Leonard Is Coming Home

    In a few days, Leonard Peltier will arrive at his new home in North Dakota.  This is something that I never thought would happen since Leonard has been in prison longer than I have been alive.

    After almost fifty years, his sentence was commuted from life in prison to home confinement.  This is not a pardon or clemency but at least he gets to go home.  There are a lot of people making preparations for his release.  All of the fundraising efforts for his legal defense have been converted to a care fund to meet his medical and housing needs.  Leonard will be well cared for as an elder upon his return.

    Leonard’s commutation is probably the only positive thing that will come out of Fuck Face Von Clownstick turning fascism in America up to eleven with his band of unqualified dipshits.  Had the cop from California won, I don’t see this happening.  There always seems to be this need to curry favor and not piss off law enforcement because these tough guys are so sensitive and have their feelings hurt very easily.  The transfer to house arrest was the bone of compromise thrown to the FBI.

    For those unfamiliar, Leonard was convicted of aiding and abetting in the murder of two FBI agents on the Pine Ridge Reservation on June 25, 1976.  The two people he was accused of aiding and abetting were acquitted at their trial so there is some math that doesn’t add up.  How was he guilty of aiding and abetting two people that were not guilty?

    The FBI wanted a fall guy for their bungling so they went out and got one.  Due to his work with the American Indian Movement over the years, Leonard Peltier ended up with a target on his back and was on the same COINTELPRO list as Malcolm, Martin and Fred long before the incident at Pine Ridge.  The government wanted him neutralized so that’s what they did.

    Several attorneys involved with the prosecution have clearly stated that they cooked the books in order to get a conviction and have no idea who killed the two FBI agents that day.  Witnesses have recanted testimony after claims of intimidation and threats from the FBI.  The feds had their story and they were going to stick to it.

    All levels of law enforcement and the legal system claim infallibility even when they get caught after the fact.  Some prosecutors even grew a conscience over the years and began advocating on Leonard’s behalf but undoing an injustice is way more difficult than screwing someone over in the first place.  Leonard was always denied parole on the basis of not showing remorse to the parole board.  He was always put into this weird Catch-22 because it’s kind of difficult to show remorse for something that you didn’t do.  The board wanted contrition, not to hear a claim of innocence.

    Gathering media attention was always difficult since most mainstream outlets don’t question authority and only regurgitate the narrative put forth by law enforcement.  Every story was predicated with “Convicted killer…” and not mentioning details of how Leonard was hung out to dry.  The media’s access to power is more important to them than the truth so they never dare to challenge what they’re told so as to protect that access.  Again, it’s the feigning of impartiality when one side is clearly lying that makes things smell so rotten.

    It took a lot of people putting in a lot of work over the decades to make sure that Leonard Peltier wasn’t forgotten.  I had run into people who didn’t even know that he was still alive when they’d see me wearing my “Free Leonard” t-shirt.  Everyone who chose to get involved kept pushing and kept up awareness, especially over the past few years.  Finally, the doddering old man did more than pay lip service to indigenous communities who had bent his ear over the course of four years.

    In what might have been his final act as President, Joe Biden signed the commutation order before he walked out of the White House and into what will hopefully either be obscurity or a cell at the Hague.

    Leonard Peltier has been a survivor his entire life.  From attempts at forced assimilation at a boarding school in his youth to mistreatment and neglect at the hands of the federal prison system.  He shouldn’t have had to have been a survivor.  Along with all of the other native peoples of this land, Leonard should have been able to live his life in peace but the government and greed had other plans.

    Unlike so many other political prisoners in this country, Leonard made it through. And now he can go home to live out his days with his family and his paints.