I was not upset that the New Orleans 10 were recorded– I was angry that there is no area in America for a black man to blend in.
I saw the news coverage of Derrick Groves being drawn from that crawl area in Atlanta, shirtless and shackled, blowing a kiss at the cams similar to this was all some intricate joke. The last of 10 men who got away from Orleans Parish Justice Center in May, finally captured after five months on the run. They found him hiding under a house like a pet, after pumping gas into the residence for hours, after a K- 9 unit tracked him down like victim.
The information anchors commemorated. An additional hazardous bad guy off the streets. Justice served. Situation closed.
Yet I had not been celebrating. I was depressed.
Not since these guys had been captured– some of them were convicted killers, awaiting sentencing for serious fierce criminal offenses that the committed on members of their own neighborhood. Not because they had actually gone against the public trust or threatened neighborhoods throughout their time as fugitives. I was depressed since enjoying their capture advised me of a fact that sits in my breast like a stone: In America, there is no place for a Black guy to run.
Unless you’re running toward change.
Let me tell you how they obtained captured, and then let me inform you regarding the ones that escaped.
The Geography of Criminal Capture
Facial recognition cams in the French Quarter detected 2 of them within hours, strolling down Bourbon Road with their heads down, trying to avoid detection. However all it takes is one secondly of looking up, and the formula has you. The modern technology really did not care about their anxiety– it simply saw faces and matched them to a database.
Antoine Massey lasted six weeks prior to a resident’s pointer led cops to an Airbnb in New Orleans’ Third District. He tried to hide in ordinary sight, also posted video clips on social networks pleading to rappers and Donald Trump for aid. The city closed in around him like mire.
Jermaine Donald and Leo Tate made it to Pedestrian Area, Texas– nearly 200 miles from New Orleans– prior to a high-speed chase finished in an accident. Also in the substantial expanse of country Texas, two Black males in a taken vehicle drew interest like a neon indication.
And Derrick Groves– one of the most dangerous of them all, founded guilty of 4 murders– lasted 5 months before a Crimestoppers suggestion led federal marshals to that Atlanta home. 5 months. In a nation of 330 million individuals, throughout 3 8 million square miles of area, this guy might hide for precisely 147 days.
That’s the geography of being Black in America when you’re running from justice: 147 days of flexibility in a nation built on the property of liberty.
The Geography of Political Escape
But allow me tell you that same tale once more.
In 1970, George Wright escaped from a New Jacket prison where he was serving time for murder. Like the New Orleans 10, he was a Black guy on the run from American justice. However George Wright didn’t conceal in crawl areas or homeless encampments. He joined the Black Liberation Military, dressed himself as a priest, burrowed a Holy bible to conceal a hand gun, and hijacked Delta Flight 841 to Algeria.
Algeria didn’t send him back.
They provided him political asylum.
Wright lived openly in Algeria, after that France, after that Guinea-Bissau, then Portugal for forty-one years. He married a Portuguese woman, ended up being a Portuguese person under the name José Luis Jorge dos Santos, increased kids, and stayed in the same town for two decades prior to being found– not by facial acknowledgment innovation or K- 9 units, however by a routine finger print examine his Portuguese ID card.
Assata Shakur, additionally a member of the Black Freedom Army, escaped from a New Jersey females’s prison in 1979 Her partners, disguised as site visitors, stormed the center, took guards captive, and released her in broad daylight. She didn’t conceal under houses or rob dope dealer in streets.
She left to Cuba.
Fidel Castro provided her political asylum.
Shakur lived freely in Havana for forty-six years until her death in 2025 She composed books, offered meetings, and came to be an icon of revolutionary resistance. The FBI placed a $ 2 million bounty on her head. Cuba rejected to turn her over.
Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver got away to Algeria in 1969, where they established the International Area of the Black Panther Party. The Algerian federal government provided diplomatic standing, an embassy building, month-to-month stipends, and the liberty to coordinate with freedom activities worldwide.
Pete and Charlotte O’Neal have actually stayed in Tanzania since 1972– fifty-three years– after Pete was targeted for his tasks as chairman of the Kansas City Black Panthers. They run a recreation center, raised children, and become columns of their embraced community.
These weren’t wrongdoers hiding from justice. These were political refugees running away American injustice.
The Distinction Transformation Makes
The distinction between the New Orleans 10 and the Black Freedom Military isn’t ethical personality or the intensity of their criminal activities. Both teams included people founded guilty of serious fierce offenses. The difference is political consciousness and international solidarity.
The Black Liberation Military understood their battle as part of an international anti-imperialist movement. They linked their resistance to the Vietnamese fighting American soldiers, the Algerians who had actually defeated French colonialism, the Cubans who had overthrown American-backed tyranny. They really did not see themselves as criminals; they saw themselves as flexibility competitors.
And crucially, various other nations agreed.
Algeria in the 1960 s and’ 70 s was the center of the Third Globe advanced activity. The Algerian government, having defeated French colonialism, used shelter to liberation movements worldwide– Vietnamese, Palestinians, African National Congress, and yes, Black American revolutionaries. They operated on the concept that any individual dealing with American expansionism deserved defense.
Cuba, still opposing American financial war fifty years after their revolution, prolonged the same solidarity to Black American political prisoners. Castro’s federal government recognized that racism in America belonged to the very same imperial system they had toppled.
These countries really did not see Wright, Shakur, and the Cleavers as bad guys. They saw them as political prisoners that had left a racist criminal justice system.
The Equipment of Revolutionary Getaway
When you’re running toward change rather than away from consequences, the location changes totally.
International networks replace regional hideouts. As opposed to dope dealer that won’t call authorities, you have governments that will not honor extradition demands.
Diplomatic immunity changes criminal anonymity. As opposed to creeping under homes, you live openly under state defense.
Ideological haven replaces geographical hiding. As opposed to regularly evaluating your shoulder, you sign up with motions with the resources and commitment to secure their own.
Historic legitimacy replaces criminal anxiety. Your story enters into a larger story of resistance that transcends national boundaries.
The Black Liberation Military had what the New Orleans 10 really did not: a political evaluation that connected their specific conditions to worldwide freedom struggles, and global allies happy to take the chance of American displeasure to supply refuge.
The Perfect Storm of Revolutionary Surveillance
Yet also political evacuees aren’t unsusceptible to the equipment of American search.
Task N.O.L.A. runs 5, 000 electronic cameras throughout New Orleans today, including 200 with facial recognition capacities. But in 1972, when Wright hijacked that plane, there were no computers scanning encounters in airport terminals. No social networks to keep an eye on. No digital impacts to track.
United state Marshals at some point caught Wright in 2011, yet it took forty-one years and the growth of electronic fingerprint databases. They caught Shakur never ever– she passed away complimentary in Cuba.
This is what revolutionary politics given: time. Time to develop new identifications, develop brand-new lives, become residents of countries that didn’t acknowledge American jurisdiction over political refugees.
The New Orleans 10 were captured within months due to the fact that they were operating within the exact same system they were attempting to run away. They had no international evaluation, no international allies, no political framework that might transform them from lawbreakers into freedom competitors.
The Historic Echo– Changed
The Fugitive Servant Act of 1850 created a nationwide network of security and capture that made every cost-free state a prospective site of recapture. But even after that, some enslaved individuals found political refuge. Canada refused to honor American slave regulations. The British Empire, having actually abolished slavery, would certainly not return escapees.
My little girl asks me often regarding the Below ground Railroad, regarding Harriet Tubman and the endure conductors who helped enslaved people run away to flexibility. I inform her regarding the networks of safe residences, the coded songs, the North Celebrity that led tourists with darkness.
Yet below’s what I don’t inform her– until now. Also after that, the majority of people who attempted escape were captured and gone back to chains. And under the Thirteenth Change, that very same fate waits for these males. Those words we have been educated to celebrate– “except as penalty for a crime”– indicate that enslavement never ever ended; it merely evolved.
That is why a lot of these men will at some point end up in Angola Jail, an abomination and a justification to people of goodwill. Angola is a former slave hacienda that still functions as a factory of torment and injustice, where hope goes to die and ruthlessness resides. It remains on 18, 000 acres of dirt very first cultivated by enslaved Africans, and today, Black prisoners select vegetables and harvest cotton under armed guard on that particular same land.
We would never tolerate any kind of concentration camp being become a prison where the majority of the inmates were Jewish. Yet that is exactly what we are expected to endure right here in America: a living monolith to white superiority operated under the banner of justice.
So when I saw those guys run away– when I watched Derrick Groves crawl beneath that house in Atlanta– it had not been just despair I saw. It was a useless run from the hacienda reborn. If I encountered that very same fate, if my sentence ended with me functioning those cotton fields under the exact same sun that burned my ancestors’ backs, I may try to escape also.
The difference is this: the Black Freedom Military recognized that individual retreat isn’t enough. You need to run away the system, not just the sentence. You need to change yourself from a criminal right into a revolutionary, from a fugitive into a political evacuee, from an American problem into a global cause.
When Revolution Passes Away, Location Becomes Prison
However below’s the catastrophe: that window closed.
The Cold War produced space for Black revolutionaries because America had geopolitical competitors ready to embarrass the united state by shielding its political evacuees. Algeria needed allies against Western expansionism. Cuba needed uniformity against American economic war. The Soviet Union needed propaganda success in the global battle for influence.
Today, that international innovative framework no longer exists. Algeria is aligned with American economic rate of interests. Cuba is separated and struggling. Russia and China have no passion in Black American liberation movements. The radical governments that when provided refuge have either dropped or suited themselves to American power.
There is no place left to run towards.
The New Orleans 10 weren’t just ranging from justice– they were running in a world where political getaway has actually become difficult. Where the only geography available to Black fugitives is the old geography: homeless encampments, pusher, crawl spaces, and the unavoidable capture that follows.
This is what the death of global cutting edge uniformity appears like: ten Black men squeezed through an opening behind a toilet, with nowhere to go but back to the ranch.
The Benefit of Political Change
If I were Latino today, I might still go away into construction sites and farms, sustained by networks of economic survival that go beyond nationwide boundaries.
If I were white, I can still disappear right into the anonymity that brightness gives in every edge of America.
If I were Black in 1972, I could have joined an innovative movement with international connections, political evaluation, and foreign allies ready to give shelter.
Yet I am Black in 2025
The revolutionary motions are gone. The worldwide solidarity is dead. The political analysis that once changed criminals into liberty competitors has been replaced by the customized despair that sent Derrick Groves creeping under a residence in Atlanta.
We live in a post-revolutionary moment, where the only getaway from American injustice is to become so unseen that security modern technology can’t discover you, so anonymous that citizen sources can’t detect you, so isolated that socials media can’t track you.
And for Black people in America, such invisibility is difficult.
The Weight of Understanding
I recognize why these males ran. I understand the despair that drove them with that hole behind the bathroom. I comprehend the difficult math of Black life in America, where even our successes feel like failures, where also our flexibility seems like bondage, where also our success feel like beats.
But I additionally understand the tragedy of their capture: they were running in the incorrect century.
They were trying to escape in an era when retreat has actually ended up being impossible, when political awareness has been changed by criminal justice, when worldwide uniformity has been changed by worldwide security, when transformation has actually been changed by incarceration.
The crawl room where they found Derrick Groves had not been simply a hiding location– it was an allegory for the reducing geography of Black freedom in America. A room so small you have to creep on your stomach. An area beneath someone else’s house. A room that can be filled with gas up until you can no more breathe.
This is what remains of the Underground Railroad in 2025: a crawl room in Atlanta, surrounded by government marshals, pumped full of tear gas, with K- 9 devices waiting outside.
There Is No place to Run– Except in Memory
I’m not supporting for these males. I’m not romanticizing their criminal activities or celebrating their escapes. But I am mourning what their capture represents: the final collapse of any location of flexibility for Black people in America.
We reside in a country of 3 8 million square miles, and for Black males, every mile is surveilled, kept track of, and controlled. There disappear Algerias offering sanctuary. No more Cubas providing asylum. No more innovative movements with the global links to transform wrongdoers right into freedom fighters.
There is nowhere for a Black man to run.
However there was when. And bearing in mind that distinction– keeping in mind when political awareness can open doors that specific desperation can never unlock– might be the very first step toward producing brand-new locations of liberty.
My child will certainly acquire this America of crawl rooms and face acknowledgment video cameras. But she will certainly likewise inherit the memory of George Wright living forty-one years in liberty, of Assata Shakur creating publications in Cuban sunlight, of Pete and Charlotte O’Neal developing community centers in Tanzanian villages.
She will acquire the understanding that escape was once possible– not just from sentences, but from systems. Not just from consequences, but from the whole apparatus of American racial fascism.
And perhaps, in her generation, that expertise will come to be geography once again.
Bear in mind: you are enjoyed, you deserve love, you are beautiful, and you are enough– also in a nation that has eliminated every exit other than transformation, and after that got rid of transformation itself.
Especially after that.
My name is Garrick McFadden, I am the creator of GAMESQ, PLC, a black-owned Phoenix auto accident law firm This permits me the capability to create essays such as this, due to the fact that my customers really feel empowered when I fight for them in the court or on Medium– both need me to utilize my words. This is a flexibility couple of have and if there is something you want me to discuss most likely to my site and leave a message.