From TowardFreedom.org Go there to see the article with links embedded.
A Growing Resistance Movement in US Prisons Seeks to End Slavery and Torture Behind Bars
Details
Written by Ben Turk
Published: 27 May 2015
There is a widespread, growing and committed resistance movement happening in US prisons across the nation. This movement is not going away, and with more outside support and national coordination, it could be powerful enough to reshape not only the US prison system, but the entire society.
At the time of this writing thirty prisoners at Ohio State Penitentiary, the supermax prison in Ohio are recovering from a hunger strike that has lasted over 30 days. Prisoners in Georgia, accused of leading the largest prison work stoppage in US historyin 2010 are on hunger strike demanding relief from torture conditions they’ve been subjected to in solitary confinement as reprisal for their non-violent protest. The Free Alabama Movement (FAM) has been dealing with threats, beatings and lockdowns they’ve been subjected to in reprisal forthe mass work stoppages that shut down three Alabama facilities for weeks in January of 2014.
Massive hunger strikes that rocked California’s prison system in recent years are now getting slow results in favorable court decisions for their class action lawsuit. Prisoners in Illinois, Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina and Washington Statehave all engaged in historically large protests in recent years. In February, thousands of immigrant prisoners in a federal detention facility in Texas refused to work, and protested and sabotaged the facility, rendering it uninhabitable. At around the same time women at an Arizona county jail were on hunger strike refusing to eat the moldy food they’d been served.
The above examples are only the most coordinated and best publicized of these protests. Many prisoners see individual acts of courage and resistance as necessary for their identity and survival. When the country locks up as large a portion of its population as the US does, prisoner protests are inevitable and almost constant.
The demands of these protesting prisoners are myriad, specific, complex and overlapping, just like the repressive bureaucracies they struggle against. From medical neglect, to wrongful conviction, or sexual assault and violence committed by staff members (particularly in women’s facilities) prisoners have many good reasons to protest and rebel, and many harms and traumas to recover from.
Prisoners engaged in the larger movements like FAM, or the CA hunger strikes also have many personal and individual grievances, but they have come together to form coordinated mass protests with collective demands. These demands vary, but can be categorized into two broad calls for justice: to end prison slavery and to end torture.
To End Prison Slavery
The thirteenth amendment to the US constitution does not abolish slavery. It states: “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction” (my emphasis). All prison systems in the US rely on prisoner labor to maintain the facilities. It is prisoners who mop floors, fix plumbing, handle paperwork, and do the many other tasks necessary to keeping the prison running. Prisoners are also farmed out to private corporations seeking cheap labor. All this labor is grossly underpaid (if paid at all) and compulsory; as many prisoners have explained to me, it is a modern form of slavery.
One important step toward ending prison slavery is to allow prisoners to organize labor unions. Prisoners need to be able to strike without violent reprisals, and to negotiate for improved conditions, including health, safety, conditions and wages. A robust and legally protected prisoner’s union is the strongest protection against inhumane and intolerable slavery conditions in prisons.
Prisoners have been fighting for labor unions since the seventies and the US Supreme Court has consistently deferred to prison administrations, rather than defending the basic human rights of incarcerated people. The 1977 decision in Jones v North Carolina Prisoners’ Labor Union, Inc. establishes the controlling precedent. The Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) labor union has taken up the call of prisoner organizing, forming an Incarcerated Workers’ Organizing Committee, whichworks closely with FAM prisoners, as well as prisoners in other state systems.
The most powerful form of direct action prisoners have used to demand the right to organize and to end slavery is a work stoppage.
To End Prison Torture
Prisons across the US rely on various forms of terroristic violence and coercion to maintain control. Prison administrators’ options vary from pepper spray, electrocution, beatings, and restraint positions, to medical neglect, deprivation and isolation. The form of torture that has gotten the most attention, and the strongest opposition from prisoners and their supporters in recent years, is solitary confinement.
In June of 2012 US Congress held their first hearings on solitary confinement. Anyone paying attention heard heartbreaking testimony from Anthony Graves, an exonerated Texas prisoner who experienced and witnessed the destructive effects of long term isolation on prisoners.
According to SolitaryWatch.com,US prisons hold over 80,000 prisoners in solitary confinement on any given day at a cost of $75,000 per prisoner per year. Many are held in isolation for years, or even decades. The prison system spends this money and trouble because they depend on solitary confinement as a tactic to break up organized groups and prevent rebellions.
Ending Slavery and Torture
These demands are directly related to each other. When prisoners get organized, the prison responds by locking up leaders, or arbitrarily choosing people to make examples out of in isolation. Solitary confinement is both a tactic for breaking up strike organizers, and a deterrent to prevent prisoners from participating in these actions. After beating striker Kelvin J. Stevenson with a hammer, Georgia prison authorities put him in solitary for what is now over five years; he is participating in the current hunger strike.
Siddique Abdullah Hasan, a long time prison rebel in Ohio, who has been in solitary confinement for over two decades has called for a nationally-coordinated prisoner protest, including hunger strikes and work stoppages. Prisoners have shown a commitment to protesting against severe and often violent reprisals. Hasan believes that, like the California hunger strikes a few years ago, many prisoners would join the movement once it took off.
The missing link is outside support. Without pressure and scrutiny from the outside, prisoners engaging in these struggles can face severe and often illegal consequences. Those of us with access to media and policy makers, with robust social networks and the ability to make public spectacles at the offices of prison authorities or elected officials are essential to prisoners reaching their goals. The Free Alabama Movement recognizes this and has outlined a step by step process by which local organizers can connect with prisoners and demonstrate our strength and commitment to support, allowing prisoner organizers to predict the possibility of success for their actions on the inside.
Even with outside support these will be extremely fierce battles. Prison administrators consider prison labor and isolation as existentially important to the operation of their institutions. Without slaves to maintain their facilities, the costs of prison will skyrocket. Without solitary confinement and supermax facilities dedicated to further isolating “trouble-makers,” they fear their captives will get organized and defend themselves. These fears are probably well founded. The increased reliance on supermax prisons and other forms of long term solitary confinement has correlated with a decline in prison riots and uprisings.
US prisons will need to transform drastically to survive without slavery and torture. Rather than being places of punishment, repression and control, they will have to maintain order by appeasing prisoners and meeting their needs. Prisons will have to become locations for support and healing, they will have to live up to the “rehabilitation” and “correction” their department names often falsely promise. They will surely no longer be able to house a quarter of the world’s prisoners as they do today.
US prisons may not be able to handle these changes; the current administrators almost certainly won’t. That is not our problem. If prisons cannot run without slavery and torture, then they should not run. Mass work stoppages and hunger strikes, with outside direct action support will make prison financially untenable. We will shut the prisons down. If the increasingly unequal and largely illusory class peace of American capitalismcannot survive without its prisons, then it too should and will end. We can and will abolish slavery and torture in US prisons, along with them we will bring down whatever institutions depend on these intolerable practices.
More information and organizing opportunities:
Free Alabama Movement: An organization led by Alabama prisoners looking to abolish slavery through work stoppages at prisons across the country: https://freealabamamovement.wordpress.com/
Solitary Watch: News from a Nation on Lockdown: http://solitarywatch.com/
IWW Incarcerated Workers Committee: Organizing for Workers Behind Bars: https://www.facebook.com/incarceratedworkers
Support Prisoner Resistance: Interviews with prison rebels on organizing tactics: http://supportprisonerresistance.noblogs.org/
Ben Turk is a dedicated prison abolitionist and the co-founder of the anarchist theatre troupe Insurgent Theatre (insurgenttheatre.org). His prisoner support work focuses on the survivors of the Lucasville Uprising (LucasvilleAmnesty.org), and prolific anarchist firebrand Sean Swain (SeanSwain.org).
Pulitzer prize winning journalist Chris Hedges has been doing a series of articles for TruthDig.com on the growing prisoner resistance movement in America. You can find all three articles below.
1. Who are you? Where are you incarcerated and how long have you been inside? If you would prefer this be anonymous to avoid repercussions, please feel free to use a nickname, or more general / generic info (like the state or region you’re in, rather than the specific prison).
I’m Sean Swain, currently level 4 at Ohio State Penitentiary, and I’ve been locked up since 1991. I’m way too lazy to use nicknames. :)
2. Can you tell us about any prisoner resistance movements or activities you’ve openly participated in?
I can describe reform efforts that failed, including legislative initiativesand hunger strikes and proposed work stoppages, all seeking changes from authorities, all recognizing the authorities and their legitimacy. In fact, I would submit that when reforms succeed, they fail… Becuz they only pave the way for counter reforms. The mythological character rolling the boulder up the hill… Succeeding… Only to end up rolling the other way… Over and over… Forever. You can participate in failure openly, but successes cannot be conducted openly.
3. What kind of tactics or action (whether formal protests or informal “troublemaking”) do you think are most effective?
Successful tactics in resistance have been those that involve direct action. On a couple of occasions, I have witnessed widespread sabotage campaigns with a decent propaganda effort really descend orderly operations into disarray. Unlike gang banging and hunger strikes and work stoppages, authorities are unprepared for this kind of tactic, incapable of putting a guard and a camera on every single captive.
Sabotage really exposes the key weakness of any authoritarian system: its reliance on the population’s obedience and complicity. Small numbers with virtually no resources or formal training can make a huge impact, attacking and discovering key choke points to exploit.
4. Can you tell us a story where outside support made a difference in your life or resistance efforts?
Outside support has greatly altered my life in many ways. One example is when I was in seg in Toledo (TOCI). Friends had a strategy. They called the prison and central office claiming to be media. This created the illusion of public attention, which all prison systems hate and fear. Friends also called legislators as media, then called the prison and central office as assistants to legislators, all of this prompting central office and the prison to call each other to say, “WTF,” and for them to contact real legislators in what they believed were return calls, right after legislators were contacted by fake media. Total shitstorm.
The illusion of visibility and political blowback. I knew it was happening as my material situation improved. Received property and privileges that had been withheld. By the time fake attorneys started calling, the will to keep fucking me around was greatly diminished. The illusion was
a powerful weapon, can be duplicated with a phone book and a handful of Walmart cell phones, however they are appropriated.
5. What strategies would you like to see emerge or develop among folks on the outside who already do prisoner support work?
I would like to see a couple things develop. First, some method to provoke prisoners to consider effective direct action resistance, to be a thread that connects resisting prisoners or aspiring resisters with information on previous successes and failures, inspiring prisoners to think beyond hungerstrikes. Second, creation of a kind of repository where information may be accessed by other supporters. Third, a developed strategy for connecting resisting prisoners at one location to prisoners at other locations. Information is power. Timing is everything. Coordination creates more favorable conditions. Fourth, and last, projection of the idea to the larger community in struggle that every element or action might in some way become integrated with local prison resistance or prospective prison resistance, or creating actions in such a way as to impact the operations of the prison industrial complex. To this last, an example: when at Toledo, an anti-nazi rally in town became a small riot. If those folks knew the location of TOCI and moved in that direction, the reaction of the enemy enforcers, the cost, the resources, the seriousness of the potential problem for perceived public order… Potential. In that case, potential from simply knowing the local prison was just down the street.
6. How could someone who’s new to prisoner support work get involved?
For this question and the next, let me give a broader response of getting informed. Departments of Corrections have websites with useful information on where prisons are, security levels, staff, how to get there, phone numbers, what prisoners are where. There are books and zine programs nationwide, where free world people get repeated requests from radical prisoners and possibly develop relationships. There are prisoner pen pal programs at infoshops and collectives. There are online presence for prisoner voices and zines… So, consult all of that, determine what your goal is, and select some course of action consistent with that goal. Like anything else, it should be experimental and fun.
7. How should we inform or include prison populations that may not already be involved, like female prisoners, prisoners in regions with less activity and support, folks in immigrant detention centers, county jails, etc?
Again, to refer back to #6 above, prisons are located in the physical world. Not hidden. The populations are inside, everyone given a number and part of an online catalog, with rap sheets and photos and FAQ sheets. Those prisons have parking lots full of cars with plates, where staff come and go at shift changes every day to drive to and from homes. This is a physical reality. Central offices for corrections systems are often located in industrial parks, with parking lots and cars with plates and shift changes. Again, physical reality. Explore it. Think while you explore. Successful developments are always organic and spring from experience.
From a supporter: A prisoner named Susan Bruce, held in the infamous ( http://www.eji.org/prisons/tutwiler/ ) Tutwiler Prison in Wetumpka Alabama, recently sent me a handwritten essay entitled “Alabama Judicial System and the Counterparts” that speaks to some of the degradation experienced in Tutwiler and all over Alabama by prisoners.
At her request, I am spreading her writing to anyone I think may be interested, especially in light of the rapid growth of F.A.M. and the IWWs new Prison Committee in Alabama and Mississippi.
The Alabama judicial system and the counterparts, are not focused on corrections and reform. The entire process is a means for Political gain, monetary advancement and a way to seek revenge.
The politicians running for office, and the ones who already occupy them, and the ones appointed to the Judicial System, and the counterparts, use crime and those who commit a crime to gain votes during election time and to continue to hold their elected or appointed position.
The age old slogan “to Get tough on Crime,” has carried on for several decades. Political figures have promised, “to get tough on crime” and “to Lock them up and throw away the Keys.” These political parties make promises to crack down on crime and to deal out harsher sentences, but the fact is the crime rate continues to rise, the county jails and prisons are over capacity and they fail to mention at whose expense the crackdown on crime falls upon. The tax payers!
All of the prisons throughout the state of Alabama are in a pitiful state of disrepair, but yet, these politicians continue to solicit money to repair them. These prisons are an environmental hazard; they are infested with dust mites, mold, rats, bugs, and spiders. They are run down, have faulty wiring, broken heating units, backed up septic systems, broken toilets, sinks a leaky roof and rusty, broken out windows with no screens. Alabama Department of Corrections was forced to install millions of dollars worth of security cameras [in Tutwiler] to protect the female inmates from sexual assault from the prison guards. But- The very guards that they were installed to protect them from are the ones who are viewing the screens. Is that not ironic? What tops it off is the fact that these ADOC guards are using these cameras to catch the inmates violating prison rules. Another waste of the tax payers’ dollars.
The prisons provide the barest of necessities for the inmates’ needs, such as eight rolls of tissue, two four ounce tubes of generic toothpaste, four bars of lye soap and two tooth brushes a month.
The quality and quantity of the prison’s meals do not meet dietary needs; they’re high starch with low protein meals. The quality of the food products is low grade soybean patties, wieners, bologna, fish patties, tuna, and starved to death chicken. All purchases at a low price, donated and the vegetables are grown by inmates and canned by them at the honor camps [“Red Eagle Honor Farm” in Montgomery].
The dental services provided to inmates is a minimal service; their teeth are cleaned once every two years, fillings are only temporary, and pulling teeth. There is no service for root canals or caps. Most of the inmates who have been incarcerated for several years wind up losing most of their teeth and wind up with dentures or a partial plate.
The health care services comes with a double price tag. The tax payers are paying for it and so are the inmates’ families. The services cost the inmates four dollars for each process, one, to be screened by a nurse, two, to see a provider, and three, for each medication prescribed. An inmate will generally walk away with an eighteen dollar bill. Try to figure this one out.
Each year the taxpayers are solicited for money to pay for the housing, feeding and medical/dental care. While each year the amount continues to increase. Did you know that the prison systems generate millions of dollars from the phone system, canteen and sandwich shop? ADOC is cutting the cost in half while lying to the public about the amount of money needed to incarcerate them. While at the same time thy are making money incarcerating them. They phone system, canteen and sandwich shop sells generic products and services at a one hundred percent markup of the consumers’ price. ADOC is making a killing off of the taxpayers and the inmates’ family. Work release centers and the honor camps that make furniture and tags also generate money for the prison systems. Where is all this money going?
When an inmate enters int o the prison system they are provided with one new set of clothing and two used sets that have preciously been issued to at LEAST two other inmates. The trick is ADOC adds to the budget that it costs them forty five dollars for three shirts and seventy five dollars for three pair of pants. What they don’t tell you is that two shirts and two pants per inmate have already been paid for twice before. Yes, that’s right, the taxpayers pay for the same two sets of clothes three times or more. They are pros at cutting corners in several ways, saving millions of dollars. Of course they would not bother telling those who are forking out the money.
The judicial system has nothing to do with reform and everything to do with seeking revenge. It begins wit hand ends with the same ideas and principles. Alabama’s criminal statutes are derived from the biblical belief before Christ was born and they do not believe in forgiveness. The age old belief of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth was the way to punish offenses in 100 B.C. [and] is still the belief of today. To put it simply, it’s not the ideal of reform that the Alabama Judicial system is looking to sell, it’s revenge. There is no self defense, the law refuses to protect and they forbid you to protect yourself. This system will convict people who are mentally retarded and mentally ill.
The same old song and dance is still the most popular with those running for political office, “Get tough on crime. However there has never been a one who has had the decency to tell those whose vote will elect them to office that you will be the on e who has to pay for this. These guys are costing the taxpayers a whole lot of money. How much of the money goes into whose pocket is anyone’s guess.
The Alabama Parole Board is on the same page as the court system, making money and seeking revenge. Has anyone been privileged to the salaries the members of the Parole Board receives? Would you believe that it’s between forty to ninety thousand dollars a year? Wow! They make all the big money sitting on their tails, pushing a pen, looking at a file and officiating public hearings, that the inmates are not allowed to attend. To the board they are a file with a number attached. It is left up to their family and friends to attend and plead their case.
The policies and procedures that govern the Parole Board’s administrative guidelines are fundamentally unfair, biased and prejudiced. The whole process is a sham. BEFORE the inmate’s hearing, the members of the parole board have already decided their fate. The only REASON why they even bother to hold a hearing is because they have to. The statute that governs the parole process states,
1) There must be an open hearing,
2) The Parole Board is a discretionary board,
3) The inmate DOES NOT have a liberty INTEREST, (freedom)
4) Their decision must not be arbitrary or capriciously made. (selected at random ore mere fancy)
The members of the Parole Board are governor appointed, he has an input in the parole hearings which is always negative. Two groups, who are nothing but a hate group disguised as a victim’s advocacy group. One is called VOCAL [Victims of Crime and Leniency] the other is MADD [Mothers Against Drunk Driving], both these groups, through the Attorney General are given a list of all the violent offenders going up for parole. These groups contact the victim’s family, tell them their stories and convince someone to show up to protest, and the members of these groups go to the hearing with them.
The criteria set out for the parole process is not supposed to have any political influence. But yet, it is made up of members appointed by a political body. Who in return has an active part in the process. The Attorney General is an elected official who by all means has a political influence on the parole process.
The parole process for a violent offender is like a poker game with the cards stacked against them. Reform DOES NOT factor into the decision of whether to grant or deny parole. The only factor considered is the crime that the inmate committed. Let me give you an example, in several cases the inmates had,
1) Served at least twenty years,
2) Had excellent institutional records
3) Had taken all the self help programs (class) available,
4) Received a GED,
5) Graduated from an occupational trade,
6) Attended college courses, etc.,
but yet, their parole was denied. The Parole Board set them off for five years. Honestly, be your own judge, what was the deciding factor to deny parole? Was there any doubt that they were rehabilitated? These inmates were denied parole because the victim’s family and Attorney General wanted blood not rehabilitation.
The entire parole process is intimidating in and of itself. First and foremost is the fact that the inmate cannot attend their own parole hearing. A family member or friend has to stand in their place. Three people are allowed to go and each are given three minutes to plead for their [the prisoner’s] release. The intimidating part of that is, nine times out of ten the Parole Board is not interested in what they want to say. The board will stop them, ask them a question that they are not prepared to answer that throws them for a spin leaving them clueless as to how to answer or afraid that they will say the wrong thing.
The Attorney General and victim’s family have absolutely no restriction on how many can attend or on what they are allowed to say. They may paint whatever picture of a person they don’t know personally as they want.
The parole hearings are conducted inside of a poorly lit room. The parole [board] members are on a dais- where the inmate’s family has to sit below and look up at them, like a king on his throne.
If and when an inmate gains release on parole or probation, they are required to pay a monthly fee as well as any court cost, fines and restitution ordered by the court. They are required to work a job, in return that puts them back into the class of taxpayers that must pay to take care of their incarcerated brothers and sisters. Money-money-money- That is what the whole process is about.
Many inmates can’t afford the above costs, particularly if they lose employment (through no fault of their own) and end up defaulting and trapped back in prison- a debtor’s prison.
With Coyote Sheff and Petey- Former prisoners Coyote Sheff was released from a Nevada state prison back in November of 2013. He never rested while in prison, starting an Anarchist Black Cross chapter at the prison he was in to actively sticking up for his comrades and taking part in prison rebellions to protest different policies or actions by the prison administration. Coyote Sheff and Petey will be talking about their own respective experiences, stressing the importance of prisoner support during incarceration and after, supporting prison struggles from providing reading material to an anarchist reading group inside the prison walls to the many ways those on the outside can support prison rebellions.
Coyote Sheff’s writings can be found at various blogs and sites on the web. For more info on Eric McDavid, discussed in this panel: http://supporteric.org/ More info on radical eco-prisoners: http://www.ecoprisoners.org/
A new website to support prisoners and prison resistance, mentioned in the panel: http://supportprisonerresistance.net
This is an interview with Jenny Esquivel and Petey S. from Sacramento Prisoner Support. They’ve been working primarily with Eric McDavid and other long term anarchist and eco defender prisoners, but also connect with and support lots of other prisoners.
They put out this extensive book on supporting prisoners in 2012.
You can contact them through sacprisonersupport@riseup.net.
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin is an American writer, activist, and black anarchist. He is a former member of the Black Panther Party. He was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, and has lived in Memphis, Tennessee, since 2010, where he and his wife JoNina organize against police terrorism with Memphis Black Autonomy.
Lorenzo and JoNina also presented Mass Incarceration is Prison Slavery at the Law and Disorder conference, and thanks to Kboo.fm we’ve got a recording of their presentation.
FULL TEXT OF INTERVIEW:
Interviewer: Alright, so I’m doing an interview with Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin. Do you wanna just start with talking about your background and your experience and how you came into doing this work?
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin: Well, I was a youth organizer in the South during the 1950s, actually, that was when I first became active in any kind of movement, I guess. I was in the student–or the youth–NAACP chapter in Chattanooga, Tennessee in the late 1950s. And then in 1960, the sit-ins came to Chattanooga and both myself and my cousin who was older and was one of the student leaders–he actually was one of the leaders of the protests from the black–from the only black—high school in the city [who moved] into the center of the city, into the department stores and so forth and they sat in, occupied the premises. And uh, after they were attacked by the police, however, and the racists, and started fighting them inside of the department stores, young people from–you know, much younger than the ones who were high school age, my age, which was, I was in grade school–but a whole bunch of us, thousands of us, really, as well as other people from the black community, cause at that time, the black community was situated primarily downtown in several large districts. The black working class people. And so a lot of people left the communities, came downtown to protect the students and so forth, and there was really something starting to see, you know, they were shooting high-pressure water hoses at–and this is interesting, this happened in Chattanooga before it happened in, you know, the more famous case happened in Birmingham. But they were doing this in Chattanooga. And loosing police dogs to attack people and all that stuff. That happened in Chattanooga. But what happened in Chattanooga was that the people weren’t passive. They resisted. They were actually fighting the cops, they were fighting, stabbing at the police dogs, beating the police dogs back, you know, people were fighting the racist whites who came into the department stores.. So it was a whole different kind of thing, and so the federal government called it a–when they did their report on it–they called it a “riot”. You know, they called it a “riot”. Which, it was a rebellion, you know. Let’s be clear. It was a rebellion against white supremacy. And uh, that radicalized me. That radicalized me, it made me an activist. And so just one step after another, during that period of the 1960’s from you know, just a young kid growing on and becoming older, and getting into the Black Panther party.. and then later, going into the army and so forth, that whole period was about stuggle and activism, and it just carried me along. And I was not the only one, there was a whole generation was just carried along at that time, it was just for me, the rioters never stopped. And so, you know, that was how I got involved in activism originally.
Interviewer: Cool. So what prisoner support movement and activities are you currently in contact with and working with?
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin: Well I’m with a group called the Black Autonomy Federation and we recently just started–and when I say recently, like in the last less than a year–we started a Black Autonomy Prison Federation. And we started it because we felt like the issues of mass imprisonment of blacks and peoples of color was not being addressed by the prison movement. And still we feel that way, and this is one of the reasons why we started to give a voice to all the, you know, to the issue of mass imprisonment of people of color but also to give a voice to activists who wanted to organize a broad-based movement around it. And so we started it for that reason, we also started it around to deal with, in the black community, you condition these young black people into prison anyway, you know with the gangs and street violence and all of this, you know. And so we started this Black Autonomy Federation, we reached out to some prisoners on the inside, we still are doing that.. We are even reaching out to prisoners that are doing work around prison strikes and so forth now, in Alabama particularly. And these things are coming together because there is a dearth of activism at this period around these issues. There is very little activism on the outside around the prison strikes, there is even less around the whole question of you know, mass imprisonment. There’s less. And it’s a reflection of the kind of co-optation by non-profit organizations and by fairly conservative figures in this period–would be fairly conservative, certainly, by the estimation of the 1960’s and what I come from.. You know this lawyer, first, this um, what is it–Mrs. Alexander, she’s Alexander? .. Well, you know, the thing about her is she…[IA] she wouldn’t even believe what was apparent, in terms of mass imprisonment, that had been known for years. She didn’t believe it, and only was able to get a voice because she had access to mass media. She had access to mass media, her privileged position, both for herself as an attorney, a corporate rights attorney, as well as for her status of her husband, who was a federal prosecutor. So she was able to get publicity, and she appeals to these liberals and so on and so on.. I don’t. I don’t care about liberals. I care about people who are being subjected to police terrorism, the people who are in the ghetto, being starved to death and forced to commit crimes of survival. And, you know, this is the kind of work we’re doing right now. We’re working with this–and of course I continue to work with, or try to continue to work with the Anarchist Black Cross. Because one, for me, the Anarchist Black Cross was one of the movements that supported me when I was in prison and was very instrumental in getting me out of prison from two life sentences in the 1970’s when I was a political prisoner. But also, I have continued to have, on some level to have ties to the Anarchist Black Cross because it’s a world-wide Radical Activist movement in the Anarchist movement– one that, in my estimation, one of the few still around that has the potential with it has reached its full capacity.. you know, or not, that’s another thing altogether, but it certainly has the potential to build a mass-based movement that could deal with a great many issues with imprisonment and the state. Because the state, until I went to prison, I don’t really think I understood the whole question of the state. State terror and the whole issue, what oppressive government is really like. Until I went to prison and saw for myself, one, the racialized nature of imprisonment. The class nature of imprsionment. And the terror, the terror. The stark terror and murder of imprisonment. I didn’t see these things, didn’t know these things when I was, like a lot of people, I wasn’t naive, But I just didn’t know about it. And then having seen it for myself and understood what this meant, you know, understood what it meant and understood how a movement in the streets could be built. And was built, on our behalf, in terms of, um, you know, the Attica rebellion in ’71 particularly. And all after that, the period after that, there were massive protests. There were forty eight. There were actually forty eight such rebellions after Attica. In 1972, there were forty eight rebellions. Which is still the highest number of prison rebellions anywhere in the country. You know what I’m saying? And so, this was a time…[IA]… in terms of my own understanding, and my own uh organizing and activism inside the prisons and also understanding the power of the movement on the outside because I’m one of the people that, the movement on the outside got out. I was the one that was fortunate enough to get out. I was able to get a world-wide campaign in terms of the Atticus movement internationally, as well as you know, anti-racist organizations that were coming into existence at the time. And even a wing of the Dutch, I guess it was Amnesty International, split. Because the original, official Amnesty International had a policy that if you engaged in violence, and if you were um, some sort of radical or anti-authoritarian organization, but um..
Somebody: [Excuse me.. how are you?]
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin: I’m good, [IA] (laughter)
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin: The point of fact… the official organization actually split. And it split, and out of it came the Help A Prisoner Oppose Torture Committee. Which was based in Amsterdam. And also around that period, the British, the UK, you know cause Black Cross came into existence and that created the whole new wing of resistance under the name, under the banner of Anarchist Black Cross. So I was the first American prisoner to be adopted by the Anarchist Black Cross UK. Had long ties and familiar thing [?] So um, I’ve had a relationship with the Anarchist Black Cross in terms of at least, well one way or another, I’m not saying I was always some member of some board meeting, but certainly I would give them my ideas and make criticisms and so forth and so on, to kind of push the movement forward, and make it more radical and try to even deal with in terms of anti-racism, as well.
Interviewer: Cool. So as you may be aware, there are prisoners who are trying to organize a uh, nationally coordinated hunger strike and potentially work stoppage and other forms of resistance starting on September 9th. Um, what do you think the outcome of that might be and how can we on the outside support and make it uh, build that mobilization?
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin: Well, it can be extremely powerful. It mean, it can be, I’ve seen it happen. Um, you know in the 1970’s we created the Prison Labor Union movement. It had between fifty and seventy five thousand prisoners in a brief period of time. And this actually formally incorporated in a lot of states, 36 states in all either had fully formed organizations or they were being formed, the unions. And it was so powerful and it was growing so quickly, that the prison officials became alarmed. An you know, the strikes and disruptions by prisoners. But it was growing so quickly that what they did was to take a case to the United Nations–oh, Sorry, the United States Supreme Court. They took the case to the United States Supreme Court called Jones vs. North Carolina Prison Labor Union. And uh, North Carolina was one of the strongest Prison Labor Unions. In fact, the person who helped me start the Federal Prison Labor Union in Atlanta, Georgia, came from North Carolina. He was a political prisoner anyway and he was framed up on, you know, on some, you know, a civil rights activist framed up on the uh-what was it-the uh… mmmm, can’t remember the city now. But they railroaded these three activists and anyway he went to prison over that in North Carolina, they transferred him somehow for whatever reason to the federal system and I met him and we worked together and we built a group–or were building, were in the process of building a group when the decision came down that you know, they had us all locked up and shipped out and what have you and broke the movement up. So I think that what I’m trying to say is that that is how far it can go, it can go much farther now, in terms of forming organizations and in terms of labor unions. I don’t know, they maybe could become the major labor force in this country in this period. I mean, all of this is possible. Now as far as building a national movement and so forth.. of course the prisoners have to decide, in the final analysis, what kind of movement they want. I’m not going to take that away from them. But at the same time, there are things that we can do out here, ourselves. That we should be thinking about in terms of national.. one is to create the framework for a National Prisoner Labor Union. Which is something they didn’t have in the past, but it can happen and should happen now. And I think that however that’s done, it has to be working with prisoners, but however it’s done that would be a real step forward. Also we need to go after every form of corporation or agency or whatever that makes money off of prison labor. We need to demand, we need to help them formulate their demands, in my opinion, even though we’ve got some very intelligent prisoners on the inside who have leadership potential. But we also don’t–and I said last night–we don’t have to re-invent the wheel. We need to understand that we can, on the outside, develop a framework where we go after these organizations and make them, pressure them to pay the prisoners a decent wage. [IA] from on the inside exploiting prisoner labor. And their objective is, is nothing but slavery. They make millions and billions of dollars from prison labor that’s run by the state, with their own corporations like the federal government had the UniCor.. I don’t know that they call it today, could be something else, but.. UniCor is what they called it back then, and most of the states have their own similar kind of state-based corporation. But then in addition to that, there are literally hundreds, hundreds, of corporations, of course in the United States, that have either factories on the inside or have contract workers with the prisoners, or what have you, and these are the kind of things we have to address I think, you know, we have to address this kind of stuff and so our objective is we’re gonna get, you know, we want to get involved with prisoners. And we want to, you know, express some idea that people might not’ve heard–you know, most of the time you have prison activists on the outside that have never been in prison. Now, that isn’t always the case, like last night, myself, Mark Cook and uh, Ed Mead and um Bo Brown were there, and of course all of us have been in prison, for a substantial period of time, I’d been in the prison with some of them, personally. But uh, I think most of the time you’ll find that most people who are prison activists have never been in prison. Now that is not to say that there cannot be great activism, you know, not to say that at all. But there’s a certain kind of sensitivity that comes from having been an activist in the prison system yourself at that time and you have an understanding of it that someone on the outside might not have. So we could build something. That could be very, very powerful in support of the struggle. Cause as you look at it right now, you only have really the three–I mean, there’s stuff percollating underneath, true enough, in all the prisons. But the reality is we’ve only had two or three real strikes. You know, now, we know they’re coming. Just like we know there’s going to be a revolution in the streets. But we don’t know when and how. And so what we have to do is try to create a framework for it to be successful and to spread. And I think it can spread if we could bring together some kind of national organization network of activists on the outside who can pass information to other prisoners and so forth. That’s what we need to do. But as I said, we need to see ourselves as a pressure group on the outside.
[We’re gonna go up and see what Paulette’s doing. OK?]
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin: Okay.
[Are you alright?]
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin: I’m fine, thank you. Take care.
[Keep an eye on that guy over there, okay?]
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin: Okay. (laughing) He been drinking something? Okay.
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin: So.. you know.. so.. So that’s where I’m coming from.
Interviewer: So the next question I had was: how can we include or involve prisoners who are in states where there’s not a lot of protest going on, people in women’s prisons, or immigrant detention centers, or other, or even county jails? You know, other forms of incarceration that aren’t part of movements like this?
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin: Well we gotta save that information. We’ve gotta get information into them. I mean, we can get information into them better than prisoners in another state, you know? So we have to get creative methods of doing that. Putting it in a newsletter, putting it in a letter, whatever, to get the information in to them. But more than anything, we gotta create fervor in the streets for them. See, that’s what I keep saying. And um, if we don’t do that, if we don’t create a fervor in the streets for them, it won’t be as successful in my opinion. It may even fold. And that’s why you know, you’re gonna have a limited number of them take place at this time. Because there’s been no ability to do coordination. And that’s to be expected, you’re in prison, you know, if you’re trying to write from prison, you know, it’s gonna be difficult. but if you got it in the street, you got some forces in the street, in different states that have a structure together, it makes it easy. We’re not taking anything from the prisoners, that’s not what I’m saying. We’re building something for the prisoners. To be quite honest. And I just think that uh, at this stage, we’re not seeing that. I mean, we keep talking about you know, in individualistic terms about this state, that state, and it’s not, you know. I always looked at it as–and people talk about class politics–I always looked at the politics of imprisonment as classist. And I never had any differences with you know, even people I was in prison with disagreeing with me at the time. When I tried to get the IWW to support the prison struggle or the strikes and so forth, and the uh, the whole idea of unionizing prisoners.. wouldn’t do it. Wouldn’t help. I mean, we were being attacked, wiped out. They wouldn’t say a word. So, those are the kind of errors, too, that we need to understand. And we made errors in the past, and we also have had victories. And I think what’s wrong with the left and what’s wrong with the movement of this period is it doesn’t even want to teach its own history. As its own. It’s not even teaching that to the newer generation of activists. And I think that’s a real serious mistake. And that’s what I’ve always seen myself as correcting, is that real deep divide in terms of the consciousness of between generations, okay, you know, “what did you do in the 1960’s?” and so forth, and what’s happening now? you know. Why don’t I know about that? Why don’t we know about the Prison Labor Union which was so powerful back in the 1970s? These are things that could help right now, in terms of building a movement, you know? You’d know where to go, you don’t have to start, go way back down to the beginning, you can start at a different stage, you see what I’m saying?
Interviewer: Absolutely.
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin: And so, this is what I think. This is what I’m saying. And the group I’m working with, you know, we pretty much agree that if we’re gonna come in with it, we’re gonna try to come in with a program that’s broader-based and non-sectarian. You know, cause you got a lot of sectarianism too, one group wants to show it’s doing more than somebody else and so on and that doesn’t help the overall struggle. it just makes it easier for the officials to come down on you. And the things we learned in the 70’s and 80s, they still apply.. 60s and 70s, I should say. They still apply to many things. You got the same prison officials. You might have a different kind of prison system in terms of repression or being standardized with the um, whaddyacallem, behavior modification units but now, you know, their so-called SHU and all that kind of stuff. [IA] But all of that happened when I was in prison. We had gone through that stage, we had defeated the man inside the prisons, we had destabilized the prison structure, and we had won some victories, but then we started suffering losses. Assassinations, George Jackson, forcible violent repression of the Attica rebellion, and then afterwards, mistakes were made in terms of letting liberal lawyers take over important aspects of decision-making and organizing of the movement. And then of course you know what lawyers do, after a while, even the ones that Carlton says are radical, they get to where they feel like it’s dangerous now. It’s “dangerous”. that the poor are gonna rise up. (laughing) That it’s gone beyond the stage of liberal negotiation. And they start bailing. And that’s what happened. You know, a lot of liberals bail out. And the rest of them are left, the rest of the people in the streets were left to hang. With that gone, a lot of them were prosecuted, some of them prosecuted, some of them were cases where they came in and broke up groups, you know, [IA] broke up organizations in support of prisoners. But it lasted for a long time, and I really learned a lot from that period. And I was hopeful that a lot of other people have, as well. You know, people my age as well as, just others in this period, younger people in this period. including new activists, That’s what i’m trying to say. The new activists have.. you know.. the thing that, the reason the government continues to hold Black Panthers is not just in terms of punishing them because of their active resistance. I mean, they’re doing that. But the reason why they’re doing that, they’re holding them so long, is that they don’t want them to link up with new generations of organizers in the streets where if you.. there’s some things that even myself–well I don’t get around much anymore but–there are some things that I can tell people that might be insightful. Oh, and inciting. (Laughing) Might be insightful on one hand, but the incite, you know, might incite rebellion.
Interviewer: I know, personally, that that’s true.
[Somebody: Hey, I’m going to be going out with Jimmy tonight.]
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin: More trouble? More trouble you’re making?
[Somebody: Something like that.]
[Laughter]
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin: But anyway, so, this is what I’m saying. We need to have continuity. We don’t have continuity in this, from that period to this, and so there’s so many problems because of that. Of course, the enemy won out, in many respects. The enemy was able to reshape the present circumstances from what had been a victory by the people. They were able to reshape the present social circumstances. Since you’ve got mass imprisonment. You’ve got the kind of disparities like I talked about last night with the black infant mortality or with the mass unemployment. With so many other things that are really issues that exist in this period that didn’t exist in the 1960’s. You didn’t have mass homelessness in the 1960s. Even in the 1970s you didn’t have that. And so these are things where the capitalist structure was able to induce more and more misery and poverty onto the masses of people so that now you’ve got mass imprisonment at a scale that has not been seen since the great depression but you don’t have fight-back. And you’re gonna see it get worse because they’re going to go and have more and more austerity measures before it falls. Because, you know, to put on our heads. And you’ve already got a mass poor population that has been decimated for years. But you have not had a resistance to fight back movement. So that’s the kind of thing you need to recognize: what is being used to stifle protests and what we can do to build it.
Interviewer: Well, I want to downstairs to see what Paulette is talking about, but, it was nice talking with you.
Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin: Yeah. Okay. Well, I hope you got enough to work with.
The Alabama judicial system and the counterparts, are not focused on corrections and reform. The entire process is a means for Political gain, monetary advancement and a way to seek revenge.
