Updates include:
- Release of Cuban 5 prisoner Rene Gonzalez
- Transfer of Patrice Lumumba Ford
- Transfer of Cuban 5 prisoner Antonio Guerrero
- Transfer of Kojo Bomani Sababu (Grailing Brown)

OAKLAND — Police arrested about 300 people Saturday as Occupy Oakland protesters were thwarted trying to take over a vacant convention center and a YMCA but later broke into City Hall, where they burned a flag taken from inside.

Police used tear gas and “flash” grenades in the afternoon against 2,000 protesters who tried to tear down fences around the vacant Henry Kaiser Convention Center, where they hoped to establish a new camp. Police said some demonstrators started throwing objects at officers. There were at least 19 arrests in the afternoon.

After 6 p.m. (9 p.m. ET), police in riot gear declared a group of protesters gathered near the YMCA under mass arrest for failing to disperse, according to local media reports and livestreams. Police said about 100 demonstrators were arrested at the YMCA.

Full coverage here.

Great News!

Today, January 26, 2012, Erik Lankin, a member of the G20 Main Conspiracy Group was released from jail in Penetang. He served 60 days (2/3 of a 3 month sentence) for counseling to commit mischief at the G20 in Toronto. We are ecstatic to have our comrade back in our arms.

Special thank to all the people who send Erik letters, postcards and reading materials, We know he deeply appreciated all the support he received.

-Sincerely, Guelph Anarchist Black Cross (GAyBC)

What? The 27 Social Centre Secret Cafe Brunch

When? Saturday, February 4th, 11:30am-2:30pm

Where? 27 Social Centre (2727 W. 27th avenue, Unit D)

Food? $5-$12  a plate. The brunch-tatstic menu includes: Egg and Veggie Quiche, Biscuits and Gravy, Waffles, Oatmeal with Topping Bar, and Banana Breakfast Sundaes. Gluten Free and Vegan options available, yummy drinks will be provided for additional donations!

The 27 Social Centre is radical cultural space that houses great people like The Denver Zine Library, Sent(a)mental Studios, P&L Printing, The Denver Community Health Collective, Build Up Books, Bread & Roses, Denver ABC, and the Colorado Street Medics.

from the NCTT Corcoran SHU

“Death is impossible for us to fathom; it is so immense, so frightening that we will do almost anything to keep from thinking about it. Society is organized to make death invisible, to keep it several steps removed. That distance may seem necessary for our comfort, but it comes with a terrible price: the illusion of limitless time, and a consequent lack of seriousness about daily life. As a warrior in life, you must turn this dynamic around: Make the thought of death something not to escape but to embrace. Your days are numbered. Will you pass them halfhearted or will you live with a sense of urgency? Cruel theaters staged by a czar are unnecessary; death will come to you without them. Imagine it pressing in on you, leaving you no escape, for there is no escape. Feeling death at your heels will make all your actions more certain, more forceful. This could be your last throw of the dice: Make it count.” – Robert Greene, bestselling author of “The 48 Laws of Power”

Greetings, brothers and sisters: A firm, warm and solid embrace of revolutionary love and solidarity is extended to each of you from each of us.

Since the last hunger strike ended, we have weathered wave after wave of retaliation from the state’s prison administrators that continues unabated to this day. But before I catalog these manifestations of weakness on the part of state prison administrators, we feel it’s necessary to recount why this struggle began and the nature of our resolve to see the five core demands realized.

We have been consigned to ever more aggressive sensory deprivation torture units for 10, 20, 30 and in some cases 40 years, based on an administrative determination that we are members or associates of a “gang” – a term that encompasses leftist ideologies, political and politicized prisoners, jailhouse lawyers and most anyone who in the opinion of Institutional Gang Investigations (IGI) is not passively accepting his role as a commodity in the prison industrial complex.

These administrative determinations are not due to some overt act of misconduct or pattern of rules violations. No, these “validations” are based most often on the reforms, words or accounts of debriefers, rats, informants and other broken men who will say and do ‘most anything their IGI and ISU (Investigative Services Unit) handlers instruct them to, to avoid confinement in the SHU (Security Housing Unit) or carry some other favor from their masters.

After decades of fruitless legal challenges, after years of suffering the deprivations of conditions so inherently evil, inhumane and psychologically torturous that most of you simply cannot comprehend the reality behind these words, most of us came to realize an immutable truth: that the state’s mantra of “the only way out of the SHU is to parole, debrief or die” was something that they not only meant, but was in fact a key feature in developing a subservient and passive pool of prisoner commodities upon which the orderly fleecing of taxpayer dollars could be based.

Thirty years of successful propaganda, of dehumanizing underclass communities and the imprisoned, of lobbying that’s led to the dominance of the CCPOA (California Correctional Peace Officers Association) in judicial and political elections and appointments – all to mislead an ill-informed public into submitting greater control of their lives and society to an industrial interest that runs counter to the public safety concerns they were vested to protect. Many of us watched this state of affairs progress unchallenged as our protestations fell on deaf ears, year after year, decade after decade, until advanced age and the decimation of our communities forced us onto “death ground,” where you may survive if you can resist, but you will most surely perish if you do not.

Read the rest here.

On Oct. 20, 1981, a band of militant zealots armed with automatic weapons tried to rob a Brink’s truck in a shopping mall in Nanuet in Rockland County, N.Y. Before it was over, two armored-car guards were shot and two police officers — one black and one white — were gunned down at a roadblock. The crime was one of the last spasms of ’60s-style, left-wing violence. To the militants, it was an “expropriation” for something they called the Republic of New Afrika, a place that existed mainly in their fevered dreams.

Judith Clark was one of four people arrested that day for armed robbery and murder. She was 31, a veteran of the white left who traveled the radical arc from student protest to the Weathermen to the fringes beyond. A new single mother, she kissed her infant daughter goodbye that morning, promising to be home soon.

No one ever accused Clark of holding or firing a gun that deadly afternoon. But she was there, a willing participant, at the wheel of a tan Honda getaway car. Over the next two years while she awaited trial in jail, Clark became a fiercer warrior than she was on the day of the robbery. During court hearings, she told the judge she was a “freedom fighter” who didn’t recognize the right of imperialist courts to try her. She called court officers “fascist dogs!” when they clashed with her supporters.

Read the rest here.

So please support the movement to defend Occupy arrestees by making a donation here. PLEASE MAKE SURE TO EARMARK THE DONATION FOR “BAIL FUND.”

In solidarity, Denver ABC

Meetings will be Mondays starting January 23rd at the Colorado Progressive Coalition (1029 Santa Fe Drive), 6pm.

Since arriving at SCI-Mahanoy, Mumia has been in the hole, on AC (administrative custody) status, solitary confinement, even though there is no valid reason for him to be in the hole.  The conditions are torturous
and much worse than the conditions on death row.  These conditions have been condemned by the United Nations as torturous.

Since arriving at Mahanoy, Superintendent John Kerestes and his staff have gone from one thing to the next to vent their fury and racism on Mumia.  First they claimed to be waiting on paperwork that Mumia’s sentence is a life sentence and not death, but Mahanoy has no death chamber, so Mumia would
never be sent there if he still had a death sentence.

When people saw right through that, Kerestes said that Mumia has to cut his hair before going into general population, now he’s saying that Mumia has to let them take his blood (something Mumia really doesn’t want to do) before he can be in general population.  Mumia has been in prison for 30 years, so why this sudden demand for his blood now.

It is crystal clear that Kerestes and his staff are doing everything they can to keep Mumia in the hole under these torturous conditions, and it’s all rooted in racism and their fury at all the world-wide attention that
stays focused on Mumia, after all these years.  They’re furious that their plan to legally kill Mumia ain’t working.

They’re torturing Mumia for the same reason the Romans tortured Jesus Christ, because he won’t go along with the lies of the system and racism.  Prison policy has nothing to do with what they’re doing to Mumia and everybody should be clear on this.  We must be vigilant over Mumia, including organizations that can visit him on an official basis.

We must continue to flood Supt. Kerestes with calls and emails.  Mumia is up in serious racist KKK territory and we must have his back.  We’ve brought Mumia too far to get lax now.

Remember, the power of the people is a force to be reckoned with when the power of the people stays consistent and united.

International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu Jamal and The Move Organization