Romaine "Chip" Fitzgerald
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Abdul Majid, also known as Anthony LaBorde, was a member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. Majid was convicted of the murder of New York City police officer John Scarangella, and the attempted murder of Scarangella's partner, Officer Richard Rainey. Officer Scarangella was murdered on April 16 1981, after he and his partner pulled over a van carrying Majid and Hameed. Majid and his co-defendant were both convicted, and Majid was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison. During Majid's imprisonment, he was beaten by prison guards, and was awarded $15,000 in compensation. In 2006, Vivian Scarangella, widow of Officer John Scarangella, initiated a lawsuit against Majid to block him from receiving the $15,000 award, a challenge brought under New York State's Son of Sam Law, which prevents a convicted murder from profiting off of his crime.
New Afrikan Prisoner, Zolo Agona Azania is on death row for the alleged murder of a police officer during a 1981 bank robbery. The Gary, Indiana police officer was fatally wounded in an exchange of gunfire with three men who fled from the bank. Zolo was not arrested at the bank, but while walking miles away from the scene. For more than 26 years Zolo has been imprisoned on Indiana's death row and has been fighting for his life. Twice he has been sentenced to die and twice the death sentence has been reversed on appeal due to suppression of favorable evidence by the prosecution, ineffective assistance of counsel, and systematic exclusion of Blacks from the jury pool. On May 10, 2007 the Indiana Supreme Court reversed Boone County Superior Court ruling that barred the state of Indiana from pursuing the death penalty in the case of Zolo Azania. Zolo did not receive a fair trial and has always maintained his total innocence of any involvement in the crime. Zolo uses the written and visual art as instruments of political struggle — not merely to call attention to himself, but to raise the political awareness of his people, and to draw the attention of the world to their fight for self-determination and independence from U.S. control and domination. 
http://www.prairiefire.org/freezoloazania.html
Sekou Odinga, in Can't Jail the Spirit, 4th edition, March 1998: "My name is Sekou Mgobogi Abdullah Odinga. I am a Muslim and a POW. I was born in Queens, N.Y., on June 17, 1944. I was raised in a family of nine — Father, Mother, three brothers, and three sisters. I was kicked out of school in the tenth grade for defending myself against an attack by a teacher. At age 16 I was busted for robbery and sentenced to three years as a 'Youthful Offender.' I spent 32 months at Great Meadows Correctional Institution (Comstock) in upstate New York, where I finished my high school education. In 1961-63 Comstock was very racist. No Blacks worked in any capacity at the prison. One of the sergeants working at Comstock was the head of the kkk. My first political education came at Comstock. In 1963, I was caught in a serious race riot at Comstock. The teachings of Malcolm X, who was then with the Nation of Islam, became a big influence on me at that time. After my release, I became involved in Black political activity in New York, especially revolutionary, nationalist politics. In 1964, I also became involved in the Cultural Nationalist movement. By 1965, I had joined the organization of African American Unity, founded by El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz (Malcolm X). I began to move with and among many young African Nationalists. My political consciousness was growing daily. I was reading and listening to many Afrikan Nationalists from Africa and the U.S. and became convinced that only after a successful armed struggle would New Afrikans gain freedom and self-determination. I also became convinced that integration would never solve the problems faced by New Afrikans. After Malcolm's death, the OAAU never seemed to me to be going in the direction I desired. By late '65 or early '66 I hooked up with other young Revolutionary Nationalists to organize ourselves for the purpose of implementing what we felt was Malcolm's program. We organized the Grassroot Advisory Council, in South Jamaica, New York. We were all very young and inexperienced and got caught up in a local anti-poverty program. By 1967 I was thoroughly disillusioned with that, when I heard about the Black Panther Party (BPP) in Oakland, California. Myself, along with some of my closest comrades, decided this was the type of organization we wanted to be a part of. We decided that some of us would go to California, investigate, and join the BPP if it was what it claimed to be. By the spring of 1968, we heard that representatives from the BPP were coming to New York and there was a possibility of organizing a chapter. I attended the meeting and decided to join and help build the BPP in New York. I became the section leader of the Bronx section, sharing an office with the Harlem section. On January 17, 1969, the day Bunchy Carter and John Huggins were murdered in Los Angeles, I went underground. I was told that Joan Bird, a sister in the party, had been busted and severely brutalized by the police and that the police were looking for me in connection with a police shooting. On April 22, 1969, I awoke at 5:30 AM to the sound of wood splitting around my door. When I investigated, I found that my house was completely surrounded with pigs on my roof, fire escape, in the halls, on the street, etc. I was fortunate enough to evade them and go deeper into hiding. In 1970, I was asked to go to Algeria to help set up the International section of the BPP. After the split in the Party, caused by the COINTELPRO program, I decided to come back to the U.S. to continue the struggle. I continued to work until my capture in October of 1981. I was charged with six counts of attempted murder of police, for shooting over my shoulder while being chased and shot at by police. I was also charged with nine predicate acts of a RICO indictment. I was convicted of the attempted murders and given twenty-five years-to-life for it. I was convicted of two counts of the RICO indictment (the liberation of Assata Shakur and expropriation of an armored truck) and given twenty years and $25,000 fine for each RICO charge. All sentences run consecutively. Prison life has been very difficult for Sekou. Upon Sekou’s arrival at USP Lompoc, he was immediately placed in a cell as dirty as the one he had just left at the county jail. His repeated requests for something to clean up the filth with were completely ignored. Mr. Odinga was placed in a section of the prison where there are no other prisoners. He was kept in his cell 24 hours a day; except Monday, Wednesday & Friday when he can take a shower. Despite the fact that the shower stall was right next to his cell, he was taken there by 3 guards and a lieutenant and was completely shackled while they move him. Mr. Odinga got no exercise or recreation; no pen or paper; no reading material, except for a copy of the Koran; no visits nor phone calls. The order securing Mr. Odinga stated no human contact!! Odinga was supposedly brought to California by subpoena to testify at a grand jury investigation. The Government had been told by Mr. Odinga's lawyers that he would not testify before any grand juries. It is a political principle which he will not compromise on. Sekou is now in super maximum security prison at Florence where according to Sekou, conditions are no better. www.thetalkingdrum.com/bla1.html
David Gilbert is a revolutionary organizer, author and militant currently imprisoned at Clinton Correctional Facility. Gilbert was a founding member of Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society and member of The Weather Underground Organization. After about 5 years of organizing in the above ground movement, David joined the revolutionary underground, spending a total of 10 years living clandestinely, actively resisting imperialism with arms. He was arrested in 1981, along with members of the Black Liberation Army and other radicals, after they killed three people in an armored car robbery. He was unarmed and did not personally hurt anyone. Two police officers and a security guard were murdered in the course of the robbery. Gilbert was tried and convicted for his part in their deaths and given a life sentence. In the late 1970s or early 1980s Gilbert and other white activists took the name RATF (Revolutionary Armed Task Force), declaring their solidarity with the Black Liberation Army (BLA). In 1981, this group participated along with several members of the BLA in an attempt to rob a Brinks armored car at the Nanuet Mall, near Nyack, New York. While Gilbert and Boudin waited in a U-Haul truck in a nearby parking lot, armed BLA members took another vehicle to the mall, where a Brinks truck was making a delivery. They confronted the guards and a shoot out ensued, almost severing the arm of guard Joe Trombino and killing his co-worker, Peter Paige. The robbers then took $1.6 million in cash and sped off to transfer into the waiting U-Haul. The truck was soon stopped by police. Gilbert and Boudin surrendered but when the officers tried to search the back of the vehicle BLA members emerged shooting. Two police officers Waverly L. Brown and Edward J. O'Grady died in the shootout. Gilbert fled the scene with other RATF and BLA members but was later caught by police, tried, and sentenced in 1983 to 75 years for three counts of felony manslaughter. His extremely long sentence for participating in this action may be due to his decision not to participate in his trial, not recognizing the authority of the state to try him. Gilbert co-founded an inmate peer education program on HIV and AIDS in the Auburn Correctional Facility in 1987, and a similar more successful project in Great Meadows Prison in Comstock following his transfer there. He has published book reviews and essays in a number of small/independent newspapers and journals which were collected into the anthology No Surrender: Writings from an Anti-Imperialist Political Prisoner (Abraham Guillen Press) in 2004.
Maliki Shakur Latine early on became involved with the Nation of Islam. It was during this time that he began on the path of confronting society’s oppressive forces. In 1969, Maliki and his brother, Shaqwan, joined up with the Black Panther Party for Self-defense. Maliki took political education classes offered by the Black Panther Party. He studied Chairman Mao, Franz Fannon, Lenin, Fidel Castro, Che, and many others. He was also involved in transforming the theoretical ideals of the BPP into daily practice. Like many of the Panthers targeted by the US government, Maliki found himself behind prison bars, specifically in Riker’s Island. There he met one of the Panther leaders, Lumumba Shakur. Lumumba and 20 other Panthers (known as the Panther 21) were facing trumped up charges, which included a plot to blow up various locations in New York City. All of the Panther 21 would eventually be freed from the charges. Maliki Latine was soon released from Rikers and returned to the Panthers, only to find that the government’s tactics against the organization forced many of them to go underground. Following their lead, Maliki and his brother decided to follow suit. Maliki then spent two years training and studying and engaging in various actions.
of the car injured. The four occupants escaped, but in the car the police found weapons and prints linking Maliki and others to the scene. Several hours after the shooting, after the police followed a trail of blood, Arkill Shakur was captured outside a building at 285 West 150th Street, with leg and ankle injuries he incurred in the gunfight. He was taken to the hospital and was later charged for his involvement in the altercation. Just over 2-weeks after the shooting, on July 18, police and FBI raided the home of Dwight (Jamal) Thomas, arrested him, and charged him with the shooting.
days later, dead because of apparent drowning.
The following was written by Maliki Shakur Latine on December 20, 2007: I am still maintaining my health and I am optimistic about being released on parole during the summer of ’08. At which time I look forward to being a valuable asset to the endeavors of liberation and progress. I’ve been following the political and socio-economic developments (or under-developments) occurring around the country. And, I’ve been closely monitoring the “Presidential Campaign” (with all its window-dressings and the usual clichés) offered for public consumption. The younger generation have a serious, huge and profound role to play in defining what the future (if there is one) of this country is to be. Each generation is solely responsible for the course and direction to be pursued in their lives. They can readily choose, by virtue of their own “humanity,” the course, direction and reality already “defined” for them by the Plutocracy (as led and headed by the “Skull and Bones”) or they can determine, for themselves, what the reality of the future is to be, by virtue of what they know and truly believe to be right, just and humane as dictated by their own heart-felt conscience—as opposed to that of any u.s. government “Party,” who are more determined to serve that of “class interest”—than any kind of just rights of the entire citizenry! Let the people of the “Resistance” know my message to them as expressed above. They can make a difference, no matter how difficult the challenges may appear, its all but a passing but dark cloud—soon the light shall appear with its radiance of achievement and splendor! Truth shall prevail! In Solidarity, Strength, and Unity! Maliki Shakur www.abcf.net/la/pdfs/latine.pdf 1984
Jann Karl Laaman is an Anti-imperialist political prisoner and one of the Ohio-7. Jaan is imprisoned for being a member of the United Freedom Front (which carried out armed actions against apartheid, imperialism and war in the 80's), involvement in fire fights with police forces and weapons charges. In the 1960's Jaan worked in Students for a Democratic Society, fought against the war and racism and did labor and community organizing. This included organizing youth along with the Black Panther Party and Young Lords (a revolutionary Puerto Rican Organization). Jaan also worked with the underground revolutionary forces. In 1972 he was charged with bombing Nixon's reelection headquarters and a New Hampshire police station. He was sentenced to 20 years. After winning an appeal and getting some of his sentence cut, he was released in 1978. In 1979, he and his comrade Kazi Toure helped to organize the Amandla Festival of Unity to support freedom in Southern Africa, which featured Bob Marley.
Marilyn Buck is a self-proclaimed life-long anti-racist and anti-imperialist activist, imprisoned for her involvement in the 1983 U.S. Senate bombing and other militant political activities. After organizing in support of Native American, Palestinian, Iranian and Vietnamese sovereignty, Buck joined Students for a Democratic Society in 1967. In 1973 she was convicted of purchasing two boxes of handgun ammunition for the Black Liberation Army. Three years into her unusually long, ten-year sentence for that crime, Buck was given a furlough from prison and went underground instead of returning. Authorities believe Buck played a key role in the Brinks robbery of 1981, providing the robbers with a safe house and weapons. In 1983 Buck was recaptured and charged in the successful removal of Assata Shakur from a US federal prison. In 1985, she and 6 others were convicted in the Resistance Conspiracy Case of the bombing of the United States Capitol Building to protest the US invasion of Grenada and US intervention in Latin America in general. Two of those charged in the case have since been released from prison, one was never captured, and the remaining three are still in prison. Buck received an 80-year sentence which she is serving at FCI Dublin in California, United States. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marilyn_Buck http://www.prisonactivist.org/archive/pps+pows/marilynbuck/index.html 1987
Tom Manning is known for killing a police officer during a routine traffic stop, and for his involvement with leftist militants who bombed a series of US military and commercial institutes in the 1980s. As a youth, he shined shoes and raised pigeons, before finding work as a stock boy. He joined the US Military in 1963, and the following year was stationed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba before being transferred off to spend the following year in the Vietnam War. Some time shortly after 1965, he was sentenced to five years in prison for armed robbery and assault, serving the last ten months in Massachusetts Correctional Institution- Cedar Junction. He claims it was during these years that he became heavily politicized, through his interactions with other prisoners. After his release in 1971, he married Carol and together they produced three children, Jeremy, Tamara, and Jonathan. Along with arrest for the bombings, Manning was also convicted for his role in killing New Jersey police officer Philip Lamonaco during a traffic stop on December 21, 1981. The killings launched the largest manhunt in NJ police history, and ended with the arrests of Raymond Levasseur, Patricia Gross, Richard Williams, Jaan Laaman, and Barbara Curzi on November 4th 1984, and Manning and his wife Carol on April 24, 1985. All of them were associated with the United Freedom Front. He plead self-defense at trial, while defense counsel showed that Lamonaco had emptied his entire .357 Magnum clip at Manning and his associates. He was sentenced on February 19, 1987. In September 2006, the University of Southern Maine removed his art from an art presentation, and apologized for allowing him to be heralded as a "political prisoner" by event organizers. His art: 
http://www.geocities.com/tom-manning/ 1989
Haydee Beltran Torres was born in Arecibo, Puerto Rico. When Haydee was 12 years old, her family moved to Chicago. Haydee attended the University of Illinois where she was an outspoken defender of Latino students’ rights. Due to her political activities, was forced underground in 1976 and was captured April 4, 1989. She has been sentenced to life in prison on charges including seditious conspiracy. Haydee was the first POW to receive a life sentence. She was kept in total isolation from the other prisoners of war and was transferred to a special control unit, which limited visits. It was a years before she was allowed to see her family. At the MCC in Chicago, she was classified as “no visitors allowed.” Haydee was subject to physical abuse in interrogations for refusing to implicate her comrades in unfounded crimes. Directory: 2009 2009 -> The Truth about the Rwandan Genocide 2009 -> Guide to learn how to install, set up and access the music you need today! 2009 -> Lesson #11: Words with 2009 -> Terry L. Root 2009 -> The environment in the news 2009 -> Town of Nags Head Annual Report 2009 -> Cemir international Download 262.02 Kb. Share with your friends:
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