The War Before: The True Life Story of Becoming a Black Panther, Keeping the Faith in Prison & Fighting for Those Left Behind

by Safiya Bukhari

THIEL: So the only violence that’s condoned is left-wing violence, violence in furtherance of left-wing causes. KUBY: No, but it’s probably only leftists who engage in acts of violence in support of equality and liberation. The right wing, virtually by definition, engages in violence in support of dictatorship, fascism, and inequality. [And they get shorter sentences.] Contrast Susan Rosenberg, a white [leftist] woman who is serving fifty-eight years in prison6 for possession of weapons and explosives, with Raymond Malvasi, whose case was also in the Southern District of New York. Malvasi blew up one abortion clinic, tried to bomb another, financed his bombing spree through robbing banks, and stored explosives in downtown Manhattan within two hundred feet of a school. He was prosecuted by the same government at the same time as Susan Rosenberg. He received seven years. Seven years in prison, and he was released after three. So Susan Rosenberg would be better off had she blown up abortion clinics. Right-wing, lunatic, anti-choice [defendants] don’t need the political prisoner designation, because the government lets them right out of prison.