Tuesday, June 15th – Letter Writing for Imam Jamil Al-Amin

WHAT: Political Prisoner Letter-Writing Dinner
WHEN: 7pm sharp, Tuesday June 15th, 2021
WHERE: your home (or wherever you happen to be)
COST: Free

Sometimes it seems that the struggle for a free society is reduced to something so simple as the struggle to remember. The ruling class hates to be reminded that it wasn’t bootstraps but the ongoing violence of settler colonialism that bought them their Sunday brunch. Or that Stonewall wasn’t a commercial for a big box store, or an isolated event in the centuries of rebellions big and small by those on the losing side of patriarchal supremacy and its false binaries. And right now, as ‘we’ are ‘getting back to normal,’ the triumphalism that callously asserts the needs of domestic markets in the face of a still raging international pandemic insists that we forgot the suffering and wide scale preventable deaths that were all most of us could think about for the past year.  We are told to take off our masks, get back to work, and go to brunch, and to forget those who got sick and especially the hundreds of thousands who died. In a very similar way we are told that Black Panthers are comic book characters and fashion symbols to appropriate, safely ancient history if they were ever real at all; that Indigenous resistance to genocide is a thing of the past; that de-colonial freedom struggles were a ’boomer fad, and that the “united states” doesn’t have any political prisoners.

But what if we choose to remember?
What if we insist on remembering that those who resisted and fell, those who were captured, are human beings?
What if we got to know them as people with aches and pains and senses of humor and wisdom won through decades of principled struggle?
What would happen if we remember that the struggle continues?

This week NYC ABC and Page One Collective are asking you write to Imam Jamil Al-Amin (formerly known as H. Rap Brown). Jamil Al-Amin is a long time community leader and organizer, falsely imprisoned for killing a sheriff’s deputy in Georgia. He was convicted in 2002 and after some time in Georgia state prison, the state decided to bury him in federal custody at the notorious Florence Supermax in Colorado before being held in Arizona. The Imam has bone cancer and other health issues, so his family and supporters are currently pushing for an appeal to his trial and for his return to Georgia to receive better medical care and to be able to take a more active role in appealing his case. More information on what you can do is available at whathappened2rap.com

We are asking folks to take the time to write a letter to Jamil (and share a photo of your completed envelopes with us online). Please note that as it states on his support site “Imam Jamil is not receiving proper medical care and is now blind as a result.” We are suggesting to send typewritten letters in a large font (size 18 font and over) to let him and those holding him captive know that he is far from forgotten:

Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin #99974-555
USP Tucson
Post Office Box 24550
Tucson, Arizona 85734

Illustrated Guide Version 14.1 Uploaded!

We’ve finished the latest version of the NYC ABC “Illustrated Guide to Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War” and it’s available for viewing (and download) by clicking on the tab at the top of this page. This update includes updated mini-bios, photos, and address changes for several prisoners. Unfortunately, we are adding prisoners to the guide this month–Plowshares activists Clare Grady and Martha Hennessy and Water Protector Steve Martinez.

Tuesday, June 16th – Letter-writing to Imam Jamil al-Amin

WHAT: Political Prisoner Letter-Writing
WHEN: 7pm, Tuesday, June 16th, 2020
WHERE: YOUR HOME
COST: Free
To say it’s heating up in NYC is an understatement, and we don’t mean the late spring heatwave. Folks in their neighborhoods have been rising up against the fundamentally white supremacist NYPD. In NYC ABC, we organized a noise demonstration outside MDC Brooklyn, where prison cops killed Jamel Floyd and continue our work to support U.S. held political prisoners and prisoners of war. Though we remain quarantined from our in-person communities, the work continues, again in collaboration with our comrades in Page One Collective. Therefore, instead of coming together at The Base in Brooklyn, we ask that folks participate in keeping prisoners from being more alienated than they already are, by writing from home. Please post a photo of your addressed envelope on social media and tag us (with your return address blurred out) and we will share it, building digital community while our analog community stays indoors and washes its hands. This week, our every-other-week letter-writing is focused on Black liberation political prisoner Imam Jamil Al-Amin.

We were recently reminded of the quote ‘violence is as American as cherry pie’ with the choking murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis by cops there. That prescient quote is from Imam Jamil Al-Amin (then known as H. Rap Brown).

Jamil Al-Amin is a long time community leader and organizer, falsely imprisoned for  killing a sheriff’s deputy in Georgia. He was convicted in 2002 and after some time in Georgia state prison, the state decided to bury him in federal custody at the notorious Florence Supermax in Colorado. Due to a concerted and strong effort on the part of his supporters, Imam Jamil was transferred to the medical facility at Butner after having been diagnosed with bone cancer. Family and supporters are currently pushing for an appeal to his trial. More information is available at whathappened2rap.com

Please take the time to write a letter to Jamil (and share a photo of your completed envelopes with us online):
Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin #99974-555
USP Tucson
Post Office Box 24550
Tucson, Arizona 85734

Illustrated Guide Version 10.9 Now Uploaded!

We’ve finished the latest version of the NYC ABC “Illustrated Guide to Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War” and it’s available for viewing (and download) by clicking on the tab at the top of this page. This update includes updated mini-bios, photos, and address changes for several prisoners as well as removes Stanley Cohen (time served!).

Illustrated Guide Version 9.7 Now Uploaded!

We’ve finished the latest version of the NYC ABC “Illustrated Guide to Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War” and it’s available for viewing (and download) by clicking on the tab at the top of this page. This update includes updated mini-bios, photos, and address changes for several prisoners as well as removing Joel Bitar (TIME SERVED!) and Jason Sutherlin (TIME SERVED!). Unfortunately, this version also includes the addition of Eric King, an anarchist awaiting trial for alleged politically motivated property destruction in Kansas City.