Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Robert King of the Angola 3 comes to Brattleboro!


“I was born in the U.S.A. Born black, born poor.
Is it then any wonder that I have spent
most of my life in prison?”

Come hear Robert Hillary King’s powerful story & learn about the campaign to free his Angola 3 comrades Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, who are still serving life sentences despite much evidence of their innocence.
In 1970, a jury convicted Robert Hillary King (formerly known as Robert King Wilkerson) of a crime he did not commit and sentenced him to 35 years in prison. While locked inside Louisiana’s notorious Angola State Penitentiary, an 18,000-acre former slave plantation, he became a member of the Black Panther Party, organizing prisoners to improve conditions. In return, prison authorities beat him, starved him, and gave him life without parole after framing him for a second crime. He was thrown into solitary confinement, where he remained in a six-by-nine foot cell for 29 years as one of "the Angola 3." In 2001, the state of Louisiana grudgingly acknowledged his innocence and set him free.

Where: Latchis 4 (Corner of Main & Flat Streets in downtown Brattleboro)
(Entrance to left of main theater door)
When: Tuesday, April 7 - 6:00 p.m.
$2 - $20 sliding scale
(no one will be turned away for lack of funds)
Refreshments will be served.
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Vermont Action For Political Prisoners (VAPP)

Mission
Vermont Action for Political Prisoners (VAPP) works for the freedom and amnesty of all U.S. held Political Prisoners (PP) and Prisoners of War (POW)

Principles
· We are committed to being anti-racist and fighting racism.
· We are anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-sexist, class-conscious, LGBTQ-allies.
· We work in solidarity with all Liberation Movements in the U.S.
· We are a non-hierarchical organization.
· We are a part of a larger movement to free all PPs/POWs.

Goals
· To be in continuous correspondences with PPs/POWs to make certain that their ideas and wishes for this movement are what provide direction for this work. We want to communicate with, connect with, and take direction from PPs/POWs
· To raise public awareness of existence of PPs/POWs, including education about the resistance movements they are a part of.
· To raise public awareness of the systemic injustices of U.S. Prisons.
· To provide material, emotional, and legal support to PPs/POWs
· To work in alliance with Jericho Movement, ABCF and other PP/POW support groups
· To make this work relevant locally by exposing issues with VT prisons and working with VT prisoners.
· To work in solidarity with Political Prisoners. We want to help meet the immediate needs and desires of PPs/POWs, while maintaining the ultimate goals of getting them free and eventually abolishing prisons. We are not interested in prison reform. We want our people out of captivity.

Analysis
What is a PP? What is a POW?
· David Gilbert- “A political prisoner is anyone whose incarceration is a result of his or her actions taken, or positions espoused, on behalf of a political cause-specifically a political cause on behalf of the oppressed and downtrodden in society and against the powers that be.”
“Prisoners of war are captured freedom fighters from the Black, the Puerto Rican, and the Native American Struggles. They consciously fought against the oppression of their people; they fulfill the obligation to oppose racist and colonial regimes.”

· Jaan Laaman- “Political prisoners come from the popular social justice and national liberation movements within the U.S. of the past 30 years-specifically from the Civil Rights/Black Power/New AfricanLiberation struggles, the Puerto Rican Independence Movement, Indigenous Peoples survival struggles, anti-imperialist/anti-war movements, anti-ractist/anti-fascist struggles, the Women’s Movement, social and economic justice struggles, and the environmental movement.

· Robert King-“Not every prisoner is a political prisoner but every prisoner is a political victim.”


We believe in the struggles, fights and freedom movements that the Political Prisoners we support are part of and work with them in solidarity. We fight for their freedom and amnesty not only because we believe they don’t deserve the charges brought against them, but because our values are rooted in their work.

We work in honor of US Political Prisoners who have passed on and strive to continue their struggles.

We are prison abolitionists.
· Prisons need to be abolished. Imprisonment is a form of slavery and perpetuates a racist, classist, and sexist society. Prisons in any form will never work to solve social problems and will always serve as a tool for the rich and powerful to maintain control. Abolition of prisons is essential to moving toward a free and just society.
· We also strive to dismantle The Prison Industrial Complex, the warehousing of people as a system of social control needed to perpetuate capitalism. Angela Davis gives us more definition to this concept. “The prison industrial complex is much more than the sum of all the jails and prisons in this country. It is a set of symbiotic relationships among correctional communities, transnational corporations, media conglomerates, guards’ unions, and legislative and court agendas.” “Prison construction and the attendant drive to fill these new structures with human bodies have been driven by ideologies of racism and the pursuit of profit.”

Projects
· Case support
· Letter writing campaign
· VT media campaign
· Former PP speakers
· Film series
· Fundraising
· Antiracist art/poetry