The Release of Mark Cook: It's A Question of Justice
By Ed Mead
[Ed Mead was a former member of Seattle's George Jackson Brigade,
a small group of revolutionaries that conducted armed actions and
bombings against the state during the last half of the '70s. He
was released from prison in late 1993, after serving eighteen
years in prison for Brigade related crimes.]
I am going write a little bit about my imprisonment, and in
doing so I hope to express to you the twisted logic that enables
me to be out here in minimum custody (on the streets) while Mark
Cook is still in prison today.
When I first went to prison I was put in the hole in the
Penitentiary at Walla Walla. From that incarceration grew a group
of resistors who became known as the Walla Walla Brothers. That
resistance culminated in a institution-wide work strike that
lasted for forty-seven days. Of the fourteen demands presented to
the administration, first on the list was a rectification of the
brutal conditions and treatment of prisoners in the segregation
unit.
The strike at Walla Walla was a major news story in 1977,
with television and newspaper coverage every day. In all of that
daily coverage by the bourgeois media, however, not once did a
prisoner or even someone representing the prisoners get a single
inch of print space, or a second of air time on the Seattle
television stations. Then, on the forty-third day of the strike,
the George Jackson Brigade placed bombs in safety deposit boxes
in two Rainier bank branches located in the affluent Bellevue
community. The Brigade issued a communique that pointed out the
interlocking directorship between the Raineer Bank and the
Seattle Times, it unmasked the biased coverage the Seattle Times
and other media outlets and explained how they presented only the
state's point of view of this struggle, and the Brigade promised
to continue bombing Raineer Banks until such time as the Seattle
Times at least made a pretense of evenhandedness in its coverage
of the struggle at Walla Walla. Within days of the adoption of a
new perspective by the news media, the public's sympathies had
changed. This was because the Seattle Times finally interviewed a
prisoner. The statewide change in consciousness was so drastic
that it quickly resulted in the firing of Harold Bradley, the
boss of Washington's Department of Corrections, as well as Walla
Walla's warden, B.J. Rhay. Lesser figures, like the associate
warden of custody, were transferred to different prisons within
the state. And the Walla Walla Brothers were released to the
prison's general population, where they went on to organize Men
Against Sexism and other work on the inside. The strike at Walla
Walla was the longest in state history. The winning of that
struggle represents the application of armed struggle at its
best. We are not about that form of liberalism any more.
There were other struggles at Walla Walla and much trouble,
too. The end result of it was that I was placed in the hole with
several comrades in connection with an armed escape attempt. From
within the segregation unit my friends and I tried to escape
again, and we were waging constant battles with our captors.
During one such battle guards shoved a riot baton up Carl Harp's
ass, causing a 5/8 inch tear in the wall of his rectum. No guard
was ever charged, although some lost their jobs for a little
while before they were put back to work in the segregation unit
and elsewhere within the prison.
Anyway, the prison administration was quite anxious to get
rid of my friends and I. Some years later, through documents
obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, I learned why I
am out of prison today. The state contacted the federal
government about sending me and some of their other troublesome
prisoners to the U.S. Prison at Marion, Illinois. As it happened,
however, the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, the Circuit that
has jurisdiction over Marion Prison, in a case involving a
Hawaiian state prisoner, had just held that the feds are not in
the rent-a-prison business for the states, and that they can no
longer accept state prisoners from other jurisdictions. The feds
told Washington prison officials how to circumvent this ruling.
They said if you write the U.S. Attorney and ask him to get the
federal court to run Mead's federal and state time together,
concurrently, then they could ship me to Marion as a federal
prisoner. That's what they did. The federal appeals court ruling
was soon overturned, but in that small window of time my
sentencing structure had changed. Within five months, while
taking part in a hunger strike by all segregation prisoners at
Marion, I was given back to the custody of the state of
Washington. From Marion I went to various other state prisons in
other states, and ultimately back to Washington. In washington I
stayed at the prison in Monroe, where I served the next ten
years.
While I was in exile I filed a Motion to Correct an Illegal
Sentence in Seattle's federal court. I successfully contended
that my thirty year sentence for bank robbery was illegal because
the court cannot give me consecutive terms for armed bank robbery
(25 years) and being armed during the commission of a federal
felony (five years). While my federal time was cut from thirty to
twenty-five years, the federal bureau of prisons was not informed
of this fact. Thus they always told the state that my federal
release date was five years longer than it actually was. In April
of 1993 the state parole board gave me the two year
administrative review all long timers receive. As always, they
had unceremoniously continued my case for another two years,
meaning the soonest I would have a parole hearing, not even a
parole hearing but another administrative review, was in April of
1995. I did not have a defense committee, but I did have a circle
of good friends. I filed a clemency petition and these friends
wrote letters in my behalf. My attorney said word about my case,
about why I was in prison for so long, got to the governor and he
suggested that the Board review my case. What ever the reason, I
was promptly given an unscheduled and unrequested in-person
parole hearing and released to my federal detainer. The state
thought I had that extra five years to serve with the feds.
Upon arriving at a federal prison I presented the applicable
officials with a certified copy of the court order cutting my
sentence by five years, and after every effort to drag the
process out, the feds released me a little over a year ago. I was
given a plane ticket and some shabby clothing. After eighteen
years I was "free." In an written article in the Seattle Post
Intelligencer shortly after the feds let me go, the Parole Board
boss was quoted as saying that my release was a "mistake," that
they thought I had several more years of imprisonment to serve.
The Board was wrong. I was not released early. My release
came ten years too late. I should have been released, and could
have been released safely, back in 1983 rather than 1993. That's
one of the problems with corrections today, they don't know when
it is time to release someone. They don't even care. And that's
what makes the experience such a destructive one, to you as well
as to us.
I am out here today not because I deserve it, but because I
was a trouble maker. In contrast to my case, Mark Cook has
maintained a good record in prison. He was active in the struggle
for prisoner rights, and filed prosecuted litigation in behalf of
the labor and safety rights of prisoners, especially those
working in the prison's industrial area. But unlike me, in the
earlier years of my confinement, he did not do his prison work
violently. At Walla Walla I was busted having three home-made
hand grenades, a pistol, and eighty round of ammunition. So I am
now on the outside. And Mark is in prison. Yet I am the more
culpable, both while inside the walls and out here in minimum
custody before my imprisonment.
So why is Mark still in prison? Just how much should a
person serve for committing crimes such as those allegedly
committed by Mark Cook and his comrades? There are three things
that need to be looked at: Firstly, you should look at the amount
of time served by darlings of the right wing who are convicted of
political crimes. Secondly, the amount of time served by social
prisoners convicted of the same type of crime Mark was convicted
of, that being two counts of first degree assault. And thirdly,
the amount of time served by others in the Brigade for committing
the same range of crimes. On the first point, the amount of time
right wing terrorists are sentenced to, you can take it from me
that they receive relative pats on the back of the hand in
relation to the time given to left wing political offenders. The
pro-capitalist Cuban who blew up a Cuban airliner that killed 76
people received something like three years in a U.S. prison. As
for the issue of social prisoners, according to the Washington
state department of statistics, the average amount of time served
in this state for first degree assault, and I averaged the annual
figures over a ten year period, is 57.1 months, that's under five
years. Mark is serving his nineteenth year, more than most first
degree murderers, who on average serve a little over seventeen
years. And thirdly, while we expect political prisoners on the
left to serve more time than social prisoners for the same crime,
just as we expect to be treated more harshly that right wing
offenders. Not only are both of those true in Mark's case, but he
is also serving more time than his white counterparts in the
Brigade. We are free. Janine Burtram is free. Rita Bo Brown is
free. Threse Coupez is free. I am free. Yet Mark Cook, the only
Black man arrested in connection with Brigade actions, remains in
prison.
Mark would like people to ask three petinent questions of
state parole and clemency officials in Washington. These are: (1)
Why hasn't Mark Cook's federal and state terms run concurrently,
like Ed Mead's sentence? (2) Why hasn't the Washington state
parole board (ISRB) used it's discretion under the Sentence
Reform Act's RCW 9.94A.400(3) to run Mark Cook's state and
federal time concurrently? And (3), if Ed Mead had two
consecutive life terms and Mark Cook had two concurrent life
terms, then why must Mark serve more time than Ed did?
We of the Mark Cook Freedom Committee are not seeking a
break for Mark Cook. That point was passed many, many years ago.
What we are asking for is simple justice--something that is long
past due. To get justice from this state's apparatus of
repression will require the involvement of a lot of people. One
very important person is the lawyer who will be doing Mark's
clemency petition. The governor had a hand in my release, I
believe, and so he should have a hand in Mark's. But the process
getting an attorney to file and prosecute a clemency petition is
a costly one. We could use your support. Please give what you can
toward the legal expenses involved in Mark's petition for
clemency. Send contributions and requests for more information
to:
Mark Cook Freedom Committee
P.O. Box 85763
Seattle, WA
98145-2763 USA
