Western Massachusetts

Youth rise up! Organize for release of revolutionary leaders

The late 1960s and early 1970s saw a huge revolutionary upsurge of young people. The Black Panther Party, Young Lords Party and many other organizations were built to fight Amerikan imperialism here in the belly of the beast.

Hundreds of thousands of white students joined Students for a Democratic Society, which fought the war in Vietnam, supported the struggle of Black revolutionaries and attempted to lead a revolution for white people.

Due to political mistakes and government assault, these revolutionary movements were crushed. Hundreds of leaders and activists of the above organizations and their political descendants still languish in Amerika's gulags. These people are imprisoned for acts they committed while engaged in political work or they were framed for so-called "common crimes" because of their politics. This latter group has received sentences far longer than typical for their "crime."

Because we aren't as closely tied to the positions of our parents and because of the environment of schools, youth have always played large initial roles in revolutionary struggles. Since the 1960s, progressive activism in North America has been on the decline. Increasingly, Amerikan culture is summed up by "What does the billboard say? Play, play and forget the movement." As the youth, we have a duty to reject this programming, turn this around and pick up where our parents left off.

One excellent place to start is with the prisoners our parent's generation left behind. One of these prisoners, Ojore Lutalo of the Black Liberation Army has said "Any movement that does not support their political internees is sham movement!"

MIM and the party-led organizations have long held political education events and distributed information to build opposition to the imprisonment of the peoples' leaders and prisoners incarcerated for political beliefs and actions. Over the last few months, we have intensified this work through building a RAIL contingent to march on Washington on March 27th. The RAIL contingent will attend the Jericho march, organized by the New Afrikan Liberation Front, to support the release and amnesty of prisoners incarcerated for political beliefs and actions.

The RAIL contingent will also strengthen the foundations necessary to continue pro-prisoner organizing and anti-imperialist struggles during the RAIL teach-in on the Criminal Injustice System on March 28th in Washington DC. This is a great time for the youth to say loudly and clearly that the so-called "Generation X" is not hopelessly apathetic. It is a great opportunity for activists to educate others and learn tools to build stronger opposition to the Amerikkkan system of political imprisonment.

As youth, many of us have not been political very long. But we have a duty to demand freedom for the previous generation's prisoners. Many of these prisoners have been incarcerated longer than we have been alive, let alone politically active. While our movement is weak compared to that of 20- 30 years ago, these organizations did leave us the legacy of their experience. We can pick up where these movements left off. By organizing for freedom for these leaders, we do several things.

We advance the strength of the progressive forces by getting its activists out of prison. One is that we help achieve justice for those accused. We also take an issue that a great majority of liberals will support and begin to make them question the legitimacy of the whole system. We hope the liberal will ask: "If Mumia was framed by police lying, how about other people who didn't have the political resources to expose their experience?"

Previous issues of MIM Notes have highlighted cases of leaders imprisoned for their beliefs and actions. Below are yet more examples of how the nasty, disgusting Amerikan Injustice system incarcerates political leaders and activists who have organized to tear the beast down.

SUNDIATA ACOLI

In 1969 Sundiata Acoli, was arrested in what became known as the Panther 21 conspiracy case. He was held without bail for over two years before being acquitted by a jury that deliberated for less than two hours.

In May 1973, while driving on the New Jersey Turnpike, he and his comrades, Zayd Malik Shakur and Assata Shakur, were ambushed by NJ State Troopers. Zayd was killed, and Assata was wounded and captured. A state trooper was killed. Sundiata was captured two days later and was brutally tortured and beaten by police and prison officials. After a highly sensational and prejudicial trial in which no credible evidence was provided by the state linking him to the shooting, Sundiata was sentenced to consecutive terms of life plus 30 years (for the murder of his comrade, Zayd!), and was confined to a new and specially created Management Control Unit (MCU) at Trenton State Prison because of his political background.

Sundiata was held in MCU for almost five years in a stripped cell that was smaller than the SPCA's space requirement for a German shepherd dog.

MARK COOK

Mark Cook has dedicated a lifetime to working for justice and equality. He was an officer of the Black Panther Party. Throughout the late 60s and early 70s, Mark fought to end not only the Vietnam War, but the systems of racism and imperialism that caused that war. In Seattle in the mid-1970s, the George Jackson Brigade waged an armed struggle.

Mark has already spent 20 years behind bars. The average length of stay for the crimes of which Mark was convicted is only five years.

Mark has never renounced his beliefs, and remains behind bars only because of his politics.

THE MOVE 9

On August 8th, 1978, Philadelphia police assaulted the MOVE house. MOVE is a Black nationalist, back- to-nature organization. In the assault, a cop was shot in the back by another cop. The cop died. Nine MOVE members-the sum total of all MOVE members in the house who refused to renounce their MOVE membership-were convicted of murder. Not only does the trajectory say the cop was killed by friendly fire, it's impossible for 9 people to pull the trigger on the same gun.

The judge who convicted them admits he doesn't know who killed the cop. He said "They were tried as a family, so I convicted them as a family."

Merle Africa, Janine Africa, Debbie Africa, Janet Africa, Chuck Africa, Eddie Africa, Mike Africa, Phil Africa, and Delbert Africa were each sentenced to 30-100 years.

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