By Matthew Vadum -- Matthew Vadum——Bio and Archives--April 19, 2019
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“I was not a good freedom fighter,” she told herself, “but I can be a good captive freedom fighter.” Her role models were Puerto Rican radicals, linked to a group responsible for a string of deadly bombings, who declared themselves prisoners of war after being arrested … Inmate 83G0313, as Clark was known, was considered a major security risk, her every step carefully tracked. There was good cause for concern. Clark’s radical crew was known for plots like the 1979 prison breakout of Assata Shakur, a Black Liberation Army leader. At one point, the prison superintendent, Elaine Lord, was assigned a guard. Twice, Lord had to leave prison grounds as a precaution … … letters from Clark describing the prison’s layout and operations were discovered when a pair of fugitives were captured. Slowly she began building a life behind bars. Through programs for inmates, she earned a bachelor’s degree in behavioral science followed by a master’s in psychology. When the government ended tuition aid for inmates, she helped persuade local colleges to offer affordable courses. As AIDS arrived in the prison, terrifying inmates and correction officers alike, she calmed things down by educating everyone. In 1994, a prison-advocacy newsletter published one of her poems and referred to her as a political prisoner. Clark wrote to the editor disagreeing, saying that she felt no pride in what she’d done. “I feel only enormous regret, sorrow and remorse.” Not long ago, Clark spoke at a Bedford Hills event. Her theme was the Book of Jonah. Like Jonah, she told the audience, she had spent years in self-destructive behavior and had been cast overboard into a stormed-tossed sea for her actions. Like Jonah, she found rescue in the belly of the whale, in her case behind bars. “In prison,” she said, “I learned who I was.”
[W]e’re supposed to believe she didn’t know about the gun in her purse (that happens to me all the time) and that she was only “squirming” towards the gun because she hurt herself playing volleyball some time back before she became a weaponized hate-moppet trying to off an innocent cop, and we’re supposed to believe that she has achieved some cosmic level of rehabilitative bliss while we’re also supposed to believe that she knew nothing of the purpose of the Brinks robbery, which was to secure funds to buy lots of other guns that Clark apparently knew nothing about …And so on. There were many lies in the Times 2012 campaign to free Judith Clark, but perhaps most dishonest was their effort to cover up the fact that they were publishing long stories about radical leftist killers learning to knit and write bad poetry in prison because they were helping push a parole reform campaign that would force the system to spring killers like Judith Clark on the grounds that they had hobbies like knitting and writing bad poetry. No matter who they killed. Cliff Kincaid exposed this campaign and the attention lavished by celebrities and politicians on the killers here. And here is my post about the release of yet another one of Clark’s co-defendants, this one freed by the Obama administration: Marilyn Buck, Cop Killer: Five Less Than Six Degrees of Separation From Barack Obama.
Please send your letter to Judy’s legal team who will submit letters to the Parole Board once her next hearing is scheduled:Professor Steve Zeidman
- By email: letters@judithclark.org OR
- By mail:
CUNY School of Law
2 Court Square
Long Island City NY 11101
Is this legal? Can anything be done about this? And here, from the same organization, is a list of Clark’s supporters, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:
PAROLE FOR JUDY CLARK: A DIVERSE COALITION OF SUPPORTERS In April 2019, over 2,000 people representing a cross-section of New Yorkers called upon the New York State Parole Board to grant parole to Judy, the second longest-serving incarcerated woman in the state. Among the notable supporters:
- Robert Morgenthau: Former Manhattan District Attorney, former United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and longtime Chair of the Police Athletic League
- The Honorable Jonathan Lippman: Former Chief Judge of New York and current chair of the Rikers Island Commission
- Four Former New York State Parole Board Commissioners: Robert Dennison, Vernon Manley, Thomas Grant, and Barbara Treen
- Elaine Lord: Former Superintendent of Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for twenty years, where Judith Clark has been incarcerated
- Thirteen former presidents of the New York City Bar Association
- Vanda Seward: former Statewide Director of Reentry Services for the Department of Corrections
- Norma Hill: a victim of the Brinks robbery who testified against Ms. Clark at her trial
- Colleen Kelly: Founder of the Nobel Peace Prize nominated victims’ organization “September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows”
- William vanden Heuvel: Former Chair of the New York City Board of Correction and Special Assistant to then-United States Attorney Robert F. Kennedy
- Hazel Dukes: President, New York State NAACP
- Sonia Ossorio: President, New York State NOW
- 11 members of New York’s Congressional delegation, including Hakeem Jeffries, Jerrold Nadler, and Alexandra [sic] Ocasio-Cortez
- 11 State Senators, including Chairman of Committee on Judiciary Brad Hoylman
- Jumaane Williams: New York City Public Advocate
- More than 150 faith-based leaders
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Matthew Vadum, matthewvadum.blogspot.com, is an investigative reporter.
His new book Subversion Inc. can be bought at Amazon.com (US), Amazon.ca (Canada)
Visit the Subversion Inc. Facebook page. Follow me on Twitter.