Introduction to Marilyn Buck's "Incommunicado": Dispatches from a Political Prisoner.

• Date: 22 June 2003
• Author: Willmott, Donna
• Published date: 22 June 2003
• Author: Willmott, Donna

LESS THAN AN HOUR AFTER THE PLANES CRASHED INTO THE WORLD TRADE CENTER on September 11, 2001, a number of political prisoners throughout the U.S. were abruptly rounded up and taken into solitary confinement. As television commentators were asking themselves how and why an attack like this could happen (a question that did not seem to puzzle much of the rest of the world), those deemed to be enemies of the state were consigned to a state of limbo where no one on the outside could reach them. One of the first to be rounded up was Philip Berrigan, (1) the unrelenting Plowshares peace activist who has spent 12 years in prison for a series of disarmament actions. Another was Sundiata Acoli, (2) former Black Panther and Black Liberation Army member imprisoned for almost three decades because of his defense of his community during the COINTELPRO war against the Panthers. (Sundiata was to spend nearly four months incommunicado during this time.) Another was Antonio Camacho Negron, (3) a Puerto Rican independentista incarcerated for violating his parole conditions by returning to his activism in the independence movement. Others included in the roundup were anti-imperialist political prisoners Richard Williams (4) and Marilyn Buck, (5) all of whom are serving extremely long sentences for their actions taken in opposition to the genocidal policies of the U.S. government, at home and abroad.

People who support the more than 100 political prisoners here were thrown into our own additional state of emergency, as those we love and support were held incommunicado, with no access to attorneys and no ability to make phone calls or write letters. It did not matter that these prisoners...