Russell Maroon Shoatz, a 77-year-old political prisoner, is suffering from stage 4 cancer. The DOC canceled his scheduled chemotherapy treatments last month. Maroon is very ill and upset that he still cannot begin these life-saving treatments. Your voice can make the difference! Call, fax and email this Thursday!
Prison SCI Dallas: Phone: 570-675-1101 PA DOC, Christopher Oppman:
Deputy Secretary for Administration who oversees healthcare Phone: 717-728-4122
Philly DA Larry Krasner Phone: 215-686-8000 [email protected] Twitter: @DA_LarryKrasner Instagram: @larrykrasner
SUGGESTED SCRIPT:
My name is __________________ and I demand:
1. The immediate scheduling of necessary chemotherapy treatments for Russell Maroon Shoatz #AF-3855, who has stage 4 cancer and is recovering from COVID-19.
2. I am aware that he had previous been scheduled for treatment and this it was postponed indefinitely. Mr. Shoatz must be put on the schedule for treatment today.
Russell Shoatz’s health is rapidly deteriorating. They track the calls from different phones and how many times the same number calls so please keep calling and activate your networks.
Make the calls, emails and tweets to ensure Maroon gets immediate response and medical treatment.
Eric cannot get letters right now but can get books (softcover only), magazines and zines. You can send them him at the address below. Please use white envelopes and hand write addresses.
Eric King #27090-045 FCI Englewood 9595 West Quincy Avenue Littleton, CO 80123
Creating a New World in the Shell of the Old – the 21st edition of the Certain Days calendar
The Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar collective (certaindays.org) will be releasing our 21st calendar this coming autumn. The 2022 theme is “Creating a New World in the Shell of the Old,” looking at collective approaches at creating a more inclusive and fulfilling world through mutual effort.
We are looking for 12 pieces of art and 12 short essays to feature in the calendar, which hangs in more than 6,000 homes, workplaces, prison cells, and community spaces around the world. We encourage contributors to submit both new and existing work. We especially seek submissions from people in prison or jail, so please forward to any prison-based artists and writers.
EXTENDED DEADLINE: June 20, 2021 Featured art- Grae Rosa
WHAT: Political Prisoner Letter-Writing Dinner WHEN: 7pm sharp, Tuesday June 15th, 2021 WHERE: your home (or wherever you happen to be) COST: Free
Sometimes it seems that the struggle for a free society is reduced to something so simple as the struggle to remember. The ruling class hates to be reminded that it wasn’t bootstraps but the ongoing violence of settler colonialism that bought them their Sunday brunch. Or that Stonewall wasn’t a commercial for a big box store, or an isolated event in the centuries of rebellions big and small by those on the losing side of patriarchal supremacy and its false binaries. And right now, as ‘we’ are ‘getting back to normal,’ the triumphalism that callously asserts the needs of domestic markets in the face of a still raging international pandemic insists that we forgot the suffering and wide scale preventable deaths that were all most of us could think about for the past year. We are told to take off our masks, get back to work, and go to brunch, and to forget those who got sick and especially the hundreds of thousands who died. In a very similar way we are told that Black Panthers are comic book characters and fashion symbols to appropriate, safely ancient history if they were ever real at all; that Indigenous resistance to genocide is a thing of the past; that de-colonial freedom struggles were a ’boomer fad, and that the “united states” doesn’t have any political prisoners.
But what if we choose to remember? What if we insist on remembering that those who resisted and fell, those who were captured, are human beings? What if we got to know them as people with aches and pains and senses of humor and wisdom won through decades of principled struggle? What would happen if we remember that the struggle continues?
This week NYC ABC and Page One Collective are asking you write to Imam Jamil Al-Amin (formerly known as H. Rap Brown). Jamil Al-Amin is a long time community leader and organizer, falsely imprisoned for killing a sheriff’s deputy in Georgia. He was convicted in 2002 and after some time in Georgia state prison, the state decided to bury him in federal custody at the notorious Florence Supermax in Colorado before being held in Arizona. The Imam has bone cancer and other health issues, so his family and supporters are currently pushing for an appeal to his trial and for his return to Georgia to receive better medical care and to be able to take a more active role in appealing his case. More information on what you can do is available at whathappened2rap.com
We are asking folks to take the time to write a letter to Jamil (and share a photo of your completed envelopes with us online). Please note that as it states on his support site “Imam Jamil is not receiving proper medical care and is now blind as a result.” We are suggesting to send typewritten letters in a large font (size 18 font and over) to let him and those holding him captive know that he is far from forgotten:
Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin #99974-555 USP Tucson PO Box 24550 Tucson, AZ 85734
Support Gage Halupowski! Gage is an antifascist political prisoner from Portland, OR who was arrested while countering a far-right demonstration in June 2019. He is currently two years into a six-year sentence.
Write Gage messages of solidarity & support: Gage Halupowski #21894460 Snake River Correctional Institution 777 Stanton Blvd. Ontario, OR 97914-8335
“June 11th is a reminder to us that though we spend our days outside of a prison many of our friends and allies spend theirs behind bars having sacrificed what little freedom they had to fight for something greater than themselves. We have a responsibility to them and to ourselves to struggle and fight until all are free.”
– Jeff “Free” Luers, former Green Scare prisoner
When you’re a political prisoner, the cards are stacked against you in a very purposeful way by the carceral State. Prisoners who feel isolated from their families and friends, uncared for, and forgotten, are more easily demoralized and depoliticized. For these reasons, it means so much for supporters on the outside to show solidarity with incarcerated comrades by maintaining contact through letters, sending books, and raising funds for their commissary needs. Sharing ongoing updates with your networks about how prisoners are faring while locked up is an act of resistance. New York City Anarchist Black Cross compiles and publishes a newsletter every other week for just this purpose.
Through June 11 and other campaigns, activist supporters from all over the world are regularly reminded that the collective work for liberation and the abolition of the prison industrial complex is intimately linked to prisoners’ struggles. After all, any one of us who demonstrates our defiance of the State’s profit-driven, racist ecocide could be next. Movements cannot afford to abandon prisoners who have put their freedom on the line — sometimes for decades — for acting upon their ethical convictions.
Since 2004, when June 11 was established as the International Day of Solidarity with ecoprisoner Jeff “Free” Luers, people from around the world have come together to show their support for anarchist and other political prisoners through a variety of tactics that have ranged from letter-writing events to banner drops, and more. We invite you to join the day of solidarity by attending a local event or simply writing a letter from wherever you are.
Marius Mason, a trans Green Scare prisoner and (previous CLDC client), is an anarchist environmental, animal rights, and labor activist currently serving nearly 22 years in federal prison for acts of property damage carried out in defense of the planet. He is also a painter and poet. You can learn more about Marius and how to support him HERE.
CLDC client Eric King, is another prisoner who urgently needs support. Eric is an anarchist political prisoner serving a 10-year sentence for attempted arson of a government official’s office in Kansas City, Missouri, in September 2014. He acted in solidarity with the Ferguson uprising and rebellion — a movement that took place over the summer of 2014 in response to the Ferguson police murder of Michael Brown. Last month we filed a federal civil rights lawsuit on Eric’s behalf against the Federal Bureau of Prisons (“BOP”) and more than 40 of its correctional officers. His constitutional rights have been continually violated since 2018 and his life and safety are regularly in jeopardy in retaliation for his political and anti-racist actions while incarcerated. King has been held in solitary confinement (the Special Housing Unit, or SHU) for over 1,000 days with no explanation or legal justification, in violation of BOP and federal statutory policy. He is currently one of only 80 people who have been held in the SHU for more than a year, let alone almost three years.
You can learn more about other incarcerated anarchists, by visiting the June 11 website, which also includes information about how to reach out and show your support — which is appreciated more than those of us on the outside could know. If you have never written to a prisoner before, that’s OK! You can learn more about sometimes very stringent prison rules regarding mail to prisoners and how to start HERE.
Mark Colville reported to the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center in the afternoon yesterday, June 8, to serve the remainder of his 21 month sentence. He had been incarcerated for 15 months prior to trial so should have to serve about four more months. He does not want to apply for any early release to home confinement or a halfway house as he views that type of intrusive supervision and wearing an ankle monitor as worse than being in a prison.
You can write him at Mark Colville #03610-036 Metropolitan Detention Center PO Box 329002, Brooklyn, NY 11232
via NYC ABC We’ve finished the latest version of the NYC ABC “Illustrated Guide to Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War” and it’s available for viewing (and download) by clicking on the tab at the top of https://nycabc.wordpress.com
This update includes updated mini-bios, photos, and address changes for several prisoners. Unfortunately, we are adding a prisoner to the guide this month–Kings Bay Plowshares 7 defendant Mark Colville. We are thankful to remove whistleblower Reality Winner (halfway house)!
