Geneva Conventions News from the Angola 3

 (PHOTO: Maroon’s daughter, Theresa Shoatz, with Chuck D at NYC event.)

Earlier this week, on Wednesday, May 8, lawyers for Russell ‘Maroon’ Shoatz filed a federal lawsuit regarding his placement in solitary confinement for over 22 consecutive years. The written complaint, directed at Pennsylvania Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel and the Superintendents of SCI-Greene, where Shoatz was last held, and SCI-Mahanoy, where he was transferred to on March 28, 2013, states that this “is an action for injunctive, declaratory and monetary relief for violations of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the United States Constitution.”

Last month, when a 30-day action campaign was launched calling for Russell ‘Maroon’ Shoatz’s immediate release from solitary confinement, the campaign promised to file this litigation if Maroon had not been transferred into general population by the morning of May 8. On Thursday, May 9 the lawsuit was announced at a press conference was held in Pittsburgh, outside the City-County Building.

An update released on May 1 argues that the campaign “can already claim a victory” because “Maroon’s case and his work has received more attention over the past month that at any time during his incarceration.” One new article about Maroon was published by Solitary Watch and co-authored by Kanya D’Almeida and Bret Grote, who is also interviewed below. D’Almeida and Grote write that maroon’s “only time in the general prison population in the last 30 years was an 18-month stint spent at the federal penitentiary at Leavenworth that ended in 1991.” Furthermore, they note that Maroon has had only one violation since 1989 and “his most recent violation was in 1999, when he covered a vent in his cell that was blowing cold air in an attempt to stay warm.”

Underscoring their argument that Maroon’s confinement is politically motivated, they write that “in 1982 he was released into the general prison population at the State Correctional Institution (SCI) Pittsburgh. Upon return to the general population Maroon became involved with the Pennsylvania Association of Lifers (PAL), a prison-approved organization that was supposed to further the interests of life-sentenced prisoners… Maroon’s reputation and the respect other prisoners had for him led to a dramatic increase in participation in the PAL. More than 100 prisoners would attend meetings in the early part of 1983. On the night that the old leadership was impeached and Maroon appointed interim president pending new elections, he and other new leaders of the PAL were placed in solitary confinement. The others were eventually released from solitary. Maroon remains in isolation to this day.”

Other recent media coverage includes a new interview with Maroon, published by New Clear Vision, and conducted by Vanderbilt University Philosophy Professor Lisa Guenther. “Ironically,” Maroon writes in the interview, “the segment of the population that presently has the most potential to effect change in the PIC is those who usually have no direct — bodily — connection to this system. That is the taxpayers among the ninety nine percent. Without their massive yearly outlays of billions in taxes (taxes they’ve been bamboozled into believing serve a good purpose, but instead serve [to] keep active a police state machine) the whole house of cards would collapse!”

Last month, in part one of our report on Russell ‘Maroon’ Shoatz, we interviewed activist Matt Meyer and Maroon’s daughter, Theresa Shoatz. Here in part two, we interview activist Bret Grote and Maroon’s lawyer Dan Kovalik, taking a closer look at the lawsuit filed on May 8, the broader use of litigation to confront human rights abuses in US prisons, and the political economy of what Grote identifies as the ‘imperial police state.’

Daniel Kovalik is a labor and human rights lawyer living in Pittsburgh. He was counsel for Maroon in his first federal case challenging his solitary confinement.

Bret Grote is an organizer with the Human Rights Coalition, the Executive Director of the newly founded Abolitionist Law Center, and a member of the legal team for Russell Maroon Shoatz.

Angola 3 News:  An April 15 update reported on Maroon’s transfer from SCI-Greene to SCI-Mahanoy and accompanying statements from Secretary Wetzel that he was moved for the purpose of eventually being transferred into general population, where he will then, among other things, be able to physically embrace family and friends during visits. Have there been any more developments since the April 15 update?

Dan Kovalik:  Yes, on May 2, Maroon was told that he would be released to general population within 90 days of his coming to SCI-Mahanoy, which was March 29. Therefore, if all goes well, and with continued pressure, Maroon could be in the general population by July.

A3N:   At this point, following the 30-day campaign, how can our readers most effectively offer their support?

DK:     We believe that continued calls and letter writing to Secretary Wetzel, as well as letters to the editors of local Pennsylvania newspapers could help to ensure that Maroon is finally released into the general population.

A3N:   How have authorities officially justified keeping Maroon in solitary confinement all these years?

DK:     To the extent that officials have given clear justifications for Maroon’s solitary confinement, they have continued to claim that he is somehow an “escape risk” in light of his having escaped from prison as a much younger man three decades ago.

This claim is ludicrous on a number of levels. First, Maroon, on the eve of 70 years old, is not in any physical condition to escape from any prison.

Moreover, Maroon does not have the will to escape through extra-legal means, as he did before. At this point, he wants to struggle for his liberation through legal and legislative means. In the meantime, he wants to be able to have human contact with others, especially his family members, as everyone has the right to do.

A3N:   What are the arguments made in the lawsuit filed on May 8?

DK:     This litigation involves a lawsuit in federal court against the prison authorities alleging that Maroon’s long-term solitary confinement violates both international and domestic norms against “cruel and unusual punishment” as that term is used in the Eighth Amendment to the US Constitution.

We will also allege that his confinement violates his right not to be deprived of a significant liberty interest without due process – a right enshrined in the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution.

A3N:   How can this international pressure influence a country as powerful as the US, who has been openly violating international law for decades by repeatedly invading other nations without UN sanction, including the recent case of Iraq?

DK:     The US, while certainly powerful, has at times proven itself susceptible to the demands of world opinion.

One notable example, which I think few realize, is the US’ relationship with Latin America. It was not long ago that the U.S. would send in the Marines to overthrow populist governments that it opposed (for example, in the Dominican Republic in 1965), or launch airstrikes against non-compliant states (for example, against Panama in 1989 in which the US killed 4,000 civilians in a working class neighborhood).

Because of mass protest in the US against such conduct, and because of resistance in the countries of Latin America, such overtly violent means of regime change appear off the table. I think that we collectively have more power that we sometimes give ourselves credit for.

A3N:   Has this type of legal action been helpful in the past in to improve conditions for prisoners?

Bret Grote:    Yes. For example, in federal courts in Wisconsin and California, litigation has been successful in challenging solitary confinement of those with mental illness or developmental disabilities. In December, a federal court in Indiana came to the same conclusion in a class action brought on behalf of the mentally ill in that state’s solitary units.

A strong ruling out of a Texas district court found conditions in solitary units to be unconstitutional due to the units’ “extreme deprivations which cause profound and obvious psychological pain and suffering. Texas’ administrative segregation units are virtual incubators of psychoses-seeding illness in otherwise healthy inmates and exacerbating illness in those already suffering from mental infirmities.”

Other courts have held that procedural due process deprivations that place prisoners in solitary without hearings or meaningful reviews, is unconstitutional. This led to a significant reduction in Ohio State Penitentiary’s supermax population, to such an extent that prison officials reduced the security classification in order to keep the beds filled.

In the case of the Angola 3 in Louisiana, the federal district court found it obvious that 30 years or more of solitary confinement implicated the Eight Amendment, and the case was ordered to go to trial. That was 6 years ago, however, and there has yet to be a trial.

In all of these cases, it should be noted that even when prisoners were ordered relief by the courts, prison officials have typically found ways to keep these cells filled, whether through the application of superficial mental health treatment procedures or by lowering the criteria for placement in isolation. This is attributable to several factors, primary among them the lack of political power of poor and working class people in this country, and the judiciary’s infamous complicity in enabling state violence against oppressed communities.

A3N:   You co-wrote, with Kanya D’Almeida, an August 10, 2012 Al Jazeera News article entitled Solitary Confinement: Torture Chambers for Black Revolutionaries.While the story begins with a look at Maroon’s case, it then looks at the Angola 3 case, last year’s Senate hearings on solitary in US prisons, and beyond. While Torture Chambers argues that the topics of “race and revolution” have been mostly left out of recent mainstream critiques of solitary in US prisons, it does recognize the relative significance of these conversations actually making their way beyond the smaller group of anti-prison activists that have been fighting solitary for decades.

BG:     The hearings definitely helped in raising the profile of this issue, as the so-called ‘free press’ usually refrains from covering prison or human rights issues until a court filing or legislative hearing serves as their permission slip to acknowledge the issue.

While the increased attention is welcome, no serious person can count on the US government to meaningfully address the issue in the absence of a powerful and growing grassroots movement that is part of a broader challenge to the imperial prison state.

We should caution against hoping for salvation from powerful figures in powerful institutions, and instead concentrate on building organizational depth and capacity based on a coherent understanding of why the U.S. ruling class has become dependent on prisons and solitary to control, stigmatize, disenfranchise, destabilize, and otherwise neutralize poor communities and communities of color.

A3N:   What role have the nation-wide prisoner hunger strikes of the last few years played in developing today’s anti-solitary movement? More broadly, what role have prisoners themselves had in building the movement and contributing to public discussions about the dismal state of human rights in US prisons that solitary abuses are symptomatic of?

BG:     The importance of the hunger strikes, in particular the two that originated in the Pelican Bay control units, cannot be overestimated. It is unlikely that there would have been any senate hearings without that courageous, disciplined, and principled act of non-violent resistance to torture. That act propelled the issue of torture in U.S. prisons to a level of visibility and outrage never before seen in the last 30 years, and has galvanized countless people across the country inside and outside the walls.

Any reform or abolitionist movement in relation to solitary confinement, or prisons more broadly, that does not take its vision and leadership from current and formerly imprisoned people does not stand much of a chance of achieving anything more than superficial reforms.

The irrepressible will to dignity and to remain human in the teeth of terrifying and grim odds by those inside the walls is the fire and inspiration that keeps the rest of us going. Without that, this movement is lost. With it we can, and must, dream bigger dreams and work tirelessly to abolish this monstrous prison state.

A3N:   As African American leader Malcolm X was developing his internationalist and anti-capitalist politics in the months leading up to his February, 1965 assassination, he spoke about the need to shift from a focus on ‘civil rights’ to one of ‘human rights.’ He announced further that he would be seeking assistance from the United Nations to rectify the human rights abuses being committed by the US government against the African American community.

BG:     Pressure from the international community is an effective and necessary tool for movements that aim to enforce human rights law on the US government, which is always an uphill battle.

The best recent example of meaningful international support for those of us fighting the federal and state governments’ administrative use of torture in prisons and jails is the report by UN Special Rapporteur JuanMendez, who concludes that longer than 15 days in solitary confinement should be considered a violation of the Convention Against Torture. This report is concise and illuminating, and an important tool for prisoners and their advocates.

Furthermore, we need to collaborate with popular movements outside the US, and to research how other countries deal with problems of drug use and violence without burying people in concentration camps.

Ultimately, however, the people of the U.S. need to rise up and fight back against the imperial prison state, which is also an imperial torture state, decimating minds, bodies, and souls throughout the country on a daily basis.

A3N:   Anything else to add for the interview?

BG and DK:  We should always remember that torture is a crime against humanity, and a government that engages in it on such a widespread basis loses its claims to legitimacy.

Of course, recognizing this is but a small part of the solution, as it will take mass organizing across many political fronts to meaningfully redress the worsening political, economic, and ecological crises that define our reality in this country.

We must organize, organize, and organize some more.

This month, a 30-day action campaignwas launched demanding the release of Russell ‘Maroon’ Shoatz from solitary confinement, where he has been held for over 23 consecutive years, and 28 of the last 30 years, in Pennsylvania prisons. On April 8, when the campaign began, Maroon’s legal team sent a letter to the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PA DOC), demanding his release from solitary confinement and promising litigation against the PA DOC if he is not transferred to general population by May 8.

The action campaign describes Maroon as “a former leader of the Black Panthers and the Black freedom movement, born in Philadelphia in 1943 and originally imprisoned in January 1972 for actions relating to his political involvement. With an extraordinary thirty-plus years spent in solitary confinement…Maroon’s case is one of the most shocking examples of U.S. torture of political prisoners, and one of the most egregious examples of human rights violations regarding prison conditions anywhere in the world. His ‘Maroon’ nickname is, in part, due to his continued resistance—which twice led him to escape confinement; it is also based on his continued clear analysis, including recent writings on ecology and matriarchy.”

Writing that Maroon “has not had a serious rule violation for more than two decades,” the campaign argues that he has actually been “targeted because of his work as an educator and because of his political ideas; his time in solitary began just after he was elected president of an officially-sanctioned prison-based support group. This targeting is in violation of his basic human and constitutional rights.”

On March 28, just before the campaign was launched, Maroon was transferred from SCI-Greene to SCI-Mahanoy  An update released by the campaign on April 15 reported that Maroon had been told by officials at SCI-Mahanoy that he had been transferred there with intent to move him into general population. Responding to the news, campaign co-coordinator Matt Meyer (also interviewed below) said: “We are encouraged by the words of the officials at Mahanoy, but we cannot rest until those words are followed by deeds: by the ultimate action which will end the current torture of Maroon.” Bret Grote, from the Pittsburgh Human Rights Coalition, who is himself a longtime legal and political supporter of Shoatz, added that, “while we are pleased that some of the concerns raised by the demand letter have been met,” including Maroon’s “access to his anti-embolism stockings and to a typewriter, we remain concerned that the timeline for release from solitary has been left vague.”

The April 15 update also reports that “the assistants at the office of PA DOC Secretary John Wetzel have confirmed that the Secretary personally ordered Maroon’s recent transfer from SCI Greene to SCI Mahanoy for the purpose of placing him in the general prison population. In conversations with some of the many people who have called in to the DOC central office on the first week of the 30-day pressure campaign, DOC personnel have suggested that Maroon supporters be patient as the process to get him into general population work its course. But Maroon and his family have been misled in the past about these issues.” While the campaign began by asking supporters to contact both Secretary Wetzel and SCI Mahanoy Supt. John Kerestes, it is now asking supporters to just focus on Secretary Wetzel, since he is the “ultimate decision-maker.”

This month also marked the release of the new book, entitled Maroon the Implacable: The Collected Writings of Russell Maroon Shoatz (PM Press), co-edited by Fred Ho and Quincy Saul, with a foreword by Chuck D. The collected essays examine a wide range of topics that are perhaps most striking for their honest self-criticism and for his commitment to confronting male supremacy and misogyny in all its forms. For example, in one essay entitled, “The Question of Violence,” after Maroon criticizes “the worldwide misogynist ‘gangsta’ genre of the hip hop culture” for being “a male, macho parody of exhibitionist violence,” Maroon writes:

“More troubling is the fact that this male exhibitionist violence has also permeated the minds, practices, and circles of otherwise brilliant and well-meaning revolutionary thinkers. Such theorists as the renowned Frantz Fanon, icons like Malcolm X and Kwane Ture (formerly Stokely Carmichael) and others have unconsciously conflated the necessary utilization of defensive revolutionary violence, in seeking meaningful revolutionary socioeconomic and cultural change, with what they believed was a need for males to use ‘revolutionary violence’ to also ‘liberate their minds and spirits’ from the subservience imposed on them by the vestiges of slavery and the colonialism /neocolonialism of their times. These individuals failed to recognize that their ‘revolutionary’ worldview would still leave in place the entire male-supremacist /patriarchal framework, an edifice that we can term the ‘father of oppression.’ The destruction of this edifice will signal the true liberation they sought. Otherwise, the ‘revolutionary violence’ they formulated must also be recognized for what it is: exhibitionist, ego-based male violence.”

Featured below is our interview with Theresa Shoatz and Matt Meyer. Theresa Shoatz is the daughter of Russell ‘Maroon’ Shoatz. Theresa has worked for decades as a public advocate for her father and through the Human Rights Coalition, she fights for all prisoners in Pennsylvania and beyond. This month, Theresa has been traveling around the US as part of a book tour promoting Maroon the Implacable, and this week she is in the SF Bay Area.

Matt Meyer, a native New York City-based educator, activist, and author, is the War Resisters International Africa Support Network Coordinator, and a United Nations/ECOSOC representative of the International Peace Research Association. Now the co-coordinator of the Campaign to Free Russell Maroon Shoatz, Meyer also has a long history in solidarity with the people of Puerto Rico. In 2009, Meyer edited Let Freedom Ring: A Collection of Documents from the Movements to Free U.S. Political Prisoners (PM Press), and in 2012, co-edited another book entitled, We Have Not Been Moved: Resisting Racism and Militarism in 21st Century America (PM Press).

Please keep an eye out for part two our report on the 30-day action campaign, which will further examine the legality of Maroon’s placement in solitary confinement and take a closer look at his recently published book, Maroon the Implacable. In the meantime, you can stay updated on the campaign for his release from solitary here. Below is a video interview with Theresa Shoatz, released by Solitary Watch in 2011.

Angola 3 News:         Political prisoners are often seen as symbolic of what is wrong with the US government, but we don’t usually hear about the actual person and how their imprisonment has affected their families. As fellow Pennsylvania political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal has commented, “I am a man, not a symbol.” To begin our interview, can you please describe your father, Maroon, for us, so we can better understand who he is as a person?

Theresa Shoatz:         Honestly, I can only define part of the man that Maroon is because I only know the man from which I engage with from behind the bullet proof glass. He is the man who pleads with me to save his life when he is not getting proper medical attention, and to fight for him when his living conditions are unbearable and his grievances aren’t addressed.

However, there’s so much more to Maroon. He loves his people. It’s what’s keeps him going. His wisdom protects our family. Even while in solitary confinement today, he is still putting others first by denying any support for his freedom until his comrades are freed throughout the United States.

Maroon is extremely concerned with issues affecting single mothers and their children. He is drafting ways to not only put food on the table, but also to grow and prepare meals for the community. He’s the man. Even when he’s in no position to help, he connects to the outside with his attempts to heal the Black communities.

A3N:   How old were you when he was first forced underground?

TS:      I was about nine years of age when my dad was forced underground.

A3N:   What do you remember about Maroon from your early childhood?

TS:      My sister and I lived with him until I was five years old. I remember that back when my sister and I were only three and four years old, there was a black board hanging in the living room. Every morning, Daddy used that black board to teach us political education alongside physical education classes. Man, I love and miss those classes.

Daddy was cultivating young minds. With anything he did, I was right behind him. He was preparing us to be future leaders, but this preparation was halted when at the age five we were separated, and I stopped living with him.

A3N:   What has your relationship with Maroon has been like as you’ve grown older?

Ever since the age of nine, I have honored and admired my Dad. Today, he is still my hero. Maroon is a leader, educator, and father to many young black males behind bars. At his core, he is about peace and love for his people.

As Maroon approaches 70 years of age, he’s a grandfather of ten. Since I can remember, he has tried to educate his biological children from behind bars. I can remember a prison contact visit from some thirty years ago, when I sat on my dad’s lap, comparing our physical similarities, and him using the opportunity to update me on present-day issues.

After those few years of contact visits, I grew into womanhood and was forced to visit him from behind a thick bullet-proof glass. During one of our visits, I pointed this out, and through the thick glass while chained at the wrist and ankles, he said: “I had to step away from my family to protect my family and my community. I stepped away to secure a better future for you and the youth coming behind me. I couldn’t allow you to be brutalized like those who came before and will come after you. I stepped away from my family for the love of my people.”

A3N:   How did that visit influence you?

TS:      Wow! That was so powerful. It hit me like a ton of bricks. Ever since that visit with Maroon, I’ve been motivated by the love of my people to do everything in my power to help us move forward, including my work with the Human Rights Coalition (HRC) in Philadelphia, and the HRC FedUp! chapter in Pittsburgh, which Maroon started from behind bars.

I am also the Director of a free after-school program for youth with a loved one in prison.  Last year, I became a foster parent and I have since fostered eight kids in my home, caring for two seventeen-year-old teenagers, a thirteen-year-old, a three-month-old, a two-year-old, a six-year-old, a four-day-old, and a pregnant teen. This is all for the love of my people.

Some think I’m crazy, but they’re crazier than I am when they pretend not to see how so many youth in our community are lost and headed towards the prison system. If they pretend not to see what the system is doing to our youth, shame on them. I love my people. I’m just like my daddy Maroon–it’s in my blood.

A3N:   A key feature of your father’s being held in solitary confinement at, until recently, SCI Greene, a supermax prison, is to not allow contact visits with family and friends. If Maroon is transferred to general population, he will then be able to have contact visits once again. How long has it been since you had a contact visit with him?

TS:      It’s been almost thirty years since I’ve been able to touch my father.

A3N:   How has this aspect of his imprisonment affected you personally?

TS:      It is extremely painful and mentally challenging. I am still that little girl who craves hugs, and reassurance from her daddy.

A3N:   How has the policy of no contacted visits affected the rest of your family?

TS:      The no-contact visits cause stress, leading to emotional and physical breakdowns.  The fear this creates often paralyzes family members, and is so debilitating that it prevents some from visiting him.

A3N:   What is a no-contact visit with him like?

To reach the solitary no-contact visiting room, there’s a tunnel spanning two city blocks, and a barbed-wired fence surrounds this ‘prison inside of a prison.’ The visiting room is cold and 99 percent of the time there are no other family members visiting prisoners.

It is mind blowing to think of this 69-year-old man with both ankles shackled, both wrists shackled, all attached by a chained waist belt. This contraption forces him to walk hunched over, and appear older than his real age.

A3N:   To underscore the importance of the new campaign to have Maroon transferred to general population, how significant will it be, if he’s transferred, to have contact visits with him after all these years?

TS:      After so many years of no-contact visits, I could really use some contact with my daddy. It’s well overdue. Contact visits would be nourishing. My soul is constantly in an uproar and the pain runs deep, yet I continue straight ahead, keeping my eye on freedom.

Outside of my daddy, there’s no man on this earth who could turn this pain around. The remedy is an end to all control units, the present day prison system, and freedom for Maroon and all my extended family: the political prisoners who stood on the front lines for our freedom.

A3N:   Thank you, Theresa, for sharing such a personal story with us.

The second part of this article now begins by interviewing longtime activist Matt Meyer. Matt, the afterword for Maroon the Implacable that you co-wrote with Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge asserts: “We believe that all people who believe in peace and nonviolence must work for justice, especially in these most grievous cases of injustice and especially at times when oppressive forces would have us distanced from colleagues and comrades such as Maroon, who are cast as ‘violent criminals’ unworthy of our support…Russell Maroon Shoatz must be freed now. His release must become a priority for all human rights activists, peace activists, pro-democracy advocates, environmentalists, anti-imperialists, students, churchgoers, and even progressive Parlimentarians.”

Building on the quote above, why is it that you are going beyond the immediate call for Maroon’s transfer to general population, and also calling for his release from prison?

Matt Meyer:   For me, the position for peace activists working in the context of restorative justice is clear: there can be no reconciliation without release. 

Nozizwe and I also say in our afterword that “we must face the truth about the uprisings of forty years ago.” As you know, Nozizwe herself was a chief negotiator in the process which ended legal apartheid in South Africa, and the two of us respect the work of Archbishop Desmond Tutu, whose commitment to truth and reconciliation has always been coupled with a commitment to ‘heal’ by working for people’s power and the rights of the most oppressed.

Here in the US, we must face the truth that the legacy of the 1960s and 1970s remain an open wound so long as key leaders such as Maroon are invisible to the majority of us, tortured in dungeons for decades upon decades.

Even one day of the type of treatment Maroon has faced would be wrong in any human rights framework that is not centered on simplistic revenge, hatred, and a cycle of murder and violence. The US criminal justice system, filled with the injustices of centuries passed–based as it is on land theft, slavery, and greed–cannot be understood as ‘democratic’ in any sense of that word so long as Maroon remains behind bars.

Aside from many questions which could be raised about the political context of the initial charges and court case against him, the length and nature of his sentence and the way it has been carried out signal grave injustices which make a mockery of any attempt to characterize US jurisprudence as fair or color-blind.

A3N:   What is the significance of Maroon’s identification of himself as a ‘prisoner of war’ (POW)? How is this different than simply identifying as a political prisoner?

MM:   The United Nations outlines the specific legal definition of the prisoner of war position, definitions which are generally accepted by most participating nation-states, including the US. This definition is rooted in history which goes back as far as 1660, when international military protocol accepted that anyone who is held in custody by an enemy power during or immediately after an armed conflict, whether combatant or non-combatant, should be classified as a POW. After World War Two, with the Geneva Convention of 1949 to which the US is a signatory, conditions were clearly outlined which require that POWs be treated humanely.

In any case, by using the international legal term ‘prisoner of war,’ the question of humane treatment and appropriate jurisdiction in a case of extreme conflict must be squarely faced.

A3N:   You edited the book Let Freedom Ring: A Collection of Documents from the Movements to Free U.S. Political Prisoners and co-edited We Have Not Been Moved: Resisting Racism and Militarism in 21st Century America. In your opinion how do popular movements resisting US military aggression abroad relate to movements at home seeking the release of COINTELPRO-era political prisoners & opposing the rise of the police state and mass imprisonment since COINTELPRO’s official end in the 1970s?

MM:   We must connect the dots between the military-industrial-complex and the prison- industrial-complex. We must begin with the fact that, on the one hand, the military has for too many become the job of choice in an era of vast economic depression and crisis. On the other hand, the ever-increasing rates of incarceration–where now there are more men of African descent behind bars than there were enslaved in the years leading up to the Civil War–suggest that cheap labor is being replaced by forced free labor as authorized by the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery, except for prisoners.

We must do more than understand that an empire in decline requires ever-cheaper means of producing whatever it can still produce and an ever-stretched military to police its dwindling holdings.

We must act, in ways faithful to the vision of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who called for a “true revolution” in the American practices of racism, militarism, and materialism. We must be moved to go beyond the false dichotomies of race, and the false splits of tactical difference which seek to make Martin and Malcolm into irreconcilable opposites.

We must build coalitions and united fronts against empire, ones which understand that the many US political prisoners represent not only acts of repression from past generations but reminders to current and future movements that we must never stray beyond the confines of polite protest, OR ELSE.

Freeing all US political prisoners is both a just and basic human rights demand, but it is also a necessary step in building future movements which can act with militancy, creativity, soul, and a free spirit which we need to envision the ‘beloved communities’ which will build just and peaceful tomorrows.

A3N:   How does Maroon’s case fit into this? What is the broader political significance of Maroon’s imprisonment and his contributions to radical political movements since?

MM:   One should not be reading this interview for the answer to that question. Maroon’s broader political significance, and his contributions to current movements, is well revealed through a careful reading of the essential new essay collection Maroon the Implacable.

His writings on his own reflections on the Black Panthers, on the nature of sexism and matriarchy, on the environment and the need for eco-socialism, on the Occupy movement and how to build effective new movements, go far beyond the current discourse which we find in blogs and what passes for the left press. It is a challenging course in building for lasting social change.