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Former Black Panther, Mama Charlotte Hill O'Neal is an accomplished poet, musician and visual artist, and Founding Director of Tanzania's United African Alliance Community Center (UAACC), a community-based organization which promotes community development in rural Africa. The UAACC has a number of independent media projects as part of its powerful community work including hip hop, music production, photography, videography, poetry, theater and the development of an independent radio station. Four decades after leaving this country for exile in Tanzania, Mama Charlotte Hill O'Neal returns to share the inspirational story of how she and her husband's past as Black Panthers affects their work among the urban and village youth of East Africa and America.

The Sanctuary for Independent Media and Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace welcome filmmaker Joe Stillman and Iraq Veterans Against the War co-founder Jimmy Massey for a screening of the new documentary "From Mills River to Babylon and Back... The Jimmy Massey Story."

Former Staff Sergeant Jimmy Massey, a 12-year Marine veteran, served in Iraq in 2003. He witnessed—and in some cases participated in—the killing of innocent civilians. The Iraqis “were just doing their normal routines,” he says, “and they were getting frickin’ blasted for it.” He began to speak out to his superiors and was eventually diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. He won an honorable discharge in December 2003

By Tom Keyser

Robert Hillary King spent nearly three decades in solitary confinement at the notorious Angola state prison in Louisiana. As a member of the Black Panther Party, he and two party members became nationally known as the Angola 3 — political prisoners who spent decades in solitary confinement for, they contend, organizing prisoners to improve conditions.

King, 66, will speak Friday at The Sanctuary for Independent Media in Troy in support of his book, "From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Black Panther Robert Hillary King" (PM Press, 224 pages, $24.95).

After becoming a Black Panther in prison and organizing inmates, according to the book's dust jacket, "prison authorities beat him, starved him and gave him life without parole after framing him for a second crime. He was thrown into solitary confinement, where he remained in a 6-by-9-foot cell for 29 years as one of the Angola 3. In 2001, the state grudgingly acknowledged his innocence and set him free."