[Pnews] 50 Years Later, Black Panthers Are Still Fighting for Freedom

[Prisoner News]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/asha-bandele-/black-panthers-are-still-fighting-for-freedom_b_9247294.html 



  50 Years Later, Black Panthers Are Still Fighting for Freedom

/...At its best the river of our struggle has moved consistently toward 
the ocean of humankind's most courageous hopes for freedom and 
integrity, forever seeking what Black people in South Carolina said they 
sought in 1865:
The right to develop our whole being./
Vincent Harding

It's early on the Monday morning, post-snowmaggedon 2016, and I have an 
unexpected 10 minutes to spare. I know I should close my eyes, center 
myself for the day ahead, but instead I FaceTime Baba Sekou Odinga. I 
don't really have anything to say. Mostly I just pick on him, tell bad 
jokes, make faces, sing off-key. "Why you do that to that man," the 
homie Everton who has been navigating me through the storm all weekend, 
asks, laughing.

And as soon he asks, it's like I slip through a wrinkle in time, back 14 
months to November 25th, 2014 when, after near 34 years in prison, more 
than half of which was spent in solitary confinement, former Black 
Panther, Sekou Odinga, walked out of a New York State prison into the 
loving arms his children and his wife, Dequi. Nine hours later, he would 
be greeted in Harlem at the National Black Theater by over 200 people 
who had found out 48 hours before that a day we had worked for but did 
not know we would ever see, was here: Sekou, one of nearly 100 American 
political prisoners 
<http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/blj/vol18/soffiyah.pdf>, 
activists from 1960s through the 1980s, was free.

§

Soffiyah Elijah 
<http://www.correctionalassociation.org/press/qa-prison-expert-soffiyah-elijah-on-reducing-prison-costs-drug-related-crimes>, 
executive director of the Correctional Association 
<http://www.correctionalassociation.org/about-us/staff>, former deputy 
director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard Law School (HLS), 
and one of the attorneys who has worked diligently for years on 
political prisoner cases, including the Herculean effort to secure 
parole for Sekou Odinga, wrote 
<http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/blj/vol18/soffiyah.pdf>:

    Political prisoners are men and women who have been incarcerated for
    their political views and actions. They have consciously fought
    against social injustice, colonialism and/or imperialism and have
    been incarcerated as a result of their political commitments. Even
    while in prison, these men and women continue to adhere to their
    principles.

This, Elijah writes, is the internationally accepted definition of 
political prisoners, and most of us rightly associate it with people 
like Nelson Mandela. What we don't generally jump to, is that apartheid 
was the progeny of Jim Crow, and the struggle against apartheid was 
deeply informed by the struggle against Jim Crow and for human rights 
for Black people living in America. In short, what we believe is 
deserved for people living in other countries, we don't always 
appreciate should apply to us. We should.

Indeed, as I write this, many of metrics that quantify what makes a life 
quality--fair employment, decent education, affordable housing and 
meaningful health care--are as disrupted today as they were for Black 
South Africans during apartheid and African Americans pre-Civil Rights 
Movement. In other words, the name-calling leveled against the Black 
Panthers, resurrected recently because of imagery in Queen Bey's 
Formation, was ahistorical (read: a outright fucking lie). The Panthers 
were a human rights organization and as we know given the history of the 
slave patrols, the three branches of the US government, the KKK and 
today's police forces from Ferguson to Baltimore, from LA to New York, 
any organization or person calling for the full human rights of Black 
people has been met with, um, resistance.

Which is why it's infuriating to hear some people argue that the Rapture 
or some shit has come because the Obamas look mighty fine and Oprah has 
a network where you can experience Tyler Perry's imagination to your 
heart's content, no disrespect. I mean, rock on and whatnot but let's 
understand at least this: elevating the exception to the rule to the 
level of the rule itself doesn't make for sound reasoning--anymore than 
toxic water poured down the throats of Black people by a governor who 
probably washes his ass with bottles of Voss or Black people getting 
dead every 28 hours by police, is progress just because we can hashtag it.

§

Two generations ago, the man who was born under a Gemini sun in 1944 and 
raised up in Queens, New York in a world where poverty in Black 
communities left children hungry and hurting, and where killer cops 
regularly cut #BlackLivesShort with impunity, Sekou Odinga was inspired 
to revolution by Minister Malcolm X. He would hang around Malcolm's 
organization, the OAAU (the Organization of African American Unity) but 
didn't officially become a member until after Minister Malcolm was 
assassinated. Roughly 18 months later, onOctober 15, 1966 
<http://www.britannica.com/topic/Black-Panther-Party>, two young men who 
were also inspired by Minister Malcolm, Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale, 
would stand on the steps of the Alameda County Courthouse in Oakland, 
California and announce the birth of The Black Panther Party and its 
10-point program that demanded human rights for all Black people. Two 
years after that, Seale traveled to New York to get things kicked off in 
the City that Stays Woke, and talked that good Let's Get Free talk to 
group of young brothers and sisters who'd gathered in an apartment in 
the East Village where Sekou Odinga was in the mix.

When I tell Sekou I am writing this piece he says, "Tell them how we 
just wanted our people to be safe. Tell them how we fed our children. 
Tell them how we opened the first-ever free health clinic in America and 
that it was in the Bronx. Tell them we stood with mothers who were being 
harassed at welfare offices. And yes, tell them we fought police, but 
tell them we did it to defend ourselves because what we, a bunch of 
20-year-old kids did, exposed what the government with billions of 
dollars refused to do. And they couldn't take that. Ultimately, that's 
what made us political prisoners. That's why we were targeted. That's 
why we were killed."

In fact, in FBI documents on the Party 
<https://www.pbs.org/hueypnewton/people/people_hoover.html>, the 
government noted that far more dangerous than any gun brandished by a 
Panther, was the fact that they fed children.

But in the Black Panther Party, Sekou, like thousands of young people 
across the country, found a place where he could lean in--elbows, 
shoulders and back--on the question of how we were going to finally 
demand and realize our human rights. It was a seminal moment in the long 
Black history of Black people giving no more fucks because then, like 
now, our lives were at risk simply by walking outside and say, not 
having taken a dog to the vet in 1967 
<http://racialinjustice.eji.org/timeline/> or buying a bag of skittles 
for our little brother in 2012 
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2013/jul/15/skittles-trayvon-martin-zimmerman-acquittal>. 
And despite all the variance in stories I've heard about the Panthers 
since I was an undergrad in the late 80s and early 90s majoring in 
political science and Black studies, in the more than quarter century 
I've known Sekou, it seems that to a person, everyone agreed that he was 
kind of stand-up, straight-backed soldier you'd want on your side.

Which is why, I suppose the decision was made that he be the one to walk 
into Clinton Prison in New Jersey on November 2nd, 1979. And six years 
and six months to the day that unarmed/hands up Assata Shakur, was shot 
and arrested on the New Jersey Turnpike, Sekou would enter that dungeon, 
take his friend and comrade by her hand, and walk her the fuck out that 
joint.

As I write this, she remains free.

And her words are a rallying cry for Black Lives Matter activists across 
the world:

/We have a duty to fight for our freedom
We have a duty to win
We must love each other and support each other
We have nothing to lose but our chains/

How I wish the story of our freedom ended there, with victory in hand. 
But as Harding instructs, our struggle is a river flowing. And two years 
after Assata was liberated, Sekou was arrested, charged with the 
attempted murder <http://www.sekouodinga.com/about.html>of six police 
officers in New York State as well as federal criminal conspiracy 
charges related to the escape, an action, by the way, in which no one 
was harmed <http://www.thetalkingdrum.com/bla4.html>.

But Sekou wasn't afforded the same humanity he demonstrated toward the 
prison staff that was present during the escape. I will not share the 
details of how he was tortured when he was captured, but suffice it to 
say that what was done to him resulted in a hospitalization that lasted 
three months and 35 years later he still lives with residual effects. In 
the end he was convicted on both federal and state charges and shipped 
off to Marion Federal Penitentiary, which was a 23-hour a day lockdown 
facility.

Another way of saying this is that it was meant to be his burial ground.

I was never supposed to know Sekou's name.

Neither were you.

§

In 1990 I was the president of my student government at Hunter College 
when Tanaquil Jones, an activist I'd known from our work to end 
apartheid and a woman who was married to former Black Panther and 
political prisoner, Dhoruba bin Wahad approached me about supporting the 
Special International Tribunal 
<http://www.abcf.net/la/pdfs/specialtribunal.pdf> on the Violation of 
Human Rights of Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War in United 
States Prisons and Jails. What was happening to the men and women who 
had stood up for freedom 25 years ago demanded recognition--the way the 
world had recognized and supported the men and women of the ANC, Black 
Consciousness Movement and PAC in South Africa. I was down.

Dhoruba, like Sekou, was one of the original members of the New York 
chapters of the Black Panther Party; he worked out of the Harlem office 
and Sekou, the Bronx office. And like Sekou, he'd been a defendant in 
the 1969 Panther 21 case <http://www.thetalkingdrum.com/bla2.html> in 
which the leadership of the New York chapters--specifically the men and 
women charged with maintaining security for the Panthers and protecting 
the organization from infiltrators--had been falsely accused of a major 
bombing campaign across the City. After a year locked down, enough bail 
money was raised to release a few Panthers who were charged with 
ensuring everyone knew the bullshit. Dhoruba was head of the Clapback 
Committee and worked tirelessly to bring attention to the case of his 
comrades.

In the end, all of those arrested were acquitted but the Panthers were 
ever more in the crosshairs of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI 
<https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/history/directors/hoover>. Hoover had 
headed the outfit since its official post-WW I launch in 1924 and was 
determined to root out anyone he thought was "anti-American." Communist 
Party members and Suffragettes were among his first targets, although 
under his watch, and despite his stated hatred for Communism, he ran his 
agency KGB-like, with at least one sitting president, Harry Truman, 
opining the FBI director had his own secret police 
<https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/the_fbi_americas_secret_police>. 
Gestapo was the other comparison Truman made. And while none fighting 
for social justice it seemed escaped his reach or wrath, arguably no 
group caught it like the young men and women of the Black Panther Party.

With local law enforcement acting as the FBI's muscle-headed henchmen, 
nowhere was it safe to throw a fist in the air and cry Power to the 
People. Indeed, the veryfirst SWAT action ever in the US 
<http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424127887323848804578608040780519904>, 
was an action against the Panther's LA chapter, and in the FBI's own 
words, the Black Panther Party was "the greatest threat to internal 
security 
<https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro/cointel-pro-black-extremists/cointelpro-black-extremists-part-01-of/view>," 
language used to justify the creation of the Counterintelligence 
Program, known more commonly now as COINTELPRO, whose mission was to 
"misdirect, discredit, disrupt, neutralize and otherwise eliminate" it.

Which they did.
By 1974, much of the Panther leadership as well as key rank and file, 
had been killed by police, driven underground or imprisoned. The Party 
was effectively destroyed. Dhoruba, who had been set up and framed for a 
crime he didn't commit after the victory in the 21 case, was arrested in 
June of 1971. 
<http://www.democracynow.org/2000/12/8/cointel_pro_25_years_later_new> 
His case would become a defining one for Panthers because for everyday 
of the 19 years he did, he fought alongside his lawyers, Bob Bloom, Liz 
Fink (1945-2015) and Bob Boyle, and later his second wife, Tanaquil, to 
prove that the FBI used coached informants to lie on Panthers to ensure 
their convictions. And it might have gone off without a hitch except for 
a sister, Mary Johnson Lowe 
<http://www.nytimes.com/1999/03/03/nyregion/mary-j-lowe-74-us-judge-noted-for-her-rulings-on-bias.html>, 
who had been appointed to the Southern District Federal Court by 
President Jimmy Carter. She was the second Black woman ever to hold such 
a seat.

"She refused to let my case go and forced the government to eventually 
release the documents proving what they did," Dhoruba tells me. For the 
first time, and after a series of failed appeals, Dhoruba's lawyers, at 
last unhampered by a judge who skewed toward prosecution rather than 
toward simply justice, were able to get more than 300,000 pages of 
documents were released. They detailed the lengths the government had 
gone to frame Panthers and specifically Dhoruba. In March of 1990, the 
onetime field secretary for the Panthers at last got a hearing on the 
possibility of a retrial. If he won, he could be released from the court 
immediately, albeit likely with a bail attached.

"But Tanaquil brought the Juju up into that court," Dhoruba reminds me. 
"You know. You were there, asha. Liz [Fink], was working on pulling 
together bail because we knew we'd get the conviction set aside and a 
call for a retrial based on all the false evidence in my case. But Liz 
figured that the only way they'd go for that was if I had a bail on me. 
But I said don't worry."

And sure enough, that judge released Dhoruba 
<http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/23/nyregion/court-erupts-as-judge-frees-an-ex-panther.html> 
in his own recognizance on March 22, 1990. And he and Tanaquil 
wouldwrite a book 
<http://www.amazon.com/Still-Black-Strong-Dhoruba-Wahad/dp/0936756748>, 
make a film <http://www.pbs.org/pov/passiniton/> and begin an 
organization, The Campaign to Free Black Political Prisoners and 
Prisoners of War 
<https://imixwhatilike.org/tag/campaign-to-free-black-political-prisoners-and-prisoners-of-war/>, 
to raise national awareness on the reality--and the particular 
persecution--of political prisoners in America. I was their student. We 
traveled together, speaking on campuses, speaking in community, speaking 
truth to power to anyone within reach of our voices.

§

The Campaign no longer exists but it paved the way for other 
organizations, notably the Jericho Movement 
<http://www.thejerichomovement.com/>, to have formed with the express 
intent of fighting for the freedom of political prisoners. And since 
1990, more than a dozen men and women, Black, Puerto Rican and North 
American (white), once political prisoners, have come home after long 
battles. But others, like Albert Nuh Washington, Teddy Jah Heath and 
Basir Hameed didn't make it out until they were bodies to be claimed, 
Spirits to be honored. And as you read these words, scores of others 
including but not limited to: Mumia Abu Jamal, Jalil Muntquin, Ed 
Poindexter, Chip Fitzgerald, Herman Bell, the MOVE family, Robert Seth 
Hayes, Russell Maroon Shoatz and Sundiata Acoli, Assata's codefendant, 
are aging and ailing in prisons where they've sat for three and four 
decades, convicted on evidence that in a human-centered and democratic 
world, would likely never take hold. Convicted because they knew that 
they, that we, were living in a time of war and somebody had to Solider Up.

The work to free them is the work to free us all, and it continues, even 
as we lift up every victory achieved along the way. Which we should do 
because it's these victories that provide us the will to go on when our 
backs are weary and our hearts are taxed. And which is why on that 
Monday when the homie Everton asked me why I do that to that man--'man' 
meaning Sekou, and 'do that' meaning calling him for no good reason--I 
look at my friend, my heart swollen with the love of a daughter, and say 
simply, "Because I can."

/*
*/

/This post is part of the "Black Future Month" series produced by The 
Huffington Post and Black Lives Matter <http://blacklivesmatter.org> 
Network for Black History Month. Each day in February, this series will 
look at one of 29 different cultural and political issues affecting 
Black lives, from education to criminal-justice reform. To follow the 
conversation on Twitter, view #BlackFutureMonth./

-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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