On August 13, 2005, former political prisoner Ashanti Alston read Bowers' prepared statement at a Washington, DC Justice Rally. He said:
"....I am Veronza Bowers, Jr. I am a former member of the original Black Panther Party (more on that below) and have been held in federal prison for almost 32 years. I am just one of the many long-held Political Prisoners whom government officials officially claim do not exist....I was convicted (mainly on the testimonies) of two paid 'informants (sound familiar?) in (a) shooting death (I had no part in)."
"....your sons and daughters, brothers and sisters and friends are filling up these prisons with sentences longer than they've been on this earth....they are filling the graveyards before they've had a chance to live. Something is dreadfully wrong with this picture...Please, can we have a full minute of silence to remember and honor all those who have gone before us in our struggle. For a better future for us all. After the silence, I salute and thank you."
The Original Black Panther Party
As Bowers said above, he was "a former member of the original Black Panther Party." This writer's October 2008 article on the San Francisco Eight former members contained the section below - slightly edited here to explain what party members stood for, an agenda far different from mainstream propaganda about them.
In October 1966, Huey Newton and Bobby Seale founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense. It was progressive, activist, militantly for ethnic justice, racial emancipation, and real economic, social, and political equality across gender and color lines - radical ideas then and now. The party's ten-point program expressed them:
(1) freedom and "power to determine the destiny of our black community;"
(2) full employment for black people and everyone;
(3) "an end to the robbery by the capitalists of our black community;"
(4) decent housing;
(5) education to expose "the true nature of this decadent American society (and teach) us our true history and our role in the present-day society;"
(6) for "all black men to be exempt from military service" at a time they were drafted for foreign wars;
(7) "an immediate end to police brutality and murder of black people;"
(8) "freedom for all black men held in federal, state, county and city prisons and jails" as political prisoners;
(9) for black people in court "to be tried....by a jury of their peer group or people from their black communities;" and
(10) "land, bread, housing, education, clothing, justice and peace."
