As COVID-19 surges through the state and tears through its prisons, loved ones of incarcerated people are driving to Harrisburg today, calling for Gov. Tom Wolf to use his reprieve power to immediately release all elderly and medically vulnerable people in prison. Loved ones are also asking the Department of Corrections to require prison staff to wear face masks and be tested for COVID-19. As part of a national caravan for health and social justice, the Pennsylvania Poor People’s Campaign worked with local anti-prison groups like the Human Rights Coalition and the Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration (CADBI) to center the survival of people in prison on this day. The car caravan will circle the state capitol and proceed to the governor’s mansion.
Read the rest of the article by Suzy Subways here.
The Anarchist Black Cross Federation (ABCF) initiated the Warchest program in November 1994 to send monthly checks to Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War who have been receiving insufficient, little, or no financial support during their imprisonment. Its purpose is to collect funds from groups and individual supporters and send that money directly to commissary accounts of vetted Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War (PP/POW) via monthly checks. Since its inception, we have distributed over $130,000 in funds.
Ways to Donate: Venmo: TimFasnachtABCF CashApp: $timabcf PayPal: www.paypal.me/abcfwarchest (or send your donation to [email protected]) Check or money order: made out to Tim Fasnacht and send to Tim Fasnacht, P.O. Box 8682, Lancaster, PA 17604.
Due to the rainy weather and police killing of #WalterWallace on the day of last month’s letter-writing event, we decided to postpone until this month. We’ll be writing letters to Imam Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (formerly H. Rap Brown) on Monday, November 23rd at 6:30pm! To observe social distancing, we will hold this event on Jitsi and post the meet link on social media the day of. You can also message us to get the link beforehand.
Jamil became known as a Black liberation leader as the chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and Justice Minister of the Black Panther Party. In the early ’70s, he did five years as a political prisoner before being paroled in 1976. Upon his release, he moved to Atlanta, GA and led one of the nation’s largest Muslim groups, Al-Ummah. He is known to have greatly improved social services to the West End community in Atlanta.
From 1992 to 1997, the FBI and Atlanta police investigated Imam Jamil in connection with everything from domestic terrorism to gunrunning to 14 homicides in Atlanta’s West End, according to police investigators’ reports, FBI documents and interviews. On March 16th, 2000, Fulton County Deputy Sheriff Ricky Kinchen is shot and later dies, while another deputy Aldranon English is wounded after being shot by a man outside Imam Jamil’s store. English identified the shooter in the March 16th incident as Imam Jamil, yet testified that he shot the assailant — who “had grey eyes” — in the exchange of gunfire. Imam Al-Amin’s eyes are brown, and he had no gunshot injury when he was captured just four days later.
Now that Fulton County has a Convictions Integrity Unit, there is a good chance that Imam Jamil’s case will be reopened due to the known incongruities. This is doubly important because he has medical challenges — symptoms of Sjogren’s syndrome and smoldering myeloma (a form of blood cancer) as well as untreated cataracts. Due to his eyesight, write letters to him in large print if you are participating remotely.
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
