Our Commitment Is to Our Communities: Mass Incarceration, Political Prisoners, and Building a Movement for Community-Based Justice

by David Gilbert, Bob Feldman

In the 2014 Certain Days calendar, David Gilbert wrote that the “War on Crime” which began in the early 1970s was in fact a conscious government counterinsurgency strategy to decimate and disrupt Black and other people of color communities across the United States. In this pamphlet, interviewed by Bob Feldman, David uses this observation as his starting point to discuss the ongoing catastrophe that is mass incarceration, connecting it to the continued imprisonment of political prisoners and the challenges that face our movements today.

About the Author
David Gilbert, a longtime anti-racist and anti-imperialist, first became active in the Civil Rights movement in 1961. In 1965, he started the Vietnam Committee at Columbia University; in 1967 he co-authored the first Students for a Democratic Society pamphlet naming the system “imperialism”; and he was active in the Columbia strike of 1968. He went on to spend a total of 10 years underground, building a clandestine resistance.

David has been imprisoned in New York State since 10/20/81, when a unit of the Black Liberation Army along with allied white revolutionaries tried to get funds for the struggle by robbing a Brinks truck. This tragically resulted in a shoot-out in which a Brinks guard and two police officers were killed. David is serving a sentence of 75 years (minimum) to life under New York State’s “felony murder” law, whereby all participants in a robbery, even if they are unarmed and non-shooters, are equally responsible for all deaths that occur. While in prison, he’s been a pioneer for peer education on AIDS and has continued to write and advocate against oppression. He’s been involved with the annual Certain Days Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar since 2001 and has written two books from prison that are available from Kersplebedeb and PM Press: No Surrender and Love and Struggle.

36 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 14, 2014

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

David Gilbert is an American radical leftist organizer and activist who is currently imprisoned at Auburn Correctional Facility. Gilbert was a founding member of Columbia University Students for a Democratic Society and member of the Weather Underground Organization. After about ten years underground, he was arrested in October 1981, along with members of the Black Liberation Army and other radicals including Kathy Boudin, his partner and mother of Chesa Boudin. The details of his arrest are included in the entry on Kathy Boudin in the section entitled "1981 Brinks Robbery." He and she both participated in that robbery and were sent to prison for their part in the resulting murders of Nyack police officers Waverly Brown and Edward O'Grady and Brinks guard Peter Paige. (In 2004 the US Post Office in Nyack was renamed in honor of the slain men.)

Reviews

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought this was a great short read about the prison system in the US. I want to print it out and give it to people.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this in 2020, when there is much discussion due to the covid pandemic, about releasing prisoners. David Gilbert provides a clear analysis of US mass incarceration.

David has been imprisoned since 1981, he is 75 years old, and should be released.

Back in 2013, I read David Gilbert's autobiography "Love and Struggle." I ended my review stating if there was any justice he would be released. Seven years later, he is still incarcerated.