To Mumia Abu-Jamal -- my brother in this Struggle; and your family, friends, and supporters. I offer you my warmest greetings. How appropriate, after so many years, that I now send you word from a cage housed in the very same state as yours. Perhaps it is destiny that we would find ourselves incarcerated so near, under similar circumstance, by similar forces, using similar excuses, for a similar love of our people.
The Los Angeles City Council has unanimously endorsed a resolution calling for former Symbionese Liberation Army member Sara Jane Olson to remain in prison for the remainder of her sentence. The resolution, approved on a 15-0 vote Wednesday, also calls for Olson to serve a potential parole term within the state, according to a news release from the Los Angeles Police Protective League.
A group of community activists is organizing its own effort to watch the performance of local law enforcement. Willie Hamilton, a member of Omahans for Justice Alliance and Black Men United, said he and others are putting together a Copwatch program, which uses volunteers to monitor police. On March 19, Hamilton brought King Downing, the American Civil Liberties Union's national coordinator for the campaign against racial profiling, to speak to Omahans about community oversight of law enforcement.
Imagine living in an 8-by-12 prison cell, in solitary confinement, for eight years straight. Your entire world consists of a dank, cinder block room with a narrow window only three inches high, opening up to an outdoor cement cage, cynically dubbed, "the yard."
An appeals court Thursday upheld Mumia Abu-Jamal's conviction for murdering a police officer 27 years ago but rejected prosecutors' request to reinstate the death penalty for the former Black Panther. A three-judge panel of the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said that because the jury that sentenced Abu-Jamal to die was given flawed instructions in the penalty phase, he must either get a new sentencing hearing or be sentenced to life in prison.
American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier's 30-year battle against government charges he killed two FBI agents landed Tuesday in Minneapolis. Oral arguments before a three-judge panel of the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dealt with Peltier's attempt to get the FBI to release thousands of pages of documents about him that it has withheld. Peltier was convicted of killing two FBI agents during a 1975 shootout on the Pine Ridge reservation in South Dakota.
NEW YORK - For the first time in history, more than one in every 100 American adults is in jail or prison, according to a new report tracking the surge in inmate population and urging states to rein in corrections costs with alternative sentencing programs.
This Sunday, February 24, 2008, a group of companions demonstrated in front of the prison of Devoto in solidarity with the anarchist prisoners on hunger strike and for the destruction of all the prisons. During this activity, flags with anti-prison markings were used and leaflets were given out to the people leaving the prison after visiting and were read to the prisoners who listened from the windows of their cells.
This is just a quick note to let you know that Eric's sentencing has been moved once again. Sentencing is now set for March 6. The new trial motion is still on calendar for February 28th at 9 am.
Friday, February 22 2008 @ 10:47 AM PST
Contributed by: Admin
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Nearly three years and three foreign secretaries on from Liberty’s first call for an investigation into UK involvement in extraordinary rendition flights, the Government has admitted that US rendition flights did stop on UK territory.
On Tuesday, February 19, in a ruling unrelated to the pending US Third Circuit Court decision, The Pennsylvania Supreme Court rejected death row journalist Mumia Abu-Jamal’s appeal of a 2005 ruling by Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Pamela Dembe, which denied Abu-Jamal’s Post Conviction Relief Act (PCRA) petition, on grounds that it was not “timely.” (See reports by The Associated Press and Philadelphia Inquirer)
This Tuesday Evening we hosted an event marking the birthday of Albert Woodfox and supporting the struggle for freedom of the Angola 3. While the turnout was modest (we had to compete with Barack Obama for attendence), we had a great informational event which sets the stage for future collaboration between people struggling against the Death Penalty, in support of Political Prisoners and against the Prison Industrial Complex.
On the night of February 18, 2008, paint-bombs were thrown at a branch of the Itaú bank located at Corrientes and Mario Bravo in Buenos Aires, Argentina, as an extension of the struggle of anarchist prisoners who are beginning a hunger strike in various countries.
Larry Davis, the Bronx man who became a hero to some and pariah to others after waging a shootout with a group of police officers who sought to arrest him for murdering rival drug dealers, was killed in a prison-yard fight on Wednesday, the State Department of Corrections said. Mr. Davis, 41, was stabbed to death by another inmate around 7:30 p.m. during a recreational break on the grounds of the Shawangunk Correctional Facility in Ulster County, about 80 miles north of New York City, corrections officials said.
On January 19, 2007, New Orleanians and several local organizations voiced their support of a class-action lawsuit filed by the local nonprofit Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana (JJPL) on behalf of juvenile inmates awaiting trial and housed at Orleans Parish’s Youth Study Center. The lawsuit targets Richard Winder, the head of the city’s Department of Human Services [check!], and other facility leaders who have allowed inhumane conditions to continue, according to JJPL despite the nonprofit’s efforts to avoid litigation.