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Caged But Unfazed

By Neela Banerjee

Merle Woo, Mitsuye Yamada and Nellie Wong. Photo by Neela Banerjee.

Asian American poets, feminists and political activists Merle Woo, Mitsuye Yamada and Nellie Wong stood shoulder to shoulder reciting the words of political prisoner Marilyn Buck. Wong stepped up to the microphone, “[W]hy are we more afraid/ to be called terrorists/ than to die in the dark/ leaving no one to speak for us?”

Last Friday, the packed audience in the back room of San Francisco’s revolutionary Modern Times bookstore celebrated the publication of Buck’s chapbook, “Rescue the World,” and rededicated themselves to a stronger fight to free all political prisoners. Sponsored by the bookstore and the Friends of Marilyn Buck, the event featured poetry by Buck, as well as Woo, Yamada and Wong.

Before the reading started, long-time activists sporting graying beards spoke with young revolutionaries, while sipping sangria out of plastic cups. Photographs and literature about Buck were displayed along the walls. The photographs of Buck were striking; her large brown eyes and wide smile exuded warmth even in static form.

Marilyn Buck. Courtesy www.prisonactivist.org.

Buck began her anti-racist activism as a teenager in Texas. She organized against the war in Vietnam and fought for the self-determination of people globally. In the late 1960s, Buck aligned herself with the Black Liberation movement. In 1973, she was convicted of purchasing two boxes of ammunition with a false ID and was given a ten-year sentence. After serving four years in federal prison in West Virginia, Buck was granted a furlough and did not return. For the next eight years, she was underground.

In 1985, Buck was recaptured and convicted of conspiracy in the successful escape of fellow-political prisoner Assata Shakur from her New Jersey prison. In 1988, she was given another ten years in the Resistance Conspiracy case, for conspiring to protest and alter government policies through the use of violence against government property. This had to do with accusations surrounding the invasion of Grenada, and United States intervention in Central America.

At this time, Buck has been in prison for 17 years and is facing a sentence of 80 years. Currently in the federal women’s prison in Dublin, California, she continues her activism from the inside. She is involved in cultural and educational activities for all prisoners and translates for the Spanish-speaking ones. Buck recently won the PEN Prison Writing Program poetry prize and continues to use her words as a connection to the outside world.

The Friends of Marilyn Buck originally approached Yamada to read at the benefit because she has been involved with the fight to free political prisoners for over twenty years. Yamada brought in Woo and Wong, who are both feminist poets active in the Freedom Socialist Party.

Yamada’s older brother is an Episcopalian Priest who founded the Interfaith Prisoners of Conscience project, a group that advocates for and supports political prisoners in the United States. Yamada was also a board member of Amnesty International for a number of years, and spent time trying to advocate for that group to give more attention to political prisoners in Western nations. Yamada first met Buck and some of the other women arrested in the Resistance Conspiracy in the mid-1980s and began corresponding with them.

When Buck was transferred to the Dublin prison, Yamada began to visit her more regularly.

“I think this is an issue that people in this country are not aware of at all,” Yamada said. “These prisoners are nearly invisible.”

Yamada, Wong and Woo are old friends. In fact, this year marks the 20th anniversary of the groundbreaking documentary by Ally Light, Mitsuye and Nellie. The 1981 film profiles the two poets who came of age in the turbulent times of World War II. Yamada and Wong were chosen as subjects because of their strong presence as older Asian American feminists. Woo, another longtime activist, also appeared in the film.

Lisa Rudman, of the Friends of Marilyn Buck, opened up the reading by speaking about Buck and introducing the poets.

“When people ask political prisoners, or any prisoners, what keeps them going, they often say their creative work, their art, their poetry,” Rudman said. She also spoke candidly about Buck’s incarceration: “How is Marilyn? She is still is prison.”

Yamada, who stood on a box of books to reach the microphone podium, spoke about her visits to Buck and the other women in prison. Of the seven political prisoners Yamada once visited, Buck is the last to remain. Hoping to recieve clemency under the Clinton administration, Buck and activists are now pessimistic about President Bush.

“The fight for political prisoners encompasses the fight for equality,” Wong said. “Especially as women of color, we must fight sexism and racism and all the other-isms at one time. We want more and more people to know about these issues because if people don’t care, then nothing is ever going to change.”