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Photo by Devin Courtright/The Advocate
Panelists from left: Jeff Luers, Chauncey Peltier, Ashanti Alston and Tre Arrow discuss freedom of speech during a Wednesday event organized by students from on- and off-campus clubs, including the Students for Environmental Justice, Black Student Union and Chako-Kum-Tux from Mt. Hood Community College.
Speakers sound off about free speech
The Advocate
A variety of speakers at Wednesday’s “Free Speech Now! Political Prisoners, Political Repression and the Prison Industrial Complex” event had been imprisoned, for various reasons, mostly due to their political or environmental activism.
The event was free and sponsored by the Black Student Union, Students for Environmental Justice, and Chako-Kum-Tux Club.
The first speaker, Kent Ford, said he’s been active for more than 40 years and was first arrested in 1968.
He was a founding member of the Portland chapter of the Black Panther Party in the late ’60s, and is the father of political prisoner Patrice Lumumba Ford, who was one of the “Portland Seven” and was sentenced in November 2003 to an 18-year prison term after pleading guilty to seditious conspiracy charges.
Jesse Guardipee, director of the Portland-area chapter of the “American Indian Movement,” spoke about being taken away to a boarding school when he was a child.
“My grandparents told me it was a camping trip,” he said. “When we got there, they yelled at us and screamed at us. They took away everything native, they cut our hair, they deloused us!” After graduating from boarding school, he said he “got to go to a place called Vietnam,” which he said was better than where he had been.
He then turned his focus to a prisoner named Leonard Peltier, who was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive life terms for the murder of two FBI agents in a 1975 shootout on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation.
Tre Arrow, an unannounced guest speaker, took the microphone next. This is the 40th anniversary of Earth Day, celebrating “our sacred earth mother,” he said.
He spoke of the time he fell out of a tree where he had been perched for two days protesting a logging sale in Tillamook County.
He said, “I was protesting the logging in Mt. Hood National Forest” while on the building ledge in downtown Portland. He encouraged everyone to donate and volunteer to the groups being represented. “United we stand, divided we fall,” he said, referring to all groups representing “the solution.” He did not say exactly what is being solved.
Ashanti Alston, a member of both the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army, spent more than 10 years in prison for armed robbery. He is co-chair of the National Jericho Movement (to free U.S. political prisoners).
He said conquerors, referring to Europeans, institute their own systems over the conquered people. “Two basic groups are always on the bottom in this country: indigenous and African,” Alston said. “Jericho represents liberation movements,” he said referring to his current affiliation. He finished his speech by saying, “We need to organize like never before. Power to the people!”
The next-to-last speaker was Chauncey Peltier, the son of Leonard Peltier, who was eight years old when his father was convicted of killing two FBI agents. He remembered his friend Joe Stuntz who was killed along with two FBI agents. Chauncey said his father is innocent but the feds told Leonard Peltier that “somebody has got to pay.” Leonard Peltier has been in prison for more than 35 years and is serving two life sentences.
The final speaker was Jeff Leurs an environmental justice activist who was released from prison Dec. 16, 2009, after serving nine years, six months for setting fire to three SUVs in a car lot in Eugene.
Leurs was originally sentenced to 22 years but that was reduced to 10 after an appeal. He said, “I am a recently released Earth liberation prisoner.
“Real change has never been accomplished by obeying the law,” Leurs said. He finished his speech by saying, “Each of us is capable of making an impact. It doesn’t matter what you give, as long as you give of yourself.”
The event was concluded after a 45-minute question and answer session.
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