[Pnews] Celebrate the birthday of Anishinabeg and Lakota Akihito political prisoner Leonard Peltier.
Prisoner News
ppnews at freedomarchives.org
Wed Sep 12 11:50:59 EDT 2018
https://fighttoxicprisons.wordpress.com/2017/09/12/it-is-leonard-peltiers-birthday-statement-of-the-florida-indigenous-rights-and-environmental-equality-firee/
Statement of Florida Indigenous Rights and Environmental Equality
(FIREE) – The Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons
September 12, 2018
------------------------------------------------------------------------
/[Note: Amidst recovery from an unexpected triple bypass heart surgery
and the largest hurricane threat seen in years, political prisoner
Leonard Peltier turned 73 this week, on September 12, inside Coleman
Federal Correctional Complex in Central Florida. FIREE released the
following statement on his birthday and , September 15, the Campaign to
Fight Toxic Prisons will hold a rally in downtown Gainesville, FL
<https://www.facebook.com/events/1725353617774126> to honor him and call
for his freedom after over four decades of torture and slavery inside
the world’s largest prison system. Find out more about Peltier,
including his address to send a birthday card, here.
<https://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info/>] /
STATEMENT OF THE FLORIDA INDIGENOUS RIGHTS AND ENVIRONMENTAL
EQUALITY FOR LEONARD PELTIER’s BIRTHDAY
Greetings:
The Florida Indigenous Rights & Environmental Equality (FIREE), Campaign
to Fight Toxic Prisons, and other organizations this September celebrate
the birthday of Anishinabeg and Lakota Akihito political prisoner
Leonard Peltier <https://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info/>.
Peltier remains a Prisoner of America’s longest war, its war on the
Indigenous peoples of this great Turtle Island. Ostensibly Peltier was
convicted on the killing of two Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
agents who invaded the sovereign Oglala Lakota Nation with a warrant
they did not have to arrest someone they knew was not there. Members of
the American Indian Movement (AIM) who were at the Jumping Bull “Tent
City” location on June 25, 1975 defended the women and children of the
camp from the unknown assailants who happened to be from the FBI. Cour
D’Alene AIM member Joseph Killsright Stuntz gave his life in the defense
of this encampment. A year later in Cedar Rapids, IA an all-white jury
acquitted AIM organizers Darrell Butler and Robert Robideau of criminal
charges because they acted in self-defense. The FBI altered evidence and
ensured the prohibition of exculpatory evidence to ensure the conviction
of Leonard Peltier during his subsequent Fargo, ND Trial.
In America, the concept of rule of law can be simply exposed as the
United States Constitution Article VI Clause 2 clearly defines Treaties
as the supreme law of the land. Yet so-called Law Enforcement in North
Dakota abandoned their oath and upheld the colonialist imposition of the
United States when they failed to block Enbridge’s Dakota Access
Pipeline which clearly violated the 1851 and 1868 Fort Laramie Treaties
by crossing into sovereign Lakota lands
Today in America many are waking up to the reality that America is not,
nor has ever been a nation of law and order. That Truth and Justice are
not the American way. America has more human beings incarcerated than
any other nation on Earth. Instead of restorative justice that respects
human beings we employ a profitable system of warehousing human beings
and enslaving those who are incarcerated while treating them inhumanely
to increase the profit margin.
Today in America many are waking up to the reality that the struggle is
between those who remember and recognize we are human beings against
those who like a predator, see only material wealth and profit as their
motivation. Indigenous peoples across the globe whether they are Hmong,
Saami, Kuna, Lakota, Anishinabeg, Ainu, Bantu, Mvskokee etc. call
themselves the people, the human beings. They remember who they are. The
dominant society see’s themselves as “Americans” a false term that
denies their connection to themselves as a human being, their ancestors
who were not “Americans” and other human beings.
Today this disconnection is visible as individuals cling to monuments
and celebrations of genocide. In every city in America there is a
statue, celebration or memorial to Columbus, Navarro, De Soto, Custer,
etc. There are no such statues in these towns to Teshunka Witko, Piz,
Titania Tanka, Techumseh, Osecola, Micanopy, Bowlegs. Etc. In many towns
across the south there are statues, celebrations and memorials to the
defunct Confederate States of America, yet there is no statute to the
brave African men and women in America who struggled for their freedom.
There are no statues in Florida to Aaron Carter or Sylvester Carrier who
courageously fought off the white supremacists who massacred Africans in
the Florida town of Rosewood.
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosewood_massacre>
In today’s America a white nationalist named Trump was elected by 63
million to the White House. Now white Nationalist organizations feel
empowered to commit terrorist attacks in the open with the rise of hate
crimes and the violence in Charlottesville, VA which they now want to
bring to Gainesville
<https://fighttoxicprisons.wordpress.com/2017/09/12/it-is-leonard-peltiers-birthday-statement-of-the-florida-indigenous-rights-and-environmental-equality-firee/>.
While unquestionably revolting and vile this white nationalism is not
new. Manifest Destiny, Termination, Slavery, Jim Crow, Alt-Right
whatever name it has it’s the same old song Indigenous, Africans in
America, and other colonized peoples in Turtle Island have heard since
the syphilis-infected, half-a-planet lost Admiral of the Ocean washed up
in the Arawak Nation in 1492. The terrorist killing of human being
Heather Heyer
<https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/13/us/heather-heyer-charlottesville-victim.html?mcubz=1>
was sad, and many of us mourned. But as she would note, how many have
mourned the murder of Savanna Lafontaine-Grey Wolf
<http://www.startribune.com/authorities-confirm-pregnant-fargo-woman-died-from-homicidal-violence/442152143/#1>an
Anishinabeg lady who was killed for her baby a few weeks ago. How many
mourned Sherry Wounded Foot or any of the scores of Missing and Murdered
Indigenous Women. How many mourned or were outraged by the hate crime
killings of Wallace Black Elk Jr, or Ronald Hard Heart or Allen Two
Crows? Colonialism and white nationalism’s ugly face are interwoven,
intertwined and run deep in this America.
FIREE and the Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons recognize and celebrate
the birth and the life of the true warriors for humanity and justice.
Warriors like Leonard Peltier, Buddy Lamonte, Frank Clearwater, Pedro
Bissonette, Joe Stuntz, Geronimo Ji Jaga (Pratt), Mumia Abu Jamal, and
so many others. May Leonard Peltier’s courage and heart stand as a
shining testament to what we must all live up to and stand for in the
resistance of colonialism and white supremacy standing for the people in
the Spirit of Crazy Horse!
Write Leonard at:
Leonard Peltier
#89637-132
USP Coleman I
P.O. Box 1033
Coleman, FL 33521
For more info: https://www.whoisleonardpeltier.info/
--
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415
863.9977 https://freedomarchives.org/
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