The people won clemency for Leonard Peltier! Justice for all political prisoners!
The International League of Peoples’ Struggle US Country Chapter celebrates the clemency decision given to longtime indigenous liberation activist and political prisoner Leonard Peltier as a people’s victory after decades of struggle. President Joe Biden made the decision within the last 24 hours of his Presidency before Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term.
While Biden was the one who signed the act to commute Leonard’s sentence, it is not due to any goodwill from the former President who poured endless amounts of money into the genocidal war on Palestine, sold off indigenous lands to fossil fuel corporations and led a campaign of massive state repression against peoples’ movements in the US and abroad. It was the mass movement that held high the demand to free Leonard while exposing the imperialist system for keeping him imprisoned unjustly for a crime that was widely known to have been charged under falsified evidence.
Leonard Peltier is regarded as the longest-serving political prisoner in the US, having been arrested in 1975 after being wrongfully convicted of killing two FBI officers during an armed encounter at the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, massive witness tampering was reported in the case, and even the judge who convicted Leonard admitted that the evidence proved he was innocent.
The US government targeted Leonard for his leadership in the American Indian Movement (AIM), a militant organization fighting for the self-determination of indigenous peoples within the US and for winning back power over their historic lands stolen by US state forces. The organization led the historic 1971 armed “occupation” (an ironic term when considering the centuries-long occupation of indigenous land on North America by White settlers and their descendants) of the town of Wounded Knee, site of the infamous 1890 massacre of indigenous peoples by US military forces after surviving centuries of genocide by European, and eventually US imperialist expansion. The occupation was meant to draw international attention to the struggle of indigenous people in the US, of which Leonard was an active player.
The movement to free all political prisoners and the movement to win indigenous power over their historic lands came together for decades in the fight to free Leonard, and it was clear that Biden could not ignore this movement if he wanted to save face from his blood-stained record as Genocide Joe. This was a major win for these movements and the anti-imperialist movement as a whole, since it shows what victories are possible when struggles for rights, land, and liberation are all united in a common goal.
After being held for 50 years and now at age 80 and with failing health due to the debilitating, dehumanizing, and racist prison system, Leonard’s release is celebrated as an inspiration for the peoples’ movement in the US and around the world. May this victory serve as fuel to the fire for the movements to free all political prisoners, end settler colonialism around the world, and smash US imperialism for the benefit of all humanity.