Solidarity With Leonard Peltier

February 4^th has been named as International Day of Solidarity with Leonard Peltier. In Ireland there will be a protest outside the US Embassy at Ballsbridge in Dublin at 2pm next Saturday. The guest speaker will be Native American activist Jean Ann Day. There will also be fundraising events held in Dublin, Derry and Belfast. The Derry event will be held in the Gweedore Bar on Thursday 9^th February. The Belfast event will be held on Friday 17^th February in the Rock Bar on the Falls Road (9pm-midnight) and tickets cost £5.

Leonard Peltier is a Native American serving his thirty-sixth year in prison. The events that led to arrest and the falsification of evidence used to convict him have long been highlighted by award-winning films like Michael Apted’s ‘Incident at Oglala’ and best-selling books such as Peter Matthiessen’s ‘In the Spirit of Crazy Horse’.

Leonard was wrongfully accused in 1975 in connection with the fatal shooting of two FBI agents. Government documents show that without any evidence at all the FBI decided from the beginning of its investigation to ‘’lock Peltier into the case’. U.S. prosecutors knowingly presented false statements to a Canadian court to extradite Leonard to the U.S.

The statements were signed by a woman who was forced by FBI agents to say she was an eyewitness. The government has long since admitted that the woman was not present during the shootings.

Meanwhile, in a separate trial in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Leonard’s co-defendants were acquitted by reason of self defense. Had Leonard been tried with his co-defendants he also would have been acquitted. Unhappy with the outcome of the Cedar Rapids trial, prosecutors set the stage for Leonard’s conviction. His trial was moved to an area known for its anti-Indian sentiment—Fargo, North Dakota. The trial judge had a reputation for ruling against Indians, and a juror is known to have made racist comments during Leonard’s trial. FBI documents prove that the U.S. government went so far as to manufacture the so-called murder weapon, the most critical evidence in the prosecution’s case. A ballistics test proved, however, that the gun and shell casings entered into evidence didn’t match. The FBI hid this fact from the jury.

Leonard was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive life terms. According to court records, the United States Attorney who prosecuted the case has twice admitted that no one even knows who fired the fatal shots.

Leonard Peltier is sixty-seven years old and in poor health. An accomplished author and artist, he is renowned for his humanitarian achievements. In 2009, Leonard was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for the sixth consecutive year.

Although the courts have acknowledged evidence of government misconduct - including forcing witnesses to lie and hiding ballistics evidence reflecting his innocence - Leonard has been denied a new trial on a legal technicality.

Nelson Mandela, Desmond Tutu, fifty-five members of Congress and others - including a judge who sat as a member of the court in two of Leonard’s appeals - have all called for his immediate release.

The Courts may not be able to act but Barack Obama, as President, can.

Please join with us to free an innocent man. On February 4, 2012, tell Obama to grant clemency to Leonard Peltier.

Leonard is an example of how a person can be imprisoned but not broken. His struggle is compared to Nelson Mandela’s and his message is also one of hope. His prison writings are full of love and belief that his people are stronger than the miserable conditions they experience on the reservation or the poverty many of them find in cities.

Despite his ailing health and diminishing eyesight, Leonard is still an inspirational leader to Native Americans generally and his own Lakota people particularly.

February 4th is a Worldwide Day of Solidarity for Leonard Peltier. Please link your name to others calling for an immediate pardon for Leonard so he can live out his days peacefully with his people.

Jean Ann Day, of the Ho-Chunk Nation, moved to Oglala in 1975 to support and protect the traditional people who had requested help from the American Indian Movement. She witnessed the shoot-out aftermath on Pine Ridge, and survived the reign of terror. She is a National spokesperson for the Leonard Peltier Defense Committee.

Jean is the Executive Director of the Ho-Chunk Nation’s Social Services. Their goals and objectives is characteristic of the Ho-Chunk Nation’s inherent cultural traditions, customs and values. She also addresses the well-being protection and self reliance of the Ho-Chunk children, families, communities and the Ho-Chunk Nation.

Liberty by Joel Condon

A new song, written by North American Joel Condon, which includes a tribute to Bobby Sands has been posted on YouTube. Another of those mentioned is the Armenian national hero, Monte Melkonian (nom de guerre, Commander Avo) who was killed in action in 1993 and who in Europe once travelled under the pseudonym Timothy Sean McCormick.

Joel Condon works as an architect in California, is a Fulbright scholar in Eurasia and a Professor at American University of Beirut. Currently he is a Professor of Architecture and Engineering Technology at University of Alaska, Anchorage. As an artist Joel has always been a supporter of people’s movements and been inspired by remarkable individuals who have attempted to change the world to make it a better place.

‘Liberty’ is his most recent song and the YouTube footage accompanying the song was produced by his wife Seta Melkonian (Kabranian) who had married Monte Melkonian two years before his death. Seta is an Armenian activist, a lecturer, a writer & translator (Armenian English), who co-authored a remarkable book, ‘My Brother’s Road’, with Monte’s brother, Markar Melkonian.

 

Itziarren Semeak

Itziarren Semeak is a Basque Skapunk band that was formed in 2006. They have released three albums to date. Their most recent album, Lehen lerroan (In the frontline 2011), dedicates fourteen songs to the people who have been fighting in the frontline of conflict. It is an album that commemorates men and women who have given everything for freedom and for the fight against the lack of democracy.

The band chose to release their album on 5^th May, 2011, on the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Bobby Sands and dedicate a song to him and his nine comrades who died on hunger strike resisting the British government’s criminalisation policy. The album is homage to the martyrs who gave everything for freedom such as Che Guevara, Nelson Mandela and All the Basque political prisoners. The chorus and the finale contains the lyrics – “As Bobby Sands said, Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.”

For more information see the band’s website here.

 

Nothing But An Unfinished Song - Launch

London Seminar on Internment

Twelve-year-old County Armagh schoolgirl, Majella O’Hare was “executed” according to a former senior British officer who served in the North and is now a leading Tory MP.

MP Patrick Mercer made this startling admission at a seminar on internment at Westminster University, London, in July.  Also attending as speakers were six former internees including Gerry O’Hare and five of the ‘Hooded Men’- Joe Clarke, Francie McGuigan, Paddy-Joe McClean, Kevin Hannaway and Archie Auld.

Patrick Mercer served nine tours in the North.  A military historian and former BBC defence reporter, he is currently a member of the British Home Affairs Select Committee and chairman of the House of Commons sub-committee on counter-terrorism.

Delegates included about eighty academics and students at the University, as well as former British officers and the former SDLP Stormont MP Austin Currie.

The audience was enthralled as the internees related their experiences and ill-treatment by British soldiers.  For the veteran republicans, being heard by a much younger and rapt audience was also a unique experience.

As PJ McClean outlined the well-documented torture that they suffered, there were looks of disbelief – which changed to wonder - as he outlined how the European Commission found Britain guilty of torture. Later the men were awarded substantial damages.

The afternoon session involved Mercer and another British officer, Jack Sheldon, answering questions from their perspective.

Sheldon was a 35-year career officer in the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment.  He did four tours in the North, three emergency tours and one residential tour based at Ballykinlar, County Down. He served from December 1971 as a lieutenant and platoon commander based at Finiston School on the Oldpark Road in North Belfast and his company was responsible for the Bone, the Protestant ‘Rivers’ area and the Louisa Street peace-line.

Also answering questions in this session was Kevin McNamara, a Labour MP for 40 years and for a long time was the Labour Party’s ‘Northern Ireland spokesman’; and Ken Bloomfield, who at the time of the introduction of internment was deputy secretary to the North’s cabinet.  He went on to become the head of the Northern civil service and, in 1997, the North’s first Victims Commissioner.

It was during this discussion that Mercer made his statement about Majella O’Hare.

After the sessions, students button-holed the internees and fired question after question.  Some initially expressed doubts about the claims of torture but were forced to reluctantly accept their veracity. Amongst questions the internees faced were those focusing on why all the internees, with the exception of Gerry O’Hare, were found at their own homes in the initial round-up on August 9^th, 1971. Why, they wondered, were active IRA members confident enough to be living at home at all?  There was an explanation: after a previous series of raids and arrests earlier in the summer which had led to a major political row, few believed the authorities would go ahead with full-blown internment. Some, more cautious republicans, had, indeed, heeded warnings not to stay at home – while others had been lulled into a sense of false security.

They were also quizzed on the reasons why they were each individually selected for what was euphemistically called ‘deep treatment. That was as much a mystery to the internees as to the audience because, for example, Paddy-Joe McClean was a civil rights activist and a well-known opponent of IRA methods.

Another question was whether, if they considered themselves soldiers, it amounted to ‘a fair cop’ for Crown Forces to arrest them?

Every volunteer, the audience was told, was warned when he/she joined that imprisonment was one outcome.

A focus of interest was whether Long Kesh amounted to a ‘University of Terrorism’ and, as ever in discussions about the prison experience, the students and University staff were fascinated by stories of escape attempts, including that by Francie McGuigan in 1972 from the internment camp.

The students were told of the achievement over the years by prisoners, many of whom emerged from jail with degrees in humanities, languages and social sciences.

There were no takers for one question: whether Unionist Prime Minister Brian Faulkner really believed the RUC claim that there were no Protestant/loyalist subversive organizations, and thus his decision only to intern nationalists and republicans. There may have been no takers – but there were plenty of loud guffaws.

The audience was also interested in the lessons for today and whether the experiences of internment in the North can inform contemporary counter-insurgency strategists.

 

 

Bobby’s Story Wins Italian Award

Silvia Calamati, Laurence McKeown and Denis O’Hearn recently received the Alessandro Tassoni Award in Modena, Italy, for their book, ‘Il diario di Bobby Sands. Storia di un ragazzo irlandese’ (The Diary of Bobby Sands. The Story of an Irish Young Man) Rome, Castelvecchi Editore, 2010. Silvia Calamati was also given a cheque for 1000 Euros which she is donating to a Belfast Irish medium school for children.

The book was welcomed and applauded by both the award jury and the audience. In giving the award to Silvia Calamati Professor Francesco Muzzioli, Professor of Literature at La Sapienza University ( Rome)  and member of the award jury, said: “Thirty years after the dramatic events which led to Bobby Sands’ death after a long hunger strike, his story is brought back to life in this book. Written by Sands’ fellow inmate Laurence McKeown, with the help of journalist Denis O’Hearn, the Italian edition has been repared by Silvia Calamati. She has added a series of photos of the Long Kesh prison where Sands and the other prisoners were kept in inhuman conditions.

“It is the story of a twenty-year old boy who just through culture and studying found the will to fight back against his imprisonment.  Faced with cynicism and violence, he chose as the ultimate form of protest to abstain from food, suppressing within himself his own survival instinct. The book’s narrative alternates between the present and the past, including passages from Bobby Sands’ diary, which follow step by step his final days. They make us feel at close hand the courage of his radical form of struggle.

“Each chapter reconstructs part of his life, prior to his arrest, his growing political awareness, his first and second imprisonments, the worsening of the detainees’ conditions, followed by the hunger strike and his election to parliament and death on the 5th May 1981.

“The book also contains descriptions of the other young people who followed Bobby Sands in the strike with its inexorable consequences. It finishes with the lyrics of the songs that were themselves a result of this form of resistance against oppression. Whilst the slowness of the diary shows incisively the devastation of physical weakness, from the biographical element emerges the palpitating portrait of an ‘everyday hero’. Because Bobby Sands – we can see him in photos and wall paintings reproduced in the book – is a boy of the Sixties and Seventies, long hair and guitar, who like so many others demands independence, freedom and equality. His heroism consists in having not feared the threat of the power structure, and having shown himself, in the end, to be stronger than it.

“So, this is a book, which – beyond the historical issue which still causes discussion – must make us reflect about the ‘need for heroes’ and the high price of freedom. It makes us think about the ethical exhortation deriving from Sands’ story to “never surrender, never despair, never lose hope”. It should also serve to recreate ex novo the question of the European identity, in a period in which our continent’s unity seems to be falling apart on all sides even before it has been achieved: an identity capable of self-criticism, which takes account of episodes like these, of the grave lack of ‘human rights’ which took place in the heart of so-called civilisation”.

Footnote: Modenese Alessandro Tassoni (1565-1635) was an Italian political writer, literary critic, and poet. The Award was set up in Tassoni’s city of Modena in 2005 and has the support of the President of  Italy Giorgio Napolitano. It is sponsored by the Emilia Romagna Region  and by the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, two of the most important universities in Italy. The Award is organized by the cultural association Le Avanguardie and by the magazine Il  Bollettario, in collaboration with Modena City Council , Modena Province and Biblioteca Estense Universitaria, the historical library in Modena. The Award is given each year to a book which, as a homage to Tassoni and his ideals, is recognized by the Jury Award as ‘innovative, inspired by values of freedom and committed to the building of a more just and democratic world’.

 

London Conference

A conference was recently held in London to mark the 30^th anniversary of the hunger strike. Describing the day’s highly successful events, Jayne Fisher reports.

A fitting and poignant event to mark what was `one of the most heroic chapters in human history’ took place last Saturday, 18 June, in London. Opening the event with these words from Fidel Castro at the time of the 1981 Hunger Strike, more than 300 people packed into the London Irish Centre to listen to speakers, in what was a moving day of both testimony and political analysis of what was a key turning point.

The event was organised to mark the 30^th Anniversary and to put the Hunger Strike in its wider political context. Organisers introduced the day, commenting that the Hunger Strike was not only a turning point in Irish history, and in the struggle for Irish freedom, it was one of the most important and courageous struggles to have taken place anywhere in history, anywhere in the world.

The conference, with a wide range of speakers from Ireland and internationally, looked at how the events unfolded, how they shone an international spotlight on the conflict in Ireland and shaped the political developments for decades to come.

The opening speaker, Brendan  `Bik’ McFarlane, as the Officer Commanding of the IRA prisoners in Long Kesh during the Hunger Strike, gave a moving and a unique and detailed insight into what happened within the jail. Setting the tone for the day, Bik outlined the stakes involved, and how there was a clear political understanding of what was necessary. It was clear that the British government’s `criminalisation’ policy was central to their whole strategy overall; by criminalising the prisoners the whole struggle became criminalised and so the stakes for both the British government and Irish republicans were immense. Ultimately the British government were defeated, but this took the lives of ten men in the course of the struggle. He also spoke of the importance of the families, the quiet dignity and strength, in the face of immense pressure. During his detailed and extraordinary account of what took place, the audience sat in rapt silence, many near to tears and struck by the magnitude and heroism of those involved, and with a feeling that this was indeed a unique and privileged occasion to hear so directly about such a key moment in history.

Sinn Fein MEP Bairbre de Brun spoke about the development of the solidarity movement outside the prison, from her own involvement in the anti-H Block/Armagh Committee. With clear points to be drawn on for today, she outlined how a huge coalition developed, based on the simple demand of supporting those who wanted the inhuman condition of the prisoners to end, around their struggle. Developing a broad basis for the campaign, she related how this mass movement was possible to develop in a way not seen before. She pointed to the huge upturn in protest activity on the streets, and how it was met with violence from the British state, such as the use of 16,500 plastic bullets in just one month.

Former Labour MP Kevin McNamara analysed how the Hunger Strike impacted in within the British State, and how there were some voices, like his own, who refused to go along with the British imperialist agenda, against those like Don Concannon and Merlyn Rees, in the discussions at the time. His comments also revealed how leading politicians – including in the south of Ireland - were clearly affected by the mass mobilisations.

Writer and journalist, and current lecturer at City University, Roy Greenslade, spoke about the lies told in large sections of the British media about the Hunger Strike at the time, which was all a part of the propaganda war to attempt to defeat what was happening. He also pointed that such misinformation still prevails today, with a concerted and right wing campaign prevalent in many comment debates online. He urged people to challenge this aspect, and writing on the eve of the conference in the Guardian [link] Roy’s detailed proved an invaluable element of the day.

US-based academic and writer Professor Christine Kinealy gave a factual analysis of the events leading up to and after 1981, and also pointed out how the subsequent rise of Sinn Fein and the peace process underlined how the magnitude of the Hunger Strikes was greater than anyone could have envisaged at the time.

How 1981 shook the world, and the international impact of the Hungers strike in breaking the isolation of the prisoners, formed the theme of the second panel discussion.

Legendary leader of the struggle to defeat apartheid, Ronnie Kasrils gave an inspiring and incisive account of how the South African movement learned from the Irish struggle and vice versa. Quoting James Connolly on `Cause of Ireland is the cause of Labour and the cause of Labour is the cause of Ireland’ he argued that the national and social struggles were indivisible. He spoke of the worldwide struggle against imperialism and how alliances and common links were absolutely vital.

Former French MEP Francis Wurtz, who chartered a plane to travel to Belfast to attend Bobby Sands’ funeral, related the impact across Europe, which along with the wider international impact, helped overcome the idea that the prisoners were isolated. In fact it was the Thatcher government which became isolated and hated for its actions.

Writer and activist on Palestine and the Middle East, Kevin Ovenden, related how the whole of the Arab world was inspired by the hunger strike and the influence that it had. He said that leading figures today spoke about how inspirational the Hunger Strikes were. He spoke of how the unity of prisoners could be a unifying factor in the wider struggle and how the issue of human rights for prisoners could bring a wider interest and support.

From the chair Jeremy Corbyn MP spoke of the lasting legacy of the Hunger Strike and how relevant many issues remained, with strong resonances to some of today’s international struggles, in Palestine and elsewhere in the world.

In the final panel of speakers, Sinn Fein’s chief whip in the Assembly, and former political prisoner and friend of Bobby Sands, Jennifer McCann spoke of the role of women in what was a dual struggle, and how strongly interconnected the men and women involved were at the time. She also remarked that, like herself, Bobby was elected by the people, as the MP for Fermanagh & south Tyrone, and yet the British government still allowed him to die. Bobby’s election to Westminster, she said, and that of two of his comrades to the Irish parliament, marked a sea change in how Irish republicans looked at elections, and their potential, and could be seen as a catalyst for Sinn Fein’s electoral intervention the following year, 1982, and since. She also brought the discussions up to the present day, outlining the development of Sinn Fein’s political strategy and pointing to the growing strength and dynamic towards Irish unity – economic, social and political.

The final speaker was Tony Benn, who spoke of how it was necessary to see the Irish struggle for self determination not simply as a small isolated fight, but as part of a huge and general struggle against colonialism worldwide. He said this was not the case of a small band fighting a bigger monster, but a world-wide anti-colonial struggle. He pointed to the rise of Sinn Fein, the advancement of the cause of Irish unity and of his own conviction that Irish reunification would happen, it was only a question of how soon.

In summary, Stephen Bell in the chair said that the day had underlined the need for the Irish community, and others within Britain to do all possible to continue to support Irish unity. He said the best way to honour the Hunger Strikers was to contribute to this same struggle today. The initiative to open up the debate on Irish unity, to put this on the agenda, would continue he said, and urged people to take part. Film of the speakers will soon be available via youtube for those who missed it.

London Conference

The 30th anniversary of the 1981 Hunger Strike, in which ten men died in the struggle for political status, shone an international spotlight on the conflict in Ireland and irreversibly shaped the political developments for decades to come.

‘The hunger strike shaped the course of Irish politics. Bobby Sand’s election in Fermanagh South Tyrone in the Westminster election of April 1981, and of Kieran Doherty in Cavan Monaghan and Paddy Agnew in Louth in the June 1981 general election in the south, were watershed moments.

It has needed the intervening decades to understand the extent to which the courage and sacrifices of the ten men who died on hunger strike changed modern Irish history.’ – Gerry Adams TD, President Sinn Féin

This year, as part of events to mark this watershed moment in Ireland, Britain and more widely around the world, Sinn Féin will host a conference in London to discuss the legacy of the hunger strike and lessons for today. With leading figures from Ireland and internationally, including those involved in the struggle at the time, former prisoners, political activists, writers and documentors of events, the conference will be a key opportunity to look at this critical moment in history, mark developments in the intervening three decades and draw lessons and inspiration for today. As the current political process in the north moves forward, alongside the

continuing debate around Irish unity, the conference comes at an important

juncture, as the relationship between Britain and Ireland enters a new phase.

REGISTRATION: £5 waged £3 unwaged (payable to ‘1981 June Conference’)

POST: PO Box 65845, London EC1P 1LS

EMAIL: london1981conference@yahoo.co.uk

STALLS available (£20)

Madrid Reading of Diary

There will be a reading of Bobby Sands’ diary in Madrid on Friday May 6th at the Club de Amigos de la Unesco and will include music and a historical introduction. The event is part of the commemorations of the thirtieth anniversary of the 1981 hunger strike. The organisers say: “Thirty years after the death of Bobby Sands we want to pay homage to him and remember him through the writings he produced while imprisoned: prose, poems and songs in addition to passages of the diary he wrote over his first 17 days on hunger strike. The texts selected will focus on the human values contained in his literary work, as well as considering the circumstances and context in which they were written.

After and introduction about him and his historical context by Luis Antonio Sierra (author of Irlanda del Norte. Historia del conflicto and Irlanda: Una nación en busca de su identidad), we will read a selection of texts in Spanish, English and Irish (translation provided for languages other than Spanish). The location is - CAUM (Club de Amigos de la Unesco de  Madrid), Plaza de Tirso de Molina, nº 8 – 1º, 28012 – Madrid, Friday, May 6th, 18.30. Admission – free. For further information and queries please write to: bslectura@hotmail.com

 

Inside A Hunger Strike

Denis O’Hearn, author of the biography on Bobby Sands, ‘Nothing But An Unfinished song’, is Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, USA, and has recently been involved in campaigning for the rights of death sentenced prisoners in US Supermax Prisons. Here, he tells the story of the prisoners’ fight and their use of hunger strike:

[Above: Siddique Abdullah Hasan; Bomani Shakur; Jason Robb]

INSIDE A HUNGER STRIKE

For anyone with a passing knowledge of the events in Ireland thirty years ago, the story of a recent hunger strike in Ohio will be interesting, if not downright encouraging. The history of the strike, its reasons, its beginning, and end, are told in two articles I wrote (below) that were published in the US. The first is an OpEd in the Youngstown Vindicator, the hometown paper where Ohio State Penitentiary (OSP) is located, that appeared on the day the hunger strike began and was widely reprinted in Znet and other places. The second article announces the end and victory of the hunger strike, after just two weeks, and appeared in MRZine (Monthly Review) and Counterpunch.

But before I tell the story, let me say a few words about how I became involved. I have been visiting two of the three men who were on hunger strike, for the right to be on death row! Yes, you heard right…to be on death row. Why three men should find this necessary (along with a fourth who was convinced by his comrades to stay off the protest because of his diabetes) will become clear below.

I first heard about Keith Lamar, a death-sentenced prisoner who prefers the name Bomani Shakur (Bomani is Swahili for “proud warrior”, Shakur for “thankful”), after my biography of Bobby Sands was published in 2006 (Nothing But an Unfinished Song: Bobby Sands, the Irish Hunger Striker Who Ignited a Generation, Nation Books). The legendary US civil rights activist, historian, and labor lawyer Staughton Lynd wrote to me. He’d read my book and was deeply moved by what happened in Long Kesh up to and during the hunger strike. So moved, in fact, that he wanted to use the book as the basis for a political discussion group that he was organizing among US political prisoners including Bomani Shakur and Mumia Abu Jamal. Staughton’s own book, Lucasville: the Untold Story of a Prison Uprising (soon to be republished by PM Press), was banned by Ohio State Penetentiary. So he was unsure that a book on an Irish hunger striker would be allowed in, but asked that I try. Following prison regulations, I sent copies in through Amazon. They had to be paperback.

It wasn’t long before I received my first letter from Bomani. He was a bit hesitant to contact a published author but he wanted me to know how deep an impact the story of Bobby Sands had on him. We started a correspondence and soon I found myself driving five and a half hours, each way, once a month to visit him in OSP. We were allowed five hour visits, two days in a row. I soon discovered what a remarkable man this was, who grew up in a loveless home in a ghetto of East Cleveland; whose attempts at making a reasonable life for himself were foiled time and again by a structured racism that has degenerated the lives and communities of many if not most Afro-Americans; who became a crack dealer and thief; who murdered a childhood friend in a shootout that left him first in hospital and later in prison; who was inspired by an older prisoner, a la Malcolm X, who gave him his African name; who became involved in one of the longest-running prison uprisings in US history in Lucasville, Ohio, 1993; who was condemned to death along with four others for killings in that uprising, on snitch testimony including the testimony of men who actually committed the murders; who at the time I met him had lived some fifteen years in complete isolated confinement, 23 hours a day in a cell the size of a parking space, with no human contact apart from the odd prison guard.

Bomani Shakur is also the most natural intellectual and writer I ever met. He had used his time in prison to read widely and he loved writers such as Richard Wright (Native Son, Black Boy). Somehow he learned in the process what was good writing and what was bad, and how to practice the former to remarkable effect. He was interested in Bobby Sands mainly because of his ability, and that of his comrades, to build a community under conditions of cellular isolation. He tried to do the same in Ohio, in conditions that were in many ways even more restrictive than Long Kesh. He’d had some success, despite the fact that the prisoners around him were poor raw material: apolitical, uneducated, often drug dealers like he’d been when he first came to jail. Bomani also wanted to know why he’d taken the roads he had taken, and he wanted to know how he might help other young black men to make better choices and stay out of prison…not out of committed, radical politics, just out of drug dealing and prison. He is still dealing with that, and we talk about it every time we meet.

Soon, I was also writing to Bomani’s best friend in the prison, and this most people will find hard to believe. Jason Robb is a leading member of the Aryan Brotherhood. Like Bomani, he wound up in prison for drug dealing and murder. Also like Bomani (and I have found this to be true of many other Aryan Brothers I’ve since met) his politics were decidedly to the left, with a stinging critique of US capitalism and state injustice. But his interests were different. He is a brilliant artist. He reads about the history and culture of Northern Europeans, Irish, and Greeks. He recently won a litigation against the Ohio prison system for the rights of pagans to practice their religion in the same way as Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Like Bomani, Jason was deeply moved by the story of Bobby Sands and he doesn’t mind telling you that he broke down and cried as he read about Bobby’s hunger strike and slow death. This, despite the fact that he is as tough as nails and, in Stoughton Lynd’s words, “looks like a fire plug covered in tattoos.”

A few weeks ago, my friend Jason Robb joined his brother Bomani Shakur and their comrade Siddique Abdul Hasan, a Sunni Imam and also death-sentenced after the Lucasville uprising, on a hunger strike to gain the same rights as a hundred other men on death row in Ohio. I was the first visitor to Bomani and Jason, on the third and second days of their hunger strikes. Bomani told me that he was reading the Irish political prisoners’ classic, Nor Meekly Serve My Time.

Less than two weeks later, the hunger strike ended in victory, when OSP warden David Bobby gave the prisoners a signed statement outlining agreement to the prisoners’ demands. Their insistence on a written agreement was undoubtedly informed by what happened at the end of the first Irish hunger strike of 1980. Despite a historic victory in terms of US prison practice, the struggle of the Lucasville Five, those who were death-sentenced after the 1993 Lucasville uprising, continues. As Jason Robb says, “This time around the fight was for better prison conditions. Now we begin fighting for our lives.”

Anyone interested in lending support to these men can join the Facebook group “In Solidarity with the Lucasville Uprising Prisoners on Hunger Strike” .

As Bomani Shakur often says, “It ain’t over…”

From the Youngstown Vindicator - On hunger strike, to be on death row

Monday, January 3, 2011, Special to The Vindicator

Why would anyone want to go on death row?

A federal judge from Ohio once asked that question. To be specific, he asked, “Why would anyone rather be on death row than at Ohio State Penitentiary?”

Why, indeed!

I’ve been asking myself that question since I began visiting OSP Youngstown a few years ago.

Now, the death-sentenced prisoners I visit are so desperate that they are going on hunger strike, essentially for the right to be on death row. The four hunger strikers participated in the 1993 prison rebellion in Lucasville and at least some of them saved lives by acting as negotiators with the authorities. In return, they were deemed to be prison leaders and received the death penalty for murders committed during the uprising. The evidence against them was largely testimonies of other prisoners who actually committed the murders.

Let’s leave aside the question of whether these men were guilty or, if so, whether they deserve to be executed. The question at hand is, why were they sentenced to death, yet the state of Ohio refuses to put them on death row?

The fact is that there are worse places than death row. Let me explain.

After Lucasville, the state of Ohio decided that a maximum security prison was not secure enough. They built a supermax prison, OSP Youngstown. Once they built it, they had to fill it. Today, a hundred prisoners there are kept in 23-hour lockup in a hermetically sealed environment wherein they have almost no direct contact with other living beings — human, animal, or plant. Even “outdoor” recreation is in a small enclosure with a concrete floor and walls so high that a person can see out only through the grilled ceiling overhead.

The system keeps its worst retribution for the four hunger-striking men for whom it built OSP: Siddique Abdullah Hasan, Keith Lamar, Namir Abdul Mateen, and Jason Robb. They are a strange group of prisoners. Two are Sunni Muslim. One an unaffiliated African-American. The fourth an Aryan Brother. Contrary to what we might expect, they are friends and even “best friends”. This is not supposed to happen between an Aryan Brother and an Afro-American.

Perhaps this is why prison authorities have written to them that, despite a cursory annual review of their cases, “You were admitted to OSP in May of 1998. We are of the opinion that your placement offense is so severe that you should remain at the OSP permanently or for many years regardless of your behavior while confined at the OSP.”

The lack of a reasonable review violates the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution. It also violates the explicit instruction of the Supreme Court of the United States in Austin v. Wilkinson. Moreover, keeping men in supermax isolation for long periods clearly violates the Eighth Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

What does this mean in real terms?

Keith Lamar, who I call by his preferred name Bomani Shakur, may be closer to me than any man on earth. I tell him things about me that no one else knows. He does the same with me. I visit him each month and when we are allowed I spend five hours with him Saturday and another five on Sunday. I love him like a brother. He is a brother to me.

Yet I have never touched Bomani, much less hugged him. One day I asked him how long it had been since he touched a tree. After he stopped laughing, he turned serious. It had been over 15 years.

Bomani told me a story about “outside exercise.” One day a leaf fell through the grille to the concrete floor below. He picked it up, hid it, and took it back to his cell. There he enjoyed this dying bit of life until a guard took it away.

Sealing men off from contact with nature, including other humans, is the cruelest punishment I can imagine.

So what would these men have if they were on death row?

On my visits to OSP I have to shout through a wall of bullet-proof glass at a man who is shackled in a small visiting cubicle. A few feet away, a man from death row sits in a booth with a small hole cut from the glass. He can hold his mother’s hand. With a little effort, he can kiss a niece or grandchild. He does not have to shout to hold a conversation.

This may not move you but consider why these men are in prison to begin with. Last year, I taught a course where my students corresponded with supermax prisoners across the US. The men wrote autobiographies. None of them pleaded innocence or for pardon; they regretted what they had done. They had one thing in common: childhoods where they were deprived of love and human contact.

If deprivation of human contact is what led these men into lives where they committed horrific deeds, why do we punish them by intensifying that deprivation? Why not give them the one thing that could have brought them from the brink in the first place: a little bit of loving, human contact? A clasp of a loving hand from time to time. The chance to show that they can be better men than they were. None of us can be hurt by this small mercy. And knowing some of these men and their capacity to contribute to society, even if their society is just a prison, we may have a lot to gain.

From MRZine - A Welcome Prison Victory at Youngstown, January 19, 2011

Three death-sentenced men were on hunger strike in Ohio State Penitentiary on January 3 to win the same rights as others on death row in the state. On Saturday January 15, the twelfth day of their protest, a crowd of supporters gathered in the parking lot by the tiny evangelical church at the entrance to the prison on the outskirts of Youngstown. They ranged from the elderly and religious to human rights supporters to members of various left groups. They were expecting to participate in the first of a series of events in coming weeks to support the men on their road to force-feeding, or even possible death. Things did not turn out as expected. For once, this was for the better.

The day’s events began when a small delegation made up of the hunger strikers’ relatives and friends (Keith Lamar’s Uncle Dwight, Siddique Hasan’s friend Brother Abdul, and Alice Lynd for Jason Robb), went up to the prison through the snow and ice to deliver an Open Letter addressed to OSP Warden David Bobby and Ohio’s state prison officials. The letter, which supported the demands of the hunger strikers, was signed by more than 1200 people including the famous (Noam Chomsky), human-rights-leaning legal experts from Ohio and around the world, prominent academics and writers, and plain garden-variety retired teachers and religious ministers. It was Saturday, so Warden Bobby was not there to meet the delegation, but he’d been aware of their coming and left someone at the front desk to take the letter.

Hopeful word of a settlement of the hunger strike had been circulating among a few friends and activists for two days. They were definitively confirmed that morning when visitors to Jason Robb received a copy of a written agreement from Warden Bobby (see below) outlining a settlement that provided practically all of their demands, despite his insistence at the beginning of the strike that he would not give in to duress.

Although the hunger strikers told me that they were optimistic from the very beginning, there were grounds to expect a harder battle. Bomani Shakur described an incident with the Deputy Warden at the beginning of his protest.

“You know, LaMar, a human being can only go so long without food,” he chided Shakur.

“Yeah, I know,” replied Bomani, “but according to the state of Ohio I’m not human, so I don’t have to worry about that!”

Nonetheless, Warden Bobby and his deputies had been meeting with the hunger strikers for some days and they agreed that they would end their protest upon receipt of the warden’s letter. Friends and relatives who came to visit Siddique Hasan and Keith Lamar (aka Bomani Shakur) told visiting friends and relatives similar details about the end of the strike. Both men said that they had resumed eating.

Shakur told one of his friends that he’d “just been eating hot-dogs.” She replied that it was crazy to eat such things on an empty stomach. Bomani just laughed and said, “but I was hungry, man!”

The delegation returned to the crowd and began the rally. The surprise was revealed to all. The hunger strike was over.

Jason Robb’s victory statement was relayed to the crowd. He wanted to thank everybody for their support, for without it the men would have won nothing. But now, he said, it was time to shift the focus to the fact that five men, including the three hunger strikers, are awaiting execution for things they did not do.

“The energy around our protest went viral,” he told Alice and Staughton Lynd on a prison visit. “This time around the fight was for better prison conditions. Now we begin fighting for our lives.”

Why a Hunger Strike?

The “Lucasville Five”, includes the three hunger strikers plus Namir Mateen, who did not join the hunger strike due to medical complications, and George Skatzes, who was transferred out of isolation at OSP after he was diagnosed with chronic depression. All five are awaiting execution for a variety of charges, mostly complicity in the murders of prisoners and a guard during the Lucasville prison uprising of 1993. In a case that resembles that of the Angola 3 in Louisiana, they have been held in solitary isolation for 23-hours a day for more than 17 years, since the evening the uprising ended. This is despite the fact that three of them helped negotiate a settlement of the uprising that undoubtedly saved lives, and despite a promise within the agreement that there would be no retribution against any of the prisoners.

The Ohio prison authorities went back on their word. They not only put the five men in isolation but they built the supermax prison at Youngstown to hold them that way in perpetuity. Having built the prison, they had to fill 500 beds, despite the fact that a small Secure Housing Unit at Lucasville had never been full. But the 1990s were the decade of the supermax. So men who were charged with minor offences found themselves locked up in Youngstown on “Level 5 security,” meaning that they were held for 23 hours a day in a cell no bigger than a city parking space. The steel-door cells and even the recreation areas where they spent an hour a day were built in such a way as to ensure that they would never have contact with another living being – human, animal, or plant. “Outdoor recreation” was in a cement-walled enclosure that was only outdoor if you consider that the roof is a steel grille. Hundreds of men have come and gone since 1998. Only four, the three hunger strikers and Namir Mateen, remain locked up in perpetual isolation.

A case is underway in the Middle District Court of Louisiana that is likely to judge this kind of treatment as a violation of the eighth amendment prohibitions on cruel and unusual punishment. It may be that the Ohio authorities see the handwriting on the wall and they want to improve the conditions of Ohio’s supermax before they are forced to do so by another court ruling, like the Wilkinson vs Austin case of 2005 in which the US Supreme Court forced them to improve conditions in the supermax.

One of the holdings of the Supreme Court instructed the Ohio authorities to follow Fifth Amendment provision on due process. In 2000, two years after the supermax opened, they began giving annual reviews to the death-sentenced Lucasville prisoners. But the reviews are not meaningful.  One of the reviews even concluded, “You were admitted to OSP in May of 1998.  We are of the opinion that your placement offense is so severe that you should remain at the OSP permanently or for many years regardless of your behavior while confined at the OSP.” Thus, the four have been condemned to de facto permanent isolation.

This lack of meaningful review, as well as the continued lack of human contact despite the agreement that ended the Youngstown hunger strike, might yet be the focus of litigation not just in Ohio but in other supermaxes around the United States, such as California’s notorious “Secure Housing Unit” at Pelican Bay State Prison.

The conditions of supermax are a running sore on the US human rights record, a sort of elephant in the bedroom that few people want to talk about. Yet there is a growing sentiment among experts and policymakers against extreme isolation, both because of its cost but also due to the judgment that it is a form of torture.

And it is these conditions of extreme isolation, without hope of ever touching a fellow human apart from a prison guard that drove these men to the ultimate protest of hunger strike. As Bomani Shakur wrote in a statement that announced his hunger strike, none of the men wanted to die. But in such conditions of isolation, and in the absence of any way of proving to the authorities that they were not a security risk if allowed to mix with other prisoners or have semi-contact visits, depriving themselves of food was the only non-violent means of protest that remained for them.

What Now?

For the Lucasville Five, the main attention turns now to their wrongful convictions and to the death penalty itself. Ohio is the only state in the US that executed more men in 2010 than in 2009. And it is second only to Texas in its rate of executions. For the past two years, the state has attempted to execute one man a month, although that attempt has been slowed by botched executions and by some surprising grants of clemency by former governor Ted Strickland. One can only hope that moves away from the use of the death penalty in states like New Mexico and, most recently, Illinois, are the beginning of a more general move to do away with this backward policy.

The hunger strikers expressed their hopes, to relatives and other visitors, that the energy that built up around supporting their recent protest could now be turned toward getting them off of their death sentences and allowing them to prove their innocence. Ironically, the improved conditions that they won through hunger strike could help in this regard. Among their demands – increased time outside of their cells, semi-contact visits, and equal access to commissary – was the demand that they be allowed to access legal databases like other death-sentenced prisoners, so that they could work toward their appeals.

For now, this is most important to Bomani Shakur. In a shocking recent decision, a district court judge affirmed the recommendation of the magistrate against his petition for habeas corpus without any discussion of the merits of the judgment. Shakur believes that the judge made this rash seemingly judgment in retaliation for his role in the hunger strike. Whether he has reason to believe this or not, he and his counsel now have to turn to the Federal Court of Appeals 6^th Circuit. In real terms, what seemed to have been a further process of five years to execution now seems to have been shortened to perhaps three. The US judicial system is strongly biased against appeal, even in most egregious cases of injustice. So the Lucasville Five now have a hard case to argue. It is a case where public opinion and social movement may have more impact than the law, just as public pressure seems to have played a decisive role in winning a successful end to the hunger strike after such a short period.

Bomani Shakur told Alice and Staughton Lynd that the denial of his habeas petition by the district court makes him more determined and focused on what he needs to do in the next few years. Activists and supporters in Ohio and beyond will be asked to find the same kind of focus.

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