All justice-loving people should rejoice at the news that Ruchell Magee, the world’s longest-serving political prisoner, is being released from prison in a California medical facility. Magee is an 84-year-old man who has lived a long life seeking justice and an end to the oppression of white supremacy. He has spent 67 of his 84 years in one prison or another, from Louisiana to various parts of California. Magee suffered extreme mistreatment, harassment, and abuse at the hands of various prison and court authorities from his first arrest in 1955 in Jim Crow Louisiana until his recapture after the Rebellion at the Marin County Courthouse in 1970 and beyond.
Rachel Magee. Photo: Coalition to Free Rachel Magee.
The Coalition to Free Ruchell Magee was founded in 2019 with the sole purpose of raising awareness about Ruchell and supporting him in his fight for freedom. Many organizations, including the Party for Socialism and Liberation, have demanded freedom for Ruchell Magee over the years, so the Coalition was made up of both older activists who fought for Ruchell’s release in the 1970s and 1980s, and younger activists who were inspired by more recent increases in socialist and black liberation consciousness.
As a 22-year-old organizer in 2019, this writer became involved in this work through the commemoration of PSL’s Black August and through letter-writing sessions for political prisoners. So I learned from the struggles of prisoners like Malcolm X, George Jackson, Jonathan Jackson, Angela Davis, Assata Shakur, LD Barkley, WL Nolen, Nelson Mandela, Fidel Castro, Vladimir Lenin, Eugene Debs and many others who dealt with incarceration for their political beliefs and actions. Along with other organizers, we decided to make the leap from letter-writing sessions and educational events to building a coalition that could strategize toward Magee’s release.
On March 17, 2021, Ruchell Magee’s 82nd birthday, the Coalition to Free Ruchell Magee went public in two ways: the launch of the Coalition website i three meetings in California: Los Angeles, San Rafael and Sacramento. From there, the work continued: strategy meetings, reaching out to organizations for endorsements, managing social media accounts, creating simple ways for people to write to the governor of California and the Los Angeles district attorney, joining progressive radio interviews and online news, and the day-to-day work of bringing people together and learning about Magee’s case. The Coalition held several meetings with decision-making offices to explain the case and push for the commutation of his sentence.
On July 15, 2021, Ruchell Magee was wrongfully denied parole by the parole system for the 13th time since his first parole eligibility hearing in 1981. On December 18, 2021, the Coalition held a press conference outside of CNN Los Angeles to commemorate 40 years of these wrongful parole denials and to demand that inmates that the media of communication in general pay attention to the prisoners. Speakers at this event included artist Noname, journalist Abby Martin and Coalition lead organizer Harold Welton.
On March 19, 2022, the Coalition hosted a monumental virtual concentration with speakers including Angela Davis, Eugene Puryear, Jalil Muntaqim, Jonathan Jackson Jr., Fred Hampton Jr., Jared Ball, Robin DG Kelly and more. This was an important step in raising awareness and showcasing the broad array of voices for justice who rallied to Magee’s cause. Later that year, a billboard was placed in Los Angeles to help raise awareness among masses of people.
For the PSL, the struggles for the release of political prisoners are a fundamental part of our work. The US government pretends it has no political prisoners and constantly attacks countries like Cuba or China labeling their prisoners as “political prisoners” or “freedom fighters”. At the same time, the United States has historically treated prisoners of the black liberation movement, the American Indian movement, the Puerto Rican independence movement, and other movements for justice with the utmost brutality, including torture, solitary confinement, and unfair sentencing practices. Prison brutality extends far beyond “political prisoners” to any prisoner who stands up for himself, refuses to be treated like a slave, or catches a prison guard on the wrong day.
George Jackson—a black communist, revolutionary, author, field marshal of the Black Panther Party, and co-founder of the Black Guerrilla Family—spent seven and a half years of his last 11 years in solitary confinement. Ruchell Magee was denied parole 13 times over 40 years, even at age 80. The prisoners of Attica were massacred by the government for fighting for the basic demands of sanitation, health and human dignity. The plight of prisoners in this country is always linked to the lives of those outside, because every incarcerated person leaves a mark on the families and communities he leaves behind. If we do not pursue the freedom of our political prisoners, then our movements set the stage for the current generation of activists to become the next political prisoners.
Tragically, we have had to send our condolences to the families of political prisoners who have died in the time since we founded this coalition. The losses of Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald, Mutulu Shakur, Delbert and Chuck Africa and other freedom fighters inspired us to work with greater urgency.
We must continue to support political prisoners in the United States and around the world, like Walid Daqqah, a 62-year-old Palestinian writer who has been unjustly imprisoned for 37 years in Zionist prisons. The organizers of the Palestinian Youth Movement have launched a request to demand his release due to the unlawful nature of his imprisonment and the denial of appropriate treatment for his diagnosis of bone marrow cancer. The struggle to free political prisoners who are imprisoned for fighting injustice has no borders.
While we celebrate the release of Ruchell Magee, the work is by no means over. Indeed, this work cannot be “completed” until we have achieved a new system in which all our political prisoners are free, the social and economic needs of black and working-class communities are met, and our prisons are not filled with working-class people who were arrested for so-called “crimes” of survival.
Political prisoners from prisons in Palestine to prisons in California must be released and the real criminals in the Pentagon, the White House, and the Capitol must be arrested. All progressive and revolutionary people should extend their full solidarity and deepest congratulations to Ruchell “Cinque” Magee, and continue the fight until we get the future we need. Long live Cinque!
