Celebrating the Life and Work of Marilyn Buck

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Two years ago today, Marilyn Buck died of cancer in New York City; after decades behind bars, she had been released from prison barely a few weeks earlier.

As comrade Judy Greenspan wrote at the time:

Marilyn died today not in the hospital but at Soffiyah Elijah’s house, her close friend and attorney with her friends around her. The federal bureau of prisons and the U.S. Criminal injustice system killed Marilyn by denying her adequate medical care, careful diagnoses, and timely treatment for her cancer. They allowed the uterine cancer to spread until it was inoperable. And they made her serve every single day of her sentence that they could for her 'heinous crimes' of actively supporting the Black Liberation struggle, aiding in the escape of comrade Assata Shakur, participating in military political actions against U.S. Wars at home and abroad and remaining defiant and opposed to the U.S. Imperialist racist system every day that she was inside the belly of the beast. Marilyn Buck, Presente!

Marilyn was an anti-imperialist, a feminist, an artist and a revolutionary, who spent almost half of her life in prison as a result of her participation in revolutionary armed movements in the united states.

Amongst other things, Marilyn was suspected of helping to break Assata Shakur out of prison, and was convicted of participating in and planning attacks on the United States Capitol building, the National War College at Fort McNair, the Washington Navy Yard Computer Center, the Washington Navy Yard Officers Club, the Staten Island Federal Building, the Israeli Aircraft Industries Building, the South African consulate, and the offices of the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association.

Here in Montreal, as part of the Week Against Prisons, some of us have organized a celebration of Marilyn's life and work, this Wednesday, August 8, at Casa del Popolo (4873 Boulevard Saint-Laurent), from 6pm to 8pm. We will be launching Inside/Out, a recently published collection of Marilyn's poems, with readings by local Montreal activists, and brief talks about Marilyn, about political prisoners, women in prison, and resistance worldwide.

The event is free of charge; the readings and presentations will be in English.

We hope that you can join us this Wednesday; we would also appreciate it if you could forward this email to let other people know about this event!


To learn more about Marilyn, see http://www.kersplebedeb.com/mystuff/profiles/buck.html

This event is a part of Montreal`s Week Against Prisons, August 7-12; for more information, see http://contrelesprisons.blogspot.ca/

If you can't make it, but would still like to get a copy of Inside/Out, the book is available from leftwingbooks.net at https://secure.leftwingbooks.net/index.php?l=product_detail&p=1076