Backlash to ICE murder

The Black Panthers are alive and well in Philly.

 

Another Panther Jailed for Decades

It has been two years since Sekou Kambui was released from the Alabama prison system after spending 47 years of his life incarcerated.

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Since his release on June 30th, 2014, he has relentlessly continued his Civil and Human Rights activism by touring nationally with The Red Flame for Freedom. The organization’s main goal is to raise awareness about the proliferation of modern day slavery experienced through sex trafficking, human trafficking, mass incarceration, and children in poverty.

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While in prison Sekou remained politically active by becoming a jailhouse lawyer and prisoners’ Civil and Human Rights activist. Many prisoners owe their freedom to Sekou’s legal efforts on their behalf. He has won numerous civil actions regarding medical malpractice, abusive treatment, abusive segregation, and abusive prison conditions.

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When Sekou was 19 years old, he became affiliated with the Black Panthers Party for Self-Defense, as well as, the Republic of New Afrika. In the 1970s, Sekou spent most of his time community organizing in Birmingham, Alabama with the Alabama Black Liberation Front, the Inmates for Action, and the Afro-Amerikan People’s Party.

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Because of his activism in the Civil Rights movement, he was watched closely by the FBI’s counterintelligence program entitled COINTELPRO, and was subsequently profiled and pulled over on January 2, 1975 for allegedly running a yield sign and/or speeding. During the traffic stop the officer found a pistol in Sekou’s vehicle, and after strong suspicion by the officer that it was the weapon listed as stolen during a Tuscaloosa, Alabama murder, Sekou was taken into custody and charged for the murders of the two white men; a fireman and KKK official Olmstead Copeland and multi-millionaire oilman John Harbin.

Throughout both trials, major witnesses admitted that they had been coerced into testifying falsely against Sekou and were repeatedly visited by certain members of the Tuscaloosa County and Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department and were deliberately coached on what to say during their testimonies.

Sekou was never placed at or near the crime scene, the real murder weapon was never found, nor was there ever any direct evidence to connect him to the murders.

  Unicorn Riot

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Mark Your Calendars

The Revolutionary Black Panther Party will hold an armed march against genocide in St. Louis, Missouri, an open-carry weapons state, on August 5, to honor Angelo Brown, also known as General Houdari Juelani, the local party leader who was shot dead by police in nearby Belleville, Illinois, last month. The party also plans “to file human rights violations with the International Criminal Court and the World Court,” according to Chief General in Charge Dr. Ali Muhammad. Juelani died from a single bullet to the temple, but his face showed signs that he had been beaten before death.

  Black Agenda Report

In other Panther news...

Russell “Maroon” Shoatz, a former Black Panther who escaped from Pennsylvania prisons twice in the 1970s, was held in solitary confinement for nearly thirty-three years, including twenty-two consecutive years, from 1991 to 2014. During that time, Shoatz was in confined to his cell, in complete social isolation, for 23-24 hours a day. He contends that his time in solitary has lead him to develop severe mental health issues, including chronic depression, anxiety, suicidal ideation, and more–and that the length of time he was held in isolation was based, at least in part, on his political beliefs.

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Shoatz was diagnosed with paranoid-schizophrenia and depressive disorder and transferred to Fairview State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. In 1980, he was able to briefly pull off an escape from Fairview. When he was caught and put back in prison, he began the first of his many long stints in solitary confinement.

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Shoatz [...] was found guilty of a first-degree murder [in 1972] that was part of a 1970 Black Liberation Army attack on a Philadelphia police station, which resulted in the death of one officer and the injury of another. In 1977, Shoatz and several other prisoners overtook a cell block, injuring several guards with a knife, and escaped from prison.

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>While in solitary, Shoatz was kept in a 7 x 12-foot cell.

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Despite his apparently deteriorating mental health, entire decades passed without the prison giving Shoatz a mental health evaluation.

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Shoatz was only allowed out of his cell for one hour a day, five days a week, to exercise in a cage not significantly larger than a cell. This limited recreation time required an intrusive strip search, which made Shoatz anxious and caused him to rarely leave his cell during the small window of time he was afforded to do so.

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Rubber strips surrounded the sides and bottom of the cell door, effectively making his cell a sensory deprivation chamber. The light of this cell remained on 24 hours a day, a practice that Dr. James Gilligan, a psychiatrist serving as an expert witness before the court, called “a well-known method of torture,” in his declaration for the court.

  

Thirty-three years of solitary. Twenty-two in a row.  Severe mental health issues, indeed.

He has recently won a lawsuit whereby an agreement was reached with the Pennsylvania prison authorites "that they will never again place him in solitary confinement." (Black Agenda Report)

2nd Amendment Rights

Micah Johnson, the man who shot Dallas police officers served in the US Army Reserve in Afghanistan and was a member of - or "liked", depending on what you read - the New Black Panthers.






...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Ferguson

Every Dan White in San Francisco empathizes.  Not to mention numerous unlucky folks at airports trying to board planes.

UPDATE: