Leonard Peltier denied clemency
It Turns out that money does buy political favors

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Show 28 2001

Leonard Peltier denied clemency
Turns out money does buy political favors

Ex-president Clinton pardoned hundreds of people in a 
last minute rush before he turned over the keys to the 
white house to George W. Bush. Supporters of American 
Indian Movement activist Leonard Peltier had been working 
for almost two years on petitioning Clinton for clemency. 
Clinton said he would review the case carefully, but 
revolutionary activists were skeptical. In the end, Bill 
knew it was too politically risky for him and now-Senator 
Hillary. FBI agents had protested against amnesty for 
Peltier in the weeks before Clinton stepped down.

Leonard Peltier was convicted of killing two FBI agents 
on June 26, 1975, despite the lack of eyewitness 
testimony and contradictions in the prosecution's case. 
There were numerous problems with this trial -- important 
witnesses against Peltier later admitted they lied, the 
prosecution withheld ballistics information which would 
have exonerated Peltier from the defense, the defense was 
prohibited from discussing the FBI's practice of using 
false affidavits and of intimidating witnesses, and so 
on.(1) Peltier was convicted in a sham trial because the 
united $tates government needed a scapegoat and he was a 
participant in a militant movement for self-determination 
for First Nation peoples.

Clinton's pardons were par for the corrupt course. He 
pardoned Susan McDougal of the Whitewater scam and his 
own brother, Roger Clinton. Among the surprises was Marc 
Rich, a billionaire who bilked the Amerikan government 
out of 48 million dollars in taxes and spent 17 years in 
exile in Switzerland rather than face a trial and prison 
time in the united $nakes. Rich's ex-wife gave a lot of 
money to Hillary's senate campaign, and begged Clinton to 
let her ex-husband "come home".

If we Peltier supporters had hundreds of thousands of 
dollars to bribe Klinton perhaps he would be coming home 
by now. But we didn't -- all we had was the truth and a 
commitment to help the oppressed. Evidently these don't 
count for much with the Amerikan bourgeoisie, whose 
courts have refused to even consider the possibility of 
reasonable doubt in the case.
Clinton's decision reaffirms the need for a long-term, 
broad strategy, even in legal battles which can be won 
under capitalism. If Clinton had given Peltier amnesty, 
for example, it would not have been because of a handful 
of lawyers. Rather, it would have been the result of the 
political pressure of the masses, aroused and organized 
by activist groups like the Leonard Peltier Defense 
Committee and the MIM.

Furthermore, we are bound to suffer some defeats. But 
even these defeats give us the opportunity for future 
victories. We can use them to further expose the 
corruption of the Amerikan imperialist government. As 
Leonard Peltier said hiself in a 30 January statement to 
his supporters, "We can see who was granted clemency and 
why. The big donors to the President's campaign were able 
to buy justice, something we just couldn't afford. 
Meanwhile, many political prisoners continue to languish 
unjustly, proof that this nation's talk about 
reconciliation is nothing but empty rhetoric."

Notes:
1. "Leonard's attorney rebuts the FBI," http://www.lpsg-
co.org/peltier.harbury.html.

[break]

Mumia Abu Jamal is a former Black Panther on death row. He was 
framed for the righteous killing of a police 
officer engaged in an act of police brutality. 
He was sentenced to death in 1982 after a bogus 
trial. His appeals are now in the much quicker 
federal courts and an execution could happen very soon. 
Prior to his arrest, Mumia was a radio 
journalist who exposed police brutality. From 
within the walls through books, articles and 
radio commentaries, Mumia continues to be an 
outspoken leader of the oppressed. With Mumia's access the media 
limited, we recorded one of his essays to bring it to a wider 
audience. See for yourself the real reason why the state of 
Pennsylvania wants to kill Mumia Abu Jamal.

[MAJ essays, vol 2 Track 3: the snitch factor 5:24]





No Free Speech in Prison

Upon receiving your MIM Notes, I found them to be very 
informative and educational to young comrades who are 
learning of the struggle. I found well printed facts that 
the puppet media fails to inform its dumbfounded 
audience. MIM Notes is truly a publication that responds 
to the cries from the invisible world of lost souls.

On any given day in Amerikkka, more than two million 
people in prisons and jails spend their days subjected to 
the most rigorous censorship and are denied the 
fundamental rights protected everywhere else by the 
freedom of speech. They are denied reading material 
deemed objectionable and punished for possessing 
"radical" views, but rewarded for renouncing them. No 
matter whether the winds of the United Snake$ Supreme 
Court blow left or right, prisoners are most often 
utterly abandoned by the federal courts.

Prison officials have not hesitated to use their position 
of total control over every aspect of a prisoner's life 
to punish an inmate for expressing unpopular views. And 
the federal courts show unbecoming credulity when 
administrators dutifully insist their goals were proper. 
For example in Nickens v. White, prison officials at a 
medium security institution placed an inmate in solitary 
confinement and then transferred him to a maximum 
facility when he refused to take his name off a petition. 
The petition, signed by about two hundred prisoners, was 
directed to a state official and protested prison 
conditions. The US court of appeals for the Eighth 
Circuit upheld both the policy against petitions (imagine 
that) as well as its peculiar enforcement. The court 
found no First Amendment problem in punishing a prisoner 
for refusing to renounce his prior speech. If I am not 
mistaken the First Amendment states that people have the 
right "to petition the government for a redress of 
grievances". How can we depend on these unjust courts 
that upon hearing a case from a prisoner, it mysteriously 
gets a case of Constitutional amnesia.

The First Amendment protection of the quest for political 
and social truth is only discoverable when people are 
free "to think as they please and speak what they think"! 
Free speech rights are also cherished as a vacation 
against tyranny and abuse of government power. Within a 
prison, the hand of government is far heavier and more 
frequently involved. What the government and its 
prisoncrats fail to realize is that punishing a 
revolutionary comrade for speech does not discourage the 
speech; it only drives it underground and encourages more 
unity among the struggle!!! Remember Comrades, the most 
dangerous man on earth is one who has knowledge. He 
becomes notorious once he begins to use it!

--a New Jersey prisoner, 26 November 2000.



Censorship in New York prisons

I finally received my first issues of MIM Notes. It was 
the October issues. Or more accurately, I should say I 
received what was left of them. I personally met with the 
chairperson of media review committee. I agreed to have 
two pages removed from each paper, which he said were a 
bit too radical.

After waiting nearly two months I received one page from 
the October 1 issue all in Spanish and two pages from the 
October 15 issue. This coward censored 20 pages in all. 
It's evident that literature of this nature exposing the 
government for what it is isn't wanted in the hands of 
prisoners.

I recently received a notice from this coward again 
stating that Nov. 1, 2000 of MIM notes are being held for 
media review committee.

-- a New York prisoner, January 2001.



There is no education in Amerikkkan prisons

I've been in prison 4 years and have been denied an 
education. I've had jobs unloading tractor-trailers, 
cutting grass, and doing mail pick-up. Each paid $8.25 
every 2 weeks for 10 months. I was not properly put in 
GED classes during this time, but continued to receive 
this wage due to not having a diploma.

-- a New York prisoner, January 2001.

When the previous report was printed in MIM Notes, the 
Maoist Internationalist added: 

Until the prison system is run in the interests of the 
oppressed under a proletarian dictatorship, we cannot 
trust that prisoners will be provided with adequate 
education.

However, it is possible to wage battles around the need 
for access to education within prisons. It is good that 
you help to expose the lack of education in prison for 
ULK, but we suggest that prisoners in situations like the 
above take it a step further. Gather the prisoncrat 
policies regarding education in your prison (get the 
copies of state regulations as well). If the policy is to 
guarantee access to GED classes, help us to publicize 
prisons not sticking to their own rules. If such basic 
education is not guaranteed either in your facility or in 
the state, use this as a launching point to develop the 
struggle to gain access to basic education. MIM can 
provide you with some resources regarding struggles to 
gain access to basic education in prisons. And we can 
help you develop tactics for a successful campaign for 
access to education in prisons. One part of building 
public opposition to the Amerikkkan Lockdown is to expose 
Amerika's unwillingness to help prisoners educate 
themselves.

That said, even after gaining access to educational 
programs sponsored by the united snakes, we do not 
conclude that this means prisoners have adequate 
education. Amerikan education is specifically geared 
toward bolstering support for imperialism and the 
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. We encourage prisoners 
to form revolutionary study groups to learn various 
subjects from the bias of the international proletariat. 
In total, we encourage prisoners to get as much out of 
the prison system as possible while studying with MIM for 
revolutionary foundations.