Political Prisoners Mumia Abu Jamal, Russell Shoatz, Leonard Peltier and About the For Profit Prison System

Free Mumia!

In this world today, when we perhaps we would need it most, there is a lack of good people. People with good morals, and people that are not afraid to stand up for what they believe in. One of the few good people we have left is Mumia Abu Jamal. Mumia has been behind bars for 37 years and is still standing up for us. He is still fighting the fight. We need more people like Mumia Abu Jamal if we are going to have a chance.

Mumia Abu Jamal was born Wesley Cook on April 24^th, 1954 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. When he was 14 years old he joined the Philadelphia branch of the Black Panther Party. He got involved and worked with the party newspaper. but later left the party in 1970.

After leaving the B.P.P. he became a journalist, and even reached the height of becoming president of the Philadelphia Association of Black Journalists.

As a journalist in Philadelphia, Mumia heard about this group of people who called themselves the Move Organization Mumia learned more and more about this group and was later really interested in the Move Organization and John Africa and he kept reporting about the Organization and their actions.

After a while Mumia found it hard to get work because some considered his stories too provacative or simply not what the establishment wanted reported. So Mumia in order to support his family started to drive a cab at night. One night Mumia was robbed, and after that he started carrying protection. One night while Mumia was driving his cab, he saw a police officer beating up his brother, and he got out of the car to see if he could calm the situation. This is when Mumia was shot, and then shot again. On that night, December 9^th 1981, police officer Daniel Faulkner lost his life.

A woman claimed that she saw Mumia shoot the officer. When other police got to the scene they did not really follow protocol, and Mumia was taken to a faraway hospital and roughed up by the police somemore before a doctor intervened and Mumia was finally treated.

The investigation that followed was a joke, the trail was strictly corrupt, and Judge Sabo was a racist. I used to think that innocent men did not go to jail, but now after studying many cases I believe many men and women in jails today are innocent.

Veronica Jones the woman that originally claimed to have seen Mumia commit the shooting, more recently changed her story and said she was pressured by police to testify against Mumia. There is even a man named Arnold R. Beverly that says and signed a sworn affidavit, stating that he shot the police officer, but that does not seem to matter to them.

Mumia was on Death Row until his death sentence was changed in 2012 to a life sentence without the possibility of parole . He is now 66 years old and has been in jail for 38 years. This man is not a violent man. No violent man would care this much about the world, He has published various books while being behind bars, and has over a thousand radio broadcasts. One can only imagine all the good he could get done if he was let out, I think he could make the world a better place. After more than three decades behind bars, they should let him out so he can return to his family immediately.

 

Write to Mumia:

 

Mumia Abu Jamal

#AM 8335

SCI Mahanoy

301 Morea Road

Frackville, PA 17932

 

Free Russell Shoatz!

Russell Schoatz was born in Philadelphia Pennsylvania on the 23^rd of August, 1943. He is a former member of the Black Unity Council and later Black Panther Party. He has been imprisoned since 1972 and is being charged with murder. He has spent much of his incarceration in Solitary Confinement, although it is said that he has now, at the age of 70, been released to the general population.

He is accused of being a member of a group who is said to have attacked a police station and murdered a police officer, and wounded another officer. It is thought to have been a retaliatory action, for an African American youth that was killed by a police officer. Russell Shoatz has twice escaped from jail and this earned him the nickname „Maroon“.

He has a published book of his writings it is called „Maroon the Implacable: The Collected Writings of Russell Maroon Shoaz“. I read the book and highly recommend it, while Mr. Shoatz offers a history lesson from a different perspective. I feel that there is not enough proof to pin this crime on this man, and I feel this man has been incarcerated for way too long, and that he should be allowed to return to his 7 children and grand children immediately.

 

Contact Russell Shoatz:

RUSSELL MAROON SHOATZ
#AF-3855
SCI Graterford
PO Box 244
Graterford, PA 19426 – 0246

 

Free Leonard Peltier!

The American Indian Movement or A.I.M. was formed in 1968 by Native Americans so that they could fight for freedoms and for a different way of life. Native people were tired of having their kids being taken away and sent to boarding schools where they were indoctrinated in the white man's ways, and they were tired of over 300 years of lies, and broken promises. These people wanted their own rights to choose and to live the way they wished to live, on their land.

Leonard Peltier was born on September 12^th, 1944 in Grand Forks North Dakota. He is a member of the American Indian Movement and has been incarcerated now for over 38 years. Leonard Peltier is being charged with the deaths of two F.B.I. agents during a shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation on June 26^th 1975. If you study the case you will see that their are many serious violations and that Mr. Leonard Peltier did not get a fair trial, and that there are many things that just don't make sense.

What where those F.B.I. Agents doing on the reservation in plain clothes and unmarked cars chasing a car matching one belonging to a man named Jimmy Eagle? The whole affair is said to be regarding some alledged stolen cowboy boots. This man Jimmy Eagle could have easily mistaken the men chasing him for someone out to hurt him.

One thing to keep in mind is that there had been many shootings on the reservation at Pine Ridge , and they were being carried out by the reservations Elected Tribal Leader Richard (Dickie) Wilson's Goons (Guardians of Oglala Nation) who had been shooting up the homes of American Indian Movement members and other native people who they thought were affiliated with the group, or helping them in any way. Sixty people had died at the hands of the GOONS.

Soon after shooting broke out, and after the shooting had stopped, American Indian Movement member Joe Stuntz and two F.B.I. Agents Ronald A. Williams and Jack R. Coler had been killed.

It is tragic that anyone died on that sad day. I think it is tragic that we cannot live in peace, I would like to send my condolences to the families of the men who lost their lives on that day. I also believe that Mr. Peltier did not get a fair trial and that he has been in jail way too long. I feel that he should be let out immediately so he can be reunited with his family and friends.

On a personal note, I really do not like jails, I do not like what they do to people, and I really do not like what they do to the families of the incarcerated beings. I have personally seen people I love taken away, and put into jail. I have personally seen people crying out due to the pain the separation from their loved one is causing them. I think that we need to find a better way. I think that many men in jail are innocent or are there for some non sense reasons, and people may also be incarcerated for having been tried by racist juries, and not their peers, or being pressured into signing plea bargain agreements that trick them into pleeding guilty even when they are innocent. I think this is an attack against the poor and the colored.

 

Contact Leonard Peltier:

 LEONARD PELTIER #89637-132

USP COLEMAN I
P.O. BOX 1033
COLEMAN, FL 33521

We must push to end the For Profit Prison System!

"Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction." 

 

That is the 13th Amendment. It was passed  on January 31st and ratified on December 6, 1865 it was supposed to abolish slavery, but it seems like it did not and it sent it into the prison system. I have read that the demographics in prisons in the south were flipped and that they started incarcerating African-Americans and working them in prison chain gangs. At the same time after the Civil War the Sharecropping system was another form of slavery in itself, because many times people would work just to pay back debt on land and on tools borrowed.

In today's society prisoners are still being used as cheap labor by many corporations. They pay them from between 11-23 cents an hour which they quickly get back through the highly inflated commissary products. It is the old "Company Store System" all over again. These prisons cut anywhere and everywhere so that they can maximize profit.

This Private Prison System  is profiting off of the misery of others.  These people see us as commodities, they just want to lock us up and exploit us. Maybe that is why the U.S. has 2.2 million people behind bars, more than any other country in the world. Slavery has never ended, things have just changed.

Another thing to worry about is the school to Prison Pipeline which is pushing kids out of schools and into the arms of Resource Officers, or pushing out of schools because they score poorly on the standardized tests. It is not about helping them learn giving them a future anymore, it is all about money, everything is about "Paper". This is not human.  Also worth noting is that Immigration Detention Centers and Family Detention Centers are also privately owned.

We must defund police departments

We must stop them from being trained by foreign countries

The must be retrained, no more deaths is the goal, and they will be punished if they commit a crime.

Officers will live in the communities they patrol, so they already know the people. 

There will no more quota systems, where they are expected to give out a certain amount of tickets or make arrests. 

Their job is to keep the peace.

We want no more deaths. 

Black Lives Matter.