By Benjamin Cohen

Sergio Maradoli, Samina Faheem Sundas, Kiilu Nyasha and Claude Marks talked to a Foothill College audience last week about their experiences as political prisoners.

More than 100 people attended the first public event of Students Ending Rights Violations (SERV) at Foothill College last week, and many stayed after the two-hour presentation to continue asking searching questions of the panelists, all of whom have experienced rights abuse firsthand.

One audience member said, “If tonight is any indication, the Foothill community is ready to hear a progressive message.”

The June 8 event was modeled on the teach-ins of the 1960s. A panel of distinguished guest speakers, Sergio Maradoli, Claude Marks, Kiilu Nyasha and Samina Faheem Sundas, was the highlight of the forum “U.S.-Backed Repression at Home and Abroad: A Conversation With Former Political Prisoners.”

Claude Marks, project director of the Freedom Archives in San Francisco, started the evening by showing a short documentary of compelling and shocking footage of the 1971 Attica Prison rebellion. He talked about how the events in the movie are related to the recent scandals involving U.S. military prisons. His key point was that the United States has a long history of abusing those whom it imprisons - Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo are not anomalous.

Marks spoke from his personal experience of incarceration, having served four years in U.S. federal prison on charges of conspiracy to aid the escape of a political prisoner.

Kiilu Nyasha shared her experiences as a former Black Panther involved in the advocacy of several activists, including Angela Davis and George Jackson. She remains an activist, writing to political prisoners and supporting worldwide liberation movements. She spoke emphatically about the current human rights abuses that are occurring in Haiti.

Samina Faheem Sundas, founding executive director of the American Muslim Voice, addressed the issue of ethnic profiling and harassment of American Muslims, Arabs and South Asians.

Sergio Maradoli is a Chilean refugee who had been a public employee in Salvador Allende’s government. He recounted his 31-month ordeal of being abducted, imprisoned and tortured by the forces of the U.S.-supported August Pinochet dictatorship.

The tranquil hilltop campus of Foothill College seems as far as one could get from the radical student movements of Berkeley or Columbia. However, SERV, a nascent group of young progressives, hopes to send ripples through the community college, which they feel has suffered from a lack of political discourse and activism in recent years. SERV is a chartered student organization whose objectives include “educating people about the reality of systematic and institutionalized inequality in our society; providing a progressive voice on campus; and doing everything in [their] power to bring an end to oppression and imperialism wherever they manifest themselves.”

For more information about SERV, e-mail foothillserv@gmail.com.

Cohen is a student in the Mountain View-Los Altos Union High School District’s Middle College program on the Foothill College campus.