The week leading up to the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as the 45th President of the United States — a phrase that still burns the tongues of many who saw Trump as a simple buffoon one year ago — has been one of cautious optimism, then triumph, then finally tragedy for many Political Prisoner activists.  Barack Obama was seen as a transformational figure when he assumed the Presidency in January 2009, and in several ways he has lived up to the hype, with the passing of the Affordable Care Act, the signing of a global climate change accord, the agreement with Iran to prevent its pursuit of nuclear weapons and the killing of Osama bin Laden, to name just a few.  On the other hand, his two terms in office can be seen as “more of the same”, as the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba still has not closed (though the number of inmates has decreased dramatically), as drone attacks and the prosecution of whistleblowers has exceeded those of all other US Presidents combined, and as many Political Prisoners continued to twist in the wind for the entirety of his eight years in the Oval Office.  The final week of his Presidency, however, held out hope that the most significant contribution of the Obama Years was yet to come, as the last round of Presidential Pardons was about to arrive.  With so many American activists held under lock and key because of their waging of struggle for liberation, it was certain that not all would receive pardons or commutations of their sentences, but still, those of us who have campaigned for years to free them held out hope.

The initial reports were encouraging.  As right-wing law-and-order politicians and commentators grumbled and bitterly complained, the first significant stroke in what appeared to be one final Freedom Campaign for activists from the Oval Office was announced.  President Obama commuted the sentence of US Army whistleblower (some said “traitor”) Chelsea Manning (https://www.yahoo.com/news/obama-commutes-chelsea-mannings-sentence-213937692.html?.tsrc=fauxdal&post_id=520524421389697_1109858142456319#_=_):

Obama commutes Chelsea Manning’s sentence
January 17, 2017
from the New York Jericho Movement

President Obama has commuted the 35-year prison sentence of Chelsea Manning, paving the way for the Army intelligence analyst turned high-profile leaker to be freed on May 17, the White House announced Tuesday.

Manning was on a list of 209 commutations and 64 pardons released Tuesday, though they may not be Obama’s final acts of clemency before he leaves office at midday on Jan. 20. Edward Snowden’s name was not on the list.

Manning was convicted after leaking U.S. military incident logs and diplomatic cables, among other secret government documents, to WikiLeaks, in 2010.

In his final scheduled briefing for reporters, White House press secretary Josh Earnest described Manning and Snowden in starkly different terms.

“Chelsea Manning, as a member of the United States armed forces, went through a legal proceeding administered by the United States military under the laws that govern the conduct of members of the United States military, and there was a hearing and a conviction and a sentence,” Earnest said. “It all went through that regular process. And that’s the way we determine guilt or innocence in this country, particularly with regard to the conduct of men and women in our armed forces. And that’s the way that our system works.”

But Snowden “should return to the United States and face the serious crimes with which he’s been charged,” Earnest said. “He will, of course, be afforded the kind of due process that’s available to every American citizen who’s going through the criminal justice process. But the crimes that he’s accused of committing are serious. And we believe that he should return to the United States and face them rather than seeking refuge in the arms of an adversary of the United States that has their own strategic interests in disseminating information in a harmful way.” …

Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan denounced Obama’s commutation decision as “just outrageous.”

“Chelsea Manning’s treachery put American lives at risk and exposed some of our nation’s most sensitive secrets,” Ryan said in a statement. “President Obama now leaves in place a dangerous precedent that those who compromise our national security won’t be held accountable for their crimes.”

Manning’s commutation reads:

Chelsea Elizabeth Manning – Oklahoma City, OK

Offense: One specification of wrongful and wanton publication to the internet intelligence belonging to the United States; five specifications of stealing, purloining or knowingly converting U.S. government records; six specifications of willful communication of information relating to the national defense; one specification of willful communication of information in unlawful possession; one specification of willful communication of information relating to the national defense by exceeding authorized access to a U.S. government computer; one specification of willful communication of information relating to the national defense obtained by accessing a U.S. government computer; five specifications of failure to obey order or regulation; U.S. Army Court Martial

Sentence: 35 years’ imprisonment (August 21, 2013)

Commutation Grant: Prison sentence commuted to expire on May 17, 2017.

Two things should be noted, however, concerning the Manning commutation.  While Earnest stated that Snowden should return to the United States and face judgement for his “crimes” as Manning did, the fact is that Manning had surrendered because she felt that, after explaining the reasons for her actions and her willingness to pay for them, she would be afforded “the kind of due process” that would confer a degree of mercy for her contrition.  However, the 35-year sentence imposed upon her was by far the harshest handed down for any person convicted of a similar crime, and her announcement that she suffered from gender dysphoria and would soon seek to become a transgender woman (she was born Bradley Manning) did not prevent the authorities from sentencing her to an all-male maximum security prison.  This would lead her to attempt suicide twice during the year 2016.  Certainly, Snowden is not living in the lap of luxury in Russia now, but he likely prefers his current residence to what would await him were he to surrender to US custody.

The second thing to remember about Manning is that, while the hundreds of thousands of documents she was convicted of leaking actually did not lead to any US official coming to harm, the videotape of US soldiers gunning down a group of unarmed Iraqis and two Reuters journalists, laughing and joking as they did so, certainly caused incalculable damage to the image the US wanted to maintain as it pursued its War Of Terror in Iraq and Afghanistan.

President Obama was not done with the commutations, however.  That same day, the announcement came that Puerto Rican Independentista activist Oscar Lopez Rivera would be freed (http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Oscar-Lopez-Rivera-To-Be-Freed-After-36-Years-in-U.S.-Prison-20170117-0029.html):

Oscar Lopez Rivera To Be Freed After 36 Years in US Prison
January 17, 2017
from Telesur TV

The United States government announced Tuesday the release of Oscar Lopez Rivera, who has been imprisoned in the U.S. for 36 years for his struggle to free Puerto Rico from U.S. colonial rule.

Outgoing U.S. President Barack Obama commuted Lopez’ sentence, which will expire on May 17, according to a White House source, consulted by the EFE news agency.

Clarissa Lopez, daughter of Lopez, will hold a press conference Wednesday at 10 a.m. in reaction to his release at the Roberto Clemente Coliseum in San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Lopez, born in Puerto Rico in 1943, is an independence leader in his native country. Upon returning to Chicago after serving in the Vietnam War, he joined the struggle for the rights of the Puerto Rican people and participated in acts of civil disobedience and other actions.

In 1976 he joined the clandestine fight for the independence of Puerto Rico as a member of the Armed Forces of National Liberation. In 1981 he was captured by the FBI accused of “conspiracy” and for his militancy in the FALN.

At the time of his capture, he proclaimed himself a prisoner of war, protected in the first protocol of the Geneva Convention of 1949. The protocol protects Lopez for being a person arrested in conflict against colonial occupation.

The U.S. did not recognize the demand of Lopez and sentenced him to 55 years in prison. After an alleged attempt to escape, the sentence increased to 70 years in prison, 12 of which have been spent in solitary confinement.

Former U.S. President Bill Clinton in 1999 offered him a pardon. The offer was made to 13 members who accepted, but Lopez rejected it because it included completing 10 years in jail with good behavior. Leaders from around the world, as well as human rights organizations, have demanded the release of Oscar Lopez Rivera.

On June 18, 2012, the U.N. Decolonization Committee approved a resolution, promoted by Cuba, in which it called for recognition of Puerto Rico’s right to independence and self-determination and urged the release of the pro-independence detainees in the United States.

All this led to increased speculation about whose name would be announced next.  While state prisoners apparently do not come under the purview of the Oval Office (which might have eliminated several Political Prisoners from the start), petition drives were mounted on behalf of at least two more Political Prisoners for whom President Obama presumably could have taken action: American Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier and Veteran Black Panther Dr. Mutulu Shakur.

Later that same day, the news would come, and it was devastating.  Peltier, a Veteran AIM activist who had come to the defense of Cecelia Jumping Bull as her ranch was being invaded by two FBI agents who had precipitated a gunfight on sovereign Indian land, who had fled to Canada afterward only to be apprehended by the Federal Bureau of Investigation through the use of a fraudulent affidavit, whose trial was presided over by an unrepentant anti-Indian judge and involved cynical attempts by prosecutors to sow fear among the jurors of reprisals by “AIM terrorists”, whose prosecution offered no clear physical evidence and who was denied the self-defense motive by pre-court motions from the prosecution, was convicted of killing FBI Agents Coler and Williams “execution-style” despite later admissions on a public radio station by the District Attorney that he had “no idea who killed the agents.”  Among the many books that provide a historical account of this case and many others, one can consult Agents of Repression: The FBI’s Secret Wars Against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement by Ward Churchill and Jim Van Der Wall.

The International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee released a statement on the day of the announcement:

PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA HAS “DENIED CLEMENCY” FOR 41 YEAR LONG CAPTURED LAKOTA POLITICAL PRISONER LEONARD PELTIER – BUT THE STRUGGLE WILL CONTINUE
January 17, 2017

Brothers, sisters, friends and supporters:

Our hearts are heavy today. President Obama has denied Leonard’s application for a commutation. His name appears on the January 18 list of commutations denied by Obama as issued by the Office of the Pardon Attorney. Leonard’s attorney Martin Garbus was also notified. (Pardon Attorney’s Letter)

Today, in an email, Leonard said, “If I should not [receive clemency] then after we are locked in for the day I will have a good cry and then pick myself up and get myself ready for another round of battles until I cannot fight [any] more. So, don’t worry. I can handle anything after over 40 years.”

It’s hard to bear such a blow, though. And make no mistake — Leonard has been hit hardest of all. But let’s not mourn so very long. Instead, let’s move ever forward. Channel your grief and anger in a positive way. Remember that Leonard still needs our help. He needs quality health care and a transfer to a medium security facility, among other things. We’ll always work towards freedom for Leonard, but these actions may help to make his life more bearable until freedom is won.

Now, we urge you to write to Leonard and help to keep his spirits up. Tell him you won’t give up, that you’ll walk the rest of the way with him. Send cards and letters to:

Leonard Peltier #89637-132
USP Coleman I
PO Box 1033
Coleman, FL 33521

Thank you for your hard work and determination. Blessings to all of you.

Please stay tuned.

In solidarity,
International Leonard Peltier Defense Committee
ILPDC | Indigenous Rights Center, 202 Harvard SE, Albuquerque, NM 87106

All this has left some supporters of Political Prisoners scratching their heads.  Certainly, the commutations of the sentences for Manning and Lopez Rivera are considered victories, but the denial of Peltier, whose health has been failing for the past several years, was seen as a crushing defeat.  And some certainly wondered what caused Obama to grant clemency to Manning and Lopez Rivera but not Peltier?  And what could be expected in answer to the petition on behalf of Dr. Shakur?  

The following article was shared with us by the New York Jericho Movement and Freedom Archives, originally from the website http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/civil-rights/314564-race-still-matters-in-presidential-pardons:

Race still matters in presidential pardons
Lumumba Akinwole-Bandele and Monifa Akinwole-Bandele, opinion contributors January 17, 2017

Barack Obama, in the 11th hour of his presidency, has commuted the sentences of 1,176 federal prisoners, more than George W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan combined. Most of the prisoners granted relief were victims of the notoriously racially biased “war on drugs.”

Many of the men and women released were serving unfair, exuberantly long and harsh sentences for low-level, nonviolent drug related charges, when what they really needed was drug treatment.

This bold move from President Obama was necessary and long awaited. However, the executive clemency process, has historically shown patterns of racial bias.

A  2011 ProPublica investigation  found that even when applicants had committed similar crimes, “White criminals seeking presidential pardons over the past decade have been nearly four times as likely to succeed” and “Blacks have had the poorest chance of receiving the president’s ultimate act of mercy…”  

In executive commutations, another form of clemency, race matters too. The Office of the Pardon Attorney, which reviews pardon and commutation requests, has been found to be biased regarding how and who it recommends for relief.

One sharp example was the handling of two federal commutation petitions. At the age of 24, Clarence Aaron was sentenced to triple life terms for his role in a cocaine deal. This was Aaron’s first criminal offense, and he was neither the buyer, seller, or supplier of the drugs.

Aaron’s application for executive commutation was not only supported by the judge who sentenced him, but also by the prosecuting attorney. 

The pardon attorney’s office removed this information about the judge and various prosecutors’ support for Aaron from its summary and recommendation, and Aaron’s application was denied twice. On the same day in 2008 that Aaron’s petition was denied for the second time, another man serving life on drug charges, Reed Prior, was granted executive commutation.

Unlike Aaron, Prior had many prior offenses, was a major drug dealer, and was serving life due to his fourth drug offense: possession with the intent to distribute. Prior is white. Aaron is Black.

Clarence Aaron was eventually granted relief by President Obama in 2014,13 years after his first application. Both Aaron and Prior’s convictions grow out of the “war on drugs.”

That “war” known for its racial bias and injustice has been indisputably linked to the acceleration of mass incarceration and the destruction of lives and entire communities throughout the 80s and 90s. 

This is part of why President Obama’s 1,176 commutations are just and appropriate. It would be equally appropriate for President Obama to look back to the 60s and 70s where there was another racially motivated and unjust war in America that also destroyed lives, devastated communities, and pushed people into prison.

The mid-twentieth century struggle for justice and equality brought about great social transformation in this country. Thousands of men and women of all ages, races, religions, genders, and social strata dedicated themselves to the simple proposition that all of us, Americans, are equal in the eyes of the law.

A generation challenged our nation to recognize the humanity of those it marginalized and oppressed. Their methods of challenging systemic and rampant police brutality, racial violence, and economic oppression took many forms. One thing was consistent: this committed generation of activists changed the course of this nation for the better.

However, in exchange for their service to their communities, their own government through a joint effort by the federal, state and local effort called the Counter Intelligence Program or COINTELPRO covertly attacked them.

COINTELPRO sought to “neutralize or otherwise eliminate” civil rights activists whether they were ministers like Martin Luther King, Jr. of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference or activists like Fred Hampton of the Black Panther Party. Some of the leaders targeted lost their freedom and some of them lost their lives.

For both King and Hampton, the U.S. government was found to have played a role in their assassinations.

Under the past presidencies, some political activists, whose incarcerations stem from their activism, have been granted executive clemency. Yet when it comes to relief granted to the prisoners whose convictions grow out of social justice movements during a time of relentless government-led targeting, attacks, and violence, race also matters.

Former prisoners and activists of the civil rights movement like Susan Rosenberg, Linda Evans, and Kathy Boudin have been rightfully granted clemency throughout the past few decades and are free. In fact, this month, New York State Gov. Andrew Cuomo commuted the sentence of Judy Clark, saying that he “got a sense of her soul” during a meeting where they discussed her case and potential release. Rosenberg, Evans, Boudin, and Clark are white.

Meanwhile, another prisoner whose case connects to theirs, Mutulu Shakur, a documented target of COINTELPRO, awaits a response to his application for executive clemency to President Barack Obama.

Obama is not legally obligated to issue any form of relief to federal prisoners seeking justice.  This moment in history where arguably, one of the most unqualified candidates for president will be taking that seat requires another examination of the kind of legacy President Obama seeks to leave. The president has a unique and valuable opportunity to set a tone of political reconciliation, justice and healing.

Mutulu Shakur, along with COINTELPRO victims like Leonard Peltier, Oscar Lopez, and Veronza Bowers have been incarcerated in federal prison for over 30 years and are currently seeking clemency.

Granting commutations to these four men would log into history the Obama administration’s commitment to healing the political wounds of the past and begin a process that will result in a society committed to rehabilitation, forgiveness, and reconciliation, rather than racial disparate treatment, retribution, and punishment.

Lumumba Akinwole-Bandele is the senior community organizer with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. Monifa Akinwole-Bandele is the senior campaign director for the Food Justice and Children’s Nutrition campaign at MomsRising, which supports and promotes policies aimed at improving family economic security. She was previously the director of organizing for the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board, and a national field director for the Brennan Center for Justice.

Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
www.freedomarchives.org

And thus, Political Prisoners like Mutulu Shakur, Sundiata Acoli, Veronza Bowers, Ed Poindexter, Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald, Jamil Al-Amin, Jalil Muntaqim, Russell “Maroon” Shoatz, Herman Bell, Robert Seth Hayes, Mumia Abu-Jamal and the MOVE Nine still sit in confinement, perhaps waiting in vain for the relief of a Presidential Pardon.  Whether because of a lack of jurisdiction in their cases or a lack of a sufficient degree of compassion or courage, these battles will, for the most part, not be won this day.  And the Trump Administration will certainly not be expected to give their cases even the slightest consideration, given his hawkish and intolerant “law-and-order” stance in the tradition of Richard Nixon.  Once again, the prospects for freedom of these Political Prisoners will be up to us, those of us on the “outside” who recognize how we have benefitted from their sacrifice, who understand what really happened in their cases, and who realize what is at stake.  And that is how it has always been.

by Heather Gray
January 16, 2017
Justice Initiative International

Preface: I first wrote this article in 2005 and it was posted on Counterpunch. I am sending it out again given the challenges we will all likely face with the Trump administration and the need for us all to have clarity on what needs changing in the United States and what is needed to create and maintain a just society for all. It is little known that marching during the civil rights movement in the 1960s was initiated after there was clarity about the demands for change. As is referred to in this article below, not having clarity about your demands can be a matter of life and death when challenging a powerful state.

As the 2017 Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday is celebrated, the popular “I Have a Dream” speech delivered by him in 1963 in Washington DC will be featured as if it was one of his primary messages. Yet, King was about far more than dreaming. His mission was about “action” coupled with concrete and definitive change. Unfortunately, many of his methods for social and economic change have been distorted since his death in 1968. And, as organizing for social change is often a matter of life and death, everyone concerned about injustice should take another look at King’s nonviolent methods. Nonviolent social change requires long, hard and sustained work, research, development of solutions, and, importantly, on-going commitment. It demands far more than bringing folks together to march and wave banners.

It appears that King’s involvement in massive demonstrations is invariably touted as his ultimate method for change, which couldn’t be further from the truth. Unfortunately, many activists throughout the world seem to be of the opinion that if you are concerned about an issue you should organize huge “feel good” rallies, which is hoped will almost magically result in changes.

The considerable risks in social change work can be demonstrated in the 1989 Chinese democracy movement. Like many throughout the world, the Chinese students wanted to demonstrate their dislike of the Chinese system through organizing a mass mobilization. And, like many, it was as if they seemingly had the mistaken notion that the mass gathering was an end in itself.

In June 1989, while in the Philippines, I talked with Filipinos activists who had been in constant communication with the young Chinese “democracy” leaders in Beijing who helped plan and implement the 1989 Tiananmen Square hunger strike. It was a mobilization that ended in tragedy. There was a lack of political consensus and unity in the impromptu coalition between students and workers and because of this, confusion prevailed in their negotiations with the Chinese government. It was just a matter of time before the brutality of the Chinese state would violently demonstrate its impatience.

On June 4, 1989, at the behest of Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping, troops descended upon the students and workers encamped in the square and against the solidarity movement throughout the country. In what is now known as the Tiananmen Square Massacre, estimates of some 4,000 Chinese were killed and 20,000 wounded.

What concerned my Filipino friends was the lack of unity, organizational infrastructure, and clarity in the demands of the students and workers to the Chinese government, which, they said, likely helped contribute to the violent response from the Chinese government. They were by no means apologists for the Chinese violent behavior but rather stressed the need for clarity and unity in any demands for social change when challenging a powerful state.

Mass mobilization or direct action, in fact, is only one part of the non-violent methods for social change. There are other misconceptions I would like to mention but first here’s a description of the steps King and other used in their social change work.

Based on the philosophy of Mahatma Gandhi, the Kingian method for nonviolent social change is a systematic one. Here is a brief summary:
(1) once the problem is identified it is essential to research the issue (i.e. define the problem, who are the key players, who or what is being affected) – the research and analysis should be above reproach as disputed or incorrect facts and figures can completely undermine the efforts for the evolving campaign;
(2) based on the research, state clearly what needs to change to solve the problem and identify the strategy for solving the problem;
(3) recruit others to join the struggle, share your findings and strategies, get their input if necessary, but essentially seek a commitment from them (i.e. this is the problem, this is what we intend to do, are you with us?)
(4) teach them in nonviolent tactics (i.e. being non-confrontational during direct action);
(5) attempt to resolve the problem through negotiations (i.e. negotiations with whoever controls the policies needing to be changed);
(6) if that doesn’t work, apply pressure through direct action techniques, which at times need to be sustained for a lengthy period (i.e. boycotts, mass demonstrations);
(7) negotiate again, if necessary engage in direct action again – often more research is required or more clarity on the solutions needs to be developed;
(8) finally, if the problem is solved, seek reconciliation.

The first issue that gets lost is that King sought “reconciliation” with his adversaries and an improvement of life for everyone. This is the end goal and if victory is all that’s wanted then that’s not Kingian nonviolence. Reconciliation is also probably the most difficult aspect of the Kingian philosophy for activists to embrace. In his book “Stride Toward Freedom” King said that the nonviolent methods are “not an end in themselves; they are merely means to awaken a sense of moral shame in the opponent. The end is redemption and reconciliation. The aftermath of nonviolence is the beloved community, while the aftermath of violence is tragic bitterness.”

There is almost always a misunderstanding of how to define the adversaries in nonviolent social change. Dr. King said it is not a “battle” against individuals who commit evil acts but against the evil itself. Regarding the Montgomery struggles, he said, “The tension is between justice and injustice. and not white persons who may be unjust.” King said further that “the nonviolent resister would contend that in the struggle for human dignity, the oppressed people of the world must not succumb to the temptation of becoming bitter or engaging in hate campaigns. To retaliate in-kind would do nothing but intensify the existence of hate in the universe. Along the way of life, someone must have sense enough and morality enough to cut off the chain of hate.”

Another misconception is that complaints can be made without concrete demands for change. Those who seek change should always develop the solutions because you don’t want to leave that in the hands of your so-called “adversary” – otherwise you’ve wasted your time. King also called for a fair hearing from the adversaries and to listen to them, as there might be some wisdom to gain from that experience. However, if you don’t like what politicians or others do, you certainly don’t want them to be the chief architects in resolving problems. So don’t just engage in a “feel good” march in front of the White House, Congress, State House or the WTO and assume that you have completed your mission, made your statement. If you haven’t developed your solutions to the problems you’re addressing, you’ve only done a quarter or less of what is necessary.

It is often thought that nonviolence and pacifism are the same. Not so! It is probably true that most advocates of nonviolence are also pacifists. Nevertheless, nonviolence is a “method for change”. Pacifism is “being against war”. Within this misconception is the assumption that nonviolence is cowardly, a “turn the other cheek” method, which is not true. As a method for change, nonviolence is confrontational. King said, “it must be emphasized that nonviolent resistance is not a method for cowards; it does resist. If one uses this method because he is afraid or merely because he lacks instruments of violence, he is not truly nonviolent. This is why Gandhi often said that if cowardice is the only alternative to violence, it is better to fight.”

King said that every nonviolent campaign should be anchored in a boycott and, importantly, voter education and voter registration. While everyone could do more on this, voter education and registration are often included in various movements. Rarely these days, however, do U.S. activists choose to challenge the bulwark and muscle of corporate America, even in spite of the unfettered capitalist abuse in which we live. King wisely recognized that going against corporate America was one of the most vital ways to change behavior. Referring to the Birmingham movement, King said, “it was not the marching alone that brought about integration of public facilities in 1963. The downtown business establishments suffered for weeks under our unbelievably effective boycott.”

King once said that the “Arc of the moral universe is long and it bends toward justice.” I would venture to say that the progressive community throughout the world needs to place consistent and considerable pressure on that arc!

HEATHER GRAY has produced “Just Peace” on WRFG-Atlanta 89.3 FM covering local, regional, national and international news. In the early 1980s she conducted research in non-violence at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta and from 1985-86 she directed the nonviolent program at the King Center for Coretta Scott king. She lives in Atlanta and can be reached at hmcgray@earthlink.net.

EDITOR’S NOTE: While we in the Pan-Afrikan community in the United States often behave as though Political Prisoners exist only in North America, the fact is that all over the world Indigenous and so-called “minority” communities and those without political and economic power are often marginalized and oppressed, and their efforts to have these abuses addressed often result in the persecution, imprisonment and sometimes assassination of their leaders.  Political Prisoners exist wherever there are those in power and those without power.  The Global South has a long and sad history of repression as well, from the military coups-d’état against democratically elected heads of state throughout South America and Afrika to acts of repression against Indigenous and tribal leaders by established governments, usually in the interest of global corporations.  This report, from the website TeleSurTV, discusses the case of Mapuche leader Francisca Linconao, whose hunger strike in protest of her wrongful imprisonment in Chile reportedly has her close to death.  She was apparently targeted because of her resistance to the Chilean government’s continued annexation of Indigenous Mapuche lands, many of which are considered sacred by the Mapuche people.  Thus, the US is not the only nation that continuously encroaches upon and takes the land of those who were here long before the people who now rule the land.  This report was shared with us by the New York Jericho Movement, which works for the exoneration and release of Political Prisoners in the United States but clearly is aware of similar abuses against communities in other parts of the world who are locked in their own struggle for truth and justice.  This particular story will be one for our “Political Prisoner Updates” and the “Free The Land” page in the future. — Bro. Cliff

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Chile-Jailed-Mapuche-Leader-Faces-Death-as-Health-Worsens-20170104-0009.html

Chile: Jailed Mapuche Leader Faces Death as Health Worsens

January 4, 2017

A new medical report warns that jailed Chilean Indigenous Mapuche leader Francisca Linconao is at risk of dying as her hunger strike to demand her freedom continues to weaken her already-fragile health.

“The severe deterioration of her health condition can become irreversible and even cost her life,” says the report completed on Dec. 31, 2016, by a certified medical and psychological team. “Among the risks to which the patient is exposed with the hunger strike are permanent consequences in various vital functions, such as neurological, liver, cardiac and renal functions.”

According to the doctors, the detained leader not only suffers physical deterioration, but spiritual loss of strength as she is deprived of freedom “which prevents her from accessing what she considers her main source of energy, the one that comes from nature, its sacred ceremonies and its mission to offer health.”

The 60-year-old activist has been on hunger strike since Dec. 23 and only consumes liquids. She was detained in 2013 and accused of arson in an incident that led to the deaths of two powerful landlords and still awaits trial.

According to an interview by the medical team, the Machi or Mapuche leader said she is willing to continue the strike until she can’t go any further.

“I want to live, but I am willing to risk my life,”  said Linconao. “I am very depressed because I can’t fulfill my spiritual mission, which is to heal others, to give health and well-being to those who need it.”

Linconao has no access to media and claims that she has been threatened and humiliated by prison officials, according to a statement given inside the Mapuche Medical Center, where she is guarded by six armed policemen.

“When I started the hunger strike, after the third day, they gave me a document from the warden of the women’s prison in Temuco, who said they would sanction me for seven or 30 days after I finish my hunger strike,” said Linconao.

According to the doctors, if Linconao dies during the hunger strike, it would worsen conflicts with Indigenous groups in the country and “would mark a serious precedent in terms of human rights at national and international levels.”

Finally, the medical team recommended alternative measures of imprisonment, such as house arrest, based on the agreement signed by the Chilean state in 2008, which gives this preference to members of Indigenous groups.

According to the report, the Chilean justice system has approved this type of prevention for Linconao, but the ruling has not been fulfilled due to the country’s anti-terror laws.

New York City Jericho Movement

2016: Crisis & Opportunities by Russell Maroon Shoatz

https://russellmaroonshoats.wordpress.com/2016/12/24/2016-crisis-opportunities-by-russell-maroon-shoatz/
Globally, 2016 has been dominated by political, economic, and social changes in the Northern Hemisphere. Massive upheavals have been occurring, seemingly churned up by the millions of asylum seekers fleeing wars and economic- and climate-related depredations in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.

The upshot of these upheavals brought proto-fascists to challenge the welfare states of Western Europe and the guinea pig economic systems of the former Soviet states. The Left there has either been crushed (Greece), is now on the ropes (Spain and England’s Left Laborites), or is circling the wagons (Germany and the Scandinavian countries), while Russia under Putin is using its military muscle to try to replicate what China has been doing in the economic sphere: remain independent of the U.S. and Western economic domination.

In South America, the once promising Bolivarian bloc has disintegrated. And while Ecuador and Peru continue to resist, the uplifting of the dirt-poor masses on the rest of the continent is in a tailspin, with their true leaders one step away from prison—or worse.

In the Caribbean, the Haitians continue to suffer unspeakable climate, economic, and political hardships. Puerto Ricans may soon join them. The late Fidel Castro, whatever one may say about his decades in power, was instrumental in assuring all Cubans and thousands of poor allied peoples received free quality health care and education; something a rich country like the U.S. has refused to do. Rest in Power Brother Fidel.

Africa remains a victim of centuries of colonial and neo-colonial rule and plunder. Despite the heroic resistance by its people, nowadays—by and large—they are being dominated by their “Big Men” and the western corporations.

The Middle East is a horror show that needs no comment, except to point to Rojava in Northern Syria. There, the Kurds are leading a multi-ethnic, multi-religious, and secular social, political, economic, and cultural struggle that we need to follow and support.

India continues its economic push, Myanmar’s experiment in “democracy”—and its civilian/military government—slowly moves along, while Pakistan and the rebels in Afghanistan continue their struggle against the agents of imperialism.

North Korea continues to skate near nuclear annihilation, due to a regime that inherited an inability to divorce itself from an ideology that has lost its usefulness. Not so for China, which is operating as if the Earth is a GO board, and is gaining influence everywhere, while the U.S. attempts to surround it, as if it’s playing chess, and the Chinese mainland is the king it can cut off and checkmate. Otherwise, for the most part, tens of millions of others in South Asia and the Pacific islands are struggling to stay alive.

The election of Donald Trump for President has focused the world’s attention on what the right wing populist backlash has made crystal clear: the neo-liberal economic engine has allowed the large corporations to move from country to country, utilizing the cheapest labor they can uncover, which has all but destroyed the elevated living standards that used to be the pride of the U.S. and Western Europe, leaving in its wake a handful of multi-billionaires who have more wealth and control than the Devil himself! And when the millions who are looking to Trump to rescue them wake up, there’s no telling how volatile things will get (remember that Americans got more guns than any people who are not involved in a shooting war).

Can a President Trump meet their expectations to “Make America Great Again”?

DOES A CHICKEN HAVE LIPS? DOES A SNAKE HAVE HIPS?

Trump will be able to get enough from Congress for some infrastructure projects to aid a portion of voters. Remember, Obama was able to push through a large “stimulus plan” to rescue the banks and GM, as well as spread around millions for a few years. But beyond something like that, Trump’s rivals in the Republican-controlled Congress, and the long established sentiments on the Right that hate ANY plan resulting in an increase of the country’s debt, will limit the jobs and “stimulus” money Trump has to spread amongst his following. When Trump goes back to his box of tricks, he’ll discover that a king cobra has eaten all of the rabbits he was hiding there. The cobra represents the little understood, galloping TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGES that are rapidly replacing the need for human labor. Think how retail sales, plus truck, bus, and cab drivers, will be on the verge of getting cut by as much as the capital the few remaining giants can pull together for the DRIVERLESS VEHICLES once the mergers end. Bye-bye Fed-Ex, UPS, U.S. Postal Service, the millions of skilled 18-wheel truckers, and hello to the driverless vehicles and the drones that will allow Amazon, et al, to better do their thing, all the way down to delivering pizza! And why should forward-looking large corporations go along with a President Trump to hire his followers (except for a kickback), instead of some 3-D printing technology? I ain’t scratched the surface. Being in prison prevents me from fully researching this angle, but I can still “see the writing on the wall.”

Then 2016 has helped us better grasp the CLIMATE CHANGE threat. This is already the HOTTEST YEAR on record. And it’s admitted that the Greenland, Arctic, and Antarctic ice caps are disappearing at a rate that assures us coastal cities across the entire world will have an almost impossible engineering job in order to survive another 20 years. All the while, Trump is filling his White House Cabinet with fossil fuel advocates. Apparently Trump plans to keep his promise to “drain the swamp”… so he can then fill the vacuum with oil and coal. Great! And don’t forget our side’s failure to take baseline measures, such as fostering a culture, far and wide, of growing as much of our own food as we can.

Here in the U.S., Black Lives Matter and the water protectors, being led by the Native Nations in the West, are movements we ALL can learn from, while continuing to support the human rights they are fighting for.

Closer to home, the Prison Industrial Complex continues to destroy lives: Mumia Abu-Jamal and thousands of other prisoners are being denied Hep-C treatment and other basic medical care.

NEVER FORGET that Trump vowed to round up and deport MILLIONS of undocumented peoples ASAP. That is certain to more than double the numbers of people being held!

On a personal level, I continue to (again) teach myself to “walk and chew gum” through Square Stepping and Tai Chi. Being forced to limit my leg workouts to tiny control unit cells and exercise cages for decades robbed me of the ability to mount stairs and even turn once through a doorway, since I was always all but carried along in chains whenever I left said cells. Though I maintained my leg strength, outside of walking in a straight line, my balance resembles that of a toddler, though much better than when I first got out of that hell hole!

I’m re-bonding with extended family members as well.

WITHIN ANY CRISIS RESTS OPPORTUNITIES. I’m calling on EVERYONE to rise to this challenge and figure out ways to overcome these added difficulties, as you can count on me to do.

Finally, you must get others to join you in deluging the White House and President Obama with the message that to protect his legacy amongst the world’s progressive people, HE MUST USE HIS POWERS TO RELEASE ALL POLITICAL PRISONERS UNDER HIS ULTIMATE CONTROL BEFORE LEAVING OFFICE.

Love and Solidarity! STRAIGHT AHEAD!

Maroon

Russell Shoats #AF-3855
SCI-Graterford
P.O. Box 246 Route 29
Graterford, PA 19426 – 0246

Maroon’s Global Network
3807 Melwood Ave
Pittsburgh, PA

Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863.9977
www.freedomarchives.org

The CIA has accused Russia of interfering in the 2016 presidential election by hacking into Democratic and Republican computer networks and selectively releasing  emails. But critics might point out the U.S. has done similar things.  

The U.S. has a long history of attempting to influence presidential elections in other countries – it’s done so as many as 81 times between 1946 and 2000, according to a database amassed by political scientist Dov Levin of Carnegie Mellon University. 

That number doesn’t include military coups and regime change efforts following the election of candidates the U.S. didn’t like, notably those in Iran, Guatemala and Chile. Nor does it include general assistance with the electoral process, such as election monitoring. 

Levin defines intervention as “a costly act which is designed to determine the election results [in favor of] one of the two sides.” These acts, carried out in secret two-thirds of the time, include funding the election campaigns of specific parties, disseminating misinformation or propaganda, training locals of only one side in various campaigning or get-out-the-vote techniques, helping one side design their campaign materials, making public pronouncements or threats in favor of or against a candidate, and providing or withdrawing foreign aid. 

In 59% of these cases, the side that received assistance came to power, although Levin estimates the average effect of “partisan electoral interventions” to be only about a 3% increase in vote share. 

The U.S. hasn’t been the only one trying to interfere in other countries’ elections, according to Levin’s data. Russia attempted to sway 36 foreign elections from the end of World War II to the turn of the century – meaning that, in total, at least one of the two great powers of the 20th century intervened in about 1 of every 9 competitive, national-level executive elections in that time period. 

Italy’s 1948 general election is an early example of a race where U.S. actions probably influenced the outcome.  

“We threw everything, including the kitchen sink” at helping the Christian Democrats beat the Communists in Italy, said Levin, including covertly delivering “bags of money”  to cover campaign expenses, sending experts to help run the campaign, subsidizing “pork” projects like land reclamation, and threatening publicly to end U.S. aid to Italy if the Communists were elected. 

Levin said that U.S. intervention probably played an important role in preventing a Communist Party victory, not just in 1948, but in seven subsequent Italian elections. 

Throughout the Cold War, U.S. involvement in foreign elections was mainly motivated by the goal of containing communism, said Thomas Carothers, a foreign policy expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “The U.S. didn’t want to see left-wing governments elected, and so it did engage fairly often in trying to influence elections in other countries,” Carothers said.

This approach carried over into the immediate post-Soviet period.  

In the 1990 Nicaragua elections, the CIA leaked damaging information on alleged corruption by the Marxist Sandinistas to German newspapers, according to Levin. The opposition used those reports against the Sandinista candidate, Daniel Ortega. He lost to opposition candidate Violeta Chamorro. 

In Czechoslovakia that same year, the U.S. provided training and campaign funding to Vaclav Havel’s party and its Slovak affiliate as they planned for the country’s first democratic election after its transition away from communism. 

“The thinking was that we wanted to make sure communism was dead and buried,” said Levin. 

Even after that, the U.S. continued trying to influence elections in its favor.

In Haiti after the 1986 overthrow of dictator and U.S. ally Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier, the CIA sought to support particular candidates and undermine Jean-Bertrande Aristide, a Roman Catholic priest and proponent of liberation theology. The New York Times reported in the 1990s that the CIA had on its payroll members of the military junta that would ultimately unseat Aristide after he was democratically elected in a landslide over Marc Bazin, a former World Bank official and finance minister favored by the U.S. 

The U.S. also attempted to sway Russian elections. In 1996, with the presidency of Boris Yeltsin and the Russian economy flailing, President Clinton endorsed a $10.2-billion loan from the International Monetary Fund linked to privatization, trade liberalization and other measures that would move Russia toward a capitalist economy. Yeltsin used the loan to bolster his popular support, telling voters that only he had the reformist credentials to secure such loans, according to media reports at the time. He used the money, in part, for social spending before the election, including payment of back wages and pensions.  

In the Middle East, the U.S. has aimed to bolster candidates who could further the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. In 1996, seeking to fulfill the legacy of assassinated Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and the peace accords the U.S. brokered, Clinton openly supported Shimon Peres, convening a peace summit in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el Sheik to boost his popular support and inviting him to a meeting at the White House a month before the election. 

“We were persuaded that if [Likud candidate Benjamin] Netanyahu were elected, the peace process would be closed for the season,” said Aaron David Miller, who worked at the State Department at the time. 

In 1999, in a more subtle effort to sway the election, top Clinton strategists, including James Carville, were sent to advise Labor candidate Ehud Barak in the election against Netanyahu. 

In Yugoslavia, the U.S. and NATO had long sought to cut off Serbian nationalist and Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic from the international system through economic sanctions and military action. In 2000, the U.S. spent millions of dollars in aid for political parties, campaign costs and independent media. Funding and broadcast equipment provided to the media arms of the opposition were a decisive factor in electing opposition candidate Vojislav Kostunica as Yugoslav president, according to Levin. “If it wouldn’t have been for overt intervention … Milosevic would have been very likely to have won another term,” he said.

The following article appeared in The Graphic in a piece initially written by Doreen Andoh on December 29, 2016, and was reposted on December 31 on http://www.theafricandream.net by Oral Ofori.

At a ceremony in the capital city of Ghana – Accra – to formalize the process of granting of Ghanaian citizenship, 37 people were made to swear an oath of allegiance to the country by Ghana president John Mahama.

Presenting certificates of citizenship to them, Mr Mahama said their naturalization made them entitled to every privilege deserving and due any Ghanaian. The event happened in the last quarter of December 2016.

The president said he was optimistic that the skills and knowledge acquired by the naturalised Ghanaians would contribute immensely to the development of the country.

“You have expressed so much gratitude to me and other stakeholders for the opportunity given you today, but I do not think you have to thank me because I have only restored to you what rightfully belongs to you and was painfully taken away” he said.

Mr. Mahama said in giving them the opportunity to obtain Ghanaian citizenship, he was only following the footsteps of forebears, including  Ghana’s first President, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, George Padmore, Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois and Martin Luther king, who led and gave a foundation to Pan-Africanism.

He said Ghana was the first country in sub-Saharan Africa to gain its independence, and had since become and would continue to be the headquarters for the fight for African liberation and the beacon of African emancipation.

He expressed the hope that the introduction of Africans applying for visa on arrival in Ghana would be extended to Africans in the diaspora to facilitate their visit and stay in Ghana to contribute to national development.

Oath of allegiance towards Ghanaian citizenship

In his remarks, the Minister of the Interior, Mr. Prosper Bani, said the naturalised Ghanaians were now free to acquire Ghanaian passports and any other national document that identified them as Ghanaians.

“I wish to assure you that the Ministry of the Interior will give you the needed assistance to acquire those documents,” he said.

Mr Bani expressed the hope that the naturalised Ghanaians would continue to owe allegiance to the country, particularly in their deeds and support the development of the country.

He, however, appealed to them to be law abiding because the acquisition of the Ghanaian citizenship has conditions, which included lawfully revoking the citizenship in accordance with section 18 of the citizenship act of 2000 (Act 591).

He said the President’s approval of the citizenship of these persons was a demonstration of the Pan-African spirit, following in the steps of Ghana’s first President, Osagyefo Dr Kwame Nkrumah, George Padmore and Dr W.E. B Du Bois that Pan-Africanism remained an integral part of Ghana’s foreign policy.

Pacesetters praised

Mr. Bani applauded the efforts of all who had contributed to the successful emancipation and reintegration of Africans in the diaspora back to their roots, giving particular recognition to Mr. Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey.

“Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey, in 2004, as the then Minister of Tourism of Ghana, organised an international conference on the theme, International Conference on the Transatlantic slave-trade, Legacies and Expectations; which provided the inspiration to  envision the return of Africans in the Diaspora,” he said.

Mr. Bani said Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey also initiated a project dubbed the “Joseph Project” in 2007 which sought to practicalise the act of healing, forgiveness, reconciliation and rapprochement between Africans in Africa and those in the diaspora.

He acknowledged that the efforts of Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey and other pan-Africanist were yielding the desired results.

On behalf of the persons who were granted Ghanaian citizenship, Ambassador Dr. Erieka Bennett expressed gratitude to the President, Mr. Mahama, for the honour done them, and pledged their commitment to remain responsible citizens of the country.

To show their appreciation, they presented a memento to president Mahama.

Source: Doreen Andoh/Graphic Online

As President Obama nears the end of his term, the tradition of the Presidential Pardon is close at hand.  Normally seen as a privilege reserved for political allies of leaving heads of state, many community activists see
this as an opportunity for President Obama to renew the faith placed in him by many African-American activists who had hoped for a White House that would be friendlier to those who had sacrificed so much from
the 1960s to the present.  Several petitions for clemency have been launched, the highest-profile of which have called for the release of American Indian Movement Political Prisoner Leonard Peltier and Black Panther Party Political Prisoner Dr. Mutulu Shakur.  Along with Sundiata Acoli, Mumia Abu-Jamal and the MOVE Nine, these represent the best-known activists who had been targeted because of their advocacy for
Indigenous and Black Liberation in the United States.  There are many others, including Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald, Ed Poindexter and Veronza Bowers, and it is hoped that by advocating for the release of Dr.
Shakur and Leonard Peltier, the atmosphere can be created that could bring many Pan-Afrikan Freedom Fighters and Prisoners of Conscience of the last century home to live out their days in the loving arms of their communities.

Academics in Support

On March 8, 2016, a petition was posted by Academics in Support of the Release of Dr. Mutulu Shakur, https://mutuluiswelcomehere.com/.  This is their announcement of the petition:

The #MutuluIsWelcomeHere Campaign has launched a petition directed at academics for Dr. Mutulu Shakur’s freedom.  We are asking professors and other educators to sign the petition and forward to their colleagues.

We’re urging President Obama to use his executive power to grant clemency to Mutulu Shakur given the context in which his crimes were committed, the time he’s already served, and ultimately in light of the positive good he can serve the community in light of his rehabilitation.

The #MutuluIsWelcomeHere Campaign

The text of the petition, which can be read at the website http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/sign-on-to-help-free-dr-
mutulu-shakur, reads as follows:

Academics Sign-On to Help Free Dr. Mutulu Shakur!

We the undersigned academics are writing you in support of the petition for the parole of Dr. Mutulu Shakur.  Many of us have worked with Dr. Shakur on projects toward the education and rehabilitation of his fellow inmates. We are also familiar with his work to promote peace within the penitentiary and on our urban streets.  Others of us are familiar with his advocacy for a Truth and Reconciliation process to heal the continued hostility within the United States resulting from the turbulence of the Civil Rights, Black Power, and anti-war movements.  We understand that Dr. Mutulu Shakur meets the criteria for parole.  His risk assessments prove that he is not a danger to society.  In fact, given his history of community service, inside and outside of prison, he is an asset and can make huge contributions upon his release.  We believe his activity for conflict resolution and transformation of his fellow inmates, and his advocacy and work for reconciliation demonstrate that he is no threat to the community.  We unequivocally support Dr. Shakur’s petition for parole. We anticipate his release and expect him to contribute to efforts to bring peace in the community and to participate in conversations towards understanding of our history and healing of our contemporary reality.

The Current Petition: Low Support So Far

A general petition has also been issued, one which had secured only about 7,000 of the 100,000 signatures sought as of late December 2016.  “Attorney-At-War” Alton Maddox Jr. had written a commentary
(available on his website, http://universityofaltonmaddox.com) concerning the petition, which Black psychiatrist Dr. James McIntosh had decried as “a disgrace” because of the low level of support.

The general petition can be found at the websites https://www.change.org/p/barack-obama-executive-clemency-for-dr-mutulu-shakur and http://mutulushakur.com/site/2016/10/executive-clemency/.  Following is the announcement of the petition:

Petitioning President Barack Obama
Executive Clemency for Dr. Mutulu Shakur

Family and Friends of Dr. Mutulu Shakur

The week of October 10th, a petition for clemency for Dr. Mutulu Shakur was submitted to President Barack Obama. Please sign on here to show your support.

The acts of which Dr. Shakur stands convicted were committed in the context of a movement some forty to fifty years ago seeking equal treatment of black people who, it is widely recognized today, were suffering catastrophically from disenfranchisement, poverty and exclusion from many of the fundamental necessities that make life worth living. Black school children were being killed in church bombings. Black and other civil rights leaders were targeted for assassination. Law enforcement, through the COINTELPRO program, infiltrated a wide range of organizations and civil rights groups disrupting their activities and, as Congressional investigation later discovered, often causing violent reactions. In that era, black youth were paralyzed with fear that smothered their dreams, they doubted their life expectancy, and were forced to submit to abuse, runaway or challenge the threat.

Dr. Shakur has served over thirty years in custody, been unjustly denied parole eight times in a documented discriminatory manner, taken full responsibility for his actions, served as a force for good and alternative dispute mechanisms throughout his decades of incarceration, is an elder with multiple health complications, and has a loving family that needs him, even moreso after his former wife, Afeni Shakur, passed away in May.  Upon release he will continue to inspire people to seek self-improvement through peaceful and constructive means, as he has done while incarcerated, as he did with his late son Tupac.

In his own words, “For many years I have been a staunch advocate for the establishment of a truth and reconciliation process to address issues of racial and economic disparities.  I have been influenced by examples in South Africa, Latin America, Northern Ireland and here in the United States of efforts at restorative justice through the pursuit of truth and reconciliation …

“I cannot undo the violence and tragedy that took place more than thirty years ago.  But for several decades while incarcerated I have dedicated myself to being a healer, spreading a message of reconciliation and justice, and playing a positive role in the lives of those I come into contact with, in and out of prison …

“This country is not the same country it was at the time of my conviction and I have lived long enough to understand the changes the country and I have undergone. I will always care about freedom and equality for black Americans, marginalized people and the lower classes in this country and abroad. The struggle was never about me, but for the will of the people.”

This petition will be delivered to:
President
Barack Obama

 

 

 

EDITOR’s NOTE: The following was submitted by Ms. Heather Gray of Justice Initiative as a follow-up to her article on the 65th anniversary of the “We Charge Genocide” declaration to the United Nations.  In answer to an inquiry from a skeptical reader, she presented the following official United Nations policy on the definition of genocide.

JUSTICE INITIATIVE
What Is Genocide?
by Heather Gray, hmcgray@earthlink.net
Gray & Associates, PO Box 8048, Atlanta, GA 31106

Preface: On December 17, I sent out information about the 65th anniversary of the 1951 “We Charge Genocide” document submitted to the United Nations by many leading Black activists in the United States. One of the notes I received about “We Charge Genocide” was as follows that basically questions the accusation of “genocide”:

Hello, Heather,

Apart from dramatic flair, I don’t see what is gained by erasing the distinction between the mass murder sense of genocide and racism or colonialism and their associated. white supremacist ideologies. If the term has meaning, the African American people of the US (as opposed to Native Americans) have plainly not been the victims of genocide.

Some of those in the 1940s and 50s also questioned this accusation of genocide until they looked closely at the United Nations definition of “genocide” which is, importantly, inclusive of much of what Black America has experienced since Africans they were brought in chains to the American shores as slaves. So in the 1940s and 50s they developed the document “We Charge Genocide” along with evidence of genocide in the United States and, importantly,  delivered it to the United Nations in 1951. Below is the definition of “genocide” from the United Nations delineated in 1948.

Peace,
Heather Gray
hmcgray@earthlink.net
URL:  Justice Initiative International

OFFICE OF THE SPECIAL ADVISER ON THE PREVENTION OF GENOCIDE

What is genocide?

The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (article 2) defines genocide as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group … “, including:

(a)  Killing members of the group;
(b)  Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c)  Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d)  Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e)  Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

The Convention confirms that genocide, whether committed in time of peace or war, is a crime under international law which parties to the Convention undertake “to prevent and to punish” (article 1). The primary responsibility to prevent and stop genocide lies with the State in which this crime takes place.

Genocide often occurs in societies in which different national, racial, ethnic or religious groups become locked in identity-related conflicts. However, it is not the differences in identity per se that generate conflict, but rather the gross inequalities associated with those differences in terms of access to power and resources, social services, development opportunities and the enjoyment of fundamental rights and freedoms. It is often the targeted group’s reactions to these inequalities, and counter-reactions by the dominant group, that generate conflict that can escalate to genocide.

The duty to prevent and halt genocide and mass atrocities lies first and fore- most with the State, but the international community has a role that cannot be blocked by the invocation of sovereignty. Sovereignty no longer exclusively protects States from foreign interference; it is a charge of responsibility where States are accountable for the welfare of their people. This principle is enshrined in article 1 of the Genocide Convention and embodied in the principle of “sovereignty as responsibility” and in the emergent concept of the responsibility to protect. The three pillars of the responsibility to protect, as stipulated in the Outcome Document of the 2005 United Nations World Summit, are:

    (1)  The State carries the primary responsibility for protecting populations from genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and ethnic cleansing, and their incitement;
    (2)  The international community has a responsibility to encourage and assist States in fulfilling this responsibility;
    (3)  The international community has a responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other means to protect populations from these crimes. If a State is manifestly failing to protect its populations, the international community must be prepared to take collective action to protect populations, in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations. 

If the root causes of genocide revolve around inequalities between iden- tity groups, preventing genocide begins with ensuring that all groups within society enjoy the rights and dignity of belonging as equal citizens. Early prevention therefore becomes a challenge of good governance and equitable management of diversity. That means eliminating gross political and economic inequalities, and promoting a common sense of belonging on equal footing.

EDITOR’S NOTE: On this, the 65th anniversary of the historic “We Charge Genocide” declaration at the United Nations, we share the following article written by Ms. Heather Gray of the Atlanta, Georgia-based Justice Initiative.  Included is the actual declaration and several footnoted sources.  A companion piece discusses the topic “What Is Genocide?”.  We thank Ms. Gray and Justice Initiative for her continued contributions on behalf of truth and justice.

JUSTICE INITIATIVE
65th Anniversary of “We Charge Genocide!”
1951 American report to the United Nations
by Heather Gray
December 17, 2016
URL: Justice Initiative International
hmcgray@earthlink.net

Sixty-five years ago, on December 17, 1951, Paul Robeson and William L. Patterson presented to the United Nations a document entitled “We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People”. Below please find 2 reports:

(1) “We Charge Genocide!” from Liberty and Justice for All, that provides details about the document and its presentation to the  United Nations in the United States and Paris on December 17, 1951; and

(2) The beginning narrative of  “We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief From a Crime of The United States Government Against the Negro People (1951)” from Black Past. (The entire document is 237 pages that includes examples of genocide in the United States.)

At the end of these 2 reports are also links to the entire 1951 “We Charge Genocide” petition to the United Nations from the incredibly valuable and resourceful website “Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement“.

This historic document present issues that are relevant today and given the ongoing atrocities in America, many are in agreement that an updated contemporary version of “We Charge Genocide” should presented to the United Nations. Below please find information about youth from Chicago doing precisely that by presenting  information about atrocities in Chicago to the UN during its “Convention Against Torture Committee Review of the U.S.” in 2014.

I am thankful to activists/journalists Marian Douglas-Ungaro and Ernest Dunkley for their advice and support of this call for action regarding presenting an update to the United Nations of “We Charge Genocide”. If you are also interested in this please send me an email at Heather Gray – hmcgray@earthlink.net.

We Charge Genocide!
Liberty and Justice for All

“We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People” is a paper accusing the United States government of genocide according to the UN Genocide Convention. This work was written by the Civil Rights Congress (CRC) and presented to the United Nations at meetings in Paris in December (17) 1951.

The document pointed out that the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide defined genocide as any acts committed with “intent to destroy” a group, “in whole or in part.” To build its case for black genocide, the document cited many instances of lynching in the United States, as well as legal discrimination, disenfranchisement of blacks in the South, a series of incidents of police brutality dating to the present, and systematic inequalities in health and quality of life. The central argument: the US government is both complicit with and responsible for a genocidal situation based on the UN’s own definition of genocide.

The document received international media attention and became caught up in Cold War politics, as the CRC was supported by the American communist party. Its many examples of shocking conditions for African Americans shaped beliefs about the United States in countries across the world. The American government and white press accused the CRC of exaggerating racial inequality in order to advance the cause of Communism. The US State Department forced CRC secretary William L. Patterson to surrender his passport after he presented the petition to a UN meeting in Paris.

Soon after the United Nations was created in 1945, it began to receive requests for assistance from peoples across the world. These came from the indigenous peoples of European colonies in Africa and Asia, but also from African Americans. The first group to petition the UN regarding African Americans was the National Negro Congress (NNC), which in 1946 delivered a statement on racial discrimination to the Secretary General. The next appeal, from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1947, was more than 100 pages in length. W. E. B. Du Bois presented it to the UN on 23 October 1947, over the objections of Eleanor Roosevelt, the widow of the late president and an American delegate to the UN. Du Bois, frustrated with the State Department’s opposition to the petitions, criticized president Walter White of the NAACP for accepting a position as consultant to the US delegation; White in turn pushed Du Bois out of the NAACP.

The petitions were praised by the international press and by Black press in the United States. America’s mainstream media, however, were ambivalent or hostile. Some agreed that there was some truth to the petitions, but suggested that ‘tattling’ to the UN would aid the cause of Communism. The Soviet Union did cite these documents as evidence of poor conditions in the United States.

The Civil Rights Congress (CRC), the successor to the International Labor Defense group and affiliated with the communist party, had begun to gain momentum domestically by defending Blacks sentenced to execution, such as Rosa Lee Ingram and the Trenton Six. The NNC joined forces with the CRC in 1947.

On 17 December 1951, the petition was presented to the United Nations by two separate venues: Paul Robeson, concert singer and activist, together with people who signed the petition, handed the document to a UN official in New York, while William L. Patterson, executive director of the Civil Rights Congress, delivered copies of the petition to a UN delegation in Paris. W. E. B. Du Bois, also slated to deliver the petition in Paris, had been classified by the US State Department as an “unregistered foreign agent” and was deterred from traveling. Du Bois had previously had an expensive legal battle against the Justice Department.

The 125 copies Patterson mailed to Paris did not arrive, allegedly intercepted by the US government. But Patterson distributed other copies, which he had shipped separately in small packages to individuals’ homes.

The document was signed by many leading activists and family of blacks who had suffered in the system, including:

• W. E. B. Du Bois, African-American sociologist, historian and Pan-Africanist activist
• George W. Crockett, Jr., African-American lawyer and politician
• Benjamin J. Davis, Jr., African-American lawyer and communist
• Ferdinand Smith, New York councilman
• Oakley C. Johnson, Communist activist
• Aubrey Grossman, labor and civil rights lawyer
• Claudia Jones, Communist and black nationalist activist
• Rosalie McGee, the widow of Willie McGee, who in 1951 was executed after being controversially convicted of rape by an all-white jury
• Josephine Grayson, the widow of Francis Grayson, one of the “Martinsville Seven”, who in 1951 were executed in Virginia after a much-publicized trial and conviction by an all-white jury
• Amy Mallard and Doris Mallard, remaining family of Robert Childs Mallard, lynched in 1948 for voting
• Paul Washington, veteran on death row in Louisiana
• Wesley R. Wells, prisoner in California facing execution for throwing a cuspidor (a spittoon) at a guard
• Horace Wilson, James Thorpe, Collis English, and Ralph Cooper, four of the Trenton Six

Patterson said he was ignored by US ambassador Ralph Bunche and delegate Channing Tobias, but that Edith Sampson would talk to him.

Patterson was ordered to surrender his passport at the United States embassy in France. When he refused, US agents said they would seize it at his hotel room. Patterson fled to Budapest, where through the newspaper Szabad Nép, he accused the US government of attempting to stifle the charges. The US government ordered Patterson to be detained when he passed through Britain and seized his passport when he returned to the United States. As Paul Robeson had been unable to obtain a passport at all, the difficulty these two men faced in traveling led some to accuse the American government of censorship.

Reception

“We Charge Genocide” was ignored by much of the mainstream American press, but the Chicago Tribune, which called it “shameful lies” (and evidence against the value of the Genocide Convention itself). I. F. Stone was the only white American journalist to write favorably of the document. The CRC had communist affiliations, and the document attracted international attention through the worldwide communist movement. Raphael Lemkin, who invented the term “genocide” and advocated for the Genocide Convention, disagreed with the petition because the African-American population was increasing in size. He accused its authors of wishing to distract attention from genocide in the Soviet Union, which had resulted in millions of deaths, because of their communist sympathies. Lemkin accused Patterson and Robeson of serving foreign powers. He published an op-ed in the New York Times arguing that Blacks did not experience the “destruction, death, annihilation” that would qualify their treatment as genocide.

The petition was particularly well received in Europe, where it received abundant press coverage. “We Charge Genocide” was popular almost everywhere in the world except in the United States. One American writer traveling India in 1952 found that many people had become familiar with the cases of the Martinsville Seven and Willie McGee through the document.

The American delegation heavily criticized the document. Eleanor Roosevelt called it “ridiculous”. Black delegates Edith Sampson and Channing Tobias spoke to European audiences about how the situation of African Americans was improving.

At the request of the State Department, the NAACP drafted a press release repudiating “We Charge Genocide”, calling it “a gross and subversive conspiracy”. However, upon hearing initial press reports of the petition and the expected NAACP response, Walter White decided against issuing the release. He and the board decided that the petition did reflect many of the NAACP views; for instance, the organization had long been publishing the toll of blacks who had been lynched. “How can we ‘blast’ a book that uses our records as source material?”, asked Roy Wilkins.

The CRC’s power was already declining due to accusations of Communism during the Red Scare, and it disbanded in 1956.

The United Nations did not acknowledge receiving the petition. Given the strength of US influence, it was not really expected to do so.

Legacy

The document has been credited with popularizing the term “genocide” among Black people for their treatment in the US. After renewed interest generated by Malcolm X and the Black Panther Party, We Charge Genocide was republished in 1970 by International Publishers. Allegations of genocide were renewed in relation to the disproportionate effects of crack cocaine and HIV/AIDS in the black communities in the United States. The National Black United Front petitioned the United Nations in 1996-1997, directly citing We Charge Genocide and using the same slogan….

During the UN Convention Against Torture Committee Review of the U.S. in November 2014, a group of eight young activists from Chicago, Illinois, (Breanna Champion, Page May, Monica Trinidad, Ethan Viets-VanLear, Asha Rosa , Ric Wilson, Todd St. Hill, and Malcolm London) submitted a shadow report using the name, We Charge Genocide. Their report addressed police brutality toward blacks in Chicago, the lack of police accountability, and the misuse of tasers by the Chicago Police Department.

On December 11th, the We Charge Genocide youth delegation spoke at a public report back on their experiences in Geneva, Switzerland to an audience of over 200 in Chicago The entire event was live-streamed and the video is available here.

We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief From a Crime of The United States Government Against the Negro People (1951)
Black Past

Introduction:

Out of the inhuman black ghettos of American cities, out of the cotton plantations of the South, comes this record of mass slayings on the basis of race, of lives deliberately warped and distorted by the willful creation of conditions making for premature death, poverty and disease.,  It is a record that calls aloud for condemnation, for an end to these terrible injustices that constitute a daily and ever-increasing violation of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

It is sometimes incorrectly thought that genocide means the complete and definitive destruction of a race or people.  The Genocide Convention, however, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 9, 1948, defines genocide as any killings on the basis of race, or, in it specific words, as “killing members of the group.”  Any intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, racial, ethnic or religious group is genocide, according to the Convention.  Thus, the Convention states, “causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group,” is genocide as well as “killing members of the group.”

We maintain, therefore, that the oppressed Negro citizens of the United States, segregated, discriminated against and long the target of violence, suffer from genocide as the result of the consistent, conscious, unified policies of every branch of government.

The Civil Rights Congress has prepared and submits this petition to the General Assembly of the United Nations on behalf of the Negro people in the interest of peace and democracy, charging the Government of the United States of America with violation of the Charter of the United Nations and the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

We believe that in issuing this document we are discharging an historic responsibility to the American people, as well as rendering a service of inestimable value to progressive mankind.  We speak of the American people because millions of white Americans in the ranks of labor and the middle class, and particularly those who live in the southern states and are often contemptuously called poor whites, are themselves suffering to an ever-greater degree from the consequences of the Jim Crow segregation policy of government in its relations with Negro citrines.  We speak of progressive mankind because a policy of discrimination at home must inevitably create racist commodities for export abroad-must inevitably tend toward war.

We have not dealt here with the cruel and inhuman policy of this government toward the people of Puerto Rico.  Impoverished and reduced to a semi-literate state through the wanton exploitation and oppression by gigantic American concerns, through the merciless frame-up and imprisonment of hundred of its sons and daughter, this colony of the  rulers of the United States reveals in all its stark nakedness the moral bankruptcy of this government and those who control its home and foreign policies.

History has shown that the racist theory of government of the U.S.A. is not the private affair of Americans, but the concern of mankind everywhere.

It is our hope, and we fervently believe that it was the hope and aspiration of every black American whose voice was silenced forever through premature death at the hands of racist-minded hooligans or Klan terrorists, that the truth recorded here will be made known to the world; that it will speak with a tongue of fire loosing an unquenchable moral crusade, the universal response to which will sound the death knell of all racist theories.

We have scrupulously kept within the purview of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide which is held to embrace those “acts committed with intent to destroy in whole or in part a national, ethical, racial or religious group as such.”

We particularly pray for the most careful reading of this material by those who have always regarded genocide as a term to be used only where the acts of terror evinced an intent to destroy a whole nation.  We further submit that this Convention on Genocide is, by virtue of our avowed acceptance of the Covenant of the United Nations, an inseparable part of the law of the United States of America.

According to international law, and according to our own law, the Genocide Convention, as well as the provisions of the United Nations Charter, supersedes, negates and displaces all discriminatory racist law on the books of the United States and the several states.

The Hitler crimes, of awful magnitude, beginning as they did against the heroic Jewish people, finally drenched the world in blood, and left a record of maimed and tortured bodies, and devastated areas such as mankind had never seen before.  Justice Robert H. Jackson, who now sits upon the United States Supreme Court bench, described this holocaust to the world in the powerful language with which he opened the Nuremberg trials of the Nazi leaders.  Every word he voiced against the monstrous Nazi beast applies with equal weight, we believe, to those who are guilty of the crimes herein set forth.

Here we present the documented crimes of federal, state and municipal governments in the United States of America, the dominant nation in the United Nations, against 15,000,000 of its own nationals-the Negro people of the United States.  These crimes are of the gravest concern to mankind.  The General Assembly of the United Nations, by reason of the United Nations Charter and the Genocide Convention, itself is invested with power to receive this indictment and act on it.

The proof of this face is its action upon the similar complaint of the Government of India against South Africa.

We call upon the United Nations to act and to call the government of the United States to account.

We believe that the test of the basic goals of a foreign policy is inherent in the manner in which a government treats its own nationals and is not to be found in the lofty platitudes that pervade so many treaties or constitutions.  The essence lies not in the form, but rather, in the substance.

The Civil Rights Congress is a defender of constitutional liberties, human rights, and of peace.  It is the implacable enemy of every creed, philosophy, social system or way of life that denies democratic rights or one iota of human dignity to any human being because of color, creed, nationality or political belief.

We ask all men and women of good will to unite to realize the objective set forth in the summary and prayer concluding this petition.  We believe that this program can go far toward ending the threat of a third world war.  We believe it can contribute to the establishment of a people’s democracy on a universal scale.

But may we add as a final note that the Negro people desire equality of opportunity in this land where their contributions to the economic, political and social developments have been of splendid proportions and in quality second to none.  They will accept nothing less, and continued efforts to force them into the category of second-class citizens through force and violence, through segregation, racist law and an institutionalized oppression, can only end in disaster for those responsible.

Respectfully submitted by the Civil Rights Congress as a service to the peoples of the world, and particularly to the lovers of peace and democracy in the United States of America

William L. Patterson
National Executive Secretary Civil Rights Congress

To the General Assembly of the United Nations:

The responsibility of being the first in history to charge the government of the United States of America with the crime of genocide is not one your petitioners take lightly.  The responsibility is particularly grave when citizens must charge their own government with mass murder of its own nationals, with institutionalized oppression and persistent slaughter of the Negro people in the United States on a basis of “race,” a crime abhorred by mankind and prohibited by the conscience of the world as expressed in the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations on December 9, 1948.

Genocide Leads to Fascism and to War

If our duty is unpleasant it is historically necessary both for the welfare of the American people and for the peace of the world.  We petition as American patriots, sufficiently anxious to save our countrymen and all mankind from the horrors of war to shoulder a task as painful as it is important.  We cannot forget Hitler’s demonstration that genocide at home can become wider massacre abroad, that domestic genocide develops into the larger genocide that is predatory war.  The wrongs of which we complain are so much the expression of predatory American reaction and its government that civilization cannot ignore them nor risk their continuance without courting its own destruction.  We agree with those members of the General Assembly who declared that genocide is a matter of world concern because its practice imperils world safety.

But if the responsibility of your petitioners is great, it is dwarfed by the responsibility of those guilty of the crime we charge.  Seldom in human annals has so iniquitous a conspiracy been so gilded with the trappings of respectability.  Seldom has mass murder on the score of “race” been so sanctified by law, so justified by those who demand free elections abroad even as they kill their fellow citizens who demand free elections at home.  Never have so many individuals been so ruthlessly destroyed amid many tributes to the sacredness of the individual.  The distinctive trait of this genocide is a cant that mouths aphorisms of Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence even as it kills.

The genocide of which we complain is as much a fact as gravity.  The whole world knows of it.  The proof is in every day’s newspapers, in every one’s sight and hearing in these United States.  In one form or another it has been practiced for more than three hundred years although never with such sinister implications for the welfare and peace of the world as at present.  Its very familiarity disguises its horror.  It is a crime so embedded in law, so explained away by specious rationale, so hidden by talk of liberty, that even the conscience of the tender minded is sometimes dulled.  Yet the conscience of mankind cannot be beguiled from its duty by the pious phrases and the deadly legal euphemisms with which its perpetrators seek to transform their guilt into high moral purpose.

Killing Members of the Group

Your petitioners will prove that the crime of which we complain is in fact genocide within the terms and meaning of the United Nations Convention providing for the prevention and punishment of this crime.  We shall submit evidence, tragically voluminous, of “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical, racial or religious group as such,” – in this case the 15,000,000 Negro people of the United States.

We shall submit evidence proving “killing members of the group,” in violation of Article II of the Convention.  We cite killings by police, killings by incited gangs, killings at night by masked men, killings always on the basis of “race,” killings by the Ku Klux Klan, that organization which is charted by the several states as a semi-official arm of government and even granted the tax exemptions of a benevolent society.

Our evidence concerns the thousands of Negroes who over the years have been beaten to death on chain gangs and in the back rooms of sheriff’s offices, in the cells of county jails, in precinct police stations  and on city streets, who have been framed and murdered by sham legal forms and by a legal bureaucracy.  It concerns those Negroes who have been killed, allegedly for failure to say “sir” or tip their hats or move aside quickly enough, or, more often, on trumped up charges of “rape,'” but in reality for trying to vote or otherwise demanding the legal and inalienable rights and privileges of United States citizenship formally guaranteed them by the Constitution of the United States, rights denied them on the basis of “race,” in violation of the Constitution of the United States, the United Nations Charter, and the Genocide Convention.

Economic Genocide

We shall offer proof of economic genocide, or in the words of the Convention, proof of “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its destruction in whole or in part.”  We shall prove that such conditions so swell the infant and maternal death rate and the death rate from disease, that the American Negro is deprived, when compared with the remainder of the population of the United States, of eight years of life on the average.

Further we shall show a deliberate national oppression of these 15,000,000 Negro Americans on the basis of “race” to perpetuate these “conditions of life.”  Negroes are the last hired and the first fired.  They are forced into city ghettos or their rural equivalents.  They are segregated legally or through sanctioned violence into filthy, disease-bearing housing, and deprived by law of adequate medical care and education.  From birth to death, Negro Americans are humiliated and persecuted, in violation of the Charter and Convention.  They are forced by threat of violence and imprisonment into inferior, segregated accommodations, into jim crow busses, jim crow trains, jim crow hospitals, jim crow schools, jim crow theaters, jim crow restaurants, jim crow housing, and finally into jim crow cemeteries.

We shall prove that the object of this genocide, as of all genocide, is the perpetuation of economic and political power by the few through the destruction of political protest by the many.  Its method is to demoralize and divide an entire nation; its end is to increase the profits and unchallenged control by a reactionary clique.  We shall show that those responsible for this crime are not the humble but the so-called great, not the American people but their misleaders, not the convict but the robed judge, not the criminal but the police, not the spontaneous mob but organized terrorists licensed and approved by the state to incite to a Roman holiday.

We shall offer evidence that this genocide is not plotted in the dark but incited over the radio into the ears of millions, urged in the glare of public forums by Senators and Governors.  It is offered as an article of faith by powerful political organizations, such as the Dixiecrats, and defended by influential newspapers, all in violation of the Untied Nations charter and the Convention forbidding genocide.

This proof does not come from the enemies of the white supremacists but from their own mouths, their own writings, their political resolutions, their racist laws, and from photographs of their handiwork.  Neither Hitler nor Goebbels wrote obscurantist racial incitements more voluminously or viciously than do their American counterparts, nor did such incitements circulate in Nazi mails any more than they do in the mails of the United States.

Through this and other evidence we shall prove this crime of genocide is the result of a massive conspiracy, more deadly in that it is sometimes “understood” rather than expressed, a part of the mores of the ruling class often concealed by euphemisms, but always directed to oppressing the Negro people.  Its members are so well-drilled, so rehearsed over the generations, that they can carry out their parts automatically and with a minimum of spoken direction.  They have inherited their plot and their business is but to implement it daily so that it works daily.  This implementation is sufficiently expressed in decision and statute, in depressed wages, in robbing millions of the vote and millions more of the land, and in countless other political and economic facts, as to reveal definitively the existence of a conspiracy backed by reactionary interests in which are meshed all the organs of the Executive, Legislative and Judicial branches of government.  It is manifest that a people cannot be consistently killed over the years on the basis of “race” – and more than 10,000 Negroes have so suffered death – cannot be uniformly segregated, despoiled, impoverished, and denied equal protection before the law, unless it is the result of the deliberate, all-pervasive policy of government and those who control it.

Emasculation of Democracy

We shall show, more particularly, how terror, how “killing members of the group,” in violation of Article II of the Genocide Convention, has been used to prevent the Negro people from voting in huge and decisive areas of the United States in which they are the preponderant population, thus dividing the whole American people, emasculating mass movements for democracy and securing the grip of predatory reaction on the federal, state, county and city governments.  We shall prove that the crimes of genocide offered for your action and the world’s attention have in fact been incited, a punishable crime under Article III of the Convention, often by such officials as Governors, Senators, Judges and peace officers whose phrases about white supremacy and the necessity of maintaining inviolate a white electorate resulted in bloodshed as surely as more direct incitement.

We shall submit evidence showing the existence of a mass of American law, written as was Hitler’s law solely on the basis of “race,” providing for segregation and otherwise penalizing the Negro people, in violation not only of Articles II and III of the Convention but also in violation of the Charter of the United Nations.  Finally we shall offer proof that a conspiracy exists in which the Government of the United States, its Supreme Court, its Congress, it Executive branch, as well as the various state, county and municipal governments, consciously effectuate policies which result in the crime of genocide being consistently and constantly practiced against the Negro people of the United States.

The Negro Petitioners

Many of your petitioners are Negro citizens to whom the charges herein described are not mere words.  They are facts felt on our bodies, crimes inflicted on our dignity.  We struggle for deliverance, not without pride in our valor, but we warn mankind that our fate is theirs.  We solemnly declare that continuance of this American crime against the Negro people of the United States will strengthen those reactionary American forces driving towards World War III as certainly as the unrebuked Nazi genocide against the Jewish people strengthened Hitler in his successful drive to World War II.

We, Negro petitioners whose communities have been laid waste, whose homes have been burned and looted, whose children have been killed, whose women have been raped, have noted with peculiar horror that the genocidal doctrines and actions of the American white supremacists have already been exported to the colored peoples of Asia.  We solemnly warn that a nation which practices genocide against its own nationals may not be long deterred, if it has the power, from genocide elsewhere.  White supremacy at home makes for colored massacres abroad. Both reveal contempt for human life in a colored skin.  Jellied gasoline in Korea and the lynchers’ faggot at home are connected in more ways than that both result in death by fire.  The lyncher and the atom bomber are related.  The first cannot murder unpunished and unrebuked without so encouraging the latter that the peace of the world and the lives of millions are endangered.  Nor is this metaphysics.  The tie binding both is economic profit and political control.  It was not without significance that it was President Truman who spoke of the possibility of using the atom bomb on the colored peoples of Asia, that it is American statesmen who prate constantly of “Asiatic hordes.”

“Our Humanity Denied and Mocked”

We Negro petitioners protest this genocide as Negroes and we protest it as Americans, as patriots.  We know that no American can be truly free while 15,000,000 other Americans are persecuted on the grounds of “race,” that few Americans can be prosperous while 15,000,000 are deliberately pauperized.  Our country can never know true democracy while millions of its citizens are denied the vote on the basis of their color.

But above all we protest this genocide as human beings whose very humanity is denied and mocked.  We cannot forget that after Congressman Henderson Lovelace Lanham, of Rome, Georgia, speaking in the halls of Congress, called William L. Paterson, one of the leaders of the Negro people, “a God-damned black son-of-bitch,” he added, “We gotta keep the black apes down.”  We cannot forget it because this is the animating sentiment of the white supremacists, of a powerful segment of American life.  We cannot forget that in many American states it is a crime for a white person to marry a Negro on the racist theory that Negroes are “inherently inferior as an immutable fact of Nature.”  The whole institution of segregation, which is training for killing, education for genocide, is based on the Hitler-like theory of the “inherent inferiority of the Negro.”  The tragic fact of segregation is the basis for the statement, too often heard after murder, particularly in the South, “Why I think no more of killing a n—-r, than of killing a dog.”

We petition in the first instance because we are compelled to speak by the unending slaughter of Negroes.  The fact of our ethnic origin, of which we are proud-our ancestors were building the world’s first civilizations 3,000 years before our oppressors emerged from barbarism in the forests of western Europe-is daily made the signal for segregation and murder.  There is infinite variety in the cruelty we will catalogue, but each case has the common denominator of racism.  This opening statement is not the place to present our evidence in detail.  Still, in this summary of what is to be proved, we believe it necessary to show something of the crux of our case, something of the pattern of genocidal murder, the technique of incitement to genocide, and the methods of mass terror.

Our evidence begins with 1945 and continues to the present.  It gains in deadliness and in number of cases almost in direct ratio to the surge towards war.  We are compelled to hold to this six years span if this document is to be brought into manageable proportions.

The Evidence

There was a time when racist violence had its center in the South.  But as the Negro people spread to the north, east and west seeking to escape the southern hell, the violence, impelled in the first instance by economic motives, followed them, its cause also economic.  Once most of the violence against Negroes occurred in the countryside, but that was before the Negro emigrations of the twenties and thirties.  Now there is not a great American city from New York to Cleveland or Detroit, from Washington, the nation’s capital, to Chicago, from Memphis to Atlanta or Birmingham, from New Orleans to Los Angeles, that is not disgraced by the wanton killing of innocent Negroes.  It is no longer a sectional phenomenon.

Once the classic method of lynching was the rope. Now it is the policeman’s bullet.  To many an American the police are the government, certainly its most visible representative.  We submit that the evidence suggests that the killing of Negroes has become police policy in the United States and that police policy is the most practical expression of government policy.

Our evidence is admittedly incomplete.  It is our hope that the United Nations will complete it.  Much of the evidence, particularly of violence, was gained from the files of Negro newspapers, from the labor press, from the annual reports of Negro societies and established Negro year books.  A list is appended.

But by far the majority of Negro murders are never recorded, never known except to the perpetrators and the bereaved survivors of the victim.  Negro men and women leave their homes and are never seen alive again.  Sometimes weeks later their bodies, or bodies thought to be theirs and often horribly mutilated, are found in the woods or washed up on the shore of a river or lake.  This is a well known pattern of American culture. In many sections of the country police do not even bother to record the murder of Negroes.  Most white newspapers have a policy of not publishing anything concerning murders of Negroes or assaults upon them.  These unrecorded deaths are the rule rather than the exception-thus our evidence, though voluminous, is scanty when compared to the actuality.

Causes Celèbres

We Negro petitioners are anxious that the General Assembly know of our tragic causes celèbres, ignored by the American white press but known nevertheless the world over,  but we also wish to inform it of the virtually unknown killed almost casually, as an almost incidental aspect of institutionalized murder.

We want the General Assembly to know of Willie McGee, framed on perjured testimony and murdered in Mississippi because the Supreme Court of the United States refused even to examine vital new evidence proving his innocence.  But we also want it to know of the two Negro children, James Lewis, Jr., fourteen years old, and Charles Trudell, fifteen, of Natchez, Mississippi who were electrocuted in 1947, after the Supreme Court of the United States refused to intervene.

We want the General Assembly to know of the martyred Martinsville Seven, who died in Virginia’s electric chair for a rape they never committed, in a state that has never executed a white man for that offense.  But we want it to know, too, of the eight Negro prisoners who were shot down and murdered on July 11, 1947 at Brunswick, Georgia, because they refused to work in a snake-infested swamp without boots.

We shall inform the Assembly of the Trenton Six, of Paul Washington, the Daniels cousins, Jerry Newsom, Wesley Robert Wells, of Rosalee Ingram, of John Derrick, of Lieutenant Gilbert, of the Columbia, Tennessee destruction, the Freeport slaughter, the Monroe killings-all important cases I which Negroes have been framed on capital charges or have actually been killed.  But we want it also to know of the typical and less known-of William Brown, Louisiana farmer, shot in the back and killed when he was out hunting on July 19, 1947 by a white game warden who casually announced his unprovoked crime by saying, “I just shot a n—r.  Let his folks know.”  The game warden, one Charles Ventrill, was not even charged with the crime.

Sources:

(1) “Civil Rights Congress, We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief From a Crime of The United States Government Against the Negro People (New York: Civil Rights Congress, 1951), pp xi-xiii, 3-10.

– See more at: http://www.blackpast.org/we-charge-genocide-historic-petition-united-nations-relief-crime-united-states-government-against#sthash.vSeM5EOr.dpuf

(2) Full text of “We Charge Genocide” petition from the Veterans of the Civil Rights Movement website listed below:

Copyright © Civil Rights Congress, 1951

Full Text (note that some of these PDF files are large):

We Charge Genocide: Cover & front matter
We Charge Genocide: Introduction
We Charge Genocide: The Opening Statement
We Charge Genocide: The Law and the Indictment
We Charge Genocide: The Evidence
We Charge Genocide: The Evidence (Continued)
We Charge Genocide: The Evidence (Continued)
We Charge Genocide: Summary and Prayer
We Charge Genocide: Appendix

###

 

New York Jericho Movement
Day of Mourning: Statement by Leonard Peltier

The following statement was made by American Indian Movement (AIM) Political Prisoner Leonard Peltier to the crowd that gathered on Thursday, November 24, 2016 at Plymouth, Massachusetts for the 47th National Day of Mourning, the annual American Indian protest of Thanksgiving.

Day of Mourning  November 24, 2016

Greetings my relatives,

Here we are again. This time the year is 2016. It has been more than 41 years since I last walked free and was able to see the sun rise and sit and feel the earth beneath my feet. I know there have been more changes then I can even imagine out there.

But I do know that there is a struggle taking place as to whether this country will move on to a more sustainable way of life. This is something we wanted to have happen back in the seventies.

I watch the events at Standing Rock with both pride and sorrow. Pride that our people and their allies are standing up and putting their lives on the line for the coming generations, not because they want to but because they have to. They are right to stand up in a peaceful way. It is the greatest gathering of our people in history and has made us more connected than ever before. We need to support each other as we make our way in these times.

Water IS life and we cannot leave this issue for our children and grandchildren to deal with when things are far worse for the natural world then they are now.

And Mother Earth is already in struggle.

And I feel sorrow for the water protectors at Standing Rock because these last few days have brought a much harsher response from the law enforcement agencies there and our people are suffering.

At least they are finally getting attention of the national media.

My home is in North Dakota. The Standing Rock people are my people. Sitting Bull lies in his grave there at Fort Yates. My home at Turtle Mountain is just a few hours north of Standing Rock, just south of Manitoba, Canada.  I have not seen my home since I was a boy, but I still hold out hope of returning there for whatever time I may have left. It is the land of my father and I would like to be able to live there again. And to die there.

I have a different feeling this year. The last time I felt this way was 16 years ago, when I last had a real chance for freedom. It is an uneasy feeling. An unsettling one. It is a hard thing to allow hope to creep into my heart and my spirit here in these cold buildings of stone and steel.

On one hand, to have hope is a joyful and wonderful feeling, but the downside of it for me can be cruel and bitter.

But today I will choose hope.

I pray that you will all enjoy good health and good feelings and I thank all of you from the bottom of my heart for all you have done and continue to do for me and for our Mother Earth.

Please keep me in your prayers and thoughts as these last days of 2016 slip away.

I send you my love and my respect for all of you who have gathered in the name of mother earth and our unborn generations. I stand with you there in spirit.

Doksha.

In the Spirit of Crazy Horse,

Leonard Peltier

• Call President Obama for Leonard Peltier: 202-456-1111 (White House Comment Line)  or 202-456-1414 (White House Switchboard); and send a text to these numbers if your cellphone provider allows for text-to-landline service (a fee may apply) .
• Email President Obama: http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments.
• Post a comment on Obama’s Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/potus/?fref=ts&hc_location=ufi or message him at https://www.facebook.com/whitehouse (or https://m.me/whitehouse).
• Send a tweet to President Obama: @POTUS or @WhiteHouse and use hastags #FREELEONARDPELTIER #LeonardPeltier and/or #FreePeltier.
• Write a letter: President Barack Obama, The White House, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20500.
• Watch the calls to action by our friends at the Human Rights Action Center. Then please urge President Obama to grant clemency.
• Also visit the 2016 clemency campaign for Leonard Peltier hosted by Amnesty International – USA and take action.
• The Office of the Pardon Attorney (OPA), DOJ, welcomes communications regarding clemency matters. Express your strong support of Leonard Peltier’s application for clemency in a letter, email and/or phone call to the OPA. Make reference to Leonard Peltier #89637-132 and his application for clemency dated February 17, 2016. Urge the OPA to recommend to President Obama that he grant clemency to Leonard Peltier:  Honorable Robert A. Zauzmer, Acting Pardon Attorney, U.S. Department of Justice, 950 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, DC  20530; Telephone: 202-616-6070; Email: USPardon.Attorney@usdoj.gov.