The best thing coming out of Black Panther is the renewed calls for the release of jailed Black Panther members whoâve been incarcerated for decades. The FBIâs terrorism unit had labeled them âblack identity extremistsâ, claiming that activists fighting police brutality posed a violent threat.Â
An incomplete list of Black Liberation political prisoners (Black Panthers and other groups) still inside:
Joe Joe Bowen, born 1946, in prison since 1971
Veronza Bowers, born 1946, in prison since 1973
Sundiata Acoli, born 1937, in prison since 1969
Chip Fitzgerald, born 1949, in prison since 1970, denied parole 17 times.
Fred Burton, born 1946, in prison since 1970
Mumia Abu-Jamal, born 1954, in prison since 1982
Ruchell Magee, born 1939, in prison since 1963,
Ronald Reed, born 1950, in prison since 1970,
Jamil Al-Amin, born 1943, in and out of prison from the 1970s to the 1990s on a series of suspicious charges, currently incarcerated
Rev. Joy Powell, born 1962, in prison since 2006, eligible for parole in 2045
Freddie Hilton, born 1953, in prison since 2002
Robert Hayes, born 1948, in prison since 1973
Russell Maroon Shoates, born 1943, in prison since 1972, held in solitary confinement for 22 years
these people are literally heroes. they organized a breakfast program for poor kids, hosted rent strikes, applied pressure to landlords to do their jobs cleaning up apartments. thereâs even one story where two of these guys drove out to a personâs house and brought their baby to the hospital to get a cockroach removed from her ear.
these are heroes who demanded freedom for oppressed peoples and actively worked toward creating a more free world.
and so they were accused of crimes they didnât commit, thrown in jail, and left to rot where theyâd be sure never to feed a hungry kid or refill an abandoned community pool ever again.
