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Open Letter to Barak Obama from Leonard Peltier
August 28, 2008
An Open Letter to Barack Obama
Symbolism Alone Will Not Bring Change
By LEONARD PELTIER
I have watched with keen interest and renewed hope as your campaign has mobilized millions of Americans behind your message of changing a political system that serves a small economic elite at the expense of the peoples of the United States and the world. Your election as president of the United States, where slaves and Indians were long considered less than human under the law, will undoubtedly constitute a historic moment in race relations in the United States.
Yet symbolism alone will not bring about change. Our young people, black and Native alike, suffer from police brutality and racial profiling, underfunded schools, and discrimination in employment and housing. I sincerely hope your campaign will inspire some hope among our youth to struggle for a better future. I am, however, concerned that your recent statement on the Sean Bell verdict, in which the New York police officers who fired 50 shots at a young man on the eve of his wedding were acquitted of criminal charges, displays a rather myopic view of the law. Until the law is harnessed to protect the victims of state violence and racism, it will serve as an instrument of repression, just as the slave codes functioned to sustain and legitimize an inhuman institution.
As I can testify from experience, the legal institutions of this nation are far from racial and political neutrality. When judges align with the repressive actions and policies of the executive branch, injustice is rationalized and cloaked in judicial platitudes. As you may know, I have now served more than three decades of my life as a political prisoner of the federal government for a crime I did not commit. I have served more time than the maximum sentence under the guidelines under which I was sentenced, yet my parole is continually denied (on the rare occasions when I am afforded a hearing) because I refuse to falsely confess. Amnesty International, South African Bishop Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama of Tibet, my Guatemalan sister Rigoberta Menchu, and many of your friends and supporters have recognized me as a political prisoner and called for my immediate release. Millions of people around the world view me as a symbol of injustice against the indigenous peoples of this land, and I have no doubt that I will go down in history as one of a long line of victims of U.S. government repression, along with Sacco and Vanzetti, the Haymarket Square martyrs, Eugene Debs, Bill Haywood, and others targeted by for their political beliefs. But neither I nor my people can afford to wait for history to rectify the crimes of the past....
Continued in comments below. August 28, 2008 An Open Letter to Barack Obama Symbolism Alone Will Not Bring Change By LEONARD PELTIER ... more -
Billy Warsoldier - Indian Artist and Philosopher
Check out this documentary video of our old friend Billy Soza Warsoldier.
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A short doc about the painter Billy Warsoldier. Commissioned by the Riverside Metropolitan Museum (Riverside, CA) 2006.
DV/Sound/For Monitor Loop in Gallery.
Contact Billy Warsoldier: http://warsoldierartwork.com/
Contact Riverside Metropolitan Mueseum: http://riversideca.gov/museum/
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From TouchArt.net and OneEarthBlog.blogspot.com
where we've known Billy Warsoldier and his art since
Charleen Touchette was relentless to get Billy's art
included in the book THE SWEET GRASS LIVES ON
in the late 1970s. Check out this documentary video of our old friend Billy Soza Warsoldier. __________________________ ... more -
Mendota Mdewakanton Dakota Community » American Indian Movement
The American Indian Movement (AIM), is an Indian activist organization in the United States. AIM burst onto the international scene with its seizure of the Bureau of Indian Affairs headquarters in Washington, D.C., in 1972 and the 1973 standoff at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
AIM was co founded in Minneapolis in 1968 by Dennis Banks, George Mitchell, Herb Powless, Clyde Bellecourt, Eddie Benton-Banai, and many others in the Native American community, almost 200 total. Russell Means was another early leader.
In the decades since AIM’s founding, the group has led protests advocating Indigenous American interests, inspired cultural renewal, monitored police activities and coordinated employment programs in cities and in rural reservation communities across the United States. AIM has often supported other indigenous interests outside the United States, as well.
AIM’s original mission included protecting indigenous people from police abuse, using CB radios and police scanners to get to the scenes of alleged crimes involving indigenous people before or as police arrived, for the purpose of documenting or preventing police brutality.
As is true with many national liberation movements (PLO, African National Congress), ideological differences emerged within AIM over the years. In 1993, AIM split into two main factions, each claiming that it was the authentic inheritor of the AIM tradition, and that the other had betrayed the original principles of the movement.
One group, based in Minneapolis, MN and associated with the Bellecourts, is known as the AIM-Grand Governing Council < http://www.aimovement.org> , while the other segment of the movement, led by, among others, Russell Means, was named AIM-International Confederation of Autonomous Chapters < http://www.americanindianmovement.org> - Excerpts: < http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Indian_Movement&g...
Guest: Steve Blake (Red Lake Ahnishinahbaeotjibway), Director, Twin Cities American Indian Movement
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From TouchArt.net and OneEarthBlog.blogspot.com The American Indian Movement (AIM), is an Indian activist organization in the United States. AIM burst onto the international scene wi... more -
The Official Website Of Leonard Peltier Defense Committee
July Newsletter
Check Our latest news Blog Here
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Leonard Peltier Defense Committee
* In The Spirit of Leonard Peltier Visions of US Prisoner #89637-132
1/22/2008
IN THE SPIRIT OF LEONARD PELTIER VISIONS OF US PRISONER #89637-132 Date: Thursday January 31st, 7:00 pm Location: El Museo…
* Bringing Leonard Peltier to Iowa and New Hampshire
12/30/2007
Bringing Leonard Peltier to Iowa and New Hampshire December 30, 2007, By Harvey Wasserman http://www.freepress.org/ The Clintons are running for…
* Global Write- A- Thon for Leonard Peltier
12/30/2007
GLOBAL WRITE-A-THON FOR LEONARD PELTIER DECEMBER 1st-31st, 2007 http://users.skynet.be/kola/writeathon2007.pdf Global Write-A-Thon for Leonard Peltier Save the Date: December 1st-31st, 2007…
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From TouchArt.net and OneEarthBlog.blogspot.com July Newsletter Check Our latest news Blog Here You can also suscribe to our feed here Leonard Peltier Defense Committee ... more -
Free Leonard Peltier - A message from Leonard Peltier
Go to link to read news and most recent letter from American Indian Imprisoned Leader Leonard Peltier who reminds us,
"Our people have told them from the very beginning about the consequences of mistreatment of individuals and mistreatment of Mother Earth.
There are history books that quote our chief headmen and medicine people cautioning
them about there destruction of the earth and nature.
We know the first concentration camps America ever had held Indian prisoners.
The first biological warfare was used on our people with poisonous blankets.
The first atomic bomb dropped was dropped on Indian land in Nevada.
Today there are abandoned uranium quarries in
Navajo country that cause genetic defects on a lot of their people.
When you look into the past, America has used us Indians as their social experiment.
They tried to destroy us with boarding schools,
relocation, and even the first slavery practice was with American people."
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From TouchArt.net and OneEarthBlog.blogspot.com Go to link to read news and most recent letter from American Indian Imprisoned Leader Leonard Peltier who reminds us, ... more -
I am an American Indian, not a Native American!
American Indian leader Lakotah Russell Means from Pine Ridge, South Dakota explains why he and many of us abhor the term "Native American."
Check out Russell Means' informative website at www.russellmeans.com
From Charleen Touchette, Oppressionist Artist recruited by Russell Means in 2006, for TouchArt.net and OneEarthBlog.blogspot.com
HAVE LAND? THANK AN INDIAN
You can get a tee-shirt with the wise words above at www.nativeharvest.com American Indian leader Lakotah Russell Means from Pine Ridge, South Dakota explains why he and many of us abhor the term "Native ... more
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