May 13, 1985 and the Legalization of Murder

(VIDEO: Part two of our May, 2010 interview with Ramona Africa. In this segment, Ramona gives her personal account of May 13, 1985. Watch part one here.)

May 13, 1985 and the Legalization of Murder

By Angola 3 News

On May 13, 1985, a State Police helicopter dropped a C-4 bomb, illegally supplied by the FBI, on the roof of the MOVE Organization’s house at 6221 Osage Avenue in West Philadelphia. The bomb started a fire that was allowed to burn, and eventually destroyed 61 homes, leaving 250 people homeless: the entire block of a middle-class black community (watch video).

The Philadelphia Special Investigation Commission (The MOVE Commission), appointed by Mayor Wilson Goode, documented that when the occupants of the house tried to escape the fire, police shot at them, blocking their escape. In the end, six MOVE adults and five children died. Ramona Africa and 13 year-old Birdie Africa were the only survivors, after successfully dodging the police gunfire.

The MOVE Commission concluded that the deaths of the five MOVE children “appeared to be unjustified homicides which should be investigated by a grand jury” (curiously the Commission did not similarly criticize the murder of the MOVE adults). However, two subsequent grand juries refused to press charges against any city or police official for murder or any other wrongdoing. In contrast, Ramona Africa spent seven years in prison.

Recognizing the racial implications of the massacre, The MOVE Commission wrote that the day’s many horrifying decisions, including “the use of high explosives, and in a 90 minute period, the firing of at least 10,000 rounds of ammunition at the house; to sanction the dropping of a bomb on an occupied row house; and to let a fire burn in a row house occupied by children, would not likely have been made had the MOVE house and its occupants been situated in a comparable white neighborhood.”

As death row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal writes in his essay "When Massacre Is No Crime" MOVE is currently seeking murder charges against police and city officials for the deaths of eleven of their family members on May 13, 1985. The remainder of this article, organized into six sections, is a compilation of testimony and evidence that makes a compelling case for why murder charges are needed: The Legalization of Murder; The Morning Assault; Mayor Goode Refuses to Negotiate; Dropping the C-4 Bomb; “Fire As a Tactical Weapon”; Police Shoot at Fleeing Occupants.

The Legalization of Murder

As detailed in the article that accompanied the first part of our video-interview with Ramona Africa, the Philadelphia police had launched a previous military-style assault on MOVE’s home in the Powelton Village neighborhood of West Philadelphia on August 8, 1978. During the assault, Officer James Ramp was shot and killed by what many believe was actually police gunfire because MOVE was below ground in the basement and the bullet in Officer Ramp did not enter at an upward trajectory like a bullet from the basement would have. Furthermore, Philadelphia journalist Linn Washington Jr. has reported that several different sources of his within the Philadelphia Police Department told him that Ramp had in fact been shot by police gunfire.

However, nine MOVE members (known today as the “MOVE 9”) arrested in the house that day were jointly convicted of third-degree murder and conspiracy for the shooting death of Officer Ramp and sentenced to 30-100 years. In the years following the imprisonment of the MOVE 9, the headquarters for MOVE shifted to 6221 Osage Avenue, in a middle-class black neighborhood, where MOVE continually demanded an official investigation into the 1978 confrontation and the convictions of the MOVE 9.

Many of MOVE’s neighbors complained to the city government about MOVE’s use of a loudspeaker to air their own grievances with the city, which mostly centered around the MOVE 9 convictions. Along with sanitation complaints, the neighbors also expressed concern about a bunker built above the house, which MOVE said they had built to defend themselves from another military-style police assault on their home similar to Aug. 8, 1978.

Officially in response to these sanitation and noise complaints from neighbors, Philadelphia mayor, Wilson Goode, held a meeting with Managing Director Leo A. Brooks and Police Commissioner Gregore Sambor, District Attorney Ed Rendell (now the Governor of Pennsylvania), and others, where he first authorized Sambor to prepare and execute a tactical plan under the supervision of Brooks, allegedly to solve the neighborhood dispute.

On May 11, Judge Lynn Abraham approved DA Rendell’s requested emergency arrest and search warrants for four MOVE members on charges of disorderly conduct and terroristic threats, based upon statements MOVE made on their loudspeaker two weeks earlier, where, among other things, they stated that they’d defend themselves from a police attack.

Today, Ramona Africa challenges the legitimacy of these May 11 emergency warrants by citing the fact that during Ramona’s later trial, all charges listed on her arrest warrant were dismissed by the judge. Ramona says that “this means that they had no valid reason to even be out there, but they did not dismiss the charges placed on me as a result of what happened after they came out.”

Charged with conspiracy, riot, and multiple counts of simple and aggravated assault, Ramona Africa served the entirety of her 16-month to 7-year sentence after she was repeatedly denied parole for not renouncing MOVE.

Concluding Ramona’s 1986 trial, presiding judge Michael R. Stiles told the jurors not to consider any wrongdoing by police and city officials, because they would be held accountable in “other” proceedings. However, no official has ever faced criminal charges.

In 1996, Ramona successfully sued the City of Philadelphia and was awarded $500,000 for pain, suffering, and injuries. Relatives of John Africa and his nephew Frank James Africa, who died in the incident, were awarded a total of $1 million. Another $1.7 million was paid to Birdie Africa, now Michael Moses Ward.

The jury also ordered that Ramona receive $1 per week for 11 years directly from Sambor and Richmond, but this was overruled by Judge Louis Pollack on grounds that the two had not shown “willful misconduct,” and were therefore immune from financial liability.

The Morning Assault

At 5:35 AM, on May 13, after evacuating the neighbors, Police Commissioner Sambor declared on the bullhorn: “Attention, MOVE! This is America! You have to abide by the laws of the United States,” and gave them fifteen minutes to surrender.

After the fifteen-minute deadline passed, several “squirt gun” fire-hoses were directed at the bunker on MOVE’s roof, in an attempt to dislodge it. At 5:53, police tear-gassed the front and rear of the house, creating a smokescreen. Police then sent bomb squads to enter the row houses on either side of the building.

While the bomb squads entered, gunfire erupted, and in the next 90 minutes, police used over 10,000 rounds of ammunition, including 4,500 rounds from M-16s; 1,500 from Uzis; and 2,240 from M-60 machine guns. Simultaneously, the two bomb squads repeatedly detonated explosives in the side walls, and then blew off the front of the house.

Sambor later attempted to justify police gunfire by saying that police had first responded to automatic gunfire from MOVE. However, the only weapons found in MOVE’s house were two pistols, a shotgun, and a .22 caliber rifle: no automatic weapons. Sambor was unable to explain this contradiction when challenged by the MOVE Commission.

The MOVE Commission wrote that “the firing of over 10,000 rounds of ammunition in under 90 minutes at a row house containing children was clearly excessive and unreasonable. The failure of those responsible for the firing to control or stop such an excessive amount of force was unconscionable.”

Mayor Goode Refuses to Negotiate

As police ran out of ammunition and went to the armory for more, a quiet afternoon standstill began.

According to Philadelphia Tribune columnist and Temple University Professor Linn Washington, Jr., MOVE member Jerry Africa, who wasn’t in the house, attempted to negotiate with Mayor Goode during the afternoon standstill. He wanted to tell Goode that MOVE would disengage from the confrontation if Goode would agree to an investigation of the Aug. 8, 1978-related MOVE convictions.

Jerry Africa was supported and accompanied by civil rights activist Randolph Means and former Common Pleas Court Judge Robert Williams, who at the time was the Democratic Party’s nominee for Philadelphia District Attorney. According to Washington, the three of them repeatedly tried to call Goode on the telephone, but he would not take their call. Instead, Goode declared at a press conference that afternoon that he was now ready “to seize control of the house…by any means necessary.”

Notably, Washington filed this story with the The Philadelphia Daily News, who he worked for at the time, but it was not published.

Dropping the C-4 Bomb

At 5:00 pm, Managing Director Brooks telephoned Mayor Goode and said that Sambor, in Goode’s words, wanted to “blow the bunker off and to blow a hole in the roof and to put tear-gas and water in through that process.” Goode’s response: “Okay. Keep me posted.”

At 5:27 pm, a State Police helicopter dropped a C-4 bomb on MOVE’s roof, which exploded and started a fire on the roof.

Challenged at a press conference later that week, Goode was unable to offer a straight answer: “If…someone called on the telephone and said to me ‘We’re going to drop a bomb on a house;’ would I approve that? The answer is no. What was said to me was that they were going to use an explosive device to blow the bunker off the top of the house.”

Afterwards, Sambor continued to defend the decision to drop the bomb by arguing that the bombing was “a conservative and safe approach to what I perceived as a tactical necessity.”

The MOVE Commission concluded that “dropping a bomb on an occupied row house was unconscionable and should have been rejected out of hand by the mayor, the managing director, the police commissioner and the fire commissioner.”

The Commission also reported that “in January, 1985, an agent of the FBI delivered nearly 38 pounds of C-4, a powerful military plastic explosive, to the Phila. Police bomb squad. Delivery of this amount of C-4 to any police force without restrictions as to its use is inappropriate. Neither agency kept any records of the transaction. The FBI agent told the Commission that he ‘never had to keep any kind of records or anything’ regarding C-4. Nor did the bomb squad keep any delivery, inventory or use of the C-4, or any other explosives under their control…Because of the absence of record keeping by the FBI and the Philadelphia Police Department, all the facts of the use of C-4 on May 13 may never be known.”

“Fire As A Tactical Weapon”

Initially, the fire was relatively small, but it was allowed to grow until it was eventually so large and powerful that it burned down the entire city block.

According to Mayor Goode, he first learned of the fire “at about ten minutes of six,” at which point he contacted Managing Director Brooks, and ordered that the fire be stopped. On behalf of Goode, Brooks told Police Commissioner Sambor over the phone to extinguish the fire, but upon discussing it, Sambor and Fire Commissioner William Richmond decided to continue to let it burn. Richmond would later claim that Sambor did not tell Richmond about Goode’s order. However, Sambor denied this and said that he did indeed tell Richmond about Goode’s order.

In defense of his decision, Richmond said that he let the fire burn because of danger from alleged MOVE gunfire, stating: “we regret what happened, but we are not going home with any firefighters with bullet wounds tonight, and I thank God for that.”

Explicitly challenging this argument made by Richmond, the MOVE Commission cited the use of the water cannons for hours, earlier in the day, at times alongside police gunfire. Even later in the day, the Commission notes that “from 5:20 to 5:25 P.M. the ‘squrts’ [water cannons] were turned on to protect the helicopter which was preparing to drop the bomb [at 5:27],” and since firefighters were safe these other times, the fire could have been extinguished “without exposing police or firefighters to any possible danger.”

The Commission concluded that the decision “to let the fire burn constituted the use of fire as a tactical weapon” that “should have been rejected out-of-hand. That it was not rejected cannot be justified under any circumstances.”

Police Shoot at Fleeing Occupants

Today, Ramona Africa recalls escaping from the fire on May 13: “We opened the door and started to yell that we were coming out with the kids. The kids were hollering too. We know they heard us but the instant we were visible in the doorway, they opened fire. You could hear the bullets hitting all around the garage area. They deliberately took aim and shot at us. Anybody can see that their aim, very simply, was to kill MOVE people—not to arrest anybody.”

Birdie later supported Ramona’s account of police gunfire when he testified that the children and remaining adults tried several times to escape the burning house, but were driven back by police gunfire, before he and Ramona successfully dodged gunfire and escaped.

Despite official police statements denying the shooting, The MOVE Commission confirmed Ramona and Birdie’s accounts, concluding that “police gunfire prevented some occupants of 6221 Osage Ave. from escaping from the burning house to the rear alley.”

Sources

For our investigation of May 13, 1985 and the validity of the murder charges being sought by MOVE today, we have cited evidence and testimony from a variety of published sources:

--“Attention, MOVE! This Is America,” by Margot Harry, Banner Press, Chicago (1987).

--Let The Bunker Burn: The Final Battle With MOVE, by Charles W. Bowser, Camino Books, Philadelphia (1989).

--“Let It Burn!” The Philadelphia Tragedy, by Michael Boyette with Randi Boyette, Contemporary Books, Chicago, (1989).

--Final Report of the Philadelphia Special Investigation Commission, aka The MOVE Commission (1986), reprinted in full in “Let It Burn!” by Michael Boyette with Randi Boyette, pgs. 269-294.

--Visit www.onamove.com and www.move9parole.blogspot.com.

--Angola 3 News is a new 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. 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.

The FBI’s War On Democracy --Claude Marks discusses the new film COINTELPRO 101

The FBI’s War On Democracy

--Claude Marks discusses the new film COINTELPRO 101

By Angola 3 News

Claude Marks, Director of The Freedom Archives, talks to Angola 3 News about the highly anticipated new documentary film, entitled COINTELPRO 101, which is premiering on October 10, at the Mission Cultural Center of Latino Arts in San Francisco.

According to its website, the Freedom Archives “contains over 8000 hours of audio and video tapes. These recordings date from the late-60s to the mid-90s and chronicle the progressive history of the Bay Area, the United States, and international solidarity movements. The collection includes weekly news/ poetry/ music programs broadcast on several educational radio stations; in-depth interviews and reports on social and cultural issues; diverse activist voices; original and recorded music, poetry, original sound collages; and an extensive La Raza collection.”

Freedom Archives has released other audio and video documentaries, including the recent video about the San Francisco Eight, entitled "Legacy of Torture." Legacy of Torture can be viewed online, as well as the previous films Voices of Three Political Prisoners (featuring Nuh Washington, Jalil Muntaqim and David Gilbert), Charisse Shumate: Fighting for Our Lives, and Self Respect, Self Defense & Self Determination (featuring Mabel Williams and Kathleen Cleaver, introduced by Angela Davis).

Angola 3 News: What can you tell us about your upcoming film COINTELPRO 101?

Claude Marks: We’ve been aware of the need to talk more about COINTELPRO since we made The Legacy of Torture – the video about the government torture of the Panthers in New Orleans in 1973 – which later became the unjust basis for the San Francisco 8 Case. In travelling with that film and organizing for the dropping of charges, we referred to COINTELPRO but often were talking to younger people in particular, who had not heard the term and had no historical frame of reference for that period of intense repression.

So we undertook to make this new film, knowing that no government agent or agency has ever been held accountable for the assassinations of leaders, the destruction of organizations, the imprisonment and political targeting of so many people – people who still remain prisoners of the wars against movements for liberation and self-determination within the US borders.

COINTELPRO 101 is not the first or only film on the subject, although there have not been many, but we hope it can help reinvigorate some organizing work, and reopen some thinking about the violence directed against progressive movements, this hidden history, and nature of the state and its agencies of repression.

A3N: How was the film showing and related workshop at the US Social Forum received by the audience?

CM: This was a good opportunity to infuse the very broad conversations at the Social Forum with a self-conscious discussion about the nature and continuity of government repression. From the European invasion & Middle Passage forward, we have always seen genocide. Prisons, COINTELPRO, Abu Ghraib…all represent the continuity of what any movements to change power relations are and will be up against.

A3N: Your website states that the film’s “intended audiences are the generations that did not experience the social justice movements of the sixties and seventies.” Given that COINTELPRO officially ended in the early 1970s, why is this story so important for the younger generation to know about?

CM: Well, the mission of the Freedom Archives is to help educate people, and especially the rising new generations, as to the true nature of recent radical history. The high point of struggle represented by the loosely used term “the sixties” and the violent repression against it, contains essential lessons for every young person seeking a more just society. More generally, people should not be misled by the myth of democracy, the idea that the system can be made to work for “us” or that those in power will somehow reach a moral epiphany and give up anything of consequence without a fight.

We see this myth exposed today in many ways – mass imprisonment, the tearing up of families and communities – driven by racism – the criminalization of dissent so any act of resistance becomes by their definition an act of “terrorism.”

This is a continuum that is unleashed upon the world’s peoples as well as internally. Black, Brown, and Indigenous people are targeted. Muslims and South Asians are targeted. Women and queer folks are targeted. Prisoners are subjected to the worst inhumanities, and if they are ever released, what do they have they to look forward to?

The U.S. has by far the largest incarceration rate in the world—as they build more prisons, the schools deteriorate and the public education system lies in racist tatters.

A3N: How do you think the US government’s repression of the Left today differs from the COINTELPRO era?

CM: In the 1970s, the public and some officials, faced with the exposure of the illegal acts of government and police agencies against dissent, feigned concerns about the loss of civil liberties, held hearings, and alleged that reforms would take place. But today, the acts of the FBI, police, and other agencies, once illegal, are now legitimate, legal – via the Patriot Act and other unconstitutional measures, all in the name of homeland security and defending the nation against “terrorism.”

The playing field has changed. The government now openly conducts assassinations anywhere in the world, can declare people to be “enemy combatants” and imprison them indefinitely without charges; drone warfare permits mass civilian murders by so-called military experts thousands of miles away without risking US military casualties – it’s a “game” except to the thousands of victims.

Today the government claims the right to breach international human rights laws and conventions with no accountability. And the corporate media is so integrated into this strategy, that there is little room for “legitimate” opposition to get a hearing. So it becomes incumbent upon us to organize and message independently and with few resources.

COINTELPRO 101 is made with mainly love and fumes, but we hope that it will be a useful tool to engage in dialogue and to help organize movements that challenge the mythology that dissent is a guaranteed right, that seek the release of political prisoners, that counter the miseducation of our youth with an understanding of the past so they can better shape the future.

A3N: Knowing what we do about this repression in the past and present, how can activists today best defend ourselves? How should our organizing strategies be modified?

CM: We must organize to show our outrage with more consistency and despite risks. There is an urgency to demand more of one another as well. Challenging the state is serious and will not succeed as a result of stroking egos or the pronouncements of self-declared leaders. It is hard work and requires a deep commitment and a passion for serving the people and rebuilding our communities. Our capacity must grow in realistic ways as there are no shortcuts, and the path includes defeats and sacrifice. This is one of the things that our political prisoners and the many martyrs can teach us.

A3N: For our readers not close enough to San Francisco for the October 10 premiere, how will folks be able to watch the new film?

CM: The film will begin to show in communities and on campuses this fall and winter. People can reach us to make arrangements. At some point we will also manufacture DVDs. We hope to have it available with subtitles in other languages as well. Also check the website as we have resources about COINTELPRO posted and will also add a teaching curriculum to accompany the film.

A3N: How can folks best support your efforts?

CM: We are very much a grassroots organization. We have no corporate or government funding. We are one voice among many, but we encourage people to support the work of independent media, including ourselves. We welcome your questions and comments and greatly appreciate your support.

Also please use the audio and video documentaries that we’ve produced as educational materials and organizing tools. The actual Freedom Archives is searchable on line and is intended to preserve radical history and culture. So check us out!

A3N: Any closing thoughts?

CM: Years ago, as the movements grew and we worked in various political and media organizations, we were fond of quoting part of an 1857 speech by Frederick Douglass, often using Ossie Davis’s dramatic rendition of his famous words. They sum up a lesson that is central to what I am saying, and is at the heart of COINTELPRO 101. Many of your readers are probably familiar with it, but its essence bears repeating:

“The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims, have been born of earnest struggle… If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation…want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters…. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

--Angola 3 News is a new 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. 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.

Prison Abolition In Practice--Part two of an interview with Criminal Injustice Kos

Prison Abolition In Practice
--Part two of an interview with Criminal Injustice Kos

By Angola 3 News

Focusing on the prison abolitionist movement, we interview two co-editors of an exciting new series at Daily Kos, called Criminal InJustice Kos, a weekly series "devoted to exploring the myths of 'crime', 'criminals', and criminal justice and the intersection of race/ethnicity/class/gender/sexuality/age/disability in policing and punishment. Criminal Injustice Kos is committed to furthering action towards reducing inequity in the US criminal justice system." Look for Criminal InJustice Kos every Wednesday at 6 pm CST.

Here, in the second part of our interview, we focus on the practicality of prison abolition and look at alternatives to the US prison system. Read part one here.

Kay Whitlock (whose online name is “RadioGirl”) is a Montana-based writer, organizer, and activist long engaged in progressive struggles for racial, gender, queer, environmental, and economic justice. She has written extensively on the intersection of race, gender, sexuality, and class in relation to police and prison violence, most notably in her former position as National Representative for LGBT Issues for the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker organization. Her publications for AFSC include Corrupting Justice: A Primer for LGBT Communities on Racism, Violence, Human Degradation & the Prison Industrial Complex (pdf download and In a Time of Broken Bones: A Call to Dialogue on Hate Violence and the Limitations of Hate Crimes Legislation (pdf download). With Joey L. Mogul and Andrea J. Ritchie, she is the co-author of Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States, forthcoming from Beacon Press in February 2011 – an analysis of queer criminalization, centering race, class, and gender, from colonial contact to the present.

Dr. Nancy Heitzeg (whose online name is “soothsayer99”) is an activist educator and Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the interdisciplinary Critical Studies of Race/Ethnicity program at Saint Catherine University. She has written and presented widely on the subjects of race, class, gender and social control. She is the author of Deviance: Rule-makers and Rule-breakers, and several articles exploring issue of race class gender and social control including: "Differentials in Deviance: Race, Class, Gender and Age" (in The International Handbook of Deviant Behavior, Routledge, forthcoming Summer 2010); "The Case Against Prison: in Prison Privatization: The State of Theory and Practice (forthcoming Fall 2010), "Education Not Incarceration: Interrupting the School to Prison Pipeline"(Forum on Public Policy, Oxford University Press, Winter 2010); "The Racialization of Crime and Punishment: Criminal Justice, Color-Blind Racism and the Political Economy of the Prison Industrial Complex"(with Dr. Rose Brewer, which appeared in a special volume co-edited by Dr. Heitzeg and Dr. Rodney Coates, of American Behavioral Scientist: Micro-Level Social Justice Projects, Pedagogy, and Democratic Movements, Winter 2008); and Race, Class and Legal Risk in the United States: Youth of Color and Colluding Systems of Social Control" (Forum on Public Policy, Oxford University Press, Winter 2009).

Be sure to read our earlier two-part interview with Heitzeg, published by Truthout, part one: Visiting a Modern Day Slave Plantation and part two: The Racialization of Crime and Punishment.

Angola 3 News: What are practical alternatives to the current prison system? What examples do we have when looking from an international perspective? Examples from here in the US?

Kay Whitlock: Accumulating overreliance on more policing, harsher punishments, and an expanded prison system to allegedly produce “safety” in our society has effectively shuttered our collective ability to think about justice outside the framework of prisons. There are very few real alternatives for that reason. Clearly, the prison system is not going to be abolished in one fell swoop – that’s not realistic. But we also lack strategic capacity for thinking clearly and synergistically about how to begin interrupting the revolving door, self-perpetuating nature of the criminal legal system. And how to divert resources that otherwise might to into more policing and prisons into broader community safety strategies that also address the needs of communities of color and other groups most likely experience violence within families, communities, and the criminal legal system. These include undocumented immigrants, poor and homeless people in general, people with mental illness, women, youth, queers who challenge middle-class heteronormativity, people with addictions, and more.

There’s no funding for real alternatives. No political will to find them over time. No broad-based faith leadership that calls us to new directions. Possible options are being choked to death by political and religious cowardice and failure of imagination. So that’s our challenge: to find inventive, intriguing, and constructive ways to shake up public discourse and get practical about new directions. To reach outside of that long shadow of prison that deadens our public imagination in order to think in fresh ways about these things and start creating more community capacity to confront multiple kinds of violence – at the hands of individuals, the state, corporations, and a whole host of public/private institutions.

Thank goodness, pockets of real imagination are found in a growing number of more locally based groups and organizations, often led by people from the communities who historically have borne the systemic brunt of police/prison violence. Focusing on strategies that seek to interrupt the revolving-door nature of the criminal legal system and how to divert resources that otherwise might go into more policing and prisons they tackle specific issues such as violence against queers, women, and children in ways that open up broader discussions about the creation of community safety.

Here are just a few groups working from various angles to create community safety without reliance on more policing and prisons:

Creative Interventions (Oakland) (This link is to an interview with CI founder Mimi Kim; I've had trouble recently linking to the Creative Interventions website, which is found here.): Developing community-based responses to domestic and sexual violence in communities of color, queer, and immigrant communities without involving police, as well as strategies aimed at promoting the healthy transformation of all people involved and the larger community.

The Audre Lorde Project: a Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Two Spirit, Trans and Gender Nonconforming People of Color center for community organizing, focusing on the New York City area. One area of emphasis is working to create neighborhood safety for queers of color.

FIERCE: Building the leadership and power of LGBTQ youth of color; addressing the criminalization of poor, young queers of color in gentrifying areas in NYC by bringing those voices into the center of discussion about planning and safety.

But there also are a few systemic changes that could help enormously.

Nancy A. Heitzeg: During the past 40 years there has been a dramatic escalation the U.S. prison population, a ten-fold increase since 1970. The rate of incarceration for women escalated at an even more dramatic pace. The increased rate of incarceration can be traced almost exclusively to the War on Drugs and the rise of lengthy mandatory minimum prison sentences for drug crimes and other non violent felonies. It is important to note that 75% of all those imprisoned are incarcerated for a non-violent offense.

A similarly repressive trend has emerged in the juvenile justice system. The juvenile justice system has shifted sharply from its’ original rehabilitative, therapeutic and reform goals, into a “second-class criminal court that provides youth with neither therapy or justice.”(Throughout the 1990s, nearly all states and the federal government enacted a series of legislation that criminalized a host of “gang-related activities”, made it easier and in some cases mandatory) to try juveniles as adults, lowered the age at which juveniles could be referred to adult court, and widened the net of juvenile justice.

These harsh policies have proliferated, not in response to crime rates nor any empirical data that indicates their effectiveness,. They have proliferated due to our unfounded fears and the profit motive that is increasingly wound up with the prison system.

The most immediate practical solution is decriminalization of a multitude of lesser and "victimless" offenses and a wholesale return to community corrections – probation, restitution and community service.. Prior to mandatory minimum sentences, these were the primary sentencing options for non-violent offenders. Probation has been used effectively for over 100 years. Community alternatives have long been associated with both much lower costs than incarceration and higher “success” rates as measured by lower recidivism rates. It costs an average of $ 25000 per inmate per year local state fed nearly $150 billion per year and the average execution costs an average of $2 million dollars..Comparatively – community correctional options have one-third of the costs and twice the success rate.

In addition to these well-tried traditional methods, there is also a move to consider restorative justice models. In the context of the community and presented as true alternative to other criminal sanctions, restorative justice models offer a method for actually addressing and repairing torn community relations

There are also international examples we can learn from. Decriminalization of drugs and other lesser offenses reduces stress on legal systems and removes an entire class of offenders form legal control. Prisons are used rarely and sentence lengths are much shorter. Perhaps the best example of how prisons may serve a rehabilitative and reintegrative purpose is Norway's new Halden Fengsel prison, described as the most humane prison in the world.

There are many options available to us other than prison and certainly many uses of prison that are less draconian than those offered in the United States. We merely lack the will to change.

A3N: What examples of organizing against the PIC do you find most inspiring?

KW: The struggle for abolition would not be gaining the ground it is without the vision and relentless persistence of Critical Resistance and INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence Other groups such as the Institute for Community Justice are taking on the challenges of community-led solutions to the crisis of mass incarceration.

I also have a special love for groups that have a genius for refusing to get caught in the “single issue” trap that characterizes much of nonprofit work today by building strong bridges to the challenge of resisting the prison industrial complex. They prove that a single issue is an entry way to cross-issue, cross-constituency movement building. In addition to those groups already named earlier, the groups that most inspire me are:

The Sylvia Rivera Law Project
Queers for Economic Justice

Project Unshackle of the Community HIV/AIDS Mobilization Project (CHAMP)

Committee on Women, Population and the Environment(CWPE Task force on Militarization, Criminalization & Surveillance)

Not surprisingly, these groups are multiracial, center the experiences and voices of people of color and poor folks, and often have strong participation – and leadership - by people who have been incarcerated.

NH: I am inspired by the work of Critical Resistance, The Prison Activist Resource Center and The Real Cost of Prisons Project. All these grassroots groups require justice activists, educators, artists, justice policy researchers and people directly experiencing the impact of mass incarceration to work towards change. These powerful coalitions are the basis for real change.

Davis (1997: 71-72) identifies three key dimensions of this work –public policy, community organizing, and academic research;

“In order to be successful, this project must build bridges between academic work, legislative and other policy interventions, and grassroots campaigns calling, for example for the decriminalization of drugs and prostitution, and for the reversal of the present proliferation of prisons and jails."

I am inspired always by the writings of those who are imprisoned -- Leonard Peltier and Mumia Abu-Jamal, Assata and Sundiata, George Jackson, , Angela Davis, Huey P. Newton, and Stanley “Tookie” Williams, Marilyn Buck, Jimmy Santiago Baca Kathy Boudin and Rita Bo Brown, Wilbur Rideau, and many more.

And I am inspired by those who work to carry these voices to the outside. The writings of many political prisoners/prisoners of conscience might have remained suppressed were it not for the efforts of scholars to bring them forward. This coalition between what Mumia calls “organic and radical intellectuals” is crucial to the uncovering of the deep structural connections between race, political economy and crime.

The work of Angela Davis and Joy James is exemplary here. Their extensive writings on these matters and their careful attendance to connecting with those inside prison walls serve as a model for future work. In Imprisoned Intellectuals (2003), James gives voice to the range of political prisoners and traces the common thread of resistance across generations, nationalities, racial/ethnic differences, genders, sexual orientations, and political causes. She hopes that writing and reading will force a transformative encounter “between those in the so-called free world seeking personal and collective freedoms and those in captivity seeking liberation from economic, military, racial/sexual systems.”

A3N: Andrea Smith, co-founder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence argues that “the criminalization approach proffered in the mainstream anti-violence movement doesn’t work. And, also, this criminalization approach obfuscates the role of the state in perpetrating gender violence.” What do you think is the best way to reduce and prevent violence against women both inside and outside prisons?

KW: Andrea is right, and over the past dozen years or so, there has been a growing challenge from women of color working on anti-violence issues to challenge the rush by white-dominated anti-violence groups to embrace more policing/harsher punishment approaches. (See some exceptional resources here, here, and here. Similarly, I am part of a growing movement of progressive queers who are challenging mainstream embrace of more policing and “get tough on crime” approaches to anti-LGBT violence; several progressive queer groups spoke out on same here.

The mainstream analysis leaves state violence out of the picture – but in fact, women (especially women of color who are low income) are often on the receiving end of mirror image forms of violence in their homes and communities and in the criminal legal system.

There’s no single solution to the problem Andrea names. What might work for one community may not work for another. But I do know some ingredients for approaches that might work better:

•address state violence – including the violence of the policing and punishment systems – in all anti-violence work.

• center the leadership and perspectives of people and communities most affected by state violence – people of color (including immigrants), poor people, prisoners and their families, former prisoners – in the work. Otherwise, we just replicate the idea of white people believing we are able to decide “what’s best” for communities of color.

• recognize that we can never just police and punish our way to safety. The overarching challenge is addressing systemic forms of violence, exclusion, and injustice in our communities. We need to build within a framework of strengthening community well being in which commitments to racial, gender, and economic justice has real, vibrant, ongoing meaning.

• shift the meaning of “criminal” simply from “dangerous individuals” to a more expansive vision that includes the harm done to individuals, entire communities, and whole nations by corporations, governments, and other public/private institutions.

• openly confront and challenge the ways in which violence against women – in families, communities, prisons – is mainstreamed into popular culture and marketed as a profitable media commodity.

NH: While the overall prison population has increased exponentially over the past 40 years, the female prison population has absolutely exploded. Women, especially black and brown women, are the fastest growing segment of our prison population. Many of these women are incarcerated for drug offenses and many have been victims of physical and sexual violence. Tragically theses women are re-victimized by prison.

We must resist rape culture. Rape culture describes a culture in which rape and other sexual violence are common and in which prevalent attitudes, norms, practices, and media condone, normalize, excuse, or encourage sexualized violence.

Acts of sexism are commonly employed to validate and rationalize normative misogynistic practices; for instance, sexist jokes may be told to foster disrespect for women and an accompanying disregard for their well-being, which ultimately make their rape and abuse seem "acceptable". Examples of behaviors that typify rape culture include victim blaming, trivializing prison rape, and sexual objectification. Our propensity for violence and sexual objectification are part and parcel of the hostile environment which leads to both rampant sexism and prisonization.

A3N: In her recent book Are Prisons Obsolete? , Davis writes that "a major challenge of this movement is to do the work that will create more human, habitable environments for people in prison without bolstering the permanence of the prison system. How, then, do we accomplish this balancing act of passionately attending to the needs of prisoners -- calling for less violent conditions, an end to sexual assault, improved physical and mental health care, greater access to drug programs, better educational work opportunities, unionization of prison labor, more connections with families and communities, shorter or alternative sentencing -- and at the same time call for alternatives to sentencing altogether, no more prison construction, and abolitionist strategies that question the place of the prison in our future?" How do you think we can best walk this line?

KW: We need to be careful in thinking about “reform” as end and in and of itself. Too often, “reform” means that we’re buying time to make sure that nothing fundamentally changes. For example, in the 1970s, many of us argued that indeterminate sentencing was being abused and demanded “reform.” What we got was a series of “get tough on crime” measures: 3-strikes laws, mandatory minimums, so-called “truth in sentencing” laws, and the bogus “War on Drugs.” Hundreds of thousands of people were swept into prisons for longer periods of time - and it's still happening.

Many people call for reforms today. Let’s get rid of prison rape. Let’s reinstitute rehabilitation. Let’s repeal certain draconian sentencing laws. All good and essential ideas. But very little – in some cases, nothing - will fundamentally change unless those ideas, and more, are advanced within a strategic framework of abolition. Why? Because if we’re not thinking “bigger,” the so-called reforms inevitably will morph into new ways of supporting the existing system. We need to remind ourselves that the first abolition struggle wasn't "realistic" - and originally, it was about as popular as the plague. White abolitionists caught hell from family, friends, neighbors, and faith communities. But it was the boldness and necessity of the vision that encouraged historic persistence and began to gain support. The Right knows the importance of the larger strategic vision that seems outrageous at first, but mainstreams over time because of the relentless pulse of national and local messaging/organizing that folds into the vision over a long period of time. Liberals and progressives in the United States so often seem to have forgotten this.

It is time for us to open up a fundamentally different and more expansive conversation around anti-queer violence and the creation of safe communities. A conversation emphasizing the integrity of community relationships and a radical commitment to community well being for all, not just the most socially, economically, and racially privileged among us.

Within that larger framework, practical reforms can be strategic steps toward something new. But apart from it, you can count on politicians, corporations, and do-nothing religious leaders to simply tweak the status quo – to our ultimate disadvantage.

The late, great civil rights activist Lillian Smith insisted that the realization of genuine justice depends on our willingness to pursue big ideas, to risk organizing for what we truly long for. In time, she asserted, big ideas that are persistently pursued will begin to take root. “To believe in something not yet proved,” Smith said, “and to underwrite it with our lives: it is the only way we can leave the future open.”

NH: The current conditions of incarceration in the US are deplorable as are the roots of prisons in racism and classism. Both are situations of injustice that we must name and oppose. Prison conditions in the US are torturous. The United States has a long list of standard police, prison and jail practices that rise to the level of torture.

Included in this list are: racial profiling; excessive use of force – including use of dogs, kicking and beatings of restrained suspects with fists, batons, and flashlights; excessive use of dangerous chokeholds, "hog-ties", and dangerous restraints - including four point restraints, the "hitching post" and the restraint chair - that have resulted in multiple deaths; excessive use of tasers and chemical sprays; excessive use of deadly force; shackling of pregnant inmates; use of nudity, strip searches and sexual humiliation and assault as a source of social control; abuse of transgender prisoners; failure to curtail sexual assaults on both male and female inmates by other inmates and guards; denial of medical care or treatment; confinement of the mentally ill; medical experimentation on inmates; excessive use of "super max" and isolation confinement and brutal methods of execution, including lethal injection which fails to meet the standards set forth by the American Veterinary Association. These practices and conditions are in violation of The Geneva Conventions, International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, Convention against Torture, Universal Declaration of Human Rights, UN Body of Principles for the Protection of All Persons under Any Form of Detention, UN Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners , UN Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials, UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials and the US Constitution’s 8th Amendment prohibition against cruel and unususal punishment.

This is surely unacceptable to civilized people anywhere and it is not incompatible to work for improvements of theses egregious human rights violations which working towards the larger goal of abolition altogether.

We can and must do both.

Our current experiment in mandatory imprisonment for non-violent offenders and mass incarceration is a very costly one. The prison industrial complex grows and profits at the expense of tax-payers, of social programs, of entire communities, of both current and future generations, and at the expense of the lives of the millions lost to its’ vast machinery. We spend billions on torturous punishment for “crimes” we could have prevented for a fraction of the costs at the beginning.

Noted author and educator Jonathan Kozol observes: “At issue are the values of a nation that writes off many of its poorest children in deficient urban schools starved of all the riches found in good suburban schools nearby, criminalizes those it has short-changed and cheated , and then willingly expends ten times as much to punish them as it ever spent to teach them when they were still innocent and clean.”

This is unacceptable. We must organize, continuing the legacy of struggle. We must come together across boundaries of national identity, gender, race, class and ethnicity. The call to social justice, especially when addressing complex and cloaked systems of racialization, requires critical and systematic documentation, the surfacing of deep political and economic structures, and bold confrontation. It requires the analytical tools and methods of multiple disciplines, as we have attempted to offer here. The dismantling of the white supremacist patriarchal capitalist machinery of criminal injustice requires coalitions between “intellectuals” of all sorts.

We must work in alliance to realize the vision that another world is possible.

--Angola 3 News is a new 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. 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.

COINTELPRO and the Omaha Two --An Interview with Michael Richardson

COINTELPRO and the Omaha Two

--An Interview with Michael Richardson

By Angola 3 News

In 2007, veteran journalist Michael Richardson began writing a series of articles for OpEdNews.com about Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa, who are two Black Panther political prisoners known as the Omaha Two. Richardson argues that they were framed for the 1970 murder of a policeman as part of the FBI’s notorious counterintelligence program, dubbed “COINTELPRO.” This top-secret and illegal operation was a dirty war on the entire US Left, including the civil rights & Black liberation movements.

Illustrating this program’s intent, a March 3, 1968 COINTELPRO memo discussed the need to stop "the beginning of a true black revolution," and to "prevent the rise of a 'messiah' who could unify, and electrify, the militant black nationalist movement… Through counterintelligence it should be possible to pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them." Another stated goal was "to prevent the long-range growth of militant black nationalist organizations, especially among youth. Specific tactics to prevent these groups from converting young people must be developed." One specific tactical approach was expressed in an April 3, 1968 communiqué arguing that "The Negro youth and moderates must be made to understand that if they succumb to revolutionary teaching, they will be dead revolutionaries."

In terms of scale, the FBI's war of repression against the Black liberation movement of the 1960s and 1970s was greatest against the Black Panthers. Many Panthers, like Chicago leader Fred Hampton, were assassinated outright, while others were framed for murders they did not commit. A few of these Panthers, like Geronimo Ji Jaga and Dhoruba Bin Wahad, had their convictions overturned and were released, but many of the COINTELPRO survivors remain in prison today.

In addressing why the Panthers were targeted so intensely by COINTELPRO, Noam Chomsky wrote in 1973: "A top secret Special Report for the president in June 1970 gives some insight into the motivations for the actions undertaken by the government to destroy the Black Panther Party. The report describes the party as 'the most active and dangerous black extremist group in the United States.' Its 'hard core members' were estimated at 800, but 'a recent poll indicates that approximately 25 percent of the black population has a great respect for the BPP, including 43 percent of blacks under 21 years of age.' On the basis of such estimates of the potential of the party, the repressive apparatus of the state proceeded against it to ensure that it did not succeed in organizing as a substantial social or political force."

Michael Richardson is now working on a book about the Omaha Two and an archive of his definitive OpEdNews.com series about the case is available here. This year, he began a new series of articles at Examiner.com, exploring the broader history of COINTELPRO, along with a continued focus on the Omaha Two, viewable here.

Ed Poindexter today.

(Photo by Michael Richardson)

Mondo we Langa today.

(Photo by Michael Richardson)

Angola 3 News: Please tell us about who the Omaha Two are.

Michael Richardson: Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa (formerly David Rice) were two leaders of the Black Panther affiliate chapter in Omaha, Nebraska and targets of the Federal Bureau of Investigation under Operation COINTELPRO. Both men are serving life sentences at the Nebraska State Penitentiary for the 1970 bombing murder of an Omaha policeman and have been imprisoned forty years. The former Panther leaders have come to be known as the Omaha Two.

A3N: As a journalist at the time, how did you first react to news of their arrests?

MR: I didn’t know Poindexter, but Mondo, then called David, was a friend of mine I met at Omaha City Council meetings. I knew Mondo was the sharpest critic of Omaha police around and that he was constantly being harassed, so I wasn’t surprised he became a prime suspect. I didn’t think he did it though and I followed the case in the news and attended part of his trial the next year. I never got to speak to Mondo after his arrest and I moved from Nebraska within a year of his trial.

My first published article was a report on the trial that appeared in the Omaha Star, but it only reported the surface story as the true facts of the case remained hidden.

Over the years I have wondered if Mondo was guilty, as there seemed to be so much evidence of his involvement. Finally, after over 35 years of doubt I began corresponding with Mondo and started research on the case. I reviewed portions of the voluminous court file, interviewed people familiar with the case including the two current attorneys, read old newspaper accounts, studied formerly secret COINTELPRO files, and visited with both men at the prison where they are held.

I am now convinced Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa did not get a fair trial and were framed by overzealous police and prosecutors who ended up letting the real killers get away to put the Panther leaders in jail.

A3N: Can you briefly explain the charges against the Omaha Two, and what evidence was used to convict them?

MR: On August 17, 1970, an anonymous 911 caller reported a woman screaming at a vacant house. Police arrived to an ambush instead, in which 29 year-old Officer Larry Minard was killed. A recording of the killer’s voice was sent to the FBI crime laboratory for analysis but before Minard was even buried, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover had ordered the crime lab to withhold a report on the tape.

A 15 year-old, Duane Peak, was soon charged with the murder and after six different versions of the crime, he implicated Ed and Mondo in exchange for his own freedom.

Dynamite was allegedly found in Mondo’s basement only to have two different detectives both claim they were each the one that found the explosives.

The 911 tape was withheld from the jury. The conflicting police dynamite testimony was also unknown to the jury, as was the deal that allowed Peak his freedom. The jury was never informed that the defendants were COINTELPRO targets.

After five days of deliberation, the jury convicted Ed and Mondo of murder but spared their lives from the electric chair. The two men have been in prison ever since.

A3N: Can you please explain what COINTELPRO was? How do the Omaha 2 fit into the story of COINTELPRO?

MR: Operation COINTELRO was a vast, illegal campaign by the FBI in the 60’s and 70’s to “disrupt” domestic political activity that J. Edgar Hoover deemed dangerous. The clandestine program was national in scope, targeted thousands of individuals and groups and broke a number of laws dwarfing Watergate in magnitude.

The Black Panthers were the primary target of Hoover’s law enforcement conspiracy. Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa had been COINTELPRO targets for at least a year prior to their arrests. Hoover had sent several memos to the Omaha FBI office complaining about a lack of results and urged the Omaha agents to be “imaginative” with counterintelligence actions.

Poindexter had been the subject of a secret FBI smear campaign with forged letters and anonymous phone calls while Mondo was targeted for an ambush while distributing Black Panther newspapers. It was the death of Minard, however, that gave the FBI an opportunity to put the Omaha Two behind bars.

At the time of the trial, the jury had no idea that COINTELPRO manipulation of evidence had occurred. The secret program was officially disbanded a week after the trial ended making Ed and Mondo the last COINTELPRO victims.

The COINTELPRO withholding of evidence did not surface until years later following Freedom of Information requests for COINTELPRO documents.

A3N: Have all the COINTELPRO documents been released?

MR: No. Key documents identifying informants and providing evidentiary details have been destroyed, withheld, or remain heavily redacted.

In the mid 70’s when the Church Committee of the U.S. Senate investigated COINTELPRO, much of the Omaha case remained hidden and so the full story of the FBI duplicity in Omaha remains unknown and will likely never be fully disclosed.

Five different members of the Omaha Police Department ended up making perjured or false statements about the case in court proceedings, to the media, and in congressional testimony.

No official or agent of the FBI ever was publicly disciplined for the COINTELPRO misconduct in the Omaha case.

A3N: What are the Omaha Two doing today to challenge the convictions and imprisonment?

MR: Both Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa have habeas corpus petitions pending in the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and petitions for hearings pending in the U.S. District Court of Nebraska.

Both appeals address the conflicting police testimony on dynamite and new scientific testing of the 911 tape that establishes Duane Peak did not make the deadly phone call as he had claimed.

Poindexter asked the Nebraska courts for review and in 2008 was told by the Douglas County District Court that it didn’t matter where the dynamite was found or who found it. Last year the Nebraska Supreme Court told Ed that it didn’t matter who made the 911 call.

A3N: How has the mainstream media done with reporting on the Omaha Two?

MR: Poorly. The national media has largely ignored the case and the regional media has failed to explore the COINTELPRO aspect of the prosecution. Almost all Nebraska media accounts of the Omaha Two contain factual errors of some sort and glaring omissions of relevant facts. Anyone relying on the mainstream media about this COINTELPRO case is sadly both misinformed and under-informed.

Racism and the stigma against the Black Panthers is partially to blame, while COINTELPRO media manipulation was another factor in early reporting on the case. Why the media continues to ignore this important case today is a mystery to me.

A3N: What upcoming articles are you working on?

MR: Now that internet newspaper Examiner.com has named me the COINTELPRO Examiner, the opportunity to report on the Omaha Two is part of my beat. I intend on revisiting, in serial form, the long convoluted history of the case as well as report on current developments.

My research on the FBI and COINTELPRO has led me to understand that Ed and Mondo are not alone and that each COINTELPRO conviction needs a fresh new look. COINTELPRO was the largest, most systematic attack on our legal system in U.S. history. It is our responsibility today to carefully review the cases of remaining COINTELPRO targets because of the strong possibility of tampering with evidence.

A3N: Having written about the Angola 3, why do you think their case is important?

MR: Any case coming out of the 1970’s involving the Black Panthers is important because of the COINTELPRO abuses. The Angola 3 case is somewhat different than others since its genesis is inside a Louisiana prison. It may have not been technically a J.-Edgar-Hoover-authorized COINTELPRO prosecution but some of the trial tactics, including deals with informers, are the same.

The severity of the punishment, decades in solitary confinement, calls out for review and is itself an injustice.

A3N: Any closing thoughts?

MR: Larry Minard, the father of five young children, was buried on what would have been his 30th birthday. He was a police officer responding to the call of a woman screaming. Larry Minard’s killers walk free today.

The named supplier of the dynamite, a suspected police informant, was never charged with the crime and only spent one night in jail.

The anonymous 911 caller was not properly identified and has never been charged in the case.

Duane Peak, the confessed bomber, was released after less then 3 years in juvenile detention.

J. Edgar Hoover let the killer of Larry Minard, the 911 caller, go free to make a case against the Omaha Two.

Justice has not been done in Nebraska.

--Angola 3 News is a new 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. 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.