The Louisiana State Penitentiary (commonly known as Angola), which sits on the site of a former slave plantation, has long forced incarcerated people, primarily Black men, to work on its prison farm under “inhumane” and dangerous conditions, including extreme heat. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, host Mansa Musa speaks with Samantha Pourciau, senior staff attorney at The Promise of Justice Initiative, about the slave-like conditions of prison agricultural labor and a groundbreaking lawsuit that could bring an end to Angola’s notorious “Farm Line.” Guest:
Samantha Pourciau is a senior staff attorney at The Promise of Justice Initiative, which serves incarcerated individuals and families in Louisiana and represents more than 7,000 clients in 57 of Louisiana’s 64 parishes.
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. Last year incarcerated farm line workers at Louisiana State Penitentiary filed a lawsuit for better working condition. Louisiana State Penitentiary is commonly called Angola. In the suit. The prisoners was alleging that the conditions they’re now working under are so inhumane that between the heat and the inadequate prevention for the heat caused them to have suffered massive heat strokes or just can’t continue to work. If they don’t work though, however, under these conditions, then they’re threatened with either going being put in solitary confinement if they don’t meet the quota that they’re given, they’re threatened with solitary confinement. If they quit, they’re threatened with solitary confinement leading up to the high heat conditions of the summer. Their attorney filed a mercy appeal in hopes of seeing some of the reforms out of the litigation. Here with us today is one of the plaintiff’s attorney Samantha Pourciau, who is a senior staff attorney with the Promise of Justice Initiative in New Orleans. Thank you for joining me today, Samantha.
Samantha Pourciau:
Thank you for having me.
Mansa Musa:
So as you see, I unpacked some of the things that’s going on so we know that one, the conditions in Angola Prison, Louisiana State Penitentiary, we know that the work conditions as it relate to the farm line is inhumane and causes massive health problems for the workers. We know that from looking at the litigation in and of itself that the threat of not working is real and if you going to work or you going to solitary confinement, but more importantly, introduce yourself to our audience and then give us some insight to what’s going on with the lawsuit
Samantha Pourciau:
My name is Samantha Pourciau. I’m a senior staff attorney at the Promise of Justice Initiative where we represent VOTE, which stands for Voice of the Experienced as an associational plaintiff in this lawsuit. In addition to seven individual incarcerated men at Angola who are seeking to represent a class of all individuals incarcerated at Angola, who currently are or may in the future be assigned to the farm line. And so the crux of a lawsuit is to get the inhumanity of what’s known as the farm line, which is the forced labor in the fields of Angola, which are known as the vegetable picking lines, where mostly black men are forced to use their hands to pick, to weed, to water vegetables, to harvest vegetables. And it’s called a work assignment. But at the heart of the lawsuit is the fact that it isn’t really a job. It’s distinct from other work and other job assignments at the prison.
It is used basically as a tool of social and punitive control, punitive control. It’s the first job assignment most people are given and it is our understanding that it is the first job assignment to essentially break people and train them into realizing that they no longer have autonomy over their physical body because if they stop to break when they no longer can physically labor, they are, as you mentioned, liable to be written up and sent to solitary confinement. So it’s used at the entrance of one’s time at Angola to train into how one needs to behave in order to make their way in the prison system. And then over time people often get off the farm line and get other job assignments that are safer, that are compensated more, that are perhaps more meaningful and an ability to learn a trade and learn a skill that could be used if someone were released in the free world and then at the end of the day they could be sent back to the farm line if they get a disciplinary writeup. And so there’s the threat always of the farm line being sent back to the farm line as a tool that is kept used to keep people in line in how the prison wants them to behave.
Mansa Musa:
And so even by your own acknowledgement that, so the institution is using, basically using the farm line as a form of control for the prison population in terms of when you come in, you going to find yourself on the farm line, if you meet the security criteria or whatever the case may be, or you meet the need of labor, you are going to find yourself on farm. But answer this question. Okay, so I ain’t going to been in existence forever. This practice of the farm line has always been in existence. You go back and look at some footage from the thirties, you go back and look at some footage from the forties, any period, you can always find that the agro aspect of Angola has always existed. So why now do they bring this litigation? When this practice been going on forever, what made the prisoners come to this point where they feel like it’s now that they have to do this or to your knowledge had they filed previous litigation, they just wasn’t successful And this is a continuum of their advocacy.
Samantha Pourciau:
I think people have always fought against the farm line in the ways that they’ve had the ability to, by choosing to not work, even knowing that it was going to put them in solitary confinement. Decades ago there was a protest where people cut their achilles tendon and protest of being forced to work in the field. We aren’t aware of any litigation on this issue prior to the instant lawsuit, but I think that over the past decade or two, criminal justice reform has become more widespread. People, the public understands that not everything that happens in our prison system is okay. And there is I think more openness to examining that. And there is also more openness into learning and tying the direct through line between us chattel slavery and our current system of mass incarceration. We saw the new Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander really was the first big text that came out that educated the public about that connection and how our current system of mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow.
And so I think that now is the time for the courts to hear this argument, to understand that the farm line is operating on top of a former plantation. Louisiana state Penitentiary was a plantation, it’s known as Angola because the plantation owner thought that the best slaves came from that country in Africa. And so this litigation really seeks to connect the dots and talk about how part of the psychological harm and the dignitary harm of the farm line is that it is purposefully simulating chattel slavery. And I think the public and the courts are ready to hear about that. I don’t know, I don’t think the case law has been established on that point, but this is a landmark case seeking to make that argument and show that it is cruel and unusual punishment to force people to basically replicate chattel slavery on the grounds of a former plantation.
Mansa Musa:
Right. Okay. Let’s unpack some of the things that goes on on the farm. One, how much money are they being given? What’s the rate? And two, do they get days off? What’s the hours that they work? And more importantly, do they have the right if they are sick, do they take that in arbitrary, say they’re trying to get off the farm line and put ’em in solitary confine. In your investigation, have you noticed the abuses to the extent where you don’t have a right to nothing other than come out, go to work and go back into your cell?
Samantha Pourciau:
So on the issue of pay, when someone first enters the prison system, they aren’t paid anything at all. And because the farm line is the first work assignment for the majority of people, that means for the most part, when people start working on the farm line, they receive no pay at all. Eventually they can start earning between two and 4 cents per hour. It tops at 4 cents an hour. So no one on the farm line will be making more than that. And in terms of the hours that people are forced to labor, they usually call work call at around 7:00 AM and bring men, line them up out the gate to bring them to the field starting around seven 30 or 8:00 AM in the morning. In the past there were two shifts in the morning and in the afternoon since we started this litigation, they’ve not been bringing out the afternoon shift in the summer and recognition that it is dangerously high heap during that time that isn’t technically in their policy that they don’t need to do that. And so that is part of what an argument we make in the litigation that all of the changes that they have been making in response to this litigation need to be documented in their policy so that they don’t just change ’em back at the lawsuit is over, but they work a full day during the non-summer. Then during the summer months it’s usually half of a shift. In terms of the, I think you were asking about medical care,
Mansa Musa:
Right? And what type of, because we already, it’s evident that they want to make sure that the men are always working and the threat of not working is solitary confinement. But I want to know in your investigation, have you seen where people have actually had medical problems but they still was forced to go out there and work? Or do they all lot for a person to say, I got a medical condition, I can’t work this day, or I’m unable to work at all even though I might have been working like a month.
Samantha Pourciau:
So the men are able to make what’s called a self-declared emergency in the field. If they are saying they can’t work because they’re having some medical issue and a medical provider will come out to assess them, what we’ve seen is that the majority of people who make those sick calls one are charged for them. It’s not free, it’s supposed to be free under their policy if it’s an illness related to your work assignment. But
We haven’t been able to get any evidence to show that they’re actually categorizing these kinds of sick calls as related to work assignment. And so people think that know that when they call for that medical call, they are liable to get charged for it. And so even if they end up not charging them at the end of the day, that is a barrier to calling for sick call when you make 4 cents an hour at most. And the sick call costs $2 and so they can make a sick call and if the provider comes out and believes them then they don’t have to continue working. But in the majority of cases we’ve seen the notes reflect that the person was assessed and the provider said they were fine and they could just take a quick break and then go back to work. And it does seem like the mentality of the providers is to get people back to work and not to issue what’s known as a duty status that it can accommodate some issue that they’re having so they aren’t forced to go out and work.
Mansa Musa:
Alright. Talk about the products. Where do the produce go that they manufacture? Do they go to feed the prisoners? Do they go to feed the guards or are they being sold in society or is it a combination of all three?
Samantha Pourciau:
So the farm line, that’s the subject of the litigation. The prison’s stance is that it only goes to feed the people in prison. It’s not sold on the open market. There are other agricultural operations at Angola that are run by the Department of Corrections for Profit branch known as prison enterprises. And those are more commonly sold crops in the open market that usually are used for animal feed. And so that’s the market that they’re looking into. For the farm line, it’s all vegetables that are harvested that are used in the kitchens at the prison. There’s a processing facility that it’s sent to onsite that other incarcerated people work to freeze some of that to build up the storage for over the winter months. But we’ve also heard reports of some of the produce going to the guards. There’s an area at Angola known as the Beeline, which is also very reminiscent of its plantation history. It’s a section of the prison where people who work there can live and they have homes, parks, recreation centers. I think at one point they had a school, I don’t think it’s operating currently. And there are reports that the Bline folks can access the food that is harvested on the farm line. Though we haven’t discovered that in this litigation
Mansa Musa:
Yet. First of all, did they get class, did they certified as a class action or is it still the seven plaintiffs and whoever else was in there? And second, what are they asking for if you can list some of their demands or the cause of actions?
Samantha Pourciau:
Sure. So the case has not yet been certified as a class action. We just had last month from April 22nd to 24th, a three day evidentiary hearing for the court to hear evidence about why we believe it should be a class action. And the court has asked for us to summarize and put in writing post that hearing why it should be certified, which will be due on June 2nd, 2025. So we hope and anticipate that the court will make a ruling on that during the summer of 2025 and the ability to make it a class action obviously as a huge change of the relief we can seek in that case. Although we do have an associational plaintiff vote, which stands for Voice of the Experience, they’re a local nonprofit at the organization in Louisiana founded by formerly incarcerated people from Angola. And so even if for some reason the class isn’t certified, they still represent their members who are currently incarcerated at Angola. So we still can seek relief on behalf of a group of people, but we hope that the court will certify the class this summer. In terms of the relief that we are seeking, the case is broken down into two primary claims. We have an eighth amendment cruel and unusual punishment claim and within that we have theories of harm related to the heat. And then we have theories of harm related to the psychological harm and dignitary harm that is happening on the farm line all of the time, not just in the summer.
And then the second claim we have in the case is that the operation of the farm line violates the Americans with Disabilities Act or the A DA and that is on behalf of a subclass and a number, not all seven of the named plaintiffs fit into that category, but some of them do. And that is for folks who have medical conditions or prescribed medications that make them even more susceptible to heat illness. And so we are asking the prison to provide further accommodations for them to be brought in once the heat index reaches 88 degrees and to be given what the prison calls a heat precaution duty status. So those are some of the specific reliefs we’re requesting.
Mansa Musa:
And you know what, I’m listening to what you’re saying and I recall I did 48 years in prison prior to getting out, but in the summertime and in the wintertime they had the heat index. They wouldn’t let us go outside if it was a certain degree, it was automatic, y’all was suspended because of the heat. And then in the wintertime, same thing. If the temperature dropped below a certain degree, we couldn’t go out and this was something that was state regulated. But they don’t according do they have that same mechanism? Do they have a heat indicator that say that under these conditions can’t nobody go out in the yard or work or they do the exclusion or exception when it comes to the farm line?
Samantha Pourciau:
So before we filed the lawsuit, there was no upper limit when they would not make people go out to work in the high heat because of the litigation. The prison has updated what they call the heat pathology policy
And they have created that upper limit of 113 degree heat index. We think that’s far too high. And so we are seeking for that number to be brought down to 103 degrees, which is still very high. But within the scientific literature is a more reasonable number that we think would provide safety and take down the risk of harm that people would have being forced to go out at that high heat. In terms of a lower limit, the prison has said that they don’t send folks out if it’s below freezing, but that isn’t written anywhere in policy. So that is also something we would want them to put in policy to put in writing.
Mansa Musa:
To your knowledge, is this something that y’all would want to include? Did they be given minimum wage for the work that they do on the farm line? This is the reality of prison. Prison’s going to work, prisons want to work, they give in prison, they give different incentives to work. Unlike Louisiana, like in Maryland, they give you incentives and you working just as inhumane conditions as anybody else, but they give you the incentive is that you get an extra five days off your sentence a month. I can break that down to less than four and a half years or four years or three and a half years. And I’m saying all that to say if the litigation is survived and y’all get the belief that y’all want, will it eliminate the farm line or will it make the farm line more, give it more regulatory, which would be still up to them to enforce the regulation. Talk about that.
Samantha Pourciau:
Yeah. We are seeking an end to the farm line because of the non heat related claims, the claims around the psychological harm and the dignitary harm, we think there really isn’t a way to reform the farm line. It is a message of US child slavery that just needs to end. And so that’s the relief we are seeking. I can speak to the Louisiana incentive pay system if you want to hear about that, but we aren’t seeking a change in the incentive pay
On the farm line and part of that is based in the claims that we are bringing. And then also part of that is in the ability to succeed on those types of claims because the reality is the 13th amendment exception clause makes it so that you don’t have to pay anything to incarcerated workers. And so the incentive pay system that exists in Louisiana today is designated by statute and it would be legally very hard to be found unconstitutional because it is above nothing. And for that reason, we aren’t attacking the incentive pay system directly. We are attacking the overall farm line and how it operates within the system. And the lack of compensation beyond pennies is a part of how it works as a whole. But we aren’t attacking exact that specific provision within the lawsuit it
Mansa Musa:
And that rightly so. Right, because slavery by any other name is slavery and they use the 13th Amendment to rationalize and justify getting slave labor out us without giving us dignity and wage. But talk about the stats of the case now, did y’all file a TIO temporary restraining order? What’s the status of the temporary restraining order?
Samantha Pourciau:
Yeah, so we filed a temporary restraining order, preliminary injunction last summer in advance of the high heat season and we were able to get it granted in part we had asked for the court to just bring in order the prison to bring in the farm line anytime the heat reached or exceeded 88 degrees. And the court did not go that far. But he ordered the prison to put up shade structures, make sure that there were more frequent and longer breaks, make sure that they had access to water at all times, things like that that we don’t think go far enough, but we’re something more than what they were currently getting. And so then in advance of this next heat season, summer 2025, we filed a second preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order asking for some of those same things but also different things because in the intervening time the prison has changed their heat pathology policy in some ways for the better.
They’ve expanded the list of medications and medical conditions that would give someone a heat precaution duty status, which would allow them to be brought in once the heat gets too high. But unfortunately, the prison has also increased the heat index threshold that allows for folks to come inside and allows for all of those protections to kick in. So it used to be 88 degrees, now it’s 91. And so we are seeking for this current summer for that number to go back down and for some other relief that can make it better for this coming summer before we’re able to get to trial and get a final judgment on the merits in this case.
Mansa Musa:
And I think for the benefit of our audience, we’re saying 91 degrees… The reality is that the person’s not out there one day, the person’s out there every day when the sun come up, they’re out there every day under these audience and inhumane conditions. So it’s not a matter of like, oh, well there’s not even one degrees out here today. Don’t let ’em work. They’re working all the time in these inhumane and he related conditions. But talk about this if you can, the plaintiffs and the expert compared the farm line to shadow slavery and Nazi concentration camp. So they basically saying that the same way the Nazis inflicted slavery on Jews, same way people in this country inflicted slavery on black people, that it’s a comparison to that and Nazi Germany, to your knowledge, can you expand on that or do you see any semblance to that or is that just beating the drum real loud to try to get attention to the issue for lack of a better word?
Samantha Pourciau:
So Dr. Hammonds is one of our expert witnesses in the case and she is a professor at Harvard who studies African-American history, American history, the history of science and the history of medicine epidemiology. And she was the one who testified at our class certification hearing about the comparison between the farm line and US shadow slavery and the farm line and Nazi Germany and the parallel she was drawing specifically, I think US shadow slavery is very easy for everyone to understand and see it is the modern day version of slavery. What is happening on the farm line? I think the Nazi Germany comparison requires some more explanation and so I’m happy to provide that. But she was opining about was the way the medical care operated within the concentration camps and how there were medical providers. But all of the medical treatment was really focused on getting people back to work.
And she was talking about in the labor camps how the medical providers were not assessing a person to really get at the illness or what medical ailment they were having but was trying to get them back to labor. And so she had reviewed deposition transcripts from the case where we deposed some of the medical providers at Angola and she saw similar characteristics of the medical providers opining that most of the incarcerated people lie about their sickness and they’re really just trying to get out of work and they’re not truthfully coming to them with the medical issue. And so she was drawing that comparison of the tendency to not believe people and to just focus on wanting to get them back to work and thinking that they were only complaining to get out of work was the comparison she was drawing that she saw in her review of the evidence in this case.
Mansa Musa:
And that right there in and of itself is a powerful testament to the severity of the farm line because we know from our history in Nazi Germany, everybody was complicit with the regime. It wasn’t a matter of like I’m in this space and I got an opinion on how these people should be treated. I’m complicit. I’m in compliance with everything that we’re doing here. The attitude and when you first said it, I reflect on most of ’em are private contracts. They became privatized. So most of them are contracts and in order to maintain their contracts, they have to provide a certain amount of services, but when they bid, they underbid to get the lowest possible service to us. And so when this entity come into play, very rarely do you find the medical going to go against the prison administration or the department of credit because they get their monies from them.
It’s not a part of the state. When you was a part of the state then it was a different thing because now you had a different standard that you could track and say, well this is and all this is the farm line, the medical, the ward and everybody associated with it. Here you have a private medical institution got going from prison to prison to prison throughout the United States. And as they got sued and they left, they got kicked out, they just went to another and they swapped out like that. So it’d be interesting to see who is responsible for this, but talk about the status of the case and I get off my so box, talk about the status of the case right now, Samantha.
Samantha Pourciau:
So right now we are awaiting a ruling on that second preliminary injunction and temporary restraining order for the summer of 2025 and we just submitted our post argument briefing on Friday, May 16th. And so now the court has all of the briefing that is requested and hopefully should be making a ruling any day, hopefully today so we can get some relief because we are in the height of the heat season. The temperature this past weekend in Louisiana exceeded a hundred degrees on the real feel heat index and we’re really getting to the point where it’s getting dangerous for folks to be out there. So we’re hoping the court rules imminently and grants us some temporary relief while we are continuing to work on a final judgment in this case related to ending the farm line generally because of its psychological and dignitary harm for those who are forced to labor on it at all times, at all seasons. And so we’re awaiting that ruling. And then as I mentioned, we are still awaiting a ruling on whether the class action can proceed as a class action not just on behalf of individuals and the associational plaintiff vote. And so we expect that ruling to come through at the end of this summer and then once that ruling comes through, the court will implement a new scheduling order and hopefully set a trial date for probably 2026. But we’re awaiting when that will happen.
Mansa Musa:
Is there anything else that we did not cover that you would like our viewers to know?
Samantha Pourciau:
I think I just feel like I always want to lift up our who we represent. I get to be here and talk about the case because I am an attorney and I’m not incarcerated, but I wish it could be them that we’re talking about the case and
Mr. De Jackson and one of the named plaintiffs was able to come for the three, the class certification hearing for the three days we were in court and sit at council table and participate and testify. And it was the first time the court was able to hear directly from an incarcerated person forced to labor on the farm line. And that changes how one thinks about this when you can hear about it directly from the person experiencing it. So even creating that opportunity to allow incarcerated folks to come out to the public, to the courtroom, to a public space and tell everyone what is happening in these places where we try to disappear people. Angola is two and a half hours away from New Orleans. It’s in a remote location that is hard to access. It’s at the end of a very long railroad that you have no cell phone reception when you’re going up there. And so I think getting folks outside of that and into the public to talk about the truth of what we’re doing, this modern day slavery is essential
Mansa Musa:
And how do our audience stay in touch or get more information or be able to track this if they want to stay on top of it and insert themselves in whatever advocacy y’all are soliciting from people.
Samantha Pourciau:
Yeah, I would recommend that folks sign up for the Promise of Justice Initiatives newsletter. If you go to promise of justice.org on our website, you can sign up there and then follow us on social media to get updates as they’re coming out. Justice Promise is our tag on Instagram and you can find us on Facebook and Blue Sky and x and that’s where we’ll post live updates as they’re happening.
Mansa Musa:
Thank you Samantha. Samantha, you rattled the bars today. We can hear the bars coming loose and the voices of those that are incarcerated or in prison or in chattel slavery, we can hear their voices being echoed through you. So we take heart at that and we recognize what you’re saying, that it would be more appealing to have the people that’s suffering this to be present. But at the same token, if we don’t have people like yourself, we ain’t have William Kler, we ain’t have Charles Gerry, we ain’t have Thurgood Marshall, and we didn’t have people like yourselves in this space willing to go. I ain’t go willing to ensure that the information is being gathered and presented to the court willing to pursue justice at all court if we didn’t have this and we would be, this is what we would have. We used to have a farm line, a graveyard and Lords coming out to ensure that you have endless slave labor.
So we thank you for that. We ask our audience to continue to support and rally in the bars in the Real News. We ask that you support us by giving your feedback on these type of podcasts or these type of interviews that we are conducting. If you have an opinion about chattel slavery, if you have opinion about slavery, if you have opinion about concentration camps being ran in the United States under our species of being a prison, and if you have an opinion about genocide, if you have an opinion about anything relative to social conditions and injustice, then we ask that you give us your views and give us your feedback. It’s important for us to hear these things because your views are what help us shape the direction we are going in in terms of educating and exposing information. We don’t give you a voice, we just turn up the volume on your voice.
The year is 1968. Summertime. Washington, DC. And covering the National Mall are endless rows of shacks built by hundreds of poor families from across the United States. It’s called Resurrection City, and they have come to Washington to demand an end to poverty and a new economic bill of rights… for the poor.
This was Martin Luther King Jr’s dream. The Poor People’s Campaign is what he’d been working for in the months before he was killed in April 1968.
The city would last for six weeks. It would inspire thousands. Its legacy would last for decades.
This is episode 51 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.
And please consider signing up for the Stories of Resistance podcast feed, either in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Spreaker, or wherever you listen.
You can listen to Michael Fox’s full interview with Marc Steiner on his Patreon account: patreon.com/mfox. There you can also see exclusive pictures of many of his stories, follow his reporting and support his work and this podcast.
And covering the National Mall are endless rows of shacks built by hundreds of poor families from across the United States. It’s called Resurrection City. And they have come to Washington to demand an end to poverty and a new economic bill of rights.
This was Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream. The Poor People’s Campaign is what he’d been working for in the months before he was killed in April 1968.
“The emergency we now face is economic. And it is a desperate and worsening situation for the 35 million poor people in America. Not even to mention just yet the poor in the other nations, there is a kind of strangulation in the air.”
For King, poverty was a great evil. Something to be overcome. And which could be tackled by uniting across communities. Uniting across color lines. Despite his death, people carried on. They would organize in poor communities across the US.
Longtime radio host Marc Steiner was deeply involved.
“And when the Poor People’s Campaign started, we knew we had to build a coalition to join Resurrection City and started in Chicago… we traveled around the industrial north and down through Appalachia to organize communities to come to Resurrection City.”
And come they did. Thousands of people came from across the country in mid-May.
“I mean, there were thousands of people there… And people moved in, well, first of all, they came into DC from all over the country. And there were people from reservations in New York in North and South Dakota and Southwest United States all coming in, you know, to, to there. There were Mexicans coming from all across Southwestern United States and California. That and the Puerto Ricans coming in from Chicago and New York and in the Appalachian group. It was, it was really unbelievable. I mean, it was hard to fathom the power and beauty of this multiracial poor people’s coalition that actually came and they built these shacks, you know, and communal eating centers for cooking tents. And the mud, because it rained and rained and rained. And people stayed. It was, it was horrendous, but powerful.”
At its height, roughly 3,000 people lived in the makeshift wooden shacks of Resurrection City, right in the middle of the National Mall, in Washington, DC. It was a full-blown town. There was a day care center. A city hall. A barber shop. It had its own ZIP code. The goal was to pressure lawmakers to pass legislation to tackle the inequality in the country.
“I got nine children going to school now. And I had been to the welfare agency to see if I can get help and they wouldn’t help. And I really need help.”
This is from old footage and interviews from Resurrection City.
“A lot of people knew the condition of some of these places and when they see and know the condition will be interested enough to try to make things better.”
They demanded that the country spend $35 billion a year to end poverty in the United States. They called for half a million homes to be built per year until every poor neighborhood was transformed. They demanded full employment in the country, with a living wage for everyone.
“What we’re saying is that our economic order is evil… It’s been our experience that Congress and this nation doesn’t really move until their own self-interest is threatened. And until they, in fact, they begin to share some of the problems of the poor. Or some of the effects of poverty.”
They held marches and rallies, the biggest on Juneteenth, with 100,000 people in the streets.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s widow, Coretta Scott King, spoke to the crowd.
“We are here because we feel a frightful sense of urgency to rectify the long standing evils and injustices in our society, racism, poverty and war. The Poor People’s Campaign was conceived by my late husband, Doctor Martin Luther King Junior, as America’s last chance to solve these problems nonviolently. The sickness of racism. The despair of poverty and the hopelessness of war have served to deepen the hatred, heightened the bitterness, increase the frustration, and further alienate the poor in our society.”
Residents of Resurrection City spoke to lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
“We’re building our old house over there and I’m gonna tell you something. It’s better than anything that we have in Brownsville. We got our house better than anything in Flatbush, which is middle class.
“It is working down in Resurrection City. And please listen to that. That beautiful thing down there is just the top of a movement that stretches from coast to coast.
“This is the last chance I think for this country to sort of respond to the quiet and peaceful petitions of people who are asking for very very just solutions to very very real problems.”
Resurrection City lasted for more than 40 days.
“Yeah, it was a, it was an amazing experience. America could use that again now.”
It was inspiring. It was powerful. Maybe too powerful.
After six weeks, on June 24, a thousand police officers rolled in to crush Resurrection City.
“It was like chaos. I mean, they came in just destroying places where people lived, throwing people out. Some people got arrested and, you know, it was a, it was a really miserable, anticlimactic end to a very powerful movement.”
But its legacy would last until today. Marc Steiner…
“It was critical. I mean, it was a game changer in many ways for a number of levels. It radicalized people inside of poor communities that were involved in the Poor People’s Campaign to help them build movements locally. One of the hidden gems of the Poor People’s Campaign for me is that what happened after it was destroyed and people went back to their communities and continued to build and organize because of that experience. And that’s that story that’s really hidden and not talked about very much.
“All over the country that happened, and some of us stayed in touch. Like when I went back to Baltimore in 1970, Baltimore had a series of collectives in working-class communities. Organizing. And so we did a lot of great work in those first few years of the 1970s, and that was born out of that.
“And it happened all over the country like that. I mean, we started a People’s Free garage, we started a People’s Free grocery store, we started at People’s Free Medical Clinic. We organized, we started a Tenants Union group that fought against slumlords and brought Black and white communities together to fight, you know, these slumlords. And so, I mean, out of Resurrection City, a movement was created.”
And it didn’t stop there. On the 50th anniversary, a new Poor People’s Campaign was organized in communities across the US to once again pick up Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream. Led by Rev. William Barber and Rev. Liz Theoharis, they, too, marched on Washington.
Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream continues to inspire.
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Michael Fox.
In Los Angeles, CA, armed, masked agents of the state are snatching and disappearing immigrants off the street, peaceful protestors and journalists are being attacked with tear gas and rubber bullets, National Guard troops and active-duty Marines have been deployed to police and intimidate American citizens. Fear and uncertainty have gripped America’s second largest city as a barrage of misinformation obscures the reality on the ground; nevertheless, Angelinos continue to defy the Trump administration’s attacks on immigrant communities and authoritarian crackdown on civil rights. In this episode of Working People, we take you to the streets of LA and speak with multiple on-the-ground eyewitnesses to the events of the past two weeks to help you better understand what’s actually happening and where this is all heading.
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 Maximilian Alvarez and today we are taking you to the streets of Los Angeles where federal agents, including many in face masks and unmarked cars, have been snatching and disappearing people off the streets, taking them from Home Depot, parking lots and farm fields. Outside immigration courts abducting them from their homes, leaving lives and families shattered with all the inhumane violence and brutal glee of fascist brown shirts. Unless you have been living under a rock and actively refusing to acknowledge the reality of what’s happening in our country, you have no doubt seen videos of these immigration raids on social media and on the news you saw federal agents tackle and arrest union leader David Huerta, president of Service employees International Union, unite Service Workers West, while he and others were exercising their first amendment right to observe and document law enforcement activity at a workplace raid on Friday, June 6th, you’ve heard the reports of President Donald Trump sending National Guard troops in active duty Marines into LA against the explicit wishes of California officials, including Governor Gavin Newsom.
And Trump is now openly demanding that ICE and other armed agents of the state specifically target and invade other major sanctuary cities with elected democratic leaders to carry out his mass deportation campaign. And you have hopefully also seen and heard the voices of resistance rising from the streets, even with a curfew in place in downtown LA over multiple days, even in the face of militarized police openly violating their first amendment rights and brutalizing protestors, journalists and legal observers alike residents across America’s second largest city, and I’m talking union members, students, grandparents, and retirees, faith leaders and concerned citizens from all walks of life have continued voicing their descent online and in the streets, protesting the Trump administration’s authoritarian attacks, rallying support and protection for immigrant communities, filming ice and police abuses and demanding accountability. What is happening in Los Angeles is already setting the stage for what’s to come around the country.
We know what the Trump administration wants to do to immigrants, to protestors, to our civil rights, and to the very concept of state sovereignty. I mean, we are literally seeing it play out in real time. What we don’t know is how much Trump’s plans will be frustrated, thwarted, and even reversed by the resistance that he faces. What happens next depends on what people of conscience people like you do. Now in this two parts series of the podcast, we’re going to do our best to give you a panoramic view of the Battle of Los Angeles, bringing you multiple on the ground perspectives to help you cut through the noise and all the misinformation and to better understand what’s actually happening, where this is all heading, and what you and others can do to stand up for your rights and stand up for yourself, your family, your neighbors, your coworkers, and your community members.
For part one of this series, I spoke with three different journalists who have been doing distinct and equally essential coverage of the raids, the protests, police abuses, and community mobilization efforts happening in la. First I speak with Sonali Kolhatkar, an award-winning journalist, broadcaster, writer, author, and the host of Rising Up with Sonali. Then I speak with Javier Cabral, editor in chief of the award-winning independent outlet, LA Taco, which has been doing vital real-time video reporting on social media throughout the raids and the protests. And lastly, I speak with Michael Nigro, an award-winning filmmaker and multimedia journalist who is among the numerous journalist colleagues who have been assaulted by police while doing his job reporting from the front lines in Los Angeles.
Sonali Kolhatkar:
Hi, I’m Sonali Kolhatkar. I am the host, founder and executive producer of Rising Up with Sonali, an independent nationally syndicated television and radio program that’s broadcast on free speech TV and Pacifica radio stations. I’m also an essayist op-ed writer, reporter, and a published book author, and I’m really excited to be here.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, Sonali, thank you so much for joining us on the show today. I’m a huge fan and appreciator of your work and everyone listening, if you’re not already, you should absolutely be listening to supporting and sharing Rising up with Sonali. It’s really, really essential work and we will link to that in the show notes. And you guys probably, if for any reason you aren’t already following son’s work, you’re definitely familiar with her and her critical voice. It was just a few months ago that Sonali was giving really important updates on news shows around the country, about the fires going on back home in Southern California. And here we are just what, four months later and now we’ve got the National Guard back in my home of LA and the protests that we are covering here on this episode. It’s been a lot and it’s kind of surreal to even be having this conversation, especially as a southern California boy now in Baltimore asking if you can kind of tell me what the hell is happening in my home.
But I really value the perspective that you’ve been bringing, and I know that right now there’s just so much crap and misinformation and bad information floating around online. And it really struck me in the first few days of the LA protests and the police backlash that it was hard to find good information about what was actually happening. And that was a very surreal experience for me to not fully know what was going on back home and to not know exactly where to look. So thankfully, I had folks like Sonali, I went to accounts that I trusted and I knew were doing good work and Sonali is very much one of those. And so I wanted to give you guys access to Sonali and her great work and perspective here. So with all that upfront Sonali, I kind of wanted to just turn it over to you and ask if you could give us a bit of a play by play of the past week down there. What has it actually been like and how has the reality on the ground differed from maybe the unreality that we’ve been hearing from the White House on down?
Sonali Kolhatkar:
Yeah, I mean it’s been really interesting. It’s been, as you said, it should be contextualized with the Eaton fires that took place five months ago. And I think LA and Angelinos are kind of a breaking point. And so we, you’re seeing that attitude on the streets in la. It really actually started in San Diego the week in early June when a restaurant was struck by an ice raid and the people who were working in the restaurant were rounded up. The people who were eating at the restaurant were outraged. And then it moved into Los Angeles a week later when on June 6th, ice went into a Home Depot parking lot in Paramount in LA County and also in the Garin District. They went to an outlet that they knew they could find people who were working these jobs. They rounded them up and that started getting people angry and people were mobilizing.
But really what was the turning point was that same day on Friday, June 6th, David Huerta, the president of S-E-I-U-U-S-W, was in a confrontation, verbal confrontation with an ice agent rounding up around a raid and was sort of coming to the defense of one of the immigrants that they were trying to take away. He was very roughly shoved to the ground. His head was smashed against the sidewalk. He was arrested and well, first he was hospitalized and then arrested. And these are ice agents that are not supposed to have any jurisdiction over US citizens, let alone labor leaders. And so David Huerta, he’s a beloved labor leader, his arrest sparked this huge rage and anger in Los Angeles. It’s a strong union town and we are known for, this is the site of numerous UTLA teacher strikes and longshore workers striking and fight for 15 fast food workers.
Striking nurses have done strikes here. We’ve had in recent years, a SAG after strike writers and filmmakers striking. So this is strong labor center, and when they arrested David Huta, all bets were off. It mobilized the crowds of labor rank and file labor. And there was a huge, huge, huge rally on Monday, June 9th, the day that David Huta was arraigned, I went there. In fact, there was something on the order of 10 to 15,000 people gathered in Grand Park in downtown Los Angeles. I walked through that rally people out in a festive atmosphere, but they were angry. They were wearing their union shirts. There was a lot of clergy there as well, who do a lot of solidarity work with labor. There was a massive rally, lot of spoke from the rally. Many, many folks spoke on the stage and people were angry. And then up the street from that, there were a conference, there was the downtown federal building, which is 300 North Los Angeles.
What’s really interesting, max, I’ve been to that building as an immigrant probably two decades ago when I was a green card holder trying to adjust my status and get a work permit. I remember standing in a long line of people to get in and into my appointment. That building now covered with graffiti, California national Guardsmen, blanking it, standing there with their shields and there were angry, raucous protests, people yelling and screaming at them with loud speakers. There was a seven or 8-year-old child. I remember I took a photo of him. I didn’t want to publish it because he’s a minor, but I want to describe it to you. Seven or 8-year-old child standing in front of the national Guardsman, his back to them wearing nothing but a pair of pants and on his chest, Sharpie F ice like diff. I saw 12-year-old kid with a bandana and a face mask on the walls and on the sidewalk.
People were angry, wrapping themselves in Mexican flags. And for anybody who knows la, the Mexican flag is a symbol of protest, is a really common site. I know it’s completely being misinterpreted and misunderstood by the Trump administration. They’re using it as a way to say, look, we’re having a foreign invasion, but every time we’ve had immigration marches in LA, people pull out their Mexican flags as a way to assert their, not just dual citizenship in the symbolic sense or dual allegiance, but their immigrant identity. And it’s a way to say, this used to be Mexican land. It’s a way to say, we are not going to assimilate and bow down to white supremacy. We’re going to be our glorious, colorful, radical, powerful selves that you can’t put in a box because we’re multiple identities. We’re intersecting identities. That’s what that flag represents. And it’s very commonly seen at LA protests that have anything to do with immigration.
So that was happening. And then in front of the detention center where that was being held, people had gathered and there were are cops standing there looking, mean there was no big confrontation because all the confrontations are happening in the evening. They did ara him, they released him. And then of course what’s been happening is there was a curfew put on a one square mile, one square mile area in downtown LA after 8:00 PM but they’re tricking protesters. I have not been there past curfew, but from the reports that I’m reading of people whose work I trust and people are emailing me about their experiences, the cops, the train stops running at seven, which it shouldn’t. The curfew starts at eight, train stops running at seven. The cops around people who are protesting kettle them, which is a term that means that they prevent them from leaving, trapping them, and then have free reign to arrest them after the curfew starts at 8:00 PM saying you are violating curfew.
Now, by the way, this is all in the control of the city, which is supposed to be separate from federal ice agents. And to me, what this movement has really clarified is that there’s no difference between police and ice. Some people would like to think there is a difference. Mayor Karen Bass in LA was trying to suggest that LAPD would not be cooperating with ICE and they’re going to protect people and ice agents are coming into our town. No, the LAPD are part of the spectrum of armed state power. That ice is also part of a spectrum of, they work in tandem and they’ve been showing that they don’t need to have a curfew, they don’t need to be out there riling people up, making it easy for ice to do its job. And frankly, the protesters don’t see a distinction between them. When you’re out protesting the streets, people are saying, the Marines disappeared.
My friend, there was a woman who had been trying to get attention on social media about her friend and others are saying, well, those aren’t Marines, they’re California guardsmen. And she’s saying, I frankly dunno who they are. There are uniformed armed men, mostly men in various different forms of uniform. Some of them, some of them not. Some of them wearing fatigue, some of them wearing black who are just arresting people. And you can’t just arrest people unless you have cause and if you’re arresting them, if they’re undocumented, you need a signed warrant from a judge. But they don’t have the signed warrants. And so it’s literally, this is the definition of fascism. They are going in rounding people up without pretext. And another thing that people aren’t paying attention to is that Trump and Christine Nome have basically explicitly said that they’re sending an ice raid into blue cities, into cities run by democratic mayors.
They’re doing this as a political action. Like, wow, think about that. Right? They’re sending in armed federal agents funded by tax dollars to undermine the leadership of their political opposition, not to suggest that Democrats are doing anything. And then on Saturday we had that, there was the no Kings rally that attracted about 30,000 people. That was the official count. I think it was bigger. I was there and I really couldn’t see the beginning or the end of the march. And that was part of the 2200 plus actions happening around the country that were organized and set up before the ice raids to coincide with Trump’s military parade. But they were just a very nice, convenient outlet for people who were upset about ICE raids. And in LA you saw people wearing kafis to show their support for Palestinian rights while holding up a sign saying F Ice.
And many other very colorful language, lots of Los Angeles centric language involving, I don’t like Isen Ice only belongs in my orta. And very just very unique to LA signage, very glorious, raucous, friendly, angry, big crowds of people who were outraged, angry, tired. And what I’m noticing is different is that no one is, very few people are suggesting that the Democrats are the answer, which I think they’ve realized what a disaster the Biden presidency was, and now there’s such a hunger for something different. So it’s a really important moment for organizing, which I don’t know if we’ll get to that, but just want to put that out there because it’s a ripe moment.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Let’s definitely make sure that we end on that point, what you’re hearing from folks about where that energy is going and where it’s decidedly not going. And I want to by way of getting there, just like while we have you just maybe take a couple minutes to ask some follow up questions to get some clarity for folks outside of LA who again, are maybe just hearing the latest on the news or maybe they’re hearing Trump posting his insanity on truth social. So I want to just ask them some basic questions here. One is, in your sense have was the National Guard and the Marines sent in because things were so unruly on the ground? Or did those additional troops instigate the upsurge in clashes with police, with violence? I mean, that’s obviously been one question over the week. Is Trump responding to a crisis that needs to be quelled or tamped down or whatever language they’re using? Or is he inflaming it by sending in the goddamn National Guard and the Marines to squash civilian protests?
Sonali Kolhatkar:
Yeah, it’s very much a manufactured crisis. It started with the ice raids. And the ice raids were initially, depending upon the time of day, Trump spoke predicated on the fact that immigrants are supposedly destroying our cities and causing violence and mayhem and invading, et cetera, et cetera. When of course in Los Angeles, our communities are so deeply intertwined. Frankly, most of us don’t know or care who among us is undocumented or not. Many live in mixed status. Families live quite happily together with one another. The one common struggle we have is violence of poverty, of inequality. And so immigrants are after the eaten fires. Almost every single person that I encountered to help me fix up my home due to wind damage was an immigrant of some sort, not originally from the us. I was making note of that in my head, like how immigrant LA is.
And so we have not had any, the problem was created by Trump. The problem of immigrant violence in cities is as real as rampant voter fraud in elections fermented by immigrants. So he started the problem, and then when people fought back, when people refused to take it lying down and protested, that was the opening he was waiting for to get the National Guard involved and to claim to send Marines in. And yeah, a couple of cars were set on fire. There’s a ton of graffiti downtown la, almost all of it as far as I could see on federal buildings. And that’s rage, right? It’s a property destruction. It’s not hurting individuals. The cars that were burned down were way more cars. They were AI powered cars. And it should be noted that these are cars that are basically gathering surveillance and sharing it with police.
They’re known to be sharing surveillance with police because they’re outfitted with dozens of cameras. So those were burned, which I think was a very symbolic protest. And so yes, this is a complete and utter fabrication that LA is so out of control and burning that they need to send in outside help. Absolutely. It’s not, I’ve been on the streets of la. I did not for a second feel threatened by anyone other than armed cops. The only threat I felt was from the armed agents of power. And they are going after journalists, by the way. So I was a little scared, not from a single protestor. And that really needs to be clarified. So this is just a manufactured crisis. It’s a way for Trump to lash out, to distract from the fact that his presidency has been an utter failure. His economic turnaround has been an utter failure, and it’s an opening for fascism. He’s trying to see how far he can push. LA is a test case. The last administration, four years ago, Portland was a test case, if you remember where they were sending in the National Guard troops into Portland. In this scenario, LA is the test case much bigger, much, much bigger city. And he doesn’t know what the can of worms that he has opened in LA because people aren’t backing down. He is going to lose in la.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And another follow up question on that front, I think I’ve learned over the past year that in fact, a lot of people don’t know much about la, right? I mean, I was getting into some very heated arguments with people, people on the left during the fires who were sort of celebrating them as if these were all just mansions of the rich in Malibu. And I had to explain to them, I was like, look, bro, I mean, there are houses in Compton for millions of dollars. That doesn’t mean the people there are millionaires. That’s just very, the property values have gone up. Just think a little more about the people you’re talking about. And right now, people are not doing that. And I think they’re not even wrapping their heads around the fact that LA is a massive city. We’re talking nearly 500 square miles in the city proper. We’re talking nearly 4 million people in the city proper to say nothing of the greater LA area. So we’re talking about a big chunk of city here. And right now, again, people outside of California are being told and even regurgitating the notion that LA is a war zone, that it’s just bedlam over there. So I wanted to give you a chance to respond to that. What does LA look like right now to you?
Sonali Kolhatkar:
It’s mostly business as usual, except in some parts of downtown la, right? I live about 25 minutes from downtown LA in Pasadena. We’re seeing regular protests in front of City Hall. They’re all extremely orderly, almost to a fault, but they’re there, which is kind of nice. We’re not seeing, we don’t normally see regular protests in Pasadena where I live, but the people are showing up in front of City Hall. They’re showing up in front of hotels where they think ice agents are staying. But in downtown LA, there is an area right around the city hall area, bridging square, and in between where all the federal buildings are located, where the detention center is. And that is an area that has been kind of closed off. Freeway exists have been shut down. So it’s harder to make it in there, and people are still making it in there.
There are some people who are showing up deliberately showing up in the evenings because they really see this as them holding the line. They’re showing up, they’re protesting. They’re protesting because there’s a curfew and their right to be angry. Why is there a curfew in our city who decided there should be a curfew in our city? Why? Because you want the right and the freedom to just openly tear apart our communities, and you want us to just take it and lay down. So yeah, people are showing up. There are clashes with cops. Nobody is being violent. The cops are not being hurt. And frankly, if the cops are being hurt, they could just leave and then they wouldn’t be hurt. So yeah, it’s not like the whole city is burning at all. The violence of poverty impacts our city much more than anything that Trump can imagine.
We’ve had the violence of climate change from the Eaton fires. We are seeing the violence of policing and of immigration enforcement. Those are the sources of violence. And we should be very, very, very clear on that. And LA may be, LA is a city of contradictions. Even I don’t fully know la, I only know the pieces that I traverse regularly. It’s a city of contradictions. It’s a city of millionaires and immigrants. It’s a city of white liberal Hollywood and radical Antifa union folks and artists and theater people. I mean, it’s everything. It’s such a slice of humanity. And also, we have some of the largest immigrant groups that are living outside native country in, I think most cities in the United States, for example, the biggest Armenian population outside Armenia lives in la, huge populations of Vietnamese, Koreans, massive Korean population, Indians and Pakistanis. It’s so a huge Arab population.
Persians, it is such an incredible sort of multi-layered city that I don’t know, it’s hard to, if you’ve never been to LA, for those people who’ve never been to LA, just come and get a sense of the beauty here. It’s a beautiful city. It’s gritty and it’s also beautiful. It’s slick and it’s gritty at the same time. I can’t describe it. You’ll never know LA unless you’ve spent a lifetime exploring every corner of it, as you said, it’s just huge. It’s massive. And everyone can unite on the one thing they all hate about la, and that is traffic, because we’re so spread out and we have to drive so much, and there’s just too much traffic. So
Maximillian Alvarez:
There you go. Well, I didn’t want to interrupt because you were making a serious point, but when you said that the thing that binds Angelinos is like class struggle, and I was like, and hatred of traffic. Those are the two things. Yeah, that’s what the banners of the proletariat in la. And I can’t keep you for too much longer. And I know you’ve been busting your butt doing interviews all day. So I promise I just got a couple more questions for you. But on that last note though, I wanted to ask the no kings protests, like you mentioned happened on Saturday. And I was here covering the protests in Baltimore. Thousands of folks showed out admittedly as a more white crowd that I think you saw a lot of folks from Baltimore County coming in. But there’s still thousands of folks that I talked to, veterans, young folks, old folks, people like you were saying, kind of a chorus of righteous grievances that were emerging from this crowd, from standing up against the attacks on immigrants to the attacks on democracy and the rule of law to the billionaire takeover of everything, but very much kind of all singing together in this chorus of righteous rage.
And it was a very peaceful endeavor. Some would criticize, it was almost too peaceful, right? There were food trucks there. And it’s just like, I think what people are seeing in LA has gotten everyone maybe a little on Tenter hooks, because it either becomes a litmus test of like, if we’re not as radical as LA, then we’re not doing anything worthwhile. But I caution people out there to just put judgment to the side at this moment in history as we descend into fascism, and just look at the people who are showing up and encourage action where you can and don’t judge people who are taking that first step to speak out. There’s a lot going on right now, and people are meeting this moment coming from a lot of different paths. Right?
Sonali Kolhatkar:
Agreed.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, and on that note, I wanted to just ask, like you mentioned the no Kings protests. I know that there were some violent tactics used by police to try to disperse some crowds. I think there were maybe about 35 arrests as I read. So I wanted to ask, is the police presence, is the curfew, is it slowing down the protest momentum in LA that you’re seeing? And are the attacks on journalists that you mentioned, is that slowing down or making you and your colleagues think twice about going out there and covering?
Sonali Kolhatkar:
I do wonder if the turnout in LA would’ve been bigger had there not been all of this warning ahead of time that the Marines are going to be sent to LA for the No Kings protest. I had a friend who was visiting from out of town, and I said to her, listen, I’m a journalist. I’m afraid you’re visiting, but come with me to the protest. We’ll do a few interviews and go get lunch afterwards. And she was like, oh. But I read and I said, oh, look, this is la. Trust me, it’s going to be fine. And we’ll know as soon as we get on the train. If there’s crowds of people on the train to go into downtown la, it’s all going to be good. If there’s not that many people, then it’s going to be a little bit iffy. And there were a few people.
And then as we sat on the train, more and more came in. And when we got out of the train, there was a sea of people. But I’ve been to a bigger protest in la, huge protest, the first women’s march in 2017, and then 2006, because I’ve been doing this a long time, the massive 2006 immigration rallies when a million people showed up on the streets of LA wearing white and waving US flags and Mexican flags, the subway trains were so, the metro trains were so, so crowded. And the more crowded it is, the more big and glorious it is, and the less fear there is about police violence. And so I would say that there was a little fear of police violence. It was huge in la, but it could have been huger. And I suspect that if people had, I suspect people also remember there were LA is so spread out.
Pasadena had its own protests. Sierra Madre had its own protests. South Pasadena had its own protests. So a lot of smaller rallies were happening in cities in LA County that people were like, well, instead of going to the one big one in la, we’ll go to the one here that’s smaller that we know there aren’t going to be cops freaking us out. So that might’ve been another thing that happened. And I think it’s really, and when it comes to the journalists, I don’t know. I mean, yes, I’ve stayed away from covering the evening protests in part because of practicality, because I’ve kids and I take care of my parents, but also in part because, yeah, I have no wish to be having a flashback grenade hurdle at my head, which is a sorry thing to say. It indicates the sorry state of our democracy when a journalist are slightly afraid to go out and cover these huge protests. So yeah, I think that that’s definitely an important thing to consider.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah, it’s pretty damn wild when you can see on camera the police targeting journalists, even foreign journalists and just shooting them with rubber bullets, shooting our colleagues in the head with rubber bullets and tear gas canisters. And I don’t want to do the thing where it’s like fellow journalists get, we clutch our pearls and we get really upset when other journalists are hurt, but we don’t speak out when citizens are being brutalized. No, we’re pissed off at all of it. And all of it is an atrocity and an attack on democracy as such, and on the people as such. See, it’s not that hard to walk and chew gum at the same time. But these are very dangerous times that we are living in. And I kind of wanted, as we round this final corner here, again, I just wanted to thank you and everyone who is going out there and continuing to do the important work of reporting so that folks like the listeners of this show can actually know what the hell is going on and not be led astray, not be led to support this authoritarian repression because they are being fed misinformation about what’s actually happening on the ground.
And in that vein, in the final turn, I wanted to circle back to the point that you raised in the beginning. I wanted to ask if we could maybe just survey a bit, the folks that you’ve been talking to, the attitudes that you’ve been picking up on, the things that people have been telling you, like I guess, where are folks right now? Where do you see this going? And where is this grassroots energy headed right now?
Sonali Kolhatkar:
So some of the people that I’ve been talking to are a lot of young folks, people who are showing up in their graduation sashes who are from mixed status families. I talked to high school kids whose families are impacted. And one kid said, I’m here because my grandfather can’t be here because he’s too scared, because he is undocumented, but I’m a citizen, so I’m here on his behalf. I’ve talked to a lot of what’s really interesting, a lot of black folks coming out in support of their immigrant neighbors. So I spoke with Jasmine Abula Richards, who is the leader of the Black Lives Matter Pasadena chapter, who said Babies are being ripped out of the arms of their families. I don’t care what race they are. I’m standing here in solidarity with them, and she is calling on her community to show up for immigrant rights, which I just love.
That’s a lot of lots. So LA’s No Kings Rally, hugely multiracial and diverse, in contrast to the women’s March that took place this year as opposed to the one that took place in 2017. So I went to the Women’s March this year, largely white, although it was still multiracial just because it’s la. But on Saturday, incredibly multiracial. I’ve also interviewed Pasadena City Councilman Rick Cole, whose daughters were arrested in downtown LA protesting the National Day labor organizing networks, Pablo Alvarado, who has been on the front lines of all of defending dayers at Home Depot. Yeah, it’s been, people are really ready to take this on. They are basically drawing the line in the sand saying, no, you cannot do this to la. We’re not going to let you, it’s just not happening because we’re immigrants are too integrated into our society. They aren’t just a part of our community.
They are our community. So I’ve talked to pastors and clergy who are doing solidarity work, union leaders. Oh my gosh, I can’t keep track of the interviews. There’ve been so many interviews, but it’s a great cross section. People who’ve been active for many, many years and who’ve come out for many protests and people just become activated. And yeah, I think I’m hoping that the people who are rising up are also seeing, because what happened the last time people rose up against Trump was it was this feeder into if only we could elect more Democrats than we could get rid of Trump. Well, that was tried and failed. And now what? And I think I am seeing from, at least in la, a sense that we need to expand beyond the two party system. We need more radical leadership in government, and if we want to change the dynamics of power, we need to elect people regardless of which party, and ideally, not really establishment Democrats, independence or whatever democratic socialists who are going to do our bidding as opposed to Wall Streets and the brown shirts. So Yeah’s been incredible. It’s a great time to be a journalist in spite of the dangers. It’s a great time to be a journalist in America. It’s also the worst time to be a journalist because nobody’s newsrooms are being decimated, and our jobs are being outsourced to ai, and we’re trying to survive on Patreon and Substack subscriptions. So yeah, contradictions, and you well know what that means.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, and that’s as good of a occasion as any to remind y’all before we let her go to please follow Sonali and support her show, check out her work. It’s invaluable in these times. So Sonali, thank you so much for joining us, and thank you for all the work you’re doing. Si, I really appreciate it.
Sonali Kolhatkar:
I appreciate your work as well. Thank you so much, max, for having me on.
Javier Cabral:
What’s up, man? My name’s Javier Cabral. I’m the editor in chief for LA Taco.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, Javier, thank you so much for joining us today, man. I know you’ve been running your ass off, you and your colleagues over there at La Taco covering the mayhem, the protests, the lifting up, the voices on the front lines of struggle back home. And I just wanted to say up top that the work y’all have been doing has been incredible, vital, and just so, so necessary in this moment when there’s so much bad information, misinformation floating around. I really can’t emphasize enough for folks listening that if you haven’t already, you need to follow La Taco, follow their Instagram, follow their accounts where they’re really posting real time updates on what’s happening back in la. And we’re going to link to those accounts in the show notes for this episode. And Javier, I wanted to toss it to you there before we really dig into what the past week has looked like through your eyes and the eyes of your colleagues and the coverage that you’re doing. I wanted to ask you if you could just tell our listeners a bit more about La Taco, what it is, and the kind of coverage that you guys have been doing, and then I guess tie that into the past week. When did this all really start kicking up for you, and how did y’all respond to the protests to the National Guard to Ice raids? How did you guys respond to that with the coverage that you’re doing?
Javier Cabral:
Sure, man. So LA Tacos started in 2005 as a blog that celebrated tacos, cannabis and graffiti. We thought ourselves as a baby vice, I would say we were, were alternative. This is a time when tacos were illegal in la. There was a big movement called ADA because taco trucks were illegal to park all over the city and pretty much what street vendors are dealing with right now and their battle for legalization and for permits. And in 2017, Dan Danez took over. He was a former vice reporter badass who was in the chapels tunnels and worked for Vice Mexico. He spearheaded our news first approach to fill the void that after LA Weekly got slashed, they fired everyone. And then LA was left without an alternative style publication for a county of 10 million people, which it was crazy. So LA Taco decided to just put our resources and hope for the best. Daniel was the editor for two years before he moved on to LA Times Food, where he is at now. I took over right before the pandemic in 2019, and no one was reading. There was the pivot.
The pivot to that Creator Media was starting to happen and vlogging with a V. And my contract was like, if you can get our traffic up in six months, you can keep the job as long as you have. And it’s been almost six years now. So we’ve really risen to meet whatever crisis or whatever big news story is happening out there because of alternative style approach. And when I say alternative, it just means that we’re, we’re not the opposite of corporate media. We’re not a nonprofit. We don’t have any nonprofit safety net. We are 100% independent. A lot of brands don’t want to work with us because we publish whatever the hell we want to publish. And some of these stuff that we do is pretty damning to corporations or to the police or to any person in power are investigative investigative journalist, Alexis Oli Ray.
He is our ace. He’s always out there keeping police accountable, has been involved of several lawsuits, and we back him up, we back everything because I famously said one time I interviewed by LA Times a little profile on me, and I’m from the hood, right? So literally I said, we have to be prepared to defend whatever we publish in a dark alley if need be. So that philosophy, it’s on my heart and in everything I publish, I’m like, I can, we can’t be ashamed kiss as we can’t be fluffy. I see these people that we’re writing about when I go to backyard punk shows, when I go eat tacos and I speak to ’em in Spanish, whatever I publish, it has to be truthful and it has to just be just 100% something that I can stand behind. So that’s been our approach and this kind of fearless approach to a term, I call this street level journalism.
And that’s been our formula in 2021, we won a James Beard Award for our unique approach to food based, to food based stories. We do more food culture, more food intersections, gentrification, all the stuff that other publications are too scared to publish or too scared to touch because they don’t want a sacrifice their whatever ad sponsor or whatever. But we don’t care. Our tagline, literally for the longest time was we had bumper stickers that it was like, we don’t give a fuck. So with that same kind of punk rock ethos, we’re in 2025 now in this recent ice raids and massive civil unrest because of the fascist regime, because of Trump, because of him terrorizing our communities through these federal forces. So we’ve been covering it all, been covering it, and we’ve been documenting our little team of six reporters has really hit the streets and just trying to do our best to just show exactly what is happening out there and provide context as best as we can. It’s nothing crazy, but in this age of people talking to their phone and not asking any hard questions, I guess that’s crazy.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Again, I’m seeing this in real time. I mean, you’ve been posting videos from the ground in demonstrations showing when just rows and rows of police cars are descending on peaceful protesters and launching tear gas into the center of the crowds you guys have gotten police brutalizing, senior citizens. You’ve gotten those senior citizens on camera talking about it. You’ve done videos on social media reporting on ice raids, on Eros and other street vendors. So I want to kind of talk a bit about that, the kinds of stories that you’ve been reporting on, especially over the past week, right? All the focus has obviously been on the protests themselves, the National Guard, the Marines, this big debate over who’s causing the violence, who’s responding to the violence, yada, yada, yada. And I do want to make time to talk about that, but I wanted to ask what the past week has looked like for you and your colleagues reporting on the stories that you’ve been reporting on. What do you want folks out there, especially outside of LA, to know about what you’ve been seeing happen in your home over the past seven days?
Javier Cabral:
Well, these are the darkest days that I’ve lived in la. I’m 36 years old, so I don’t remember much about the LA riots in early nineties, but as far as I’m concerned, as long as I’ve been doing this, if you’re someone who’s looking from afar into what’s happening, it’s bad. It’s enough to just make everything like your life stop. It’s really hard to not fall in a downward spiral of depression, anxiety, paranoia. If you know anyone who is an immigrant and lives in la, especially if you’re a Latino, brown skinned person, definitely check in on them. Or don’t try to pretend like life is going on as normal because it’s not. It’s what we’re seeing is unprecedented and how LA Taco has been responding is also unprecedented as a leader, as the editor in chief, it’s been crazy. I’ve been very overwhelmed sometimes. I’m not going to lie.
I don’t know. I’m really grateful for my team that trust me. But there came a point where we were getting dozens of tips in our emails and our dms about all these ice raids happening around us just a few miles away. And what people, everyone was just scared. And then there were some stories that we were getting to before our competition, I guess other broadcasts or print publications, because we’re a lot more nimble. But even then, we couldn’t get to it fast enough. So as editor in chief, as a diehard writer, I was like, man, I think we need to get out of ourselves and get out of our business model even. Because as you know, the way that journalism and websites work is we get paid by either impression, but that’s dried up this Google AdSense. It’s not much money or if it’s syndicated on any of these apps, but that’s also a lot of it is very, Penn is on a dollar.
So what we’ve been doing is having a membership approach. People you join our members, and before all these protests, we were at 3,500, no, we were maybe like 3,300 members, and now we just checked it in and we’re over 4,000. So that, for me, it was very risky. So I decided that we needed to go on a social media first approach and employ these tactics that these creators or influencers are doing, but just apply a layer of integrity and ethics to everything and be able to verify everything. So we’ve been doing that, and it was a very risky approach. And my team luckily trusted me, and people have been, they’ve been heating our call, they’ve been responding to us. I frankly just from the bottom of my heart, just a little video, and I was like, look at everyone. Shit’s crazy right now. We can’t keep up with tips.
We’re only a team of six, so we’re going to start doing more videos and we hope that you back us up. We hope that you just don’t enjoy our content for free and you throw us a bone, whatever you can, anything helps. So we’ve actually raised more than $25,000 from just donations too in the last seven days. And it’s, how have we been covering this? It’s all hands on deck people. Sometimes my team doesn’t even ask me. They just go and cover it because that’s how newsworthy everything is right now. It’s just, it’s crazy times. And we’ll think about it after, just go first document and then we’ll think about, we’ll unpack it later. That’s how insane LA is right now with what’s happening with these ice raids and all these protests. I think I went, there was a straight protest for nine days. Nine days of hundreds of people protesting, and then obviously the police escalation that we have all been just seeing on our phones and on tv.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And can you say more about the raids themselves, just for folks listening? I mean, where are the raids happening? Who’s getting taken the manner in which people are being hunted down and detained again? I want to bring people down to that street level where you guys are, just to give them a sense of the terror that’s being waged against our community right now and what that looks like in the tips you’re getting, the stories that you’re reporting, the people you’re talking to. I want people listening to hear that and know that.
Javier Cabral:
Yeah, so undocumented street vendors, undocumented workers of any kind, even if you’ve been working here for 30 years and you have a home, you own a home, even if you are a functioning member of American society who pays your taxes, who has a complete family, who has made is probably more American than Mexican at this point. And what I mean by that is has adopted more American values. They’re good consumers. They watch a lot of American football. There are people like you and I, and they just haven’t had their legal processing. As some of us know, it takes a long time.
It depends on whatever kind of visa you want to apply for, but it’s very unrealistic for a lot of working people. And the way that these federal agencies are abducting people is very violent, very traumatic. When I say violent, traumatic, there was a video that we shared yesterday where we got some more details on about, it was in the Walmart parking lot in Pico Rivera here in la, which is Pico Rivera is a small suburban Latino community, maybe about 25 minutes from downtown. I call it east of East la. It’s even more east of East la. And it was in the Walmart parking lot. And this I got to interview the daughter of a tortilla delivery driver who worked for Mission Foods. And if you work those jobs, that’s a lot of of seniority to have your route and do it. And he was delivering his tortillas in a stack of ’em in a dolly.
And straight up, I abducted them, left the dolly, his daughter informed me that it was very peaceful, but they left the dolly filled tortillas on the sun. His car there opened with the doors open, completely no description. You know what I tell people, if anyone here has ever seen that satire movie called A Day Without a Mexican, when all of a sudden you just wake up and there’s the street vendor, shoes are just there, but not the human. It is like imagine if people are getting vaporized by the federal government. That’s what it feels like right now, and it’s very violent. That video actually really messed me up. Actually, that video actually was that tipping point for me. And finally getting therapy, because I just felt so many things. It was like a 20-year-old kid who he had stood, he was documenting, and there’s two different sides of this, but I just found out that he’s getting federal charges for obstruction of justice and for assaulting a federal officer was just announced a couple of minutes ago, and this is a 20-year-old kid who was out picking up carts at Walmart and was documenting, and I think probably got in the face of a federal agent.
And they didn’t like that they got him. They violently took him down, put his face to the floor, took away his phone, they took him, no one knew where he was at. And then another federal agent came cocked his gun really loud. I mean, I’m not a gun person, so I don’t know if that’s the right word, cock, but he kind of almost like if you’re playing a video game or something. And I just seeing that on all these unarmed civilians who were just concerned and crying, and then seeing this young 20-year-old kid who looked a lot like me when I was younger, I’m like, damn, that just hit home to me. I was, oh man. So it’s that kind of deep where it’s starting to affect journalists too. I’m trying to look for therapy myself too, because it’s just constant barrage of violence, guns, physical violence in real life at these protests by police, and also that we’re being bombarded with on TV and our phones every day.
And it’s hard to look away because there’s also a sense of fear too, because what if it happens to me tomorrow? I’m going to go on a ride along with a community agency who has formed community. They formed a community coalition that look out for each other whenever there’s ice protests. And this guy just got subpoenaed, I can tell you right now, lemme look it up. He got subpoenaed by the federal courts to hand over his, to hand over his everything, his information, his campaigns, his phone. Otherwise it’s going to be a full, I dunno, I’m sorry. Otherwise it’ll be a federal criminal investigation. And it was like the counter-terrorism unit because they’re trying to say that he’s fueling these protests and that he’s feeling all this, all this, no, but no one’s feeling anything. It’s everyone’s feeling ourselves because everyone is just so just upset at a very deep level because they’re coming here and they’re destroying families and destroying lives, and we’re all just seeing it. So yeah, that’s what I’ll say. And if you’re watching from afar, definitely support independent media support La Taco LA Public Press. They’ve been also been stepping it up, Kalo News, CALO News. They’ve been stepping it up. So there are independent sources that, I mean, they’re also nonprofits, but it’s still good. It’s all for the same goal. But definitely if you know anyone in LA who is from Guatemala, Mexico or El Salvador, definitely reach out to them and see how they’re doing, because I guarantee you that they’re not. Okay.
Michael Nigro:
Hey, I’m Michael Nigro I’m a Brooklyn, New York based photojournalist. I’ve been covering stories in the United States and around the world for roughly 15 years, mainly independent, but I will go and pitch stories of conflict politics and protests.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, Michael, it is such an honor to have you on the show, man. I really appreciate you in all the work that you do. And to everyone listening, you no doubt know Mike’s work, even if you don’t know his name yet. But you should. And for those who listened to this show, you have very likely heard Michael’s name because of the reporting he was doing at the protests in LA and what happened to him while he was doing his job and doing his job to inform us the people about what was happening on the ground. And we’re going to get to that in a second. But just to give you guys some context, I actually want to read from a piece from NPR that was published earlier this week by David Folkenflick. And David writes in this piece on Monday, the Los Angeles Press Club and the investigative reporting site status coup filed a lawsuit against the city of Los Angeles and the chief of the Los Angeles Police Department in federal court alleging that officers at the demonstrations were routinely violating journalists’ rights.
Being a journalist in Los Angeles is now a dangerous profession states. The complaint filed in the Western division of the Central District of California, LAPD, unlawfully used force and the threat of force against plaintiffs, their members and other journalists to intimidate them and interfere with their constitutional right to document public events. As the press consider a selection of the episodes that the press Club has compiled, including some that were captured live in the moment by the journalists themselves, an Australian television correspondent was shot by a law enforcement officer with a rubber bullet during a live shot. As she stood to the side of protests in downtown Los Angeles, the officer taking aim could be seen in the background as it happened. Another instance, a photographer for the New York Post was struck in the forehead by another rubber bullet, his stunning image capturing its path immediately before impact.
A veteran Los Angeles Times reporter by his account says he was shoved by a Los Angeles Police Department officer after reminding him that journalists were exempt under state law from the city’s recently imposed curfew. Several of his colleagues reported being struck by police projectiles. A student journalist says, LAPD officers shot him twice with rubber bullets. One nearly severed the tip of his pinky, which required surgical reattachment. A freelance journalist says he believes he was shot by a deputy from the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department. A CT scan showed what appears to be a 40 millimeter less lethal munition embedded in a two inch hole in the reporter’s leg. Now, those are just some of the stories that have been coming out of la, and the one that this article in NPR starts with is what happened to Michael. And so Michael, I want to turn it over to you, man, and ask if you could just walk us through your reporting in LA and walk us through what happened when the police made you a target.
Michael Nigro:
So as a photojournalist, you are there to document what is happening, what is occurring. Often, historical moments, not often do I ever want to be part of the story or become the story. However, doing some of the work that I do, sometimes it becomes that. And in the case of First Amendment and police trying to quash or censor what we are doing, then I think it’s really important to step up. So when David Folkenflik called me, I first wondered how he got my number, but what it turned out is that the Los Angeles Press Club is compiling a list of all the journalists who were either shot at or injured or targeted by the police. And the list is long. So that he contacted me out of all those people, I felt that it was a duty for me to actually kind of say, this is what I saw is what I experienced.
Now I am based in New York and I’ve been covering the ice raids inside courtrooms in downtown Manhattan. And there are very few people out in the street, very few inside the hallways trying to stop these kidnappings from happening kidnappings in quotes, but I don’t know what else to call them. They’re disappearing people. And one day at lunch, I walked outside and this French journalist approached me and said, where is everybody? Why aren’t people in the street? And I thought the same thing. I don’t know. Well, as it turned out, it was in la. And so when they called up the military and the National Guard and the win against Gavin Newsom wins against the mayor, win against everybody in Los Angeles, and they sent them there, I’m like, this is where I need to go.
I arrived on Monday the ninth, so I missed the first day. But when I arrived, I had already talked to a number of colleagues of mine, many of whom already been shot with rubber bullets or 40 millimeter sponge grenades or pepper balls, and just said, they’re, look out, they’re targeting us. And if not targeting us, it’s indiscriminate. So I have covered these things for years, protests from in Paris, France, and Hong Kong in the United States. Black Lives Matter, and I was geared up and it’s best thing I could have done is to have a very good helmet, a gas mask with protective eyewear and a flack jacket, all with press, front and back, side and side on my helmets, and that did not deter them from targeting the press. Early on in the evening on Monday, I was over on this bridge right across from the detention center all by myself, trying to get a wide shot.
Flashbacks had already been going off and some pepper, some rubber bullets, and I’m just sitting there with my long lens and all of a sudden I just heard this bing, bing, bing. And they shot right at my head, didn’t hit me, but that was definitely sending a message. I had no idea where it came from, but it was close. So I moved away and the day kind of played on some arrests and I need to be very clear here. What I witnessed is primarily a peaceful protest, primarily a peaceful protest. It never got violent until the police in riot gear and batons and started firing munitions at protestors. At this moment, there was no curfew that called, so they were just exercising their first amendment rights. They were protesting. This is American protest. It was not an insurrection. I covered January 6th, I know exactly what that looks like.
They were not storming buildings, they were not smearing feces on the wall. They were not hitting police with hockey clubs and crutches. This was a standard protest, a real display of anger galvanizing communities. So we were walking through Koreatown at one point and there was a standoff, this kind of cat and mouse standoff, and they decided to target one protestor and shot him with a bunch of pepper balls. I went over to try to grab the angle and document that, and all of a sudden there was a ding that just kind of took me in the side of the helmet. And what has come to light since then is that a lot of these police have red, not infrared, they’re called red dot sensors so they know exactly what they’re pointing. These officers, every officer with a less lethal munition, a weapon is supposed to be trained not to aim for the head, not to aim for the neck, some to aim at the ground and have a ricochet.
These are called less lethal, but they’re not non-lethal. People have been killed by these people have lost eyesights and even one photojournalist in Minnesota ended up losing her eye and then eventually lost her life a few years later from those very injuries. So it was very, very dangerous to be shot with these things, especially a close range. And that’s essentially what happened, which was I feel they’re trying to have a chilling effect on the press and the press that I know that’s out there. They’re tenacious. They were hit once, twice, three times. Not going to stop. This is wrong. We need to be able to document the public has a right to know what is happening.
Maximillian Alvarez:
You mentioned that you’ve been doing this for years, you’ve been covering protests all over the world, and I wonder how you would compare this to what you’ve seen elsewhere Taking our audience into account. Right, because admit, as a American kid who grew up not knowing shit about the world, like most American kids, it was embarrassingly late in my life when I learned that like other countries didn’t shoot tear gas at their own citizens the way that we do. In fact, tear gas is a weapon of war, that there’s a reason that it’s not shot at civilians the way that we do here in America. But I had no idea at that time in my twenties that this was just something we had been conditioned to accept even though it was so manifestly unacceptable. So I wonder, just in that vein, if you could, using your experience, help put this in context for our audience. We’ve been trained to see this as normal. Is this normal?
Michael Nigro:
Is this normal? I don’t think weapons of war used against American citizens exercising their first amendment. It is anyway normal. However, we’ve militarized the police to such a degree that there are Humvees in the street, there are militarized vehicles in the street. They are practicing and trained in this kind of quashing of protests. New York City has something called the SRG, the Strategic Response Group. They’re supposed to be a crowd control group, but what they’ve mainly become is a protest control group, and they are violent. When you see them come in with the riot gear, you know that violence is about to happen and I’ve covered protests long enough to recognize when I’m up against the front line, what police officers have that kind of look in their eye and that their training or lack of training, they are out to make a point. And that is, I am not in the mind of a police officer, but I certainly see the behavior which is far different from perhaps that officer who maybe is better trained or just doesn’t have that blood lust within them.
But there were a number of officers in my videos that I’ve just squared up with and you could just see it. They’re ready to kick some ass. And it’s troubling to see, especially when you have the majority of the people majority. This was a peaceful march. They are able to do this. I will say that when I think it was Wednesday night when they went back out, there was a contingent of clergy that came probably five or 600 that had a vigil. Then they marched to the detention center where the National Guard was stationed and they prayed. They prayed, they laid flowers, they told the soldiers there that they were praying for them and their safety and the curfew was coming up at eight o’clock. Most of the clergy dispersed, but there were other people there that did not want to disperse. And then even before the curfew happened, they started firing on the crowd, which I don’t know how you piece that together.
And not only on the crowd, but also at the press, which I know this is kind of what we’re talking about, that the targeting of the press seems to be happening more and more in New York. We had to fight tooth and nail to get inside these courtrooms. And what I mean by that is there was a contingent of us that said, we need to go see what’s happening inside these public spaces. Security said no. We said for some amendment violation, they said, we’ll talk to my boss. Boss came down, then another boss came down, another boss came. Finally, I called my lawyer and my lawyer, oddly enough, I called him. I said, look, I’m having this problem in this public space. He goes, I’m oddly right around the corner.
He comes around probably one minute later. I’m like, what are you doing here? He is like, we’re going to get you in. He got us in. From then on, we were able to document all the snatching grabs and deportations or disappearing of these mainly young black men, but also women, some kids that are no one under 18 I saw. But they’re disappearing. These people, some of these people, they’re just, they’re doing what they were told to do, which was come to your mandatory court meeting because your next step is we’re going to get you citizenship. We’re going to get you the green card with you doing law doesn’t matter anymore. And when the law doesn’t matter anymore, it is up to the press to say public, this is what’s happening. And that’s what I think happened in la. The groundswell there became such that people came out and said, we need to protect our community. These are barbers. These are people working at a carwash. These are people who’ve been here for 10, 20, 30, 40 years and that they’ve been paying their taxes, they’ve been paying into social security, which they will never draw from, and they’re part of these communities. And the response to that was so disproportional, but also part and parcel to what the Trump administration wants to inflict across the country. So if you’re in a big city and there’s immigrants, I mean I would fully expect it to be coming to a city near you.
Maximillian Alvarez:
I mean, I think powerfully and chillingly put, and I am going to toss a broad question at you, but please just take it in whatever direction you feel comfortable. But as journalists at this moment in the year of our Lord 2025, we’re not just documenting the political mayhem that’s happening outside of our windows, but we’re whether we knowingly enlisted or not, we are all in effect kind of soldiers in this battle, this war over reality as such. And so much of what the Trump administration is doing depends on blasting a warped version of reality. Like LA is chaos, LA is bedlam. We got to send in the National Guard and the Marines when folks on the ground are like, it’s not bedlam. It’s a massive city and we’re exercising our first amendment rights. But once that sort of unreality gets a critical mass of people believing in it, it justifies the worst excesses of these authoritarian policies.
And it brings out the worst in people who say, well, yeah, I’m all for sending the Marines in to LA because I’m being told that it’s the protesters who are rioting and yada, yada, yada. So that all is to say that what we do and what you are doing every day is so goddamn important. Your lens is showing people what is actually happening in this country right now to our people. I wanted to kind of end on that broad note and ask if you could communicate to folks out there who are maybe only checking their social media feeds, maybe they haven’t been following your work, maybe they’ve just been hearing this stuff secondhand. What do you most want people to know about what you are seeing and documenting happening in this country right now? From LA to the courtrooms in New York?
Michael Nigro:
It’s those two different narratives that you have coming from a propaganda based White House that is taken essentially what happened on January 6th and lifted it up and plopped it right into LA into a very tiny footprint of Los Angeles. Wasn’t all of Los Angeles. Los Angeles is a sprawling, sprawling place. This is downtown la relegated to very few blocks, but Trump basically said what happened on January 6th and he just transplanted into Los Angeles. Why I do what I do is because I hear all the time, well, this is what I’ve heard. This is what I read. A lot of that is just theoretical. I go out and take photos and videos and create multimedia pieces so it’s not theoretical. So you can see what is happening on the ground with the people actually doing, whether they’re protesting or doing hard work of trying to keep immigrants safe.
And that’s very particular to this, but that’s why I do what I do. So it’s an airtight documentation of reality and without it, I feel far too often people are just not realizing that that immigrant that I just shot as being taken away from his loved ones to a very dangerous country, could be their brother, their friend, their coworker, their sister, their brother. That makes it less theoretical to people and I hope that it sits with them. Now of course, I’ll get FLA online and social media with all these kind of talking points of like, this is what I voted for and there’s nothing I can really do to refute that, but except go out and do it again and shoot it and continue to document as a lot of my colleagues are going to continue to do, no matter how much they’re going to try to suppress us.
I think there’s more of us out there trying to show what’s really, really happening and that the city wasn’t burning down. Look, a few Waymo cars, if that’s what they’re called, we burned and no one was hurt. Yeah, it’s illegal, but these are very small instances. May be part of the protest. Perhaps not. I wasn’t there to view it, but what I witnessed there was communities coming together and what happens so very rarely with journalists nowadays is that I had people thanking me, people thanking me, saying, thank you for doing this work. Thank you for coming out here and showing that we’re fighting for our communities, we’re fighting for our brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers and daughters and sons.
Maximillian Alvarez:
All right, gang. That’s going to wrap things up for us this week. Once again, I want to thank our guests, Sonali Kolhatkar, Javier Cabal and Michael Nigro for their vital work and for taking the time to speak with us for this episode. And I want to thank you all for listening and want to thank you for caring. We’ll see you all 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 that 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. Sign up for the Real News 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.
This story originally appeared in Jacobin on June 09, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
You don’t think it’s gonna happen to you, quite frankly, until it does,” said Luisa, whose father was detained in a raid at the Ambiance Apparel factory in Los Angeles’s garment district. Immigration officers had arrived in force on Friday morning and invaded the warehouse, initiating what Luisa called “a manhunt for each and every one of the workers” on their list.
Luisa, twenty-four, has been unable to talk to her father, fifty-one, since he was taken from the factory floor.
A crowd immediately gathered outside Ambiance, drawn by the swarm of armored vehicles. Some protesters blocked vans in an attempt to physically prevent them from leaving the scene with detainees. Observing the action was David Huerta, president of Service Employees International Union–United Service Workers West (SEIU-USSW), who was tackled to the ground, injuring his head. Huerta was treated at a hospital, but remained in federal custody throughout the weekend. He was released early Monday afternoon on bond, but now faces federal felony charges.
Luisa’s family has been increasingly worried about separation since Donald Trump’s election last November. “My father made it a big deal to ensure us that if it did happen — he always said, ‘If it does happen, but it won’t’ — we’re gonna be fine,” Luisa told Jacobin. She has been given a pseudonym to protect her anonymity.
Now that the moment has arrived, the family’s optimism has given way to quiet dread. “We don’t know how to address it with each other even,” she said. “We want to remain strong for him, and for ourselves, so that we can find ways to help him.” She described the family’s interactions with officials so far as “suspicious and difficult to navigate.”
On Saturday morning, Luisa caught a glimpse of her father outside the federal building in Downtown Los Angeles. He was being loaded into a van for transport to a separate facility. Officials had promised her visitation but canceled at the last minute, citing the protests roiling outside.
By Friday night, the federal building had already become a focal point of protests against the raids. Police had fired rubber bullets, flash-bang grenades, and tear gas at protesters and journalists surrounding the building. The melee on federal property empowered Trump to intervene directly, and on Saturday, he called in the National Guard to protect the building.
California legislators had not asked for the federal government’s assistance. Instead, evidently eager to create a national spectacle, Trump went over their heads, putting the protests in the national spotlight. His border czar, Tom Homan, threatened to arrest the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, and the governor of California, Gavin Newsom, if they resisted Trump’s federal troop takeover.
Capitalizing on the media attention, Trump issued several sensationalist statements, promising that “the Illegals will be expelled” and Los Angeles would be “set free.” “A once great American City, Los Angeles, has been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals,” the president wrote. He called the protests “violent, insurrectionist mobs.” He pledged to “liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion, and put an end to these Migrant riots.”
Luisa expressed concern about how swiftly Trump shifted the narrative from the detentions to the police clashes and his demonization of protesters. “The reason why we do these protests is beyond just wanting to make noise and cause chaos,” said Luisa. “It’s meaningful, and it has purpose. They want to steer away from that. They want to change that story and say that it’s because we’re violent.”
Trump’s Needless Provocations
Los Angeles City Council member Hugo Soto-Martinez rejected Trump’s claim to be acting on behalf of Angelenos who are being held captive by migrants to the detriment of their city. “That is not the way the people of Los Angeles view immigrants,” Soto-Martinez told Jacobin. “People in Los Angeles understand that immigrants are part of the very fabric of the city. So for Trump to say that is completely deranged.”
Soto-Martinez, a former union organizer and the son of undocumented immigrants himself, views the Trump administration’s provocations as opportunistic and cynical. “In the last few days, we have seen an escalation of aggressive tactics by the president, provoking these conflicts and trying to intimidate people,” he said. “The public is responding to what they’re doing, not the other way around.”
Protests in Los Angeles grew in response to Trump’s announcement that he was deploying the National Guard. On Sunday, crowds were estimated in the thousands, with demonstrators representing labor unions, immigrant rights groups, students, and many unaffiliated local residents. They held signs, waved flags, chanted through bullhorns, and blocked intersections. As National Guardsmen arrived in Los Angeles, hundreds of protesters blocked a freeway, bringing traffic to a halt. They clashed with police in multiple locations.
The Trump administration provided running color commentary, dramatizing the crisis of its own making. “Insurrectionists carrying foreign flags are attacking immigration enforcement officers,” wrote Vice President J. D. Vance on social media. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller characterized events in Los Angeles as “a fight to save civilization.” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth threatened to send in the Marines to quell “violent mobs.” The administration placed a man who had thrown rocks at immigration vehicles on the FBI’s Most Wanted list alongside violent murderers and large-scale international drug traffickers.
On Sunday evening, Trump took to his social media platform, Truth Social, to call protesters “thugs” and demand the arrest of any protester wearing a face mask. He also called to deploy more federal forces, though it was unclear if he meant the National Guard or another body. “Looking really bad in L.A.,” he wrote. “BRING IN THE TROOPS!!!”
Gloria Gallardo, a Los Angeles public-school teacher who taught the son of a detainee, accused the Trump administration of “inciting people to build a narrative that the people here deserve to be deported.” By using inflammatory rhetoric and taking increasingly provocative action, like rolling tanks through the city streets, Gallardo said the administration is deliberately attempting to create scenarios that will go viral on social media. “They’re doing it on purpose because they want this to be circulating around the world,” she said.
Gallardo speculated that a small minority of protesters may be intent on giving Trump what he wants, whether undercover agitators or just frustrated individuals. “With any mass mobilization like this, there are people who are trying to make it more violent, and it’s not the seasoned organizers in our city,” Gallardo said. Many community activists, she said, were “at home like me trying to organize responses for our schools, or on the streets trying to be peaceful and not put people in danger.”
Luisa, the detainee’s daughter, told Jacobin that the Trump administration is “definitely enticing people to react in certain ways,” noting that “protests come with powerful emotions” and accusing the administration of “poking the bear.” She cautioned protesters not to play into their hands. “It’s important to have protests, but we need to do so in a way that does not prove the current administration right.”
Pointing Fingers as the Rich Get Richer
The Trump administration purports to be responding to out-of-control events in Los Angeles. Many commentators challenge this order of events, arguing instead that he targeted the city and intentionally turned it into a political spectacle. He could have known, they argue, that high-profile, military-style workplace raids in a majority-Latino and largely immigrant city would be met with protests, that deploying two thousand National Guardsmen to quell those protests would draw even more ire, and that large unplanned protests frequently involve clashes that make for sensational media fodder, no matter how peaceful the vast majority of participants are.
Gloria Gallardo believes that the Trump administration chose this showdown to divert attention from his administration’s failure so far to relieve Americans’ economic distress. “He wants to distract from all the other problems that are happening — with the tariffs, with the high cost of living. People who rely on Medicaid and food stamps are finding that things are getting even more difficult. It’s so expensive when I go to the grocery store. I can’t move for economic reasons. Things are really rough,” Gallardo said.
Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill has come under fire for drastic cuts to Medicaid coupled with a massive tax break for the richest Americans. “The budget is set to increase the wealth of the top 10 percent of Americans by 2 percent,” wrote Liza Featherstone in this magazine. Meanwhile, “the resources of the bottom 10 percent are expected to shrink by 4 percent, because of the cuts to health care and food assistance.”
Councilmember Soto-Martinez accused Trump of trying to blame Americans’ economic difficulties on immigrants to deflect from his own failed leadership. “The federal minimum wage is $7.25 per hour, and rents are only rising. People feel that frustration. To say that somehow immigrants are responsible for this is an absolute distraction,” Soto-Martinez said. “Meanwhile, the billionaire class continues to become richer. It’s the billionaire class that’s robbing us blind, and they’re not even doing anything illegal.”
Marissa Nuncio is the executive director of the Garment Worker Center, an organizing space for Los Angeles garment workers whose membership consists primarily of immigrants from Mexico and Central America. Nuncio said that this kind of scapegoating of immigrant workers is a tactic commonly used to distract from economic inequality. Accusing immigrants of driving down wages for native-born Americans obscures the real problem, Nuncio told Jacobin: a broader climate of exploitation.
“It is exploitative industries, exploitative bosses, and draconian immigration policies that place immigrants in vulnerable positions that create these ripple effects in these economies,” she said.
Nuncio described garment workers in Los Angeles as “skilled craftspeople creating garments from whole cloth. It’s amazing to see their work.” Undocumented immigrants are paid poorly not because what they do is easy, but because they are uniquely vulnerable to workplace abuses. Nuncio said that Trump hopes his raids will have a chilling effect on immigration, but instead they will have a chilling effect on workplace organizing, depressing wages further.
“Over twenty years of organizing workers,” she said, “we know that what we will see in the workplace is exploitative bosses saying, ‘Hey, if you complain about those wages, I know where you live, and I’ll call immigration.’”
While Trump’s xenophobia is particularly brazen, Gallardo sees a problem much bigger than Trump at play. “Republicans — or, really, the ruling class, the elites — don’t want Trump’s base to understand the material reasons for the way things are,” she said. “They want to stop their base from actually coordinating as a working class with these other groups of people.”
Undocumented immigrants and their families are bearing the immediate brunt, she said. But the division ultimately hurts the entire working class, including many people who are at home rooting for Trump to crush the violent mobs of illegal immigrants and crazy leftists.
The events in Los Angeles have played out in a familiar sequence: manufacture a crisis, amplify the conflict, then use the ensuing chaos to justify increasingly authoritarian measures while diverting attention from policies that hurt ordinary Americans. As Luisa waits for word about her father, detainees’ families raise funds for basic necessities, and protestors face off with National Guardsmen and potentially Marines, the Trump administration is hoping that questions about who benefits from this cruelty and repression go unasked.
This post has been updated with new information about David Huerta’s arrest and release shortly after publication.
President Trump’s Executive Order calling for incarcerated transgender women to be housed in men’s prisons and halting gender-affirming medical care for prisoners has put one of the most vulnerable segments of the prison population in even greater danger. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, host Mansa Musa investigates the violent realities trans inmates face in the US prison system, and the impact that Trump’s attacks on LGBTQ+ rights is having inside prisons.
Guest(s):
Dee Deidre Farmer, Executive Director of Fight4Justice. In 1994, Farmer’s landmark Supreme Court case, the unanimous Farmer v. Brennan decision, established that prisoners have a right to be protected from harm and that prisons are responsible for their safety.
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
According to The Guardian, transgender women are being sent back to male prisons under an executive order issued by President Donald Trump. A recent report from Democracy Now, stated that 17 transgender women have coverage under a lawsuit they filed, but the remaining transgender population have been sent back. They are suffering horrible abuses in the form of rape by the male population and from the prison guards.
The impact of this decision can be seen in the segment of this transgender population that don’t have coverage. More importantly, we can see the impact that this decision is having on the prison population in general. What do you think? Should an executive order supersede a court order where multiple court decisions said transgender women should remain in the population where they’re at? Or should an executive order supersede that, regardless of the court?
To learn more about trans women and the LBGT community’s resistance, I spoke with Deidre Farmer, who in the mid ’90s, filed a historical lawsuit against the Federal Bureau of Prisons because of their complicity in allowing rape to exist in all prisons they govern. Out of this lawsuit came PREA: Prison Rape Elimination Act. It became policy and it became law, throughout the prisons and throughout America.
Deidre Farmer:
I’m Deidre Farmer, I’m the executive director of Fight for Justice. I was incarcerated in the Federal Bureau of Prisons for a total of about 25-30 years. I brought the first transgender case accepted and decided by the US Supreme Court; In that case, Farmer V. Brennan, the US Supreme Court said that prison officials can be held liable for the sexual assault of other inmates when they knowingly place inmates at risk of danger. I am currently working with several organizations on cases that challenge the executive orders bought by Donald Trump regarding transgender people in prison as well as in the military.
Mansa Musa:
Talk about how this suit came into existence and more importantly, why?
Deidre Farmer:
I entered the Bureau of Prisons as a teenager and when I was 19-20 years old I was transferred to the Federal Penitentiary in Terre Haute. I had never been in a penitentiary environment before and did not know what to expect. I was in the prison system at Terre Haute for about a week when an inmate came into my cell with a knife and demanded that I have sex with him, and when I refused, he beat me up and raped me. Then a number of his homeboys or guys that he associated with, held me hostage in the cell for a day or two.
I ended up in protective custody and I had already started studying law and spending time in the library. When you’re in the segregation unit, you find other people who have had the same experience– They weren’t necessarily transgender people, some of them may have been LGBTQ or young guys that were vulnerable or other people viewed them as weak. When I was transferred from Terre Haute, this is something that continued to play on my mind because I knew people, like me, went into protective custody and therefore the prison officials knew what was happening in the population, but weren’t doing anything about it.
So I brought a suit claiming that when prison officials know that you are at risk of danger, assault, or rape, they can be sued for it. The district court and the Court of Appeals did not agree with me, but the US Supreme Court accepted the case. I wrote the petition on my own and filed it on my own and they accepted it. Then a friend of mine, who was an attorney at the ACLU National Prison Project, represented me in the Supreme Court. Of course, the court held if you can prove they knew — Because of the environment or previous incidents — Then you can sue them.
Mansa Musa:
Out of this litigation came what is now commonly known as PREA: Prison Rape Elimination Act. Based on this advocacy in the prison system right now, it’s policy that they had autonomous system set up where prisoners can complain about being sexually mistreated. We know this is a fact that PREA exists throughout the system– Federal Bureau, federal, state, and county jail, city jail, it exists.
The president issued this order and according to it, all transgender people are to be sent back to the institutions that they’ve been identified by their original sexual origin; If it’s a male that’s transgender and he’s in a female prison, according to Donald Trump, he going to be sent back to a male prison and vice versa. Talk about the impact that’s going to have on the transgender population in general and with the prison population overall.
Deidre Farmer:
What you’re doing is sanctioning the death of transgender people, whether they are transgendered or otherwise, they are still human beings and we should not be subjecting them to death because they do not conform to what our ideology of human beings should be. In my case, the Supreme Court recognized that people with certain vulnerabilities — Including gender dysphoria or transgender — Are vulnerable in certain populations.
After my case, there were many studies done. Consequently the US Congress took the issue up and enacted the Prison Rape Elimination Act, which is supposed to have zero tolerance for rape in prisons. As the Supreme Court said, rape is not part of the sentence. Congress, because they recognized from many, many hearings and testimonies from women, young people, disabled people, mentally challenged people, gender-conflicted people who were sexually assaulted in prison or in jail, and consequently implemented PREA, which is nationwide standards. It does not create legal rights, but if you violate it, you can lose federal funding.
The executive orders that Trump has issued totally ignores what the Supreme Court has said, totally ignores what the US Congress has said, and what Trump is saying, despite the vulnerabilities that you have, you’re going back into that environment. Despite the knowledge that you will be raped, despite the knowledge that the person who raped you might kill you so that you cannot tell. This is not an ideology, this is not a presumption; This is something that happens and has happened.
Now for transgender people who remain in facilities consistent with their biological gender, it is happening. To say that you will take an incarcerated transgender woman who has had vaginoplasty and has a vagina and place her into a male institution, it’s the same as placing a woman in there and to place a person at that risk, it’s inhumane.
Mansa Musa:
In Baltimore, I spoke to Ronnie Taylor, a policy advocate with Free State Justice about the adversities facing the LGBTQ community in its current political climate. Also, we talked about the historical activism of the LGBTQ community.
Ronnie Taylor:
Thank you for having me. Ronnie Taylor, as you said. Pronouns are she/her. I serve as the advocacy policy and partnerships director here at Free State. We are the oldest LGBT organization providing legal services, resources, advocacy, and education in the state of Maryland. And we’re the only– We call ourselves Maryland’s LGBTQ+ advocates.
Mansa Musa:
I was looking at some of y’alls accomplishments. Y’all have been given numerous awards, but more importantly, y’all had a bill passed to deal with marriage. Talk about that.
Ronnie Taylor:
Absolutely. We were birthed out of the merger of Equality Maryland, for those that are familiar with that. We became Free State Legal Project and then Free State Maryland. Equality Maryland passed the Same-Sex Marriage Act numerous years ago, and it was such an accomplishment for Maryland so we wanted to figure out how we can continue to position ourselves as advocates.
Unfortunately, when the doors closed at Equality Maryland, Free State Legal Project continued to work when it comes to our advocacy portions and we’ve been continuing to do that. We have some amazing legislative wins such as the Trans Health Equity Act. This recent year we passed the Carlton R. Smith Jr. HIV Modernization Act. The awards are great and it’s great to be recognized, but we’re going to continue to do the work for Marylanders.
Mansa Musa:
In the 2024 presidential campaign, Kamala Harris was being denigrated for providing or signing off on the legislation to allow transgender people to have a sex change according to what their orientation was. The President of the US and the Republican Party had a campaign ad; In the campaign ad they were promoting this as something that was inhuman and immoral with the way they was representing the person that was getting their sex changed, they had them looking almost monstrous. Talk about the impact that is having on the transgender community right now.
Ronnie Taylor:
Those acts that have come into place and how it is crucial to our current standing Marylanders, I pride myself in saying that on a local level, we have a great partner in our Governor Wes Moore. However, federally we are under attack, and that attack has looked a variance of ways. Military personnel folks and particularly trans folks who have been serving in the military for numerous of years.
Mansa Musa:
And honorably mention.
Ronnie Taylor:
And honorably mention. To have their careers taken away for an oath that they took to protect this country is inhumane in regards to our prison systems. The Prison Rape Elimination Act is a thing, and to say we’re going to put folks in cells and disregarding medical procedures and stating that you are trans, it’s simply an attack. Furthermore, there’s been numerous things this party has done; There’s been over 886 pieces of legislation introduced by the Federal Administration for the attack of transgender individuals.
Mansa Musa:
This is outstanding because you put all that time and energy into trying to have a moral agenda over people’s lives, but at the same token you are a convicted felon, you paid off Stormy Daniels for lewd lascivious behavior towards her, but you turned around and now you want to become the moral cop of people’s lives. Talk about the impact this is having on the transgender community and y’alls ability to raise funds.
Ronnie Taylor:
It’s hard. Funding is at a ultimate halt right now for a lot of organizations, including mine. If you put terms in such as “DEI” or “community” which our federal government are trying to eliminate, it puts us in a tricky situation. Thankfully we’ve been able to diversify our funding tools, as I’m in charge of that portfolio, and be able to still do the work. But it’s challenging because we don’t want to get rid of our moral compass and we refuse to.
We’re going to continue to do the work, but we find ourselves in a position in which the federal administration has proven they do not want to be a partner in this work. Thankfully, we have a great federal delegation in Maryland that’s going to continue to do the work and put forth legislation to combat that hate and that anti stuff, but it’s still there and it’s impacting everyday lives. It’s affecting people’s housing, their mental health, their ability to work, and so forth and so on.
Mansa Musa:
And we interviewed a transgender female that was responsible for PREA, Prison Rape and Enforcement Act, and she was saying that right now it look like it’s all out assault on transgender men or women in prison based on the fact that the president has put an executive order out saying that you going to be transferred to the prison of your assigned gender as opposed to your current gender. Talk about that if you can.
Ronnie Taylor:
I couldn’t agree with her more. It’s definitely an overall attack. It’s an agenda, it’s an attack. And one of the things that I often remind people in my advocacy work here is our current president, and I use that term loosely, these are just executive orders. This person has done nothing but signed executive orders throughout his time throughout this term. There has not been any laws. The reality is there’s still a chance to work and get things done on a local level. Now is the time more than ever. Primary general elections are coming up. We need folks to get in the race for the 2026, there are local elections, and do the work because it can be done.
And overall you need to hold your elected officials to the responsibility. When they took that oath to serve in Annapolis or serve in whatever state house you elected them to be in to do the work of all Marylanders. It’s inhumane. Trans people are a part of the political, social economic living sphere that we all consist and exist in. And so this attack on said sub community, it’s horrendous and there absolutely needs to be something done about it.
Mansa Musa:
This government is taking a conservative act. Like I said, we went back through the military, don’t ask, don’t tell, but now they just did an executive order around that. Secretary of Defense issued a memorandum about that, their prison, and they taking federal funds from anyone under [inaudible 00:17:48] species of DEI. But they primarily saying that if you’re transgender then you don’t have an arm and leg to stand on. Why do you think they’re having such a conservative act towards this particular community, sub-community?
Ronnie Taylor:
Great question, is we have to highlight folks from both sides of the aisle are trans.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, yeah.
Ronnie Taylor:
President Musk’s daughter is a woman of trans experience, but she’s not often talked about. She’s been pushed underneath of a carpet and it’s again, rooted in ignorance.
Mansa Musa:
As we go forward, what do you want our viewers to know about the transgender community? And more importantly, speak to them about what transgender means to you and what it should mean to society, because we live in a society supposed to be equal. We say we hold these truths to be self-evident that all people are treated equal and have [inaudible 00:18:42] rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If your life is at jeopardy, your liberty is at jeopardy, and then therefore you ain’t going to have no pursuit of happiness. Talk about why we should be looking at this issue and be real critical about this administration as it relates to their attitude towards people.
Ronnie Taylor:
Yeah. One of the things I often say is trans people since the beginning of time have done an amazing body of work, and our portfolio show that. Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera stood on the front lines of the Stonewall movement and they threw the first brick.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Ronnie Taylor:
That’s not often something that we talk about. Trans people are elected officials. We have precious Brandi Davis down in the south, we have Andrea Jenkins in the Midwest, we have Sarah McBride, our first congresswoman.
Mansa Musa:
Come on, come on.
Ronnie Taylor:
And so folks are capable and willing to do the work, but we refuse to be ostracized. And so what it means to me, and thank you for asking me that question, I have prided myself and it’s often a label that I wear with pride and I introduce myself and my pronouns and say, “I’m a woman of trans experience,” because I refuse to dim that light in the work that I’m doing.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Ronnie Taylor:
And so we’re in advocacy spaces, we’re in policy spaces. We are in all of the spaces. And so it’s ultimately the education that gets into it. And so the willingness to learn, there are some of us that are willing to do our trans one-on-one conversations with you, but you have to come to the table with a willingness to learn.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Ronnie Taylor:
And so, oftentimes our political landscape has shown that it’s okay to be disrespectful and neglectful of said communities, but there is some work to be done.
Mansa Musa:
There you have it. The real news, Rallying the Boss. Transgender community is here, it’s here to stay. We not trying to make no excuse for it, but they’re human beings like us. The only problem that we have with this whole entire issue is that someone thinks that they have the moral compass to determine who should have a quality life versus whose life should be treated differently. This country is prided on equality and we are saying that equality is paramount when it comes to recognizing the transgender community and all their accomplishments they have made.
These stories about the LBGT community and transgender and their rights to be treated as human beings is something that Rallying the Boss believe should be brought front and center as it relates to humanity. This is about humanity. This is not about a person’s preference, sexual orientation. This is about people being treated as human. And we at Rallying the Boss believe that these stories, when you look at them and evaluate them, will give you a sense of understanding about humanity. We ask that you continue to look at Rallying the Boss and we ask that you give your views. Tell us what you think about these stories because it’s your views that give us content and context to our next story.
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on June 8, 2025. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
U.S. President Donald Trump deployed 2,000 National Guard members in response to protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in Los Angeles over the weekend, as Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth threatened to call in the marines.
The protests kicked off on Friday in opposition to ICE raids of retail establishments around Los Angeles. During Friday’s protests David Huerta, president of SEIU California and SEIU-United Service Workers West, was injured and then arrested while observing a raid. His arrest sparked further protests, which carried over into Saturday in response to apparent ICE activity in the nearby city of Paramount.
“The Trump administration’s baseless deployment of the National Guard is plainly retaliation against California, a stronghold for immigrant communities, and is akin to a declaration of war on all Californians,” Victor Leung, chief legal and advocacy officer at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Foundation of Southern California, said in a statement.
“They yell ‘invasion’ at the border—but this is the real one: Trump is seizing control of California’s National Guard and forcing 2,000 troops into our streets.”
Saturday’s most dramatic protest occurred outside a Home Depot in Paramount following rumors of an ICE raid there. However, Paramount Mayor Peggy Lemons told the Los Angeles Times that the ICE agents may instead have been staging at a nearby Department of Homeland Security (DHS) office. There were also rumors of an ICE raid on a meatpacking plant that never occurred.
“We don’t know what was happening, or what their target was. To think that there would be no heightening of fear and no consequences from the community doesn’t sound like good preparation to me,” Lemons said. “Above all, there is no communication and things are done on a whim. And that creates chaos and fear.”
According to the LA Times, the Home Depot protests began peacefully until officers lobbed flash-bang grenades and pepper balls at the crowd, after which some individuals responded by throwing rocks and other objects at the ICE cars, and one person drove their vehicle toward the ICE agents.
“Many of the protesters did not appear to engage in these tactics,” the LA Times reported.
In another incident, Lindsay Toczylowski, the chief executive of Immigrant Defenders Law Center, wrote on social media that ICE agents threw a tear-gas canister at two of the center’s female attorneys after they asked the agents if they could see a warrant and observe their activities.
ICE just threw a teargas canister at the two female @immdef attorneys moments after this picture was taken while they were calmly asking to be allowed to see the warrant and to be allowed to observe its execution. https://t.co/aOtFIRqDyh
— Lindsay Toczylowski (@L_Toczylowski) June 7, 2025
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Central District of California said that over a dozen people were arrested on Saturday for interfering with the work of immigration agents.
The first member of the Trump administration to mention sending in the National Guard was White House border czar Tom Homan, who told Fox News, “We’re gonna bring National Guard in tonight and we’re gonna continue doing our job. This is about enforcing the law.”
Trump then signed a memo Saturday night calling members of the California National Guard into federal service to protect ICE and other government officials.
“To the extent that protests or acts of violence directly inhibit the execution of the laws, they constitute a form of rebellion against the authority of the Government of the United States,” the memo reads in part.
“The only threat to safety today is the masked goon squads that the administration has deployed to terrorize the communities of Los Angeles County.”
Instead of using the Insurrection Act, as some had speculated he might, Trump federalized the guard members under the president’s Title 10 authority, which allows the president to place the National Guard under federal control given certain conditions, but does not allow those troops to carry out domestic law enforcement activities, which invoking the Insurrection Act would enable.
“On its face, then, the memorandum federalizes 2,000 California National Guard troops for the sole purpose of protecting the relevant DHS personnel against attacks,” Georgetown University Law Center professor Steve Vladeck explained in a blog post Saturday. “That’s a significant (and, in my view, unnecessary) escalation of events in a context in which no local or state authorities have requested such federal assistance. But by itself, this is not the mass deployment of troops into U.S. cities that had been rumored for some time.”
Indeed, several state leaders spoke out against the deployment.
“The federal government is moving to take over the California National Guard and deploy 2,000 soldiers,” California Gov. Gavin Newsom wrote on social media Saturday. “That move is purposefully inflammatory and will only escalate tensions. LA authorities are able to access law enforcement assistance at a moment’s notice. We are in close coordination with the city and county, and there is currently no unmet need.”
“The Guard has been admirably serving LA throughout recovery,” he continued, referring to the devastating wildfires that swept the city early this year. “This is the wrong mission and will erode public trust.”
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) posted on social media that he “couldn’t agree more.”
“Using the National Guard this way is a completely inappropriate and misguided mission,” Padilla said. “The Trump administration is just sowing more chaos and division in our communities.”
Rep. Norma Torres (D-Calif.) added, “They yell ‘invasion’ at the border—but this is the real one: Trump is seizing control of California’s National Guard and forcing 2,000 troops into our streets.”
While the National Guard’s mission is currently limited, Vladeck argued that there were three reasons to be “deeply concerned” about the development. First, troops could still respond to real or perceived threats with violence, escalating the situation; second, escalation may be the desired outcome from the Trump administration, and used as a pretext to invoke the Insurrection Act after all; and third, this could depress the morale of both National Guard members and the civilians they engage with while degrading the relationships between federal, local, and state authorities.
“There is something deeply pernicious about invoking any of these authorities except in circumstances in which their necessity is a matter of consensus beyond the president’s political supporters,” Vladeck wrote. “The law may well allow President Trump to do what he did Saturday night. But just because something is legal does not mean that it is wise—for the present or future of our Republic.”
Leung of the ACLU criticized both the ICE raids and the decision to deploy the Guard.
“Workers in our garment districts or day laborers seeking work outside of Home Depot do not undermine public safety,” Leung said. “They are our fathers and mothers and neighbors going about their day and making ends meet. Rather, the only threat to safety today is the masked goon squads that the administration has deployed to terrorize the communities of Los Angeles County.”
He continued: “There is no rational reason to deploy the National Guard on Angelenos, who are rightfully outraged by the federal government’s attack on our communities and justly exercising their First Amendment right to protest the violent separation of our families. We intend to file suit and hold this administration accountable and to protect our communities from further attacks.”
National political leaders also spoke out Sunday morning.
Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) wrote on social media that it was “important to remember that Trump isn’t trying to heal or keep the peace. He is looking to inflame and divide. His movement doesn’t believe in democracy or protest—and if they get a chance to end the rule of law they will take it. None of this is on the level.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) posted that the entire incident was “Trump’s authoritarianism in real time.”
Trump’s authoritarianism in real time:
▪️Conduct massive illegal raids. ▪️Provoke a counter-response. ▪️Declare a state of emergency. ▪️Call in the troops.
Meanwhile, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth threatened further escalation Saturday night when he tweeted that “if violence continues, active duty Marines at Camp Pendleton will also be mobilized—they are on high alert.”
Newsom responded: “The Secretary of Defense is now threatening to deploy active-duty Marines on American soil against its own citizens. This is deranged behavior.”
“This is an abuse of power and what dictators do. It’s unnecessary and not needed.”
Hegseth then doubled down on the threat Sunday morning, replying on social media that it was “deranged” to allow “your city to burn and law enforcement to be attacked.”
“The National Guard, and Marines if need be, stand with ICE,” he posted.
Journalist Ryan Grim noted that it was an “ominous development” for the secretary of defense to be commenting on immigration policy or local law enforcement at all.
Rep. Nanette Barragán (D-Calif.) said of Trump and Hegseth’s escalations: “This is an abuse of power and what dictators do. It’s unnecessary and not needed.”
Writing on his Truth Social platform early Sunday, Trump praised the National Guard for their work in Los Angeles. Yet local and state leaders pointed out that the Guard had not yet arrived in the city by the time the post was made.
For those keeping track, Donald Trump's National Guard had not been deployed on the ground when he posted this. pic.twitter.com/xm2CViZMKe
As of Sunday morning, the National Guard had arrived in downtown Los Angeles and Paramount, ABC 7reported.
In the midst of the uproar over Trump’s actions, labor groups continued to decry the ICE raids and call for the release of Huerta.
National Nurses United wrote on Friday: “With these raids, the government is sowing intense fear for personal safety among our immigrant and migrant community. Nurses and other union workers oppose this, and are standing up in solidarity with fellow immigrant workers. We refuse to be silent, and people like David Huerta are bravely putting their own bodies on the line to bear witness to what ICE is doing. It’s appalling that ICE injured and detained him while he was exercising his First Amendment rights. We demand his immediate release.”
AFL-CIO President Liz Shuler and AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer Fred Redmond said in a statement Saturday:
The nearly 15 million working people of the AFL-CIO and our affiliated unions demand the immediate release of California Federation of Labor Unions Vice President and SEIU California and SEIU-USWW President David Huerta. As the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda has unnecessarily targeted our hard-working immigrant brothers and sisters, David was exercising his constitutional rights and conducting legal observation of ICE activity in his community. He was doing what he has always done, and what we do in unions: putting solidarity into practice and defending our fellow workers. In response, ICE agents violently arrested him, physically injuring David in the process, and are continuing to detain him—a violation of David’s civil liberties and the freedoms this country holds dear. The labor movement stands with David, and we will continue to demand justice for our union brother until he is released.
The unrest in Los Angeles may continue as Barragán toldCNN on Sunday she had been informed that ICE would be present in LA for a month. She argued that the National Guard deployment would only inflame the conflict.
“We haven’t asked for the help. We don’t need the help. This is [President Trump] escalating it, causing tensions to rise. It’s only going to make things worse in a situation where people are already angry over immigration enforcement.”
Utah real estate photographer Jahshua Grover was simply doing his job, taking photos of his client’s house, when he was accosted by Morgan County sheriffs. Despite the owner of the home arriving on the scene and explaining to the cops that Jahshua was hired to do a job, he was cuffed, injured, arrested, and charged. Taya Graham and Stephen Janis of the Police Accountability Report investigate this violation of First Amendment rights and uncover long-term credibility issues with the sheriff who led the investigation, and reveal a troubling pattern of harassment.
Pre-Production: Taya Graham, Stephen Janis Post-Production: David Hebden, 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. And 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, to achieve that goal, we’ll break down this video of a photographer who literally could not do his job due to police overreach, a man who was trying to take pictures from a public sidewalk, a task that apparently police determined was illegal, but it’s the consequences resulting from police pushback that we’ll also be unpacking for you today. Oh, in the body camera video I’m about to show you has some pretty revealing moments that show how police feel about us when they don’t think we’re watching or listening, I think you’re going to want to hear what they have to say about citizens who dare to invoke their rights.
But first, 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 you can reach out to me directly on Facebook or Twitter at TEUs baltimore 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, I give out those little hearts down there and I’ve even started doing a comment of the week to show how much I appreciate your thoughts and to show what incredible community we have. And we have a Patreon called accountability report. 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 all that out of the way. Now, as we have reported on repeatedly on this show, bad policing does not just result in useless arrests or unlawful detainment. No. The misuse of police power can often lead to disastrous economic consequences for the person on the receiving end. And no case we have covered fits that description more than the video I’m showing you right now. It depicts an encounter between Jahshua Grover and two Morgan County Utah Sheriffs that ended with handcuffs, false charges, and even more disturbing interference with his economic livelihood, namely the apparently dangerous occupation of taking photos. The story starts in the small town of Morgan, Utah. There Jahshua was doing what every American has a right to do, earn a living now for him that entailed taking pictures of properties that were listed for sale. It’s a process that thousands of people do every day to help others sell their homes, but apparently in this community that act was potentially criminal. Take a look.
Speaker 2:
Hey, do you want it’s 97, correct that you work for 97, so I think it’s 97. The end unit down there. We can be detained. Will you go get the real estate agents information real fast?
Taya Graham:
So as you can see, police confronted Jahshua as he was filming. The couple in the background had called the police officers were detaining him to verify his employment because he was again taking pictures. Now I want you to watch this closely as the officers checked out his story.
Speaker 3:
Hey, how you doing? Good, how are you? Good. Sorry to bug you. We’re investigating this minor incident down the street here. There’s somebody out taking photos. Yeah, I
Speaker 2:
Talked to the other officer.
Speaker 3:
Oh, did you talk
Speaker 2:
To you? Yeah,
Speaker 3:
He
Speaker 2:
Has my ID right now, so I was coming out.
Speaker 3:
Oh, perfect. Are you working through a realtor right now?
Speaker 2:
Yeah. You want the number?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, if you have a name and number that would be great. We just want to make sure he’s legitimate.
Speaker 4:
Yes.
Taya Graham:
So we can’t hear every word exchanged between the homeowner and the officer, but it seems pretty clear that Jahshua’s assertion that he was just doing his job is in fact true. Nevertheless, when Jahshua directly asked the officer if he wants to review his work, the officer declines just watch.
Speaker 3:
I don’t know, I’m just jumping in the middle of this so I don’t know what all’s going on. If there was a crime here to investigate, I would accept an investigative detention. But there is nothing to investigate. It’s pretty plain and clear. It’s photos and Well, I’m going to go touch base with him and then we’ll go from there. Okay? Do
Speaker 5:
It quickly because I’m wanting this detention
Taya Graham:
To be over. Now at this point with confirmation that a realtor had been engaged and even the tacit admission that the same realtor was employing a photographer, you would think the police would just walk away, but that is not what they did. Not hardly. Instead they continue and I’m quoting this investigation, just watch, I mean you guys swore to
Speaker 3:
Defend rights. Alright? I don’t need you to educate me, I’m here to help out. Okay? I’m just asking who’s okay, just let us do our job. The one here that’s going to illegally take, let us do our job and we’ll get you on your way. Just relax. Don’t escalate this. Keep it simple.
Taya Graham:
Don’t escalate this. Now, really, who is escalating here? Maybe he should have said instead, don’t assert your rights, which I think has been the real issue throughout this encounter. Jahshua knows his rights and he has again asserted them. And again, as we have witnessed before, time and time again, police, when you assert your rights, have a tendency to retaliate, detained. Stand up here
Speaker 3:
Until I can figure out who you’re, I’m not going to id. Okay, stand up here. You’re required to follow our instructions. I’m not. Why am I being detained? Don’t just stand up here. It’s for our safety and for your safety. I’ll stand over here. Okay? Bring your hands behind your back for me. What did I do? Bring your hands behind your back. What did I do? Get out here. What did I you, you’re not following our orders. Why do I have to follow your orders? Let me put the camera up here so it doesn’t get wrong. Hey, can somebody film this?
Speaker 2:
Hey, I’m not going to
Speaker 4:
Resist nothing. Resist, but why do I
Speaker 5:
Have a lesson learned or something?
Speaker 2:
There are no lessons to learn at already. Sir, you gave you law order and you’re refusing to comply. I told you I didn’t want you sitting on my car right on there. When I’m sitting there trying to do a few things to figure out who you are, what
Speaker 4:
Have I done? What law have broken, it’s possibly voyeurism. That’s what we’re trying to figure
Speaker 2:
Out.
Taya Graham:
Possibly voyeurism. Are you sure? I mean those are some serious detectives. I mean honestly, just forgive my sarcasm here. I mean how exactly did they deduce that crime given the information that they had already gleaned? What made them think that Jahshua was a peeping tom? But it gets worse. So much worse. Just look
Speaker 5:
Real estate photography is what I’m doing. Well we got to figure that all out. That’s what I’ve done for like 12 years.
Speaker 3:
Guess what? We get called to something. It’s our job to investigate. That’s it. What crime? Your right should not be contained.
Speaker 5:
Your camera, body, camera.
Speaker 3:
What am I, my sergeant going to say?
Speaker 5:
What? Crime warrior. Voyeurism? Yes.
Speaker 3:
I think you heard it the first time
Speaker 5:
And what did about voer. Somebody’s who? This is something that’s done all the time. You shoot the outside of the unit to what about sale or somebody calls us and says you’ve had it explained by the only that they’re doing it for real estate. Huh? The owner that I’m doing for that explained to you it’s for real estate. Well, the owner never invited you here. Yeah, they did 97. What I’m shooting for. Why are they saying that? Because somebody else is confused about why I’m taking photos. It’s just a confusion on their end. It shouldn’t be a reason why I’m in cuffs
Taya Graham:
Now I think at this point the officer on the right looks a little, let’s say embarrassed. Maybe. He’s starting to realize that putting someone in cuffs for taking photos and doing their job is a little bit much. I mean notice that not far from this excellent arrest they just made. There’s a sidewalk That’s right. A small swath of land otherwise known as public property. It’s the one place where anyone can take a picture, protest or hold a sign or otherwise exercise their first amendment rights. But of now apparently in Utah, this small but significant piece of constitutional oasis has become a path to criminalization. What an accomplishment. But that officer actually doubles down. Look,
Speaker 3:
The reason you’re in cuffs is not for following our orders for safety purposes. You made that choice. I was. That’s why you’re in cuffs right now. We told you to stand in front of this car where we could see you, period. Why do I have, why don’t be a dumb ass to follow the police fucking orders. It’s simple follow orders. This is to Germany. I don’t have to follow orders. My God, you have no idea what you’re talking about. If I haven’t broken the law investigating it’s simple. I haven’t broken the law. You have a job to do, haven’t broken the law. Just shut your mouth and I’ll explain to you, but there’s no reason to detain me if I haven’t broken the law. We get dispatched to something. You have no reasonable or articulable suspicion. There’s no getting through to you to put me in cuffs. Just keep it. I’m going to make this into a lawsuit, okay? I absolutely have to. I haven’t done anything. That’s your right. Do it. Do it. Enjoy the lawsuit. That’ll go nowhere.
Taya Graham:
Don’t be a dumb ass. I don’t even know where to start with that one, but let me try first. Knowing and invoking your constitutional rights is about as American as it gets, which hardly means dumb. And Jahshua might be wrong or he might be right, but asserting your right to peaceably assemble or petition the government is not stupid. It is in fact the opposite of dumb. It is what we aspire to in a democracy, a fully informed citizenry pushing back against power using the constitution to preserve freedom. That is precisely what the writers of our body of laws intended. So perhaps, and this is just a suggestion, respect the man for invoking his rights instead of insulting his intelligence. But of course this all escalates when Jahshua asks the officers to identify themselves.
Speaker 5:
So your name and badge number, Mr. Crane. Yep. What’s your badge number? Is it part of the policy to get the public?
Speaker 3:
Why are we not
Speaker 5:
Going?
Speaker 3:
Do yourself a favor.
Speaker 4:
Lemme explain something to you. Okay? You’re in a tiny ass area. We don’t have badge.
Speaker 5:
I’m just, I have a call sign, an employee ID number, anything. Okay, well my number is 62, my employee ID number. We don’t have, I would like to know what law is broken. That’s what we’re investigating. Public photography is protected under the first amendment
Speaker 4:
Even and that’s great. If everything checks out, then you’ll be on your way. I don’t know what happened to one. Why am I being detained? What you did to get stuff. He said, Stan,
Speaker 3:
Are you with a photography company or what? And I’m not. I haven’t broken the law. Do you work for a company, yes or no?
Speaker 5:
I’m answering questions. I’m in cuffs.
Speaker 3:
I’m trying to help you out here so we can get you on your way.
Speaker 5:
It’s gets me out of cuff.
Speaker 3:
Okay. This is
Taya Graham:
Ridiculous. To quote them, we’re a small ass town and we don’t have badge numbers. Well, Steven actually asked the police department about this and he will have answers for us shortly, but again, it seems like the officers are simply making stuff up out of whole cloth. How on earth can a law enforcement officer not have an ID number? I mean, if you are detaining someone because he won’t give you an id, then how on earth can you possibly deny him the right to see your id? I mean I’m just not sure how the officers don’t see their own hypocrisy here, but the absurdity of this arrest only accelerates over time. Just watch. When somebody
Speaker 3:
Calls us and tells us camera pointing through somebody’s window, that’s a whole different thing. That’s very likely. Lawyer see pictures.
Speaker 5:
You want to
Speaker 3:
See the pictures. I’ll let our investigating deputy look at the pictures. If that’s what he wants to do. I’m just here to assist him.
Speaker 5:
Then the investigation’s over, isn’t it because you’re not bowering into somebody’s window.
Speaker 3:
Yep. Don’t one quit, do you?
Speaker 5:
I’m going to stand up for my rights. I’m in cuffs for no reason.
Speaker 3:
You’re in cuffs for not following orders.
Taya Graham:
I don’t have to follow orders. You did that to yourself. Now, just to be clear, voyeurism in Utah is defined as taking a picture of someone’s naked body when they have a reasonable expectation of privacy, namely in a private residence or in their own room. And if indeed that’s what Jahshua did, it should be easy to discern. All the officers have to do is either ask to see his pictures or if Jahshua declines, get a warrant based upon probable cause to search his camera. And yes, that’s a lot of work, but the officers are the ones who started this. So perhaps they could finish it by adhering to the law, but that’s not what happens. Just watch us trying to figure out who gentle
Speaker 2:
Back people calling us and he wants to play the roadside warrior with us until we figure
Speaker 5:
It out. Now you want to steer me down, try to intimidate.
Speaker 3:
You’re siring me down. You’re the one that’s sitting here. I’m not trying to you making eye contact with me all creepily.
Speaker 5:
What are you talking about? All creepily? Like can you describe it better?
Speaker 3:
Well, you’re staring me down.
Speaker 5:
I’m not staring you down. You’re staring me down. I looked over and you were just mad dogging me because you have a point proof. Just like you tried to hurt my arm when you put these cuffs on me, you did it on purpose. There was no reason for it, dude. You were using more force than necessary.
Speaker 3:
Stop pretending to be a victim here.
Speaker 5:
I’m not. I’m just stating the facts. You don’t like the facts. I understand
Speaker 3:
Your facts are bullshit. They’re not facts.
Speaker 5:
No, they are facts. You were trying to be a little more aggressive than you needed to be for no reason. No, there was no resistance, no nothing.
Speaker 3:
There was no reason for you to not follow our orders. Was there other than being an asshole
Speaker 5:
Other than did a good job of that, that I don’t have to listen to what another man tells me to do unless I’ve broken the law.
Speaker 3:
You clearly dunno what you’re talking about. I clearly do. No, I absolutely know for a fact I do. It’s cute. Keep it up.
Taya Graham:
I honestly have to wonder if this officer is trying to show us, show in under 20 minutes why people don’t trust law enforcement. It’s like a crash course in all the overkill and sense of entitlement that police deny when they’re confronted about it. But this officer seems dead set on proving is actually true. Do you understand, officer? You have a man in handcuffs. Do you realize you detained him without probable cause? Do you even comprehend how unconstitutional your actions are? Unfortunately, I don’t think so because this apparent arrest from hell continues.
Speaker 2:
It is not common practice for him to sit there and take pictures inside people’s houses and stuff. That’s the people that hired him and she goes, no. Every once in a while he’ll take a picture of the whole road to show what it’s attached to and it’s not okay for him to be taking pictures of people’s properties and their personal stuff. She goes, I don’t hire him for that.
Speaker 3:
Oh, so had she hired him at all?
Speaker 2:
Yeah, she hired him to take pictures of this house and this house.
Speaker 3:
Oh,
Speaker 2:
So he was taking pictures of everybody else. He was standing in the very back, in the back of their place. She’s sitting in her house, her blinds are open and he’s standing there with the tripod taking pictures inside her house. Oh no shit. She opened up the door saying, can I help you? Why are you taking pictures of me? She says, I’m doing my job. Takes a few more pictures. She says, well your job is what? Taking pictures of me. He is like, am I trespassing? Am I breaking just like he’s doing with us? Am I breaking the law? Am I doing this?
Speaker 3:
Wow. He did say, for what it’s worth, he goes, he offered to show me the photos that he took. So I don’t know if you want to
Speaker 2:
He or not. He’s been wandering around. Who knows what he deleted. I don’t even give a shit.
Speaker 3:
For sure. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:
So did he give you his date of birth or anything?
Speaker 3:
No. No. I wast give a shit.
Taya Graham:
I can’t believe this, but I think I have nothing left to say only that I would recommend First Amendment training to these officers if he was standing on a public sidewalk and taking pictures of houses. That is not a crime. But since these law enforcement officers seem unaware of the law, I’m just going to let this arrest play out for all of us to see.
Speaker 3:
You’re legally required to identify yourself by the way.
Speaker 5:
So I’m going to be arrested if I don’t
Speaker 3:
Talk to the deputy.
Speaker 2:
What is your date of birth? I’m trying to make this
Speaker 5:
Easy. I’ll give it to you. If you tell me I’m going to be arrested. If I don’t give it to you, I’ll give it to you.
Speaker 2:
You want me to tell you you’re being arrested.
Speaker 5:
If you’re going to threaten me with arrest,
Speaker 2:
I’m not threatening you with anything right now. I’m trying to figure out the situation because your employer is saying at not any given time has she ever hired you to take direct pictures inside people’s or their personal property? I’ve never taken a picture inside. That’s not what these people are saying when her blinds are open. That’s why I’m trying to figure this out. So we can either get you out of here or you and I can sit down and have a more civil conversation about this. So you want to force my information out of me? No, I want to talk to you. There’s no forcing.
Speaker 5:
So my birthday lets you know whether or not I was looking through windows.
Speaker 2:
I’m telling you what they’re telling us. I’m trying to figure this out. Sir, I’m trying to be decent with you. You are the reason you are in handcuffs. I’ll
Speaker 5:
Help you out. That’s a 14 millimeter lens, which is a very wide angle, which is very far, far, far, far, far away. So that corner, you can’t even see into a window.
Speaker 2:
Okay, what is your date of birth so I can make sure that we have everything correct so that we can try to get you out of here.
Speaker 5:
What crime am I being detained for? Just, and then I’ll give you my birthday.
Speaker 2:
Are you shitting me? You want to go down this road? I just want to know. I’m going to go get statements from them about,
Speaker 5:
Okay, I just want know what crime I’m being detained
Taya Graham:
For. You know what? Let’s just keep going. I’m actually at a loss for words at the moment. Just keep rolling the video.
Speaker 3:
So taking photos in public is illegal. No. Okay. But if you were take your photos inside somebody’s home as they’re alleging that is highly illegal. I wasn’t taking photos inside, but that’s what we’re investigating. That’s why we don’t know. Hang on. I have a false, that’s why we don’t know if there’s a crime yet against that’s it’s our job to investigate. We can’t just take your word for it. We don’t owe you. You don’t know me. That’s our job. We’re cops. We investigate shit. Sometimes people allege a crime that didn’t occur. Sometimes people allege a crime that did occur. It’s our job to find out if it occurred or not. We’re
Speaker 4:
Mutual fact finders. That is all we
Speaker 3:
Do. And while we’re doing that, you are required to identify yourself if it’s a criminal violation not to. So if that’s something you want to get stuck with, then that’s on you. We’ll find out who you are one way or another. Be arrested.
Taya Graham:
Let’s try to picture for a moment, no pun intended, the set of facts that would need to be true for the alleged crime of voyeurism to have occurred. And bear in mind, I’m doing this out of respect for the fact that we, journalists are supposed to report both sides of the story. So let’s do so. Fact one, a man drives into your average neighborhood cul-de-sac parks, his fairly noticeable sports car with the attention of taking pictures of a naked woman inside her home, apparently unconcerned that his nefarious plot would be revealed. He does this as conspicuously as possible. First he parked and got out of his car in broad daylight for all to see. Then this cunning paper takes out a tripod out of his trunk of his car and places it on the sidewalk in front of the house where apparently he was surreptitiously seeking to snap nude photos in plain sight for everyone just hoping beyond hope that his timing would be perfect and a naked woman would just then be standing in front of an open window.
And then when police come to investigate this culdesac ur, they learn he’s working for a real estate company. So now the plot thickens, the alleged nudity. Hunter actually took a job with a real estate company, actually several years worth of jobs to take pictures of the exteriors of homes with the hope. Well, maybe really the gamble that one of these exteriors would actually have nestled inside of it. An unsuspecting naked person. It’s amazing scheme. Really what a nefarious and dedicated plan as improbable as it seems, these are the facts that would have to be true for the officer’s suspicions to be confirmed. His entire career as a real estate photographer was all for this one special moment. So with respect for Sherlock Holmes and Watson here, I will play this video to its bitter end.
Speaker 5:
Okay? What’s your name? As long as you guys are saying that by law, I have to, you do enlist multiple times to you and if I don’t do it, I’ll go to jail. Right? There’s a very
Speaker 3:
High likelihood of that. Yes, I
Speaker 5:
Need yes or no.
Speaker 3:
We’re just going by the book, dude. We’re not going. I’ll identify myself. Okay, perfect. Then who are you? Am I going to go to jail if I don’t identify yourself?
Speaker 4:
Yeah.
Speaker 3:
Yes. Okay. Whatever false narratives you want to create in your goofy head, feel for it. Go ahead and try to belittle me. You’re belittling yourself just fine trying to belittle me. I’ve got dispatch on you. You should know how to make your life difficult, don’t you?
Speaker 5:
What? By speaking freely. You got a problem with that by
Speaker 3:
Speaking freely, but you got a problem with it not having any idea what you’re talking about.
Speaker 5:
No. You’re over here trying to belittle me again. You just tried to say I didn’t know what I’m talking about
Speaker 3:
Because you keep trying to put words in our mouth and make drastic assumptions that are completely false guys, you guys make false assumptions about voyeurism and other stuff for a reason to be here. Okay? You guys must be vo again, believe these false narratives you’ve created. That’s
Speaker 5:
Fine. You treat false narratives. You’re just like a Russian. I listen to those Russians lie all the time. Why? They’re doing exactly the same thing. They’re accusing. Yeah, doing okay.
Taya Graham:
Of course, with no evidence that Josh was a voyeur. The investigation took another twist this time to focus on his car. Take a look.
Speaker 5:
Big time investigation. It’s taken quite some time.
Speaker 3:
Which car is yours?
Speaker 5:
It’s taken quite a while to investigate this.
Speaker 3:
This is your car up here.
Speaker 5:
Do I have to answer that question?
Speaker 3:
It’s a simple question. How
Speaker 5:
Is this investigating? Does that help you with the voyeurism claim that you’re making up? It could. I’m about to end this detention. It’s
Speaker 3:
Illegal. You mean the voyeurism claim? That seems very legitimate up to this point.
Speaker 5:
Very legitimate.
Speaker 3:
Yeah. Not even close so far.
Speaker 5:
Not even close.
Speaker 3:
That’s what all criminals say.
Speaker 5:
Oh, now I’m a criminal. Yeah,
Speaker 3:
We’re working on it. We’re trying to find out. You’re trying to find out to a criminal. Yeah, you’re doing that to yourself. No, I’m not. I haven’t done anything wrong. I don’t know why you’re so confrontational. If you’re just cool with us, then we could wrap this up quickly and potentially get you on your way.
Taya Graham:
That’s what all criminals say. I think that’s a telling admission of how police construct narratives. First a criminal than a liar. But really a more accurate description would be a person who actually pushes back. That’s Jahshua’s real crime. A fact that becomes apparent as they continue to search for justification of their actions and along the way, take Jahshua on a perp walk. Just look.
Speaker 3:
I’ve been pushing in the back of my car here for now. My camera home up here. Yeah, I’ll grab it.
Speaker 5:
So I’m going into the back of a cop car now. Still haven’t broken the law. I still haven’t broken the law.
Speaker 3:
I can handle them anymore. I can handle them anymore.
Taya Graham:
And finally, after turning off their body cameras during which they discussed this investigation, police, perhaps the profoundly flawed suspicions are not in fact true.
Speaker 2:
After all this stuff. You got to go today.
Speaker 5:
So I’m being trespassed from public property.
Speaker 2:
No, I’m being told. I’m telling you, you’re not going back and causing any more issues. So you can either get in your car and leave or I’ll take the ticket and we’ll go to jail. I’m trying to make this easy for you. You just don’t get it. You bought this yourself.
Taya Graham:
Appreciate the brake been given and move on. So after all the insinuations accusations, handcuffs, calling him a voyeur and refusing to answer any of his questions, Jahshua is charged with interfering with a police officer. Now forget the fact that generally speaking, this is a secondary crime. It’s pretty clear that along with turning off their body cameras when discussing the charges, no one was taking pictures that was somehow criminal or otherwise unlawful. But this is just the very beginning of the ordeal for Jahshua who will tell us later how this type of police harassment is not just routine but has happened many times before. And he will explain why this keeps happening and how it has affected him when we talk to him in just a moment. But first I’m joined by my reporting partner, Steven Janice, who’s been investigating the case, contacting police and researching the law. Steven, thank you so much for joining me
Speaker 6:
Te. Thanks for me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham:
So first you contacted the police department. What did they say? Did they answer any of the questions you had about not having an ID number?
Speaker 6:
We’ll tell you? Yes. I was sent them a very detailed list of questions, including about the officer not IDing themselves or not having a badge number. And then I also asked ’em about what their probable cause was to detain Jahshua in the first place, given that the real estate people had said, yeah, we hired a photographer. So it’s kind of absurd. I have not heard back yet, but we’re going to keep pushing on them also. I tried Facebook, but their comments are muted and you can’t send ’em a direct message. So they’ve really walled themselves off from the community, but we will keep trying.
Taya Graham:
Steven, what aspects of the law do you think inform this case? I mean, for example, how does the First Amendment apply here?
Speaker 6:
Well, the First Amendment is very important because he was on a public sidewalk and that is literally one of the few places where the First Amendment is sacrosanct in terms of the voyeurism charge. It’s very clear that you have to film someone who has a reasonable expectation of privacy. So unless they had evidence that Jahshua had taken video of someone who was naked, they had no right to detain him. Now he had offered to let them look at his camera. So it seems like they didn’t have any way or any reasonable means to detain him or even start an investigation. It was pretty absurd and I think the law is pretty clear on that.
Taya Graham:
Also, something happened with the primary officer in the case. Can you tell me a little bit more about Officer Green and what happened?
Speaker 6:
Well tell you, 10 years ago the Utah Department of Public Safety called into question officers green credibility because of some questionable DUI arrest and of course the evidence and some of the circumstances were reviewed and the cases were dropped. So I think it creates some, not just a cloud of uncertainty, but some doubts about the investigation itself. So it’s something we’re going to keep looking into and we’ll report back, but serious questions have been asked and they have to be answered.
Taya Graham:
And now to understand how this encounter has affected him, why police keep targeting him and how he’s fighting back. I’m joined by Jahshua. Jahshua, thank you so much for being here. So what were you doing that evening before the sheriff’s approached you and that woman approached you?
Speaker 5:
I was shooting the interior of the homeowner’s home. I turned on all the lights. I had the blinds open, typical for a twilight shoot or any shoot, and I finished that. I went out to shoot the common space. They had specifically requested photos of the common space, which is usual. And yeah, I stepped out. I wasn’t outside for maybe five minutes. I had taken maybe two photos. I was at the far end of the grass field and I saw a woman step out on her back patio. I really quickly, as soon as I saw her, I said, Hey, do you mind if I take a photo real fast before you get over here? And she completely ignored me. She got a dirty look on her face and started marching towards me and she screamed at me halfway across the grass field and she says, what are you taking photos for?
I replied back, I said, I’m taking photos for my job. It’s for real estate. She continues walking towards me. She gets to where I’m standing and she’s in my face. I kind of try to ignore her. I take the picture and she goes, well, who are you taking the photos for? And I pointed over and I said, it’s for those owners. The house had the lights on the blinds open to me. It seemed clearly obvious. I took my picture, I walked away and she followed me. We got right to the corner of the homeowner that I was shooting for his unit and she goes, well, what’s their names? Then I was frustrated at that point because it’s none of her business. That’s the plain and simple part about it, and she wants to speak to treating me as if I was lying to her. I told her, ma’am, I’m a business and I don’t give away my client’s personal information.
She says, well, I’m going to call them. And we were talking about the homeowners. At some point, her story changed. I said, that’s fine. And I walked away. I went over to go shoot the pickleball court. Her husband approached me. He is got his fist bald and he’s got an angry look on his face. I’m taking pictures of the pickleball court and he’s saying, F this, F that. Getting really angry with me. I chose not to say anything. I knew if I said anything, it was going to escalate it and I didn’t have anything nice to say. And my mother taught me well, yeah, I just ignored him. He got frustrated with me not saying anything, and then he lunged at me like he was going to hit me. I didn’t move. I was carrying my tripod. That’s a formidable weapon. I wasn’t concerned and he turns and walks back to his house.
I went and shot the playground and I was walking back to shoot the front of the house. I hadn’t shot the front of the units yet. The homeowner came home. He pulled up in his truck with his wife and his kids in the car they had left, so they weren’t in the way to take photos. As soon as they pulled up, I let ’em know that their neighbor was having an issue and that they might want to talk to them. We were standing there and that’s when Deputy Boots pulled up. He pulls up, he gets out, he sees me and the homeowner. The homeowner had his baby in the car seat and let him know right away, we’re taking real estate photos, we’re putting our house up for sale. I let him know I’m doing real estate photos. I walked away to take photos of the front of the unit and he started yelling at me asking me what I was taking photos of other people’s property for and telling me that I didn’t have a right to take these photos. And I asked him, have you ever seen real estate photos before? And so at that point he told me that I was being detained for disorderly conduct, for taking photos from the public street of the front of the unit.
Taya Graham:
It sounds to me like you were very professional. You had professional photography equipment with you, including an expensive camera and a tripod. You had the permission of the neighbor, the homeowner who requested the photos, but the police were still called and investigated even though this was explained. What did they initially ask you for and what did you provide them as proof?
Speaker 5:
He immediately wanted to run my id. I let him know that it’s late. I’ve got an hour drive to get back home and I still have business operational things to do, and I need to get these communications out to my client early in the morning. I don’t have time. I’m not going to let you run my id. There’s no reason. I’ve had interactions with police officers before. Most times they don’t even come and talk to me. They just go and let the complainant know they’re doing real estate photos or he is taking photos. It’s not a big deal. Did he come on your property? Ask those types of questions. So I was in the expectation having the expectation of them just saying, Hey, not a big deal. Have a good night. When he wanted to detain me and the things he wanted to detain me before were completely inaccurate. I’m not unfamiliar to misconduct from police officers. I recognized right away what and why they were doing what they were doing, and I’m against that completely. I remained defiant and I wasn’t going to provide them with anything from there.
Taya Graham:
So you provided information that proved you were working as a real estate photographer and you explained to the officer that you shouldn’t be detained if no crime was committed, but you were detained and asked for id. Now understandably, you didn’t think you were obligated to provide it, but the sheriff started escalating the situation by threatening you with arrest. So you gave your personal information what happened next?
Speaker 5:
I provided that information, but that was later on in the interaction after he got to the point where he was going to take me to jail. If I didn’t from the very beginning, the information I wanted was to find what reasonable suspicion he had to detain me. So it was probably 30 minutes into the interaction before I provided my id, but it was only done so under the threat arrest.
Taya Graham:
Now you were hesitant to provide ID and there are people out there who would ask, why were you hesitant? How would you answer?
Speaker 5:
I’ve experienced police abuse in the past, the things that they can do with your name and your identification. I don’t find these as trustworthy people. Not only that, I love my country, I love the constitution. Not all countries have these freedoms or these rights and they should be allowed without question.
Taya Graham:
Now, something I thought was interesting is that the sheriff mentioned cop watchers or auditors. What did he say?
Speaker 5:
He wasn’t really accusing me of being an auditor, but he did recognize some of the language I was using as what his training was. So I think he put the pieces together with the First Amendment protective activities to his recent training about the First Amendment, and I don’t know why he decided to call that all bs, but I’m assuming the training wasn’t sufficient.
Taya Graham:
I noticed that the officer started to use a lot of profanity when speaking with you, when you were asking simple questions like why am I being detained and what crime have I committed? In what other ways was the officer aggressive with you?
Speaker 5:
At the point they decided to put cuffs on me. I don’t know if you noticed in the video, but they had a little code that they used in order to affirm that both of them were on the same page about putting me in handcuffs in that just my simple questions, it didn’t matter what I asked, I just asked very basic reasonable questions. Like when he had his hands on me and had me up against the car, why do I have to follow your orders? It was at that point he cranked this hand. He pushed it all the way up to the top of my shoulder and in doing so, he separated tendons in my elbow and in my shoulder. So the reasons for escalation, I don’t know other than they are unprofessional. I tried to maintain my professionality and conduct myself in a proper manner. I wasn’t cursing, I wasn’t taking things out of proportion, but those that we give our tax dollars to feel like they don’t have to maintain professionalism, I guess when they were doing their duties.
Taya Graham:
So you were in the back of a police car cuffed, even as they discussed the fact that they knew you were there to perform a job. How long did they continue to detain you
Speaker 5:
From that point? In the video where he’s explaining the legality of what I’m doing, it was another 15 to 20 minutes before I was taken out of the cuffs. That speech that he gave is typically the speech that the officers give at the beginning of the interaction to whoever complained and him giving that speech in the way he did shows that he was trained to handle a complaint that is based on such, which is based around photography.
Taya Graham:
What did they say to you about your charges and you also received a secondary charge? A failure to ID months later. Right.
Speaker 5:
So they charged me with interference of a peace officer, and that was the only charge I had at the time. It was six months later I wrote a letter to the mayor and the city council members of Morgan County. I received a secondary charge once again, six months after the fact for failure to ID a retaliatory charge.
Taya Graham:
You believe you are being maliciously prosecuted and retaliated against. Can you explain why you believe that?
Speaker 5:
Just recently I filed motions in my case and I received a memorandum in opposition to those motions. I issued a reply to that memorandum and the reason I did so they have detailed inaccuracies, exaggerations, and lies such as classifying the complainant as a victim. As the Supreme Court has ruled, photography does not cause harm. So his misclassification is fouling up these proceedings and tainting them in the interaction. Before I was cuffed, I was told to step in front of the vehicle and I kept approaching the officer that was in his vehicle. If you look at the video, I actually take four steps back and then I decide to step to the curb. So he’s misrepresenting the facts. A couple other details that were in his memorandum that were completely inaccurate. In fact, his memorandum details that I was detained solely for the act of photography.
Taya Graham:
So how much has this cost you to fight these charges either personally or emotionally or financially, and have you had to get physical therapy for your arm? I mean, basically how has this impacted you?
Speaker 5:
Yeah, it’s had a big impact. I don’t know if you understand this, but when you’re not feeling well, experiencing pain, your motivation to get things accomplished, it diminishes. And so I’ve been taking on less work. I’ve also been taking on less work because I’m representing myself. I know that they did this to me to make me have to waste my time and my money. So I’m representing myself so I don’t have to let them win on that aspect, the emotional, I can’t focus on my work, I can’t focus on my relationship. I’ve got pets that I feel like I should be taking better care of. This is a all day, every day kind of concern. Learning how to suddenly become an attorney requires a lot of time. My ability to even be, I guess as happy about life in general has been difficult, if not impossible.
Taya Graham:
Often people say to me, the process is the punishment. I’ve had victims who are defending themselves tell me that going through the court process is a stress and a harm unto itself. Has this changed how you view police or has it confirmed your understanding?
Speaker 5:
Well, and I’ve also had health conditions. I’ve been dealing with an ulcer and that and the stress and everything. I have not been able to recover from it during this process. It’s been months as you know. It’s been difficult to say the least. In fact, even just right now dealing with this, I’m not feeling well. I’ve made a determination that for every good cop video I see of cops playing basketball with kids and being a hero and providing CPR, all of those good actions get canceled out by how many negative interactions I witness and I view. It’s making it impossible for cops to be heroes. They’re giving something great, which is power and authority and what they choose to do with it is shameful and I’ve lost my respect. I still have interactions with officers that do conduct themselves properly and that I hold them highly respectable. But there are a few that still sign up for an old way of policing that is outdated and not with what the citizens want to see.
Taya Graham:
If you could speak directly to the sheriff’s department and you knew they were listening to you, what would you want to say to them
Speaker 5:
In this interaction? And since I’ve had over a dozen of my rights violated, currently, the Morgan County Sheriff’s Department has their Facebook comments turned off and their online reviews turned off. This is a public forum. This is a violation of the public’s first amendment rights to redress and express their grievances. They haven’t at one point decided to act appropriately or adhere to the law or respect the constitution. What I would say to them, you guys deserve to be defunded. Not all of them but you guys. You don’t need to exist anymore if you can’t clean your house and you can’t act appropriately, step down.
Taya Graham:
Now, usually on this part of the show, I do a rant, for lack of a better word. That is I try to add some context to the case or make a broader point about policing with the idea that we can hopefully event some useful truths about the stories we unpack here. But I’m going to do something different today. I’m going to dig a little deeper into Jahshua’s case. I’m doing this now because I thought you should hear from him first before I explore what has happened since the arrest now that we’ve spoken to him, I want to go through the process. I will call the aftermath. As we all know, the arrests we cover are only the beginning of the ordeal for the people who suffer through them. That’s why we spend so much time speaking to the people who experience questionable detainment, it upends their lives, threatens their jobs, and otherwise turns the world upside down.
But there’s another aspect of being put in handcuffs and thrown into the criminal justice system without justification. I’ve noticed it in case after case a yearning prompts the victim to dedicate themselves to proving one simple fact they did nothing wrong. I think it’s a deeply embedded desire in a society that invests so much in arresting, charging and otherwise labeling people as criminals regardless of circumstance. It’s a need to clear one’s name regardless of the obstacles that in different system often places in one’s way. To emphasize that point, I want to show some of the extra video that Jahshua gave us. It depicts his efforts to obtain the evidence related to his case, specifically the body-worn camera. I think it reveals something beyond the typical and personal bureaucracy that can often obscure and otherwise bury important truths behind laws and regulations. It shows that even when the handcuffs are taken off, there is another potent barrier to obtaining justice. It depict a man who simply wanted to be treated with the presumption of innocence when doing his job, which should define our society and our laws, and that he wanted the government that had been cruelly depriving him of his basic rights to simply acknowledge the truth that he had been wronged. But of course, that did not turn out to be easy. Let’s just watch as he tries and fails initially to get the body-worn camera that we just showed you.
Speaker 5:
So I will be getting the body cam footage and the dash cam footage today.
Speaker 7:
Probably not.
Speaker 5:
How long will that take?
Speaker 7:
I’ll send you the form and it’ll have all the information on it for you.
Speaker 5:
The form?
Speaker 7:
Yeah,
Speaker 5:
I need the body cam footage.
Speaker 7:
Yeah, I’ll give you all the information
Speaker 5:
To fill that out.
Speaker 7:
No,
Speaker 5:
To request it?
Speaker 7:
No, it’ll be denied.
Speaker 5:
You’re going to deny me?
Speaker 7:
Yes.
Speaker 5:
The body cam footage of the incident that I was involved in.
Speaker 7:
Yes.
Speaker 5:
Why?
Speaker 7:
Everything will be, all the information will be provided to you and the statutes.
Speaker 5:
So I’ll just contact the ombudsman?
Speaker 7:
Yes, you can if you’d like.
Speaker 5:
She’s
Speaker 7:
There for,
Speaker 5:
You’re not going to tell me the reason why.
Speaker 7:
Yes, it’ll all be on. I’ll send you all the information.
Speaker 5:
I can’t have access to the body cam footage of the incident I’m involved in.
Speaker 7:
It’s going to be denied.
Speaker 5:
So since it’s civil rights violations involved, it seems as though there’s some corruption in Morgan County and they’re trying to hide.
Speaker 7:
That’s not what I’m saying
Speaker 5:
And suppress this.
Speaker 7:
No, that’s not what I’m saying at all.
Speaker 5:
I won’t. Well, that’s the fact. If I don’t receive the body cam footage,
Speaker 7:
I won’t. I do the state law. It’ll all be, and then everything as far as the grammar process will be provided to you.
Taya Graham:
Now, this was the first time he requested the body-worn camera, and it was denied under the auspices of the Utah statute. I’m showing you on the screen now. This law describes dozens of exemptions that allow the state government to deny anyone access to public information. I mean, the list is so vast. I’m surprised that anyone can get anything from Utah that the bureaucrats decide they don’t want to release. It certainly puts the work of transparency on the back of the citizen seeking the information. But Jahshua persisted. He asked, not once, not twice, but three times. The reason I wanted to show this video is because it reveals how hard it is to persist and prevail when trying to show that the government has wronged you, how much you must fight, how much red tape you must unravel to reveal the truth, and more importantly, how much the system has been constructed to prevent you from doing so.
I wanted to show this for all the people fighting the same battle as Jahshua, for all the guests who’ve appeared on our show, despite the prospect of retaliation from police or other arms of government, how people when wronged who have everything to lose, still fight against a bureaucracy that can arrest, detain or otherwise destroy them, and they don’t give up and they keep going despite the odds, often without lawyers, usually without support and frequently amid pushback and retaliation from the police themselves. And usually when I ask why they tell me they’re not just pushing back for themselves, not just to be vindicated, but for the community. Their quest for justice is not simply about their own law enforcement predicament, but it’s about a concern for others to ensure that their fellow citizens are not engulfed in questionable arrests or overly aggressive law enforcement. It’s a spirit of communal good, so often missing from today’s political discussion that pits ideologies and factions against tribes and parties.
And yet in our midst among the least empowered exists a group of people who I’ve had the privilege to speak to, people who embody all the best aspects of our constitutional republic, who despite all odds strengthen and bolster the underlying ideals of our body and laws and of our Constitution, people who renew democracy by believing in it. That’s my rant for today. It’s my statement of respect, admiration, and support. Yes, a journalist support for people like Jahshua who keep fighting. I salute him and all our other guests because they are the ones who will save our rights and we must respect them for their work and for their sacrifices on our behalf. I want to thank our guest, Jahshua, for sharing his story with us and his fight for justice. And of course, I have to thank Intrepid reporter Steven, Janice for his writing, research and editing on this piece. Thank you Steven
Speaker 6:
Te. Thanks Ami. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham:
And I want to thank mods of the show, Noli D and Lacey R, for their support. Thanks Noli D and a very special thanks to our accountability reports, Patreons, we appreciate you and I look forward to thanking each and every one of you personally in our next livestream, especially Patreon associate producers, Johnny R. David k, Louis p, Lucia, Garcia, and super friends, Shane, b Kenneth K, pineapple Girl, matter of Rights, and Chris r. 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. Please reach out to us. You can email us tips privately@therealnews.com and share 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. And of course, you can always message me directly at teos Baltimore on Twitter and Facebook. And please like and comment. I really do read your comments and appreciate them. And of course, if you can hit that Patreon, don’t link pinned below in the comments. We’d appreciate it. My name is Taya Graham and I’m your host of the Police Accountability Report. Please be safe out there.
Private companies and state governments have long exploited the 13th Amendment to create a profitable agribusiness system that runs on prison slave labor. “If you look at the history of agriculture in the United States, it’s built on dispossession, it’s built on enslavement,” says Joshua Sbicca, director of the Prison Agriculture Lab, and the legacy of that violence lives on in the big business of “agricarceral” farming today. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, host and former political prisoner Mansa Musa speaks with Sbicca about the prisoners farming our food, the parties profiting from their exploitation, and the ongoing fight to uphold the basic rights and dignity of incarcerated workers.
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 Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa.
We oftentimes, when we look at agriculture in society, we see fields and fields of crops, irrigation system, birds flying and chirping. This is the agribusiness as it relates to a fantasy. But when you look at the agribusiness in prison, you see an entirely different story. You see men in the same kind of uniforms providing the labor to produce plants and crops. You see officers, guards on horseback with shotguns, overseeing them, making sure they do not run or escape.
Prisoners are left out in the field, as Malcolm said, one time from, can’t see in the morning to can’t see at night, but they’re left out there at ungodly hours. Recently I spoke with Professor Joshua Sabika, who is an educator, community builder and associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Colorado State University, author of Food Justice Now: Deepening the Root of Social Struggle and co-author of A Recipe for Gentrification, Food, Power, and Resistance in the City. Thank you for joining me, professor Joshua Sabika.
Joshua Sabika:
It’s a pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me on your show.
Mansa Musa:
And introduce yourself to our audience and tell them how you got into the space that we’re now talking about today.
Joshua Sabika:
Sure. Yeah. I’m the director of the Prison Agriculture Lab out of Colorado State University. And the Prison Agriculture Lab is a space for inquiry and action related to understanding agricultural operations inside the criminal punishment system.
And we do a lot of research to understand what’s happening and provide translations of that research for a public audience, for a media audience, so that people can see behind the curtain of the prison and understand specifically what it’s like to be on a prison farm and to understand the scope of that work.
So I come at this work originally actually through doing food justice work and in particular working with an organization called Planting Justice, who is an organization that works with formerly incarcerated people. It’s also worked inside prisons like San Quentin State Prison in California. And through that work was exposed to the perspectives of a lot of formerly incarcerated people who’ve had to work in prisons, but also who were working in a more positive way with plants and in gardens.
But it stoked this question in me, though, what’s happening more broadly in the US prison system when it comes to agricultural operations. And so that sort of curiosity was really the impetus behind the launch of the prison agriculture lab.
Mansa Musa:
And I did 48 years in prison, and I was in the Maryland system and one of the prisons, they called it the penal farm. And the reason why they called it the penal farm is because that was when it was first built. That’s what the design was. It was designed for producing food for the prison population, as well as the general society in that region, which was western Maryland. Professor, can you give our audience an overview of the history of the agribusiness and practice in prisons in the US?
Joshua Sabika:
Yeah, absolutely. And maybe I’ll start first with just laying out what are some of the trends right now that we know? So through our research, we found there are around 660 adult state-run prisons that have agricultural operations of some kind.
And we found these fall into four categories, horticulture and landscaping crops, food processing and production, and animal agriculture. And within each of those, kind of broad categories, are a whole bunch of specific practices.
And so you have everything from essentially plantation-style, large cropping kinds of operations, to more diversified gardens. And so it really runs the gamut, but we do see a concentration of agricultural operations in the South. We also know that in the South there’s a greater number of prisons in that region compared to other parts of the US.
And we’ve also asked kind of why are these things taking place? And so currently, according to the prison system, there’s four main reasons why these operations take place. One is idleness reduction. So essentially, kind of because prisons force people to work in the name of, they don’t want “idle hands doing the devil’s work.”
Another is financial reasons, so feeding the prison population or producing profits for the prison system. There’s also more or more, I should say training purposes. So educational and vocational programs are tied to ag operations.
And then lastly, a very small subset are reparative. So we understand this is for community service purposes, donating the food that’s grown, or greening the prison or something like that. But I’ll say that that’s a huge exception, that there are those sorts of reasons for these operations.
As far as the more historical kind of connections, you know, one of the pieces that I think is really clear is that if you look at the history of agriculture in the United States, it’s built on dispossession, it’s built on enslavement. And a lot of those violent kinds of logics in agriculture find their way into the prison system, as the US prison system begins to develop in the 1800s.
And the same groups who were bracketed out of this sort of agrarian utopia that was being built for white immigrants to the US, as those people were bracketed out, they were then incarcerated again as the prison system began to develop. And yet agriculture was somehow imagined as a tool to discipline incarcerated people and compel them into being an orderly subject, basically.
And so in many ways, agriculture helped build the prison system. As prisons begin to develop, they needed to find a way to afford what they were creating. And so if you had a captive free labor force, you could force that labor force to grow a bunch of food to feed all the people that were then in that system. And so, farms were really central actually to the building of the US prison system and have continued to play a role over time.
Mansa Musa:
And you listed four things, talk about the relationship between how they work out as far as the agri, and as it relates to the support of the institution and the profit margin that come out in support of the prison industrial complex profiting off of it.
Joshua Sabika:
So maybe I’ll kind of start with breaking down a little bit, these two differences. So when it comes to agricultural operations in prisons and the financial benefits of those operations, it comes in two forms. One is essentially a subsidy to the prison system in the form of food that goes to feed the prison population. And this acts as a cost savings.
So instead of a prison having to go into the open market and buy that food from a corporation, they have their prison force do that work, anything from $0 to cents on the hour. There’s a large number of prisons that subsidize the cost of feeding people in this kind of way. And food is one of the few pieces within a budget in the prison that is controllable in many ways.
And so prisons have sought to make that expenditure less and less and less over time, and it’s at a great cost to the health of people within prisons. And I’ll note that, even in cases where food is going into the prison system, it usually isn’t enough to completely feed everybody. And so food has to be bought anyway.
And then there’s the food that’s being sold on the open market. So if we were to think about it, I think about it like an agricultural/industrial complex, where have prisoners that are selling or that are working to produce crops that then get sold. And also raise animals and livestock.
So in Texas for example, there’s a huge livestock operation. A bunch of this livestock is going into livestock auctions throughout the state of Texas. And then that beef is making its way into food supply chains that go into the consumer market, where you know may be having a hamburger at McDonald’s where some portion of that was produced in a prison in say, Texas.
And so, in terms of how much money is being made, like an exact dollar figure, this is something that actually the prison agriculture lab is trying to get information on. And so we’re in the middle of a project where we’re compiling a bunch of these numbers and we’re compiling the companies that are buying from the prison system. But just to name a few know there’s big companies like Smithfield or Cargill, these large multinational corporations that are purchasing some part of their food supply from prisons. And so tracing that is much more complicated, but it’s nevertheless happening.
Mansa Musa:
Are you familiar with the farm line litigation involving the Louisiana State Penitentiary? And can you talk about your research as it relates to that and any other views you might have on that?
Joshua Sabika:
Sure. I guess the first thing that I’ll actually say here is, I was retained by the plaintiffs as an expert witness in the farm line litigation. So I can speak about some things and not other things.
But I guess what I’ll say first is a little bit about the research that the prison agriculture lab has done. So as it pertains to Louisiana know, our research has found that there’s a lot of different agricultural operations in prisons in Louisiana, at Angola specifically. So Louisiana State Penitentiary, we know that there are large cropping operations, and that’s sort of the majority of the kind of agricultural work that takes place there.
And there’s work that’s run by the prison industry itself in LSP. And then there are fields that are run by LSP itself. And so those operations run parallel to each other but serve different kinds of purposes.
And part of what the farm line litigation is about, and this has been all kind of publicly recorded and reported on, I should say, is focusing on the heat conditions that men incarcerated at LSP are subject to, particularly in the summertime. And then the harms that are associated with working in a plantation-style agricultural system that’s reminiscent of chattel slavery. And so the pending class action lawsuit is seeking to address those two concerns.
Mansa Musa:
And to your knowledge and your research, how much money do they make versus how much profit comes out of that space? I know you say y’all was trying to pin down how much profit, but if you can give a general view of the profit margin relative to how much the wage margin.
Joshua Sabika:
Yeah, I mean it really varies a lot by prison and state across the US, but if we’re talking about a state like Louisiana and a prison like Angola, prisoners are paid anywhere from zero to 4 cents an hour, so basically nothing. And in terms of the farm line itself, what’s come out in kind of public declarations, is that food actually goes back into feeding the prison population. So it’s different than some of the other agricultural operations that are producing food for the open market.
In terms of the exact dollar figures, I don’t have those exact figures, but if you were to look like in the aggregate, the Associated Press released a report about a year or so ago, and they essentially found that there’s likely hundreds of millions of dollars that are being made by this agricultural system within prisons. And so you could do some ballpark math to realize essentially that you have incarcerated people paid basically nothing while companies and/or the state are profiting off of this labor.
Mansa Musa:
And it is known that when you’re dealing with any type of large agricultural situation that you have to have some type of pesticide, or some type of way to preserve the plants that you’re growing, or create an environment for the plants to grow. In your research, have y’all found any relationship between the pesticides being used and the health, or health related issues, from men or women that’s working in these environments?
Joshua Sabika:
Our research hasn’t looked specifically at that relationship between, kind of the environmental exposures and then the health of incarcerated people working in these systems. But one thing that I can say, is that based on various cases that I’m aware of around the country, that the use of pesticides and herbicides is part of some of these agricultural operations. So I’m particularly familiar with the case of Florida where I’ve done extensive research and I know that pesticides and herbicides are used in various farming operations. Now whether or not they’re being safely applied and whether or not people are getting sick as a result of those exposures, I think is another question.
There have been reports, again, this is in sort of publicly available documents that at places like Angola, that crop dusters are used. Again, the question is how safely is that practice happening and are people around when those practices are happening? The prison system is notoriously opaque and it can be incredibly hard to verify what’s happening in any systematic way, but there appear to be reports and information to suggest that these chemicals are being used. And then it’s whether or not it’s harmful to people is the bigger question.
Mansa Musa:
The real news recently reached out to Louisiana State Penitentiary for comment on how frequently they use crop dusters, and has not yet been provided with any official response. I come out of prison myself. When I look at the farm line and I look at the whole agribusiness as it relates to the prison industrial complex.
Unless a person is coming out of the system and buying acres of land and planting and feeding them on their own self, even with a marketable skill is virtually impossible. If you are in an environment where agriculture is the primary industry that exists in the Maryland system, in the federal system, they have industry and it is exploitative in and of itself, but they provide you with a marketable skill where a person might come out with upholstery, a person might come out with plumbing, a person might come out with cabin making, even though they’ve been exploited all them years.
I find the connection between when a person doing long-term in the Angola, or long-term on any prison where it’s agri is concerned, that they don’t have the necessary job skills to be competitive back in society. Do you have a view on that?
Joshua Sabika:
Yeah, I do. And I think that’s a really important point that you’re making. And one of the claims of many state prison systems is that there is some sort of educational or vocational benefit to the agricultural work that people are performing.
Unfortunately, there’s very little evidence to suggest that that’s actually happening. And I think that there are several reasons for that. I think one is part of it’s like a tracking problem. It’s very difficult to track people once they leave prison. But I think more fundamentally is the point that you made, which is that you can’t buy land coming out of prison. It’s very, very unlikely that you’re going to be able to do that. And moreover, the skills that you actually developed are probably for a more frontline position.
Mansa Musa:
Exactly.
Joshua Sabika:
So working as a field hand or milking a cow or something of that sort, and if you look at the pay that’s associated with that work, it’s very low pay, and agricultural work is some of the most dangerous work that exists in the economy. And so the thing that I’ve thought a bit about is what is it actually signaling to incarcerated people when you say, this is the kind of work you’re going to do? It signals that they don’t deserve better work.
Mansa Musa:
Right. Exactly.
Joshua Sabika:
It signals that they deserve some of the most backbreaking, brutal work that we know exists. And to suggest that people are going to come out with a skill then, in that same sector that continues to abuse people, is ultimately this sort of disciplinary and brutal logic that has no intention of actually taking care of people.
Mansa Musa:
And under the law, you have crime, you have punishment, and the punishment is the sentence that you receive. I commit a crime, I get punished for it. The punishment is the sentence I receive. The punishment is not where I go at, and then in turn be brutally punished or physically punished.
And according to the concept of penology is that once I get into the system, then I’m supposed to be provided with the opportunity to change my behavior, to develop a work ethic, to develop social skills, because ultimately I’m going to be returned. Within in the agri system, and much like in the industrial system as well, but in the agri system in and of itself, you’re going to find very few people that come out of the system that is equipped to re-socialize themselves back into society, primarily because everything is done in a plantation style. If I don’t work, if I refuse to work, I’m going in solitary confinement. Or the threat of solitary confinement exists that if I don’t get on the farm line that exists, and more importantly, I’m doing long-term, the average person is doing 15 to 20 years in that environment and come out that environment, have very little skills to adjust back in society.
So it’s inevitable that they’re going to revert back to some kind of criminal behavior which opens that cycle, repeat that cycle. And this has been my experience that I’ve seen over and over again when people leave out, we’re not prepared, we’re not equipped and we’re confronted with a society that we have to live in. We don’t have the ability to get housing, our medical benefits, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
But in closing, professor, tell our audience where you see this farm line litigation going. If you can give an overview on that or based on your research and your knowledge of these types of litigation, where do you think this might end up at?
Joshua Sabika:
Yeah, it is a great question. And when we look at how some agricultural operations are run in this plantation style, like you were talking about, where the point of the system is to heap punishment on top of a sentence, as you put it.
When we see that these kinds of systems exist, it breathes life into the argument that we need to get rid of, for example, exception clauses from state constitutions that say, you can be subject to slavery or involuntary servitude if you’ve been convicted of a crime.
So these kinds of systems, they breathe life into this analysis that prisons are akin to chattel slavery, and they traumatize people in ways that are akin to chattel slavery. And so, even though plantation style agricultural operations are the exception in the American prison system, they’re demonstrative of the larger logics in the prison system that abuse people that use incarceration and capturing the time of people in order to prop up, essentially a giant public works program.
And then on top of that, the entanglements of that system with private industry, which profits off of the captured time of people. And so when thinking about something like the farm line litigation or kind of more broadly what it represents, I think that’s why it’s significant, and that’s why we should be paying close attention, and thinking about how that logic is maybe happening in many other places as well. And so there’s an opportunity to crack that open and engage in efforts that actually uplift the human rights of people who are incarcerated, and that sees the human dignity of people who are behind bars no matter what they’ve done.
Mansa Musa:
Based on your research and your study and your knowledge of the history, what would be a good solution for the type of problem that we just outlined?
Joshua Sabika:
Yeah, I mean, I guess the one thing that I would point to is that it’s always important to take direction from people who are on the front lines, and that’s incarcerated people, and look at the analysis and demands of people who are subject to abusive systems.
So if you look at efforts like the Free Alabama movement or efforts in the State of Florida, for example, to engage in various prisoner rights organizing, I think it’s really important to find those organizations and those individuals that are already doing the work and to find a way to plug into it wherever you’re located.
There are prisons in every single one of these states that we live in here in the United States, and there are many people that are locked up in that system. So making connections with people on the inside I think is really important.
I think on a more outside level, knowing those companies that are profiting off of the labor of incarcerated people and refusing to spend your money to support those companies is also something that we can all take ownership of ourselves and be aware of how we’re entangled with the prison industrial complex. And so I think that’s another set of actions that consumers can be taking.
And I think the last piece is, in those cases where there is a litigation or other kinds of efforts to hold prisons accountable, that people find ways to support those efforts. So those are the things that I would offer here today.
Mansa Musa:
And will say, tell our audience how they can follow you or keep track of some of the works that you’re doing in terms of your advocacy.
Joshua Sabika:
Sure, you can find the work of the Prison Agriculture Lab at prisonagriculture.com. And personally, I’m on Blue Sky and you can find me on Blue Sky if you want to follow me on social media.
Mansa Musa:
Professor Joshua Sabika, you rattled the bars today, and we want to always be mindful of this to say that we’re talking about human beings. We had the United Farm Workers that was working in the fields for pennies a day and inhumane conditions that was able to unionize and ultimately get treated like a human being, get a livable wage.
We had people that, when we look at this country that was working in sweatshops, that unionized and was able to get treated like a human being. The thing with the prison population as the professor outlined, is the 13th Amendment. The 13th amendment is the one thing that’s preventing prisoners from being treated like human beings, because it says that except for those who’ve been duly convicted of a crime, they can be treated as a slave. Anybody else cannot. If you’ve been duly convicted of a crime, you can be treated as a slave. And as we see from the Louisiana farm system or any other system where it’s agriculture involved, we see this 13th amendment being carried out.
The only difference between the 1800s and now is everybody’s not on the plantation. They don’t have free reigns to round people up to go kidnap people. But once you’re in that system, it’s like you’ve been kidnapped, and that’s the end of your life as it exists during that time.
We want to ask our audience to continue to support The Real News and Rattling the Bar. We ask that you give us your feedback on these conversations because it’s important that we hear what you got to say. If you agree with it or don’t agree with it, we still want to hear it because it’s only through discourse that we can get a better understanding of the direction that we want to take and treating each other like human beings. Thank you, professor.
An audit of past rulings by a controversial medical examiner found that 36 cases of police custody deaths deemed accidents should have instead been classified as homicides.
Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown, whose agency managed the audit of former Chief Medical Examiner Dr. David Fowler, said the audit was disturbing and that the reclassified cases warranted further scrutiny.
“These findings are of great concern and demand further review,” Brown wrote in the preface of the report.
The report is simply an audit. It does not formally reclassify any of the cases that have been reviewed. Normally, changing an autopsy determination requires a hearing in front of a judge.
The push to examine Fowler’s past rulings came after he testified at the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Chauvin was charged with murder after video surfaced of him sitting on George Floyd’s neck for roughly nine minutes. Floyd later died at a nearby hospital.
The case sparked outrage and nationwide protests.
Fowler testified that Floyd did not die from positional asphyxiation, the result of the downward pressure of Chauvin’s knee. Instead, he attributed carbon monoxide poisoning from a nearby tailpipe to be the primary cause.
The testimony sent shockwaves through the medical community. An open letter penned by roughly 450 medical experts called for a review of Fowler’s rulings in light of his testimony. The pushback prompted the state to undertake a comprehensive audit, the findings of which were released in a 90-page report.
Among them is the death of a 19-year-old Eastern Shore resident, Anton Black.
Black died after police chased him to his mother’s home. The body camera showed officers lying atop the former track star, who weighed 160 pounds at the time of the arrest. Fowler ruled the death an accident due to an underlying heart abnormality and bipolar disorder, a decision his family said did not reflect the evidence.
“This is a classical case of positional asphyxiation in which somebody is placed face down, and then someone leans on his back, presses down on his back, and he’s tasered, after several minutes, and then he goes limp,” Wecht told TRNN.
Black’s family eventually won a $5 million settlement of a wrongful death suit against the state. Sonia Kumar, senior staff attorney at the Maryland chapter of the ACLU, who was lead counsel on the lawsuit, released a statement calling the audit result long overdue.
“This report vindicates what family members and communities—mostly Black and Brown Marylanders—have been saying for decades: that the entire system has been complicit in making police-involved deaths seem inevitable,” Kumar wrote.
The audit also includes other cases covered by TRNN.
Among them is the death of Tyrone West. West was pulled over in 2013 in North Baltimore after officers stopped his car for a broken taillight. Officers dragged him out of his vehicle and beat him for roughly an hour. West died later at a nearby hospital.
Fowler ruled his death was accidental, the result of dehydration and an underlying heart condition. Prosecutors also declined to press charges.
But Tyrone’s sister Tawanda Jones fought back. She started a series of protests known as West Wednesdays that have continued every week since her brother’s death in 2013.
Jones noted that the first protests were staged outside Fowler’s office.
“That’s where West Wednesday started, at his office. And now the right is finally coming out. I am just overwhelmed.”
Now she is calling for the prosecutor to reopen her brother’s case.
“Yes absolutely, I am going to keep pushing forward.”
Critics say Fowler’s misclassifications were purposeful, with the aim to lower the number of homicide cases in a city where political careers are made or broken by the murder rate. Other sources say the primary goal of his questionable findings was to protect police officers from accusations of wrongdoing. But families like Tawanda’s are simply seeking closure and justice.
“I’ve been fighting for my brother and other families for so long. I just want the truth to be known.”
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.
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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.
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