On October 11th of this year, I met with Ojore Lutalo and Bonnie Kerness of the American Friends Service Committee’s Prison Watch Project on assignment for my journalism class. Mr. Lutalo was incarcerated for 28 years in New Jersey state prisons for activities related to his involvement with the Black Liberation Army, a black nationalist movement prominent in the 1970s. He spent 22 of those years in solitary confinement. Throughout his confinement, Mr. Lutalo maintained his convictions and anarchist ideology, and remains a political revolutionary and educator to this day. His story is remarkable and at times strains belief. It is presented here entirely in his own words, edited only for length and clarity.
Hard Times
My name is Ojore Lutalo, I’m a New Afrikan anarchist. I was born in a city called Longbranch, New Jersey in extreme poverty – I come from a family of twelve. I grew up in a predominantly black and Latin neighborhood in Asbury Park.
We had difficult times in our lives, such as living in cold water flats with no running hot water—no heat, et cetera. A lack of food, a lack of money to buy proper shoes for our feet. Things of that nature. I had twelve siblings, some of them passed on, but I grew up in a family of twelve – I’m in the middle. It was extremely difficult due to the fact of poverty. I was just like everybody else in our neighborhood, we were economically, you know, dependent, you know, we were lacking the basics.
Prior to me becoming political, I was what we would describe as a lumpen. You know what a lumpen is right? Well you have the lumpen proletarians, then you have the lumpens right? I was a lumpen which means I hustled as opposed to work: I became a stick up kid. I would steal checks, I would do shoplifting, I would do breaking and enterings – I was introduced to the street when I was round about 12 years old. Because my household was so poor that I had to steal food to bring home to eat. I refused to be hungry, in America.
I was out there what we would call gunnin’ and runnin’, living the fast lane, livin’ the street life. Prior to me becoming political, I was a bank robber – for personal reasons. I was involved in different kinds of armed robberies, super markets, you know, things of that nature. Banks, you know, loan companies – you know. We were just doing it for survival purposes.
I grew up in the 1960s. In 1969 I first heard about the Black Panther party. I listened what they had to say, but I wasn’t in tune to embracing what they were saying because I was caught up in the lumpen lifestyle. So I heard what they were saying and I didn’t hear it. Then I was in prison. For bank robbery. Which was apolitical at the time. I think that was in 1970.
And then – then I started to read a lot. First, I heard about the BLA [Black Liberation Army]. I was attracted to them more than I was to the [Black] Panthers because they were dealing with the reality of police oppression in our communities as black people, right? I would read some of their writings, I would listen to what some of the BLA prisoners in prison had to say, right? I was influenced, I was impressed. Not on a romantic level, on a political level: they were articulating the realities – my realities.
I was drawn to that particular formation because they were action prone, dealing with our reality with regards to the police brutality. They would take actions against the police for terrorizing our communities. For instance, the government has accused the BLA of neutralizing, of liquidating police – frontline police forces around America.
My first introduction to left wing politics was through Che [Guevara]– a pamphlet called “Vietnam and World Revolution.” A 17 page pamphlet I got from Pathfinder Press while I was in prison. In prison, I done a lot of extensive reading. And that’s when I learned about imperialism, in that particular pamphlet. And then after I read that pamphlet, you know, I got an international understanding. It wasn’t…as clear as it is now, but I understood who the enemy was and why our conditions were like they were. Home – here in America – as well as abroad.
I was also influenced by Mao. Mao Tse-tung. I studied Marxism, Leninism, right? But I was – their articulation of politics was more foreign to me because they was coming from a European point of view in another time zone. Mao taught struggle from a peoples of color point of view. You see, Mao took Marxism-Leninism to another level. And then Mao – Mao had volumes of books out, but he also put things in pamphlet form, to make it easier for people to read and understand where he was coming from, what he had to teach. So I was more of a Maoist than I was a Marxist.
But then I was introduced to anarchy. By Kuwasi Balagoon, in prison. He’s another BLA prisoner. He was there for, you know, carrying out what we call, what the government calls bank robberies. We call that expropriations – the terminology bank robbery is apolitical. Expropriations is political. And so I met him, I met other political people behind the bars of Trenton state prison, so we would talk and talk and talk and talk and just started from there. He articulated an anarchy from a people of color’s point of view as opposed to a white European point of view. Anarchy is a concept. You understand what I’m saying? It’s not owned by one particular formation or organization in a group or grouping of white leftists.
I believe in the consensus process. A consensus – whereas, let’s say you’re trying to resolve an issue in our community. We would take it to the people, we would have meetings, or we would pick representatives from different communities, neighborhoods, and they be coming together and everything’s based on consensus instead of having one person or one small group of people making decisions for the whole body. Yes, yes. So its community controlled, self-government. That’s what I believe in. Community control, you know. We police our own communities, we patrol our own communities, we control the finances going and coming into our communities. You see I realized after reading Che’s pamphlet that voting didn’t work for people of color. Demonstrating didn’t work for our people as well, so there’s only one solution, so we just took struggle to another level. Which entails armed resistance.
Committing to Struggle
I changed my name in 1983 to represent my African heritage – again I’m a new Afrikan, I guess we’re Afrikan in America, or African American. I’m a new Afrikan because, look, my ancestors were stolen and brought to this country in chains, as you are well aware, right? They took everything, they stripped everything: the identity, the language, rights. So we started from that to redefine ourselves. That’s how I became a new Afrikan.
You could say I was a free agent. I was engaged in struggles with people of Marxists, nationalists, different ideologies. Whoever we was inclined to, you know, stand up to the US Government. I was doing expropriations, like we would do expropriations, we would get the money and funnel some of the money back into the communities, you know, we would take action against drug dealers in our communities, we would take the dope and destroy the dope brought down the silver or whatever case it might be. That’s a plague in our communities, all you have to do is go into any inner cities and you’ll see what the effects of what drugs do.
I was captured in 1975. Mercer country, New Jersey, Trenton. We had a gunfight with the police. At that point, the government became more focused on who I was. From that point on, they stopped treating me as a regular person.
Before I became involved, before I took a step forward, I weighed the consequences, right, I said, can I deal with the consequences of my actions to come if I’m captured. So I said to myself: as a revolutionary you have to come to terms with the prospect of death and captivity. You have to understand that in revolution you either win or you die, there is no compromise. That was our mindset; that was from my understanding. I didn’t start struggling because a girlfriend or boyfriend or brother, I started struggling because I was oppressed. I understood my oppression and what that oppression entails, and what it took to alleviate that oppression. So my commitment to struggle was 100 percent.
28 Years, with 22 in Isolation
Once you accept revolution, right, it’s not a matter of a time factor. You could get killed in action. So you have to again, come to terms with the prospect of death and captivity. So come what may, I was ready to deal with it.
I returned to Trenton state prison in 1982. I was in up from 1982 to February 4th, 1986. That’s when they placed my in Management Control Unit (MCU), 1986.
When they put you in MCU, you’re not there because you violated any of the prison rules, you’re there for who you are, and your abilities to do whatever, to influence other prisoners, to be overthinking, or to take action. You had a sham hearing, I would go to the hearing and they said, well, we can’t disclose the evidence because it’s confidential. So I said, “How can I defend myself?”
It was a sham. So every 90 days you would have a hearing to make a determination as to whether or not they would release you from the management control unit… But I’m getting ahead of the story.
The MCU consists of 90 individual cells, locked down 24 hours one day and 22 hours the following day. Maybe 14’ by 15’ or 15’ by 9’ or something like that, small cells. We were allowed reading material, we were allowed a typewriter if you could afford one, we were allowed a radio if you could afford one, we were allowed a T.V. if you could afford one.
I was one of the most closely watched prisoners in the state of New Jersey. What they would do, they would censor my mail, copy it and then they would go through. So that way, they said we were planning on escape or anything like that, they could pick up on the follow the flow so to speak. Some of the mail I never received. Some of the people I wrote, they never received my mail. It’s like that.
I was engaged with a lot of the people, because I was trying to rally support around issues of control unit, so I was in touch with a lot of people. I was in touch with revolutionary organizations in foreign countries, like for instance, in Barcelona, Spain.
I would get up in the morning, and I would, bathe, turn the radio on, listen to the news, read, write, exercise. Things like that. During the course of my years in isolation, I created a lot of collages.
I knew people that self-destruct psychologically, because they can’t cope with the constant lockdown – they deteriorated mentally. First, when a person first starts to deteriorate psychologically, their personal hygiene starts being neglected, they withdraw from people that they knew. And that’s how you could tell, the process has started, right?
I had a strong sense of self and purpose, I had an ideology. Initially, I came to terms with the prospects of death and captivity, right? So, that was all part of being a revolutionary – come what may, I dealt with it. As a political person with an understanding of who I was fighting against.
Leaving the Box
I went to court – here’s what happened.
I went to court August 25th [2009]. They put me in the little armored truck, right? Strapped me to the bench inside, had a police escort in the front, police escort in the back, and the sirens blazing to the courthouse. Once we got to the courthouse, we had guards posted with machine guns, automatic rifles. I had my hearing. So the judge ordered my release the next day, August 26th. I just walked out Trenton State Prison like nothing ever happened.
Four in the afternoon, the attorney Jean Ross picked me up and I went to Philly. I was staying with a supporter over in Philly. I needed a place where I could sit back and focus on my future plans. I needed a safe space so to speak, a safe area. And that area was provided for me by one of ABCF supporters – Anarchist Black Cross Federation.
I was attending different meetings, meeting new people, just readjusting to what they call “freedom after 28 years, with 22 years in isolation.” I’ve never experienced freedom, so I don’t know what freedom is. But being released from constant lockdown was like, you close somebody in the closet and leave them there forever, then open the door, you see the light? It was like that.
But my only adjustment was technology. I had to come to terms with that, which I’m still doing. See, I never allowed myself to become institutionalized, so me being released was no shock to anything.
The day I was free, another prisoner was being released with me, and he refused to go, because he had become institutionalized. They had to physically pick him up, sit him outside the door, say “you can’t stay here, you got to go, you free, go on home, go about your business.” But I didn’t have that problem, because I never wanted to be in captivity, I never wanted to be in prison.
I came out and all the cars looked alike. When I went in, you had a selection of the cars. Now, all the cars look the same. And, a lot of the people I knew had died, so I was meeting a lot of new people. It was, I would travel around the country. I went to Cuba. I became involved with people that were strictly, see, like, doing above ground activities, working.
The BLA: a lot of members were killed, chased into exile, or placed in prison. It was like, presently the BLA is just licking its wounds, so to speak. The BLA is a concept. The fact that you have oppressed people, you will always have a Black Liberation Army. Somewhere in some form.
Planting Seeds
When I came home I saw that the oppression was more intense than in 1982. You have more oppressive laws, more repressive surveillance.
I’ve seen that people needed to be educated. So I set out to start doing that. I set out to start educating people about the politics of prisons.
All you can do is plant seeds. It’s up to the people you speak to, that speak to you, to decide the path they want to travel. One day you might become a revolutionary. Who knows? I think it’s my responsibility to educate people about the reality of their oppression, especially white people. Majority of white people don’t see themselves as being oppressed.
They think they’re actually sitting in the circles that make economic, social and political decision of this country, and it’s not true. It’s not true. Corporations make those determinations. Corporations dictate who will be president and who’s not going to be president – that’s who run, that’s who control the world.
So have you seen this DVD? It’s about confessions of an FBI, an informant for the FBI. He was, he was active. It’s in his own words, and this is yours. You need to go back and let your fellow students watch that with you. This is one of my responsibilities – to educate. If I don’t share the information, you won’t never know. That’s what I’m doing, that’s what you’re supposed to do.
Once you become aware, you have to be held responsible, because you know now. Once you become aware of these activities of FBI informants, you are aware. So that’s why I’m giving it to you, that’s why I’m sharing everything with you.
Everything is more repressive than it was back in ’82. What you have now, you don’t have any resistance to anything. Everybody’s moving on the reformist level, when reforms don’t work…
[Daniel Teehan: What do you think would work?]
Well, that’s not for me to say, because I’m an individual. I might feel that people should resort to armed struggle. Other people might feel another way.
[ Daniel Teehan: people voted for Obama, they thought he was going to change the world. Once Obama got in office, who did he bail out?]
You have to understand that Obama is, just a black face in a high place. He represents the corporations, which came as no surprise to me. Because of my national and international understanding of the world.
Obama deported more immigrants than any other president. He used more drones than any other president. Obama – I say Obama is being an international terrorist – ‘cuz he killed women and children. So again, if people feel like they’re being oppressed, they have to sit down and make a decision like I did about how they’re gonna approach that, the oppression. My duty, my responsibility right now is to educate. And what might become of that, who knows. I can’t forecast the future.
You have to understand the nature of a protracted guerilla warfare. It took the people of Vietnam 40 years to win their independence, but they won it. They had ups and downs faced some defeats. But they carried on. They wanted to be their own liberators. They wanted to dictate their own reality. So they struggled against all kinds of oppression on the international level. That’s the nature of struggle.
An Amtrak Ride, 2010
See what it is, political prisoners aren’t supposed to travel alone. That was a mistake I made.
I received an invitation from the Anarchist Black Cross chapter in LA to do a presentation at the event. So I went to LA, by way of Amtrak. I spoke. And then on my way back, in La Junta, Colorado, I was arrested by the Colorado policing unit and accused of “endangering public transportation” which means – the charges were threatening to blow up Amtrak.
So there was a lady sitting in front me, she was listening to my conversations – I stayed in constant contact with Bonnie and Tim and other people. Just articulating my experiences at the conference, right?
And so the lady, now she heard all these things, right. She was writing that, she started putting in things that was never said. So she got up and contacted the conductor, so they called, the train stopped in a little country town named La Junta, Colorado.
Prior to that I had been down to the lounge and washed up and came back. I was laying down, relaxing, dozing off. Next thing I know, I heard someone say, “Don’t move.” So I opened my eyes, I’m looking down the barrel of two automatic pistols and the guys dressed in plain clothing. And they never identified themselves as police or anything.
They said “Don’t move, expose your hands to us.”
I exposed my hands. They said, “Get up, turn around.” They cuffed me, took me off the train.
I was thinking about how the Gestapo done back in the day when they would raid a house or raid an apartment of pull a train over, take people off, take them out to execute them. I was thinking that, right. Because I didn’t know what was going on.
[Being killed] was a possibility! So then I seen the train pull off, and we’re out in the middle of nowhere. It’s 9:30 at night, I didn’t know where I was, I didn’t know where I was at the time they took me off. So they take me to the local jail in La Junta, Colorado, put me in a holding cell.
First of all I had to establish contact with the outside world. Make people aware of what was happening to me – which Bonnie [Kerness, of the American Friends Service Committee] did very effectively. I knew that I had legal support. Then I knew that as long as I had Bonnie there, then she would, then I could count on her, right. Bonnie has been my backbone. And throughout history, women have been the backbone of all struggles, right?
So anyway, so after that I was released on bail, and the Anarchist Black Cross Federation in Denver bailed me out and took me in to their home. A complete stranger – they put their home up, they just had their baby. But they said, “You’re a comrade.” So they took me into their home, they gave me a key to their home, said, “This is yours.” Just like I was family.
The lady in front said she had a gut feeling about me which she couldn’t articulate that feeling. Then she told the police that I threatened to blow up the train. So based on that they arrested me. Once the investigation started, the other passengers said, “no, no, he never said anything about blowing up the train.”
Even the lady who reported my conversations to the conductor said “no, no, no” – no reference was made to me saying supposedly that I was going to blow up the train. So now the case started crumbling. So the FBI came down to investigate. And they said that “we can’t make the case yet because there’s no evidence.” So they was forced to drop the charges.
They charged me with trying to blow up an Amtrak train. So obviously they have some sort of proof, of evidence – they didn’t. So the district attorney and the arresting officer had a conversation about ways they should have killed me because they were forced to drop the charges.
-Transcript via Alternet
Arresting Officer Mobley: I should have just let [the arrestee] get off the train and go.
Assistant District Attorney Barta: Ah, you should have said that he pulled a knife on you and shot the son of a bitch.
Mobley: (Laughter)
Barta: (Laughter) He pulled something out of his pocket and it looked like a gun… then… it was a goddamn comb, I’m sorry! (Laughter)
Mobley: My bad, I’m sorry! (Laughter)
Barta: My bad! (Laughter)
Barta: (Laughter) Oh well, anyway… (Pause) Or, you could have arrested him, alleged that the train tried to pull out, and here’s a thought, throw him under the track, the wheels, and then say he tried to escape. But too late for that….
Mobley: Yeah …
Mobley: Oh well! Anyway….
A New Isolation
Stemming from that, once I got out, people were more concerned about my number being in their phone than about my welfare. Because of the fear factor.
It was all over the news, they charged me with being an Islamic terrorist. I said, “But they dropped the charges, right?” They were convinced that I said something. Malcolm X says the government is good at making the victim look like the villain and the villain look like the victim, right?
After they dropped the charges the damage had been done. Because I began to receive death threats by way of the internet. All kinds of death threats. Ways that I could have been killed or should have been killed. Turned into road kill or shooting me in the head or, things of that nature. Total strangers, right.
So then because of that, because of the Amtrak, people started pulling back from me, because I got that exposure. You have to understand that people have a tendency to distance from whatever they might hear on the news or read in the newspaper. And my personal history came out at that time, being a political prisoner, being et cetera. And some people said, “Well how’d he get out of jail?” “Why’d you let him go?” Well, I maxed out. They couldn’t understand why I was supposedly free.
I’m surveilled more now. By the police. I’m a political person, and I didn’t want to be harassed. So that’s why, as opposed to taking an airplane to California, the Amtrak, I thought I would be safer, that proved to be untrue. So I didn’t want to be harassed. I was just trying to have my own, to get my life back in mode after 28 years in prison. You need time to adjust. This happened six months after I was out.
I live across the street from the park, so the police would come by and wave to me. Which they never done before. Up until Colorado. Then I would see undercovers in the neighborhood. Which is easy for me to identify as being undercovers right – the way they look, the way they dress, right? I mean, I live in a predominantly well Colombian, Haitian neighborhood, and once you start seeing…A person with my experience, it’s easy to identify those kinds of people.
Do you think that, given another chance, they’ll try to arrest you again?
Well sure. Again, that’s the consequence of struggle. I can be killed. Anything can happen. Once again, if you accept revolution, you have to accept all that it entails.
Understanding Oppression
White people [pause] need to do some research on the nature of their own oppression. And read another book called “Look out Whitey, Black Power’s Gonna Get Your Mama.” Don’t be taken back by the title, because it goes deeper than that.
That’s one of your responsibilities. ‘Cuz you, do you see yourself as being oppressed? I’m asking you! Explain how. Are you, are you one of the people that makes the decisions that govern the political, economic and social life of this country? You have to understand that the people who run the country are a small minute – you’ll be a lackey.
The people that you’re talking about [Princeton students], they exist to be lackeys. Spokespersons. They would be like Obama – a spokesperson – Obama’s a landlord. That’s all they do! What power do you have?
Everything now is reactive. Everything now is based around reform. Even after Obama, people are coming to understand that Obama didn’t live up to what their expectations.
So we’ll have to see, we’ll have to see what the future brings. Are you going to vote, did you vote for Obama? Are you going to vote next time around – your vote would be a vote to oppress the Palestinians. Why waste your time? Why not become a revolutionary?
Don’t think I’m trying to be smart, put you on the spot or anything. Do me a favor – don’t vote. I hope people listen to what I had to say, and educate themselves, and do what they feel is necessary. Please, don’t vote. If you vote, you’re just voting to oppress the Palestinians – you’re voting to help the US prison-industrial complex.