NYC ABC, along with several other individuals and prisoner support crews, now send hard copies to all political prisoners and prisoners of war we support.
If you consistently mail the latest updates to a specific prisoner, please let us know so we can insure there’s no overlap. The goal is to have copies sent to all of the prisoners we list.
We’ve also been told that some prisoners are not receiving the copies sent in, yet we aren’t getting rejection notices. If you are in steady contact with a prisoner, please ask them whether or not they are receiving the updates and let us know.
Grailing Brown #39384066 USP Canaan Post Office Box 300 Waymart, Pennsylvania 18472
Birthday: May 27
Kojo Bomani Sababu is a New Afrikan Prisoner of War serving a 55 year sentence. Kojo was captured on December 19th, 1975 during a bank expropriation. He was subsequently charged with conspiracy for an alleged plan to use rockets, hand grenades and a helicopter in an attempt to free Puerto Rican Prisoner of War Oscar Lopez Rivera from the federal prison where he was serving a 55-year sentence for a 1981 conviction of seditious conspiracy
Ronald Reed #219531 Minnesota Correctional Facility Lino Lakes Post Office Box 247 Phoenix, Maryland 21131
Birthday: August 31
Ronald Reed, a former member of the Black United Front, was convicted of the 1970 shooting of a St. Paul police officer. Twenty-five years after the killing, Reed was arrested and convicted of first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit first degree-murder. He is serving Life in prison. Reed is a former 60s civil rights activist. In 1969, Reed was also among the students at St. Paul Central High School who demanded black history courses and organized actions against racist teachers. He was also instrumental in helping to integrate college campuses in Minnesota. During this period, Reed began to look toward revolutionary theory and began to engage in political street theater with other young black revolutionaries in the city of St. Paul. More information: http://bit.do/RonaldReed
Smart Communications/PA DOC Fred Burton AF3896 SCI Chester Post Office Box 33028 St Petersburg, Florida 33733
Birthday: December 15
Frederick Burton is an innocent man who has diligently attempted to prove his innocence to the courts for 47 years. Prior to his inprisonment, Fred worked for a phone company, was a well respected member of his community and his wife was preparing to have twins. In 1970, Fred was accused and then convicted of participating in the planning of the murder of Philadelphia police officers. While the alleged plan was to blow up a police station, instead a police officer was shot and killed by alleged members of a radical group called “the Revolutionaries.”
Smart Communications/PA DOC Joseph Bowen #AM4272 SCI Fayette Post Office Box 33028 St Petersburg, Florida 33733
Birthday: January 15
Joseph “Joe-Joe” Bowen is one of the many all-but-forgotten frontline soldiers in the liberation struggle. A native of Philadelphia, Joe-Joe was a young member of the “30th and Norris” street gang before his incarceration politicized him.
Released in 1971, his outside activism was cut short a week following his release when Joe-Joe was confronted by an officer of the notoriously brutal Philadelphia police department. The police officer was killed in the confrontation, and Bowen fled. After his capture and incarceration, Bowen became a Black Liberation Army combatant, defiant to authorities at every turn. In 1973, Joe-Joe and Philadelphia Five prisoner Fred “Muhammad” Burton assassinated Holmesberg prison’s warden and deputy warden as well as wounded the guard commander in retaliation for intense repression against Muslim prisoners in the facility.
In 1981, Bowen led a six-day standoff with authorities when he and six other captives took 39 hostages at Graterford Prison as a freedom attempt and protest of the prison conditions. Much of his time in prison has been spent in and out of control units, solitary confinement, and other means of isolating Joe-Joe from the general prison population. He is legendary to many prisoners as a revolutionary. “I used to teach the brothers how to turn their rage into energy and understand their situations,”
Bowen told the Philadelphia Inquirer in 1981. “I don’t threaten anybody. I don’t talk to pigs. I don’t drink anything I can’t see through and I don’t eat anything off a tray. When the time comes, I’ll be ready.”
Mumia Abu-Jamal Smart Communications/PA DOC Mumia AbuJamal #AM8335 SCI Mahanoy Post Office Box 33028 St Petersburg, Florida 33733
Birthday: April 24
Mumia is an award winning journalist and was one of the founders of the Black Panther Party chapter in Philadelphia. He has struggled for justice and human rights for people of color since he was at least 14 years old ~ the age when he joined the Party. In December of 1982, Mumia, who moonlighted by driving a taxi, happened upon police who were beating his brother.
During the melee, a police officer was shot and killed. Despite the fact that many people saw someone else shoot and then run away from the scene, Mumia was convicted and sentenced to death by what can only be called a kangaroo court. During the summer of 1995, a death warrant was signed, which sparked one of the most effective organizing efforts in defense of a political prisoner ever. Since that time, Mumia has had his death sentence overturned, but still has a life sentence with no opportunity for parole.
Join family and friends of the Virgin Islands 3 on Sunday, June 27th for music, food and a wellness raffle to raise funds and support for their freedom!
Where: Vital Shoppe, 1030 Union Street, Brooklyn
Doors open: 5pm Presentation from Mas Rising: 7pm Raffle closing: 8:30pm Music by One Nation Sound and Rev Love throughout
No door cover to come enjoy the vibes in community. Vital Shoppe will be serving their menu, and we’ll be collecting donations for VI3 merch + the wellness raffle (yoga classes, acupuncture and massage).
Accessibility: This will be an indoor/outdoor event, and there’s a step with a small ramp to get into the restaurant. There is some seating but bringing a folding/camping chair is encouraged if you’re more comfortable sitting.
Malik has been transferred to Broad River Correctional (BRCI) – a maximum security facility in Columbia, South Carolina.
After so much uncertainty and no answers from Oregon DOC, we have learned that Malik has ended up at an institution nearby the Kirkland transfer facility.
This type of interstate transfer is rare and has been used as retaliation against political prisoners working to organize with fellow prisoners and challenge the awful conditions across the US prison system. See recent reporting for how this process has been weaponized.
We are so relieved to know that Malik is alive and their whereabouts are known (even though ODOC has intentionally moved them away from their friends, lawyer, and loved ones).
But as Malik seeks to stabilize and rebuild after their possessions were taken, we are asking folks for support. Please consider contributing to their commissary and living expenses: https://chuffed.org/project/185716-support-malik-muhammad
All funds will go directly to Malik and will be strictly accounted for; we deeply appreciate your support and solidarity as Maliks transitions to this next chapter.
Love, rage, and solidarity. Always
To write Malik:
Malik Muhammed #400523 (Marion 183) 4460 Broad River Road Columbia, SC, 29210
NYC ABC, along with several other individuals and prisoner support crews, now send hard copies to all political prisoners and prisoners of war we support.
“I am not a martyr and I am not a hero. I don’t fit some perfect archetype, and I can’t live up to any ideal of what so many people think I am. I’m just a man who loves without being able to say the words and who cries without being able to shed tears. I chose this life. I chose the possibility of prison. I chose to forsake my personal life for that which I believed in. It was not out of any altruistic or self-sacrificing desire. I chose this life because I don’t think I could live with myself if I did not.”
I wrote those words on June 3, 2004, in my regular dispatch from the Oregon State Penitentiary, the state’s oldest and only maximum-security prison. About a week later the world would witness the first June 11 International Day of Solidarity with Jeffrey “Free” Luers and Earth Liberation Prisoners. That year June 11 made national headlines because the FBI graciously released a public safety bulletin warning that car dealerships and other business may be targeted by environmental radicals and anarchists. We are currently heading into the 22nd annual Day in Solidarity with Earth Liberation & Anarchist Prisoners!
But the truth is that June 11 started with a small group of friends trying to support a friend they lost to prison and ran a campaign to seek my release. Afterall what are politics if not personal? We struggle because it is personal when your freedom is taken and your world is burning. And when you lose a loved one to the struggle it gets even more personal than you can imagine.
As I sat behind those bars my thoughts were often with those I left behind. The struggle was ever present, that part was easy, the State always made sure of that. To me, it was easy to resist oppression or at least find the desire to do so. It is much harder to endure being separated from your family, your friends, and your community.
And that is why June 11 is so important. I chose to act on my own when I set fire to 3 vehicles at a car dealership. Did I make the right choices? Well, that’s a different conversation, but as a young man sitting in a prison cell, I never expected anything of my community. But my community had an entirely different plan, and it changed the course of my life and I am eternally grateful.
For more than half of my imprisonment, June 11 stood out as an international announcement: We have not forgotten, we will not forget, and we will resist until all are free! Free Free! Became a rallying cry against the excessive, politically biased sentence imposed on me by the judge—the longest sentence of any environmental activist in the U.S. at the time.
I was not the only one that heard that message. My family heard it, my loved ones heard it, and the State heard it because my community around the world was shouting it at the top of their lungs!
In 2007, the Oregon Court of Appeal ruled my sentence illegal, and ordered the lower court to revisit my sentence in a manner consistent with the law. However, if it were not for the public support I had, I do not believe I would have had my sentence reduced by more than half at my resentencing. Moreover, at the resentencing hearing, I do not believe that the prosecutor assigned to my case, Erik Hassleman, would have compared my actions to that of the Boston Tea Party in court if it were not for the actions of thousands upon thousands around the world doing the same thing.
In 2011, after my release from prison, I helped transition June 11 to predominately support for Eric McDavid and Marius Mason (who we welcome home with arms wide open). Yet, it is a special kind of curse to pass the baton of prison solidarity– but if other liberation activists are caught by the state and imprisoned, I wish every one of our prisoners receive the support I did. I pray that whoever is next is strong and courageous because our journey is arduous and full of peril, but we come home. We come home! And as long as you are not a snitch, you are welcomed by the movement with love and support.
On this June 11 International Day of Solidarity with Earth Liberation Prisoners and Anarchist Prisoners we welcome home Marius Mason. And reflect on the lessons learned over all the years.
It takes one person to commit an action, it takes a small group of people to support that person, it takes a community to stand up for that person, and a movement to inspire a world to fight back. The moral of the story is that no matter how painful the journey, under the right circumstances one person can change the world.
*Jeff Luers was sentenced to 22 years and 8 months in state prison for a June, 2000 arson motivated by climate and environmental concerns. Luers appealed the sentence with the help of CLDC and in 2007 the Court of Appeals overturned his sentence and he was resentenced to a term of 10 years.
