Adiós viejo amigo, usted no será olvidado

I was going to post about a good trip... instead, I come home to find that the FBI killed an old friend, friday night, as Genie and I were being taken by Mennonite horse drawn buggy to the Green Dragon, the FBI was hunting down an old man who fought for his nation Puerto Rico, and like generations of Puerto Ricans before him, he paid with his life for his hopes for his nations freedom. Filberto would always bring me a cup of tea, when I worked with Joe Doherty, on his case as a paralegal, in the Metropolitan Correctional Center. He was a kind, grandfatherly fellow, with an air of self confidence and hospitality. Visiting him on the cell block, was like being invited into his home. He and his friends robbed an armored car in protest to the illegal occupation of Puerto Rico, a story of the murder of unarmed protestors and corruption. They took the money and bought toys for all the children of Puerto Rico for Christmas.

We are returning to the times when activists like Fred Hampton are simply killed?
Adiós Filberto, mi amigo, usted no será olvidado
Sleep now, and awake in a land of freedom.

"If They Come in the Morning" by Jack Warshaw
(sung by Roy Bailey too)
and... sung by Christy Moore

They call it the law, we call it apartheid, internment, conscription, partition and silence
Its the law that they make to keep you and me where they think we belong
they hide behind steal and bullet proof glass machine guns and spies
and they tell who suffer the teargas and torture that we're in the wrong

Chorus
no time for love if they come in the morning
no time to show tears of for fears in the morning
no time for good by no time to ask why
and the sound of the siren is the cry of the morning

they suffer the torture the rotted in cells when crazy wrote letters and died
the limits of pain they endured but the loneliness got them instead
and the courts gave them justice as justice is given by well mannered thugs
sometimes they fought for the will to survive ,but more times they just wished they were dead

The took away young Francis Hughes and his cousin Tom McElwee as well
they came for Patsy O'Hara, Bobby Sands and some of his friends
In Boston Chicago, Saigon, San Diego, Warsaw and Belfast
and places that never make headlines the list never ends

The boys in blue are only a few of the everyday cops on the beat
The CID branch men the Blacks and the Gilmores do their jobs as well
behind them the men who tap phones take photos program computers and files
and the man who tells them when to come and take you to your cell

Come all of you people who give to your sisters and your brothers the will to survive
they say you can get used to a war but that does not mean the war isn't on
the fish need the sea to survive just like your people need you
and the death squad can only get through to them if first can get through to you




The following comes to me from the Portside list

DENOUNCE THE ASSASSINATION OF FILIBERTO OJEDA RIOS!!

MONDAY SEPT. 26TH, AT 5PM
PROTEST AT 26 FEDERAL PLAZA
(Subway: 4, 5, 6, J, M to Brooklyn Bridge; A, C, E to
Chambers St.; R, N to Canal St)

The ProLibertad Freedom Campaign is calling on all our
allies and supporters of justice to join us on Monday
Sept. 26th at 5pm at 26 Federal Plaza to denounce the
assassination of Puerto Rican revolutionary leader
Filiberto Ojeda Rios, leader of the clandestine
revolutionary organization called El Ejercito Popular
Boricua-Macheteros (The Popular Boricua Army-Machete
Wielders)!!

On Friday Sept. 23rd, in a massive Federal Bureau of
Investigation (F.B.I.) operation in the town of
Hormigueros, Puerto Rico, Filiberto Ojeda Rios, leader
of the clandestine revolutionary organization called El
Ejercito Popular Boricua-Macheteros (The Popular
Boricua Army-Machete Wielders) was assassinated by an
FBI sniper.

During the ensuing gun battle, Beatriz Rosado Barbosa,
Ojeda RiosÂ' wife, was critically wounded and then
arrested, along with an F.B.I. agent. Both are
presently hospitalized, and a third man has yet to be
identified by authorities.

This assassination is an attack against the Puerto
Rican Independence movement that cannot go unanswered!!
We must mobilize and organize a response to this
heinous act of murder. Ojeda Rios represented the
revolutionary spirit and morality of the Puerto Rican
independence movement!!

The FBI chose to assassinate Ojeda Rios on Friday Sept.
23rd (Known as El Grito de Lares, a celebration of the
anti-colonial resistance movement in Puerto Rico) as a
message to the independence movement; the US government
is trying to tell us that if we resist, then we will be
murdered like Ojeda Rios, Don Pedro Albizu Campos,
Angel Rodrgiuez Cristobal and the many other Puerto
Rican patriots that have fallen at the hands of the US
governement.

We will not be scared or initmidated. The power of the
people cannot be stopped!! We make freedom happen; we
make liberation happen!!

WE WILL RISE, RESIST AND REBEL!! Join us in our
outrage, mourning and resistance!! Wear a black arm
band, wear all black, bring your niose makers, your
flags and your 25 closest friends to the protest!!
MOBILIZE IN THE SPIRIT OF FILIBERTO!!

¡¡FILIBERTO OJEDA RIOS PRESENTE!!
¡¡FILIBERTO VIVE, LA LUCHA SIGUE!!