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Brothers and Sisters and Everyone in the Struggle:

I am now about to turn 59 years of age, and this will be my 26th birthday serving time on this case in federal prison. It is often very empty and cold on birthdays and holidays, because you’re obviously far away from your family. But when people reach out, when brothers and sisters in the struggle reach out and write to a political prisoner on their birthday, it is amazingly powerful. But when you share something that sounds like it was written according to a format, or like it comes from a robot, it is disheartening. Because I often receive birthday greetings from people where it sounds like there is no real heart to the message. I’m a human being, and I like people to express human love from the heart. When they write they should write something from the heart—because I can tell the difference, and I don’t feel any human interaction because they don’t express real human emotions. It is often the same thing—the same words—over, and over, and over, for years.

For over two years now, prisoners at USP Victorville have been prevented from performing sweat lodge as well as other Native spiritual ceremonies at times. They were given improper rocks, pressure treated lumber to burn which is toxic, have had medicine bags withheld, have had sacred pipes mishandled and many sacred herbs have not been available or distributed properly.

The Cherokee Prayer and Songs were recorded from USP Victorville high security prison in California via phone by Pain Chain (Sam Gayheart), from across the country at The Falling Rock Zone in Taunton, MA in 2022.

The Blue Agave Revolution: Poetry of the Blind Rebel is a collaboration among radical author, indigenous freedom-fighter, and political prisoner Oso Blanco (aka Byron Shane Chubbuck, aka Robin The Hood) and Michael Novick–a Brooklyn-born veteran of SDS/Prairie Fire Organizing Committee, the John Brown Anti-Klan Committee, publisher of Turning The Tide journal, and all-around tireless anti-fascist activist–along with numerous contributors who have supported, and continue to support, Oso Blanco over the years spanning his imprisonment.