Save the date in the Bay Area for an event with Laura Whitehorn -
Thursday, March 11th
other
dates will also be announced!
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Of-Black-Panthers-Prisons-by-Dan-Berger-100102-360.html
January 3, 2010
Of
Black Panthers, Prisons, and a Life in Struggle for Social Justice -"
Review of "The War Before"
By
Dan Berger
Mention
the Black Panthers, and Safiya Bukhari is probably not the first person most
would think of. Yet perhaps she should be. Bukhari was a dedicated and tireless
organizer from the time she joined the Black Panthers in the late 1960s until
she passed away in 2003. Thanks to Laura Whitehorn, a former member of the
Weather Underground and now a journalist, new generations of activists and
others can learn of Bukhari through the essays, interviews and speeches
Whitehorn has gathered in "The
War Before: The True Life Story of Becoming a Black Panther, Keeping the Faith
in Prison, & Fighting for Those Left Behind" (The Feminist Press,
February 2010). The book also features an introduction by Angela Davis and an
afterword by Mumia Abu-Jamal, each powerful statements in honor of Safiya's
lifelong commitments against mass incarceration and political repression.
Bukhari was not a "writer" per se, but a tireless grassroots
organizer who occasionally wrote along the way. She joined the New York Black
Panthers out of respect for the work it was doing feeding children in black
communities and standing up to police violence. When state repression and
internal strife debilitated the organization, Bukhari went underground with the
Black Liberation Army. She served eight years in prison, escaping once for
several months and using the subsequent trial as a platform from which to protest
the medical neglect at the prison. Later in life, she was a leader in the black
nationalist group the Republic of New Afrika. But above all, Bukhari was a
stalwart organizer for political prisoners. She was a founder and leader of The Jericho Movement and
of the NYC Free Mumia Coalition. Her unending commitment was legendary;
Whitehorn describes how Bukhari consistently wrote, visited, and agitated on
behalf of those people who found themselves imprisoned for their activism from
the 1960s and 1970s. Whitehorn writes how she, too, met Safiya while in prison
in the 1980s, knowing from that first meeting that she had made a lifelong
friend. Bukhari's unwavering dedication to freeing political prisoners, which
she lived until her death at 53, raises the question of whether she worked too
hard without taking care of her own health enough. Her daughter, Wonda Jones,
describes seeing her mother's tireless organizing, and how she went from
resenting to respecting and admiring her mother's efforts.
As the essays in this book eloquently reveal, she gave all of herself to the
movement to free political prisoners. She was especially committed to her
fellow Panthers, who have received the longest sentences and have faced the
stiffest opposition to their release. She watched too many people die--from
police violence, white racism (one of her BLA comrades was stomped to death in
front of her by store owners in Virginia), intra-movement conflict, and imprisonment--to
give anything less.
Safiya, as the book so perfectly captures, was an organizer, not a martyr. The
book is a wonderful expression of all of these aspects of Safiya. It is, above
all, a deeply human book. With passion and humility, Safiya was self-critical
of how the movement's weaknesses enabled state repression to tear the movement
apart. She routinely challenged the ways radicals perpetuated such violence,
rejecting self-righteousness or posturing while remaining focused on the
greater violence carried out by the government. She asked that social justice
movements get smarter and more compassionate in their efforts. In this book, as
she did in life, she eloquently describes how the movement needed to overcome
the post-traumatic stress disorder that was the legacy of the internal and
external violence that befell the Panthers and other revolutionary movements.
In capturing the arc of her life's work, this book is a manual for long-haul
radical struggle.
"The War Before" deserves a wide audience--by activists and
academics, history buffs and political neophytes. It is a fantastic
contribution to the burgeoning history of the Black Panthers, all too rare in
its grassroots spirit and emphasis on (re)building movements strong enough not
just to withstand state violence but to overcome our own egotism and
individualism. It is one of few books by a woman member of the Black Panthers,
and we see her trajectory from community service provider to revolutionary
organizer, along with the many steps in between. Following Bukhari's path
enables us to tease out the legacy of the Black Panthers, from organizing
inside America's ever-growing prison system to the myriad battles for racial
and economic justice in the twenty-first century. Her writings are both passionate
and practical in their emphasis on movement building and freedom for those
behind bars. To top it off, the stunning introduction by anti-racist activist
and former political prisoner Laura Whitehorn brought tears to my eyes, weaving
together her own story with Safiya's in a model example of Amilcar Cabral's
dictum, "tell no lies, claim no easy victories." Such expressions of
honesty and humility are perhaps the greatest legacy that Bukhari, in her life
and through this book, left us.
Author's Website: www.danberger.org
Author's Bio: Dan Berger is a writer, activist and Ph.D. candidate at the
University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of "Outlaws of America: The
Weather Underground and the Politics of SOlidarity," co-editor of
"Letters From Young Activists" and editor of the forthcoming
"The Hidden 1970s: Histories of Radicalism." He lives in
Philadelphia, where he is completing a dissertation about 1970s prison
radicalism.
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
Questions and comments may be sent to claude@freedomarchives.org