The Uprising — Raymond Luc Levasseur (Marion Prison, May 1992)

About this record

Raymond Luc Levasseur's May 1992 essay written from his cell at Marion Federal Prison in the immediate aftermath of the Los Angeles Uprising. Levasseur, a captured United Freedom Front leader serving 45 years for the 1976–1984 bombing campaign in support of Puerto Rican independence, anti-apartheid struggle, and Central American liberation movements, draws explicit parallels between the LA Uprising and the Palestinian First Intifada — calling both "dispossessed nations fighting for basic human rights" whose struggles are rooted in "the right to national identity and land." The essay rejects mainstream coverage that framed the uprising as criminality or a riot, instead positioning it within 500 years of European-exported genocide on Indigenous and Mexican land in California, the African Diaspora's historical Black Belt land base, and the lineage from earliest slave rebellions through Malcolm X. He addresses the participation of Mexicans (occupying stolen Mexican land) and white youth in solidarity, and closes with a call to white anti-racists to follow John Brown. Extracted from the larger "Letters From Exile" compilation (pages 18–22). Source: https://archive.org/details/ray-luc-levasseur