Rosenberg Fund for Children

Victory for the San Francisco 8

I first wrote about the case of the San Francisco 8 in my Executive Director’s report in the Summer/Fall, 2007 issue of Carry It Forward, the RFC’s newsletter. In 1975 a judge dismissed all charges against three Black Panthers because they had been tortured into “confessing” to slaying a San Francisco police officer in 1971. In January 2007 eight former Black Panthers, including one of the defendants from the 1970’s case, were arrested by the State of California for the same crime. These men, now in their late 50’s to early 70’s, include two politically principled long-term prisoners, Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim, whose families have received RFC support. The other six have led exemplary lives filled with community service.

The government’s case was weak, but the California prosecutors apparently felt that in the post-9/11 climate the courts and jurors might be more sympathetic to the introduction of confessions produced by torture and evidence generated by other COINTELPRO dirty tricks. California Attorney General Jerry Brown’s support of this outrage demonstrated the worst sort of opportunism. But the case never got to a jury because it began to come apart before it really got started.

Many progressives throughout the nation quickly rallied to the activists’ defense. A crack team of defense attorneys took on the case. In 2008 charges against one of the defendants, Richard O’Neal, were dropped. Then in a stunning development, on July 8th, 2009, the prosecution announced it had dropped the charges against Ray Boudreaux, Richard Brown, Harold Taylor and Hank Jones, four of the remaining seven defendants, because it had insufficient evidence against them.

The prosecution agreed to this action in return for Jalil Muntaqim and Herman Bell agreeing to plead "no contest" and "guilty" respectively to sharply reduced charges that carried no additional sentences for them. (For Jalil’s statement go to http://www.sfbayview.com/2009/jalil-a-muntaqim-my-statement-on-the-sf-8-plea-agreement-july-6-2009/. For Herman’s go to http://www.sfbayview.com/2009/on-the-sf8/.)

Francisco Torres, the final defendant, remains free on bond. He maintains his innocence and is scheduled for his next court appearance on August 10th.

The continued imprisonment of Jalil and Herman makes this a bittersweet victory. And there are those who are confused by their acceptance of a plea bargain. Kiilu Nyasha, Black Panther veteran, revolutionary journalist and Bay View columnist who hosts a TV talk show explained it this way:

“For those who think this plea bargain is somehow a sell-out, this is definitely not the case. These brothers still have solidarity with one another and all recognize, as do I, that our fight cannot continue to rely on their system of injustice.” (http://www.sfbayview.com/2009/sf-8-and-supporters-celebrate-a-bittersweet-victory/)

There’s a lot of bad news out there, but I believe this is a great victory that is well worth celebrating.

For more information about the San Francisco 8 visit http://www.freethesf8.org/

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For Geronimo Pratt

Geronimo “ji-Jaga” Pratt died last week. He spent 27 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. It took place in Los Angeles while he was 350 miles away under FBI surveillance. Pratt was a target of the FBI’s notorious COINTELPRO program, along with hundreds of other Black Panthers, Puerto Rican Nationalists, American Indian Movement members and other anti-imperialists and radicals.

His death reminds me of why I started the RFC, and that things have changed but also remained the same. My initial concept was that the RFC would help “the children of political prisoners” in the United States. (The project ultimately morphed into something broader; one to help “the children of targeted activists.”) I used the definition of political prisoners in the book, Can’t Jail the Spirit: “We define Political Prisoners as people who have made conscious political decisions, and acted on them, to oppose the United States government, and who have been incarcerated as a result of these actions. These actions are taken in response to economic, social, and political conflict within our society…. Many are framed up on totally unrelated charges or vague conspiracy laws. For example Geronimo Pratt and Leonard Peltier are in prison on frame-up murder charges...”

Once my dream of starting a foundation in my parents’ name had found its focus, my first task was to find as many children of political prisoners as I could. I discovered over 70 of them in my initial survey. Not surprisingly, many of them desperately needed help. In May, 1991 our very first grant, for $805.00, enabled two children of a political prisoner to attend a two-week session at a summer camp.

More than 20 years have passed since then. All the children I found in that initial canvas have become adults. Some of the political prisoners have been released. A few, like Geronimo have died since their release, and others died while still incarcerated. Most, however, like Leonard Peltier, received grotesquely long sentences, and still languish in jail. Instead of paying for their children to visit, the RFC is paying to unite them with their grand and great-grandchildren.

Unfortunately, a new generation of RFC beneficiary children have replaced the first cohort we aided in the early 1990’s. Iraq War resisters, Green Scare defendants and targeted Muslims are part of a recent wave of people incarcerated in the 21st century for political purposes.

As I write this we await word of a new round of indictments against peace and international solidarity activists the Justice Department apparently intends to charge with giving material aid to terrorists. Many of these “dangerous peace terrorists” have children. I hope none of them ever have to visit an imprisoned parent, but we will do what we can to help any child of this new group of targeted activists.

Just as the RFC has persisted, thousands of other committed people continue the effort to free all political prisoners. They place their struggle within the larger context of the battle against the prison industrial complex, a multi-billion dollar industry that leaves our nation, the ironically labeled “land of the free,” with the highest incarceration rate in the world!

Sometimes it may feel like we are a trickle resisting a mighty force, but our tiny stream is also part of a massive flow that has persevered for generations. In my parents’ name, in honor of Geronimo “ji-Jaga” Pratt, and so many others, we will continue.

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Green is the new Red?

Next Wednesday (12/7) I’m joining a panel organized by The Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) entitled: Red to Green: Political Panic from McCarthyism to “Eco-Terrorism.” It will take place at the Community Church of New York, 40 East 35th Street, from 6:30 to 8:00 pm. Other panel members include journalist Will Potter, author of Green is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege, and Jenny Synan, activist and partner of jailed environmental activist Daniel McGowan. The panel will be introduced and moderated by Rachel Meeropol, a staff attorney at the CCR. (Oh yes, she’s also my daughter.)

Although some in the RFC’s community are aware of the series of “Green Scare” cases from the last decade, and understand the parallels between them and the Red Scare spy cases of the 1950’s, many of our supporters give me a blank look when I talk about the Green Scare. Many others appear reluctant to equate these “violent environmental extremists” with people like my parents.

We should be wary of accepting the government’s and mainstream media’s characterization of Green Scare defendants. As far as I know none has any caused injury, let alone death, to anyone, yet some have received multi-decade sentences and been branded violent terrorists. True, some have committed property damage, but even that is not always the case.

For instance, six people went to prison under the Animal Enterprise Protection Act (AEPA) for organizing against Huntingdon Life Sciences. The AEPA created the new crime of “animal enterprise terrorism” to punish those who caused physical disruption. The young people who organized Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), and who along with their organization became known as the SHAC 7 caused no physical disruption. Instead, they planned a very public and successful effort to shame and harass a large corporation, Huntingdon Life Sciences. However, in post-9/11 America, prosecutors developed a new legal theory by expanding the “physical disruption” language in AEPA to include loss of profits. The SHAC 7 were convicted of being animal enterprise terrorists under that interpretation of physical disruption. In 2006 a Judge sentenced the “conspirators” to up to six years in prison.

When people turn their backs on those they feel have been imprisoned for being too militant, it reminds me of my parents’ case. Few alive today remember that A.J. Muste, the pacifist mainstay of the War Resisters’ League, refused to get involved in the effort to save my parents’ lives because they had been accused of aiding the Soviet military. Fellow pacifist, Dave Dellinger, disagreed. He argued that regardless of what my parents might have done, all progressives should stand in solidarity with them because they were being subjected to violent, right-wing political repression.

Dellinger foresaw the long-term negative consequences of the split between leftists and liberals generated by McCarthy-era charges of communist subversion. The military industrial complex took this lesson to heart and has repeatedly driven a wedge between mainstream and militant progressive movements ever since. Those on the Left who turn their backs on Green Scare defendants, fail to see that this round of repression is another iteration of the divide and conquer strategy.

Others on the Left, although not necessary members of the RFC community, have characterized environmental and animal rights activists as self indulgent, well-off white kids who seem more concerned with trees, birds and puppies than they are with worldwide human suffering. Those who think this way appear blind to the common thread of corporate exploitation that propels environmental destruction, animal torment and abuse of workers. The successful, big business-driven legislative effort to redefine terrorism as anything that hurts commodities or profits, should set off alarm bells among all people on the Left. This is part of a larger corporate strategy to have law enforcement treat all progressive activism as a form of terrorism.

Finally, while the panel will focus on the Red and Green scares, we should never forget that attacks did not end in the 1950’s, only to resurface after September 11th, 2001. COINTELPRO took a terrible toll on many progressive movements in the 1970’s that were neither communist nor environmental. And the repression did not end with COINTELPRO’s exposure; it has had a significant negative impact on progressive activity during my entire lifetime.

This just scratches the surface of what we’ll be addressing next Wednesday. I hope to see some of you there.

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The Terrorist in the Mirror

On May 2nd the FBI placed Assata Shakur on its “Most Wanted Terrorists” list. Simultaneously the New Jersey State Police increased its bounty on her from one to two million dollars.

Assata Shakur was a member of the Black Panthers and then the Black Liberation Army. In 1973 she was involved in a shoot-out with the New Jersey State Police in which one of her companions and a state trooper were killed. She was convicted of killing the trooper even though forensic evidence supported her claim that she had been shot in the back while her hands were raised. She escaped from prison in 1979 and now lives in exile in Cuba, which granted her asylum in 1984.

Assata Shakur meets the Rosenberg Fund for Children’s definition of a targeted progressive activist. She championed the cause of African American liberation and equality along with other members of the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In response, a consortium of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies attacked the Black Panthers through their infamous COINTELPRO program. COINTELPRO was a coordinated campaign of government-sponsored terror that included police harassment, frame-ups and even targeted assassinations. I believe Assata had the right to defend herself. However, the evidence indicates she was not doing so in this instance, but rather that she was the victim of an attempted police killing.

The facts of the 1973 incident aside, what justifies listing Assata as a “terrorist?” My understanding is that terrorism consists of an effort to kill civilians in a manner designed to spread fear and panic among the general population. Even if Assata killed the trooper during a late night shootout, how does that constitute terrorism? Is it the FBI’s position that everyone who shoots a law enforcement agent is a terrorist?

It amazes me how the government adjusts its definition of terrorism to meet its political agenda. Anyone from animal rights and environmental activists who destroy corporate property or endanger corporate profits, to hackers who divulge government secrets, to those resisting police attacks make the grade. But Cuban exiles who blow up civilian airplanes, CIA assets who engage in targeted assassinations, and those who order drone strikes that terrorize entire communities don’t.

Assata Shakur is a heroine, not a terrorist. She is a symbol of courage and resistance who is treasured by freedom-loving people in many countries. Hopefully Obama will not order a drone strike against her, or the two million dollar reward will not tempt some hit man to assassinate her. I hope she remains safe in Cuba, or better still, the truth of her targeting is revealed and she is able to return home if she wishes.

If the FBI and the New Jersey State Police want to find terrorists, they don’t need to look for them in Cuba, they can just look in the mirror.

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