Free Herman Wallace — of the Angola 3

Who are the Angola 3? Here's a brief overview:

The Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola Known as "The Farm," the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola is the largest prison in the United States. Around three-quarters of its inmates are African-American. According to the Academy-Award-nominated documentary The Farm, 85 percent of the inmates who are sent to Angola will die there.

Angola is an 18,000-acre complex of antebellum plantations that the state of Louisiana purchased and converted into a prison around the turn of the century. The penitentiary is called Angola because most of its former slaves came from the African country of the same name. Angola still operates on the plantation model. Prisoners perform back-breaking labor, harvesting cotton, sugar cane, and other crops from dawn to dusk.

In the early 1970s, Angola was known as the most brutal prison in the United States, with stabbings an almost-daily occurrence. Armed "inmate guards" patrolled the prison, and they frequently used their state-issued rifles to settle scores with other inmates, sometimes at the behest of Angola officials. On one occasion, a prisoner died after five men were locked together in a sweltering isolation cell, without food or water, during the hottest days of summer. Dozens of bodies are rumored to be buried in the swampland where Angola borders the Mississippi River.

Among the men who have been marooned at Angola are Albert Woodfox, Herman Wallace, and, until recently, Robert King Wilkerson. Of the world's political prisoners, few have been held in solitary confinement for as long as they have: nearly 30 years. All three men initially arrived at Angola with sentences for unrelated robberies, and a dedication to political activism. Wallace and Woodfox founded a chapter of the Black Panther Party at Angola. Their activism made them targets of the all-white prison administration. In 1972, in an effort to stop their organizing, prison officials concocted murder charges against Woodfox and Wallace and placed them on permanent lockdown. Relying on the paid-for testimony of prison snitches, Angola officials won convictions against the two men, who received sentences of life without parole. Later in 1972, when Wilkerson arrived at Angola, his reputation as an activist preceded him, and he was immediately placed in solitary. Subsequently he was charged with and convicted for a murder he did not commit, even though the actual killer admitted he acted alone in self-defense.

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That's the short version of the bad news. The good news is that after nearly three decades in solitary confinement, things are looking up for Herman Wallace.

Even if all goes right, it may be a while yet before Herman Wallace is released. And then there's still the case of Albert Wooodfox. In support of them, Dave Stewart (yes, that Dave Stewart) has produced a music video to help spread the word.