sentence 
has been stayed. December began with days of action in New York, 
Philadelphia, and San Francisco in solidarity with political 
prisoners worldwide. The five former Panthers turned grand jury 
resisters were released from jail in November triumphant in their 
non-cooperation; although it is unclear whether the expiration of 
this particular grand jury will also spell the end of harassment for 
these activists. Thousands of people throughout Puerto Rico, Chicago, 
New York, Philadelphia, and the San Francisco Bay Area protested the 
September 23 FBI assassination of former political prisoner Filiberto 
Ojeda Rios, a leader of the clandestine indepentista group Los 
Macheteros, who had been living quietly under an assumed name in 
Hormigueros, Puerto Rico.

While the US denies the existence of political prisoners, it pursues 
a vengeful policy of lifelong incarceration. To acknowledge the 
political basis of their incarceration would further expose the 
depths of social problems that these militants have committed their 
lives to fighting. The veneer of US democracy and tolerance requires 
that dissidents be branded as criminalsor terrorists. Working to free 
political prisoners goes hand in hand with exposing the faade that 
the US is a country where injustice is minimal and solved through 
electoral politicsone point necessitates the other.

Demanding amnesty

Most governments routinely release political prisoners every decade 
or so, and political internees are often incarcerated together or 
allowed increased family visits, in tacit recognition of the 
political nature of their crimes. Not so in the US, where amnesty is 
a forbidden term. The FBI, Police Benevolent Associations, US Parole 
Commission, and similar entities, have routinely lobbied hard to 
prevent parole, even when people meet all standards for release 
(e.g., good records, jobs available upon release, community support).

The government has regularly pointed to the serious charges and prior 
political affiliations of the prisoners as reasons for ongoing 
incarceration even where it contradicts the normal functioning of 
parole and release from prison. Thus, building an amnesty movement 
becomes a priority.

Although support for political prisoners is at the center of 
movements in some countries, such is not the case in the US today. It 
was hard to be an activist in the US in the early 1970s and not know 
about Huey Newton, George Jackson, or the Attica Brothers. Today, 
political prisoners languish largely outside the movements 
consciousness or action. Perhaps it is because letter writing and 
lobbying are not activities revolutionaries traditionally enjoy.

Therefore, securing freedom for the many people who languish behind
bars for militant actions taken as part of mass movements will 
require a thorough challenge to the reigning political culture, as 
well as a willingness by the radical Left to strategically engage in 
activities it has generally eschewed.

As months turn into years and years into decades, several political 
prisoners have become ill. A few have passed away: Merle Africa 
(1998), Albert Nuh Washington (2000), and Teddy Jah Heath (2001) all 
died of cancer after more than twenty years inside. Even on their 
deathbeds, the state remained intransigent about compassionate 
release or parole for people who pose no threat to society. People 
are growing old in an environment known for its malign neglect and 
medical malfeasance, with the government consistently refusing parole 
because of the supposed seriousness of the offense for which 
political prisoners are incarcerated.

Prison can be seen as an extension of the repression that drove many 
of these people to undertake militant action in the first place. It 
is part of the governments arsenal to destroy revolutionaries. Then 
as now, the bulk of such repression is meted out against 
revolutionary people of color, particularly Black and Native-American 
radicals. The reasons for this are complexthey involve not just white 
privilege but the fact that the government has taken a firm position 
against the release of any political prisoner with a murder 
conviction. Due to the open levels of confrontation between police
and communities of color, these liberation movements often adopted 
different tactics than white militants. But the states intransigence 
on paroling those with murder convictions has repercussions for 
political prisoners regardless of race - several white 
anti-imperialists are also imprisoned for the deaths of law 
enforcement, seemingly with no recourse to release.

State repression

Meanwhile, the US Senate investigating committee called the FBIs
Counterintelligence program (COINTELPRO) activities little more than
a sophisticated vigilante operation that violated even the most 
minimal standards of official conduct within a democratic society. 
Despite this, no FBI agent who participated in the repression of 
legal social movements has been imprisoned for his or her 
participation in the repression of legal movements. Ronald Reagans 
first act in office was to pardon the only two FBI officials 
convicted of COINTELPRO wrongdoing.

The political incarceration of people who became active in the 1960s 
is inextricably tied to state repression. Even when they committed 
illegal acts or acts of which they themselves are now critical, their 
continuing incarceration cannot be separated from the legacy of 
COINTELPRO. Even now, movement veterans captured as a result of 
movement work in the 1960s are paying for the states crimes through 
continued incarceration. The ongoing imprisonment of Sixties-era 
activists together with a new breed of political prisoners coming 
from an array of modern movements presents a direct connection 
between the struggles of yesterday and those of today.

With public outrage over the Bush administrations illegal spying 
comes the opportunity to raise the issue of political prisoners as 
longtime victims of government repression. An administration on the 
defensive increases its repressive apparatus, proof that its 
stranglehold on power is maintained more through force than consent. 
Indeed, the treatment of political prisoners has been used to 
establish precedents regarding policing, prosecuting, and imprisoning 
any enemy of the state. The lack of pre-9/11 resistance to the 
branding of leftist prisoners as terrorists, the imposition of 
lengthy sentences, the use of isolation units, and the media 
portrayal of dissidents as grave threats to civilians, leaves us on 
weaker ground to fight this same repression now. A movement to 
defend, support, and free political prisoners and incorporating 
political prisoners into the work that we do is a necessary step to 
building sustainable movements capable of achieving lasting victories.

There are serious challenges to this work, including limited 
resources, a strategy that makes use of the legal system, public fear 
of left-wing terrorists, and the difficulty of building working 
relationships among the various movements who find themselves 
experiencing state repression. But combating political incarceration, 
and supporting those in the cross hairs of state repression remains 
central to creating a better future. After all, the government 
doesn't forget who joins and organizes in the movement why should we?


Dan Berger is a Philadelphia-based activist and author of Outlaws of 
America: The Weather Underground and the Politics of Solidarity (AK
Press, 2006). This article is a revised excerpt from that book. 
Thanks to Laura Whitehorn for editorial comments on this version.

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