Chip’s Supporters are RE-ENERGIZING!!!

Please send Chip a letter or card for the holiday season. His 94 year old mother passed away last week, it was his dream to see her before she died. His current address is:

Romaine Fitzgerald
B-27527
Kern Valley State Prison
P.O. Box 5101
A-1-105
Delano, California 93216

Also….look out for Chip’s Monthly Blog….COMING SOON!!!

CHIP FITZGERALD IS IN SOLIDARITY WITH THE SHU HUNGER STRIKE! HE IS IN SPIRIT WITH US IN SACRAMENTO ON AUGUST 23, 2011!!

State corrections officials are moving forward with a major policy initiative that could improve conditions and reduce the length of time some inmates spend in controversial isolation units. The changes are being proposed amid threats of another hunger strike by inmates who spearheaded one last month at Pelican Bay State Prison.

The policy changes, which still are being worked out, are in line with proposals highlighted in an internal study completed in 2007 by a panel of experts appointed by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, according to interviews and documents. The panel’s recommendations included:

Moving to a conduct-based model that punishes inmates for tangible offenses, rather than for mere affiliation with a gang. This approach is widely used in other states and by the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Ending the practice of indefinite detention of alleged prison gang members and associates in the Security Housing Units
Ending the practice of automatically sending validated prison gang members and associates to the Security Housing Units

Creating a “step-down” program inside the Security Housing Units to encourage positive behavior by offering incentives, such as special programs

Ending the distinction between prison gangs and other threat groups to give the department more flexibility in determining inmate placement in the Security Housing Units

The longest held Black Panther Party Political Prisoner, Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald has ended his hunger strike at Corcoran State Prison in California now that the prison and its warden have met his demands. These demands were met only after countless calls made into the prison by his supporters. According to sources close to him, Chip is scheduled to be transferred today out of administrative segregation at Corcoran and into Kern State Valley Prison’s general population, where conditions (including access to medical care) may be significantly better. But, as he wrote recently, “we’ll see.”

We will be sure to keep you posted.

Without a doubt, Chip’s transfer is a people’s victory. Warden Lopez at Corcoran State Prison capitulated to the people’s demands. This proves the importance and value of political solidarity with prisoners in general and political prisoners in particular. Let’s keep our movement going strong.

The Committee to Free Chip Fitzgerald thanks you for your support!

Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald, Political Prisoner and Former Panther on Hunger Strike in California’s Corcoran Prison

URGENT UPDATE ON CHIP FITZGERALD!
CHIP ON HUNGER STRIKE!

Chip is demanding a transfer out of the hole at Corcoran State Prison where he has been for over a year.

In response to his unfair housing in Administrative Segregation (“the hole”) Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald is currently refusing food. In support of Chip we ask that you call Warden Raul Lopez to DEMAND that Chip be transferred out of Ad Seg and into general population immediately.

PASS THIS CALL FOR SUPPORT WIDELY!
CALL WARDEN RAUL LOPEZ TODAY!!!
FAX WARDEN RAUL LOPEZ TODAY!!!

DEMAND THAT ROMAINE FITZGERALD #B-27527 BE TRANSFERRED OUT OF AD SEG and INTO GENERAL POPULATION! End his hunger strike!!!

559-992-8800 (phone) Extension #5008
559-999-4636 (fax)

_____________

Political Prisoner
Prisoner of War for over 40 years!

JOIN THE FIGHT FOR HIS FREEDOM

Since February 2009, Chip has been held in an isolation chamber, “the hole,” on an administrative charge he has appealed. Even though the required term of punishment ended in February of this year, Chip remains in the hole, transferred now from Centinela to Corcoran State Prison, in Corcoran, California.

And, Chip’s situation is now worsened by the ongoing refusal of the CDCR to provide him urgently-needed medical care, in violation of his Constitutional rights, under the Eight Amendment’s prohibition of “cruel and unusual punishments.”

The Committee to Free Chip has engaged Attorney Keith Wattley of Oakland, California, to petition the local superior court to release Chip from the hole immediately. We need your help.

SEND YOUR CONTRIBUTION NOW!
MORE UPDATES TO FOLLOW… STAY TUNED!

About Chip

Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald, born and raised in Compton, California, joined the Southern California Chapter of the Black Panther Party in early 1969 as a teenager who had just been released from the California Youth Authority. In September of that year, as a dedicated member of the Party, Chip was arrested in connection with a police shoot-out and tried for assault on police and related charges, including the murder of a security guard. He was sentenced to death.

Ultimately, his sentence was commuted to life with parole. He has been in prison for nearly 40 years now.

Chip’s dedication to the cause of the liberation of black and all oppressed people has not wavered through all the years of his brutal incarceration.

Re: Romaine Fitzgerald—B27527

Dear Governor Schwarzenegger:

Pursuant to Article V, Section 8, of the California Constitution, you have the extraordinary executive power to affirm, modify or reverse a decision of the California Board of Prison Terms (the “Board”) as to parole for people serving indeterminate life sentences. And, you have exercised that power in denying parole to hundreds of inmates to whom the Board has granted parole, including in the case of Sandra Lawrence. Of course, in 2008, the California Supreme Court overruled your decision in the Lawrence case, and ruled that the Board’s charge is to grant parole except where there is a showing of present dangerousness.

Romaine Fitzgerald has been incarcerated under a life term for 40 years now, even though he has been eligible for parole for 33 years. In 2008, the Board denied parole to Mr. Fitzgerald despite the failure of evidence that he represented a present danger. Its denial was, therefore, unlawful. Moreover, as Board commissioners at that last, July 2008 hearing challenged Mr. Fitzgerald to renounce the political views he held at the time of the commission of the crime when he was a member of the Black Panther Party, I believe the denial was politically motivated.

At the hearing, Mr. Fitzgerald showed that he had never been charged with a violent infraction during his long incarceration, that he had participated in innumerable rehabilitative programs, been trained in several vocational fields and fulfilled all work assignments. In 1998, he suffered a stroke, and, as a result, remains partially paralyzed. On April 11, 2009, he turned 60 years old. In consideration of all of the above and in the absence of any showing of present dangerousness, I am urging you to reverse the Board’s politically-charged, unlawful denial and grant parole to Romaine Fitzgerald.

Sincerely yours,

___________________________
Name

____________________________
____________________________
Address

____________________________
Telephone

____________________________
Email

Warden Domingo Uribe, Jr.
Centinela State Prison
Imperial, California

Re: Immediate Medical Treatment and Transfer—Romaine Fitzgerald—B27527

Dear Warden Uribe:

This is a demand that you immediately provide Romaine Fitzgerald the emergency medical treatment he needs and transfer him to a proper medical facility for care. Your denial of this urgent treatment and care is a blatant denial of his Constitutional rights, for which the California prison system has already been reprimanded by the Order of the federal district court.

Mr. Fitzgerald, who has been incarcerated for 40 years and is now 60 years old, has made a request for a medical transfer numerous times because he is suffering extreme spinal pain and is partially paralyzed, arising from a stroke he experienced in 1998. Indeed, over three years ago, prison doctors recommended corrective surgery, and, recently your own doctors supported that recommendation. Every day his condition worsens on account of the barbaric conditions under which you presently house him in your administrative segregation unit. The report of Dr. Marie Branch, based upon her examination of Mr. Fitzgerald in July of this year, confirms that the metal bed, extreme isolation and denial of proper exercise and denial of a neck support or even a pillow in that unit exacerbate his deteriorating condition. Indeed, I believe if you continue to refuse to provide Mr. Fitzgerald proper treatment, he will soon suffer permanent paralysis.

The Committee to Free Chip Fitzgerald is prepared to pay for any and all costs related to the services of a private doctor to treat Mr. Fitzgerald. The Honorable Thelton E. Henderson, District Court Judge, and his appointed Receiver, J. Clark Kelso, are copied on this letter to alert them of these serious concerns and encourage them to closely monitor your response.

Very truly yours,

Name ________________________

Address ________________________
________________________

Telephone/Email ________________________

cc: J. Clark Kelso, Receiver, California Prison Health Care Services
Matthew Cate, Secretary, California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation
The Honorable Thelton E. Henderson, Judge, United States District Court
Edmund G. Brown, Jr., Attorney General, State of California
Prison Law Office, San Quentin, California

My friendship with Chip began when we were in our teens, and enthusiastic about our new sense of the world. Both of us having been confined in some of the worst reform schools in California, we ended up together in Tracy, an adult prison where so-called unfit youth were also incarcerated. It was an amazing period in which, for the first time, we were reading books, magazines, journals, learning about the social justice movement. Our new way of thinking was primarily the result of how deeply the Movement influenced and penetrated the fabric of society.

We came to represent an important departure from the previous generation of black youth of a similar background, who had made different choices, many of whom had fallen down an abysmal gutter into a cesspool of no escape. We, on the other hand, had become products of the Movement, a movement that was more powerful than any drug, and guaranteed to hook you. Overnight, it seemed, we had become aware of its vast new terrain. The Movement would plaster a smile on your face, straighten you up in an erect fashion, tighten your gut and propel you into the future. That was how we felt.

We had been rescued, not from danger, but from the corruption of our old values and principles. We had been rescued by the Movement from what seemed our predestined path. We were overwhelmed with excitement about our discovery of what was going on in the world and how we might fit into it. We formed ourselves into an activist group made up of 20-25 black adult and youth inmates.

Now, we spent a portion of everyday exercising, going to the library, and having group discussions about what we were reading. We talked politics, recited poetry and listened to jazz on a small battery-operated record player. We transformed our prison environment into a training center for the Movement. Everyone in our group was responsible to run laps and engage in a physical fitness program.

We saw ourselves physically and mentally getting into shape for the Struggle, the struggle to remedy the racist murders of four little girls in Birmingham, and the Emmett Tills, and the lynchings, and Jim Crow, and the suppression of our people’s human rights. To stay under the prison radar, we operated in squads, in groups of twos and threes, threes and fours, debating current events and pursuing various aspects of radical philosophy. We stayed clear of the prison bickering, and it stayed clear of us.—If only a new movement could rise and replicate such a positive human transformation among black youth.

Our minds became free, free to roam the Kenyan mountains of Jomo Kenyatta, soothed by thoughts of the struggle in the Sierra Maestra of Cuba, refreshed by the Long March of China, healed by the successes of the freedom fighters of Algeria, warmed by contemplations of the cold winters of the Russian Revolution, aroused by the crashing waves of Cape Town that fathered another Movement, imagining ourselves riding down the Mississippi river singing “I’ve known rivers, those ancient dusty rivers,” or escaping to survive yet another day in the hills of Bolivia with Che and Tanya, only to find ourselves talking with Langston Hughes or being brought to tears by Richard Wright’s black boys.

Kwame was the African name Chip adopted for himself. Chip understood and expressed his political perspective in an enhanced manner. In most dialogues about the critical issues before the Movement, Chip was always more engaging. And he was always grasping to understand all the implications of the Movement, its history and the forces that influenced it. Chip became a young mentor, who was kind and patient with everyone around him.

There were five of us in our group who knew we were getting out of prison around the same time and who all agreed that we would join the Black Panther Party when we got out.—Of the five of us, only Chip and I remain alive.—I remember one day after we made that pledge, when the weather was wonderful and we were sitting around on the prison yard, we dramatically decided that Donald Byrd’s “Cristo Redentor” encapsulated the music we wanted for our funerals, as we romanticized our possible deaths.

Upon our release, we wasted no time joining the Black Panther Party. Chip worked tirelessly in various capacities in the Westside office of the Los Angeles Branch of our Southern California Chapter. To be a Panther was a 24/7 commitment, and every single day seemed like weeks due to the volume of activities during that explosive period. We were totally consumed in the Party’s free breakfast program, the tutorial program, selling Panther papers, political education classes and other projects. Chip was a favorite of many in the communities we served, and the children, especially, loved him, as reflected in their smiling little faces when he appeared.

I remember that night, too, and the solemn look on Chip’s face after he got away from a shoot-out with the police. He had been shot in the head. The bullet had hit the front of his head without having entered his skull and miraculously exited the rear of his head. Still conscious, Chip consoled me, telling me, “Everything will be okay. Don’t worry.”

Even though Chip must have been in excruciating pain, there were no screams, no tears, no complaints. Yet in that dreadful moment, all of the romanticized aspects of our struggle collided with a startling reality.

I know better than most that Chip’s silence and low-key manner about his long incarceration are the result of the preparation for death or imprisonment we made long ago. Heroically, Chip has endured these many years of confinement with the clear understanding that it is collateral damage, the fate of a captured activist.

The parole board in California has demanded Chip’s remorse, which he has demonstrated. This is a terrible irony, though, in consideration of the fact that the same government has shown no remorse for its crimes against humanity and long-standing oppression of black people, which we struggled to overcome. Indeed, Chip’s excessive, continuing incarceration exposes a system that punishes a young, black freedom fighter more brutally than a common criminal.

My name is Bruce Richard, and I’m an Executive Vice President of United Healthcare Workers East, the largest local union in the world, and this is my personal account about my friend and comrade Romaine “Chip” Fitzgerald.

Committee Note: In October of 1969, the same year Chip was captured, Bruce Richard then 18 years old, was captured several weeks later and like Chip, was himself shot and severely wounded by Los Angeles police in a shoot-out that ended in the murder of Panther Walter Touré Pope. Bruce spent the next seven years of his life in prison.

Our Weekly – Los Angeles
By Shirley Hawkins

Dozens of activists, supporters, and former members of the Black Panthers Party showed their solidarity Saturday for Romaine ‘Chip’ Fitzgerald, a former member of the Southern California Chapter of the Black Panther Party who has been imprisoned for 39 years.

A national groundswell of support is growing for the incarcerated political prisoner and nearly 3,000 signatures have been compiled on a “Petition for the Release to Free Romaine ‘Chip’ Fitzgerald.” The activist is currently incarcerated at Centinela State Prison in the Imperial Valley.

The rally, which was held at the KAOS Network in Leimert Park and organized by The Committee to Free Chip Fitzgerald, was held to show support for the former Black Panther whose parole date was July 2.

Fitzgerald, who has been in prison for 39 years, is the longest incarcerated Black Panther in history. At the age of 18, he was convicted of murder and attempted murder. In 1972, the state of California renounced the death penalty and commuted all death sentences to life imprisonment.

Showing their support for the long-time political prisoner were community activists and former members of the Black Panther Party Elaine Brown, David Hilliard, Roland Freeman, George Robinson, and Sherwin Forte.

“Some people have said, ‘What crime needs 39 years in prison to make amends?’” said Dominique DiPrima, host of KGFJ Radio’s The Front Page, who hosted the event. “We need to continue to show ‘Chip’ Fitzgerald that he has a network of support so that he can come home. We need to spread the word of his case by writing to the governor.”

David Hilliard, a founding member and chief of staff of the Black Panther Party, flew in from Oakland to attend the event.

Hilliard, a college professor who is also director of the Dr. Huey P. Newton Foundation, recalled that from the beginning, the party was a target of governmental opposition. “The Los Angeles and Chicago branches of the party were the chapters that suffered most of the heat,” he recalled.

Like other Black Panthers who became targets of COINTELPRO and the FBI, Hilliard observed, “Fitzgerald was a victim of the FBI’s war against the Party. He became involved in a shootout with the California Highway Patrol in Sept. 1969 and got shot in the head. A week later, police arrested Chip for allegedly shooting a security guard, but a witness testified that he was at home at the time recuperating from his head wound.”

Holding a reprint of the Black Panther Intercommunal News Service newspaper, Hilliard then read the names of nearly 20 Black Panthers who had been murdered by Los Angeles police or FBI operatives between 1968 and 1970, including Black Panther co-founders Bunchy Carter and John Huggins. Hilliard said that Carter and Huggins were assassinated in 1969 by members of the FBI on the campus of UCLA.

“The state reserves the right to enact violence for itself,” observed Hilliard. Waving the newspaper, Hilliard declared, “I just wanted to show you the impact of the oppression that the Black Panthers faced.”
Declaring that Fitzgerald was his hero, Hilliard said, “Chip hasn’t lost his self-respect. He is a paradigm of what a political revolutionary soldier really is. We support his dignity, strength, and courage. We want our brother back in the community. He’s done his time and we want him home.”

Emani Bey, one of the organizers of the event, said that Fitzgerald has written letters stating his commitment to non-violence. “He is helping to form a cease fire group for black and brown unity,” said Bey. “He wrote me about the black and brown violence in the prisons and how it spills out on the streets. He wants to work with the youth to stop the spiral of violence,” she said.

Elaine Brown, former chairperson of the Black Panther Party who flew in from Savannah, Georgia, to attend the event, said, “We need the state to understand that Chip Fitzgerald has done enough time. We have to let the Board of Parole Hearings know that we support Chip’s parole and we’re asking people to sign the online petition we have established to get him home.”

Noting the lack of elected officials at the rally, Brown added, “We need our politicians to come out and say that they support this man. We need to raise the number of people showing Chip support as much as we can.”

Brown recalls that Fitzgerald joined the party in the ‘60s at the age of 18 with several other youths who had just been released from the California Youth Authority. “Of the seven who came into the party together, only two are still alive,” said Brown. “One is Chip and the other one is Bruce Richard, executive vice president of 1199 SEIU in New York.”

Brown, a lifelong friend of Fitzgerald, observed, “Chip is so humble, he has never wanted a lot of publicity around his cause. He’s a true soldier.”

Brown said that no matter what the pending outcome of Fitzgerald’s hearing, his supporters must remain vigilant. “Let’s keep the momentum to free Chip going,” she said.

Forte observed, “We need a high level of unity and we want to do everything civilly and legally to get Chip out, whether it’s with phone calls, letters, or emails. Let’s keep each other’s spirits high. Stick it out and we will win.”

The online petition for Romaine ‘Chip’ Fitzgerald can be accessed at www.freechip.org.

source: http://www.ourweekly.com