Democratic Congressional candidate Raul Ruiz, who was arrested for his role in a violent protest on Thanksgiving Day, 1997, doesn’t want voters in California’s 36th Congressional District to know what he said at a 1999 “Day of Mourning” rally.
Breitbart News has obtained a copy of an audio tape from that 1999 speech when Ruiz (pictured above far left at his 1997 arraignment) proclaimed his support for Leonard Peltier, convicted in 1977 of killing two FBI agents:
What is Leonard Peltier accused of?
Leonard Peltier’s most serious “crime” is that he seeks to rescue in the past, in his culture, in his roots, the history of his people, the Lakota. And for the powerful, this is a crime, because knowing oneself with history impedes one from being tossed around by this absurd machine that is the system.
If Leonard Peltier is guilty, than we are all guilty because we seek out history, and on its shoulders we fight to have a place in the world, a place of dignity and respect, a place for ourselves exactly as we are, which is also very much as we were.
If the Indian people of the North and Indian people of Mexico, as well as the indigenous people of the entire continent, know that we have our own place (being who we are, not pretending to be another skin color, another tongue, another culture), what is left is that other colors that populate the entire world know it. And what is left is for the powerful to know it. So that they know it, and learn the lesson so well that they won’t forget, many more paths and bridges are needed that are walked from below.
On these paths and bridges, you, Leonard Peltier, have a special place, the best, next to us who are like you.
Salud, Leonard Peltier, receive a hug from one who admires and respects you, and who hopes that one day you will call him “brother.”
At a recent debate with incumbent Congressman Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), Ruiz was singing a very different tune. To hear him tell it, he’s never been a supporter of convicted FBI agent killer Peltier:
Here’s the full text of the speech Ruiz gave at the “Day of Mourning” rally in 1999, where he not only offered his support for convicted FBI agent killer Peltier, he also offered support for Mumia Abu-Jumal, who was convicted in 1982 of murdering a Philadelphia policeman:
WOMAN:
I want to introduce from Danazteca our friend and our good campañera Raul Ruiz.
RUIZ:
This makes me feel like I’m walking in the land of giants
We are walking in the land of giants with Mumia
We are walking in the land of giants with Leonard Peltier…Today we are breaking the political myth of Thanksgiving…
Another some place somewhere in a corner of this earth deep down in the jungles in a place called Chappas they are calling for freedom…
They have raised their hands towards freedom… in honor of our history…
And one man writes a letter from this place in Chappas for Leonard Peltier, and I will read it to you…October 1999…
Leonard…
We extend greetings from the men, women, children, and elders of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation.
Cecilia has told us about the grave injustice the North American judicial system has committed against you. We understand that the powerful are punishing your spirit of rebellion and your strong fight for the rights of indigenous people in North America.
Stupid as it is, the powerful believe that through humiliation, and arrogance, and isolation, they can break the dignity of those who give thoughts, feelings, life and guidance to the struggle for recognition and respect for the first inhabitants of the land, over whom the vain United States has risen. The heroic resistance that you have maintained in prison, as well as the broad movement of solidarity that your case and your cause have motivated in the US and the world, reveal their mistake…
What the powerful fail to understand is not only Peltier’s resistance, but also the entire world, and so they intend to mold the planet into the coffin the system represents, with wars, jails, and police officers.
Probably, the powerful in North America think that in jailing and torturing Leonard Peltier, they are jailing and torturing one man.
And also they don’t understand how a prisoner can continue to be free, while in prison.
And they don’t understand how, being imprisoned, he speaks with so many, and so many listen
And they don’t understand how, in trying to kill him, he has more life.
And they don’t understand how one man, alone, is able to resist so much, to represent so much, to be so large.
Because Leonard Peltier speaks through the Lakota men and women who are, in themselves and in their nature, the best of mother earth.
Because the strength that this man and this people have does not come from modern weapons, rather it comes from their history, their roots, their dead.
Because the Lakota know that no one is more alive than the dead.
Because the Lakota, and many other North American Indian people, know that resisting without surrender not only defends their lives and their liberty, but also their history and the nature that gives them origin, home, and destiny.
Because the racism that now governs can only imagine the other and the different in jail or in the trashcan, where two Lakota natives were found last month, murdered, in the community of Pine Ridge.
What is Leonard Peltier accused of?
Leonard Peltier’s most serious “crime” is that he seeks to rescue in the past, in his culture, in his roots, the history of his people, the Lakota. And for the powerful, this is a crime, because knowing oneself with history impedes one from being tossed around by this absurd machine that is the system.
If Leonard Peltier is guilty, than we are all guilty because we seek out history, and on its shoulders we fight to have a place in the world, a place of dignity and respect, a place for ourselves exactly as we are, which is also very much as we were.
If the Indian people of the North and Indian people of Mexico, as well as the indigenous people of the entire continent, know that we have our own place (being who we are, not pretending to be another skin color, another tongue, another culture), what is left is that other colors that populate the entire world know it. And what is left is for the powerful to know it. So that they know it, and learn the lesson so well that they won’t forget, many more paths and bridges are needed that are walked from below.
On these paths and bridges, you, Leonard Peltier, have a special place, the best, next to us who are like you.
Salud, Leonard Peltier, receive a hug from one who admires and respects you, and who hopes that one day you will call him “brother.”
Valé, and health to you, and I hope that injustice disappears with tomorrow, with yesterday as a weapon and today as a road.
From the mountains of the Mexican Southeast,
Subcomandante Insurgente MarcosAPPLAUSE
RUIZ:
Let’s follow the voices of our ancestors… let’s follow the voices of our warriors children women and elders.
Let’s listen to those voices…
As we walk and see the rain which is on our side.