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Some Background on Muntaqim
Born in Oakland, CA, he grew up in San Francisco and engaged in NAACP youth organizing during the civil rights movement. In high school, he was a leading Black Student Union member. After Martin Luther King's assassination, he joined the Black Panther Party for Self Defense to fight racism and injustice.
More on them below and the San Francisco Eight, that included Muntaqim and Herman Bell, targeted for their activism against racism, imperialism and injustice, not crimes they never committed, and prosecutors knew it.
When arrested in 1971, Muntaqim was a high school graduate, a social worker, an activist for social justice, and an FBI target to be "neutralized."
His Prison Achievements
Incarcerated since 1971, he's one of the nation's longest held political prisoners and one of the 10 longest held Black political prisoners in the world. He has a daughter, two grandchildren, one great grandchild, and states:
"I came to prison an expectant father and will leave prison a grandfather....The United States does not recognize the existence of political prisoners. To do so would give credence to the fact of the level of repression and oppression, and have to recognize the fact that people resist racist oppression in the United States, and therefore, legitimize the existence of not only the individuals who are incarcerated or have been captured, but also legitimize those movements of which they are apart."
His prison achievements are impressive:
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