Concluded 2019 Welcome Home FW Qadhafi

FW Qadhafi is one of the first prisoners to join IWW around the time IWOC was forming. He provided the initial membership boost that solidified IWOC when he signed up hundreds of new IWW members in prison.We are thrilled to have him home and looking forward to providing the support he will need to stay free, start bringing to life his Hug-Yo-Hood program, and work with IWOC in Kansas City. He has been out for less than 30 days and has already experienced numerous extremely difficult challenges. His needs are currently bus and gas money, filing fees for getting his birth certificate, drivers license, etc, money for clothing and some household items, and other items that people need for day to day basic comfort.FW Qadhafi is an amazing organizer and we are so lucky to have him here with us. Thank you everyone so much for your support <3Biography:Imprisoned in Missouri for 38 of the past 40 years, Qadhafi has long engaged in resisting the system that gave him more time in prison for stealing money than it did for multiple murders. Born into poverty, Quadhafi was not able to attend kindergarten because he didn't have shoes. He started stealing food for himself and his family that year. To date he has never been enrolled in any school. He taught himself to read and write in prison.The juvenile system tried to make him hard-hearted, separating him from his family, trying to prepare him for prison. They never could break him though. He kept thinking back to times he cried over having no food, sitting in the floor with his little brothers dividing up a handful of peas between them because that's all there was. Like Huey Newton observes in Revolutionary Suicide, "By having no family I have inherited the family of humanity". Qadhafi ruled every yard he set foot in because he helped every underdog, every oddball and misfit, every vulnerable, picked on, pushed out, shut down "little brother" that he could in every way from physically protecting them from rapists to literally getting people free by doing their innocence paperwork. Now when he introduces himself, he states his qualifications very modestly, "I used to be somebody".Many times, the only form of resistance available to him was doing hunger strikes because forcing the prison to follow the hunger strike protocols was the only way to be heard. As punishment for his resistance, Qadhafi ended up spending nearly half his time in prison in solitary confinement and was tortured. After approximately 500 hunger strikes, with 21 days being the longest, he can now refuse food for two weeks without even blinking. During one strike, he was strapped to a bed with the intent of forcing an IV into him but his veins were withered due to dehydration. Staff stabbed him repeatedly, not even trying to actually insert the needle, just stabbing him, hitting bone, telling him if he doesn't want to go through this he should eat something. One guard was able to get a DVD of this torture session which was mailed out of the prison and could possibly be retrieved.After having been beaten, tortured, and force fed, he decided it would be better to preserve himself and start focusing on writing more to let people outside know what was happening inside the Missouri prisons. When he was approached by an IWW member in December of 2013, he already had literature prepared for numerous programs such as Hug Yo Hood, Thug for Life, and Cease Fire. He was on the front page of a Missouri newspaper twice for these efforts. As IWOC formed within IWW, Qadhafi was responsible for the first main burst of energy when he signing up 500 or so members in Missouri prisons confirming that IWOC is a useful program.From that time until his release on August 9th, 2019, the administration continued targeting him, sending other prisoners and guards at him, solitary confinement was a way of life, many times he thought he wouldn't get out alive. After being transferred to St Mary's Honor Center in St Louis he was shot 17 times, 4 in the head, and died twice. At another point in time, he requested emergency medical services and was denied. His body shut down and by the time they got him to a hospital he had lost his sight, had pneumonia, flu, meningitis, and a stroke. He still has tinnitus, deafness in one ear, and vertigo. To look at him you would never know any of this because he hides all of his myriad injuries. He had to use a wheelchair for almost two years but got tired of sitting around and refused to continue using it. When his eyesight returned it returned corrected so that he no longer needs glasses. To all of this he says I am resilient and failure is not an option.Today, Qadhafi still wants to do something that makes a difference for all his little sisters and brothers, something positive. He is involved with numerous different progressive groups in Kansas City and is also spearheading his own effort called Hug Yo Hood which aims to create a network of autonomous communities which are based on neighborhoods. He has a lot of energy that can be used for positive or for negative. He knows what it is to be disenfranchised for not having money so he's grassroots for real, straight from the Mississippi dirt by way of St Louis. He's always been with the underdog, the one that no one cares about, the one that gets kicked to the side, and he knows how to deal with bullies. A lot of people don't have what it takes to fight. Qadhafi does though and he says when he decides to elaborate on his qualifications, "I used to be somebody, don't make me have a flashback."