Angola 3 News: Support the Leonard Peltier Statue Project / Take Action with Amnesty USA

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Support the Leonard Peltier Statue Project / Take Action with Amnesty USA

Take Action by joining Amnesty International USA's call for President Obama to release Leonard Peltier!

Featured below is the full post from the Leonard Peltier Statue Project:

9″ epoxy resin model, Alcatraz Prison Mess Hall,
February 13, 2016 – First “Indians of All Tribes Day.”

As you might already know, Leonard Peltier has now spent four entire decades behind bars for a crime he has not committed. Even though, by most countries’ standards, he has now fulfilled both of the consecutive life-sentences to which he was wrongly sentenced, he remains behind bars.

Throughout his incarceration, many powerful national and international voices have raised their support for his case, including dozens of members of the United States Congress, Nobel Peace Prize laureates, Amnesty International, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and countless others. The injustice of his situation has been raised via national best-selling books, documentary films, paintings, posters, songs, petitions, walks, marches, protests, gatherings and prayers.

Original Alcatraz Island Occupiers – 1969/71 –
gather with statue’s model at Alcatraz on February 13th.

Currently there are several campaigns under way, united in their goal: to have President Obama grant a long overdue clemency to Leonard Peltier, thus allowing for a historical healing process to finally begin. Healing for Peltier himself, his family and the larger extended family of all the Indigenous Peoples living within the United States borders.

Only after this initial step of goodwill can the relationship between the United States Federal Government and the Indigenous Peoples living within its borders evolve past the painful standstill at which it’s stood. Native American youth suicide rates are the highest of any other cultural group in the United States.

Here are a few links of many:

Petition 2 Congress – Please Support Executive Clemency for federal prisoner Leonard Peltier!

Amnesty International – 40 Yeast Behind Bars: Free Leonard Peltier

Before Leonard joined the American Indian Movement, he applied twice to attend art school in Santa Fe, but got turned down. Even so, he has never stopped painting, despite all of the severe limitations he faces in prison.

Self-Portrait. Detail of Peltier’s painting used as the blue print for the 9 foot tall sculpture.

The goal of this project is to honor Leonard Peltier as both a symbol of Native struggle for self-determination in North America and as a persevering artist. Leonard has never stopped inspiring others to resist and to work towards the betterment of all relations inhabiting this shared Earth.

Using Leonard’s most recent self-portrait as the blue print, artist Rigo 23 has set out to build a 9 foot tall statue which – once finished – will tour the United States raising awareness for the Clemency Campaign and Mr. Peltier’s long-overdue release from prison.

The multimedia sculpture will be made so that it can be taken apart and reassembled for ease of travel and exhibition. The feet, arms and face will be carved out of redwood and the body will be covered in water resistant epoxy resin. All parts will be sustained by a steel structure running inside the hollow torso and legs.

Our ideal goal is to complete the sculpture by the end of July 2016 and to accomplish this we need to raise $40,000. It is a tight time frame, but given the vast number of people the world over that care for Leonard Peltier, we are confident to be able to accomplish this goal.

We ask that you share this page with your circle of acquaintances and consider contributing to this effort by:

using the PayPal button below (no PayPal account required)

or sending a check to the address below, made out to:

PDF/Leonard Peltier Statue Project
P.O. Box 40250
San Francisco, CA 94140-0250

Warmest Greetings,

Lenard Foster – Mr. Peltier Spiritual Advisor
Tony Gonzales – American Indian Movement – West, Director
Rigo 23 -Visual artist, creator of the Tommie Smith and John Carlos sculpture at San José State University

Delegates to the 15th Session of the United Nations
Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues, gather
around statue’s model at Flying Eagle Woman Fund
reception in New York City on May 13, 2016.

This project is endorsed by: American Indian Movement (AIM) ,ANIS – Associacion Nacional Indigenas Salvadoreños, Flying Eagle Woman Fund, Indigenous Women’s Life Net, and Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples.

Click here to contact us.

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Angola 3 Basics

(Download a flyer version of this fact sheet here.)

In 1972, deep in rural Louisiana, three young black men were silenced for trying to expose continued segregation, systematic corruption, and horrific abuse in the biggest prison in the US, an 18,000 acre former slave plantation called Angola.

Peaceful, non-violent protest in the form of hunger and work strikes organized by inmates caught the attention of Louisiana’s elected leaders and local media in the early 1970s. They soon called for investigations into a host of unconstitutional and extraordinarily inhumane practices commonplace in what was then the “bloodiest prison in the South.” Eager to put an end to outside scrutiny, prison officials began punishing inmates they saw as troublemakers.

At the height of this unprecedented institutional chaos, Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox, and Robert King were charged with murders they did not commit and thrown into 6x9 foot solitary cells where they remained for decades.

Their struggle for justice continued until Robert was released in 2001, Herman in 2013, and Albert in 2016.

Despite a number of reforms achieved in the mid-70s, many officials repeatedly ignored both evidence of misconduct, and of innocence.

The State’s case was riddled with inconsistencies, obfuscations, and missteps. A bloody print at the murder scene did not match Herman, Albert or anyone charged with the crime and was never compared with the limited number of other prisoners who had access to the dormitory on the day of the murder. In 2008, NPR asked Louisiana Attorney General Buddy Caldwell why the state refused to test the print. "A fingerprint can come from anywhere," Caldwell explained. "We're not going to be fooled by that."

Potentially exculpatory DNA evidence was “lost” by prison officials—including fingernail scrapings from the victim and barely visible “specks” of blood on clothing alleged to have been worn by Albert.

Both Herman and Albert had multiple alibi witnesses with nothing to gain who testified they were far away from the scene when the murder occurred.

In contrast, several State witnesses lied under oath about rewards for their testimony. The prosecution’s star witness Hezekiah Brown told the jury: “Nobody promised me nothing.” But new evidence showed Hezekiah, a convicted serial rapist serving life, agreed to testify only in exchange for a pardon, a weekly carton of cigarettes, TV, birthday cakes, and other luxuries.

“Hezekiah was one you could put words in his mouth,” the Warden reminisced chillingly in an interview about the case years later.

Notably, Teenie Rogers, the widow of the victim, prison guard Brent Miller, after reviewing the evidence believed Herman and Albert’s trials were unfair, expressed grave doubts about their guilt, and called upon officials to find the real killer. "“Each time I look at the evidence in this case, I remember there is no proof that the men charged with Brent’s death are the ones who actually killed him. It’s easy to get caught up in vengeance and anger, but when I look at the facts, they just do not add up,” said Rogers in 2013.

Herman’s conviction was finally overturned in October 2013 by a Federal Judge. Although his trial was riddled with evidence of prosecutorial misconduct and other constitutional violations, it was the systematic exclusion of women from his jury in violation of the 14th Amendment that freed him. Unfortunately he was released in the late stages of advanced liver cancer and only experienced 3 days of freedom. Sadly for Herman, justice delayed was justice denied.

Albert’s conviction was overturned three times by judges citing racial discrimination, prosecutorial misconduct, inadequate defense, and suppression of exculpatory evidence. While the case worked its way through endless appeals, Louisiana officials refused to release Albert from solitary, even when no longer convicted of the crime, because “there’s been no rehabilitation” from “practicing Black Pantherism.”4

In June 2015, a Federal Judge courageously ordered Albert's immediate release and barred a retrial stressing the “Court's lack of confidence in the State to provide a fair third trial." This extraordinary remedy was also frozen pending yet another series of appeals.

Finally, Albert was released in February of 2016, 43 years and 10 months after first being put in isolation for a crime he didn’t commit.

Louisiana today has the highest incarceration rate in the US—thus the highest in the world.

Three-fourths of the 5,000+ prisoners at Angola are African American. And due to some of the harshest sentencing practices in the nation, 97% will die there.

Reminiscent of a bygone era, inmates still harvest cotton, corn and wheat for 4 to 20 cents an hour under the watchful eye of armed guards on horseback.

We believe that only by openly examining the failures and inequities of the criminal justice system in America can we restore integrity to that system.

We must not wait.

We can make a difference.

As the A3 did years before, now is the time to challenge injustice and demand that the innocent and wrongfully incarcerated be freed.

Cruel and Unusual Punishment

In 2000, Herman, Albert and Robert filed a civil lawsuit challenging the inhumane and increasingly pervasive practice of long-term solitary confinement. Magistrate Judge Dalby described their decades of isolation as “so far beyond the pale” she could not find “anything even remotely comparable in the annals of American jurisprudence.” Over the course of 16 years, this seminal case detailed unconstitutionally cruel and unusual treatment and systematic due process violations at the hands of Louisiana officials and inspired worldwide action to end long term solitary.

Tuesday, May 31, 2016

Support the Leonard Peltier Statue Project / Take Action with Amnesty USA

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Enslavement, past and present--from the Middle Passage to US prisons today