Maroon The Implacable: The Collected Writings of Russell Maroon Shoatz

(Paperback)

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Russell Maroon Shoatz is a political prisoner who has been in solitary confinement for 30 years. This is the first collection of his accumulated written works. Despite the having spent decades in prison, Shoatz has remained on the cutting edge of history, writing wide-range of essays covering past and current issues. He gives a fresh retelling of the Black Liberation Movement, as well as an analysis of the prison system. His sharp understanding of current historical movements includes proposals on how to move forward to embrace new political practices.

Reviews

"This book, Maroon the Implacable, is that very funky instruction manual on how to make revolution against Imperialist America."
--Amiri Baraka, former Poet Laureate of New Jersey

"If the Great Dismal Swamp is no longer a refuge, nevertheless the message of the Maroons lives on, and Russell Maroon Shoatz is today its untamed voice. Free Maroon the Implacable!"
--Hakim Bey, author of TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone

"At the core of the book is the theme of marronage--the will to escape from conditions of enslavement at any cost. This is what Russell Maroon Shoatz has done, not physically, but in the world of ideas by escaping from the rigid patriarchal framework he inherited and revaluing and promoting the role of women in the history of liberation. This book is a document of this transformation carried out against tremendous odds and told with searing honesty."
--Silvia Federici, author of Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle

"Russell Maroon Shoats's life reads like fiction composed by Victor Hugo. But this Jean Valjean for our time is the living truth, and his writings are a beacon for a new, revolutionary age. What a treasure has here been uncovered!"
--Joel Kovel, author of The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World

"Though he's been inside for forty of his sixty-nine years on earth, the problems he raises about the justice movement are amazingly up to date. Above all, he thinks organizationally... He is always trying to work out what to do. Where he looks for answers is the only sensible place: not in ideas but in the historical experience of the grassroots."
--Selma James, author of Sex, Race, and Class: The Perspective of Winning

"For twenty-seven years I visited four prisoners, one of whom was Russell Shoatz, who we called Maroon. From him I always got a lesson in politics that fortified me and made me understand just what was happening in our country and what I should be doing about it. He trusted the truth of 'power to the people, ' and it kept him focused and hopeful. His body was incarcerated but his mind soared. My mentor!"
--Frances Goldin, publisher of Mumia Abu-Jamal, Barbara Kingsolver, and Adrienne Rich

Author Bio

Russell Maroon Shoatz is a founding member of the Black Unity Council, former member of the Black Panther Party, and soldier in the Black Liberation Army. He is currently incarcerated in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania. Quincy Saul writes columns for Capitalism Nature Socialism and the Africa Report and is a cofounder, a writer, and an organizer for Ecosocialist Horizons. He lives in Amherst, Massachusetts. Fred Ho is a jazz baritone saxophonist, composer, bandleader, playwright, writer, and social activist. His previous books include Diary of a Radical Cancer Warrior and Raw Extreme Manifesto, and he is a cofounder of Scientific Soul Sessions. He lives in New York City. Chuck D is a rapper, an author, and a producer. He helped create politically and socially conscious hip-hop music in the mid-1980s as the leader of Public Enemy. He lives in Ventura, California. Matt Meyer is an educator, an activist, an author, and an editor whose previous work includes Let Freedom Ring: A Collection of Documents from the Movements to Free U.S. Political Prisoners. He is a founder of the anti-imperialist collective Resistance in Brooklyn and served as national chair for both the War Resisters League and the Peace and Justice Studies Association. He lives in New York City. Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge is a South African politician and activist. A founding member of the Natal Organization of Women, she has worked as the Chairperson of the ANC Parliamentary Caucus, Deputy Speaker of the National Assembly, Deputy Minister of Health, and Deputy Minister of Defence. She is currently the executive director of Embrace Dignity.