Richard Williams exemplifies the best of our movements. He was a warrior who never stopped struggling for a better world.
He was a father and grandfather, originally from Beverly, Massachusetts, former chairperson of the New England Prisoner Association (in the early '70s), former member of the New England Free Press (a radical print shop) and Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, and one of the organizers of the Amandla "Festival of Unity" Concert in Harvard Stadium in July of 1979 featuring Bob Marley and the Wailers (a benefit concert to provide aid to the African National Congress and other liberation forces in Southern Africa). He was also active during the struggle for equal education for Black and Latino children in Boston in the '70s (aka the "busing crisis").
Richard Williams spent more than 20 years in federal prisons after being convicted based on actions claimed by the United Freedom Front taken to protest the covert U.S. war in Central America in the 1980s and the apartheid regime in South Africa, and in support of the Puerto Rican independence movement, and liberation movements in Southern Africa and Central America, including the ANC and the Sandinistas.
Richard was captured in Cleveland in 1984, becoming one of the "Ohio 7." Richard was convicted in federal court for five political bombings targeting the U.S. military and corporations profiting from South African apartheid (in which no one was harmed). In 1991, Richard was convicted, after an earlier trial resulted in a hung jury, of being an accomplice in the killing of a NJ state trooper during a highway shoot out. After September 11th, 2001, Richard was held in isolation, without explanation, for more than 8 months. This was the same time period that his lawyer, Lynne Stewart, was herself was targeted by Attorney General Ashcroft under the USA-PATRIOT Act. Richard suffered a heart attack in February 2002.
After more than two decades in federal prisons, Richard was in increasingly poor health due to Hep C and complications that surfaced after his cancer treatment last year. He died while at the Federal Medical Center in Butner, North Carolina on December 7, 2005.
Financial contributions for Richard's family can be sent to:
Jericho Movement
P.O. Box 774
Bronx, NY 10458
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