Read an Excerpt
Let Freedom Ring
A Collection of Documents from the Movements to Free U.S. Political Prisoners
By Matt Meyer PM Press
Copyright © 2008 Matt Meyer
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-60486-149-5
CHAPTER 1
Section I. Putting Political Prisoners on the Map
In the early and mid-1980s, an upsurge in militant activity by U.S. revolutionary movements led to a series of arrests and renewed waves of repression, producing a whole new batch of political prisoners. Both the newer and the longer-term prisoners from each national movement, drawing on successful campaigns of the 1970s, pushed outside organizations to reassess their efforts, devise broader and more creative outreach methods, and build unity with one another. The result was that those organizations resumed working in a more coordinated way within the U.S. left and oppressed communities to put the issue of political prisoners squarely on the activist map. One of the strategies of choice was the use of People's Tribunals.
Not only did these organizations make the case that, contrary to U.S. government denial, there were more than 100 political prisoners, but also that authorities had programs scientifically designed to break the will of those prisoners through isolation, sensory deprivation, and brutality in specialized control units. Most notorious were the federal prison for men in Marion, Illinois, and for women in Lexington, Kentucky. Jailed revolutionaries like Bill Dunne (at Marion); Alejandrina Torres, Susan Rosenberg, and Silvia Baraldini (at Lexington); and Black political prisoners in the Research Committee on International Law and Black Freedom Fighters played key roles in documenting and exposing conditions in these and other units and in galvanizing outside activists to fight against them. A large-scale, multitactic campaign, including a federal lawsuit, pressured the government to shut down the Lexington Control Unit in 1988, but the Marion Control Unit would remain open for many more years. Ultimately, new and more sophisticated federal control units – particularly Florence, Colorado, for men and Marianna, Florida, for women – replaced them (although because of the struggle, conditions in Marianna have never matched the extreme abusiveness of Lexington), and horrendous clones now exist in virtually every state.
Despite these setbacks, the campaigns and events by the political prisoner support movements of the late '80s and early '90s paved the way for the broader popular support, and many of the victories, that mounted throughout the '90s.
I.1
Political Prisoners in the U.S.?
Freedom Now!
1989
The Government denies it. Yet today there are more than 100 people locked up in U.S. Prisons because of their political actions or beliefs.
The U.S. alone among the world's governments maintains the fiction that it holds no political prisoners. The official position is that all those jailed for politically motivated actions are "criminals." The U.S. tries to hide the existence of political prisoners because they challenge the image that the U.S. is a truly democratic and humane society. These prisoners expose the fact that there are political resistance movements of such influential impact that the government is compelled to use repression against them.
* * *
This was the text of a flier produced by Freedom Now!, an effort to pull together in a single organization representatives of all the U.S. political prisoners and leaders of all the internal national liberation movements.
By labeling political prisoners as criminals, the U.S. government has also been able to shield from view serious human rights violations against them. These include:
• excessive prison sentences — example: 8 Black political prisoners will soon begin their third decade behind bars;
• psychological torture;
• assault — example: one Puerto Rican prisoner of war was beaten to death by guards and his death labeled a suicide;
• sexual assault — example: under the guise of security, male prison staff forcibly conducted cavity searches on two women political prisoners at F.C.I. Tucson;
• denial of medical care;
• placement in control units — example: the men's federal prison in Marion, Illinois, which includes several political prisoners among its 400 inmates, has been condemned by Amnesty International for violating international standards on the minimum treatment of prisoners. The men in Marion are locked in their cells 23 hours per day and are sometimes chained spread-eagle to their beds for days at a time. The control unit for women at Lexington, Kentucky, was an experimental underground political prison that practiced isolation and sensory deprivation. It was finally closed by a federal judge after two years of protest by religious and human rights groups.
Human Rights Must Begin at Home!
Who are America's political prisoners? Like the four women and men pictured on the facing page — Alejandrina Torres, Leonard Peltier, Geronimo Pratt and Susan Rosenberg — they represent many movements for freedom and social justice.
People of color are most often targeted. Black activists participating in the fight for Black Liberation and against racism are the largest group represented, with well ever 50 political prisoners. Many of them, like Geronimo Pratt, have been in jail nearly 20 years.
The movement for Puerto Rican independence has also been heavily attacked with the imprisonment of many of its members. These include 14 women and men such as Alejandrina Torres who consider themselves prisoners of war. They have taken this position because they believe that as colonized people they have the right to fight for independence, and their captor, the United States, has no right to criminalize them.
Other political prisoners in the United States include more than thirty white North American activists. These militants are accused of various actions opposing the foreign, domestic and military policies of the U.S. government. Their protests have been directed against symbols of U.S. support for the apartheid regime in South Africa, military intervention in Central America, and the continued colonial oppression of Blacks and Puerto Ricans. Among these prisoners are women and men from the religious peace community who have received long sentences for direct actions against U.S. nuclear installations.
Revealing the existence of all of these political prisoners is of extra importance now because greater world attention is being focused on human rights. Many countries, including the Soviet Union and Cuba, have released most of their political prisoners. They have also started to raise questions about human rights problems here in the U.S.A. Now is the time to break through the wall of silence that has surrounded these political prisoners in the United States. We in the Freedom Now! campaign are making information available on all their cases to the people of the U.S. and the world. While the government will continue to deny holding political prisoners, we seek to make their existence common knowledge in every American community.
At the same time, all of us can begin to speak out against the terrible human rights violations taking place against political prisoners and all prisoners in the U.S. Jails and prisons have abandoned all pretenses of "rehabilitating" inmates, and have become concentration camps for warehousing the youth from the ghettos and barrios of America. We must especially denounce the spread of prison control units, which attempt to rob prisoners of their humanity, sanity and even their lives.
Ultimately we must seek the freedom of all political prisoners in the U.S. Other countries are doing it. Why not here? Freedom Now! is initiating a campaign for amnesty for all the women and men imprisoned in this country as a consequence of their political actions. Officials of the U.S. government have signed many international laws and treaties governing political repression. We must hold them to those standards!
The Freedom Now! campaign is about real people, women and men behind bars who care deeply about justice and humanity. The government has sought to isolate them, not only from their friends and families but from their ability to influence and lead political movements.
Our campaign is breaking that isolation. We are bridging the walls with a common effort that includes the active participation of the prisoners and their families, along with political activists, clergy and professionals. We welcome your participation! Join us in stopping the continued imprisonment and mistreatment of political activists in the United States. Human rights must begin at home.
Amnesty for Political Prisoners!
I.2
Political Prisoners and International Law
Research Committee on International Law and Black Freedom Fighters in the U.S. 1990
The only alternative that Black [people] have in America today is to take it out of [U.S.] jurisdiction and take it before that body [United Nations] ... which represents International Law and let them know that the human rights of Black people are being violated in a country that professes to be the moral leader of the free world.
Malcolm X, April 8, 1964
The quality and nature of the struggle waged in this country by Black people must be viewed in a historical context. First, it must be recognized that we were brought here against our will, thereby making us, en masse, political prisoners.
The initial laws of this country, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights, did nothing to change this status. They inherently stated that the laws of inclusion did not apply to us, and we have essentially remained outside to the present. This lack of legal parity has demanded that our struggle develop from one of civil rights to human rights.
We must always look at our situation differently from those who have been included within the American society. Ours has been a continuous struggle starting with the capture, the middle passage, slave revolts, and each successive generation of revolutionaries. The Black Freedom Fighters who resisted militarily in the 1960s, '70s and '80s follow in the tradition of Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner and Malcolm X.
Their struggle — our struggle — is similar to that of other peoples in the world striving for human rights and self-determination. Today, these world struggles are gaining legal recognition and protection in the growing body of international law vitalized by the Third World. Part of our task now is to have the International Law and international community recognize and protect the just struggle of Black Freedom Fighters within the United States.
Dr. John Henrik Clarke
Professor Emeritus, African World History
Hunter College, New York, NY
Committee Purpose
The purpose of the Research Committee is to increase awareness of the relevance of International Law to the situation of Black political prisoners and prisoners of war in the U.S. For nearly four centuries, Afrikans in the United States have been denied the power over their own destinies and, in return, have been fighting for self-determination. This struggle has taken many forms. In the 1960s, responding to the Civil Rights and Black Liberation Movements, a low-intensity war was undertaken by the U.S. government through the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Counterintelligence Program and local police intelligence units. As in any war, this war has had its combatants, noncombatant support units, casualties, and prisoners.
It is crucial that the local and international communities understand how International Law, including the 1949 Geneva Accords and Protocols I and II, apply to the cases of Black Freedom Fighters who are an essential and inseparable part of the Black Liberation Movement in its struggle for self-determination.
Statement of International Law
International norms and principles for the treatment of national minorities have become a part of international law through treaties and membership in the United Nations and hence part of the laws of all states.
Dr. Y. N. Kly, International Law and the Black Minority in the U.S.
Among the international documents that guarantee the right to self-determination and protect those who fight to exercise the right are the following:
• 1949 Geneva Convention
• 1977, Protocol I (to 1949 Geneva Convention)
• 1/29/87, Protocol II (to the 1949 Geneva Convention)
• Universal Declaration of Human Rights, General Assembly Resolution No. 217 (III), December 10, 1948 • Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, 78 UNTS 277 • International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, 1966
• Political Offense Exception to Extradition
I.3
Political Prisoners: Guilty Until Proven Innocent
Susie Day 1989
People are so afraid of us, they don't want to hear. Like thy say we believe in violence. That's been said of me every time I was moved from one institution to another. ... Hollywood believes in violence; this country believes in violence. But we don't.
Laura Whitehorn has spent nearly four years in eleven different jails and prisons since she was arrested in May 1985. Held under "preventive detention," the 43year-old Whitehorn has been denied bail, although her record shows no previous criminal charges and only three arrests for demonstrating against the Vietnam War and forced sterilization.
Now Whitehorn and six others — Alan Berkman, Timothy Blunk, Marilyn Buck, Linda Evans, Susan Rosenberg, and Elizabeth Duke (who remains free) — stand accused by the federal government of the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Capitol and three military buildings in the District of Columbia. Although no one was killed or injured in these bombings, which protested the invasion of Grenada and other U.S. foreign aggression, the defendants could receive as many as 45 years in prison, if convicted. The Resistance Conspiracy trial, as the defendants call it, will likely begin in March of this year, and promises to be one of the most important political cases of the decade.
In November 1988, I traveled to the Detention Facility in Washington, DC, and talked to the four women awaiting trial. Their words in this article are drawn from those interviews. Here, Susan Rosenberg speaks:
Most people don't think there are forms of political oppression in this country, but there are. And I think we're a very good example of it, you know? ... When you go to jail because of conscious acts, it doesn't mean that being in prison is easier. I mean, the most fundamental deprivation is to lose your liberty. ... Short of death, it's probably the most profound loss a person can have.
In 1985, at the age of 30, Rosenberg was sentenced, with Tim Blunk, to 58 years in prison for weapons possession and fake identification. She spent 20 months in the Lexington High Security Unit, a notorious behavior modification facility for "violence prone" women.
Reprinted from Sojourner: The Women's Forum, February 1989
Although the United States refuses to acknowledge them as political prisoners, Rosenberg and her codefendants are part of some 200 people with left-wing views now in federal prisons for alleged crimes against the government. This figure includes "prisoners of war" such as Puerto Rican Nationalists, who see themselves as part of oppressed nations within the United States. The psychological toll of years in confinement is incalculable to these prisoners — 25 percent of whom are women. Says Marilyn Buck:
I haven't worked in three and one-half years. Even if I didn't work a job where I brought home a paycheck before, I did work that was organized, that was directed. ... I see women sitting in jail, idle, doing nothing. Take Marion [men's prison in Illinois] or Lexington, where there's no work, no productive labor. ... It really tears you apart.
Buck was convicted in 1988, with Dr. Mutulu Shakur, a New Afrikan freedom fighter, for alleged conspiracy in actions attributed to the Black Liberation Army, including the 1979 prison escape of Black activist Assata Shakur. Before the Resistance Conspiracy trial begins, Buck at 41, already faces 70 years in prison.
Like her codefendants, all of whom are white, Buck has devoted her life and political work to fighting racism. Perhaps it is the alliance of these six North Americans with people of color, and with radical black and Puerto Rican groups in particular, that has motivated the prosecution in the Resistance Conspiracy case to erect a massive, bullet-proof plexiglass wall — the kind often seen in South African trials — to separate the defendants from the rest of the courtroom. As an extra "precaution," special cameras have been installed to monitor the defense table as well as courtroom spectators.
Ironically, at about the same time and in the same building, Oliver North is scheduled to be tried, without shields or cameras. Unlike Laura Whitehorn, neither North nor his colleagues have spent time in preventive detention. There is also wide speculation that these men will not go to prison, even in the unlikely event that they are convicted. These legal discrepancies are not unusual, according to Linda Evans; convicted right-wing defendants generally receive lighter sentences than those who disagree with government policy:
I ended up getting five years in New York ... for being a felon in possession of a gun when I was arrested. And then 40 years in Louisiana for making false statements. ... And, of course, the thing that's interesting about the Louisiana case is that it's the same jurisdiction where the Ku Klux Klan tried to mount an invasion of Dominica, a Black island in the Caribbean. You might have heard about it, in '81? It was Don Black. And he had ten other men with him; he had almost a million dollars in cash; they had a boatful of illegal weapons, machine guns and stuff. And he received a total of ten years and was out in 24 months.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Let Freedom Ring by Matt Meyer. Copyright © 2008 Matt Meyer. Excerpted by permission of PM Press.
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