A Call for Justice from the Angola 3

A Call for Justice from the Angola 3

By Herman Wallace -- Introduction by Scott Fleming

Herman Wallace (Left), Robert King Wilkerson (Center), and Albert Woodfox (Right).

The following letter is from Herman Wallace, one of the “Angola 3,” three men--all former Black Panthers--incarcerated at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. Wallace and Albert Woodfox have been in solitary confinement for 32 years. Robert King Wilkerson, the third member of the group, was released from prison in 2001 after 29 years of solitary confinement. Wallace and Woodfox were falsely convicted of murdering a white prison guard in 1972, at a time when the Louisiana State Penitentiary was a cauldron of racism, violence, and rape, and known as the “Bloodiest Prison in America.”

Despite demonstrable and growing evidence of their innocence, Louisiana’s racist and conservative courts--the state’s elected judges run for office on tough-on-crime, pro-death penalty platforms just like other politicians--have so far refused to consider their appeals. Because they are politicized black men who refuse to acquiesce to their own oppression, the Louisiana penal system hopes to torture them until they die, despite the fact that they are two of the kindest, most principled men one could ever meet.

The prison itself is a former slave plantation, named “Angola” after the national origin of the slaves who were kidnapped and taken there. After the Civil War, the plantation became a prison and is operated on the plantation model to this day. 80 percent of the 5,000 prisoners there are African-American, and 80 percent are serving sentences that will keep them there until they die. Most spend their days in the fields, working for pennies an hour to harvest produce that the state sells at a profit. Louisiana incarcerates a higher percentage of its population than any other state.

In prison, Wallace and Woodfox are subjected to constant harassment and retribution from the mostly white administration. For the past few years, the guards have repeatedly slammed Wallace with phony conduct charges that have resulted in two years in Camp J, the prison’s punishment unit. Among these charges are the possession of “gang materials”--any books or papers pertaining to African-American history or the Black Panther Party can be labeled “gang material” at the whim of the retrograde officers. Just this month, Wallace was taken from his cell and charged with destroying state property after officers found a scratch on the glass light fixture in his cell. The fact that the prison’s own maintenance staff say the scratch has been there longer than Wallace has been assigned to the cell hasn’t helped so far. If Wallace is found guilty, he could be sent back to Camp J, where he will be locked in his un-air-conditioned cell for 23 hours a day, have all his property confiscated save two books (and a Bible, of course), and be forced to exercise in an outdoor cage with his hands shackled to a chain around is waist. Wallace is now 63 years old.

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Wallace and Woodfox receive dozens of letters every day from people around the world. You can write to them at:
Herman Wallace #76759 CCR U/D #4 Louisiana State Penitentiary Angola, LA 70712
Albert Woodfox #72148 CCR U/B #13 Louisiana State Penitentiary Angola, LA 70712
For more information about this case, visit www.angola3.org.

Dispatch from “The Hole”

By Herman Wallace

My name is Herman Wallace. I am one of three men who have spent and continue to spend more than 32 years in solitary confinement at Angola State Penitentiary. I have witnessed and been a victim of torture all my life. I find it quite amusing how white America can be so naïve in their thinking that acts carried out by the accused al Qaeda are simply acts of Terrorism as opposed to acts of retaliation. The United States built its strength with the use of terrorism. The “Founding Fathers” of this country who were treated with love and respect by the Indians used biological weapons (blankets saturated with smallpox) to weaken and kill off the Indians to weaken and enslave them.

African men, women and children were transported here and forced to do the labor that the founding fathers could not do themselves. African men who tried to escape were flogged, feet decapitated and worked like mules. In some cases African pregnant women were tied to trees, their stomachs cut open, and as their babies fell to the ground, the white slave master would stomp the head of the African baby. These were the rights given to the white property owners by their own government.

Time brought change, revealing itself during the Civil War--and after the Civil War, the white government created the “Black Code” laws and allowed the Klu Klux Klan to lynch African men and women, burn their homes, and imprison many to strike fear so as to keep them in their place.

For the past 45 years this government has threatened other nations who dare to do business with Cuba and would jail its own citizens who would dare to give as much as an aspirin to the Cuban people.

Today prison has become a neo-slave method for domestic control with a focus on white supremacy.

The White majority has accepted the illogical concept that what their forefathers did to the Indians and Africans in this part of the world has nothing to do with them and that all their accumulated wealth stems from hard work and will destroy anyone who threatens to remove or attempt to nationalize that wealth. Even when this government is clearly wrong, the white majority will support it in its entirety. The attack upon Iraq was based on lies and now that the truth has been revealed showing that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11 the Bush Administration claims the world is better off without Saddam. From my perspective, it appears the world is in far worse shape without Saddam. If there are no WMDs in Iraq and Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11--why is America still turning it into a graveyard? Why are the great majority of White Americans supporting this illegal war? The abuse of Iraqi people in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay is enough in itself to shake the consciousness of White America--but then again White America is used to sticking its head in the sand when interests of its own economy are at stake.

I do not sanction the killing of non-combatant women and children as was done on 9/11, as well as the slow death of the Cuban people through economic woe, but what happened on 9/11 is the fault of All Americans. Just because 9/11 took place under the Bush Administration does not mean this is where it started--it’s America itself. Freedom in the eyes of White America is slavery in the souls of others, it is the will of the white majority. In Gore Vidal’s latest book, Imperial America he correctly states “We have only one political party in the United States, the property party, with two right wings, Republican and Democrat.” In order to be true leaders of the world with respect to all countries, America must change its foreign and domestic policy.

What is so hypocritical is how White America could be in so much shock at the news of torture in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay while knowing all along of its torture practices in America’s own prisons. 32 years of solitary confinement for any human being is an act beyond the scope of torture and what makes it worse is the fact that I’m an innocent man. Not only because I say I’m innocent, but because all evidence in my case points to my innocence and I’m not alone. None of America’s faith can be realized through the eyes of the Republicans and Democrats, but rather through the fairness of all its people--cut your losses and get out of Iraq, out of Afghanistan, out of Cuba, and out of Haiti. End the death penalty and free all political prisoners and prisoners of war: When you commit to these goals, only then will you be able to enjoy true prosperity.