Sunday May 1, 2pm – Film, Discussion & Exhibit of Collages
Red Ink May Day Celebration
Political Prisoners, Isolation & Torture in America
With Hakim Green, Bonnie Kerness, Ojore Lutalo, Luis Sanabria & TJ Whitaker
Hakim Green is Hip-Hop. He uses it to address the ills affecting black culture and he founded the For Life Initiative, a non-profit that promotes Hip-Hop as a positive lifestyle. Hakim has recorded albums with Channel Live, leactured for Human Education Against Lies (H.E.A.L.), Stop the Violence Movements, and the International Youth Organization.
Bonnie Kerness serves as Coordinator of the American Friends Service Committee’s Prison Watch Project and has worked as a human rights advocate in US prisons with a focus on torture, isolation (no-touch torture), and use of devices of torture in US prisons. She contributed to Our Children’s House (testimonies on juvenile imprisonment): Torture in US Prisons (Evidence of Human Rights Violations): The Prison Inside the Prison (Control Units, Supermax Prisons and Devices of Torture).
Ojore Lutalo is a former New Afrikan Anarchist political prisoner who served 28 years in prison for clandestine activities during the 1970’s and 1980’s. 22 of those years were in isolation in the Management Control Unit at New Jersey State Prison, for entertaining thoughts that the NJ Department of Correction/Homeland Security didn’t approve of. During this time, Ojore created collages of political and social commentary on the neo-slavery of US prisons.
Luis Sanabria is a member of the National Boricua Human Rights Network, Philadelphia chapter (which works to free Puerto Rican political prisoners) and the Movimento de Liberacion Nacional – MLN – (which spearheaded the campaigns for freeing two generations of Puerto Rican political prisoners). He was the founding member of the National Committee to Free Puerto Rican Political Prisoners and the Juan A. Corretjer Centers in San Francisco and in Philadelphia.
TJ Whitaker is the National Secretary and the New Jersey Coordinator for the Jericho Movement, a national organization dedicated to raising awareness and support for US political prisoners and Prisoners of War. He is currently completing his PhD in Global Affairs at Rutgers University, Newark, where his research focuses on human rights violations and political activists.