[Ppnews] Leonard Peltier - open letter to Obama

Thu Aug 28 12:20:36 EDT 2008

http://www.counterpunch.org/peltier08282008.html

August 28, 2008

An Open Letter to Barack Obama

Symbolism Alone Will Not Bring Change

By LEONARD PELTIER

I have watched with keen interest and renewed hope as your campaign 
has mobilized millions of Americans behind your message of changing a 
political system that serves a small economic elite at the expense of 
the peoples of the United States and the world. Your election as 
president of the United States, where slaves and Indians were long 
considered less than human under the law, will undoubtedly constitute 
a historic moment in race relations in the United States.

Yet symbolism alone will not bring about change. Our young people, 
black and Native alike, suffer from police brutality and racial 
profiling, underfunded schools, and discrimination in employment and 
housing. I sincerely hope your campaign will inspire some hope among 
our youth to struggle for a better future. I am, however, concerned 
that your recent statement on the Sean Bell verdict, in which the New 
York police officers who fired 50 shots at a young man on the eve of 
his wedding were acquitted of criminal charges, displays a rather 
myopic view of the law. Until the law is harnessed to protect the 
victims of state violence and racism, it will serve as an instrument 
of repression, just as the slave codes functioned to sustain and 
legitimize an inhuman institution.

As I can testify from experience, the legal institutions of this 
nation are far from racial and political neutrality. When judges 
align with the repressive actions and policies of the executive 
branch, injustice is rationalized and cloaked in judicial platitudes. 
As you may know, I have now served more than three decades of my life 
as a political prisoner of the federal government for a crime I did 
not commit. I have served more time than the maximum sentence under 
the guidelines under which I was sentenced, yet my parole is 
continually denied (on the rare occasions when I am afforded a 
hearing) because I refuse to falsely confess. Amnesty International, 
South African Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama of Tibet, my 
Guatemalan sister Rigoberta Menchu, and many of your friends and 
supporters have recognized me as a political prisoner and called for 
my immediate release. Millions of people around the world view me as 
a symbol of injustice against the indigenous peoples of this land, 
and I have no doubt that I will go down in history as one of a long 
line of victims of U.S. government repression, along with Sacco and 
Vanzetti, the Haymarket Square martyrs, Eugene Debs, Bill Haywood, 
and others targeted by for their political beliefs. But neither I nor 
my people can afford to wait for history to rectify the crimes of the past.

As a member of the American Indian Movement, I came to the Pine Ridge 
Oglala reservation to defend the traditional people there from human 
rights violations carried out by tribal police and goon squads backed 
by the FBI and the highest offices of the federal government. Our 
symbolic occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973 inspired Indians across 
the Americas to struggle for their freedom and treaty rights, but it 
was also met by a fierce federal siege and a wave of violent 
repression on Pine Ridge. In 1974, AIM leader Russell Means 
campaigned for tribal chairman while being tried by the federal 
government for his role at Wounded Knee. Although Means was barred 
from the reservation by decree of the U.S.-client regime of Richard 
Wilson, he won the popular vote, only to be denied office by 
extensive vote fraud and control of the electoral mechanisms. 
Wilson's goons proceeded to shoot up pro-Means villages such as 
Wanblee and terrorize traditional supporters throughout the 
reservation, killing at least 60 people between 1973 and 1975.

It is long past time for a congressional investigation to examine the 
degree of federal complicity in the violent counterinsurgency that 
followed the occupation of Wounded Knee. The tragic shootout that led 
to the deaths of two FBI agents and one Native man also led not only 
to my false conviction, but also the termination of the Church 
Committee, which was investigating abuses by federal intelligence and 
law enforcement agents, before it could hold hearings on FBI 
infiltration of AIM. Despite decades of attempts by my attorneys to 
obtain government documents related to my case, the FBI continues to 
withhold thousands of documents that might tend to exonerate me or 
reveal compromising evidence of judicial collusion with the prosecution.

I truly believe the truth will set me free, but it will also signify 
a symbolic break from America's undeclared war on indigenous peoples. 
I hope and pray that you possess the courage and integrity to seek 
out the truth and the wisdom to recognize the inherent right of all 
peoples to self-determination, as acknowledged by the United Nations 
Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. While your 
statements on federal Indian policy sound promising, your vision of 
"one America" has an ominous ring for Native peoples struggling to 
define their own national visions. If freed from colonial constraints 
and external intervention, indigenous nations might well serve as 
functioning models of the freedom and democracy to which the United 
States aspires.

Yours in the struggle.

Until freedom is won,

Leonard Peltier
# 89637-132
U.S.P. Lewisburg,
P.O. Box 1000,
Lewisburg, PA USA 17837

Special Note:

Please Help Support the LPDOC for Leonard's Freedom

As Leonard Peltier marks his 64th birthday on Sept. 12, the LPDOC is 
redoubling its efforts to win his freedom. We are planning an 
ambitious organizing drive in our new Fargo office to persuade North 
Dakota Senator Byron Dorgan, chair of the Senate Committee on Indian 
Affairs, to investigate the federal government's role in the violent 
counterinsurgency on the Pine Ridge Reservation from 1973-1976, the 
FBI's withholding of thousands of pages of documents related to the 
AIM activist, and the unfair federal trial in Fargo which led to 
Leonard's conviction in 1977.

Leonard is suffering from partial blindness, diabetes, a heart 
condition, high blood pressure, and prostate problems. He needs your help.

We need your help too, if we are to do the work that needs to be done 
to obtain justice for one of the longest-serving political prisoners 
in the world. At the moment, we are barely keeping up with our rent 
and phone bills, our two full-time staff members are working without 
pay, and we badly need a new photocopier. Due to the damaging actions 
of a former LPDC employee, who removed valuable office equipment and 
contributor records, we are rebuilding our committee virtually from 
scratch. We have found an experienced volunteer editor for our Spirit 
of Crazy Horse newspaper, but in order to resume publication, we will 
need your support.

If you are able to contribute $20 or more for this campaign, you will 
receive a free subscription to the newsletter to keep abreast on 
developments in Peltier's campaign and in Indian Country generally. 
Please contribute as generously as you are able, and also take the 
time to write and/or call Sen. Dorgan With your help, we can win 
Leonard's freedom from the same city in which it was taken away. Even 
if you are unable to contribute at this time, please send us your 
name and address to help us rebuild our list of supporters at the 
state and national level.

Please send your donation to:

LPDOC
PO Box 7488
Fargo, ND 58106
701-235-2206

Thank You,
Betty Ann Peltier-Solano,
Executive Director
<http://www.leonardpeltier.net/>Leonard Peltier Defense Committee

Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110

415 863-9977

www.Freedomarchives.org  
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