2026

Support comrade Sundiata Jawanza in his Upcoming Parole Hearing.

Sundiata Jawanza | South Carolina Department of Corrections #00233800 | Kirkland Correctional Institution, Columbia, SC

Sundiata Jawanza is a New Afrikan Revolutionary Nationalist, human rights advocate, abolitionist organizer, and jailhouse lawyer. The State of South Carolina has imprisoned him since 1995.

Sundiata did not enter prison as a revolutionary. He entered as a young man — by his own account, a "lumpen proletariat"— convicted of offenses committed in his youth. He has expressed remorse for those acts and has spent three decades working toward self-development and the empowerment of others.

What the State did not anticipate was what happens when a human being is confined for decades in a system built on dehumanization: he began to study. He read George Jackson and other New Afrikan revolutionary thinkers. He studied law. He came to understand that his individual case was not an anomaly but part of a machinery of racialized mass incarceration. And he began to organize.

The State did not imprison a political prisoner in 1995. It created one through decades of confinement, political education, and retaliation.

His leadership extends beyond the prison walls. He serves as Jailhouse Lawyer Vice President on the National Lawyers Guild National Executive Committee, strengthening relationships between incarcerated organizers and legal advocates across the country.

Inside, he is a Certified Peer Support Specialist (CPSS) and crisis interventionist, providing emotional support to incarcerated people experiencing crisis, trauma, depression, and hopelessness. He facilitates therapeutic programs five days a week in a classroom provided by prison authorities. He is also an Imam, providing spiritual guidance, pastoral care, and principled leadership to the Muslim community at Kirkland Correctional Institution.

This work is organized, documented, and institutionally recognized.

Prison officials have reportedly told Sundiata directly: if he continued organizing, he would never leave prison alive. Confidential informant allegations — unsupported by evidence — have been used to brand him a leader of an all "Black paramilitary organization" and to justify parole denials and strict custody classification. For over a year, prison officials blocked his general mail, classifying correspondence as a "security threat." He prevailed only after filing a formal complaint.

He is not being kept in prison despite his rehabilitation. He is being kept in prison because of it. The State fears the organizer he became more than it ever feared the young man who entered in 1995.

Supporters regard Sundiata Jawanza as a political prisoner because his continued imprisonment reflects not only his conviction but retaliation for his political beliefs, national human rights organizing campaigns, and leadership behind the walls.

How You Can Help Bring Sundiata Home

The campaign to free Sundiata Jawanza recognizes that lasting change requires organized public pressure. Supporters are working to build a broad movement rooted in community organizing, public education, media outreach, legal advocacy, and solidarity.

He encourages people and organizers to pick up his campaign and organize, you don't need permission from his freedom committee to organize around his name for his freedom.

Write to Sundiata.

His general mail is now being delivered after a year long suppression. If you wrote before and never received a reply, your letter likely never reached him. Sundiata has promised to respond to every letter he receives.

Sundiata Jawanza #00233800
Kirkland Correctional Institution
4344 Broad River Road
Columbia, SC 29210

Contact South Carolina decision makers.

Call and write elected officials, the South Carolina Department of Corrections, and the parole board. Tell them is welcomed back into the community.

Amplify his story.

Share information about Sundiata's case through traditional and social media. Help ensure his name and his work reach a wider public.

Organize in your community.

Host educational events, film screenings, or panel discussions about political prisoners and prison abolition. Bring information about his case to your mosque, church, union, school, campus, or neighborhood organization.

Funding

Support fundraising efforts here. Legal and campaign expenses require sustained resources. Organize or contribute to fundraisers for Sundiata's freedom campaign.

Unchain Sundiata Jawanza = https://share.google/hIgsKKaZ1CSsglcJ0

Join solidarity actions.

Participate in or organize public events calling for his freedom and an end to the political retaliation against incarcerated organizers.

Get Involved

To volunteer, organize in your area, or request "Unchain Sundiata Jawanza" campaign materials:

Jailhouselawyersspeak@protonmail.com
freejawanza@protonmail.com

Sundiata has spent more than three decades building hope, fighting for prisoners human rights, leadership, and collective power among incarcerated people. Now it is our responsibility to build the movement necessary to bring him home.

Donate Now

https://givebutter.com/unchainSJ

Unchain Sundiata Jawanza

Help secure Sundiata's release!

Team Members