The U.S. government is continuing its brutal war of terror, in Iraq and worldwide, alongside its war against undocumented immigrants and its war on drugs, which has been used to put a record seven million U.S. residents, many of them in the prime of their youth, in jail, on probation or on parole. Detention of immigrants has now made them the fastest growing section of the prison population. This further confirms the racist character of the U.S. which already has imposed modern-day genocide on African American youth, using mass incarceration. Meanwhile, the crime of a government that does not provide for its youth, by eliminating the violence of poverty, and providing the right to education, jobs, recreation and all that is required, goes unpunished.
President George W. Bush recently proposed a $2.9 trillion budget, representing the massive wealth produced by working people here and abroad. Yet there are more children living in poverty, now estimated at 20 percent of all children and even more of the children of national minorities. The already record high prison rates are expected to bring an increase of 200,000 more prisoners in the next five years. Alongside imprisoning the youth, the government is deporting immigrants in large numbers, often without grounds. Recent raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have meant the arbitrary deportation of 150 people from one New Jersey town and more than 700 from Los Angeles. Meatpacking plants, day laborers, places where union battles are raging, all are being targeted. And these raids are increasing. Now ICE is raiding public transit and next it will be the community colleges and high schools.
The trend of the rich getting richer, poor poorer, and millions facing a form of civil death through poverty, racial discrimination, mass raids, detention and imprisonment signify a failed state that is dragging down all humanity in war and violence. The U.S. ruling elite, which is the richest class in the history of human beings, is petrified at the prospect of working class youth leading the struggle for political empowerment and new arrangements in the socialized economy. Through cultural aggression and a three-pronged war on terror, war on drugs and war on undocumented immigrants, the U.S. ruling class is depriving poor working class youth and people of their right to be and to change the world.
Racism and chauvinism are deeply embedded in the institutional state fabric of the United States, rooted in the kidnapping and enslavement of Africans, the theft of land and genocide of Native peoples, the conquest and seizure of Mexican territory and the colonization of Puerto Rico. It is no coincidence that the U.S. ruling elite is most terrified of the revolutionary potential of the descendants of Africans, immigrants and their children from Mexico, Central and South America, the Caribbean and colonized Puerto Rico.
The contemporary capturing and cruel imprisonment and abuse of young men and increasingly young women from both the African American and Hispanic communities are forms of state terrorism and civil death. Making petty theft, drugs and lifestyle targets of law enforcement, keeps the working poor and especially national minority communities in the constant grip of state-terror and violence. Marginalization, violence and the stranglehold of outdated social property relations perpetuate yet more violence and criminalized behavior.
State-organized targeting, criminalizing and kidnapping of young men and women from national minorities wreak havoc on their communities. Instead of upholding its modern duty to change the social conditions and guarantee the rights of all and their cultural and material well-being, the failed U.S. state is doing the opposite and has put whole communities under police siege. Far from addressing this impunity, the government is resurrecting its COINTELPRO terror, going backward to a long-discredited and criminal program of state terror openly against resistance, especially among African Americans and revolutionary forces. The demand to investigate COINTELPRO, its crimes and current role, is a just demand that not only speaks to the crimes of the past, but demands rejection of such programs and different arrangements of governance. It is one part of the determined and growing rejection of U.S. state terrorism.
In the face of a failed state that denies its social responsibilities to its people and with the forcible removal of so many mothers and fathers, hundreds of thousands if not millions of children and youth are left to fend for themselves in hostile anti-social conditions without a pro-social state and without one or both parents or any stable guardian to help them. The situation is a state-organized social calamity beyond academic debates of crime, punishment and revenge. The social conditions must be changed. An alternate world must be built that cherishes the youth and guarantees the people’s rights and well being.
The current three-pronged war has caused enormous damage to those communities specifically targeted by the state for attack and to the working class and people generally. The two parties of the ruling class, the Republicans and Democrats are the main proponents of this war and provide no way forward. Instead they are taking the country backward, insisting on clinging to their failed system and its failed state. It is this refusal to move forward and the failure it brings that generates yet more vicious violence and attacks on the people — more use of force at home and abroad, more criminalization of resistance, views and the peoples generally, more prisons and concentration camps. These are not solutions, they are desperate acts of revenge stemming from the failure of the U.S. state and imperialist system.
The necessity facing the U.S. working class and all its leading forces is to turn the ugly situation around by rejecting the failed U.S. Empire and its three-pronged war and racist and chauvinist conscience. A society fit for human beings can be built. The potential of urbanized peoples and their highly socialized forces of production is waiting to be unleashed, freed from the shackles of private monopoly control. Prisons will no longer be used to terrorize and control the people for the benefit of an anti-social ruling elite. They will be transformed into museums to teach the youth of the degradation, horror and terror spewed upon the people by the U.S. imperialists. Humanizing the social environment, including the judicial system and society’s social forms, guaranteeing the rights of all and their cultural and material well-being will be high on the agenda of the new arrangements of a progressive state dedicated to political empowerment of the people and resolving its pressing contradictions instead of suppressing their resolution with violence and civil death.
The time is now to organize for such a state, for an anti-war government that will represent and harness this drive of the U.S. working class for new arrangements that oppose war — whether the war on terror, or on drugs, or on immigrants and national minorities — and embrace empowerment of the people.[TOP]
San Francisco, February 26-March 2
Week of Actions Against the Immigrant Raids
Join the various immigrant rights organizations and coalitions to respond to, and resist, the recent immigration raids! No to the proposed guestworker program! Legalization for all!
A week of protest is being organized against the government raids, against guestworker programs and in support of legalization. Rallies, vigils, marches, and more are planned. Immigrant communities are coming in from all over the Bay Area. Plans include:
• Monday: Opening rally, community of faith.
• Tuesday: Regional Labor Councils, Labor leaders, day laborer centers of Northern California — defend immigrant rights and all rights of all workers
• Wednesday: We are families! Teachers, youth and children speak out
• Thursday: We will not be criminalized!
• Friday: Closing rally, march to Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi’s office.
Please come out as many days as you can, and bring people with you!
WHEN: February 26 – March 2; 11-1 everyday that week.
WHERE: Homeland Security/ICE Building, 630 Sansome St., downtown San Francisco.
For more info, please feel free to call Renee Saucedo at (415) 553-3404, or St. Peter’s Housing Committee at (415) 487-9203
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Mexican Workers Held Captive in U.S.
Hurricane Katrina Survivors Join Workers in Confronting Louisiana Slave Holder
Close to 100 Mexican workers have been trapped for months in Westlake, Louisiana after their employer illegally confiscated their passports. Workers were recruited under false pretenses and transported to the U.S. where they have been subjected to humiliating conditions and treatment. Workers and advocates say that the employer, a prominent business leader, has violated anti-slavery and human trafficking laws while leasing the workers to local businesses for a profit.
Already vulnerable and made economically desperate in their home country the workers were defrauded by the employer who promised steady work and fair pay in the U.S. He charged them for airfare to the U.S., and then proceeded to pack them into vans to cross the border. He seized their passports in Mexico, ostensibly for their own safety. Despite numerous requests by the workers, this business owner has steadfastly refused to return the passports, in effect holding them captive in his employ. Workers who have organized to demand their passports have faced retaliation and threats of deportation.
Hurricane Katrina survivors and AfricanAmerican civil rights leaders will join the guest workers to confront the employer and take a stand against modern day slavery. The group is demanding that the employer return the workers’ passports. The group is also challenging government officials to recognize that the H-2B visa program is being used as an opportunity to subject workers to slave-like conditions across Louisiana .
In advance of the confrontation, Katrina survivors and workers have alerted the U.S. Attorney General, U.S. Department of Justice, U.S. Department of Labor, Federal Bureau of Investigation, and other state and local law enforcement agencies of the practices of this prominent Louisiana slaveholder.
Mexican workers, hurricane Katrina survivors and various organizations and activists will confront this employer armed with copies of federal anti-slavery statute and handcuffs on February 15.[TOP]
Stop Government Profiling and Terrorizing
ICE Raids Los Angeles Buses
On February 12, 2007, Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents raided the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) public transit system in Los Angeles without any cause or justification. ICE profiled passengers, arbitrarily harassed those they thought were immigrants and disappeared people right off the bus. The raid is part of what ICE calls its “stepped-up” enforcement to “swiftly” detain and deport undocumented immigrants. The LA raid follows the killing of three immigrants along the border by government agents last week, on-going attacks on communities across the country and the December ICE raids at Swift meatpacking plants in six states, where almost 1,300 workers were detained, many deported and some still remain as disappeared.
Organizations and activists in Los Angeles immediately organized to oppose these unjust raids and blatant state terrorism against the public, and to defend everyone detained. Organizations active in defending the rights of immigrants and African Americans together with community and student organizations issued a press release and organized a press conference and demonstration at the federal building in downtown LA on February 14.
Organizers are demanding:
1) An Immediate Moratorium on Immigration Raids and Deportations
2) An end to the racial profiling, interrogations without cause and detaining and deporting MTA passengers.
February 14 will also see many other press conferences organized by rights groups. The various organizations are all demanding that the government stop the raids and deportations. Actions include those in Washington, DC, as well as Boston, Miami, Philadelphia, and Portland, Maine; Chicago, Milwaukee and Springfield, Missouri; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Dallas, Texas, and Phoenix, Arizona.[TOP]
$35,000 Bond Set With No Crime Committed
Community Outraged at ICE Raid and Arrest of Family
Despite frigid weather, a busload of family and community supporters from civil and human rights organizations traveled to Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey today to demonstrate their support for the Siraj family. Another chapter in a nightmare that has ruined the lives of a tight-knit family unfolded as an Immigration Judge, in a hearing closed to the public, set a forbidding bond in the amount of $20,000 for the mother and $15,000 for the daughter.
Today’s hearing comes a week after twenty-four year old Matin Siraj was sentenced to 30 years in prison for false terrorism charges based on a NYPD-paid informant’s entrapment. Less than twelve hours after sentencing, the Siraj family’s Queens home was raided at dawn by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the father, mother and daughter were arrested and jailed in New Jersey. [The family are members of DRUM and have been active in defending the rights of immigrants and opposing the government attack on their son. The mother and daughter have no immigration issues pending and the father’s case for asylum is currently under appeal. So ICE had no grounds for arresting the family].
Immediately after today’s hearing, speaking to a crowd of supporters in a press conference organized by DRUM, the family’s immigration lawyer, Mona Shah, reported that the bond hearing was unusually lengthy, the bond amount was peculiarly high for a routine immigration matter, and that the mother and daughter were visibly distraught. After hearing the Judge’s decision at the support demonstration, a family member expressed, “The Judge has set a prohibitive, unfair bond. I cannot make magic to raise this money and the family has already broken their backs to fight a preposterous case against their son. The lives of an innocent family are being destroyed.” While family and community members scramble to raise funds, the family will be held at Elizabeth Detention Center in New Jersey. The father will not receive a similar hearing and is instead subject to an ICE Administrative decision for deportation under an unspecified timeline.
An organizer of today’s demonstration in support of the family, Fahd Ahmed expressed, “Setting such an unreasonable bond is clearly another political tactic to keep our communities fearful and silent. The Siraj family, as another victim of the US government’s “war on terror,” is being targeted for their outspoken cries for justice on behalf of their son…they remain steadfast and courageous in speaking the truth as the government continues to try to break their spirits”.
Given the high profile media attention on their son’s case, in which there were many underhanded legal irregularities and rights violations, these arrests and today’s unreachable bond are being seen by the community as an attempt to silence everyone and make an example of the family through harassment. The family and community maintain that Matin was ensnared by an NYPD informant, evidence of which the court did not properly consider, resulting in an unfair trial and sentencing. The family has filed a notice of appeal for their son’s case.
From detention, the mother recently said that “this is a systematic targeting of Muslims, a political attack on a peaceful family — and we have been caught in the middle of it. We have not gotten any justice and will continue to speak the truth. We will continue to struggle with patience and courage.”
DRUM, as a community based organization that works with Muslim and South Asian immigrants and has seen the targeting of this community before and especially after 9/11, is calling on all concerned individuals and organizations to support the immediate release of the Siraj family. DRUM, alongside countless civil and human rights organizations and concerned citizens will continue to expose the ongoing injustices of the “War on Terror” against this family and all targeted communities.
For questions, contact: Fahd Ahmed, DRUM (940) 391-2660 or Kavitha Pawria, 718-216-0756, www.drumnation.org[TOP]
For Your Information
South Asians Organize: Desis Rising Up and Moving
Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM) was founded in early 2000 to build a strong low-income South Asian community led organization in a climate of worsening conditions for migrants in the U.S.
South Asians make up the fastest growing ethnic community and second largest Asian immigrant community in New York City. Unlike the professional class of immigrants who entered the U.S. post-1965 Immigration and Naturalization Act, the more recent wave of South Asian migrants are those being displaced by globalization and structural adjustment in South Asia and recruited by current U.S. immigration policy to fill low-wage service sector jobs including taxi driving, restaurant work, domestic work, and sweatshop industries. Many recent immigrants become undocumented when their visas expire or when employers fail to sponsor them as promised. As a result of undocumented and easily exploitable status, many South Asians work in low wage or no wage jobs and lack access to higher education, social services, and healthcare.
Many families in our community have been ripped apart by deportation and thousands of other live in constant fear of law enforcement agencies. Since the passage of some of the harshest immigration laws in U.S. history, including the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA) of 1996 and the 1996 Anti-Terrorist and Effective Death Penalty Act, immigrants have become the fastest growing segment of the prison population.
After September 11, 2001, the anti-immigrant climate escalated with Executive Orders and policies targeting South Asians, Arabs, and Muslims, and eventually all migrants. These policies include: detention without charges for 48 hours and closed hearings (Sept. 2001), secrecy of names and location of detainees (Nov. 2001), the Absconder Initiative (Jan. 2002), student reporting (May 2002), the NSEERS Program (National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, Dec. 2002), the October Plan (October 2004), the Safe Third Country Agreement (December 2004) and the REAL ID Act (March 2005).
The impact of these policies has been the detentions and deportations of several thousand Arab, South Asian, and Muslims under conditions that have violated due process and human rights. Of the few thousand immigrants who have been detained or deported as post 9/11 “Special Cases,” none have been charged with any crimes related to terrorism, yet almost all have suffered basic due process violations including indefinite detention without charges, often for 6 months to more than a year.
The due process violations have been focused largely on South Asians in the NYC area, where the largest concentration of post 9/11 arrests have taken place. The effects of these policies are and will be enormous for the more than 11 million undocumented and millions of non-citizen immigrants nationally in our communities, workplaces, and schools. The climate of criminalization of immigrants, particularly Muslim immigrants, has created an overwhelming fear among families to go to hospitals, motor vehicle offices, Medicaid offices, enroll in school, or to seek employment or housing for fear of arrest, detention, and deportation. Families and children have been plunged further into poverty and invisibility.
DRUM’s Mission
DRUM — Desis Rising Up and Moving — is a community based social justice organization of low-income South Asian immigrants and immigrants facing deportation in New York City. Desi is a common term used by people of South Asian descent to identify as peoples from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and parts of the diaspora including Africa, England, Fiji, Guyana, and Trinidad. Our vision is to organize low-income South Asian immigrants for racial, economic, and social justice on critical local struggles and their global roots.
DRUM is committed to centralizing poor and working class immigrants as the agents of social change and follows the leadership of low-income South Asian immigrants. DRUM builds the leadership and power of immigrants and families affected by detention, deportation and unjust immigration policy, and of low-income South Asian immigrant communities to halt expanding anti-immigrant enforcement policies, win legalization for undocumented immigrants, and gain safe access to services for all immigrants, including housing, education, medical care, and workplace rights. DRUM builds the leadership of low-income, undocumented and detained immigrants, particularly women and youth, through popular education, grassroots organizing campaigns, and direct advocacy.
Our long-term vision is to build power in low-income migrant worker communities in the U.S. and link globally to build just global trade and migration policies rooted in human rights and dignity. DRUM builds solidarity with low-income communities of color inside the U.S. and in the Third World to further movements for justice and equality around the world.
For more information see drumnation.org.
[TOP]
Government Imposes Murder Charges From 1971
Defend Black Panthers Who Resisted
Government Terrorism
Eight former Black Panthers were arrested January 23 in California, New York and Florida on charges related to the 1971 killing of a San Francisco police officer. Similar charges were thrown out after it was revealed that police used torture to extract confessions when some of these same men were arrested in New Orleans in 1973. Richard Brown, Richard O’Neal, Ray Boudreaux, and Hank Jones were arrested in California. Francisco Torres was arrested in Queens, New York. Harold Taylor was arrested in Florida. Two men charged have been held as political prisoners for more than 30 years — Herman Bell and Jalil Muntaqim are both in New York State prisons. A ninth man — Ronald Stanley Bridgeforth — is still being sought. The men were charged with the murder of Sergeant John Young and conspiracy that encompasses numerous acts between 1968 and 1973.
In 2005 several of those charged were held in contempt and jailed for refusing to testify before a San Francisco Grand Jury investigating the 1971 police shooting. The government alleged that Black radical groups were involved in the 34-year old case where two men armed with shotguns attacked the Ingleside Police Station resulting in the death of a police sergeant and the injury of a civilian clerk.
In 1973, thirteen Black activists were arrested in New Orleans, purportedly in connection with the San Francisco events. Some of them were tortured for several days by law enforcement authorities, in striking similarity to the horrors visited upon detainees at Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib. In 1975, a Federal Court in San Francisco threw out all of the evidence obtained in New Orleans.
The two lead San Francisco Police Department investigators from more than 30 years ago, along with FBI agents, re-opened the case. Rather than submit to proceedings they felt were abusive of the law and the Constitution, five men chose to stand in contempt of court and were sent to jail. They were released when the Grand Jury term expired. Four of these same five (Ray Boudreax, Richard Brown, Hank Jones, Harold Taylor), are among those arrested and charged with murder. The fifth, John Bowman, died recently.
[The five also took part in production of a video recently produced: “Legacy of Torture: The War Against the Black Liberation Movement,” which is being used to demonstrate that the government, despite its own admission that COINTELPRO was illegal, is trying to resurrect these same crimes and methods of intimidation. Resistance is growing to this government terrorism and impunity.][TOP]
Jericho Calls for Congressional
Investigation into COINTELPRO
Congressman John Conyers of Detroit, Michigan is the new chair of the United States House of Representative Committee on the Judiciary. The House Committee on the Judiciary jurisdiction includes the following areas: (1) the judiciary and judicial proceedings, civil and criminal; (2) civil liberties; (3) claims against the United States; (4) national penitentiaries and (5) Revision and codification of the Statutes of the United States.
Herman Ferguson, on behalf of The Jericho Movement, has written a letter to Congressman Conyers requesting that he schedule hearings on “COINTELPRO: Its Legacy and Continuing Impact.” (see below). It is our hope that these hearings, if held, will not only further expose the FBI and local law enforcement crimes against the Black Liberation Movement and many of those involved in it, but also result in legislation addressing some of these injustices.
Of particular concern to the Jericho Movement is the release and treatment of our political prisoners. Though the United States steadfastly denies it, presently there are many political prisoners in the United States, the majority of them Black/New Africans who were targets of the COINTELPRO “Black Nationalist Hate Groups” program. Many of these brothers and sisters have been incarcerated for decades.
For example, Jalil Abdul Muntaqim has been incarcerated since 1971; Sundiata Acoli and Herman Bell since 1973. It is critical that the human rights and constitutional violations surrounding their arrests, trials, sentencing, conditions of their confinement and continuing incarceration because of their political histories — all were members of the Black Panther Party — and continuing commitment to the liberation of Black/New African people be brought to the wider attention of the public. Sundiata Acoli, now 70 and with a near exemplary record, has twice been denied parole.
If nothing else, congressional hearings on “COINTELPRO: Its Legacy and Continuing Impact” would go along way towards achieving this result.
To this end, we are calling on all supporters of political prisoners — defense committees; revolutionary nationalist, radical, and progressive organizations, elected officials, community, religious, spiritual leaders, etc. — to write, fax, or call Congressman Conyers to urge that schedule hearings on COINTELPRO. Congressman Conyers’ address is as follows:
The Honorable John Conyers
2426 Rayburn Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-5126
(202) 225-0072 Fax[TOP]
Investigate COINTELPRO and State Terrorism Against African Americans
Dear Congressman Conyers:
Congratulations on your pending ascendancy to the chair of the House Committee on the Judiciary. We write to request that you schedule hearings on “COINTELPRO: Its Legacy and Continuing Impact.” For more than a decade, many of us have been requesting hearings on COINTELPRO, and hopefully, legislation that begins to address some of the injustices committed against the Black movement and activists as result of COINTELPRO. We hope that one of your acts as the new chair of the Judiciary Committee will be to schedule these hearings.
As I am sure you are aware, COINTELPRO is an acronym for a series of FBI counterintelligence programs against, inter alia, the Communist party, and so-called “Black Nationalist Hate Groups.” The August 1967 FBI memorandum announcing the program describes its goals as:
1. Prevent a coalition of militant black nationalist groups;
2. Prevent the rise of a messiah who could unify and electrify the militant nationalist movement;
3. Prevent violence on the part of the black nationalist groups;
4. Prevent militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining respectability by discrediting them;
5. Prevent the long range growth of militant black nationalist organizations especially among youth.
The targets of the Black Nationalist Hate Group program included a wide array of Black organizations and individuals, among them the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), the Revolutionary Action Movement, the Republic of New Afrika, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., Kwame Toure, formerly known as Stokely Carmichael, and countless others.
Though the Black Panther Party (BPP) was not among the original targets of the program, in September 1968, then FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover labeled the BPP “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country.” Thereafter the BPP became the primary focus of the program, and was ultimately the target of 233 of the believed total authorized “Black Nationalist” COINTELPRO actions.
As the Final Report of the 1976 Select Committee to Study Government Operations With Respect to Intelligence Activists states: “Although the claimed purpose of the Bureau’s COINTELPRO tactics was to prevent violence, some of the FBI’s tactics against the BPP were clearly intended to foster violence, and many others could reasonably have been expected to cause violence.”
In its pursuit of the BPP, the FBI, often together with local law enforcement officials, knew no bounds. BPP members and supporters were not only spied on and harassed but, in blatant violation of the both the United States Constitution and International law, falsely accused of crimes that they had not committed. Many were wounded and murdered by police and FBI.
December 4, 2006, marked the thirty-eighth anniversary of the assassination of Fred Hampton, one of the leaders of the Chicago chapter of the BPP, by local Chicago police thanks to information from an FBI informant, while he slept in his bed. Hampton was shot twice in the head, once in the arm and shoulder; while three other people sleeping in the same bed escaped unharmed. Mark Clark, sleeping in a living room chair, was also murdered while asleep. Hampton’s wife, who was eight months pregnant, was also shot but survived. Four Panthers sleeping in the apartment were also wounded, while one escaped injury. Fred Hampton was 21 years old when he was assassinated; Mark Clark was 17.
While the true impact of the COINTELPRO "Black Nationalist Hate Group Program" on the Black Liberation Movement will probably never be known because the FBI never recorded all of its activities, has destroyed many of its files, and many of the architects and participants are now deceased, it is crucial that the impact and continuing legacy of this program be investigated and remedies developed to repair the damage it has done. This is particularly true with respect to the many members of the Black Panther party, the Republic of New Afrika and other organizations who today languish in jail as a result of their having been targeted by the FBI and local law enforcement officials as part of the counterintelligence programs.
We urgently request that you schedule hearings on “COINTELPRO: Its Legacy and Continuing Impact” in the near future. Thank you in advance for your prompt attention this matter. We expect that you will give our request the serious attention that it deserves.
Yours Truly.
Herman Ferguson,
Co-Founder, The Jericho Movement
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Adopt-A-Prisoner 2007
We have initiated a new campaign in support of our Puerto Rican political prisoners and as part of the on-going work to win their release. The campaign is called Adopt-a-Prisoner and we are calling on all concerned to adopt one or all of the prisoners and support the struggle against their inhumane treatment and unjust sentences. The campaign is also a means of expressing the firm resolve to carry forward the fight to free these and all political prisoners and win the independence of Puerto Rico.
There are 5 easy steps:
Step 1: Go to http://www.prolibertadweb.com/page4.html and read about one of our prisoners.
Step 2: Choose one of them or all of them and make the commitment to write to him/her/them once or twice a month.
Step 3: If you can, send them a commissary donation (small financial donation $5, whatever; every little bit counts). These small donations allow them to pay for phone calls to legal counsel and family and friends and also for over priced materials behind the walls.
Step 4: Email us Prolibertad@hotmail.com and let us know who you have adopted. We want to keep track of this campaign and see how many of you are able to commit to supporting our prisoners.
Step 5: Motivate all of your friends to Adopt-a-Prisoner. Be creative! Invite ProLibertad to speak to your friends or organize a card/letter writing party. Let us know how we can support you.
Together We Can
Make Freedom Happen!
Together We Can Support Our Heroes!
[TOP]
Petition to the United Nations General Assembly
Free the Puerto Rican Political Prisoners
On behalf of the Puerto Rican Political Prisoners: Carlos Alberto Torres, Haydee Beltran and Oscar Lopez Rivera,
We, the undersigned, respectfully petition the United Nations General Assembly to address in plenary the cases of the Puerto Rican Political Prisoners incarcerated in U.S. jails for their political beliefs and actions in the defense of self determination and freedom for Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico has been a colony of the United States of America since 1898; the United Nations Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, Resolution 1514 (XV) declares colonialism as an international human rights violation and calls for the self-determination and independence of all colonies.
The United Nations Special Committee on De-colonization recognizes Puerto Rico’s colonial reality and has passed many resolutions calling for its self-determination and independence. The Puerto Rican Political Prisoners found Puerto Rico’s colonial reality intolerable and unacceptable; this led them to join the Puerto Rican Independence movement and to confront the United States government, which was their right as International citizens, as stipulated in the United Nations Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, Resolution 1514 (XV).
When arrested in April 1980, the Puerto Rican Political Prisoners invoked prisoner of war status and argued that the U.S. courts and its political subdivisions did not have jurisdiction to try them as criminals; they petitioned their cases to be handed over to an international impartial court, which was their right under Article 4 of the Geneva Convention Relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War of August 12, 1949. The U.S. government did not recognize their request and tried them; they did not defend themselves and were given sentences 19 times longer than the average sentence given out that year. These sentences are punitive and excessive; it is clear that they were being punished for fighting against U.S. colonialism in Puerto Rico.
During their more than 25-year incarceration, the Puerto Rican Political Prisoners have been subjected to physical and psychological torture; this is in direct violation of international law, which prohibits the mistreatment of prisoners due to their political beliefs [United Nations; Minimum Uniform Rules on the Treatment of Prisoners (UNSMRTP), Rule A1 6(1).].
We petition the United Nations General Assembly to pass a resolution in favor of the unconditional release of the Puerto Rican Political Prisoners from U.S. jails and for the de-colonization of Puerto Rico.
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