Originally published in the Winter/Spring 2025 edition of the Virginia Defender, issue 76, printed March 26. Reproduced here for accessibility and archival purposes. To find other stories in the Winter/Spring 2025 issue or to download the full PDF, see this post. For other issues dating back to 2012, see the Full Issues page.

Editor’s note: Thirty years ago, Richmond native Uhuru Rowe was sentenced to 93 years in prison without the possibility of parole. While incarcerated, he educated himself and is now a self-described “conscious prisoner” who has inspired many other people to transform their own lives under difficult circumstances. In 2022, due to his own efforts and the diligent work of his many supporters, his sentence was commuted by former Gov. Ralph Northam. He is now due to be released on Oct. 18 of this year. We asked him for his thoughts on what led to the commutation. This is his reply.

By Uhuru Rowe

I have been imprisoned for just over 30 consecutive years and had filed approximately five pardon petitions prior to the one granted in January 2022. I have analyzed the situation and concluded there was a convergence of factors that made my last petition successful.

Some of those factors are as follows: one, representation by a competent attorney who was motivated, in part, by our prior friendship; two, former Governor Northam’s infamous blackface scandal, which led to his subsequent reconciliatory mission to make amends to the Black community; three, the 2020 global anti-racist protests sparked by the police murder of George Floyd, which made certain aspects of the white power structure slightly sympathetic towards Black people and other people of color impacted by the so-called criminal legal system; four, advocacy by several legislators on the local and state level; five, an online petition which amassed 2,600 signatures from people in the community; and six, a student-led freedom campaign called the Justice for Uhuru Coordinating Committee, which organized rallies, teach-ins, email/phone zaps, and letter-writing and petition-signing events, among many other things.

All the above factors, both individually and collectively, contributed to the success of my clemency campaign. Of course, there were hundreds, perhaps thousands of other people who did not have the benefit of some of what I mentioned above. But because I am political and have a history of organizing behind enemy lines, there had to be present a greater push for clemency to be granted in my case. Such was true in the case of the recently released Indigenous political prisoner Leonard Peltier, who had his sentence commuted by former president Joe Biden on his last day in office.

What makes the success of freedom campaigns for political and politicized prisoners a win for the movement is that we hold vastly different positions when it comes to the prison system, i.e., the prison industrial complex. We do not hold the position that prisons are good and that they helped us to become better people. Instead, we hold the position that the PIC is a system of torture and exploitation and needs to be abolished, and in spite of the harms it causes, many of us are able to transform our criminal mentality into a revolutionary mentality, which will enable us to be true servants of our communities.