Linda Evans
Linda Evans is a far left radical member of the terrorist group Weather Underground[1] who was convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison for using false identification to buy firearms and for harboring a fugitive in the 1981 Brinks armored truck robbery, in which two police officers and a guard were killed. In a second case, she was sentenced in 1990 to five years in prison for conspiracy and malicious destruction in connection with eight bombings, including the 1983 United States Senate bombing.
While in prison, she authored The Prison Industrial Complex with funding from the George Soros Open Society Institute.[2] Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders adopted her prison industrial complex slogan as part of his 2020 presidential election agenda.[3]
Background
Born May 11, 1947, in Fort Dodge, Iowa, she was a revolutionary and anti-imperialist since 1967. She was a Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) regional organizer against the U.S. Vietnam War and a supporter of the Black liberation movement. In 1969, she participated in the anti-war delegation to North Vietnam to receive POW's released by the Vietnamese.
Arrest
In 1970, she was arrested for conspiracy and crossing the state line to incite riot while organizing for SDS's National Action, Days of Rage, in Chicago, and for conspiracy/transportation of weapons and explosives in Detroit. These charges were eventually dropped because of government misconduct while collecting evidence using illegal wiretaps. Additionally, she was a Political/cultural worker in guerilla street theatre troupe, all-women's band, and women's printing/graphics collective in Texas. She was active in the women's liberation movement and in the lesbian community, organized support for struggles led by Black and Chicano/Mexicano grassroots organizations against the Ku Klux Klan, forced sterilization, and use of deadly force by local policing agencies, and fought racism, white supremacy, and Zionism as a member of the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee.
Later, she built support for Black/New Afrikan, Puerto Rican, and Native American POW's and political prisoners, and for the right of these nations to independence and self-determination. She began working to develop clandestine resistance capable of struggle on every front, and she was also active in building solidarity for South African, Palestinian and Central American struggles for self-determination by organizing material aid for these national liberation struggles and to oppose U.S. intervention. She also organized support for Black/New Afrikan, Native and Puerto Rican PP/POW's.
Evans began working to develop clandestine resistance capable of conducting armed struggle as part of a multi-level overall revolutionary stategy. Evans was arrested on May 11, 1985 and charged with acquisition of weapons, ID, safe houses, finances, political and military training and actions to bring terrorist activity against U.S. home to America. Targets of these activities include the U.S. Capitol Building, National War College, Navy Yard Computer Center and Navy Yard Officers Club, Israeli Aircraft Industries, the FBI office and New York Patrolmen's Benevolent Association. She received a 40-year sentence, which was commuted by President Clinton January 20, 2001.
Writings
- The Prison Industrial Complex and the Global Economy, with Eve Goldberg [1]
- Statement from Women Political Prisoners on the Takeover of KPFA, July 14, 1999
See also
References
External links
- Interview With Lesbian Political Prisoners [2]
- FBI Weather Underground file, pp.23-25 pdf
- Linda Evans, Anti-imperialist political prisoner [3]
