Daily Archives: October 18, 2013

After telling the public that their main goal at the bargaining table was saving money to buy new trains, BART management blew up negotiations by insisting that employees sacrifice workplace protections in exchange for economic well-being. This was a poison pill for workers: Choose between your paycheck and your rights.

On Oct. 9, Chas was featured on the TVOne show Verses and Flow with his poem “Collect Call” about his mother. It’s an emotional editorial on having his family split by the U.S. concentration camp system aka the prison industrial complex’s war on the domestic Black community. This poem is especially timely coming on the heels of the monumental California Prison Hunger Strike of ‘13.

The hunger strike for my comrades and fellow people of unjust confinement started July 8, 2013, and I was one of the 30,000 prisoners throughout the state of California prison system to participate. Yet defeated as I write, I must address all the dirty games that are being played and why the numbers drastically dropped from the thousands to the hundreds.

The Free Russell Maroon Shoatz website describes him this way: “Russell Maroon Shoatz is a dedicated community activist, founding member of the Black Unity Council, former member of the Black Panther Party and soldier in the Black Liberation Army. He is serving multiple life sentences as a U.S.-held prisoner of war.” Shoatz has been locked in solitary confinement at various state prisons for the past 22 years, 28 of the past 30 years.