What is the Prisoners of Conscience Committee?

by Makaya
Basics Issue #10 (Aug/Sep 2008)

The Prisoners of Conscience Committee (POCC) is a national, revolutionary organization in America that was founded in the nine years Fred Hampton Jr. spent in prison. In his words:
“POCC was literally birthed from behind enemy lines. Its birth canal was the concentration camps, it’s umbilical cords are the prison chains.”

POCC uses what happens inside the prisons as a learning tool to understand the oppression that takes place on the outside. They define themselves as “an organization of African Revolutionary Freedom Fighters whose agenda is to liberate the minds and hearts of African and Colonized people.” Since POCC recognizes that “ain’t nobody gonna save us but us” they aim to organize as many people as possible through their own programs and through coalition building with other revolutionary organizations and peoples.

Among the many campaigns that POCC members are currently engaged in there is the ‘One Prisoner, One Contact Campaign’ that builds real contact between prisoners and people on the outside, the ‘Welcome Black to the Community Campaign’ that helps newly released prisoners re-settle into their communities and provides packages of clothes and other necessities to aid them in re-adjusting to outside life. Molded after the Black Panthers Breakfast Programs, POCC runs the ‘Feed the People Program’ which continues to feed the hungry on a regular basis. One of the organization’s main mandates is to free all political prisoners and they are working especially hard to free their own political prisoners, such as Minister of Defense, Aaron Patterson, who is currently imprisoned and already spent 17 years on death row for a false conviction.

POCC’s Code of Culture remains strict and principled in their call out to all artists and musicians who claim to support the struggle to engage in revolutionary acts with their music.
With growing campaigns and successful community programs, with legendary hip hop artist M1 as their Minister of Culture, supporters like Mos Def, Erykah Badu, Kanye West, with bases in Chicago and Oakland and chapters opening up in other cities and around the world, such as in Brazil, the Prisoners of Conscience Committee is making its way into the hearts and minds of revolutionary people everywhere. Free ‘em all.

Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. of the P.O.C.C. Speaks, Part 1

In August 2008, Steve da Silva and N. Zahra of Basics Community Newsletter met with Chairman Fred Hampton Jr. of the Prisoners of Conscience Committee in Chicago in front of the historic site of the assassination of his father, Deputy Chairman Fred Hampton of the Illinois Black Panther Party. They spoke about police terror in Chicago, the legacy of the Black Panther Party, the hype around Obama, and the importance of people’s self-determination. This is Part 1 of our transcript of the interview...

Basics: Chairman, what exactly is going on here now in Chicago right now?

Chairman Fred Hampton Jr: Revolutionary appreciation for having me here today. Basically it’s been business as usual for the city of Chicago. We are standing in front of the site which we refer to as one of the “ground zeros” of black and other oppressed communities. And I say ground zero because it’s the site on which one of the most brutal acts of terrorism occurred on U.S. soil and when I say that I’m not talking about September 11th, I’m talking about December 4th, 1969 when the United States government via the Chicago Police Department assassinated Chairman Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. At that time the mayor of Chicago was Daley who we refer to as Gangster Daley Senior. He was a part of the brutal counter-insurgency program against the Panthers.

Lately especially, they’re continuing war, they’re continuing attacks on our leadership, on our movements and on the people in general. It’s in the numbers: 12 shootings by Chicago pigs, and 6 murders in one month. I want to point out too that the present mayor of Chicago is Gangster Daley Junior, the son of the mayor who was in place in 1969. This is the modus-operandi, how the police get down, cause the reality is there’s no war on drugs, there’s no war on guns, there’s no war on gangs, this is war on black and other oppressed communities and in case after case, you know what I’m saying, as soon as the shootin’ go down you hear the police say stuff like, ‘Well, it was a justified shooting,’ but I just want to point out also it’s met with resistance. Just recently, this past July 25th, I was locked up in response to resistance that was waged against Chicago pigs on the south-west side of Chicago in the heart of Englewood.

It’s important that the world hear this and see what’s goin’ on, especially in contrast to what U.S. propaganda’s been putting out, especially this whole election or selection, whatever the case may be, with people getting caught up with this whole façade about the first black, they say African American, running for President. A lot of people are under the impression that everything is okay in the States and in Chicago in particular. In fact, let the record reflect that Barack Obama is U.S. Senator from Chicago who has never addressed or acknowledged the atrocities that go down on a day to day basis right here in this city, and even atrocities such that the United Nations itself acknowledged Chicago as the torture capital of the country. I think it was last month, myself and our Minister of Defense, Aaron Patterson, who’s a political prisoner was also tortured by Chicago police.

Obama and all of these minions of Gangster Daley haven’t addressed or acknowledged these contradictions, you know what I’m sayin’ and when they do, if they do, they try to put it in some sort of abstract nostalgia, ‘Well this is how bad things was in the 60s and continued in the 80s,’ but the reality is in those numbers, and let the record reflect also a lot of these cases of police terrorism are not even documented. The black community is put in such a state of terror that when they get terrorized they acknowledge it as terrorism. In response we’ve also put several campaigns forward. We’ve got the African Anti-terrorism Bill. We say police brutality is a euphemism. The reality is it’s police terror.

Basics: Could you speak about the legacy of the Panthers?

Chairman Fred Hampton Jr.: The Black Panther Party was a revolutionary organization that fought for self-determination, so that people can speak in their own interests and that’s something that should not be taken lightly. A lot of different organizations playin’ that they support that but they’re really not with it. People say, ‘Let us articulate your plan for you’. We say what Stephen Biko said in the Black Consciousness Movement, that people must learn the ability to distinguish intelligence from the ability to articulate. And the reality is that the masses, they may not be too articulate but the reality is they’re very intelligent. We’re the POCC, we’re the official caretakers of this legacy. They’ve tried to say that the Black Panther Party was a racist organization, a gang. So it’s very important that we show that this was a revolutionary organization that stood up fighting for self-determination. In closing, revolutionary appreciation, ears up, eyes open and fists clenched. Power to the People.

The Foundation of the Revolution is Love: Interview with Political Prisoner Robert “Seth” Hayes

Interview by N. Zahra and Steve da Silva
Basics Issue #10 (Aug/Sep 2008)
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In June 2008, Basics visited political prisoner and former Black Liberation Army member Robert ‘Seth’ Hayes at a prison in upstate New York known as Wende Correctional Facility.

Robert Seth Hayes is one of the longest held political prisoners in the U.S.A. In 1973, Hayes was sentenced 25 years to life in prison on trumped-up charges.

This interview was pieced together by Basics members Steve da Silva and N. Zahra from our written notes, because we were not allowed to bring anything into the prison to record the interview.

Basics: What is a political prisoner?

Seth Hayes: We have people in these prisons who are just coming into a revolutionary consciousness, and we have people in here who have always been revolutionaries, agitating against the state. They are all political prisoners…

But one thing that more brothers in here need to be able to do is develop patience and a sense of appreciation for the scale of the struggle we have ahead of us. Things aren’t going to change overnight.

Unless you have a very strong sense of appreciation for the deep exploitation and oppression of the people and unless you are driven by strong love for the people, you will not last long. If you don’t love yourself and the struggle, you won’t last long at all.

Another problem in here is that many people think that by becoming political they will become modern-day Assata Shakurs or George Jacksons, but they end up breaking down under the pressure of the system because they are not working from a foundation of revolutionary love.
If we are to build a revolutionary movement, we need a strong foundation to stand on, and that foundation is love.

Another problem is the baggage that a lot of people come in here with. We have a lot of people who come from gangs, and they are accustomed to living by very different principles. So we are patient in our work with these people. It is a long, protracted pedagogical process.
We are trying to teach analytical thinking and social investigation, but the youth today are so used to instant gratification, and give little time to reading and writing. If the foundation is not secure, then anything that we build upon it will collapse…

Basics: So you’re saying that study is a prerequisite for revolutionary change?

Seth Hayes: It’s absolutely necessary. Our struggle is protracted in all senses.
A major aspect of the work of the Black Panther Party was our Political Education classes. Every member of the Party had to carry out political education. When I came back from serving in the Vietnam War, I didn’t know the first thing about Stalin, Ho Chi Minh, or Mao Tse-Tung. But I soon learned the value of studying these revolutionary thinkers, and why the ruling class does everything they can to prevent us from studying these thinkers.
After carrying out our community work, we would always have to carry out our educational work. We would have these educational raps whereby each of us would have to study a different revolutionary thinker, and then we would have to debate one another on the merits of the various thinkers. These dialogues proved incredibly fruitful in advancing our thinking.
It was such a pleasure to study back then, at a time when we weren’t wasting ourselves away with all the distractions of modern entertainment.

Basics: What was the significance of studying history in the foundation of the Party and what is the significance of the history of the Party itself?

Seth Hayes: In the Party, we summarized and criticized what had come before us. Previous movements of Blacks in America had no clear sense of direction and no clear revolutionary program. We did. Unfortunately, the generation after us has been left with no memory of what we did, despite the fact that our legacy lives on vividly today.

Basics: How does the legacy of the BPP live on today?

Seth Hayes: Before the Black Panther Party, there was no such thing as a Black politician.
Why? Because before the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army, there was no strong force in the Black community upon which Black opportunists could refer back to in their own compromising with the system.

So all Black politicians, Obama included, can thank the BPP for paving the way for this small advance in the Black community…

Basics: Is struggle still possible today?

Seth Hayes: We must realize that it may take us some 25 years of struggle for our work to really begin to make its mark felt. More importantly, we must realize that the capitalist class is itself planning its next 25 years of terror.

When we look at the runaway inflation that the capitalist economy is experiencing, and the dying away of the American dollar, the ruling class’s response here is the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). And to make this all a reality, they will need to suspend any outstanding liberties we have. This is all a hell of a legacy to leave for our children. So it’s just as clear that we have a hell of a fight ahead of us.

Gary Freeman Released!

by Kabir Joshi-Vijayan

After 4 years of imprisonment and physiological ordeal for him and his family, Gary Freeman was finally released on probation in the U.S. on March 7th. The black librarian was arrested by Toronto cops in 2004 for his suspected involvement in the 1969 shooting of a Chicago Police officer. After spending 4 years in Ontario prisons, he agreed to be extradited to face trial in Chicago in early February.

At the time of the shooting, black liberation and other revolutionary organizations in the US were being exterminated by the FBI. Chicago itself had the reputation of having the most corrupt and brutal police force in North America. John Knox, the cop that attacked Gary in 1969 (forcing Freeman to shoot in self-defense), had headed a squad that illegally infiltrated dozens of legal political organizations. Freeman fled to Canada because he feared he would be killed in prison after being wrongfully identified as a Black Panther and being convicted by an all white jury of shooting Knox.

Had he been found guilty of attempted murder in February, Freeman would have faced 30 years of imprisonment in the Chicago Cook County jail. This is the same prison where 65 black inmates were tortured, resulting in multi-million dollar lawsuits. Fortunately, the court only charged Freeman for aggravated battery as part of plea bargain, and sentenced him to a month in jail and 2 years probation in the U.S. Freeman must also pay $250,000 to a police aid fund.

This has been a remarkably positive outcome for the situation, and Basics extends our congratulations to Gary Freeman and his family. However, while some are celebrating Freeman’s release as proof that the racial and political situation in the US has improved since the 60’s, the reality is that social and political conditions remain deeply oppressive for the majority of Black and poor Americans. Today, a Chicago cop shoots a civilian every 10 days, and across the U.S., black people (13% of the population) make up 60% of the prison population. The fight to and end to systematic racism and police brutality in the US and Canada continues.

Captive Nations: Ombudsman Slams Justice System's Treatment of First Nations

The Office of the Correctional Investigator released a report on Monday blasting the federal Correctional Service for its treatment of the First Nations in Canada. First Nations peoples make up 18.5 per cent of the prison population despite being only 2.7 per cent of the population of Canada and are nine times more likely to go to jail than the population at large. In Western provinces the situation is even worse, where Natives make up 60 percent of the inmate population.

Once inside the justice system, First Nations fare worse than non-First Nations. They are less likely to get sentenced to community supervision and are frequently "over-classified" - ie. sent to maximum security instead of medium - forcing them to serve their time far from their homes, families, elders, and communities. They have less access to rehabilitative services, such as education, job training, or addictions counseling. They are released much later into their sentences and are more likely to get their parole yanked and sent back to prison on technical grounds.

While this injustice has grown worse in recent years, it is hardly new. "Despite years of task force reports, internal reviews, national strategies, partnership agreements and action plans, there has been no measurable improvements in the conditions for aboriginal offenders during the last 20 years," Sapers said. The pattern of sweeping the problem under the rug continues, as Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day said he would "take the report under consideration" but denied that there was any evidence of systemic discrimination against First Nations in the prison system.

Such avoidance makes sense, since having impoverished and locked-up First Nations communities benefits powerful interests in our society. The First Nations have repeatedly and consistently struggled to defend their sovereignty and land rights, arousing the ire of the government and their corporate backers. Traditional, unceded First Nations territory includes lucrative fishing areas on the East and West coasts, massive oil and uranium deposits in the prairies, hydroelectric projects in northern Quebec, rich logging areas all over Canada, and more. Even those lands that lack natural resources are still be considered useful - as dumping grounds for solid or toxic waste that would be politically unacceptable in richer, whiter, parts of the country. As long as we have a government in power that views strong, vibrant, First Nations communities as a threat to their power and control - rather than allies in the struggle for justice - we can look forward to another decade of government stonewalling, sabotage, denial, and repression.