And a former Black Panther held for more than two decades in solitary confinement has won a permanent reprieve from solitary and nearly $100,000 in a settlement with the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. Russell “Maroon” Shoatz was convicted in 1970 of first-degree murder for an attack on a Philadelphia police station that left one officer killed and another wounded. In the 1980s he became active with the Pennsylvania Association of Lifers and worked to abolish sentences of life without parole. He was placed in solitary confinement for the next 22 consecutive years. Shoatz issued a response to the settlement through his lawyers, saying, “I have always chosen to fight! Frederick Douglass was right when he said 'Power concedes nothing without a demand.' So have no doubt that I see this settlement as anything but the latest blow struck.” Many people say Shoatz’s more than two-decade stay in solitary confinement was retaliation for his activism. This is War Resisters League leader Matt Meyer speaking on Democracy Now! in 2013 about Russell “Maroon” Shoatz’s solitary confinement.

Matt Meyer: “I think it’s important for people to realize that despite whatever issues, political or otherwise, related to his conviction, the reason he’s in solitary confinement is because he was elected by an official prison-approved body to be the head of this lifers’ group. And it was because he was seen, correctly, as a key organizer, even amongst his fellow inmates, that he was put into the hole. He was not put into solitary confinement initially, once convicted; it was only an immediate and very direct reaction to his organizing work.”