Prisons and Political Prisoners
Click here to see articles tagged police and prisons on the defenestrator site.
Organizing against prisons and the prison industrial complex:
Critical Resistance
Seeking to build an international movement to end the Prison Industrial Complex by challenging the belief that caging and controlling people makes us safe...
HRC- Fed Up
FedUp! is the Pittsburgh chapter of the Human Rights Coalition dedicated to upholding the rights of prisoners through providing resources and support, exposing injustices, and building relationships with people in prison and their advocates.
HRC Chester/Phila
Families and Friends of Prisoners organizing for human rights.
STOPMAX
Promoting and Supporting a national movement to end the use of solitary confinement and related forms of torture in US prisons.
Emergency Response Network
help and comfort to loved ones and friends, as well as to hapless prisoners, who find themselves in that situation.
Books Through Bars
A Philadelphia collective who've spent the last 10 year sending books to prisoners. Everyone is invited to send free books to prisoners every 1st and 3rd Tuesday, 7:30PM at the A-Space, 4722 Baltimore Ave. in West Philly. 215-727-0882 #2
Fight for Lifers
Educating the public about the realities of serving a life sentence as well as advocating for prisoners and attempting to fight for parole reviews for Lifers.
Human Rights Coalition
Coalition of family members of inmates fighting the Prison Industrial Complex and for their loved ones.
Prison Activist Resource Centre
PARC is a prison abolitionist group committed to exposing and challenging all forms of institutionalized racism, sexism, able-ism, heterosexism, and classism, specifically within the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC).
Real Cost of Prisons Blog
A great place to catch up on what's happening in prisons in the US. Also the producers of the highly recommended comic series.
Support for PPs and POWs:
Jericho Movement
For the release of all political prisoners and prisoners of war.
4strugglemag
Views, thoughts, and analysis from the hearts and minds of north american political prisoners and friends...
International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu Jamal
Anarchist Black Cross Federation
Prison Activist Resource Center
Political Prisoners in the USA
The US holds over 150 political prisoners in its prisons, many framed for their activism, some in prison for their actions which were part of their struggle for a freer world.
For those of us who still enjoy a certain degree of freedom in this country, who share the struggle against a class society for freedom and who believe in a world based on solidarity, we owe these prisoners our support. Below are links for support websites for some who were sent down for their part in the struggle.
Russell Maroon Shoats is a political prisoner being held in the control unit of SCI Greene, a supermax prison in western Pennyvania. Russell was a founding member of Philadelpia's Black Unity Council which eventually merged with the Black Panther Party. While a member of the Philadelphia chapter Russell was arrested and tried for the murder of a police officer. He received an unfair trial, and without adequate legal representation he received two life sentences. Russell has spent twenty-three of his twenty-seven years in prison in a lock-down sensory deprivation unit in retaliation for his political activities and escape attempts in the early 70's. Russell recently was diagnosed with prostate cancer and is trying to be transferred closer to Philadelphia for treatment.
Sundiata Acoli
Sundiata is a Political Prisoner, a brilliant mathematician, artist and committed freedom fighter for the New Afrikan Nation. Ambushed on the New Jersey Turnpike with Assata Shakur and Zayd Malik Shakur, Sundiata has been unjustly incarcerated for 26 years. Assata remains exiled in Cuba.
Mumia Abu Jamal
Mumia Abu-Jamal is an award-winning African-American journalist, the author of several books, and a political prisoner currently sitting on Pennsylvania's Death Row. He was convicted and sentenced to death for the alleged murder of a white policeman on December 9, 1981, in a trial defined by prosecutorial, judicial, and even defense attorney misconduct.
Tom Manning
Tom Manning is a Vietnam veteran, working class revolutionary and US political prisoner. He militantly struggled against the war in Vietnam and supports the right of self-determination of all oppressed peoples. Tom Manning was captured in 1985 and sentenced to 53 years in federal prison for a series of bombings carried out as "armed propaganda" against apartheid and U.S. imperialism. He tirelessly fought against racist, genocidal capitalism in the USA. Tom Manning was also wrongly sentenced to 80 years in prison for the self-defense killing of a New Jersey state trooper.
Leonard Peltier
Leonard Peltier, a citizen of the Anishinabe and Lakota Nations, is a father, a grandfather, an artist, a writer, and an Indigenous rights activist. He has spent more than twenty-seven years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Amnesty International considers him a "political prisoner" who should be "immediately and unconditionally released."
more political prisoners ..
from jerichomovement ...
Recommended reading:
A soldiers story - Kuwasi Balagoon
Celling America
Discipline or Punish - Michel Foucault
