Vol. 77/No. 31      August 26, 2013

BY JOE SWANSON  
OMAHA, Neb. — Some 60 people took part in Black August Weekend: Human Rights-Political Prisoner Commemorative Festival held Aug. 2-3 at the Malcolm X Memorial Foundation Center near the birth site of the historic leader. The event focused on the more-than-four-decade campaign to win freedom for political prisoners Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa.

Known as the “Omaha Two,” Poindexter and we Langa (formerly David Rice) are former leaders of the Black Panther chapter here. They were railroaded to prison on false charges of killing a police officer, who died in 1970 after being lured into a home where a suitcase bomb exploded. Both men are serving life sentences. The jury was never informed that the two were the targets of the FBI’s Cointelpro spying and disruption campaign directed against Black rights organizations, anti-war coalitions, socialists and others.

Sponsored by the Malcolm X Memorial Foundation, Omaha Jericho Movement, Nebraskans for Justice and X Factor, the event also discussed government attacks on workers’ rights and the fight to free other political prisoners in the U.S., including the Cuban Five.

The opening program featured the film “Cointelpro 101.” “The government was spying on every organization showing dissent at the time: the American Indian Movement, Martin Luther King, Puerto Ricans and the Communist Party,” said Carlos Carr, a board member of the Malcolm X Memorial Foundation, who chaired and organized the event.

The next day participants watched video interviews with the Omaha Two from the Nebraska State Penitentiary.

“My first protest was against a white army officer for racist brutality against a fellow soldier,” said Poindexter, talking about his experience in the U.S. military while stationed in Germany in the 1960s.

We Langa said he got active in politics “writing for a local underground newspaper distributed in the Omaha Black community that monitored city council meetings and ongoing cop violence.”

Fight to free Cuban Five

Jacob Perasso, Socialist Workers Party candidate for Omaha city council in the May elections, gave a presentation on the fight to win freedom for the Cuban Five. “Antonio Guerrero, Fernando González, René González, Gerardo Hernández and Ramón Labañino are Cuban revolutionaries who accepted assignments during the 1990s from the Cuban government to gather information on the activities of Cuban-American paramilitary groups organizing on U.S. soil,” Perasso said. “These groups have a long record of carrying out bombings, assassinations and other murderous attacks, both against targets in Cuba and supporters of the Cuban Revolution in the United States, Puerto Rico and elsewhere.”

Perasso also talked about efforts to push back a recent attack on free speech, the July 16 political break-in at his home. A number added their names to an open letter to Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert.

Charles E. Jones, professor of Africana Studies at the University of Cincinnati and editor of The Black Panther Party Reconsidered, gave the keynote address on efforts by city and federal spies and cops to destroy the Panthers.

“The issue of police brutality continues nationwide today, as it did against Omaha’s Black population in the context of the 1970 frame-up of Poindexter and we Langa,” Jones said.

The afternoon session featured a panel of Nebraska state Sen. Ernie Chambers; August (Buddy) Hogan, former chair of the Omaha chapter of the NAACP; Lennox Hinds, professor of criminal justice at Rutgers University and one of we Langa’s attorneys; Tariq Al-Amin, president of Nebraskans for Justice; Carlos Carr, board member of Malcolm X Memorial Foundation Center and Community Talk Radio; and Laura Garza, chairperson of the Socialist Workers Party in Omaha.

“In the early to mid-1990s, members of the Nebraska Parole Board recommended commutation of their life sentences,” said Hinds. “But the Nebraska Board of Pardons — comprised of the Nebraska governor, secretary of state, and attorney general — have consistently refused.”

Chambers said he will press legislation to get parole for the Omaha Two.

For more information and to get involved in the fight to free Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa, contact Nebraskans for Justice at P.O. Box 11725, Omaha, NE 68111 or email: comments@nebraskansforjustice.com.

To write directly to the Omaha Two: Ed Poindexter # 27767 P.O. Box 2500, Lincoln, NE 68542-2500 and Mondo we Langa (David Rice) # 27768 P.O. Box 2500, Lincoln, NE 68542-2500.
 
 
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