An interview with Theresa Shoatz and Matt Meyer

by Angola 3 News

This month, a 30-day action campaign was launched demanding the release of Russell "Maroon" Shoatz from solitary confinement, where he has been held for over 23 consecutive years—and 28 of the last 30 years in Pennsylvania prisons. On April 8, when the campaign began, Maroon's legal team sent a letter to the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PA DoC), demanding his release from solitary confinement and promising litigation against the PA DoC if he is not transferred to general population by May 8.

The action campaign describes Maroon as "a former leader of the Black Panthers and the Black freedom movement, born in Philadelphia in 1943 and originally imprisoned in January 1972 for actions relating to his political involvement. With an extraordinary thirty-plus years spent in solitary confinement… Maroon's case is one of the most shocking examples of US torture of political prisoners, and one of the most egregious examples of human rights violations regarding prison conditions anywhere in the world. His 'Maroon' nickname is, in part, due to his continued resistance—which twice led him to escape confinement; it is also based on his continued clear analysis, including recent writings on ecology and matriarchy."

Writing that Maroon "has not had a serious rule violation for more than two decades," the campaign argues that he has actually been "targeted because of his work as an educator and because of his political ideas; his time in solitary began just after he was elected president of an officially-sanctioned prison-based support group. This targeting is in violation of his basic human and constitutional rights."

Colombian Communities Reclaim Land and Life
from the Paramilitary-Business Alliance

by James Bargent, Toward Freedom

The first of the displaced people to return to their homes in Curvarado, north Colombia found the forests they had known cut down, the rivers and streams diverted and the native wildlife long gone. It was a desert, they say—not of sand but of African-palm and cattle ranches.

Standing in the shadows behind the palm businesses and ranchers that had taken over the region were the same paramilitaries that had forced them from their homes several years before.

But still the people came. They built new communities known as "Humanitarian Zones," which are now legally recognized as neutral zones where all armed actors, legal and illegal are prohibited from entering. They also began the process of reclaiming the land exhausted by the agri-business onslaught, dividing recovered territory into "Biodiversity Zones."

What the Boliviarian Revolution Owes the Yukpa and Bari

by Sybila Tabra and Jorge Agurto, Servindi

Amid the homages that pay tribute to the late Hugo Chávez, we cannot forget the historical debt that the Venezuelan state has to the territorial claims of the Yukpa and Bari peoples, whose leader, Sabino Romero, was brutally assassinated March 3 by sicarios (hired killers) that respresent the interests of various sectors that occupy their ancestral territories.