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Books by Leonard
Peltier
Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance
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Have You Thought Of Leonard Peltier Lately?
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Native Americans say
NO to Hilary Clinton
By Carter Camp,
Ponca Nation
During the
Clinton administration I worked for the Leonard
Peltier Defense Committee (LPDC) trying to get
Leonard a pardon for his aiding and abetting
conviction in the tragic deaths which occurred
during an altercation between the FBI and the AIM
[American Indian Movement] on the Pine Ridge Indian
Reservation in 1975. For many years before and
during the Clinton administration millions of
Americans, and even more millions of people from
other countries, signed petitions demanding simple
justice for Leonard.
Over fifty
Senators and Congressmen and women signed on,
President Nelson Mandela made a personal appeal on
his behalf, Bishop Desmond Tutu did likewise. Every
Indian Tribe and Native organization from Alaska to
Argentina rose to his defense, Amnesty International
called him Americas only political prisoner. Mass
marches and rallies were held in cities across the
U.S. and an intense lobbying effort was begun on his
behalf. Despite all these efforts our pleadings fell
on deaf ears and Leonard languished in prison,
writing books and doing what all political prisoners
do... wait until the truth frees them.
During the
first Bush administration it was a hopeless task
seeking any justice from the executive branch so we
concentrated on legal proceedings and appeals. It
became so clear that a miscarriage of justice had
occurred that even an Federal Appeals Court Judge
asked for clemency. Robert Redford made a
documentary about him called
Incident at Oglala
and Peter Matthieson wrote a book called In the
Spirit of Crazy Horse both of which proved Peltiers
innocence and documented the prosecutions misdeeds
in convicting him.
It was proven
that Leonard was a scapegoat for FBI failures more
than a convicted criminal. Then came the Clinton
administration and we in Indian Country were hopeful
that a Democrat in the White House would at last
listen to reason and finally free Leonard Peltier.
So for eight years we patiently presented our
evidence and over ten million signatures from around
the world. We were wrong, President Clinton left
office without signing his pardon and Leonard was
left to spend another decade unjustly confined to a
jail cell. He has now been there for over thirty
years, long past the parole date for the crime he
was convicted of aiding and abetting.
However it
isn't only that Clinton refused to pardon Peltier it
was the way it was done that has angered Indian
Country. After an immense and intense lobbying
effort by Native American people and our
organizations the Clintons led us to believe that a
pardon would be forthcoming at the end of their
administration. I spent the final days of the
Clinton administration helping the LPDC so I know
first hand that contacts within the administration
made reassuring backchannel statements to the LPDC
and I also know that those statements came from the
Office of the First Lady, Hillary Clinton.
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Any release of
the specific White House people involved would have
to come from the LPDC but we were led to believe
what we did by Hillary Clinton's office and we all
assumed, because of who those contacts were, with
her direct knowledge. They deliberately lied to keep
us quiet as long as needed and Indian Country has a
long memory.
At first we were at a loss to explain
what had happened but then the far right,
anti-Indian Ex-Governor of South Dakota, Bill Janklow, began bragging about how he and his
rightwing allies had stopped Clinton from issuing a
pardon. |
He said he had
a "personal meeting" with Clinton in which he
"convinced" the President not to pardon Peltier or
else face dire consequences from "law enforcement"
and their allies. Of course as soon as Gore was
cheated out of the election, Hillary Clinton began
claiming her right to the nomination and the reason
why Peltier was denied a pardon became very clear .
. . the Clinton machine was afraid a pardon, no
matter how deserved, would impede their march back
to power! Plain and simply they were intimidated by
the far right and cowardly gave in to their threats.
Bill Clinton
came to some Indian reservations when he was
President and that has left some lingering good will
for him among some Indian people. But he, like every
politician before him, flat out lied when he
promised to do something about the conditions on our
homelands. Our people still suffer the highest
poverty numbers in the nation. On Pine Ridge where
Clinton visited the unemployed are over 75% of the
population!! Where else on earth are 75% of the
people without work, much less in America? Bill
Clinton came to South Dakota and exploited the
horrible poverty of our people for his own
political gain.
Then he left to
forget what he saw and disrespect us on Leonard
Peltier's pardon. Our poor people deserve better
than another Clinton presidency and we must remember
that electing another Clinton means that our brother
will continue to remain unjustly imprisoned. Here in
the west, in states where our votes count, we must
reject Hillary Clinton and send her back to D.C.
where lies are normal. Native America and all of
Indian Country must say NO! to Hillary Clinton.
Feel free to
help by circulating this letter and visiting the
LPDC webite;
LeonardPeltier.net we have until June 3rd to
organize against the Clinton re-election.
Letter about
Peltier from Harvey Wasserman, “Bringing Leonard
Peltier to Iowa and New Hampshire December 30, 2007,
Freepress.
The
campaign to free Leonard Peltier
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The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Enjoy!
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
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January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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posted 11 May 2008
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