greetings, following is the text of my remarks at a recent benefit for 'black political prisoners' organized by pfoc [Prairie Fire Organizing Committee] and crsn [Crossroad Support Network]. any comments, criticisms, questions and/or suggestions will be appreciated. rebuildin', hondo t'chikwa, 3/5/95
Good Evening,
i would like to welcome you all out tonight and personally thank each and every one of you for attending this benefit honoring Black political prisoners. On behalf of the CROSSROAD Support Network, the many New Afrikan Political Prisoners, Prisoners of War, and politicized prisoners who cannot be here, and the 27- years young New Afrikan Independence Movement - i give you our revolutionary greeting: FREE THE LAND! Now, i just want to talk to you briefly about this work to benefit political prisoners and prisoners of war. First of all, We want to look at the problem concretely; secondly, We want to work for their benefit in the ideological, theoretical, and political realms; thirdly, We want to do this work with some critical grasp of the past quarter-century of struggle to free political prisoners. Ruchell Magee has been in prison for over 30 years! The New York Three have been down since 1971! Sundiata's been locked up since 1973! i could go on - my point is that We should try to learn the history of this work. Concretely
In their statements, the brothers made this aspect crystal clear! They want visits, cash, correspondence... and freedom. Freedom to come to programs like this; freedom to work on solving family problems in the middle of the night; freedom to hug their children and wake up next to a mate tomorrow morning. So it's our duty to do whatever We can to make these things happen. i think that We must also pound away at the question of "how long is long enough?" We've got to sharpen our critique of the politics of parole; where "seriousness of the offense" is used as an excuse to hide the fact that capitalist amerikkka places more value on first police life, then white life, than on the life of a colonized New Afrikan, Puerto Rican, Mexicano, or indigenous person. Not to mention that many of these brothers have been "rehabilitated" (if you want to go for that!). Ideo-politically Now, i wanna turn to the struggle to benefit these captured combatants ideologically and politically. We must give them voice; help to break down the state-imposed veil which comes down when folks get locked up. It has always irritated me to see a flyer or brochure urging support for a prisoner or groups of prisoners, with no indication of how to contact them directly. So, if you raise the issue, make sure you give a current address. Let them speak for themselves. Then, agitate, educate, organize and mobilize around the issue: amerikkka uses prison as a weapon against national liberation movements, and other movements for social change. Increasingly, amerikkkan imperialism is going to try to genocide these movements out of existence - giving the death penalty to freedom fighters. This is naked, terrified power; don't legitimize it by doing a lot of fence-sitting. After over 500 years of genocide, do you really think that amerikkka can sit in judgment of his victims? One more thing, educate yourselves! About our movements, about settler history, about scientific socialism and how capitalism works. i'll close this section with a quote from Le Duan, 1st Secretary of the Vietnamese Workers Party: "The goal of learning should not be limited to raising our level of knowledge. Rather it is to achieve the best results in our productive labor, our work, and our struggle." - Intensify your self-education efforts! Now, briefly, let me say a little bit more, then i'll be done. In our community, and in all communities, We've got to learn how to disagree without being disagreeable. This is of the utmost importance. i say this knowing that all of y'all don't accept this notion of Afrikans being a colonized nation and having a historical right to the southeastern portion of this rock We're on. That's not important; but this is: is my work, our work, our practice worthy of your recognition, and maybe even support in some fashion (however limited it may be?) This measure of respect is crucial; and whether folks want to accept it or not, revolutionary nationalism appeals to a lot of our people. The government, with the support of the masses of North amerikkkans, offers only crime bills, death penalties, workfare, lockdowns, control units, more prisons, and tokens. Which would you choose? ReBuild!
- Crossroad activist hondo t'chikwa, 3/5/95
MARYLAND: A CALL TO ACTION!
STOP The Maryland Department of Corrections! A communique for an inmate who has been confined in Maryland's Supermaximum facility (Maryland Corrections Adjustment Center) for over 2 years:
"Conditions here at the State of Maryland's Supermaximum facility are completely shocking. The warden continues to institute methods of punishment through physical and mental torture, some of which even the notorious Marion Federal Prison hasn't seen. Prisoners have resorted to very sick and disturbing practices as a result of Warden Sweall Smith's 'make it as he goes' policy. Prisoners use human waste (feces) as weapons. The method of throwing it or spraying it on other prisoners and guards is referred to as 'chemical warfare'. All the frustration and conflict are a result of being locked in 99% of the time as no one is guaranteed walks or showers. Physical and psychological abuse is a daily part of this sick program. For example, one method of controlling out-of-line prisoners is to spray them down the chemical mace after which guards then beat them with sticks. Then, perhaps, you may end up in the hole where you are stripped naked and chained in what is called a 'three piece'. A three piece means you are chained at your hands, waist and ankles. No sooner than you hit the hole, an order is issued for the blowers to be turned on. The blowers are extremely powerful. For instance, if the temperature is 40 degrees in the room, the blowers will make it feel as if it is 0 degrees. In the hole areas there are no mattresses, no blankets and no sheets. You are left chained like a wild animal for 1 to 7 days."
The Maryland Penal System headed by Secretary Bishop Robinson, Commission Richard Lanhan, and Parole Commissioner Paul Davis has earned a reputation as one of America's cruelest and racist as attributed to the following:
* Over-crowded conditions due to Maryland's 20,000 prison population - currently 60% over-capacity and increasing an average of 100 per month - resulting in health hazards such as record high outbreaks of tuberculosis, in particular, at a Hagerstown facility where 400 of 1,900 inmates tested positive.
# Upscale inmate control mechanisms such as the modeling of a supermaximum facility, Maryland Corrections Adjustment Center (MCAC), after Illinois' infamous Marion Prison, where inmates are subjected to inhumane punishment such as 23 1/2 hour-a-day solitary confinement.
# Escalated repression as demonstrated by removal of 134 inmates serving life sentences from the work release program because of the actions of one individual involved in a murder-suicide. Please note that many of these individuals on work release had been at that status for years with no violations.
# Decreased focus on education, drug treatment, vocational training and rehabilitation due to the 'law and order' punishment mentality of prison administrators.
# Untrained and under-educated prison employees lack basic knowledge of Department of Corrections (DOC) regulations.
# Biased grievance process due to an incompetent administrative board comprised of DOC staff members who oftentimes express prejudicial notions about the aggrieved, demonstrated by failure to acknowledge violation(s).
# Sexist dress codes formulated by wardens at each institution (no state-established visiting room dress code is established) implemented by guards at random. For example, Jessup Pre-Release Unit allows for no spandex pants which has been expanded to include NO cotton straight leg pants considered to be revealing or provocative as defined by guards. This results in denial of visiting privileges for family and friends who oftentimes must travel long-distances. Please write Maryland Governor Parris Glendening to encourage him to make new appointments for both the Department of Public Safety and Department of Corrections. TO NOT FOCUS ON REHABILITATION AND/OR ALTERNATIVES TO INCARCERATION IS GENOCIDE FOR BLACKS IN THE U.S.!
Write to: Governor Parris Glendening State House 100 State Circle Annapolis, Maryland 21401
For more information:
BlackWatch Grassroots Network c/o Jennifer Smith 3802 14th St. N.W., #511 Washington, D.C. 20011 (202) 291- 0875
- Prison Activist Resource Center, 5/3/94
URGENT APPEAL FOR SEKOU KAMBUI
This man's parole hearing is set for Monday; instead of the thirty (30) days notice that We were supposed to have, his wife was notified yesterday of the hearing. Please send your letter(s) of support asap.
- hondo for CR/SN (Crossroad Support Network)
SUPPORT PAROLE FOR SEKOU KAMBUI!
Sekou Kambui is of Afrikan/Cherokee heritage, born on September 6, 1948, in Gasden, Alabama. He was raised by his mother/grandparents, and aunt in Detroit, Michigan; Harlem, New York; Chicago, Illinois; and Birmingham, Alabama respectively. He is presently 46 years old. Throughout the 1960's, Sekou participated in the Civil Rights Movement, organizing youth for participation in demonstrations and marches across Alabama and providing security for meetings for SCLC, CORE, SNCC and other programs. Sekou is a paralegal professional and active jailhouse lawyer and prisoner rights activist for more than 20 years.
Sekou became affiliated with the Black Panthers in 1967 in Chicago and New York. While in Detroit, he became a member of the Republic of New Afrika, before returning to Birmingham. In Birmingham, Sekou coordinated community organization activity with the Alabama Black Liberation Front, the Inmates for Action (IFA), and the Afro-Amerikan People's Party in the mid-1970's.
Charges and trials:
Sekou was falsely arrested on January 2, 1975, and charged with the murder of two white men; (1) a KKK official out of Tuscaloosa, Alabama and the other (2) a multi-millionaire oil man out of Birmingham. Sekou's first trial took place on May 22, 1975 in the Tuscaloosa County Circuit Court; the second trial took place on August 3, 1975 in , Jefferson County Circuit Court, Birmingham, Alabama. Sekou was convicted in both trials and sentenced to life in both cases, with sentences to run consecutively....
Issues at trial:
In both trials, witnesses were coerced and threatened by police officials; testimony was perjured; evidence all circumstantial and/or manufactured to implicate Sekou's involvement with person assumed responsible for the crime. Defense witnesses presented an unshakable alibi defense; However, coerced witnesses stipulated that "Sekou admitted to having killed two white men." Never was Sekou placed anywhere near the scene of the two murders; no murder weapon was found nor any direct evidence offered to connect Sekou to the murders.
The defense witnesses in the first trial were so terrified after continuous threats and racial intimidation by the Birmingham police for providing alibi testimony that they fled Alabama before the second trial, leaving Sekou without a defense to support the contention that he was not at the scene of the second murder...
In 1985, both trial counsels admitted to having destroyed all files regarding both murder convictions. The claim made at that time was that "law requires a trial counsel to hold files only seven (7) years. This may be true, however, it is accepted legal practice that any case which has not gone through the post conviction process is held, or at least, converted to microfiche for more permanent holding.
Major witnesses in both cases admitted during investigation in 1985 that they had been forced to testify against Sekou and had been repeatedly visited by certain members of the Birmingham Police Department as well as the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department.
Evidence presented during both trials was manufactured to make it appear that Sekou had conspired with the perpetrator of both murders, if not actually participating in the murders. In addition to the manufactured evidence, the Court clearly erred in dividing the trials, making it appear that there was no connection between the two murders and no issue of time constraints. These murders occurred within a very short span of time in two separate counties in December when the roads were terribly slippery and difficult to traverse.
The physical impossibility of Sekou's having been in the locations in which he was placed by his alibi witnesses precludes his having killed two men in two different locations in the span of time the state alleges by its own testimony these two killings took place. None of this evidence has ever been presented properly in any court of law either at state or federal level.
The pre-trial publicity involving both murders was intense, including a story in a popular "crime" magazine of the time. The trial court, however, refused a motion for a change of venue; appeals court affirmed and cited that the defense counsel had failed to support his allegations of pre-trial publicity and had failed to answer questions regarding possible prejudice said publicity had upon the defense during trial ... upon the defense during trial.
The nature of the case itself remains so intense that during the 1985 investigation of the crime, persons in Tuscaloosa vividly recalled details of the murder, the accused (Sekou), and the entire issue of the killing. Even the time frame of the murders was still recalled. Finding evidence of pre-trial publicity was not difficult; considering further the racial nature of the case, the publicity was enhanced, even with photographs of the accused in handcuffs.
In the second case in Birmingham, the evidence at trial is even weaker than that offered in Tuscaloosa. The connections between Sekou and this crime so tenuous and convoluted that it is impossible to present the issues here...
Continuing legal proceedings:
The legal challenge to both convictions has been continuously thwarted by the unavailability of both transcripts, the seizure of legal materials by the Alabama Department of Corrections (ADOC) over nearly twenty (20) years, and the repeated, retaliatory transfers which presently number four in only five years (between 1988 and 1993). The repeated seizures of legal mail resulted in a Civil Action in U.S. Federal District Court - C.A. No: 85-0795-P-M, which went to trial in March, 1989. The issues in this case included: 1. Confiscation of all legal-trial preparation materials; 2. Confiscation of law books; 3. Denial of visitation with paralegal aide; 4. Threats to interfere with upcoming parole;
Upon trial, the State was forced to produce said documents they had labeled "security risks" and "contraband." The courty risks" and "contraband." The Court ruled that all such documents did not violate the DOC's security interests in prison order and discipline. Despite the victory in court, however, the wealth of legal documents and books already confiscated were never returned. All prison claims to have returned these documents to the outside paralegal proved false; no papers or books have ever been returned.
An interesting note in this trial occurred when the state was forced to show collections of writing they had obtained from political prisoner-type magazines from as far away as Canada with articles written by Sekou, which the ADOC claimed proved his security risk. Any and all forms of revolutionary rhetoric have caused severe paranoia on the part of ADOC officials, a few of them in particular, where Sekou is concerned.... Sekou has written numerous lawsuits against the Alabama Department of Corrections over his twenty years in the ADOC. His co-authorship of the James v. Wallace, Pugh v. Locke, and Newman v. State of Alabama, 406 F. Supp. throughout the early 70's - '76, '77, and '78, won a court order declaring the Alabama prison system unconstitutional.
A large number of inmates owe their freedom to Sekou's legal efforts on their behalf. He has won numerous other civil actions regarding medical malpractice, abusive treatment, abusive segregation, abusive prison conditions, all of which have earned him nothing but retaliatory transfers and continuing, unabated enmity by officials of the ADOC.
In the last ten years, the harassment pattern of the ADOC (in collusion with the Alabama Board of Pardons and Paroles) has been clear. Sekou has been "up" for parole in 1986, 1988, 1991, and 1993 - denied each time and set off. And prior to every parole consideration, there has been a seriously disruptive transfer and tremendous harassment, both physical, mental, and racial. Behind every transfer has been a legal action taken by Sekou on behalf of another inmate or against the institution itself for its pattern of abuse against the inmates or a particular group of inmates....
Prison records/files on Sekou
Despite a clear prison record of ten years, Sekou has never received the benefit of work release or more exercise of his minimum custody level. When he did have the opportunity to participate in the prison program Free By Choice, which permitted him to travel outside the prison and speak to church and youth groups, he was then transferred to Easterling which has no such program. Each time Sekou has won a case against the ADOC for any of its discriminatory policies and practices, the ADOC has then changed its rule to thwart this victory and deny Sekou the benefit of his own legal victory. This has happened so often that nobody close to him even considers this application of ex post facto laws "strange" anymore.
Despite repeated requests for the information used by the ABPP in considering Sekou for parole (and then denying same), the Board has never once provided such documentation.... Despite the issuance of Board guidelines for prisoners and their families to follow in preparing for parole, the family and friends of Sekou have been made aware that these guidelines don't apply to prisoners such as Sekou.
Sekou remains an innocent man in prison, a victim of the continuing racist conspiracy to silence the voice of the righteous and quell the movement for empowerment of his people. The twenty years of harassment, oppression, and abuse testify abundantly to the depths of hostility and acrimony generated by the tyrannical ADOC in response to the drive for human and civil rights by one man - Sekou Cinque Kambui.
Letters of support and petitions should be sent to the following address:
Alabama Board of Pardons & Paroles ATTN: Chairman John Nettles 501 Dexter Avenue Lurleen Wallace Bldg. Montgomery, AL 36130 334-242-8700; 334-242-1809 (FAX)
Sekou C.T.M. Kambui Defense Committee ATTN: Aysha De'Jenaba Kambui 2233 Second St., South Birmingham, AL 35205 205-322-1047
Sekou C.T.M. Kambui (William J. Turk, AIS #113058) P.O. Box 10 (6A100) Clio, AL 36017
- Crossroad Support Network, 5/3/95
THE ROSENBERG FUND FOR CHILDREN
The Rosenberg Fund for Children was established to provide for the educational and emotional needs of children whose parents have been harassed, injured, lost jobs, or died in the course of their progressive activities and who, therefore, are no longer able to adequately care for their children. Professionals and institutions will be awarded grants to provide the children with services at no or reduced cost. For more information, write to:
Rosenberg Fund for Children 1145 Main Street, Ste. 408 Springfield, MA 01103
NATIONAL PHONE-IN CAMPAIGN TO FLORENCE PRISON
***Want to do something about the torture and oppression of prisoners in Amerika? The best way is to join MIM to help end the system. In the mean time, while we are building public opinion and organizing for revolutionary change, you can also take smaller actions that may help some of the prisoners in Amerika.***
The National Committee to Free Puerto Rican POW's and Political Prisoners-Boston Chapter is issuing an urgent call to action. Call the Florence, Colorado Federal Prison at (719) 784-9496. Ask for Warden William Storey or his assistant. Once he or his executive assistant is on line, tell him you are calling about Puerto Rican POW/Political Prisoner Oscar Lopez Rivera (#87651-024), Thomas Manning (#10372-016) and Raymond Levasseur (#10376-016). Demand an end to sleep deprivation and strip searches immediately. Demand freedom for all Puerto Rican political prisoners unconditionally. Demand the closure of the ADX Florence Gulag for torture and sensory deprivation.
Callers should be aware that prison personnel have denied the torture. The following answers are recommended to such statements from prison personnel: 1. They are lying and we won't believe them. 2. They shouldn't speak as if they were friends, they are their jailers. 3. They should refuse to participate in the torture as some U.S. soldiers refused to massacre Vietnamese in the Vietnam war.
The dates for the calls are Mondays: June 26 and July 24.