Matt Meyer

Matt Meyer is an internationally noted historian, orator, and organizer who serves as Secretary-General of the International Peace Research Association, the world’s leading consortium of university-based professors, scholars, students, and community leaders. Meyer is the Senior Research Scholar of the University of Massachusetts/Amherst’s Resistance Studies Initiative, active also with the International Fellowship of Reconciliation and the War Resisters’ International. The author/editor of over a dozen books, Meyer’s work focuses on African Peace Studies; 21^st Century Decolonization; the Strategies and Tactics of Movement-building; and Political Prisoners and the Abolition of White Supremacy. Along with co-editor dequi kioni-sadiki and contributors Sekou Odinga, Dhoruba bi Wahad, and Jamal Joseph, Meyer proudly helped produce the recent Look for Me in the Whirlwind: From the Panther 21 to 21^st Century Revolutions (PM Press). South African Nobel Peace Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, in his Introduction to Meyer’s first book Guns and Gandhi in Africa (co-authored with Pan-African pacifist Bill Sutherland), noted that they “have looked beyond the short-term strategies and tactics which too often divide progressive peoples…and begun to develop a language which looks at the roots of our humanness.” Argentine Nobel Peace Laureate Adolfo Perez Esquivel, in his Introduction to Meyer’s encyclopedic look at issues of US imprisonment Let Freedom Ring, added that his “consistent work as a coalition-builder…provides tools for today’s activists.”

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Praise

“Jackson is one of the epicenters of resistance for all of us to emulate; this book lays the scene.”
—Chris Hedges, journalist, Presbyterian minister, and Princeton University lecturer; author of War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning

“Jackson Rising is the rarest of things: a real strategic plan. You will not find a simple wish list that glosses over the hard questions of resources, or some disembodied manifesto imploring the workers forward, but a work in progress building the capacity of people to exercise power.”
—Richard Moser, author of The World the Sixties Made

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Praise

“The success of the Movement for Black Lives over the last three years has demonstrated the power inherent in a challenge to white supremacy that is at once radical, nonhierarchical, intersectional, and queer-centered. But for many in today’s political world, this constellation of commitments pops out of nowhere, with little articulate history. And that is a shame, because there is always a history, and to understand where we came from tells us a great deal about where we are. A conversation with our elders—whether departed or not—always deepens our understanding. This important, often-brilliant, and little-known collection from a Black anarchist political prisoner, whose struggle moves from the early ’60s Panthers to the early years of the AIDS epidemic, deserves wide discussion. The words in these papers and letters speak important truths to our current situation and will provoke heated debate on both theory and practice, as we move into a new and dangerous era, ever rekindling the hope of radical transformation.”
—Mark Lance, professor of philosophy, Program on Justice and Peace, Georgetown University 

“We have to get our jewels where we can, for this is how we carry on from one generation to the next—it’s revolutionary cross-pollination. To paraphrase Che, we need one, two, three, many more Kuwasi Balagoons in order to get free of the chains that bind us.”
—Sanyika Shakur, author of Stand Up, Struggle Forward

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Praise

“This legendary freedom fighter brings together the best of the peace movement and the best of the anti-racist movement.”
—Cornel West

“The stories Matt Meyer tells should be listened to by all people who work for freedom and justice: not just for the few, but for everybody.”
—Talib Kweli, hip-hop artist, entrepreneur, and social activist

“The rich and still evolving tradition of revolutionary pacifism, effectively sampled in these thoughtful and penetrating essays, offers the best hope we have for overcoming threats that are imminent and grim, and for moving on to create a society that is more just and free. These outstanding contributions should be carefully pondered, and taken to heart as a call for action.”
—Noam Chomsky, on We Have Not Been Moved

“This book demonstrates the scope of the Panthers’ intellectual gifts as well as the compassion and revolutionary spirit at the center of their radical grassroots activism.”
—Publishers Weekly on Look for Me in the Whirlwind

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Praise

“Listen to these voices of young men and women—from places like New Jersey or Panama, New York or Antigua—who poured their insights, courage, and creative energy into New York City’s fledgling Black Panther Party that generated chapters in all five boroughs. Unlike out west, where police shot and killed Panthers to disrupt the revolutionary group, New York relied more heavily on courts, jails, and prison to sabotage the organization.

These men and women were tried in the case called the “New York 21”—a barrel full of preposterous crimes which the Panthers supposedly conspired to commit—that led to the arrest and imprisonment of all the leaders (except those who reached an escape route before the police caught them at home). The state fully expected that the Panthers would remain behind bars for decades after being convicted, given that a police informant had masqueraded as a Panther until their arrest. However, the powerful example of Afeni Shakur, who defended herself, the fierce dedication of brilliant attorneys, and the organizing talents of Panther supporters on the outside made the trial the longest-running case in New York—with a short one-hour jury deliberation before finding the 21 not guilty on all charges.

This reprint edition allows a new generation to hear these amazing stories, and additionally, to read the authors’ reflections and insights for today.”
—Kathleen Cleaver, Black Panther Party communications secretary (1967–1971); senior lecturer, Emory University School of Law

“Look for Me in the Whirlwind could not come at a timelier moment in history. As newly emerging grassroots movements challenge state violence against Black people in the U.S., it is essential that new generations learn anew, and that older ones are reminded, of police and FBI tools of repression deployed to demobilize Black radical activism and its growing influence on the Black working class in the ’60s. These remembrances, by those framed in the NY Panther 21 case, are vital building blocks for reconstructing the history of one of the least understood chapters of the Black Panther Party. They are also indispensable reading for those seeking to understand how individual activists and their movements were able to hold their center in the face of harrowing government repression.”
—Johanna Fernandez, professor of history, Baruch College Department of Black and Latino Studies, City University of New York; cocurator, ¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York

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Praise

“Listening to Oscar’s voice in this book makes something clear that one such as Nelson Mandela would know well: his sense of liberty has not been extinguished by the jailers’ bars or the torturers on call.”
—Celina Romany-Siaca, former president, Puerto Rican Bar Association

“The story of Puerto Rican nationalist Oscar López Rivera told in this book is a story of the lengths to which our government will go to punish and silence voices of liberation. But it is also the story of the courage of one man who perseveres in his hunger and thirst for justice.”
—Bishop Thomas Gumbleton, founding president, Pax Christi USA

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Praise

This book, Maroon the Implacable, is that very funky instruction manual on how to make revolution against Imperialist America.”
—Amiri Baraka, former Poet Laureate of New Jersey

“At the core of the book is the theme of marronage—the will to escape from conditions of enslavement at any cost. This is what Russell Maroon Shoatz has done, not physically, but in the world of ideas by escaping from the rigid patriarchal framework he inherited and revaluing and promoting the role of women in the history of liberation. This book is a document of this transformation carried out against tremendous odds and told with searing honesty.”
—Silvia Federici, author of Revolution at Point Zero: Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist Struggle

 “Russell Maroon Shoats’s life reads like fiction composed by Victor Hugo. But this Jean Valjean for our time is the living truth, and his writings are a beacon for a new, revolutionary age. What a treasure has here been uncovered!”
—Joel Kovel, author ofThe Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World

“Though he’s been inside for forty of his sixty-nine years on earth, the problems he raises about the justice movement are amazingly up to date. Above all, he thinks organizationally… He is always trying to work out what to do. Where he looks for answers is the only sensible place: not in ideas but in the historical experience of the grassroots.”
—Selma James, author of Sex, Race, and Class: The Perspective of Winning

“For twenty-seven years I visited four prisoners, one of whom was Russell Shoatz, who we called Maroon. From him I always got a lesson in politics that fortified me and made me understand just what was happening in our country and what I should be doing about it. He trusted the truth of ‘power to the people,’ and it kept him focused and hopeful. His body was incarcerated but his mind soared. My mentor!”
—Frances Goldin, publisher of Mumia Abu-Jamal, Barbara Kingsolver, and Adrienne Rich

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Praise

“Within every society there are people who, at great personal risk and sacrifice, stand up and fight for the most marginalized among us. We call these people of  courage, spirit and love, our heroes and heroines. This book is the story of the ones in our midst. It is the story of the best we are.”  —asha bandele,  poet and author of The Prisoner’s Wife

“As a convicted felon, I have been prevented from visiting many people in prison today. But none of us should be stopped from the vital work of prison abolition and freeing the many who the U.S. holds for political reasons. Let Freedom Ring helps make their voices heard, and presents strategies to help win their release.” —Daniel Berrigan, SJ, former Plowshares political prisoner and member of the FBI Top Ten Wanted List.

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Praise

“When we sang out ‘We Shall Not Be Moved’ in Montgomery and Selma, we were committed to our unshakeable unity against segregation and violence. This important book continues in that struggle—suggesting ways in which we need to do better, and actions we must take against war and continued racism today. If the human race is still here in 2111, the War Resisters League will be one of the reasons why!”
—Pete Seeger, folk singer and activist

“The rich and still evolving tradition of revolutionary pacifism, effectively sampled in these thoughtful and penetrating essays, offers the best hope we have for overcoming threats that are imminent and grim, and for moving on to create a society that is more just and free. These outstanding contributions should be carefully pondered, and taken to heart as a call for action.”
—Noam Chomsky, professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; philosopher, cognitive scientist, and activist

“One of the biggest stumbling blocks to building a successful movement against war has been our inability to cross racial and cultural lines, bridging the divides created and maintained by the powers that be. Since the 1960s, there have been some hopeful signs—in grassroots groups and in educational efforts—but the road forward is still long and difficult. The contributors to We Have Not Been Moved, with extraordinary scope and vision, have given us an indispensable tool to fight oppression, resist war and injustice, and create powerful new coalitions for lasting social change. This volume should be required reading—alongside of Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States—in every sociology and political science class.” 
—Connie Hogarth, life-long peace and justice activist and inspiration for Manhattanville College’s Connie Hogarth Center for Social Action; cofounder and former executive director of the Westchester People’s Action Coalition

“While it is nearly impossible to agree, or to disagree, with the totality of this or any other book, I applaud the ways in which We Have Not Been Moved helps us sharpen our understanding of these moral and social imperatives. This book is in the best tradition of civil and human rights movements and a welcome addition to the literature on these crucial issues.”
—Congressman Luis V. Gutiérrez, (D-IL)

“In an era of rampant militarism, growing anti-Islamic sentiment and racist violence, the essays in We Have Not Been Moved provide us with urgently needed analytical frameworks and on-the-ground strategies for challenging structural injustice. The wide range of voices in this collection, spanning generations and social movements, remind us of the interconnectedness of our struggles against racism, militarism, violence, and injustice, and collectively urge us to build a unified, principled movement to resist intensified empire.”
—Angela Y. Davis, author, activist, and professor emerita, History of Consciousness, UC Santa Cruz

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Book Events

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Reviews

• Balagoon, Bourdain, and Boo on A Brief Chat
• Revolution and Beyond: A Review of Love and Struggle
• Maroon the Implacable: A Review in Solidarity
• Let Freedom Ring in the Political Media Review
• The Prison Industrial Complex and Political Prisoners
• Let Freedom Ring: A Review
• Let Freedom Ring in Earth First! Online Journal
• A Stronger Movement Against War
• Resisting Racism and Militarism in 2013
• We Have Not Been Moved in PeaceNews

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Interviews

• Many Movements, Many Steps Forward, a “Movements of Movements conversation”
• Matt Meyer & Mandy Carter Present: Intersectional and Intergenerational Organizing
• Watch David Gilbert on a Panel with Monifa Bandele, Terry Bisson, Kenyon Farrow, Matt Meyer, and More
• Free Them All! Matt Meyer on Kuwasi Balagoon
• Linda Thurston Talks Community
• White Lives Matter Most— A Publishers Weekly Review
• The Color Maroon
• Look for Me in the Whirlwind: Special 2-Part Interview on WBAI
• Matt Meyer and White Lives Matter Most on Law & Disorder Radio
• NYC Anarchist Bookfair 2009— Panel: Resistance Behind Bars

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Mentions

• The USA v. Oscar López Rivera
• Obama Commutes Sentence for Political Prisoner Oscar López Rivera
• Open Letter to President Obama: A Pardon for Oscar Lopez Rivera
• Oscar Lopez Rivera, Between Torture and Resistance Reviewed in Peace News
• Puerto Rican Independentista Oscar López Rivera’s 32 Years of Resistance to Torture
• Book Release Event Review: Russell Maroon Shoatz “Maroon the Implacable” – The Book Launch of An American Political Prisoner
• Why Russell ‘Maroon’ Shoatz Must Be Released From Solitary Confinement –An interview with Theresa Shoatz and Matt Meyer
• Little Known Black History Fact: Russell ‘Maroon’ Shoatz

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Blog

• How to read the ICJ decision and end genocide, war and settler colonialism
• The Passing of Archbishop Tutu…and love for a better year ahead
• Free Them All! : Matt Meyer on Kuwasi Balagoon— on Final Straw Radio
• 6 ways to stay focused on movement-building amid the post-election chaos
• Many Movements, Many Steps Forward, a “Movements of Movements conversation”
• Moments at War
• Watch “Revolutionary Nonviolence in Violent Times: 50 years since 1968” at PJSA 2018
• Watch Mandy Carter & Matt Meyer on Breaking the Set
• Why Nonviolent Activists Should Follow John Brown Partners in the Freedom Struggle
• MAROON UNCHAINED: A People’s Victory!