If my prison source is correct, Black liberation fighter, imprisoned intellectual historian, and now book author Russell Maroon Shoatz has been transferred from the dungeons of SCI Green, and he is in the hole of SCI Mahanoy, in southeastern Pennsylvania.
Maroon, who has the dubious distinction of being perhaps the longest held-in-the-hole prisoner in Pennsylvania, nearly 36 years, is now 69 years old. Except for a brief interlude in 1986, Maroon has spent a lifetime in state prison holes: in Huntington, in Western, in Green, and now in Mahanoy. His first trek began in 1977. That’s right, 1977. Today, 36 years later, he’s still in the hole after an exemplary record of over a decade without misconduct. As fate would have it, his transfer is marked by the release of his new and first book, Maroon the Implacable: The Collected Writings of Russell Maroon Shoatz, by PM Press of Oakland, California. The renowned poet Amiri Baraka called the book a “very funky instruction manual on how to make revolution in imperialist America.”
Maroon’s writings have appeared for years in small, little-known anarchist booklets and publications. This book makes much of that work accessible to a wider, hopefully more appreciative audience. When I left death row, I had several delicious days to listen to him—for he did most of the talking—and marvel at the brilliance and quickness of his mind. He talked politics, current events, and trends to come in the nation and the world. Now you can share in some of that fine thinking by reading Maroon the Implacable. This book will surely spark the movement to get him out of the hole and hopefully open the doorway of his dungeon to freedom. From in prison nation, this is Mumia Abu-Jamal.
These commentaries are recorded by Noel Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
