Photo by Ron WilkensBy Michael Novick
Photo by Ron Wilkens
Geronimo ji Jaga (Pratt) was released from prison in June after more than a quarter century behind bars for a crime he did not commit. Yet even after a conservative Orange County judge ruled that the principal witness against geronimo - former L.A. sheriff's deputy Julius "Julio" Butler - had lied on the witness stand, and after the judge overturned the conviction based on the fact that Butler's role as an informant for the FBI, LAPD, and District Attorney's office was withheld from the defense and the jury, still D.A. Gil Garcetti persisted in compounding the injustice by appealing the judge's decision rather than dropping all charges.
Ji Jaga, a former leader of the Black Panther Party in Los Angeles, was one of the most prominent targets of the FBI's COINTELPRO ("COunter-INTELligence PROgram") of harassment, disruption and assassination against the Black Panthers and other revolutionaries. In a period in which FBI-led police raids were resulting in deaths of Panther leaders across the country, geronimo, a decorated war veteran, had led the successful defense of LA Panther headquarters against an armed assault by the LAPD.
The way in which geronimo ji Jaga emerged from prison - unbroken, unbowed, and uncompromising in his commitment to liberation for his people and release of all political prisoners - makes it clear why he was so viciously targeted by COINTELPRO and the California prison system, and why Garcetti is attempting to send him back to prison.
Hundreds of supporters filled the courtroom the day of Pratt's anticipated release, and hundreds more cheered him in South Central L.A. and West Hollywood, in Marin County, where he went to attend his son's graduation from middle school, and in Louisiana, where he visited his aged mother in a tearful reunion.
On June 24, just weeks after his release, geronimo ji Jaga was headed to a courthouse in Pennsylvania to attend new evidentiary hearings in the case of Mumia Abu Jamal, a fellow former Black Panther and frame-up victim. "There are still over a hundred political prisoners," geronimo declared upon his release. Speaking to scores of supporters at Faith United Methodist Church the night of his release, he denounced the police state apparatus responsible not only for his incarceration, but for the conditions of Black people generally. He also declared his intent to help identify the real killers of the woman for whose murder he was framed.
The facts of ji Jaga's case form an indictment of the criminal justice system. As former FBI agent Wesley Swearingen testified, the Bureau maintained wiretaps of the Black Panther Party offices in L.A. and the Bay Area that would have confirmed Geronimo's alibi that he was at a meeting in Oakland when the killing took place in Santa Monica. But these wiretap records mysteriously disappeared. Meanwhile the informant Julio Butler, claimed that geronimo had confessed the killing to him.
Geronimo was taken aback when several of the well-wishers who turned out to greet him upon his release on bond asked for his autograph. "I am not a movie actor," he declared, "I am a revolutionary."And this truth must inspire us to struggle alongside him, not as a mythic figure or a "movement celebrity," but as a flesh and blood resister. The struggle to free geronimo is not over yet. We must redouble our efforts to ensure that geronimo remains free. We need this brother beside us, as we need the many other sisters and brothers who are still political prisoners in this country.
For more information, contact the International Campaign to Free Geronimo,
PO Box 781328, L.A. CA 90016.