It’s About Time… Volume 5 Number 3 Summer 2001 OUR SAN FRANCISCO KID News Briefs PASSES ON Houston - Shaka Sankofa’s son, Gary Lee Hawkins, convicted of Black Panther Captain Warren Wells murder - gets life. He was accused of robbing and killing a friend, but Remembered as the People’s Defender maintains his innocence. York, PA - A new autopsy has been performed on the exhumed body By Ida McCray and Kiilu Nyasha of a white police officer shot to death during the city’s 1969 riots. The Warren William Wells was born in San Francisco’s Alice Griffith body of Henry C. Schaad was exhumed Tuesday morning, looking for projects (Double Rock) on Nov. 13, 1947. His first struggle in a predomi- metallic remnants and a few were found. Prosecutors are reinvestigating nately Black community was to over- the killings of Schaad and Lillie Belle Allen, an African American woman, come the stigma attached to his green both shot during 10 days of riots in July 1969. Nine white men, including eyes and light skin. Nicknamed York Mayor Charlie Robertson, were recently charged with homicide in “Dub”, Warren got his first taste of the Allen shooting. prison in 1963, when at the tender age Oklahoma City - Police took blood from 200 men and compared of 16, he was sentenced as an adult to their DNA to the semen left behind in a murdered woman’s car in a “sweep” Soledad State Prison. It was there that for DNA. There were no matches. Police plan to test 200 more men who he met brothers like George Jackson, either lived near the victim and have a criminal record or resemble the Eldridge Cleaver, Alprentice Bunchy police sketch. There is a growing debate about whether innocent people Carter, Hugo Yogi Pinell, Fleeta should have to hand over their blood. Besides concern over unreasonable Drumgo, James McClain, and others. searches, even supporters of DNA testing say such large-scale genetic Like so many of our young dragnets raise the possibility of police coercion. The ACLU said that Black men (and more recently our Photo: Jeffrey Blankfort requiring people to give DNA samples without other evidence linking young sisters), Warren got caught up Ph. & Fax: 415-255-9182 them to the crime would be an unconstitutional search and seizure. in the revolving-door prison syndrome. As Soledad Brother George L. Los Angeles - A wrongful-death lawsuit against the city and Police Jackson noted, “Black men born in the U.S. and fortunate enough to live Dept. claims police engaged in a cover-up after an officer’s fatal shooting past the age of 18, are conditioned to accept the inevitability of prison. of a Halloween partygoer who was holding a fake gun. Tina Lee-Vogt For most of us, it simply looms as the next phase in a sequence of humili- claimed that the shooting of her brother, Anthony Dwain Lee, was unjus- tified and excessive. “My brother was not a fleeing felon. He was not a See WELLS on Page 2 parolee at large. He was not a suspect with an outstanding warrant,” she said. Police said that Officer Tarriel Hopper shot the 39-year-old Lee after The Murder of Donald Venerable he saw Lee point the phony gun at him. Lee-Vogt’s lawyer disputed that Unarmed Black Man Killed by Police account, “The physical evidence puts the lie to that,” attorney Johnnie L. Cochran Jr, said. “He was shot in the back.” The lawsuit accuses the po- The City of Sacramento has once again let the murdering police off lice officers involved of altering evidence at the scene, making false state- the hook for the killing of a Black man on Feb. 9, 2001. Donald Venerable ments about the circumstances and withholding evidence. Lee was an ac- was shot to death by two rookie officers responding tor who had appeared on several TV show, including ER and NYPD Blue. to a domestic dispute. They said they thought he had Friends said he brought the fake gun to the party as part of his costume. a gun, but it was a cell phone. One officer shot him Washington DC - Bush will nominate 11 candidates for judgeships with a Taser, but the other shot him dead. on federal appeals courts across the country, choosing some of the nation’s According to witnesses, police “were shouting leading conservative lawyers. The nominees include Jeffrey Sutton, a conflicting commands which might have confused former law clerk to Justice Antonin Scalia who has argued in defense of Donald”. Reportedly, one officer yelled “put your school vouchers, and Michael McConnell, a leading legal scholar who hands up” and the other was yelling to “get on the has argued for an expanded role for religion in American life. ground”.The African community is outraged at yet New York - In another embarrassing blow, the United States lost its another blatant act of racism, whitewashed by the seat on an international drug monitoring body on the same day it was Sacramento Police Department. Local NAACP voted off the U.N. Human Rights Commission. The 13-member Interna- leader, Ida Sydnor, expressed dissatisfaction with the tional Narcotics Control Board monitors compliance with U.N. drug con- investigation. ventions on substance abuse and illegal trafficking. Seven countries - Iran, Don Casimere, the director of Police Accountability for the City Brazil, India, Peru, France, Netherlands and Austria were elected to the Manager’s office, said that the shooting could have been prevented. board; joining China, Russia, Nigeria, Turkey, Mexico and Chile who are Casimere suggested better police training, including a modification in completing their current terms. See VENERABLE on Page 2 See NEWS BRIEFS on Page 3 SPONSORED BY - It’s About Time Committee & Black Panther Party Alumni Committee For More Information: P.O. Box 221100 • Sacramento, CA 95822 • Ph: 916-455-0908 • Website: itsabouttimebpp.com Cincinnati Fires BLACK PANTHER PARTY By Mumia Abu-Jamal HISTORY - WRITING CONTEST You can be a part of history… “The government is only The Black Panther Party for as lasting as your understand- Self-Defense (BPP) was born thirty- ing of administration. The five years ago in Oakland, CA. This Army is nothing without October, former members of the BPP and people, the Air Force is their supporters will meet in Washing- grounded without your en- ton DC. Our reunion is not just a senti- dorsement, the ships of the mental journey, but a conference to plan strategies to Navy could never have sailed free our political prisoners and to address the social ills if your leaders didn’t have you which afflict our communities to this day. sail ‘em, and the brutal de- We will publish a program, which will be a limited edition, historical pravity of police would be document. Your work will appear in this program if you are a winner of non-existent if you didn’t the It’s About Time Writing Contest. The theme of this contest is: “What wear the uniform.” - John Af- is/was the significance of the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense in the rica, “On the Move” (1975) Black Liberation Struggle?” Black youthful rage ex- There are two categories - poetry and essay. The winning piece in plodes in Cincinnati, Ohio, and several nights of fire, rebellion and pain each category will be published in the 35th Anniversary Program. Runners reminds us that the much-maligned and heralded “60’s were really not so up will be published in the “It’s About Time” newsletter. Winners will very long ago. For like the riots that rocked the nation in the 1960’s, the also receive two copies of the program and a year of the “It’s About Time” precipitating event was an act of brutality and violence by police against newsletter. black folks. Police violence against blacks has sparked rampages of re- Poems are not to exceed thirty (30) lines. Essays should be approxi- bellion from coast to coast, costing hundreds of millions of dollars in de- mately 1500 words in length. Prisoners are encouraged to apply. There is stroyed property, and hundreds of lost lives. a reading fee of $10 per entry; up to three poems may be entered at one Over 30 years have passed, and in the intervening years we have time. The fee is waived for prisoners. The proceeds of the contest will be seen the emergence of the black political class and the entrenchment of used to publish the program and to defray costs of the reunion. the black poor in inner cities, projects, and ghettoes more desolate, more Entries will be screened by Sister Sheba Haven, former literary edi- isolated and more hopeless than the 1960’s. We have seen the explosion tor of the Black Panther Newspaper, Black Community News Service. of the Prison Industrial Complex, at rates that would’ve been unthinkable Five finalists in each category, and the winner in each, will be chosen by in the 1970’s, with upwards of 2,000,000 men, women, and juveniles in a panel of judges. Entries will be judged on the basis of ideological under- American jails. The U.S., with only 5 percent of the world’s population, standing, historical accuracy, originality and style. has 25 percent of the world’s prison population! Deadline for contest entries is August 21, 2001. Address all entries And for black young men and women, the horror of prison has become a and make check or money order payable to: perverse rite of passage, marking one’s transition from youth to adulthood.