On February 1st, 1985 guards at the Indiana Reformatory (now Pendleton Correctional Facility) sparked a rebellion with the brutal beating of defenseless inmate Lincoln Love aka Comrade Lokmar Abdul-Wadood. In a successful attempt to save his life, a politicized group of prisoners took several hostages including guards and a politician and occupied a cell block in the Indiana State Prison for 15 hours. . . .
Liberation Archives
Political Prisoners in Azania
Any discussion about Azania has to start with an anti-colonial understanding of that region of Southern Africa. First, Azania is the original and proper name for the country commonly known as South Africa. Pan-Africanist formations like the Pan-Africanist Congress of Azania (PAC) and the Azanian People’s Organization (AZAPO), as well as Pan-Africanists worldwide, have been calling Azania that for decades. Speaking through an anti-colonial lense, the name South Africa clearly represents one imposed by those from Europe who invaded the country and have occupied it for centuries. Second, like with any settler colony i.e. the United States, Australia, occupied Palestine . . .
Why We Need A Mau Mau in Amerikkka
During a speech delivered in 1964, Malcolm X made a profound assertion about a rebel group that fought against British colonialism in East Africa known to many as the Mau Mau. “We need a Mau Mau revolution in Mississippi, we need a Mau Mau revolution in Alabama, we need a Mau Mau revolution in Georgia, and we need a Mau Mau revolution in Harlem.” . . .
Enemies and Friends: Resolving Contradictions
The following is an excerpt from Safiya Bukhari’s The War Before: The True Life Story of Becoming a Black Panther, Keeping the Faith in Prison & Fighting For Those Left Behind. This section is titled “Enemies and Friends: Resolving Contradictions and it was written some time in the late 1980s or early 1990s, during a time where those who had been targeted by COINTELPRO were trying to recover their relationships and figure out how they would be able to continue to do political work together. We have written extensively about the environment of mistrust created around the imprisonment of Geronimo ji Jaga. That environment contributed significantly to the solutions that Safiya offers in this work. . . .
Ahmed Sékou Touré at 100
Ahmed Sékou Touré offered the concepts of Party-State; national democracy; harmony between religion and Revolution and developed the concept of a Mass Revolutionary Party. . . .
January 2022 Update: New Legal Filing in Mumia’s Case
In her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston wrote, “There are years that ask questions, and years that answer.” With continued pressure from below, 2022 will be the year that forces the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office and the Philly Police Department to answer questions about why they framed imprisoned radio journalist and veteran Black Panther Mumia Abu-Jamal. Abu-Jamal’s attorneys have filed a PCRA petition focused entirely on the six boxes of case files that were found in a storage room of the DA’s office in late December 2018, after the case being heard before Judge Leon Tucker . . .
Women in the Haitian Revolution
The 1791 slave uprising of Saint-Domingue was the largest and most successful slave revolt in modern history. It transformed one of the wealthiest colonies in the world into a new nation led by the black leaders of the Revolution. Because Saint-Domingue was a French colony, the French Revolution was inextricably linked to the Revolution in Saint-Domingue, however, the two Revolutions functioned in largely separate spheres not least because of the ocean that separated them. The struggle for liberation took on a particularly bloody and brutal shape on the island of Saint-Domingue. Along with other French Caribbean colonies (such as Martinique . . .
Britain’s Legacy of Brutal Slavery in Barbados
Yes, the British Empire is indeed one colony smaller as Barbados formally declared itself independent of its colonial rulers after 400 years yesterday in a big ole fancy ceremony attended by all kinds of dignitaries. England’s Prince Charles delivered a message from his mother, Queen Elizabeth, conveying the “warmest good wishes” and said, “from the darkest days of our past and the appalling atrocity of slavery, which, whatever stains out of his study, the people of this island forge their path with extraordinary fortitude.” It’s nice that he mentioned that appalling history of slavery, but it deserves more than a . . .