Gage Halupowski was arrested along with two other protesters in the wake of clashes in Portland’s Pioneer Courthouse Square, later indicted on four criminal charges, including second-degree assault, unlawful use of a weapon, attempted assault of a public safety officer, and interfering with a peace officer. In November 2019, Gage was convicted and sentenced to six years in state prison.
Write: Gage Halupowski #21894460 Snake River Correctional Institution 777 Stanton Boulevard Ontario, OR 97914-8335 Birthday: July 1
Veronza was a member of the Black Panther Party, convicted in the murder of a U.S. Park Ranger on the word of two government informants, both of whom received reduced sentences for other crimes by Federal prosecutors. There were no eye-witnesses and no evidence independent of the informants to link him to the crime.
At trial, Veronza offered alibi testimony, not credited by the jury. Nor was testimony of two relatives of the informants who insisted that they were lying. The informants had all charges against them in this case dropped and one was given $10,000 by the government according to the prosecutor’s post-sentencing report. Veronza has consistently proclaimed his innocence of the crime he never committed, even at the expense of having his appeals for parole denied for which an admission of guilt and contrition is virtually required.
Write: Veronza Bowers, Jr. #35316-136 FCI Butner Medium II PO Box 1500 Butner, NC 27509
EACH WEEKEND, WHILE New York City’s East Village packs into sidewalk tables for brunch, activist Carmen Trotta leads a vigil for ending the U.S.-backed war in Yemen in Tompkins Square Park. He only has a few more Saturday mornings before he must report to federal prison, along with fellow activists from Plowshares, the anti-nuclear, Christian pacifist movement. Despite a lethal pandemic ravaging prison populations, Trotta, Martha Hennessy, Clare Grady, and Patrick O’Neill are due to report to prison within the next few months for activism against a suspected nuclear weapons depot.
Desmond Tutu and the families of Gandhi and King urgently call on New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to grant clemency to the 76-year-old activist, imprisoned for nearly four decades. More here.
Write! David Gilbert #83-A-6158 Shawangunk Correctional Facility Post Office Box 700 Wallkill, NY 12589
Bio:
David Gilbert, a longtime anti-racist and anti-imperialist, first became active in the Civil Rights movement in 1961. In 1965, he started the Vietnam Committee at Columbia University; in 1967 he co-authored the first Students for a Democratic Society pamphlet naming the system “imperialism”; and he was active in the Columbia strike of 1968.
He went on to spend a total of 10 years underground, building a clandestine resistance. David has been imprisoned in New York State since 10/20/81, when a unit of the Black Liberation Army along with allied white revolutionaries tried to get funds for the struggle by robbing a Brinks truck. This resulted in a shoot-out in which a Brinks guard and two cop were killed.
David is serving a sentence of 75 years (minimum) to life under New York State’s “felony murder” law, whereby all participants in a robbery, even if they are unarmed and non-shooters, are equally responsible for all deaths that occur. While in prison, David has been a pioneer for peer education on AIDS and has continued to write and advocate against oppression. He’s been involved with the annual Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners calendar since 2001 and has written multiple books including:
After ten long years, many transfers and lost good time and being held in contempt of a federal grand jury, political prisoner Jeremy Hammond has been released to a halfway house in Illinois. His sentence ends in March 2021 and keep an eye out for information on how to support him as he adjusts back to the outside world.
Marius Mason is a revolutionary anarchist, avid community gardener, artist, musician, parent of two, writer, Earth First! organizer, IWW member, and former volunteer for a free herbal healthcare collective. He was an extended care assistant at a small Cincinnati school when arrested on March 10, 2008 by federal agents.
Marius was convicted of involvement with a December, 1999 arson at a Michigan State University office in which GMO research was being conducted and a January, 2000 arson of logging equipment in Mesick, Michigan. Both arsons were claimed by the Earth Liberation Front.
Write: Marie (Marius) Mason #04672-061 FCI Danbury Route 37 Danbury, CT 06811 *Address card/letter to Marius Mason. Birthday: January 26
WHAT: Political Prisoner Letter-Writing WHEN: 7pm, Tuesday, November 17th, 2020 WHERE: YOUR HOME COST: Free
NYC ABC and Page One Collective are back for our every-other-week Political Prisoner Letter Writing. As anarchists, it should come as no surprise that we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving– we’ll take your damned day off from work, but not in exchange for commemorating the historic and ongoing genocide of indigenous folks and the 250 million turkeys who are killed each year. While we might be eating the fruits of the fall harvest, don’t confuse that with an acceptance of the Thanksgiving myth.
This Tuesday’s event will focus on indigenous political prisoners Leonard Peltier and Rattler.
Leonard Peltier is an American Indian Movement (AIM) warrior. In the 1970s, the United States government continued its legacy of decimating indigenous communities, focusing on those organized and prepared to challenge its authority. Peltier is imprisoned for the 1975 shoot-out between the FBI and AIM in which two federal agents and an indigenous man were killed. Four years after his imprisonment, a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request released documents which prove Leonard Peltier’s innocence and the FBI’s targeting him. And still, Peltier remains imprisoned. For more information and ways to help, visit whoisleonardpeltier.info
Rattler (Michael Markus) is Oglala Lakota from Pine Ridge, South Dakota, a water protector, and one of six folks who eventually came to be known as the Standing Rock 6. The Standing Rock 6 are arrestees enduring felony charges stemming from arrests on October 27, 2016 at ceremonial resistance camps at Standing Rock. These camps were convened in North Dakota by Native peoples and their allies who gathered there to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. Collectively, they are referred to as water protectors. These seven arrestees are out of the 800-some water protectors arrested, many the result of widespread police sweeps at demonstrations like October 22 with scant or no evidence to link most individuals to any crime. More information: freerattlernodapl.com
Please take the time to write a letter to Leonard and Rattler (and share a photo of your completed envelopes with us online):
Leonard Peltier #89637-132 USP Coleman I Post Office Box 1033 Coleman, Florida 33521
Rattler* #06280-073 FCI Sandstone Post Office Box 1000 Sandstone, Minnesota 55072 *Address envelope to Michael Markus
A New York Black Panther, he endured two years of prison awaiting trial for the Panther 21 Conspiracy Case. He and his comrades were eventually acquitted on all the bogus charges. The case was historic and a classic example of police and government attempting to neutralize organizations by incarcerating their leadership. As a result of this political attack and because of the immense pressure and surveillance from the FBI and local police Sundiata, like many other Panther leaders went “underground.”
On May 2, 1973, Sundiata Acoli and two companions were ambushed and attacked by state troopers on the New Jersey Turnpike. One was wounded and the other was killed. During the gun battle, a state trooper was shot and killed in self-defense. Sundiata was tried in an environment of mass hysteria and convicted, although there was no credible evidence that he killed the trooper or had been involved in the shooting. He was sentenced to thirty years. Sundiata was ordered released on parole by a state appeals court in New Jersey in September 2014 when the court ruled the parole board had “acted arbitrarily and capriciously” when it previously denied him parole. The State of New Jersey has appealed the decision and won in October 2018.
Write: Sundiata Acoli* #39794-066 FCI Cumberland Post Office Box 1000 Cumberland, Maryland 21501 *Address envelope to Clark Squire Birthday: January 14
Our beloved elder Russell Maroon Shoatz, suffering stage 4 cancer for the last year and a half, has now been diagnosed with COVID-19. This infection is no doubt a result of the “full-blown resurgence” of the virus in Pennsylvania state prisons, and the callous disregard shown by prison authorities to elderly and infirm incarcerated people, including withheld testing and unhygienic isolation of those who report symptoms.
Maroon is asking that all supporters call the office of Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf and demand his immediate, unconditional release, as well as that of ALL elderly prisoners infected with COVID-19.
Please call (717) 787-2500 beginning the morning of Monday, November 16, and keep the pressure on! Our sincere gratitude for all of your support.
