Bobby Rush Carries Message from Supermax Prison: 'Stop the Killing'

From left to right, Congressman Bobby Rush, the former Jeff Fort, now known as Abdul Malik Kabah, founder of the Black P Stone Nation, and Larry “King” Hoover, co-founder of he Gangster Disciples.

On a day when Chicago said goodbye to a 9-year-old boy brutally murdered in a South Side alley, Congressman Bobby Rush brought a message of peace to the outside world from the two incarcerated gang lords who may have started it all.

Rush (IL First District)  traveled to Florence, CO, to visit the notorious federal supermax unit that houses Jeff Fort, who formed the Black P-Stone Nation, and Larry Hoover, co-founder of the Gangster Disciples. It is believed that Tyshawn Lee -- lured to an alley and shot execution style last week -- may have gotten caught between the warring rivals due to his father’s reputed gang ties.

The congressman told ABC-7 Chicago that both Fort and Hoover were “appalled” by the murder of the child, Tyshawn, and want the killing in Chicago to stop between the organized gang criminal enterprises they created over a half century ago.

“They knew about it and were appalled at it,” Rush said.

Known as the “Alcatraz of the Rockies,” USP Florence ADMAX houses 410 of the nation’s most dangerous criminals, including 911 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui, shoe-bomber Richard Reid, Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols, and former Evergreen Park native Ted Kaczynski, who pleaded guilty in 1998 to mailing explosives in 16 separate bombings.

Recently joining this federal rogues gallery is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, awaiting his death sentence by lethal injection for his part in the Boston Marathon bombing.

Visitors who’ve toured the prison describe soundproofed cells made of poured concrete to prevent inmates from communicating with each other in Morse code. Slivers of 4-in by 4-foot windows allow only views of the sky, designed to deprive the inmates’ senses and prevent them from knowing exactly where they are in the supermax facility and plotting an escape.

Inmates spend 23 hours a day in cells that are less the size of a backyard storage shed. Communication with other human beings in the facility and the outside world is forbidden. Meals are hand-delivered to inmates by guards.

So hellish is the supermax of supermax prisons, Olympic Park bomber Eric Rudolph is said to have written a series of letters in 2006 to a Colorado Springs stating that “ADX Florence” is built to inflict “misery and pain.”

Fort, who changed his name to Abdul Malik Kabah after converting to Islam behind prison walls, was sentenced in 1987 to 80 years for conspiring with Libya to commit acts of terror against the United States. His old rival and nemesis, Hoover, is serving six life sentences on drug conspiracy charges.

The criminal organizations that Fort and Hoover created are responsible for scores of street deaths, maimings, violent crime and human misery, as well as the incarceration of thousands of young men who murdered and stole for their gangbanger masters.

According to Rush, “Jeff/Malik and Larry said, ‘Use my name. Tell those youngsters to stop the killing,’” ABC 7 reported.

It may be weeks. months, or even years before Fort and Hoover are allowed any kind of close human contact. Rush thinks that by allowing Fort and Hoover to communicate with the outside world, they could be “part of the solution” to stemming the tide of Chicago’s out-of-control gun violence.

The day after Tyshawn Lee’s murder, Rush announced his plans to reintroduce the Blair Holt Firearm Licensing and Record of Sale Act of 2015, named after another young Chicagoan who lost his life to gun violence.

“We are losing a generation to self-inflicted murder and mayhem,” Rush said. “We are not powerless to end this community carnage.”