An Open Letter From Assata

My name is Assata Shakur, and I am a 20th century escaped slave. Because of government persecution, I was left with no other choice than to flee from the political repression, racism and violence that dominate the US government’s policy towards people of color. I am an ex-political prisoner, and I have been living in exile in Cuba since 1984.

I have been a political activist most of my life, and although the U.S. government has done everything in its power to criminalize me, I am not a criminal, nor have I ever been one. In the 1960s, I participated in various struggles: the black liberation movement, the student rights movement, and the movement to end the war in Vietnam. I joined the Black Panther Party. By 1969 the Black Panther Party had become the number one organization targeted by the FBI’s COINTELPRO program. Because the Black Panther Party demanded the total liberation of black people, J. Edgar Hoover called it “greatest threat to the internal security of the country” and vowed to destroy it and its leaders and activists.

In 1978, my case was one of many cases bought before the United Nations Organization in a petition filed by the National Conference of Black Lawyers, the National Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, and the United Church of Christ Commission for Racial Justice, exposing the existence of political prisoners in the United States, their political persecution, and the cruel and inhuman treatment they receive in US prisons. According to the report:

‘The FBI and the New York Police Department in particular, charged and accused Assata Shakur of participating in attacks on law enforcement personnel and widely circulated such charges and accusations among police agencies and units. The FBI and the NYPD further charged her as being a leader of the Black Liberation Army which the government and its respective agencies described as an organization engaged in the shooting of police officers. This description of the Black Liberation Army and the accusation of Assata Shakur’s relationship to it was widely circulated by government agents among police agencies and units. As a result of these activities by the government, Ms. Shakur became a hunted person; posters in police precincts and banks described her as being involved in serious criminal activities; she was highlighted on the FBI’s most wanted list; and to police at all levels she became a ‘shoot-to-kill’ target.”

I was falsely accused in six different “criminal cases” and in all six of these cases I was eventually acquitted or the charges were dismissed. The fact that I was acquitted or that the charges were dismissed, did not mean that I received justice in the courts, that was certainly not the case. It only meant that the “evidence” presented against me was so flimsy and false that my innocence became evident. This political persecution was part and parcel of the government’s policy of eliminating political opponents by charging them with crimes and arresting them with no regard to the factual basis of such charges.

On May 2, 1973 I, along with Zayd Malik Shakur and Sundiata Acoli were stopped on the New Jersey Turnpike, supposedly for a “faulty tail light.” Sundiata Acoli got out of the car to determine why we were stopped. Zayd and I remained in the car. State trooper Harper then came to the car, opened the door and began to question us. Because we were black, and riding in a car with Vermont license plates, he claimed he became “suspicious.” He then drew his gun, pointed it at us, and told us to put our hands up in the air, in front of us, where he could see them. I complied and in a split second, there was a sound that came from outside the car, there was a sudden movement, and I was shot once with my arms held up in the air, and then once again from the back. Zayd Malik Shakur was later killed, trooper Werner Foerster was killed, and even though trooper Harper admitted that he shot and killed Zayd Malik Shakur, under the New Jersey felony murder law, I was charged with killing both Zayd Malik Shakur, who was my closest friend and comrade, and charged in the death of trooper Forester. Never in my life have I felt such grief. Zayd had vowed to protect me, and to help me to get to a safe place, and it was clear that he had lost his life, trying to protect both me and Sundiata. Although he was also unarmed, and the gun that killed trooper Foerster was found under Zayd’s leg, Sundiata Acoli, who was captured later, was also charged with both deaths. Neither Sundiata Acoli nor I ever received a fair trial We were both convicted in the news media way before our trials. No news media was ever permitted to interview us, although the New Jersey police and the FBI fed stories to the press on a daily basis. In 1977, I was convicted by an all- white jury and sentenced to life plus 33 years in prison. In 1979, fearing that I would be murdered in prison, and knowing that I would never receive any justice, I was liberated from prison, aided by committed comrades who understood the depths of the injustices in my case, and who were also extremely fearful for my life.

Julian Assange: Wikileaks Has the Goods on the Deaths of Innocent Iraqis Killed by the US

AlterNet / By Medea Benjamin, Julian Assange, April 29, 2013

The WikiLeaks founder talks Bush and Bradley Manning.

[Photo Credit: Espen Moe / Creative Commons]

I had an opportunity to interview WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he has been granted political asylum since June 2012. Assange is wanted for questioning in Sweden over sex allegations, although he has never been charged. Assange believes that if sent to Sweden, he would be put into prison and then sent to the United States, where he is already being investigated for espionage for publishing hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic and military memos on the WikiLeaks website. –Medea Benjamin

George W. Bush’s new presidential library at Southern Methodist University in Texas has opened with great fanfare, including the attendance of Presidents Obama and former Presidents Carter, Bush Sr. and Clinton. George Bush has said that the library is “a place to lay out facts.” What facts would you like to see displayed at his library?

A good place to start would be laying out the number of deaths caused by the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. At Wikileaks, we documented that from 2004-2009, the US had records of over 100,000 individual deaths of Iraqis due to violence unleashed by that invasion, roughly 80% of them civilians. These are the recorded deaths, but many more died. And in Afghanistan, the US recorded about 20,000 deaths from 2004-2010. These would be good facts to include in the presidential library.

And perhaps the library could document how people around the world protested against the invasion of Iraq, including the historic February 15, 2003 mobilization of millions of people around the globe.

Oakland: Hundreds of Immigrants, Children, and Supporters to join May 1 Rally, Demand Dignity for their Families

Oakland– Immigrant workers, children, and community members will converge in Fruitvale Plaza on Wednesday for a vibrant May Day march demanding swift action to expand rights for all immigrants and their families.

The May 1 festivities will feature colorful banners, lively speakers, along with musical and theatrical performances. Following the kick-off rally in Fruitvale BART Plaza, hundreds of immigrant rights supporters will march to Mi Pueblo to stage a picket calling for justice for the grocery store’s workers who were threatened with I-9 audits and deportation after trying to organize a union.   The diverse coalition will then continue to Josie de la Cruz Park for a festive closing rally.

WHAT:     May 1 Rally and March for Immigrant Rights

WHEN AND WHERE:

3:00pm        Opening rally at Fruitvale Plaza (Near BART)

4:00pm        March begins

4:30pm        Rally at Mi Pueblo

5:00pm        Continue march to Josie de la Cruz Park

6:00pm       Closing rally at Josie de la Cruz Park

              

WHO: Oakland Sin Fronteras, a coalition of immigrant workers, students, labor unions, and faith and community groups.

 

Israel demolishes West Bank homes, water wells

[A woman from the 24-member Palestinian Ghaith family stands with the rubble of her home destroyed by Israeli forces under the pretext that it was built without a permit in the mostly Arab East Jerusalem neighborhood of al-Tur on 29 April 2013. (Photo: AFP - Ahmad Gharabli)]

Monday, April 29, 2013 — Israeli forces on Monday demolished Palestinian homes and water wells in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, as settlers confiscated land near Hebron to build a new outpost, local media reported.

In occupied East Jerusalem, Israeli forces razed two apartments in the Tur neighborhood after several attempts by the owners to reverse the demolition order failed.

The authorities evicted 24 members of the Ghaith family, including five children and an elderly woman, from the two apartments ahead of the demolition, Rushi Ghaith, one of the owners, told Palestinian news agency Ma’an.

The apartments were scheduled for demolition in December but the family secured a court-ordered injunction to stop it from going ahead, Ghaith said.

The Ghaith family lawyer said they had successfully stalled attempts to raze the apartments since September 2004, when Israeli authorities handed down the demolition notice because the home was built without a licensing permit. The family’s case to reverse the demolition order is ongoing.

Ghaith said the family has been fined 80,000 Israeli shekels (about $22,000) since the case began.

Meanwhile Israeli soldiers demolished water wells south of Hebron in al-Fawar refugee camp, as settlers from the nearby Ma’oun settlement seized land west of Yatta in preparation for the establishment of new outposts.

The Persecution of Lynne Stewart

[Lynne Stewart, a lifelong activist and people's lawyer-advocate, is a Federal political prisoner serving a ten year sentence in a Texas prison.  73 years old, she is suffering from terminal (stage 4) cancer--and not receiving the medical care she needs.  Her continued incarceration is nothing but medical torture.  We urge all to join thousands in demanding her release from prison, and in signing the petition at http://www.change.org/petitions/petition-to-free-lynne-stewart-save-her-life-release-her-now-2 -- Frontlines ed.]

Lynne Stewart–people’s lawyer-advocate, political prisoner, victim of medical torture

“We go out to stop police brutality -To rescue the imprisoned -To change the rules for those who have never ever been able to get to the starting line much less run the race, because of color, physical condition, gender, mental impairment,” she said. “We go forth to preserve the air and land and water and sky and all the beasts that crawl and fly. We go forth to safeguard the right to speak and write, to join; to learn, to rest safe at home, to be secure, fed, healthy, sheltered, loved and loving, to be at peace with ones identity.”   –  Lynne Stewart

April 21, 2013

By Chris Hedges

Lynne Stewart, in the vindictive and hysterical world of the war on terror, is one of its martyrs. A 73-year-old lawyer who spent her life defending the poor, the marginalized and the despised, including blind cleric Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, she fell afoul of the state apparatus because she dared to demand justice rather than acquiesce to state sponsored witch hunts. And now, with stage 4 cancer that has metastasized, spreading to her lymph nodes, shoulder, bones and lungs, creating a grave threat to her life, she sits in a prison cell at the Federal Medical Center Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas, where she is serving a 10-year sentence. Stewart’s family is pleading with the state for “compassionate release” and numerous international human rights campaigners, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu, have signed a petition calling for her to be freed on medical grounds. It is not only a crime in the U.S. to be poor, to be a Muslim, to openly condemn the crimes committed in our name in the Muslim world, but to defend those who do. And the near total collapse of our judicial system, wrecked in the name of national security and “the war on terror,” is encapsulated in the saga of this courageous attorney—now disbarred because of her conviction.

“I hope that my imprisonment sends the wake up call that the government is prepared to imprison lawyers who do not conduct legal representation in a manner the government has ordained,” she told me when I reached her through email in prison. “My career of 30 plus years has always been client centered. My clients and I decided on the best legal course, without the interference of the government. Ethics require that the defense lawyer DEFEND, get the client off. We have no obligation to obey [the] ‘rules’ government lays down.

“I believe that since 9/11 the government has pursued Muslims with an ever heavier hand,” she wrote, all messages to her and from her being vetted by prison authorities. “However, cases such as the Sheikh’s in 1995 amply demonstrate that Muslims had been targeted even earlier as the new ENEMY—always suspect, always guilty. After 9/11, we discovered that the government prosecutors were ordered to try and get Osama Bin Laden into EVERY Muslim prosecution inducing in American Juries a Pavlovian response. Is it as bad as lynching and the Scottsboro Boys and the Pursuit of Black Panthers? Not as of yet, but getting close and of course the incipient racism that that colors—pun?—every action in the U.S. is ever present in these prosecutions.”

US: FBI, the Manufactured “Official Story”, and “Manufacturing Terrorists”

[The Official Story as told by FBI spokespeople, and repeated by the uncritical media, is "White House defends FBI query into Boston suspect (Associated Press, 22 April 2013) -- The White House is defending the FBI's performance in its 2011 inquiry into Tamerlan Tsarnaev (tsahr-NEYE'-ehv) one of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings....White House spokesman Jay Carney says it's clear that the FBI followed up on information it received about Tsarnaev. He says the FBI interviewed him and his relatives and didn't find any domestic or foreign terrorism activity.....The Russian FSB intelligence security service told the FBI in early 2011 about information that Tsarnaev was a follower of radical Islam. The FBI says it conducted interviews and provided the results in the summer of 2011. The bureau says it also checked U.S. government databases and other information to look into his telephone communications, possible use of radical online sites, personal associations, and travel and education history."  But, given the history of COINTELPRO, and of post-911 FBI entrapment schemes and political Islamophobic campaigns, many are skeptical of the official story.  Was the Boston Marathon bombing either an FBI-manufactured-jihad or an event which was FBI-known but not prevented, for political reasons?  Has any major news media demanded the FBI records including the Tsarnaev files, the FBI agent/interviewer and "Tsarnaev handler" notes?  The corporate media has been such a loyal and uncritical, un-investigative propagandist for the ever-changing and offically manufactured story, it is important to take a look at sharply critical views and background, such as these given below. -- Frontlines ed.]

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The Official Tsarnaev Story Makes No Sense

by Craig Murray – April 22, 2013

There are gaping holes in the official story of the Boston bombings.

We are asked to believe that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was identified by the Russian government as an extremist Dagestani or Chechen Islamist terrorist, and they were so concerned about it that in late 2010 they asked the US government to take action. At that time, the US and Russia did not normally have a security cooperation relationship over the Caucasus, particularly following the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008. For the Russians to ask the Americans for assistance, Tsarnaev must have been high on their list of worries.

In early 2011 the FBI interview Tsarnaev and trawl his papers and computers but apparently – remarkably for somebody allegedly radicalised by internet – the habitually paranoid FBI find nothing of concern.

So far, so weird. But now this gets utterly incredible. In 2012 Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who is of such concern to Russian security, is able to fly to Russia and pass through the airport security checks of the world’s most thoroughly and brutally efficient security services without being picked up. He is then able to proceed to Dagestan – right at the heart of the world’s heaviest military occupation and the world’s most far reaching secret police surveillance – again without being intercepted, and he is able there to go through some form of terror training or further Islamist indoctrination. He then flies out again without any intervention by the Russian security services.

India: Intense Revolutionary Struggles for Liberation from the Intense Oppression of Dalits

No revolution without the annihilation of caste, no annihilation of caste without revolution!! The only way of paying true homage to Babasaheb Ambedkar is to fight back the caste atrocities and caste oppression!

by Democratic Students’ Union (DSU), Jawaharlal Nehru University, 18 April 2013

Last week in the Bulandshahr district of UP, a 10 year old Dalit girl who had gone to the fields was raped by a man belonging to the dominant caste. The mother of the girl, waiting for her return, ultimately went searching and found her lying there unconscious in a critical condition. When the family of the girl decided to lodge a police complaint, they were threatened by the dominant caste section of the village of dire consequences. The family, as is usually the case, was bluntly asked to forget the incident. However, determined to take the fight for justice, the mother of the girl refused to yield to these threats and approached the local police station. But justice for dalits and other oppressed people remains a far cry within the current system! Refusing to lodge any complaint, the police rather kept the girl locked up in custody for the entire night while her mother helplessly waited outside the station. She was only released the next morning when the locals, hearing of the incident, started protesting in front of the police station. In another part of the country in Krishnagiri district of Tamil Nadu, over 300 dalit families have been facing a complete social and economic boycott by the dominant castes for the past few months. The ‘crime’ being that a dalit man had fallen in love with a woman belonging to the dominant caste. Fearing violent attaack, like the one that happened in Dharmapuri last year, the parents of the boy have already sent back the girl to her parents – something that the police of this self-proclaimed ‘largest democracy of the world’ facilitated. Ever since a khap panchayat ordered this decision, dalits of the area are facing a complete boycott. They have been banned from working on the fields or even in the brick kilns and other such small industries.

Hunger Striking at Guantanamo & the Abusive Use of Forced Feeding

By Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter,  Thursday April 18, 2013

[Photo on Flickr by JTF-GTMO] Guantánamo Bay prisoners have been on a hunger strike for over two months. Some of them have, in that period, been subject to forced feeding by medical staff in the prison. But, a new report that examines the United States government’s recent history of torture and abuse of detainees in the global war on terrorism highlights hunger strikes in the prison camps and recommends that forced feeding come to an end because it is abuse. The report comes from a “Task Force on Detainee Treatment” formed by The Constitution Project, which describes itself as “a national watchdog group that advances bipartisan, consensus based solutions to some of most difficult constitutional challenges of our time.” The co-chair of the “Task Force” was Asa Hutchinson, a Republican who worked in the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush. James R. Jones, who helped President Bill Clinton pass the North-American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), was the other co-chair. The Task Force took two years to develop a report on “the past and current treatment of suspected terrorists detained by the US government” during the administrations of President Bill Clinton, President Bush and President Barack Obama. During a press conference on the report on April 16, Dr. Gerald Thomson, a professor of medicine emeritus at Columbia University and former president of the American College of Physicians, stated, according to “Democracy Now!”: We do not believe that force-feeding should be an approach to the hunger strike. If you can imagine being a detainee and using refusal to eat as a form of protest, and then you are forced to eat, forced physically to eat by being strapped into a specially made chair, and restrained—having restraints put on your limbs, your arms, your legs, your body, your head, so that you cannot move, having a tube inserted into your throat that extends into your stomach, and you’re trying to resist that with the only muscles that are free in your throat—pain, discomfort, obviously. But in addition to that, food is then forced, in a liquid form, into your stomach. You’re kept in the chair for at least two hours, usually more than two hours, to prevent you from vomiting and undermining the force-feeding. You can’t go to the bathroom during that time. Your dignity is taken away. The World Medical Association and international officials have clearly identified that process as cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. And whatever the—given the level of brutality, it could extend to torture. Hunger strikes have been taking place at Guantánamo since right after it opened. The report notes, “The first reported incidents of detainees being force-fed occurred in May 2002, after 60 or 70 days of hunger strikes.” A major hunger strike took place in the summer of 2005. By September, 131 prisoners were being denied food. “In October 2005, prison officials told a delegation of visiting medical organizations that 25 prisoners were currently on a hunger strike, 22 of whom were being fed by nasogastric tube,” according to the Task Force’s report. Prisoners’ lawyers “filed motions asking federal courts to stop the involuntaryfeeding, which they claimed was carried out in a punitive, brutal fashion.” The prisoners alleged that “excessively large feeding tubes” were being inserted through prisoners’ noses and were causing “bleeding, vomiting and loss of consciousness in some cases.”

NYC, April 16 — Building Internationalist Resistance and Movements

 

***PLEASE SHARE AND FORWARD***

DRUM- Desis Rising Up & Moving,
MXGM – Malcolm X Grassroots Movement,
Campaign to End New Jim Crow,
and VAMOS Unidos
present

Building Internationalist Resistance and Movements: Black, Muslim, South Asian, Latino, & Third World Organizing Globally
Black Star, Crescent Moon book launch, followed by panel discussion

Join us for a powerful evening of discussion linking the struggles for freedom across the world to radical activism and organizing here in the US.

Sohail Daulatzai is Associate Professor, Film and Media Studies and Associate Professor, African American Studies at UC Irvine. His new book is Black Star, Crescent Moon: The Muslim International and Black Freedom Beyond America, which documents the political and cultural history of Black internationalism from the 1950s to the present. The book maps the rich, shared history between Black Muslims, Black radicals, and the Muslim Third World, showing how Black artists and activists imagined themselves as part of a global majority, connected to larger communities of resistance.

The lecture will be followed by a panel discussion amongst NYC organizers working on challenging state violence- from police abuse & mass incarceration, to neoliberalism & exploitation of workers, to wars & occupations.  Speakers and an audience discussion will link internationalist politics to day-to-day organizing in the U.S., the opportunities, challenges, and links to struggles internationally.

-         Fahd Ahmed, DRUM – Desis Rising Up & Moving (Moderator)

-         Monami Maulik, DRUM – Desis Rising Up & Moving (on Third World Internationalism)

-         Imam Al-Hajj Talib ‘Abdur-Rashid, Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood (on Muslim Internationalism)

-         Rafael Samanez, VAMOS Unidos (On Latino Internationalism and Bolivarianism)

-         Speaker, MXGM – Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (on Black Internationalism)

Tuesday, April 16th, 2013 – 7:30-10:00pm
Riverside Church
490 Riverside Drive

New York, NY 10027

Please RSVP your name to info@drumnyc.org or 718-205-3036. Or on Facebook.

The Louder My Voice the Deeper They Bury Me

Herman Wallace

Voices from Solitary: The Louder My Voice the Deeper They Bury Me

by Herman Wallace, who has been held in solitary confinement in Louisiana’s prison system for almost 41 years, mostly in the Louisiana State Penitentiary, known as Angola.

A Defined Voice

They removed my whisper from general population
To maximum security I gained a voice
They removed my voice from maximum security
To administrative segregation
My voice gave hope
They removed my voice from administrative segregation
To solitary confinement
My voice became vibration for unity
They removed my voice from solitary confinement
To the Supermax of Camp J
And now they wish to destroy me
The louder my voice the deeper they bury me
I SAID, THE LOUDER MY VOICE THE DEEPER THEY BURY ME!
Free all political prisoners, prisoners of war, prisoner of consciousness.

Click here to listen to Herman Wallace read his poem.

for more about Herman Wallace: http://www.whoishermanwallace.com/

Source:  http://solitarywatch.com/2013/04/11/the-louder-my-voice-the-deeper-they-bury-me/

Bangladesh: On The Shahbagh Movement Against War Criminals Of 1971

To see The Hindu slide show on the Shahbagh Movement, click on this link:

Shahbag: Bangladesh’s war against fundamentalism – The Hindu.

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Badruddin Umar

Bangladesh22 March, 2013
Courtesy: Countercurrents.org

Some young people gathered on the cross-roads of Shahbagh in Dhaka on February 5, 2013 , to protest against the judgment of t he International Crimes Tribunal ( ICT ) which sentenced Kader Mollah, a 1971 war criminal, to life imprisonment. They demanded capital punishment for Mollah and eight others who are now under trial in the ICT.

In many ways it was an extraordinary situation. First, this demand was being made to a war crimes tribunal which has been constituted for the first time after forty-two years since the end of the war of independence and the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971. Second, the trial is being conducted only of some local collaborators of the then Pakistan government and the Pakistan army. The 195 Pakistani army officers who were initially identified as the principal war criminals and on whose bidding the collaborators committed their crimes, have been left out of this trial.

DSU poster for a Delhi University program on the Shahbagh Movement

Today it seems amazing that in spite of the Bangladesh government’s occasionally demanding apology from Pakistan government for war crimes of 1971, a demand for the return of the 195 army criminals for trial in Bangladesh was never made. But the Awami League (AL) government under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had forgiven all the arrested Pakistani army personnel, including the 195 identified criminal army officers, and returned them to their country as a gesture of goodwill towards Pakistan ! In this case, in their own interest, India played the role of a decisive mediator. Referring to this gesture of goodwill Sheikh Mujibur Rahman ‘magnanimously’ declared that the people of Bangladesh knew how to forgive and forget.

Yet in spite of this, in fact false, declaration of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on behalf of the people of Bangladesh , the latter never forgot the atrocities committed against them, and they have always sought justice against the military and civilian war criminals who perpetrated every imaginable crime against them. Nothing could be a more conclusive proof of this than the movement for the proper trial and punishment of the 1971 war criminals which began on February 5.

A small number of young men and women started the movement, but almost immediately it began to spread like wildfire all over the country. The way it spread cannot be properly explained only in terms of peoples’ desire to try and punish the war criminals of 1971. In this connection it should be noted that the movement has started by a new generation of people who had no direct experience of Pakistani atrocities committed in 1971. They were not even born at that time. Thus the stirring which happened was caused by reasons other than the mere desire of the people to punish the war criminals, though at the surface nothing else was visible. It actually happened because the ground was prepared by what happened to the people of this country since the independence of Bangladesh.

During the independence movement and the war, the aspirations of the people were very high. But after independence the government led by Sheikh Mujib threw overboard what the people actually stood for and what they understood by the spirit of liberation war.

FRAMED, CAPTURED, GAGGED: “STATE REPRESSION OF BLACK RADICALS IN THE 1960′S”

VETERAN BLACK PANTHER LEADERS & FORMER POLITICAL PRISONERS

DHORUBA BIN WAHAD & ERIKA HUGGINS TO SPEAK IN NYC NEXT WEEK!

by the Baruch History Department

Monday, April 15, 2013 at 6:30pm

FREE ADMISSION

The panelists include:

Dhoruba Bin Wahad

Dhoruba Bin Wahad:  Former Black Panther released from prison after 19 years following the publication and discovery in 1990 of COINTELPRO documents pointing to his innocence and the FBI’s domestic counterintelligence program (code named “COINTELPRO”) frame-up.

Ericka Huggins

Ericka Huggins:  Former Black Panther and Political Prisoner – imprisoned with Bobby Seale for two years in the 1960s and Director of the renowned Oakland Community School from 1973-1981.

Dr. Akinyele Umoja:  Professor at Georgia State University, author of forthcoming book on the politics of self-defense in the southern civil rights movement.

Dequi Kjoni Sadiki:  Activist, educator and co-coordinator of the Sekou Odinga Defense Committee.

Location Information:
Baruch Performing Arts Center – Newman Vertical Campus
Baruch College: 25th St. (bet. 3rd and Lexington Aves.), NYC
Contact Information:
Name: Box Office
Phone: 646-312-5073

New Annual Report — “Operation Ghetto Storm” — 313 Black People were killed in 2012, averaging one every 28 hours.

[Last year, the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement released, in the wake of the murder of Trayvon Martin in Florida, a report revealing that every 36 hours, a Black man, woman, or child is murdered or protected by the US government.  As if this were not shocking enough, ongoing research is revealing an even more pervasive pattern, as shown in the updated research and new report described below.  We urge you to download and forward, share, discuss and study this report which must not be ignored.  Take it to friends and neighbors in the community, in schools, at work--and plan ways to educate and act upon it. -- Frontlines ed.]

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Released by Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Monday, April 8, 2013

Contact:     Kali Akuno, 404.567.5938, kaliakuno@mxgm.org

For Immediate Release: New Annual Report reveals that 313 Black People were killed in 2012, averaging one every 28 hours. 

Download here: http://mxgm.org/operation-ghetto-storm-2012-annual-report-on-the-extrajudicial-killing-of-313-black-people/

Every 28 hours in 2012 someone employed or protected by the US government killed a Black man, woman, or child! This startling fact is revealed in Operation Ghetto Storm: 2012 Annual Report on the Extrajudicial Killings of 313 Black People by Police, Security Guards, and Vigilantes.

“When we started this investigation in early 2012, we knew a serious human rights crisis was confronting the Black community”, says Kali Akuno, an organizer with the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement (MXGM). “However, we did not have a clear sense of its true depth until we compiled and examined the annual figures. We have uncovered outrageous rates of extrajudicial killings–rates, that when they are found in countries like Mexico or Brazil, are universally condemned.  The same outrage inside the U.S. also demands immediate action.”

Thousands of Palestinian prisoners launch hunger strike protesting death of prisoner

4,500 Prisoners Refuse Food, Launch 3-Day Hunger Strike in Israeli Jails

http://english.pnn.ps/index.php/prisoners/4382-4500-prisoners-refuse-food-launch-3-day-hunger-strike-in-israeli-jails

On Wednesday 3rd April, around 4,500 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails sent back their food this morning as part of a protest launched following the death of their fellow prisoner, Maysara Abu Hamdiyeh, who suffered from cancer.

Palestinian prisoners also launched a three-day hunger strike following the death of 64-year-old Abu Hamdiyeh, who was serving a life term in Israeli prison.

An autopsy of Abu Hamdiyeh’s body was scheduled to take place Wednesday at the Institute of Forensic Medicine at Abu Kabir in Tel Aviv in the presence of a Palestinian observer. The body will then be transferred to the Palestinian Authority for burial.

Abu Hamdiyeh’s funeral was scheduled to take place Thursday in his hometown of Hebron.

Palestinian protesters hold up photos of Maisara Abu Hamdiyeh, a prisoner who died of cancer while in an Israeli jail.

Protests immediately erupted in the West Bank, east Jerusalem and in Israeli prisons on Tuesday over his death. More protests are expected to break out at his funeral in Hebron on Thursday.

Protestors and the Palestinian Authority (PA) blamed on Israel for medical negligence and bare Israeli authorities the full responsibility for Abu Hamdiyeh’s death. Abu Hamdiyeh was claimed a hero and a martyr. 

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Jail death sparks Palestinian protests

Jerusalem (CNN), April 3rd, 2013— A well-known Palestinian prisoner died of cancer in Israeli custody on Tuesday, sparking outrage among Palestinian groups who accuse Israel of denying him treatment.

Maysara Abu Hamdiya, 64, a retired Palestinian general, had been in Israeli prisons since 2002 and was serving a life sentence for alleged involvement in an attempt to bomb a Jerusalem cafe. He died Tuesday morning in an Israeli hospital after being admitted last week because of his deteriorating health, according to the Palestinian Authority’s Government Media Center.

Last UK resident in Guantanamo joins hunger strike

A British resident who has been held by the US without charge or trial for over eleven years has joined the hunger strike in Guantanamo Bay.

Shaker Aamer (46) from South London, whose wife and four children are all British citizens, told his lawyer on 29 March that he had lost over 30 pounds since joining the strike.

Lawyers for the Guantanamo inmates estimate around ¾ of the 166 men still held there have joined the hunger strike, although the US military claims the number is lower.

In a legal declaration filed by his lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith, Mr Aamer also details how he has been subjected to sleep deprivation and violent procedures known as “Forcible Cell Extractions” while attempting to pray, in response to his hunger strike. These procedures are “excruciatingly painful,” particularly because of his long-term back injuries originally caused by mistreatment by the US in Bagram Air Force Base, Afghanistan.

Mr Aamer is protesting his ongoing detention, despite having long been cleared for release by the US authorities and never having been charged or tried with any crime during his eleven year ordeal.  Mr Aamer continues to be held despite British Foreign Secretary William Hague’s public calls for his release.