A notorious federal prison in Dublin, CA, was closed in 2024 after years of complaints of rampant and systematic sexual abuse, medical neglect, and human rights violations. Now, the Trump administration is pushing to reopen the facility as an ICE detention center, but an interfaith coalition of community members and human rights advocates are fighting to keep the facility closed.
Edited by: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Speaker 1:
The Dublin City Council and Representative DeSaulnier, as well as Representative Zoe Loughran, we would like everyone to join them in opposing the opening of FCI Dublin as an ICE detention center.
Speaker 2:
On April 16th, faith leaders and activists gathered outside of a federal correctional institute, Dublin, a site of horrific abuse, neglect, and state-sanctioned violence, calling for the facility’s permanent closure and to reject a plan to use it as an immigration detention center. That’s from a statement released by Interfaith Movement and Human Integrity and the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice. The statement further details that countless people incarcerated at FCI Dublin survived being sexually abused by the Bureau of Prison staff and faced inhumane conditions, retaliation and medical neglect, and that now ICE appears to be moving forward with converting FCI Dublin from a BOP facility to an ICE facility, despite congressional opposition, its abusive history and dangerously dilapidated infrastructure.
Speaker 3:
Led an amazing campaign to organize to shut that prison down. We want to honor their dreams that this harm not be continued and perpetuated on other people and other communities. So this is why we’re preventing, here to prevent ICE from reopening Dublin as a detention facility.
Speaker 2:
Immigrants incarcerated at Dublin who are not citizens were specifically targeted by BOP staff who threatened to turn them over to immigration and customs enforcement, or made false promises that in exchange for sex, they could help them stay in the United States. In 2023, the Real News spoke with organizer Erin Neff of the California Coalition for Women Prisoners about the lawsuit filed on behalf of incarcerated women who were experiencing abuse at the prison.
Erin Neff:
In the case of Dublin, just to give it an historical context, 30 years ago there was a horrific incident of abuse upon many people, and there was a big case and a big settlement, and it is heartbreaking to see that 30 years later, the same thing is happening. And what it exposes is a culture of turning a blind eye to this abuse. There’s cooperation, there’s cover-up. It’s very difficult to report, let alone confidentially report. So in recent times, what you’re seeing are people being abused who are undocumented. So first of all, they’re being targeted because the staff knows that they are people who are going to be deported. So there’s an exposure there. They are threatened that if they say anything, they’ll be deported. So these people are people who’ve been here maybe their entire lives, all of their families here, they’re being retaliated against by putting in isolation. They are getting strip searched. It goes on and on. They’re being deprived of medical care, of mental health care.
Speaker 2:
At the recent vigil, outside the gates of FCI Dublin, Reverend Victoria Rue read a statement by Anna, a survivor of FCI Dublin.
Rev. Victoria Rue:
Like so many other immigrant women, I was sexually abused by an officer at FCI Dublin. After I was finally free from the hell of FCI Dublin, I was taken to another hell, an ICE detention center. The conditions at the detention center were terrible. I saw so much suffering. After months and months, I finally won my freedom. I am finally home with my children and trying to heal from the U.S. Government, from what the U.S. Government did to me. When I saw on the news that they wanted to reopen FCI Dublin for immigration detention, my heart fell. That prison is toxic and full of the pain of so many people. I pray that it is demolished, given back to the birds that live on the land there.
Speaker 2:
There was also testimony from Ulises Pena-Lopez, who is currently incarcerated in ICE detention. According to the Santa Clara rapid response team, early on February 21st, as Ulises was getting ready to leave his home, ICE agents showed up and forcibly arrested him, disregarding his rights and his health. Despite Ulises invoking his right to remain silent, to speak with a lawyer and to not exit his vehicle with without seeing a warrant, ICE officers responded with violence, smashing his car window with a baton and dragging him out of his vehicle. Without receiving proper medical care, Ulises was released into ICE custody and is currently being held at the Golden State Annex Detention Center in McFarland, California.
Ulises Pena-Lopez:
It fills me with strength, encouragement, joy, knowing that we are not alone. That you are standing in front of us, that you are our voice and I know and I feel that you’ll never leave us. God bless all of you. Physically, I feel like half of my body is numb, my foot, my right hand. I’m losing vision in my right eye and my face without mobility. Psychologically, I feel like I’m having pauses. They detected my medical and psychological condition as serious and they’re giving me treatment. I can’t sleep. When I call someone or whatever I need, I’m scared. I tremble. I start to sweat. My heart races because of everything they did to me; because of the way we’re not supposed to possess medication in here. If you want two painkillers, you have to submit a request. If you have to put in the request, it usually takes two or three days to be approved.
Speaker 2:
This comes from the statement of Ulises’s campaign and his supporters. They are calling and sending emails to Congress members Ro Khanna and Alex Padilla to demand ICE to release Ulises from the Golden State Annex ICE Detention Center in McFarland and provide access to medical care, treatment and medications.
Ulises Pena-Lopez:
I want to tell you that despite what ICE did to me, when they beat me in front of my wife, in front of my daughter, and they took me to an alley, they continued to beat me. They performed CPR on me to revive me. After they called the ambulance, they still had the audacity to send the ambulance bills to my wife, not once but twice, saying that she is responsible and has to pay for these bills for what they did to me.
Speaker 2:
The list of demands issued by the organizations Interfaith Movement and Human Integrity and California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice includes: honor and uplift survivors of FCI Dublin; demolish and permanently close the FCI Dublin; reject all forms of ICE detention in Dublin and the ongoing terror and criminalization of immigrant communities; return and transform the land to meet community needs and reaffirm that places of worship and religious observance should remain sensitive locations free from the reach of immigration enforcement.
Speaker 7:
Just to close, we know that if Dublin is reopened as an ICE detention center, if people are once again caged in those empty buildings across the street, abuse and neglect will continue. As Dublin survivors have said so many times, the horrors that happened at Dublin are not unique. Abuse is baked into our prison system. Everywhere there are cages, there is violence. In BOP, in ICE in the Santa Rita jail across the street. What is unique about FCI Dublin is that survivors of this violence came together and they organized and they spoke out and they made themselves heard. Dublin survivors shut for years to shut that prison down and they won and it must stay closed forever.
Across the country, chairs sit empty around dinner tables.
Husbands, brothers, sons, mostly, are missing.
Caught up in a government dragnet that picked them off the streets.
Or took them from their homes. Or ripped them off of buses or from their workplaces.
The news gushes over how safe the country of El Salvador is today.
But for the thousands of families who’s innocent loved ones were taken from them
And locked into high security prisons without a key…
This is not a paradise.
It’s a nightmare.
In March 2022, President Nayib Bukele ordered a state of exception and unleashed raids that have locked up more than 70,000 people around the country.
They are accused of being affiliated with gangs.
Gangs that wreaked havoc in the country
with one of the highest homicide rates in Latin America (or the world).
People say they couldn’t leave their homes without fear of violence.
But in Bukele’s gang crackdown
he also picked up the innocent.
Thousands. Tens of thousands of innocent people.
Police grabbed people with impunity.
Without asking for proof, or a warrant.
And in jail, they are languishing. Most incommunicado from their families.
Incommunicado from a lawyer.
Waiting for years.
And there are no charges. No court cases. No trials. No conviction.
They are just held, indefinitely.
Their crime: Being young. And male. And, in many cases, tattooed.
And this system has the stamp of approval from the United States,
which is now openly participating, by sending Venezuelans to be housed in El Salvador’s jails.
Also under the pretext of being gang members, even though many are not.
The rule of law is dead. Habeaus corpus, buried.
Buried in the name of the war on gangs.
Buried in the name of the United States.
But people are fighting.
Family members are marching.
On May 1, International Workers Day, the family members of the detained lead the way.
They carry signs of the loved ones who have been ripped from them. Husbands. Sons. Brothers. Breadwinners for their families, now languishing in prisons.
They carry signs and images, strangely reminiscent of the pictures of those detained, killed, and disappeared during the 1970s and ’80s… in another time and another war, funded and backed by the United States.
Those also kidnapped in the name of the United States.
But the Salvadorian relatives are not the only ones marching for their loved ones.
So are Venezuelans, standing up in Caracas and other cities against the illegal deportation of their compatriots to another country far away.
So are people in the United States.
But family members in El Salvador are leading the way.
They are marching. They are organizing. Demanding the freedom for their loved ones.
Demanding to be allowed to speak to them.
Demanding that there be justice.
Resisting, despite so much impunity.
Despite so much injustice.
###
Thanks for listening. I’m your host, Michael Fox.
I was in El Salvador for the May 1 march a couple of years ago, and did some reporting on the situation in the country and the widespread dentition of innocent people. I’ll add links in the show notes for some of my stories for The Real News.
This is episode 26 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, I bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, leave a review, or tell a friend. You can also check out exclusive pictures, follow my reporting, and support my work at my patreon, www.patreon.com/mfox.
Thanks for listening. See you next time.
In El Salvador, thousands of innocent people have been locked up in Nayib Bukele’s crackdown on gangs. They have been held without due process for years. But family members are standing up. And on May 1 they march, carrying the pictures and the names of their innocent loved ones detained and held without rights, with the ever-increasing support of the United States.
This is episode 26 of Stories of Resistance — a podcast co-produced by The Real News and Global Exchange. Independent investigative journalism, supported by Global Exchange’s Human Rights in Action program. Each week, we’ll bring you stories of resistance like this. Inspiration for dark times.
If you like what you hear, please subscribe, like, share, comment, or leave a review. You can also follow Michael’s reporting and support at patreon.com/mfox.
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Apr. 25, 2024. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
This is a breaking story… Please check back for possible updates…
Federal agents arrested a sitting Wisconsin judge on Friday, accusing her of helping an undocumented immigrant evade arrest after he appeared in her courtroom last week, FBI Director Kash Patel said on social media.
In a since-deleted post, Patel said the FBI arrested 65-year-old Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Hannah Dugan “on charges of obstruction.”
“We believe Judge Dugan intentionally misdirected federal agents away from the subject to be arrested in her courthouse… allowing the subject—an illegal alien—to evade arrest,” Patel wrote. “Thankfully, our agents chased down the perp on foot and he’s been in custody since, but the judge’s obstruction created increased danger to the public.”
FBI arrests judge in escalation of Trump immigration enforcement effortFederal agents arrested Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan on obstruction charges. Dugan is accused of “helping” an immigrant evade arrest.The fascism getting turned up!
It is unclear why Patel deleted the post. U.S. Marshals Service spokesperson Brady McCarron and multiple Milwaukee County judges confirmed Dugan’s arrest, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. McCarron said Dugan is facing two federal felony counts: obstruction and concealing an individual.
The Journal Sentinel reported that Dugan “appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Stephen C. Dries during a brief hearing in a packed courtroom at the federal courthouse” and “made no public comments during the brief hearing.”
Dugan’s attorney, Craig Mastantuono, told the court that “Judge Dugan wholeheartedly regrets and protests her arrest,” which “was not made in the interest of public safety.”
The FBI had reportedly been investigating allegations that Dugan helped the undocumented man avoid arrest by letting him hide in her chambers.
Here's the magistrate-signed complaint in US v. Dugan. She's charged with two counts, 18 USC 1505 and 1701; it doesn't appear they used a grand jury.
Wisconsin state Rep. Ryan Clancy (D-19) said in a statement Wednesday that “several witnesses report that [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] did not present a warrant before entering the courtroom and it is not clear whether ICE ever possessed or presented a judicial warrant, generally required for agents to access non-public spaces like Judge Dugan’s chambers.”
Clancy continued:
I commend Judge Hannah Dugan’s defense of due process by preventing ICE from shamefully using her courtroom as an ad hoc holding area for deportations. We cannot have a functional legal system if people are justifiably afraid to show up for legal proceedings, especially when ICE agents have already repeatedly grabbed people off the street in retaliation for speech and free association, without even obtaining the proper warrants.
While the facts in this case are still unfolding, it’s clear that actions like Judge Dugan’s are what is required for democracy to survive the Trump regime. She used her position of power and privilege to protect someone from an agency that has repeatedly, flagrantly abused its own power. If enough of us act similarly, and strategically, we can stand with our neighbors and build a better world together.
Prominent Milwaukee defense attorney and former federal prosecutor Franklyn Gimbel called Dugan’s arrest “very, very outrageous.”
“First and foremost, I know—as a former federal prosecutor and as a defense lawyer for decades—that a person who is a judge, who has a residence who has no problem being found, should not be arrested, if you will, like some common criminal,” Gimbel told the Journal Sentinel.
“And I’m shocked and surprised that the U.S. Attorney’s office or the FBI would not have invited her to show up and accept process if they’re going to charge her with a crime,” he added.
FBI has arrested Judge Hannah Dugan in Milwaukee, WI, for "helping an illegal escape arrest." FBI hasn't provided an arrest warrant or criminal complaint, but Judge Dugan already sits behind bars.We told you it would escalate when they disappeared immigrants without due process. This is fascism.
Julius Kim, another former prosecutor-turned defense lawyer, said on the social media site X that “practicing in Milwaukee, I know Judge Hannah Dugan well. She’s a good judge, and this entire situation demonstrates how the Trump administration’s policies are heading for a direct collision course with the judiciary.”
“That being said, given the FBI director’s tweet (since deleted), they are going to try to politicize this situation to the max,” Kim added. “That sounds an awful lot like weaponizing the DOJ, doesn’t it?”
Responding to Dugan’s arrest, U.S. Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) said on the social media site Bluesky: “The Trump admin has arrested a judge in Milwaukee. This is a red alert moment. We must all rise up against it.”
On April 12, 2015, lifelong Baltimore resident Freddie Gray was arrested, hogtied and thrown into the back of a police van by six officers. When Gray was pulled from the van less than an hour later, he was in a coma. A week later, he passed away from severe injuries to his cervical spinal cord. The incident, and the revelations thereafter, set Baltimore and the entire country ablaze. Details of the case alleged officers had taken Gray for a “rough ride,” a police brutality practice where individuals are intentionally left unrestrained in police vehicles during dangerous driving maneuvers. After a coroner ruled Gray’s death a homicide, the six officers involved in his arrest were charged with crimes ranging from false imprisonment to manslaughter. But the damage was done, not only to Gray, but to his community, which had endured decades of deprivations and abuse by Baltimore police. The resulting Baltimore Uprising shook the city and the nation to its core, fueling a fresh wave of Black Lives Matter protests building on the murders of Trayvon Martin, Mike Brown, and Eric Garner.
In a special 10-year anniversary documentary, TRNN reporters Stephen Janis and Taya Graham asked Baltimore organizers, activists, teachers, and residents for their reflections on Freddie Gray’s death, the subsequent uprising, and where the city is now. What did they feel when they first received news of Freddie Gray’s death? Did they have any hope the police would be held accountable, and has Baltimore City and its police department changed for the better as a result of the uprising? The following conversation is a thoughtful meditation on the long term impact of police brutality, the limitations of legislating cultural change, the power of community organizing, and the determination to still love and heal this city.
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
[CROWD CHANTING]:
While they’re smiling, we are dying. While they’re smiling, we are dying. While they’re smiling, we are dying. While they’re smiling, we are dying. While they’re smiling, we are dying. While they’re smiling, we are dying. While they’re smiling, we are dying. While they’re smiling, we are dying.
Taya Graham:
In 2015, 25-year-old Baltimore resident, Freddie Gray, locked eyes with a police officer. He was chased, arrested, hogtied, and thrown into the back of a van. He died a week later from severe spinal cord injuries. Baltimore City rose up to protest his death, the result of decades of aggressive over-policing. 10 years later, the real news spoke to activists and community leaders about what they remembered, how it affected them, and the impact on the community, and finally, their thoughts on the future of our city. This is what they said.
[VIDEO CLIP] Taya Graham:
Thank you. Thank you so much. Really appreciate that. Welcome to a special live edition-
Taya Graham:
Just before the uprising began, I was actually hosting a town hall with Michelle Alexander, who’s the author of The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness.
[VIDEO CLIP] Michelle Alexander:
We maintain this attitude that we ought to be punishing those kids and teaching them a lesson by putting them in literal cages.
Taya Graham:
And activists and organizers from all throughout the city had joined us. Members of the ACLU, Leaders of a Beautiful Struggle. All types of community members were there, and we were actually there initially to discuss the school-to-prison pipeline, but one of the people spoke up and spoke about the video of Freddie Gray that had just been released to the public.
[VIDEO CLIP] Adam Johnson:
I know here in Baltimore, in particular, we’ve been dealing with the issue of police brutality for quite some time. And Freddie Gray recently, his spine was severed and he died, I think two days ago.
Dayvon Love:
I actually got a text from a cousin of the Tyrone West family, and I still have it, a text message that has the picture, the famous picture that we’ve all seen of Freddie Gray in hospital while he was still alive, but on life support and says, “This is Freddie Gray. This just happened and we think this is going to cause a big uproar.”
Tawanda Jones:
When I seen Freddie Gray getting dragged into that van, it was like opening up my brother’s casket all over again.
[VIDEO CLIP] Eddie Conway:
Tyrone West’s family held their 200th-week protest and demonstration, trying to demand justice for Tyrone West, who was beaten to death by a dozen police in the city and still has not received any justice.
Tawanda Jones:
Hearing him screaming and moan, it just took me to, with my brother moaning and groaning and screaming and hollering, he was getting beat down in the same streets in Baltimore, not in the same streets, but in the same city, and nobody being held accountable. It broke my heart and that’s when I met Freddie Gray’s mom, Ms. Gloria, and I was just telling her pretty much to hold on, just keep fighting, and I was being prayerful that he was going to survive his attack.
D. Watkins:
I never forget, I was over Bocek’s, Bocek Park in East Baltimore and I got a homeboy that’s like he is one of those guys that he wanted to be affiliated. Rest in peace. He’s dead. This particular day, he was outside. He was riding around the city with my homeboy daz because they was filming a video and they was on a basketball court, and he just started blacking out. He was going crazy. He was going back and forth, and I’m like, “What’s wrong?” And he was like, “The police did such and such,” to my man, and he was going through it. So, that’s how I first heard about the story.
Michael Wilkins:
That morning, that morning, I actually had a hearing for a parole violation down in classification on Biddle Street, I think it is in Baltimore. And when they call you in for parole hearing for a violation, if they’re calling you into the actual jail itself, it means you’re not coming up.
Doug Colbert:
I was supervising law students who were representing people in criminal court, and we had many cases just like Freddie Gray, where the police would react to a black person who was not showing the proper respect and decorum, and they would then chase them down and eventually apprehend them and search them. And of course, those searches would not have been constitutional legal. So, my students won most of those cases.
Michael Wilkins:
So, I’m at home, and I’m like, “I don’t want to go to jail today.” Who wants to go to jail? So, I’m like, “I don’t want to go to jail,” and I’m praying. And then the riots break out, shuts the whole city down.
[VIDEO CLIP] Jaisal Noor:
In Baltimore on Saturday, April 15th, about 1500 people took part in the largest demonstrations to date against the killing of 25-year-old West Baltimore resident, Freddie Gray in police custody.
D. Watkins:
When people see things on video, it brings a different type of anger than just us talking about it. That’s the first thing. The second thing is poor leadership in a police department. We never really tracked down the source of who made the decision to shut the bus lines down, but some people said it came from the state, and then some people said it came from the police department. I don’t know. But whoever made that decision is a very, very bad decision.
Doug Colbert:
Oh, I think what happened in terms of the video was so unusual. It’s when you see something and then you have live witnesses who can tell the story that made a huge difference, and the reaction was immediate and predictable.
Michael Wilkins:
It made me feel as it relates to the city that once you push any population enough, once you keep them under your thumb enough, once you continually to kick them and prod them and laugh at them and mock them, it gets unbearable after a while.
Taya Graham:
For years, our community had yelled out and screamed out, people are experiencing misconduct, people are experiencing brutality. We had endured 10 years of zero-tolerance policing, where corners were cleared. People were taken off blocks for loitering or expectorating, spitting in public or simply not even having your ID on you to prove that you lived in the neighborhood. I actually endured that on multiple occasions in my own neighborhood, I would have to produce ID and be questioned on who I was, where I was going, and did I belong there.
[CROWD CHANTING]:
No justice, no peace, no racist, police.
Doug Colbert:
Freddie Gray was well-known in his community, and there were a lot of Freddie Grays who had suffered the same consequences. So, when people were actually there, they were able to tell the story firsthand.
Michael Wilkins:
Freddie Gray, unarmed. Freddie Gray dying in the custody of police. And then the first thing the police do is try to soften the situation and then they try to devalue Mr. Gray by victimizing him, putting the blame on the victim, saying that it was his fault that he died. All that together with everything else going on, it was a powder cake and it grew up.
[CROWD CHANTING]:
Justice for Fred. Justice for Fred. Justice for Fred. Justice for Fred.
Michael Wilkins:
You have to understand the atmosphere surrounding Freddie Gray’s murder, the uprising, which grew from, you have to understand the climate.
Jill P. Carter:
I think zero tolerance had a lot to do with it. It’s not me just thinking that the entire Department of Justice thought so because it’s all throughout the report that led to the consent decree.
[VIDEO CLIP] Vanita Gupta:
EPD engages in a pattern or practice of making unconstitutional stops, searches, and arrests.
Jill P. Carter:
So, it absolutely did. How does it not? How do you have 100,000 people in a city of 600,000 people? Many of them are not even eligible for arrest because they’re either super old or super young. So, you take out, out of the 600, you got what, 300 or 400 that are actually maybe arrest eligible or likely, and then you got a hundred thousand people arrested each year, each year.
Michael Wilkins:
Nothing is in a bottle, you know what I mean? Nothing is isolated, you know what I mean? It’s like a silo with wheat flurries going through it. All it takes is a spark for that silo to ignite. It’s like being at a gas pump and the fumes in the air and you light a cigarette, the pump might blow. So, the fumes, in this case, the wheat flurries in this case of the silo of Baltimore was the policing, was the attitude of the police.
Jill P. Carter:
I think that the ongoing confusion that people have, as well, when those arrests were coming, wasn’t that what was needed? Well, no, because those were also years that we had astronomical homicide numbers and astronomical violent crime numbers and astronomical shootings that didn’t lead to homicides.
Dayvon Love:
Whenever I talk about the Baltimore case, I just, I point viewers or people talking to two figures. One figure is spending on parks and rec, and the other is spending on policing, starting in 1980. I think in 1980, parks and rec spending was like $35, $45 million parks and rec spending in 2015 was $35, $45 million. Policing was maybe, I think 140 million, policing by 2015 was three times, that was approximately 430, 440 million. Now, it’s above, I think, it’s maybe 500, 550 if not more. And then you look at where that spending goes, that spending goes into a martial approach to policing.
Some of the factors that I think led to the uprising is that law enforcement is a very insular industry, and the way that the system of white supremacy operates in this society is that there’s a fundamental disregard for the humanity of people of African descent. And that manifests itself in the notion that the community having oversight of law enforcement and light respectable “political establishment society” is seen as ridiculous.
Taya Graham:
The fuel, the gasoline was all the crimes that had gone unpunished. And when I’m speaking of these crimes, I’m talking about police crimes, Baltimore City police crimes against our community.
Dayvon Love:
Because I remember talking to a reporter at the time for whom I mentioned this concept of community oversight of law enforcement and young white women whose response was almost like she found it a little bit of a stretch.
D. Watkins:
If I walk out here right now and you put a gun on me and rob me, the last thing on my mind is going to be, “Call the police.” I’m never going to think that unless I had something that was insured and I was like, “Oh, I can get that bread back.” Then I might be like, “All right, back, call the police.” But other than that, if I can’t get my stuff back or figure it out, then that person was meant to have whatever they took and that’s just theirs. That’s just what it is.
Dayvon Love:
But I’m mentioning that because when you think about all the structural forces that in terms of socioeconomic denigration, lack of access to resources, disempowerment of community, when you have all those factors, the community doesn’t have the levers that it needs to be able to push back against police abuse.
Lester Spence:
Yeah. So at that point, what happens is when an event happens that people didn’t predict, and remember, I didn’t predict, I do this, but I didn’t really predict it. So when something happens that people can’t predict something explosive like this, it disrupts everything. It disrupts alliances. It disrupts institutions. It disrupts the solutions that people routinely believe should be applied to political problems.
Jill P. Carter:
I was infuriated. So the arrest and ultimate death of Freddie Gray literally happened days after the conclusion of the 2015 legislative session. And that was a session where for the second time in a row, 2014 and 2015, I had proposed a multitude of different pieces of legislation that would do things to create police reform.
Dayvon Love:
So police, in many respects could run rough shot as a result of that, the community not having those mechanisms of accountability because they’re fundamentally politically disempowered given the society that we live in.
Jill P. Carter:
One of the ones that I thought was really important was we’ve ultimately passed something similar now, but whistleblower protection so that officers would be free to report on other misconduct within their institutions and other officers and even their leadership without fear of repercussion. This happened a number of times and there were a lot of different mothers testifying. And why was that painful? Because my colleagues within the legislature just didn’t seem to care.
Michael Wilkins:
I don’t think that people really realize that nobody on the corner wants to be on the corner. Whoever’s doing bad, selling drugs, shooting people, robbing people, nobody wants to do that. That’s the reality of it. And if anybody comes and says, “Look, we’re going to help you find a job, that’s all that they want.” You think some man wants to go home to his girlfriend and two kids after spending all day on a corner, hustling drugs?
Doug Colbert:
And what then happened is that three nights a week, they did drug suites or gun suites or whatever arrest, whoever was on the street on a Sunday, Tuesday, or Thursday, if those were the three nights would be arrested.
Jill P. Carter:
Those were the years, the O’Malley years where everybody wasn’t safe outside of their home. You are sitting on your steps on your porch, you’re in your backyard, you’re on your street, you’re on your corner, just being present and being black could often result in an arrest without charges. So out of those 100,000 or so arrests every year, at least 1/3 were without charges, meaning we had no reason to legitimately arrest you.
Michael Wilkins:
Is directly proportionate to these men having jobs now. And we’re talking about a very impoverished area. People in trouble with the law already. And from personal knowledge, I can tell you how difficult it is to have a criminal record, a felony record, and not being able to find a job. I mean, there’s a lot of despair involved in that. There’s a lot of give up in that. I mean, you talk about taking a knee, try going to an interview, getting hired, and then a week later getting fired because your background record comes back. People get tired of that. So the easier path, is just to go on the corner. I can make 75, $100 a day hanging on the corner for 8 hours, and that’s enough that they’ll get me by until tomorrow.
Doug Colbert:
And I remember having a conversation with the mayor because we happened to both belong to the downtown athletic club. Baltimore is a very small town, and I’m going, “Martin, these arrests are not legit.” He says, “We got five guns off the street, that’s five less people that are going to be in danger.” I said, “But the other 95 people should never have been arrested in the first place.” He said, “Well, they shouldn’t have been out in the street.” I said, “Martin, they have fines that they didn’t pay.”
Lester Spence:
I think when Martin O’Malley was mayor, I think over a three-year period, he made more arrests than Baltimore had black citizens. So each of those arrests ends up leaving a mark. Leaves a mark on the individual, leaves a mark on that individual’s family. And as much as those arrests are concentrated in certain types of neighborhood, it leaves marks on those neighborhoods.
Taya Graham:
So the protests had been going on for days, and Marilyn Mosby calls a press conference. So at the time, everyone was a little bit nervous. No one was sure what was going to be said, but we knew it was going to be important.
Michael Wilkins:
And you have a brand new city-state’s attorney, Marilyn Mosby, who nobody thought would win, who was an extreme outsider fighting against the system just being a black woman and running for city-state’s attorney. And she wanted to show that she was different.
Taya Graham:
So she calls a press conference in front of the War Memorial, and it seemed like the entire world was there. There were reporters from across the country, and even international reporters were there to listen to what SAO Marilyn Mosby had to say.
Marilyn Mosby:
First and foremost, I need to express publicly my deepest sympathies for the family of the loved ones of Mr. Freddie Gray. I had the opportunity to meet with Mr. Gray’s family to discuss some of the details of the case and the procedural steps going forward. I assured his family that no one is above the law and that I would pursue justice on their behalf to the thousands of city residents, community organizers, faith leaders, and political leaders that chose to march peacefully throughout Baltimore, I commend your courage to stand for justice. The findings of our comprehensive, thorough and independent investigation coupled with the medical examiner’s determination that Mr. Gray’s death was a homicide which we received today, has led us to believe that we have probable cause to file criminal charges. The statement of probable cause is as follows.
Lester Spence:
So Marilyn Moseley was one of the beneficial… It’s complicated, but her election was one of the beneficial consequences of organizing. She had far less money, if any, than her person she was running against, and she ran on the platform of holding police accountable.
Taya Graham:
City state’s attorney Marilyn Mosby walks out to the memorial and she drops a bomb that she’s charging all six officers. As much as it was what people in the community wanted, I think we were all shocked that was actually really happening.
Speaker 21:
This morning at seven o’clock, I said, on one of the national networks that I would trust, whatever Marilyn Mosby did. I didn’t know that a decision would be coming down today. And the other thing that I said was this, that I believe with all my heart that she would take the facts, once she did all the research she needed to do, size it up with the law and make the right decision. And I said this morning before I knew any of this, that whatever her decision would be because of her integrity and the fact that I believe in her, that I would accept that decision.
Tawanda Jones:
I was so shocked that Marilyn Mosby stood up because I never saw a state prosecutor stand up and say, “You know what? You all hold your peace while I get accountability, gave the greatest speech that I have ever heard.”
[VIDEO CLIP] Marilyn Mosby:
To the youth of this city, I will seek justice on your behalf. This is a moment. This is your moment. Let’s ensure that we have peaceful and productive rallies that will develop structural and systemic changes for generations to come.
Tawanda Jones:
And I’m like, “Oh my God.” I’m at work. I’m in tears. I didn’t know, because I’m thinking in my mind, “Nobody’s going to be charged. They didn’t charge nobody in my brother case.” But when she came out with those words, I’m like, “Oh my God,” and that speech was profound. I’m like, yes,
D. Watkins:
I know it didn’t make her a lot of friends, but at the same time, it made her a hero to a lot of people. So a lot of people, they still talk about that, but on one side, and then a lot of people on the other side can’t stand her for that.
Michael Wilkins:
She wanted to show that her constituency matter to her. That she was going to stand up for them and with them, because she is part of them and she charged them. She charged those officers like they should be charged.
Doug Colbert:
What prosecutor state’s attorney Mosby did, which she really has never gotten the full credit for, is that she handled that case so differently from the way that most criminal prosecutions against police officers would take place. So in the first instance, she did not allow the police to investigate police officers because the outcome of that situation, not just here in Baltimore but throughout the country, was that there would never be charges filed.
Taya Graham:
But as soon as she announced those charges, the pushback from law enforcement began even before the trial. There were, let’s say, advocates on behalf of the law enforcement industrial complex in Baltimore city that were going on CNN, lawyers who were calling her juvie league and saying that she was rushing to judgment. There was an entire media blitz to discredit Mosby from the very beginning of her actually announcing those charges, let alone the trial itself.
Doug Colbert:
Steve, I think what people forget is how close the prosecution came to convicting Officer Porter, who was the first to go on trial. As I recall, the jury went out late Monday afternoon, probably around four o’clock if I recall, and they deliberated very little on Monday. They had a full day on Tuesday. On Wednesday, they sent a note to the judge in the afternoon saying that they had not reached a verdict, and the judge had Thursday, there was a holiday weekend coming up, as I remember. The judge easily could have allowed them to deliberate some part of Thursday at least to see if they could have resolved their difference. Surprisingly, the judge did not do so, and that’s when the mistrial took place. But I think that outcome really scared the bejesus out of the police union because they saw how close a jury of 12 people came to convicting the first officer.
Taya Graham:
I sat in that courtroom, and I can tell you, even though there had been a lot of chatter about how Judge Williams was going to be a fair judge, he was an honest judge and a forthright judge. When I was sitting in that courtroom, I couldn’t help but feel like the fix was in.
Dayvon Love:
So I think the officers that participated in arresting Freddie Gray that ultimately led to his death, them being clear, is, I think, a little complicated. There is a natural relationship between the prosecutor and law enforcement. So in some ways there’s an inherent structural mismatch between the notion of a prosecutor holding police accountable, and having the tools that when a prosecutor decides to do that, having the tools to do that, because you need law enforcement in order to do the investigations, in order to hold them accountable.
D. Watkins:
And I tell people, I don’t claim to be an expert on anything, but it is hard to be a revolutionary, identify as a revolutionary, and work as a prosecutor. If you want to be loved by the masses, you got to go be a public defender.
[VIDEO CLIP] Marilyn Mosby:
There were individual police officers that were witnesses to the case, yet were part of the investigative team, interrogations that were conducted without asking the most poignant questions, lead detectives that were completely uncooperative and started a counter investigation to disprove the state’s case by not executing search warrants pertaining to text messages among the police officers involved in the case.
Dayvon Love:
So in terms of them being cleared, for me, it is a result of the structural mismatch between the fact that law enforcement in many respects, as a matter of policy, had developed a structure where they’re the only ones that could investigate. And so with just the culture of the blue wall of silence, it makes it nearly impossible
Michael Wilkins:
When those cops, when those six policemen were exonerated, I don’t want to sound cliche, but it was just deflation. It was an air balloon with the oxygen being turned off. But at the same time, I’m old enough and I’m wise enough to realize that police is a very powerful beast with a very powerful ying and a very long reach. And they stay together, they stick together. There’s not too many juries and judges around that’s going to facilitate willfully their incarceration.
Dayvon Love:
And there are ways that both her deciding to indict those officers and prosecute marked her in ways that was detrimental to her and her family. But it was a net positive to have a person in that seat who took the positions that she ended up having to take. It was a net positive. I think it helped us on police accountability, juvenile justice. Her being there really helped in some of the policy work that we’ve done on a lot of relevant issues. And I think the targeting of her in many ways was not just about her, the individual. It was about her policy platform and pushing back against it.
Taya Graham:
So after the Uprising, the Baltimore City government makes a really extraordinary choice, and that choice was to give a billionaire a $600 million tax break to build out Port Covington.
[VIDEO CLIP] Stephanie Rawlings-Blake:
So my office began working with Sagamore Development months ago to make sure that all of the people of Baltimore benefited from Port Covington.
Lester Spence:
And as much as that’s all occurring within a dynamic in which Baltimore is being hollowed out in social service provision, and they’re giving tax breaks to a combination of high income earners and then to either corporate actors like Under Armour or even like my employer, like Hopkins, who doesn’t pay taxes, it ends up creating this hollowed out city in which I think the word that comparative politics or IR scholars would use to describe Baltimore if it were a nation, I think the term is Garrison State. It’s a state in which most of its governing resources are put into policing.
Taya Graham:
This tax break of $600 million going to a billionaire is going to allow him to build out Port Covington, also now known as the Baltimore Peninsula. Now, this area is isolated from the rest of Baltimore City, so the amenities, the luxury apartments, the Under Armour headquarters, none of this is actually going to benefit city residents.
Lester Spence:
The degree to which there were some actors who were able to benefit far more than others, and that in some ways, even though the priorities shifted, they didn’t shift, they shifted, right? So they shift a little bit, but not enough where giving a $600 million basically tax write off to a major development actor wasn’t deemed to be abnormal. It was still business as usual.
Tawanda Jones:
Again, it’s just a capitalist system that perpetuates off of poor people and use our paying for its game, just like they built a Freddie Gray community center. What is the Freddie Gray community center? How is it helping black and brown folks, or needy folks? What is it doing? Do anybody know what is it doing?
Jill P. Carter:
Where you spend your money is indicative of your priorities and your moral code, your moral compass. So if you’re spending your resources or expending resources to help billionaires while you have neighborhoods of people starving, that shows you the priorities. And that’s indicative of the leadership of the city that’s always been in place. I’m born and raised in Baltimore, and I wasn’t always astute about decisions of leadership and how they affected everyone, but when you look at the entire history of the city, we’ve always had leadership and an establishment that feeds the rich and starves the poor.
D. Watkins:
Freddie Gray got robbed by one of those settlement companies. You’re supposed to get a lead check for like a half a million dollars, and they come through with like 15, 20 cash, it was something criminal like that. So it’s like you’re being preyed upon by the people at the corner store, you’re getting preyed upon by the payday loan people, you’re getting preyed upon by some of the ripoff preachers. So many different people are just picking at you, and you got to exist in that reality. And then you got a world of people speaking on your behalf, and they don’t fuck with you either, in a real way.
Tawanda Jones:
It’s the haves and the have-nots. They take care of what they want to take care and neglect what they want to neglect. And the saddest part, they get more money in the city than they do anywhere else. And then they take our money and run with it, and take care of what they want to take care of, and leave people in food deserts, leave them. It is the same exact way. And in fact, it’s getting worse.
Taya Graham:
It was a hastily called press conference at City Hall. Mayor Catherine Pugh, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and Police Commissioner Kevin Davis announced they had reached an agreement over how to reform the Baltimore City Police Department.
[VIDEO CLIP] Catherine Pugh:
I want to say that the agreement recognizes that the city’s Baltimore Police Department has begun some critical reform, however, there is much more to be done.
Taya Graham:
A process that started last year with the release of a damning report that revealed the Baltimore City Police engaged in unconstitutional and racist policing. But the devil was in the details. Among them, a civilian oversight taskforce charged with assessing and recommending changes to the city’s civilian review process, requirements that suspects are seatbelted when transported, and that cameras are installed in all vans. It also included additional training and emphasis on de-escalation tactics.
Doug Colbert:
The federal consent decree is the best thing that has happened in legal circles since Freddie Gray’s killing. And I say that because once you have a federal judge monitoring police behavior and police conduct, and Judge Bredar, another unsung hero has been doing so for the last, what, eight years, and he doesn’t just bring people in to pat them on the back. He’s always demanding, “What are you doing to control that practice?”
Dayvon Love:
So what I’m about to say is not super popular. So initially when the consent decree was conceived, I wasn’t super excited about it. And I think sometimes people say “consent decree”, but aren’t even entirely clear structurally what it is. It is in essence an agreement between the federal government and local jurisdiction that we would sue you, but we won’t unless you meet these certain standards and obligations in order to withdraw any potential legal action. So that is in essence structurally what a consent decree is. And so the consent decree doesn’t impact policy as much as it impacts the internal practices of the institution of the police department.
Jill P. Carter:
Right on the heels of the consent decree, there’s an entire unconstitutional lockdown because an officer is possibly shot and killed in one of the neighborhoods.
[VIDEO CLIP] Jill P. Carter:
The idea of making people understand that we understand that we’re valuable, I think that the message of what they did because of the detective’s homicide or potential homicide versus the lack of that kind of action with the other 60 or so people that were killed in West Baltimore this year.
[VIDEO CLIP] Speaker:
The second day when this was locked down, this board should have went to the media and said, “You’re in violation.”
Jill P. Carter:
Now every day, there are people that are not officers that are shot and killed, and we don’t have lockdowns of entire neighborhoods. That shows you that the priorities were no different even after the consent decree.
D. Watkins:
These questions are really complex, and it’s hard to give a straight answer, and I’m going to tell you why. If I’m living as an outlaw, I don’t give a fuck about a consent decree. I’m an outlaw, I’m not thinking about that shit. I’m not even watching… I love Debra Wynn, I’m not watching them talk about the dissent decree. You know what I’m saying? So it’s not even a part of my reality. So there’s nobody who’s like, “Yo, I’m going to be a bigger criminal because the police officers are nice now.”
Doug Colbert:
At that time, the police were still being extremely aggressive. The Gun Trace Task Force had been in effect and operating for probably six years. And so on the street, people knew about the hitters. I mean, they would just jump out of their car and they would go after whoever they wanted. And there was no regulation, there was no supervision.
Michael Wilkins:
For years, very passive, and it was part of that, them not working for the city and working for Marilyn Mosby, they would just not do it. And I believe that it was a complete call of duty for them not to perform their duties and tasks. I really strongly believe that.
Taya Graham:
I recently went to Gilmore Homes in order to speak to residents, and I have to be quite straight with you that it doesn’t look that much different than it did in 2015 when I was reporting from Gilmore Homes. Even as I was standing on the playground, there was a woman there picking up broken glass so the children wouldn’t be injured. As I looked across the street from the playground, I saw that the row houses that were connected, one of them was burned out in the middle. I mean, imagine having your home connected to a completely burned out and abandoned home.
Dayvon Love:
So I think what has happened in the 10 years since the death of Freddie Gray and the Baltimore uprising, it’s mixed. I think that one of the biggest outcomes of the uprising was that I think there was recognition of the demand for more black community control of institutions and more investment in black folks’ capacity collectively to have control of major institutions.
Doug Colbert:
We have to be investing in our schools, we have to be investing in our kids. It’s not that complex. And it doesn’t mean we’re going to succeed for everyone. And if we succeeded for half of the people, that would be enormous, because that would set an example for the other half. Right now, once you get a criminal record, once you get a criminal conviction, your chances of getting a good job have decreased considerably. In wealthy neighborhoods, we often will give enormous tax benefits, and that makes it, I guess, the profit-
And that makes it, I guess, the profit margin higher. But we’re talking about a city which has a very high poverty rate and a very high low income rate. And we’re just neglecting so many people.
Michael Wilkins:
No, it hasn’t changed and it won’t change. It won’t ever change. That’s the hood, that’s the ghetto. That’s where lower income Black folks are relegated to. That’s their designation. That’s their station. That’s where they’re from. That’s the way it will always be. Gilmor Homes, that whole West Baltimore area is huge. So to change the whole area, you have to change that huge amount of real estate and space. And what are you going to do? What developer is going to walk in there and step on those? And then what do you do with the people when you try to redevelop it? So no, it’s not going to change. It hasn’t changed. Nothing’s changed. Poverty is poverty. Poverty is necessary, some people believe, and Gilmor Homes faces the brunt of that belief.
Jill P. Carter:
It’s possible that 10 years ago, if you had asked me if I thought that was possible or if I had some optimism about what might happen, I probably would’ve said yes. But 10 years later, having watched what has occurred since then, no, I’m not surprised at all. There’s no real interest in… There’s a belief that the people that have been ignored, neglected, deprived, criminalized, demonized, are always going to be that way and it’s just okay. We got to always have some group of people that we can just prey on. Do you know what I mean? Do I think anyone in leadership is that crass or that insensitive? No, but it’s a subconscious kind of thinking.
Dayvon Love:
The decline in homicides and non-fatal shootings the last few years in Baltimore City I think is one of the most important things to discuss and I think it has national implications.
Doug Colbert:
In some ways, we certainly have improved. I always like to start with the positive, especially in these times when sometimes it’s difficult to find positive, but our murder rate has decreased almost in half. I mean, whoever expected it would ever go under 200. And that reflects maybe a different approach to policing. I don’t get as many complaints or reports from citizens. I’m not saying they don’t happen, but I used to get regular calls, “We need your help. We need you to look at this.”
Dayvon Love:
So let’s just start with just the facts of where we are. Baltimore City Police Department for the past several years has said that it has a shortage of officers. So they’re having trouble recruiting officers, retaining officers, and therefore they will claim numbers between maybe 500 to almost sometimes, let’s say, a thousand short in terms of police officers in Baltimore City. What has happened simultaneously are precipitous declines and homicides and non-fatal shootings. So the argument that we have a police shortage, but homicides and non-fatal shootings go down that the case that makes is that law enforcement is not central to addressing public safety. The historic investments, and this is where the current mayor, Brandon Scott, should get a lot of credit. One of the first mayors to make the level of historic investments and community-based violence prevention. And what that means pretty simply is investing in people who are formerly involved in street activity, clergy that are really engaged and on the ground level, and a variety of other practitioners from the community and historic investments in their work to mediate conflicts, to prevent conflicts.
Jill P. Carter:
I do give credit to some of the violence intervention efforts that have sprung up since Freddie Gray and definitely since George Floyd. I don’t just give credit to the grassroots and neighborhood-based organizations actually to some of the political leaderships credit, they’ve funded and resource some of these organizations in ways they never had before. That is helpful, 100% helpful. But I also believe that I don’t understand why nobody ever looks at the decrease in population as well. You’re always going to have lower numbers if you have less, fewer people. What I would like to see it change, I would like the same way that it protects white folks. I would like for it protect brown and Black folks too, the same way it gives white privilege, we need Black privilege. That’s what I would like.
Michael Wilkins:
I think 10 years post Freddie Gray uprising, I think it has changed the city in the sense that the residents feel a certain compatriotism, they feel tied to each other. They feel as though they’re a collective, that they can move as one, that they can achieve goals, that if they stick together, if they hang together, if they are together, then they can move forward.
D. Watkins:
Invest in the residents, not just with money, but with ideas and that main idea being that this city is yours. It’s yours. You should love it and you should nurture it and you should take care of it because you can own a piece of it too. This is your city. It’s not a place where you rent. It’s not a place where you’re visiting. It’s not a place where you’re here until something tragic happens to you, this is yours.
Taya Graham:
Looking back 10 years after the uprising, I have a hope I didn’t before. And that’s because I have seen community organizers and activists and just community members actually feel like if they raise their voices, they can be heard. And I have seen incredible work from our community organizers going to the Maryland legislature asking for reform, crafting legislation.
Doug Colbert:
The criminal justice system always can be improved, always, but there are signs at least that lawyers are fighting for their clients. I always want them to fight harder for their clients. So we have a place to start. And if we can just keep adding to that and adding more resources to all of those different areas, I think we’re going to have a bright future.
Dayvon Love:
I think for me to overcome the narrative so that people aren’t freaked out by Black folks that are self-determined and that taking that posture doesn’t mean I dislike white people, but it is clear that there is no form of freedom where me being self-determined should be a threat to the space if folks are serious about liberation.
Jill P. Carter:
I’m always going to have hope because I’m always going to want to see people do better. I’m always going to want to see political leadership be better for all the people. But at this moment, I could honestly say I’ve been disappointed for the most part in what I’ve seen. But there’s always hope. Let me tell you, every generation there’s something that happens, some events that kind of galvanizes people around. And so I’m sure that there will be things in the future who’ll do the same thing.
D. Watkins:
Obviously we know a lot of people didn’t care when it happened and they don’t care now. A lot of people started off on their little activist journey and then they realized they weren’t going to get no bread, so they went and did something else. But there’s a whole lot of people who remember that, who remember those curfews, who remember seeing those tanks, who remember what happened, and they started moving differently as a result. And I think that’s important too. I’ve known some people that have passed and didn’t really have an opportunity to mobilize a city like that. I think his life mattered and I think his life put a whole lot of people on the journey towards being better people.
One year ago, Columbia University became ground zero for the student-led Gaza solidarity encampment movement that spread to campuses across the country and around the world. Now, Columbia has become ground zero for the Trump administration’s authoritarian assault on higher education, academic freedom, and the right to free speech and free assembly—all under the McCarthyist guise of rooting out “anti-semitism.” From Trump’s threats to cancel $400 million in federal grants and contracts with Columbia to the abduction of international students like Mahmoud Khalil by ICE agents, to the university’s firing and expulsion of Student Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers union president Grant Miner, “a tremendous chilling effect” has gripped Columbia’s campus community. In this urgent episode of Working People, we speak with: Caitlin Liss, a PhD candidate in history at Columbia University and a member of Student Workers of Columbia-UAW (SWC); and Allie Wong, a PhD student at the Columbia Journalism School and a SWC member who was arrested and beaten by police during the second raid on the Gaza solidarity protests at Columbia on April 30, 2024.
Additional links/info:
Student Workers of Columbia-UAW Local 2710 website
April 17: Day of Action to Defend Higher Ed website
Studio Production: Maximillian Alvarez Post-Production: Jules Taylor
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and today we are continuing our urgent coverage of the Trump Administration’s all out assault on our institutions of higher education and the people who live, learn and work there. Today we are going deeper into the heart of authoritarian darkness that has gripped colleges and universities across the country and we’re talking with two graduate student workers at Columbia University. Columbia has become ground zero for the administration’s gangster government style moves to hold billions of dollars of federal funding hostage in order to bend universities to Donald Trump’s will to reshape the curricula culture and research infrastructure of American higher ed as such and to squash our constitutionally protected rights to free speech and free assembly, all under the McCarthy’s guise of rooting out supposed antisemitism, which the administration has recategorized to mean virtually any criticism of an opposition to the state of Israel.
The political ideology of Zionism and Israel’s US backed genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians just one year ago. Columbia University was also ground zero for the student-led Palestine solidarity protests and encampments that spread to campuses across the country and even around the world. It was exactly one year ago that the first Gaza solidarity encampment began at Columbia on April 17th, 2024 and that same month on more than one occasion, Columbia’s own president at the time minutia authorized the NYPD to descend on campus like an occupying force, beat an arrest protestors and dismantle the camps. Now fast forward to March of this year. On Friday, March 7th, the Trump administration announced that it was canceling $400 million in federal grants and contracts with Columbia claiming that the move was due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students. The very next day, March 8th Mahmud, Khalil was abducted by ICE agents at his New York City apartment building in front of his pregnant wife and disappeared to a Louisiana immigration jail.
Khalil, a Palestinian born legal resident with a green card had just completed his master’s program and was set to graduate in May. He had served as a key negotiator with the university administration and spokesperson for the student encampment last year. He’s not accused of breaking any laws during that time, but the Trump administration has weaponized a rarely used section of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, invoking the Secretary of States power to deport non-citizens if they supposedly believed their presence in the country could negatively affect US foreign policy. Just days after Khalil’s abduction, the university also expelled grant minor president of the Student Workers of Columbia Union, a local of the United Auto Workers, and that was just one day before contract negotiations were set to open between the union and the university. On March 13th, I was expelled from Columbia University for participating in the protest movement against the ongoing genocide in Gaza, minor rights in an op-ed for the nation.
I was not the only one. He continues, 22 students, all of whom like me had been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, were either expelled, suspended for years or had their hard earned degrees revoked on the same day all for allegedly occupying a building that has been occupied at least four times throughout Columbia’s history. And then there’s Y Sao Chung, a 21-year-old undergraduate and legal permanent resident who is suing the government after ICE moved to deport her, following her arrest on March 5th while protesting Columbia’s disciplinary actions against student protestors. I mean, this is just a small, terrifying snapshot of the broader Orwellian nightmare that has become all too real, all too quickly at Columbia University and it is increasingly becoming reality around the country and things got even darker last week with the latest development in Mahmood Khalil’s case as the American Civil Liberties Union stated on Friday in a decision that appeared to be pre-written, an immigration judge ruled immediately after a hearing today that Mahmud Khalil is removable under US immigration law. This comes less than 48 hours after the US government handed over the evidence they have on Mr. Khalil, which included nothing more than a letter from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that made clear Mr. Khalil had not committed a crime and was being targeted solely based on his speech. He’s not yet scheduled for deportation.
Listen, this isn’t just a redux of McCarthyism and the red scare. It has elements of that absolutely, but it is also monstrously terrifyingly new. I don’t know how far down this road we’re going to go. All I know is that whatever comes next will depend on what people of conscience do now or what they don’t do. Will other universities cave and capitulate to Trump as quickly as Columbia has? Will we see instead faculty, staff, students, grad students, parents, community members and others coming together on campuses across the country to fight this or will fear submission silence and self-censorship went out? What is it even like to be living, working and studying at Columbia University right now? Well, today you’ll hear all about that firsthand from our two guests. With all of this going on, I got to speak with Caitlin Liss, a PhD candidate in history at Columbia University and a member of Student workers of Columbia, and I also spoke with Alie Wong, a PhD student at the Columbia Journalism School, and a student workers of Columbia member who was arrested and beaten by police during the second raid on the Gaza solidarity protests at Columbia on April 30th, 2024.
Here’s my conversation with Caitlin and Allie recorded on Saturday April 12th. Well, Caitlin, Allie, thank you both so much for joining us today on the show. I really appreciate it, especially in the midst of everything going on right now. And I basically wanted to start there and ask if you could tell us from your own firsthand experience as student workers at Columbia, like what is the mood on campus and in your life right now, especially in light of the latest ruling on Mahmud Khalil’s case?
Caitlin Liss:
Okay. Yeah, so thank you for having us. I’m happy to be here. The mood on campus has been, you probably won’t be surprised to hear pretty bleak, pretty bad. We found out yesterday that Mahmood Kalila is not going to be released from jail in Louisiana. I think a lot of us were hoping that this ruling that was coming up was going to be in his favor and he would be released and be back home in time to be there for the birth of his baby. And it didn’t happen. And I think it’s just another horrible thing that has happened in a month, two months of just unrelenting bad news on campus. So stuff is feeling pretty bad. People are afraid, especially international students are afraid to leave their house. They’re afraid to speak up in class. I hear from people who are afraid to go to a union meeting and even those of us who are citizens feel afraid as well.
I mean, I wake up every day and I look at my phone to see if I’ve gotten a text message telling me that one of my friends has been abducted. It’s really scary. And on top of the sort of personal relationships with our friends and comrades who are at risk, there’s the sense that also our careers are industry are at risk. So, and many other members of student workers of Columbia have spent many years dedicated to getting a PhD and being in academia and it’s increasingly starting to feel like academia might not exist for that much longer. So it’s feeling pretty bleak.
Allie Wong:
Yeah, I would definitely agree. And again, thank you so much Max for having us here. It’s a real pleasure to be able to share our stories and have a platform to do that. Yeah, I would agree. I think that there is a tremendous chilling effect that’s sunk in across the campus. And on one hand it’s not terribly surprising considering that’s the strategy of the Trump administration on the other. It is really a defeating feeling to see the momentum that we had last year, the ways that we were not only telling the story but telling it across the world that all eyes were on Columbia and we had this really incredible momentum. And so to see not just that lack of momentum, but the actual fear that has saturated the entire campus that has indiscriminately permeated people’s attitudes, whether you’re an American citizen or not, whether you’re light-skinned or not, has been something that’s been incredibly harrowing.
I know that after Mahmood, I at least had the anticipation of quite a bit of activity, but between that ranjani the other students and Columbia’s capitulation, it actually has gone the opposite way in that while I expected there to be tons of masks on campus after Columbia agreed to have a total mask ban, there was no one when I expected to see different vigils or protests or the breakdown of silos that have emerged across the campus of different groups, whether they’re student groups or faculty groups, I’m just hoping to see some kind of solidarity there. It hasn’t, and I think it’s largely because of the chilling effect because that this is the strategy of the Trump administration and unfortunately it’s such a dire situation that I think it’s really squashed a lot of the fervor and a lot of the fearlessness that many of us had prior to this moment.
Maximillian Alvarez:
It feels like a ice pick to the heart to hear that, especially knowing not just what we saw on campuses across the country just a year ago, but also the long tradition of campus protests and universities and higher education being a place of free speech, free thought free debate and the right to protest and lead with a moral consciousness like movements that help direct the whole of society to see that this is what is happening here now in front of all of us. And since I have so much more, I want to ask about the past month for you both on campus, but while we’re on that subject that Allie just brought up about the expectation right now, which I have heard echoed a lot of places online and offline of why aren’t there mass protests across higher ed in every state in the country right now, you would think that the generation of the sixties would do just that if Nixon had tried such a thing. And a lot of folks have been asking us why aren’t we seeing that right now? And so I wanted to ask if y’all had any thoughts on that and also if that would in your mind change things like if you saw other campuses that weren’t being targeted as intently as Columbia is, if you saw students and faculty and others protesting on behalf of what’s happening to you, would that change the mood on campus you think?
Caitlin Liss:
I mean that there’s a few things going on. Part of it is, like Allie said, the chilling effect of what’s been happening is making a really large percentage of our members and people in our community afraid to publicly take action. International student workers make up a really big percentage of our membership, and a lot of those people are afraid to even sign their name to a petition. In my departments. We sent a joint letter to the departments about what was going on, and a bunch of students didn’t want their names appearing on this letter that was just being sent the chair of the departments. So the chilling effect is real and very strong, and I think that that’s preventing a lot of people from showing up in ways that they might have done otherwise. I think that another part of it is just the kind of unrelenting nature of what’s been happening.
It has been one horrible thing after another and trying to react to everything as it comes in is difficult, but I don’t think it’s the case that we’re not doing anything. We are doing quite a bit and really trying through many different avenues to use our power as a union to fight back against what’s happening. We are talking with other unions on campus, we talk to other higher ed unions across the country, and so I think that there is quite a lot going on, but it does sometimes feel like we can’t keep up with the pace of the things that are happening just because they are happening so quickly and accumulating so fast.
Allie Wong:
Yeah, I mean I would definitely agree. I think that it’s the fire hose strategy, which has proven to be effective not just on Columbia but across the nation with the dismantling of the federal government attack on institutions, the arts, the legal processes and legal entities. And so I think that again, that that’s part of the strategy is to just overwhelm people with the number of issues that would require attention. And I think that’s happening on Columbia’s campus as well. If we take even divestment as an example where it was a pretty straightforward ask last year, but now we’re seeing an issue on campus where it’s no longer about Palestine, Israel divestment, it’s about immigration reform and law enforcement. It’s about the American dream class consciousness. So many of these different things that are happening not just to the student body, but to faculty and the administration.
And so I think that in terms of trying to galvanize people, it’s a really difficult ask when you have so many different things that are coming apart at the seams. And that’s not to say it’s an insurmountable task. As Caitlin mentioned, we are moving forward, we are putting infrastructure in place and asks in place, but I think it’s difficult to mobilize people around so many different issues when everyone already feels not only powerless but cynical about the ability to change things when again, that momentum that we had last year has waned and the issues have broadened.
Caitlin Liss:
Just in terms of your question about support or solidarity from other campuses, I think that one of the things that has been most dispiriting about being at Columbia right now is that it’s clear that Columbia is essentially a test case for the Trump administration. We were the first school to be and are still in many ways kind of the center of attention, but it’s not just us, but it feels like the way that Columbia is reacting is kind of setting the tone for what other universities and colleges can do across the country. And what Columbia is doing is folding, so they are setting an example that is just rolling over and giving up in terms of what other colleges can do. I think we’re seeing other universities are reacting to these kinds of attacks in ways that are much better than Columbia has done. We just saw that Tufts, I think filed some legal documents in support of Ru Mesa Ozturk because she is a student there.
Columbia has done no such thing for Ranjani, for Uno, for Mahmood. They haven’t even mentioned them. And so we can see other universities are reacting in ways that are better. And I think that that gives us hope and not only gives us hope, but it gives us also something to point to when people at Columbia say, well, Columbia can’t do things any differently. It’s like, well, clearly it can because these other universities are doing something. Columbia doesn’t have to be doing this. It is making a choice to completely give in to everything that Trump is demanding.
Allie Wong:
And I would also add to that point, and going back to your question about Mahmood and sort of how either us individually or collectively are feeling about that, to Caitlin’s point, I think there’s so much that’s symbolic about Columbia, whether it has to do with Trump’s personal pettiness or the fact that it was kind of the epicenter of the encampments list last year. I think what happened with Mahmood is incredibly symbolic. If you look at particularly him and Ranjani, the first two that were targeted by the university, so much of their situations are almost comical in how they planned the ambiguity of policy and antisemitism where you look at Mahmud and he, it’s almost funny that he was the person who was targeted because he’s an incredibly calm, gentle person. He provided a sense of peace during the chaos of last year. He’s unequivocally condemned, Hamas, very publicly condemned terrorism, condemned antisemitism.
So if you were looking for someone who would be a great example, he’s not really one considering they don’t have any evidence on him. And the same thing for Ranjani who literally wasn’t even in the country when October 7th happened in that entire year, had never participated in the protests at most, had kind of engaged with social media by liking things, but two really good examples of people who don’t actually quite fit the bill in terms of trying to root out antisemitism. But in my mind it’s really strategic because it really communicates that nobody is safe. Whether you’ve participated in protests or not, you’re not safe, whether you’ve condemned antisemitism or not, you’re not safe. And I think that plays into the symbolic nature of Columbia as well, where Trump is trying to make an example out of Columbia and out of Columbia students. And we see that very clearly in the ruling yesterday with Mahmud.
Again, that’s not to say that it’s not an insurmountable thing, but it’s disappointing and it’s frankly embarrassing to be a part of an institution that brags about its long history of protests, its long history of social change through student movements. When you look at 1968 and Columbia called the NYPD on students arrested 700 students, and yet it kind of enshrines that moment in history as a place of pride, and I see that happening right now as well where 20, 30, 50 years from now, we’ll be looking at this moment and Columbia will be proud of it when really they’re the perpetrators of violence and hatred and bigotry and kind of turning the gun on their own students. So yeah, it’s a really precarious time to be a Columbia student and to be advocating for ourselves and our friends, our brothers and sisters who are experiencing this kind of oppression and persecution from our own country.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Allie, Caitlin, I want to ask if we could again take that step back to the beginning of March where things were this terrifying new reality was really ramping up with the Trump administration’s freezing and threatening of completely withholding $400 million in federal funds and grants to Columbia just one day before Mahmood Khalil was abducted by ice agents and disappeared to a jail in Louisiana thousands of miles away. So from that point to now, I wanted to ask, as self-identified student workers at Columbia University, how have you and others been feeling throughout all of this as it’s been unfolding and trying to get through your day-to-day work? What does that even look like? Teaching and researching under these terrifying circumstances?
Allie Wong:
For me, it has been incredibly scary. As you mentioned, I was someone who was arrested and beaten last year after the second Gaza solidarity encampment raid and have spoken quite publicly about it. I authored a number of pieces around that time and since then and have been pretty open about my involvement being okay serving as a lightning rod for a lot of that PR stuff. And so for me, coming into this iteration of students battles with the university, it’s been really scary to kind see how many of the students that I was arrested with, many of my friends and colleagues are now either being targeted because of their involvement or living in the fear of being targeted because there is an opacity around what those policies are and how they’re being enforced and implemented. So it really does feel quite McCarthys in the sense that you don’t really know what the dangers are, but you know that they’re there, you’re looking over your shoulder all the time.
I don’t leave my house without wearing a mask just because through this whole process, many students have been doxed. Both Caitlin and myself have been doxed quite heavily through Canary mission and other groups online, and many folks have experienced offline behavior that has been threatening or scary to their own physical emotional security. And so that’s been a big piece for me is just being aware of my surroundings, being mindful of when I leave the house. In many respects, it does feel like I am growing in paranoia, but at the same time I consider it a moral obligation to be on the front lines as a light-skinned US citizen to be serving as a literal and figurative shield for my international brothers and sisters. And so it’s an interesting place as particularly a US citizen to say, what is my responsibility to the people around me?
What’s my responsibility to myself and keeping myself and my home safe? What’s my responsibility for sticking up for those who are targeted as someone who has the privilege of being able to be a citizen? And so I think it’s kind of a confusing time for those of us on the ground wanting to do more, wanting to help, wanting to offer our assistance with the privileges that we have and everyone’s level of comfort is different, and so my expectation is not that other people would take the kinds of risks I’m taking, but everyone has a part to play and whether that’s a visual part or a non-visual part, being in the public, it doesn’t really matter. We all have a part to play. And so given what we talked about just about the strategy of the Trump administration and the objectives to make us fearful and make us not speak out, I think it’s more important now than ever for those of us who are able to have the covering of US citizenship, to be doing everything in our power with the resources we’ve been given to take those risks because it’s much more important now in this administration than it’s ever been.
Caitlin Liss:
And I think on top of the stuff allie’s talking about, we do still have to continue doing our jobs. So for me, that is teaching. I’m teaching a class this semester and that has been very challenging to do, having to continue going in and talking about the subject matter, which is stuff that is very interesting to me personally and that I’m very excited to be teaching about in the classroom, but at the same time, there’s so much going on campus, it just feels impossible to be turning our attention to Ana and I hear from my students are scared, so part of my job has become having to help my students through that. I have heard lots of people who are trying to move their classes off campus because students don’t want to be on campus right now.
ICE is crawling all over campus. The NYPD is all over the place. I don’t know if you saw this, but Columbia has agreed to hire these 36 quote peace officers who are going to be on campus and have arresting power. So now essentially we have cops on campus full time and then on top of all of that, you have to wait in these horrible security lines to even get onto campus so the environment on campus doesn’t feel safe, so my students don’t feel safe. I don’t think anyone’s students feel safe right now. My colleagues who are international students don’t feel safe. I had a friend ask me what to do because she was TAing for a class and she wasn’t allowed to move it off campus or onto Zoom, and she said, I don’t feel safe on campus because I’m an international student and what am I going to do if ice comes to the door?
I don’t know what I’m supposed to do in that situation. And so the students are scared, my colleagues are scared. I’ve even heard from a lot of professors who are feeling like they have to watch their words in the classroom because they don’t want to end up on Canary mission for having said something. So that’s quite difficult. Teaching in this environment is very difficult and I think that the students are having a really hard time. And then on top of that, I am in the sixth year of my PhD, so I’m supposed to be writing a dissertation right now, and that is also quite difficult to be keeping up with my research, which is supposed to be a big part of the PhD is producing research and it’s really hard to do right now because it feels like we have, my friends and my colleagues are at risk right now, so that’s quite difficult to maintain your attention in all those different places.
Allie Wong:
Just one more piece to add because I know that we’ve been pretty negative and it is a pretty negative situation, so I don’t want to silver line things. That being said, I do feel as though it’s been really beautiful to see people step up and really beautiful to see this kind of symbiotic relationship happening between US students and international students. I’m at the journalism school, which is overwhelmingly international, and I was really discouraged when there was a report that came out from the New York Times a couple of weeks ago about a closed town hall that we had where our dean, Jelani Cobb more or less said to students, we can’t protect you as much as I would love to be able to say here are the processes and protocols and the ways to keep yourself safe and the ways that we’re here to support you, but he just said we can’t.
And he got a lot of flack for that because that’s a pretty horrible thing for a dean to say. But I actually really appreciated it because it was the most honest and direct thing he could have said to students when the university itself was just sending us barrages of emails with these empty platitudes about values and a 270 year history of freethinking and all this nonsense. That being said, I think that it was a really difficult story to read, but at the same time it’s been really beautiful to see community gather around and clinging together when there are unknowns, people taking notes for each other when students don’t feel comfortable going to campus, students starting to host off campus happy hour groups and sit-ins together and things of that nature that have been really, again, amazing to see happen under such terrible circumstances and people just wanting to help each other out in the ways that they can.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Caitlyn, Allie, you were just giving us a pretty harrowing view of your day-to-day reality there as student workers of Columbia PhD working on your PhDs and dealing with all of this Orwellian madness that we’ve been talking about today. When I was listening to you both, I was hearing so many kind of resonances from my own experience, just one sort of decade back, right? I mean, because I remember being a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan during the first Trump administration and co-founding for full disclosure, I was a member of the grad union there. I was a co-founder of the campus anti-fascist network. I was doing a lot of public writing. I started this podcast in that sort of era, and there were so many things that y’all were talking about that sounded similar from the fear of websites like Canary Mission, putting people’s names out there and encouraging them to be doxed and disciplined and even deported.
That resonated with me because it just ate nine years ago. That was groups like Turning Point USA, they were the ones trying to film professors in class and then send it to Breitbart and hopefully get it into the Fox News outrage cycle. And I experienced some of that. But what I’m hearing also is just that the things we were dealing with during the first Trump administration are not what y’all are dealing with now. There is first and foremost a fully, the state is now part of it. The state is now sort of leading that. It’s not just the sort of far right groups and people online and that kind of thing, but also it feels like the mechanisms of surveillance and punishment are entirely different as well. I wanted to ask if y’all could speak a little more to that side of things. It’s not just the university administration that you’re contending with, you’re contending with a lot of different forces here that are converging on you and your rights at this very moment.
Caitlin Liss:
Yeah, I mean I think the one thing that has been coming up a lot for us, we’re used to fighting Columbia, the institution for our rights in the workplace for fair pay. And Columbia has always been a very stubborn adversary, very difficult to get anything out of them. Our first contract fight lasted for years, and now we’re looking at not just Columbia as someone to be fighting with, but at the federal government as a whole. And it’s quite scary. I think we talked about this a little bit, about international students being afraid to participate in protests, being afraid to go to union meetings. We’re hearing a lot of fear from people who aren’t citizens about to what extent participating in the union is safe for them right now. And on the one hand you want to say participating in a union is a protected activity.
There’s nothing illegal about it. You can’t get in trouble. In fact, it’s illegal to retaliate against you for being in a union. But on the other hand, it doesn’t necessarily feel like the law is being that protective right now. So it’s a very scary place to be in. And I think that from our point of view, the main tool we have in this moment is just our solidarity with one another and labor power as a union because the federal governments does not seem that interested in protecting our rights as a union. And so we have to rely on each other in order to fight for what we need and what will make our workplace safe.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, and I was wondering, Allie, if I could also toss it to you there, because this makes me think of something you said earlier about how the conditions at Columbia, the structure of Columbia, how Columbia’s run, have sort of made it vulnerable to what’s happening now or the ways that Columbia talks about itself versus what Columbia actually is, are quite stark here. And connecting that to what Caitlin just said, I think it should also be understood as someone who has covered grad student campaigns, contract campaigns at Columbia and elsewhere, that when these sorts of strikes are happening when graduate student workers are taking action against the administration, the first ones that are threatened by the administration with punitive measures including potentially the revocation of their visas are international students. They have always been the most vulnerable members of grad student unions that administrations have actually used as leverage to compel unions to bend to their demand. So I make that point speaking only for myself here as a journalist who has observed this in many other times, that this precedent of going after international students in the way the Trump administration is like didn’t just come out of nowhere.
Allie Wong:
Exactly. Yeah. So I mean I think if you even look at how Trump campaigned, he really doubled down on immigration policy. I mean, it’s the most obvious statement I can say, but the high hyperbole, the hatred, the racism, you see that as a direct map onto what’s happening right now. And I think that’s part of what maybe isn’t unique about Columbia, but as we’re starting to see other universities take a stand, Caitlin mentioned Tufts. I know Princeton also recently kind said that they would not capitulate. So there is precedent for something different from how Columbia has behaved, and I think you see them just playing exactly into Trump’s hands folding to his kind of proxy policy of wanting to make Colombian example. And it’s a really disappointing thing from a university that prides itself on its liberal values, prides itself on its diversity on protecting students.
When you actually see quite the opposite, not only is Columbia not just doing anything, it’s actively participating in what’s happening on campus, the fact that they have yet to even name the students who have very publicly been abducted or chased out of the country because of their complicity, the fact that they will send emails or make these statements about values, but actually not tell us anything that’s going to be helpful, like how policies will be implemented when they’re going to be implemented, what these ice agents look like, things of that nature that could be done to protect students. And also obviously not negotiating in good faith. The fact that Grant was expelled and fired the day before we had a collective bargaining meeting right before we were about to talk about protections for international students, just communicates that the university is not operating in good faith, they’re not interested in the wellbeing of their students or doing anything within their power, which is quite a tremendous power to say to the Trump administration, our students come first. Our students are an entity of us and we’re going to do whatever we can in our power to block you from demonizing and targeting international students who, as you said, are the most vulnerable people on our campus, but also those who bring so much diversity and brilliance and life to our university and our country.
Caitlin Liss:
And I think on the subject of international students, you, you’re right that they have always been in a more precarious position in higher ed unions. But on the other hand, I think that that shows us what power we do have as a union. I’m thinking. So we’ve been talking a lot about to what extent it’s safe for international workers to stay involved in the union, and our contract is expiring in June, which is why we’re having these bargaining sessions and we’re talking about going on strike next fall potentially. And there’s a lot of questions about to what extent can international students participate now because who knows what kind of protections they’re going to have? And I’ve been thinking about the last time we went on strike, it was a 10 week strike and we were striking through the end of the semester. It was the fall semester and we were still on strike when the semester ended.
And Columbia said that if we didn’t come off strike that they weren’t going to rehire the workers who were striking for the next semester. So anyone who was on strike wouldn’t get hired for a position in the spring semester and for international students that was going to affect their visa status. So it was very scary for them. And we of course said, that’s illegal. You can, that’s retaliation for us for going on strike. You can’t do that. And they said, it’s not illegal because we’re just not rehiring you. And it was this real moment of risk even though we felt much more confident in the legal protection because it felt like they could still do it and our recourse would have to be going to court and winning the case that this was illegal. So it was still very scary for international students, but we voted together to stay on strike and we held the line and Columbia did not in fact want to fire all of us who were on strike, and we won a contract anyway, even though there was this scary moment for international students even back then. And I have been telling people this story when we are thinking about protections for international students now, because I think that the moral of the story is that even under a situation where there’s a lot more legal security and legal protection, it’s still scary. And the way that you get over it being scary is by trusting that everyone coming together and standing together is what’s going to win and rather than whatever the legal protection might be.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Caitlin and Allie, I have so many more thoughts and questions, but I know that we only have about 10 minutes left here and I want to use the time that we have left with y’all to sort of tug on the thread that you were just pulling there. Caitlin, looking at this through the union’s perspective or through a labor perspective, can you frame these attacks on higher ed and the people who live, learn and work there through a labor and working workers’ rights perspective, and talk about what your message is to other union members and other people who listen to this show who are working people, union and non-union, why this is important, why they need to care and what people can do about it.
Caitlin Liss:
It’s very clear why it’s important and why other workers should care. The funding cuts to Columbia University and other universities really threaten not just the university, but the whole ecosystem of research. So these are people’s careers that are at risk and careers that not only they have an interest in having, but careers that benefit everyone in our society, people who do public health research, people who do medical research, people who do research about climate change. These are really important jobs that the opportunities to pursue them are vanishing. And so that obviously is important. And then when we’re looking at the attacks on international students, if m kil can be abducted for speaking out in support of Palestine and against the genocide and Gaza, then none of us are safe. No worker is safe if the governments can just abduct you and deport you for something like that.
On the one hand, even people who aren’t citizens are protected by the first amendments, but also it’s not clear that that’s where they’re going to stop. I think that this is a moment that we should all take very seriously. I mean, it’s very serious for the future of higher education as a whole. I feel like we are in sort of an existential fight here. And at the moment, Columbia is just completely welcoming this fascist takeover with open arms and it threatens higher ed as an institution. What kind of university is this? If the Middle Eastern studies department is being controlled by some outside force who says what they can and can’t teach, and now Trump is threatening to put all of Columbia under some consent decree, so we’re going to have to be beholden to whatever the Trump administration says we’re allowed to do on campus. So it is a major threat to higher education, but it’s also a threat I think, in a much larger sense to workers all over the country because it is sending the message that none of us are safe. No one is safe to express ourselves. We can’t expect to be safe in the workplace. And it’s really important that as a labor union that we take a stand here because it is not just destroying our workplaces, but sort of it’s threatening everyone’s workplace.
Allie Wong:
Exactly. That’s exactly what I was thinking too. I know it’s such an overused word at this point, but I think a huge aspect of this has to do with precedent and how, as we were mentioning, Columbia is so symbolic for a lot of reasons, including the fact that all eyes are on Columbia. And so when Columbia sets a precedent for what can and cannot not be done by University of Administration in caving to the federal government, I think that sets a precedent for not just academic institutions, but institutions writ large and the workers that work in those institutions. Because what happens here is happening across the federal government and will happen to institutions everywhere. And so I think it’s really critical that we bake trust back into our systems, both trust in administrations by having them prove that they do have our backs and they do care about student workers, but also that they trust student workers.
They trust us to do the really important research that keeps the heartbeat of this university alive. And I think that it’s going to crumble not just Columbia, but other academic institutions if really critical research gets defunded. Research that doesn’t just affect right now, but affects our country in perpetuity, in the kinds of opportunities that will be presented later in the future, the kinds of research that will be instrumental in making our society healthier and more equitable place in the future. And so this isn’t just a moment in time, but it’s one that absolutely will ripple out into history.
Caitlin Liss:
And we happen right now to be sort of fortunately bargaining a new contract as we speak. So like I said before, our contract is expiring in June. And so for us, obviously these kinds of issues are the top of mind when we’re thinking about what we can get in the contract. So in what way is this contract that we’re bargaining for going to be able to help us? So we’re fighting for Columbia to restore the funding cuts we’re fighting for them to instate a sanctuary campus and to reinstate grant minor, our president who was expelled, and Ronan who was enrolled, and everyone else who has been expelled or experienced sanctions because of their protests for Palestine. And so in a lot of ways, I think that the contract fight is a big part of what we’re concentrating on right now. But there’s also, there’s many unions on Columbia’s campus.
There’s the postdoc union, UAW 4,100, there’s the support staff and the Barnard contingent faculty who are UAW 2110. There’s building service employees, I think they’re 32 BJ and the maintenance staff is TW. So there’s many unions on campus. And I think about this a lot because I think what we’re seeing is we haven’t mentioned the trustees yet, I don’t think, but recently our interim president, Katrina Armstrong stepped down and was replaced by an acting president, was the former co-chair of the board of trustees Claire Shipman. And in many ways, I think what we’ve been seeing happening at Columbia is the result of the board of trustees not caving, but welcoming the things that Trump is demanding. I think that they’re complicit in this, but the board of trustees is like 21 people. There’s not very many of them. And there’s thousands of us at Columbia who actually are the people who make the university work, the students, the faculty, the staff, thousands of people in unions, thousands of non-unionized students and workers on campus as well.
And we outnumber the trustees by such a huge amount. And I think that thinking about the power we have when we all come together as the thousands of people who do the actual work of the university as opposed to these 21 people who are making decisions for us without consulting us that we don’t want, and that’s the way we have to think about reclaiming the university. I think we have to try and take back the power as workers, as students, as faculty from the board of trustees and start thinking about how we can make decisions that are in our interests.
Allie Wong:
One more thing that I wanted to call out, I’m not sure where this fits in. I think Caitlin talking about the board of trustees made me think of it is just the fact that I think that another big issue is the fact that there’s this very amorphous idea of antisemitism that all of this is being done under the banner of, and I think that it’s incredibly problematic because first of all, what is antisemitism? It’s this catchall phrase that is used to weaponize against dissent. And I think that when you look at the track record of these now three presidents that we’ve had in the past year, each of them has condemned antisemitism but has not condemned other forms of racism, including an especially Islamophobia that has permeated our campus. And because everything is done under the banner of antisemitism and you have folks like Claire Shipman who have been aligned with Zionist organizations, it also erodes the trust in of the student body, but then especially student workers, many of whom are Jewish and many of whom are having their research be threatened under the banner of antisemitism being done in their name. And yet it’s the thing that is stunting their ability to thrive at this university. And so I think that as we talk about the administration and board of trustees, just calling out the hypocrisy there of how they are behaving on campus, the ways that they’re capitulating and doing it under the guise of protecting Jewish students, but in the process of actually made Jewish students and faculty a target by not only withholding their funding but also saying that this is all to protect Jewish students but have created a more threatening environment than existed before.
Caitlin Liss:
Yeah, I mean, as a Jewish student personally, I’m about to go to my family’s Seder to talk about celebrating liberation from oppression while our friends and colleagues are sitting in jail. It’s quite depressing and quite horrific to see people saying that they’re doing this to protect Jews when it’s so clearly not the case.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, I wanted to ask in just this final two minutes that we got here, I want to bring it back down to that level to again remind folks listening that you both are student workers, you are working people just like everyone else that we talk to on this show. And I as a former graduate student worker can’t help but identify with the situation that y’all are in. But it makes me think about the conversations I had with my family when I was on the job market and I was trying to go from being a PhD student to a faculty member somewhere and hearing that maybe my political activism or my public writing would be like a mark against me in my quest to get that career that I had worked so many years for and just having that in the back of my mind. But that still seems so far away and so minuscule in comparison to what y’all are dealing with. And I just wanted to ask as act scholars, as people working on your careers as well, how are you talking to your families about this and what future in or outside of academia do you feel is still open to you and people, graduate student workers like yourselves in today’s higher ed?
Caitlin Liss:
I mean the job market for history, PhDs has been quite bad for a long time even before this. So I mean, when I started the PhD program, I think I knew that I might not get a job in academia. And it’s sad because I really love it. I love teaching especially, but at the end of the day, I don’t feel like it’s a choice to stop speaking up about what’s happening, to stop condemning what’s happening in Gaza, to stop condemning the fascist takeover of our government and the attacks on our colleagues. It’s just I can’t not say something about it. I can’t do nothing, and if it means I can’t get a job after this, that will be very sad. But I don’t think that that is a choice that I can or should make to do nothing or say nothing so that I can try and preserve my career if I have to. I’ll get another kind of job.
Allie Wong:
Yeah, I completely agree. How dare I try to protect some nice job that I could potentially have in the future when there are friends and students on campus who are running for their lives. It just is not something that’s even comparable. And so I just feel like it’s an argument a lot of folks have made that if in the future there’s a job that decides not to hire me based off of my advocacy, I don’t want that job. I want a job based off of my skills and qualifications and experience, not my opinions about a genocide that’s happening halfway across the world, that any person should feel strongly against the slaughtering of tens of thousands of children and innocent folks. If that’s an inhibitor of a potential job, then that’s not the kind of environment I want to work in anyway. And that’s a really privileged position to have. I recognize that. But I think it’s incredibly crucial to be able to couch that issue in the broader perspective of not just this horrific genocide that’s happening, but also the future of our democracy and how critical it is to be someone who is willing to take a risk for the future of this country and the future of our basic civil liberties and freedoms.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Alright, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. Once again, I want to thank our guests, Caitlin Liss and Allie Wong of Student Workers of Columbia, and I want to thank you for listening and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see you Allall back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go explore all the great work we’re doing at the Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. And we need to hear those voices now more than ever. Sign up for the real new newsletter so you never miss a story. And help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you it really makes a difference. I’m Maximilian Alvarez, take care of yourselves. Take care of each other, solidarity forever.
Mansa Musa, host of Rattling the Bars, spent 48 years in prison before his release in 2019. At the invitation of the UMD College Park Young Democratic Socialists of America, Mansa delivered a lecture on his life behind bars and the political struggles of prisoners.
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
I hope that at the end of this conversation that we have, that y’all will be more enlightened about what direction y’all want to go in in terms of changing social conditions as they exist now. As she said, my government name is Charles Hopkins. I go by the name of Mansa Musa. Prior to getting out in December the 5th, 2019, I did 48 years in prison. Prior to going to prison, I was a heroin addict, a petty criminal, and that’s what got me in prison.
I went in early, I went in ’72, and during the seventies was a tumultuous time in this country. You had Kent State, you had Attica, you had Puerto Rican nationalists taking over the hospital in Bronx, you had the rise of the Black Panther Party in terms of becoming one of the most formidable fighting formations in this country. So you had a lot going on in society, but more important, the number one thing you had going on in society during that time that cost every sector in society was the war in Vietnam. Everywhere you looked, you had protests about the war in Vietnam. And you’re talking about every day somewhere in this country, 75,000, 10,000, 15,000.
People was coming out protesting the war in Vietnam and the establishment’s response was to suppress the movement, to suppress the war in Vietnam. Anybody who was anti-war, their attitude was suppressive. And what got people in an uproar about it was when the media started showing them bringing back United States citizens bodies, and the coffins they was bringing back, they was bringing them back in numbers. So society started looking and said, “Well, this is not a good thing because a lot of people dying.”
And in my neighborhood, I lived in projects in Southeast, my brother in ’68, back then they had, the way they had the draft was, it was like the lottery. Literally that’s what it was. They had balls that rolled up and your number came up, A1, A1. In my neighborhood in the projects in Southeast, my brother graduated in ’68, and in 68, the whole entire, everybody that graduated from high school, the men, was gone to Vietnam. So this shaped the attitude of the country. But more importantly, a lot of people that were coming back from the war in Vietnam was radicalized. And because they experienced a lot of segregation, a lot of classes in the military, a lot of them came back and joined the Black Panther Party.
During that period, the Black Panther Party was, according to Hoover, the number one threat in the country. So the response to them being the number one threat in the country was to eradicate them. Assassination. They killed Fred Hampton, assassinated Fred Hampton, little Bobby Hutton, they assassinated him. And they locked up a lot of Panthers. That’s how I became a Panther because they locked up a Panther named Eddie Conway, Marshal Eddie Conway. And they set him up and locked him up. And I got some information over there, y’all can pick it up when y’all leave.
When he came, so when you got the encouragement of Panthers coming into the prison system, prisoners are becoming politicized. Petty criminals like myself are becoming politicized because now we’re looking at the conditions that we’re living under and we’re looking at them from a political perspective, like why the medical was bad, why the food is garbage, why are we in overcrowded cells? Why is this cell designed for a dog? You got two people in it.
So these things started like resonating with people, but the Panthers started educating people about understanding, raising their consciousness about this is why these things are going on and this is what your response would be. So that got me into a space where I started reading more, because that was one of the things that we did. We did a lot of reading. You had to read one hour a day and exercise. But more importantly, you organized the population around changing their attitude about the conditions. Because up until that point, everything in prison was a kind of predatory.
Then when you had the Attica Rebellion, that created a chain reaction through the country, with the most celebrity political prisoner in prison that got politicized in prison was George Jackson. George Jackson was a prisoner in San Quentin. He spent most of his time in what now they call solitary confinement. They call it the Adjustment Center. Back then in San Quentin. Him and three or two other political prisoners was locked up in [inaudible 00:05:06] killing a correctional officer. After the San Quentin police had killed… [inaudible 00:05:14] police had killed some prisoners in the courtyard who were wrecking. And it was a dispute between white prisoners and Black prisoners. The only prisoners that got killed was Black prisoners. So that created a chain reaction in the prison system.
Fast forward, so this became my incursion into the political apparatus in prison. While in prison, and some of the things I did in prison, my whole thinking back then when I was in prison was I didn’t want to die in prison. I had life and I didn’t want to die in prison. So I would probably go down in the World Book of Guinness for the most failed attempted escapes ever. And if I would sit back here and go back over some of the things I did, it would be kind of comical. But in my mind, I did not want to die. I could have died, I could walk, literally come out on the other side of the fence and fall out and be dead, as long as I didn’t die in prison. It was just a thing about being [inaudible 00:06:19].
And in 2001, a case came out in the Maryland system called Merle Unger, Unger v. State. They said anyone locked up between 1970 and 1980 was entitled to a new trial. So I was entitled to a new trial because of the way they was giving the jury instructions. So at that time, everybody was getting ready to come out. Eddie Conway was on his way out. So everybody’s coming out. Now we’re able, we did a lot of organizing in prison. We had organized political education classes, we had organized forums where we had a thing where they say, “Just say your own words.” We brought political leaders in, radicals in to talk about, had books that they had a political discussion in a forum much like this. And it changed the whole prison population thinking about the way they thought about themselves and the way they thought about themselves in relation to society. So all of us coming out now.
And when I got out, I got out December the 5th of 2019. I got out, I had, they gave me $50 and let me out in Baltimore City. I’m from Washington D.C. They let me out in Baltimore City and I’m standing there with $50. I don’t know nothing. I don’t know how to use a cellphone, I don’t know how to get on the bus, I don’t know how to get from one corner to… I know the area because the area is the prison where the prison was at, where I lived at all my life. So I know the street name. I know this is Green Mount, I know this is Madison, I know the street, I know these streets, but I never seen, that’s like me knowing somewhere I read something about something in Paris. I know the name of the street, but put me there and I wouldn’t know what to do.
So this is the situation I found myself in and I didn’t know what, my family knew I was coming out, but I didn’t know whether they knew this particular time. And so I got $50. I see somebody coming with a cellphone and I’m like, “Look, I got, can I use?” He said, “No, I’m going to get on the bus.” So it was an elderly woman coming off. I said, “Look, miss, I was locked up 48 years. I got $50. You can get 25 of them. I just need you to call this number and tell my people.” And I heard somebody calling from the side, was my family.
Now I’m out. While I’m out, I’m out December the 5th of 2019. It was a major event that came right in that period, COVID. So now I’m like, I’m out in society, but really I’m back in prison because the whole country was locked down. So for most people it was a discomfort. For me, I was like, “Oh, this is all right. I can walk.” You know, I’m like basically walking, like I’m walking in, I’m coming back in. I’m not, you know, there’s not a whole lot going on, so you know. And I’m working out and people dealing with each other from afar. You see the same people, everybody like, “I see you, you have a group.” And we started having like a distant social relationship like, “Hey, how y’all doing? How you doing?” And keep it moving right?
After I got out and when COVID peaked out, I was doing some organizing in Gilmor projects in Baltimore, and backstory on that, we had took a house in Gilmor Projects, which is exactly what it is, Gilmor and their projects. Real notorious. So we took a house, we found out it was city property, we took it, renovated it and made it community property, and we started doing stuff for the kids. Because Eddie, Eddie Conway’s attitude, he’s like, “Kids don’t have no light in their face. It’s real dark.” So we started doing Easter egg hunts, showing movies on the wall, you know, doing all kinds of activities, gardening to get the kids to be kids.
And we took it and when we took it, we say, “We taking this house.” We put the city on and we had a press conference, “Yeah, we took this house, we doing this for the community. Y’all got a problem with that, y’all come down here and tell the community that they can’t have this house.” So the city pretty much like, “Ah, whatever, we ain’t going down there and messing with them people.” So we did, we gave out coats. So this is our organizing.
See, our organizing method was you meet people with their needs, you meet people’s needs. So it’s not only about giving out food and giving clothing, it’s about having a political education environment where you can teach people how to, you know, you got the analogy of Jesus saying like teach people how to fish. Right? Okay, I already know how to fish, now tell me how to survive. Tell me how to store, tell me how to build, tell me how to build out. So this is the things that we was doing and we would put ourselves in a position, we would network with legal organizations. The people had issues with their rent and we know it was a slum lord environment. And we would educate people about this is how you get your rights recognized.
So Eddie, and I’m going to talk about Eddie often, right? Because that was my mentor. Ultimately, he got lung cancer and passed away December, February the 13th a couple of years ago. He passed away the day before my birthday. My birthday was February the 14th. And I was like, when his wife called me and said, “Eddie is getting ready, you know, transition. They in Vegas, can you come out here?” And I’m like, I can’t come out there. But the only thing I’m saying is like, man, whatever you do, don’t die on my birthday. I’m like, because I ain’t going to be able to take it. I ain’t going to have no birthday no more. It’s already sad for me to have to deal with it the day before, but I just didn’t want that memory of him.
But long story short, this individual was responsible for changing the mindset of a lot of prisoners and getting us to think outside the box more or less, right? Our political education, this was one of the things that the Black Panther Party emphasized. So you see, we call it Panther porn. This is Panther porn for us. Panther porn for us is when you see the guns and you know the Berettas and the mugging, that’s Panther porn. What we identified with is the free breakfast program where we fed our kids. We tried to promote the hospital, we tried to promote where we was taking and giving sickle cell anemia tests to our people because we knew they wasn’t doing that. You know, we used to give them free breakfast program. We was getting our food, we had clothes, we was transporting prisoners, families to prisons in California. All out of the way prisons. We was holding political education classes in community and networking with people around their needs and making sure they understood exactly what was going on with them.
One of the questions I seen that was on the question is the difference between abolition as it relates to prison and the police. And we know we had this call for divest, and I’m going be perfectly honest with you. I don’t want to live in a society that there ain’t no law and order. That’s just not me. I don’t want to live in a society where we don’t feel safe. So it’s not an issue of whether or not police should be in the community. It’s an issue of what’s their relationship? They got on their car serve and protect. Okay, if you’re responsible for serving and protecting me, then my interest should be first and foremost and I shouldn’t be targeted. I shouldn’t be like back in the sixties, everybody that had long hair that was white, they was hippies and you was treated a certain way because in their mind you was anti-sociable or anti-establishment. That’s what made you a hippie. It didn’t make you a hippie because you didn’t… Your identity was based on, I don’t really have a lot of interest in the establishment.
But they looked at it as a threat. People had afros, they looked at it as a threat. So when we look at it’s not about abolishing the police, it’s about the police respecting the community and the community having more control over. So if you represent me in my community, then you need to be in my community, understand what’s going on in my community and serving my community according to serve and protect.
Abolition on the other hand is we’re about completely abolishing the prison system. What would that look like? And we was having this conversation, what do that look like? You going to open the doors up and let everybody out? I’ve been in prison 48 years. There’s some people that I’ve been around in prison, if I see him on the street the day after tomorrow, I might go call the police on them because I know that’s how their thinking is. But at the same token, if a civil society, we have an obligation to help people. And that’s what we should be doing.
You know, people have been traumatized and trauma becoming vogue now. You know everybody like oh, trauma experience. So trauma becoming vogue, but people have been traumatized and have not been treated for their trauma. So they dial down on it and that become the norm. So we need to be in a society where we’re healing people. And that’s what I would say when it comes to the abolition. Yeah, we should abolish prison as they exist now, they’re cruel, they’re inhumane. We’ve got the guards in Rikers Island talking about protesting and walkout, wildcat strike because they saying that the elimination of solitary confinement is a threat to them. How is it a threat to you that you put me in a cell for three years on end, bringing my mail to me and say that if you eliminate this right here, me as a worker, it’s going to be threatened by that non-existence. How’s that? That don’t even make sense.
But this is the attitude that you have when it comes to the prison industrial complex. The prison industrial complex is very profitable. The prison industrial complex became like an industry in and of itself. Every aspect of it has been privatized. The telephone’s been privatized, the medical’s been privatized, the clothing been privatized. So you’ve got a private entity saying, “I’ll make all the clothes for the prisons.” You got another private entity saying, “I’ll take, I want the telephone contract for all the prisons.” You got another company saying, “I want to be responsible for making the beds, the metal and all that.”
Which leads me to Maryland Correction Enterprise. Maryland Correction Enterprise is one of the entities that does this. There’s a private corporation that has preferential bidding rights on anything that’s being done in Maryland. I’m not going to say these chairs, but I’m going to say any of them tags that’s on your car, that’s Maryland Enterprise. I press tags. So I know that to be a fact. A lot of the desks in your classroom come from Maryland Correction Enterprise.
So what they’re giving us, they gave us 90 cent a day and you get a bonus. Now, you get the bonus based on how much you produce. So everybody like, so now you’re trying to get… Okay, I’m trying to get like $90 a month. I’m just starting. So somebody that’s been there for a while might be getting $2 a day and some. We pressing tags like till your elbows was on fire because you’re trying to make as much money as you possibly can. You’re trying to produce as many tags as you possibly can to make money.
Well, they’re getting billions, they’re getting millions of dollars from the labor. So I just recently did an interview with a state senator about that because he had put a bill in and I was asking him about it. And then I asked him, I said, “Okay, prisoners going to want to work.” The incentive for prisoners to work is in the Maryland prison system, you get five days off your sentence when you come through the door. Then if you get a job, then some jobs give you 10 days off, so that’s 10 days less that you do in a month. Everybody trying to get in them kind of jobs where you getting less days. So it’s not a matter I don’t want to work and it’s not a matter I like the work that I’m doing. I’m just, the incentive for me to work is really the reduction in my time in prison.
So I asked the state senator, I said, “Listen,” I said, “Would it be better if, okay, everybody going to want to work, wouldn’t it be better if you pass and try to get a bill passed that say that everybody get minimum wage, that they’d be able to pay their social security, they’d be able to pay taxes and they’d be able to acquire some money. Wouldn’t that be the better approach? Because prisoners going to work.” So I realized when I was having this conversation with them. In Kansas, that’s exactly what they’re doing in Kansas prison. They got guys that’s in Kansas prison saved up to $75,000. They got long-term, they’re not going anywhere, but they’ve been able to have an impact on their family and have a sense of responsibility.
So another question that came up was, that I was thinking about is what would be y’all response? What would I say to y’all in terms of what I think that y’all should be looking at? And I’m not here to lecture you, but this is for when we look at colleges and as they relate to the struggle, the majority of people that resisted in the seventies, sixties, they came out of school, they came out of college. You had Angela Davis, you had Huey Newton, Bobby Seales, they came out, they was in college, the Kent State, this was a college., they got rid of Angela Davis because she was teaching on campus, because of her politics.
So college has always been a place where you have a propensity to like being organized or start questioning things and start developing ideas about looking at what’s going on in society today in the country and around the world. We’re in a time right now where, I don’t know how many of y’all read George Orwell 1984, but we’re in like a George Orwellian type of society. And free speech, yeah, it’s only if you talk about a subject matter that is not contrary to capitalism. And then you got the right to free speech, but then you don’t have the right to be heard. So then you got who got control of the media.
So right now getting our voice out or taking a position and you take a position, oh you being anti, so therefore I’m going to take your grant or I’m going to take your scholarship. I only got like one more semester to graduate. Hey so what? And I’m going to blackball you or better still, I’m going to snowball you and put you in an environment where you ain’t going to be able to get a job at McDonald’s. Why? Because I’m trying to control your thinking and make sure that you don’t be organizing in a manner that’s going to be against anything that we’re doing.
We’re getting a lot of information coming out and a lot of people is like hysterical. “Oh my god, I don’t know what I’m going to do.” No, this is what you do, you organize. We don’t have the luxury of saying what somebody else is doing going to dictate me not doing nothing. We should be in the mindset that regardless of what you’re doing, I have a right. This is what they say to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I have a right if I want to be transgender, I have a right. I have a right to that. Your morality is not going to determine what I do with myself.
We were just getting ready to do a thing on transgender prisoners. They didn’t have their biology changed. Your biology changed. According to law. You went to court and got an operation. They took you out of a female prison and put you in a male prison because they say that biology aside, you was born a male, not what you are now. And rounded them up and took them to a male prison. Who does this? Who had the right to tell you that you come from another country to come here for a better life? Oh by the way, everybody in Congress, ancestors came here for a better life. So I know they should have no issue with that because they wouldn’t be where they are right now if the Statue of Liberty would say hell no. So we passed that.
But everybody, I ain’t talking about the people that they brought here, the people that was here before them, the indigenous people who said, “Hey, everybody get the hell out. Because this is our…” No. What you want to say that you create this false narrative that people of color from another country is creating all the crime in this country, therefore we’re going to round you all up. Kind of sound like something they did with the Japanese when they put them in internment camps, right? When they say like, these are people that was fighting for this country. These are United States citizens that were fighting in this country. They rounded them up, put them in internment camps because you’re Japanese and we fighting Japan. So your loyalty can’t be with us. Your loyalty got to be with them, or we just don’t care one way or the other.
It sounds like kind of like that. But the point I’m making is we don’t have the luxury to sit back and allow the hysteria that’s going on in this country around some fools to make us say, I’m not going to do nothing, or get into a position where I’m just, I don’t know what to do, I’m giving up. No. Resistance is possible. It starts with education, it starts with political education. It starts with understanding the history. Lenin said that imperialism is the highest form of capitalism. We’ve seen imperialism, we’ve seen that imperialism taking shape. So a lot of this is based on the capitalist drive for greed. It’s about greed. A lot of this.
When you talk about taking a country and say, “Oh, we’re going to take the Gaza and turn it into Disneyland.” And what you going to do with the people? “Hey we already bombed them into oblivion so they’d be glad to work, they’d be glad to put on Donald Duck suits and Mickey Mouse hats and get some money.” That’s your reality. Their reality is, “I just want to live a human life.” That’s my reality. My reality, I just want to live human. I don’t have no problem with nobody. I just want to be human and treated like a human.
But when you say something like that, “Oh, you anti.” You ain’t got the right to say nothing like that. And if you say it on campus and you try to get them to take a position on campus, their masters who they invest with, corporate America going to tell them, say no. And Congress going to say, “Oh any money we gave you, we’re taking it back.” So the money, monetary is more important than people’s lives. That’s our reality.
So as we move forward, my message to y’all is don’t settle for mediocrity, don’t settle for nothing less. Whatever you’re thinking that you think should be done, do it. If you think that, but more importantly in doing it, make sure that it’s having impact. When you’re dealing with, like I said, we took that place. We knew that neighborhood, the drug dealers in the neighborhood, this is what they used to say to us when we come through there and say, “Hey, it ain’t a good time to be down here today.” And they give us a warning like, “Y’all can’t come down here today.”
And we was good with that because they knew that it was their children that we was creating a safe environment about. They couldn’t get out of the grips of their insanity and we weren’t trying to get them out of it. Our focus was on the community and people. And we feel that if we educate the people enough, if we educate the mothers, the girlfriends, the wives enough to say like, “Y’all deserve to be safe.” The people that’s not making y’all safe is your boyfriend, your father and them. Y’all need to talk to them and tell them that y’all are making our lives unsafe. All we’re doing is educating you that you have a right.
All we’re doing is coming down there and telling you that we’re doing something with your children. We’re taking your children out of the neighborhood on trips that they’ve never been before. We’re making them feel like they have some value. We’re making them feel like, “Yeah you can get a hug today and there won’t be nothing unusual about it.” This is what we was doing and it had an impact. What they wind up doing with that neighborhood is they did with all of Baltimore, that’s a major, they started tearing down places, boarding up places. So you might be on the block or you might be in the projects and you might live in this house. The next four houses is boarded up, another house, the next two houses boarded up. How can you have a sense of community with all that blight?
Then the trash bins that’s for the area become public trash, and then people just ride by, see a trash bin, throw trash in the area. How can you live in that kind of blight? So when somebody come and say, “I’m going to give you a voucher to move somewhere that you ain’t going to be able to afford in a year,” you’re going to take it on the strength that like you ain’t factored in, I ain’t going to be able to afford it. You say, “I just want to get out of here.” And when they get you out of there, next thing you know they come in and demolish it and they got condominiums and townhouses and it’s affordable housing for somebody that’s making 90, 100,000 dollars a year. But it’s definitely ain’t affordable housing for somebody that’s making less than minimum wage. So that’s my point. And I’m opening the floor for any comments or questions.
Student:
I was going to ask what can everyday citizens, meaning not politicians do to help prisoners?
Mansa Musa:
Okay, and that’s a good question because one of the things that we had, we had a lot of people from the community come into the institution. But what you can do is educate yourself on some of the issues that’s affecting them. Like right now in Maryland they got what they call the Second Chance Act and they trying to get this bill passed to say that after you did 20 years then you can petition the court for a reduction in sentence. It’s not guaranteed you’re going to get it, but it opens the door for a person to have hope, because after you… when you get first locked up, they give you a designated amount of time to file a petition for modification. After that, it’s over with,. The only thing available to you then is parole. If you don’t make parole then you in there forever and ever and ever.
So this is a bill that’s being sponsored by people whose family members are locked up and been locked up for a long time. And it’s a good bill because what it do, it create hope. And when you have hope in an environment, it changes the way people think. So when you have a hopeless environment, and case in point the then Governor Glenn Denning came in front of the Jessup Correction Institution in Jessup because a guy was out on work release, had killed his girlfriend and he had life. So he sent all the lifers back, took them all out of camp and put them all back in prison and then stood out in front of the institution to say, “From now on life mean life, let me tell you that ain’t nobody, any of you got a life sentence, you going to die in prison.”
When he left that prison, the violence went up like that. I mean stabbings, murders and everything because there was no hope. Because now people saying, “I’m going to be here for the rest of my life so I got to dominate this environment.” When the Unger case came out, bills was passed about juvenile life, they got bills passed. They’re saying if you have drug problem you can get drug treatment and the [inaudible 00:33:05] and people started going. It was whole. So to your question, monitor some of these things and look at some of the websites of the institutions, see what kind of programs they offer. They might need some volunteers to come in help with teaching classes. They might need some volunteers to come in to help with some of the activities they doing that’s helping support prisoners. Thank you.
Student:
First of all, thank you for coming out and really appreciate it. It’s great to hear you speak. I had a question, you kind of briefly alluded to it already, but how would you compare the political conditions, especially like during Black Power in the sixties and seventies and eighties, and like the repression that everyone faced, like especially from COINTELPRO and FBI and the police to today, and like what students and people on the street are facing right now?
Mansa Musa:
I think that back then the difference was technology, the internet, where we get our information from and the AI, that’s becoming vastly like the thing now. I think the difference is like back then, and Huey Newton made this analysis, what he called intercommunalism. He talked about that at some point in time technology will become so advanced that we ain’t going to have no more borders, and which we don’t when it comes to information, right?
So the difference is that the fascists are more advanced and pluralism is more insidious. Back then, because you had a lot of repression around class, so Black people was being subjected. So you had the war in Vietnam, we had so much going on that it was easy for people to come and find a commonality. Said, “Hey, we live in this squalor here in Little Puerto Rico and New York. We live in this squalor down here in Brooklyn and so and so. We’re living in…” What’s our common thread? Our common thread is that we’re being treated inhuman. So it was easy to come together around organizing around social conditions.
Now because of so much misinformation and so much control, that it’s hard to really get a read on what is real and what’s not real. You had the president say that when they gave everybody an ultimatum to give their report by the end, like a report card or something at the end of the week and they didn’t do it. He said, so when they put the mic in front of his mouth he said, “Oh, the reason why they didn’t do it is because the people that didn’t submit it don’t work there anyway.” So somebody getting a check in their name, in other words fraud was the reason why you got a 100 workers and only 10 people work there so the other 90 don’t exist anyway, so where that money going? That money going to somebody else’s pocket.
But that was the narrative he painted. But when he painted the narrative, the media is so dim with it that they like, it’s almost like you asking them a question and it’s like, no you’re dumb, no you’re dumb, no you’re dumb, no you’re dumb. And I got a Pulitzer and I’m going back and forth a whole stop. I’m not even going to ask you no more questions. So that’s what we’ve been relegated to. So that’s the difference, but in terms of our response, I’m going to give you an example. When they killed, when them little kids got killed at Sandy Hook Elementary, the children said they going to do something about it. They asked their parents, they went on social media, they started finding everybody had the same attitude. Next thing you know they had 40,000 kids that say they going to Washington.
So now I’m telling my mother, “I’m going to Washington, whether you going with me or not.” So the parents say, “Oh we’re going to chaperone you.” That’s how quick they organize. So that’s the difference. Our ability to organize is a lot fast, it’s a lot quicker now. So we can organize a lot quicker if we come to a consensus on what we’re trying to get done. And our response can be a response of like hysteria. We got to be focused. You know, we got to really sit back and say, they’re going to do what they’re doing. You know? They’re going to do what they’re doing. So if I’m doing around workers, I got every federal worker, I’m getting with every federal worker, I’m organized. I’m not going to sit back and say, “Oh well look…” No. Organized.
You know you got a right, organize, get together, organize, bump Congress, bump, bump, filing lawsuits, bump them doing whatever they’re doing. They the problem. Get organized and say, “Okay we’re going to organize, we’re going to mobilize. We got midterms coming up, we getting in your ass. In the next presidential election, you don’t have to worry about the count, we ain’t going to give one vote. That’s going to be your vote.” That’s what you do, organize. Well don’t, we get caught up in this thing like with Trump, I don’t have no problem with him. He is what he is. My problem is making sure that I tell people and organize people and help people get some type of sense of security.
So we should be food building co-ops, food co-ops. Because $99 for a dozen eggs? No, we should be building a food co-op. We should be doing things where we really looking to each other to start a network. And on campus, we should be looking at how are we going to take and organize ourselves into a block where once we decide an issue then all we’re going to be forced to deal with that issue and try to make a difference.
See some fights is not a fight worth taking because all it’s going to do is cause a loss. So you got to be strategic in your fight. We put a 10-point platform program together for the reason of identifying the social conditions that existed in society as it related for oppressed people. We chose to police the police because that was the number one issue that was affecting people. But our main thing was feeding our children, medical, housing, and education. Those were the main things we did. So we took over education institutions. That was our main thing. Our main thing wasn’t walking around with shotguns and guns. Those was things that we did to protect the community, but our main focus was programs that directly related to serving people’s needs.
Student:
Thank you. Thank you.
Mansa Musa:
You’re welcome.
Student:
Hi, I do have a question. First of all, I want to say great job, amazing conversation and the topics are so important. So I guess my question to you is how do… you mentioned this, like how do college students on campus build morale and boost momentum? Because I know it can kind of be a little iffy and hard to do so, especially if you have that backside fear of like this could cost me my entire like college education and the future I was wishing to build for myself?
Mansa Musa:
Right, and see and that’s not something that shouldn’t be taken into account. I invested in this, you know, and I invested in for a reason. I spent money. This money, my parents put in. They ain’t going to be sitting back like, “What? You did what? All that money going down the drain? Nah, that ain’t happening.” But the reality is this here, you mobilize around educating yourself, raising your consciousness and understanding historical conditions like Kent State, what college students did back then. Vietnam War and groups like this, young Democrats, socialists of America come to create political education classes, bring in speakers much like myself.
We pass around literature of books, videos, and look at those things and develop a space for y’all coming together to talk and discuss, how that’s going to come a direction. And look at issues off the campus. Look at issues like if it’s around in this area right here, how many homeless people exist? How much property do the campus, do the school own? All right, I ain’t telling you, I ain’t going to say like don’t mess with them over in the Middle East because that’s wrong. No, I’m going to say, “Oh, damn, you know what, y’all got all this land and property and within this radius you got like homeless people sleeping on the ground. We asking that you take some of this property and turn it into homeless shelter, and in the name of Ms. Snyder or give it a name of somebody. We asking, now now we’re moving in the area, we’re asking that you take this money and feed some people.
Now in this area, now we’re talking about that. We’re taking that you dig in this area and you help people that can’t, don’t have medical insurance but need certain things that you can get done, like dental. We’re asking that you take this money and putting it… This is things that free dental health. So you can take and say, “We providing free medical assistance at this level. We tested people for sickle cell, we tested people for HIV.”
When Huey and them decided to do the Black Panther Party, they looked at Malcolm and they picked up where Malcolm left off at. That’s how they got in the space that they got. They just took the social conditions said that these are areas you need to focus on, because you got what they call objective and subjective conditions. Objective conditions is what you see every day. The subjective conditions is what we do, how we organize, how we develop ourselves, what we’re doing. Because that’s going to determine how effective we going to be when we go out. So if we can’t come to no consensus on direction then we ain’t going to be effective when we go out. Because somebody going to be saying do this and somebody going to be saying do that, but that ain’t going to be the problem. Problem going to be I don’t like what you doing. So now you my enemy.
Student:
Thank you.
Student:
So I think one of the questions was actually about Maryland Correctional Enterprise. So we could talk about that. Yeah. In response to student concerns about Maryland Correctional Enterprises, President Pines said students concerns is that inmates are underpaid. That’s out of our control and we have to abide by state law. But the other side of the story is that the inmates actually want the employment because it gives them skills. How do we combat this messaging?
Mansa Musa:
All right, so the basic thing, and somebody asked earlier, what can you do? It’s legislation because the argument is why can’t you give them minimum wage? So when we tried to unionize back in the seventies and it’s a celebrity case, North Carolina versus somebody, we tried to unionize, they said no. And the reason why they said no because then you talking about the whole prison in the United States of America, [inaudible 00:44:30] you got 2.9 million people there in prison or better. So you’re saying we in the union, we got the largest union in the country.
So the issue is legislation and advocating for them prisoners to get minimum wage, a livable wage, no matter how much time you got. That allowed for MCE, we’re not opposed to them making money, we’re opposed to them profiting off of us and we’re not getting the benefit of it. So the issue is if I left out of prison and I had my quarter paid into social security, I had my quarters three times over. Now I’m forced to work. I got to work at least three more years or more before I get my quarter. Because when I left the street, I ain’t worked like maybe three years on it all.
But if a person got their quarter while they in, they get minimum wage or they allowed to save money, they can make a contribution to their family. A lot of guys got locked up, they got children, they could do something for their children. They got their mother, their families travel long distances to see them. They could pay for that transportation. The phone calls, they could pay for the phone calls. So they’d be able to take a burden off their family.
It don’t cost MCE nothing. They got preferential treatment and contract for all state institutions. Any institution that’s in state under the state of Maryland, they can do them. Whatever they make, clothes, the chemicals, signs, signs you see up and down there. They do all that. Tags, all the furniture. All the furniture you see in the state cabinet, all that. They do all that. So yeah, they could do that. That’s the alternative is for the legislator to pass a bill that says that prisoners can get minimum wage from any industry, any prison industry. If you hired in the prison industry, then you should be given minimum wage. And they got meat cutting, they do the meats, they do the furniture, they do the laundry for like different hospitals, and they do them tags. Them tags, I’m telling you, that was like… I really realized how people felt on the plantation doing them tags. That was like some… Yeah. That was labor.
Student:
This isn’t on the responses but this is like one of the questions that we’ve thought about. In your previous podcast episode, you interviewed the state senator and he mentioned the 13th Amendment and the connection between prison labor and slavery. So what do you think are some of the connections between the prison abolition movement and like the historical movement for the abolition of slavery?
Mansa Musa:
Right now, you know the 13th Amendment says that slavery is illegal except for involuntary servitude if you’re duly convicted of a crime. So if you’re duly convicted of a crime, you can be treated as a slave. And the difference between that and the abolition movement back in the historical was the justification. The justification for it now is you’ve been convicted of a crime. Back then, I just kidnapped and brought you here and made you work. So the disconnect was this is a human, you taking people and turning them into chattel slaves. Versus, oh the reason why I can work you from sun up to sundown, you committed a crime. But the reality is you put that in there so that you could have free labor.
All that is a Jim Crow law, Black code. It’s the same. It’s the same in and of itself. It’s not no different. You work me in the system. In some states they don’t even pay you at all. South Carolina, they don’t even pay you. But they work you. In Louisiana, they still walk, they got police, they got the guards on horses with shotguns and they out there in the fields. In some places in North Carolina and Alabama, Alabama they work you in some of the most inhumane conditions like freezers, women and men, put you to work you in a meat plant in the freezer and don’t give you the proper gear to be warm enough to do the work.
And then if you complain, because they use coercion, say “Okay, you don’t want to work? We’ll take the job from you, transfer you to a prison where now you’re going to have to fight your way out. You going to literally have to go in there, get a knife and defend yourself. So this is your choice. Go ahead, work in this inhumane conditions or say no and go somewhere and be sent back to a maximum security prison where you have to fight your way out.” So now it’s no different. Only difference is it’s been legislated, it’s been legalized under the 13th Amendment.
And abolition, in response to abolition, so we’ve been trying to change the 13th Amendment. We had an attempt in California where they put a bill out to try to get it reversed, and the state went against it. The state was opposed to it. Because why would I want to stop having free labor? The firefighters in California, they do the same work that the firefighters right beside them, they do the same work, the same identical work. They fighting fire, their lives are in danger. They’re getting like 90 cent a day, maybe $90 a month. They don’t have no 401k, they don’t have no retirement plan, and they’re being treated like everybody else, go out there and fight the fire.
So yeah, in terms of abolition, the abolition movement is to try to change the narrative and get the 13th Amendment taken off, out of state constitutions because a lot of states, they adopted it. They adopted it in their own state constitution, a version of the 13th Amendment that says that except if you’ve been duly convicted for a crime, you can be treated as a slave. If you’ve been convicted of a crime, you can be treated as a slave. That’s basically the bottom line of it. Thank you.
Student:
So like, I saw two questions kind of talking about state repression and like attempts to divide solidarity movements. So how do you kind of feel like state repression has changed over the decades and how can we kind of respond to those situations?
Mansa Musa:
The thing with state repression now is it’s a little bit more insidious. It’s not as overt like it was back in the sixties when they crossed the Edmund Bridge and they beat them, put dogs on them, or like they just took a move in Philadelphia, they burned the house down, burned the whole block down. There’s one house right here we got a problem with, oh hey, you had no business living in that neighborhood. We burned the whole neighborhood down, dropped a bomb on it. Or like they went to in California and they shot the headquarters of the Black Panther Party up. Or they ran down and killed Fred Hampton, drugged him and then came in there and shot him. His wife was in the bed with him. They put like 90 holes in him and not one on her. So you already knew you had the diagram where he sleep at, you knew he was drugged because the agent provocateur spiked his milk. So he was drugged, he was knocked out. And you came in there and killed him and said, “Oh, he fired out the window.”
So the difference is now because of the media and the propaganda, you have a different slant on things, and the fear of corporate America in terms of perpetuating this fear. So you change the narrative. You can’t say certain things. You can’t. If you say certain things about certain people or certain countries, you’re going to be Blackballed, labeled. And the pressure going to come in the form of okay, you don’t care. Okay, I’m going to attack your family. I’m going to find somewhere in the scenario where I can get you to back up. If that don’t work, then I’m going to round your ass up and send you to Guantanamo Bay. I can make up something. We got the illegal combatants. You got people that’s been in Guantanamo Bay since the Gulf War and has not been sent nowhere, had not been, no due process, no where are my accusers. Oh you’ve been labeled illegal combatant, state sponsored terrorism.
So they got so many different things they can say to make it where as though it seems to be an issue of you resisting and your right to protest and demonstration. It becomes you’re a threat to society or you’re a threat to the government. And this is how we’re saying it. We’re saying that, oh you was on the internet with somebody that’s been branded a terrorist. And that become enough to get them to say, “All right, lock them up.”
So now the difference is when they had COINTELPRO, COINTELPRO they was doing all these things and setting people up and killing them. But we knew what was going on and we made people aware of it. Now all this misinformation, it’s hard to get a read on what’s going on. So the response got to be, again, we got to organize ourselves, develop our own information source and all the misinformation, be prepared to identify it and put it in perspective. This is misinformation. And start educating people on understanding that be mindful where you’re getting your information from. We’re addicted to social media. We’re addicted to being like, how many likes I get today? Hey, they don’t like me. Oh my God, I’m having a fit. No, I don’t care if you don’t like me because if they lock you up and send you to another country, you ain’t want to be liked by nobody. I don’t know.
In terms of supporting countries and movements that’s fighting for their liberation in the Congo, in the hemisphere, South America, then yeah, we support a person’s right to self-determination. For us, our position right now should be to educate ourselves, politically educate ourselves to understanding social, economic, political conditions and the relationship they have between us and people. Because people going to resist. People going to be hungry, they’re going to go to stores and take whatever the hell they want to take because they don’t have nothing to eat. That’s just the reality. They ain’t got nothing to do with, I have a propensity to steal. No, I don’t have the ability to pay to feed my children.
Versus somebody that had ability. Food is high. And then medical, they talking about the Medicaid and all that. So if they take that and poor people rely on that, how you going to get the medical treatment that you need? How you going to get the medicine that you need? So these are the areas that, this is when you’re talking about organizing people, you got to look at what they’re doing, what the repression is, how they trying to repress people and organize around the counter to that. What’s the counter to this? What’s the counter to the medical? Do y’all have medical students here? What are their attitudes towards providing services for people?
What’s the problem with mental health? Do y’all have mental health people here that’s in that field? Social workers in that field? Then your responsibility is come and get them to say, “Listen, we need you to go in the community to organize, to help us organize this. Show us how to organize this for the community to get them to be more proactive.” Okay, what’s your purpose of your education? The purpose of my education, I want to get a degree and make some money. Okay, and what? The federal government? What’s your chances of getting a job in the federal government?
They find people that’s on probation, person that got 20 years in one job, get a better job and they put them on probation. They say, “Oh you fired because you’re on probation.” No, I just took a better job. But the arbitrariness of this thinking is that I’m putting fear and I’m turning people into snitches because I’m making you, in order to keep what you got, you got to tell on somebody as opposed to us saying, take the institution of higher learning and look at the different departments and see how you can go into new departments and get them to become more proactive in doing some things in the community.
And that’s the whole thing about the higher learning. Look at these other disciplines and start asking yourself, how can I get them to start doing some things in the community to help raise people’s consciousness? How can we come together to do a plan, a program around how we can invest in the community? How can we get a plan to start dealing with getting trauma to be recognized as a national mental health and get the government to do what they supposed to do in terms of providing services for people that’s been traumatized. And stop, oh, oh yeah, you traumatized but you shouldn’t have did what you did. But you’re saying that trauma, I’m in trauma, that’s why I’m doing what I’m doing. Yeah, but we don’t recognize that because you did it. All we recognize as a problem, we’re not recognizing as it relate to you. Double talk.
Student:
I had a question about the role of electoralism, because one part of the Black Panther Party’s historical activism that’s somewhat forgotten is elections and campaigns like Bobby Seale ran for mayor of Oakland. A lot of the modern American left is starting to be more wary of the use of elections because we’ve seen people who maybe are supposed to represent our values get elected, and then do things against what their constituents want, things like that. But I was wondering if you had any thoughts about if there’s still a role for elections to, you know, be agitational and grow the organization, or you know, how we can make sure that we’re still, you know, being agitational against the establishment.
Mansa Musa:
And you know, Tip O’Neill said, “All politics are local.” And Tip O’Neill was the speaker of the House, the Democrat party back in caveman days. But my position, and to reflect on what you said about Bobby Seale, when the party took that position of running Bobby Seale for mayor, we knew that he wasn’t going to get elected. But the objective was, this was the ability to mobilize people around, educating them around what this government, what the city government is supposed to do, what your government is supposed to do. So now we are on the campaign trail saying, “No, the budget is the people’s budget. The money is the people’s money. The budget got to be like this. If I’m elected, I’m going to do this,” and make him respond to it.
But then at the same token we looked at, when we started doing that, I was telling [inaudible 01:01:59], we started looking at local elections. Our institution of elected. Ericka Huggins, who was a member of the Black Panther Party, she ran for the position to be the director of the Juvenile Services. And when she got in that position, she changed the whole narrative of how they treated the kids. So that was one way we got in there and changed policy.
What we recognize though, that in terms of electoral system, there’s no such thing as two parties. It’s one party, the capitalist party. That’s it, that’s all. They knew that this is reality, this is the reality we confronted with. If you know Biden ain’t going to be able to cut the mustard for two years, just hypothetical, you know he ain’t going to cut the mustard for two years. Why you didn’t in two years at the end there say, “Listen, the Democrat Party that’s responsible for putting all the money up, let’s start getting a candidate now. We’re going to have open primaries, whoever come out there.”
No, you put Kamala Harris, the top cop in this position and expected, one, they’re going to put a woman in there. Hillary Clinton was more qualified and more fascist than all of them put together. And they ain’t put her in there more qualified. She’s secretary of state, senator, her husband, Obama, Biden, Trump, Bush one, two, and three. More qualified than all of them. They definitely wasn’t putting her in there. And then they’re going to turn around and put Kamala Harris in there. That wasn’t happening.
So what you did, so it ain’t made no difference. Trump, they got somebody come on. I don’t know if it’s AI generated or not where he’s saying that he stole the election. That yeah, Elon Musk knew how to work the computers, so that’s why I won Pennsylvania. All right. What we did on that? Ain’t nobody in their right mind think they won’t let this woman get in there. And this is a two-party system and then y’all at the 11th hour, y’all got to… So now you’re putting the pressure on everybody donate, donate. And her position was, “Look what you want to do? What you want to do? So I’m going to do something but my thing is, I’m telling y’all don’t, I’m here. This your alternate. Vote for me, don’t vote for him.”
Why? “Because y’all going to… Look at him.” Yeah. It wasn’t like what I’m offering y’all, what am I offering y’all? How am I changing? Food was still high, gas was high. People’s everyday needs. And he, look, he did a whole bunch of crazy fire too but he played, he ran on that. Oh, he ran on that record. Oh look, y’all can’t put gas in y’all cars? Y’all can’t put food on your table? Oh man, y’all ain’t safe? Yeah, we wasn’t safe when you was in there, we didn’t have food on our table when you was in there. But you saying, “Look. Oh yeah, but look. Forget what I did. Look what they’re doing to y’all now.” Yeah. Come on.
So in turn, in response to I look at the electoral politics like this here, certain municipalities that you can make impact policy, that you can organize people and put people in there that’s going to be responsible to that. Yeah. But when you look at Congress and they beholding to corporations, they beholding to them. You ain’t going to find a Ron Dellums. You ain’t going to find a Clayton Powell. You ain’t going to find these people like this here, Shirley Chisholm, Fannie Lou Hamer. You ain’t going to find these people that’s like, I’m here, I’m here as a representative of the people.
Ron Dellums and he was a member of this right here. Ron Dellums was the first one that had congressional hearings about what they were doing to the Black Panther Party. This was when he was in the office and Hoover was in power. And so everybody was scared of Hoover, but Ron Dellums wasn’t scared of him. So when you look at the electoral politics, we got to take the position of Malcolm too. Malcolm said that we’re going to register as independents, we’re going to put our agenda together. You sign onto our agenda. If you don’t represent what you say you’re going to represent, then we’re going to be calling you. The same way we got you in, the same way we’re going to get you out. And make them sign on to that.
All right. Thank you. I appreciate it. And I got some stuff over here on Eddie Conway. I got my card over there. We can take a picture of the QR code, Rattling The Bars, real news. Appreciate this, appreciate this opportunity. My call to action for y’all is, you know, just go out, sit back, get together, start brainstorming, look at some of these institutions. How can I get… That’s where you go at, go to these bodies of work, psychology, go to these bodies of work. What are you doing? What’s your position on trauma? Oh, this is my position on trauma. All right, will you be willing to do a trauma workshop in a Black community, in a neighborhood where they traumatized? Would you be willing to help set that up?
Then go out there and find a community where they’re traumatized. Get somebody to say, “Look, hey, we want to come down here and educate y’all on trauma, but more importantly, we want to get the other part of this institution that we have that’s doing wellness to get them to create a wellness program for y’all to do it and make the institution pay for it.” Yeah, you ain’t got to tell them don’t invest in somebody. Say, “Look, invest in this.”
Maryland’s Second Look Act has passed the State House, and now awaits a vote in the Senate. The bill would allow prisoners to request judicial review of their sentences after serving 20 years of prison time. Advocates say Maryland’s prison system is in desperate need of reform; parole is nearly impossible for longterm inmates, and clear racial disparities in arrest and incarceration are immediately evident—72% of Maryland’s prisoners are Black, despite a state population that is only 30% Black. Meanwhile, opponents of the Second Look Act charge that the bill would endanger state residents and harm the victims of violent crimes. Rattling the Bars digs deeper, speaking with activists, legislators, and formerly incarcerated people on the real stakes and consequences of the Second Look Act.
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Jheanelle K. Wilkins (Maryland State Delegate, District 20):
Colleagues, I rise in support of this legislation, the Maryland Second Look Act, but it may not be for the exact reason that you would think. For me, this legislation is about justice. Was justice served in this sentence? We know that in Maryland, Black residents are 30% of the population, but 72% of our prisons. Our own Maryland data tells us that Black and Latino residents are sentenced to longer sentences than any other group or any other community. I’m not proud of that. Was justice served? For us to have a piece of legislation before us that allows us the opportunity to take another look at those sentences for people who were 18 to 25 years old when convicted, for us to have the opportunity to ask the question, if justice was served in that sentence, why would we not take that opportunity colleagues? If you believe in fairness, if you believe in making sure that our justice system works for all, then colleagues, you will proudly vote yes for this bill.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. According to press releases published by the Maryland Second Look Coalition and the ACLU, “The Maryland House of Delegates passed The Second Look Act on March the 17th, recognizing the urgent need for reform in a state with some of the nation’s most pronounced citizen disparities.” The Second Look Act, House Bill 853, passed a final vote in the House. The vote was 89 yeas and 49 nays. Now, the bill will move over to the Senate, where it has until April 7 to pass. Delegate Linda Foley, representing the 15th District, who voted yes on the bill, sent a statement to The Real News Network providing some critical context. “The Maryland Second Look Act follows many other states, including California, Oklahoma, Colorado and New York, to allow a judicial review of sentences. The Second Look Act allows the individual who was convicted between the ages of 18 and 25 years old to request a review of their sentence by the court after serving 20 years in prison.”
Delegate Foley goes on to cover the details of what this bill achieves. She states, “It’s important to note the critical safety measures in the Maryland Second Look Act. The bill does not guarantee release of any individual. It allows an individual who was convicted between the ages of 18 and 25 years old to request a review of their sentence by the court only after serving 20 years in prison. A judge must evaluate individuals based on strict criteria, including the nature of their original crime, threat to the public, conduct while incarcerated, statements from the witnesses, et cetera. The court may only reduce a sentence if it finds an individual is not a danger to the public and that a reduction of their sentence is in the interest of justice.”
Recently, I spoke with two members of the Maryland Second Look Coalition, William Mitchell, a formerly incarcerated community activist, and Alexandra Bailey, a two-time survivor of sexual violence, about the organizing they are doing around the bill, and why it’s important to support The Second Look Act.
William Mitchell:
The Second Look Coalition is a group of people who come from all different backgrounds, some being returning citizens, some being people in the political realm, some being professors, and we all support what we call The Second Look Act. The Second Look Act is essentially, when an inmate has served 20 years day for day, the judge would have the authority to possibly review that inmate’s sentence, to see if the sentence is still warranted after the person has done tons of things to change their life.
Alexandra Bailey:
The Second Look is a mechanism that is being considered all across the country, and the reason it’s being considered all across the country is because America, for a long time, has led the world in incarceration, and part of the reason that we’ve led the world in incarceration is because we have a hammer and we think everything is a nail. We’ve addressed everything from poverty, trauma, veterans’ PTSD, domestic violence survivors’ responses, young children who are led astray by giving them lengthy prison terms, and we know that this doesn’t keep us safer. This has been statistically proven. If you’re a survivor of violent crime as I am, I think the one thing that all of us would agree on is that we want no more victims. We want a safer society. We want people to be okay so that everyone can be and stay okay.
The first criminal offense that I ever lived through happened when I was a minor. It was a sexual offense, and the person who perpetrated that against me is serving a life without the possibility of parole sentence. I was plagued with the pain of this for many years, for a lot of my childhood and early adulthood, and as I came to my faith and came to forgiveness, what I wanted was to understand why this had happened. I reached out to the person who harmed me, and what I learned is that he had also been harmed. He also had been sexually victimized as a young person, really had nowhere to turn in order to gain support, and lived out the natural consequences of pain, PTSD, lack of health and support, mental health support, and I ended up caught in that cycle of violence.
What I say is, we need to get way upstream on the cycle of violence. Everyone, from those who are remorseful inside to those who are advocates for survivors, as I am, we have the same goal, and the only way that we’re actually going to address that is by taking our resources away from a public safety concept that we know doesn’t work, which is mass incarceration, and transferring it where it should have been, when the person who harmed me suffered his victimization. If that help had been there, if he had been able to go to a crisis center, receive the mental health support that he need, have the education and access that would have allowed him to divert his life and recover from his own trauma, I more than likely would not have been traumatized.
As a survivor, I’m here promoting Second Look because actually, if you take a look around at who our peer recovery specialists are, who our violence interrupters are, our credible messengers, the people who are out getting in the way of other people’s victimization, it is our returning citizens who have kept the peace not just in prison, but are now keeping the peace outside, and based on my own faith, I believe that people who are remorseful deserve a chance at forgiveness. We all deserve a second chance. Also, from a practical standpoint, if my goal is that nobody suffers from what I suffered from, then the people who are best suited to help me, unfortunately in many instances, are currently behind bars.
Mansa Musa:
Brian Stevenson says, we’re not our worst mistake. All right, William, let’s unpack the Second Look, because earlier, we talked about how this allows for a person, the bill that’s being proposed, and you can go over the bill that’s being proposed, after a person has served 20 years, they’re allowed to petition the court for a modification, or to review their sentence, and take certain factors into account. Why can’t they do it anytime? I know under Maryland’s system, don’t you have the right to modification sentence? Don’t you have a right to a three-judge panel? Explain that for the benefit of our audience that doesn’t know the criminal justice system, and understand that.
William Mitchell:
Our Maryland rules, specifically it’s Maryland rule 4-345, subsection E, what it does is, it allows for a judge to have the authority to review a sentence, but that reviewing power is only from five years from the imposition of the sentence. Meaning, if you have a lengthy sentence, no judge is really going to consider, within five years, if you have a lengthy sentence for maybe a serious crime, if you’ve changed your life. Most people’s thoughts on it are, if you’ve committed a heinous crime or something that’s bad in public view, you need to sit for a long time, which may be true. Some people transition, grow and mature at different stages and different ages. My crime, I was 23, so I really wasn’t developed. I had a very immature mindset, though an adult technically, by legal standards, I was still very immature. The law right now, as it sits, say you get 50 years for an attempted murder. You’re 20 years old, it occurred when you were on drugs, maybe you were gang affiliated, family structure was broken.
And then what happens is, you sit in prison, and right now, as the law stands, you could go into prison, take every program, become a peer specialist, work to transform everybody that comes through that door, and unless you are collaterally attacking the legality of your sentence, there is no legal means for somebody to have a judge look at their case for compassionate reasons, or to see if the very system, because the Maryland Department of Correction, their job is to correct criminalistic behavior, but right now you have a department that is supposed to be correcting it, and if they do, there is no legal avenue for you to bring it to the judicial branch and say, “Hey, DOC has done her job. This behavior has been corrected. Now, what’s the next step?”
The system was set up many years ago to punish, to correct behavior, and then in that correction or rehabilitation, to allow the person to assimilate back into the community as a productive member. That has been taken away over the years because one law is added on top of another law, which moots out the point of the first law, and before you know it, you can’t get out. For me, I had a 70-year sentence. That means I would have to serve half of the sentence, 35 years, before I could go for parole. Meaning, I committed a crime, intoxicated at 23, coming out of a broken background, and I would have had to have been 53 to show the parole board the first opportunity to say, “Hey, I’m worth a second chance.” Most people age out of criminalistic behavior, number one, and number two, if you commit in your 20s, by the time you’re 30 something, you don’t even think like that.
I always bring this point to anybody’s mind, whether an opponent or an advocate, nobody can say that they are the same person they were 20 years ago. I would like to meet somebody if they can stay the same from 20 years ago, because just life in general will mature you or change you. Right now, there’s just no way to bring it before the judge or a judicial body, to get any relief. Even if you change your life, right now, you’re pretty much stuck in prison until, if you have parole, you might get the opportunity to possibly get relief.
Mansa Musa:
Alexandra, talk about what you look for in this particular narrative, because as William just outlined, we do a lot of time, we don’t have the opportunity to get relief. We do good works while we’re incarcerated, and we have no way of having that good work brought to the attention of someone that can make a decision. Talk about that.
Alexandra Bailey:
Well, Second Look is just that, it’s just a look. It is not a guarantee of relief. It is not a get out of jail free card. It is literally a mechanism whereby, after two decades of incarceration, where the criminological curve shows us that most people have aged out of crime, that you can petition a judge to show your rehabilitation, and the survivor of your offense or their representatives get to be part of that process. Some of the most miraculous moments that I’ve ever seen are those moments of forgiveness. There’s this false story that goes around, that what prosecutors are doing is giving permanent relief to victims. I’m going to give them, in William’s case, 50 years before anybody can even say hi, and that’s going to heal you. That’s going to make you feel better.
Mansa Musa:
That’s what you mean by permanent relief?
Alexandra Bailey:
That’s what they would say. It’s permanent relief. We are making sure that this person stays safe permanently. Now, there are some people who do not rehabilitate, but in my experience, they’re very much in the minority. The people who do rehabilitate, like I said, they’re the ones raising other people in the prison, getting them out of criminal behavior, and all we’re asking is that the courts be able to take a look. When the survivor steps into that room, and I’ve witnessed this, and actually receive the accountability, the apology, the help that they need from the system, that is where the healing comes in. It’s rarely through punishment. You know that this is true because I watch survivors who have not moved on a single day from the day that this happened to them, and if you’re reliving that trauma day by day, what that tells me is that you haven’t received the mental health counseling, support, grief support that you needed. Why don’t we focus on that and rehabilitation, as opposed to permanent punishment?
To what William was saying, the criminological curve tells us that people age out of crime. Crimes are more often than not committed by young people who very frequently are misguided, and that is certainly true for Maryland, with a particular emphasis on the Black and Brown community. There was actually a national study that was done of survivors, which I was actually interviewed for, 60% of us who have survived specifically violent crimes are for more rehabilitation and second chances than we are for permanent punishment. Permanent punishment doesn’t get us to what it is that we need, which is a safer society, a more healed society, a society that when things are going wrong for folks, there is a place for them to turn. Our lack of empathy and kindness is not serving us.
Mansa Musa:
Also, I had the opportunity to talk to Kareem Hasan. Me and Kareem Hasan were locked up together in the Maryland penitentiary. He’s talking about some of the things that he’s doing now that he has gotten a second chance. I’m outside of 954 Forrest Maryland Penitentiary. I’m here with Kareem Hasan, who’s a social activist now, both us served time in the Maryland Penitentiary. When did you go into the Maryland pen?
Kareem Hasan:
1976, at 17 years old.
Mansa Musa:
All right, so you went in at 17, I went in at 19. When you went in the pen, talk about what the pen environment was like when you went in there.
Kareem Hasan:
Well, when I went in the penitentiary, like you asked me, the first day I went in there, I walked down the steps and it was just confusion. I was like, “Where am I at now?” People were running everywhere, all you hear is voices and everything. It was like you were in the jungle.
Mansa Musa:
Now, what type of programs did they have to offer when you went in there?
Kareem Hasan:
Well, when I went in there, they had a couple of programs, but I wasn’t too interested in the programs because I was still young and wild, running wild. I wasn’t even thinking about educating myself. All I was thinking about was protecting myself, because of all the stories I heard about the penitentiary.
Mansa Musa:
Right. All right. Now, how much time did you do?
Kareem Hasan:
I did 37 years.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, you did 37. I did 48 years. When I went in the penitentiary, they had no programs, like you say, and everything we were concerned with was protecting ourselves. When did you get out?
Kareem Hasan:
I got out in 2013, on the first wave of the Unger issue.
Mansa Musa:
The Unger issue is the case of Merle Unger versus the state of Maryland, that dealt with the way the jury instruction was given at that time, it was unconstitutional. I got out under Unger. When Unger first came out, what did that do for you in terms of your psyche?
Kareem Hasan:
Oh man, that really pumped me up.
Mansa Musa:
Why?
Kareem Hasan:
Because I saw daylight.
Mansa Musa:
And before that?
Kareem Hasan:
Before then, man, I was gone. I was crazy. I wasn’t even looking to get out, because I had a life sentence.
Mansa Musa:
Right. Didn’t you have parole?
Kareem Hasan:
Yes, I went up for parole three times.
Mansa Musa:
And what happened?
Kareem Hasan:
First time, they gave me a four-year re-hear, and then the second time, they gave me a two-year re-hear with the recommendation for pre-release and work release.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Kareem Hasan:
Then they come out with life means life.
Mansa Musa:
Glendening was the Governor for the state of Maryland at that time.
Kareem Hasan:
Yeah, he just snatched everything from me, snatched all hope and everything from me.
Mansa Musa:
Hope, that’s where I want to be at, right there. When Unger came out, Unger created Hope.
Kareem Hasan:
Unger created hope for a lot of guys, because when it first came out, I think it was Stevenson.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Kareem Hasan:
I had it in my first public conviction in 1981.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Kareem Hasan:
But they said it was a harmless error.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Kareem Hasan:
And then, Adams came out, and then, everybody kept going to the library, and everybody was running back and forth. Everybody was standing in those books, because they saw that daylight, they seen that hope.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Kareem Hasan:
And then, when Merle was fortunate enough to carry it all the way up the ladder to the courts, the Supreme Court, Court of Appeals, they made it retroactive.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Kareem Hasan:
All that time we were locked up, it wasn’t a harmless error. They knew it, but they just kept us locked up.
Mansa Musa:
And you know what? On the hope thing, you’re supporting the Maryland Second Chance Act. You’ve been going down to Annapolis, supporting the Maryland Second Chance Act. Why are you supporting the Maryland Second Chance Act?
Kareem Hasan:
Look at me. I’m a second chance, and everything I do, I always refer back to myself. I’m looking at these young kids out here in the street, and when I talk to them, they relate to me. I need more brothers out here to help with these kids out here, because y’all see how Baltimore City is now. These young kids are off the chain, and they need somebody that’s going to give them some guidance, but they’re going to listen to a certain type of individuals.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Kareem Hasan:
They’re not going to listen to somebody that went to school, somebody that’s a politician or something like that. They’re looking for somebody that’s been through what they’ve been through and understands where they at, because that’s all they talk about.
Mansa Musa:
When you went into Maryland Penitentiary back in the 70s, you said ’77?
Kareem Hasan:
’76.
Mansa Musa:
You had no hope?
Kareem Hasan:
Oh, no. I had a fresh life sentence.
Mansa Musa:
Right. When Unger came out, then we had legislation passed to take the parole out the hands of the governor, that created hope. Then we had the Juvenile Life Bill, that created hope. Your case, had you not went out on Unger, you’d have went out on Juvenile Life, because they were saying that juveniles didn’t have the form, the [inaudible 00:22:12] to do the crime. Well, let’s talk about the Maryland Second Chance Act. Based on what we’ve been seeing and the support we’re getting, what do you think the chances of it passing this year?
Kareem Hasan:
I think the chances are good, especially the examples that we set. We let them know that certain type of individuals, you can let out. Now, there’s some people in there I wouldn’t let out, but the ones we’re talking about will help society, will be more positive for the society, especially for Baltimore City, and we need that.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Kareem Hasan:
The Second Chance Act is something that I support 100%.
Mansa Musa:
What are some of the things you’re now doing in the community?
Kareem Hasan:
Well, I have an organization called CRY, Creating Responsible Youth.
Mansa Musa:
What is that?
Kareem Hasan:
It’s a youth counseling and life skills training program, where we get kids, we come to an 11-week counseling course. After they graduate from the counseling course, we send them to life-scale training courses such as HVAC, CDLs, diesel training, and things of that nature. The program is pretty good, and I’m trying to get up off the ground more, but I need some finances.
Mansa Musa:
How long have you had this idea, and how long has it in existence thus far?
Kareem Hasan:
Well, when I first got the idea, I was in the Maryland House of Corrections, because we had a youth organization called Project Choice.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Kareem Hasan:
I had a young guy come in, and the counselor told me, he said, “Hi son, can you talk to him?” He can’t relate to any of us.” I took the kid on a one-on-one, and the kid said, “He’s trying to tell me about my life, but he’s from the county. He never lived like me. My mother and father are on drugs. I’ve got to support my brother and sister. I’m the one that’s got to go out there and bring them something to eat, because my mother and father take all that money and spend it on drugs.”
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Kareem Hasan:
The kid said, “He doesn’t understand my lifestyle, so how is he going to tell me about my lifestyle?” And then he looked at me and said, “Now see, where you come from, I can understand you. We can talk.”
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Kareem Hasan:
“Because I know you understand where I’m coming from.”
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Kareem Hasan:
“Because you’ve been there.”
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Kareem Hasan:
He got to talking about his mother and father, and he started crying. When he started crying, I was telling him about when my father passed, when I was on lockup, and I was in my cell crying.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Kareem Hasan:
And then, later on that night, I was in bed, and it just hit me. I said, “Cry, create a responsible youth.” That’s how I came up with that name, and just like those boys in the penitentiary, they’re crying out, just like in the Maryland state penal system, the ones that’s positive and they change their life, they’re crying out for help, and we’re here to help. We’re here to create responsible youth.
Mansa Musa:
Last, you will hear from Bobby Pittman, who was in the Maryland Prison system and is now out, a community organizer and leading a bully intervention program. This is what he’s doing with his second chance, in the interest of justice.
Robert Pittman:
Bobby Pittman, I’m from Baltimore. I’m a Baltimorian, and I actually went to prison when I was 17 years old. I was sentenced to a life plus 15 year, consecutive 15 year sentence at 17 years old, for felony murder.
Mansa Musa:
How much time you serve?
Robert Pittman:
I served 24 years on that.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, come on.
Robert Pittman:
The crazy thing, it’s been a year and a few days, it’s probably been 370 days I’ve been free.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Come on. Welcome home.
Robert Pittman:
Thank you. Since I’ve been out here, it’s been amazing. The things that I learned while I was inside of prison, actually, it carried over, with me out here. Within the last year, I helped 50 people get jobs with a connection with the Mayor’s Office of Employment Development. Shout-out to Nigel jobs on deck Jackson.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, Mr. Jackson.
Robert Pittman:
We’ve got individuals, like a couple of mothers, single mothers into schooling.
Mansa Musa:
Okay.
Robert Pittman:
With full scholarships. Got 10 people into schools, people that never believed that they’d have an opportunity to get their education. We got about 10 people in school. And then, I did all that through my peer recovery knowledge, my lived experience, and understanding where these individuals come from, and assessing these individuals, seeing some things that they might need or whatever.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Robert Pittman:
You know that you can get that. You can do that.
Mansa Musa:
What made you stop, once you got to a point where you said you needed to change, what made you get to a point where you started looking and thinking that you can get out? What inspired you about that?
Robert Pittman:
This is crazy. I actually fell off. I was on lockup one time, and I heard all this screaming and yelling. I’m like, “What is this screaming and yelling for?” It was 2012.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Robert Pittman:
They’re like “The law passed.”
I’m like, “What law?”
They said, “The Unger, the Unger’s passed.” People on lockup are screaming and all this stuff. I can hear, on the compound, individuals screaming and celebrating, and things like this. The crazy thing, they were screaming and yelling about a chance.
Mansa Musa:
Come on, yeah.
Robert Pittman:
You know what I mean? It wasn’t even a guarantee.
Mansa Musa:
I got a chance.
Robert Pittman:
All they know is, I’ve got a chance, because I’ve done exhausted all of my daggone remedies.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Robert Pittman:
But I’ve got a chance right now.
Mansa Musa:
Come on.
Robert Pittman:
To have my case looked at again.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Robert Pittman:
That’s when it started.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Robert Pittman:
That’s when it started. The Ungers went out, it wound up being 200 and something.
Mansa Musa:
People started seeing people going home.
Robert Pittman:
People I’ve been looking up to, now they’ve taken my mentor. My mentor is gone. I was happy for them, but now, it made me like I had to step up more, because I had to prepare for my chance. I see it now, Maryland. They said that they had a meaningful opportunity for release through the parole system.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Robert Pittman:
But there wasn’t one person that got paroled since 1995.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Robert Pittman:
It was a fight. It took about six years, but it gave us hope. We’re just waiting.
Mansa Musa:
Oh, yeah.
Robert Pittman:
We’re sitting there like, “Man.” Six years later, 2018, that’s when it was an agreement with the ACLU and Maryland courts that we’re going to restructure the parole system.
Mansa Musa:
Right, for juvenile lifers.
Robert Pittman:
For juvenile lifers, and on that, they created a whole new set of criteria that an individual on parole, or going up for parole had to meet. If they meet these things, the parole commission has the opportunity to release them. I started going through that. I went through it, went through the whole process in 2018, went up for parole and all that, was denied at my first parole hearing, of course. I saw people going home.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, through the system.
Robert Pittman:
I’m sitting there like, “Oh man, I saw somebody go home from parole. This is real.” The first couple I saw, I’m like, “Oh, this is real, now. I see how real this is.”
Mansa Musa:
Right. Talk about what you’re doing now.
Robert Pittman:
Now, I do peer recovery work. I’ve got a nonprofit, Bully Intervention Teams. What we do with Bully Intervention Teams, it’s not your average bully intervention. We look at all forms of injustice as bullying.
Mansa Musa:
Right, you’re talking about bullies.
Robert Pittman:
Yeah, all forms of injustice is bullying. One of the things that I see, I was seeing bullying when I went down to Annapolis this week. They’re bullying individuals through misinformation. This organization will try to make sure these individuals that receive this misinformation will receive proper information, because they’re being bullied through ignorance. It just was horrible. What we do on the weekend, Saturdays, individuals that were incarcerated, a lot of people look at them, “They’re doing good,” but they don’t know the stress of that, because you know what you’re representing. You’ve got to be a certain type of way, because you’re trying to be an example for these individuals. You’re trying to pioneer for these individuals that come out.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, you don’t hae the luxury make a mistake.
Robert Pittman:
We have our session, our peer-run session, where we can just relieve ourselves, because it’s a lot of pressure.
Mansa Musa:
Oh no, that’s there. You’ve got a wellness space.
Robert Pittman:
We need it.
Mansa Musa:
You’ve got to have it, because like you say, our reality is this here. We don’t have the luxury of making a mistake, and everything that we’ve been afforded, and every opportunity that we have, we don’t look at it as an opportunity for us. We look at it as an opportunity to show society that we’re different. Therefore, the person that I’m talking about, who I’m representing on their behalf, I’m saying that I’m different, but this person I’m asking you to give the same consideration that y’all gave me is also different.
We want to be in a position where we can have a voice on altering how people are serving time. One, we want to be able to say, if you give more programs, if you give more hope, you’ll meet your purpose of people changing and coming back out in society. But more importantly, we want to be able to tell the person, like you said, rest assured that you’ve got advocates out there.
The ACLU of Maryland and advocates urged the Senate to pass The Second Look Act, House Bill 853. For those that are interested, the hearing for The Second Look Act, House Bill 853, in front of the Senate Judiciary Proceeding Committee will be held Tuesday, March the 25th, 2025, 1:00 PM to 5:00 PM, in the East Miller Building, room two. For more information, visit Maryrlandsecondlook.com, or ACLUMaryland.org.
There you have it, the real news and Rattling the Bars. We ask that you comment on this episode. Tell us, do you think a person deserves a second chance, and if giving a person a second chance is, in fact, in the interest of justice.
My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law.
Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met, who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing.
Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.
Justice escapes the contours of this nation’s immigration facilities.
On March 8, I was taken by DHS agents who refused to provide a warrant, and accosted my wife and me as we returned from dinner. By now, the footage of that night has been made public. Before I knew what was happening, agents handcuffed and forced me into an unmarked car. At that moment, my only concern was for Noor’s safety. I had no idea if she would be taken too, since the agents had threatened to arrest her for not leaving my side. DHS would not tell me anything for hours — I did not know the cause of my arrest or if I was facing immediate deportation. At 26 Federal Plaza, I slept on the cold floor. In the early morning hours, agents transported me to another facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey. There, I slept on the ground and was refused a blanket despite my request.
My arrest was a direct consequence of exercising my right to free speech as I advocated for a free Palestine and an end to the genocide in Gaza, which resumed in full force Monday night. With January’s ceasefire now broken, parents in Gaza are once again cradling too-small shrouds, and families are forced to weigh starvation and displacement against bombs. It is our moral imperative to persist in the struggle for their complete freedom.
I was born in a Palestinian refugee camp in Syria to a family which has been displaced from their land since the 1948 Nakba. I spent my youth in proximity to yet distant from my homeland. But being Palestinian is an experience that transcends borders. I see in my circumstances similarities to Israel’s use of administrative detention — imprisonment without trial or charge — to strip Palestinians of their rights. I think of our friend Omar Khatib, who was incarcerated without charge or trial by Israel as he returned home from travel. I think of Gaza hospital director and pediatrician Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, who was taken captive by the Israeli military on December 27 and remains in an Israeli torture camp today. For Palestinians, imprisonment without due process is commonplace.
I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear. My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the U.S. has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention. For decades, anti-Palestinian racism has driven efforts to expand U.S. laws and practices that are used to violently repress Palestinians, Arab Americans, and other communities. That is precisely why I am being targeted.
I have always believed that my duty is not only to liberate myself from the oppressor, but also to liberate my oppressors from their hatred and fear.
While I await legal decisions that hold the futures of my wife and child in the balance, those who enabled my targeting remain comfortably at Columbia University. Presidents Shafik, Armstrong, and Dean Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target me by arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing campaigns — based on racism and disinformation — to go unchecked.Columbia targeted me for my activism, creating a new authoritarian disciplinary office to bypass due process and silence students criticizing Israel. Columbia surrendered to federal pressure by disclosing student records to Congress and yielding to the Trump administration’s latest threats. My arrest, the expulsion or suspension of at least 22 Columbia students — some stripped of their B.A. degrees just weeks before graduation — and the expulsion of SWC President Grant Miner on the eve of contract negotiations, are clear examples.
If anything, my detention is a testament to the strength of the student movement in shifting public opinion toward Palestinian liberation. Students have long been at the forefront of change — leading the charge against the Vietnam War, standing on the frontlines of the civil rights movement, and driving the struggle against apartheid in South Africa. Today, too, even if the public has yet to fully grasp it, it is students who steer us toward truth and justice.
The Trump administration is targeting me as part of a broader strategy to suppress dissent. Visa-holders, green-card carriers, and citizens alike will all be targeted for their political beliefs. In the weeks ahead, students, advocates, and elected officials must unite to defend the right to protest for Palestine. At stake are not just our voices, but the fundamental civil liberties of all.
Knowing fully that this moment transcends my individual circumstances, I hope nonetheless to be free to witness the birth of my first-born child.
This story originally appeared in Truthout on Mar. 11, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
A group of over a dozen lawmakers is demanding the “immediate” release of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil after his likely illegal arrest and threat of deportation by the Trump administration this week.
The House members, led by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), raised alarm about the threat to free speech raised by Khalil’s detention, saying that his arrest violates immigration laws and effectively criminalizes protest.
“Mahmoud Khalil must be freed from DHS custody immediately. He is a political prisoner, wrongfully and unlawfully detained, who deserves to be at home in New York preparing for the birth of his first child,” the lawmakers wrote. “Universities throughout the country must protect their students from this vile assault on free thought and expression, and [the Department of Homeland Security (DHS)] must immediately refrain from any further illegal arrests targeting constitutionally protected speech and activity.”
The arrest violated Khalil’s constitutional rights to freedom of speech and due process, the lawmakers said.
The letter was signed by 14 Democrats in the House: Representatives André Carson (Indiana) Jasmine Crockett (Texas), Al Green (Texas), Summer Lee (Pennsylvania), Jim McGovern (Massachusetts), Gwen Moore (Wisconsin), Ilhan Omar (Minnesota), Mark Pocan (Wisconsin), Ayanna Pressley (Massachusetts), Lateefah Simon (California), Delia Ramirez (Illinois), Nydia Velázquez (New York) and Nikema Williams (Georgia).
The case has been met with silence by other Democratic leaders like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, who represents the state where the arrest happened and is a fervent Zionist. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, also from New York, has also refused to denounce the arrest.
On Saturday night, DHS officers detained Khalil at his home in Columbia University student housing, citing his role in organizing pro-Palestine protests at the university last year. The Trump administration has threatened to revoke Khalil’s green card and deport him for his activism — which experts say is illegal and a major overstep of the administration’s power.
Federal agents seemingly covertly transported Khalil, who is Palestinian, to a private jail in Louisiana without telling his wife, who is eight months pregnant. On Monday night, a federal judge temporarily blocked the planned deportation of the activist, pending more legal action.
“Khalil has not been charged or convicted of any crime,” the lawmakers said. “As the Trump administration proudly admits, he was targeted solely for his activism and organizing as a student leader and negotiator for the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on Columbia University campus, protesting the Israeli government’s brutal assault on the Palestinian people in Gaza and his university’s complicity in this oppression.”
“We must be extremely clear: this is an attempt to criminalize political protest and is a direct assault on the freedom of speech of everyone in this country,” they went on. “Khalil’s arrest is an act of anti-Palestinian racism intended to silence the Palestine solidarity movement in this country, but this lawless abuse of power and political repression is a threat to all Americans.”
Khalil’s detention has been widely denounced by advocates for Palestinian rights and civil society organizations.
“This arrest is unprecedented, illegal, and un-American. The federal government is claiming the authority to deport people with deep ties to the U.S. and revoke their green cards for advocating positions that the government opposes,” said Ben Wizner, who heads the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “To be clear: The First Amendment protects everyone in the U.S. The government’s actions are obviously intended to intimidate and chill speech on one side of a public debate.”
The fingerprints of antebellum slavery can be found all over the modern prison system, from who is incarcerated to the methods used behind bars to repress prisoners. Like its antecedent system, mass incarceration also fulfills the function of boosting corporate profits to the tune of $80 billion a year. Bianca Tylek, Executive Director of Worth Rises, joins Rattling the Bars to discuss her organization’s efforts to combat prison profiteering across the country, and expose the corporations plundering incarcerated people and their communities to line the pockets of their shareholders.
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
In the heart of downtown Baltimore lies the Maryland Reception, Diagnostic and Classification Center, commonly called Diagnostic, which is a place where people convicted of a crime go to be classified to a particular prison based on their security level.
December the 5th, 2019, I was released from Reception Diagnostic Classification Center after serving 48 years. I was given $50, no identification, and no way of knowing how to get home. I’m not from Baltimore, I’m from Washington, D.C, and I heard my family member called me. I realized then that I had a way home. This is the state that most people are released from the Maryland system, and prison in general. No source of income, no identification, and no place to stay. So I had a few items, so I had to go get my stuff from my apartment. So they let everybody else look… Everybody came out the back, but they let them go “pew, pew, pew.” So most of them dudes wasn’t long term, they was familiar with the layout, right? Me, I know… I’m familiar with Green Mountain Madison, right? Me and another dude stand down here on the corner. I’m like, “Man…”, because I ain’t know my people. I ain’t know my people here was going to be, I ain’t know if they had got… Because they wouldn’t let me make no collect calls. Right? So every time, and I had money.
Speaker 2:
You’ve been released, and they…
Mansa Musa:
I had money on the books. I’m serious. They wouldn’t even let you make the call. So I kept on dialing, and it would go to a certain point, then it cut off, but my sister say, “Look, come on. Something going on. Let’s go down there.” This is what this show is about. This show is about giving a voice to the voiceless.
As we venture into the segments and the stories that we’ll be telling, we want people to take away from these stories, the human side of these stories. More than anything else, this is not about politics. This is about humanity. We’re trying to address the concerns of people, their families, their friends, and their loved ones that’s affected by the prison industrial complex, be it labor, be it medical, be it the food, be it being released with all identification and just a minimal amount of money to get home, and you don’t even live in the city that they released you from. Rattling the Bars will be covering a multitude of subject matters and a multitude of issues, and we ask that you stay tuned and tune in.
Welcome to this episode of Rattling the Bars. Recently, I had an opportunity to talk to Bianca Tylek, executive director of Worth Rises. Worth Rises is an organization whose mission is to complete abolishment of the prison industrial complex as it now exists, they have a strategy where they identify major corporations that are investing in or exploiting labor out of the prison industrial complex. You’ll be astonished at how many corporations have their tentacles in the prison industrial complex and the amount of money they’re sucking out of it in astronomical numbers, but first, we’ll go to this interview I had with Lonnell Sligh, who was on one of our previous episodes to talk about the impact the prison industrial complex is having on the communities at large.
We’re in East Baltimore at Latrobe Projects talking about how, in the shadow of the Maryland Penitentiary and Diagnostic, the housing projects are affected by the existence of these prisons. Many women walk out of their houses in Latrobe into the Maryland prison system, and why? Because of the devastation of the social conditions that exist in this particular community.
Now, my interview with Lonnell Sligh.
When I first got out, I never thought I’d be out and not be in the van. These vans right here, this is all our modes of transportation, three-piece shackle, and that’s how we’re being transported.
Lonnell Sligh:
What we said about the gloom and doom, one of the first things that I noticed when I got to MRDC was the projects and the kids playing outside of their area. Looking out and seeing the kids, and they looking up at this place. So I’m making a connection of that pipeline, because this all they see.
Mansa Musa:
Then when… That’s what he’s seen. What I seen when I came here, this building wasn’t right here. This was a parking lot. This building wasn’t right here. This was a lot. So the kids had a clean shot to the Maryland Penitentiary. So every kid that lived in these projects right here, this is what they seen. They see barbed wire on the Maryland Penitentiary. Then they seen another big building come up, there’s another prison. Then they seen this is a prison, and outside their front door, what they see when they come out their house is barbed wire and a wall.
Lonnell Sligh:
So it might be ill concealed to us, but for them and their mindset, this was a perfect, “Oh man, we got our clients and our…”, what’d you call it when you check in the hotel? Our patrons, you know what I mean, right here, because they got their industry, they got their pipeline, they got everything that they designed this to be.
Mansa Musa:
As you can see from my conversation with Lonnell Sligh, the prison industrial complex has a devastating impact on everyone. The men and women that’s in prison, the communities that they come from, the infrastructure they build on, the entire system has devastating consequences that should be recognized and addressed.
Some communities that they’re building, it’s the major source of their industry, like in Attica and Rikers, Hagerstown, Maryland, Louisiana, but some communities that they’re building, they’re building it for one reason only. To occupy the psyche of the community. So people walk out of their houses every day, this is all they see, and ultimately they find themselves in these spaces, but now you are going to see who’s behind this, the corporations that’s responsible for this exploitation.
I have the list right here. The Prison Industrial Corporation Database put out by Worth Rises. Super Ammo, Visa Outdoors, Warburg Pincus, 3M, T-Mobile, Tyson Foods, SS Corporation, Advanced Technology Groups, major corporations that are using prison labor to exploit it, profit, and profit alone, with no regard to human life.
Now my conversation with Bianca Tylek.
Yeah, we’re talking to Bianca Tylek from Worth Rises. Tell us a little bit about yourself, Bianca, and how you got in this space.
Bianca Tylek:
Sure. Thank you so much again, Mansa, for having me, and so great to meet you, and I’m glad that you’re home. My name is Bianca Tylek, as you noted. I am based in the New York area, and I’m the executive director and founder of Worth Rises. We are a non-profit criminal justice advocacy organization that works nationally to end the exploitation of people who are incarcerated and their loved ones and dismantle the prison industry.
I came to this where I founded the organization, it’s seven and a half years ago now, and we’ve been doing a tremendous amount of work all over the country towards our mission, and I come to this work through a few different sort of paths. I think most recently, I’m an attorney. Before that, I was on Wall Street, and so I actually worked in the investment banking and corporate sector, and then I think previously, what really makes me passionate about this issue is that I was myself an adjudicated youth and had others in my life who had experienced incarceration and were touched by this system, and all of those sorts of experiences collectively have brought me to this point.
Mansa Musa:
Worth Rises is dedicated to dismantling the prison industrial complex, it’s an abolition group, and as I listened to some of the things that you talked about, I thought about the war in Vietnam when the North first became known for their ferocious fighting where they had what they call a Tet offense, and the Tet offense was like when they had their initial salvo of repelling or resisting the United States and South Vietnam, and I thought when I heard some of the ways you was attacking this industry, that came to mind how systematic your group is in terms of dismantling, as you say, dismantling this group.
Bianca Tylek:
Yeah, I appreciate that so much. So I would say we have a three part strategy that we deploy at the organization, and it is narrative policy and corporate, and so each one of those tentacles is sort of a part of how we approach the industry, and specifically not so much guilting it as much as demanding and forcing it and pressuring it into better getting out or not exploiting our people in the same way, and so just to expand a little bit on each, our narrative work is really designed to help educate the populace, the American people and beyond on the harms that the prison industry is committing.
I think in particular, we know that the prison industry is an $80 billion industry, more than that these days, and a lot of people just simply do not know and are not familiar with it. Folks who have done time, like yourself, are familiar with, for example, the cost of phone calls in prison, but a lot of people walking the streets are not. They don’t know that phone calls are so expensive, they don’t know the cost of commissary, they don’t know that people pay medical co-pays, they don’t know that people are making pennies, if anything, an hour for work, and I think often, when we talk about these things, people are pretty surprised, because all of the modern media has people convinced that you go to prison, you get everything you need, and it’s some kind of luxurious, pushy place to be.
So a lot of our role is to simply… Through our narrative work, what we’re trying to do is get people to understand the reality of prisons and jails, both what the experiences are of people there, the exploitation that happens, and then importantly, at the hands of who, and that’s the industry, and so we do everything from published research to storytelling and beyond to help people really understand what the prison industry is.
So that’s sort of the narrative work, and that really builds the foundation, because we need informed people in order to be able to cultivate their outrage into action, and that leads us to our policy work. Our policy work is really designed to undermine the business model of the industry, and so we work to change legislation and regulations that would sort of hinder the ability of these companies to continue to exploit people in the exact same ways, and so for example, what that means is when it comes to prison telecom, where we know that one in three families with an incarcerated loved one is going into debt over the simple cost of calls and visits, and the large majority of those folks are women who are paying for these calls.
So what we have done in the last about five or so years is we have started a sort of movement to make communication free in prisons and jails. We passed the first piece of legislation in New York City in 2018 to do so, and since then, we’ve been able to pass legislation at the county, state and federal level to make communication entirely free, and today, over 300,000 people who are incarcerated have access to free phone calls, and so that changes the business model and revolutionizes the space entirely.
We also managed to pass game-changing regulations at the FCC to curb the exorbitant charging of phone calls in those places that still do charge for calls, and then finally, in our corporate side of the work, we sort of harness the work we do on the narrative side and the policy side to bring these corporations that are exploiting our communities to account, and really, in some cases, shut them down.
So we have companies that we’ve gone… We’ve had investors divest, we have removed their executives from the boards of cultural institutions like museums. We have blocked mergers and acquisitions. I mean, we’ve done all types of corporate strategies when it comes to those who are exploiting folks who are incarcerated and their loved ones, and we’re bringing some of them to their knees fully to bankruptcy, and so that is the kind of work that we do and really stress that it’s time that this system stopped responding to the profit motives of a few.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, let’s throw in this examination because in California, they was trying to get a proclamation passed about the 13th Amendment, because the genesis of all this has come out of the legalization of slavery under the 13th Amendment. I think that a lot of what we see in concerns of us versus the interest of them comes out of the fact that they can, under… Anyone duly convicted of a crime can be utilized for slave labor, and in California, they voted against this proclamation. How do you see… Is this a correlation between the 13th Amendment prison industrial complex, and if it is and you recognize that, how do y’all look at that? Because this industry is always fluid, it’s continuing to grow, it’s got multiple tentacles, and it’s all designed around profit. So when it comes to profit and capitalism, profit is profit is profit. That’s their philosophy. So however they get it, whoever they get it from, but in this case, they got a cash cow. Talk about that.
Bianca Tylek:
So we actually run a national campaign called End the Exception campaign that is specifically about the 13th Amendment. So we’re very close to this particular part of the fight. So if you visit EndTheException.com, you’ll see that entire campaign, which is, like I said, a campaign to pass a new constitutional amendment that would end the exception in the 13th Amendment.
While we run the national campaign at the federal level, which has over 90 national partners, a lot of states are taking on similar causes, including the state of California, and so California was one of several states in the last five or six years that brought a state constitutional amendment through a ballot initiative. Eight others have won in the last five years. So I do think despite the fact, and I have thoughts about California, despite the fact that California lost, other states like Alabama, Tennessee, Oregon, Vermont have all passed, and so I remained hopeful that it’s something that we can do both at the state level, but also at the federal level.
I think unfortunately, California lost, I think for various reasons, both the moment in time in California. There was also Proposition 36, which was expanding sort of tough on crime policies, and I think Prop 6 got a little bit mixed up into that. The language of Prop 6 was really not particularly helpful, and I think some of the local efforts also needed to coalesce and have those things happen, maybe, and hopefully it would’ve passed. It lost by a relatively small margin, albeit it did lose.
So I think your question, though, about how do these things relate, I mean, I guess what I’d say which degree with you, which is that I think that exploitation in prisons and jails is absolutely rooted in antebellum slavery, right? I think that what the Emancipation Proclamation and 13th Amendment in large part did was certainly, obviously, free a lot of people, but it also transitioned slavery behind walls, where you can’t see it, and then our carceral system, because in the years that followed during reconstruction, the prison population went from being 99% white to being 99% black. Many of the practices of antebellum slavery were shifted into the carceral setting and became normalized in that setting and continue today.
I tell people all the time, when you think of solitary confinement, which, as you know, is often referred to as the hole or the box, those are terms that come from antebellum slavery. When enslaved people disobeyed, their enslavers, they would be put in what was called the hot box or a literal hole.
Mansa Musa:
A hole, exactly.
Bianca Tylek:
And held there in darkness, in solitary without food, separation affairs, things like that, and those are essentially punishments that we’ve just modernized, but don’t actually change the true function of them. They’re meant to break down people into obedience, and the same terminology is used and the same practices are used.
Consider another example. When people who are enslaved again would disobey their enslavers, they would often be separated from their families. Their children would be sold off or their spouse would be sent away. Well, similarly, when people who are incarcerated exhibit what the system would call disobedience, they can be denied visits and phone calls with their families, contact, right? All of these sort of penal sanctions that exist today were the same ones that existed then, just in a newer 2025 version, and so I’d say I think much of… And that’s not to obviously mention the most obvious aspect, which people in prison are forced to work and they’re forced to work often for essentially nothing, and then are expected to be grateful for crumbs when given 15 cents or 30 cents on the hour or something like that, and so I think it would be foolish for anyone to suggest that the system isn’t once that was adapted from antebellum slavery.
Mansa Musa:
As you can see from our conversation with Bianca Tylek, the extent to which the prison industrial complex and corporate America merge is beyond imagination.
She was once involved with the criminal justice system. This in and of itself helped her to focus on what she wanted to do. She worked on Wall Street, and while on Wall Street, she started seeing the impact that corporate America was having on the prison industrial complex, the profit margin. From this, she developed this strategy and this organization on how to attack it. As you can see, she’s very effective, as is her organization, in dismantling the prison industrial complex.
Recently, I had the pleasure and opportunity to speak to some young people at the University of Maryland College Park. The group is the Young Democrat Socialists of America. You’ll see from these clips how engaging these conversations were, and when they say we look to our future, remember, our movement started on the college campuses. The intelligent element of society started organizing. As they started organizing, they got the grassroots communities involved, and this is what we’re beginning to see once again.
Student:
So today we have a speaker event with Mansa Musa, AKA Charles Hopkins. He is a former Black Panther, political prisoner. He’s done a lot of activism after re-entering society. He spent nearly five decades in prison, and that kind of radicalized him in his experience, and you can learn a lot more about him today during this meeting.
Mansa Musa:
We’re about completely abolishing the prison system. What would that look like? We was having this conversation. What did that look like? You’re going to open the doors up and let everybody out? I’ve been in prison for their year. It’s some people that I’ve been around in prison. If I see him on the street today or tomorrow, I might go call the police on it, because I know that’s how their thinking is, but at the same token, in a civil society, we have an obligation to help people, and that’s what we should be doing.
People have been traumatized, and trauma becoming vulgar, everybody like, “Oh, trauma experience.” So trauma becoming vulgar, people have been traumatized and have not been treated for their trauma. So they dial down on it, and that become the norm. So we need to be in a society where we’re healing people, and that’s what I would say when it comes to the abolition. Yeah, we should abolish prisons as they exist now. They’re cruel, they’re.
You got the guards in Rikers Island talking about protesting and walk out, wild cat strike, because they saying that the elimination of solitary confinement is a threat to them. How is it a threat to you that you put me in a cell for three years on end, bringing my meal to me, and say that if you eliminate this right here, me as a worker is going to be threatened by that not existing? How is that? That don’t even make sense, but this is the attitude that you have when it comes to the prison industrial complex.
The prison industrial complex is very profitable. The prison industrial complex, it became like an industry in and of itself. Every aspect of it has been privatized. The telephone’s been privatized, the medical has been privatized, the clothing’s been privatized. So you got a private entity saying, “I’m going to make all the clothes for prisons.” You got another private entity saying, “I want the telephone contract for all the prisons.” You got another company saying, “I want to be responsible for making the bids, the metal,” and all that. Which leads me to Maryland Correction Enterprise.
Maryland Correction Enterprise is one of the entities that does this. There’s a private corporation that has preferential bidding rights on anything that’s being done in Maryland. I’m not going to say these chairs, but I’m going to say any of them tags is on your car, that’s Maryland, it’s Maryland Enterprise. I press tags. So I know that to be a fact. A lot of the desks in your classroom come from Maryland Correction Enterprise. So what they giving us? They gave us 90 cents a day, and you get a bonus. Now, you get the bonus based on how much you produce. So everybody… Now you trying to get, “Okay, I’m trying to get $90 a month. I just started.” So somebody’s been there for a while, might be getting $2 a day and some. We pressing tags till your elbows is on fire, because you’re trying to make as much money as you possibly can, you’re trying to produce as many tags as you possibly can to make money, but they’re getting millions of dollars from the labor.
Student:
In your previous podcast episode, you interviewed the state senator, and he mentioned the 13th amendment and the connection between prison labor and slavery. So what do you think are some of the connections between the prison abolition movement and the historical movement for the abolition of slavery?
Mansa Musa:
Right now, the 13th Amendment says that slavery is illegal except for involuntary servitude if you’re duly convicted of a crime. So if you’re duly convicted of a crime, you can be treated as a slave, and the difference between that and the abolition movement back in the historical was the justification. The justification for it now is you’ve been convicted of a crime. Back then, I just kidnapped and brought you here and made you work. So the disconnect was, this is a human, you’re taking people and turn them into chattel slaves, versus, “Oh, the reason why I can work you from sunup to sundown, you committed a crime,” but the reality is you put that in there so that you could have free labor. All that is is a Jim Crow law, black code. It’s the same. It’s the same in and of itself. It’s not no different.
You work me in a system… In some states, they don’t even pay you at all. South Carolina, they don’t even pay you, but they work you, and Louisiana, they still walk… They got police, they got the guards on horses with shotguns, and they out there in the fields.
In some places, in North Carolina and Alabama, they work you in some of the most inhumane conditions, like freezers. Women and men. Put you to work in a meat plant in the freezer and don’t give you the proper gear to be warm enough to do the work, and then if you complain, because they use coercion, say, “Okay, you don’t want to work? We’re going to take the job from you, transfer you to a prison, where now you’re going to have to fight your way out.” You are going to literally have to go in there and get a knife and defend yourself. So this is your choice. Go ahead and work in these inhumane conditions, or say no and go somewhere and be sent back to a maximum security prison where you have to fight your way out.
So now it’s no different. Only difference is it’s been legislated, it’s been legalized under the 13th Amendment, and in response to abolition, so we’ve been trying to change the 13th amendment. We had an attempt in California where they put a bill out to try to get it reversed, and the state went against it. The state was opposed to it. Why would I want to stop having free labor? The firefighters in California, they do the same work that the firefighters right beside them… They do the same work, the same identical work. They’re fighting fire, their lives in danger, they getting 90 cents a day, maybe $90 a month. They don’t have no 401k, they don’t have no retirement plan, and they’re being treated like everybody else. “Oh, go out there and fight the fire.”
So yeah, in terms of abolition, the abolition movement is to try to change the narrative and get the 13th Amendment taken off out of the state constitution, because a lot of states, they adopted it. They adopted it in their own state constitution, a version of the 13th Amendment, that says that except if you’ve been duly convicted for a crime, you can be treated as a slave. If you’ve been convicted of a crime, you can be treated as a slave. That’s basically the bottom line of it. That’s our reality.
So as we move forward, my message to y’all is don’t settle for mediocrity. Don’t settle for nothing less. Whatever you thinking that you think should be done, do it. If you think that, but more importantly, in doing it, make sure it’s having an impact.
There you have it. Rattling the Bars. As you can see from these conversations, the seriousness that corporations have on the prison industrial complex, how they’re exploiting prison labor with impunity. We’ve seen this from the conversation we had with Bianca Tylek, who talked about her involvement with the criminal justice system, but more importantly, how she worked on Wall Street, how she developed this strategy of dismantling the prison industrial complex by going straight to the heart of the matter, corporate America. Her strategy, the organization’s strategy is to dismantle it one corporation at a time.
We’ve also seen it from our conversation with Lonnell Sligh, as we talked about the impact that these corporations have on the community, how most communities live in the shadow of major prisons, like in East Baltimore, the troll projects, where kids come out every day and see these buildings and ask their parents, “What is that?”, and their parents say, “Oh, that’s where you going to go if you keep doing what you’re doing,” or, “That’s where your uncle’s at,” or, “You don’t want to go there.” At any rate, it has no positive value to their psyche, but more importantly, we’ve seen how the youth are taking the stand to change and find this place in the struggle.
The exception clause and exception movement to abolish the 13th Amendment is constant, and on the rise. We have suffered some major setbacks, we’re trying to get legislation passed, but the fact that we have a consensus on, “This has to go,” because this is the reason why we find ourselves in this situation, where corporations have unlimited access to free prison labor with impunity. We ask that you give us your feedback on these episodes. More importantly, we ask that you tell us what you think. Do you think the exception clause should be passed? Do you think they should abolish the 13th Amendment, or do you think that corporations should be able to profit off of free prison labor? Do you think that communities should not be overshadowed by prisons? That our children should have the right to be in an environment that’s holistic? Or do you think that our youth that’s taking a stand against corporate America, fascism and imperialism should be given coverage? That institutions of higher learning should be held accountable for who they invest in? Tell us what you think. We look forward to hearing from you.
Police violence has shaken the US to its foundation multiple times in the past decade, but the problem has not been solved and only grows with each passing year. In the face of this, intrepid cop watchers across the country have stepped up to defend working people and communities. Why does the cop watching movement matter, and what can the rest of us learn from activists who have done this vital work for decades? On the sixth anniversary of the launch of Police Accountability Report, Taya Graham and Stephen Janis speak with a panel of cop watchers, including James Freeman, Tom Zebra, Otto The Watchdog, The Battousai and Laura SharkCW.
Pre-Production: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham Written by: Stephen Janis Studio: Cameron Granadino, Adam Coley
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Taya Graham:
Today we are not only going to be celebrating the sixth anniversary of our show, but we will also be seeking to answer a fairly profound question about a form of activism that has as much to do with the evolution of our show as policing itself. And that is cop watching. That’s because during the last six years as we have produced hundreds of shows, many have featured the work and personalities of this uniquely American art form. So we thought as we celebrated this special anniversary, we should do so in tandem with the people who have shared their work with us, which is why over the next hour we’re going to try to answer several important questions. First, why does Cop watching matter? In fact, why does any sort of activism matter and what makes it matter? It’s a question that I think is not asked enough, an idea that we feel must be explored in light of all the challenges we are facing.
And we’ll be trying to address it by examining the work of one of the people who literally helped invent it. He’s a man who started watching cops when VHS tapes were the dominant technology, and he’s a person who’s impacted Steven and my life in ways that are hard to measure. And of course, to help us unpack all of these ideas, we’ll be joined by cop watchers who are legends in their own rights. James Freeman, out of the Watchdog and Laura Shark, and they will be with us later to discuss their work. And at the end of the show, we’ll be making a big announcement about something Steven and I have been working on for quite some time. So please make sure to stay tuned. But of course, all of this begins with this show, the police accountability part. I mean, when we started it six years ago, we had no idea where it would lead.
I mean, sure policing was front and center as an institution that needed serious reform. Examples of police brutality were everywhere. And in our own hometown, we had just experienced the uprising after the death of Freddie Gray in police custody, which engulfed our city and led to even more recognition that law enforcement was basically broken. But really, if we’re honest, there was something else, not just immediate concerns that prompted us to launch this show. Instead, I think our impetus was about something deeper. Remember at the beginning of the show, we always made clear it’s not just about the bad behavior of individual cops. No, it was and is more than that. It was a way to examine the system that makes bad policing possible. And it was that system which allows rogue law enforcement to be pervasive, which has divined our work, prompted us to dig deeper and to explore the underlying imperative that we will interrogate further as we celebrate our anniversary. So Steven, can you talk a little bit about that idea and how the show came together?
Stephen Janis:
Well, every time we looked at policing, especially the worst parts of policing, or there’s some of the worst policing we’ve seen, it occurred in communities where there was an absolute underlying unfairness to the way the community was situated. And when I say that, I mean a community which was beset by poverty or a community that had unfair economic and unfair economic inequality. And so we said, why is bad policing always part of this equation? Well, it’s because policing in a sense, enforces the idea that unfairness is okay, that unfairness is actually a natural outcome of what we call late stage capitalism. So the idea was saying if we just look at a bad cop and take what they do and just show it on the screen and not really give some context, and we’re not doing our job as journalists. So the idea was to expand the palette and say, look, this is part of a system of unfairness. Please enforce that ideology that this is actually inevitable. And so we wanted to go beyond that. That’s why we look at the system.
Taya Graham:
Really well said, Steven. Thank
Stephen Janis:
You.
Taya Graham:
And just as he was saying, back in February, 2019, we just kind of launched the show. Just sort of did it. I mean, I wish I could say it was all planned out and we were sort of working in trial and error mode, but we weren’t winging it, but we just didn’t really know where it would lead. Maybe let’s watch a brief compilation of some moments from our first shows.
Stephen Janis:
The audience is small, we’ll be out of business pretty soon. So we got this idea that we need to focus on what we did best on what we knew best.
Taya Graham:
So one thing about Baltimore City is that policing is everywhere. You’re probably familiar with the death of Freddie Graham police custody in 2015, or you might know that my city is under consent decree for racist and unconstitutional policing.
Stephen Janis:
We had to pick what we knew and make it something special.
Taya Graham:
So when Steven said he wanted to do a show called the Police Accountability Report, I thought it really made sense.
Stephen Janis:
I think that came up at the same time I’d been teaching journalism at a local university and I was trying to teach the next generation of journalists to survive. I came up with this idea of subject matter expertise, like do a show or report on what you know the best. And to us, well that was policing.
Taya Graham:
And honestly, I think it was like a last ditch attempt to really make this work to find an audience for our reporting.
Stephen Janis:
So in January of 2019, we shot our first show. We just went ahead and did it.
Taya Graham:
Hello, my name is Taya Graham and welcome to the Police Accountability Report on the Real News Network. Honestly, I was just hoping we could break 10,000 views.
Stephen Janis:
I would’ve been perfectly happy with that. We’re talking about 10 years. These police officers were robbing people,
Taya Graham:
So we kept going and doing more shows. This is Taya Graham and Steven Janis for The Real News. Welcome to the Police Accountability Report.
Stephen Janis:
And it seems like T’S talent hosts a show and the topic was working, and we finally found a way to get a broader audience.
Taya Graham:
Oh my gosh, Steven, look how young you were. Look how young I was reporting on policing ages. You I think a
Stephen Janis:
Little bit. It was weird because we really did just kind of do it and we just sort of made up was going along. So it’s interesting to see that how the show has evolved themselves.
Taya Graham:
I know it really has. But as we were building the show, we started to hear about a community that we knew nothing about, a group that was in a way doing what we were doing, but let’s just say in a more different and more direct style. It was a slowly growing YouTube based movement that caught our attention. Thanks in part to our mod, Noli d Hi Noli D that we couldn’t ignore. Of course, I’m talking about Cop watchers, the people and personalities that go out and actively watch the police and then post their encounters on YouTube. Now, of course, cop watching existed long before YouTube. We all know the Black Panthers who watch police in African-American communities by taking notes and keeping track of the officers who were problematic. But along with the growth of YouTube, a new type of cop watching emerged. And that’s what Steven and I decided to report on the evolution of this form of digital activism that was different in many respects than what we were used to. And Steven, this version of Cop watching was uniquely formed by YouTube, wouldn’t you say?
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, I mean, the thing was you had a historic moment where for once an average working person could form an audience or have an audience. Remember before YouTube came along, and obviously the internet, most people who wanted to report the news or report what’s going on in their community needed an intense amount of capital. They needed a broadcast license or they needed a newspaper. But suddenly YouTube had created this alternative form of reaching an audience. It was kind of revolutionary. And I think that’s why Cop watching was so uniquely positioned and why it was so different, because YouTube gave a platform that didn’t exist before, a way of communicating to an audience, a way of forming an audience that didn’t exist before. So it was really revolutionary in a lot of ways.
Taya Graham:
I have to agree. And just to let people know, I will be trying to address some of the folks in the chat. I want you to know I see you, I saw you. Linda Orr. I see you. Lacey R. Hi, Lacey. R Hey, Lacey. So I just wanted to make sure to acknowledge some of the moderators and the supporters in our community are here, and Noli Dee helped introduce me to Cop watching. And I think we can honestly say that without Cop Watchers, this would be a very different show, very different. I mean, not that we couldn’t report on police, of course we could, but reporting on Cop Watchers and the personalities that drive it gave us access to a community that shaped how we thought about law enforcement by examining their work. It changed our perspective on how law enforcement had become more pervasive and powerful than even we could imagine.
And in a way, it gave us a sense of how much policing could affect not just the health of the community, but the entire psychology of it. Meaning the fact that there was a community of people who would literally go out and document police in communities across the country day in and day out for no other reason than it had to be done influenced how we thought about our show and what we needed to report again on the system, which is how and why the idea of making a show that we called Reverse Cops emerge. So let me explain. I’m sure most of you’re familiar with the show called Cops. It’s one of the longest running police reality series ever. The format is also pretty familiar, a bunch of photo follow cops as they arrest working class Americans for generally speaking petty crimes. The show, I believe, is meant to solidify the notion that only police can impose order and that the police are the moral arbiters of right versus wrong, and that working class folks are simply degenerates only worthy of arrest and jail cells. But Steven, I think our experience with Cop Watchers gave us some other ideas on how to, in a sense, reverse this narrative through journalism.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, I mean because Cop Watchers and people like Tom Z were had gone out and sort of shifted the narrative, right? Gone out every night and reported from the community perspective, we sort of adopt that into our show where the person, the cops would make look bad. This guy who cops go and arrest for some dumb reason, not always the dumb reason, but a reason that is questionable, let’s put
Taya Graham:
It that way. Or at least maybe for a nuisance crime,
Stephen Janis:
Right? For a ance crime. We thought, okay, let’s reverse the perspective of the camera there. The way cop watchers are. Let’s turn the camera around. Let’s not tell it from the police going in and rushing after some guy and chasing him. Let’s do it the way Tom Zebra and Otto the Watchdog and James Freeman do, where they’re the ones holding the camera and telling the story from their perspective. So we ended up dedicating a huge amount of our show to the people who had been either brutalized, questionably, arrested, whatever. That actually became like the linchpin of our show, which is just as someone from the mainstream media, that’s not the way we report on police. We follow the police around and we follow their cues. So this whole community that created this kind of reverse cops, we just followed their cues and said, we’re going to give 15 minutes to the person who got arrested and let them tell their story, just the way police get to control the narrative. And it was really, again, sort of a revolution of narratology. We are actually looking from the different perspective that the cop watchers have adopted, and I think that’s why, how it influenced our show, what made our show kind of different in some ways.
Taya Graham:
Steven, I think that’s such an excellent point and something that I think you really teased out there is that not only did Cop Watchers show us to turn the perspective around, but they also showed us, you were talking about how you had to have money to be able to control the narrative and to sort of democratize the process.
Stephen Janis:
They absolutely democratize and absolutely took away the need to have other than a cell phone camera and the ability to edit and the ability to be creative, which is what’s really cool about it. There’s so much creativity. It kind of inspired me to say, play around with the show, have the swipes, all the things that we know are signature. Or the police accountability report came from just watching Cop Watchers and what they would do. And I’d be like, well, we can’t just be this blase report. We’ve got to have a little action in there.
Taya Graham:
Yeah, we have to add a little creativity. Absolutely.
So as we built the show, we dedicated a large part of it to the perspective that mainstream media ignores. We turned the camera around to give the people who’ve been negatively impacted by policing the opportunity to tell their stories in detail. And we made the show not about police, but about the community. And no other community played a bigger role in this evolution than of course cop watchers. And no other cop watcher embodies the spirit of that ethos better than the man we will be talking about tonight. And I am of course referring to the legendary og cop watcher, Tom Zebra. And like our show, his story and his life is intertwined with his work, and it is that work that’s transformed him and the community he lives in. But let me try to share part of his story so you can understand why that is so important.
It’s the story of a man who lived in Los Angeles in one of the city’s struggling neighborhoods who saw a problem. People have been cracking down on, excuse me, police have been cracking down on working people for years with aggressive car stops, arrests for minor infractions. Law enforcement had adopted more and more punitive tactics as a way to fight crime, but that’s not what happened, and that’s not really why they were doing it. And this man understood this implicitly. He knew that over policing was an instrument of poverty. He understood that it only made the lives of those struggling to afford housing and even put food on the table. Even worse, he comprehended the pain inflicted by a system that trapped people and stripped them of their ability to fight back. But what did he do? I mean, in a sense, he didn’t have the tools necessary in our money fueled system to fight back.
He wasn’t a powerful politician or billionaire. He wasn’t a celebrity. He was just a man, passionate man, but one seemingly without the power to protect the community he loved. So what did he do? Well, he picked up a camera, not a cell phone, but a camera back when video was recorded on VHS tapes when YouTube didn’t even exist when the internet was still in its infancy. And when his fight was essentially his own will and ingenuity against the entire Los Angeles law enforcement industrial complex. But against those odds, he decided to fight. And he did it despite a powerful institution more than willing to fight back despite the obvious imbalance of power of one man with a camera against a legion of guns and badges. And he did it for the myriad of reasons people in our flawed democratic republic decide to step forward. He did it because it had to be done. Let’s watch a little bit of his video from 2005.
Speaker 6:
Man, where you going? Why a hard T got a bike license? Have a bike license. The driver’s license. I told you to that I, yeah, it does. Your bike over here. Probation, parole. Why you being such an ass about it? What’s your problem tonight? I have no problem. Good. You have a bike license for your bike? No, I don’t see one on there. No, you need to register your bike and the city have a bike license. You riding the city. Where are you going? Okay, where are you coming from? Okay. You want to
Taya Graham:
Do a difficult No,
And of course that was the OG I was talking about at the beginning of the show, Tom Zebra. In that dramatic footage, you can see how one person with one camera lit a fire that burns bright to this day. You see someone who’s fighting against power in ways that would eventually be adopted by thousands of cop watchers and activists using the camera, not just as a mirror, but as a tool of dissent recording video that no one would perhaps ever see, but still recording. Anyway. Steven, can you talk a little bit about how Tom has helped shape contemporary cop watching?
Stephen Janis:
Well, the thing when I was watching that video and I was thinking about it, and we both hung out with him a little bit. He is tireless, right?
Taya Graham:
Yes.
Stephen Janis:
He’s like a one man mainstream media kind of org,
Taya Graham:
One man media machine,
Stephen Janis:
Right? Because the thing that was really interesting about Tom and talking to him, we interviewed him a lot. He goes out every night and he goes out every night and he just films. And sometimes when he films, something happens and he will confront police as what he sees as being wrong. And that to me is such a David and Goliath story of someone who goes out and is willing to every night, watch cops no matter what, and willing to push back. And that creates, I would say, an alternative mainstream media ecosystem. Not mainstream in the sense that it looks like mainstream media, but that counter power, that counterbalance that doesn’t always exist in a community to tell their own stories. And so he was out there like a storyteller looking at what’s happening, watching and observing and exposing police in ways that are more subtle. It’s not just about the really, really bad events, but the way they abuse their power. And when you watch these Zoe videos, you can see where are you going, where are you headed, what are you doing? Those are the things that create this psychology of power that makes policing so devastating for people living communities where that type of policing is allowed. And I think Tom did the work
And that really made a difference.
Taya Graham:
Absolutely. That’s such an excellent point. And just to add to that idea, let’s run a clip about Tom Zebra. We produced for this yet to be announced project.
Stephen Janis:
Why were they focused on policing? What were they getting out of this and what was the real story?
Speaker 7:
It was like to protect myself from the police.
Stephen Janis:
Hello.
Speaker 8:
What’s going on
Stephen Janis:
Man?
Speaker 8:
Not much you doing here.
Speaker 7:
Doing know the tapes will just go in a box.
Speaker 8:
Good. How are you? Just your car?
Speaker 9:
Yes sir. Where are you coming from? Where do you
Speaker 8:
Live? I’m coming from getting dinner and I’m going home. Do you
Speaker 9:
Any guns or knives in the car?
Speaker 8:
No, sir.
Speaker 9:
You got valid driver’s license?
Speaker 8:
Yes,
Speaker 9:
Sir. Where is it at? It’s
Speaker 8:
In my center
Speaker 9:
Console. Don’t reach. You got any? You don’t have a gun or anything in
Speaker 8:
There? No, sir. There’s nothing illegal in here.
Speaker 9:
What’s going on with the camera? That’s the camera. Yeah, but what’s going on with that? Well, it’s sitting there
Taya Graham:
Recording. Mr, why don’t you pull me over? But this is only just part of the story, the beginning about the growth of a collection of YouTube activists that stood up for communities across the country, a movement that has actually achieved something tangible. People who connected on YouTube and other social media platforms to push back against power and actually made a difference. Activism that might’ve started with OGs like Tom Zebra, but has expanded to include hundreds if not thousands of channels and YouTubers working in big cities and small towns across the country. And so to talk about how this happened and what it means, and of course the work of Tom Zebra, we’re going to be joined by several guests who have been intimately involved in all of it. And to get this discussion started, we are happy to have Otto the Watchdog as our first guest. I mean, really, who else could it be? And just to let you guys know, if you see me looking down, that is because I’m looking to make sure to put some of your lovely comments on the screen. And I wanted to let you know, I think we finally have super chats and super stickers.
Now, I don’t know if you guys know this, but we don’t run any ads on our channels, and I’m sure you’ve noticed I’ve never done a HelloFresh commercial, so we don’t take any corporate sponsors, but if you want to buy us a little super chat so we can say hi to James Freeman or a The Watchdog for you, we’d be happy to do that.
Stephen Janis:
And also, we should also tell people to try to subscribe to our newsletter. Go to the real news.com. You can subscribe because that way, even if you don’t have money to be able to support our journalism, you can also subscribe to the newsletter and keep in touch with what we’re doing. So we really would like people to do that as
Taya Graham:
Well. Yes, absolutely. You can hit and subscribe to the email and that would really help us as well. Now back to Otto, he’s probably one of the best, along with our other guest, James Freeman, at actually injecting comedy into the practice of Cop watching. He’s a style that is both unique and illuminating. You know what? Let’s watch a quick clip about Otto talking about how he came up with this.
Otto The Watchdog:
So I wanted to do something comical because I was becoming an angry person. I was sitting at my kitchen table, I was writing down slogans. I said, well,
Speaker 10:
He’s got stuff from there and in other counties that they’re going to try to put together and they’re going to try to get his ass organized crime.
Otto The Watchdog:
I said it out loud and I was like, hand stuff
Speaker 4:
That
Stephen Janis:
Awesome, Otto, that could have been a hit song if maybe Otto, if you’d had a few less swear words in it, I
Taya Graham:
Guess. But the thing is, I’m sure with the beeps, I am sure you all could probably figure out what was being talked about. Some of you who know the cop watching community, well might’ve recognized the other voices singing despite all the beeps. And that Otto is another important member of the cop watching community, Eric Brant, who was known for his extravagant actions to help protest treatment of the Denver homeless community. And like Tom Zebra, Eric Brat is an important part of the Secret project that we’ve been working on that we cannot wait to share with you. But perhaps it would be better to let the fellow singer speak for himself, which is why we are joined by Otto the Watchdog. Thank you so much for joining us.
Otto The Watchdog:
Hi. It is pleasure to be here. Thanks. It’s always nice to be here.
Taya Graham:
Well, we’re so glad to have you are so glad. And first, we just want to ask you a very simple question, or maybe actually it’s not a very simple question. What got you involved in COP watching? What prompted you to pick up a camera and start filming your encounters with police?
Otto The Watchdog:
Well, those are two separate things. So what got me started looking towards police and being upset in general was license plate lights. A lot of my friends were being pulled over and they were being pressured to allow a search of their vehicle over license plate lights. And when one of my friends was roughed up and one of those traffic stops, I decided that something had to be done. And the inspiration to film it came from people like Tom Zebra and James Freeman. Freeman was in my local area at the time, and I saw those guys and I thought that it was a great idea. And then I found out that there was actually a lot of people doing this, and I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t going to get run over and falsely accused of some pretty terrible stuff. And I wasn’t expecting that it was going to go bad, but it did quickly. So
Stephen Janis:
When you say it went bad quickly, can you just explain a little bit what you mean by that? It went bad quickly. Are you talking about the potatoes or something like
Otto The Watchdog:
That? Oh, no. So yeah, the potatoes, the first time I went out with the camera, I was only out for 15 minutes before I had my first police contact. And that was when I was like, oh, this is probably going to be a little bit more of a thing than I thought it was. Then I took a break for a while and I really went out and looked and made sure that what I was doing was going to be legal. And if it wasn’t for people posting on YouTube, their encounters, I never seen it. And like Tom Zebra, he was doing it before when VHS was out and he said that he put all those tapes in a box and nobody would ever know unless a major production company put it together and then distributed those videos.
Stephen Janis:
Right, which is what we’re trying to do. Not really, but we did use some excerpts from them. But Kate, go ahead.
Taya Graham:
Oh, I do have to ask though. I mean, we’ve discussed and highlighted some of your more humorous approaches to watching cops. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I know it might seem strange to people who see police brutality or police overreach and says, that’s not a funny topic, but you managed somehow to bring humor into it. Can you kind of explain how you did it and why you did?
Otto The Watchdog:
Well, I did it because I brought humor into it because it is so dark. It is not a funny topic. And it was something that I felt passionate about and I think that everybody should know, mainly because my family was very supportive of law enforcement. I have several members of my family who are law enforcement, and we get along fine, just for the record, everybody’s fine. Thanksgiving can get a little bit, sometimes we have to change the topic of conversation,
But I believe that they were good people and they think that they were doing good work and doing good things. And since I’ve been more active in this topic genre specifically, we’ve come to the conclusion that they might’ve not been breaking the law and violating, violating people’s rights, but they were violating people’s rights. You mentioned the long running show cops. Well, that was very popular when I was a kid. We watched it all the time, and I watched it for a long, long time, and I loved that show. It was always entertaining. There was always something going on. Now here I am many years later, I go back and watch that show and shows like it, and basically every single encounter is a violation. Every single one of those is like, oh, well, why are they doing that? Why are they immediately pulling somebody out and putting ’em in handcuffs? What’s the purpose of that? And they’re beating people up. They’re very violent. But that was because that’s the content that got them the most views and interesting. Nothing’s really changed about that. I guess there’s still the thing that gets them the most views is when they’re the most violent.
Stephen Janis:
That’s really interesting because now there shows live pd and there just seems to be this fascination with other people’s misery. But that’s really interesting. And so at some point you kind of said, I’ve seen enough actual encounters with cops that I know that kind of propaganda the cops is promulgating or whatever. I know that’s actually false. I mean, is that what someday it just clicked for you? Or is it because after you went out a couple of times you kind of felt like, wow, this is all wrong?
Otto The Watchdog:
Oh no. It was a slow progression and then a sudden snap. I was watching these things because I wanted to know what I was illegally required to do at traffic stops
Laura Shark:
And
Otto The Watchdog:
Things of that sort. I didn’t really have any run-ins with the law, but when I was not quite an adult yet, there was an incident where law enforcement, there was a fight in the park and the law enforcement showed up and somebody pointed at me and I was arrested. I was not involved in it,
But nevertheless, I went to jail and I was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. And that case was dismissed because I wasn’t the guy, but I had to call into a bondsman every Wednesday with the threat that I could be arrested if I didn’t. And that went on for a while. So that was my first, oh, maybe these guys aren’t all superheroes. And then again, one of my friends was pulled over for their license plate lights being too dim, not being bright enough, and she’s a minority. And when the police officer pulled up to the window, said, get out, and she asked one question and he opened the door and yanked her out and then roughed her up a little bit. And I just had enough. I just had enough. And that’s when I put my boots on for the first time and actively what I love about cop watching. Thank you for asking Steven. What I love most about Cop watching is that protesting in general is a reactive response to a situation that has occurred. Cop watching is a proactive protest, or No,
Stephen Janis:
You’re right.
Otto The Watchdog:
I’m using protests loosely there. Cop watching is proactive. We can go out and actively look for these.
Stephen Janis:
That is such a great way to put it.
Otto The Watchdog:
I love
Stephen Janis:
That. Cop watcher is always smarter than me because I wrote this whole script, but Otto said it in a way. Otto, sorry, I should be looking at you. But you said that, and that is so right. You guys go out there sometimes when there’s nothing going on, right? I mean, you’re just, you’re out there and you’re just watching
Taya Graham:
Or listening to a scanner, right?
Stephen Janis:
Yeah. I mean, that’s such a different form of protest. You’re right. We have protests now against this administration or that, but Cop watchers just out there active. That’s pretty interesting.
Taya Graham:
I just want to mention this, since we did have Eric Brat singing earlier, we’re going to talk a little bit more about him later as we share our big project, but you connected with him and others that helped create this community that we covered. How did you connect with people like Eric Brat or Monkey 83 or Joe Kool or any of the other folks that we were fortunate to meet?
Otto The Watchdog:
That was definitely a 100% direct response from James Freeman being in my local area at the time, that I needed somebody to be local. And he just happened to respond to my email. And we’ve been good friends ever since. And I mean, he might disagree, but I can’t count James Freeman among my friends. I would invite him over for dinner. That’s wonderful. Eric. I had seen some of his videos and this man looks absolutely nuts, and I love it. I love it because he is so far out there that if he can get away with what he’s doing, then what I’m doing must be fine. And he was kicking ass and he would be arrested. And then before you know it, the cases are dismissed. And he did file a lot of lawsuits and he won quite a few, a lot of lawsuits, and he won a lot of his cases.
Taya Graham:
It was actually impressive. I think some of his lawsuits, he won the right for body cameras and
Stephen Janis:
Englewood,
Taya Graham:
Colorado.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah. First a training,
Taya Graham:
First Amendment training,
Stephen Janis:
He $35,000 tattoo that
Taya Graham:
That’s right.
Stephen Janis:
He got arrested for a tattoo.
Taya Graham:
I think he was arrested on nearly 200 times and won over 80% of his cases. I mean, that’s a pretty impressive track record.
Otto The Watchdog:
It’s a staggering track record. It really is.
Taya Graham:
I am glad you mentioned Eric again, because I know he must have shaped to some extent how you do cop watching and how the community came together. I mean, how would you describe Eric’s role, just out of curiosity?
Otto The Watchdog:
Well, the cop watching and protesting are two separate things that I do both. I do both of them, but they are sometimes intertwined, but they are different. Cop watching is usually a little bit more somber. You’re just trying to document the thing. And then sometimes I would just get the calling and have to sing a song. And the song was inspired by Eric, his signs, and then I just wanted to make it into a rhyme. And then it just evolved into a song and it sounded really good. It was easy to sing, and I could do it loudly, and that was the key. And Eric and I, we could harmonize together and just pop it off. We had a unique chemistry that allowed such a thing like that. And as far as the protesting, Eric definitely shaped the protesting. He absolutely shaped what I was, everything from the sign and then his clothes. I liked that he would wear bright green clothes and everything about him screamed protestor. And then for him to be arrested, it’s clear and obvious to everybody that he was arrested for what he was saying and what the sign that he was holding. And I appreciated that.
Stephen Janis:
Wow. Well, last question we wanted to ask you, just give a little bit about what do you think about Tom Zebra? Did Tom Zebra influence your work at all? Or how do you feel about his work and how it’s influenced cop watching?
Otto The Watchdog:
Yeah. So I saw Tom Zebra after I had gotten fully immersed in what was going on because he’s in California and I’m not.
So I was trying to find somebody in Texas because I knew that Texas and California law were different, different enough that you need to know what goes on in Texas, not California. Right? So when I finally found Tom, I was well into my activism. So he didn’t necessarily shape and drive me directly, but I guarantee you that he inspired somebody that I saw at some point, or the six degrees of separation. I know that Tom Zebra shaped me and encouraged me through his actions, even though I hadn’t heard his name until well after I had begun. And again, Tom Zebra goes out every single night.
Stephen Janis:
I know,
Otto The Watchdog:
Right? It’s amazing. And if he’s not posting a video every single day, it’s because nothing happened last night. And when a cop watcher is not posting a video, in my opinion, that’s a good thing. We should not have content.
Taya Graham:
That’s a good point.
Otto The Watchdog:
None of us should be anybody worth interviewing because our channels should have zero followers. We should have zero views. But that’s not the case. And it’s not the case because, well, police officers feel like they can do whatever they want to because they’ve been able to do whatever they want to. They’re told that they can do it. And until that changes, I think that this genre is going to continue to grow. And as it has dramatically. So in the last five years since specifically the Floyd protests
Stephen Janis:
Instead Armada, the show should be, this show would not exist without the bad behavior of individual cops, I guess, right?
Taya Graham:
In some way. I mean, I’ve said before I would be happy if I didn’t, if I could report on something else.
Stephen Janis:
That’s a profound statement. We should have no followers and no videos.
Taya Graham:
That’s a really profound statement. Just before we let you go, I believe it was Tyler Smith asked what happened to Otto’s arrest at the gas station where the cops solicited a complaint on the day he had court for custody. Did you have that resolved?
Otto The Watchdog:
It did. That case is resolved. It took a while, and I took a beating. So we resolve that case out of court for, I believe that settlement was $90,000. And I took that money and split it 50 50 and put it into savings accounts for my children because they’re the victims. And I am deeply bothered by the events that happened early in my channel because they continue to affect you every single day. It’s something that never goes away, and I never wanted that, never thought that that would be a thing. And I’m glad that it’s over and looking forward, all we can do is hope that justice will prevail.
Taya Graham:
Wow. Thank you. Thank you so much. And thank you for sharing that. And we just want to tell you how much we appreciate hearing from you, and we’re going to drag you back on a live stream in the future. I’m sorry. And we’re just have to do it.
Stephen Janis:
And remember, we both are going use Invisit on our car.
Taya Graham:
That’s
Stephen Janis:
Right. Your sponsor.
Otto The Watchdog:
Oh yeah, invisit. It’s the only window film approved by Nala.
Stephen Janis:
Okay, well let’s not go there, but let’s say this. It’s completely transparent, so police can’t see it. Neither can you. It’s pretty awesome. Perfect
Taya Graham:
Tint to make sure you never get arrested for Windows again.
Stephen Janis:
Alright,
Taya Graham:
Otto,
Stephen Janis:
Thank you Otto, it
Taya Graham:
Great to have you as always. Awesome. And I did just want to make sure that people saw that we had some lovely comments here. People really appreciate you, Otto. Thank you.
Otto The Watchdog:
Hey, I appreciate you guys. I wouldn’t have made it through it if it wasn’t for my friends and fantastic supporters. I could not have gotten through that if it wasn’t for you guys.
Taya Graham:
Oh, Otto,
Otto The Watchdog:
Thank Attia. And Steven, thank you for doing what you do because when I was doing this, we didn’t have a lackluster that would focus on these channels. You guys also pioneered your own little branch here because before the police accountability report, we really didn’t have anybody that cared enough to bring our videos to a larger audience in a professional way. Because a lot of people who do this are motivated, dedicated, passionate, but we’re not video editors, audio producers, and we don’t have all the skills and material and resources to do what you guys do. So thank you. Thank you as well. You’re
Stephen Janis:
Welcome. It was our pleasure,
Taya Graham:
Otto. We appreciate that more than thanks for being know that was really kind of you. Thank you. Thank you.
Stephen Janis:
That means a lot.
Taya Graham:
Especially because the Washington Post came in and said, oh, there is such a thing as Cop Watchers. I was like, thanks for noticing. Five years later,
Stephen Janis:
Right? Good
Taya Graham:
Job
Stephen Janis:
Five years after, but
Taya Graham:
At least finally, you guys are getting the recognition that you deserve.
Stephen Janis:
Absolutely.
Taya Graham:
Absolutely. Absolutely. We’re so happy about that. And I just did want to also make sure to say thank you to Michael Willis, who was kind enough to give us a donation. Very kind.
Stephen Janis:
Thank
Taya Graham:
You, Mike. And I thought that was really kind. Thank you. And I just want to make sure someone else said in response to our conversation about Eric, they could not stop Eric, so they put him away like they did. That was from DJ Plus. So I just wanted to let you all know I am taking a look at your comments, and I’m going to put them up whenever I can. You know, Stephen, that story about how Otto and Eric Brandt and Monkey 83 and Friends in Code and Chris Powers, how they got together is pretty incredible.
I mean, they all met on YouTube and they were all connected because of their support for Cop Watchers and each other, and they sort of built a community together. I mean, that’s an interesting story.
Stephen Janis:
Well, no, I think it’s interesting listening to Otto talk about how he connected with James Freeman, and you know how James Freeman connected with Eric and these guys are all working in different places.
Taya Graham:
Yeah. All
Stephen Janis:
Across the country. And organically created a network of people to bring these stories to people’s attention. And that’s not how YouTube is often advertised, is building communities and building actual physical activism. As Otto said, it was proactive. We said, here’s the problem. We’re going to go out every night and film that is so different from many things that, and I think we could all learn something from that activism.
Taya Graham:
And I have to say this, and this is a personal opinion, but I think it is very brave to go out on the streets armed with nothing but a camera.
Stephen Janis:
Absolutely.
Taya Graham:
And trying to make sure that your community has justice. So I think that’s a very brave thing to do,
And that is one of the reasons why we did that documentary. But we’ll save some more of those details for a little bit later. Hope you stick around and hear more about it. But for now, we’re going to be joined by a person who has been one of the most visible, prolific, and creative members of the community. He is notorious for turning routine encounters with police into revealing examples of comedic role reversal that reveals much about the power that police have and how it affects us in unseen ways. Let’s watch a clip of one of his encounters.
Speaker 11:
But these people have been told that they’ve got it in their head, that they literally have a right. They have the authority to just arbitrarily control everyone around them.
Speaker 12:
Hey, what’s up everybody? It’s James Freeman. You doing all right over here? What department are you with? You got ID on you. I sir. Dude, can I see it? Please.
Speaker 11:
I was even disturbed by the fact that this cop let me do it. Most of the people in the comments are like, man, this is the nicest cop ever. No human should tolerate that from another human. It’s wrong.
Taya Graham:
And now we have to give a big welcome for James Freeman. James, thank you so much for joining us.
James Freeman:
Hey guys, thank you for having me on the show again. It’s always good to be here.
Taya Graham:
We love having you. So happy to have you. And so first off, if you don’t mind, I would like to ask you about the legendary Tom Zebra. What did you think of his work? When did you first see it and has it influenced you at all?
James Freeman:
Honestly, I can’t remember the first time I saw it, but Tom Zebra influenced, he was one of the first. And when he was out there doing this stuff, I’ve said this before actually, I’ve compared Tom Zebra to a pioneer. Well, I have a lot of ancestors that crossed the plains over into the west, and we call ’em pioneers, right? And they blazed a trail. When they did it, it wasn’t easy. Basically when I came into the game, it was a lot easier than when Tom Zebra did it because Tom Zebra was basically Bush whacking it. He came up with the idea. He was the one who decided, alright, I’m going to go out and record these guys. When I started, I had people like Tom to help me understand what I legally could and couldn’t do. Tom, I don’t know who was his influence, but without people like Tom, I probably would’ve ended up in prison or in jail before I even really hit the ground. Got going.
Stephen Janis:
And what prompted you personally to start doing cop watching? Why did you decide that, Hey, I’m going to do this. I’m going to take this risk, the risk of getting arrested and go out and film police. What kind of motivated you to do that? How did it get started for you personally?
James Freeman:
Like Otto, it was a lot of things. I wouldn’t say it was necessarily just one thing.
I can tell you that the first video I ever shot though was when I was going through an inland border patrol checkpoint that I traveled through on a regular basis as me and my family were traveling between Arizona and Texas. And for those who don’t know what that is, you don’t cross a border or anything. But these federal police stop you and start asking interrogating questions. And it really doesn’t even have anything to do with stopping immigration or drug trade or anything like that, because all you have to do is they ask you, are you a US citizen? And if you can say the word yes, it’s like that’s the magic word. Yes. You’re no longer what they’re looking for. And I was realizing that this really wasn’t even about stopping crime or even immigration or drug traffic or anything. It was about conditioning people to obey and to understand who their master was. When master tells you to say yes, you say yes.
Speaker 7:
Wow. Wow. That’s
James Freeman:
Really
Speaker 7:
Powerful.
James Freeman:
So I shot that video and I really only shot the video to show it to four or five of my close friends and one of my friends, I couldn’t figure out a way to share it. I was trying to email it. I didn’t know anything about this technology stuff. I sucked at it. And one of my more technologically advanced friends said, Hey, best place to share a video is on YouTube, or even just with friends. So I uploaded it to YouTube. I didn’t even know how it worked. And so it was set to public, and two weeks later, a handful of other people who did this type of stuff regularly saw the video, shared it, and it had a half a million views within two weeks. And people were reaching out to me and saying,
Stephen Janis:
James,
James Freeman:
Do this again. Do it again. And I’m like, dude, what? That’s
Stephen Janis:
Incredible. That’s amazing. I mean, a half a million views, that’s not easy.
Taya Graham:
Wow. Wow. That’s amazing.
Stephen Janis:
That is amazing.
Taya Graham:
I have to ask you though, and I suppose this is somewhat of a serious question, but what is it like going out there holding a camera knowing that you might possibly be arrested, and how do you deal with that threat and how does it affect you?
James Freeman:
People talk in my comment sections. People are like, oh, James, you’re so brave. You never back down and you never get scared. That’s not true at all. Anybody who does this knows that the people we’re dealing with are armed terrorists. That’s all there is to it. It doesn’t matter what laws or don’t law, or I’m sorry, it doesn’t matter what laws or don’t know. These people don’t operate under Law and order. They’re terrorists. They’re armed people who are willing to do anything that they can get away with to you. And law legislation, none of it really plays a part. The only thing to me that really plays a part is that I think that they feel some duty to hold up the illusion that they’re some type of legitimate law enforcement or some type of legitimate entity. And so I try to play on that more than anything because I know they don’t actually care about the law, but sometimes they do care about public opinion because if people really understood, if people really knew what they were, they’d be completely abolished immediately. I’m not just talking about the people that you talked about earlier, poor lower class, financially. I mean, if everybody middle class upper, maybe upper class knows what they are, but I really think that if most people really knew what they were, they would say, whoa, we want a system of law and order, and this is not it. This is armed thugs ruling our streets.
Stephen Janis:
Now, is that why you did those? Because we showed some of the videos, the video where you’re asking an officer for ID and those sort of rural reversal kind of videos. Is that where you got that idea? Because to me, they’re so revealing about policing space saying, I can come up to any person at any time and demand almost with the threat of arrest. Is that why you did those kind of videos because of that?
James Freeman:
Yeah.
Yeah. And that was inspired by a book that I read, the Most Dangerous Superstition by Larkin Rose. And I was reading it, and he was basically comparing, most of us were told that government is by the people, for the people, and that we delegate power and authority to our government. Therefore, and the point that he makes is if that’s true, then I can only give to you or delegate to you what I have. And so a lot of people even mimic this, that government can only have the power or authority that we give to them. But when we talk about it hypothetically and say, what if I were to go up to a cop and do this, still usually just doesn’t quite click with people. It’s a hypothetical, but when you actually do it, all of a sudden it’s shocking. It’s like, wow, what an arrogant piece of crap. This guy is a total douche bag. And I did it recently just a couple of weeks ago for the first time in years, and the internet has gone crazy over it. People described me in the way that people like Tom Zebra have been describing cops for a long time, and it’s horrible the way that they were talking about me. I said, that’s it. That’s exactly what I’m trying to tell you.
Taya Graham:
Wow, that great. And those new videos are really amazing. I
Stephen Janis:
Would encourage everyone to go to James Freeman’s channel.
Taya Graham:
Absolutely. And of course, all the watchdogs channels as well, watch or Tommy. But it’s amazing. And there’s a moment, one of the videos where, I know it sounds like a strange thing to say, but you snap on these gloves and it’s like somehow it gives you another level of authority. You already had the authority in your voice, but then when you snapped on the gloves, it was as if the person, the officer you were interacting with just handed over her authority to you. It was amazing. So when you folks have a chance, definitely go check out his channel. And I wanted to mention, since I was mentioning Otto as well, when did you find yourself really interacting with other YouTubers and other cop watchers?
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, that’s good question.
Taya Graham:
I mean, I think you connected with Eric Brant fairly early on, but when did you find yourself interacting with other cop watchers and forming that community?
James Freeman:
Actually, Otto Otto was one of the first that I really connected with because he was local where I was at. So I mean, I had talked to a few others. Johnny five Oh was out in California. He flew out to visit me, but Otto was actually one of the first that I regularly connected with because it was important when we were doing this stuff to have somebody close by because there is a good chance that you’re going to get arrested, you’re going to go to jail, you’re going to need help from somebody else. The truth is, you really can’t do this stuff alone. You’ve got to have some type of support group. I mean, these cops are 900,000 strong across the whole country, and they’ve got legislators and judges and prosecutors and a whole team of people to terrorize you. And so just having a small handful of people, it was David Borin and Auto, the Watchdog that were my local people that I regularly worked with and connected with. And Otto really got the poopies end of the stick on what happened out there.
Taya Graham:
And also, I think David Bore was in the chat. So Hi, David Boron.
Stephen Janis:
Hey, David. I just want two more questions. One, Alice one then to you, what did you learn about YouTube using YouTube as a tool for publishing your videos and showing people what you were learning? How did YouTube influence your work? And I know it’s kind of a weird question, but I think YouTube is always left out of this conversation. And what did you learn about YouTube in the audience too? What kind of audience you have?
James Freeman:
Let’s see. What did I learn about YouTube?
Stephen Janis:
Well, what I mean is, I guess YouTube is a big feedback machine. You kind of learn things when you do videos certain ways, and
Taya Graham:
Some
Stephen Janis:
People like something.
Taya Graham:
I mean, and do you feel like in using YouTube, do you think the activism or the work that you’ve done would be even possible without YouTube? How important is YouTube to this whole idea, to this whole idea to the work that you do?
James Freeman:
Yeah, it’s essential. My wife asked me when I recorded at a border patrol checkpoint again, just last week, we were just traveling. We traveled an hour to go have dinner with family. And on the way back ended up going through a border patrol checkpoint. And I yelled at him and told him, you don’t have the right to do this and blah, blah. I got out of the car, I was belligerent, I was nuts on this one. And I get back in the car and my wife says, would you do this if you didn’t have a camera in your hand? I said, no, of course not.
Taya Graham:
I love the honesty.
James Freeman:
But the truth is that in the nineties when I was being bullied by cops, it didn’t mean that it wasn’t right for me to do what I do and wrong for them to do what they do. It was just that if you tried to assert your rights back then you were guaranteed to get that crap beat out of you and be thrown in jail and or prison. And so just like a cop wouldn’t do what he does without that badge and gun. And so you’re right, but also, I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing here if cops weren’t doing something wrong. But you’re absolutely right though the camera, the ability to publish this and show it to the world, I really wouldn’t do it if I couldn’t show the world. I just end up beat up or dead. It wouldn’t help anyone if I wasn’t showing it to the world.
Stephen Janis:
That’s deep.
Taya Graham:
That’s incredible. But the thing is, you’ve also like Otto, you’ve incorporated humor into it, I mean, I thought what you said, because you had me read that book by Lobar, and I appreciate that, but you incorporated humor and there are these moments that seem really spontaneous. How did you decide to evolve that and why did you Yeah, it’d be funny. Yeah. How did in
Stephen Janis:
Situations sometimes didn’t seem like they were funny, but
Taya Graham:
Somehow you made them funny somehow might make them work. I don’t know how you managed to do that. Yeah.
Stephen Janis:
How do you do that? Or why did you do that?
Taya Graham:
Yeah. Better was the question. Why did you one day do that? I mean, would you see the absurdity of the situation? How did you get there?
James Freeman:
Yeah.
I think that it was both from a necessity, because I get kind of depressed watching too much of this stuff and being immersed in it too much. It’s really sad, and I am sure that you guys experience it too. Day after day after day, you see people’s lives being destroyed. You see people being terrorized, good working people. And so the comedy comes from some people have been offended by me making jokes out of really horrific stuff. But I don’t know, like Otto said, you got to do something to lighten it up. You’re either going to laugh or you’re going to cry once you really see what’s going on. So I try to laugh a little bit, and I think that it does help people. Making jokes and comedy of it, I think helps people to really truly see the absurdity of what government does, what cops do.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, I think it was funny because the one that we used, the famous one where he asked the cop for his ID
Taya Graham:
And just the look
Stephen Janis:
On his face. But what’s interesting, he pauses for a second, and then you see something click in his head like, oh, this is kind of weird. Right?
Taya Graham:
Because initially he does sort of react to the authority in James’ voice, like, oh, and you see him processing, wait a second, wait a second. I’m the one who does
Stephen Janis:
This. Wait, the Exactly.
Taya Graham:
And that power reversal James, that is so powerful for people to see. It’s incredible. I don’t know. It spoke to me on a different level and it helped me interrogate for myself how much of other people’s authority, especially with law enforcement I have accepted and how I’ve had to do a lot of work to distance myself from that and find my own autonomy. And your work really highlights that. James or
Stephen Janis:
The better one, have you been drinking to, we should be showing these, but you can go to his, not the poor guy, but the cop looks at him like
Taya Graham:
Just confounded, just flabbergasted. We’re shortcircuiting his brain in that moment. Okay. Obviously I think we’re showing we’re James Freeman fans. I think we’re kind of embarrassing ourselves right now.
Stephen Janis:
But anyway, James, thank you so much for joining us.
Taya Graham:
Thank you so much. Because we are going to have to get to the super secret special person that we’ve been talking about this whole time. So we have to make sure to go forward and speak to the legendary Tom Zebra shortly. So James, we just wanted to thank you and before you go, if there is anything that you want to shout out into the world, please feel free to do so.
James Freeman:
Yeah, thanks for having me on the show. And guys, congratulations on six years.
Stephen Janis:
Thank
Taya Graham:
You,
James Freeman:
Thank you, thank you for what you guys are doing. It’s always an honor to be able to come on your guys’ show. Thank you.
Stephen Janis:
Thank you
Taya Graham:
James. Appreciate that’s really kind. We appreciate you so much. And next time we have you on the live stream, we’re locking you in for a full hour and you’re just going to have to sit with us. Just letting you know
Stephen Janis:
I’m
Taya Graham:
There. We’re locked in. Alright, wonderful.
Stephen Janis:
Cool.
Taya Graham:
Thank you James. Thank you so much. And so
We will be turning to the man we mentioned at the beginning of the show the OG cop watcher who started filming cops. And it sounds almost prehistoric to say this when people were just recording video on VHS tapes. And if you didn’t already know, his name is Tom Zebra and as we’ve explained it already and have discussed at length, his work was both pioneering and instrumental in building this community known as Cop Watchers. And just to give viewers just a little of how dedicated he is to his work and how he practically invented the current form of cop watching. We have a clip from 2012 we’re going to show, and then we’re going to have his legendary cop watcher partner, Laura Shark, come on and talk to us about it as well. So let’s take a look at this clip. Yep.
Speaker 8:
Officer, I hate to be the one to bring you the bad news. I’m going to try to break it to you gently. It’s against the law for you to ride that motor vehicle on the sidewalk here. Did you know that? Has anyone ever mentioned that to you before? Nope. None of your police didn’t tell you that in your police training.
Speaker 12:
Do you have a point?
Speaker 8:
I made it very clearly. It’s against the law for you to be on that sidewalk for me to make that left. Turn in the middle of the road and cut off that car. You’re mistaken Bacon. You need to get your motorcycle off that sidewalk. Why is that? You guys, you guys ride people on bicycle tickets every day for riding on the sidewalk, don’t you? Every day you guys write tickets to people on bicycles, don’t you? For riding on the sidewalk. And guess what? That’s not an enforceable law, but you’re on a motor vehicle. Let me ask you this, do you have an ID with you? I’m asking questions right now, not you. No, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, you’re wrong. You’re wrong. Let me explain something to you.
Speaker 12:
I’m asking the questions now. No, keep filming. Lemme see your id.
Speaker 8:
No, I don’t have id. You don’t need to have an ID to record. It’s the camera. It has nothing to do with recording. It has to do with
Speaker 12:
You making an illegal turn
Speaker 8:
Here. I didn’t make an illegal turn. I didn’t cut off a car. I beg to differ, bro. Keep begging to differ. Do you have an ID with you? I already told you. Told me what? I already told you. I don’t need an ID to record. You’re missing the point. You’re missing the point. The reason you just pulled around and questioned me is because I was questioning you is because you made an illegal turn. Came over here to question me wrong. Do you have a supervisor, Mr. Garver?
Speaker 12:
I’ve got plenty of supervisors.
Speaker 8:
Who’s the watch commander right now? I don’t know. Why don’t you find out? Why don’t you have ’em come out here? First of all, I don’t have No, no, no, not first of all, you do work for me. I’m a taxpayer and you do work for me. Why don’t you find out who’s the watch commander and you haven’t come out here right now?
Taya Graham:
That was pretty amazing, don’t you think?
Stephen Janis:
Oh yeah. Yeah.
Taya Graham:
I mean incredible.
Stephen Janis:
I know because motorcycle cops, they have their own TV show, so Yeah,
Taya Graham:
They do. And I have a little,
Stephen Janis:
What do you
Taya Graham:
Have? Some have just some folks saying that they love Tom Zebra and Laura Shark. Thank you. Slushy 58. And then I have someone saying hello, just saying, hi Jeff. Thank you. Hi. Real news fam. Good to see you. And I thought there was something that was really powerful here that was written and this is Leonine. And they said, then they came for the socialist and I did not speak out. Then they came for the next trade unionist and I did not speak out. And then they came for me and there was no one left to notice. And I thought that was really powerful because something that James said that was really important to have community that you can get in trouble, you can need help with
Speaker 4:
Bail,
Taya Graham:
You can need legal advice. And so that’s why I think the fact that this became a community so important.
Speaker 4:
And
Taya Graham:
Also of course, I appreciate that I’m a union member myself. I’m a union steward. So shout out Leah Teen. Thank you for that.
Speaker 4:
Yeah.
Taya Graham:
Okay, now we are going to go to Laura Shark and Tom Zebra. Are they here with us? Do we have Laura Shark to join us? Laura Shark?
Laura Shark:
Yes. Yes.
Taya Graham:
Do I hear her? Lovely boys. I think I do
Laura Shark:
Tom
Taya Graham:
Now. So Laura and Tom, we got you.
Stephen Janis:
Oh, finally together. Great
Taya Graham:
To see you.
Stephen Janis:
Great to see you guys. Great to see you.
Taya Graham:
So first, thank you both so much for being here. And then we have to ask Tom, this is your video. Maybe you can tell us a little bit why you felt it was so important to let this officer on his motorcycle know that sidewalks are not for motorcycles. You seemed very determined there.
Tom Zebra:
You cannot imagine the amount of abuse that not just myself, five years before this, before YouTube or anything else, I had gone through the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. This is something that I’ve never really published, but the Ninth Circuit Court of appeals already ruled in my favor. I had already been through depositions with high power attorneys. I had already destroyed them and proved every single one of them was a liar. So when that video rolled around and you could still hear the fear of my voice despite 10 or more years of being proven and the police’s courts, the law, it’s not my court, it’s their court. I had beat them repeatedly. I knew the difference between right and wrong. And I knew even you hear Dusty Garber in that video, he tried to say, I don’t work for you. Whatever he was going to say, I don’t think he got all of those words out by that time. I already knew what they were going to say before they could say it. And it was like I was just on autopilot.
Taya Graham:
Wow.
Tom Zebra:
But that video, when I said mistaken bacon, I think that must’ve put me on the map because that’s what people just love that. And
Before we go any further, I just want to say thank you for having me on the show and Otto and James and Laura and all you guys, it is a pleasure to be here with you. The conversation, I don’t have the video playing like the audience, but all the conversation I’ve heard has just been inspiring. All these thoughts, comments. There’s no way the human mind would be able to remember all the thoughts I just had. So I’m just happy to be here and unfortunately my mind can’t keep up with all the brilliance you guys have already discussed.
Taya Graham:
Well Tom, you are part of the reason we’re here. You have inspired us and we are just so happy to have you and have all these people talk about how important you’ve been to the community. We should ask Laura, so we have to ask Laura, I mean, how did his work affect yours? And actually, actually even before I ask that, how did you guys meet? How did this connection
Stephen Janis:
Connect? We both cop watching. You just ran into each other? No,
Laura Shark:
No, no. Literally at a store. I was walking in and we both weren’t really paying attention and we almost ran into each other.
Taya Graham:
No, you’re kidding. That’s like a
Laura Shark:
Me too. And I had been shown a video, a friend of mine was like, look at this crazy guy on YouTube. And I remembered seeing it in passing and then so when we almost ran into each other, I was like, wait a minute, are you the guy from YouTube? And he was all, oh, and it kind of just kind of spiraled from there. He’s all messaged me or I think I made a comment on one of his next videos and then, I mean I really had no intention to be doing this as well, but it gets you. I went on a cop watch with them and I was terrified. I mean naturally I couldn’t do it by myself for the first couple of times and it was just kind of amazing how much I didn’t know at that point in my thirties it’s just like, how did I not know that this was happening? And then I kind of teamed up with Boxy just to be able to break the mold and not be afraid anymore. He was doing his own thing and then we met back, I guess he’d seen some of my videos and he started to take me seriously and I really appreciated that. And then we were kind of just did all that. It’s
Stephen Janis:
Interesting, I kind of think of you as a team, even though I don’t, you both have your separate channels.
Laura Shark:
Absolutely.
Stephen Janis:
Do you work as a team a lot or is it just my impression?
Laura Shark:
We cop watch a lot, but we butt heads even more. We dunno what’s up. We have no experience with that.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, we have no experience with that at all. We don’t know how to relate to that.
Laura Shark:
Yeah, we definitely have. I’ve come a long way because of him and I admit that sometimes I don’t want to. But no, he’s taught me a lot, him, Catman, Ricky, just the people that I’ve met through him too. I mean, you can’t stop learning. Every time I pop watch, there’s always something new and something else that I absorb into the situation. Something shocking, something simple. When we experience the Christopher Bailey incident, that was shocking for me. Even though it happens when you see something like that, it changes you
Stephen Janis:
Just so people know.
Laura Shark:
Friedman was saying that it will start to mess with you if you really don’t try to make a little bit of humor out of it. But that situation, there was nothing funny that
Stephen Janis:
We could. Just really quickly, so
Taya Graham:
Everyone knows who might not have seen it, Christopher Bailey,
Stephen Janis:
Who might not have seen it, it was a man who was beaten near to death by police
Taya Graham:
And or
Stephen Janis:
By sheriffs.
Taya Graham:
And your recording was instrumental, was absolutely instrumental.
Stephen Janis:
And your recording in a lie to a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. Is that correct?
Laura Shark:
Yeah, it was almost a year to the day till we heard from the lawyer. I had almost had to accept that I would never know who he was, if he survived what his story was. But we kept on the story one way or another because of the deputies we would see day in and day out. So I kept posting about it and I also did a sent video to the, I think the, forget who it was, they were doing a whole thing. They were trying to Department of Justice, sorry? Oh yeah, department of Justice, department of Justice, because they were calling for any video of sheriff abusing that stuff. And I was like, oh, I had a couple. I had a lot. And that was the first on the list that I sent them and I think that’s who contacted the lawyer or something behind the scenes.
And then she contacted me and it was literally I had resorted the fact that I would never know and then boom. And yeah, we took part in that case from beginning to end and it was a weird experience. It taught me a lot and Chris couldn’t have been so undeserving of that. There are bad people in the world, I’ll admit. Police can serve a purpose. It’s just too much that we see is the abuse part, but this is so undeserving of it, the nicest man you’ve ever met. It broke my heart when we did a Zoom. We never met him in person, but we did do a zoom with him and the lawyer and he was so sweet. He actually said he was glad it to him being in his health and just being able to take that opposed to somebody that might be on drugs or just be kind of health wise. And I was like, what? He was an amazing man and he did not deserve that and I’m glad he was able to have his resolve.
Stephen Janis:
Tom, do you remember when you decided to pick up a camera? Do you remember that moment? I know when we interviewed before, you said it was to protect yourself. Do you remember that day? Oh, you do. Okay. Can you talk about that?
Tom Zebra:
I remember it was to protect me. No, I couldn’t tell you when At first I put a bunch of cameras in my car because they would pull, I had a Cadillac that I think the stereotype is they’d expect to find a black person driving it. I don’t know if that’s the reason, but I just had a really shiny, beautiful car and I, there were certain agencies I couldn’t drive through without being pulled over. I mean, even though nobody would look at these videos, I couldn’t show them. Nobody cared to watch ’em. Not even my girlfriend friends, it didn’t matter. But
Stephen Janis:
No one wanted to watch it.
Tom Zebra:
Nobody gave a shit. There was no such thing as video sharing or whatever. It wasn’t like people’s phones probably. I don’t know if they had cameras or they didn’t, but they probably didn’t. So it wasn’t a thing where everyone just makes videos and whatnot.
Stephen Janis:
That’s so interesting. And you did it. I’ve got question, Steve. Yeah, no, no, I’m sorry. I’m thinking about that. I’m trying to understand. You’re making these videos and probably at that point you had no idea YouTube was going to and you just kept doing it.
Tom Zebra:
Go ahead. Well, I knew that they’re not going to keep pulling me over and searching me. Gosh, sorry. That’s okay. They’re not going to keep pulling me over and searching me. I wasn’t very smart, but I was wise enough to know because they had already started framing me, but they were framing me for little irrelevant things and the more they would frame me and make me have to go to court and all these stupid things just because they’re mad that they were wrong when they pulled me over, the more angry I got. Eventually I didn’t want to get out of the car and be searched again.
And so the camera thing, it was just like I said to protect me and it would confuse them and throw them off so it wouldn’t have matter if I had a hundred dead bodies in the trunk. Once they seen the camera, they’d be like, what’s that for? I’m like, the video you showed just today, you hear the guy said, well, what’s that for? Well, it’s a device, it records audio and video. I guess you never heard of such a thing, right? It’s sitting there, it’s recording you. So act accordingly. And usually at that point they would just disappear so I could continue on with my a hundred dead bodies in the trunk. Yeah. So it was to protect myself. Yeah. I mean neither of them or myself, none of us understood at that point that these videos would ever even have a purpose.
If I was smart enough to think, oh, one day there’ll be, and I told you this Steven the other night, when if I was smart enough to think ahead and realize one day I’ll be able to share these videos with the world, and if the police were smart enough to realize the same thing, we could have brought some police accountability around sooner, but unfortunately adopted. Yeah, exactly. If I would’ve been that smart, I would’ve been the inventor of YouTube. And unlike the inventor of YouTube who only published one video, he published the very first video, I think, and never to this day never published a second. I would’ve never stopped publishing videos and nobody would’ve been able to terminate my channel and take my videos down. So I think police accountability would’ve went much further. I was as smart. Unfortunately I’m not, and I wasn’t
Taya Graham:
Tom, I was sort of curious. We have our theories on why sometimes police are so aggressive in communities. Why do you think the police were so aggressive in your community? I mean, there’s one of the videos we showed. There’s a clip and I see you just sitting there and eating your chicken nuggies just looking as innocent as the day is long. And I’m like, why is this cop harassing him? And so I’m just curious, why do you think the police were so aggressive in your community and aggressive towards you?
Tom Zebra:
Okay, well, let me try to explain what I think is the reason it’s part of it. I can answer that question a hundred different ways depending on my mood. But this is according to the sheriff. I know you guys are well aware of their budget. All the money that’s spent a billion dollars goes towards what I would call unlawful traffic stops. They call it pretextual. Lemme try again. Pretextual traffic stops only half of 1% of these stops results and any contraband whatsoever, according to them, that’s their story. I don’t know if is the truth better or worse, but according to them, despite all these searches, they only find something illegal 0% of the time. Wow. They sure have a whole lot of motivation. Why would you search 200 cars and you’re only going to find something once.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, it’s a very inefficient way of police
Tom Zebra:
Make what you will that either they’re finding shit more often than they’re willing to admit and taking it home or their supervisor’s taking it home. Somebody’s taking it home because you’re not going to search 200 cars, find out a damn thing, and then next week you’re going to search 200 more cars. Why not just go have lunch
Stephen Janis:
Now, Laura, it seems like every cop knows Tom at least, and a lot of ’em know you was going out with Tom a little fraught. Everyone would see you with Tom Zebra and then the cops would be like, oh, it seems like they talk to you guys. They’ll use your names.
Taya Graham:
Yeah. It seems like they know you. Do they
Stephen Janis:
Respect you? Or they just saying, Hey, we know who you are. We’re going to retaliate. What’s that about?
Laura Shark:
I don’t know if it’s respect. I would say maybe they loathe us. They’re like, oh, great
Stephen Janis:
Here. I
Laura Shark:
Mean, yeah, they always recognize, Daniel’s got so much history with most of the police in our area. I mean, there are a lot, especially when we were doing sheriff, there’s just no way to get away from me on and around 2020, I was just put to the ground. I was just doing it almost every day. And yeah, they could not know me. But overall, just the surrounding cities, I appreciate the history that he has with them. I do feel like I’ve kind of paved my own path when it comes to it. We do kind of post in different kind of formats, but for the most part, yeah, I do appreciate when they do remember me, to be honest, like good. That’s what we’re dealing with now. Okay,
Stephen Janis:
That’s back. That also means your work’s having an impact. They wouldn’t recognize, you know who you are if they weren’t all watching your videos. So that is a good sign.
Taya Graham:
Oh no, I just wanted to mention, no, there’s Chuck Bronson is in the chat, actually have watched him. I’ve lurked during some of your videos while you’re driving around listening to the police scanner, Chuck. So hi, it’s great to see you. And Laura, I had put a comment on the screen that you’d mentioned that there are a lot of great women cop watchers, and I feel like they’re maybe not quite as well known. I was wondering if there are any cop, female cop watchers that you like in particular? Any names you’d want to shout out at
Laura Shark:
All? Oh, I love a lot of them. Yeah. And Jody of course.
Taya Graham:
Is that Jody Cat Media who you’re referring
Laura Shark:
To? Yeah.
Taya Graham:
Okay.
Laura Shark:
Hi, Jody Kat. She’s close friend. I met a lot of, I mean, I don’t want to just kind of throw out names like that mean, sure, I do do Miss Denise. We lost her and I’m
Speaker 4:
Sorry.
Laura Shark:
I do know that. I mean, so many flooding my mind right now and I don’t want to forget to say one.
Taya Graham:
Sure.
Laura Shark:
But I feel like I’ve been, it has blown my mind, the evolution of women cop watchers and it’s always so great to see when I see their posts, I’m like, and they’re doing way more than me, better than me, and I can’t express how much I appreciate their work.
Stephen Janis:
Tom, you heard what people said, James Freeman, all the watchdog about your work. I mean, how does that make you feel to know that people learn from you and how much they respect you and how much you’ve meant to their lives, and also just the fact that it’s all about YouTube connected you. How do you feel about that?
Tom Zebra:
I kind of feel like I’m not allowed to say bad words, but Tom f and Zebra, whatever, I know that’s my name, my moniker, but that’s just a persona. I’m Daniel, and I feel like the town zebra, that wasn’t really a choice that I made. Didn’t, it’s going to be tough to talk about this.
Speaker 4:
It’s okay.
Tom Zebra:
It wasn’t a conscious choice. I didn’t say, oh, I’m going to hold these police accountable. I felt like they didn’t give me any choice except to defend myself. And I feel like Otto, I can’t speak for him, but I feel like he might feel that same way, James. I don’t know if James had a bad experience or not, but just in general, it wasn’t something that I chose to do. It was something that they either I had to bend over and just spread my cheeks and take it and try to smile, or I had to turn around and stand up and it wasn’t easy. But I don’t deserve all the credit. Like I said, Tom Zebra, anybody could be the Tom Zebra in their town or the Jodi Cat or the Laura or the James or the Otto. But I’m not going to suggest anybody should. You got to be willing to probably take a beating and if you have kids, if you have a wife, if you have a mortgage, it’s going to be really difficult to accomplish anything because you can’t be going to jail and court. It’s going to be rough. You guys have all said so many brilliant things. I can’t remember all. I feel like I had a comment for everything and I’ve lost track of all of them.
Taya Graham:
No, but Tom, I think you brought up a really good point, and I think it shows the sort of self-sacrifice that I see and a lot of people in the community because like you said, if you’ve got a kid at home and let’s say you’re working two jobs, you literally can’t afford to go out and cop watching. So someone’s got to go out there and take the hit, so to speak.
Tom Zebra:
Look what happened to Eric Brandt. I mean, I can make a whole show I did. I spent weeks, if not months riding around. They put a bunch of laws in his name. That’s because he’s righteous. That’s because he’s the one telling the law what it is. It’s true if they named it after him. So how do a bunch of corrupt judges send him to prison when the same corrupt judges a year later are buried in their own corruption? If they were smart, they would’ve embraced Eric brand because instead of being embarrassed and all this by their own corruption, they could have avoided it. But they’re not smart because there’s no damn consequence for ’em. So they’ll never care. They laugh all the way to the bank. I’m sorry,
Stephen Janis:
Thomas. Okay, that’s perfect. I think you had a clip that you wanted to play.
Taya Graham:
There is a clip I do want to play. I just want, so actually I will play this clip. I have one more question for Laura before we lose, have our guest leave. Let’s play the clip, but let’s play this clip. This is very special. First, it’s a very special thank you to The Battousai who, because unfortunately because of a scheduling conflict, he couldn’t be here with us today, but he wanted to make sure to say hi to us.
Stephen Janis:
Let’s watch.
Taya Graham:
Let’s watch this.
The Battousai:
Hey Tom. Unfortunately, I was unable to make the live stream however, I wanted to make a quick video in my absence. I just wanted to say that you are one of four people who inspired me to record the police. Now, I did have the honor to meet you a few years ago back in California, and we did some cop watching together. I never forgot that moment. In fact, it was probably one of the biggest highlights of me recording police. Just wanted to wish you well and hope that you’re doing well, and hope to hear from you soon. Take care, buddy.
Taya Graham:
Wow. So we want to thank Philip of the infamous well-known Philip Turner of Turner V Driver. If anyone doesn’t know that case law, go look it up right now. It’s named after that young man who in his work has helped affirm and protect the right to record police as well as support your first amendment rights. So either one of you, Laura or Tom, I just wanted to know what you thought of, but two sides stopping in to say hi.
Laura Shark:
Yeah, no, he was great. We got to meet him and when he came out, I actually went to Texas before that and met up with him. Super sweet. Just the knowledge he has is amazing, and everything that he’s accomplished is makes me a little jealous, right? He’s so young. I know. Yeah. I mean, he is a great guy.
Tom Zebra:
If I could add, it was wonderful. We made a spoof video. We also made serious videos. He went through DY checkpoint with nothing, but I’m sorry, with his, instead of giving the license, he gave his carry concealed weapon id. I think something so outrageous that that’s kind of an outrageous thing to do. You don’t get my license. I’m not rolling the window down, but I do have a gun is basically how we went through that DUI checkpoint.
Speaker 7:
Wow.
Tom Zebra:
Obviously not my id. I would’ve never put him in that situation. But besides that, everybody here, you guys too. Happy anniversary. I’m going to shut up. If you don’t shut me up, I will talk forever. Thank you guys for having me and James Otto, everybody. Laura, even I told the one guy to put his name because I don’t remember it now. Is it Adam?
Taya Graham:
Did I
Tom Zebra:
Get it
Taya Graham:
Right? Yeah. Adam behind the scenes. Yeah. Adam, that’s Adam. Absolutely. Adam, thank you Adam. Adam’s
Tom Zebra:
Making friends.
Taya Graham:
Yeah. Oh, that’s awesome.
Tom Zebra:
I’m going to mute my microphone and just tell you guys, I love you and the viewers, everybody. I love all you guys, and I’m so happy to be back. I’m finally healthy again. I never stopped being on the street, but hopefully one of these days I’m going to start publishing again. And I look forward to seeing each and every one of you again. I’m going to mute.
Stephen Janis:
Okay.
Speaker 4:
Thank you. Thank you
Taya Graham:
So
Stephen Janis:
Much. And Laura, thank you too.
Taya Graham:
That’s
Laura Shark:
Beautiful. No problem. Yeah, thank you. And congratulations to you.
Stephen Janis:
Thank you.
Taya Graham:
Thank you, Laura. We really
Laura Shark:
Appreciate it you guys so much. I can’t tell you how much I appreciated how much you’ve done for my channel, for our channels, I mean in publishing about some of our stories and things we’ve seen. So
Stephen Janis:
Is our pleasure, the
Speaker 16:
Community for the world, happy to do it.
Laura Shark:
Oh, I thought you were going to mute
Stephen Janis:
Tom. You
Taya Graham:
Said I love the interaction
Stephen Janis:
Between them. It seems familiar.
Taya Graham:
You know what, Laura, I really appreciate that. And we are just grateful that you were willing to trust us because we are journalists and the media has a certain reputation and some of it is well earned.
Speaker 4:
So
Taya Graham:
We really appreciate that you trusted us with your stories. Thank you. We do.
Stephen Janis:
And keep up the great work out there in la.
Taya Graham:
Yeah, keep up the great work you guys. We love you too.
Tom Zebra:
One more thing, guys. I told you I’m coming through town Baltimore, right? I’m putting them motor homes. It’s going to have the mistaken baking pig on the back on both sides. I’m going to stop in as many cities as I can, and when we get there, I want you guys to tell me and teach me all about the Gun Trace Task Force and the work that you guys have done in your community. Make sure you mute me so I can’t come back on, please.
Taya Graham:
That was wonderful. We would be delighted to take you on a tour of Baltimore. We can show you where the gun trace task force dealt drugs. We can show you, we can take you to the courthouse where Sergeant Ethan Newberg shot us both daggers
Speaker 4:
As
Taya Graham:
He read his statement to the courtroom if he was being convicted on how many counts was it
Stephen Janis:
32? It was nine counts of false arrest. It
Taya Graham:
Was
Stephen Janis:
A lot.
Taya Graham:
It was 32 counts overall, but nine counts were false
Stephen Janis:
Arrest. I don’t remember exactly.
Taya Graham:
It was, it
Stephen Janis:
Was significant.
Taya Graham:
It was a significant number of counts. So we would be absolutely delighted to,
Stephen Janis:
And thank you both for being here to take you on our
Taya Graham:
Tour through Baltimore. We appreciate you.
So we have to thank all the wonderful cop watchers who joined us today. All of them are special to us because they have helped guide us through this meaningful movement. But now, just for a moment, we’re just going to spend just a little bit of time talking about us and what it means to have reached our sixth anniversary. And with that, the announcement about something we’ve been working on for quite some time now. One of the aspects of the most overlooked aspects of copy watching Cop watching is unlike much of YouTube is that it’s not all talk. What I mean is that it is about action. Literally the people we spoke to, the others who do it all must decide to go out, get a camera, find and film police. And that’s what makes it so unique in the offerings of YouTube. It is a hands-on assertion against the policing of space, against the policing of movement and against the policing of behavior and all the other sorts of psychological aspects of policing that would be hidden or less obvious if not for the work of these folks on YouTube. And that’s one of the reasons Steven and I decided we needed to explore this collection of YouTubers in more detail, tell their stories in conjunction with ours. So Steven, do you just want to talk just a little bit about what that means?
Stephen Janis:
Well, I mean, we had encountered just today listening to the cop watchers that we had so many insights about things that you wouldn’t even expect beyond the realm of cop watching, about the psychology of how our government works, the psychology of how law enforcement works and the way it affects everyone’s life. And what we thought was very interesting to us, because we had to learn as journalists who adopt to YouTube and kind of become YouTubers. And through that, through the Cop watchers, we learned how to make that work on some level. And we wanted to tell that story, how our work evolved with their work. Wanted to tell through the prism of one particular cop watcher, which is Eric Brand and his story, and sort of uses a lens for which to view this whole movement, the movement, not just about cop watching, but about journalism, right? I mean you, like I said before, I started a newspaper and suddenly I found myself in our basement recording you and producing shows. And it was a journey for all of us. I mean, we kind of wanted to share how we learned from them and also look at some of the extremes and some of the questions that Eric raised as a cop watcher going to extremes that got him in a lot of trouble and celebrate this community. So we put together a film,
Taya Graham:
And it is a film that examines cop watchers, and it does so through the lens of Eric Brandt, but it’s not just about cop watching and cameras in YouTube. It’s about an aspect of YouTube that contravenes a lot of how we characterize it. Now we have to say Eric is considered very controversial. His tactics have been criticized and sometimes even condemned. And he has also been sentenced to 12 years in prison by Denver Judge for alleged telephone harassment of judges. And this story of how it unfolded and the consequences we cover in this film is just part of explaining why YouTube is not just a platform for videos, because we also covered the improbable community that emerged from the cop watchers who met on YouTube through Eric. And these connections are forged by activism which evolved into friendship, and I would say even into a family.
And the pushback from law enforcement that wreaked havoc on their lives is also explored as well, and the way they supported each other and how they endured the consequences of watching cops and how this collective fight forged real friendships and family that led to meaningful new achievements. But most importantly, as we told the story, one aspect of it seemed increasingly clear all of this, every single aspect of it was again, premised upon taking action, along with identifying the problem, policing these people decided to do something and do something specific, not just talk, not just speculate, not just debate, but act. And that was critical because through action things changed. People picked up cameras, watched police for hours on end and create videos. They were doing something specific about a specific problem. Now, by acting, things changed and by connecting their lives were transformed by using YouTube to come together in this, I don’t know, tactile sphere we call reality.
They changed it. I mean, as we mentioned earlier, I think we might have an issue with the Washington Post article. Even the Washington Post finally acknowledged in this article that cop watchers had changed police behavior. But enough of that kind of analysis onto the official announcement, Steven and I have filmed multiple documentaries, including the Friendliest Town, which is on policing on the eastern shore, about a Maryland police chief who was fired under very controversial circumstances and tax broke, which is a feature length investigation into the ways wealthy developers get even wealthier off the backs of my city’s taxpayers. And hopefully we might have a few links to those in the chat. We now have a new film that I’m excited to announce. It’s called I Am, but The Mirror, the Story of American Cop watching. It’s the story of the evolution of the YouTube version of Cop watching through not one, not two, but possibly three separate lenses. But let’s watch the trailer first and then maybe we can talk about it a little
Speaker 4:
Bit. Global. Globaltel Link has a collect call for you
Speaker 11:
From Eric.
Stephen Janis:
Our top story, a controversial Denver activist, is facing sentencing for threatening, not one, but three Denver judges.
Speaker 10:
Eric Brandt is an agitator. This is why I now advocate for the random shooting of judges. Judges have absolute
Otto The Watchdog:
Immunity, nothing that they do can they be held accountable for. I met Eric through YouTube. I really didn’t like the guy when I first saw his stuff. I thought that I’m going to watch his poor guy get his ass whipped on tv.
Speaker 16:
He’s going to say something, this cop’s going to flip the and whip his ass.
Speaker 10:
Here’s what he did in this case, he told Judge Rudolph’s staff, it is my thought that Judge Rudolph should be violently murdered. Who in the world thinks that that’s okay, Mr. Brandt, on each of these three counts, you’re sentenced to four years in the Department of Corrections. For those of you who do not know, a congregation of adult pigs is called a sounder.
Stephen Janis:
When TERs came to me with this idea of we’re going to cover these people called Cop Watchers, I was like, what? And I watched a couple videos and I was like, no.
Taya Graham:
So I finally come in, Stephen, to look at this video of a man who got arrested for filming the police.
Speaker 12:
Hey, what’s up everybody? It’s James Freeman. You doing all right over here? What department are you with? You got ID on you.
Speaker 16:
I’d say there’s about 800 people that have their own channels that are filming the police and either going live and doing it or posting in their videos later.
Speaker 17:
One of the things that, in talking about all that’s gone on is that without Eric Brand, none of this would’ve come to be.
Taya Graham:
Well, Steven, I’m sure you might have something to say since you’re the one who put together that trailer and also is the one playing the guitar and doing that music. So
Stephen Janis:
Do you want me to sing the theme song?
Taya Graham:
No, that would Maybe next time, maybe next time everyone, he can sing for you. But this time, maybe just give us a little bit about the layers of the film.
Stephen Janis:
Well, the layers, like I said, you have Eric’s, I guess, the evolution of Cop watching through the eyes of Eric and how Eric became sort of tested the extremes. And then you have the other layer of this community that was formed by YouTube of all things where people met online, but then ended up doing something active in the actual world and the tactile existence. And then you had the evolution of our journalism, as I said before, of how we learned become journalists on YouTube, and how we covered a movement that actually ended up changing the way we covered things. I mean, literally, it was like a mirror effect in some way where we adopted the way Cop watchers kind of adopted to YouTube. So all those things are told in the story,
Taya Graham:
And
Stephen Janis:
I thought it should all be put together in one place, what I like to do. And it had 1500 edits.
Taya Graham:
Yes,
Stephen Janis:
It was very,
Taya Graham:
This took a lot of work traveling out to Colorado, back and
Stephen Janis:
Forth.
Taya Graham:
And if you think cops cop watchers chasing cops or something, we were chasing the cop watchers around as they were chasing cops.
Stephen Janis:
So
Taya Graham:
We put a lot of heart and effort into it, and we really hope that you’re going to check it out when we do our launch.
But one of the reasons though, I really wanted to tell the story myself is to show how my evolution as a journalist was actually accelerated by reporting on the community of cop watchers that we feature in this documentary. And I wanted to share that I learned a lot from people I really didn’t even know and would’ve never have known at all if it hadn’t been for YouTube. And I’ve mentioned before that I grew up in Baltimore City and that I understood police misconduct, of course, which is something I experienced personally, but I had seen it as an urban issue. Cop watchers and auditors and independent journalists and people who are literally this comment section right now, they reached out to me and they helped me understand that I should investigate rural communities. That those communities were also enduring pain and harassment and exploitation at the hands of police.
And this was critical to me understanding that the police industrial complex has a boot that steps on many necks, and we need broad consensus across racial lines across city versus country, right versus left. We’ve got to agree this needs to change because it’s hurting all of us. And that for me is what makes this whole story so critical that these social media platforms that normally just keep us isolated and divided can actually be used to accomplish real change, but only if we act together and only if we use the ability to communicate, to translate our ideas into practice. And it taught me a lot about what journalism can do. That by covering a grassroots movement with all the effort and energy that the mainstream media normally heaps on the elites, we could help connect the dots. We could be part of accelerating ideas and connecting the people to each other in a way that made the push for progress more tangible, not just theoretical.
So on this the six anniversary of the Police Accountability Report, I want to express more than anything gratitude. Gratitude to the people who openly share their stories with us, despite the threat of police retaliation to the guests on our show who talk to us about some of the worst moments in their lives, and the brave souls from small towns to big cities who are willing to push back simply because they know it’s right. I know I’ve been inspired by them. I have seen Stephen Bees inspired by them, and we both understand that independent journalism is wholly dependent upon people being willing to speak to us and share with us and trust us. So please let me say this as my final thought. Thank you, all of you from the bottom of my heart. Thank you for watching. Thank you for caring, and thank you for being willing to push for knowledge, the truth, and hopefully seeing the best in all of us. Thank you all. I really appreciate you.
Taleb al-Majli effortlessly recites his detainee identification number from Iraq’s infamous Abu Ghraib prison, where he was held more than 20 years ago—the numbers forever etched into his memory.
“Every day I still think about what happened to me,” explains the 58-year-old, who says American soldiers tortured and humiliated him in the prison. He is sitting on the hard floor of a small, mostly unfurnished, apartment he rents in Baghdad. “It lives inside me and never leaves me alone. I cannot begin to heal until I get justice for what they did to me.”
The torture and abuse of detainees by United States soldiers in Abu Ghraib made headlines and was broadcast from newsrooms around the world when photographs were released in April 2004 showing a hooded man standing on a box with electrical wires attached to his fingers, along with men stripped naked, leashed like dogs, or forced into sexual positions while US soldiers gleefully posed beside them. Majli tells The Real News Network that he appears in one of these images, in which naked detainees with bags over their heads are piled on top of each other in a disturbing human pyramid. Two American soldiers—Sabrina Harman and Charles Graner—are smiling and giving a thumbs up.
“The only thing I could think about at that moment was that I wish I had died before experiencing this,” Majli says, fiddling with his thumbs. “They stole my humanity from me. I still haven’t been able to process what happened to me there.”
Majli sitting on the floor of the apartment he rents in Baghdad. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.The other side of Majli’s prison identity card, showing an official Abu Ghraib entry stamp. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.
For more than two decades, no one from Abu Ghraib—or other victims of torture during the US war on Iraq—ever received compensation from the United States government or its private military contractors. Majli is still among those who have not received redress for what he endured.
But, in November last year, something historic occurred in a Virginia courtroom. In 2008, three former Abu Ghraib detainees who were tortured at the facility sued Virginia-based CACI Premier Technology, Inc, which was contracted by the US military to provide interpretation services at Abu Ghraib. The federal lawsuit, Al Shimari v. CACI Premier Technology, Inc., alleged that CACI participated in a conspiracy to commit unlawful conduct, including torture and war crimes.
After 15 years of litigation, the jury agreed with the defendants, ordering CACI to pay $42 million to the former detainees—marking the first time victims of torture during times of war in the post-9/11 era have received compensation. The case is also the first lawsuit where victims of US torture and cruel treatment held a trial in a US courtroom.
Following this historic win, other former Abu Ghraib detainees hope this case can renew possibilities of getting redress for crimes they faced two decades ago. Rights groups propose that this could be a legal opening for other victims of US torture to come forward against private military and security contractors. Others, however, are doubtful the case could easily be reproduced by others.
‘No one will know about it’
During the rule of Saddam Hussein, Abu Ghraib, located 20 miles west of Baghdad, was one of the world’s most notorious prisons, with torture, weekly executions, and vile living conditions. It held tens of thousands of political prisoners at one time. After the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and Saddam’s toppling, it was transformed into a US military prison.
Majli was detained in October 2003, picked up off the streets while visiting his uncle in Iraq’s western Anbar province. “They were just arresting all the men,” recounts Majli, who was about 36 at this time. “They zip-tied my hands and put a hood over my head. I was innocent and they took me for no reason at all.”
View of Abu Ghraib prison. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.View of Abu Ghraib prison. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.
After a few days at the Habbaniyah Camp in Anbar and another unknown location, Majli was transferred to Abu Ghraib, where he remained for 16 months. He was never charged with a crime nor informed of the reasons he was being detained. According to a leaked International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) report, military intelligence officers from the US-led coalition forces in Iraq admitted that between 70% and 90% of Iraqis detained after the US invasion were actually arrested by mistake.
Majli tells TRNN he was kept in solitary confinement for nearly one month, which is prohibited under international law. “All I could think about was suicide,” he says, adding that he tried to use the ceiling light in his cell to electrocute himself. “The American guards told me that behind the [isolation] cell is a shredder that was used during Saddam, so if they wanted they could shred me up and throw my remains in the river and no one will ever know about it.”
Majli recounts being attacked by unmuzzled dogs, ordered to strip naked while soldiers threw freezing water on him during cold winter months, and beaten directly on his genitals with a stick. In addition to the human pyramid, the soldiers forced him into sexual positions with other male inmates while he was naked and blindfolded—although he is not certain whether soldiers took photos of it.
Majli says US soldiers also shot live ammunition at the prisoners. With his own eyes, he saw two inmates killed from this and their bodies removed from the prison in body bags. Majli also developed pneumonia after guards flooded his cell with cold water as a tactic to stop the prisoners from getting rest.
“I never imagined that human beings were capable of such things,” Majli says, lifting his knuckles to his mouth and gnawing on the skin, a nervous tic he picked up in Abu Ghraib. “I felt so scared and nervous all the time in the prison that I started uncontrollably biting my knuckles. Even now, I still bite the skin on my knuckles and arms whenever I remember my time in prison. I can’t help it.”
Majli shows the scars on his knuckles and arms from chewing the skin any time he thinks of Abu Ghraib, a habit he picked up in the prison. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.
When Majli was released in February 2005, his ordeal only continued. He was left penniless and psychologically distraught, suffering from nightmares and uncontrollable anger over what he endured.
According to Sarah Sanbar, a researcher at Human Rights Watch (HRW), owing to the sexual nature of the released photos former Abu Ghraib detainees face extreme stigma in Iraq’s conservative society. Therefore, many survivors of torture are too fearful to go public with their experiences. “A lot of people just don’t want to come forward,” explains Sanbar. “The people who do come forward face marginalization and stigmatization from within the community. Others are also harassed by contractors and soldiers for speaking out.”
“So we don’t actually know how many other victims of torture there are from Abu Ghraib,” she adds.
After Majli went public about his experiences in the prison, his wife filed for divorce and his children faced bullying in their schools, eventually dropping out. He is also forced to move each time his neighbors find out he was detained at Abu Ghraib. “This is the ninth house I have moved to in Baghdad,” Majli tells TRNN, nervously glancing towards the window.
Despite the US government’s attempts to portray the abuse at Abu Ghraib as an isolated incident, human rights experts assert that these abuses were indicative of a grim pattern of torture that characterized the Iraq war and the so-called War on Terror. The only exceptional aspect of the abuse at Abu Ghraib was that it was photographed and shown to the world, Sanbar says. But widespread torture and mistreatment of detainees, which was sometimes more extreme than Abu Ghraib, have been documented in numerous US military-run locations throughout Iraq.
Suhail al-Shimari, Salah al-Ejaili, and Asa’ad al-Zubae, the three plaintiffs of the Virginia-based case, were subjected to weeks and months of serious mistreatment, humiliation, degradation, and denial of their humanity while at the “hard site” of Abu Ghraib, where the most severe acts of torture were carried out.
The plaintiffs described being sexually assaulted, electrically shocked, deprived of sleep, forced into stress positions—which resulted in one of the men vomiting black liquid—forced to wear women’s underwear, and threatened with dogs. Shimari was dragged around the prison by a rope tied around his neck. None of the men, however, are in the notorious photos, in which Majli says he appears.
Unlike Majli and other victims of US torture, these three men got their day in court—and won.
‘Empire’s court’
US courts have repeatedly dismissed similar cases against the federal government because of a 1946 law that preserves US forces’ immunity for claims that arise during war. Since the US is not party to the Rome Statute, which founded the International Criminal Court (ICC), war crimes are investigated by the US military internally, a process which has continuously failed to provide redress for victims.
In what rights groups say is a rarity, 11 US military officials were convicted of crimes relating to the Abu Ghraib scandal from 2004 onwards—several of whom received prison sentences ranging from a few months to several years. But, “Abu Ghraib is a symptom of a much bigger cancer within the US government,” explains Yumna Rizvi, a senior policy analyst at the Center for Victims of Torture (CVT).
“What took place in Abu Ghraib is not isolated, but part of the Bush administration’s War on Terror torture policy. There are innumerable other cases of torture where it was not photographed or caught on film and it never attracted media attention. And those victims were essentially forgotten and the perpetrators never punished.”
Owing to the immunity afforded to the US government, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which filed the lawsuit on the plaintiffs’ behalf, decided to sue CACI in US courts through the Alien Tort Statute (ATS), which allows for non-US citizens to bring civil actions before US federal courts in cases concerning violations of international law. Over the years, several Supreme Court decisions have greatly limited the reach of ATS.
While two of the plaintiffs testified from Iraq, Ejaili, a former Al Jazeera journalist who is now living in Sweden, traveled to the US to testify. “He basically entered the Empire’s court and stood firmly and demanded that they be heard,” explains Baher Azmy, the legal director of CCR. “And this jury agreed.”
CACI is appealing the decision and will likely try to take it all the way to the US Supreme Court, according to Azmy.
Human rights experts hope this case can pave the way for other victims of US torture to seek redress from private military and security contractors. “I hope we see more people filing under the ATS,” says Rizvi, from CVT. “I hope this creates a [legal] precedent and shines some light on those who have been waiting for justice for a long time.”
Majli tried to obtain compensation from the US government for years after his release, requesting assistance from the Iraqi Bar Association in Baghdad; however, they informed him that they did not deal with such cases. He also reached out to the Iraqi Ministry for Human Rights, but other than providing him a letter confirming he was in their system as a former prisoner of Abu Ghraib, they were not able to help him.
Since then, he has been stuck, without any legal avenue in Iraq to seek redress from the US government for the abuses. “Myself and all the other Iraqis abused in Abu Ghraib deserve financial compensation so we can heal and rebuild our lives,” Majli tells TRNN. The news of the historic legal win in November has given Majli a glimmer of hope, wondering if this could be a new avenue of getting justice for the abuses that continue to haunt him.
“This essentially puts all other military and security contractors around the world on notice—no matter what theater or conflict they are operating in,” Sanbar tells TRNN. “They can and will be held accountable for their actions abroad should they engage in mistreatment, torture, or war crimes.”
But, according to experts, this court win would likely not be helpful to other victims of torture at Abu Ghraib. While ATS does not have a specific statute of limitations within the law itself, conventionally courts consider it to be 10 years. Therefore, a US court accepting cases from more than 20 years ago would be very unlikely.
According to Sanbar, from HRW, there are also limitations for other, more recent victims of torture to emulate this case. “The context in which a lot of this torture occurs is that you’re picked up off the street and sent to a detention facility,” Sanbar explains. “You don’t speak the language of your captors. You’re not able to recognize the different insignias or uniforms. And you don’t actually know in a lot of cases who is the one torturing you.”
CCR’s case was helped immensely by the fact that the US government conducted extensive investigations into the abuses at Abu Ghraib, the reports of which were released to the public, and specifically identified CACI’s role in the torture and abuse. In other cases that did not attract the outrage that Abu Ghraib did, information is not shared publicly. “In future cases, it will be very easy for the government to deny access to information on the grounds of national security,” Sanbar says.
The US government has also long issued gag orders against detainees at Guatanamo Bay, which has become a symbol of torture, rendition, and indefinite detention without charge or trial. Most recently, it was revealed that part of the plea deal of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the September 11 attacks, includes a lifetime gag order on speaking about aspects of his torture by the CIA. Moreover, Congress has constitutionally divested the federal courts of jurisdiction over suits for damages by former Guantanamo detainees.
Despite these barriers, the court win is still extremely significant, not least because it sends a message to private security contractors that they can be held accountable for abuses they commit abroad. “This essentially puts all other military and security contractors around the world on notice—no matter what theater or conflict they are operating in,” Sanbar tells TRNN. “They can and will be held accountable for their actions abroad should they engage in mistreatment, torture, or war crimes.”
But Sanbar emphasizes that this court win should not distract from the fact that the US government has an obligation under national and international law to provide redress and reparations for harm it has committed “both in terms of holding its own soldiers accountable and providing redress to victims.”
“There is currently no legal avenue for people who claim they were tortured or mistreated by US officials to have their cases heard or for them to apply for compensation,” she adds.
‘Heart can’t heal’
“My heart cannot heal without justice,” says 50-year-old Abdelrahman Muhammad Abed, who was detained by US soldiers in December 2005, nearly two years after the first photos from Abu Ghraib were released to the media, sending shockwaves throughout the world.
The public indignation that followed the Abu Ghraib scandal in 2004 did not deter US soldiers from abusing and humiliating Abed immediately upon his arrest, during which Abed, along with his brother and nephew, were beaten by the soldiers, including with the butt of their guns; they were also forced to strip down to their underwear.
They were transferred to a US-run military camp, where a party among soldiers was underway. “There was a DJ and the men and women were dancing together,” Abed recounts, anxiously shaking his leg up and down while seated on a chair at his home in Baghdad. “The soldier threw me on the ground and started dancing, kicking sand and dust into my face and mouth.”
According to Abed, the three men, who were still only in their underwear, were then forced to stand in front of freshly dug holes in the ground, resembling graves. “The translator working for the soldiers told us they will now execute us so we should say our last words.” They were forced to stand in front of the graves for about an hour, while celebratory music blared around them. Then soldiers beat them again, Abed says.
He was detained without charge or trial for a year and a half in Camp Bucca, once referred to as “Iraq’s Guantanamo Bay,” and Abu Ghraib, where he was held for two months. “For weeks in [Abu Ghraib], they were beating me constantly. On my hands, legs, and back, with their fists, feet, and their guns,” Abed tells TRNN.
Abdelrahman Muhammad Abed at his home in Baghdad. Photo by Jaclynn Ashly.
Abed abruptly stops speaking as he chokes back a wave of tears. “Most of us don’t like to talk about our experiences because it’s too painful,” he says, slowly regaining his composure.
“I deserve compensation from those who abused me—not because I want money. Even if they paid me $1 million for each day I was unfairly detained, it would not be enough. But I want recognition for what happened to me.”
For years after his release, Abed says he lived in constant fear that US soldiers would come for him again. “If I even heard a noise outside—like a rustling of leaves—I would become terrified, worried it was the Americans,” he explains.
“The Americans just saw all Iraqis as terrorists. They made us feel like we were not human. Since I was a child, I heard about America and the Western world and how they respect human rights and democracy. But the truth is the opposite.”
Across Maryland’s prison system, incarcerated workers assemble furniture, sew clothing, and even manufacture cleaning chemicals. In spite of making the state more than $50 million annually in revenue, these workers are compensated below the minimum wage in a system akin to slavery. But how does the system of forced prison labor really work, and how do state laws keep this industry running? Rattling the Bars investigates how Maryland law requires government institutions to purchase prison-made products, and how legislators like State Senator Antonio Hayes are working to change that.
Producer: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to Rattling The Bars. Recently, I had the opportunity to speak to State Senator Antonio Hayes from the 40th district of Baltimore City about a bill he sponsored around prison labor in Maryland. The bill was designed to regulate Maryland Correctional Enterprise, which is the prison industry in Maryland, around their preferential treatment they receive for contracts, be it furniture, tags, clothing, or any chemicals that’s used for cleaning. The purpose of the bill was to regulate how much money they were getting from free prison labor.
Antonio Hayes:
They bring in anywhere in a high $50 million a year in business that they’re generating. So they perform everything from furniture making to license plates, to, in some cases, even on the Eastern shore, they have inmates working on poultry farms and agriculture. So the variety of services that they offered have expanded dramatically since its inception.
So here’s the thing, it’s not just state universities. All state universities are using it. The General Assembly is using it. The Maryland Department of Labor is using it. The Maryland Department of Education is using it. Maryland State Police is using it. Maryland DHS is using it. If you are a state agency, you are required by state procurement law to purchase from MCE as long as they have the product. So that’s why they’re able to bring in that type of revenue. Like I said, if you look at their annual reports, it’s somewhere around $58 million a year.
Mansa Musa:
Later, you will hear a conversation I had with former prisoner Lonnell Sligh, who was sentenced in Maryland, but was sent out of state to Kansas. And while in Kansas, he worked in prison industry. I was surprised to hear how Kansas is treating this prison labor force versus how prisoners are being treated throughout the United States of America. But first, you’ll hear this conversation with Senator Antonio Hayes.
I want you to talk a little bit about why you felt the need to get in this particular space, because this is not a space that people get in. You hear stuff about prison, okay, the conditions in prison, the medical in prison, the lack of food, parole, probation. But very rarely do you hear someone say, “Well, let me look at the industry or the job that’s being provided to prisoners.” Why’d you look at this particular direction?
Antonio Hayes:
Yeah. So interesting enough, I’ve been supporting a gentleman back home in Baltimore that has an organization called Emage, E-M-A-G-E, Entrepreneurs Making And Growing Enterprises. So the brother had reached out to me and said, “Hey, I’m manufacturing clothing, but I hear the correctional system is teaching brothers and sisters behind the wall these skills. I’d like to connect with them. So when brothers and sisters return into the community, I’d like to hire them.” Muslim brother, real good, very active member of the community. So I said, “Excellent. Let me reach out to Corrections.”
So I found the organization, MCE-
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Maryland Correctional Enterprises.
Antonio Hayes:
Maryland Correctional Enterprises. And I asked them to come out and do a site visit with me so we could build a pipeline of individuals returning back to West Baltimore, Baltimore City period, especially if they’re already learning these skills so they could get jobs. And I’ll never forget the CEO at the time responding to me, pretty much saying, “Look, we’re in the middle of a pandemic. How dare you invite us to come into the community?” So I was taken aback by the thought that they would clap back in such a way. But if you look at my legislative agenda, it’s really focused around economics. A lot of the things that I push is around economics.
When my mom showed me how to shoot dice in West Baltimore-
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Antonio Hayes:
… one of the things she used to always say, “If it don’t make dollars, it don’t make sense.”
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Antonio Hayes:
So when I looked at this, like why MCE existed and the fact that they had a procurement law in the state, a preferred provider status, there’s three organizations that have a preferred provider status. It’s America Works, who hire individuals that have disabilities to have employment. Because if they didn’t do it, these individuals would probably be getting state resources from some other pot. But it takes people who have disabilities, so people who are somehow impaired. There’s another organization called Blind Industries.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Antonio Hayes:
They supply janitorial products to the state of Maryland, and these people are blind or visually impaired. And then you had MCE, which were people who were incarcerated for whatever reason. And it didn’t seem to really fit with the other two that were serving populations of individuals with disabilities. So then I began to research even more the existence and how much money they were generating. And I found out, here in the state of Maryland, they were generating revenue of upwards of fifty-something million dollars a year. Whereas, the individuals who are incarcerated, the individuals that were doing the work, were getting paid no more than a $1.16 a day. So that alarmed me, one, the fact that they had a monopoly, because they were eliminating opportunities for other individuals to participate in the economy. Right?
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Antonio Hayes:
So they had a monopoly over. And then two, they had an unfair advantage, because they were essentially paying wages that were subordinate to any other wage anyone could afford. So their overhead was so much cheaper, because they were taking advantage of the status of people who are incarcerated and paying them far less than anyone else could even think of competing against.
Mansa Musa:
And you know, it’s ironic, because as we’re sitting there, we’re talking, and we’re at this table, these chairs, all this furniture was made at Maryland Correctional Enterprise. But on back, I worked in the cash shop at Maryland Correctional Enterprise. And prior to becoming Maryland Correctional Enterprise, it was State Use-
Antonio Hayes:
State Use Industries, correct.
Mansa Musa:
… which is my next lead to my next question. So this particular, going back to your point, it’s three people, or it’s three organizations, three industries that get preferential treatment, but they created… In your research, did you find out that they created this entity solely to be able to get that preferential treatment procurement, or was it a bid more on who is going to get the third slot? Because the first two slots, I can understand, they [inaudible 00:07:45] the Maryland Penitentiary. Some guys had brought in. And they were networking with the Library of Congress to try to bring all the books in the Library of Congress into Braille. And they were getting minimum wage, and they were paying it to the social security. All that was being done in that entity.
But from your research, was this particular… Maryland Correctional Enterprise, was this created as an institution by the private sector for the sole reason to have access to the label?
Antonio Hayes:
Right. So what I found was, actually, the federal government at some point had made it against the law to transfer prison-made goods across state lines. So in order for the industry to… So also, there’s some tie to this. This has really evolved as a result of the abolition of the 13th Amendment.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Antonio Hayes:
So when you had the abolition of slavery, and individuals… They lost a workforce that they would’ve had.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Antonio Hayes:
So there was a need to supplement that workforce, and the way they did that was through the, what is it called? The loophole in the constitution-
Mansa Musa:
The constitution, right.
Antonio Hayes:
… that said that slavery was illegal except for those who were being incarcerated-
Mansa Musa:
Convicted of a crime, right.
Antonio Hayes:
… due to convicted of a crime. But in Maryland and another state, I think they needed a way to create an artificial audience, because they didn’t necessarily have an audience to make the purchases in order to make it sustainable. So what they did was they put this preferred provider label on it through the state procurement so they could create an audience and customer base to support the work that they were doing.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. And now I can see. I can see it now, because, like you say, it’s all about exploitation of labor on the 13th amendment, giving them the right to use convicted convicts. So they saw that loophole, they saw the opportunity.
Antonio Hayes:
Yes.
Mansa Musa:
This is continuing black hole. They saw the opportunity. Okay. As we wrap up on this particular segment of this thing, you spoke on the economics, that’s your focus. And we know that, coming out of prison, a person having job, the likelihood of coming back to prison is slim to none. Because if you got an income… This is just my philosophy, and I’m a returning citizen, I came out of prison. Once I got an income, it allowed me to be able to get my own place. It allowed me to be able to create a savings. It allowed me to get my credit score.
In terms of, from your perspective, what would it look like if, and this is something that you might want to look at from your office level, as opposed to the opposition of them having that right, wouldn’t it be more feasible if they gave minimum wage? If the advocacy from policy would be, “Okay, you get this preferential treatment, but in order to get it, you have to provide minimum wage and you got to let them pay into their social security.” Is that something that you could see happening?
Antonio Hayes:
I think something that shows that isn’t as unbalanced as the current system is, is definitely where we want to be. Remember, a lot of the stuff that I do is around economics. I would’ve never looked at the criminal justice system or this system as something that I would want to focus on. I just wanted to make sure that individuals that were returning back to the communities that I grew up in, West Baltimore, had an opportunity to be successful. And this current system, the way it’s structured, it doesn’t give individuals an opportunity to transition back into the community, to have a greater chance of success. It’s literally setting them up for failure.
And my last visit to Jessa, I met three individuals, if you combine their sentences together, they had a hundred years. Some of them were life, some of them were never coming back to the community, ever. And I know to some degree, you need something for these individuals to do. But what I’m told anecdotally is the people that most likely will have these opportunities are people who have very long sentences. Because from a labor perspective, going back to the whole 13th Amendment thing, it’s more predictable that they will be around for a long time, as opposed to just the opposite, using this as a training opportunity. So when they reintegrate back into society, they will have a better chance of being successful and a productive member of society.
I think this current system, the way it’s working, even if you look at the suppliers, where are they getting the equipment from? We’re subsidizing MCE, and the supplies we’re getting from, from somewhere out of state. Right?
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Antonio Hayes:
We’re not even doing business. This wood is being procured from some out of state company. We’re not supporting Maryland jobs. So I think we need to just reevaluate and deconstruct piece by piece, how could we better get a better return on its investment, not just for the state, but also for the individuals who are producing these products that we enjoy?
Mansa Musa:
That was Senator Antonio Hayes, who, as you could see, sponsored a bill to try to get the labor force, prison labor force in Maryland regulated. We’ll keep you updated on the developments of that bill.
Now, my conversation with Lonnell Sligh. Lonnell Sligh told me about his experience in working with the prison industry in Kansas. He told me that the average prisoner in Kansas has saved up to $75,000 while working in prison industry. That it doesn’t matter how much time you’re serving, if you have a life sentence or not, most of the prisoners that’s working in the industry have long term. But because of them being able to work in the prison industry, they’re able to save money, to assist their families, pay taxes, buying to social security, and more importantly, live with some kind of dignity while they’re incarcerated.
Lonnell Sligh:
The blessing of me going to Kansas, I saw the other side of that slave industry that we called and we thought about for so many years. Now, going to Kansas, I saw an opportunity where they afforded guys to work a minimum wage job. And in that, guys were making living wages. I met guys that had 60, 70 or a hundred thousand dollars in their account.
Mansa Musa:
From working in the prison industry?
Lonnell Sligh:
From working in the prison industry. So when I saw that, that kind of changed my mindset. Because at first, I thought it was a joke. Because they asked me say, “Hey, Mr. Sligh, you want to work in the minimum wage shop? Because you’re doing a lot of good things.” And I said, “Man, get out of here.”
So going back to what I was saying, when I found out that it was true and I was afforded to get a job there, it changed my whole outlook on it. Because now, my wheels started turning on, how can we make this better?
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Lonnell Sligh:
You know what I mean? How can we change the narrative?
Mansa Musa:
Right. Okay. In every regard, okay, how did you change the narrative? Because, okay, now, reality being reality, Kansas might be an anomaly, and by that, I mean that might be in and of itself something that they doing. But overall, when you look at the prison industry throughout the United States of America, and it’s massive, they don’t have that narrative. So what would you say? How would you address that? What would you say about the Kansas model and the need to adapt it to other states’ prison industries?
Lonnell Sligh:
Well, you know firsthand that when I first came back to Maryland, my whole mindset was bringing some of the things from Kansas back to Maryland and taking some of the things that was progressive and good for Kansas back to Kansas. Now, the prison industry, we are in process now trying to bring that to Maryland. And one of the things that I’m advocating for, and I’m sure, because in the process when I got the job and I saw how we can, it’s an opportunity to make some changes and make it better for the people that’s inside, I crafted a set of guidelines and things that I presented to the administration.
So one of the things was allowing people with long-term sentences to be afforded that opportunity. So when they gave it to me, and I showed them through example that… Because I was never supposed to get out of prison.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Lonnell Sligh:
So I was never supposed to have that job. But the blessing in that, I showed them two sides of promise, and that was that now the companies that were coming in there had a long-term person that can be there that they can depend on, because they had a high turnover rate.
Then secondly, I crafted a thing as far as giving dudes the opportunity to learn financial literacy, things of that nature. Because one of the things that I know for sure, a lot of guys that’s getting those jobs, that was getting those jobs were leaving out of the prison with a lot of money, but they were just as ignorant as when they came in.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Lonnell Sligh:
So if you got a hundred thousand dollars in your account and you don’t know how to pay bills or you don’t know any financial literacy, the first thing you’re going to do is go out and buy a Cadillac, a bunch of flashy clothes.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, yeah.
Lonnell Sligh:
So you’re going to end up broke or back in prison. So that’s one of the things that we are working to craft, bringing this to Maryland, having it upfront, having a criteria, a curriculum that’s designated the design for success. And one of the things that, like I said, in Kansas, the politicians, the prison industry, the corporate industry, if y’all want to help with this cause, you say you want to give people a second chance, what better way than bringing in private industry jobs, but making it something for the better, not as a slave camp?
Mansa Musa:
In terms of, how did you come out? And were you able to come out, after being in the industry, to be able to feel some sense of security financially? Or were you in need of getting support from family members to make sure that you had what you needed? Or were you able to save some money, bottom line?
Lonnell Sligh:
Absolutely.
Mansa Musa:
Not going into how much.
Lonnell Sligh:
Yeah.
Mansa Musa:
But what did your savings allow you to do in terms of adjust, readjust back into society? That’s really what it’s all about. If you’re coming out and you can’t adjust in society with the money that you made out of the industry, if you don’t have no sense of security with the money that you’re making out of industry, then likely your chances of survival is slim to nothing.
Lonnell Sligh:
Yeah. But I’m going to take it back even before, because remember, I was never supposed to get out of prison.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Lonnell Sligh:
So having that job really took a burden off of my family.
Mansa Musa:
Okay.
Lonnell Sligh:
And it took a burden off of me, because now I didn’t have to reach out and ask for money, somebody to send me money to make commissary. So my whole strategy when I first got the job, because remember, I wasn’t ever thinking about getting out of prison, so my thing was helping my family, saving as much money as I can, building a bank account, like some of them guys that I knew had 60, 70, a hundred thousand dollars in their account.
So then I transitioned over to finding out that now I may have an opportunity to get out of prison. So that really changed the whole narrative and outlook that I had, because now I got in my mind that if I’m able to get out, not only can I afford to pay for a lawyer to help this cause, but now when I get out, I don’t have to come out in a desperate situation not knowing where I’m going to live at, not knowing if I can put a roof over my head or get a car.
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right, right. So then in that regard, the model that Kansas had in terms of giving the minimum wage, allowing you to pay into your social security, and allowing you to save, in that model, it allowed for you to transition back in society. But more importantly, while you were incarcerated, it allowed for you to be able to feel a sense of self-sufficiency in terms of taking care of your family, or providing for your children, not having to rely on them to put money on your phone or put money in your books. So that Kansas model is really a model that you think that… Well, then let’s just ask this, why do you think that other states haven’t adapted this model?
Lonnell Sligh:
Because one of the things we know is that it’s an old mindset. It’s an old way of thinking, that’s not progressive. And it’s not beneficial for a lot of states to transition or to try to do something better. They don’t want to help us. They don’t want to help the incarcerated person or the person that’s serving their times, even though they say their Division of Corrections. And they need to change that name from the Division of Corrections, because they’re not helping correct anything.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right, right.
Lonnell Sligh:
But Kansas most definitely afforded the opportunity for… But their mindset when this first started was in the seventies, so they were about making a dollar themselves.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right, right, right.
Lonnell Sligh:
So it evolved, and just like I said, it was still a hundred years behind the timing, by me being afforded to get in that space, it was a blessing because I was able to help bring a different light to it. But other states, just like I say, it’s about their bottom line and their control and old way of thinking. But my thing is, and what I’m advocating for is, is that you have to think outside the box. Because if you don’t think outside the box, then you’re going to get the same results, the same thing.
Mansa Musa:
Well, how do you address this part of the conversation? That long-term imprisonment people, that most people in those situations, those jobs after you spoke on this and have long-term, and so therefore, the benefits for them is not in comparison to the benefits of people that got short-term that can get the skill and get the money and come out. How do you… Can you have it both ways, or either/or?
Lonnell Sligh:
I think, for me, you can have it both ways. But one of the things that we mess up so much on in our way of thinking in society and in the department, we’re stuck on a certain way of thinking. So my thing is that, if you want to breed a successful person, no matter what kind of time you have… That’s my focus and my mindset, because I took a stance knowing I was never getting out of prison, but I took a stance that I was going to better myself and I was going to walk every day and do the things that I needed to make myself successful and act like I was getting out of prison tomorrow, even though I knew I was never getting out of prison. So for me, it was about me better than myself.
So having a minimum wage job or allowing a person to have a job that they can create wages, it makes a better person. It gives you a better product, whether you’re getting out or not. But you have to instill those things in people so that they can understand that it’s a different way. If not, you’re going to think that old way of thinking. Nothing is going to change.
Mansa Musa:
There you have it. Two conversations about prison labor. The prison industry. I worked in MCE. I earned 90 cents a day, a dollar and something with bonuses, approximately $2.10. The bonuses came from how much labor we produced.
On the other hand, you had the conversation I had with Lonnell about Kansas. In Maryland, I didn’t pay taxes, I wasn’t allowed to pay into the social security. I didn’t pay medical, and I didn’t pay rent. In Kansas, a person is allowed to pay into social security. That means when he get released, he had his quarters to retire. Pay the medical. That means, if he is released, he’ll be able to afford medical. Pay taxes. That means that he’s also making a contribution to society in that form. But more importantly, they’re allowed to save money. And in saving money, they will become less of a burden on the state upon their release.
What would you prefer? A person that earns slave wages and don’t pay back into society, or a system where the person is paying into society in the form of taxes, social security, medical, and also becoming economically sufficient upon their release? Tell me what you think.
Speaker 4:
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Last June, months before her release date, Paula Drake remembers getting called to fight the Gorman Fire in Los Angeles County, California. She was part of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Malibu Conservation Camp #13, which is jointly operated by CDCR and the Los Angeles County Fire Department (LACFD).
When her crew arrived at the fire, she remembers, it covered about 500 acres, but by the next day, it had spread to 15,000 acres. Drake knew how to hike through the mountains with a 40-pound bag on her back and run a chainsaw through the rugged terrain — skills that made it possible to help contain the fire. Out of that experience, she felt pride and camaraderie with her crew.
Drake remembers “just feeling like you’re a part of something bigger and being able to give back to a community that has deemed us unredeemable, and being able to be like a productive member of society.” She returned home in November and is pursuing a career in firefighting.
“The experience there was absolutely amazing,” she said. “It was amazing enough to where I decided, coming home, that this is something that I would like to do with my life, and be able to grow in the firefighter industry, and hopefully make it a career.”
Incarcerated firefighters make up 30% of California’s firefighting crews, and those who participate in the program are able to live at one of the many conservation camps or fire stations outside of prison, where they are given training and work alongside the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection (CAL Fire) or the LACFD. Drake said that, while it is still a prison program, the fire camps allowed her to have more freedom.
Drake said she would make about six dollars a day, and an additional dollar per hour she was working a fire. A seasonal CAL Fire firefighter gets paid a salary of more than $50,000 a year.
“Society has deemed us these dangerous criminals that shouldn’t be allowed to have their freedom, yet, here we are running chainsaws and given these tools that are highly dangerous, so is it really even necessary for people like us to be somewhere where we’re stripped of our freedom?” Drake said. “I just think that people don’t realize what an impact it has on us and the community.”
While versions of the CDCR firefighting program have been around in California for over a century, they became the subject of headlines earlier this year when several fires broke out across California and over 1,100 incarcerated firefighters were deployed to fight the Eaton Fire, Hughes Fire, and Palisades Fire in Los Angeles County, which destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses. These firefighters were out for days at a time, and had no contact with their families. However, many reported a sense of pride that they were helping the community.
Even though they put their lives at risk and do the same jobs as any other fire crew, those who are incarcerated get paid between five to ten dollars a day by CDCR, plus an extra dollar an hour by CAL Fire when they are deployed to an active fire. As she worked second saw—a position where she helped clear the terrain with a chainsaw—in the fire crew, Drake said she would make about six dollars a day, and an additional dollar per hour she was working a fire. A seasonal CAL Fire firefighter gets paid a salary of more than $50,000 a year.
“You’ve got paid crew members working right next to you, doing the same exact job, but getting paid a hell of a lot more, and we interact with these crews, we cut lines with them,” Drake said. “We’re putting ourselves at risk. The compensation doesn’t really match up with the job that we’re doing.
In many cases, incarcerated firefighters are saving lives. Eduardo Herrera, who was a firefighter while incarcerated, remembers being called to a traffic collision in Los Angeles County. He was assigned what the LACFD calls “landing zone coordination” to arrange for a helicopter to pick up victims. At that time, while awaiting transport, a victim went unconscious, so Herrera had to perform CPR. He later found out that the individual that he was performing CPR on was a deputy sheriff of 27 years on his way to work.
“I was an incarcerated municipal firefighter, so not only was I serving the community, I actually helped save lives of our law enforcement, which is a very unique situation,” Herrera said.
He remembers other police officers and military members thanking him for his work and shaking his hand.
Herrera described his experience as “something that most of the public are not aware of. I think that that’s just another story of the capacity of change and what we’re capable of doing in spite of our circumstances.”
During the two years he worked in this program, Herrera, who was released in 2020, resided at a fire station in Mule Creek. He remembers being deployed to residential structure fires, rescues, traffic collisions, medical calls, and vegetation and wildlife fires. He said that participating in the program reduced his sentence by just under three years.
Hererra said that he is glad that the public is becoming more aware of the important work of firefighters who are incarcerated—people who “have maybe made a mistake in their lives, but they’re no longer defined by that mistake and wanting to pay it forward and make a difference.” He said it is important the public know what change looks like and what it can be and what it can mean for their communities.
“I’m glad that now we’re having this dialogue, and the narrative is starting to be changed in regards to seeing the capacity that we have to serve the community,” Herrera said. “It gives people hope. I believe the public wants to hear stories of hope and redemption.”
Herrera is now a firefighter with CAL Fire in the Riverside unit. He said that while he was incarcerated, he did not make as much as he makes now.
“The discussion about pay is always going to be a discussion, because we definitely didn’t make what your normal firefighter that’s out here makes,” Herrera said. “At the end of the day, we’re the hard workers, we work two times harder, if not more, than anybody else, because we had more to prove, and there was a sense of pride that went with it.”
“Incarcerated firefighters are on the frontlines saving lives,” Bryan said in an email. “They are heroes just like everybody else on the frontlines and they deserve to be paid like it.”
Last month, Assembly Member Isaac Bryan introduced a bill, AB 247, which would ensure incarcerated firefighters are paid an hourly wage equal to the lowest nonincarcerated firefighter in the state for the time that they are actively fighting a fire.
“Incarcerated firefighters are on the frontlines saving lives,” Bryan said in an email. “They are heroes just like everybody else on the frontlines and they deserve to be paid like it.”
Sam Lewis, executive director of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition—which helped write and introduce AB 247—said that incarcerated firefighters have returned to their fire camps and have been in good spirits about the job they did. He said that the ARC, who owns the Pine Grove Youth Conservation Camp for incarcerated youth, provided more microwaves, an air conditioning unit, new boots, and sporting equipment for the youth who returned from fighting fires. Through donations, they were also able to give all of them hygiene packages that include new toothbrushes, lotion, deodorant, nice soap—things he said they might not normally be able to get while incarcerated.
In the time that passed since the fire, Lewis said six youth at the camp who were fighting the fires have been released and received a $2,500 scholarship as they transition out of incarceration into training to become full-fledged firefighters. Lewis said the work they are doing to save homes and lives is important, and that they should be paid the same as the lowest paid firefighters on any other crew.
“The fact that they get paid basically $10 is not equitable, it’s not fair,” Lewis said. “They’re putting their lives on the line too. Why wouldn’t they be paid for something that they’re providing that’s needed, desperately needing in the state of California? So it was a simple question of equity.”
Lewis said that people who are incarcerated often want to demonstrate that they’ve changed and be able to give back to their communities, and participating in the program has been a way for people to transform their lives.
“Sometimes people end up in jails or prisons with the belief that they don’t have value, and it’s clear that every human being has value once you find out what your purpose is,” Lewis said. “In many instances, people who have an opportunity to go to these fire camps find that their purpose is to be of service to their communities in this way, and so it’s a way of them being able to demonstrate their commitment to their communities, but also to find their pathway to redemption.”
As the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles prepare to square off in New Orleans for Super Bowl LIX, security has been unprecedented both in the wake of the deadly Bourbon Street attack on Jan. 1 and in preparation for Donald Trump’s planned attendance. As a result, police, secret service, and even the Department of Homeland Security are turning New Orleans into a garrison city. Residents and local activists are pointing out the inherent dangers of so many police swarming their streets, not to mention the political priorities on display as tremendous resources are mobilized to protect out-of-state fans in a city where most residents still feel the effects of Hurricane Katrina 20 years later. Edge of Sports speaks with frontline New Orleans activist Deon Haywood, executive director of Women with a Vision, about the impact of this and past Super Bowls on The Big Easy.
Studio Production: David Hebden Post-Production: Taylor Hebden
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Dave Zirin:
Welcome to a special Super Bowl edition of Edge of Sports tv, only here on the Real News Network. Look, given everything horrifying going on in the world, you might only be vaguely aware that the Super Bowl is coming up this Sunday pitting the Kansas City Chiefs again against the Philadelphia Eagles. Even if you are focused on the big game, you might not know that for the 11th time, the Super Bowl will be played in New Orleans, Louisiana. And this collision between the great city of New Orleans and the Super Bowl is what we are focusing on today. The immediate backdrop for this Super Bowl is of course, tragedy. In the early hours of New Year’s Day, a deliberate car attack on crowded Bourbon Street killed 14 people by someone who claimed an adherence to isis, but clearly was in the throes of some serious mental health crisis.
Because of that, the police and military presence in New Orleans is going to be according to the NFL, like none in history. The head of NFL Security is Kathy Lanier, the former chief of police in dc. So someone very familiar, let me tell you, with over-policing large events, now the goals of over-policing aren’t just about calming down wealthy tourists who can afford $10,000 Super Bowl tickets. It is also about isolating the most vulnerable residents of a city, building a moat of heavily armed bodies between halves and have nots. But that’s not all. 2025 is also the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and the memories of the Louisiana Superdome, the sight of the game, of course, becoming a deadly hurricane shelter from hell, and when the ball is kicked off on Sunday, this should also not be far from people’s minds. And then there’s the state of Louisiana in the present day, a right wing political horror show where members of the state legislature are saying that they will crack down on human trafficking this week, which at mega events like the Super Bowl, is always code for attacking sex workers.
It’s all part of a broader racist and reactionary agenda that surrounds the big game. Look, if we care about the Super Bowl, then we should care about the people upon whose community this game will land. That is why I am honored this week to be speaking with Dionne Haywood for more than 30 years. Ms. Haywood has been a frontline fighter in New Orleans for the rights of those who need it the most. She was named executive director of the organization, women with a Vision after Hurricane Katrina, and utterly transformed it into an organization that has built and practiced solidarity as a way of life. I’m so honored to speak with her today. Let’s bring her on. Dion Haywood. Dionne Haywood, thank you so much for joining us here on Edge of Sports.
Deon Haywood:
Thank you so much for having me.
Dave Zirin:
We mentioned in the introduction that this will be the 11th time New Orleans has hosted the Super Bowl.
Speaker 3:
Yes,
Dave Zirin:
In regular times. Regular times, and these are of course not regular times. What kind of strain is it on the most marginalized communities when the big game comes to town?
Deon Haywood:
So New Orleans is one of those cities, like many cities where the people, in some way we talk about the economic boom that the state or the city will have from people coming to town from whatever the event is. And we host large events, massive events all the time. But I think the strain is how do people get to work, how do they make it to take care of their everyday activities? Because it’s hard. It’s even difficult for me. It also puts a strain, this Super Bowl. I think the strain is basically because we just had such a tragic tragedy in the French Quarter, and so local people are still struggling with that moment, with that moment of violence, senseless violence as always, but it makes it more difficult for the people who live and work in the areas where people will be for the Super Bowl. It just makes it hard to navigate and hard for people to get around and hard to get hard for people to get what they need here.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah, I’d love it if you could talk a little bit more about the aftermath of the January 1st Bourbon Street attack in the context of the Super Bowl, in the context of the mood in New Orleans and the whiplash feeling that must exist
Deon Haywood:
Of
Dave Zirin:
Having to play host in the context of mourning.
Deon Haywood:
Yeah, so I think New Orleans is a party city. I often tell people the only reason that I can cope or what makes it easy to cope with so many really hard moments in the world in New Orleans in the US right now is because it’s like every day our head is on a swivel.
We do host a lot of events. We’re known for hosting large events, everything from Essence Fest to Mardi Gras every year. And so it’s not unusual. And normally when we fall right into it and we know what we need to do, we know how to set up, we even know how to direct people what to do and how to be safe and have fun. But what makes it difficult this time is coming off an event that in my opinion, really we didn’t do enough to take care of the people here. We didn’t do enough to make sure that people who worked in the quarter and witnessed what happened, that their mental health and care we’re taken care of. It’s kind of like business as usual. And because of the economy today, it just makes it harder because people have to go to work. They have to work if they want to survive, they have to be able to get their kids where they have to go, and they have to come home and function away from their jobs. New Orleans is a place where we feel deeply when something like this happens. And I have talked to many people, both my staff at Women with a Vision, but also just around the city about this moment. And most people feel like it happened so quickly and seemed like we just kind of glossed over it.
And I don’t think that was the intention all the time that we glossed over it, but it’s kind of like the next big thing is happening. So we got to move. So we had New Year’s Eve, we had the New Year’s Eve tragedy, and now we’re moving between Mardi Gras and Super Bowl, super Bowl and Mardi Gras, right?
Large events where so many people in surveillance and policing are going to be large. I do believe that New Orleans has always done a great job with large events, with crowd control. We do it because we do it all the time. Mardi Gras is huge. You’re talking about millions of people, not just tourists, but locals. Our police department normally does a really good job. But I think after witnessing what took place for New Years, it’s added more policing. It’s added surveillance without really addressing the issues. But this is what we always do, not just here in Louisiana, but I think in the US period, we do not address root causes. We are not good at addressing root causes of a situation and why we got here and who those people were. It’s just like more police. And as much as I understand the idea of security, police don’t keep us safe.
Dave Zirin:
I’m glad you said that, and I’d like to dig into that a little bit more because of course, new Orleans, the people of New Orleans are legendary for being able to figure out how to host these events. But this year there will be an unprecedented, according to the National Football League, military and police presence as well as police from out of town. I mean that level of policing. And you mentioned surveillance, which they also say will be unprecedented. How does that affect the lives of the people with whom you work?
Deon Haywood:
It’s difficult. So let me give you an example. At Women with Division, we have worked for all of our existence 35 years with street-based sex workers, dancers, anybody involved in sex work we’re normally a go-to for those people. But then we also have operated a robust harm reduction program where people are either functioning and working through their addiction or they may be homeless and just need support. It puts a strain on all of us who provides those types of services because how do those people get to us if they’re feeling the pressure of just moving around the city that they live in, regardless of how hard their lives may be, it just makes it even more difficult for them to navigate. Right? So I’ll give you an example. My office is located in Central City, new Orleans, historic neighborhood on a historic street. When I drive to work in the morning, I drive from my house all the way to my job without making a turn, without doing anything because it’s a straight shot. I haven’t been able to do that with all the preparation for Super Bowl because everything is blocked off, the streets are blocked off, and New Orleans is a very pedestrian city, which is why I find it interesting when people are saying, oh, let’s make the French Quarter pedestrian only. Majority of the French Quarter is pedestrian only.
Dave Zirin:
Exactly.
Deon Haywood:
So I feel like we are regurgitating these ideas of safety, these ideas of policing, but they really won’t keep us safe. And it just makes it difficult for not only the people here who live here, but tourists who come here. And most people have been to New Orleans quite a few times, so they kind of know where to go, know how to navigate. I’ve got questions for people and they say, well, I’ll be able to get to all the things I normally do in the city when I’m there. And my answer was, I don’t think you will. I think this year is going to be really different. So if you think about the location of the Superdome and you think about the neighborhoods around the Superdome outside of the central business district, which many people get to see from the TV side. But the other side of that is everyday people who are living their lives trying to get back and forth and live
Speaker 3:
And
Deon Haywood:
Navigate, and those people, they just, and all the preparation, were opening up a food truck park. It’s beautiful. That’s great, but where was that months ago or a year ago? And in doing so now we’ve gathered up all the unhoused people and taken them to a secured location so people don’t see them. That is how people are affected. And I’ll just quickly say this, I know you have other questions, but I can’t
Dave Zirin:
Wait to go. No, please. Without saying it, the attacks on the unhoused is so important to this conversation.
Deon Haywood:
It
Dave Zirin:
Is it, please, please continue, please.
Deon Haywood:
And we saw this, and again, it’s not just isolated here to New Orleans. We see this across the country globally, Paris, the Olympics, we saw them taking busloads of unhoused people out of the city. So people visiting don’t see them as if we don’t know that this is an issue globally. And so knowing that housing advocates here, many who I’m in partnership with, I know personally I know their work. Many of them were so upset in this moment that the governor of Louisiana had all of these people gathered up when many of these people are already working with housing groups
Speaker 3:
To
Deon Haywood:
Find housing, to get housing. There was a recent initiative where they were doing really well, and I don’t remember the dollar amount and I apologize, but to take millions of dollars and pay the Port of New Orleans to house unhoused people for a week when that amount of money would’ve housed them for three years. It just at a time where everybody’s talking about good government and making sense. We don’t have a good government right now. I’m sorry. I’m not sorry. It’s facts.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah. Sorry, not sorry. As they say.
Deon Haywood:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dave Zirin:
You mentioned sex work earlier and the work you do in that area and the work your organization has done
Speaker 3:
In
Dave Zirin:
Providing support for so many years, every time there’s a Super Bowl,
Speaker 3:
The
Dave Zirin:
Government likes to talk about, as they put it, the crackdown on human trafficking. They usually do some kind of photo in the process of the Super Bowl, but what really goes on in these quote crackdowns on human trafficking?
Deon Haywood:
So not my favorite time at all. Again, a waste of resources. We as a society don’t do well with our people.
Some of us do better, most of us do not. The fact that people think it’s okay to remove unhoused people so that people don’t see them, put your poor cousins in the back so nobody sees the poor side of the family. And then when you talk about sex work, we know that trafficking does happen. It does happen, but also we’ve allowed it to happen. And when I say we’ve allowed it to happen, it is because we are so good at figuring out how we are going to incarcerate people and throw them in jail. But yet, you won’t legalize sex work. And when I say legalize, I’m not just talking about, oh, make it legal across the country, but really making it what it is. It’s work, sex work is work People work people make the decision to be involved in sex work, to survive. It might be the best thing for them if we don’t need everybody to agree, we just should agree that criminalization is not the answer. And then you have, for women who dance, again, in economies where people are really struggling, arresting people over surveillance of people is not going to stop trafficking. But maybe if we have programs where we’re really in community and working with women who know what’s going on, that they would be a support and a help to the movement. But trafficking is going to continue to happen because now it’s black market, right? Anything that people can’t access, what happens? It becomes a part of the black market, something to hide still and sell,
But those conditions are created.
Dave Zirin:
Yeah, that’s right. And you keep going back to that issue of root causes. I think that’s the discussion this country is so weak at having.
Deon Haywood:
Yes,
Dave Zirin:
Absolutely.
Deon Haywood:
Because we can’t heal, oh, I’m sorry. Go ahead. I’m sorry.
Dave Zirin:
No, I was just going to say also there are certain people from certain class backgrounds who don’t want to have discussions about maybe the roots of their own empires and their own funds.
Deon Haywood:
Yes, absolutely.
Dave Zirin:
So you do such terrific work on these issues. How does your state legislature either help you or undermine you in the process of trying to do this work?
Deon Haywood:
Right. So as I mentioned, women with the Vision has been around for 35 years, and in those 35 years, we have had great support from Congress people to people who are a part of who are Congress people for Louisiana, state representatives, local government. From the mayor to the city council. We have had support. It’s according to who’s in office at the time. And up until the election this year, we did feel supported by quite a few people. We actually sponsored a sex worker. Decrim Bill was sponsored by State Representative Mandy Landry, and she was with us a hundred percent and really spoke out about how people are targeted and how an arrest record wouldn’t help someone in this situation. And so we tried. It didn’t pass, but we tried, and it’s not the first time we’ve done it. We’ve done it before where we actually challenged Louisiana’s crime against Nature Law.
And at that time, state representative Charmaine Marshan sponsored that bill, and we actually won. We worked with the Center of Constitutional Rights attorney, bill Quigley and attorney Andrea Richie, and we won, ended up removing over 800 people from the sex offender registry who was charged with this. And not only did we win and remove people, we’re still removing people. So we know that the work can progress, but when we have conservative extremists, both state and federal levels, it makes it hard for us to get things done, to make our communities better, to help people find their feet, to find second chance. We just make it really difficult for them. And so hosting events like the Super Bowl, yes, I get the economic impact, but how does that filter to the people when we talk about public safety, sex workers aren’t making you unsafe, unhoused people aren’t making you unsafe. Maybe if public officials thought that, oh, lighting something as easy as lighting will change a situation, crime is less. Most of us has read stats around public safety. We did a thrive study here a few years back, and it really was about how people interact with police. And it turned out to be no, how people are keeping themselves safe. Because again, police come in for the reactionary part, their presence. They react after a crime, but they do not prevent crime because when someone sets their mind on doing a thing, which we saw for New Year’s, they’re going to do that thing, right?
Dave Zirin:
Right.
Deon Haywood:
It doesn’t matter if a barrier was up. He had been here multiple times, scouting the city and looking at things and recording it. That is addressed through mental health, making sure people are getting what they need and addressing again, the root causes of why people commit crimes like this and why they’re willing to go through with it.
Dave Zirin:
Now, 2025, that’s the year we are in. And it means, and I can’t believe this, we are going to be, I do believe the right word is commemorating the 20 years since Hurricane Katrina and the levies breaking now since the sight of the Super Bowl is the Louisiana Superdome.
Deon Haywood:
Right.
Dave Zirin:
I was wondering if you could perhaps share what it was like to see that space at the time being used as a shelter for thousands of residents. If you could take us back there, please.
Deon Haywood:
Yeah. It was probably the most, one of the most difficult times in my life as a person who is a native New Orleans, I was born and raised here, and a person who fights for Louisiana and the people of New Orleans in particular, it was one of the most painful images I think I’ve ever witnessed, especially because it was home and many people I knew was in the dome at the time, between the dome and the convention center, right. Major institutions of parties in Super Bowl and football games and basketball games and concerts. It was extremely painful. But yet again, I feel like we do better now. But in that moment, I don’t think people knew what to do because I think what people don’t remember is that Hurricane Katrina did not hit the city of New Orleans.
The levies broke in the city of New Orleans. When we’re talking about natural disasters versus manmade, this was both. This was both. And being manmade is the part that caused the destruction that we saw, the suffering that we saw. And so I’ve been in a dome multiple times since that time. It doesn’t change the reality of that painful day. I know people who still won’t enter the dome because it’s too traumatic for them. But it’s just the example of how we’re not prepared to care for our people, the US in most states, in the us. We just don’t do a good job at caring for our people. And that was that moment. And as a person who’s rolled out a many of hurricanes here in the city, nobody ever thinks they’re not going to come back. We would’ve been fine had the hurricane hit. We weren’t fine because the levees broke.
Dave Zirin:
You can’t say that enough.
Deon Haywood:
Yeah, it makes it a game changer, right? It’s one thing to have food and shelter for people because rain, when a possible tornado is coming, it’s another thing to have people’s homes in entire communities wiped out because our levies were substandard and weren’t built correctly.
Dave Zirin:
New Orleans is one of my favorite cities, and when I’m there, it’s always a topic of conversation, how the city has changed over the last 20 years and how those changes have really landed on the backs of some of the most marginalized people in the city. I’m hoping you could speak to that particularly about black culture in the city and what the last 20 years has done to the soul of the city as
Deon Haywood:
Well. Growing up in New Orleans, the beauty of it is we had neighborhoods that I could walk around the corner and I’m going to my aunt, I could walk around the corner and I’m going to see my grandmother, right? New Orleans is a very, it’s a walkable city. Most people, if I say, oh, I’m from the third ward, or I live in the Ninth Ward, you probably got 50 family members that live there with you. That is no longer the case in New Orleans. Gentrification, the selling of New Orleans, the buying up from New Orleans, people from Chicago, California, New York, buying up property that they didn’t even see. And now we have a culture of Airbnbs.
They’re everywhere. A culture everywhere. And it’s also raised housing. I’ll give you an example. There was a bar called Mimi’s in the Bywater. Everybody. Mimi’s was truly a place where it didn’t matter who you are, who you were, who you love, who you like, your ethnicity. Everybody went to Mimi’s and everybody danced after Hurricane Katrina, they did reopen, but then all the people who moved here was upset because their playing music in the neighborhood. Are you kidding me? Trying to get local government to create ordinances, noise ordinance. So just the disruption of culture. It is not unusual for us to walk down the street and have young people playing their instruments on a porch, on a corner. It is the voice of New Orleans. It’s the sounds of New Orleans, and much of that has been taken away since Hurricane Katrina.
Speaker 3:
Mimi
Deon Haywood:
Is no longer in existence because the people who bought up that area who are living in that area are renting it out, felt like it was too much noise. But you chose here.
Dave Zirin:
Exactly. I mean, complaining about music in New Orleans is complaining about pizza in New York City.
Deon Haywood:
It’s insane. It’s
Dave Zirin:
Insane. It’s ridiculous.
Deon Haywood:
It really is.
Dave Zirin:
I just have one last question for you, and you’ve been so generous with your time. I just would love for you to speak about your organization, women with a Vision, and particularly the book written with Laura McTigue, I believe I’m pronouncing her name correctly.
Deon Haywood:
Yes.
Dave Zirin:
Ti Yes. And it’s called Fire Dreams, making Black Feminist Liberation in the South. Please, if you could speak about organization and book.
Deon Haywood:
So thank you for asking that question. I appreciate it. Women with A Vision, last year was our 35th year, our 35th anniversary, and Women with A Vision was started by eight black women who bought harm reduction to Louisiana. And it’s been steeped in harm reduction ever since. And for those people may not know what harm reduction is, it is simply a modality used to get you from today to the next day. Somebody may be struggling with addiction today, but tomorrow might be the day they want to change that. And that’s what harm reduction does. We meet the needs of community and meet them where they are. We are a reproductive justice organization, and we do a lot of anti criminalization work, a lot of reentry work, as well as all the other things, but all under the umbrella of reproductive justice.
Dave Zirin:
Got you.
Deon Haywood:
The book written by Laura MCT and the organization, Laura is a friend and board member of Women with a Vision. And in 2012, we had an arson attack in our offices in Mid-City, and it destroyed everything that we had, which was all our history. And so we were really trying to rebuild the history, and it turned into this beautiful offering to the world because the book really talks about how we got started, the fact that we ran underground syringe exchange program for 27 years Here in the state. In the state, but based here in New Orleans. And so we decided to write this book about how we organized and how we were able to do that. And we believe that it is critical in this moment. We just got picked up by eight K Press. The book exceeded expectations for last year. It was just launched, so March would be our one year of the book being out.
And it’s been a beautiful experience, and I love that so many universities in schools are using the book as a guide for how do we move in this moment where we might not be able to say all the things we would normally say, but I feel like myself and women with a vision, we’re up for the challenge because everything that we take for granted today, how we fight, how we use social media is sometimes the only way to communicate with people. We’re still boots on the ground. Yes, we do social media, but we are constantly, every day on a weekly basis, spending time in our community. And this book, our hope with this book is that you realize that you could do this too.
Dave Zirin:
Wow.
Deon Haywood:
That your voice is powerful, and we actually all have guides and our stories will take us where we need to go.
Dave Zirin:
I can’t imagine a more timely message for 2025. The book is called Fire Dreams, making Black Feminist Liberation in the South. It was such a thrill to speak with you. It’s such an important issue. It’s the story the football networks are not going to tell, and it’s so, so vital to be part of the tapestry of the big day that people know who this game is landing upon. Thank you so much.
Deon Haywood:
Thank you so much, David.
Dave Zirin:
Well, that’s all the time we have this week for this special Super Bowl edition of Edge of Sports. Thank you so much to Dionne Haywood for joining us that was beyond memorable. Thank you so much to the whole team here at the Real News Network, Dave Hebden, Maximilian Alvarez, Kayla Rivera, and the whole team that makes this show happen. And please, please stay tuned to The Real News Network, like the YouTube page, get on the website not only to see back editions of Edge of Sports, and we are so proud of the work we have done at the collision of sports and politics, but also because this year we’ve got so much planned and we want you to be on the cusp of everything that we are going to do. We want you to be watching us in the months ahead because we’re going to have a new studio. We’re going to have a series of absolutely amazing Titanic, incendiary and important topics, and we’re going to show you how sports can be part of the resistance in the year ahead. For everybody watching, please stay frosty and be safe. We are out of here. Peace.
This story was originally published by In These Times on Jan. 30, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
“Tom Homan said Chicago is very organized,” Margarita Klein, director of member organizing for Arise Chicago, proclaimed gleefully in Spanish to a room of 80 people at an immigrant rights training, many of whom laughed and clapped in response.
Klein was calling back to a CNN appearance two days earlier by Trump’s handpicked border czar.
“Sanctuary cities are making it very difficult,” Homan told anchor Kaitlan Collins of the administration’s immigration sweeps. “For instance, Chicago … they’ve been educated on how to defy ICE, how to hide from ICE.”
When Trump moved to make an example of Chicago, sending federal immigration authorities to the city on Sunday, Chicago’s immigrant rights community was braced for it. The city’s vast networks of workers’ centers, unions, and community organizations have spent months preparing, disbursing flyers and cards, and sending the message to residents: Don’t talk to ICE. The two-hour training at Arise Chicago’s offices yesterday night was the organization’s sixth in-house training that month, and just one of numerous actions taking place across the city to defend immigrant residents.
It’s one thing to know, intellectually, how to handle ICE, and another to have the muscle memory, so that you follow the plan in a stressful situation. To that end, Jorge Mújica, strategic campaigns organizer, did some boisterous role playing, in which he banged on the door and marched into the room pretending to be ICE. “Where are you from?” he shouted as he pointed at attendees, many of whom laughed at his lively presentation. Moises Zavala, workplace justice campaigns organizer for Arise Chicago, advised attendees to go home and practice with their families: “After dinner, do role playing: ‘What’s your name, where are you from, what’s your address?” (The answer, as always, was: Don’t talk to ICE.)
Over the last week, the Trump administration has worked to turn its deportation agenda into a perverse Reality TV spectacle, inviting reporters to embed with ICE operations, instructing agents to be “camera-ready” and even livestreaming arrests. It has publicly touted an array of federal authorities that are participating in the sweeps, including the FBI, ATF, DEA, CBP and the U.S. Marshals Service.
Chicago, a sanctuary city where local laws restrict police collaboration with ICE, is a favorite Trump punching-bag, and the center of the media spectacle. Dr. Phil hosted an hours-long broadcast on his MeritTV network on Sunday dedicated to ICE operations in Chicago, repeating widely debunked talking points about the dangers posed by immigrants, and media outlets like Bloomberg embedded with immigration authorities during the raids.
The full impact of the federal immigration actions is not yet known. Chicago police superintendent Larry Snelling said Tuesday that he believes approximately 100 people had been detained by federal officials, though he said he couldn’t give an exact figure. Immigrant rights groups in Chicago confirm that immigration authorities are in the city, but do not have a complete tally of detentions.
What is clear is that the PR push seems designed to incite fear.
But at the Arise Chicago office in the West Town neighborhood, the mood was not one of defeat; all of the people who spoke with In These Times and Workday Magazine wanted to underscore that their community is trying to fight fear with preparation and organization. “Obviously there is nervousness,” Klein said, as Arise Chicago members ambled into the office and greeted friends with smiles and hugs. “But we don’t see our community being paralyzed.”
Chicago’s sanctuary status means that no city agency, including the police department, is supposed to work with ICE to deport residents. The 2006 Welcoming City Ordinance enshrining these policies was recently upheld at City Hall following a large public mobilization to defend it, despite an effort by some alders to water down its sanctuary provisions.
Since taking office, Trump has unleashed a bevy of anti-immigrant actions nationwide, including indefinitely suspending refugee admissions, deploying troops to the border, cancelling asylum appointments and attempting to limit birthright citizenship rights, though the latter has been temporarily halted by a federal district court judge. Trump declared on Wednesday that he plans to cancel the student visas of Palestine solidarity demonstrators and use the Guantánamo Bay military prison to hold up to 30,000 deported migrants.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said in response, “We are not going to be intimidated by those acts of terror to radically shift our way of living.”
Targeting sanctuary cities is key to the new administration’s strategy. On his first day in office, Trump signed an executive order that “sanctuary jurisdictions” will be cut off from federal funds “to the maximum extent possible.” And his Justice Department is instructing its prosecutors to investigate and charge state and local officials for “failing to comply” with immigration actions. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said in response, “We are not going to be intimidated by those acts of terror to radically shift our way of living.” Johnson is one of four mayors who has been called to testify before a congressional committee about their cities’ sanctuary status.
On January 25, four Chicago-based organizations filed a lawsuit in federal court, charging that the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Chicago is a bid to crush the sanctuary movement and violates activists’ First Amendment rights.
Antonio Gutierrez is an organizer with Organized Communities Against Deportations, one of the groups that filed the lawsuit. “We urge other groups to potentially think about similar lawsuits in their own cities,” Gutierrez says.
“Don’t open the door, remain silent if you’re arrested, tell your children not to open the door, and don’t sign anything,” Zavala told the crowd, most of whom are members of Arise Chicago, which organizes primarily Polish and Latino immigrant workers in low-wage industries like food production, manufacturing, domestic labor and food service.
The same principles apply if ICE shows up to your workplace, he underscored, and employers should know that ICE can’t enter without a warrant signed by a judge — unless the employer or another authority lets them in.
Even if the worst happens, and ICE detains you, it is best to remain silent and speak to an immigration attorney, whose number you’ve hopefully memorized, the trainers explained. Klein drove this point home with some gallows humor. “I know that when we are afraid, sometimes when we are nervous, we start talking and babbling too much and start telling them about all sorts of things like how many pimples we have on our back,” she said, jabbing her finger at an imaginary blemish as the room laughed.
Arise Chicago isn’t the only worker organization mobilizing to defend immigrants.
The Chicago Teachers Union won sanctuary protections in its 2019 contract, which say that Chicago Public Schools are not supposed to ask about or document the immigration status of students or community members, and ICE can’t come into schools unless it provides credentials, a reason and a criminal judicial warrant signed by a federal judge (an administrative warrant or ICE detainer is not sufficient). This commitment takes on new meaning after Trump announced that he will allow immigration authorities to make arrests in schools, as well as hospitals and churches.
The Raise the Floor Alliance, which was founded by eight Chicago-area worker centers, held a know-your-rights training for a 200-strong member assembly on January 18. “We got people together across organizations, across sectors,” says Raise the Floor Alliance Executive Director Sophia Zaman, for a conversation that linked workplace justice campaigns with plans to keep workplaces safe from ICE.
Like many organizers in the city, Zaman responds to Homan’s recent gripes about Chicago with pride. “That’s evidence of our really robust system, networks of support,” she says. “An informed community and an organized community is the safest community.”
If the mood at the Arise Chicago training was jovial, at times, it also was serious; trainers and attendees talked through issues that ranged from the wonky to the personal. ICE has the right to examine a workplace’s I-9 forms, Zavala explained, which have workers’ social security numbers, immigration status, and other personal information, and then use this information to compel employers to fire workers who lack authorization. However, some employers might lie about being audited, Zavala said, and use this to justify firing workers. “Do not engage in any conversation with your employer about ‘yes or no, I do or don’t have papers,’” he emphasized. “Immediately go to a worker center to ask how to handle the situation.”
During one of the more sober moments of the training, Klein announced an upcoming meeting to discuss how to talk to children about ICE without causing them stress or trauma.
There is no shortage of trauma to go around. However organized Chicago communities might be, they are also dealing with an intense crackdown from an administration that has Chicago in its crosshairs. If there is no way to guarantee safety, organizers hope that at least solidarity can provide a layer of protection. “In my country, we organized against a dictator,” Klein, whose parents were political refugees from Chile, told the room. “An organized people will never be defeated.”
This article is a joint publication of In These Times and Workday Magazine, a non-profit newsroom devoted to holding the powerful accountable through the perspective of workers.
On the campaign trail, Donald Trump promised that, if elected, “On day one, I will launch the largest deportation program of criminals in the history of America.” Trump’s administration has wasted no time since re-entering the White House on Monday, and communities around the US are currently bracing for a wave of ICE raids. In plans that were publicly leaked ahead of Trump’s inauguration, the city of Chicago was identified as a key target for immigration raids, putting immigrant residents and their neighbors on high alert. To discuss the impending threat to Chicago and cities around the country, and how communities can fight back, The Real News speaks with Moises Zavala, Workplace Justice Campaigns Organizer for Arise Chicago, and Natascha Elena Uhlmann, a writer for Labor Notes and immigrant rights activist from Sonora, Mexico.
Studio: David Hebden, Adam Coley, Cameron Granadino Post-Production: David Hebden Produced by: Stephen Janis and Taya Graham Written by: Stephen Janis
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Taya Graham:
Hello, my name is Taya Graham and welcome to a special emergency report created to help those who are immigrants or might be helping innocent people who happen to be immigrants in our country. And it’s no small matter. We’re tackling one of the most urgent human rights issues of our time, the weaponization of immigrant officers and law enforcement officers against working people, and it’s under the guise of law and order. This new administration has revived and expanded policies that threaten to tear families apart, destabilize communities, and target some of the most vulnerable people among us. And yet, amid the fear and uncertainty, there is resistance, resistance from those who refuse to let cruelty and chaos define our workplaces and our neighborhoods. Today we’ll be speaking with organizers and advocates and reporters who are pushing back creating sanctuary in unexpected places and proving that solidarity is our strongest shield. From teachers standing up for their immigrant students to unions rewriting the rules of what it means to protect workers, these are the people finding innovative, compassionate ways to challenge the unchecked power of ICE.
And leaked plans show that ICE will be heading into Chicago, and we will be directly speaking to the organizers on the ground, and we’ll try to get for you the most current updates on the situation. We’ll also explore how deportations are not just acts of cruelty, but tools of economic control throwing lives into disarray, creating fear, and reinforcing inequality. But for those who might think, “Well, this doesn’t affect my life,” we’ll also explain the economic disruption that will occur across the board for those of us understandably worried about the cost of groceries and other goods. And there is solid data that shows that when President Obama deported a record 3 million people, it did not equate to 3 million jobs for Americans or proportionately higher wages. In fact, in President Trump’s first term, he only deported 1.9 million people, and I was somewhat surprised to discover that Biden deported even more than both Trump and President Obama.
Although allegedly this was because more people entered the country during his tenure, it is interesting to note that both Democrats and Republicans have engaged in mass deportations, but the type of deportation policies that are currently being proposed can target people here legally under temporary protected status, children born in the U.S. to noncitizens, or people without criminal records who’ve been working here for decades who might’ve had trouble renewing a work visa or have been waiting years for the asylum process to be finalized. So, to get a better understanding of what our country is doing, let’s dive into the policies that make this possible and, more importantly, the people and movements fighting back. Because while this is a time of fear, it is also a time when we can show our humanity, our compassion, and our resourcefulness, and to demonstrate the power of collective action. I’m fortunate to be joined by senior investigative reporter Stephen Janis to help me break down this difficult topic.
Stephen Janis:
Absolutely. Glad to be here.
Taya Graham:
Stephen, thank you so much for joining me.
Stephen Janis:
You’re welcome.
Taya Graham:
First, can you give me just a brief overview of what the Trump administration has been doing?
Stephen Janis:
I mean, it’s so complex and so expansive and sprawling, it’s difficult to connect all the dots, and we’ll be talking to our guests about this. But for example, he wants to revoke birthright citizenship for children who are born to people who are not here, I guess, legally, from his perspective. Another thing he wants to do is deputize, as we were saying before the show, all sorts of law enforcement agents to be able to deport people. So he’s ratcheting that up. He’s created a national emergency at the border, he has mobilized the military to the border, and he has issued an executive order to conduct emergency raids and to deport people kind of on the spot. I don’t know if it’s the mass deportation, but it’s sprawling. It’s like in every aspect…
Oh, and even more importantly and even more astounding, it used to be you can’t grab a person at a church or a school. We’re not going to have people storming in there with jackets. Well, guess what? That’s absolutely on the table now, that people can go into a school or a church or something and just snatch up people. It’s scary really, and it is an expansion of law enforcement I think that’s unprecedented in our recent history. But we’ve seen some of this before in the history of this country. But it is so sprawling and so expansive and so permeates every part of life, I think it’s going to change a lot for people who thought they might’ve been voting for Trump, and they’re going to see up front how cruel this can be.
Taya Graham:
Absolutely. We want to get started as soon as possible. We are joined by two guests-
Stephen Janis:
Absolutely.
Taya Graham:
… to help us understand who is at risk and what we can do to help. First, we have Natascha Uhlmann, staff writer for Labor Notes and an organizer. Her reporting covers Unite Here, farm workers, immigrant workers, and Mexico’s growing independent labor movement. And she’s already active in cross-border solidarity. In fact, she’s the editor and translator of former Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s book, A New Hope for Mexico. Natascha is a member of Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, and she’s the author of Abolish ICE. Natascha, thank you so much for joining us.
Natascha Uhlmann:
Thank you so much for having me.
Taya Graham:
And next we have Moises Zavala. He is an accomplished union organizer with over 25 years of experience. He has developed strategic plans to organize workers for union membership. He trains junior organizers. He serves on the local 881 UFCW executive board, and he’s an organizer at Arise, a faith-based labor movement where he helps workers to learn their rights and how to enforce them, including through making collective demands and building workplace committees. Moises, thank you so much for being here. We really do appreciate it.
Moises Zavala:
Thank you for having me.
Taya Graham:
So let me turn to you first, Moises. Just tell me a little bit about your organization, Arise that you work for, because it’s a faith-based organization, but also tell us what your concerns are for the people who are at the risk of deportation. And I just want to mention, we heard there might be an update on some of the raids across the country, so if you want to step in and speak about that first, please feel free.
Moises Zavala:
Sure. First of all, Arise Chicago is a worker center, not for profit, and what we do here is we support workers that are non-union to organize and protect their rights, organized collectively to improve their working conditions. We have been very involved in creating a rapid response to the problem that we have now of these mass deportations. What we did to create this rapid response was to have our members and community be ready for this. How? By creating trainings with our members and in the community of what to expect and how to be ready for this. Because when a worker is detained by ICE or there is a raid, people get paralyzed because of fear, because of the shock, and it is very hard then to be able to fight that deportation and provide to an attorney what they need to defend these workers.
We have created an organizing toolbox for the community and for our members so they could be ready, such as what are the documents that they need to have with themselves at all times? What happens if there is a raid or they’re detained? Who is going to pick up their children? Who is going to take care of their last paycheck or be able to go into their bank accounts and be able to provide for the children or the family that’s left behind? If the children are sick, who is going to know what kind of medication the children have to take or what are the illnesses? So there’s a huge area of readiness that our members and community have been developing now in case the worst happens. If the worst does not happen, then our community is one step ahead.
Stephen Janis:
Aren’t they going to classify family members who are actually citizens as collaterals or something? Taya and I were hearing about as we were driving into work to do this show. Do you know anything about that and what that means for people who have families?
Moises Zavala:
All I could say is that from the looks of things, it sounds like ICE will pick up anybody that they run into. They have a list of names that they are looking for, but clearly that’s not going to stop from asking others, say, in a household or in a facility where people are working if they have documentation or not.
Stephen Janis:
Okay. Yeah, go ahead. I’m sorry.
Taya Graham:
No, I just thought it was really interesting because I believe Tom Homan had been saying that if people who we would say are at risk for deportation don’t voluntarily leave on their own, he was basically saying people are concerned that families will be separated. He said, “We’ll take the family with them.”
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, the whole family. They’re not going to separate. Yeah.
Taya Graham:
Right, and people were referring to families being deported as collateral-
Stephen Janis:
Right, I just said that.
Taya Graham:
… damage in the war. So that was really disturbing.
Stephen Janis:
Natascha, I want to ask you, your work is amazing on all this. We were reviewing it. And how historic is this? And we know the first couple raid has happened across the country, about 400 or 500 people. First, what do you know about this and how unprecedented is this effort by the Trump administration historically speaking?
Natascha Uhlmann:
Yeah, I mean, we’re definitely seeing an escalation. Some employers are already instituting non-mandated employment authorization checks. 100 custodial and kitchen workers at New York City’s Tin Building were fired after building management carried one of these out. They’re effectively called silent raids, and they’re every bit as damaging as the more visible raids that tend to get more publicity. So a lot of this stuff can happen sort of quietly too.
Stephen Janis:
What do you mean by silent raids, so people understand? I didn’t know exactly what that meant, so can you just give us a description of what a silent raid is?
Natascha Uhlmann:
Yeah, absolutely. So basically your employer can, in a way that it is not mandated to do, say, “I want to check that you’re authorized to work here,” even if you’ve been working here for a year, for 10 years. And it’s a way of clearing out if you are knowingly hiring undocumented workers. It’s every bit is damaging to get rid of them, but in a way that often just goes unnoticed because it’s not the sort of showy ICE bursting through the door, right?
Stephen Janis:
That’s really interesting. That’s horrifying too. And do you know anything about the raids that have occurred with 400 or 500 people in Illinois and Maryland and a couple other states, Utah? I mean, has anyone said anything to you about these?
Natascha Uhlmann:
So it’s really a rapidly developing situation, but I think a few things are clear. The first is that bosses are absolutely going to abuse this atmosphere of fear and uncertainty, and the second is that ICE and Border Patrol are going to throw a lot of things at the wall and see what sticks. And we’re going to need to do the same, right? Experiment with tactics, see what sticks, but always with an eye to building power in a strategic way.
Taya Graham:
Let me ask you, Moises, something. When you’re speaking to immigrants in your community, what are their fears and what are they trying to do to address them? I know you’re doing organizing, I know you’re trying to prepare people, but what are their fears at heart?
Moises Zavala:
The fear is the unknown. What’s going to happen? How is it going to happen? And we don’t have those answers, but what we do have is the ability to organize. And more than ever, we are sharing with our members that this is the time to organize with their coworkers, with their community, with their churches, the schools where the children go, to really solidify that network that we have and use it to organize support because this is not the first time that working families are attacked in this fashion. It’s happened before, and in the past, workers and communities organized very sophisticatedly to be able to win those types of oppressions, and we have to do the same thing. We have to continue that effort of unity, of organizing, and information so that people do not feel or do not have that fear that is going to paralyze them. We don’t have all the answers, but what we do know is that people want to live in peace and people can organize, and that is the avenue in which our members are taking to be able to have some stability in their lives at this moment.
Stephen Janis:
Natascha, one of the executive orders was getting rid of the birthright citizenship. How destructive do you think this will be? Do you think it will stick? Do you think the Trump administration will be able to make this stick? It really is contradicting the Constitution. But nevertheless, how destructive is this to families, and what are your concerns about that?
Natascha Uhlmann:
Yeah, absolutely. First, can I say, can I jump in on the fear question after this?
Stephen Janis:
Absolutely.
Taya Graham:
Oh, please do.
Stephen Janis:
You can jump in now. If you want to start with that, go ahead.
Taya Graham:
Yes.
Natascha Uhlmann:
Yeah, thank you so much.
Stephen Janis:
Absolutely.
Natascha Uhlmann:
Yeah. On the topic of fear, I mean this is without question a scary moment, but it is really essential that we don’t do the right’s work for them. They want people to be afraid. They want to project way more strength than they have in hopes that people will self-deport or remove themselves from public life. I am seeing a lot of bad actors who are seizing on this moment to spread terror. I heard from one organizer that a photo circulating spreading panic of an ICE van was actually photoshopped. And I’ve also seen someone screencap a photo from an ICE raid in 2018 and post it and say it was this week. So a lot of organizers I talk to right now are saying, “Spread power, not panic.” If you’re sharing information about a raid, verify it first. It can be tempting to just want to get that info out there, and I certainly feel that urge, but it’s really important not to play into the right’s hands and not to spread fear and uncertainty.
Stephen Janis:
Do you have any sense of who is spreading this fear and why they would want to do that? Are they trying to exploit workers, or is there some motivation behind that? Just curious.
Natascha Uhlmann:
I mean, it’s all very developing, so I can’t-
Stephen Janis:
I know. Totally understand. It just struck me like, wow, what a horrible thing to do to people. What’s your motive there?
Natascha Uhlmann:
I think just abject cruelty. I mean, I certainly do think bosses are very much prepared to take advantage of this moment, no question, but I can go back to the birthright question now.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, sure. Of course. Of course. Absolutely.
Natascha Uhlmann:
Cool. Yeah, it’s absolutely heinous, and it’s just a complete mess because where do you draw the line? Right? Babies born today, a year ago, 10 years ago? And also he’s claimed that the U.S. is the only country that offers birthright is just actually factually wrong. Right? Canada, Mexico, for starters, our literal backyard, Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, this is not an uncommon practice.
Stephen Janis:
Wow.
Taya Graham:
And just to make this clear, because one of the things that was mentioned in the inauguration speech was the idea that the people who are in this country that are immigrants are somehow criminals, and I don’t think anyone would argue that if someone is engaged in transporting narcotics or human trafficking, no matter what your status is, you’re committing a crime. But we’re hearing that there’s so many people like clergy and teachers and employers, they’re worried about protecting community members that are valued hard-working people and even children. I was hoping, and this is either for you, Moises, or for you, Natascha, maybe you can just tell us a little bit about the people at risk. Describe who they are, help put a face to it so people understand who you’re trying to protect.
Moises Zavala:
It’s everyday people. Everyday people are at risk. Students, restaurant workers, grocery workers, factory workers, everybody’s at risk because we don’t carry an ID that says I’m a U.S. citizen, I’m a permanent resident, I’m undocumented. Hey, if you look Mexican, we’re going to have to pull you over. Show me some papers. That’s the kind of world in which we live in right now. If it was that simple where, “Hey, here’s a list. These are people that you have to go and find,” that’s one thing, but that’s not what we’re hearing. So again, we’re living in a moment where we have to inform faster than before, broader than before, and really organize to be able to push back to be able to make sure that workers know what their rights are.
For example, if there is a raid or they get pulled over or they’re stopped on the street, what’s the first thing that we mentioned in our trainings? Remain silent. Remain silent. We have little cards that say, “I’m going to remain silent, and I want to speak to my attorney.” They look something like this where the work it can put in their pocket and show it to an ICE agent. So this is what we’re doing to be able to fight off this environment of fear. I mean, attacking a birthright citizenship, it’s just another way to create fear and to create anger and to try to point at people and wonder, hey, I wonder if he or she is a U.S. citizen. Well, let’s ask them. Right? I hope it doesn’t get to that point, but it sure as heck looks like it is. So we have to be ready for that. We have to push back.
Stephen Janis:
Natascha-
Natascha Uhlmann:
[inaudible 00:18:20].
Stephen Janis:
Oh, go ahead. You go ahead. Absolutely. I don’t need to ask a question.
Natascha Uhlmann:
Great. I think Moises makes some excellent points. Just to add to that, there’s often this sort of outrage of, “Well, they broke the law to come here. Why didn’t they come the right way? Why didn’t they get in line?” Well, first of all, for many people, there just simply is no line to get into. But secondly, often the people who say this are often the same people who say things like, “I would do anything for my child. I would kill for my child.” And I think it’s really important to tap into that shared humanity. People are coming here because they have hopes and aspirations, and they want to give their kids something that they didn’t have. And you cannot tell me as a parent, if you could not feed your kid, you wouldn’t cross some damn line for them. I think these are the conversations that we need to be having.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah. I think-
Moises Zavala:
Another thing that I would add-
Stephen Janis:
Okay.
Natascha Uhlmann:
Sorry.
Moises Zavala:
Another thing that I would add when we talk about criminalizing undocumented workers is, well, what are we talking about? They just pardoned 1,500 criminals that attacked our capital.
Stephen Janis:
Oh, good point.
Moises Zavala:
And what is it? What are we talking about when we say criminals?
Stephen Janis:
Well, one of the things, and I wanted both of you, if you want to jump in on understanding, have they canceled the ability to ask or seek asylum, speaking of cruelty? I think that was in part of the executive orders. Is that playing out? Is that correct?
Moises Zavala:
I believe that’s what it was.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah. Yeah, because seeking a asylum is an important part of that process you were talking about for people trying to come here, right? If that goes away, what happens?
Moises Zavala:
People continue to see the United States as a place of hope, and people will continue, like Natascha mentioned, they will continue to walk the miles and miles for their children. I don’t think it’s fun to be walking through the desert or through a jungle. These are needs. But there are different ways to welcome people into this country, but the way this new administration is going about it, it’s simply just to create chaos and create fear.
Taya Graham:
I think you brought up such a good point that these people are doing what any American would say they would do for their family, which is I would do anything for my child. I think you brought up such a great point, both of you. And I hate to bring up something that stokes more fear, but there have already been instances of anti-immigrant violence. I mean, back in December, there were two teenagers in New York. They were asked by a group of men if they spoke English. When they said no, they didn’t speak English, they were both stabbed and one died. Of course, in Springfield, Ohio, after Haitians were falsely accused of being in the U.S. illegally and harming pets and spreading disease, there were marches by white supremacists, and there were 30 bomb threats in one week. So I have to ask you both, are there any concerns that there could be vigilante actions against the immigrant community?
Moises Zavala:
Look, it could very well be, but I think it’s also on all of us to play a role in making sure that this changes. It’s not just for immigrant rights organizations like ours to be fighting this off. We will. That’s what we do. But it’s also the participation of the rest of our communities to stand up and to fight against this kind of attacks on all of us.
Natascha Uhlmann:
Yeah, I would just add, I think a lot of this work will come down to talking to people who don’t agree with you, building bonds of trust and solidarity, and then you can have that conversation, right? It’s not the undocumented worker making five bucks an hour under the table who’s getting the better end of the deal, right? He didn’t choose that. The boss did. And if there wasn’t some arbitrary designation of immigration status, the boss couldn’t get away with paying him five bucks an hour. It is the vulnerability of immigration status itself that creates the conditions where a boss can undercut you. I just wanted to flag, we’ve got a great piece in Labor Notes called Worker Solidarity Is the Best Strategy to Defeat Rising Fascism, and it talks about exactly that. It is in the boss’s interest to have us at each other’s throats, keep us divided, see each other as a threat. I think it is going to take talking to people who don’t agree with us, not violent people like that, but I think it’s what it’s going to have to look like.
Stephen Janis:
One thing I want to note, I think what happened with the asylum process is now people have to remain in Mexico, I believe. Just a little correction there or kind of clarification. But yeah, I mean, as a reporter, is there any story that stands out to you or something that sort of shows the cruelty and the inhumanity of this or that has affected you in any way?
Natascha Uhlmann:
I think there’s so many, but unfortunately, they largely precede Trump, right? Even under Obama we had kids in deportation hearings, and I remember reading their feet couldn’t even touch the floor is how little they were. They didn’t know their last name is how little they were. So unfortunately, this is a bipartisan affair, and I think that it’s just a total abdication of leadership on behalf of the Dems, and that handed us Trump. If you’re going to condemn Trump’s rhetoric and fall all over yourselves to top it in the support for the Laken Riley Act… I don’t know. It’s not only morally reprehensible, but yeah, it’s a total abdication of leadership, and it’s just bad politics. You want to tell us come election time that Trump’s a fascist, that this is the most important election of our lives. But then if you’re going to fall right into place and advance his agenda, what is the political calculus? Right.
Stephen Janis:
That’s a great point.
Taya Graham:
I actually have a dozen more questions I want to ask, but I want to make sure that I ask the most important question, and this is for people who want to take action but maybe let’s say they aren’t directly involved in a union, what are some ways they can support immigrant workers and help create sanctuary workspaces or just safe spaces in their own communities? And I’ll go to you first Moises and then to you Natascha.
Moises Zavala:
A number of things that they can do. One is they can reach out to a church in their community, find out if their church is doing any work or is willing to do some work and take on some of the responsibilities to create that support base in the community. Talk to the schools. Obviously, contact a worker center like us. We’d be more than happy to share the work in supporting our community. So there’s a range of ways that they can support. They can contact their aldermen, their elected officials, find out what is it that they’re doing. If it’s obviously a state like in Illinois, what are they doing and how can they participate to strengthen the work that those elected officials are doing? So thank you for that question. That is what we need to be thinking about. How can we incorporate and encourage others to have a role in this support base for these workers?
Natascha Uhlmann:
Yeah, there’s a lot of good language you can include in your collective bargaining agreements. The Chicago Teachers Union has some good language about how you don’t let ICE through the door unless they got a signed warrant. But a teacher I spoke with for a recent story with Sarah Lazar, teacher’s name was Catherine Zamarrón, she made a really important point that good contract language is only useful if people know their contract. Someone’s going to have to be the person when ICE is at the door that says, “Hey, don’t open that door. We don’t have to let them in.” So this piece I referenced at Labor Notes and Workday, Sarah Lazar and I collected the best collective bargaining agreement language that we found with these sorts of protections, protections against retaliation against nonmandated audits, stuff you’re going to want in your contract. So you can find that on both the Labor Notes and Workday Magazine websites.
But in addition, I think worker centers and community groups also have a really important role to play. There’s all the work Arise is doing, which has been integral. Escucha Mi Voz Iowa faith-based community org has committed to having 6,000 one-on-one conversations with church members in the area. And interestingly, they likened it to how organizers build a union. Talking to people who don’t agree, it’s going to be a slow process of building trust, of being in dialogue. It’s going to be exceptionally frustrating, but you got to bring in people who don’t agree or we’re just going to be talking to each other.
And finally, I would just point to there are very practical things you can do in your community. I spoke with one organizer who turns out a crowd when a community member needs to go to an ICE check-in because ICE will generally not make detentions during public events as a safety precaution for their agents. So there’s a lot of stuff you can do. If you’re not in a union organized, reach out to the one of the incredible worker centers supporting these organizing efforts or to EWOC, the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee. But I think everyone has a role to play, and it’s going to take all of us.
Taya Graham:
Well, you know what? We’re going to make a point of putting in our YouTube description perhaps a link to that article that you wrote with Sarah Lazar. I think you might also have some tips. That would be great. I think the same with you, Moises. At the beginning, you held up what looked like a little pamphlet or handbook. Perhaps we could post a link to that as well so that people can see for themselves things that they can do if they want to help protect their fellow community members. I want to thank you both so much for joining us for this emergency livestream. We know we grabbed you last minute and we know you both have a lot of important work to do, so we want to thank you so much for your time. I feel like you want to add one thing, Moises?
Moises Zavala:
Yes, one thing, very important, despite the fear that is being thrown at us, I think that it is these moments that draw out the best in us to organize, to change, and to create power. And we just got to remember that because our communities have done that in the past, and we need to continue to do it today and teach it for the future.
Taya Graham:
I’m so glad that you ended us on such a positive note, to not give into fear, but that this is a time where we can join together to do something positive. Thank you both again for your time.
Stephen Janis:
Yes, thank you.
Taya Graham:
We really appreciate you.
Natascha Uhlmann:
Thank you so much.
Moises Zavala:
Thank you.
Taya Graham:
Take care. Once again, I want to thank our guests, Moises Zavala from Arise and Natascha Uhlmann of Labor Notes for discussing this human rights issue with us.
Stephen Janis:
And get her book Abolish Ice.
Taya Graham:
Yes, that’s right. Thank you.
Stephen Janis:
A great book.
Taya Graham:
But most importantly, we want to thank you for not only working in your communities to provide protection, but teaching us how we can help. We appreciate your time and your work, and we want to thank you again for joining us. And we also want to thank everyone for watching and taking the time to listen and taking the time to care. Our immigrant neighbors aren’t our enemies. They’re our friends, our co-workers, and they’re even our family. Let’s keep sharing the things that make our country truly great, being open, being innovative, being welcoming, and being compassionate, and being a place where anyone who works hard at least has a chance at the American dream. Thank you so much for joining us.
Police in Jonesboro, Arkansas, are facing scrutiny following the release of body camera footage capturing a ticket issued to a local pizza delivery driver—who says that officers have pulled him over more than seven times in under a year. The driver, Christian Mobley, says police have destroyed his livelihood after he lost his job due to receiving so many tickets. Police Accountability Report investigates the case as an example of how police departments around the country employ dirty tactics to maximize city revenues through ticketing.
Production: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham Written by: Stephen Janis Post-Production: Adam Coley
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Taya Graham:
Hello, my name is Taya Graham and welcome to the Police Accountability Report. As I always make clear, this show has a single purpose holding the politically powerful institution of policing accountable to do so. We don’t just focus on the bad behavior of individual cops. Instead we examine the system that makes bad policing possible and today we will achieve that goal by showing not one, not two, but multiple questionable stops by police of a pizza delivery man trying to simply make a living. It’s an ongoing pattern of writing tickets, pulling him over, and yes, even an arrest that we will investigate to reveal just how problematic the actions of these officers are. But first, before we get started, I want you watching to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct, please email it to us privately at PAR@therealnews.com or reach out to me on Facebook or Twitter @TayasBaltimore and we might be able to investigate for you.
And please like share and comment on our videos. It helps us get the word out and it can even help our guests. And of course I read your comments and appreciate them. You see those little hearts I give out down there and I’ve even started doing a r comment of the week to show you how much I appreciate your thoughts and what a terrific community we have. And we do have a Patreon accountability reports. So if you feel inspired to donate, please do. We don’t run ads or take corporate dollars. So anything you can spare is truly appreciated. Alright, we’ve gotten that out of the way. Now there is no doubt that times are tough for the working class in this country. Grueling jobs, underpaid work and insufficient benefits are not only commonplace but a veritable addendum to the American dream that for some has turned into a nightmare and that is why today we are telling the story of one man who personifies both the challenges and obstacles of making an honest living under extreme duress.
The man in question, Christian Mobley has been working as a pizza delivery person in Jonesboro, Arkansas for years. There he has been diligently delivering food, working late into the night to make ends meet. But soon he found along with the occupational hazards and inherent dangers of delivering food, another unexpected challenge he had to overcome to make ends meet the Jonesborough Arkansas Police Department. That’s because in spring of 2023, police began pulling him over for minor traffic violations, car stops that often became confrontational and ever more contentious as police turned traffic enforcement into something entirely divorced from public safety encounters with police that changed his life. Now Christian’s story begins, like I said, in June of 2023, Christian was driving to work to start his delivery shift when a Jonesboro officer Michael Starns pulled him over. Take a look.
Speaker 2:
What’s going on man? All right. My name is Officer Jonesboro Police Department. The reason I stopped is you got a brake light out, you’re passenger side brake light. Is there a reason you’re not wearing your seatbelt today, sir? Now I’m trying to get Walmart. You going Walmart, you’re going the wrong way. You got a driver’s license on you.
Taya Graham:
Now as you notice, the officer is already questioning Christian about circumstances that have nothing to do with his allegedly broken taillight. I’m not sure why he has to explain where he is going or even why. But the officer asks, let’s say provocative questions that heightened the tension of this stop. Just listen.
Speaker 2:
Okay, Mr. Moby, is there a reason you’re nervous? What’s wrong man?
Christian Mobley:
I mean you’re telling me from all the way who wouldn’t be nervous? You’re telling me all the way from back there. Well,
Speaker 2:
You have a brick light out man.
Christian Mobley:
You tell somebody that long, I mean you going to pull me over. You
Speaker 2:
Could have pulled me up. Well I thought you were going to turn to a residence back there. I wasn’t going to bother you because you were going to be at home, but I saw you driving. So I mean you need to know your brake lights out, don’t you, for your safety, right? Alright, I mean, right. And you’re not wearing your seatbelt. That’s not safe either, man. I’ll be right back with you, okay?
Taya Graham:
Now I won’t judge for you, but I think Christian looks annoyed rather than nervous and truly, if the officer was concerned about Christian safety, why were they focusing on his state of mind? But apparently Mr. Moby’s answer did not satisfy the Jonesboro Police Department because again, they escalated the encounter. Just look
Speaker 2:
Ly shaken.
Taya Graham:
Now before I play the next section of the video, I want you to notice how police often needlessly escalate a routine car stop. That is because since the initial contact, at least two other officers appear, including the one I’m showing you now on the screen, they approach Christian’s car from the back. So how would any rational person not be afraid? How could you not be fearful of a rapid and frankly questionable ratcheting up of police presence? Just take a look at what happens next.
Speaker 2:
Hey Ms. Mul, go ahead. Step back for me. Okay, so I’ll explain all that to you in a second. Just go back here. So this is a high drug traffic area. So what I’m going to do is I’m just going to run around your vehicle and if it doesn’t hit, we’ll be out of here. Is there anything in your vehicle illegal? I’m just going Walmart. I’m a pickup driver. Walmart, I get it man. I get it man. That’s all I’m trying to prove, man. Trying to prove your exact man. Okay? Is anything on you illegal? Nothing. Mind we search you real, okay? Yes, or
Speaker 4:
I
Speaker 2:
Just want to spray though there’s nothing illegal in here at all.
Taya Graham:
So the overarching crime under investigation here is an allegedly broken taillight, although the cop never uses his body camera to record the evidence from that point, police construct a narrative that Mr. Mobley, because he’s driving in a so-called high drug crime area, should be subject to a drug sniffing dog to test his car.
Speaker 2:
She’s been letting it go. So dispatch let her go. Yeah, essentially. Hey dude, I appreciate your on your break. Fives going to give you a verbal warning, a citation.
Taya Graham:
So after the entire ordeal of being personally searched, then his car subject to a drug sniffing dog, Christian is given a citation. That’s right. All the assorted officers, including a drug canine unit deployed to battle a broken taillight. But for all the duress Krishna experienced with his stop, he was soon pulled over again in March of 2024. Let’s listen as an officer justified stopping him,
Speaker 5:
Adam nor zebra, 86 M NZ 86 M on Nettleton by the country club. Send me another unit over here. I’m not sure what he’s doing.
Taya Graham:
He’s over by the country club. I’m not sure what he’s doing. I mean that’s interesting. So driving by a country club is suddenly a crime. First he was driving in a high drug and crime area and that was justification to search his car and now he’s driving next to a country club. Apparently Jonesboro is just a bunch of no-go zones for delivery drivers. And like the previous stop, apparently one officer was not enough to corral Mr. Mobley. Shortly after he was pulled over, another cop showed up on the scene. Take a look.
Christian Mobley:
How was y’all harassing me? I just told you cops are always following me. That’s harassment. That’s not harassment. It is. There’s officers who drive every day, every you on it too. You want to harass me too.
Speaker 2:
I just came here because he asked for backup. Man,
Christian Mobley:
He’s clear. I’m always clear. I ain’t never committed no crimes. I’m always clear you ain’t never going to catch me with nothing but drugs or nothing. Listen
Speaker 4:
Dude, bring it down.
Taya Graham:
Just bring it down. Now the car stop then takes a troubling turn as the officer says something that seems very pointed and honestly a bit disturbing.
Speaker 2:
Where have I talked to you before? Your name sounds familiar.
Christian Mobley:
Yeah, I got these cops always following me harassing. So if I don’t come home, you know where I’m at. They’re arresting me for no reason. We’re not arresting you for anything man.
Taya Graham:
But yet again, this car stop ends without charges. Not even a ticket. As the officer never fully articulates what Christian was apparently doing wrong other than driving adjacent to a country club. But this is not the last encounter in the series of stops that have pervaded Mr. Moby’s life. That’s because just months later he’s pulled over yet again this time just outside his workplace. See for yourself.
Christian Mobley:
Yeah. What’s up? What’s going on? Yeah, what’s going on? I’m working officer jp, I’m working right now. I know
Speaker 6:
Officer JP D. You reading that stuff because you didn’t use the turn signal?
Christian Mobley:
Yeah, I did use the turn signal. Yeah, I did you use it hundred. I used the turn signal. Yeah, I did. Your feet prior your into the parking. What? What’s your name?
Speaker 6:
Can you have a driver’s license insurance? What?
Christian Mobley:
What’s your name? Name and badge number?
Speaker 6:
Driver’s license, registration, insurance
Christian Mobley:
Name and badge number. Name and badge number driver license registration.
Taya Graham:
Okay, so I’m just going to have to be blunt for a moment. I understand enforcing the law is not easy and is often complicated. I understand officers have to do their jobs to make sure we obey certain rules of the road. But to pull a man working to make a living for not signaling quickly enough within 100 feet, I mean is that really worth anyone’s time? Let alone a police officers? I mean, how many times have we been told traffic stops are one of the most dangerous facets of policing? How many law enforcement officials have repeatedly claimed that they take a mortal risk simply by pulling over a driver to procure their license and registration? My point here is why if indeed this is so risky, why bother to pull over a man for a traffic infraction that is so minor and of such little consequence? Why take the risk if the alleged misdeed is so inconsequential? Well, Steven has been working on that question and we’ll discuss it later. But despite the questionable nature of the allegation, the jonesborough officer presses on and actually escalates the encounter. Just watch, Hey, I need driver to get
Speaker 6:
My driver’s license out of there. Driver’s license registration.
Christian Mobley:
I need to go in there and get my driver’s license out of there. Oh,
Speaker 6:
You not going inside.
Christian Mobley:
It’s inside.
Speaker 6:
Well you not going inside. I’ll take your name and date of birth. Matter of fact, step out for me.
Christian Mobley:
We have to lock our stuff up in the car up in the job then. All right, cool.
Speaker 6:
You still away? Do you have any weapons on you?
Christian Mobley:
No, I don’t have no, no weapons, nothing on me. Alright, cool. I’m working right now. As you can see Papa Johns, I’m working. What’s your name, date of birth?
Speaker 4:
Christian Mobley.
Speaker 6:
I did use the turn signal. I did. You didn’t. If you stop talking over me and let me explain.
Christian Mobley:
Okay.
Speaker 6:
You didn’t use the turn signal a hundred feet prior before making this right? Turn to this.
Christian Mobley:
I used the turn signal fully and you know
Speaker 6:
I did not a hundred feet prior. That’s what I’m saying.
Christian Mobley:
A hundred feet prior.
Speaker 6:
You trying to turn you giving the wrong information.
Christian Mobley:
Okay man. Okay. This is clearly harassment. Do you have any registration in? Yeah, I got everything you need in the car. Where is it? Can I get in the car? Of course, go ahead. Okay, registration insurance please. Okay, hold on, hold
Taya Graham:
On, hold on. Now as the stop continues, I want you to notice something as I run the video Again, these car stops are not being conducted by a single officer. No. This apparently serious offense of not signaling more than 100 feet before the turn has actually warranted. Not one, not two, but seemingly three cops at least. That’s three law enforcement officers for one pizza delivery man, who apparently made an ill time use of his turn signal. Take a look at how this increased police presence makes this stop even more tense.
Christian Mobley:
This is clearly me. I’m only going to ask you this one time, okay? Stay right there. Don’t move. You understand what I’m telling you? Yeah, I understand what you’re telling me fully. Officer, am I being same? Yes moment. Yes. I’m being the same at the moment. Yes. Where is it at? In the glove box. It’s in the glove box. My insurance and everything’s in the glove box. Officer, are you getting consent to go in there and get it? You said I’m be in the same, right? Yes sir. So if I’m, we
Speaker 2:
Have to have consent for you to go inside there, get your
Christian Mobley:
So if I deny, if I deny,
Speaker 2:
If you
Christian Mobley:
Deny it, we’ll recite you for not having proof of, okay, go on there and get it. Go on there and get it. Come get my keys out the car and get my driver’s license out the bunk
Speaker 5:
Because you’re supposed to have it while you’re driving. So we just won’t even worry about that. I’m going to be driving without a license.
Christian Mobley:
Yeah, yeah. Come get my keys at the car. No, stay over there. Come get my keys out the car so you can get my drivers out the box.
Speaker 6:
Put you in a until we tell you to don’t throw with nothing. Okay? Thank you.
Christian Mobley:
Okay, let’s get this right. You’re not in patrol, you don’t need to tell him what to do. You don’t get I got you officer. I got you. What’s your name and badge number? D Thomas. 1, 5, 3, 3. Thank you. Thank you officer. Yeah, they harassing me. They harassing me. Get your hands out your pocket. Ain’t no weapons on me out of your pockets. My bad. I’m used to putting my hand in my pocket, man.
Taya Graham:
Okay, just wait a moment. I think I actually undercounted the number of cops at the scene this time. It looks like there are at least four officers who’ve joined this investigation. And guess what? More cops probably means more problems. And that’s exactly what happened as police decided to put Christian in handcuffs. Just look ice.
Christian Mobley:
Huh? Ice. What’s your bad number? What’s your bad number? Four, eight. Thank you. Who is that right there?
Speaker 2:
He’s not a part of this traffic stop
Christian Mobley:
Business, sir. Okay. Hey, hey, hey. They won’t let me get my license out the box. They won’t let, he’s my manager. He, yeah, they harassing me. What did I just say? They harassing me. Hey, put him back in there. Put him back in the truck going on. I’m being arrested. Being detained.
Taya Graham:
That’s right. They detained him. Although this looks like an arrest to me. And again, this entire ordeal did not lead to any actual charges. Just more mental anguish for Mr. Mobley. But it wasn’t over. Not hardly just 48 hours later, just two days after the stop we just watched Christian was pulled over again by the same officer
Speaker 6:
Jones, bur police department. I know the reason I stomped you is because you falling too close. No I wasn’t. Yes you were. No. You flashed me with your high beams. No I wasn’t. When I pulled over into this parking lot, you was so close. You almost rear-ended me. No. Okay. What was the purpose of you? You harassing me again. Odie. Can I have your driver’s license? Registration, insurance.
Christian Mobley:
What’s the traffic ion? Odie.
Speaker 6:
Driver’s license, registration, insurance. You
Christian Mobley:
Harassing me again? OIE,
Speaker 6:
Mr. Moley. Okay, driver’s license, registration, insurance. Do you know that’s bs
Taya Graham:
O. But this time the crime was apparently following too closely, but this time as well, the officer seems to have decided that he would employ the full extent of his police powers. Take a look.
Speaker 6:
Set up out. Step out. Step out. Here’s your drive license here. No step out. It’s too late. Here it is. Here it is. What you doing man? Step out. What are you doing? Turn around. What are you doing? Oie? Hands behind your back. What are you doing? Hands behind your back. What am I being arrested for? Odie. What am I being arrested for? Obstruction for what? 1 42. Dispatch. Oh damn, this is bullshit. 15 one time. You know this is bullshit, right? Turn around. I asked you three times to give me your information. I gave it to you. It’s in your hand. I’m only required to ask you once you gave it to me once I came over here and told you to step out the vehicle,
Christian Mobley:
You know what you’re doing. It’s bs man.
Speaker 6:
Let’s go
Taya Graham:
Obstruction. Well that’s interesting. Bear in mind obstruction is premised upon obstructing an investigation into a separate crime. And since the officer did not articulate what the underlying crime is, we have no idea how he is justifying the charge. A lack of full disclosure that is not addressed during a post-arrest discussion. Let’s watch
Speaker 6:
Mr. Mobley. Yeah, what’s a good phone number for you?
Christian Mobley:
What am I being arrested for?
Speaker 6:
Obstruction. I’m being arrested for obstruction. Yes sir. What’s a good phone number? How did I obstruct Odie? Are you going to tell me your phone number? Mr. Mobley? What’s the number for your citation? How did I Instruc? Odie. What’s your current address? You know my address Odie? It’s on the driver’s license. Okay, you mind telling it to me?
Christian Mobley:
It’s on the driver’s license.
Speaker 6:
Alright, well like I said, you going to jail tonight for obstruction? I asked you three times to provide me with your identification.
Christian Mobley:
I gave it to you
Speaker 6:
After the fact. I came over there And
Christian Mobley:
How was I obstructed though? Oie? How was I obstructed?
Taya Graham:
And so Christian is taken to jail without sufficient justification and truly without understanding what crime he’d committed. And as you’ll learn later, this had devastating consequences for him and his livelihood. But there is more to the story, so much more that we’re actually not showing all the video now. Instead there will be a part two of our investigation into the Jonesborough Police Department. And please feel free to reach out with your own stories of your interactions with the Jonesborough Police Department and we will be soon joined by Christian to tell us how this continuing series of police encounters has impacted his life and what he wants to happen as a result. But first we will be joined by my reporting partner, Steven Janis, who’s been reaching out to the police and examining the documents. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me
Stephen Janis:
Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham:
Now first I know you sent a lengthy email to the Jonesboro Arkansas Police Department. What did you ask and how did they respond?
Stephen Janis:
Well, I was very specific. I was very concerned about the kind of probable cause for putting Mr. Moley through all these car stops and some of the searches. So I asked him very specifically, how do you designate a high crime area in the city? Is that like an official designation? What is the process you use? Secondly, I asked about country club is driving within the vicinity of a country club actually a crime. And how do you establish this? Basically I was looking for a criteria for how they decide when to pull someone over and what that means. Now you sent an email to it to the Jonesborough Police Department? We actually sat and talked to them on the phone. We actually spoke to a traffic sergeant there who said he would get back to us. I have not heard, but we’re going to keep following up and I just want to let people know we did our due diligence to get these people to respond. We let them know what the questions we had. We asked specific questions and we did not get a response. But they are certainly been put on notice about this.
Taya Graham:
So you have reviewed all the video in depth. Do you think the officers had probable cause to stop Christian?
Stephen Janis:
Well tell you. Certainly not because I have a lot of experience with being pulled over myself and living in a city that part of their crime enforcement was to pull random people over all the time. And these stops saying high crime area, that’s so subjective. Driving near a country club even more odd and I can’t even call it subjective, just kind of crazy. And then the stops occurred later when he was driving a hundred feet. I mean, how on earth is any person supposed to know? How is a cop supposed to know that? How do you know when someone’s not put a tour signal on a hundred feet before they turn? It’s just impossible. So to me these stops are highly questionable. I don’t think the law backs it up and I think the questions need to be asked.
Taya Graham:
Steven, can you give me some background on the Jonesboro Police? How large is the department and what their crime rates look like?
Stephen Janis:
Te there are a lot of different ways to look at crime statistics and we’ve seen some reports that say Jonesboro has somewhat of a high crime rate, although it’s not that much different from the rest of major cities in Arkansas. Some people have given them a B plus for certain types of crimes and a C for violent crimes. So there’s all over the board. Obviously they have some problem with crime, but I will say as a word of caution that pulling people over randomly does not reduce crime. They did that a lot in Baltimore and it didn’t work. And if that’s the department strategy and I really wish they would talk to us about this then I think they’re going in the wrong direction.
Taya Graham:
And now to give us a sense of how his ongoing encounters with police have affected his life and his livelihood and how his perception of law enforcement has changed. I’m joined by Christian Mobley. Christian, thank you so much for joining us.
Christian Mobley:
No problem.
Taya Graham:
Now first please walk me through what we’re seeing in this video. You’re working in food delivery, driving back from a stop, I assume. What happens when the officer pulls behind you? What did they say and why are they pulling you over
Christian Mobley:
That? I didn’t use the turn signal at a hundred feet before making the turn, but I used the turn signal.
Taya Graham:
So the officer initially says you’re not using your turn signal and then admits, well, you used the turn signal, you just didn’t use it within 100 feet of the turn. What were your thoughts when he said this and do you agree with his assessment?
Christian Mobley:
What you don’t see, what you don’t see is there’s another cop on the left side of me. He’s right on the left side of me and Odie is behind me. So it’s like they kind of got me boxed in. But yeah, it’s just harassment. They’d have, the police department is actually across the street from Papa John’s, so they sit over there all the time stalking me, trying to make their presence felt. It’s like they’re just trying to agitate me all the time and it’s just what they do
Taya Graham:
Now. This seems to be a simple traffic enforcement issue and really if you were guilty at all, there should have just been a warning. Why did it escalate? I mean, it seemed like there were four officers on the scene just for a turn signal infraction.
Christian Mobley:
Simply put, they don’t like me. They don’t like the fact that I stand up to them and they can’t bully me or intimidate me and I speak out against them. So they just got a problem with that. But like I said, I’m not really necessarily doing this for me. I know I’m not the only one in this town dealing with this kind of stuff. So this is more so for the other people that’s dealing with this and somebody needs to do something about it. I feel like I’m the one to do something about it.
Taya Graham:
Now you were trying to communicate with your manager or wanted for your coworkers, you tried to explain to the officers where your information was. Why do you think they were so adamant about stopping you from communicating with your manager?
Christian Mobley:
They knew that if he could get my driver’s license, they wouldn’t have, they probably wouldn’t be able to get me with that charge of failure to present driver’s license. But when I come into work, my driver’s license is always in my wallet and I lock my wallet up in my locker, so I forgot it that day. So that’s why my driver’s license wasn’t on me at the time.
Taya Graham:
So what surprised me was that they placed you in cuffs effectively for trying to speak. How did they treat you? I mean, did they put you in the back of the car? You can’t really see because the video goes dark for a little period of time.
Christian Mobley:
Well, they didn’t put me in the back of the car, they just cuffed me. They just took my phone, placed it on the hood of his patrol vehicle and that’s why the scream went dark. But I was in front of the vehicle handcuffed.
Taya Graham:
So this wasn’t the first time. Jonesboro police officers have followed you looking for traffic infractions. Can you tell me how many other times you’ve been pulled over this year and for what?
Christian Mobley:
I mean if I could off the top of my head, I could say at least five times. It’s like they would pull me over to try to find out where I live, try to get my, they would just issue me warnings, but they would pull me over. It’s like they just trying to find out who I am and where I live at so they can monitor me or something.
Taya Graham:
So I know you mentioned that after one of your traffic stops with Officer Sergeant James D. Stout on March 3rd this year, you said he followed you into a Walmart afterwards. Do you believe this is harassment?
Christian Mobley:
It is something they do. It’s like this little thing they do. It was after the encounter I was doing Walmart Spark and while I’m doing Walmart Spark, he drives by me and kind of nods at me. It’s something they do, they’ll drive by you and they’ll nod at you we’re watching you. It is just something they all do. It’s like a little gang thing that they do. And yeah, he drove past me. He nodded at me. He’s trying to intimidate, he’s trying to send me a message and they all do it.
Taya Graham:
They said they aren’t following you but pull you over because they thought you were break checking them. Can you please explain?
Christian Mobley:
No, I was just coming from Natural Grocers and they have this thing where they’ll always get behind me and start telling me and he was just doing the same thing and what you don’t see is him looking in his mirror. I can see him looking in his mirror, making a face trying to intimidate me. It’s what you don’t see in the video video. So I’m just slowing down to see what he’s on and then he turns his lights on and said, I’m trying to break check him. It’s what? It’s
Taya Graham:
So Officer Michael Starnes of the Jonesboro Police Department pulled you over June 27th this year allegedly for having a break light out. But then he started saying you look nervous. I mean, considering how often you’ve been pulled over this year, I would be nervous too. Do you think he was hoping to search your car and he was talking about smelling deodorizing spray in your car and talking about running a canine around your vehicle and that you’re in a very high crime area. I’m familiar with that sort of police procedure as a Baltimore city resident, do you think he was fishing for bigger crime than a traffic infraction?
Christian Mobley:
It wasn’t a high crime area, not at all. But yeah, I think he was just targeting me. But the very next day after that incident, I’m in Dollar General on East Johnson. He walks in my back is to him, he walks in the Dollar store and like I said, as I turned around, I seen him standing there. He gives me this nod. He’s trying to send me a message like We’re going to be watching you. Yeah, it’s what they do. It’s like they target people. It’s like a game to them.
Taya Graham:
So you were driving your mother’s car during that stop, which is nice looking car. And the also said you were in a high crime area. Do you think that you were being profiled, I mean there were at least four officers on the scene and a canine, so it seems like they were expecting you to be the catch they were fishing for. I mean, is Jonesboro a place where there’s lots of criminal activity?
Christian Mobley:
Not at all. I mean, nah. Mean even if you say you live in the hood in Jonesboro, it ain’t dangerous. Give me a break. Nah, it’s not a high crime at all.
Taya Graham:
So Christian, how much has this cost you personally? I would imagine it is stressful just getting into your car for work, considering how often you’ve been followed and ticketed and how much it costs in tickets and timing going to court. I mean, what has this cost you either financially or even emotionally or psychologically?
Christian Mobley:
I would just say I’m built for it. No, I’m not. And like I said, they’re not going to intimidate me. I’m not the one they’re going to intimidate. I’m going to stand up, I’m going to stand up against them. But I mean in the beginning it was kind of stressful. It was new to me, but it started to anger me and that’s when I decided, you know what? I’m going to stand up against this. I’m going to bring light to this situation because I can’t be the only one in Jonesborough, Arkansas dealing with this from these officers. One time it got the best of me where I made a mistake and thought someone was following me and I ended up getting arrested by Deputy Jordan drum. But that was in the beginning when it was new to me, but now I built a tolerance for it and I know how to deal with it and I know how to manipulate it and catch them in the process of trying to do it to me.
Taya Graham:
Christian, I hate to ask this, but do you have any sort of criminal history that could explain why these officers have chosen to keep such a close eye on you?
Christian Mobley:
No, the only thing that if you want to consider it is when Deputy Jordan drum from the Craighead County Sheriff’s Office, he arrested me. The only thing they charged me with was obstruction. That’s the only, I guess major thing you can say that’s on my record. Everything else is just traffic tickets.
Taya Graham:
By any chance, do you know why Officer Peyton Perkins was fired? I mean he was one of the officers that was involved in your interactions?
Christian Mobley:
I don’t know. I went in there, I went in there one day to get A-F-O-I-A video and yeah, Trevor, I was talking to Trevor, officer Trevor and I said, I was talking to him about Perkins and he said he got fired and I asked him why he wouldn’t disclose to me why he got fired. So I’m not really sure, but I’m happy he’s fired.
Taya Graham:
If you could speak to the Jonesboro Police Department right now, what would you say if you knew they were listening to you right this moment? What would you want to tell them?
Christian Mobley:
Personally? I just want to tell them they cowards, they’re cowards for you to do for them to try to put that type of, this is the type of stuff that can make people commit suicide. So for them, them to find some sort of satisfaction out of doing this type, this type of stuff, they’re cowards. That’s what I would tell them. They’re cowards and that’s all you’ll ever be.
Taya Graham:
Okay. I have a lot to say about what happened to Mr. Christian Mobley. Part of what I’m thinking about is directly related to the constant and I think obviously unnecessary police interactions we just witnessed, it seems based upon the video evidence that these traffic stops were the result of concerns other than just enforcing the law. One can only imagine the stress that Christian must have experienced when a drug sniffing dog was deployed to search his car or one can guess how he felt when a police officer told him he was pulled over because he was driving near a country club. All of these interactions with law enforcement hardly build a connection with the community. In fact, all of this police intervention for Noncrime only increases the distrust of institutions and not just policing. That has become endemic in this country. And I don’t think policing like what we just witnessed is simply the result of Officer overreach, but that’s not the only aspect of Christians’ ordeal that concerns me.
Something else bothers me about what we just watched that more than likely will get less attention than the stops themselves. An idea about law enforcement in this country that deserves to be discussed so that we understand what we’ve truly seen and to make it more comprehensible, I’m going to explain it as a story, a tale about people like Christian who work hard struggle, keep trying only to discover that the biggest obstacle to carving out a good life for himself is the government that’s supposed to serve him. The story starts almost 50 years ago before Christian was even born. That’s when the working people of this country had benefited from one of the most robust expansions of the middle class in history, high union membership and less income inequality meant that the American dream was alive and well and more importantly actually possible. But over the past 50 years everything changed.
Union membership fell, income inequality rose the road to the middle class was filled with potholes of neglect. As the wealth of the top 1% expanded to engulf the bottom 80, it seemed like the hope for a comfortable middle class life turned into an unattainable dream, a mirage of a long forgotten social contract that seemed to move further and further away the harder we reached for it. Now the reason I bring this up is because the excessive policing we just witnessed is part and parcel of the lack of opportunity for the middle class. It’s something I’ve been thinking about because I’ve witnessed so many cases like this where police seem inexplicably drawn into conflicts with people whose biggest crime is being economically vulnerable. Now, it made me think about something I heard about one of the reasons America seemed so invested in the middle class 50 years ago, I don’t remember who it was, but their argument went like this.
The country’s political leadership concerned over the Cold War with Russia felt they had to prove that democracy could deliver for the people. The idea was that the best life prospects for the greatest number of people would lead to proof that a democratic society was an effective society. It would be proof that the whole system actually worked. So what happened? That’s a good question. Apparently after the end of the Cold War, our country’s elites decided to abandon the egalitarianism of making the greatest number of lives better without the so-called red scare. It seems like we all veered in the opposite direction, extracting the biggest gains for the smallest number of people. And I think along with that decision was the idea that in order to prevent such an imbalance system from collapsing the elites turn to an institution that could in some sense keep the declining middle class and working class in check by sowing chaos in their midst.
And that’s why we see so many questionable car stops and ordeal like Christians. That’s why police roll out drug sniffing dogs because you simply drive in an area they deemed well basically poor and off limits or while you’re stopped a second time for driving next to a country club, no need to worry if you’ve committed a crime. No need to think about if you’re a threat to public safety. The whole idea is containment to make you feel less capable of demanding your rights or of expecting a fair shake or of being treated fairly. The unnecessary scrutiny and inexplicable traffic stops is all a part of the same process to make you feel strange from the rights that are bestowed upon you by the Constitution. And to make this point even more salient, I want to share some news with you, a development to reinforce my argument that over-policing is a consequence of rampant inequality.
Just as we were finishing recording our show, Christian sent me an email and I want to read part of it to you. I just found out I lost my job because of this arrest. Christian wrote me not only that his car was impounded and he spent three days in jail and now he’s unemployed. So I ask you, what exactly did law enforcement accomplish here? What exactly was the goal, the purpose, the public interest that was served by causing a hardworking man to lose his job? I mean, I am at a loss to explain the underlying societal justification for a process that culminates in this type of economic loss that bolsters such unnecessary hardship, that conscripts humiliation to justify the deleterious effects of a society that are intrinsically unfair. Honestly, when I watch videos like these, I feel like all the mainstream media pundits who say discussing economic inequality is class warfare are right except the abuse runs downhill to those who can least afford it.
To people like Christian who were struggling but working hard and now must struggle even more just to overcome the government that he literally funds through his taxes, but only if the police department will allow him to work. One of the things that is most discouraging about Christians ordeal is like many cities we cover, Jonesboro spends more on policing than any other facet of city government. As Stephen pointed out, the city dedicates less the firefighting, sanitation, parks, recreation and fixing city streets than to law enforcement. Basically 37% of all the money their city collects goes to cops, cars, arrests, and jails. But how does city leaders justify this expenditure? What do they say to residents who might ask why they need to find countless numbers of officers to conduct countless numbers of questionable stops? How do they explain the dedication of communal resources to a process that seems so unnecessary?
And Jonesboro is not the exception throughout this country. We invest more in handcuffs than we do in housing, more on cages than in keeping our cities clean, more on traffic stops than healthy recreation. And that’s what’s really intriguing. The recent trend in crime calls into question the entire justification for this hard to fathom spending. As you may already know, there has been a historic drop in violent crime in many of the largest cities across the country in our city. Baltimore homicides reached a record low dropping by nearly 40% over the last year. But what’s also intriguing about this good news is that it occurred when the police department also had a record number of vacancies. And Baltimore is not alone. Departments across the country have raised concerns about a dearth of new police officers shortages that they simply can’t fill vacancies that have remained vacant.
So then how can we explain the historic drop in violence? If more police and increased spending on police will somehow deliver more public safety, then why do crime drop when fewer officers were on the streets? What exactly am I missing here when fewer cops translates into less crime? I think what we’ve considered and truly examined is that perhaps all the spending on policing has less to do with crime than police. Partisans would want us to believe that pumping tax dollars into shiny new SUVs for cops isn’t really about keeping us safe, but perhaps about keeping us in check, maybe just maybe cops have another purpose, an often unacknowledged role in the economic inequality that has engulfed people like Christian maybe along with traffic stops and minor crimes, they are the guardians of the border between extravagant wealth and soul crushing poverty. Maybe they are here not just to enforce the law but impose boundaries on the chaos that communal poverty creates.
I mean, just consider that roughly only 20% of property crimes and 40% of homicides are solved. I’m not saying it’s easy to catch a thief, but certainly that doesn’t seem to be the focus of police who have the time to constantly pull over the same man over and over and over again. And that’s why we take the time to report on cases like Christians. That’s why we produce a detailed show to scrutinize the actions of police that deserve the attention. And that’s why we tell the stories of people who end up on the wrong side of police overreach. That’s why we produce the show so that someone other than the cops holding handcuffs can tell their side of the story. I want to thank our guest, Christian Mobley for bravely coming forward, supplying us the video evidence and of course sharing his story. And we really hope that things are going to take a positive turn for you soon. Thank you so much for your time, Christian, and of course I have to thank Intrepid reporter Steven Janis for his writing, research and editing on this piece. Thank you Steven
Stephen Janis:
Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham:
And of course I want to thank mods of the show, Noli D and Lacy R for their support. Thank you and a very special thanks to accountability report, Patreons. We appreciate you and I look forward to thanking each and every single one of you personally in our next live stream, especially Patreon associate producers, Lucita Garcia, David K, and John, er, and super friends, Eddie Clegg, Kenneth K Shane, B, pineapple girl, Chris R and matter of W Rights. But also I want to thank a very special supporter of the show, Scott Rushing. Scott was kind enough to share his family story with us. Unfortunately, this case is a tragic use of excessive force that result in the death of his unarmed son. Tyler rushing 34-year-old Tyler rushing was tasered attacked by police canine shot and killed on July 23rd, 2017 in Chico, California. But Scott has never given up on the hope that his family will receive justice for his son’s death and neither have we.
Scott, we appreciate you supporting our work and we hope you’ll join us soon to update us on your progress on reforming the excessive force policies and training practices of private security guards. Thank you for your support, Scott. And I want you watching to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct or brutality, please share it with us and we might be able to investigate for you. Please reach out to us. You can email us tips privately@therealnews.com, ensure your evidence of police misconduct. You can also message us at Police Accountability report on Facebook or Instagram or at Eyes on Police on Twitter. Or of course you can message me directly at tia’s baltimore on Twitter or Facebook. And please like and comment, I do read your comments and appreciate them. And we do have a Patreon link pinned in the comments below for accountability reports. If you feel inspired to donate, please do. We don’t run ads, never take corporate dollars, so anything you can spare is truly appreciated. My name is Taya Graham and I’m your host of the Police Accountability Report. Please be safe out there.
It is not uncommon for police to drive around with their lights flashing in Black and working-class neighborhoods in Atlanta. This is a tactic used to intimidate and make their presence known; for residents of these neighborhoods, it can feel like psychological warfare. US law enforcement learned this strategy from Israeli forces.
Thousands of law enforcement officials have traveled to Israel to learn new repression strategies and surveillance techniques from the Israel National Police, Israel Defense Forces, and the Shin Bet, who inflict violence, crowd control, and surveillance onto Palestinians. Anti-imperialist advocates say the tactics being taught to US law enforcement were battle-tested on Palestinians and spread to the US to target Black and Brown communities through a training relationship that grants Israeli forces more power and profit, causing further harm to Palestinians.
These programs are facilitated by the Anti-Defamation League, the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, and the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange Program—the latter of which was started in 1996. US leaders sought Israel’s guidance to curb terrorism, and a ‘deadly exchange’ of worst practices between US and Israeli forces was born. Federal, state, county, and municipal law enforcement executives including local police departments, the FBI, and ICE have traveled to Israel, while thousands of officials have attended conferences with Israeli experts in the US. An inaugural “US-Israel Security Conference” by JINSA occurred last month, where a former Israel Defense Forces commander was included as a guest speaker.
“Certain police practices and policies that all happen time and time again, when you look back and try to pull back on the thread to see where they got this from, it always comes back to somebody went to Israel.”
Steven Hardge, an organizer with the Black Alliance for Peace.
“Within these programs, worst practices are shared to promote and extend discriminatory and repressive policing practices that already exist in both countries,” said Rania Salem, an organizer with the US Palestinian Community Network. “US forces take whatever is working in Israel and they bring it here and inflict it on Black and Brown people.”
Police departments in New York, Los Angeles, New Orleans, and Atlanta, among others, have close ties with Israeli forces. Salem said that the increasing militarization of US police in recent decades is due in large part to the “funding and support of Israel’s brutal military occupation.” She said that in return for these trainings the state of Israel gets in good standing with the US for future support, and its forces learn new tactics in return—Salem said that Israel learned stop-and-frisk and racist traffic stop techniques from US law enforcement.
There is strong opposition. Palestinian solidarity, racial justice, and local organizations are calling for an end to this deadly exchange, saying that it perpetuates settler colonialism and violence against marginalized communities, and harms both people in the US and in Palestine. They say that investments should be made into the community, not policing.
“It essentially brings together all these violent systems that oppress our people here in the United States and oppress Palestinians and Palestine together,” Salem said. “Our communities need to come together to organize against these police exchange programs.”
The deadly exchange
After George Floyd was murdered by Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin in 2020, advocates said that the knee-to-neck choke-hold used was “used and perfected to torture Palestinians by Israeli occupation forces through 72 years of ethnic cleansing and dispossession.” Members of the Minneapolis Police Department have been trained by Israeli officials.
Following that, when thousands of protestors took to the streets in the Black Lives Matter uprisings, police used racial profiling, tear gas, and other repressive crowd control techniques to quell the protestors. Salem said many of those practices were exported from the violence of Israeli forces.
“When police started using different kinds of weaponry against protesters, Palestinians were already very, very familiar with that kind of confrontation,” Salem said.
Between 2002 to 2009, the Los Angeles Police Department’s chief and deputy chief traveled to Israel for training multiple times. The deputy chief traveled as part of JINSA’s first cohort in their first law enforcement exchange program. During these trips, Israeli companies introduced the LAPD officials to facial recognition and drone technology manufactured in Israel. The police department also developed a “broken windows” approach, which “grows from the idea that constant policing of low-level disorder—through the targeting of Black and brown communities with constant police surveillance, harassment—will somehow deter serious criminal activity.”
After nearly 10 years of training with Israeli forces, the New York Police Department was exposed to have run a “demographics unit” that spied on Muslims and “treated basic acts of daily living as potential crimes,” which are techniques used by Israeli forces on Palestinians. In return, they adopted NYPD’s data collection method.
“Certain police practices and policies that all happen time and time again, when you look back and try to pull back on the thread to see where they got this from, it always comes back to somebody went to Israel,” said Steven Hardge, an organizer with the Black Alliance for Peace.
Officials in Atlanta, Georgia, are pioneers in the police exchange program as well. The Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange Program, housed at the University of Georgia, has been sending people to Israel every year for over 31 years. Hardge said that the trips are funded by private entities, Department of Justice grants, and taxpayer dollars.
Hardge also said that the GILEE program also trains with Israeli forces through annual conferences in Atlanta and hosts law enforcement from around the country at these events. The training, he said, includes workshops and seminars.
Musa Springer, also an organizer with Black Alliance for Peace, said that at least 43,000 people have participated in GILEE workshops, conferences, and events. They said it creates danger for Atlantans, as demonstrated in the police killings of Anthony Hill and several Black people in Atlanta.
“There is a sort of level of racial profiling that is sewn into the tactics and then those racial profiling, which also takes place here in the US, among us, becomes even stronger and more reinforced in the style of policing,” Springer said. “What we see is that Black residents, as well as activists and organizers who are mobilizing, are increasingly treated as terrorists.”
Out of Atlanta’s collaboration with Israeli forces comes their “Cop City” police training facility, which is based off Israel’s “Little Gaza,” a replica of the Gaza strip. At these facilities, police can battle test repressive techniques and surveillance. Hardge said that the Cop City and Little Gaza are meant “to give the occupying forces a realistic training ground in which they can actually implement their counterinsurgency tactics on the occupied population.”
“Anybody who goes there will be participating in the skills development of counterinsurgency, of how to better practice kettling, how to better practice shutting down or brutalizing peaceful protests,” Hardge said.
Surveillance and Technology Expansions
In addition to repressive tactics, advocates say that US and Israeli forces both make use of surveillance techniques and technology that is Israel-based, like Cellebrite, and predictive policing software, like the software provided by Palantir.
Lou Blumberg, co-founder of Eye on Surveillance and a representative of the Jewish Voice for Peace chapter in New Orleans, said that, in 2014, the New Orleans Police Department took a trip to Tel Aviv which was funded by a government grant, the Jewish Federation, and other private entities. The goal was to learn about Cellebrite, a ‘universal forensics extraction device’ from an Israel-based technology company, in order to bring the surveillance back to the US. Cellebrite’s technology was tested on Palestinians before its usage became widespread.
“Because Israel is occupying the Palestinian people, it creates what author Antony Lowenstein calls the ‘Palestine Laboratory’ for Israel to experiment and then get all this data about these surveillance tools, and then be able to sell that … ‘Look how well these tools are working to criminalize these people, don’t you want that for your country?’” Blumberg said.
An organizer with New Orleans Stop Helping Israel’s Ports, an organization dedicated to ending all ties between New Orleans institutions and businesses and Israel, who wished to remain anonymous, said that a lot of the cameras the city of New Orleans has put up in the streets for surveillance use Israeli technology. She said that law enforcement can often use Briefcam, an Israeli video surveillance technology, now owned by the parent company Canon.
Hundreds of people in the US have been arrested due to facial recognition technology, some of them falsely identified. People of color, particularly Black people, are more likely to be misidentified by facial recognition technology.
The organizer said that Israeli technology companies are “taking this technology and exporting it for governments like the US government to perpetuate this form of apartheid that marginalized communities have been living under” and Israel “uses the same tactics abroad and over here in order to further their hegemony and their occupation of the people.”
“Cellebrite is used today to violate people’s right to due process, or these AI facial recognition technologies are used to attack and jail people, mostly disproportionately people of marginalized communities,” the organizer told TRNN. “These have been tried and tested methods in Palestine for the past decades, and Israel does it to expand its territory, to further occupy and oppress people to further the apartheid system that they are under.”
In addition to supplying local law enforcement with surveillance, the organizer said that Israeli companies sell Cellebrite “universal forensics extraction” hacking software and training to ICE, which gives them access to personal data. ICE officials have gone on multiple trips to Israel to swap “best practices” at checkpoints, prisons, settlements, and the airports in Israel.
The US Department of Homeland Security has also been contracting with Israeli defense electronics company Elbit Systems for technology that surveils the US-Mexico border in southern Arizona since 2014. The contract was extended by DHS in 2017 to further militarize the border using this technology.
Edith Romero, an organizer with Eye on Surveillance, said she sees parallels in the rhetoric Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli forces use for Palestinians and the language used in the US to talk about immigrants. In the past, President-elect Donald Trump and Netanyahu have praised each other’s border policies.
“They’re using this to target immigrant communities and to arrest, to detain and to separate families, and sometimes deportations,” Romero said.
The fight to stop the exchange
Activists are fighting for liberation in the US and Palestine. Some are already seeing victories. In 2020, Eye on Surveillance successfully advocated for a ban on facial recognition surveillance—provided in large part by Israeli companies—in New Orleans. While parts of the ban were reversed in 2022, the organization continues to hold monthly meetings to push back against surveillance and policing.
Additionally, they are looking to end economic ties between Israel and the city permanently and calling for the money to be redirected into the community. Renard Bridgewater, co-founder of Eye on Surveillance, said that “so many things could be funded with the money that is going towards Israel and their continued onslaught and overall abuse and slaughter of Palestinian people.”
Bridgewater said that rather than funding law enforcement trips to Israel, cities should be supporting their residents by providing equitable living wages, education, affordable housing, and resources to solve food insecurity. Eye on Surveillance is also part of the Break the Bonds Campaign in Louisiana, which aims to encourage state officials to divest from Israel. The state has over $40 million in bonds which the organization said “bolsters and supports Israel’s economy.”
Bridgewater said that people can fight against the police training exchanges and Israeli technology being used in the US by organizing. Eye on Surveillance, Black Alliance for Peace, and the US Palestinian Community Network are some of many organizations raising awareness about the issue.
“I think that small movements or small ripples certainly create larger movements and things of that nature,” Bridgewater said. “I think that any time you have the opportunity to be able to build with folks, no matter if it’s two or three, that can eventually lead to two or 3,000 but it has to start somewhere, and it can’t necessarily always be these very grandiose and large, expansive ideas.”
“It’s important to get together and organize, because as soon as we realize that our enemies are the same, the easier it is to realize who our allies are,” said the organizer with NOSHIP. “Once we organize and put these two and two together, then we know who put our effort against.”
On Jan. 6, 2021, supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the nation’s capitol in an attempt to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral victory. In a 70-minute speech on the National Mall, Trump falsely claimed that the election had been stolen: “We won this election,” he told the crowd, “and we won it by a landslide.” Trump also urged his supporters not to accept the results: “You don’t concede when there’s theft involved,” he said. “Our country has had enough. We will not take it anymore.”
“I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard,” Trump said on stage shortly before the same crowd violently and un-peacefully descended on the Capitol building. Minutes later, at the end of his speech, Trump also warned his supporters, “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
The attempted insurrection played out on TV screens worldwide as rioters stormed the Capitol building, destroyed property, assaulted police, and stalked the halls of Congress hunting for elected officials. A large percentage of those who participated in the Capitol riot were eventually captured and placed in the notorious District of Columbia Jail, which is located just two miles from the Capitol. Unlike the countless predominantly poor and non-white detainees who have languished in the DC jail before them, the predominantly white and out-of-state MAGA rioters were immediately given preferential treatment.
“The DC Jail is even more segregated than the city it serves,” Andrew Beaujon wrote in The Washingtonian one year after the attempted insurrection.
Just 3 percent of the inmates, on average, are white; 87 percent are Black. What happens inside when you lock up dozens of overwhelmingly white men arrested as part of a radical-right insurrection? The jail’s overseers decided they didn’t want to find out. The Sixers—as they’re known to their faithful—were confined to a medium-security annex, away from other prisoners. The brass call the block C2B, or Charlie Two Bravo. Its 40 or so residents call it the Patriots’ Pod.
Nevertheless, it was the treatment of the “Sixers”—in particular, the delay of medical treatment for Proud Boy Christopher Worrell’s broken hand—not the decades of complaints by other inmates, that finally got people to care about the conditions inside the DC jail. Having become a cause célèbre for the MAGA right, the Sixers were even visited in November 2021 by DC Council members and members of Congress Louie Gohmert and Marjorie Taylor Greene.
The Jan. 6 rioters sent to the jail complained to the court about the unsanitary living conditions, poor food, inadequate medical services; the lack of safety, recreation, case management, library services, and visitations. “After Jan. 6 defendants’ lawyers raised allegations of poor conditions at the Department of Corrections (DOC) facility, including a lack of access to medical care,” Madeleine Carlisle writes in TIME, “an unannounced review of the jail by the US Marshals Service (USMS) concluded there was ‘evidence of systemic failure.’” The report submitted by USMS was a scathing indictment of the deplorable conditions inside the DC jail, including lack of water, inadequate quality of food, and “large amounts of standing human sewage.”
Following the report, USMS announced that it would be moving 400 detainees housed in the DC jail’s notorious Central Detention Facility (CDF) to the federal prison in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Those housed in the less horrifying Central Treatment Facility (CTF), however, including the Jan. 6 rioters, were not moved. According to an official statement released by USMS on Nov. 2, 2021, “The US Marshal’s inspection of Central Treatment Facility did not identify conditions that would necessitate the transfer of inmates from that facility at this time. Central Treatment Facility houses approximately 120 detainees in the custody of the US Marshals Service, including all the defendants in pre-trial custody related to alleged offenses stemming from events that took place on January 6 at the US Capitol.”
In exactly two weeks, on Jan. 20, Donald Trump will be inaugurated as the 47th President of the United States of America. He has gone on record saying it would be a “great honor to pardon the peaceful January 6 protesters, or as I often call them, the hostages … a group of people treated so harshly or unfairly.” Will Trump and the MAGA right continue to care about the conditions inside the DC jail and the treatment of its inmates after the Sixers are hand-plucked from that cesspit and given their freedom back? Let’s just say I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for that…
For those poor Black and Brown men and women who have been held inside the DC jail and who have complained about the inhumane conditions there—complaints that have continuously fallen on deaf ears—this is yet another glaring example of this country’s racist, classist hypocrisy. But it is also a chilling reminder that, for Trump and his MAGA supporters, the hypocrisy is the point: “Make America Great Again for us, not for them.”
Popular representations of the Black Panthers often focus on their armed self-defense activities, but medical services and health justice were a tremendous part of the party’s work. This legacy continues today as Black activists work to transform the medical industrial complex and its relationship to the prison system. Erica Woodland (he/him), co-author of Healing Justice Lineages, joins Rattling the Bars to discuss this history, his current activism, and the role of The Real News’s own beloved Eddie Conway in influencing his path.
Studio/Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
Mansa Musa: Marshall Eddie Conway, former Black Panther and political prisoner, served approximately 44 years in captivity before he was released. While in prison, he and his wife, Dominque Conway, created a series of programs designed to raise prisoners’ consciousness. One program was Friend of a Friend. Friend of a Friend was a mentor program that taught prisoners critical thinking skills.
Throughout his imprisonment, Eddie Conway advocated for the liberation of all political prisoners and the abolishment of the prison-industrial complex. After his release in 2014, Eddie joined The Real News Network and started this very program, Rattling the Bars.
Recently I interviewed Baltimore native Erica Woodland, one of the many people influenced by Eddie Conway and Dominque Conway.
Welcome to Rattling the Bars, Erica.
Erica Woodland: Thank you for having me, Mansa. It’s good to see you.
Mansa Musa: All right, tell our audience a little bit about yourself and one of your latest projects.
Erica Woodland: Yeah, for sure. So I’m born, bred, and raised in Baltimore, East Baltimore, to be specific. And for the past 20 years, it’s been really an honor to be part of abolition work and liberatory harm reduction work, and work that’s really thinking about how to disrupt every single aspect of the way the criminal justice system disappears our communities.
And so I had the great pleasure of meeting Eddie Conway 20 years ago, and when we met, he immediately decided that I was going to be part [Musa laughs] of his liberation struggle — And you know Eddie, you can’t really tell him no. And also through organizing on behalf of his liberation and liberation of all political prisoners and being mentored by him and Dominque Conway, it really, as a young person, shaped the work that I’m doing now, which is primarily focused on Healing Justice.
And Healing Justice is a political and spiritual framework that helps to remind our people that, in addition to us liberating our minds and revolutionizing our consciousness, we have to also make sure that we’re taking care of people. So feeding people, making sure people have access to healthcare, making sure people have access to spaces for healing and collective grief.
And a lot of this work might sound familiar because it’s the work that the Black Panther Party was up to. But unfortunately in our movements now, a lot of that care and safety work has been forgotten, in part because the state has been extremely strategic and successful, in many ways, of co-opting our movements and then criminalizing our traditions.
So the project that I am spending a lot of my time with today is called Healing Justice Lineages. And so, it started off as an anthology, and I was able to contribute to this with my dear comrade Kara Page, who is one of the co-architects of this framework. But Healing Justice Lineages is an opportunity to tell the true lineage of this framework, which is actually having us think about what are the ways that historical and generational trauma are affecting our minds, our bodies, our spirits, our organizations, our revolutionary groups, and our ability to actually build power to get free, right?
Mansa Musa: Right.
Erica Woodland: So when you have communities that are highly traumatized, cut off from basic human needs, they’ve stolen our traditions — White people are selling our traditions back to us.
Mansa Musa: Right.
Erica Woodland: — And they’ve demonized our traditions. You have communities that are more easily surveilled and controlled and disappear.
And so the project has tried to map a lot of different voices and trying to bring up examples like, here are people who are doing liberation work, but also thinking about how do we feed people? How do we love up on people when they’ve experienced grief, loss, and violence?
But that project has led to a lot of other aspects, including a listening and cultural memory tour that we did in 2023. We went to seven cities across the country to actually lift up local work around healing justice and collective care and safety. And then we also did strategy sessions with organizers and practitioners in particular to say, what’s possible when you have health healing practitioners and organizers at the same table before we turn up on the state?
Mansa Musa: Right, right, right. And that’s a good observation, because me and Dominque talked about this oftentimes, about, as revolutionaries, we find ourselves in a space that we human, we made a decision to fight for our liberation, but in that, oftentimes, a lot of our emotions get wrapped up in that. And we look recognized that in the Black Panther Party — And our anniversary just passed — We recognized that, during that period, and which is a good observation on your part about the healing aspect of, is during that period they ain’t have no therapy. They ain’t have no, oh, this is trauma. They ain’t have no, oh, yeah, well, you an alcoholic, and it’s a result of the police wanting to kill you, or the police been locked you up seven times, and you been locked up, in the seven times you done spent a total of five years in and out of county jail. You ain’t have that then.
Now that particular aspect of the contradiction didn’t subsided, where the antagonism don’t exist because the formation is not in the same space. What do we do now? What do we do? But more importantly, the lessons learned and how do we pass it on? I think this is what you are telling us right now. That, OK, we need to be in this space right now because we ultimately going to have to turn it up.
Erica Woodland: Exactly.
Mansa Musa: And when we do turn it up, we want to be in a space where we don’t find ourselves so burned out that we become suicidal, even if it be in the form of substance use, it be in the form of spousal abuse, all the things that we oppose, if we don’t take and look at our mental health as it relates to our struggle. Talk about that.
Erica Woodland: Yeah. No, this is really important, and I also want to just name that I’m a therapist, but mostly my work is organizing therapists to understand their role as politicized. Because for me, the prison-industrial complex is actually deeply connected to the medical-industrial complex. And we saw that very clearly with Eddie’s experience at the end of his life. That you have social workers like me who are in positions where we’re actually facilitating the dissolution of families, where we are facilitating people experiencing psychiatric detention and psych hospitals.
And so, one of the things I want to bring attention to is I was able to interview Eddie for the book. And Eddie’s interview is a lot of people’s favorite, because what we know is that Eddie was willing to talk about things that a lot of other folks weren’t willing to talk about.
Mansa Musa: Right, right.
Erica Woodland: And so in this conversation… I’ve been talking to Eddie about trauma, probably our whole relationship, even if I didn’t use that language, because I want to understand what made it possible for him to survive those conditions and hold onto his humanity, when many, many people are out here and they have survived much less and they don’t have that same connection to their humanity.
So I’m always thinking about, where are the ways that we’re already knowing how to heal without an external person or professional? And what are the consequences of us not taking that work seriously? So therapy is one aspect, but we have traditions in Black community, the ways that we come together when we experience a loss, the way that we pour a little bit out for the homie that we lost to violence. That these are all things that are happening. But if we don’t understand trauma, then the state can exploit that.
And so in the interview, which is the chapter’s title, “Don’t Give Up and Don’t Make the Same Mistakes”, because one of the things I really appreciated about my relationship with Eddie is that he was very generous with his wisdom. He’s very generous about, here’s what I know, here’s what I don’t know, and here’s the things we did not think about because we didn’t have the language, we didn’t have the tools.
And the reality is when COINTELPRO came on the scene, it hadn’t existed before. It’s not like the Panthers had the knowledge, they didn’t have the playbook. They were writing the playbook down.
So one of the things that I’m committed to is documenting and preserving our political and spiritual traditions. Because disconnection from those traditions, that’s a tool of genocide. That’s essentially how the state continues to dominate and control our minds, first and foremost, and our radical imagination.
So that interview we got to talk about… You know, Eddie didn’t necessarily call his work healing justice, but I’m like, I wouldn’t even be talking about healing justice if it wasn’t for the Black Panther Party and their commitment to making sure our people were well. To making sure that we preserved our dignity and wholeness, and to say, there’s nothing wrong with you. There’s something wrong with these conditions, and we actually have to build power to change the conditions. We don’t heal just to heal. That’s cute, but I don’t want to heal, I don’t want to learn how to cope with this, I want to actually figure out how we change this, because it’s unacceptable.
Mansa Musa: And you know what I was thinking about what you were saying when you were saying how you title the chapter of Eddie and “Don’t Give Up”. Because me and him did a lot of time together, we was incarcerated together. And he was my mentor. And I used to always joke about him having gray hairs, and I would say 80% of them gray hairs in his head I put it in there myself, from him dealing with me.
But in terms of how you articulate his outlook, that’s just how it was. I recall when I hadn’t seen him for a while, we wound up in an institution together, now JCI, and he said, man, let’s go up to the library and talk. So we made a schedule, we would go to the library once a week and talk. And I didn’t think too much of it at the time. I hadn’t seen you in a while, so we just catching up. But as we talking, we’re talking about events. We’re talking about stuff that’s going on around the world. We’re talking about what I’ve been doing. We’re talking about what he’s doing.
And then it got to a point where he said, we was getting ready to bring friends of the friends in. It got to a point where he said like, yeah, well, we don’t have to come to the library no more, and we getting ready to do this with this group. And the reason why I had you come up here is because I wanted to see where your thinking was at. Because I didn’t come in contact with a lot of people in the system that started out a certain way, but as time went on, their thinking didn’t evolve. They regressed, and they abandoned any politics, they abandoned any instinct to survive, they just allowed themselves mentally to accept where they was at.
And he say, and he was telling me, he said, well, that ain’t you. And I was like, man, what you think? You the one that educated me. So I’m a product of this education in terms of, like you said, we didn’t say trauma, we didn’t say healing. If something went on. This is what we did.
And I think that, and I want you to speak on this, how you unpack that within the community. Because traditionally we always done that. And traditionally we don’t call it, we don’t give it no clinical definition. This is what we did. This is our nature, to be there for each other. What happened?
Erica Woodland: A lot of things happened [Musa laughs]. So this is a great way to bring in the medical-industrial complex, which includes, obviously, hospitals, health clinics, doctors, nurses. But it’s a broader system that includes pharmaceutical companies. And that’s basically a for-profit system that is trying to surveil, control us, and preserve the life of certain people, primarily white men of wealth, and to exterminate or extract labor from the rest of us.
So part of what happened is, you take people, even if you just think about the attempted genocide against Indigenous people on this land. They literally cut you off. They put you in a residential boarding school, cut you off from your language, cut you off… I mean, this happened to Black Americans, too. But I want to just make that connection because I think we forget. And all of these things we innately know how to do, they turn you against them. They tell you that is uncivilized. That’s not the way to do it.
Then you bring in somebody who’s deemed professional. So, I have what one of my comrades called colonial credentials. So I’m a licensed clinical social worker. I didn’t get that license to be an arm of the state, I got that to be able to disrupt and understand how the state is working through things like social work and therapy and the mental health system. So I’m a professional, so I get told I’m legitimate. You’re allowed to work with survivors, you’re allowed to do all this healing work.
Meanwhile, this work is happening not paid. People aren’t getting support in community all the time because the vast majority of marginalized people’s mental health support comes from their friends, it comes from their family members, comes from their homies. Most people don’t have access to therapy. And those therapeutic interventions weren’t designed for us. They were designed to control us.
So one of the things that I do in my work in my organization is we really disrupt that. So we organize mental health practitioners — And that includes people like me who are licensed, but it includes all the other people who are attending to the emotional and spiritual well-being, specifically in my work of queer and trans people of color. So we don’t prioritize my training over the actual lived experience, but you’re getting on-the-job training. Actually, nobody trains you at all. You’re self-taught. You’re taught by community.
But those relationships is what the state has tried to disrupt. So we wouldn’t need a whole… Nothing’s wrong with therapy. I think therapy is actually a great tool, but it’s not a cure-all. But we wouldn’t actually need therapists in the same way if our siblings and our family members who were behind these walls were home, if we had food, if the air we were breathing was not toxic. If we actually restored our ability to be in right relationship with the land and every other being that we have to be on this planet with, we wouldn’t have this kind of trauma.
It doesn’t mean we wouldn’t suffer. But what we’re seeing at this point, at this scale, especially with the genocides happening across the globe, is this is unnecessary, manufactured suffering. And if we don’t understand how it’s affecting not just the way we treat each other, but how are you going to strategize? How are you going to make a strategy that’s actually going to work when you are highly traumatized? And the ways that you’re attempting to heal, the state is saying, oh, you have a substance abuse problem? You’re getting locked up. Oh, you are hallucinating, for instance. We’re going to lock you up in a psychiatric facility and potentially give you forced treatment — Not potentially, give you forced treatment that then takes away your rights the same way that happens when you’re incarcerated.
So it’s a setup and it’s a scam, but I think there’s a growing conversation in the communities that I’m in of Black and Brown people who are like, we are going to figure out how these systems work, to tear them down, and to abolish them. And we’re also going to create alternatives because that’s what we need.
So that story you just told about Eddie sitting with you weekly, I was like, that was therapy.
Mansa Musa: Exactly.
Erica Woodland: That was you having human to human connection. That was also a vetting. I keep that. I’m like, we need to bring vetting back. I just had a conversation about that earlier. I’m like, we just out here trusting people that have not demonstrated that they’re trustworthy with the kind of liberation work that we’re talking about.
Mansa Musa: And that’s a good segue to talk about Eddie, but I wanted to unpack that a little bit more. Because right now you have trauma, and they starting to monetize trauma, saying trauma, resilience, and define it, [inaudible] and everybody and their mother coming around with an approach. But at the same token, it’s the same old story and the same old song. It’s just a different band playing it.
But speaking of Eddie, so let’s talk about the campaign to exonerate Eddie. And for the benefit of our viewers, this is one of the posters that was put out by some college students in conjunction with myself, Erica, and Dominque comrade, and some other comrade that’s advocating for Eddie to be exonerated. Speak on why do you think that Eddie’s been transitioned? Why is it important that, in your mind, or that our audience should want to know, that we should try to have Eddie exonerated? He’s gone, he was out, he lived his life, and he lived his life to his fullest, or what was left of it.
Erica Woodland: Right. This is a really good question and I think it ties into a lot of the archival work that I’ve been a part of over the past three years, that we have to hold on to the truth of Eddie’s life, Eddie’s work, and what the state did to Eddie. There has been no redress. Eddie’s name has not been cleared, and Eddie was innocent.
So one of the things that, it happens with a lot of revolutionaries, we’ve seen it many times, is the sanitization of their actual work. And there’s a way that we all then kind of forget. You could actually make this sound like some kind of happy story in the end. Oh look, this person, wrongfully convicted. Well, they got out [Musa laughs] in the end of their life, they were able to do this, that and the third. No, let’s go back to the fact that this person literally did almost 44 years for their political work, and they were targeted by the state. And that is happening now.
Mansa Musa: Exactly.
Erica Woodland: So to me, part of the campaign is about telling the truth. That is always, to me, a healing act. To tell the truth of what actually happened, to move with the knowing that this was a wrongdoing. And if we do not prioritize the exoneration of Eddie and all political prisoners, then when this… Political prisoners are being manufactured right now.
Mansa Musa: That’s right.
Erica Woodland: They’re being manufactured right now.
Mansa Musa: That’s right.
Erica Woodland: Young people are political prisoners right now. So this is part of a larger struggle to combat state repression. And I think spiritually it’s also really important to preserve Eddie’s legacy by telling the truth. And then it’s also really important to think about how that supports our generational healing, our healing as a community. Somebody who did nothing but sacrifice on our behalf, and we’re going to let the state continue to lie? We’re going to let the state continue to try to manipulate the story of what really happened.
Mansa Musa: When me and Dominque was having this conversation and we decided like, well, this is something that we want to look at. And we start organizing, got some of the supporters together and start talking about it. Everybody had the same perspective, just like you said, it is about we want to be able to say, like you say, tell the truth. And it’s important that we tell the truth about what happened to Geronimo Pratt, what happened to Fred Hampton, what happened to Malcolm. That because of their political views and their aspiration to be free, that they was targeted and set up and, in most cases, assassinated or died a death of a thousand cuts.
And they did the same thing with Eddie. And only for no reason other than the fact that he believed in his right to self-determination. He believed that he had a right to be treated as a human being. He had a right to our people being free.
Talk about where we at in terms of some of the things that we’re doing with the campaign, for the benefit of our viewers and listeners.
Erica Woodland: Yeah, absolutely. So we’re doing a couple of things. We currently have a petition and a website, which is at marshalleddieconway.com where you can get information about Eddie’s case and why exoneration is so important. But you can also sign the petition so that we can actually put some pressure on Gov. Wes Moore to move forward with this exoneration.
Part of what we’re also doing with the website and with some filmmakers is to help to document more of Eddie’s story, in particular how we build a case for exoneration and why that’s so important, I think, to Baltimore City in particular. The history, the legacy, the revolutionary lineage here, I only know about that because of Eddie. And so this is part of a larger effort to get Eddie’s story out so we can have redress and justice in this situation, as much justice as you can have with how much harm and violence the state has engaged in towards Eddie. But this campaign is really, really important.
And so, I know we’re also doing some things coming up in 2025 to help honor Eddie’s legacy around his birthday in April. So there’ll be more information about that. I’m sure you’ll get the word out, Mansa.
Mansa Musa: Yeah, most definitely.
Erica Woodland: But right now we need people to educate themselves and to sign the petition and get the word out.
Mansa Musa: And we was real strategic in making sure that all this information that’s coming out about Eddie is not being repackaged for the benefit of changing the narrative or minimizing his contribution. We was real mindful to make sure that the social media that have any representation of Eddie is authorized by us. To ensure that the truth — Because it’s all about the truth.
And in this case, it might sound cliché, but they say the truth will set you free. What we talking about, the freedom of the truth setting Eddie free in terms of him being recognized for the person that he was and the impact that he had on people that exists today. Whenever anybody come in contact with Eddie, even to this day, they make the observation that the impact that he had on them, how he was able to tap into their thinking, how he was able to get them to maximize on their potential.
And this is something that we want to make sure that people understand. That had he not been set up, had charges [not been] fabricated against him, no telling what he would have done. And he done a lot while he was incarcerated, while he was on the plantation. But no telling what he would’ve done.
And I want to go back to your point. Political prisoners, young people right now are being manufactured to be political prisoners. And as we move forward in this country, it is going to come a time where they going to be like 1984. Like your thoughts, literally going to be the law saying, if you think this way and then you going to be charged with being a terrorist or whatever.
But as we close out, Erica, tell people how they can get the book and where we at in terms of the exoneration.
Erica Woodland: Absolutely. So again, if you want more information about the exoneration campaign, that’s at marshalleddieconway.com. And then if you want any information about the Healing Justice Lineages project, we’re at healingjusticelineages.com. And we have a digital archive that we’re building out there so you can hear more voices about the work.
Mansa Musa: All right, and you got the last word on this subject matter. What you want to tell our viewers and our audience as you rattle the bars?
Erica Woodland: I appreciate the last word. I neglected to say, the work that we’re doing right now around Eddie’s legacy is also about getting ahead of and interrupting co-optation. And there’s a lot of co-optation that happens here in Baltimore City. It happens everywhere. But there’s a particular way that people like to manipulate the story of revolutionaries to actually fuel work that is deeply harmful to Black people. And so, I just wanted to end on that. That we actually need to be very clear about we’re protecting Eddie’s work and Eddie’s lineage because it deserves that much. And co-optation is a tool of the state. And even if our own people are doing it, it’s unacceptable.
Mansa Musa: There you have it. The Real News round about. Erica, you rattled the bars today. And I’m reminded of what you just say. Dominque reminds us that she owns… She don’t own Eddie, but she’s not going to let nobody co-opt the narrative or taking change who he was. And this is something important that we must always be mindful of, that we should never let people continue to define us, tell us who we are, what we are, and what we’re doing, and then give us some money to accept that what you just said about me is acceptable because I’m getting paid. No. Our legacy, our image, our heritage is not for sale.
There you have it. And we ask you to continue to support The Real News and Rattling the Bars. It’s only on Real News and Rattling the Bars that you get this kind of information. That we have a professional therapist. We don’t have a professional clinical therapist that’s certified by the state and recognize their state credential. We got somebody certified by the people and recognize their people credentials, which is way more important than any credentials that they can get, even though they do have the documentation that the state say they should have. But in terms of their application and practice, it’s all about the people.
Thank you, Erica. Continue to rattle the bars, and we ask you to continue to support The Real News and Rattling the Bars. Because guess what? We really are the news.
President Biden’s decision to pardon his son, Hunter Biden, has drawn criticism from across the political spectrum. Among these critics are opponents of the War on Drugs and mass incarceration, which President Biden played a personal role in architecting throughout his political career. Jason Ortiz, Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Last Prisoner Project, joins Rattling the Bars to discuss Hunter Biden’s pardon and what it means for Biden’s legacy.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
President Biden recently gave his son, Hunter Biden, an unconditional pardon. Hunter was convicted on tax evasion and federal gun charges. He was due to be sentenced this month. In pardoning his son, the president stated that he believes in the justice system, but also believes that raw politics has affected this process, and it led to a miscarriage of justice.
His decision to pardon his son has created a Richter magnitude scale response from every sector of society. President Donald Trump and his treasonous cohorts, former prosecutors, convicted police, just to name a few.
Everyone has an opinion on this decision, but the voices that are missing are those who are enslaved in the prison industrial complex. The people sitting in prison on outdated marijuana charges, people who lost their freedom, because of racist three strike laws, or mandatory minimum sentence.
These are the real victims of the raw politics that President Biden spoke about. Here to help us unpack President Biden’s decision to pardon his son and the impact of that decision is Jason Ortiz from The Last Prisoner Project.
Jason, introduce yourself to the Rattling The Bars audience.
Jason Ortiz:
Sure. My name is Jason Ortiz. I’m the director of strategic initiatives for The Last Prisoner Project, which is a nonprofit organization that helps folks that are currently incarcerated for cannabis crimes achieve their freedom, get reunited with their families, and become full members of society.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to Rattling The Bars, Jason.
Jason Ortiz:
Thank you. Welcome to have me. I’m really excited that you’re having me here today.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. So, we recently recognized that President Biden used his authority to pardon his son Hunter Biden from the conviction that he got for tax evasion, gun violation, among other charges.
And in pardoning him, and this is what we want to hone in on this interview, in pardoning, he said that he believed in the justice system, and he believed that the American people when you tell them the truth, they will be fair.
But he also believed that the raw politics, the decision to indict his son, and the raw politics to convict his son is the reason why his son was convicted. Not that he was guilty of anything. That wasn’t the issue. He was guilty. It was just that the raw politics superseded his guilt, and, therefore, he should not have been found guilty, but for raw politics.
Okay. So, let’s look at this decision that President Biden made. Talk about … Because you recently was interviewed on Democracy Now by Amy Goodman, and in your response to this decision, you made the observation about President Biden being instrumental in creating an atmosphere where the prison industrial complex blew up to what we know it to be now.
Talk about that, and why you think that this decision should have a better impact than it is in terms of everybody coming out of the closet, war criminals, treasonous, convicted felons, in the sense of Donald Trump and his cohort. Talk about that.
Jason Ortiz:
When we heard that President Biden was going to use his pardon power to pardon his son for his various convictions, we were understanding of why a president and a father would want to help their sons avoid prison time. And so, we have seen this as an affirmation that the president and his administration understand that while some folks have committed crimes in the past, some of their sentences are egregious and politically motivated.
That is true for all of the 3000 federal cannabis prisoners who are currently serving decades, or life sentences in prison for cannabis crimes that are now legal for half the states across the country, and producing tax revenue.
We have thousands of cannabis businesses that are producing tax revenues for states and municipalities across the country as there are people currently incarcerated watching this all unfold, and President Biden, himself, was one of the chief architects of the 1994 crime bill-
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… which enhanced all kinds of sentences, both for cannabis, other drugs, other crimes, and it was on the floor of the Senate at the time, he was a Senator at the time, making the argument that there were these big, bad drug dealers out there that were hurting all these folks, and so, we should lock them up forever. Right?
That was where the whole Corn Pop meme came from with Joe Biden, and he was very proud at the time to be a drug warrior, and push to lock up thousands, if not millions, of Black and brown people across the country while, at the same time, fully aware that under Nixon, when the War On Drugs was declared-
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… the Controlled Substance Act was created, his office was very explicit that they wanted to disrupt Black and brown communities, and the anti-war community, and used the War On Drugs to have a reason to demonize and vilify folks on the evening news, to go into different organizations, and break up their leadership, and incarcerate folks, and much worse. There were plenty of political organizers in that time that were murdered by the State.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
And so, this was the climate that Joe Biden gets brought up in as a House member, and then eventually a Senator, and then in the ’90s as a Senator, he becomes the architect of the crime bill.
So, all of the really long sentences we’re dealing now are in part due to that bill. And so, we have folks like Edwin Ruiz. Edwin is a resident of Texas, he has kids, and he was arrested in the ’90s for a trafficking charge, so, selling weed, moving weed from one person to another, and he got 40 years for that offense.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
40 years in the ’90s. Right? So, 1997. He served 27 years already of that term. And so, these are folks that are serving decades, and have already served decades for activity that’s legal in the District of Columbia where President Biden lives. Right?
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
It’s a clear hypocrisy. They’re fully aware that the War On Drugs was always racially and politically motivated, and yet until this day, he refuses to use his pardon power, his presidential authority, to help undo that damage where he’s more than happy to do it for his son, and fully understand why parents across the country would not want their sons and daughters in prison either.
So, he still has the opportunity to make moves and use his pardon authority to commute the sentences. That’s specifically what we’re asking the president to do is commute the sentences of all the folks that are currently incarcerated to time served. So, that they would be let out.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. And you know what? I like that observation in terms of, like, marijuana laws. As we’ll go into the political prisoner spectrum as well, but as a marijuana law, it is, like, ironic that you legalize marijuana that there’s nowhere in this country right now that a person cannot light a joint up. Literally, there’s nowhere in this country that a person cannot … You can go to a dispensary, and buy.
There’s nowhere in this country, there’s very few places where … It’s, like, maybe regulated, but you can have access to it, and then a person find themselves in prison for two decades, and with no hope of getting out under this law that this very president is responsible for it being, and then he turn around and say, oh, raw politics is the reason why his son … Okay, but the raw politics, the reality behind the raw politics is that you created this situation that these people find themselves in.
And I look at it like Leonard Peltier.
Jason Ortiz:
Yeah.
Mansa Musa:
Peltier is innocent.
Jason Ortiz:
Absolutely.
Mansa Musa:
He is innocent of every crime. Mumia Abu-Jamal, he’s innocent. You got political prisoners that’s innocent. You have the Treasury Committee came out and say in … When they did a study on the FBI’s practice, and the counterintelligence program, they noted that who had ratted them up, was setting people up, only because of their political views, and locking people up, and kill people, the raw politics behind it was that he was representing the corporate America, and the system that by any means was designed to destroy any political opposition.
But talk about the impact that this decision will have, if you can speak to this, the impact that President Biden’s decision to pardon his son will have overall.
Jason Ortiz:
Overall, it is highlighting the idea of using a presidential pardon to undo damage done by politically motivated sentencing. Right? So, the president has affirmed that sometimes the sentences people get are not there, because of they’re a threat to society, or safety for anyone, that it’s all about the politics behind it, and that is very true about the 3000 federal cannabis prisoners who are also politically motivated prisoners, and the folks like Mumia and Leonard Peltier are also politically motivated arrests and convictions.
And so, if he’s able to affirm that for his son, his administration has no excuse from applying that same logic to all the folks that are currently in prison, and using his presidential pardon authority to give them their freedom, and undo the damage that was done.
So, while I am frustrated that the president is choosing to only use his power in this way, it is creating a national conversation around what is the right use of the presidential pardon, and how else can he use it to help more people?
While we would like to see … I’m not opposed, I don’t feel like what he did to Hunter was wrong, it’s just incredibly hypocritical and frustrating-
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… that he’s not using it for lots of other folks, who want to expand the use of the presidential authority. His predecessor Trump also has used it in all kinds of wild ways. Right? So, there is really no limit on what we can do with the presidential pardon. The president could pardon all of these folks tomorrow, if he wanted to.
And so, that means it’s a political decision by him, and his office to not do it so far. And that means on us, on the people. Right? We got to apply pressure, and we got to organize to push the government to do the right thing. They’ve already admitted that they can do it. They’ve already used the power the way they think makes sense. So, it’s on us to push and pressure them to use it in a way that we think makes sense.
Mansa Musa:
And I was listening to someone, [inaudible 00:10:32] talking heads on our network, and they started lining up, and taking the position that, “Okay. Everybody that was involved with trying to throw a coup, and was involved with the riot with President-Elect Trump, then president at that time, told them, “Go down to the Capitol and storm the Capitol, and reverse the democratic decision to elect Biden,” that they was saying, “Well, all of them should be pardoned,” that the police, the George Floyd, they should be pardoned, that everybody, former prosecutors that got caught with their hand in the till, they should be pardoned.
What you think about that? Do you think they should have the same right under this concept as those that was politically motivated, or do you think it should be a more objective approach to this whole process?
Jason Ortiz:
So, I’ll just say clearly, though, the presidential pardon is a political tool. Right? And so, there is no limit to it. So, whether they can, or can’t use it, they definitely can do that.
Now who should get a pardon? Right? Like, personally, I don’t think folks that committed a crime, and their sentence was just, it was fair what they were supposed to serve as far as time goes, that that is justification for a pardon. Right?
The president gets to use it as he sees fit, however, these folks did commit a crime, and I don’t know exactly, if I would say their sentences are unjust-
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… for what they did, because what they did was a pretty serious offense. Right? Storming the Capitol, and trying to seize control of the government, you used the word treasonous earlier. Right? It’s about as close as we can get to treason as we’ve experienced in modern history.
And so, there are times when the sentence is fitting the crime. Right? And so, trying to overthrow the government, that’s a pretty serious offense. Right?
Now folks that have been participated in a lesser extent, or simply showed up to January 6, there’s always going to be a range of participation, and action, and folks should be held accountable to their specific actions.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
And so, folks that did really egregious things in the Capitol should be punished for that. Right?
However, storming the Capitol is not a crime that is now decriminalized, and legal for millions of folks to participate in.
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
And that’s a very different-
Mansa Musa:
[inaudible 00:12:51].
Jason Ortiz:
… situation.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Jason Ortiz:
Right? That we have said as a society, some people can make millions of dollars selling weed, and these other folks got punished for that crime a long time ago. Nobody is now decriminalizing storming the Capitol. Right?
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Right. Exactly.
Jason Ortiz:
And so, we’re saying society has changed since this happened. It was originally racist and politically motivated, but even on top of that, society has now said, “This is no longer a crime. We’re going to let folks operate cannabis businesses,” and that’s what I believe is the moral justification for using a pardon on cannabis prisoners, specifically. Right?
There are lots of other reasons to use a pardon. Right? Some folks are innocent of their crimes, and their original arrest and conviction was politically motivated. Right? That is where a presidential pardon can come in, in that times have shifted, the new administration that is elected is there to push for the people that support the political movements that got folks elected.
And so, that is another good justification for a pardon, because the person didn’t actually do the crime. The only reason they’re in there was politically motivated. So, it takes a political resolution to undo that process. Right? And so, I think that’s definitely what Leonard Peltier and Mumia fit into that category.
Then there’s folks that maybe did commit the crime, but the sentence is just way more than the crime that they committed.
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
For example, folks that are on death row.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
Right? There are a number of folks on death row that should not be losing their life, because of the crime that they committed.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
And that is another space where the president can commute their sentence to life in prison, or time served, depending on the situation, and those are the folks that I think also they are not innocent, necessarily, although, some of them very much are, but the punishment did not fit the crime to have a life sentence.
Like, to really put someone away for the rest of their life, it has to be a pretty egregious situation where they’re also a threat to society forever, and there’s very few situations I think that fit that mold, where someone should be in jail for 50, 75 years. Right?
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
But I do think death row and folks that are sentenced to death is particularly one that warrants presidential intervention, as we should just not be killing folks anymore using the State, and giving people death penalties, which sometimes people can get charges trumped-up, because of drug charges that add to different charges, and then they end up with life in sentence.
[inaudible 00:15:08] is someone that was operating in a cannabis operation, and got charged with trafficking, and is serving a life sentence for a non-violent drug offense.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
And so, honestly, I don’t care how many pounds somebody was selling, nothing justifies a life sentence.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
Specifically, because he did way less than any cannabis company does on a monthly basis. Right? And so, the biggest difference I see between January 6th folks and our folks is the crimes that folks are currently incarcerated for are no longer crimes.
Mansa Musa:
And talk about-
Jason Ortiz:
And that’s a huge difference.
Mansa Musa:
Why do you think that in regard to this country’s attitude about recognizing cannabis laws and recognizing that because of the social trend, and attitudes has changed, why you think they still holding fast to this draconian position of, “Lock them up, throw away the key. It’s a crime. It’s a crime. It’s a crime. We’re not dealing with what type of crime, we’re dealing with it’s a crime, and, therefore, we saying a person that has been duly convicted should serve the time,” but at the same token, as you outlined, “I can leave from visiting somebody that got locked up for marijuana, and on my way out of town, go to a dispensary, and buy some marijuana”?
Why you think this country’s attitude is so entrenched on just holding people to that standard?
Jason Ortiz:
Well, I think the United States has been addicted to punitive punishment for a very long time. Like, there have been folks that have always used ostracizing certain communities and making them the problem, or demonizing them. Right?
We see it happen in many different communities over time. Immigrants are currently being demonized in a lot of ways, as folks want to lock them up, or deport them, but Black and brown folks, specifically, leftist organizers over the years have always been targeted, and using the legal system to not just disrupt those communities, but then profit off of those disruptions. Right?
There are private prisons, even public prisons. Right? There’s billions of dollars in the prison industrial complex that uses our people first to arrest them, but then also uses them for things like labor, where-
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… prison. Right? Like, we actually saw California had a ballot measure-
Mansa Musa:
Yup.
Jason Ortiz:
… to end prison labor, and it lost.
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
And so, that was a pretty heartbreaking moment to hear that that ballot measure lost, and it is pretty clear that right now the way the United States is structured, we are a military superpower, we’re a prison industrial superpower. We use violence and coercive force as our number one tactic in a lot of different ways, and a lot of different situations.
And so, the longer that we are continuing with that addiction to punitive punishment and incarceration, the more damage we’re doing over time, and so, to undo that is a tremendous lift in the international collective consciousness.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
To shift people away from that addiction is tough. Right? And so, I think the drug policy movement has done a pretty good job in shifting public opinion of whether, or not people should be in jail moving forward, but what is really hard for, especially, white folks, or folks that have a significant amount of wealth is being able to address what happened in the past.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
And so, we haven’t been willing to do that part. We have gotten the public to say, “Okay. No more people going in prison,” and even that’s not really true, because we still arrest people and incarcerate people for selling weed. Right? We say that possession is okay. It’s perfectly okay if you buy from a dispensary, but if you buy it from your homey that you used to buy it from-
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Ortiz:
… that’s still a crime.
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
And it’s a felony for the guy selling it to you still.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
Right? And out of the 24 states and DC that have had some, kind of, real adult use legislation, zero actually let everybody out of prison when they did it. Zero. Right?
So, there is this lack of historical understanding, and saying, “We’re going to address what happened in the past. We’re willing to move forward and act like it never happened, and not talk to anybody about it,” but we’re not going to actually address the very racist and politically motivated history of why it happened to begin with.
And so, that’s actually where the equity movement started to come out in the mid-2010s up until now where I was part of a different organization then, The Minority Cannabis Business Association, where we were working with different states to help people figure out how do Black and brown people get a piece of the legal pie?
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
Right? And in that equity space, we had three main pushes. So, one was helping folks achieve freedom, and things like reentry support, expungements, reducing sentences-
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… and that was the criminal justice part of it. Then there was the community investment part, because the other part of the War On Drugs was that the police disrupted the economics of communities of color, and removing people that were breadwinners and fathers and parents and putting them in prison. So, there should be very targeted investment to undo that damage as well, which where the State invest in community investment. And then third was economic opportunity in the cannabis industry itself.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
We found a lot of ways that folks are willing to talk about how everybody can make money off of selling cannabis, but when it came to the criminal justice side, we had to really fight for all the advances in those spaces, but this equity movement, which was, essentially, the movement to help undo the damage down by the War On Drugs did spread across the country.
Now most of the states that have cannabis operation have some kind of equity program-
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… where there are set aside licenses, community investment, expungement support, all those kind of things, but even now they’re under assault. Right? There’s all kinds of governments that want to move that money somewhere else-
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… and so, it’s been an internal struggle. Right? But that being said, we are making a lot of progress. Like, things are moving. So, for example, Wes Moore, Governor-
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… Wes Moore-
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… from Maryland.
Mansa Musa:
Where we at.
Jason Ortiz:
Yeah. So, he pardoned 170,000 cannabis charges. I was there when he actually signed the paper. Right?
Mansa Musa:
Okay.
Jason Ortiz:
And so, we are seeing governors across the country pick up the mission to actually undo the damage done, and making some progress. That being said, that’s one governor out of 50 that has actually done anything real serious. And so, that’s an inspiration. We’re glad he did that. Right? Hopefully, he pushes on Biden for us to do more as well, but we still have a lot of work to do.
So, it’s a long-term standing addiction to punitive punishments. Right? That we’re going to shame and make examples out of people, but, at the same time, I do think we are cracking the dam of the War On Drugs-
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… and we will see it end in our lifetime, I do, and in your lifetime, and all of our lifetimes. Right? Like, we are winning the overall war, but it is something that has been built over 125 years, and ending that is not going to be an easy process, nor a quick one.
But I do see us growing, and winning the fights every day.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. And as we conclude, tell our audience going forward what y’all be doing going forward, and how our audience can act with your project, or your former initiatives.
Jason Ortiz:
Sure. So, actually, we have until January 20th to push President Biden to use his pardon authority to commute the sentences of the cannabis prisoners. And so, folks can go to www.CannabisClemency.org, and we have a countdown clock there where you can actually send a letter to the president, and between now and January 20th, that is the number one priority is we have the opportunity to get folks out of prison with this one person making one decision will actually have huge impact.
So, again, it’s www.cannabisclemency.org. You can go to www.LastPrisonerProject.org to see all the different campaigns we’re working on. If you’d like to write a letter to someone that’s currently incarcerated, we would love to have folks participating in our letter writing program.
And then I always say to wrap up, if you know anyone in prison for cannabis crimes, please let them know about us, and let us know how we can get in touch with them, because we do want to be in touch with folks that are on the inside, helping them get resources.
So, The Last Prisoner Project can provide legal support, funding in commissaries, and then also reentry funding when folks come out. So, that there’s actually a grant, and you can come out and get a car license, or a house, whatever you may need.
So, help us get our message to the folks that-
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Okay.
Jason Ortiz:
… are on the inside, and we would love to help as many people as we can.
Mansa Musa:
Thank you, Jason. You definitely rattled the bars today.
Jason Ortiz:
There you go.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Jason Ortiz:
It’s an honor to be here with you, my man.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. No doubt about it. We recognize that raw politics, this is a politically motivated … That’s all it is, and we recognize now based on your education of our audience, and the marijuana laws, that the hypocrisy of this country is that they’re big on saying things … Like Stevie Wonder say, “We all amazed, but not amused at all the things you say you do, but if you really want to know something, you haven’t done nothing.”
And this is exactly what President Biden … This is your opportunity to cement your legacy, and in terms of, like, pardoning everyone that was convicted of this draconian marijuana law to pardon people that’s been convicted of a frame, like Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, politically motivated, because of their politics.
We ask that y’all continue to support Rattling The Bars, and The Real News, because it’s only from this platform that you get this kind of information that Jason Ortiz gave us from The Last Prisoner Project.
We recognize that a person can come out and smoke a joint around the corner, and buy some weed, but the same person sitting back in the cell in Denver, Colorado, or Florida somewhere that’s been convicted of having four pounds, or 10 pounds of marijuana is sitting back wondering, “Why am I still sitting here when it’s illegal to sell this throughout this country?”
So, we ask that you support this initiative to try to get the word out, and encourage President Biden to cement his legacy by being the architect of change, and not the architect of confusion and destruction.
Five incarcerated people in Alabama are fighting to push forward a lawsuit, Stanley v. Ivey, challenging the state’s power to punish prisoners who resist forced labor. Despite a state constitutional provision abolishing slavery that was passed in 2022 by referendum, Montgomery County Circuit Court dismissed the plaintiffs’ lawsuit, arguing Governor Kay Ivey and Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm were protected by state sovereign immunity. Emily Early, Associate Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights‘ Southern Regional Office, joins Rattling the Bars to discuss the lawsuit and the plaintiffs’ ongoing fight to have their case appealed.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
Mansa Musa: Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa.
The 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution says that slavery is legal — And they use the term involuntary servitude — They say that anyone duly convicted of a crime can be enslaved and labor can be used for slavery purposes.
Now, the question becomes what happens when a state take that clause and say it no longer should be used? And the state that’s being talked about was one of the crown jewels in slavery, the state of Alabama.
Recently in the state of Alabama, prisoners filed a suit challenging utilization of forced labor and for the abolishment of slavery as we know it. The court ruled that the defendants in the case had qualified immunity and the prisoners had no standing in bringing this suit forward.
Joining me today is Emily Early. Welcome, Emily.
Emily Early: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Mansa Musa: And Emily, tell our audience a little bit about yourself and where you’re from before we unpack this tragedy that’s going on down in Alabama.
Emily Early: Sure. Well first, again, I’d like to thank you for having me on your radio show to educate your audience about this really important issue that exists very much so in many of our own backyards and many people don’t know about forced prison labor and slavery that happens inside the prison walls.
I am an attorney with an organization called The Center for Constitutional Rights, which is a racial and justice advocacy organization founded in 1966. We are headquartered in New York, but we are expanding into the South through our Southern initiative, of which I am the head. My official title is the associate director of our Southern regional office, and I’m also a trained attorney. And again, I live in Atlanta, but I have colleagues who are part of this Southern initiative who reside in Alabama and who are helping to lead the litigation that I’m here to talk about today, as well as another colleague in Atlanta, and one in Jackson, Mississippi.
The case name is Stanley v. Ivey, and, again, was brought on behalf of six individuals who are incarcerated inside of Alabama prisons. I will note that one of our original six plaintiffs, Mr. Dexter Avery, sadly passed away a couple of months ago while he was in the custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections. So I wanted to note that, unfortunately, and to make sure that we say his name in the course of this interview.
The suit was brought on behalf of these individuals who have been punished for not working, or refusing to work. And the defendants whom we sued are the governor of Alabama and the Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner.
The claims that we brought were intended to, if you will, give teeth or force to the constitutional amendment that the voters of Alabama overwhelmingly voted in support of in November of 2022 that got rid of the exceptions clause, or the prison loophole clause that you were talking about, Mr. Musa, earlier, that exists, though, in Alabama’s state constitution.
After the ratification of the 13th Amendment, each state that decided to become a part of the union also had to ratify their own versions of the 13th Amendment. And so Alabama, like many other states, has its own version of the 13th federal amendment that also excludes from the prohibition of slavery persons who are duly convicted of the commission of a crime. And so in November 2022, voters voted to ratify the constitution to get rid of that prison loophole, or that exceptions clause, as it’s referred to.
Nonetheless, the state government, including the governor herself and the Alabama Department of Corrections commissioner, John Han, enacted executive laws that still proceed to punish people and threaten to punish people for refusing to work and not working. And our clients have been subjected to those laws that were passed, very much so in violation of the 2022 constitutional ratification.
So our suit, again, was filed, like I said, in May of this year. Intentionally we filed on May 1 because we recognize that this lawsuit is not only about pushing up against and eliminating this prison-industrial complex, the system of mass incarceration, but it is also very much an issue of labor rights and ensuring that individuals who are choosing to work and who do work under their own free will have the right protections of safety, adequate pay, fairness, and are treated with dignity and humanity. And this system of forced prison labor inside of the Alabama Department of Corrections that still exists, notwithstanding the constitutional amendment, is very much so not providing workers these principles, these rights, this concept of justice.
So in early August of 2024 of this year, our case was dismissed by the Montgomery County circuit court for not actually qualified immunity but what is called sovereign immunity and standing. The court gave absolutely no reasoning whatsoever in its two-sentence dismissal of this lawsuit.
But what sovereign immunity effectively is, it says that the state or the sovereign, it’s a doctrine that derives from British law that says that the king, the sovereign cannot be sued. And if the king or the sovereign or the head of state is sued then, as a matter of policy, everything that the sovereign does could be subjected to a lawsuit.
And so this doctrine of sovereign immunity was created centuries ago, and it’s adopted into many states common law, in statutes, even in federal law in one form or another. And again, that just says that the government and officers and instrumentalities of the state cannot be sued. However, there are rules that have to be met or elements that have to be met before sovereign immunity even can be triggered before it comes into play. And even if those elements are met, there are exceptions to sovereign immunity.
So our position is that sovereign immunity does not apply to this case because our clients are seeking what’s called forward-looking or prospective relief, meaning an injunction to stop the governor and the Alabama Department of Corrections from enforcing these laws that violate Section 32 of the Alabama Constitution that outlaws prison slavery, and also a declaration that declares that what these laws are doing violate Section 32 of the constitution. So because that’s the form of relief that our clients are seeking, sovereign immunity doesn’t apply.
Mansa Musa: I mentioned earlier that we interviewed two members of a union who was involved with being co-plaintiffs in a suit, and I want our audience to know that, as you clarify, Emily, this not necessarily having anything to do with what y’all talking about, but the reality is that they complained about the same conditions that you’re complaining about and that’s being brought to the court’s attention, the inhumanity, the cruel and unusual punishment that’s taking place as it relates to men and women that’s in the Alabama prison system.
But talk about why you think that the state of Alabama, specifically the governor and the Department of Corrections, why you think that they’re taking such a staunch position to ensure and maintain this forced labor system. Because as you said, the state of Alabama, the citizens in the state of Alabama ratified the constitution eliminating any use of forced labor by getting rid of the exception clause in the state constitution. Why do you think that they’re so adamant about holding fast to this particular position?
Emily Early: Well, I think it’s because of two justifications among others, but the two I’ll focus on here today are profit, number one, and you talked about that earlier in the interview. And number two is controlling the bodies that are inside of the prison system, which are overwhelmingly Black and low income. And as it concerns the motivation of profit, the prison system in Alabama — And I would also go as far as to say in many other states — Could not function if they did not rest on, rely on the labor of incarcerated individuals.
Incarcerated workers inside of Alabama Department of Corrections prisons, they cook the food that incarcerated individuals eat. They clean the bathrooms, the hallways, the dormitories, the grounds outside of the four prison walls. They also work — And this is a piece that I haven’t covered as much, but our lawsuit also focuses on this — They are also contracted out to private industries.
Even some of the restaurants that we frequent often in our very own communities, McDonald’s or Buffalo Wild Wings, they’re also cooking and cleaning and performing at these fast food restaurants. And then they take a van that they have to pay for, it comes out of their own pay, that Alabama Department of Corrections transports them to and then picks them back up, and then they come back and then they sleep back inside of the prison walls.
And there also are some incarcerated individuals who are performing security functions because the staff, the prison system is so understaffed and overworked. And so sometimes there are even individuals who are performing some of those same security functions that correctional officers would perform. So it definitely is profit. The Alabama Department of Corrections makes hundreds of thousands of dollars off of the backs of Black and Brown bodies inside of the prison system.
And the second justification for why the state is resisting and forcing this constitutional ratification, which relates to the first reason, is it is an extension, the prison slavery is an extension of slavery, a method used to control and dehumanize and subjugate individuals who are Black in society. And because they are now in this system of incarceration, I think there is very much an attitude, not just among the state government, but, unfortunately, among many in our society and in our community, that we can just do away with people who are inside of prison walls.
And that is not the case. That should not be the case at all. And they still deserve to be treated with dignity and humanity. And if they choose to work, then they should be provided with the same protections that those in the free world have.
Mansa Musa: I want to unpack that as well because I was locked up 48 years prior to getting released. And at one time during my incarceration, I worked what we call industry, that’s what most prisoners referred to it as, industry. And they have with Maryland, MCE, Maryland Correctional Enterprises, and Maryland Correctional Enterprises is legislated by the state of Maryland. This particular corporation is legislated by the state of Maryland and all the labor for, they automatically get, they don’t have to bid for no contracts for state property to make the furniture, anything relative to the state. The chemicals that’s used in the institutions and in government buildings, the uniforms that the officers wear, the clothing that we wear, all these products are made by prisoners in MCE. The furniture for the state house is made by prisoners in MCE.
One, we wasn’t getting minimum wage. Two, we didn’t have no healthcare plan. Three, we couldn’t buy into social security. And four, in order to get any type of, which was considered money, we had to do an enormous amount of work in order to get a bonus.
And I was looking at the state of Alabama, the fact that they outsourcing the labor in Alabama and the fact that they’re outsourcing it. And most of these people in the work release or pre-release environment, they’re not getting, one, they’re not getting minimum wage, and, if I’m not mistaken, in some cases they’re paying for their own room and board. And you can correct me if I’m wrong on that. I know they’re paying for transportation.
And the last thing I noticed in the conversation we had was that in order to maintain the labor pool, they was denying people parole or the ability to progress through the system because they didn’t want to lose their labor. In y’all suit or y’all fact finding, did any of this come up?
Emily Early: As far as the parole piece, it’s not something that we have highlighted directly in the suit, however, it’s something we’re very keenly aware of, that the rate of parole grants in Alabama is abysmal. It’s very, very low. And for that reason, we actually are representing a couple of our clients who are clients in the forced prison labor, Stanley v. Ivy case, in their parole hearings. And even there in our representation, at least on the first try, two of our clients were denied parole.
But that’s something that we’re keenly aware of. And I agree with you, Mr. Musa, that yes, the denial of parole, I think, is tied, in one way or another, to the state’s need to keep people incarcerated to continue to profit off of their labor and to continue to keep the system running.
Mansa Musa: Another observation that was made in our previous conversations was that the fact that the utilization of prison labor automatically stopped, infringes on the rights of people having society to work. So I got cheap labor on the prison-industrial complex. I can take this labor, the same labor, and outsource it to, like you say, fast food restaurants, butcher shops, anywhere that they need labor, and they could have unions there, and I’m undermining the unions and undermining the ability for people to get minimum wage or living wage because I got cheap labor.
Do you think that this has something to do with the fact that it’s the relation between the business community has a hand in ensuring or maintaining this particular standard of slavery in the Alabama prison system? Is a connection between the business community in conjunction with the governor or the state in order to maintain cheap labor? Because if I got cheap labor and they don’t have to unionize, I don’t have to pay health, medical benefits, they don’t have to buy into social security, their pension, or none of that. Have you seen that?
Emily Early: No, I haven’t seen that necessarily, if I’m understanding your question correctly. I think what I do agree with, and I’m gathering from your statements, is that individuals who are incarcerated within the Department of Corrections in Alabama but are contracted out to private employers don’t have to be paid health insurance, 401k, if they qualify for it, and I think that is the case. However, and many of the folks that we did speak to — And I’m not saying this is the case across the board — But many of the folks whom we spoke to in our investigation were paid the same as free world workers and I think have to be paid. They cannot be paid less.
But what happens is the State Department of Corrections takes out 40% of their paycheck and it goes back to the state prison system. And so while they may be paid the same as some individuals who are free world workers, they don’t have the same take home pay. And that’s because the Department of Corrections is taking out its own cut, fees for transportation, fees for laundry, fees for the commissary. Right there, you mentioned room and board, and that is the case as well where, in some jails and prisons, individuals have to pay for their own incarceration.
Mansa Musa: My understanding is that they don’t have the right to say, I don’t want to work. If they don’t work, then they’re being punished even if they’re being given, in the state system they call it infractions. They’re being given disciplinary charges for refusing to work. Is that something that came out in the course of your investigation or gathering the facts of the suit?
Emily Early: Sure. So if people have been assigned to work and they are unable to work for whatever reason, or even if they refuse to work because the conditions are not safe, as happened with one of our clients, Mr. Reginald Burrell, who was injured while working at a furniture store in the free world community and was disciplined for saying he was not going back because it was not a safe environment.
That very much so is what is happening inside of the Department of Corrections where individuals, they cannot work, they refuse to work, they exercise a choice that they should have to not work for whatever reason, and then are consequently written up. That has happened to each of our plaintiffs. That threat remains and is ongoing because of these laws that the Alabama governor and the Department of Corrections commissioner and the Alabama legislature enacted after Section 32 of the constitution was ratified.
So each of those provisions, they relate to one another. And what they effectively do is authorize disciplinary reports and write-ups for literally refusing to work or failing to work or failing to report to work.
And the consequences of those disciplinary write-ups are extra duty, so individuals can be assigned even more work, which can effectively lengthen their sentence; They can lose privileges such as visitation with family and friends who come to visit them, which is very key to their survival and mental health and stability while on the inside; They can also be transferred to more dangerous prisons, which has also happened to some of our clients as a result of a disciplinary write up; They also can lose their good time credit, which is a system where folks earn, effectively, days of time that can be knocked off their sentence for good behavior. But if they’re written up, then they can lose a lot of good time, which, once again, extends or re-extends their sentence.
So they’re being punished over and over and over again, even though they were sentenced to incarceration and, effectively, are now being sentenced to labor, to slavery, to involuntary servitude inside the prisons.
Mansa Musa: And you know what, as you was talking, I was reminded of, I think the case was Sardin v. O’Connor, it’s a US case that came out with the concept of in order to prove an 8th Amendment claim or a claim relative to the conditions, you had to show atypical and significant hardship. You had to show that whatever you was complaining about was atypical and had significant hardship on you.
And I remember when they first came out with this concept, a lot of legal scholars unpacked it and was showing how difficult it was to meet this standard. But I was looking up in the Alabama prison system, it’s one of the most cruel, inhumane prison systems in the country. Some of the prisons — And that’s one of the things I was made aware of in terms of getting people to work — They threaten to transfer them to some of the more notorious prisons in order to pretty much get them to change their mind about not wanting to work.
But talk about going forward, what do you think the standing, what do you think the court, the higher court, going to do in terms of recognizing y’all claim that they don’t have sovereign immunity and that what y’all arguing and the issue that y’all raising has standing?
Emily Early: Sure. So we’re not sure what the court will do, but of course our hope is, and we think we’re right, is that the court will reverse the circuit court’s dismissal of the case and the judgment that the circuit court entered in favor of the defendants, and remand or send the case back to the circuit court. So the case would then be reinstated, and we would continue to litigate the case.
We think that we are right on the law. We think that the circuit court was absolutely wrong on sovereign immunity. It’s very clear that this is a case that does not trigger sovereign immunity, and even if it does, it meets one of the exceptions. And on standing, we think that our clients have fled the claim that shows that they were injured by these three laws, the Executive Order no. 725, the Administrative Regulation 403 that was promulgated in response to the executive order, and then the Alabama statutory code provision that also punishes folks for refusing to work, that all these laws have harmed our plaintiffs, and the defendant’s continued enforcement of these laws harms our plaintiffs, and the lawsuit that they have brought for injunctive and declaratory relief will redress or resolve those harms.
So we think that they have the standing necessary to raise these claims to enforce their right under Section 32 of the Alabama Constitution. So again, we think we’re right on the law, and we can only see what the court will say once the defendant submits their brief and we submit a reply brief. We are also requesting oral argument, so there may be an opportunity for us to go before the Alabama Civil Court of Appeals to have our day in court on behalf of our clients to plead our case.
Mansa Musa: OK. Thank you, Emily. And as we close out, tell our audience how they can stay on top of this or keep being informed about what’s going on with this lawsuit, and how they can track some of the work that y’all are doing.
Emily Early: Sure. Well, they can absolutely follow us on all the major platforms. Again, our organization is the Center for Constitutional Rights. Our website is ccrjustice.org. And this case is titled Stanley v. Ivy, and it’s currently pending in the Alabama Civil Court of Appeals. You can find a specific case page also on our ccrjustice.org website about Stanley v. Ivy. So if you just Google it, you can get updates. And again, we do try to update our casework on all the major social media platforms.
Mansa Musa: Thank you very much. You rattled the bars today, Emily. And we want to remind our audience that we’re talking about humanity. We’re talking about people who has been duly convicted, but the sentence was what they were serving. The crime, you have crime and punishment, the crime that I committed, and then the punishment is the time that I’m given. The punishment is not that I be leased out in forced labor and subjected to inhumane working conditions and don’t have no redress.
And so we asking that you really look into this situation that’s going on and ask yourself, would you want to wake up one day and find out that you cannot refuse to work? And that if you refuse to work, that you’re going to be subjected to more punishment, more cruelty, only because someone chooses to ignore the will of the citizens of the state of Alabama.
Thank you, Emily. We appreciate you.
Emily Early: Thank you so much for having me.
Mansa Musa: And we ask that you continue to support The Real News and Rattling the Bars. It’s only because of The Real News that you get this kind of coverage of what’s going on in Alabama, what’s going on throughout the United States of America and the world. And guess what? We’re actually the real news.
A new bill in Washington, DC seeks to end the district’s use of solitary confinement in jails. Rattling the Bars‘ Mansa Musa speaks with two formerly incarcerated organizers: Herbert Robinson and Cinquan Umar Muhammad of the Unlock the Box DC campaign, which advocates for an end to the barbaric practice of solitary confinement around the country and to pass the ERASE Bill.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa.
Oftentimes we hear about Unlock the Box, and it’s almost becoming cliché. It’s an organization called Solitary Watch that monitors solitary confinement throughout the world and the United States in particular, and they’re real strategic in highlighting the torture and abuse that solitary confinement is.
What we have with us today, people that’s in this space right today. And guess where they’re operating out of? Our nation’s capital. They’re operating out of Washington DC, and they’re organizing to Unlock the Box. But guess where they’re trying to Unlock the Box at? In DC jail.
So why would you have solitary confinement in an environment where the nature of the environment is a transitory environment? The people in that environment, they’re pending conviction, they haven’t got convicted, they’ve only been charged, but yet they’re being treated like they’re doing severe time, and they’re being subjected to solitary confinement.
Joining me today is Herbert Robinson and Cinquan Umar Muhammad. Welcome, men.
Cinquan “Umar” Muhammad:
Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. How you doing today?
Herbert Robinson:
Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us.
Mansa Musa:
I’m doing all right. So let’s start with you, Herbert, because we had you on before talking about Unlock the Box. I was recently at an activity that y’all was doing, y’all sponsored, about Unlock the Box. That’s where I met brother Umar. And y’all was talking about some of the things that y’all was doing, some of your initiatives y’all was taking, but more importantly, y’all was in the space of educating people about Unlock the Box and what exactly that is.
Tell our audience what exactly is Unlock the Box, and where y’all staying at right now in terms of the coalition that y’all building to Unlock the Box.
Herbert Robinson:
Got you. Again, I thank you for letting me be on and appreciate you, Umar, for joining. The Unlock the Box DC is the coalition here in DC that’s trying to end solitary confinement. It’s built up of transformative justice advocates and a lot of the organizations in DC that look at solitary confinement as torture, along with the United Nations. United Nations had what they brought about as the Mandela rule that says 15 days or more in solitary confinement is torture.
And solitary confinement is often described as torture, and involves isolating individuals for 22 to 24 hours a day inside of a cell.
So the Unlock the Box campaign is here to end that. And we are offering a different change into the community. Because it’s in DC jail, it’s being looked at as a judicial issue, but we’re looking at it as a public health issue.
Mansa Musa:
And one of the things that y’all, I recall at the conference that y’all was having on it, y’all had got someone to introduce a bill to do what?
Herbert Robinson:
Yes. So that bill was introduced by a champion, and that’s council member Brianne Nadeau.
Mansa Musa:
From Washington DC?
Herbert Robinson:
From Washington DC. Yes. Brianne Nadeau introduced the bill for us, and the bill is to abolish solitary confinement. We are seeking the in solitary confinement, and we’re asking that each person housed in DC jail is entitled to eight hours a day outside of their cell.
DC jail uses solitary confinement, but they have named it with different names. They have a mental unit that they use for solitary confinement, they have protective custody, they have safe cells, they have disciplinary. They house the LGBT community in solitary confinement because they don’t have nowhere else to put them. And they do the juveniles like that at times on different units.
So with this being said, it’s like the jail that’s lacking the programs and the resources, and that’s what we seek, to figure out how to implement these programs and resources inside the jail. Because there’s a lot that could be done, man, to help the people adjust and better themselves under them conditions, especially when it comes to social and emotional learning and cognitive thinking and things like that to deal with problem solving and be aware of their anger and how they respond and react to certain situations.
And these are things that’s stripped away from you when you locked in that cell by yourself. You become possessive of your own material and things like that. And then the dignity of rewashing clothes that the whole unit then wore and then giving back to you to put on. These things, they take away from you, they strip you down.
Mansa Musa:
Right. Yeah. And I did 48 years before I got out, but I did four-and-a-half of them years in the super max, which was solitary confinement. I did a lot of time on segregation, which is solitary confinement, but I never looked at it like that.
But when I got to super max, I really realized that the impact that isolation had, because sometimes it was like 24 and none, 23 and one, or 24 and none for the most part. And everything was designed around how you would do your due diligence with yourself in your cell.
Umar, talk about your experience. Tell our audience a little bit about yourself and some of your experience and your experience dealing with solitary confinement. I recall your speech at the conference that the Unlock the Box Coalition was having, and I’ve been in this space for a minute, but I was really impressed. That’s what made me approach you about coming on and educating our audience about solitary confinement.
Cinquan “Umar” Muhammad:
Yes sir. Well, first I want to thank you, brother Mansa Musa, for having me here today. I also want to thank my brother Herbert Robinson for always bringing me along. Brother Herbert is my mentor, has been my mentor for some time, so I always try to get in any space that I can with him and get involved with any campaign he’s a part of because we both have some of these shared experience.
At the age of 16, I was sentenced to juvenile life in DC Superior Court, and I was fortunate that at some point in time, roughly around 2017, 2018, the DC Council came up what’s called the Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act. What the Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act does it affords our juveniles who committed crimes before the age of 18, the first version, second version, the age of 25 and under who have served a minimum of 20 years or 15 years to petition the court for release.
And everything is predicated on your conduct while you’ve been incarcerated throughout these years since you were a juvenile. I petitioned the court for release after 29 years, 10 months, and I was released. I was released back into society.
And I made it my top priority because while I was incarcerated, I knew that if I should ever be released, the one thing that I wanted to work on and I wanted to dedicate the rest of my life to was working first and foremost just criminal justice reform in general, but more importantly in this solitary confinement period. But it has to be a starting point. There had to be a starting point. And I’m from Washington, DC, so what better place to start but in Washington, DC?
But over 29 years and 10 months, I roughly spent about six years, six-and-a-half years consecutively in solitary confinement. And one thing that I always say, and I shout it from the rooftop, solitary confinement is 100%, make no mistake about it, torture.
This is torture that needs to be ended because these are the same citizens that will be returning back to the community at some point in time. Who do you want living next door to you: Somebody who has been reformed, who has spent years in incarceration, who has reformed himself, bettered himself when he’s coming back out, back into society as someone who’s a better person.
Or do you want someone who is batshit crazy? Who has practically lost his mind because he’s been sitting inside of a cell alone counting bricks on a wall? I mean, this is a public safety issue. And if this is a public safety issue, then we got to treat this in a manner where this is an emergency in solitary confinement. Who would want to lock somebody in a room the size of your bathroom and leave them in there for years on top of years on top of years, but expecting them to still come out in the same conditions that they went in? That’s insanity. That’s insanity.
So Unlock the Box. I’m involved with a lot of organizations, Free Minds writing workshop and book club, building communities in our prisons. Currently, I’m a BreakFree Education hour 2024 fellow. I’m a fellow, that’s where I’m working at right now. But I just was hired for a job with Dreaming Out Loud, which is an organization that works to end the food inequities in the greater Washington DC area.
But whatever my brother Herbert Robinson is involved in because we are passionate about these same issues. But the top one being, the top one being, first and foremost, is erasing solitary confinement, unlocking the box. And that’s what I’m here to talk about.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. Hey Herbert, because Umar made a good point. And this is his mantra. That’s his mantra. He said it at the conference, the coalition, that solitary confinement is 100% torture. When we think of torture and we see the forms of torture that take place in the movies, we see torture as more physical. Why are y’all saying that solitary confinement?
And he outlined the different reasons what’s behind, emotional, social, physical, mental. But why do you say it’s torture, and how do you get people to understand it being torture? Because when you say someone is being tortured, they waterboard people they falsely accused, they locked up in Iraq, named them illegal combatants. They waterboarded them and the US say, well, that’s torture. They did a lot of physical things to them and they claim that’s torture.
So most people might think say, well, when you say torture and it ain’t got no physical element to it, you just putting somebody in a cell, feeding them, giving them a shower, some food, break them out maybe once in a while and give them some rec, how is that torture?
Herbert Robinson:
So as the brother spoke, because when he said torture, he broke it down from psychological, emotional, mental, physical. This torture happens on every level. You come from being in society with your family to being incarcerated. Now if you’re incarcerated on population, you might have access to the phone and things at a regular basis.
In solitary confinement, you don’t get that. You might be put in a position where you can only send one letter a month, have one 15-minute phone call a month. That’s torture. Sitting there wondering what your family doing for 30 days before you could send your next letter or receive your next letter or get your next phone call.
Again, having them collect everybody’s under clothes off of the tier and wash them in the same laundry basket and then come and pass them back out. Not you, your personal stuff, but just, this your size, this yours. This the stuff the man next to you could have just, man, shitted in in or whatever the day before. But this is what you got to wear now because they feel as though it’s clean enough for you to wear, that you still see hairballs and stuff in it. Like this is torture.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, that’s torture.
Herbert Robinson:
But on the flip side, just imagine being trapped in your bathroom, but there’s COVID. For the people that was trapped in their house during COVID felt as though they was being tortured. They couldn’t handle being stuck in their own home. But just imagine people that’s incarcerated as being trapped inside of something the size of a bathroom, that is considered a bathroom because they have a toilet and sink in it as well. Some have showers too.
Mansa Musa:
Right there in the cell.
Herbert Robinson:
And you’re being trapped in it. So you have some that complain about that, say it’s not solitary confinement because in some locations you have a celly. But I think at times that make it worse because now when this person has to relieve themselves or go take care of any personal hygiene or washing themselves, you are within arm’s reach at all times.
I don’t feel comfortable and could never get comfortable being trapped in a cell with a man right there that’s washing his complete body naked in the shower. But this is what you’re forced under. These are the things you want to know about torture. I call that torture, sir. That’s torture to me.
Mansa Musa:
That would be torture. Umar, how did you deal with solitary confinement? Because you say you did six in all years. And like I said, I was regimented. I was real regimented in everything I did. But when I came out of that space, when I got released from the super max in Baltimore and they send me to Jessup, which was known as the cut, and I was standing in what they call center hall, which is where all the traffic goes.
And the whole time, this was my first time ever being out and about and around people. And I knew a lot of people in that institution, and they was coming by hollering at me and everything. They hadn’t seen me in long. But I was paralyzed. My back was against the wall and I was paralyzed. Literally I was paralyzed. And a friend of mine seen it and said, come on man, let’s go outside. No one recognized that I was paralyzed from not being around people.
Umar, how did you deal with it?
Cinquan “Umar” Muhammad:
No, you was traumatized because you were tortured for the period of time that you was in solitary confinement. That’s called trauma, brother. That was psychological trauma that paralyzed your limbs.
Listen, listen, it’s like being sick. It’s like being sick. And you become so ill and sick that your limbs won’t even function properly no matter how much you want to move those limbs. Brother, that’s trauma.
And see, the thing is this when you ask the brother, well, some people going not see it as torture. Okay, well, go lock yourself in your bathroom without no food. Go lock yourself in your bathroom without no clothes, no TV, and no phone, no radio. And then somebody bring you what they want to give you as food three times a day. You stay in there for three, four, five, or six years and then tell me, still tell that that ain’t torture inside of your bathroom.
Tell me that ain’t torture. Somebody to come around and, at will when they want to, yank you off your cell and beat on you with not only their fists, but with instruments. Tell me that ain’t torture. Somebody that come around where you trying to sleep and hawk spitting through your tray slot or kicking your door won’t allow you to sleep every time they see you falling asleep. Tell me that ain’t torture.
Because if I’m not mistaken, what they have in the Geneva Convention also deems torture is that at a certain period of time when they continuously turn on lights and when they continuously try to, it’s called sleep deprivation. That, sir, is what torture is. And that is what’s going on not only in Washington, DC, not only in Baltimore County, but in the state prisons across the United States and in federal rural prisons.
Now you ask the question in specific, how did I deal with it? See, I dealt with it because I knew I didn’t have any other choice but to deal with it because I’m a resilient young man, first and foremost. I had already suffered so much emotional loss, so much physical loss because I’m an only child. My mother and father already died. I didn’t have brothers and sisters. So all I had was myself.
So I knew that if I wasn’t strong for me, who was going to be strong for me? So what I would do is I would get up in the morning and I would offer salat. I would offer the early morning fajr prayer. Bright and early before breakfast even came around, I would pace the floor a little bit, read the Quran, and then I wait for breakfast to come, eat my breakfast, straight back out to the salat.
Then I would work out. I work out to the zuhr prayer, which is the midday prayer. I will work out to that time, pray, get back to working out after prayer and get my food at lunch. After lunch, get back to working out again.
And I’m giving you this regimen because here’s what it entailed. It entailed every hour that I was awake that I had to be doing something that my mind could grasp onto. That I wouldn’t be looking at these walls, that I wouldn’t be trying to count the bricks on the walls or trying to count the spots on the floor. Or I may see a stain on the floor and I’m saying, oh, that look like Jesus on the floor.
Because I had almost got to that point, make no mistake about it. You see a spill on the floor, but the spill may have been on the floor so long that it takes a certain design of somebody that you may have known, right? That’s when you know you’re losing your damn mind. That’s when you know that what you are experiencing is torture. Because now what it does is it’s starting to alter your perspective on how you see the world. That’s torture, brother.
So I had to do things, man, that my mind could physically identify with, that I could grasp onto and that would keep me sane, which is prayer, which is working out, but also which was getting inside of the vents, the vent that blows out, they controls the air to the cell. And I would talk to other people in the other cells because I wanted to make sure that they was all right.
Here I am damn near losing my mind, but I wanted to make sure other brothers was all right. Why? Because we all in the same struggle. We all in the same fight and I don’t want to be the only one up here sitting like, I’m all right. But then that’s what was giving me a peace of mind, so I wouldn’t lose my mind, talking to somebody else. So I know that they needed it too.
Mansa Musa:
And Umar, that’s real succinct. And I’ve been in that space. Like I told, I said earlier, I was regimented. So I had a regimen that I had set up and everything was based on whatever I wanted to do that day. But it was a regimen. I worked out, studied law, read books, went to sleep, woke up, ate, boom, bam, boom, bam, boom.
That was a regimen to keep me from going crazy, keep me from pacing the floor, keep me from looking on the floor and seeing something down there and saying, oh look, that’s Michael Jordan shooting a jump shot. Or keep me from wanting to cut my wrist with a spoon.
But Herbert, talk about where y’all at right now, what the campaign look like in terms of, one, trying to get the legislation passed at the DC City Council. That’s what you’re talking about when you say the councilwoman, that was the councilwoman at the DC City Council. Talk about where y’all at with the Unlock the Box campaign and what’s y’all upcoming initiative around Unlock the Box.
Herbert Robinson:
So right now with the Unlock the Box campaign, the fiscal year is ending. So we have a push till December to try to get a hearing this year, but if not, we’ll be looking to secure a hearing next year, the beginning of next year. And that task is through the judiciary chair, Councilmember Brooke Pinto here in Washington DC. Right now we have nine councilmembers that have signed on in support of the bill.
Mansa Musa:
For the benefit of our audience, what’s the bill number?
Herbert Robinson:
It’s the ERASE Act 2023. I will have to go…
Mansa Musa:
That’s good enough. Just so let them know that when you say the bill, they know it is an actual bill.
Herbert Robinson:
Yeah, it’s ERASE Act 2023. And so out of the nine that we have signed on, it’s only 13. One is being voted into office next month. But we do have, throughout one of his campaign forums, we had him actually verbally say that he agrees that solitary confinement is torture and he wants to support us ending it.
So in that sense, we have 10, we are only missing three. And that’s the chairman, Brooke Pinto, the ex-chairman, Mendelsohn, and Trayon White. Trayon White asked us to set up a conversation with him so we can explain a little bit more about the bill, and that’s where we at with that step and the process of scheduling meetings with Mendelsohn as well as Brooke Pinto.
Mansa Musa:
In terms of work, because y’all did a nice thing with organizing the coalition. So in terms of getting people involved with the coalition, what are y’all doing around that?
Herbert Robinson:
So ERASESolitary.com is the website and you can go on, there’s links on there to ask for those that want to join the coalition, want to do any volunteer work for the coalition, bring in your organizations, and we take individuals. We go out and do canvassing. It’s always something that can be done, especially when it comes to social media posts and editing, things like that, website work. We always got a space where we can find help and need help. So one could go onto the website, ERASESolitary.com, and check that out.
Mansa Musa:
And Umar, you have to answer this question. Why you think they so resistant to recognizing this torture and doing something about it? When I say they, I’m talking about the system, the state, the government, the powers that be. Why you think it’s such a resistance on their part to recognize this is torture and enact legislation to eliminate it?
Cinquan “Umar” Muhammad:
I’ll give you a scenario better. I give it to you in the form of a scenario to help you understand it. I kill somebody in the street, but the state that got the death penalty want to kill me. That’s retaliatory in nature. But this is supposed to be a government for the people and by the people.
But now somebody killed one of my brothers in the street, I go back and kill them and they give me life. I mean what makes it right for them to kill me for killing somebody, the state, but then I kill somebody for killing somebody, the same thing they done, and you give me a life sentence? It’s retaliatory in nature.
And that’s the way that the Americans judicial system functions. You do something we don’t like… Because listen, you know, Herbert know, and many people that been in solitary confinement that hear this know, and those that haven’t been that need to be educated need to know this. Do you know that you could be put in solitary confinement because you got an extra tray out the chow hall line because you was hungry? You were hungry, so you wanted seconds, and you got in the line to get seconds, and they locked you up and put you in solitary confinement because you were hungry.
Do you know that the officer can not like you and shake your cell down because they can anytime they want to do what’s called random searches, but they’re not so random. Search in your cell and plant a knife, drugs, or whatever they want to plan in your cell just to get you in solitary confinement so that when he does his overtime mandated shift, he can be working in solitary confinement so that he can physically abuse you outside of the purview of the camera.
So what we need to do more is we need to not only educate people about solitary confinement, what solitary confinement really is, we need to educate them about how they get people into solitary confinement and for what reasons they get them in solitary confinement, so they can do torturous things to them that they couldn’t do within the sight of the camera. But when you put them in solitary confinement, they say, oh, they got a camera on the hall. I don’t live in the hall. I live on a cell in the hall where there’s no camera at. And this is where the torturous activities go on at.
Mansa Musa:
You rattled the bars that time, Umar. Took a tray. Somebody hungry, they put him in solitary confinement. Police say man disrespected him, put him in solitary confinement. Man walking too slow, solitary confinement. Oh, better still, look. Got a tray, torture you. You talk back, torture. Not walking fast enough, torture.
Herbert, you got the last word on this here. Tell our audience how they can get in touch with you and how they become involved in the campaign, and some of your other initiatives that you might be involved with.
Herbert Robinson:
Got you. So again, ERASESolitary.com is a way to get in touch with the Unlock the Box campaign and you go on there and there’s links to sign up and join the coalition and all that.
As far as me, I have a website, and on my website you could check out a lot of what I’m into, from Growing Pain Solutions to AGG transportation. I’m trying to build out one in the transportation industry and the other is in this advocacy sector.
But I have what I call Building Inclusive Communities, where I try to bring in brothers like Umar and a lot of those that I’ve worked with. And we sharing our voice, we trying to be heard, we trying to fight for what we believe in and what we feel as though the community needs and what we feel as though, when we go out into the community and talk to the community, what they tell us they need. We ain’t just doing this for ourselves and we ain’t just bringing the information that we feel, but nah, this is stuff we bringing out from the community. We out here, we in the community, we do these rallies, as you seen, and we engaging all those around us.
Mansa Musa:
Umar, how can people get in touch with you and some of the things that you’re doing, some of your initiatives you’re taking, as we close out?
Cinquan “Umar” Muhammad:
I’m actually, excuse me. Yes, sir. I’m actually on Facebook and I’m on Instagram ,and my Instagram and Facebook is basically tied together. Cinquan815, and Cinquan is spelled with a C. C-I-N-Q-U-A-N 815. You can find me on Facebook or you can find me on Instagram, the same thing.
You can see what I’m into on a daily basis. You can see the type of work that I advocate for. You can see pictures of different conferences and canvassing that we have done, and you can find out how to get involved also.
But thank you for having me, brother. I really appreciate this. This really needed to get out. People need to understand what solitary confinement is, what’s really going on. You know what I mean? And how they can help the movement. And man, anytime you need me, brother, anytime, and I know Herbert feel the same, call on us, and we going to be there because this a fight that we got to keep on fighting as long as we walking this earth.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right. This is a fight that we got to keep on fighting. Y’all rattled the bars.
And we want to encourage our listeners and our viewers to look at this particular episode of Rattling the Bars and ask yourself, just ask yourself when you get your plate, you take your plate to the bathroom, sit on top of the toilet stool, wash your hands, sit on the toilet, and start eating it. Then you wait for somebody to open the door and take it out.
Ask yourself, did you wait for them to come open your door and tell you that you got 15 minutes to take a shower? And then on top of that, they tell you that the laundry is coming back and they’re giving you some underwear that you got pick of the litter, doodoo stains in them, nut balls in them. And then they tell you that at the end of the day when you get up out of there, after doing six years in that environment, oh, you all right. Ain’t nothing wrong with you. And by the way, you wasn’t being tortured.
Y’all rattled the bars, and we thank you for y’all coming on today. And we ask our listeners to understand this and understand this real clearly. It’s only from The Real News and Rattling the Bars, you get this kind of information. All three of us have been in solitary confinement. We’re not talking about this as a theory. We’re talking about this from actual practical. We all lived this experience and we are campaigning against it. And this is why these men are on here today to talk about it.
Thank y’all for joining us, and we ask that you continue to support The Real News and Rattling the Bars, because guess what? We really are the news.
Since the 1990s, 2 million people with felony convictions have regained the right to vote, thanks to crucial reforms abolishing felony disenfranchisement in 26 states. This election, these voters could play a crucial role—and based on data from 2020, many of them prefer Trump. There’s more to this story however, from incarcerated people’s limited access to information, to the role of prisoners’ race and even positive perceptions of Harris’ gender in shaping incarcerated voters’ preferences. Nicole Lewis, engagement editor for The Marshall Project joins Rattling the Bars to discuss her organization’s findings and insights into the politics of prisoners.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
Mansa Musa: We hear during this period that the most important election ever in the history of elections is getting ready to take place. We hear that if we don’t come out and vote, that Armageddon going to follow if certain people get elected. This is what we are hearing.
But for the abolitionists and for prisoners, what do this mean for them? What do this mean for us? What do it mean to say that this is the most important election ever when you are sitting in a cell serving triple life sentences? This the most important election ever, and you are in an environment where the judges have complete control over your livelihood.
Joining me today is Nicole Lewis from the Marshall Project to talk about why prisoners are voting for Trump, but more importantly, to give us some insight to the electoral process and electoral assistance as it relates to those of us are on the plantation.
Welcome, Nicole.
Nicole Lewis: Thanks for having me on.
Mansa Musa: First, tell our audience a little bit about yourself before we get into the subject matter.
Nicole Lewis: Yeah, absolutely. So, I’m a journalist. I’m an editor at the Marshall Project, and we are a nonprofit news organization that covers the criminal justice system. And typically, our pieces take a systemic look at issues of abuse, harm, wrongdoing, inequality. We use journalism, we tell stories to shine a bright spotlight on where things are not working. And our mission is to create a national sense of urgency about the criminal justice system.
Mansa Musa: OK. And right there. So, as you’ve seen how my intro as it relates to the electoral process and from the abolition, and I’m talking specifically from an abolitionist perspective or from the carceral… We’re not trying to reform prison, we’re not trying to make sanitized prisons, we’re trying to abolish prison. That’s what the abolitionist position is.
But in that regard, how do the abolitionists, and this is a question that we’ve been proposing lately, what’s the abolitionist perspective on the electoral process?
So, you wrote a piece on why prisoners vote for Trump. So, let’s talk about this, OK. And I’m going to set it up like this here.
All right. When I was locked up, I was telling one of my colleagues this. When I was locked up, I was in one institution, and when I was walking around the institution, they had, throughout the institution, vote for Robert Ehrlich. Robert Ehrlich was a Republican that was running for governor in the State of Maryland. And I’m like, why would anybody in their right mind vote for Ehrlich?
And so, I’m asking around because the population’s somewhat enlightened. I’m asking around, why are we putting this stuff up here saying vote for Ehrlich? And that’s what they said. They said that a Democrat delegate had went to Ehrlich and asked Ehrlich would he be inclined to pardon lifers or cut life with people that had life sentences, cut their sentences or look at their case? And that was the highest issue for prisoners in the State of Maryland at that time.
So, we got a secular interest that’s being represented. And somebody went to a Republican governor, a potential Republican governor saying, would you be inclined to do this? And he said, yeah.
And the delegate came back to us and said, this is what he going to do versus what the Democrat governor is doing or has been doing. So, what’s the difference? OK, we saying don’t vote for Trump or why people vote for Trump, but they saying don’t vote for Trump, but vote Democrat. However, the Democrats are in control now. You got Democratic president, vice president running, in some quarters they call it a top cop. So, why wouldn’t people vote for Trump? Come on.
Nicole Lewis: You framed this really perfectly. I think you’re asking all the right questions here. So, let me back up before I truly get into that answer to just give a little bit more context. So, for the last three elections, I’ve run a survey of incarcerated people. It started in 2020. I did one in 2022, and, of course, I did one ahead of this election in 2024.
So, this year alone, we heard from 54,000 people across 45 different states, prisons, and 745 facilities across the country. So, this is the largest representation that we have right now of what incarcerated people are thinking about this election.
And like you said, it’s been framed in the media as a really consequential and incredibly important election. I think it’s the right question to ask: what does it actually mean for incarcerated people? That’s the intention behind it.
For the last six years I’ve been at TNP as a reporter, I’ve covered felony disenfranchisement laws. So, what I’ve seen is the way that states have reconsidered people losing their voting rights when they’re convicted of a felony.
And so, it’s really important to know that, since the late 1990s, about 2 million people with felony convictions now have regained the right to vote. And so, that’s mostly people on the outside, that’s people coming home, that’s not necessarily people in prison.
So, this is the backdrop under which I’m doing this survey. It’s the first time in 20 years that you’ve got 2 million people with felony convictions who can decide who represents them at all levels of our government.
So, when we take a look inside and we ask incarcerated people, mostly in prison who are not eligible to vote, we say, well, who would you pick? Who’s interesting to you? We’ve actually found, time and again, so we saw it in 2020, we see it again here, that many incarcerated people would choose Trump. They would choose him for president.
And I think it’s really important to know that, by and large, it’s a lot of white men who are incarcerated who feel very strongly about Trump. Black men somewhat, to some degree, but that survey result is really driven by the white prison population. So, that’s just to start there. Trump has white male supporters behind bars. I don’t actually think that that should be that surprising [laughs]. That tracks what we see.
But let me break it down even further. So, when we go and we ask people and we say, well, what is interesting to you about this candidate? Why does he appeal to you? It’s exactly what you’re saying in this previous Maryland race. A lot of people have — Or they have a false understanding, I want to make this really clear because it’s not correct. They have a false understanding that Trump is going to help them get out of prison.
And the reason they believe this is because of some of the work that he did with the First Step Act. That was federal. So, it doesn’t apply to people in state prisons. Because of some of the work that he’s done with Kim Kardashian, because of people like Alice Johnson who he was able to get out of prison. But again, by and large our surveys are entirely people in the state system. And so, it’s not actually asking federal people.
But it’s this idea that permeates the perception of his policy that he’s going to be good for incarcerated people over the facts. So, people might not have full access to news. They might not be able to watch news on the TV. They might not be able to read it. And so, if you hear someone say, Trump, he’s really good for us, he’s going to get us out, that he’s my shot, of course people are going to say, yeah, no, this is my candidate. This makes sense to us.
And so, we’ve seen again and again, like you said, criminal justice issues, getting out of prison, prison reform, abolition to some degree, reentry, release, all of these things are very important to incarcerated people. So, they’re making decisions based on who they think could support them the most.
But there’s more to the story. There’s more to the story there.
The other thing I think is really important to know is that when Kamala entered the race, when she became the Democratic nominee, we actually saw a surge of support for her. So, a lot of people, particularly Black people who were saying originally that they would vote for Trump in a Trump-Biden race, said that they would now choose the VP.
And they’re conflicted about this because a lot of people, we could, again, we could see, and when we followed up with people, we could see people saying, I’m conflicted. She’s a prosecutor. I don’t know what that means in terms of her ability to help me. That seems completely very clear. That seems like her job was putting people away.
But they’re so desperate. There’s such clarity that no system, no party, no person, particularly no man has helped them in their situation, that they’re willing to take a gamble on a woman.
So, it’s this interesting thing where her identity as a woman is now seen as like, well, maybe she would do something different than what these guys have done and not done for us over many, many years. So, it’s a complex situation where people are working on…
Mansa Musa: And on that note right there, and I agree on the complexities of it, because prison’s not monolithic, and everything is motivated by what’s of interest to them.
And I was talking about with one of my colleagues earlier, that the only time we was monolithic in our thinking was from in the early ’60s and to the ’70s, Attica and beyond, where the prison conditions were so horrific that the repression and the brutality forced us into a position where we had to resist. It wasn’t a matter of if you going to resist or you going to die, it’s a matter of resist and possibly live or possibly die, but at least stand and fight.
And so, that attitude of being monolithic was right there. We was talking about the conditions of the prison, the way we was living, the way they was feeding us, the way they was clothing us, and the way they was [inaudible] us. When prison, they started reforming the plantation and coming up with different scenarios of getting people out. That’s where the interest became more secular in terms of what’s in it for me? Which leads me to my next question.
OK. In your survey, it was established that most people thought that Trump, because the first act is responsible for them getting out. OK. But then look at what’s been taking place for the last four years. Because I’m comparing that against… So when you come to me and say, as a candidate or you saying as a candidate that vote for me, but you don’t have on your agenda nothing about prison reform, you don’t have nothing on your agenda about changing family unification, all those things that’s of interest to me.
But I got one example, albeit far-fetched as it might be, that he didn’t do nothing, no more than do a photo op, get somebody out, and he running on the photo op. But I got that as a reference in comparison to what I got from the Democrats. So, how did you survey jails with that?
Nicole Lewis: Yeah, again, such a good question because these are all the issues. So, let me think about where I would start on that. So, I do think that it’s perception over reality for sure.
Mansa Musa: That’s right. That’s right [laughs].
Nicole Lewis: And I think that an important point to be made here is that when Trump was in power, at the end of his term, he went on an execution spree. He was —
Mansa Musa: Yeah, exactly.
Nicole Lewis: We had a moratorium on executions. And so, he killed people. Well, he said, let’s let these executions go forward. So, I wonder if incarcerated people understood the reality, were really able to engage more deeply with what’s happening, would people still feel this way? Have some more thoughts there. So, that’s one thing.
But I will say from what we’ve been looking at and trying to get our heads around both candidates’ policies, both candidates are actually really thin on criminal justice issues right now. There is a lack of clarity on both sides about productive things that people would do.
But I will say still, when we stack the policy perspectives up against each other, Trump is much more punitive. He’s really taking a much more punitive approach. He’s really trying to limit any and all kinds of protections, trying to continue to restart the death penalty. So, it’s pretty clear that if, as a president, he would have a very different policy and position.
Kamala is sort of still undeveloped. She’s a blank slate. We don’t exactly know what a Kamala presidency means.
I think what’s more important for incarcerated people to understand is that the president can only do but so much to affect state policy. And this is really, again, when I’ve covered voting rights, we step back and we say, where could you actually move the needle at the moment? Where does this matter? Why does any of this matter?
The president is limited. They mostly oversee the federal system, federal prisoners, they oversee the BOP. Most people are incarcerated in the state system, and it’s the state leadership that basically determines that policy.
So, where I think the participation, if you were saying to yourself, I care about this democracy. I want to participate, I want to make my voice heard. If that’s your route, then the midterms become really critical elections. And so, those are elections in which people are more likely to choose their governor. They’re more likely to vote. In some states where judges are elected, they get to vote on judges, sheriffs, district attorneys, city council, state legislature, these folks who actually set the policy and the laws for how the state system is going to work.
So, we get so caught up in what’s Kamala going to do for me? What’s Trump going to do for me? And there’s really all these smaller elections where people have much more power to move the needle, to think about reform, to think about releases, to think about improving conditions, to think about how our court system operates.
And so, I’ve always said that incarcerated people have really intimate knowledge. You have real clarity about how the system functions. You have real clarity about whether or not states are using their tax dollars appropriately to house people. Are we harming people? Are people getting the rehabilitation help?
So, I think that there’s real knowledge that’s locked up. There’s a real understanding of is this working? Is this experiment that we have, is it working? Is it productive? Is it doing anything for anyone? Is it just harmful?
So, that’s really what I would say of, I know we pay a lot of attention to what’s Trump or what’s Kamala going to do for me. I would say neither person is going to do much. Trump is objectively, when we compare policy side by side, potentially much more harmful for incarcerated people. But two years from now, in the midterms, it’s really going to be consequential in terms of people’s experiences.
Mansa Musa: And I agree with you on that, because Tip O’Neill, former speaker of the House, said all politics are local.
But I had the opportunity to interview some people in Louisiana and they got an organization called Voices of the Educated. And it’s called, it’s VOTE, Voices of the Educated. What they did, going back to your analysis about the impact of local elections, they was able to mobilize the community to vote around the sheriff election.
But the way they was able to get traction on it was, they went to everybody that was locked up, still locked up, and the ones that was out that was locked up, that went through the county jail, this particular jail, and said, man, listen, we trying to get rid of these sheriffs. You know what the conditions are in this environment. So, it’s not a matter of not knowing that. So, we are asking you to vote for this person because this person is signed onto our agenda saying that they going to do the necessary things to change the conditions.
And they was able to get the sheriff in. And the sheriff did some things and didn’t do other things, because when you dealing with the political aspect of it, you still beholden to your stakeholders, for lack of a better word. But we do get traction and do get changes.
And I think that in terms of what you just said, I think the biggest problem is we are enlightened, but we’re not educated on the electoral system as it relates to local politics.
Like you say, you can’t go nowhere in prison and not find out, talk to somebody, and they don’t know the judicial system, their appeal procedures. OK, I got my direct appeal, now I got a post convicted, I got a habeas corpus, but I do know these… Or somebody in that system is telling me about these things.
But what I don’t know is, and nobody organized me around, is that all the judges on the bench, they come up for elections. You dig what I’m saying?
So, as we close out, talk about why you think that we don’t have that kind of attention nationwide. Because like you say, on the federal level, even on the federal level, the president has so much to do. But even beyond that, the Congress, the judiciary, the committees, and the Congress where the people are locally elected, the congressperson, the Senate person, are locally elected, why you think that we don’t have that kind of insight, or why you think that it’s not being mobilized in that regard?
Nicole Lewis: Yeah, no, this is great. I mean, it’s really what you’re talking about here is if people had more clarity, they could come up with a strategy for how they win. They could make decisions. Yes, absolutely.
And I would say that in this regard, and incarcerated people are really no different than the rest of the public. Midterm elections tend to be the lowest turnout elections. People just don’t show up. Even though the local officials are the people who are going to make the most influential decisions in their lives. So, there’s really not much difference from people on the outside who blow those off as well.
But I think there’s some unique elements to prison. One of the things we always ask in our survey is, how do you get your news? Who do you talk to about this? How would you actually go about educating yourself?
And what we’ve seen is that news is extremely controlled, information is extremely censored. So, even if you wanted to, even if you were like, I’m going to figure this out for myself so I can make decisions, you still might be prevented by the administration from accessing the news and information that you would need to have a clear understanding.
And we see this again and again. We ask people directly because we know how it works. So, we want to say, well, if you wanted to even understand more about your governor, what would you consult? And people tell us, we’re really cut out. We’re really censored. Newspaper clippings don’t come in. By and large now, many prisons have moved towards scanning mail. So, you can imagine you take a newspaper, you scan it down, you can’t even read it anymore.
So, there’s all these systemic barriers that keep people unable to really self-advocate, because information is really that power. So, that’s one component.
I think another component is just a little bit about how politics in this country works. The whole news media, we spend a ton of time on the presidential election. A lot of resources go into covering it. And so, I don’t know that we spend the same amount of time actually, as journalists, I’m saying as my industry, scrutinizing district attorneys, scrutinizing judges, sheriffs. I don’t think that they get the same amount of attention. And it’s harder for us as well. So, we actually can’t see…
The Marshall Project has done some work in Cleveland where we produced a judge’s guide to help Clevelanders make decisions about these folks. We can’t actually even see into their record fully because we don’t have access to the data. It’s really unclear.
So, people in our community are saying, our readers are saying, well, we want to know who’s tough on sentencing? And who sent more Black people? They want to know these. We can’t even truly answer them because of the way data is withheld from the public. It becomes systematically, again, a little bit harder to scrutinize these folks.
So, in the long run, they just don’t get the same amount of media attention. So, if you don’t get the media attention, and then media is censored in prison. So, you see how it works. There’s a lack of information.
But again, I think that it’s incredibly important for incarcerated people to understand that they have insights about the system that are powerful. That they are deeply informed about an aspect of pretty much every state budget. The most expensive item is the carceral system.
So, you’ve got folks who are experiencing it, who have an ability to help the public understand what is not working. And so, I think that when I talk to people, they say, oh, why does it matter? They can’t quite connect what they’ve gone through to how it could be useful in making change. And I say, well, you know something that many people don’t understand. You know something so intimately about what’s broken.
I think that’s really powerful. I think that that is enough to say if voting is the route that you want to go, if voting feels important, to take that knowledge and really think about how you’re going to apply it to the system itself.
So, whenever I’m reporting on people, I say, well, you know more than many of us, it’s my job here to try to even understand. And I feel like I understand a little, but you understand even more. And I think that alone is really powerful, and it’s something that no one can really take away. No one can contradict that you saw it with your own eyes.
Mansa Musa: Right. And Nicole, you rattled the bars today because, at the end of the day, we look at when those of us that’s on the plantation, we have the insight to how we got there. We have the insight to who controlling it. We have the insight to how to get off of it through a system.
I suffer from the apathy when it comes to the electoral process. But at the same token, I recognized after talking to brothers and sisters in Louisiana, looking at DC code, offenders got the right to vote.
And like you said, being educated on understanding that this system, electoral system, is not national, it’s local. And there are a lot of the policies and procedures that we’re trying to have impact or effect, we can have impact and affect them through who we put in the office. And on a local level, we can control that because we have numbers. And I think that’s the takeaway for me in this conversation.
But you got the last word, Nicole. What you want to tell our audience about this system and some of your upcoming work or what you’re doing now?
Nicole Lewis: Sure. Yeah. I would say right to that point of we’re in a really historic moment for voting rights for people with felony convictions. And so, 26 states and the District of Columbia in the last two decades have reconsidered why we even take away people’s voting rights when they go to prison. That’s a question we have to ask ourselves.
And we can see, we can locate that history. For many states, we can see very clearly that felony disenfranchisement was a way to disempower Black communities. This is something that state lawmakers were standing up openly saying at the time, in this period of Reconstruction and Jim Crow.
And so, now we’re in a moment, fast-forward, where many states have said, well, we need to redo that. We need to reconsider that. So, it’s now more than ever, people have more access and ability to participate. It doesn’t mean that they always do. It doesn’t mean that it’s a perfect system.
The other thing I think people should know is that there’s a pretty aggressive backlash to this expansion of voting rights. So, in several states, Republicans are actively trying to undermine the expansion of voting rights. So, I think it’s a really important moment for people to decide to think about that apathy and really question it and say, is this in my best interest? What can I do? No matter what your politics are.
So, as a journalist, I don’t advocate for one party over the other. I don’t advocate for one reform over the other. I’m simply here to provide this information to say you have power, you know something really unique and special. Prison is extremely expensive. So, how you’re treated there really matters. Local actors, local agents, a lot of them you get to vote for. So, you get to decide who wins and who has your interest.
And just to question if anyone says there’s one candidate who’s going to be great for you, I would just question that a little bit to say we really want to make sure that we’re making decisions based off of the full facts. And so, we just got to ask deeper, bigger questions about who’s actually good and why.
Mansa Musa: And if our listeners and our viewers want to follow you or get in touch with you, how can they do that?
Nicole Lewis: Sure. Absolutely. So, you can find all of my work at themarshallproject.org, and it’s Marshall with two L’s. Unfortunately, I’m not really on social media, the way that X has gone. But my email’s online at the Marshall Project.
I would say some of the next work that I’m working on that we’re trying to think about is, my work is actually very designed to understand some of the needs, issues, interests of incarcerated people and their families, and then we try to figure out how do we make work that reflects.
So if people want to email me, it’s just nlewis@themarshallproject.org. Just tell me what’s important to you, what matters, what you’re seeing. And that’s one way we try to make decisions about what kinds of stories we look into.
Mansa Musa: There you have it. Real News, Rattling the Bars. Nicole rattling the bars today. And she reminds us that, as 2.4 million people are in prison, on the plantation, those of us that have our voting rights restored, is apathy in our best interest when it comes to the electoral process? Is it sitting back, not doing nothing in our better interests? Is it sitting back, vilifying the candidates and saying, have nothing to do with me in our best interest? Or is it, as we heard, becoming more informed about this system and how we can utilize this system to effectively change?
Because at the end of the day, we’re the ones that’s sitting behind the doors locked down. At the end of the day, we’re the ones that’s being denied parole. We’re the ones being given harsh sentences. We’re the ones who our families don’t have access to because of a myriad of reasons. And we can change these things if we can change these things. Or are we willing to try to change these things? To utilize this mechanism as a technique as opposed to anything other than that.
Thank you, Nicole. I really appreciate you coming on. And we ask that y’all continue to support The Real News and Rattling the Bars because it’s only on The Real News and Rattling the Bars you are going to get someone like Nicole Lewis to come in and educate us on this system, and educate us on all the myths associated with the electoral system and how this is being shaped to get us to look a certain way at certain candidates, as opposed to looking into ourselves and how we can utilize our own strength and our own powers.
We ask you continue to do this, and because there’s only one reason we ask, we are actually The Real News.
Policing and prison abolition policy questions have been minimized in the lead-up to the 2024 November election, despite their significance in the last election cycle. Yet these ideas have finally pierced into mainstream debate, and committed prison abolitionists are tirelessly organizing to free incarcerated people, improve conditions within the prison system, and close or prevent the opening of new correctional facilities. Rattling the Bars looks back on the past year of discussions with abolitionists on the stakes and political lessons leading up to November’s presidential election.
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A corrected version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa: On Tuesday, this country will be holding elections for Presidency as well as other national, state and local elections. Nationwide the cry is that the election for presidency is the most important elections this nation will be having. Rattling the Bars and The Real News have been focusing on the impact the elections will have on the prison industrial complex. More importantly how does the abolition movement look at the electoral system. What role does it play in the abolishment of the prison industrial complex. You can hear the views of abolitionists from previously recorded interviews.
Back in May we covered the Free Her March where formerly incarcerated women were calling for clemency for 100 women:
Mansa: Okay. We got the Bronx with us today. Why are you here today?
Star:
Because we’re here to petition the President, and everybody else on his team, to grant clemency to Michelle West, and all the other women who deserve it.
Speaker 8:
He told us when we was here four years ago that he was going to free a hundred women within the hundred days of him being in office. And he has not done any of what he said he was going to do. So we’re here today asking for him to free our women, and free them now.
Star:
We are tired of giving the Democrats what they want, and they don’t give us what we need.
Speaker 3:
So what do we want?
Star:
We want freedom for all women and girls. We want rehabilitation, and alternatives to incarceration.
Speaker 9:
We want Michelle West Free!
Miquelle West:
I’m Miquelle West, Michelle West’s daughter. My mom was incarcerated when I was ten years old for a drug conspiracy case. And she’s serving two life sentences and 15 years.
Speaker 9:
I represent the women that want to be free. Let our women be free. Let our women out of [inaudible 00:04:06].
Music:
Music
Group:
Cut it down!
Speaker 10:
[inaudible 00:04:36].
Group:
Cut it down!
Speaker 10:
[inaudible 00:04:39]
Speaker 11:
Stop criminalizing us for poverty, stop criminalizing us for how we cope from this trauma that has been put on us historically, and continues into this present day. Free my sisters.
Speaker 12:
The women get treated badly. The women get raped in jail. All kinds of things. I served federal time, and I know what it’s like to be in there. And I say free women today.
Andrea James:
We told them to free those women, and they didn’t do it. They’re sending them to other prisons that, guess what? Also are raping our sisters inside of the federal system. So we’ve got a lot of work to do, people.
Laura Whitehorn:
The response is to move all the women at once, all of a sudden to just throw them out into places all over the country with no preparation, no bathroom facilities. They’re being, as one of them said, the men who raped them, should, and are, going to prison. And the women are being punished now because they’re saying that the BOP, which can’t control their own staff, has to close the prison because they can’t manage it. And they take the women. I’ve been walking with different friends of mine who were in Dublin with me.
Speaker 3:
Right.
Speaker 14:
It was not a low-security place at that point. And we’re all having flashbacks of what it was to be transferred in that way, where you’re treated like a sack of laundry, except that you’re chained up. You’re chained at the waist. You can’t use the bathroom for hours, you get no food. They sat on a bus for five hours in the parking lot of the prison. And then at the end of five hours, they were taken back into the prison. They said, “Oh, we don’t know where to take you.” So the way that they’re being treated and then their families… Some people have children and their families are in the Bay Area. So the children were able to visit their moms in the prison, and now the moms have been sent like across country.
Mansa:
All this is the remedy for their abusive behavior. The remedy for their abusive behavior become more abusive.
Mansa Musa: Hear Andrea James, founder and executive director of the National Council for incarcerated Women and Girls and Families for Justice as Healing.
Andrea James:
We were incarcerated in the federal system. We were in prison with sisters who are never coming home unless their sentences are commuted. So it’s kind of different when you determine what space you’re going to work out of when you haven’t had the full experience of what we’re talking about here. But if you were like us, if you were women that were incarcerated in the federal system, who were mothers, who were wives, who were aunties, and grandmothers and sisters, and moms in particular, we have been separated from our children, but some of us had the opportunity to go to prison and come home. So we’re fighting for sisters that unless we get clemency for them, they’ll never come home. And we’ve got to really understand that. We’re talking about is the liberation of our people, and we want to bring attention to the intentionality of incarceration of our people and the policies that led up to that. Now, we started our work after, we started organizing in the federal prison for women in Danbury, Connecticut in 2010, and brought the work-out with us starting in 2011. And then other sisters inside Justine Moore, Virginia Douglas, Big Shay, they started to come home. So it wasn’t rocket science for us, but in the federal prison, you would see this from all over the country, sometimes from different Black communities around the world.
And so it wasn’t rocket science for us to stop this work. But we started in the prison realizing not really totally clear about what clemency was as a tool. But after coming home in 2011, that became crystal clear to us. We met Amy Povah at CAN-DO Clemency. She taught us a lot about clemency as a tool. And then of course, President Obama, who we got in front of and who centered women and brought us to the White House. But also we should not be going backwards from what President Obama did with clemency.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, let’s pick up on right there because, all right, now for the benefit of our audience, clemency is a federal mandate and it’s top heavy in its bureaucracy. Honest you know-
Andrea James:
It’s a tool, it’s a privilege bestowed upon. It’s not a mandate, it’s a tool. It’s bestowed upon the President of the United States to grant relief to people from their sentences. And that takes many forms. It could be freedom, immediate freedom, commuting your sentence, meaning it only stops the sentence that you are serving from within a carceral place, a prison.
We decided at some point you can only go so far with what’s happening in Congress right now, who’s controlling Congress, what they’re paying attention to. We fought so hard against the passage of the First Step Act, the way it was presented, because it’s been a big smoke screen. And we knew when Congress passed First Step that it really wasn’t what we needed. It didn’t address the people who needed to get out. It called out the very people that needed the most relief and so how could we ever support a bill like that. And we never crossed over in support of it, even though we fought valiantly to try and add retroactivity and other things to the first step. And then it was put into the hands of the most vile regime of a think tank called the Heritage Foundation also responsible now for project 2025 to implement the First Step Act. And it’s just, we are one of the few, I don’t know if any other organizations have done it, but our legal division led by our senior council, Catherine Sevcenko, has followed the implementation of the First Step Act. And it’s been just a sham. It’s been a [inaudible 00:13:59], but the PR on it would make anybody think that everybody who’s come like 30,000 people got released because of First Step Act. That’s not true. But I digress.
So when we talk about the FIX [Clemency] Act, at some point, yes, we have to weigh in. We need legislators who are directly affected like Congresswoman Ayanna, Pressley, to carry these bills forward for us and to at least put them into existence knowing that we got a big struggle to get them to go anywhere because the members of Congress were satisfied with the First Step Act. As abysmal as it is, they weren’t going to center criminal justice reform in any significant following that for years, we knew that. That’s the path of how things go. We haven’t heard a peep about criminal justice reform other than Trump wanting to bring the death penalty back for drug dealers. We haven’t even heard. It’s not even on the current candidates platforms.
And so we had to shift our energy to, and it’s not really a shift, it’s just, what are we picking up now to being present and to make sure that the concept of liberation of our people isn’t just left to hope somebody’s going to keep it at the forefront? That’s our job. Nobody’s coming to save us. If nobody gives a shit about our issue. If you’re going to do this work, you have to be consistent in finding ways of staying in the public eye, of showing up, of taking up space, of getting in the street. And so that’s what we did with the 10th anniversary.
We did this, did this 10 years ago in 2014, and that’s how we got the attention, because of the work of civil rights lawyer, Nkechi Taifa who brought the National Council and the sisterhood to the attention of President Obama and Valerie Jarrett to say, “Yo Prez, we see you. We see you equating. We see you connecting clemency to racial justice. That clemency is racial justice. We see you going into the federal prisons.” How could it be that he was the first President of the United States to go to visit a federal prison? How could that be?
Mansa Musa: In August, The Real News’s Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez and I talked to David Schultz, a criminal reform and social justice advocate, about How poor and working-class voters navigate an electoral system that doesn’t serve them.
Max: So I wanted to ask just as two guys on the front lines of that struggle, what do you think the pundit class covering the elections in mainstream media should learn about the conversations that y’all are having and that folks in these communities are having about the election right now?
David Schultz:
Okay, yeah. So I’ll start with that one. So I would say it’s important for individuals. I think being in Washington DC obviously puts us in a unique position because we’re obviously a very political city. I guess it’s different when I go to different areas, different cities. I was just traveling. Recently, I was in Chicago, and of course it was very political there because we’re getting ready to have the Democratic and national convention. But usually it’s not.
So that puts us in a unique perspective to see how politics really affect our everyday lives. I think you’re a hundred percent correct. I think that individuals that are from smaller, more rural areas really want to see and are more concerned with that direct impact. And so elections for them kind of seem like this far away thing. It’s like they kind of drop something in a box and if they’re the person they like personality wise really, or who agrees with them on more things than the other, then that’s how they go for.
But they don’t really do their research on the candidates as well as they should to see really are they living up to what they’re saying? Are they voting this way even though they’re saying they might be voting this way? And so I think that it’s important for the pundits, so to speak, to really listen to grassroots individuals because we are the ones that matter. We are the people that they say in the constitution. We are the ones that are the make everything one. We’re the working class. So at the end of the day, our vote matters and they want our vote. So I think it’s imperative that they listen to what our needs and specific asks are.
Mansa Musa:
I think on the grassroots, when you’re dealing with a grassroots level, it’s imperative that we educate the people that’s affected because like you say, people want jobs. People want quality education. People want safe living environment. People want food quality, cheap food. As far as food prices being so high. People want rent control. They don’t want to be living in squalor and then paying astronomical fees to live there.
So it’s important that we educate… When you’re dealing with the grassroots, it’s important that you educate the population to understand that you have to find a candidate that’s going to represent your interest. When the Black Panther Party bring Bobby Seale for mayor. They wasn’t running Bobby Seale for mayor, to try to get Bobby Seale to be the mayor, they was educating people about how, like Dave said earlier, where the monies come from, how the monies are allocated, and how you can have a voice in monies being allocated to your neighborhood, to clean up your neighborhood, to have the trash collected.
How monies could be allocated towards medical or universal healthcare for everyone. So when I look at it from the grassroots level, I’m always in my mind… My mind is always in this area, educating the people about the electoral process, educating the people about, “Okay, if you get involved with this process, then make sure you had a candidate that’s going to represent your interest because the candidate is going to come and say what they think you want to hear.”
They’re going to put on all kinds of activities to motivate your interest. But when it does settle and they leave, trash hasn’t been collected. It’s high unemployment rate in your neighborhood, housing, you live in a squalor. You’re not safe and your children being targeted because you’re not safe. So when I look at it from the perspective, I look at it from a perspective that it is incoming from me and people that’s in that space to educate the people on the budget, educate the people on electoral process, educate the people on how to go about vetting account. Like you say, candidates have listening sessions.
So when a candidate have a listening session, then it’s coming from people like myself and Dave to get people to come down there and educate in electorate like ask questions about, “Okay.” Because if you don’t do what we say you supposed to do, same way we elected you in, we can get the recall and get you out.
David Schultz:
Can I just add one quick thing? Can I just say from a grassroots level to answer your other question is what the individuals are saying is the basic needs is what they’re struggling with when it comes to housing and especially affordable housing, it doesn’t matter if you’re a returning citizen, if you’re just a working class individual, that basic need is a struggle that basically grassroots individuals are really looking to have fixed this election cycle.
And just the basic necessity of being able to keep food on their table and be able to feed their kids. So I know it sounds basic, but that’s what I’ve been hearing a lot of in the community and what they are really focusing on this election cycle.
Mansa Musa: And we recently sat down with Jeronimo Aguilar and John Cannon to talk about Prop. 6, initiative to have removed from California State Constitution it’s version of the 13-amendment legalizing slavery.
Mansa: I want you to give us a history lesson on how the code that came to exist that’s legalized slavery in California. Because you made an interesting observation before, and we was talking about it again, how we got this perception of California as being the big Hollywood, Rolls Royce.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Yeah, thank you, Mansa. Yeah, no, you’re right, man. We got this idea of what California is. Not only the palm trees and the Rolls Royce, and it’s always sunny, but also that we’re soft on crime, and that criminals are out able to just do whatever they want out here, and there’s no law and order, and all that kind of stuff.
The reality is, the prison-industrial complex out here is as crooked and oppressive as it is in any state of the union. And so, when you talk about especially this exception clause, and specifically here in California, it’s the exception to involuntary servitude. But like we say, as you can see on my background there, one of our main messaging points is that involuntary servitude is slavery.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
So, they try to lessen it or give it a fancy name, but the reality is the practice is the same thing, of subjugating human beings to work against their will.
So, when you talk about involuntary servitude in California, the history, like you mentioned, it goes all the way back to when California became a state. So, back in 1849. Remember, this territory here was territory of Mexico up until then. You had the expansionist, I wouldn’t even really call it a war, but an assault on Mexico in 1848, which ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
That treaty was not honored. Or like most of the treaties that the US [inaudible] with folks of Indigenous ancestry, them treaties were nothing but opportunities for the forked tongue, as they say, to get what they want.
And so, what happened is the land was taken, and Indigenous folks, Indigenous mixed with Spanish folks, became immigrants overnight. And with that said, what you started seeing was the first Constitution of California in 1849 has that exception clause that we see today. It says that involuntary servitude is prohibited except for punishment for a crime. It’s not that exact wording, but it’s the same exact practice.
And so, that set things up. That set the stage for 1850, you started seeing this. So, this is the year right after it became a state and the constitution was introduced. You see the 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians.
And again, the forked tongue. The way that they named the act, you would think, oh, they’re protecting Indians, when in fact, it was a vagrancy law that they used to criminalize Indigenous people, and subsequently enslave them under the exceptions to involuntary servitude.
And so, I want to add to that. Indigenous peoples were already being enslaved by the Spanish colonial powers. We’ll talk about the mission system. So, the Southwest and California, a lot of it was already built by the enslavement of Indigenous peoples.
When you talk about colonization, and once the Spanish came and that era of terror, and then Mexico getting its independence, and you’ve seen Mexico actually outlaw slavery for a period of time while that practice of servitude was brought back once the US took the land from Mexico.
And so, like I said, from 1849 on, up until now, you’ve seen the consistent criminalization of Indigenous, Brown folks, later, obviously, our African brothers and sisters that were enslaved and brought to this continent, and also that ended up migrating, trying to find free states, trying to find places where they can actually be free from the subjugation of slavery, only to find the same kind of practices happening over here in the Southwest.
And so, following that 1850 Act of Government and Protection of Indians, which actually turned what’s now LA Federal Courthouse, was a vibrant slave auction. Based on that law, you saw acts like the Greaser Act, which passed in 1855. It’s another vagrancy law. If you look at the actual statute, the statute reads, “Dealing with the issue of those of Spanish and Indian blood.” And so really, you’re talking about folks like me. Chicanos, Mexicans, those that are of Spanish or Latino and Indigenous ancestry.
And I think the point, and the benefit for our audience, I think you well represented the case to how they codified laws —
Jeronimo Aguilar:
That’s right.
Mansa Musa:
…To make sure that this exception clause could be enacted under any and all circumstances.
John, so now we’re at a place where in terms of y’all organized around the abolishment of slavery, the legal form of slavery as we know it now. Talk about y’all Proposition 6, John.
John Cannon:
So, Proposition 6 would us actually be reversing Article 1, Section 6 of the California Constitution, which is basically just like the 13th Amendment of the United States.
So, Proposition 6, what it would do right now is give a person autonomy over their own body, give a person choice whether they want to work or not. Because as it is now, you have no choice whether to work or not. So, Proposition 6, it would prioritize rehabilitation over forced labor.
So, what that will look like is, right now as it stands, if you’re inside and you’re working, they assign you a job automatically. And whether you want to do college courses or rehabilitative courses or anything else, you’re not able to, because you’re assigned a job. You don’t get to pick the job. You don’t get to choose if you want a job. If you’re assigned the job, you have to do it.
So, if you did want to, say, take an anger management course, or seek anything to rehabilitate yourself, and that aligns at the same time as your job, you’ll have to go to that job or you’ll be punished for refusing to work.
Whether you have a death in the family, you have to go to work, or you’ll be punished for refusing. And all these cases happened to me while I was incarcerated, and you’re getting punished for refusing to work. You’re losing days off your sentence, you’re losing phone time, you’re losing all type of things if you refuse to work. So, Prop 6 would actually give a person their own choice over their own body, over their own rehabilitation.
Mansa: how do y’all address, or how will y’all address… We know Proposition 6 coming to effect, but we also know that prison has become privatized on multiple levels. The privatization of prison is the food service is private, the commissary is private, the industry is private, the way the clothes is being made. Everybody has got involved in terms of putting themselves in a space where they become a private entity.
How will Proposition 6 address that? Because what’s going to ultimately happen, the slave master ain’t going to give up the slave freely. They’re going to create some type of narrative or create some kind of forceful situation where, oh, if you don’t work, you ain’t going to get no days, and you can come over here and work, and… You see where I’m going there with this?
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Yep. Yep.
Mansa Musa:
So, did y’all see that? Do y’all see it as a problem? Or have y’all looked at that and be prepared to address it?
Jeronimo Aguilar:
No, no doubt, Mansa. I think that this is really the first step for us, because it’s going to be a long road. And those of us that have been incarcerated or have fought against the carceral system, you know that every time you do something, they’re going to figure out a way to retaliate, and to find a way to try to circumvent it, they’re going to try to find a way to basically make whatever you’re doing obsolete so they can continue their practice.
And so on our end, it was a really long and tedious process with the language, but we wanted to make sure was that we weren’t just passing something that was symbolic, that ended up just being, oh, okay. We’re removing some words out of the constitution, we all feel better about ourselves, and people that are incarcerated are going through the same conditions.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Status quo. Go ahead.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Status quo. Exactly. So, the language in Proposition 6, and what was ACA 8 when we passed it in the legislature to get it on the ballot, actually says that any person that’s incarcerated cannot be punished for refusing a work assignment. Cannot be [crosstalk].
So what that does is, it’s not going to stop CDCR from definitely trying to circumvent things. But what it does is it gives folks a pretty strong legal stance. So, if they do continue to be forced to work and disciplined for refusing to work, they can go to court. And we feel, with the language that we now have in the constitution, which is supposed to be the highest letter of the law, they’re going to have a pretty strong legal stance to stand on when they get to court.
Mansa Musa: We have amplified the voices of the abolition movement. We don’t give voice to the voiceless, because everyone has a voice. We just turn up the volume. Thank you for watching Rattling the Bars on The Real News Network.
Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina, including its prisons. Yet rather than evacuate incarcerated people, the state left prisoners locked up in their cells without running water or light to survive the storm on their own. Schuyler Mitchell, who recently covered this story for The Intercept, speaks to Rattling the Bars about this manmade disaster and its consequences.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. Imagine you are told that a major storm is coming your way, a hurricane of Katrina proportion is coming your way, and you’re told to evacuate. Would you evacuate or would you remain where you at? But more importantly, imagine that you cannot evacuate because you are incarcerated, because you are a prisoner in the prison industrial complex, in a carceral system that has no evacuation plans for the people that are incarcerated, or are imprisoned, or on the plantation. Joining me today is Schuyler Mitchell, who wrote an article called Hurricane-Struck North Carolina Prisoners Were Locked in Cells With Their Own Feces For Nearly a Week. Welcome, Schuyler.
Schuyler Mitchell:
Hi, thank you so much for having me.
Mansa Musa:
All right, and tell our audience a little bit about yourself, Schuyler.
Schuyler Mitchell:
Yeah, so I’m an independent investigative journalist. I am a columnist at Truthout, and then I also report for places including The Intercept, which is where I wrote this investigation. I report on a lot of different things, but lots of different instances of power, corruption, cases where the people in power, or powerful corporations, or whatever it is, aren’t treating people with dignity or kind of doing what they’re supposed to be doing. So I do some reporting and research on the prison industrial complex. So yeah, I started working on this story after Hurricane Helene.
Mansa Musa:
Right, and I’m going to open up by saying, well, it’s a quote that you had in your article, say, “We thought we were going to die there. We didn’t think anybody was going to come back for us.” Did anybody come back for them, or if they did come back, how did they come back?
Schuyler Mitchell:
Yeah, so for context, so Hurricane Helene hit in the middle of the night, late Thursday night, early morning hours, Friday, September 27th. And at this one institution called Mountain View in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, from late that night until Wednesday, October 2nd, nearly a week, they didn’t think anybody was going to come back for them. They had no running water, no potable water. There was a shipment of potable drinking water that came several days in. But before that, they were drinking from the sinks is what family members told me, not knowing that what they were essentially drinking was sewer water, because it was non-potable water after the hurricane hit.
They didn’t have lights in their cells, there were some emergency lights that a generator supplied in common areas. And the generator supplied, I heard, power to the prison guards’ laptops or computers, but they didn’t have power in the cell. So yeah, so for five days, thinking about being in darkness, some people reported having water in their cells from flooding if you were on the bottom floor of the facility. Very few food rations. You know, crackers for breakfast or a piece of bread with peanut butter for dinner, and the response was slow.
So there were several facilities throughout Western North Carolina that were eventually evacuated. It was very disorganized is what family members told me, right, where in the case of Mountain View, it’s less than half a mile away from another facility called Avery-Mitchell. And Avery-Mitchell also, their power went out, their water lines were busted, but they got evacuated 24 hours before Mountain View did.
And when you’re in those conditions, 24 hours, and you don’t know if anybody’s going to come save you, that’s a long time, when they’re right next to each other. So the family members were saying they didn’t understand why one facility got evacuated first, and even that one, they had a multi-day delay. And there was a period of many days where family members were trying to get information about what was happening at these facilities, but prisons are by design a black box. It’s really hard [inaudible 00:04:37]-
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Schuyler Mitchell:
… information about what’s going on.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, let’s talk about this, then. Okay, how did you become involved? Somebody reached out to you and asked that you could possibly intervene or make some noise about their conditions? That’s how you initially got involved, or was you just doing your due diligence?
Schuyler Mitchell:
Yeah, so it’s actually the second. I knew that Western… I’m originally from North Carolina, I’m not from the mountains, but I know, I grew up going there a lot, I spent a lot of time there, I knew that there were lots of facilities that were in the path of the hurricane. And so I just started doing some research to see if I had seen any other reporting about what happened at those prisons. And there was actually a press release on the morning of October 2nd from the North Carolina Department of Corrections that said that they’d evacuated a certain number of facilities. [inaudible 00:05:33]-
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Schuyler Mitchell:
… was five. And so then, what I did was I actually took the names of the different facilities from that press release, and I put them on Facebook, because after the hurricane, Facebook was still a big place for where people were exchanging information. There were all these different Facebook groups, like Hurricane Helene Safety Check-In, where people were posting, trying to find their loved ones. It was a horrible situation across the western part of the state. But what I saw when I put in the name Mountain View or Avery-Mitchell were posts for days of people posting in these groups, commenting on the Department of Corrections Facebook page, saying, “What’s going on? Do you have any information for me?”
And then, finally, after several days, on October 2nd, there were a couple posts from people who said, “I finally heard from my loved one, he gave me a call. He’s been evacuated, but for days, they were in horrible conditions.” And people were posting that, and so I just reached out to them and I spoke to… There were at least five people I spoke to that had direct knowledge of what happened at Mountain View, but then I also spoke to like five or four more family members as well from other facilities.
And everybody had the same story about lack of communication and just utter panic for nearly a week, just not knowing what was going on. And then, specifically in the case of Mountain View, everybody told me the exact same things about their loved ones calling them, finally, after nearly a week and saying, “I’m okay. I’m now on the eastern part of the state, but the things that I saw in Mountain [inaudible 00:07:11] for nearly a week were just horrible.” And having to defecate in plastic bags because the toilets are full.
You know, I went to the Department of for comment. Obviously as a journalist, it’s something that you have to go to them for comment. And what the spokesperson said to me, they acknowledged that this had happened, and they were like, “That was a solution that they devised on their own,” and were kind of dismissive, which is interesting, because the question is, “Well, why did they have to devise that solution?” So yeah, I actually found the story just from looking on Facebook and reaching out to people who had been impacted.
Mansa Musa:
And in terms of the information, and you definitely was able to capture what was going on in real time. Talk about the… Because you just mentioned about the Department of Corrections or the Division of Corrections response, and they sanitized it in certain quotes. You know, “No, no, we had water,” plausible denial. But talk about, in your investigation, was you ever able to discern from them, do they have evacuation plans for these type of events?
Schuyler Mitchell:
I mean, they said they did. Again, it’s like a black box, so it’s really hard to know. I think what we do know from what happened is that there was not a proactive response. If they’d had a proactive plan in place, there wouldn’t have been a five-day period where people weren’t knowing when their next meal was coming, or not knowing if they would have enough water. One of the things that I heard was people making decisions about, “Should I use this water to bathe myself or drink it?” You know, because there were limited rations.
So I don’t know what the plan was. Eventually, they did follow through on a plan, because they did evacuate certain facilities. But who’s to say what if things went according to their plan that they already had in place, that either way, the outcome was not what it should have been. And I did see that there is actually a petition circulating, asking the federal system… And so I should clarify, these were state prisons, but the federal DOJ, they also have a Bureau of Prisons. And yeah, there was a petition circulating, asking the government to have a clear evacuation plan in place. And I think we saw this happen then again in Florida, right, with Hurricane [inaudible 00:09:53]-
Mansa Musa:
Right, right, talk about that.
Schuyler Mitchell:
… after. Yeah, so less than, what, less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene, Hurricane Milton was barreling towards Florida, and there were state correctional facilities that were in the mandatory evacuation zones that were not evacuated. Ultimately, I didn’t see any reporting after that said… There was a lot of coverage of Florida before that happened I think because of the situation had just happened in North Carolina. I think people were more attuned to the fact that this was something that they needed to keep an eye on, the fact that incarcerated people just are often overlooked and [inaudible 00:10:30]-
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Schuyler Mitchell:
So there was definitely a lot more pressure on the State Department of Corrections in advance of Hurricane Milton to evacuate facilities. I don’t believe they did, but it’s just another example of different state systems also have different policies and respond in different ways. And one of the things that the family members I spoke with fed again and again was just people, they feel overlooked, they feel like nobody cares. And obviously, lots of people are really hurting across Western North Carolina from [inaudible 00:11:07] hurricane, but people often just don’t think about people who didn’t have any choice to evacuate or any choice of what they were going to do when the storm hit.
And we know there were lots of people that were missing after the hurricane, but these are all people that are in the state’s care, right? It’s the state’s responsibility to ensure their well-being. There should have never been a period where people didn’t know where their loved ones were. They knew, they were in the state system. Yeah, and it’s just going to be an issue that’s going to continue.
The Intercept actually did a project several years ago called Climate and Punishment, where they mapped DHS data about prisons across the country, with different information about wildfire, heat, and flood [inaudible 00:11:54]-
Mansa Musa:
Right, right, right.
Schuyler Mitchell:
And they did this in-depth investigation about the impact of the climate crisis on prisons. But whether it’s flooding, or severe heat, or wildfires, this is just an issue that’s not going away. And I think it’s right to call for more transparency about what the plan is in these.
Mansa Musa:
And I want to unpack some of you say for the benefit of our audience. Like you say, a mandatory evacuation site, a lot of the plantations in the prison industrial complex is in areas that will be evacuated, because of any type of climate situation, or be it, like you say, fires, or hurricanes, or rain, or inclement weather, like frigid weather. A lot of these prisons or a lot of these plantations are in these areas that they designate. They designate this as an evacuation zone, “This is a mandatory evacuation.”
So the reality is that they could look at it and say, “Okay, this is a mandatory evacuation zone. Oh, we got four facilities that house anywhere from 2,500 to 3,000 people collectively, or more.” And in terms of, all right, you recognize that the population that need to be evacuated, but when you start making an assessment of evacuation, they don’t even include them in the conversation. They’re not even included in the conversation in the sense of, “Okay, they’re in the path of Hurricane Helene. We know it’s coming, we telling people to get out of town. What is our plan for this population right here?”
They don’t have no plan, because that’s by the design. It’s by design. You know, according to the 13th Amendment, we are slaves under the system of the 13th Amendment. So therefore, the value that’s associated with our lives is not. Was you able to glean this from your research, or from this particular article, or your study in general?
Schuyler Mitchell:
Yeah, I mean, so the interesting thing in Western North Carolina was there weren’t the same mandatory evacuation orders, just because I think that region is not used to seeing these types of hurricanes. So I think it just really walloped the area. And it did take people by surprise, even though there were warnings and forecastings. But unlike in the case of Florida, where there were absolutely mandatory evacuation zones, where they’ve made the explicit choice not to evacuate those prisons…
I think, yeah, I mean, but in reporting on the prison system, you see this time and time again, where it’s incredibly hard, for example, for incarcerated people to win cases that they bring against prisons or prison guards for mistreatment, or for instances where their human rights have been violated. The bar for winning those lawsuits and getting any sort of justice is intentionally set really high. One of the women that I spoke with for my article, her husband was one of the people at Mountain View. They have three kids, a teenager and two young kids. And she said to me that she herself has also been in prison before. And she said, “When he was telling me about some of his experiences in the past, I didn’t really believe it could be that bad. But then, I actually was on the inside and I saw it myself.”
And that’s something that didn’t even make its way into the piece, but she was saying… But she was the one who said, actually at the end of the story, “When you’re in there, you’re treated less than a human. You’re treated like a rabid dog,” and that was an exact quote. And so yeah, once you start talking to people, lots of people have similar stories, and I think the climate crisis really exacerbates these existing inequalities, and really reveals how neglected people can be. And when I went for comment to the Department of Corrections, they said, “Well, lots of people in Western North Carolina have it way worse.” That was almost exactly what the response was. And even just in the official statement, there wasn’t a full, of course, acknowledgement of what people had said that they had gone through.
One of the other things that was interesting to me about Mountain View was actually a day before the hurricane hit, somebody committed suicide at that facility. And what one of the women said to me, she was asking questions about, “What was it like there, that he decided that he needed… That was his only way out?” And Mountain View, it’s single cells, so people are locked in their cells for most of the hours of the day, and they’re allowed to do their job for the lunch hour. But it was pretty high, it was a medium-security facility, but there wasn’t a lot of freedom of movement at that facility.
And it’s not the exact same thing as solitary, but everybody I spoke to… I spoke to somebody also who was incarcerated and who lived through everything that happened at Mountain View. His partner was able to connect me with him through the Department of Corrections phone system. And I spoke to him, and they all say that it’s a pretty… Even when there’s not a hurricane, it’s not a great place to be. I guess nobody expects prisons to be great or anything like [inaudible 00:17:58]-
Mansa Musa:
Right. No, I understand. [inaudible 00:17:58]-
Schuyler Mitchell:
… learn about it. It’s quite bad, the conditions that people have to-
Mansa Musa:
And the crazy part about that is, like you say, it’s medium security, and the security paradigm, you have max, medium, minimum, and pre-release. So in the case of Mountain View, most of these individuals are transitioning out. So it’s not like they’re having served significant time. But more importantly, the reality is that the system in North Carolina or throughout this country is really designed to dehumanize us, to ignore our humanity.
And when, like you say, global warming, climate crisis that’s developing in the world, people that’s incarcerated or on the plantation, we got it bad, because we’re not considered human to begin with. We’re considered slaves. And in terms of the monies that’s going to be invested in trying to get us out of a situation that’s a natural disaster, is not priority for the state. But answer this question, have you ever been able to glean, like is it a FEMA response that could be used for this type of situation, in hindsight?
Schuyler Mitchell:
I’m not sure about how the FEMA response would overlap with the State Department of Corrections, unfortunately. Yeah, I think that again, what we do now is that this is a population of people that are always an afterthought, and yeah, whatever resources that can be made available to prevent this from happening again, clearly, there’s a need for that. But yeah, I don’t know about FEMA specifically in this case.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, and in terms, as we get ready to close out, because you talk to the family members, and tell our audience how your sense coming from them, their anxiety and their stress, as it relates to this type of situation? Because really, we need people to understand that, okay, “You saying that I did something to go to prison, got that. You’re saying that I’m serving a sentence, got that. You’re saying that I’m going to be confined to a prison, got that. But you’re also saying, according to the Constitution of the United States, I can’t be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. I got to be treated like a human being at some junction. But at the same token, my family is not locked up, my family is not sentenced to a certain time, and my family is my family, and taxpayers, and have a right to know what’s going on with me.” Talk about the family members or your conversation. What did you take away from them?
Schuyler Mitchell:
Yeah, I mean, my conversations with family members were incredibly moving. And I spoke to people who… This was an all-men’s prison, so it was people’s sons, partners, husbands, yeah, siblings, whatever that were in there. And one of the things that someone said to me, she was like, “Nobody cares or pays attention to this until someone like you, a journalist starts looking into it.” That was one sentiment that I heard. There was another woman where her 26-year-old son was one of the people in the prison, and she was saying, “He might be 26, but he’s still my son. And I called around and I got a voicemail for somebody who works in the prison system, and the voicemail said, ‘Please only leave messages in the case of emergency. Don’t leave a message if you’re asking about the whereabouts of a certain inmate’,” was the voicemail. And she said to me, she was like, “How dare he say that? Because it is an emergency if I don’t know where my son is.”
And another person said, “My Sammy, my loved one, he did something bad. He deserves to serve his time, but he’s still a person [inaudible 00:22:18]-“
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Schuyler Mitchell:
“… and he’s still very much loved.” And that was, of course, the message over, and over, and over again was like, these are people, people love them. They knew they were going to prison. They didn’t sign up for being cruel and unusual punishment, days of not being evacuated. And yeah, I think if everybody could have the conversations that I had… I mean, I was very grateful to these people for opening up to me and trusting me with their stories. I think there’s so much more coverage that needs to be done on this issue.
I mean, there’s just no end to the amount of abuses that take place across the federal and state prison system. I mean, this wasn’t even a private prison, so that’s a whole other layer. But yeah, everybody just really was saying that they felt like no one cared and they felt unheard. And I think one of the things that is good about doing this work is you do see how many people do care and want to talk about this issue. And I think as many people that can to spread important information about the prison system, like what you’re doing on the show, and report on the issue, it’s so important, and people really, really value that.
Mansa Musa:
And as we close out, I want to make sure that I always understand what we’re talking about, because if this same situation took place in a foreign country, that United States citizens was being held in captivity, that a national disaster came through there, and it came back to this country that they were standing in their feces, they was drinking sewer water, they didn’t know whether they were going to live or die, they was given food that was not nutritional, we would be up in arms and an uproar, protesting, everybody, the four winds, talking about taking any funding we giving this country, stopping everything.
We are coming short in sending a [inaudible 00:24:21] courier over there to take our people out there or take their citizen out. We’re talking about right here in the United States of America, and where we don’t have the common decency as a state to recognize that we are dealing with human beings, no matter what they did, that this is human beings that we’re dealing with. As we close out, what do you want our audience to take away from this article, Ms. Mitchell?
Schuyler Mitchell:
Yeah, I mean, I think what you just said is a really great point. I think yeah, what I want people to take away from this article is this is one specific prison, one specific case after one specific hurricane. I mean, think about it on a national scale, think about how many people we have in this country that are incarcerated. We have a massive prison industrial complex. Yeah, and I think just as we are all increasingly impacted by natural disasters and are able to make choices about what we do in those situations, this is a massive population of people that has, by definition, had choice taken away from them. And they don’t [inaudible 00:25:37]-
Mansa Musa:
Exactly.
Schuyler Mitchell:
They don’t have a say, and they don’t have a voice, and it’s really hard to get information in and out. So yeah, it’s just many layers of problems that are piled on top of each other. And yeah, that’s I think my biggest takeaway. And what you said is so important. If this happened anywhere else, people would be able to, I think, kind of see it for what it was. But it’s hard to see it when it’s in your own country, for a lot of the time.
Mansa Musa:
And if our audience, and the viewers, and listeners want to follow your work, how can they stay in touch with you or track your work?
Schuyler Mitchell:
Yeah, I am on Twitter. It’s my first name, Schuyler, with an underscore in between the Y and the L. And I think my email should be on my website, but if people actually have any insights, have anybody that they know that’s in a prison or anything that they want me to look into or cover, I’m super passionate about this issue, and I love to do investigations. So if you need somebody to dig deep, I’m your girl. So yeah, feel free to reach out to me with any tips as well.
Mansa Musa:
There you have it. Real News, Rattling the Bars. Schuyler, you rallied the bars today. You brought to the attention to raise the national consciousness about how do we treat people as human beings. How do we treat people? Should we treat them as human beings or should we treat them as numbers? It stands to reason that the state of North Carolina is looking at people as numbers, and in both sense, a number in terms of how much money they can make off of them, and a number in the sense of when they don’t have to do nothing for them, they just write them off.
We want our audience to understand, and we want our listeners to be mindful of this here, we’re talking about human beings. This is a humane issue. This is not an issue that’s dealing with whether a person did something or didn’t do something. They are wards of the state, and when you say you’re a ward of the state, the state is obligated to provide for your safety, and your safety is important, and your safety should be not compromised by virtue of you not having an evacuation plan in effect, for you not having the necessary infrastructure to ensure that people that are under your custody that’s coming home, it wasn’t like they not coming, they coming home at one time or another, and that you treat them less than human. Schuyler, we appreciate you. We appreciate your advocacy, and we look forward to staying in touch with you. Thank you very much.
This story originally appeared in Jacobin on Oct. 23, 2024. It is shared here with permission.
This month, when Emmanuel Macron’s newly chosen prime minister, Michel Barnier, laid out his first government agenda to the National Assembly, much attention was naturally focused on the budget and immigration. But a seemingly throwaway line pointed to another aspect of security and policing. “We will generalize the methods experimented with during the Olympic and Paralympic Games,” Barnier promised.
I have previously written for Jacobin about the controversial algorithmic video surveillance that France rolled out in advance of the Olympics — a test that was supposed to last through March 2025 and concern only large-scale public events like sporting matches and concerts. Experts in surveillance and human rights told me about the debilitating effects that such mass surveillance can have on dissent and peaceful protest — creating a dissuasive “chilling effect.”
“You get people used to it in that happy face, ‘celebration capitalism’ environment of the Olympics, and then that new technology that was injected during the Games in that state of exception becomes the norm for policing moving forward,” Jules Boykoff, a political scientist who has published multiple books about the Olympics, warned at the time.
As if on cue, as soon as the Olympics ended, a steady drumbeat of Macronist politicians began manufacturing consent around the need to keep this technology, which has not yet been independently studied or analyzed.
In September, less than two weeks after the Paralympic closing ceremony, Paris police chief Laurent Nuñez declared himself “in favor” of extending the technology. The news channel France Info, citing a government source, reported that Barnier’s interior minister also envisioned making the technology permanent. (Currently, a bill floated by a member of his right-wing Républicains party proposes a three-year extension.) Barnier’s speech, while not specifically mentioning the algorithmic video surveillance tool, pushed in this same direction.
“The government is going to do everything in its power to entrench [algorithmic video surveillance technology],” Élisa Martin, a member of the left-wing France Insoumise, told me over the phone. “We’re absolutely certain of this.”
“A Security Showcase for the World”
On July 26, as hundreds of boats carrying Olympians made their way down the river Seine during a rain-soaked opening ceremony watched by twenty-five million viewers worldwide, another show was taking place underground. On the French capital’s metro platforms, nearly five hundred state-of-the-art surveillance cameras were capturing and analyzing human behaviors in real time, assisted by an artificial intelligence tool called CityVision. The AI-based technology, produced by a French start-up, was rolled out across the metro system.
Above ground, 45,000 national police and an additional 20,000 military operatives patrolled the city. An estimated fifty-three drones were shot down by military anti-drone units in the first several days of the Games.
“The Olympics, and especially the opening ceremony on the Seine, were sold as “a security showcase for the world and a moment of experimentation,” Noémie Levain, a legal expert at La Quadrature du Net, a digital rights NGO, told me.
After the National Assembly passed an omnibus Olympics bill on May 19, 2023, which included, among other things, the legalization of AI-assisted mass surveillance tools, French tech start-ups presented offers for Olympics contracts — with several then selected in January 2024. One has been likened to a French version of Palantir — the Peter Thiel–owned surveillance company best known for its discriminatory policing tool used in cities like Los Angeles, which is set to host the next summer Olympics in 2028.
“The bread and butter of these companies is the analysis of human bodies,” Levain told me. “The idea is to analyze them, classify them, and come up with data points.”
The tool, as currently intended, is supposed to catch “predetermined events,” such as a terrorist attack or an “unusual crowd movement.” But researchers worry that the increased use of algorithms in predictive policing, which use racially biased statistics as their initial input, creates a pipeline for additional surveillance of vulnerable communities. “Increasing evidence suggests that human prejudices have been baked into these tools because the machine-learning models are trained on biased police data,” Will Douglas Heaven wrote in MIT Technology Review.
In the French case, little is known about how the technologies actually operate and at what point they’re deployed by police, Yoann Nabat, a jurist and lecturer at the University of Bordeaux, said. “It’s a black box,” he told me.
Algorithmic video surveillance “is only supposed to be a decision aid,” Nabat added. “It is supposed to alert the person behind the screens to say, ‘Be careful, you have to look in this place, at this time.’ Except that there’s a thin line between automation and human interaction. We know that with the lack of existing resources that decision support often turns into the decision itself.”
From Experiment to Fait Accompli
Much has been written about the shock doctrine — the period often following a natural disaster when vulture-like private companies swoop in to take over public services. According to Boykoff, a similar process takes place before, during, and after mega-events like the Olympics.
Katia Roux, the head of advocacy at Amnesty International France, described a similar phenomenon in France. “We haven’t had the balance sheet yet,” she told me of the Olympics surveillance tools. Yet, “there’s a clear political desire to legalize this technology and the Olympics were just a way to get a foot in the door.”
Elia Verdon, a member of France’s Observatory on Surveillance and Democracy, agreed. “I think we have to be careful with periods of experimentation,” she warned. “We end up accepting a technology at a given time in response to a possible threat, and then the next threat, they go even further.”
Since pronouncing themselves in favor of the new technology, Barnier and Nuñez have since walked back their statements about the extension of the measures, saying that they are still waiting for the results of a government report that must be presented before parliament by the end of the year. But it seems that the French public may have already been swayed by government rhetoric — with a recent poll showing that 65 percent of French people supported augmented video surveillance in public space.
“If it’s deemed successful, they’ll extend it,” Levain, from La Quadrature du Net, said. “If it’s not, they’ll say we need more experiments with it. There are so many actors involved, so much money, so much lobbying, they’re not just going to say, ‘Alright, let’s just stop.’”
With an increasingly hard-line government using immigration as a wedge to pass restrictive policies, it’s hard to imagine that the army of private companies in what Macron calls his “start-up nation” won’t step up with more offers.
This November, California voters will have the chance to pass Proposition 6. This ballot referendum would nullify the state constitution’s exception for involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime, and institute additional protections for incarcerated people. Jeronimo Aguilar of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, and John Cannon of All of Us or None join Rattling the Bars for a breakdown of Prop 6.
Studio Production: David Hebden Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa.
It might sound odd, it might sound strange, it might even be mind-boggling to believe that in this country, these United States of America, slavery is still legal in some form, shape, or fashion. The 13th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States codified slavery under the circumstances that anyone duly convicted of a crime, they can be a slave. They can be held accountable as a slave, their labor can be processed like slave labor, and they have no rights to say nothing about that.
Joining me today are two extraordinary men in this fight to abolish slavery. And I was amazed when Jeronimo reached out to me. We had talked before, and I was amazed when he reached out to me, and they came full circle on their strategy on how to eradicate slavery as we know it. And so, I’m going to let them explain it.
Introduce yourself, Jeronimo and John.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Right on, man. Jeronimo Aguilar here. I go by Jeronimo, I go by Geronimo. Either one is fine with me. I’m a Chicano activist, also organizer with all of us in West Sacramento, and also a policy analyst with Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, and just honored to be a servant to the movement, man. I’ll pass it over to John.
John Cannon:
My name is John Cannon. I also go by John John. I’m also an organizer with All of Us or None. I’m out here with the Oakland chapter. And did 10 years incarcerated, so being able to get out and just fight for the same things I saw behind those walls just gives me a real purpose.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. And all of us probably been in this space where you bring an expert witness in to court to testify. Before the expert witness testify, they run a list of all the things they have accomplished in terms of qualifying them to be an expert. So, it’s sufficed to say, we are an expert in this matter when it comes to being slaves, or being on the plantation, under the prison-industrial complex.
But Jeronimo, let’s start with you. All right. I want you to give us a history lesson on how the code that came to exist that’s legalized slavery in California. Because you made an interesting observation before, and we was talking about it again, how we got this perception of California as being the big Hollywood, Rolls Royce.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Yeah, thank you, Mansa. Yeah, no, you’re right, man. We got this idea of what California is. Not only the palm trees and the Rolls Royce, and it’s always sunny, but also that we’re soft on crime, and that criminals are out able to just do whatever they want out here, and there’s no law and order, and all that kind of stuff.
The reality is, the prison-industrial complex out here is as crooked and oppressive as it is in any state of the union. And so, when you talk about especially this exception clause, and specifically here in California, it’s the exception to involuntary servitude. But like we say, as you can see on my background there, one of our main messaging points is that involuntary servitude is slavery.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
So, they try to lessen it or give it a fancy name, but the reality is the practice is the same thing, of subjugating human beings to work against their will.
So, when you talk about involuntary servitude in California, the history, like you mentioned, it goes all the way back to when California became a state. So, back in 1849. Remember, this territory here was territory of Mexico up until then. You had the expansionist, I wouldn’t even really call it a war, but an assault on Mexico in 1848, which ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
That treaty was not honored. Or like most of the treaties that the US [inaudible] with folks of Indigenous ancestry, them treaties were nothing but opportunities for the forked tongue, as they say, to get what they want.
And so, what happened is the land was taken, and Indigenous folks, Indigenous mixed with Spanish folks, became immigrants overnight. And with that said, what you started seeing was the first Constitution of California in 1849 has that exception clause that we see today. It says that involuntary servitude is prohibited except for punishment for a crime. It’s not that exact wording, but it’s the same exact practice.
And so, that set things up. That set the stage for 1850, you started seeing this. So, this is the year right after it became a state and the constitution was introduced. You see the 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians.
And again, the forked tongue. The way that they named the act, you would think, oh, they’re protecting Indians, when in fact, it was a vagrancy law that they used to criminalize Indigenous people, and subsequently enslave them under the exceptions to involuntary servitude.
And so, I want to add to that. Indigenous peoples were already being enslaved by the Spanish colonial powers. We’ll talk about the mission system. So, the Southwest and California, a lot of it was already built by the enslavement of Indigenous peoples.
When you talk about colonization, and once the Spanish came and that era of terror, and then Mexico getting its independence, and you’ve seen Mexico actually outlaw slavery for a period of time while that practice of servitude was brought back once the US took the land from Mexico.
And so, like I said, from 1849 on, up until now, you’ve seen the consistent criminalization of Indigenous, Brown folks, later, obviously, our African brothers and sisters that were enslaved and brought to this continent, and also that ended up migrating, trying to find free states, trying to find places where they can actually be free from the subjugation of slavery, only to find the same kind of practices happening over here in the Southwest.
And so, following that 1850 Act of Government and Protection of Indians, which actually turned what’s now LA Federal Courthouse, was a vibrant slave auction. Based on that law, you saw acts like the Greaser Act, which passed in 1855. It’s another vagrancy law. If you look at the actual statute, the statute reads, “Dealing with the issue of those of Spanish and Indian blood.” And so really, you’re talking about folks like me. Chicanos, Mexicans, those that are of Spanish or Latino and Indigenous ancestry.
And so, again, following that, I believe it was, man, 1858, ’59, you saw a Fugitive Slave Act that was [crosstalk]. And a lot of you are familiar with the federal Fugitive Slave Act, but California had its own Fugitive Slave Act that they passed. Don’t quote me on those years, but it was definitely in this era of oppression.
And in that Fugitive Slave Act, what they did is that they gave slave owners from the South a year to recapture their slaves that ran off to California looking for freedom.
Well, that one year that they gave them actually turned into a sunset clause that ended up lasting five-plus years. And basically, anybody that was African-American, that was Black, that was here in California, could be kidnapped and trafficked back to the South without any evidence.
All the slave master had to say was, oh, yeah, he used to be my slave. He ran off. He didn’t need no proof. He didn’t need to know nothing. Just by his word. And they were capturing folks that never had even been enslaved.
Mansa Musa:
And I think the point, and the benefit for our audience, I think you well represented the case to how they codified laws —
Jeronimo Aguilar:
That’s right.
Mansa Musa:
…To make sure that this exception clause could be enacted under any and all circumstances.
John, so now we’re at a place where in terms of y’all organized around the abolishment of slavery, the legal form of slavery as we know it now. Talk about y’all Proposition 6, John.
John Cannon:
So, Proposition 6 would us actually be reversing Article 1, Section 6 of the California Constitution, which is basically just like the 13th Amendment of the United States.
So, Proposition 6, what it would do right now is give a person autonomy over their own body, give a person choice whether they want to work or not. Because as it is now, you have no choice whether to work or not. So, Proposition 6, it would prioritize rehabilitation over forced labor.
So, what that will look like is, right now as it stands, if you’re inside and you’re working, they assign you a job automatically. And whether you want to do college courses or rehabilitative courses or anything else, you’re not able to, because you’re assigned a job. You don’t get to pick the job. You don’t get to choose if you want a job. If you’re assigned the job, you have to do it.
So, if you did want to, say, take an anger management course, or seek anything to rehabilitate yourself, and that aligns at the same time as your job, you’ll have to go to that job or you’ll be punished for refusing to work.
Whether you have a death in the family, you have to go to work, or you’ll be punished for refusing. And all these cases happened to me while I was incarcerated, and you’re getting punished for refusing to work. You’re losing days off your sentence, you’re losing phone time, you’re losing all type of things if you refuse to work. So, Prop 6 would actually give a person their own choice over their own body, over their own rehabilitation.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, let’s talk about this. And both of y’all been wearing this. You can go first, Jeronimo. Okay, I understand what you’re saying, and I come out of that space. I did 48 years in that space.
So now, how do y’all address, or how will y’all address… We know Proposition 6 coming to effect, but we also know that prison has become privatized on multiple levels. The privatization of prison is the food service is private, the commissary is private, the industry is private, the way the clothes is being made. Everybody has got involved in terms of putting themselves in a space where they become a private entity.
How will Proposition 6 address that? Because what’s going to ultimately happen, the slave master ain’t going to give up the slave freely. They’re going to create some type of narrative or create some kind of forceful situation where, oh, if you don’t work, you ain’t going to get no days, and you can come over here and work, and… You see where I’m going there with this?
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Yep. Yep.
Mansa Musa:
So, did y’all see that? Do y’all see it as a problem? Or have y’all looked at that and be prepared to address it?
Jeronimo Aguilar:
No, no doubt, Mansa. I think that this is really the first step for us, because it’s going to be a long road. And those of us that have been incarcerated or have fought against the carceral system, you know that every time you do something, they’re going to figure out a way to retaliate, and to find a way to try to circumvent it, they’re going to try to find a way to basically make whatever you’re doing obsolete so they can continue their practice.
And so on our end, it was a really long and tedious process with the language, but we wanted to make sure was that we weren’t just passing something that was symbolic, that ended up just being, oh, okay. We’re removing some words out of the constitution, we all feel better about ourselves, and people that are incarcerated are going through the same conditions.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Status quo. Go ahead.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Status quo. Exactly. So, the language in Proposition 6, and what was ACA 8 when we passed it in the legislature to get it on the ballot, actually says that any person that’s incarcerated cannot be punished for refusing a work assignment. Cannot be [crosstalk].
So what that does is, it’s not going to stop CDCR from definitely trying to circumvent things. But what it does is it gives folks a pretty strong legal stance. So, if they do continue to be forced to work and disciplined for refusing to work, they can go to court. And we feel, with the language that we now have in the constitution, which is supposed to be the highest letter of the law, they’re going to have a pretty strong legal stance to stand on when they get to court.
So, all of those things are going to be… We’re going to have to be following and monitoring things, implement it. We know that, like you said, man, they’re not going to just give this stuff up. All of the money that’s being made. California, fifth largest economy, CDC’s got a $14 billion budget.
And so, that money… I mean, what we’ve seen here in California, Mansa, is we’ve literally reduced the prison system. We’re under 100,000 now. We’re at about 90,000 incarcerated, and their budget has gone up. So, make that make sense. They’re figuring out ways to make money.
Mansa Musa:
And tell our audience what CDCR is.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Yeah, that’s California Department of Corrections. The R is for Rehabilitation. And like John says, CDCR, we really call it CDC. But we’re trying to get that R to actually mean something by having rehabilitation, access to rehabilitation, education, and other things be prioritized as much as labor, giving folks the opportunity to work.
Because we know folks are still going to want to work inside. We’re not trying to take away that opportunity for folks. But you shouldn’t be forced into a job, and then you want to take a class, but you’re not able to because of that. They’re prioritizing that exploitation over anything else.
Mansa Musa:
Hey, John. And talk about the feedback that y’all got from the inside, in terms of educating the population about what is expected. Because ultimately, it’s going to be on the inside that’s going to be monitoring the effect of the legislation. It’s going to be on the inside where we know from our own personal experience that we create programs to help us rehabilitate ourselves and to socialize. So, this would be a golden opportunity for that kind of initiative on the part of those of us that are still behind the walls and still on the plantation.
Talk about that, John. What kind of feedback are y’all getting from those of us that’s still on the plantation?
John Cannon:
So, we have members on the inside. And some of the feedback we’re getting is, we got a lot of letters that were written to us about people’s personal experiences, and it’s a lot similar to mine. I understood a lot of what people were saying and how some people, they want to prioritize being able to continue their education. They want to be able to do stuff that’s actually going to help them for when they get out, so they are rehabilitated when they get out here into California, on the outside world.
And also, some of the feedback we’re getting, just like Jeronimo said, is that this doesn’t mean people are just going to stop working. There’s a lot of people… There’s a waiting list to get on some of these jobs in prison.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right, right.
John Cannon:
So, it’s not the fact that people don’t want to work. People do want to work. But for those people that don’t want to be forced to work, some people want to prioritize certain courses that are offered. You have anger management courses, you have drug rehabilitative courses, and you can’t even access these courses if you’re assigned a job duty. So, those courses are there for no reason if you can’t access them.
So, this is some of the feedback that we’re getting from the inside from our members.
Mansa Musa:
All right. And Jeronimo, talk about where we at in terms of how y’all assessing the Proposition 6, because you don’t have no opposition. That’s a given. I think I was looking at some of the footage, and I think, since from ACLU say, who going to come out and say we agree with slavery? So, talk about where y’all at in terms of getting this passed or getting people to vote on it.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
So, those of us that worked on the legislation, ACA 8, it was ACA 3 once upon a time, three, four years ago, and it failed in the California Senate the first time around. We brought it back with ACA 8, and man, it was —
Mansa Musa:
What’s ACA?
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Assembly Constitutional Amendment.
Mansa Musa:
Okay.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
And so, the author of the bill was Assemblymember Wilson. She was in the assembly. Before her, it was Assemblymember Sydney Kamlager, who’s now actually in Congress, I believe. So, yeah. It was a couple of assembly members that had brought it up.
So, there were ACAs. And just the fact that it failed one time, it showed us that it’s not as much as an afterthought as folks think, as you would think, especially here in California.
And, I mean, it goes back to that history that we were talking about. I mean, shoot, California’s first governor was actually a slaveholder, Peter Hardeman Burnett. You talk about the founder of San Quentin was a California senator named James Estelle, and he was also a slave holder.
So, that I think a lot of the stuff that we have even subconsciously in the population here in California, they don’t understand that they’re aligning with… Sometimes it’s not so much of like who’s going to agree with slavery, but they buy some of this stuff that the Tough on Crime or CDCR puts out around, oh, yeah. Well, that’s true. They should work, man. They’re criminals. Or, they should do this and that. And they’re not understanding that they’re actually buying into the whole thing on slavery.
And so, with the proposition itself, man, it hasn’t pulled us as high as we would have liked. I could have told you that because ACA 8 was so hard to pass. I knew it was going to be a struggle.
And then, here in California, we’re in a pretty big crisis as it comes to the criminal justice reform. You got Proposition 36 that’s on the ballot as well, which is trying to repeal some of Prop 47, which was a landmark proposition that we passed that reduced a lot of felonies down to misdemeanors. It allowed folks to not have to end up in the prison system for low-level offenses, non-violent stuff, drugs. Stuff that it’s common sense, that it should focus [crosstalk].
Mansa Musa:
Fueling the plantations. That’s it. Fueling the plantations.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Exactly.
Mansa Musa:
Y’all got that. Y’all been successful at taking the source away from where they’re getting the labor from, and now y’all killing the utilization of the labor.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Right.
Mansa Musa:
Y’all been fighting on all fronts.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
We’ve been fighting on all fronts, and they’re pushing back, though.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, most definitely. Most definitely.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
The system is definitely pushing back, and we’re filling it right now with Prop 36 on the ballot. And it’s being funded by — And this is to your point, Mansa. We just learned that Walmart dropped another $1 million to support what’s going on with Prop 36.
And so, why would Walmart be so invested in making sure that Tough on Crime passes, that more prisons get filled up? Well, that’s because they rely on that labor.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
They’re exploiting that labor. They’re using that labor of Black and Brown people. And so, people need to see this, maybe. What I’m hoping this episode really is is public education for folks so they could really see, even in a state like California, it’s so invested and married to the idea of exploitation and cheap labor. California and the US has never lost its appetite for cheap labor.
And so, when you think about it, it’s going to find ways to do that. It’s always going to go back to the same thing that it knows. And so, that’s what we’re seeing.
So, Prop 6, it’s polling… We’re at 50/50 right now. I mean, we’re a little bit on the side of… The last polling that came out was not favorable to us, but I think that we’re getting closer to that 50/50 range. It’s going to be a tough, drag-out fight.
I think, really, the thing is, the real positive is what we’re seeing that there’s a huge percentage of folks that are uneducated on this subject. And when you’re able to explain the stuff that we’re talking about here, all these different factors are at play, with the corporations and all these different people that are making money, and they don’t care about the regular person that’s struggling to pay his bills, even if he hasn’t been locked up. But he don’t care about that taxpayer.
Prop 6 actually will benefit the taxpayer because they’re getting return on their investment in the criminal justice system. You got $133,000 it costs to incarcerate somebody for a year. And our people in there, they’re not learning how to read, they’re not learning how to write, they’re not learning nothing. They’re just being forced to make money for these corporations.
So, once they start seeing all this stuff and we’re able to educate them, we’re able to move them to a yes at a pretty good rate. So, I feel confident.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. And John, you say you in Oakland, right?
John Cannon:
Right.
Mansa Musa:
And so, what are y’all doing now? Because just like Jeronimo said, it’s the fight to the finish. So, the fight is, we know the election’s coming up in November, but we know that we have to educate people to understand what the prop is, and now, how to counter the opposition. What are y’all doing in Oakland to get the vote out, get people out to respond to the proposition?
John Cannon:
The main thing we’re doing in Oakland is educating our folks on slavery, on the history of slavery and involuntary servitude, the history of what our constitution is, and also getting people engaged with voting.
There’s a lot of people that haven’t voted. Making sure people know their rights in California, because we’ve been encountering a lot of people that didn’t even know they could vote. People on parole could vote. In California, you can vote on parole. Technically, you’re allowed to vote while you’re in jail, you just can’t vote in prison. So, that’s the main part, is making sure people know.
Even myself, when I was released from prison, I didn’t even know I could vote until I came to All of Us or None, and we were actually one of the organizations that was on that proposition to get people to vote on parole.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. All right. And as we close out this for both of y’all, all right, so, what do we expect in November based on y’all taking the temperature of the climate out there? What can we look forward to? And then, two, how can our viewers always become more involved in the process of getting Proposition 6 passed? We go with you, start with you, Jeronimo.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
I think I’m hopeful. I’m very hopeful about particularly Proposition 6 in California. Like I said, there’s an all-out assault on criminal justice reform happening right now in California, so it’s a tough time. And this last legislative session, it was probably… The four or five years that I’ve been working on the policy side, trying to pass statewide bills at the Capitol, this is probably the most challenging year. The majority of our bills just didn’t make it through the legislature.
So, for us to pass ACA 8 in a climate like this, it shows you we got some very talented and skillful organizers. And so, I have that same faith and confidence in them that we’ll get Proposition 6 passed. God willing, we can defeat Proposition 36 as well.
But with that said, I think the way folks can activate, we have a website, voteyesprop6.com. Folks can check us out there. We also got our organization’s website, prisonerswithchildren.org.
And then, on social media, All of Us or None Action is basically housing all of our Proposition 6 work. And so, we’re teaming up with some… trying to get some influencers and high-level folks out there to get the word out, make sure they hit the polls and vote.
We’re doing big regional events out here in California on Oct. 8. We’re doing a statewide day of action. So, we’re going to be in here at Sac State. I’m doing something at the University of Sacramento. UC Berkeley is going to have a big event. They’re doing something out there in LA, Bakersfield, Stockton. So all over the state.
And like John said, the main thing, our mission as the grassroots ballot committee is really to activate our people, man, those that have been disenfranchised. Those that typically don’t vote, and they got every reason not to vote because of the way this system is designed.
But at the same time, there’s certain stuff that is important for us to get out and get active on. And so, this is one of those. We have the historic opportunity to end slavery and stop the forced labor and exploitation of our people inside.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. And John?
John Cannon:
Yeah. And I would just say, spreading the information, spreading the knowledge as much as you can. And we have materials that we’ll send out. If you’re in California, you want to do any type of outreach, you could reach out to me at john@prisonerswithchildren.org. I can send you a whole package with materials, postcards, flyers, and just make sure we’re spreading the information to everybody.
And also getting people aware that voting is coming up, and it’s important to vote. I know that I actually was one of those people that thought voting didn’t matter. And I remember my sister, she told me what someone told her, what my grandma told her, and she said, if our vote doesn’t count, then why they’ve been trying to take it from us since forever, or keep us from voting? So, it made sense. So, it does count. We’ve got to get out there and just spread the news to everybody we can.
Mansa Musa:
And I want to add this as we close out. It does count, but the reason why it does count is because of y’all. Y’all making it count. Y’all educating people on the importance of understanding how to utilize their voice. Y’all educating people on understanding where it came from, the history of their voice.
But more importantly, y’all mobilizing people and franchising people to change and dismantle the prison-industrial complex. Y’all rattling the bars today.
There you have it. The Real News and Rattling the Bars. I really appreciate both of y’all, man. Y’all, look, y’all really made me feel good today because I’m one of those that was cynical when it came to the electoral process. I was one of those that didn’t believe in it. But then I remember what Tip O’Neill said, that all politics are local. But more importantly, y’all skill organization, y’all skill strategy, has now enlightened people on how to be effective in raising your voice and voting to get effective change. Thank you.
John Cannon:
Thank you.
Mansa Musa:
And we ask you to continue to support The Real News and Rattling the Bars. Look, this is the only way you’re going to get this kind of information. Two skilled individuals in the state of California, Sunshine State, where you got a big Hollywood sign up. But behind the Hollywood sign is slave labor. Now we got people that’s challenging it and attacking it, and ultimately going to be a drama, or say this is a historical event. This is going to go down history as the few that tackled the many and won. I’m out.
This story originally appeared in Truthout on Oct. 17, 2024. It is shared here with permission.
The Nebraska State Supreme Court ruled this week to allow a state law passed earlier this year to be enforced, enfranchising thousands of people who were formerly convicted of felony level crimes and thwarting efforts by Republican state officials to deem the law unconstitutional.
In a bipartisan vote this summer of the unicameral state legislature, Nebraska lawmakers enacted a veto-proof law that ended a prohibition on residents voting for at least two years after serving a sentence for a felony, overturning a 2005 state law that had enacted the restriction. However, Attorney General Mike Hilgers and Secretary of State Bob Evnen, both Republicans, claimed the new law was unconstitutional, and before it could take effect, ordered election officials across the state to bar people with felony convictions from registering if that two-year period hadn’t elapsed.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Nebraska, representing state residents who would be restricted from voting under the action from Hilgers and Evnen, implored the state Supreme Court to intervene, and in a split decision from Tuesday, the court did just that.
Hilgers and Evnen asserted that only the state’s board of pardons could restore voting rights. The state Supreme Court, however, issued a split decision on Wednesday that overturned their attempt to block the new state law.
In Nebraska, the state Supreme Court must have a supermajority of justices deem a state law unconstitutional in order for it to be blocked. Only two of the five justices on the bench came to the conclusion that the new law was unlawful, while two others couldn’t bring themselves to rule either way on the matter. A fifth justice found that the new law was constitutional, as ruling otherwise would give too much power to the two executive branch offices in question.
The split decision means that the new law is now enforced, and that state residents with past felony convictions can vote right away if their sentences have been completed.
The ruling allows a small window for such residents to register to vote. The deadline to register for this year’s election is this Friday. Residents can still register to vote in person through October 25.
The ruling could influence two important elections. A contentious Senate seat is up for grabs in the state, between independent candidate Dan Osborn and Republican Sen. Deb Fischer. And since Nebraska allocates one Electoral College vote per congressional district, the ruling could affect the district encompassing the state’s largest city of Omaha, where most of the formerly disenfranchised residents currently live, potentially tipping the scales of the presidential election as well.
The ruling from the Nebraska Supreme Court was celebrated by people who would have otherwise been restricted from voting this year.
“For so long, I was uncertain if my voice would truly count under this law. Today’s decision reaffirms the fundamental principle that every vote matters,” said Gregory Spung, one of the petitioners in the case who intends to register as an independent voter.
“It is a weight off my shoulders, and not just because of what it means for me,” said petitioner Jeremy Jonak, a Republican voter who was affected by the actions of Hilgers and Evnen. “Over the years, so many of us have earned a second chance. We live in every part of the state, and the truth is most of us are just trying to live our lives and leave the past behind us.”
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