YOU LOVE TO SEE IT: “Today I Am Finally Free”

Friends:

Good things are happening! An Indigenous rights activist walks free, a gun-loving state holsters its most dangerous weapons, abortion care resumes where it should have never stopped, and shoppers abandon corporate sycophants. 

Rock the boat.

Freed At Last

After nearly 50 years in federal prison, the 80-year-old Native American rights activist Leonard Peltier walked free on Feb. 18 after former President Joe Biden commuted his sentence in January. 

“Today I am finally free,” Peltier said after his release. “They may have imprisoned me, but they never took my spirit.” 

Peltier, who is a member of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians in North Dakota, has maintained his innocence since he was convicted in 1975 for the killing of two FBI agents. His imprisonment resulted from a 1975 shootout on South Dakota’s Pine Ridge Indian Reservation between the FBI and members of the American Indian Movement, an activist group founded in 1968 to address police brutality and discrimination against Indigenous communities. The group sought to call attention to the federal government’s history of violating treaties it had made with Native American tribes.

Peltier was one of three individuals who were indicted in connection with the agents’ killings. Peltier was ordered to serve two consecutive life sentences, while the two other American Indian Movement members were acquitted on grounds of self-defense. Peltier’s defense argued that prosecutors withheld critical evidence that was included in the trials of the other two acquitted activists. Following his conviction, a witness who initially testified to having seen Peltier shoot the agents later rescinded her testimony, saying that her initial statements were coerced.