QUESTION: Articles on Russell Maroon Shoats' prison escape

question / pregunta: 

I'm trying to track down some articles for an imprisoned comrade.

1. He's looking for articles in Scranton, PA papers from march 4-6 , 1980 dealing with Russell Maroon Shoats' escape from Fairview State Hospital.

2. The text of a piece by Jalil Muntaqim entitled "On the B.L.A."

Thanks in advance!!

cheers

Answers


Answer posted by:
tripmastermonkey

SO here's what i've found on Jalil Muntaqim through WorldCat (a database of library holdings from around the world- institutions volunteer to put their holdings in this database, which is very useful for interlibrary loan purposes- not all libraries put their holdings on it, but it is still useful- public libraries do make use of it- I thought that WorldCat was going to be free soon, but it currently is not)
The pamphlet "On the Black Liberation Army" is at:
Oakland Public Library- Library Use Only
Kutztown University, PA- Main Collection
UC Davis- Shields Library- Special Collections
Northwestern University, IL- Special Collections
Michigan State University- Special Collections American Radicalism
University Michigan- Labadie Collection

And then there is the book: "We are our own liberators", which contains the essay "On the BLA", and it's at:
Northwestern University- MAIN COLLECTION
University Michigan- Labadie Collection
New York University- Non-circulating
The book is published by Abraham Guillen Press/Arm the Spirit, and is distributed in the US by AK Press.

If you can’t get to these places, there is a website that sells political literature, and lists “On the BLA” for $1.50: http://www.impassionedinsurrection.info/terraphile.html

Freedom Archives in San Francisco also has recordings of Jalil Muntaqim.

With not tons of information out there on the BLA, there is the online magazine 4strugglemag
http://www.4strugglemag.org/archives/cat_issue_8.html

Additionally, there is a 2006 dissertation from Michican State University that analyzes the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army:
Let's worry the line: Black radicalism and the bourgeois ideal
by Burns, Phyllis Lynne, Ph.D., Michigan State University, 2006, 196 pages; AAT 3236292

This is the abstract:
This dissertation addresses the influence of Black Radical theory and activism on African American literature and Black culture in North America. A theoretical analysis of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army provides space to critique the ideals of "racial progress" advocated by the Black bourgeoisie. Thus, the dissertation questions readily assumed theoretical frames espoused through Black middle-class ideologies. I argue that the Black bourgeois ideal is based on the foreclosure of the possibility of self-defense in response to racial violence, and, more generally, the marginalization of the Black majority based on an ideological collusion between white America and the Black "elite." Through a comparative examination of chattel slave narratives and neo-slave narratives/novels, the project connects these texts by critically engaging late twentieth-century Black liberation activism and its opposition to mainstream and Black bourgeois models. An examination of ideas emerging from the Black Power Movement provides a comprehensive investigation of underrepresented texts within the Academy. This project looks at the insights of Assata Shakur, Elaine Brown, Huey P. Newton, George L. Jackson, and Robert F. Williams along with the testimonies of Frederick Douglass, Harriet A. Jacobs, and Mary Prince in addition to the literature of Gloria Naylor, Sherley Anne Williams, Toni Cade Bambara, Toni Morrison, and Sam Greenlee. This array of texts in turn creates space to re-formulate traditional investigations of chattel-slave narratives and African American literature and, further, to analyze the continuum of liberation efforts historically and their link to Black youth culture in the contemporary context of North America.

Institutions that hold the Scranton Times newspapers number close to 25
In Pennsylvania there are:
University of Scranton
Scranton Public Library
State Library of Pennsylvania
Free Library of Philadelphia
Lackawanna Historical Society
Marywood University Library
Osterhout Free Library
Lock Haven University
Mansfield University
Penn State
Pennsylvania State University, Commonwealth
Bloomsburg University
East Stroudsburg University Library

Please also look at our Reference Shelf on this website for information on political prisoners and prisoner/prisoner-solidarity/anti-prison websites.