Assata Shakur: "To My People" (1973)

After a couple of months of dividing my time between attention to my teaching position and attempts to restore my badly decomposed physical and emotional well-being after trying to do way too much for way too long, I slipped quietly onto my blog site the other day and discovered that -- while I was among the missing -- Why Am I Not Surprised? crossed the line into its second million pageviews. It now stands at 1,034,127 hits in 200 countries. I am grateful that the Universe moved me to take on this task twelve years ago. I am inspired to imagine that there are so many "out there" who share my passion for justice. And I am humbled by your support.

We all share in this remarkable feat because I could write till the cows come home, but if you don't care, there's no point. We are engaged in a daily practice of living our commitment to change the world. Thank you for being a part of my life and letting me be part of yours.

To celebrate this remarkable feat, I'm posting the stirring statement Assata Shakur recorded from jail in 1973. She had been shot, tortured, brutalized, vilified, humiliated, held incommunicado, and finally locked in solitary confinement. Nevertheless, despite the possibility of dire repercussions for such a bold act, she and her lawyer recorded this statement and released it publicly to those who were waiting -- breathlessly -- for a word from one of their most fearless leaders.

The day I discovered that you and I had crossed the million mark together, I was listening to Assata's Autobiography while I drove around in my car. Suddenly, I felt so connected to her and to the struggle to overcome White Supremacy, a struggle that has continued since the first European took it into his head that "White" people are superior to everyone else on the planet. Assata Shakur's words are just as powerful, just as true, and just as reasonable as they were 35 years ago. May they burn themselves into our consciousness as we read them over and over that we might honor her ongoing sacrifice and earn our own place in history.

Will California’s Governor Block Parole For Soledad Brother John Clutchette?

BREAKING: John Clutchette was released on parole from a California prison on Wednesday, June 6th. As he re-entered society, Mr. Clutchette had a few words for his supporters.

On January 12, 2018, the California Board of Parole Hearings granted parole to an elderly inmate named John Clutchette. However, supporters of parole for Clutchette are concerned that California Governor Jerry Brown will reverse the Board's decision, and Clutchette will not be released.

Supporters have a reason to be concerned. After all, this is exactly what happened in 2016 when Clutchette was similarly granted parole by the Board but Governor Brown chose to reverse the Board's ruling.

Porsha O: "Capitalism"

Shadowproof: Florida Officials Deny Operation PUSH Is Ongoing, Even As They Retaliate Against Prisoners

OperationPUSH supporters demonstrate in Gainesville, Florida, on January 18th
(Photo by FightToxicPrisons) 

On Thursday, January 25th, I posted about Operation PUSH and the Florida Department of Corrections' attacks on Kevin "Rashid" Johnson for publicly reporting earlier in the month on the conditions in the FDC. The following article, which was written by Brian Sonenstein and appeared that same day at Shadowproof.com, provides more detail about the development of this situation over the past three weeks. It is re-posted with permission. Where details have been duplicated in my earlier post and this one, I have indicated abridging.

Stand For Prisoner Being Tortured For Speaking Out

On January 15th (Martin Luther King, Jr., Day), the prisoners in the Department of Corrections in the state of Florida kicked off a mass multi-prison month-long work stoppage to protest their conditions. They have called the action #OperationPUSH and their demands are: "(1) payment for our labor, rather than the current slave arrangement; (2) an end to outrageous canteen prices; and (3) reintroduction of parole incentives to lifers and those with Buck Rogers dates." According to The Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons, 150 organizations coast to coast now stand in solidarity with #OperationPUSH and the Florida prison strike. But such actions always create a backlash and this one is no different.

Kevin "Rashid" Johnson (#158039), a prisoner who has been moved from prison to prison in state after state because of his history of speaking truth to power, wrote an article about the impending strike that was published online January 6th. The following day, Warden Barry Reddish retaliated against Johnson's use of his 1st Amendment rights, ordering that he be given a disciplinary infraction for "inciting a riot."

On January 19th, Johnson wrote to his lawyer:

 "Need your and folks' immediate mobilization. Am being literally tortured in retaliation for article on prison strike and conditions, by the warden. No heat. Cell like outside, temp in 30s. Toilet doesn't work. Window to outside doesn't close and cold air blowing in cell. Copy everyone with this letter! Just put into this cell. It's daytime and so cold I can barely write. This is obvious set up [...] This is a genuine emergency! Take care, Rashid"

Florida State Prison Warden Barry Reddish can be reached at 904-368-2500. He needs to move Johnson immediately to a climate-controlled cell with a working toilet. He needs to give Johnson continuing contact with his lawyer. And he needs to stop all retaliation against Johnson for reporting on conditions at the prison. Now.

Most prison wardens are notoriously agitated by any sense that they are not in complete control of everything in their purview. (One can only imagine what the lives of their spouses and families must be like.) So when a prisoner challenges their power  -- however reasonably and Constitutionally-mandated that challenge is -- it must be brutally addressed. This is what Barry Reddish is doing. But Reddish needs to be reminded that when a person in a position of authority tries to "make an example" of a human being just because they claim their human rights, it threatens all of us.

It appears that not only does Reddish, as a representative of the Florida Department of Corrections, want complete control over "his" prison, so that he can implement policies and practices that are both inhumane and illegal, but he wants to operate in secrecy while he does it. We will not allow that to be an option.
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NOTE: Report back to jaybeware@riseup.net on your actions and anything you may learn in the process.

UPDATE: Rashid Johnson was able to see one of his lawyers on Friday. There are no specifics released as yet, but he is okay and his conditions have improved. On Thursday afternoon (before I published this post), I ranted at spoke with the warden's secretary for long enough (threatening mayhem on this blog) that she gave me a another number to call. I called and left a message -- again referencing this blog. On Friday afternoon, I received a call back, but I wasn't able to return that call until after the close of business. I left another message, assuring them that I would be back in touch Monday morning for an update. Don't ever think they don't listen. Even if they don't admit it, if enough sand is raised, some of it will go in their eyes. I promise.

What A Difference A Day Makes

Yesterday, I got out of bed at 6 am. It was 66 degrees in my apartment. It was 16 outside. And -- when I looked at the clock, I realized that I didn't have electricity. That meant: no heat, no coffee, no hot breakfast, no hot shower, no internet, no way to charge my phone, no Netflix or Amazon Prime, and no music. Then, after taking my morning poop, I found out the pipes had frozen and I had used my one flush getting rid of my 6 am pee. 

This morning, I got out of bed at 6 am. It was 71 degrees in my apartment. It was 20 outside. As I turned up the heat, turned on the lights so I could read the paper, made coffee and breakfast, booted my laptop, and settled back into my my dark blue leather desk chair, I remembered how un-fun yesterday's get-up had been. "Wow," I thought, "I take a lot of things for granted."

And then I thought about those who woke up in an ice cold cell this morning, behind bars, without enough clothes or blankets, standing on a concrete floor, hungry (but still recuperating from the food poisoning they got from what they were given to eat yesterday), out of snacks, out of stamps, out of soap, out of money, facing two consecutive dimes with nobody left who cares...

Prisoners Have No Patience Because They Have No Choice

The Powers-That-Be in this country have made an art form out of using the 13th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution to turn humans (a disproportionate number of them Black) into slaves so that corrupt prison administrators, corporations, and their stockholders can enjoy ever expanding financial gains. It occurs to me as I write this that, while the 13th Amendment does make this practice legal (as immoral as it is), what it does not make legal is the multiple forms of prisoner degradation, humiliation, violation, and abuse that most U.S. prisons have made a standard operating procedure in the way they treat millions of incarcerated men, women, and even children.

It is not only the prisoners who suffer. It is their loved ones, as well, who must agonizingly observe the brutality against and sometimes death of their missing family member or friend while enduring the separation they fight to overcome.

In the early 1970s, when I first became aware of what was going on in the prisons and jails across this land, I was instantly and horrifically aghast. What kind of monsters would so relish tormenting other humans, I wondered. I became ballistic in my rage, working tirelessly to raise consciousness about the matter as often as possible. One ex-prisoner, trying to help me really get my brain around the situation, reminded me that people in this country lock up animals in cages who haven't done anything to anybody. "As long as they do that," he pointed out, "they're not going to care about people they think of as criminals." But I refused to listen.

Still, here we are nearly fifty years later and it appears he was right.

So the prisoners are left no recourse but to riot or to strike -- which in most prisons would be seen as the same thing and treated the same way. This is why Florida prisoners announced recently that they intend to meet the brutality and exploitation with resistance starting today. My heart is with them.

I know that many in the U.S. have no sympathy. They think the prisoners deserve whatever they get, that organizing to rise up in any way that attempts to claim their human rights "proves" their recalcitrant nature. But the article I am re-posting today (with permission of the author) is about why that's the only option prisoners have left.

Why Martin Luther King, Jr. Was Murdered

All over the United States tomorrow, people will be listening to Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have A Dream" speech, as if that's all he ever said. If you've been reading my blog for any length of time, you know -- or at least have probably guessed -- that I was more of a Malcolm girl than a Martin girl. Still, if you scroll down the labels list and click on King's name you'll find a number of posts through the years I've been blogging, including a post of a six-part film wherein Dick Gregory tells us the real story of King's murder, if you're interested.

But the little film clip above, which I discovered in 2014, is my favorite of all. I watch it regularly to remind me not how he died, but why.

Mwende "FreeQuency" Katwiwa: "The Joys of Motherhood"

From The Belly Of The Beast Near Dallas, Texas

A message to us from Rakem Balogun (dated 1/10/18):

Peace, Power and Prosperity, Comrades and love ones.

I'm very eager to inform you that I'm doing well during this time of trials and tribulation for me, my family and comrades. I'm truly thankful for all of your love, support, and prayers. This situation has us closer in solidarity and has proven that we are ONE body as people fighting for liberation. I’m honored to see those around the country rally for my release and for the boost of my morale. I thank every single person who has brought awareness to this situation. This proves that attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.
 
I take pride in this hardship due to the fact that our elders and ancestors have prepared me for this struggle through their hard sacrifice for our liberation. Brothers and sisters such as Geronimo Pratt, George Lester Jackson, Assata Shakur, Afeni Shakur, Mutulu Shakur, Marilyn Buck, Mumia Abu Jamal, H Rap Brown, and the list goes on and on. Studying history through political education made me accept my fate ten years ago. I used my time as wisely as possible through exercise, reading, meditating and fellowshipping with our brothers who are also detained by the United States of Amerikkka Federal Institutions. My goal is to educate those within the belly of the beast one conversation at a time with love and patience.

They can jail me but they cannot jail our movement, which is thousands strong national and world wide. I'm grateful to have GMF, GJU, BEM, Geronimo Tactical, NBPP, HPNGC, The People's Brigade, Harambee Culture, APSP and so many others in support and solidarity. Thank you for all you have done and the effort brings warmth to my heart and tears to my eyes to see love for our unity.

Thank you and I will be seeing you soon.

Rakem Balogun
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You can support Rakem by writing him at:
Christopher Daniels #56601-177
Federal Correctional Facility
PO Box 9000
Seagoville, TX 75159

You can keep in touch with the movement to free him at: https://www.facebook.com/freerakembalogun

An Open Letter To The Parole Board

Last week, I received a phone call from the office of the local District Attorney asking if I wanted to offer the Board of Pardons and Paroles some input. Apparently, sometime in the near future, they're going to consider the possibility of early release for a young man who was locked up a few years ago for the crime of robbing me at gunpoint.

I gave it serious thought, since I believe that the criminal "justice" system in this country is grossly over-used and badly broken. I even drafted a letter. But when I read it over the next day, I decided that it probably wouldn't get the prisoner released. It might even get both him -- and me -- in more trouble. So I'll just put a modified version of it here and walk quietly away.

Public Service Announcement: Cointelpro 2.0

In the early 1990s, when I was in grad school, a young El Salvadoran revolutionary came to campus to talk about why she had joined the guerilla forces fighting to overthrow the repressive right wing government that had already killed more than 70,000 of her fellow citizens. One of the students in the audience raised her hand and said timidly, "I'm uncomfortable with the idea of using violence to create social change. How do you know when to pick up a gun?"

The young revolutionary didn't hesitate a moment as she replied matter of factly, "When they start shooting at you."

The audience laughed, but it is unlikely that any of them -- all being  young and White, as I recall -- were considering the possibility that their government, their military, their local and state law enforcement officers would boldly and unapologetically turn on them one day. Sitting there, thinking back to experiences I had twenty years before, I recalled seeing blood shed in just such confrontations in the streets of America. And I recalled the four students killed for demonstrating at Kent State in 1970. But when that happened, the shock ripples were palpable from coast to coast.

The deaths (even the blatantly public deaths) of People of Color, however, and most particularly Black people, haven't historically created the same reaction. And this is what I'm blogging about today.

Why It's Non-negotiable

It's more than a little weird to wake up in a White Supremacist country every day looking like me but having a serious history of consciousness-building related to “race.” I mean, I was ten before I even talked to a Black American. I was sixteen before I realized the extent to which most Black people and their so-called “White” counterparts in America live vastly different lives. But today – five and a half decades later – I remain incredulous at how little has changed beyond the superficial.

I’ve read many, many books about “race” relations (the first being Soul on Ice by Eldridge Cleaver when I was in high school). I’ve watched many, many films – fiction and non-fiction, well known and never heard of – about “race” relations. I've done research (scientific and otherwise) on “race” relations. And I’ve spent literally thousands – maybe tens of thousands – of hours talking with Africans and African-Americans about all manner of things, including “race” relations. But one thing's for sure: I'll never pull a Rachel Dolezal. ‘Cause I'm not Black. I'm not confused about that.

Last Week In Alabama

If you haven't been hiding in a cave somewhere, you know that two middle-aged White male politicians had a scuffle last Tuesday in Alabama and, inexplicably, the one who isn't a known pedophile won. Not by much, I must hasten to add, but won, nonetheless.

Interestingly enough, the winner also distinguished himself once by successfully prosecuting two KKK members for the bombing deaths of four little girls in the 16th St. Baptist Church in Birmingham back in the day. While his opponent shot himself in all his feet making remarks about slavery that he would have done better to keep to himself.

Anyway, Lesle' Honore' (see photo above) wrote this poem the day after the election, giving props to the voters in Alabama who carried the day. Lest you have any doubt, I'm providing the statistics at the bottom of this post. Hopefully, they will give us all pause. What this exercise in political will demonstrates rather clearly is that whenever solidarity hooks up with action, anything can happen.

Sorry To Keep You Waiting. I Hope You Are Still Here.

Twelve years ago, I introduced this blog early in January with the idea in mind that I could write about race relations so my students wouldn't keep me standing in the parking lot at the university until midnight. I didn't realize at the time that I would shortly be moving from a major city in Florida to a small rural town in Louisiana. I took my photo off the blog and the "Eracism" bumper sticker off my car because I thought they were going to take me out in the woods in Louisiana and nail me to a tree. As it turned out, they didn't. In fact, I found a real niche for myself where I still reside and do my work and socially reproduce myself and even find time to write when I get the chance.

If We've Fallen Down A Rabbit Hole, Does It Have A Bottom?

Maybe I'm just getting old. I mean I am 71. And it happens to everybody -- until they die. And I'm still producing more than the average person I know. After all, I taught six courses to three hundred students this spring, including one that turned ten students into social change agents and ended with a performance titled "Truth Be Told" -- on speaking truth to power (with no holds barred).

The end of May, I went to Havana, Cuba, for nine days to work on organizing a conference there for sociologist/activists from all over the world to meet, learn from, and network with each other for five days in November. I've taught two more rapid-fire Intro courses online this summer already while healing a broken foot, getting over a hellified parasitic invasion I dragged back from Cuba, and recording my book on race relations so people can buy an audio edition (it's been out as paperback and Kindle editions for two years). I'm still sending money to a family I know in Haiti, to Black Lives Matter, and to build an underground hospital where women can more safely birth their babies in Syria while U.S.-provided bombs fall often and without warning from the sky.

But it's never enough when reading your Facebook feed becomes an exercise in shock-and-awe, dead bodies all over the place with no repercussions, things just getting weirder and weirder in Washington, and the police reaching new heights in horror and new lows in morals daily. The prisons have become physical and emotional pressure cookers, where men, women, and even children are being par-boiled in their own juices in a summer determined to prove that climate change is real, with or without scientists to tell us so.

So everybody I know is either stumbling through their lives in a state of numb acceptance, doing what has to be done to pay the rent, but little else. Or they're careening through a tsunami of one kind or another trying not to wind up unemployed, incarcerated, or dead. I'm trying to soldier on, but what the fuck? I mean, really, what the fuck?

A Communique From A New Afrikan

On occasion, I like to post or re-post things written by others, particularly People of Color who have something I think my readers would want to read or benefit from reading. The following communique was developed out of a conversation I had with a brother inside the walls.
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Greetings, New Afrikan womyn, men, and all people’s POWER!!!!

 

~~ from Mujahid Kambon ~~

Last week, a brutha and elder gave me a copy of Negroes with Guns by Robert F Williams to read. It's a short book without complicated words or obtuse ideas, yet it affected me deeply. I had never heard of Bro. Williams before nor his struggle in Monroe, NC, in the 1950s and early 1960s. But after leaving the Marines in 1945, he felt compelled to serve his people in their struggle for justice and human rights.

Let Me Make One Thing Perfectly Clear

When I first dropped out in 1970, hit San Francisco for a hot minute, and then proceeded on to join a collective in Iowa City, Iowa, committed to the prison abolition movement, I could not possibly have imagined that 45 years later, I would want to re-publish something I wrote in 1972. Yet here I am, more than a little disappointed that the call for unity, solidarity, and action I issued in the Prisoners' Digest International four and a half decades ago would still be pertinent -- and even sorely needed.

This is why I am still doing what I am doing, teaching what I am teaching, and writing what I am writing. Still trying to make our situation perfectly clear.

Bloody, But Unbowed

Emory Douglas/2016 (by permission)

It's taken me a while to catch my breath. That one-two punch last November was a doozy and though I've been meeting my responsibilities (which are many), my psyche went down for the count and has been lying on the canvas in the ring ever since, trying to figure out if I can make it to the locker room on these jelly legs or do I need to jump in a cab and head straight for the border. There's something to be said for living to fight another day.

I've been lying still with my eyes closed, as it were, reminding myself that this is not new news. White Supremacy. the patriarchy, capitalism, and a cold-blooded commitment to power held by a handful of old White men combined with an almost stunning lack of consciousness in the mass public over the past 250 years has delivered us to the present like an express train to hell. And for the last fifty years of that period, I've been watching it all unfold like a Grade B movie. Yet -- no matter how you've trained -- a well-placed upper cut that catches you off-guard can rock your world, even if you're the better fighter.

Still, as I often tell my students, it's not what happens. It's what happens after that. Watcha gonna do?

The Death of Innocence

We are standing on a precipice, contemplating our mortality, foot raised to take the next step and hoping it will not come down on a land mine placed there by our own previous hesitation. I walk into classrooms where the students sit in anticipation, dark pools for eyes, red rimmed from crying, or steely-eyed, defensively imagining that I am going to shame them for their choice.

I surprise them both by not talking about the election, but rather talking about the Power Elite, the history of our nation, the ideologies of White Supremacy and patriarchy and capitalism that have always guided both. I tell them this was inevitable and therefore predictable. ("You plant beans, you get beans. No matter what you thought you were planting, we know we planted beans because that's the crop we got.") Nobody did this to us. And we will all suffer.

The steely-eyed lose some of their belligerence and look more doubtful. It is a likelihood they hadn't considered. "Black people, Latinos, Native Americans, immigrants, Muslims, women, LGBTQ people, and poor people -- young and old -- are going to suffer even worse than ever," I say, "But they've suffered before. They know how to do it. They know how to survive physically, psychologically, and emotionally. They are prepared -- well and bitterly prepared -- to face and live through this. But unless you are part of the Power Elite, unless you were born into millions, millions, even if you don't belong to one of those groups, you are going to suffer, too. And you don't expect that. You aren't prepared to understand, accept, or survive it. And how you will respond to your own pain, we cannot know."

"I suspect that those who will suffer most are those like me who are White and professional and have of late been able to pay our bills. We have had the luxury of believing that we are untouchable and we are careening into a time when we will be forced to know in terrifying ways that we are not and never were.

"We are not the first people to face this in history. Read Howard Zinn's A People's History of the United States 1492-Present. Or Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo Galeano. Or The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William Shirer. By the time you finish one of them, let alone all three, you will have long since quit reeling or celebrating and gotten a better perspective on where we are.

"Not only are we not the first people to deal with this situation, but we're not by a long shot alone. People all over the world -- and most particularly in Europe -- are suffering already under the boot of fascism. So this is not really a national dilemma. It is a global one. When there are 85 billionaires who own the same amount of wealth as three billion humans on the planet (the poorest half of the entire human race), would you really expect those 85 billionaires to care what happens to the rest of us? Eighty-five people would fit in this classroom with seats left over. How did they get that rich? What kind of system would allow 85 people to become that rich while the bulk of the human race starves?

"I long to protect you all -- even the ones who don't like me, who don't think I know what I'm talking about, who evaluate me as 'retarted' and 'a traitor to my race,' who say I hate White people, that I hate men, that I make them feel 'uncomfortable' or 'bad about themselves,' that I wish all my students were Black. I long to protect you all from what is coming, but I can't. We are in this now together. We will be tried by fire and when this chapter ends, we will none of us be who we were. Whatever shred of innocence we each once had, whatever cloak of denial we have clung to, whatever desperate hope we counted on to allow us to feel special, will have disappeared forever and we will simply be the latest in a saga of lives unfolding.

"We will play our parts in history and pass on into oblivion with those who've gone before. We have rushed to embrace a time of horror and now we will learn what the cost of our arrogance is. May we meet our collective future open to learning -- finally -- that we stand together, honoring each other's humanity as full citizens or we will none of us be citizens at all."