Biography
Ojore Nuru Lutalo is a Black anarchist who upon his release from prison has become an acclaimed artist displaying works at MoMA PS1.
In December 1975, Lutalo and Black Liberation Army member Kojo Bomani Sababu were arrested after they attempted to rob a bank to fund revolutionary projects, which ended in a shoot out with the police. In 1977 he was sentenced to 22 to 48 years in prison for the robbery and shoot out.
In February 1986, Ojore was taken out of the general prison population, and placed in the Maximum Control Unit (MCU) in New Jersey State Prison. There was no provocation that lead to this. The MCU is a sensory deprivation unit, about the size of an average bathroom. Ojore had to remain in this cage for 46 hours out of every 48. There are virtually no privileges for inmates of the MCU – limited telephone use, controlled visitation and censored mail. Any movement outside the cage is conducted in shackles, accompanied by body searches and watched by guards carrying clubs they call “n*gger beaters”. He was put in the MCU as a form of torture, to isolate him and prevent him from politicizing other prisoners.
Ojore Lutalo was released from prison on August 26, 2009.
In testimony presented to the Uhuru Tribunal on Reparations on November 14–15, 2003, AFSC Prison Watch coordinator Bonnie Kerness reported that Lutalo was held in the Management Control Unit at New Jersey State Prison in total isolation from February 1986 through January 2000. This dates a historical isolation phase; January 2000 is not a prison-release date and does not establish that he never experienced later isolation. His separately documented final prison release remains August 26, 2009.
In a first-person statement reproduced in Fire to the Prisons, Lutalo said that a parole-violation term ended in December 1987 and that he then began serving a 40-year sentence with a 20-year parole-ineligibility period arising from the 1982 armed confrontation. He described continuous captivity beginning April 20, 1982. The change between legal sentences is not treated as a physical release or new admission.
