Garnering support for political prisoners

Former political prisoner Herman Ferguson, second from left, chaired the 10th annual commemoration dinner to support political prisoners. The event was called by New York’s Malcolm X Commemoration Committee under the theme “No Surrender, No Retreat.”

With numerous speakers and Jericho’s Preserve musicians to entertain and inspire, the dinner was a fundraiser to help prisoners with their needs—stamps, phone call expenses, etc.—and to build political support.

This year’s dinner paid special attention to the reactionary abuse of prisoners in Pennsylvania, where they have suffered repeated attacks by State Correction Institute guards. At SCI Greene—where Mumia Abu-Jamal is imprisoned on death row and where Abu Ghraib torturer Charles Grainer worked—prisoners suffer sleep deprivation with lights on 24 hours a day. Guards are known to withhold food, showers and water from prisoners, who are under lock down 23 hours a day. In some cases they’ve even been denied toilet paper, toothpaste and writing pens.

Families organizing against the attacks are also pictured here.

—Photo and story by Anne Pruden