Kuwasi Remembered

The following memories and poems appeared in the 1999 first edition of A Soldier’s Story.

In Memory of Kuwasi Balagoon, New Afrikan Freedom Fighter

David Gilbert, December 15, 1986

When i think of Kuwasi, i think of the word “heart.” No, i got that backwards. When the term “heart” comes up i think of Kuwasi, because he epitomized it so beautifully—but of course he also lived and expressed many other fine qualities. “Heart” has two distinct meanings: one is great courage; the other is great generosity. Kuwasi was an outstanding example of both.

People at this commemoration[91] are aware of Kuwasi’s core identity as a New Afrikan Freedom Fighter. His political activity began as a tenant organizer in Harlem. (He was, incidentally, also part of the Harlem contingent who, bringing food and water, broke the right-wing blockade around we students who were holding buildings during the Columbia Strike of 1968.) Kuwasi was part of the landmark New York Panther 21 case of 1969. In the same period, he was imprisoned for expropriations in New Jersey; he escaped a few years later.

It takes both daring and creativity to escape from prison. Kuwasi did that and a whole lot more: three and a half months later, and on very short notice, he went to free a comrade being taken to a funeral under armed guard. Kuwasi was hit by a bullet, yet kept moving, and he almost made it too. With a little more time for planning and preparation, he would have been successful. His second escape, about five years later, from a maximum security prison was even more impressive. That time he stayed free and active until his capture subsequent to the Nyack expropriation of October 20, 1981.

After each of these prison escapes in the ‘70s, he was able to quickly establish himself in a secure and comfortable personal situation. He didn’t go back for his comrade or reconnect with that unit of the BLA out of any personal desperation. It was purely a commitment to the struggle, to New Afrikan liberation, to freedom for all oppressed people.

When one hears of such courage and sacrifice (and here we have mentioned only a small portion of his deeds) the stereotyped image is of a stern or fierce character, perhaps with an inclination for martyrdom. But nothing could be further from Kuwasi Balagoon the person. Actually, he had an affecting ebullience, a zest for the pleasures of life, a keen appreciation for the culture and creativity of the people who lived in the ghettos and barrios. Politically he placed great stress on the need for his movement (and other revolutionary movements, as well) to respond directly to the concrete needs of the people in the communities: he opposed anything he saw as hierarchy that stifled initiative from below.

Kuwasi was a poet; or, to put it better, he was a revolutionary who wrote fine poetry. He had read his poetry in the same clubs as the “Last Poets” way back when they were forming, and he continued to write poems in prison. Here at Auburn, he worked on drawings late at night and listened to tapes of both punk rock and jazz with great enthusiasm.

Being in prison population with Kuwasi for this past year, i got to see an additional dimension of his humanity. Prison can be depressing, especially in a period of low political consciousness. Kuwasi had a truly unique ability to make people laugh and to create a sense of community. Most jailhouse humor is either bleak or sexist. Kuwasi was able to create a healthier community humor where we’d be laughing at the authorities or at our own foibles and pretensions. Sometimes in the yard, i could hear his whole workout crew in uproarious laughter from fifty yards away. His great spirit is not just my personal observation. Something like one hundred guys have come up to tell me about it in the two days since Kuwasi died.

When a guy comes into prison with such a high-powered case and reputation—well, often the terms are what favors other prisoners can do for him. With Kuwasi it was just the opposite. i’ve never seen anybody do so much for other people. i actually felt that he was accommodating to a fault. We couldn’t have a half hour political discussion in the yard without about ten or fifteen guys coming up to him to ask him for some help or favor. He always used his day off from work—even when he should have been catching up on rest—to do “personal baking,” which he gave away to innumerable persons over the many weeks; he shared his commissary purchase with whomever asked. Kuwasi ran a very substantial and worthwhile political education class for several months.

Kuwasi Balagoon, a bold New Afrikan Warrior with a giant heart: while we all mourn together there is something particular about the situation here at Auburn prison that puts the meaning of his life in sharp relief. The prison guards, who never had the courage to face him straight up in his life, have been obviously gloating over his death. Meanwhile, literally hundreds of prisoners are mourning him (particularly prisoners of his nation, but also a wide range of prisoners who are standup against state authority). Both sets of reactions, in their opposite ways, are tributes to Kuwasi and how he led his life. The loss is immeasurable; what he gave us is even more.

New Afrikan People’s Organization Memorial Statement

Black revolutionary soldier Kuwasi Balagoon died on December 13 [1986], at the Erica County Medical Center in upstate New York. He had been moved there from the New York State penitentiary at Auburn, where he was incarcerated for his political-military work on behalf of Black Liberation.

Balagoon was born Donald Weems on December 22, 1946, in Lakeland, Maryland, the youngest of three children of Mary and James Weems. His parents and two sisters, Diane Weems Ligon and Mary Day Hollomand, still reside in Maryland. Kuwasi attended Fairmont Heights High School.

At seventeen, as an enlisted man in the U.S. Army, Kuwasi witnessed racism and discrimination in the treatment of Black soldiers. At this young age he began to realize that Black people had no reason to be fighting in Vietnam or anywhere else on behalf of a racist “Amerikkka,” where Black people’s survival remained threatened by capitalist economic policies and a white dominated political system. He left the u.s. military and moved to New York, where he became a tenant organizer and, in 1968, a member of the Black Panther Party.

When the u.s. government’s repression campaign against the Black Liberation Movement known as Cointelpro took aim on the Black Panthers, he was among twenty-one men and women named in a federal conspiracy rap to bomb shopping centers and police stations. It was in the intense atmosphere of an eighteen-state alarm to pick up these twenty-one Panthers and vicious FBI and police attacks against Panthers throughout the empire that Brother Kuwasi would elude arrest and go underground. All twenty-one defendants would be found not guilty on all counts. His latest arrest (he escaped from prison two times) would occur in December 1981, when he was arrested and charged with participation in the Brink’s armored car expropriation attempt of October of that year in Nyack, New York.

In the show trial on charges arising from the Brink’s action, Balagoon would uphold a Prisoner-of-War position and refused to participate in the trial. He openly acknowledged that he was a soldier in the New Afrikan Freedom Fighters Unit of the Black Liberation Army (BLA), a political-military clandestine organization formed in 1971 to defend Black people and to fight for Black people’s liberation. This unit is said to be responsible for the liberation of Assata Shakur.[92]

Balagoon was also a contributing author of the book Look for Me in the Whirlwind and has written many poems, short stories, and political articles published in several Black, U.S., and Canadian journals and newspapers.

Balagoon was loved and respected by many as a dedicated fighter for freedom. His spirit will live in the people’s struggle for a new and better world.

Free the land!

The Following Statement Was Signed by 117 Prisoners at Auburn and Sent to the December 21, 1986 NAPO Tribute

We mourn deeply the loss of Kuwasi Balagoon. We knew him here as a man of great courage and principles, warm generosity, and vibrant spirit. The death of such a person is heavier than a mountain; what he gave us all in his life is even greater.

A Eulogy

Sundiata Acoli, December 16, 1986

Kuwasi Balagoon was a revolutionary, a rebel, a poet, and he was faithful to his calling. Once he stepped upon the revolutionary path, he remained true to the struggle for the rest of his life, fighting the good fight, staying in shape, writing poetry, and helping fallen comrades at a moment’s notice, never stopping to count the cost.

He was a natural rebel, couldn’t stand conformity or authority, especially an illegitimate one. And he had the heart of a gunfighter, which he was—using all his tools in the service of Black people all his adult life.

If you ever read or heard his poem “I’m A Wild Man,” you knew him, because it described him to a T—and he was wild. He knew it, we knew it, and we loved him for it, because it was his nature … and the nature of the times, in the late ‘60s, when Black folk needed wild men; and still do today.

But now Kuwasi’s gone, and the beat goes on, and we who knew and loved him can only eulogize him—and constantly scan the horizon wondering how long, how long will it be, before another giant such as he comes along again.

Born on Sunday[93]

David Gilbert, December 31, 1986