Movement In Motion

Black August

Calendar of Events 2013

for info on black august https://www.dropbox.com/sh/x185lasr6bpji0h/gwsnMOQrww 

 

spiritchild & Mental Notes

Blue Note
Friday August 2nd 1230am
131 West 3rd street

Celebrating Black August 
Songs for Assata Shakur & Sekou Odinga

featuring 
Yuki Ishiba (keys), Ramsey Jones (drums), Djibril (bass), spiritchild (vocals)

Maya Azucena, Akim Funk Buddha, Phase One, Marine Futin, Miky Hustles, Prince Akeem

Ben Barson (sax), Quincy Saul (clarinet), Ziedah Diata (visual arts), Cashel Campbell (dance)
words by 
Dequi of Sekou Odinga Defense Committee 
Brother Shep of BPP, PSP & Zulu Nation 

All Ages $10 cover www.xspiritmental.com  an xspiritmental vibration 

 

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August 17^th

The Coney Island Healing Arts Collective

Movement In Motion artist guerrilla performance

12pm

Location: 21^st and the Boardwalk

poetry, rhymes, songs, sounds and vibrations of resistance

 

August 17^th

3pm

http://www.theuniversalhiphopparade.com/

performances by Zulu Nation, Movement In Motion, SSS band...

PARADE ROUTE

 This year participants will line up inside of Von King Park near the Lafayette and Tompkins Ave entrance. Starting at Lafayette and Tompkins ave We will walk to Marcus Garvey Blvd then make a right and proceed straight down Marcus Garvey Blvd to Fulton Street. At Fulton St the parade will turn Right pass through the busy intersection of Nostrand Ave and Fulton Street before ending at Franklin Avenue.

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Black August D.C. Events 2013

BLACK AUGUST 2013 – WASHINGTON DC

For more information: www.BlackAugustDC.com or runawayblood@gmail.com 
Also visit: www.TheJerichoMovement.com

Black August Film Series at Sankofa, Every Wednesday at 6pm, $5 admission

Tune in to Voices With Vision every Tuesday at 10am and the Super Funky Soul Power Hourevery Friday at 11am on 89.3fm or stream at www.WPFW.org

August 1 – One man play, Jay Sun for President; Directed by John Johnson
Location: Anacostia Playhouse; 2020 Shannon Pl. SE (Behind the Big Chair), Time: Doors 7pm; House Open 7:30pm; Show 8pm

Welcome to the New World. Meet the New President.

August 3 - War Resister's League 90th Anniversary Conference; Political Prisoner Panel
Location: Georgetown University (37th & O St NW) Inter-Cultural Center, Room 205b
Time: 1-330pm
Cost: Free
More info: https://www.warresisters.org/wrl-90th-anniversary-conference 
Political Prisoners: How people become political prisons: how do we support them? 

The workshop will focus on the forces that turned 3 people - Jihad AbdulMumit, Jericho Co-chair; Ramona Africa, Move; Cisco Torres, former political prisoner from SF - into Resistance Movement organizers against The War by Amerkia on People of Color in the 1970’s. There will be short presentations that discuss how theses forces were perceived and resisted by the panelists and their actions in response. The remainder of the time will be for discussion. Led by Paulette D'Auteuil from DC-Jericho.

August 7 – Wilmington 10; USA 10,000
Location: Sankofa Video & Books; 2714 Georgia Ave NW, Washington DC
Time: 6pm
Cost: $5

"Wilmington 10; USA 10,000" by Haile Gerima, looks at the case of nine black boys and men as well as one white woman held as political prisoners in the 1970's on trumped up charges designed to discourage their organizing in Wilmington, North Carolina.  Ben Chavis and icons such as Charles Cobb Sr. and the United Church of Christ are featured.  Includes Assata Shakur, and other political prisoners.

August 10 – Dr. CR Gibbs Annual Black August lecture “Let Your Motto Be Resistance”
Location: DC Public Library (TBD)
Time: Afternoon (TBD)
Cost: Free

This year, Professor Gibbs annual lecture will focus on the history of the effective use of the boycott for purposes of Black self-determination, liberation, and protest.

August 14 – Mumia: Long Distance Revolutionary
Location: Sankofa Video & Books; 2714 Georgia Ave NW, Washington DC
Time: 6pm
Cost: $5
Before he was convicted of murdering a policeman in 1981 and sentenced to die, Mumia Abu-Jamal was a gifted journalist and brilliant writer. Now after more than 30 years in prison and despite attempts to silence him, Mumia is not only still alive but continuing to report, educate, provoke and inspire.
Stephen Vittoria's new feature documentary is an inspiring portrait of a man whom many consider America's most famous political prisoner - a man whose existence tests our beliefs about freedom of expression. Through prison interviews, archival footage, and dramatic readings, and aided by a potent chorus of voices including Cornel West, Alice Walker, Dick Gregory, Angela Davis, Amy Goodman and others, this riveting film explores Mumia's life before, during and after Death Row - revealing, in the words of Angela Davis, "the most eloquent and most powerful opponent of the death penalty in the world...the 21st Century Frederick Douglass."

Trailer: http://youtu.be/YlUTlBmuAcM?t=11s

August 21 – Herman’s House
Location: Sankofa Video & Books; 2714 Georgia Ave NW, Washington DC
Time: 6pm
Cost: $5
Herman Wallace may be the longest-serving prisoner in solitary confinement in the United States—he's spent more than 40 years in a 6-by-9-foot cell in Louisiana. Imprisoned in 1967 for a robbery he admits, he was subsequently sentenced to life for a killing he vehemently denies. Herman's House is a moving account of the remarkable expression his struggle found in an unusual project proposed by artist Jackie Sumell. Imagining Wallace's "dream home" began as a game and became an interrogation of justice and punishment in America. The film takes us inside the duo's unlikely 12-year friendship, revealing the transformative power of art.

Trailer: http://youtu.be/cOK9QILmXW0

August 28 – Free Angela Davis & All Political Prisoners
Location: Sankofa Video & Books; 2714 Georgia Ave NW, Washington DC
Time: 6pm
Cost: $5
Free Angela is a gripping historic account of the events that catapulted a young University of California philosophy professor into a controversial political icon in the turbulent late 1960’s. Angela Davis joins the Communist Party, protests with the Black Panthers, and becomes a principle spokesperson for the burgeoning prison reform movement. As a result, she finds herself Fighting to keep her job, and in the national media spotlight characterized by her many detractors as a dangerous subversive menace, and by her supporters as a strong leader challenging authority and boldly advocating for “Power to All People.”
It’s an edge-of-your seat thriller told for the first time by Angela and others who lived through the events firsthand. The interviews recount the politics that led her to challenge authority and spur a worldwide movement for her freedom that cemented Angela Davis, and her signature Afro hairstyle, as an iconic symbol of this still relevant political and social movement — the right to challenge the system.  You know her name. Now, you will finally know her story.

Trailer: http://youtu.be/lrE6yJyMK_c

August 25 – Annual Black August book event
Maroon the Implacable: The Collected Writings of Russell ‘Maroon’ Shoatz
Location: Sankofa Video & Books; 2714 Georgia Ave NW, Washington DC
Time: 430pm
Cost: Free
Russell Maroon Shoatz is a political prisoner who has been held unjustly for over thirty years, including two decades in solitary confinement. He was active as a leader in the Black Liberation Movement in Philadelphia, both above and underground. His successful escapes from maximum-security prisons earned him the title “Maroon.” Despite the torture and deprivation that has been everyday life for Maroon over the last several decades, he has remained at the cutting edge of history through his writings. This is the first published collection of his accumulated written works, and also includes new essays written expressly for this volume.

This program will feature Russell Shoatz III on behalf of his father.

AUGUST (TBD) – Discussion on the Prison Labor Movement
Location: UDC Law School; 4240 Connecticut Ave
Time: 6pm
Cost: Free
This program will feature Donald F. Tibbs, JD/Phd of Drexel University Law School and author of the book From Black Power to Prison Power: The Making of Jones v. North Carolina Prisoners' Labor Union.  The book is a legal history of how the social and cultural history of the Black Power era connects to the legal history of the Prisoner’s Rights Movement; and what the Supreme Court did to eviscerate both.

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Our comrades in North Carolina have put out a wonderful August PP poster Birthday list, Please use it and share widely,

Many thanks to them for their great  work.Paulette

 

Hello Friends and Comrades,

1) Here is the political prisoner birthday poster for August. As always,
please post this poster publicly and/or use it to start a card writing
night of your own. This month's poster is much less avant garde than last month's. Sorry.
http://prisonbookscollective.files.wordpress.com/2013/08/august2013.pdf

Some News And Updates:

2) Sentencing for nine  NC Latin Kings and an associate tried as part of a criminal racketeering enterprise has been scheduled for the mid-August. Folks will be packing the court room for Jorge Cornell and his brother Russell Kilfoil on August 14th. More details to come. More information on the sentencing here. http://wp.me/p18Qq1-Lz

3) The CA prison hunger strike is entering its fourth week. Check out the latest call out for support: http://wp.me/p18Qq1-Mn
And a story about NC prisoners hunger striking in solidarity:
http://wp.me/p18Qq1-Mc


4) Lastly, here is a link to the latest Political Prisoner/Prisoner of War
every-other week update by the  NYC-Anarchist Black Cross. There are lots of important updates on many political prisoners.
http://nycabc.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/updates-23-jul-2013.pdf

Until Every Cage Is Empty,

The Chapel Hill Prison Books Collective
http://prisonbooks.info/

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 HISTORY IS A WEAPON

Soledad Brother: The Prison Letters of George Jackson

George Jackson

 

Table of Contents

George L. Jackson: September 23, 1941 — August 21, 1971	Page ix
Foreword by Jonathan Jackson, Jr.	Page xiii
Recent Letters and an Autobiography	Page [1]
Letters: 1964-1970	Page [35]
Back Matter	Page 331
Appendix: Introduction to the First Edition by Jean Genet	Page 331

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To the Man-Child, Tall, evil, graceful, brighteyed, black man-child — Jonathan Peter Jackson — who died on August 7, 1970, courage in one hand, assault rifle in the other; my brother, comrade, friend — the true revolutionary, the black communist guerrilla in the highest state of development, he died on the trigger, scourge of the unrighteous, soldier of the people; to this terrible man-child and his wonderful mother Georgia Bea, to Angela Y. Davis, my tender experience, I dedicate this collection of letters; to the destruction of their enemies I dedicate my life.

George L. Jackson: September 23, 1941 — August 21, 1971

In 1960, at the age of eighteen, George Jackson was accused of stealing $70 from a gas station in Los Angeles. Though there was evidence of his innocence, his court-appointed lawyer maintained that because Jackson had a record (two previous instances of petty crime), he should plead guilty in exchange for a light sentence in the county jail. He did, and received an indeterminate sentence of one year to life. Jackson spent the next ten years in Soledad Prison, seven and a half of them in solitary confinement. Instead of succumbing to the dehumanization of prison existence, he transformed himself into the leading theoretician of the prison movement and a brilliant writer. Soledad Brother, which contains the letters that he wrote from 1964 to 1970, is his testament.

In his twenty-eighth year, Jackson and two other black inmates — Fleeta Drumgo and John Cluchette — were falsely accused of murdering a white prison guard. The guard was beaten to death on January 16, 1969, a few days after another white guard shot and killed three black inmates by firing from a tower into the courtyard. The accused men were brought in chains and shackles to two secret hearings in Salinas County. A third hearing was about to take place when John Cluchette managed to smuggle a note to his mother: "Help, I'm in trouble." With the aid of a state senator, his mother contacted a lawyer, and so commenced one of the most extensive legal defenses in U.S. history. According to their attorneys, Jackson, Drumgo, and Clutchette were charged with murder not because there was any substantial evidence of their guilt, but because they had been previously identified as black militants by the prison authorities. If convicted, they would face a mandatory death penalty under the California penal code. Within weeks, the case of the Soledad Brothers emerged as a political cause célèbre for all sorts of people demanding change at a time when every American institution was shaken by Black rebellions in more than one hundred cities and the mass movement against the Vietnam War.

August 7, 1970, just a few days after George Jackson was transferred to San Quentin, the case was catapulted to the forefront of national news when his brother, Jonathan, a seventeen-year-old high school student in Pasadena, staged a raid on the Marin County courthouse with a satchelful of handguns, an assault rifle, and a shotgun hidden under his coat. Educated into a political revolutionary by George, Jonathan invaded the court during a hearing for three black San Quentin inmates, not including his brother, and handed them weapons. As he left with the inmates and five hostages, including the judge, Jonathan demanded that the Soledad Brothers be released within thirty minutes. In the shootout that ensued, Jonathan was gunned down. Of Jonathan, George wrote, "He was free for a while. I guess that's more than most of us can expect."

Soledad Brother, which is dedicated to Jonathan Jackson, was released to critical acclaim in France and the United States, with an introduction by the renowned French dramatist Jean Genet, in the fall of 1970. Less than a year later and just two days before the opening of his trial, George Jackson was shot to death by a tower guard inside San Quentin Prison in a purported escape attempt. "No Black person," wrote James Baldwin, "will ever believe that George Jackson died the way they tell us he did."

Soledad Brother went on to become a classic of Black literature and political philosophy, selling more than 400,000 copies before it went out of print twenty years ago. Lawrence Hill Books is pleased to reissue this book and to add to it a Foreword by the author's nephew, Jonathan Jackson, Jr., who is a writer living in California.

 

Read more

http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/soledadbro.html