Black August 2009 in DC schedule

Visit us on Facebook and Myspace.com/blackaugust_dc

contact:  black.august07@gmail.com and/or 202-271-7763

Aug1^st, Sat. 5 – 8pm
George Jackson documentary with discussion Featuring Elaine Brown and Kumasi
Sankofa Video/Bookstore & Café
2714 Georgia Ave NW, Washington, DC

Showing of the film “Death of a Revolutionary”, followed by discussion with Elaine Brown of the original Black Panther Party and Kumasi, historian of the Black August Organizing Committee, who was a comrade of George Jackson and one of the founders of Black August 30 years ago.

Aug 2^nd, Sun. 4 – 7pm
Black August 30^th Anniversary… Where to From Here?
Inquire for location:   runawayblood@gmail.com or 202-271-7763

This will be a follow up discussion from the night before.  It will be an opportunity for all voices to be heard.  Our featured guests, Elaine Brown and Kumasi, will share with the group their ideas and vision of how the struggle to free political prisoners and address the inhumanity of the prison system, can be moved forward.  Their advices will be integrated into a BAPO led initiative that will utilize our location in DC to advocate on Capitol Hill. This will be an interactive strategizing session.

Aug 8^th, Sat. 2pm – 6pm
Tupac Shakur:  Shadow Revolutionary
Maya Angelou Public Charter School
1851 9^th St NW (9^th& T), Washington, DC

On the birthday of Dr. Mutulu Shakur, we will feature this conference which will discuss his history as a revolutionary with the Black Panther Party and Black Liberation Army, as well as his circumstances as a Political Prisoner.  Moreover, we will focus on his God-son, Tupac Shakur, as a Shadow Revolutionary and the evidence of him being targeted by the FBI and his influence as a rap artist. Participants will include John Potash (Author of The FBI War on Tupac Shakur and Black Leaders), Dr. Jared Ball (VoxUnion.com), Dr. Kokayi Patterson (African Wholistic Health Association), Khalil Mustafa (Friends and Family of Dr. Mutulu Shakur), and Daniel Bradley (Peaceoholics).

Aug 9^th, Sun. 3 – 6pm
Book Signing and Discussion
with Flores “Fly” Forbes — ‘Will You Die With Me?’
Sankofa Video/Bookstore & Café
2714 Georgia Ave NW, Washington, DC

Flores Forbes will discuss and sign his book.  In this remarkable memoir, Forbes vividly describes his transformation from an angry youth into a powerful partisan in the ranks of the black liberation movement.  With intimate portraits of such BPP leaders as Elaine Brown, Eldridge Cleaver, and Huey P. Newton, Will You Die with Me? is a riveting firsthand look at some of the most dramatic events of the last century and a brutally honest tale of one man’s journey from rage to redemption.

Aug, 22^nd Sat. 9am
Part 1 of Slave Rebellion Weekend:
3rd Annual Pilgrimage to Prosser City (Richmond,VA)
Meeting and leaving from Sankofa Bookstore (2714 Georgia Ave) at 9am SHARP!

Van/bus to Richmond, VA will include a tour and History of the Gabriel Prosser Revolt/Conspiracy.  Led by Anna Edwards and Brother Manifest, this has proven to be a memorable stimulating experience for all in previous years.  The cost of this trip is $20 (contact: 202-580-4001) or you can follow us there.

Aug 23^rd, Sun. 3 – 6pm
Part 2 of Slave Rebellion Weekend:  Lecture with Dr. CR Gibbs
Maya Angelou Public Charter School
1851 9^th St NW (9^th & T), Washington, DC

CR Gibbs will present a thorough lecture/slide presentation entitled: “LET YOUR MOTTO BE RESISTANCE:  THE GREAT SLAVE REBELIONS”

Aug 29th, Sat. 1pm - 4pm
Monthly Political Prisoner Workshop & Presentation on BAPO Congressional Lobby efforts
Southwest Branch Library
900 Wesley Place, SW, Wash., DC (3rd & K st, 3 blocks from Waterfront-SEU metro)

Monthly letter writing initiative. This month we will feature Ruchell Magee, sole survivor of the Marin County Court rebellion and Sekou Odinga of the Black Liberation Army. Afterward, Naji Mujahid will present BAPOs plans for a congressional lobbying effort on behalf of PP/POWs and to address the inhumane operation of the prison system.

30TH ANNIVERSARY BLACK AUGUST WEEKEND/7TH ANNUAL HAPPILY NATURAL DAY-ATLANTA

For more info contact:  BLACKAUGUSTWEEKEND@GMAIL.COM or 404-437-0828
Time: August 14, 2009 at 6pm to August 16, 2009 at 6pm
Location: RBG (Rap Brown Georgia)
Organized By: Black August Organizing Committee/Happily Natural/FTP Movement
See more details and RSVP on FTP MOVEMENT: http://ftpmovement.ning.com/events/event/show?id=2079122%3AEvent%3A10128&xgi=aK1wAjs

HAPPILY NATURAL DAY in Richmond VA. August 28-29
www.happilynaturalday.com

Assata: An Autobiography

On May 2, 1973, Black Panther Assata Shakur (aka Joanne Chesimard) lay in a hospital, close to death, handcuffed to her bed, while local, state, and federal police attempted to question her about the shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike that had claimed the life of a white state trooper and Zayd Shakur, a Black revolutionary. Long a target of J. Edgar Hoover’s campaign to defame, infiltrate, and criminalize Black nationalist organizations and their leaders, Shakur had already been dogged by police accusations of criminal activities, although the cases against her were always dismissed due to the complete lack of evidence.

More than simply a political chronology, in this book Assata Shakur shares the life experiences that led her to embrace revolutionary politics and the fight for human liberation. She discusses her childhood, life in the Black Panther Party, and what it was like at the time to be faced by government repression, sanctioned by the FBI’s lethal Counter-Intelligence Programme.

Assata had faced the standard repressive fare of trumped up charges and bogus arrests since shortly after she joined the Black Panther Party. The harassment and vilification continued, forcing her into the underground. On May 2, 1973 she and her comrades Sundiata Acoli and Zayd Shakur were driving on the New Jersey Turnpike when a state trooper pulled them over in a case of Driving While Black. Shots were exchanged and Zayd and one of the white state troopers were killed. Shot and seriously injured in the incident, Assata Shakur was at the time on the FBI’s most wanted list, and orders had been given for her capture dead or alive, because she was supposed to be armed, dangerous, a kidnapper and murderer. Although Zayd Shakur was the only one on whom a weapon was found, Assata and Sundiata were both tried and convicted of murder in 1977.

Two years later Assata escaped from prison with the help of the Black Liberation Army.

She has been living as a political refugee in Cuba since the mid-eighties. American law enforcement officials and right-wing politicians have put a bounty on her head, and continue to lobby for pressure to be put on the Cuban regime to extradite her.

Soledad Brother

George L. Jackson: September 23, 1941 — August 21, 1971

In 1960, at the age of eighteen, George Jackson was accused of stealing $70 from a gas station in Los Angeles. Though there was evidence of his innocence, his court-appointed lawyer maintained that because Jackson had a record (two previous instances of petty crime), he should plead guilty in exchange for a light sentence in the county jail. He did, and received an indeterminate sentence of one year to life. Jackson spent the next ten years in Soledad Prison, seven and a half of them in solitary confinement. Instead of succumbing to the dehumanization of prison existence, he transformed himself into the leading theoretician of the prison movement and a brilliant writer. Soledad Brother, which contains the letters that he wrote from 1964 to 1970, is his testament.

In his twenty-eighth year, Jackson and two other black inmates — Fleeta Drumgo and John Cluchette — were falsely accused of murdering a white prison guard. The guard was beaten to death on January 16, 1969, a few days after another white guard shot and killed three black inmates by firing from a tower into the courtyard. The accused men were brought in chains and shackles to two secret hearings in Salinas County. A third hearing was about to take place when John Cluchette managed to smuggle a note to his mother: “Help, I’m in trouble.” With the aid of a state senator, his mother contacted a lawyer, and so commenced one of the most extensive legal defenses in U.S. history. According to their attorneys, Jackson, Drumgo, and Clutchette were charged with murder not because there was any substantial evidence of their guilt, but because they had been previously identified as black militants by the prison authorities. If convicted, they would face a mandatory death penalty under the California penal code. Within weeks, the case of the Soledad Brothers emerged as a political cause célèbre for all sorts of people demanding change at a time when every American institution was shaken by Black rebellions in more than one hundred cities and the mass movement against the Vietnam War.

August 7, 1970, just a few days after George Jackson was transferred to San Quentin, the case was catapulted to the forefront of national news when his brother, Jonathan, a seventeen-year-old high school student in Pasadena, staged a raid on the Marin County courthouse with a satchelful of handguns, an assault rifle, and a shotgun hidden under his coat. Educated into a political revolutionary by George, Jonathan invaded the court during a hearing for three black San Quentin inmates, not including his brother, and handed them weapons. As he left with the inmates and five hostages, including the judge, Jonathan demanded that the Soledad Brothers be released within thirty minutes. In the shootout that ensued, Jonathan was gunned down. Of Jonathan, George wrote, “He was free for a while. I guess that’s more than most of us can expect.”

Soledad Brother, which is dedicated to Jonathan Jackson, was released to critical acclaim in France and the United States, with an introduction by the renowned French dramatist Jean Genet, in the fall of 1970. Less than a year later and just two days before the opening of his trial, George Jackson was shot to death by a tower guard inside San Quentin Prison in a purported escape attempt. “No Black person,” wrote James Baldwin, “will ever believe that George Jackson died the way they tell us he did.”

Soledad Brother went on to become a classic of Black literature and political philosophy, selling more than 400,000 copies before it went out of print twenty years ago. Lawrence Hill Books is pleased to reissue this book and to add to it a Foreword by the author’s nephew, Jonathan Jackson, Jr., who is a writer living in California.

*This book can be accessed at:  http://www.historyisaweapon.com/defcon1/soledadbro.html*

David Walker’s Appeal

In 1829 David Walker, a free black born in Wilmington, North Carolina, wrote one of America’s most provocative political documents of the nineteenth century, Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World. Decrying the savage and unchristian treatment blacks suffered in the United States, Walker challenged his “afflicted and slumbering brethren” to rise up and cast off their chains. Walker worked tirelessly to circulate his book via underground networks in the South, and he was so successful that Southern lawmakers responded with new laws cracking down on “incendiary” antislavery material.

Walker’s Appeal represents one of the earliest African-centered discourses on an oppressed people’s right to freedom. African American political philosophy has evolved from many of the themes that it articulates.  We should explore the relevance of the Appeal in the 21st Century.