Ray Luc Levasseur: Defendant in the Great Sedition Trial of Western Mass Returns After 20 Years…

On Thursday, Nov. 12th @ 7pm, Ray Luc Levasseur will speak at 1009 Campus Center at UMass in Amherst, Massachusetts. VAPP will be co-sponsoring the event and hoping to coordinate rides for anyone interested in attending from Southern VT. Please contact us at vermontaction@gmail.com if you are interested in going to this event.

In 1989, Ray Luc Levasseur, along with his comrades Pat Levasseur and Richard Williams, stood trial in Springfield, Massachusetts on Federal charges of seditious conspiracy. After ten months of deliberation, in the most expensive trial in Massachusetts history, a jury found all three not guilty of conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government through armed force. In his first public address in the Pioneer Valley in twenty years, Levasseur will reflect on the past and present significance of the Springfield sedition trial. He will also discuss his life experience as a French-Canadian youth growing up in a Maine mill town; as a Vietnam veteran; as an anti-imperialist revolutionary active in the Civil Rights, antiwar, and prison reform movements; as a prisoner arrested with other members of the “Ohio 7” and incarcerated for twenty years for his involvement in a series of bombings carried out to protest U.S. backing of South Africa’s racist apartheid regime and Central American right-wing death-squads; and his 2004 release and ongoing involvement in movements for social justice.

Levasseur’s prison writings and his closing statement from Springfield sedition trial are available on the following websites: http://home.earthlink.net/~neoludd/ and http://home.earthlink.net/~neoludd/statement.html.

Sponsored by: Special Collections and University Archives, W.E.B. Du Bois Library, UMass Amherst; UMass Amherst Program in Social Thought and Political Economy; UMass Amherst Department of History; Food For Thought Books; Vermont Action for Political Prisoners; Rosenberg Fund for Children; and the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts.

With partial support from the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities and the Dean of Graduate School, UMass Amherst.

VAPP presents MOVE on 10/16 and 10/17/09

Vermont Action for Political Prisoners

presents:

MOVE

a documentary by Cohort Media

Followed by discussion with the film-makers

The Brick House Turners Falls, Mass.

Friday, October 16^th @ 7:30 pm

Latchis Theater Brattleboro, Vermont

Saturday, October 17^th @ 4:30 pm

Tickets: $5.50-$7.50 (sliding scale)

This film exposes the history of violence perpetrated by the city of Philadelphia against the revolutionary organization MOVE, as well as the struggle that continues today to free nine MOVE members who have spent 30 years in prison for a crime that they did not commit. Come see this documentary and voice your questions to film-makers Benjamin Garry and Matt Sullivan.

“MOVE” is narrated by world-famous historian Howard Zinn and made its debut at numerous film festivals throughout the United States in 2004. These included the Ann Arbor Film Festival, East Lansing Film Festival, Melbourne Underground, Boston Underground, Atlanta Underground, 5 College Film Festival. The film won at both the 5 College Film Festival and the Boston Underground Film Festival.

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.