Unyielding Resistance: Perspectives on Political Prisoners and the Lifelong Pursuit of Freedom@ Bay Area Book Festival

I just finished listening to a book: I Am Maroon (2024) by Russell Maroon Shoatz. He was a political prisoner in Pennsylvania. He served 50 years. I corresponded with him once. I asked him if he wanted to send a letter to a Black Panther comrade who made it into exile, Pete O'Neal in Tanzania. Emse Pete escaped capture and relocated in Arusha, Tanzania with his wife, Mama Charlotte and their son and daughter. I was traveling there and Maroon sent a letter to him through me.

I am recommending this book to Black men, especially Black men just getting out of prison who think they have figured their lives out. I am recommending this book to men who converted to Islam behind bars. I am recommending this book to angry men, men who feel powerless, to men who find themselves blaming others for their behavior.

As you read the book, there is a lot to get through before enlightenment and transformation. Maroon is steadfast and resolved to become a better human being, but this resolve takes time. The twenty years in solitary confinement (ages 50-70) is helpful and productive.

Maroon makes tangible amends; however, his notable retribution lies in his work with other men inside. They have study groups, called seminars, and learn to discuss ideas and draw conclusions about the material which is relevant to the situation that landed them inside locked up doing time. The prison silences him, but the seed, planted has taken root. It flourishes and continues to bear fruit in his physical absence.

I love the creativity employed by those who will not allow a system to steal their freedom. My friend, Robert H. King, Angola 3, would always say that we're all serving minimum sentences when we reflect on the cost we pay to stay physically free. Sometimes people lose what's most important: dignity, self-respect, trustworthiness.

Maroon's life is a test tube, a social experiment allowed to ripen and explode. The world was not ready for this freedom fighter, the man had heart and intelligence. Once he matured, he was buried alive.

Freedom is not for the meek, but we descendants of captives and runaways know this already.

Maroon teaches us to stay ready: physically, mentally, emotionally and most important spiritually.

There is a lot of violence in this story. Misogyny and patriarchy juxtaposed with structural racism and white privilege across all institutions are also a form of violence.

No one respects Black life, least of all Black people. No one respects the Black woman, least of all Black boys who become men -- Maroon's peers.

Maroon is the child of parents who moved north for an opportunity to be free. However, plantation breath lingered in their nostrils.

Gang culture normalized the aberrant behavior. Power articulated values. His transformation is slow, yet this is the 1960s and from Civil Rights to Black Power, change is coming.

It is a page turner, a sit on the edge of your seat story. It is cinematic. Maroon is a great storyteller and the narrator does a good job (in the Audible version).

There is domestic violence so if you're a survivor like me, you might want to just read part 4, specifically chapter 32, Quilombo, where Maroon makes amends.

This is a man's story. Assata Shakur wrote about this time from a woman's perspective. Safiya Bukhari's posthumous, The War Before: The True Life Story of Becoming a Black Panther, Keeping the Faith in Prison & Fighting for Those Left Behind (2010), is another perspective.

I think his audience is the youngster who needs guidance at a pivotal point in his consciousness and human development. His audience is also the old head who is stuck in truncated thinking.

Maroon clearly spells out a rite of passage program he successfully launched in Pennsylvania prisons that spread across the country. It's not called this but if you read the afterward, it is so.

The move from captive to freethinker is subtle. It is active and Maroon models over and over-- do not surrender, do not give up. Setbacks are not deterrents.

His book is the topic of a panel discussion at the Bay Area Book Festival May 31-June 1, in Berkeley. 

I spoke with Sharon Shoatz and her brother Russel Shoatz III about the impact his life had on theirs and how why they decided to continue Maroon's work to liberate Black people. They are both panelists Sat., May 31, 12:30-1:30 p.m. PT at the Bay Area Book Festival.