May 29 Court Date for Albert Woodfox of the Angola 3

Albert Woodfox

On Tuesday, May 29th, Albert Woodfox will begin a 3 day hearing that may result in his conviction being overturned for a third time. Proceedings will begin at 9am in Courtroom 1 at the US District Court in Baton Rouge and continue through Thursday, May 31st.

Albert will be present for the proceedings, and the hearing is open to the public. Please remember if attending that the Federal Court strictly enforces a more formal, conservative dress code (no short skirts or shorts of any kind, even with tights, no bare upper arms, sleeveless, or low cut shirts) and requires that observers don't react, either visibly or audibly, to anything the might see or hear in the courtroom. Also security is tight, so bring only your ID, car keys, and a pen and paper into the courthouse.

There is limited seating in the courtroom so if you arrive and are turned away, consider your show of support a success and try coming back the next day!

Unlike the first and second time that Albert’s conviction was overturned based on judges who cited racial discrimination, prosecutorial misconduct, inadequate defense, and suppression of exculpatory evidence during his first trials for the 1972 murder of Brent Miller, this proceeding will seek to overturn based on apparent discrimination in the selection of a grand jury foreperson during his 1998 retrial.

The well known facts of the A3 case will not be debated; all that will be examined is whether or not people of color were discriminated against during the grand jury selection process. This means instead of murder mystery theatre, witnesses will mostly discuss compositions of the pool of grand jury forepersons in the Parish where Albert was indicted. Expert witnesses will discuss statistical analysis and methodology, the demographics of the community, and the sociological mechanics of how discrimination can play out in the criminal justice system. If successful, this claim could serve to overturn Albert’s conviction for a third time.

Judge James A. Brady, the same judge who overturned Albert’s conviction the second time in 2008, will preside. That ruling was ultimately reinstated on appeal by the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals who cited AEDPA-gutted habeas protections that limit federal power that allowed them to defer judgment to Louisiana.

Although there are no time limits officially imposed by law, Brady is expected to rule before the end of 2012.

For more on the case, read A Crim Case 5 & 6.

VIDEO: The Outer Limits of Solitary Confinement

BREAKING: LA Gov. Bobby Jindal refuses to meet with Amnesty International delegation!

MoreBreaking News: Robert King on Democracy Now with Amnesty International, Guardian UK, BBC News Magazine, Mother Jones

Updates and more photos from Amnesty International Petition Delivery at Louisiana State Capitol on Twitter.

PHOTO: Delegation returns from delivering petitions to Gov. Jindal's office at the State Capitol in Baton Rouge, April 17.

This public forum, entitled "The Outer Limits of Solitary Confinement," held at UC Hastings College of the Law, in San Francisco on April 6, 2012 was organized by the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3, and co-hosted by the Hastings chapter of the National Lawyers Guild and the Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal.

The event marked 40 years of solitary confinement for Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox of the Angola 3, by exploring the expansion and overuse of solitary confinement, mobilizing support for the Amnesty International Petition to remove Wallace and Woodfox from solitary confinement (being hand delivered to LA Governor Bobby Jindal on Tuesday, April 17) and support for the California Hunger Strikers. Read more about the event here.

Featuring the following speakers:


·         Robert King, of the Angola 3, released in 2001 after 29 years of solitary confinement.


·         Hans Bennett, Independent journalist and co-founder of Journalists for Mumia


·         Terry Kupers, Institute Professor at The Wright Institute in Berkeley, California


·         Manuel La Fontaine, Northern California Regional Organizer for All of Us or None


·         Aaron Mirmalek, Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee Oakland


·         Kiilu Nyasha, Independent journalist and former member of the Black Panther Party


·         Tahtanerriah Sessoms-Howell, Youth Organizer for All of Us Or None


·         Luis "Bato" Talamantez, California Prison Focus and one of the San Quentin 6


·         Azadeh Zohrabi, Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal


·         Stuart Hanlon, lawyer for Geronimo Pratt.


·         David Newton, Editor in Chief of the Hastings Constitutional Law Quarterly


·         Kelly Turner, author and former three-strike prisoner.


·         Anita Wills, member of Occupy 4 Prisoners and mother of Kerry Baxter Sr., a three-strike prisoner.

FULL STATEMENT FROM AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL FOR APRIL 17 PETITION DELIVERY:

Amnesty International Press Release

For Immediate Release

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Marking 40 Years of “Inhuman” Solitary Confinement for Angola 2 Prisoners, Amnesty International Set to Deliver Tens of Thousands of Petition Signatures to Louisiana Governor

Press Conference/Photo Op Planned Tuesday, April 17 at State Capitol Building –   40th Anniversary of Inmates’ Solitary Confinement

Contact: Suzanne Trimel, 212-633-4150, strimel@aiusa.org

(Baton Rouge, La.) – On Tuesday, April 17, on the steps of the Louisiana State Capitol, Amnesty International will deliver more than 65,000 petition signatures from people worldwide,  calling on Governor Bobby Jindal to immediately remove two Louisiana inmates from “inhuman” solitary confinement, where they have been held for 40 years – and denied meaningful review as to why.

On April 17, 1972, Albert Woodfox, now 65, and Herman Wallace, 70, serving a sentence for armed robbery, were placed in an isolation unit in Louisiana State Penitentiary - known as Angola Prison, charged and later convicted of the murder of a prison guard. The two men consistently denied involvement in the killing of Brent Miller. No physical evidence links them to Miller’s murder and documents have emerged suggesting the main eyewitness was bribed into giving statements against the men and that the state withheld evidence about the perjured testimony of another inmate witness. A further witness later retracted his testimony.

“Holding elderly men in six by nine foot cages after four decades --  when they pose no threat -- is inhuman and unjust,” said Everette Harvey Thompson, director of Amnesty International’s Southern Regional Office.  “What evidence is there that these men are so dangerous that they must be subjected to these conditions?  They have clean disciplinary histories. Afterfour decades of solitary confinement, they are physically and mentally frail. The only explanation is that they are being held in solitary confinement as retribution for political activity.

“Governor Jindal and the Department of Correction’s policies regarding the Angola 2 push the boundaries of cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, and fly in the face of international standards to which the United States is a party. Forty years of isolation is an outrage and must end!”

At a press conference to take place at  2-3 p.m. (central time) April 17 on the steps of the Capitol building following the petition delivery, Amnesty International’s Thompson will be joined by Robert King, the only freed man of the original Angola 3, who was held for 29 years; Alfreda Tillman Bester, general counsel to the Louisiana State Conference of the NAACP, and Angola 3 family and friends.

In June 2011, Amnesty International released a report, “100 Years in Solitary: The Angola 3 and Their Fight for Justice,” which outlines the unjust confinement of Woodfox, Wallace and King.

In the brutal conditions of the prison in the 1970s, Woodfox and Wallace founded a prison chapter of the Black Panther Party to campaign for better conditions and fair treatment. King joined the effort. The men believe they were falsely implicated in the murder because of their political activism in prison.  Evidence has emerged to suggest the decision to hold them in solitary was based at least in part on their activism and association with the Black Panther Party.

Today, Woodfox and Wallace suffer from serious health problems, their lawyers say; Woodfox suffers from diabetes, heart disease and hypertension while Wallace has osteoarthritis and memory loss. The years of isolated confinement aggravated or exacerbated their health problems, their lawyers contend.

Woodfox and Wallace are confined to their 6.5 by 9 feet cells for 23 hours a day and allowed out only to exercise alone in a small outdoor cage, or to shower or walk along the cell unit corridor.

They have limited access to books, newspapers and television. For the past four decades they haven’t been allowed to work or have access to education. Social interaction has been restricted to occasional visits from friends and family and limited telephone calls.  

They have also been denied any meaningful review of the reasons for their isolation.

To read the report, “100 Years in Solitary” please visit: http://www.amnestyusa.org/research/reports/usa-urged-to-end-inmates-40-year-long-solitary-confinement

A short video on the story of the "Angola 2", which includes an interview with Robert King, who spent 29 years in solitary confinement in the same prison, is available on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kotf68mrqCI

Amnesty International is a Nobel Peace Prize-winning grassroots activist organization with more than 2.8 million supporters, activists and volunteers in more than 150 countries campaigning for human rights worldwide. The organization investigates and exposes abuses, educates and mobilizes the public, and works to protect people wherever justice, freedom, truth and dignity are denied.

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For more information, visit www.amnestyusa.org

Twitter: @amnesty Facebook: Amnesty International USA

April Marks 40 Years of Solitary Confinement for Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace

Update from the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3

April 5, 2010

This April we are commemorating what has now been 40 years in solitary confinement for Albert Woodfox & Herman Wallace.

On April 17, Robert King will be joined by Amnesty International and other supporters at the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge to present Amnesty International's petition to Governor Bobby Jindal demanding that Wallace and Woodfox be immediately released from solitary confinement ( view/download the flyer here). A press conference on the front steps of the State Capitol will begin at 2pm. A free bus will be departing New Orleans at 12 noon, from 1212 St. Bernard Ave. Seating is limited, so please call (504) 344-1717 to reserve a place by April 15.

If you have not yet done it, this is your last chance to sign the petition before delivery to Governor Jindal. and sent it to all your friends. We need as many signatures as possible. The deadline to sign it is Tuesday April 10.

This Friday, April 6, we are organizing an event in support of the California hunger strikers and marking the 40 year anniversary, with an appearance by Robert King at UC Hastings College of the Law in San Francisco, co-hosted by the Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal and the Hastings chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. If you are in the area please come and join us. Read more here.

Today, BBC News Magazine released an excellent article about the Angola 3, entitled "Forty Years in Solitary Confinement and Counting," to be aired on Thursday, April 5 at 11:00 BST and Monday, April 9 at 20:30 BST. See also the new Public Radio International article, here.

We've got the wind at our back and need to take full advantage of it. We send our gratitude to Amnesty International, USA, UK and all other European Chapters for their remarkable support and strong campaign effort.  Let's do what we can to free all political prisoners and stop the brutal torture of our brothers and sisters in struggle-expand your network and stay in the streets- carpe diem! 

*Keep updated by visiting our brand new Free All The Angola 3 facebook page.




Amnesty International's Email Action Alert


Below is the full text of an email action alert sent out yesterday by Amnesty International to its mailing list.

*****************************

Two Black men, confined to isolation in tiny cells for the last 40 years. End the "Angola 3" nightmare. No human being deserves this. 23 hours a day isolated in a small cell, four steps long, three steps across. Three times a week for exercise in an outdoor cage, weather permitting. A few hours every week to shower or simply walk. Rare, fleeting human contact with prison guards, let alone with family. This describes four decades of existence for Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace in Louisiana, two members of the so-called "Angola 3" who pass their remaining hours "in the hole" to this day. April 17 will mark 40 years -- 14,600 days -- of their nightmare. The conditions in which these two men are held, as well as the tragically absurd duration of this punishment, violate a host of human rights treaties to which the US is a party, including those covering basic standards for treatment of prisoners. Prisons simply shouldn't operate this way in the US. Demand an end to the cruel and unnecessary solitary confinement for Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace. Our goal is to collect 14,600 petition signatures from just this email alone -- one signature for every day each man has spent in isolation. Janina , can we count on your voice? Woodfox and Wallace may be in isolation, but they are not forgotten. Our calls for justice will ring loud -- on April 17 we'll make sure Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal hears us when we arrive at his Baton Rouge doorstep with tens of thousands of petition signatures in hand. We can't let more days pass without justice. Herman Wallace is now 70 years old, Albert Woodfox is in his mid-60s, and both men are suffering from serious health problems -- made worse by the appalling deprivation in which they live. Ill, advancing in age, with clean disciplinary records for the last 20 years -- what is so dangerous about these men that could possibly warrant this inhumane treatment, for so long? Because the prison authorities see them as a threat. The "Angola 3" organized their fellow prisoners against inhumane treatment and racial segregation in the early 1970s. Angola Prison's warden, Burl Cain, has suggested that Woodfox and Wallace's continued isolation is based on their political activism -- particularly their association with the Black Panthers. The "Angola 3" case highlights the failings of a Louisiana justice system that is undermined by discrimination. No physical evidence links Woodfox and Wallace to the 1972 murder of a prison guard. Inmate testimony is questionable. And judges who twice overturned Woodfox's conviction for the murder cited racial discrimination, prosecutorial misconduct, and more. 14,600 days in solitary is far too many. But today, we can do something about it -- demand justice for the remaining "Angola 3". And on April 17, we won't take no for an answer in Baton Rouge! For justice, Bryna Subherwal Individuals at Risk Campaigner Amnesty International USA

The Outer Limits of Solitary Confinement: A Public Forum to Support the California Prisoner Hunger Strike

Release Date: March 24, 2012  
Contact: Marina Drummer
International Coalition to Free the Angola Three
Marina@communityfuturescollective.org
(707) 486-6806
www.angola3.org
www.angola3news.com

The Outer Limits of Solitary Confinement:
A Public Forum to Support the California Prisoner Hunger Strike

Friday, April 6, 2012, 6pm - 8pm

UC Hastings College of the Law

Louis B. Mayer Lounge

198 McAllister Street

San Francisco

(San Francisco)  --This free San Francisco event organized by the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3 will mark 40 years of solitary confinement for Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox of the Angola 3, by exploring the expansion and overuse of solitary confinement, and mobilizing support for the Amnesty International Petition to remove them from solitary confinement and support for the California Hunger Strikers. Includes Keynote with Angola 3’s Robert H. King, 2 films and additional speakers.

The International Coalition to Free the Angola Three is presenting a free public forum and film screening entitled “The Outer Limits of Solitary Confinement,” at UC Hastings College of the Law, Louis B. Mayer Lounge, 198 McAllister Street, San Francisco, on Friday, April 6, 2012, from 6pm - 8pm, and co-hosted by the Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal and the Hastings chapter of the National Lawyers Guild.

The International Coalition to Free the Angola 3 stands in solidarity with the courageous prisoners that recently initiated hunger strikes throughout California prisons. The event will examine how the torture and wrongful convictions of the Angola 3 are part of a much larger problem throughout US prisons. With presentations from several speakers involved with supporting the hunger strikers, the audience will be presented with many ways in which they too can lend their support in the fight against solitary confinement and other forms of torture in California prisons.

The keynote speaker will be Robert H. King, of the Angola 3, who was released in 2001 when his conviction was overturned, after 29 years of continuous solitary confinement. King says today that “being in prison, in solitary was terrible. It was a nightmare. My soul still cries from all that I witnessed and endured.  It does more than cry- it mourns, continuously.”

Since his release, Robert H. King has worked tirelessly to support the other two members of the Angola 3, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, who have been in solitary confinement since April 17, 1972. This coming April 17, which marks the 40^th anniversary of their solitary confinement, King will be joined by Amnesty International and other supporters at the Louisiana State Capitol in Baton Rouge to present Amnesty International’s petition to Governor Bobby Jindal demanding that Wallace and Woodfox be immediately released from solitary confinement. Read more about Amnesty International’s Angola 3 campaign, here.

At the UC Hastings event, King will talk about the Amnesty International petition demanding transfer from solitary and the broader struggle to release Wallace and Woodfox from prison altogether. Interviewed in a recent video by Amnesty International, King says about Wallace and Woodfox: “All evidence shows that they were targeted simply for being members of the Black Panther Party. There is really no evidence, forensic, physical, or otherwise, linking them to the crime. When I think about the ten years in which I’ve had time to be out here, that is ten more years that they are there.”

In their investigative report, Amnesty International similarly concluded that “no physical evidence links Woodfox and Wallace to the murder.” Even further: “potentially favorable DNA evidence was lost. The convictions were based on questionable inmate testimony…it seems prison officials bribed the main eyewitness into giving statements against the men.  Even the widow of the prison guard has expressed skepticism, saying in 2008, ‘If they did not do this – and I believe that they didn’t – they have been living a nightmare for 36 years!’”

(Photo of the Angola 3. From left to right: Herman Wallace, Robert H. King, and Albert Woodfox.)

Additional speakers will include:

·         Hans Bennett, Independent journalist and co-founder of Journalists for Mumia

·         Terry Kupers, Institute Professor at The Wright Institute in Berkeley, California

·         Manuel La Fontaine, Northern California Regional Organizer for All of Us or None

·         Aaron Mirmalek, Leonard Peltier Defense Offense Committee Oakland

·         Kiilu Nyasha, Independent journalist and former member of the Black Panther Party

·         Tahtanerriah Sessoms-Howell, Youth Organizer for All of Us Or None

·         Luis “Bato” Talamantez, California Prison Focus and one of the San Quentin 6

·         Azadeh Zohrabi, Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal

·         And more (Full speaker bios below). 

In addition, two short films will be featured: The Gray Box: A Multimedia Investigation, by Susan Greene, The Dart Society, and Cruel and Unusual Punishment, by Claire Schoen, for the AFSC Stopmax Campaign.

Event notes: Hastings is on the corner of Hyde and McAllister, two blocks from the Civic Center BART station. The Hyde Street side entrance is wheelchair accessible. Refreshments will be served and signed books will be for sale. This event is free and open to the public. Donations for prisoner support will be gratefully accepted.

Watch the trailer here.

a FORTY YEAR HistorY OF REPRESSION:

On April 17, 1972, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox of the Angola 3 were placed in solitary confinement at Angola Prison in Louisiana. Wallace and Woodfox were subsequently railroaded and convicted for the murder of a prison guard, and remain in solitary to this day. They were framed COINTELPRO-style, in retaliation for co-founding a Black Panther chapter at Angola that initiated multiracial work and hunger strikes.

Currently held inside California’s notorious Pelican Bay State Prison, Hugo “Yogi Bear” Pinell, of the San Quentin Six, has now been in continuous solitary for at least 42 years.  A participant in the recent statewide prisoner hunger strike, Pinell was a close comrade of Black Panther and prison author, George Jackson. Having been continually denied parole despite a clean record for the last 27 years, Pinell is, in the words of the Angola 3’s own Robert H. King, “a clear example of a political prisoner." His next parole hearing is scheduled for this May.

The stories of the Angola 3 and Hugo Pinell are the most extreme examples of a widespread human rights crisis in US prisons, where prolonged solitary confinement has become routine. According to www.solitarywatch.com, there are “at least 75,000 and perhaps more than 100,000 prisoners in solitary confinement on any given day” in the US.

On March 20, several human rights organizations jointly filed a petition to the United Nations Group on Arbitrary Detention, the United Nations Human Rights Council, and United Nations General Assembly on behalf of prisoners throughout California’s Security Housing Units (SHU) and Administrative Segregation Units (ASU).  The petition calls for UN action against California’s prison administration and deplores the conditions of thousands of California prisoners, “being detained in isolated segregated units for indefinite periods or determinate periods of many years solely because they have been identified as members of gangs or found to have associated with a gang.”

The petition states further that “as a result of the policies and practices that leave California with the largest population of prisoners in isolated segregation anywhere in the world, these prisoners suffer extreme mental and physical harm, including mental breakdowns, extreme depression, suicidal ideation, and breaks with reality, such that their treatment may be considered torture or degrading treatment illegal under well-established international norms and obligations of the United States and the State of California under, inter alia, the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhumane or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (‘CAT’) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (‘ICCPR’).”

Fueled by the racist “War On Drugs,” and the broader criminalization of poverty, the US prison population has exploded from less than 300,000 prisoners in 1970 to over 2.4 million today. This 40-year policy of mass incarceration has turned the US into literally the world’s #1jailer—with the world’s highest incarceration rate and total number of prisoners.

Feb. 20 "Occupy San Quentin" protest. Photo by Alex Darocy, Indybay.org

Position Statement:

We declare that this human rights atrocity known as the “criminal justice system” has now reached its outer limits. This cannot continue! It is becoming increasingly clear to the public that prolonged solitary confinement is nothing other than state torture.

The recent collaboration of prison activists and Occupy Wall Street, Occupy 4 Prisoners, marks a renewed linking of economic justice activism to a critique of mass incarceration and the criminalization of poverty. As Robert H. King said in his message to Occupy 4 Prisoners, “the same people who make the laws that favor the bankers, make the laws that fill our prisons and detention centers. We have to continue to make the connection between Wall St. and the prison industrial complex.” The upcoming "Occupy the Justice Department” action in Washington DC on April 24 is calling for the release of Mumia Abu-Jamal and all political prisoners.

The strength of the 99% is in our numbers. Our only hope is to unite against the 1%. A newly-formed multiracial coalition of hunger strikers throughout California’s prisons (most recently at Corcoran State) has demanded an end to prolonged solitary confinement and many other inhumane policies. These freedom fighters are on the frontlines of the struggle and they badly need our support. Our event is being held to give voice to their struggle and to present the audience with opportunities to show their support.

FEATURED SPEAKERS BIOS:

ROBERT H. KING (Keynote Speaker)-- A member of the Angola 3, released in 2001 after 29 years of continuous solitary confinement.  Since his release, he has worked tirelessly in support of Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox. In 2008, King released his award-winning autobiography, entitled From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Robert Hillary King (PM Press). His website is www.kingsfreelines.com.

HANS BENNETT--  A prison abolitionist, independent multi-media journalist and co-founder of Journalists for Mumia Abu-Jamal (www.abu-jamal-news.com), Bennett has written for several publications including Alternet, Truthout, Z Magazine, Black Commentator, ColorLines, Poor Magazine, SF Bay View Newspaper, Slingshot and Indymedia.

TERRY KUPERS-- An Institute Professor at The Wright Institute in Berkeley, CA. Dr. Kupers’ forensic psychiatry experience includes testimony in several large class action litigations concerning jail and prison conditions, sexual abuse, and the quality of mental health services inside correctional facilities. He is a consultant to Human Rights Watch, and author of the 1999 book entitled Prison Madness: The Mental Health Crisis Behind Bars and What We Must Do About It.

MANUEL LA FONTAINE-- The Northern California Regional Organizer, All of Us or None. As a former street organizer (also known as a gang member), a formerly-incarcerated person, and a college graduate, Manuel brings street savvy, along with scholastic aptitude, and incorporates them into his work life to better assist those without voices.

AARON MIRMALEK-- The founder of the Oakland chapter of the Leonard Peltier DefenseOffense Committee, started in honor of his cousin Leonard Peltier. Born in Oakland, he is a longtime community organizer. In 2010, Aaron was the Executive Producer of "Free Leonard Peltier: Hip Hop's Contribution to the Freedom Campaign." In 2011, he was the Executive Producer and Co-Host of "Free Peltier Free Em All!" DVD with Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. For more information: www.FreeLeonardAlbum.com.

KIILU NYASHA-- A San Francisco-based journalist and former member of the Black Panther Party. Through the end of 2009, Kiilu hosted a weekly TV program, "Freedom Is A Constant Struggle,” on SF Live. She writes for many publications, including the SF Bay View Newspaper and Black Commentator. Also an accomplished radio programmer, she has worked for KPFA (Berkeley), SF Liberation Radio, Free Radio Berkeley, and KPOO in SF. Her website is www.kiilunyasha.blogspot.com.

TAHTANERRIAH SESSOMS-HOWELL-- Youth Organizer, All of Us Or None. Sessoms-Howell is a native of Berkeley, California.  When she was arrested at the age of 15 she got her first glimpse into the cruel world of “rehabilitation.”  While in jail and on probation, Sessoms-Howell found out very fast that there is no such thing as a fair justice system. She now works to inform the youth of their rights and keep connections between youth and their elders strong. As Youth Organizer for AOUON, her job is to help, by any means, ensure the safety and rights of future generations to come.

LUIS “BATO” TALAMANTEZ—One of the San Quentin 6, Talamantez also works with California Prison Focus, and is a long time Bay Area activist and organizer.

AZADEH ZOHRABI-- Co-Editor-in-Chief of the UC Hastings Race and Poverty Law Journal, Zohrabi is a third year law student at UC Hastings. Her family's experience with incarceration is what motivated her to become an attorney and an advocate for people in prison. Most recently, she has worked to advocate on behalf of prisoners in the Security Housing Units as a member of the Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition and the mediation team for the prisoners.

View/Download April 6 Event Flyer Below:

MORE SF BAY AREA EVENTS WITH ROBERT H. KING:

--Let Us Not Forget: Honor Fallen Comrades and Political Prisoners, Saturday, April 7, 1:00pm, West Oakland Library, 1801 Adeline Street. For more information:  www.itsabouttimebpp.com, (916) 455-0908.

--Oakland International Film Festival, Sunday, April 8, 3:00pm, Oakland Museum, 1000 Oak Street, at 10th Street. King will be speaking in conjunction with a screening of the new British documentary about the Angola 3, entitled “In The Land of the Free…” For more information: www.oiff.org.

Guantanamo Prison's True Secret: Jason Leopold in Conversation With Andy Worthington

Guantanamo Prison's True Secret: Jason Leopold in Conversation With Andy Worthington

By Angola 3 News for Truthout.org

British journalist Andy Worthington, the author of “The Guantanamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America’s Illegal Prison,” has been documenting the array of human rights abuses at Guantanamo for over six years now, after he personally became angry that the US government would not say who they were holding at Guantanamo. Worthington was recently a guest speaker alongside investigative journalist Jason Leopold at the UC Hastings College of Law, in San Francisco on January 13, 2012, hosted by the college’s chapter of the National Lawyers Guild. The event, entitled “Ten Years of Guantanamo,” was held amidst protests around the world calling for the prison to be immediately shut.

Leopold, who has also written extensively about Guantanamo for Truthout, queried Worthington about a range of issues surrounding Guantanamo and the so-called “war on terror.” While exchanging stories of false imprisonment and torture, both journalists expressed a profound moral outrage, openly supporting a global coalition of human rights activists’ call to shut the prison down, and, at a minimum, to release prisoners already cleared for release. Most of the conversation examined the reasons why the prison has not yet been closed, and then how, with these reasons in mind, activists can best strategize their organizing tactics for targeting lawmakers and building public support for closure.

While strategizing about ways to gain public support for shutting Guantanamo down, both Leopold and Worthington converged on the need to expose the extreme fearmongering perpetrated by US leadership in order to justify the human rights nightmare created by the war on terror. Looking specifically at the rhetorical strategies used to advocate for the recently passed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), Worthington commented that elected officials are either “scared and [therefore are] disgraceful cowards or they’re scaremongers, and I think most of them are scaremongers. They’re playing the fear card. It’s an insult to you … we face such grave economic problems at the moment, that to have these idiots obsessing only about a terrorism threat that they conjured up, is a disgrace.”

A central focus of Worthington and Leopold’s discussion was the Obama administration’s role in keeping Guantanamo open, despite the Executive Order that he issued on his second day of office calling for it to be closed. Leopold asserted, “There seems to be a certain segment that really does want to protect President Obama, not casting blame on him and shifting it onto Congress.”

Worthington agreed that President Obama shares as much responsibility as Congress, arguing that as soon as Obama issued the Executive Order to shut down Guantanamo, prisoners should have been released. “There had been 65 prisoners still held, who had been cleared for release by military review boards under the Bush administration. When Obama came into office, he could have released some of those guys easily. But he did nothing,” said Worthington, adding that “it means nothing” to tell a prisoner that “we want to release you,” but can’t do it because of the political environment. “It makes such a mockery of any concepts of justice and the law,” Worthington declared.

The Mainstream Media and Guantanamo’s “True Secret”

Jason Leopold

Together, Leopold and Worthington dissected mainstream media coverage around the tenth anniversary, arguing that coverage was superficial, with no real follow-up after the initial January 11 anniversary. Worthington told of an experience at a press conference earlier in the week, where a US journalist suggested that perhaps President Obama has not shut Guantanamo down because of some “dark secrets” that cannot be made public for legitimate reasons of national security.

Worthington recounted telling this journalist that the truth is “much more mundane” than “some huge national security secret…. It’s about cruelty, incompetence, embarrassment … issues where senior officials and senior lawyers are responsible for things that might rise to the level of war crimes. But above all, it’s about the torture, abuse, coercion and bribery that was in Guantanamo. There was a ‘house of cards’ of evidence built out of nothing except the testimony of prisoners and their fellow prisoners, who were abused or persuaded in other ways to produce what masquerades as the evidence. That’s the true secret.”

Taking an even deeper look into Guantanamo Prison’s “true secret,” Leopold described an interview he conducted with a Guantanamo lawyer defending a so-called “high-value detainee.” Leopold could not even ask the lawyer what he’d had for lunch when meeting with the detainee, which Worthington confirmed was representative of how “nothing has been made unclassified” about those prisoners designated as high-value detainees.

“Why would that be? Would it happen to be coincidental that these were the guys who were held in secret CIA torture prisons for all these years, and the government is determined to keep a lid on any mention of that whatsoever? I can’t see that there could possibly be any other conclusion,” said Worthington.

The DC Circuit Court vs. Habeas Corpus

Andy Worthington

A June 2004 ruling by the US Supreme Court granted habeas corpus rights to the wartime prisoners at Guantanamo. Worthington argues that this is because the court recognized that they weren’t being granted the rights in the Geneva Conventions accorded to soldiers. In response to this decision, “Bush’s Congress” tried to revoke these habeas corpus rights, and, in 2008, the Supreme Court affirmed their habeas corpus rights and ruled that Congress had acted unconstitutionally.

Following the 2008 ruling, the Guantanamo prisoners were then “able to file their cases in front of District Court judges in Washington DC, who all got together to decide how they were going to do it, to decide what kind of standard was required to detain people, because the Supreme Court had not spelled that out. Nobody ever had really properly spelled out what an ‘enemy combatant’ meant,” said Worthington. They decided that it meant the accused person had to be part of al-Qaeda or the Taliban.

Commenting on this decision, Worthington emphasized that the “fundamental problem identified – ‘Are you a terrorist or a soldier?’ – wasn’t addressed … But at least they tried to codify what it meant.” Worthington reported feeling vindicated when dozens of District Court rulings harshly criticized the evidence being used against the Guantanamo prisoners, with Worthington commenting that these rulings read “remarkably like what I and other people who’ve been looking at these cases closely for years have been saying.”

Around two dozen prisoners were released as a result of this process, leading the government to appeal to the DC Circuit Court. Once there, Worthington reports that the District Court judges did not adequately test “the allegations made by the government,” or properly “balance those against the claims made by the prisoners.”

“They’ve steadily – in ruling after ruling,” unfairly given “presumption of accuracy to whatever nonsense the government comes up with,” said Worthington. “We are hoping that the latest ruling will lead to an appeal to the Supreme Court, and that the Court will take [it] up.”

The NDAA’s Silver Lining

Andy Worthington

As Worthington and Leopold began to criticize the NDAA, Leopold chided those who had objected to it solely because it meant that “US citizens can be detained and go to Guantanamo … One thing that’s not been discussed in this context is that indefinite detention is a human rights issue, regardless of the fact that it involves Americans; it’s simply a human rights issue.”

Worthington added: “I understand people’s concern about this applying to US citizens, and I absolutely understand that lawmakers had US citizens in mind, but they had foreigners in mind, as well. Where it came from was Guantanamo, because it’s been happening for ten years in Guantanamo. The foreigners have been thrown into a hole and held without charges or a trial in indefinite military detention. It’s the same thing.”
Analyzing it further, Worthington felt that the real intention of the NDAA is “to make sure that no one can be released from Guantanamo,” by creating a standard for release that is basically impossible to meet. First off, it “requires the Secretary of Defense to guarantee that if a prisoner is released, he will not be able to be involved in anti-American actions. You can’t make that kind of guarantee … it’s deliberately so.” The second key requirement is “not allowing anyone released to a country where there is an allegation that there is a single person from that country [who] has engaged in any recidivist activities…. How is that supposed to be fair?”

Looking beyond these provisions mentioned, Worthington asserted that “there is a glimpse of hope in this legislation that most people haven’t noticed. There is a waiver in the legislation…. that says if the president is prepared to tell Congress that he and his administration are satisfied that releasing a prisoner is safe, he does not have to jump through these impossible hoops. It means that the president is giving himself and his administration the power to release prisoners. Now, will he do it? He looks unlikely to do it because anything he does about Guantanamo rocks a boat that he doesn’t want rocked, and enables Republicans to speak up. But he could do it, and we can put pressure on him.”

Focusing on how to create such political pressure, Worthington reflected that “I think shame is where we’re at now, after ten years.” Lawmakers should be told: “We know that you care about how you will be thought of. It isn’t all just about short-term gain and political expediency. You want to be remembered as a good man or woman who tried to do a good job. You will not be remembered that way. No one in a position of responsibility will be if they consistently and persistently fail to close Guantanamo, because the longer it goes on, the more shameful it will be …The last living person left there over a year ago. After that, the last two people to leave were dead; they left in coffins. That will continue to happen.”

(Permission is granted to reprint as long as Truthout is cited as the original source)

–Angola 3 News is an official project of the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3. Our website is www.angola3news.com, where we provide the latest news about the Angola 3. Additionally we are also creating our own media projects, which spotlight the issues central to the story of the Angola 3, like racism, repression, prisons, human rights, solitary confinement as torture, and more. Our articles and videos have been published by Alternet, Truthout, Counterpunch, Monthly Review, Z Magazine, Indymedia, and many others.

Medical Self Defense and the Black Panther Party --An interview with Alondra Nelson

 

Medical Self Defense and the Black Panther Party

--An interview with Alondra Nelson

By Angola 3 News

Alondra Nelson, a professor of sociology and gender studies at Columbia University, is the author of a new book released last month, entitled Body and Soul: The Black Panther Party and the Fight Against Medical Discrimination. By documenting the multifaceted health activism of the Black Panther Party (BPP) and critically assessing the BPP’s strategy and tactics in a respectful and appreciative manner, Body and Soul presents an analysis that is rare and badly needed in US colleges and universities today. In this interview, Nelson discusses how the Panthers’ legacy can both inspire and provide important strategic lessons for today’s new generation of political activists

In her book, Nelson writes that “the Party’s focus on health care was both practical and ideological.” On a practical level, the BPP provided free community health care services, including preventative education. Simultaneously, the BPP railed against the medical-industrial complex, declaring that health care was “a right and not a privilege.” Ronald “Doc” Satchel, the minister of health for the Chicago BPP, wrote in the BPP newspaper that “the medical profession within this capitalist society…is composed generally of people working for their own benefit and advancement rather than the humane aspects of medical care.” A newsletter published by the Southern California chapter argued that “poor people in general and black people in particular are not given the best care available. Our people are treated like animals, experimented on and made to wait long hours in waiting rooms."

By 1970, People’s Free Medical Clinics had become a requirement for every BPP chapter. In 1972, the BPP revised point six of the founding ten-point-platform, adding a demand for “completely free healthcare for all black and oppressed people…We believe that the government must provide, free of charge, for the people, health facilities which will not only treat our illnesses, most of which have come about as a result of our oppression, but which will also develop preventative medical programs to guarantee our future survival. We believe that mass health education and research programs must be developed to give Black and oppressed people access to advanced scientific and medical information, so we may provide ourselves with proper medical attention and care.”

While citing Martin Luther King’s 1966 declaration that “of all forms of inequality, injustice in healthcare is the most shocking and inhumane,” one chapter provides an important historical context for the BPP’s health activism by detailing what Nelson calls “the long medical civil rights movement,” that began long before the BPP. “Mobilized in response to the distinctly hazardous risks posed by segregated medical facilities, professions, societies, and schools; deficient or nonexistent healthcare services; medical maltreatment; and scientific racism, activism challenges to medical discrimination have been an important focal point for African American protest efforts and organizations. The Panthers were heirs to health activism that directly reflected tactics drawn from this tradition,” writes Nelson.

Nelson says the central focus of her scholarly work is on “the intersections of science, technology, medicine and inequality.” She has co-edited Technicolor: Race, Technology, and Everyday Life (2001) and Genetics and the Unsettled Past: The Collision of DNA, Race, and History (scheduled to be released in March, 2012). To learn more, please visit www.alondranelson.com.

Angola 3 News:         In our recent interview with Billy X Jennings from It’s About Time BPP, one theme explored was how, with rare exception, the mainstream media has misrepresented the BPP. However, it seems that the even the radical and anti-capitalist media has generally underreported the health activism that is the focus if your book. How did the BPP’s health activism relate to their better-known stances against white supremacy, capitalism, and police violence?

Alondra Nelson:        Yes, it’s true. The Black Panthers’ health activism has been under-reported across the ideological spectrum. Their critics obviously did not want to cast them in a positive light. And, as your question suggests, even the Party’s supporters said little about this important aspect of the BPP’s work. I think its plausible to say that many on the Right and some of us on the Left--in very different ways and for completely opposite reasons--were captivated by a vision of the Party that did not include its health politics. Depictions of African Americans working in their neighborhoods, wearing white medical coats, was unspectacular compared to images of Black radicals wearing leather jackets and carrying guns.

It is ironic that our collective memory of the Panthers remains so incomplete because their health activism—from their political writing about medical issues in The Black Panther newspaper, to their practice of DIY healthcare—exemplified the anti-racist, anti-capitalist stance for which they are known. In fact, the reality of health inequality brought the BPP’s political perspective into sharper relief because it offered stark and specific examples of how economic and racial oppression literally damaged bodies, families and communities.

As you know, the BPP was originally the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense, a name that reflected that protecting communities from police brutality was a primary motivation for the group’s founding. The BPP exposed the misuse of power whether it was at the hands of police officers or physicians. So, it’s also useful to think of the Panthers as being engaged in medical self-defense.

In Los Angeles, Party members Ericka Huggins and Elaine Brown, nursing professor Marie Branch, Dr. Terry Kupers, and others established that chapter’s People’s Free Medical Clinic. But, like all of the BPP’s health activism, this work extended beyond the clinic, including in this case, confronting police brutality. (Branch shared meeting notes with me from the 1970s from her personal archive where the formation of BPP health programs and prisoners’ protection from medical discrimination were seamlessly discussed). The LA Panthers advocated for and provided health care for incarcerated persons; some of these men and women needed medical attention because they had been abused while in police custody.

A3N:   How does the story of the BPP’s health activism, as presented in your book, contribute to and challenge the traditional presentations of the BPP by both the mainstream and alternative media?

AN:     Body and Soul offers an account of the BPP that moves away from the narrow confines of the so-called “culture wars,” in which the Party can only ever be a positive force or a negative element. Paying attention to the Party’s health activism calls into question the inaccurate stereotype of the activists as aimless thugs.

We also gain a different perspective on things we thought we already knew about the BPP, like the fact that the Panthers were avid followers of Fanon, Che and Mao, whose writings were required reading for all members. Through the prism of health, one can see very clearly the influence of Fanon’s dissection of colonial medicine in Algeria on the Panthers’ understanding of medical discrimination in the U.S. We can take seriously the fact that Fanon and Che were physicians as well as political thinkers. We can appreciate that Mao, who established the “barefoot doctors” lay health worker program, made available to the Party not only broad revolutionary principles, but also specific ideas about health care as political practice.

A3N:   What do you think were the most successful tactics employed by the BPP as part of its health activism? Strategically speaking, what lessons from the BPP’s health activism do you think are most applicable for today’s activists to learn from?

AN:     In addition to setting up their own clinics, they used legal approaches not dissimilar from the NAACP to voice their opposition to problematic biomedical research. The Party leadership realized early on that “policing the police” would not be the only method they used in their effort to topple racism and capitalism. The Panthers were pretty flexible tacticians.

One of the lessons that the BPP offers today’s activists is that they should be more loyal to the desired outcome than to the tactic. The sit-in came to be associated with the southern civil rights movement just as the mic check is now emblematic of the Occupy movement. But these groups also used other tactics: marching, occupying, sermons, etc. Social movements are dynamic phenomena; circumstances are constantly changing. So too should tactics.

One of the BPP’s more fascinating tactics was what I call, after sociologist Lily Hoffman, the “politics of knowledge.” Working in this vein, the Panthers engaged and reinterpreted scientific ideas about race and disease. They reinterpreted scientific theories about the causes of sickle cell anemia, for example, by placing the prevalence of the disease in the context of the history of the transatlantic slave trade, the medical-industrial complex and contemporary racism.

The Panthers use of this tactic—the politics of knowledge—should remind today’s activists that “framing” matters. It is important to be able to translate political arguments—health-related ones and other ones—into language, into stories really, that resonate with the broader public. The Party could be expert at this.

The Nixon administration and mainstream philanthropies would ultimately coopt the issue of sickle cell anemia. But the BPP played a key role in raising awareness about the disease and in situating it in a powerful political language that could mobilize communities.

A3N:   Along with chapters focusing on the BPP’s free medical clinics and the campaign to educate the Black community about and test for Sickle Cell Anemia, another chapter focuses on the BPP’s involvement with a diverse coalition that successfully organized against the formation of the Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence at UCLA in 1973. You write that BPP felt that the Center’s “biologization of violence” line of research would ultimately “craft a narrative of Black and Latino violent pathology” that would serve to “make already marginalized populations more vulnerable to medicine as a tool of social control,” and “effect the further criminalization of social groups—black males, the incarcerated—and in turn justify calls for increased surveillance and social control.”

While writing that the defeat of the Center was a “notable triumph,” you note further that it “was somewhat of a Pyrrhic victory for Newton and his allies, as blocking resources to the center as an entity would not prevent individual researchers from pursuing other sources of support for their investigations.” With this in mind, how has biologization of violence research progressed since the 1970s? How much influence has it had on public policy?

AN:     Attempts to attribute the causes of violence to biology (and closely related to this, criminality) are a very old story. In the late 19th century, the influential Italian criminologist Lombroso, claimed that new methods (e.g., phrenology) and theories (e.g., social Darwinism) showed that the tendency toward criminal behavior was inherited.

More than one hundred years later, similar ideas persist. In the 1990s, during the first Bush presidency, Louis Sullivan, the Secretary of Health and Human Services set-up a “violence initiative” to explore the biological models of social unrest in urban settings. Your readers may recall that around the same time another Bush official, referencing studies on violence among non-human primates, said that disproportionately black and brown “inner cities” were like “jungles.” (The initiative and controversial commentary around it would recall to the heated debate the Panthers were engaged in over plans to form a “violence center” at UCLA in the 1970s that may have had an especially harmful impact on black and Latino youth and men).

Recently behavioral researchers have aimed to link the presence of what has been called the “warrior gene” to violent, criminal behavior. At a time when we are learning even more about the complexities of genetic inheritance, about the epigenome and the systems biology, it simply does not make sense that one single genetic marker could have such a dramatic, determinative effect.

A3N:   What role has biologization of violence research played in justifying the mass incarceration explosion that began in the 1970s, increasing the prison population from 300,000 to 2.4 million today, giving the US the highest incarceration rate and the largest total prisoner population in the world?

AN:     To the extent that the longstanding efforts that I have just described have kept in circulation the fallacy that there is a definitive link between human biology and violence, theses ideas have indeed served as a justification for the expansion of the carceral system.

This is where the policy implications of the biologization of violence come to the fore: If violence is “in your genes” or “in your blood,” then one can justify policies that lock people away because these people are “lost causes.”

And, in turn, the idea that there is a innate predisposition to violence contributes to the decline of support for rehabilitation and reparative justice programs. 

A3N:   Since the 1970s, has the US come any closer to realizing the BPP’s public health goals?  If BPP co-founder Huey P Newton were alive today, what do you think he would say about President Obama’s “Affordable Care Act?”

AN:     The revised ten-point platform was prescient in capturing one side of the recent debates about widening health inequality in the U.S. and what to do about it. If I had to venture a guess, I would say that Newton and the Party would have appreciated the historic nature of what President Obama accomplished—a feat that many administrations before his had variously tried to accomplish and failed to do. Perhaps Newton would have even observed that the Affordable Care Act is a very small step in the right direction.

However, some journalists and pundits have noted the similarity between President Obama’s historic Affordable Care Act and the national insurance plan that former President Nixon backed unsuccessfully. Given the animus between the Party and Nixon, and the way this administration and its agents worked to destroy the BPP, it is hard to imagine that Newton would have been in strong support of recent healthcare reform legislation. There would have certainly been opposition to the fact that President Obama’s plan is a boon for insurance companies because the Panthers demanded, “healthcare for the people, not for profit.”

--Angola 3 News is an official project of the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3. Our website is www.angola3news.com, where we provide the latest news about the Angola 3. Additionally we are also creating our own media projects, which spotlight the issues central to the story of the Angola 3, like racism, repression, prisons, human rights, solitary confinement as torture, and more. Our articles and videos have been published by Alternet, Truthout, Counterpunch, Monthly Review, Z Magazine, Indymedia, and many others.

VIDEO: Resisting Gender Violence Without Cops or Prisons --An interview with Victoria Law

Resisting Gender Violence Without Cops or Prisons 
--An interview with Victoria Law

By Angola 3 News

(First published by Truthout)

Activist and journalist Victoria Law is the author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women (PM Press, 2009). Law has previously been interviewed by Angola 3 News on two separate occasions. Our first interview focused on the torture of women prisoners in the US. The second interview looked at how the women’s liberation movements of the 1970s advocated for the decriminalization of women’s self defense. Taking this critique of the US criminal “justice” system one step further, Law presented a prison abolitionist critique of the how the mainstream women's movement, then and now, has embraced the same “justice” system as a vehicle for combating violence against women.

While citing the important work of INCITE: Women of Color Against Violence, Law argues that “today, abuse is treated as an individual pathology rather than a broader social issue rooted in centuries of patriarchy and misogyny. Viewing abuse as an individual problem has meant that the solution becomes intervening in and punishing individual abusers without looking at the overall conditions that allow abuse to go unchallenged and also allows the state to begin to co-opt concerns about gendered violence.”

Furthermore, “the threat of imprisonment does not deter abuse; it simply drives it further underground. Remember that there are many forms of abuse and violence, and not all are illegal. It also sets up a false dichotomy in which the survivor has to choose between personal safety and criminalizing and/or imprisoning a loved one. Arrest and imprisonment does not reduce, let alone prevent, violence. Building structures and networks to address the lack of options and resources available to women is more effective. Challenging patriarchy and male supremacy is a much more effective solution, although it is not one that funders and the state want to see,” says Law.

In our new video-interview, Law builds upon her earlier prison abolitionist critique by discussing practical alternatives for effectively confronting gender violence without using the prison system. She cites many success stories where women, not wanting to work with the police, instead collectively organized in an autonomous fashion. Law stresses that at the foundation of these anti-violence projects is the idea that gender violence needs to be a seen as a community issue, as opposed to simply being a problem for the individual to deal with.

One group spotlighted, Sistah II Sistah / Hermana a Hermana, in New York City, was formed to confront both interpersonal violence and state violence. They formed discussion groups where experiences are shared and the women collectively decide what tactics and strategies to employ. In one instance, they confronted an ex-boyfriend who was stalking a member of the group by going to his workplace, where they demanded he stop and successfully enlisted the support of his employer and co-workers.

Self defense advocacy and training is another tactic employed by many of the groups cited by Law. For example, in the 1970s, two feminist martial artists founded Brooklyn Women’s Martial Arts (BWMA), later renamed the Center for Anti-Violence Education in the 1980s. Along with teaching practical self defense techniques at sliding-scale classes, Law emphasizes that the Center also focused on the larger picture of how violence “holds different types of oppressions together,” resulting in a complex situation for poor women of color.

Our interview is being released in conjunction with the Unite to End Violence Against Women campaign first initiated in 1991 by the United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. This campaign began sixteen days of action on November 25, the International Day Against Violence Against Women, and will conclude on December 10, International Human Rights Day. We will be releasing two more segments of our video interview with Victoria Law during the sixteen days of action, so stay tuned to learn more about how Chinese sisterhood societies dealt with gender violence, as well as an update on new stories of women prisoners’ resistance that have happened since the first edition of Resistance Behind Bars was released in 2009 (a second edition is scheduled to be released next year). 

--Angola 3 News is an official project of the International Coalition to Free the Angola 3. Our website is www.angola3news.com, where we provide the latest news about the Angola 3. Additionally we are also creating our own media projects, which spotlight the issues central to the story of the Angola 3, like racism, repression, prisons, human rights, solitary confinement as torture, and more. Our articles and videos have been published by Alternet, Truthout, Counterpunch, Monthly Review, Z Magazine, Indymedia, and many others.