President Biden’s decision to pardon his son, Hunter Biden, has drawn criticism from across the political spectrum. Among these critics are opponents of the War on Drugs and mass incarceration, which President Biden played a personal role in architecting throughout his political career. Jason Ortiz, Director of Strategic Initiatives at the Last Prisoner Project, joins Rattling the Bars to discuss Hunter Biden’s pardon and what it means for Biden’s legacy.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
President Biden recently gave his son, Hunter Biden, an unconditional pardon. Hunter was convicted on tax evasion and federal gun charges. He was due to be sentenced this month. In pardoning his son, the president stated that he believes in the justice system, but also believes that raw politics has affected this process, and it led to a miscarriage of justice.
His decision to pardon his son has created a Richter magnitude scale response from every sector of society. President Donald Trump and his treasonous cohorts, former prosecutors, convicted police, just to name a few.
Everyone has an opinion on this decision, but the voices that are missing are those who are enslaved in the prison industrial complex. The people sitting in prison on outdated marijuana charges, people who lost their freedom, because of racist three strike laws, or mandatory minimum sentence.
These are the real victims of the raw politics that President Biden spoke about. Here to help us unpack President Biden’s decision to pardon his son and the impact of that decision is Jason Ortiz from The Last Prisoner Project.
Jason, introduce yourself to the Rattling The Bars audience.
Jason Ortiz:
Sure. My name is Jason Ortiz. I’m the director of strategic initiatives for The Last Prisoner Project, which is a nonprofit organization that helps folks that are currently incarcerated for cannabis crimes achieve their freedom, get reunited with their families, and become full members of society.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to Rattling The Bars, Jason.
Jason Ortiz:
Thank you. Welcome to have me. I’m really excited that you’re having me here today.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. So, we recently recognized that President Biden used his authority to pardon his son Hunter Biden from the conviction that he got for tax evasion, gun violation, among other charges.
And in pardoning him, and this is what we want to hone in on this interview, in pardoning, he said that he believed in the justice system, and he believed that the American people when you tell them the truth, they will be fair.
But he also believed that the raw politics, the decision to indict his son, and the raw politics to convict his son is the reason why his son was convicted. Not that he was guilty of anything. That wasn’t the issue. He was guilty. It was just that the raw politics superseded his guilt, and, therefore, he should not have been found guilty, but for raw politics.
Okay. So, let’s look at this decision that President Biden made. Talk about … Because you recently was interviewed on Democracy Now by Amy Goodman, and in your response to this decision, you made the observation about President Biden being instrumental in creating an atmosphere where the prison industrial complex blew up to what we know it to be now.
Talk about that, and why you think that this decision should have a better impact than it is in terms of everybody coming out of the closet, war criminals, treasonous, convicted felons, in the sense of Donald Trump and his cohort. Talk about that.
Jason Ortiz:
When we heard that President Biden was going to use his pardon power to pardon his son for his various convictions, we were understanding of why a president and a father would want to help their sons avoid prison time. And so, we have seen this as an affirmation that the president and his administration understand that while some folks have committed crimes in the past, some of their sentences are egregious and politically motivated.
That is true for all of the 3000 federal cannabis prisoners who are currently serving decades, or life sentences in prison for cannabis crimes that are now legal for half the states across the country, and producing tax revenue.
We have thousands of cannabis businesses that are producing tax revenues for states and municipalities across the country as there are people currently incarcerated watching this all unfold, and President Biden, himself, was one of the chief architects of the 1994 crime bill-
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… which enhanced all kinds of sentences, both for cannabis, other drugs, other crimes, and it was on the floor of the Senate at the time, he was a Senator at the time, making the argument that there were these big, bad drug dealers out there that were hurting all these folks, and so, we should lock them up forever. Right?
That was where the whole Corn Pop meme came from with Joe Biden, and he was very proud at the time to be a drug warrior, and push to lock up thousands, if not millions, of Black and brown people across the country while, at the same time, fully aware that under Nixon, when the War On Drugs was declared-
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… the Controlled Substance Act was created, his office was very explicit that they wanted to disrupt Black and brown communities, and the anti-war community, and used the War On Drugs to have a reason to demonize and vilify folks on the evening news, to go into different organizations, and break up their leadership, and incarcerate folks, and much worse. There were plenty of political organizers in that time that were murdered by the State.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
And so, this was the climate that Joe Biden gets brought up in as a House member, and then eventually a Senator, and then in the ’90s as a Senator, he becomes the architect of the crime bill.
So, all of the really long sentences we’re dealing now are in part due to that bill. And so, we have folks like Edwin Ruiz. Edwin is a resident of Texas, he has kids, and he was arrested in the ’90s for a trafficking charge, so, selling weed, moving weed from one person to another, and he got 40 years for that offense.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
40 years in the ’90s. Right? So, 1997. He served 27 years already of that term. And so, these are folks that are serving decades, and have already served decades for activity that’s legal in the District of Columbia where President Biden lives. Right?
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
It’s a clear hypocrisy. They’re fully aware that the War On Drugs was always racially and politically motivated, and yet until this day, he refuses to use his pardon power, his presidential authority, to help undo that damage where he’s more than happy to do it for his son, and fully understand why parents across the country would not want their sons and daughters in prison either.
So, he still has the opportunity to make moves and use his pardon authority to commute the sentences. That’s specifically what we’re asking the president to do is commute the sentences of all the folks that are currently incarcerated to time served. So, that they would be let out.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. And you know what? I like that observation in terms of, like, marijuana laws. As we’ll go into the political prisoner spectrum as well, but as a marijuana law, it is, like, ironic that you legalize marijuana that there’s nowhere in this country right now that a person cannot light a joint up. Literally, there’s nowhere in this country that a person cannot … You can go to a dispensary, and buy.
There’s nowhere in this country, there’s very few places where … It’s, like, maybe regulated, but you can have access to it, and then a person find themselves in prison for two decades, and with no hope of getting out under this law that this very president is responsible for it being, and then he turn around and say, oh, raw politics is the reason why his son … Okay, but the raw politics, the reality behind the raw politics is that you created this situation that these people find themselves in.
And I look at it like Leonard Peltier.
Jason Ortiz:
Yeah.
Mansa Musa:
Peltier is innocent.
Jason Ortiz:
Absolutely.
Mansa Musa:
He is innocent of every crime. Mumia Abu-Jamal, he’s innocent. You got political prisoners that’s innocent. You have the Treasury Committee came out and say in … When they did a study on the FBI’s practice, and the counterintelligence program, they noted that who had ratted them up, was setting people up, only because of their political views, and locking people up, and kill people, the raw politics behind it was that he was representing the corporate America, and the system that by any means was designed to destroy any political opposition.
But talk about the impact that this decision will have, if you can speak to this, the impact that President Biden’s decision to pardon his son will have overall.
Jason Ortiz:
Overall, it is highlighting the idea of using a presidential pardon to undo damage done by politically motivated sentencing. Right? So, the president has affirmed that sometimes the sentences people get are not there, because of they’re a threat to society, or safety for anyone, that it’s all about the politics behind it, and that is very true about the 3000 federal cannabis prisoners who are also politically motivated prisoners, and the folks like Mumia and Leonard Peltier are also politically motivated arrests and convictions.
And so, if he’s able to affirm that for his son, his administration has no excuse from applying that same logic to all the folks that are currently in prison, and using his presidential pardon authority to give them their freedom, and undo the damage that was done.
So, while I am frustrated that the president is choosing to only use his power in this way, it is creating a national conversation around what is the right use of the presidential pardon, and how else can he use it to help more people?
While we would like to see … I’m not opposed, I don’t feel like what he did to Hunter was wrong, it’s just incredibly hypocritical and frustrating-
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… that he’s not using it for lots of other folks, who want to expand the use of the presidential authority. His predecessor Trump also has used it in all kinds of wild ways. Right? So, there is really no limit on what we can do with the presidential pardon. The president could pardon all of these folks tomorrow, if he wanted to.
And so, that means it’s a political decision by him, and his office to not do it so far. And that means on us, on the people. Right? We got to apply pressure, and we got to organize to push the government to do the right thing. They’ve already admitted that they can do it. They’ve already used the power the way they think makes sense. So, it’s on us to push and pressure them to use it in a way that we think makes sense.
Mansa Musa:
And I was listening to someone, [inaudible 00:10:32] talking heads on our network, and they started lining up, and taking the position that, “Okay. Everybody that was involved with trying to throw a coup, and was involved with the riot with President-Elect Trump, then president at that time, told them, “Go down to the Capitol and storm the Capitol, and reverse the democratic decision to elect Biden,” that they was saying, “Well, all of them should be pardoned,” that the police, the George Floyd, they should be pardoned, that everybody, former prosecutors that got caught with their hand in the till, they should be pardoned.
What you think about that? Do you think they should have the same right under this concept as those that was politically motivated, or do you think it should be a more objective approach to this whole process?
Jason Ortiz:
So, I’ll just say clearly, though, the presidential pardon is a political tool. Right? And so, there is no limit to it. So, whether they can, or can’t use it, they definitely can do that.
Now who should get a pardon? Right? Like, personally, I don’t think folks that committed a crime, and their sentence was just, it was fair what they were supposed to serve as far as time goes, that that is justification for a pardon. Right?
The president gets to use it as he sees fit, however, these folks did commit a crime, and I don’t know exactly, if I would say their sentences are unjust-
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… for what they did, because what they did was a pretty serious offense. Right? Storming the Capitol, and trying to seize control of the government, you used the word treasonous earlier. Right? It’s about as close as we can get to treason as we’ve experienced in modern history.
And so, there are times when the sentence is fitting the crime. Right? And so, trying to overthrow the government, that’s a pretty serious offense. Right?
Now folks that have been participated in a lesser extent, or simply showed up to January 6, there’s always going to be a range of participation, and action, and folks should be held accountable to their specific actions.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
And so, folks that did really egregious things in the Capitol should be punished for that. Right?
However, storming the Capitol is not a crime that is now decriminalized, and legal for millions of folks to participate in.
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
And that’s a very different-
Mansa Musa:
[inaudible 00:12:51].
Jason Ortiz:
… situation.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Jason Ortiz:
Right? That we have said as a society, some people can make millions of dollars selling weed, and these other folks got punished for that crime a long time ago. Nobody is now decriminalizing storming the Capitol. Right?
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Right. Exactly.
Jason Ortiz:
And so, we’re saying society has changed since this happened. It was originally racist and politically motivated, but even on top of that, society has now said, “This is no longer a crime. We’re going to let folks operate cannabis businesses,” and that’s what I believe is the moral justification for using a pardon on cannabis prisoners, specifically. Right?
There are lots of other reasons to use a pardon. Right? Some folks are innocent of their crimes, and their original arrest and conviction was politically motivated. Right? That is where a presidential pardon can come in, in that times have shifted, the new administration that is elected is there to push for the people that support the political movements that got folks elected.
And so, that is another good justification for a pardon, because the person didn’t actually do the crime. The only reason they’re in there was politically motivated. So, it takes a political resolution to undo that process. Right? And so, I think that’s definitely what Leonard Peltier and Mumia fit into that category.
Then there’s folks that maybe did commit the crime, but the sentence is just way more than the crime that they committed.
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
For example, folks that are on death row.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
Right? There are a number of folks on death row that should not be losing their life, because of the crime that they committed.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
And that is another space where the president can commute their sentence to life in prison, or time served, depending on the situation, and those are the folks that I think also they are not innocent, necessarily, although, some of them very much are, but the punishment did not fit the crime to have a life sentence.
Like, to really put someone away for the rest of their life, it has to be a pretty egregious situation where they’re also a threat to society forever, and there’s very few situations I think that fit that mold, where someone should be in jail for 50, 75 years. Right?
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
But I do think death row and folks that are sentenced to death is particularly one that warrants presidential intervention, as we should just not be killing folks anymore using the State, and giving people death penalties, which sometimes people can get charges trumped-up, because of drug charges that add to different charges, and then they end up with life in sentence.
[inaudible 00:15:08] is someone that was operating in a cannabis operation, and got charged with trafficking, and is serving a life sentence for a non-violent drug offense.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
And so, honestly, I don’t care how many pounds somebody was selling, nothing justifies a life sentence.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
Specifically, because he did way less than any cannabis company does on a monthly basis. Right? And so, the biggest difference I see between January 6th folks and our folks is the crimes that folks are currently incarcerated for are no longer crimes.
Mansa Musa:
And talk about-
Jason Ortiz:
And that’s a huge difference.
Mansa Musa:
Why do you think that in regard to this country’s attitude about recognizing cannabis laws and recognizing that because of the social trend, and attitudes has changed, why you think they still holding fast to this draconian position of, “Lock them up, throw away the key. It’s a crime. It’s a crime. It’s a crime. We’re not dealing with what type of crime, we’re dealing with it’s a crime, and, therefore, we saying a person that has been duly convicted should serve the time,” but at the same token, as you outlined, “I can leave from visiting somebody that got locked up for marijuana, and on my way out of town, go to a dispensary, and buy some marijuana”?
Why you think this country’s attitude is so entrenched on just holding people to that standard?
Jason Ortiz:
Well, I think the United States has been addicted to punitive punishment for a very long time. Like, there have been folks that have always used ostracizing certain communities and making them the problem, or demonizing them. Right?
We see it happen in many different communities over time. Immigrants are currently being demonized in a lot of ways, as folks want to lock them up, or deport them, but Black and brown folks, specifically, leftist organizers over the years have always been targeted, and using the legal system to not just disrupt those communities, but then profit off of those disruptions. Right?
There are private prisons, even public prisons. Right? There’s billions of dollars in the prison industrial complex that uses our people first to arrest them, but then also uses them for things like labor, where-
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… prison. Right? Like, we actually saw California had a ballot measure-
Mansa Musa:
Yup.
Jason Ortiz:
… to end prison labor, and it lost.
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
And so, that was a pretty heartbreaking moment to hear that that ballot measure lost, and it is pretty clear that right now the way the United States is structured, we are a military superpower, we’re a prison industrial superpower. We use violence and coercive force as our number one tactic in a lot of different ways, and a lot of different situations.
And so, the longer that we are continuing with that addiction to punitive punishment and incarceration, the more damage we’re doing over time, and so, to undo that is a tremendous lift in the international collective consciousness.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
To shift people away from that addiction is tough. Right? And so, I think the drug policy movement has done a pretty good job in shifting public opinion of whether, or not people should be in jail moving forward, but what is really hard for, especially, white folks, or folks that have a significant amount of wealth is being able to address what happened in the past.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
And so, we haven’t been willing to do that part. We have gotten the public to say, “Okay. No more people going in prison,” and even that’s not really true, because we still arrest people and incarcerate people for selling weed. Right? We say that possession is okay. It’s perfectly okay if you buy from a dispensary, but if you buy it from your homey that you used to buy it from-
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jason Ortiz:
… that’s still a crime.
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
And it’s a felony for the guy selling it to you still.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
Right? And out of the 24 states and DC that have had some, kind of, real adult use legislation, zero actually let everybody out of prison when they did it. Zero. Right?
So, there is this lack of historical understanding, and saying, “We’re going to address what happened in the past. We’re willing to move forward and act like it never happened, and not talk to anybody about it,” but we’re not going to actually address the very racist and politically motivated history of why it happened to begin with.
And so, that’s actually where the equity movement started to come out in the mid-2010s up until now where I was part of a different organization then, The Minority Cannabis Business Association, where we were working with different states to help people figure out how do Black and brown people get a piece of the legal pie?
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
Right? And in that equity space, we had three main pushes. So, one was helping folks achieve freedom, and things like reentry support, expungements, reducing sentences-
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… and that was the criminal justice part of it. Then there was the community investment part, because the other part of the War On Drugs was that the police disrupted the economics of communities of color, and removing people that were breadwinners and fathers and parents and putting them in prison. So, there should be very targeted investment to undo that damage as well, which where the State invest in community investment. And then third was economic opportunity in the cannabis industry itself.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
We found a lot of ways that folks are willing to talk about how everybody can make money off of selling cannabis, but when it came to the criminal justice side, we had to really fight for all the advances in those spaces, but this equity movement, which was, essentially, the movement to help undo the damage down by the War On Drugs did spread across the country.
Now most of the states that have cannabis operation have some kind of equity program-
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… where there are set aside licenses, community investment, expungement support, all those kind of things, but even now they’re under assault. Right? There’s all kinds of governments that want to move that money somewhere else-
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… and so, it’s been an internal struggle. Right? But that being said, we are making a lot of progress. Like, things are moving. So, for example, Wes Moore, Governor-
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… Wes Moore-
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… from Maryland.
Mansa Musa:
Where we at.
Jason Ortiz:
Yeah. So, he pardoned 170,000 cannabis charges. I was there when he actually signed the paper. Right?
Mansa Musa:
Okay.
Jason Ortiz:
And so, we are seeing governors across the country pick up the mission to actually undo the damage done, and making some progress. That being said, that’s one governor out of 50 that has actually done anything real serious. And so, that’s an inspiration. We’re glad he did that. Right? Hopefully, he pushes on Biden for us to do more as well, but we still have a lot of work to do.
So, it’s a long-term standing addiction to punitive punishments. Right? That we’re going to shame and make examples out of people, but, at the same time, I do think we are cracking the dam of the War On Drugs-
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right.
Jason Ortiz:
… and we will see it end in our lifetime, I do, and in your lifetime, and all of our lifetimes. Right? Like, we are winning the overall war, but it is something that has been built over 125 years, and ending that is not going to be an easy process, nor a quick one.
But I do see us growing, and winning the fights every day.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. And as we conclude, tell our audience going forward what y’all be doing going forward, and how our audience can act with your project, or your former initiatives.
Jason Ortiz:
Sure. So, actually, we have until January 20th to push President Biden to use his pardon authority to commute the sentences of the cannabis prisoners. And so, folks can go to www.CannabisClemency.org, and we have a countdown clock there where you can actually send a letter to the president, and between now and January 20th, that is the number one priority is we have the opportunity to get folks out of prison with this one person making one decision will actually have huge impact.
So, again, it’s www.cannabisclemency.org. You can go to www.LastPrisonerProject.org to see all the different campaigns we’re working on. If you’d like to write a letter to someone that’s currently incarcerated, we would love to have folks participating in our letter writing program.
And then I always say to wrap up, if you know anyone in prison for cannabis crimes, please let them know about us, and let us know how we can get in touch with them, because we do want to be in touch with folks that are on the inside, helping them get resources.
So, The Last Prisoner Project can provide legal support, funding in commissaries, and then also reentry funding when folks come out. So, that there’s actually a grant, and you can come out and get a car license, or a house, whatever you may need.
So, help us get our message to the folks that-
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Okay.
Jason Ortiz:
… are on the inside, and we would love to help as many people as we can.
Mansa Musa:
Thank you, Jason. You definitely rattled the bars today.
Jason Ortiz:
There you go.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Jason Ortiz:
It’s an honor to be here with you, my man.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. No doubt about it. We recognize that raw politics, this is a politically motivated … That’s all it is, and we recognize now based on your education of our audience, and the marijuana laws, that the hypocrisy of this country is that they’re big on saying things … Like Stevie Wonder say, “We all amazed, but not amused at all the things you say you do, but if you really want to know something, you haven’t done nothing.”
And this is exactly what President Biden … This is your opportunity to cement your legacy, and in terms of, like, pardoning everyone that was convicted of this draconian marijuana law to pardon people that’s been convicted of a frame, like Mumia Abu-Jamal, Leonard Peltier, politically motivated, because of their politics.
We ask that y’all continue to support Rattling The Bars, and The Real News, because it’s only from this platform that you get this kind of information that Jason Ortiz gave us from The Last Prisoner Project.
We recognize that a person can come out and smoke a joint around the corner, and buy some weed, but the same person sitting back in the cell in Denver, Colorado, or Florida somewhere that’s been convicted of having four pounds, or 10 pounds of marijuana is sitting back wondering, “Why am I still sitting here when it’s illegal to sell this throughout this country?”
So, we ask that you support this initiative to try to get the word out, and encourage President Biden to cement his legacy by being the architect of change, and not the architect of confusion and destruction.
Five incarcerated people in Alabama are fighting to push forward a lawsuit, Stanley v. Ivey, challenging the state’s power to punish prisoners who resist forced labor. Despite a state constitutional provision abolishing slavery that was passed in 2022 by referendum, Montgomery County Circuit Court dismissed the plaintiffs’ lawsuit, arguing Governor Kay Ivey and Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner John Hamm were protected by state sovereign immunity. Emily Early, Associate Director of the Center for Constitutional Rights‘ Southern Regional Office, joins Rattling the Bars to discuss the lawsuit and the plaintiffs’ ongoing fight to have their case appealed.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
Mansa Musa: Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa.
The 13th Amendment of the United States Constitution says that slavery is legal — And they use the term involuntary servitude — They say that anyone duly convicted of a crime can be enslaved and labor can be used for slavery purposes.
Now, the question becomes what happens when a state take that clause and say it no longer should be used? And the state that’s being talked about was one of the crown jewels in slavery, the state of Alabama.
Recently in the state of Alabama, prisoners filed a suit challenging utilization of forced labor and for the abolishment of slavery as we know it. The court ruled that the defendants in the case had qualified immunity and the prisoners had no standing in bringing this suit forward.
Joining me today is Emily Early. Welcome, Emily.
Emily Early: Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.
Mansa Musa: And Emily, tell our audience a little bit about yourself and where you’re from before we unpack this tragedy that’s going on down in Alabama.
Emily Early: Sure. Well first, again, I’d like to thank you for having me on your radio show to educate your audience about this really important issue that exists very much so in many of our own backyards and many people don’t know about forced prison labor and slavery that happens inside the prison walls.
I am an attorney with an organization called The Center for Constitutional Rights, which is a racial and justice advocacy organization founded in 1966. We are headquartered in New York, but we are expanding into the South through our Southern initiative, of which I am the head. My official title is the associate director of our Southern regional office, and I’m also a trained attorney. And again, I live in Atlanta, but I have colleagues who are part of this Southern initiative who reside in Alabama and who are helping to lead the litigation that I’m here to talk about today, as well as another colleague in Atlanta, and one in Jackson, Mississippi.
The case name is Stanley v. Ivey, and, again, was brought on behalf of six individuals who are incarcerated inside of Alabama prisons. I will note that one of our original six plaintiffs, Mr. Dexter Avery, sadly passed away a couple of months ago while he was in the custody of the Alabama Department of Corrections. So I wanted to note that, unfortunately, and to make sure that we say his name in the course of this interview.
The suit was brought on behalf of these individuals who have been punished for not working, or refusing to work. And the defendants whom we sued are the governor of Alabama and the Alabama Department of Corrections Commissioner.
The claims that we brought were intended to, if you will, give teeth or force to the constitutional amendment that the voters of Alabama overwhelmingly voted in support of in November of 2022 that got rid of the exceptions clause, or the prison loophole clause that you were talking about, Mr. Musa, earlier, that exists, though, in Alabama’s state constitution.
After the ratification of the 13th Amendment, each state that decided to become a part of the union also had to ratify their own versions of the 13th Amendment. And so Alabama, like many other states, has its own version of the 13th federal amendment that also excludes from the prohibition of slavery persons who are duly convicted of the commission of a crime. And so in November 2022, voters voted to ratify the constitution to get rid of that prison loophole, or that exceptions clause, as it’s referred to.
Nonetheless, the state government, including the governor herself and the Alabama Department of Corrections commissioner, John Han, enacted executive laws that still proceed to punish people and threaten to punish people for refusing to work and not working. And our clients have been subjected to those laws that were passed, very much so in violation of the 2022 constitutional ratification.
So our suit, again, was filed, like I said, in May of this year. Intentionally we filed on May 1 because we recognize that this lawsuit is not only about pushing up against and eliminating this prison-industrial complex, the system of mass incarceration, but it is also very much an issue of labor rights and ensuring that individuals who are choosing to work and who do work under their own free will have the right protections of safety, adequate pay, fairness, and are treated with dignity and humanity. And this system of forced prison labor inside of the Alabama Department of Corrections that still exists, notwithstanding the constitutional amendment, is very much so not providing workers these principles, these rights, this concept of justice.
So in early August of 2024 of this year, our case was dismissed by the Montgomery County circuit court for not actually qualified immunity but what is called sovereign immunity and standing. The court gave absolutely no reasoning whatsoever in its two-sentence dismissal of this lawsuit.
But what sovereign immunity effectively is, it says that the state or the sovereign, it’s a doctrine that derives from British law that says that the king, the sovereign cannot be sued. And if the king or the sovereign or the head of state is sued then, as a matter of policy, everything that the sovereign does could be subjected to a lawsuit.
And so this doctrine of sovereign immunity was created centuries ago, and it’s adopted into many states common law, in statutes, even in federal law in one form or another. And again, that just says that the government and officers and instrumentalities of the state cannot be sued. However, there are rules that have to be met or elements that have to be met before sovereign immunity even can be triggered before it comes into play. And even if those elements are met, there are exceptions to sovereign immunity.
So our position is that sovereign immunity does not apply to this case because our clients are seeking what’s called forward-looking or prospective relief, meaning an injunction to stop the governor and the Alabama Department of Corrections from enforcing these laws that violate Section 32 of the Alabama Constitution that outlaws prison slavery, and also a declaration that declares that what these laws are doing violate Section 32 of the constitution. So because that’s the form of relief that our clients are seeking, sovereign immunity doesn’t apply.
Mansa Musa: I mentioned earlier that we interviewed two members of a union who was involved with being co-plaintiffs in a suit, and I want our audience to know that, as you clarify, Emily, this not necessarily having anything to do with what y’all talking about, but the reality is that they complained about the same conditions that you’re complaining about and that’s being brought to the court’s attention, the inhumanity, the cruel and unusual punishment that’s taking place as it relates to men and women that’s in the Alabama prison system.
But talk about why you think that the state of Alabama, specifically the governor and the Department of Corrections, why you think that they’re taking such a staunch position to ensure and maintain this forced labor system. Because as you said, the state of Alabama, the citizens in the state of Alabama ratified the constitution eliminating any use of forced labor by getting rid of the exception clause in the state constitution. Why do you think that they’re so adamant about holding fast to this particular position?
Emily Early: Well, I think it’s because of two justifications among others, but the two I’ll focus on here today are profit, number one, and you talked about that earlier in the interview. And number two is controlling the bodies that are inside of the prison system, which are overwhelmingly Black and low income. And as it concerns the motivation of profit, the prison system in Alabama — And I would also go as far as to say in many other states — Could not function if they did not rest on, rely on the labor of incarcerated individuals.
Incarcerated workers inside of Alabama Department of Corrections prisons, they cook the food that incarcerated individuals eat. They clean the bathrooms, the hallways, the dormitories, the grounds outside of the four prison walls. They also work — And this is a piece that I haven’t covered as much, but our lawsuit also focuses on this — They are also contracted out to private industries.
Even some of the restaurants that we frequent often in our very own communities, McDonald’s or Buffalo Wild Wings, they’re also cooking and cleaning and performing at these fast food restaurants. And then they take a van that they have to pay for, it comes out of their own pay, that Alabama Department of Corrections transports them to and then picks them back up, and then they come back and then they sleep back inside of the prison walls.
And there also are some incarcerated individuals who are performing security functions because the staff, the prison system is so understaffed and overworked. And so sometimes there are even individuals who are performing some of those same security functions that correctional officers would perform. So it definitely is profit. The Alabama Department of Corrections makes hundreds of thousands of dollars off of the backs of Black and Brown bodies inside of the prison system.
And the second justification for why the state is resisting and forcing this constitutional ratification, which relates to the first reason, is it is an extension, the prison slavery is an extension of slavery, a method used to control and dehumanize and subjugate individuals who are Black in society. And because they are now in this system of incarceration, I think there is very much an attitude, not just among the state government, but, unfortunately, among many in our society and in our community, that we can just do away with people who are inside of prison walls.
And that is not the case. That should not be the case at all. And they still deserve to be treated with dignity and humanity. And if they choose to work, then they should be provided with the same protections that those in the free world have.
Mansa Musa: I want to unpack that as well because I was locked up 48 years prior to getting released. And at one time during my incarceration, I worked what we call industry, that’s what most prisoners referred to it as, industry. And they have with Maryland, MCE, Maryland Correctional Enterprises, and Maryland Correctional Enterprises is legislated by the state of Maryland. This particular corporation is legislated by the state of Maryland and all the labor for, they automatically get, they don’t have to bid for no contracts for state property to make the furniture, anything relative to the state. The chemicals that’s used in the institutions and in government buildings, the uniforms that the officers wear, the clothing that we wear, all these products are made by prisoners in MCE. The furniture for the state house is made by prisoners in MCE.
One, we wasn’t getting minimum wage. Two, we didn’t have no healthcare plan. Three, we couldn’t buy into social security. And four, in order to get any type of, which was considered money, we had to do an enormous amount of work in order to get a bonus.
And I was looking at the state of Alabama, the fact that they outsourcing the labor in Alabama and the fact that they’re outsourcing it. And most of these people in the work release or pre-release environment, they’re not getting, one, they’re not getting minimum wage, and, if I’m not mistaken, in some cases they’re paying for their own room and board. And you can correct me if I’m wrong on that. I know they’re paying for transportation.
And the last thing I noticed in the conversation we had was that in order to maintain the labor pool, they was denying people parole or the ability to progress through the system because they didn’t want to lose their labor. In y’all suit or y’all fact finding, did any of this come up?
Emily Early: As far as the parole piece, it’s not something that we have highlighted directly in the suit, however, it’s something we’re very keenly aware of, that the rate of parole grants in Alabama is abysmal. It’s very, very low. And for that reason, we actually are representing a couple of our clients who are clients in the forced prison labor, Stanley v. Ivy case, in their parole hearings. And even there in our representation, at least on the first try, two of our clients were denied parole.
But that’s something that we’re keenly aware of. And I agree with you, Mr. Musa, that yes, the denial of parole, I think, is tied, in one way or another, to the state’s need to keep people incarcerated to continue to profit off of their labor and to continue to keep the system running.
Mansa Musa: Another observation that was made in our previous conversations was that the fact that the utilization of prison labor automatically stopped, infringes on the rights of people having society to work. So I got cheap labor on the prison-industrial complex. I can take this labor, the same labor, and outsource it to, like you say, fast food restaurants, butcher shops, anywhere that they need labor, and they could have unions there, and I’m undermining the unions and undermining the ability for people to get minimum wage or living wage because I got cheap labor.
Do you think that this has something to do with the fact that it’s the relation between the business community has a hand in ensuring or maintaining this particular standard of slavery in the Alabama prison system? Is a connection between the business community in conjunction with the governor or the state in order to maintain cheap labor? Because if I got cheap labor and they don’t have to unionize, I don’t have to pay health, medical benefits, they don’t have to buy into social security, their pension, or none of that. Have you seen that?
Emily Early: No, I haven’t seen that necessarily, if I’m understanding your question correctly. I think what I do agree with, and I’m gathering from your statements, is that individuals who are incarcerated within the Department of Corrections in Alabama but are contracted out to private employers don’t have to be paid health insurance, 401k, if they qualify for it, and I think that is the case. However, and many of the folks that we did speak to — And I’m not saying this is the case across the board — But many of the folks whom we spoke to in our investigation were paid the same as free world workers and I think have to be paid. They cannot be paid less.
But what happens is the State Department of Corrections takes out 40% of their paycheck and it goes back to the state prison system. And so while they may be paid the same as some individuals who are free world workers, they don’t have the same take home pay. And that’s because the Department of Corrections is taking out its own cut, fees for transportation, fees for laundry, fees for the commissary. Right there, you mentioned room and board, and that is the case as well where, in some jails and prisons, individuals have to pay for their own incarceration.
Mansa Musa: My understanding is that they don’t have the right to say, I don’t want to work. If they don’t work, then they’re being punished even if they’re being given, in the state system they call it infractions. They’re being given disciplinary charges for refusing to work. Is that something that came out in the course of your investigation or gathering the facts of the suit?
Emily Early: Sure. So if people have been assigned to work and they are unable to work for whatever reason, or even if they refuse to work because the conditions are not safe, as happened with one of our clients, Mr. Reginald Burrell, who was injured while working at a furniture store in the free world community and was disciplined for saying he was not going back because it was not a safe environment.
That very much so is what is happening inside of the Department of Corrections where individuals, they cannot work, they refuse to work, they exercise a choice that they should have to not work for whatever reason, and then are consequently written up. That has happened to each of our plaintiffs. That threat remains and is ongoing because of these laws that the Alabama governor and the Department of Corrections commissioner and the Alabama legislature enacted after Section 32 of the constitution was ratified.
So each of those provisions, they relate to one another. And what they effectively do is authorize disciplinary reports and write-ups for literally refusing to work or failing to work or failing to report to work.
And the consequences of those disciplinary write-ups are extra duty, so individuals can be assigned even more work, which can effectively lengthen their sentence; They can lose privileges such as visitation with family and friends who come to visit them, which is very key to their survival and mental health and stability while on the inside; They can also be transferred to more dangerous prisons, which has also happened to some of our clients as a result of a disciplinary write up; They also can lose their good time credit, which is a system where folks earn, effectively, days of time that can be knocked off their sentence for good behavior. But if they’re written up, then they can lose a lot of good time, which, once again, extends or re-extends their sentence.
So they’re being punished over and over and over again, even though they were sentenced to incarceration and, effectively, are now being sentenced to labor, to slavery, to involuntary servitude inside the prisons.
Mansa Musa: And you know what, as you was talking, I was reminded of, I think the case was Sardin v. O’Connor, it’s a US case that came out with the concept of in order to prove an 8th Amendment claim or a claim relative to the conditions, you had to show atypical and significant hardship. You had to show that whatever you was complaining about was atypical and had significant hardship on you.
And I remember when they first came out with this concept, a lot of legal scholars unpacked it and was showing how difficult it was to meet this standard. But I was looking up in the Alabama prison system, it’s one of the most cruel, inhumane prison systems in the country. Some of the prisons — And that’s one of the things I was made aware of in terms of getting people to work — They threaten to transfer them to some of the more notorious prisons in order to pretty much get them to change their mind about not wanting to work.
But talk about going forward, what do you think the standing, what do you think the court, the higher court, going to do in terms of recognizing y’all claim that they don’t have sovereign immunity and that what y’all arguing and the issue that y’all raising has standing?
Emily Early: Sure. So we’re not sure what the court will do, but of course our hope is, and we think we’re right, is that the court will reverse the circuit court’s dismissal of the case and the judgment that the circuit court entered in favor of the defendants, and remand or send the case back to the circuit court. So the case would then be reinstated, and we would continue to litigate the case.
We think that we are right on the law. We think that the circuit court was absolutely wrong on sovereign immunity. It’s very clear that this is a case that does not trigger sovereign immunity, and even if it does, it meets one of the exceptions. And on standing, we think that our clients have fled the claim that shows that they were injured by these three laws, the Executive Order no. 725, the Administrative Regulation 403 that was promulgated in response to the executive order, and then the Alabama statutory code provision that also punishes folks for refusing to work, that all these laws have harmed our plaintiffs, and the defendant’s continued enforcement of these laws harms our plaintiffs, and the lawsuit that they have brought for injunctive and declaratory relief will redress or resolve those harms.
So we think that they have the standing necessary to raise these claims to enforce their right under Section 32 of the Alabama Constitution. So again, we think we’re right on the law, and we can only see what the court will say once the defendant submits their brief and we submit a reply brief. We are also requesting oral argument, so there may be an opportunity for us to go before the Alabama Civil Court of Appeals to have our day in court on behalf of our clients to plead our case.
Mansa Musa: OK. Thank you, Emily. And as we close out, tell our audience how they can stay on top of this or keep being informed about what’s going on with this lawsuit, and how they can track some of the work that y’all are doing.
Emily Early: Sure. Well, they can absolutely follow us on all the major platforms. Again, our organization is the Center for Constitutional Rights. Our website is ccrjustice.org. And this case is titled Stanley v. Ivy, and it’s currently pending in the Alabama Civil Court of Appeals. You can find a specific case page also on our ccrjustice.org website about Stanley v. Ivy. So if you just Google it, you can get updates. And again, we do try to update our casework on all the major social media platforms.
Mansa Musa: Thank you very much. You rattled the bars today, Emily. And we want to remind our audience that we’re talking about humanity. We’re talking about people who has been duly convicted, but the sentence was what they were serving. The crime, you have crime and punishment, the crime that I committed, and then the punishment is the time that I’m given. The punishment is not that I be leased out in forced labor and subjected to inhumane working conditions and don’t have no redress.
And so we asking that you really look into this situation that’s going on and ask yourself, would you want to wake up one day and find out that you cannot refuse to work? And that if you refuse to work, that you’re going to be subjected to more punishment, more cruelty, only because someone chooses to ignore the will of the citizens of the state of Alabama.
Thank you, Emily. We appreciate you.
Emily Early: Thank you so much for having me.
Mansa Musa: And we ask that you continue to support The Real News and Rattling the Bars. It’s only because of The Real News that you get this kind of coverage of what’s going on in Alabama, what’s going on throughout the United States of America and the world. And guess what? We’re actually the real news.
A new bill in Washington, DC seeks to end the district’s use of solitary confinement in jails. Rattling the Bars‘ Mansa Musa speaks with two formerly incarcerated organizers: Herbert Robinson and Cinquan Umar Muhammad of the Unlock the Box DC campaign, which advocates for an end to the barbaric practice of solitary confinement around the country and to pass the ERASE Bill.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa.
Oftentimes we hear about Unlock the Box, and it’s almost becoming cliché. It’s an organization called Solitary Watch that monitors solitary confinement throughout the world and the United States in particular, and they’re real strategic in highlighting the torture and abuse that solitary confinement is.
What we have with us today, people that’s in this space right today. And guess where they’re operating out of? Our nation’s capital. They’re operating out of Washington DC, and they’re organizing to Unlock the Box. But guess where they’re trying to Unlock the Box at? In DC jail.
So why would you have solitary confinement in an environment where the nature of the environment is a transitory environment? The people in that environment, they’re pending conviction, they haven’t got convicted, they’ve only been charged, but yet they’re being treated like they’re doing severe time, and they’re being subjected to solitary confinement.
Joining me today is Herbert Robinson and Cinquan Umar Muhammad. Welcome, men.
Cinquan “Umar” Muhammad:
Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. How you doing today?
Herbert Robinson:
Thank you for having us. Thank you for having us.
Mansa Musa:
I’m doing all right. So let’s start with you, Herbert, because we had you on before talking about Unlock the Box. I was recently at an activity that y’all was doing, y’all sponsored, about Unlock the Box. That’s where I met brother Umar. And y’all was talking about some of the things that y’all was doing, some of your initiatives y’all was taking, but more importantly, y’all was in the space of educating people about Unlock the Box and what exactly that is.
Tell our audience what exactly is Unlock the Box, and where y’all staying at right now in terms of the coalition that y’all building to Unlock the Box.
Herbert Robinson:
Got you. Again, I thank you for letting me be on and appreciate you, Umar, for joining. The Unlock the Box DC is the coalition here in DC that’s trying to end solitary confinement. It’s built up of transformative justice advocates and a lot of the organizations in DC that look at solitary confinement as torture, along with the United Nations. United Nations had what they brought about as the Mandela rule that says 15 days or more in solitary confinement is torture.
And solitary confinement is often described as torture, and involves isolating individuals for 22 to 24 hours a day inside of a cell.
So the Unlock the Box campaign is here to end that. And we are offering a different change into the community. Because it’s in DC jail, it’s being looked at as a judicial issue, but we’re looking at it as a public health issue.
Mansa Musa:
And one of the things that y’all, I recall at the conference that y’all was having on it, y’all had got someone to introduce a bill to do what?
Herbert Robinson:
Yes. So that bill was introduced by a champion, and that’s council member Brianne Nadeau.
Mansa Musa:
From Washington DC?
Herbert Robinson:
From Washington DC. Yes. Brianne Nadeau introduced the bill for us, and the bill is to abolish solitary confinement. We are seeking the in solitary confinement, and we’re asking that each person housed in DC jail is entitled to eight hours a day outside of their cell.
DC jail uses solitary confinement, but they have named it with different names. They have a mental unit that they use for solitary confinement, they have protective custody, they have safe cells, they have disciplinary. They house the LGBT community in solitary confinement because they don’t have nowhere else to put them. And they do the juveniles like that at times on different units.
So with this being said, it’s like the jail that’s lacking the programs and the resources, and that’s what we seek, to figure out how to implement these programs and resources inside the jail. Because there’s a lot that could be done, man, to help the people adjust and better themselves under them conditions, especially when it comes to social and emotional learning and cognitive thinking and things like that to deal with problem solving and be aware of their anger and how they respond and react to certain situations.
And these are things that’s stripped away from you when you locked in that cell by yourself. You become possessive of your own material and things like that. And then the dignity of rewashing clothes that the whole unit then wore and then giving back to you to put on. These things, they take away from you, they strip you down.
Mansa Musa:
Right. Yeah. And I did 48 years before I got out, but I did four-and-a-half of them years in the super max, which was solitary confinement. I did a lot of time on segregation, which is solitary confinement, but I never looked at it like that.
But when I got to super max, I really realized that the impact that isolation had, because sometimes it was like 24 and none, 23 and one, or 24 and none for the most part. And everything was designed around how you would do your due diligence with yourself in your cell.
Umar, talk about your experience. Tell our audience a little bit about yourself and some of your experience and your experience dealing with solitary confinement. I recall your speech at the conference that the Unlock the Box Coalition was having, and I’ve been in this space for a minute, but I was really impressed. That’s what made me approach you about coming on and educating our audience about solitary confinement.
Cinquan “Umar” Muhammad:
Yes sir. Well, first I want to thank you, brother Mansa Musa, for having me here today. I also want to thank my brother Herbert Robinson for always bringing me along. Brother Herbert is my mentor, has been my mentor for some time, so I always try to get in any space that I can with him and get involved with any campaign he’s a part of because we both have some of these shared experience.
At the age of 16, I was sentenced to juvenile life in DC Superior Court, and I was fortunate that at some point in time, roughly around 2017, 2018, the DC Council came up what’s called the Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act. What the Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act does it affords our juveniles who committed crimes before the age of 18, the first version, second version, the age of 25 and under who have served a minimum of 20 years or 15 years to petition the court for release.
And everything is predicated on your conduct while you’ve been incarcerated throughout these years since you were a juvenile. I petitioned the court for release after 29 years, 10 months, and I was released. I was released back into society.
And I made it my top priority because while I was incarcerated, I knew that if I should ever be released, the one thing that I wanted to work on and I wanted to dedicate the rest of my life to was working first and foremost just criminal justice reform in general, but more importantly in this solitary confinement period. But it has to be a starting point. There had to be a starting point. And I’m from Washington, DC, so what better place to start but in Washington, DC?
But over 29 years and 10 months, I roughly spent about six years, six-and-a-half years consecutively in solitary confinement. And one thing that I always say, and I shout it from the rooftop, solitary confinement is 100%, make no mistake about it, torture.
This is torture that needs to be ended because these are the same citizens that will be returning back to the community at some point in time. Who do you want living next door to you: Somebody who has been reformed, who has spent years in incarceration, who has reformed himself, bettered himself when he’s coming back out, back into society as someone who’s a better person.
Or do you want someone who is batshit crazy? Who has practically lost his mind because he’s been sitting inside of a cell alone counting bricks on a wall? I mean, this is a public safety issue. And if this is a public safety issue, then we got to treat this in a manner where this is an emergency in solitary confinement. Who would want to lock somebody in a room the size of your bathroom and leave them in there for years on top of years on top of years, but expecting them to still come out in the same conditions that they went in? That’s insanity. That’s insanity.
So Unlock the Box. I’m involved with a lot of organizations, Free Minds writing workshop and book club, building communities in our prisons. Currently, I’m a BreakFree Education hour 2024 fellow. I’m a fellow, that’s where I’m working at right now. But I just was hired for a job with Dreaming Out Loud, which is an organization that works to end the food inequities in the greater Washington DC area.
But whatever my brother Herbert Robinson is involved in because we are passionate about these same issues. But the top one being, the top one being, first and foremost, is erasing solitary confinement, unlocking the box. And that’s what I’m here to talk about.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. Hey Herbert, because Umar made a good point. And this is his mantra. That’s his mantra. He said it at the conference, the coalition, that solitary confinement is 100% torture. When we think of torture and we see the forms of torture that take place in the movies, we see torture as more physical. Why are y’all saying that solitary confinement?
And he outlined the different reasons what’s behind, emotional, social, physical, mental. But why do you say it’s torture, and how do you get people to understand it being torture? Because when you say someone is being tortured, they waterboard people they falsely accused, they locked up in Iraq, named them illegal combatants. They waterboarded them and the US say, well, that’s torture. They did a lot of physical things to them and they claim that’s torture.
So most people might think say, well, when you say torture and it ain’t got no physical element to it, you just putting somebody in a cell, feeding them, giving them a shower, some food, break them out maybe once in a while and give them some rec, how is that torture?
Herbert Robinson:
So as the brother spoke, because when he said torture, he broke it down from psychological, emotional, mental, physical. This torture happens on every level. You come from being in society with your family to being incarcerated. Now if you’re incarcerated on population, you might have access to the phone and things at a regular basis.
In solitary confinement, you don’t get that. You might be put in a position where you can only send one letter a month, have one 15-minute phone call a month. That’s torture. Sitting there wondering what your family doing for 30 days before you could send your next letter or receive your next letter or get your next phone call.
Again, having them collect everybody’s under clothes off of the tier and wash them in the same laundry basket and then come and pass them back out. Not you, your personal stuff, but just, this your size, this yours. This the stuff the man next to you could have just, man, shitted in in or whatever the day before. But this is what you got to wear now because they feel as though it’s clean enough for you to wear, that you still see hairballs and stuff in it. Like this is torture.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, that’s torture.
Herbert Robinson:
But on the flip side, just imagine being trapped in your bathroom, but there’s COVID. For the people that was trapped in their house during COVID felt as though they was being tortured. They couldn’t handle being stuck in their own home. But just imagine people that’s incarcerated as being trapped inside of something the size of a bathroom, that is considered a bathroom because they have a toilet and sink in it as well. Some have showers too.
Mansa Musa:
Right there in the cell.
Herbert Robinson:
And you’re being trapped in it. So you have some that complain about that, say it’s not solitary confinement because in some locations you have a celly. But I think at times that make it worse because now when this person has to relieve themselves or go take care of any personal hygiene or washing themselves, you are within arm’s reach at all times.
I don’t feel comfortable and could never get comfortable being trapped in a cell with a man right there that’s washing his complete body naked in the shower. But this is what you’re forced under. These are the things you want to know about torture. I call that torture, sir. That’s torture to me.
Mansa Musa:
That would be torture. Umar, how did you deal with solitary confinement? Because you say you did six in all years. And like I said, I was regimented. I was real regimented in everything I did. But when I came out of that space, when I got released from the super max in Baltimore and they send me to Jessup, which was known as the cut, and I was standing in what they call center hall, which is where all the traffic goes.
And the whole time, this was my first time ever being out and about and around people. And I knew a lot of people in that institution, and they was coming by hollering at me and everything. They hadn’t seen me in long. But I was paralyzed. My back was against the wall and I was paralyzed. Literally I was paralyzed. And a friend of mine seen it and said, come on man, let’s go outside. No one recognized that I was paralyzed from not being around people.
Umar, how did you deal with it?
Cinquan “Umar” Muhammad:
No, you was traumatized because you were tortured for the period of time that you was in solitary confinement. That’s called trauma, brother. That was psychological trauma that paralyzed your limbs.
Listen, listen, it’s like being sick. It’s like being sick. And you become so ill and sick that your limbs won’t even function properly no matter how much you want to move those limbs. Brother, that’s trauma.
And see, the thing is this when you ask the brother, well, some people going not see it as torture. Okay, well, go lock yourself in your bathroom without no food. Go lock yourself in your bathroom without no clothes, no TV, and no phone, no radio. And then somebody bring you what they want to give you as food three times a day. You stay in there for three, four, five, or six years and then tell me, still tell that that ain’t torture inside of your bathroom.
Tell me that ain’t torture. Somebody to come around and, at will when they want to, yank you off your cell and beat on you with not only their fists, but with instruments. Tell me that ain’t torture. Somebody that come around where you trying to sleep and hawk spitting through your tray slot or kicking your door won’t allow you to sleep every time they see you falling asleep. Tell me that ain’t torture.
Because if I’m not mistaken, what they have in the Geneva Convention also deems torture is that at a certain period of time when they continuously turn on lights and when they continuously try to, it’s called sleep deprivation. That, sir, is what torture is. And that is what’s going on not only in Washington, DC, not only in Baltimore County, but in the state prisons across the United States and in federal rural prisons.
Now you ask the question in specific, how did I deal with it? See, I dealt with it because I knew I didn’t have any other choice but to deal with it because I’m a resilient young man, first and foremost. I had already suffered so much emotional loss, so much physical loss because I’m an only child. My mother and father already died. I didn’t have brothers and sisters. So all I had was myself.
So I knew that if I wasn’t strong for me, who was going to be strong for me? So what I would do is I would get up in the morning and I would offer salat. I would offer the early morning fajr prayer. Bright and early before breakfast even came around, I would pace the floor a little bit, read the Quran, and then I wait for breakfast to come, eat my breakfast, straight back out to the salat.
Then I would work out. I work out to the zuhr prayer, which is the midday prayer. I will work out to that time, pray, get back to working out after prayer and get my food at lunch. After lunch, get back to working out again.
And I’m giving you this regimen because here’s what it entailed. It entailed every hour that I was awake that I had to be doing something that my mind could grasp onto. That I wouldn’t be looking at these walls, that I wouldn’t be trying to count the bricks on the walls or trying to count the spots on the floor. Or I may see a stain on the floor and I’m saying, oh, that look like Jesus on the floor.
Because I had almost got to that point, make no mistake about it. You see a spill on the floor, but the spill may have been on the floor so long that it takes a certain design of somebody that you may have known, right? That’s when you know you’re losing your damn mind. That’s when you know that what you are experiencing is torture. Because now what it does is it’s starting to alter your perspective on how you see the world. That’s torture, brother.
So I had to do things, man, that my mind could physically identify with, that I could grasp onto and that would keep me sane, which is prayer, which is working out, but also which was getting inside of the vents, the vent that blows out, they controls the air to the cell. And I would talk to other people in the other cells because I wanted to make sure that they was all right.
Here I am damn near losing my mind, but I wanted to make sure other brothers was all right. Why? Because we all in the same struggle. We all in the same fight and I don’t want to be the only one up here sitting like, I’m all right. But then that’s what was giving me a peace of mind, so I wouldn’t lose my mind, talking to somebody else. So I know that they needed it too.
Mansa Musa:
And Umar, that’s real succinct. And I’ve been in that space. Like I told, I said earlier, I was regimented. So I had a regimen that I had set up and everything was based on whatever I wanted to do that day. But it was a regimen. I worked out, studied law, read books, went to sleep, woke up, ate, boom, bam, boom, bam, boom.
That was a regimen to keep me from going crazy, keep me from pacing the floor, keep me from looking on the floor and seeing something down there and saying, oh look, that’s Michael Jordan shooting a jump shot. Or keep me from wanting to cut my wrist with a spoon.
But Herbert, talk about where y’all at right now, what the campaign look like in terms of, one, trying to get the legislation passed at the DC City Council. That’s what you’re talking about when you say the councilwoman, that was the councilwoman at the DC City Council. Talk about where y’all at with the Unlock the Box campaign and what’s y’all upcoming initiative around Unlock the Box.
Herbert Robinson:
So right now with the Unlock the Box campaign, the fiscal year is ending. So we have a push till December to try to get a hearing this year, but if not, we’ll be looking to secure a hearing next year, the beginning of next year. And that task is through the judiciary chair, Councilmember Brooke Pinto here in Washington DC. Right now we have nine councilmembers that have signed on in support of the bill.
Mansa Musa:
For the benefit of our audience, what’s the bill number?
Herbert Robinson:
It’s the ERASE Act 2023. I will have to go…
Mansa Musa:
That’s good enough. Just so let them know that when you say the bill, they know it is an actual bill.
Herbert Robinson:
Yeah, it’s ERASE Act 2023. And so out of the nine that we have signed on, it’s only 13. One is being voted into office next month. But we do have, throughout one of his campaign forums, we had him actually verbally say that he agrees that solitary confinement is torture and he wants to support us ending it.
So in that sense, we have 10, we are only missing three. And that’s the chairman, Brooke Pinto, the ex-chairman, Mendelsohn, and Trayon White. Trayon White asked us to set up a conversation with him so we can explain a little bit more about the bill, and that’s where we at with that step and the process of scheduling meetings with Mendelsohn as well as Brooke Pinto.
Mansa Musa:
In terms of work, because y’all did a nice thing with organizing the coalition. So in terms of getting people involved with the coalition, what are y’all doing around that?
Herbert Robinson:
So ERASESolitary.com is the website and you can go on, there’s links on there to ask for those that want to join the coalition, want to do any volunteer work for the coalition, bring in your organizations, and we take individuals. We go out and do canvassing. It’s always something that can be done, especially when it comes to social media posts and editing, things like that, website work. We always got a space where we can find help and need help. So one could go onto the website, ERASESolitary.com, and check that out.
Mansa Musa:
And Umar, you have to answer this question. Why you think they so resistant to recognizing this torture and doing something about it? When I say they, I’m talking about the system, the state, the government, the powers that be. Why you think it’s such a resistance on their part to recognize this is torture and enact legislation to eliminate it?
Cinquan “Umar” Muhammad:
I’ll give you a scenario better. I give it to you in the form of a scenario to help you understand it. I kill somebody in the street, but the state that got the death penalty want to kill me. That’s retaliatory in nature. But this is supposed to be a government for the people and by the people.
But now somebody killed one of my brothers in the street, I go back and kill them and they give me life. I mean what makes it right for them to kill me for killing somebody, the state, but then I kill somebody for killing somebody, the same thing they done, and you give me a life sentence? It’s retaliatory in nature.
And that’s the way that the Americans judicial system functions. You do something we don’t like… Because listen, you know, Herbert know, and many people that been in solitary confinement that hear this know, and those that haven’t been that need to be educated need to know this. Do you know that you could be put in solitary confinement because you got an extra tray out the chow hall line because you was hungry? You were hungry, so you wanted seconds, and you got in the line to get seconds, and they locked you up and put you in solitary confinement because you were hungry.
Do you know that the officer can not like you and shake your cell down because they can anytime they want to do what’s called random searches, but they’re not so random. Search in your cell and plant a knife, drugs, or whatever they want to plan in your cell just to get you in solitary confinement so that when he does his overtime mandated shift, he can be working in solitary confinement so that he can physically abuse you outside of the purview of the camera.
So what we need to do more is we need to not only educate people about solitary confinement, what solitary confinement really is, we need to educate them about how they get people into solitary confinement and for what reasons they get them in solitary confinement, so they can do torturous things to them that they couldn’t do within the sight of the camera. But when you put them in solitary confinement, they say, oh, they got a camera on the hall. I don’t live in the hall. I live on a cell in the hall where there’s no camera at. And this is where the torturous activities go on at.
Mansa Musa:
You rattled the bars that time, Umar. Took a tray. Somebody hungry, they put him in solitary confinement. Police say man disrespected him, put him in solitary confinement. Man walking too slow, solitary confinement. Oh, better still, look. Got a tray, torture you. You talk back, torture. Not walking fast enough, torture.
Herbert, you got the last word on this here. Tell our audience how they can get in touch with you and how they become involved in the campaign, and some of your other initiatives that you might be involved with.
Herbert Robinson:
Got you. So again, ERASESolitary.com is a way to get in touch with the Unlock the Box campaign and you go on there and there’s links to sign up and join the coalition and all that.
As far as me, I have a website, and on my website you could check out a lot of what I’m into, from Growing Pain Solutions to AGG transportation. I’m trying to build out one in the transportation industry and the other is in this advocacy sector.
But I have what I call Building Inclusive Communities, where I try to bring in brothers like Umar and a lot of those that I’ve worked with. And we sharing our voice, we trying to be heard, we trying to fight for what we believe in and what we feel as though the community needs and what we feel as though, when we go out into the community and talk to the community, what they tell us they need. We ain’t just doing this for ourselves and we ain’t just bringing the information that we feel, but nah, this is stuff we bringing out from the community. We out here, we in the community, we do these rallies, as you seen, and we engaging all those around us.
Mansa Musa:
Umar, how can people get in touch with you and some of the things that you’re doing, some of your initiatives you’re taking, as we close out?
Cinquan “Umar” Muhammad:
I’m actually, excuse me. Yes, sir. I’m actually on Facebook and I’m on Instagram ,and my Instagram and Facebook is basically tied together. Cinquan815, and Cinquan is spelled with a C. C-I-N-Q-U-A-N 815. You can find me on Facebook or you can find me on Instagram, the same thing.
You can see what I’m into on a daily basis. You can see the type of work that I advocate for. You can see pictures of different conferences and canvassing that we have done, and you can find out how to get involved also.
But thank you for having me, brother. I really appreciate this. This really needed to get out. People need to understand what solitary confinement is, what’s really going on. You know what I mean? And how they can help the movement. And man, anytime you need me, brother, anytime, and I know Herbert feel the same, call on us, and we going to be there because this a fight that we got to keep on fighting as long as we walking this earth.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right. This is a fight that we got to keep on fighting. Y’all rattled the bars.
And we want to encourage our listeners and our viewers to look at this particular episode of Rattling the Bars and ask yourself, just ask yourself when you get your plate, you take your plate to the bathroom, sit on top of the toilet stool, wash your hands, sit on the toilet, and start eating it. Then you wait for somebody to open the door and take it out.
Ask yourself, did you wait for them to come open your door and tell you that you got 15 minutes to take a shower? And then on top of that, they tell you that the laundry is coming back and they’re giving you some underwear that you got pick of the litter, doodoo stains in them, nut balls in them. And then they tell you that at the end of the day when you get up out of there, after doing six years in that environment, oh, you all right. Ain’t nothing wrong with you. And by the way, you wasn’t being tortured.
Y’all rattled the bars, and we thank you for y’all coming on today. And we ask our listeners to understand this and understand this real clearly. It’s only from The Real News and Rattling the Bars, you get this kind of information. All three of us have been in solitary confinement. We’re not talking about this as a theory. We’re talking about this from actual practical. We all lived this experience and we are campaigning against it. And this is why these men are on here today to talk about it.
Thank y’all for joining us, and we ask that you continue to support The Real News and Rattling the Bars, because guess what? We really are the news.
Since the 1990s, 2 million people with felony convictions have regained the right to vote, thanks to crucial reforms abolishing felony disenfranchisement in 26 states. This election, these voters could play a crucial role—and based on data from 2020, many of them prefer Trump. There’s more to this story however, from incarcerated people’s limited access to information, to the role of prisoners’ race and even positive perceptions of Harris’ gender in shaping incarcerated voters’ preferences. Nicole Lewis, engagement editor for The Marshall Project joins Rattling the Bars to discuss her organization’s findings and insights into the politics of prisoners.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
Mansa Musa: We hear during this period that the most important election ever in the history of elections is getting ready to take place. We hear that if we don’t come out and vote, that Armageddon going to follow if certain people get elected. This is what we are hearing.
But for the abolitionists and for prisoners, what do this mean for them? What do this mean for us? What do it mean to say that this is the most important election ever when you are sitting in a cell serving triple life sentences? This the most important election ever, and you are in an environment where the judges have complete control over your livelihood.
Joining me today is Nicole Lewis from the Marshall Project to talk about why prisoners are voting for Trump, but more importantly, to give us some insight to the electoral process and electoral assistance as it relates to those of us are on the plantation.
Welcome, Nicole.
Nicole Lewis: Thanks for having me on.
Mansa Musa: First, tell our audience a little bit about yourself before we get into the subject matter.
Nicole Lewis: Yeah, absolutely. So, I’m a journalist. I’m an editor at the Marshall Project, and we are a nonprofit news organization that covers the criminal justice system. And typically, our pieces take a systemic look at issues of abuse, harm, wrongdoing, inequality. We use journalism, we tell stories to shine a bright spotlight on where things are not working. And our mission is to create a national sense of urgency about the criminal justice system.
Mansa Musa: OK. And right there. So, as you’ve seen how my intro as it relates to the electoral process and from the abolition, and I’m talking specifically from an abolitionist perspective or from the carceral… We’re not trying to reform prison, we’re not trying to make sanitized prisons, we’re trying to abolish prison. That’s what the abolitionist position is.
But in that regard, how do the abolitionists, and this is a question that we’ve been proposing lately, what’s the abolitionist perspective on the electoral process?
So, you wrote a piece on why prisoners vote for Trump. So, let’s talk about this, OK. And I’m going to set it up like this here.
All right. When I was locked up, I was telling one of my colleagues this. When I was locked up, I was in one institution, and when I was walking around the institution, they had, throughout the institution, vote for Robert Ehrlich. Robert Ehrlich was a Republican that was running for governor in the State of Maryland. And I’m like, why would anybody in their right mind vote for Ehrlich?
And so, I’m asking around because the population’s somewhat enlightened. I’m asking around, why are we putting this stuff up here saying vote for Ehrlich? And that’s what they said. They said that a Democrat delegate had went to Ehrlich and asked Ehrlich would he be inclined to pardon lifers or cut life with people that had life sentences, cut their sentences or look at their case? And that was the highest issue for prisoners in the State of Maryland at that time.
So, we got a secular interest that’s being represented. And somebody went to a Republican governor, a potential Republican governor saying, would you be inclined to do this? And he said, yeah.
And the delegate came back to us and said, this is what he going to do versus what the Democrat governor is doing or has been doing. So, what’s the difference? OK, we saying don’t vote for Trump or why people vote for Trump, but they saying don’t vote for Trump, but vote Democrat. However, the Democrats are in control now. You got Democratic president, vice president running, in some quarters they call it a top cop. So, why wouldn’t people vote for Trump? Come on.
Nicole Lewis: You framed this really perfectly. I think you’re asking all the right questions here. So, let me back up before I truly get into that answer to just give a little bit more context. So, for the last three elections, I’ve run a survey of incarcerated people. It started in 2020. I did one in 2022, and, of course, I did one ahead of this election in 2024.
So, this year alone, we heard from 54,000 people across 45 different states, prisons, and 745 facilities across the country. So, this is the largest representation that we have right now of what incarcerated people are thinking about this election.
And like you said, it’s been framed in the media as a really consequential and incredibly important election. I think it’s the right question to ask: what does it actually mean for incarcerated people? That’s the intention behind it.
For the last six years I’ve been at TNP as a reporter, I’ve covered felony disenfranchisement laws. So, what I’ve seen is the way that states have reconsidered people losing their voting rights when they’re convicted of a felony.
And so, it’s really important to know that, since the late 1990s, about 2 million people with felony convictions now have regained the right to vote. And so, that’s mostly people on the outside, that’s people coming home, that’s not necessarily people in prison.
So, this is the backdrop under which I’m doing this survey. It’s the first time in 20 years that you’ve got 2 million people with felony convictions who can decide who represents them at all levels of our government.
So, when we take a look inside and we ask incarcerated people, mostly in prison who are not eligible to vote, we say, well, who would you pick? Who’s interesting to you? We’ve actually found, time and again, so we saw it in 2020, we see it again here, that many incarcerated people would choose Trump. They would choose him for president.
And I think it’s really important to know that, by and large, it’s a lot of white men who are incarcerated who feel very strongly about Trump. Black men somewhat, to some degree, but that survey result is really driven by the white prison population. So, that’s just to start there. Trump has white male supporters behind bars. I don’t actually think that that should be that surprising [laughs]. That tracks what we see.
But let me break it down even further. So, when we go and we ask people and we say, well, what is interesting to you about this candidate? Why does he appeal to you? It’s exactly what you’re saying in this previous Maryland race. A lot of people have — Or they have a false understanding, I want to make this really clear because it’s not correct. They have a false understanding that Trump is going to help them get out of prison.
And the reason they believe this is because of some of the work that he did with the First Step Act. That was federal. So, it doesn’t apply to people in state prisons. Because of some of the work that he’s done with Kim Kardashian, because of people like Alice Johnson who he was able to get out of prison. But again, by and large our surveys are entirely people in the state system. And so, it’s not actually asking federal people.
But it’s this idea that permeates the perception of his policy that he’s going to be good for incarcerated people over the facts. So, people might not have full access to news. They might not be able to watch news on the TV. They might not be able to read it. And so, if you hear someone say, Trump, he’s really good for us, he’s going to get us out, that he’s my shot, of course people are going to say, yeah, no, this is my candidate. This makes sense to us.
And so, we’ve seen again and again, like you said, criminal justice issues, getting out of prison, prison reform, abolition to some degree, reentry, release, all of these things are very important to incarcerated people. So, they’re making decisions based on who they think could support them the most.
But there’s more to the story. There’s more to the story there.
The other thing I think is really important to know is that when Kamala entered the race, when she became the Democratic nominee, we actually saw a surge of support for her. So, a lot of people, particularly Black people who were saying originally that they would vote for Trump in a Trump-Biden race, said that they would now choose the VP.
And they’re conflicted about this because a lot of people, we could, again, we could see, and when we followed up with people, we could see people saying, I’m conflicted. She’s a prosecutor. I don’t know what that means in terms of her ability to help me. That seems completely very clear. That seems like her job was putting people away.
But they’re so desperate. There’s such clarity that no system, no party, no person, particularly no man has helped them in their situation, that they’re willing to take a gamble on a woman.
So, it’s this interesting thing where her identity as a woman is now seen as like, well, maybe she would do something different than what these guys have done and not done for us over many, many years. So, it’s a complex situation where people are working on…
Mansa Musa: And on that note right there, and I agree on the complexities of it, because prison’s not monolithic, and everything is motivated by what’s of interest to them.
And I was talking about with one of my colleagues earlier, that the only time we was monolithic in our thinking was from in the early ’60s and to the ’70s, Attica and beyond, where the prison conditions were so horrific that the repression and the brutality forced us into a position where we had to resist. It wasn’t a matter of if you going to resist or you going to die, it’s a matter of resist and possibly live or possibly die, but at least stand and fight.
And so, that attitude of being monolithic was right there. We was talking about the conditions of the prison, the way we was living, the way they was feeding us, the way they was clothing us, and the way they was [inaudible] us. When prison, they started reforming the plantation and coming up with different scenarios of getting people out. That’s where the interest became more secular in terms of what’s in it for me? Which leads me to my next question.
OK. In your survey, it was established that most people thought that Trump, because the first act is responsible for them getting out. OK. But then look at what’s been taking place for the last four years. Because I’m comparing that against… So when you come to me and say, as a candidate or you saying as a candidate that vote for me, but you don’t have on your agenda nothing about prison reform, you don’t have nothing on your agenda about changing family unification, all those things that’s of interest to me.
But I got one example, albeit far-fetched as it might be, that he didn’t do nothing, no more than do a photo op, get somebody out, and he running on the photo op. But I got that as a reference in comparison to what I got from the Democrats. So, how did you survey jails with that?
Nicole Lewis: Yeah, again, such a good question because these are all the issues. So, let me think about where I would start on that. So, I do think that it’s perception over reality for sure.
Mansa Musa: That’s right. That’s right [laughs].
Nicole Lewis: And I think that an important point to be made here is that when Trump was in power, at the end of his term, he went on an execution spree. He was —
Mansa Musa: Yeah, exactly.
Nicole Lewis: We had a moratorium on executions. And so, he killed people. Well, he said, let’s let these executions go forward. So, I wonder if incarcerated people understood the reality, were really able to engage more deeply with what’s happening, would people still feel this way? Have some more thoughts there. So, that’s one thing.
But I will say from what we’ve been looking at and trying to get our heads around both candidates’ policies, both candidates are actually really thin on criminal justice issues right now. There is a lack of clarity on both sides about productive things that people would do.
But I will say still, when we stack the policy perspectives up against each other, Trump is much more punitive. He’s really taking a much more punitive approach. He’s really trying to limit any and all kinds of protections, trying to continue to restart the death penalty. So, it’s pretty clear that if, as a president, he would have a very different policy and position.
Kamala is sort of still undeveloped. She’s a blank slate. We don’t exactly know what a Kamala presidency means.
I think what’s more important for incarcerated people to understand is that the president can only do but so much to affect state policy. And this is really, again, when I’ve covered voting rights, we step back and we say, where could you actually move the needle at the moment? Where does this matter? Why does any of this matter?
The president is limited. They mostly oversee the federal system, federal prisoners, they oversee the BOP. Most people are incarcerated in the state system, and it’s the state leadership that basically determines that policy.
So, where I think the participation, if you were saying to yourself, I care about this democracy. I want to participate, I want to make my voice heard. If that’s your route, then the midterms become really critical elections. And so, those are elections in which people are more likely to choose their governor. They’re more likely to vote. In some states where judges are elected, they get to vote on judges, sheriffs, district attorneys, city council, state legislature, these folks who actually set the policy and the laws for how the state system is going to work.
So, we get so caught up in what’s Kamala going to do for me? What’s Trump going to do for me? And there’s really all these smaller elections where people have much more power to move the needle, to think about reform, to think about releases, to think about improving conditions, to think about how our court system operates.
And so, I’ve always said that incarcerated people have really intimate knowledge. You have real clarity about how the system functions. You have real clarity about whether or not states are using their tax dollars appropriately to house people. Are we harming people? Are people getting the rehabilitation help?
So, I think that there’s real knowledge that’s locked up. There’s a real understanding of is this working? Is this experiment that we have, is it working? Is it productive? Is it doing anything for anyone? Is it just harmful?
So, that’s really what I would say of, I know we pay a lot of attention to what’s Trump or what’s Kamala going to do for me. I would say neither person is going to do much. Trump is objectively, when we compare policy side by side, potentially much more harmful for incarcerated people. But two years from now, in the midterms, it’s really going to be consequential in terms of people’s experiences.
Mansa Musa: And I agree with you on that, because Tip O’Neill, former speaker of the House, said all politics are local.
But I had the opportunity to interview some people in Louisiana and they got an organization called Voices of the Educated. And it’s called, it’s VOTE, Voices of the Educated. What they did, going back to your analysis about the impact of local elections, they was able to mobilize the community to vote around the sheriff election.
But the way they was able to get traction on it was, they went to everybody that was locked up, still locked up, and the ones that was out that was locked up, that went through the county jail, this particular jail, and said, man, listen, we trying to get rid of these sheriffs. You know what the conditions are in this environment. So, it’s not a matter of not knowing that. So, we are asking you to vote for this person because this person is signed onto our agenda saying that they going to do the necessary things to change the conditions.
And they was able to get the sheriff in. And the sheriff did some things and didn’t do other things, because when you dealing with the political aspect of it, you still beholden to your stakeholders, for lack of a better word. But we do get traction and do get changes.
And I think that in terms of what you just said, I think the biggest problem is we are enlightened, but we’re not educated on the electoral system as it relates to local politics.
Like you say, you can’t go nowhere in prison and not find out, talk to somebody, and they don’t know the judicial system, their appeal procedures. OK, I got my direct appeal, now I got a post convicted, I got a habeas corpus, but I do know these… Or somebody in that system is telling me about these things.
But what I don’t know is, and nobody organized me around, is that all the judges on the bench, they come up for elections. You dig what I’m saying?
So, as we close out, talk about why you think that we don’t have that kind of attention nationwide. Because like you say, on the federal level, even on the federal level, the president has so much to do. But even beyond that, the Congress, the judiciary, the committees, and the Congress where the people are locally elected, the congressperson, the Senate person, are locally elected, why you think that we don’t have that kind of insight, or why you think that it’s not being mobilized in that regard?
Nicole Lewis: Yeah, no, this is great. I mean, it’s really what you’re talking about here is if people had more clarity, they could come up with a strategy for how they win. They could make decisions. Yes, absolutely.
And I would say that in this regard, and incarcerated people are really no different than the rest of the public. Midterm elections tend to be the lowest turnout elections. People just don’t show up. Even though the local officials are the people who are going to make the most influential decisions in their lives. So, there’s really not much difference from people on the outside who blow those off as well.
But I think there’s some unique elements to prison. One of the things we always ask in our survey is, how do you get your news? Who do you talk to about this? How would you actually go about educating yourself?
And what we’ve seen is that news is extremely controlled, information is extremely censored. So, even if you wanted to, even if you were like, I’m going to figure this out for myself so I can make decisions, you still might be prevented by the administration from accessing the news and information that you would need to have a clear understanding.
And we see this again and again. We ask people directly because we know how it works. So, we want to say, well, if you wanted to even understand more about your governor, what would you consult? And people tell us, we’re really cut out. We’re really censored. Newspaper clippings don’t come in. By and large now, many prisons have moved towards scanning mail. So, you can imagine you take a newspaper, you scan it down, you can’t even read it anymore.
So, there’s all these systemic barriers that keep people unable to really self-advocate, because information is really that power. So, that’s one component.
I think another component is just a little bit about how politics in this country works. The whole news media, we spend a ton of time on the presidential election. A lot of resources go into covering it. And so, I don’t know that we spend the same amount of time actually, as journalists, I’m saying as my industry, scrutinizing district attorneys, scrutinizing judges, sheriffs. I don’t think that they get the same amount of attention. And it’s harder for us as well. So, we actually can’t see…
The Marshall Project has done some work in Cleveland where we produced a judge’s guide to help Clevelanders make decisions about these folks. We can’t actually even see into their record fully because we don’t have access to the data. It’s really unclear.
So, people in our community are saying, our readers are saying, well, we want to know who’s tough on sentencing? And who sent more Black people? They want to know these. We can’t even truly answer them because of the way data is withheld from the public. It becomes systematically, again, a little bit harder to scrutinize these folks.
So, in the long run, they just don’t get the same amount of media attention. So, if you don’t get the media attention, and then media is censored in prison. So, you see how it works. There’s a lack of information.
But again, I think that it’s incredibly important for incarcerated people to understand that they have insights about the system that are powerful. That they are deeply informed about an aspect of pretty much every state budget. The most expensive item is the carceral system.
So, you’ve got folks who are experiencing it, who have an ability to help the public understand what is not working. And so, I think that when I talk to people, they say, oh, why does it matter? They can’t quite connect what they’ve gone through to how it could be useful in making change. And I say, well, you know something that many people don’t understand. You know something so intimately about what’s broken.
I think that’s really powerful. I think that that is enough to say if voting is the route that you want to go, if voting feels important, to take that knowledge and really think about how you’re going to apply it to the system itself.
So, whenever I’m reporting on people, I say, well, you know more than many of us, it’s my job here to try to even understand. And I feel like I understand a little, but you understand even more. And I think that alone is really powerful, and it’s something that no one can really take away. No one can contradict that you saw it with your own eyes.
Mansa Musa: Right. And Nicole, you rattled the bars today because, at the end of the day, we look at when those of us that’s on the plantation, we have the insight to how we got there. We have the insight to who controlling it. We have the insight to how to get off of it through a system.
I suffer from the apathy when it comes to the electoral process. But at the same token, I recognized after talking to brothers and sisters in Louisiana, looking at DC code, offenders got the right to vote.
And like you said, being educated on understanding that this system, electoral system, is not national, it’s local. And there are a lot of the policies and procedures that we’re trying to have impact or effect, we can have impact and affect them through who we put in the office. And on a local level, we can control that because we have numbers. And I think that’s the takeaway for me in this conversation.
But you got the last word, Nicole. What you want to tell our audience about this system and some of your upcoming work or what you’re doing now?
Nicole Lewis: Sure. Yeah. I would say right to that point of we’re in a really historic moment for voting rights for people with felony convictions. And so, 26 states and the District of Columbia in the last two decades have reconsidered why we even take away people’s voting rights when they go to prison. That’s a question we have to ask ourselves.
And we can see, we can locate that history. For many states, we can see very clearly that felony disenfranchisement was a way to disempower Black communities. This is something that state lawmakers were standing up openly saying at the time, in this period of Reconstruction and Jim Crow.
And so, now we’re in a moment, fast-forward, where many states have said, well, we need to redo that. We need to reconsider that. So, it’s now more than ever, people have more access and ability to participate. It doesn’t mean that they always do. It doesn’t mean that it’s a perfect system.
The other thing I think people should know is that there’s a pretty aggressive backlash to this expansion of voting rights. So, in several states, Republicans are actively trying to undermine the expansion of voting rights. So, I think it’s a really important moment for people to decide to think about that apathy and really question it and say, is this in my best interest? What can I do? No matter what your politics are.
So, as a journalist, I don’t advocate for one party over the other. I don’t advocate for one reform over the other. I’m simply here to provide this information to say you have power, you know something really unique and special. Prison is extremely expensive. So, how you’re treated there really matters. Local actors, local agents, a lot of them you get to vote for. So, you get to decide who wins and who has your interest.
And just to question if anyone says there’s one candidate who’s going to be great for you, I would just question that a little bit to say we really want to make sure that we’re making decisions based off of the full facts. And so, we just got to ask deeper, bigger questions about who’s actually good and why.
Mansa Musa: And if our listeners and our viewers want to follow you or get in touch with you, how can they do that?
Nicole Lewis: Sure. Absolutely. So, you can find all of my work at themarshallproject.org, and it’s Marshall with two L’s. Unfortunately, I’m not really on social media, the way that X has gone. But my email’s online at the Marshall Project.
I would say some of the next work that I’m working on that we’re trying to think about is, my work is actually very designed to understand some of the needs, issues, interests of incarcerated people and their families, and then we try to figure out how do we make work that reflects.
So if people want to email me, it’s just nlewis@themarshallproject.org. Just tell me what’s important to you, what matters, what you’re seeing. And that’s one way we try to make decisions about what kinds of stories we look into.
Mansa Musa: There you have it. Real News, Rattling the Bars. Nicole rattling the bars today. And she reminds us that, as 2.4 million people are in prison, on the plantation, those of us that have our voting rights restored, is apathy in our best interest when it comes to the electoral process? Is it sitting back, not doing nothing in our better interests? Is it sitting back, vilifying the candidates and saying, have nothing to do with me in our best interest? Or is it, as we heard, becoming more informed about this system and how we can utilize this system to effectively change?
Because at the end of the day, we’re the ones that’s sitting behind the doors locked down. At the end of the day, we’re the ones that’s being denied parole. We’re the ones being given harsh sentences. We’re the ones who our families don’t have access to because of a myriad of reasons. And we can change these things if we can change these things. Or are we willing to try to change these things? To utilize this mechanism as a technique as opposed to anything other than that.
Thank you, Nicole. I really appreciate you coming on. And we ask that y’all continue to support The Real News and Rattling the Bars because it’s only on The Real News and Rattling the Bars you are going to get someone like Nicole Lewis to come in and educate us on this system, and educate us on all the myths associated with the electoral system and how this is being shaped to get us to look a certain way at certain candidates, as opposed to looking into ourselves and how we can utilize our own strength and our own powers.
We ask you continue to do this, and because there’s only one reason we ask, we are actually The Real News.
Policing and prison abolition policy questions have been minimized in the lead-up to the 2024 November election, despite their significance in the last election cycle. Yet these ideas have finally pierced into mainstream debate, and committed prison abolitionists are tirelessly organizing to free incarcerated people, improve conditions within the prison system, and close or prevent the opening of new correctional facilities. Rattling the Bars looks back on the past year of discussions with abolitionists on the stakes and political lessons leading up to November’s presidential election.
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A corrected version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa: On Tuesday, this country will be holding elections for Presidency as well as other national, state and local elections. Nationwide the cry is that the election for presidency is the most important elections this nation will be having. Rattling the Bars and The Real News have been focusing on the impact the elections will have on the prison industrial complex. More importantly how does the abolition movement look at the electoral system. What role does it play in the abolishment of the prison industrial complex. You can hear the views of abolitionists from previously recorded interviews.
Back in May we covered the Free Her March where formerly incarcerated women were calling for clemency for 100 women:
Mansa: Okay. We got the Bronx with us today. Why are you here today?
Star:
Because we’re here to petition the President, and everybody else on his team, to grant clemency to Michelle West, and all the other women who deserve it.
Speaker 8:
He told us when we was here four years ago that he was going to free a hundred women within the hundred days of him being in office. And he has not done any of what he said he was going to do. So we’re here today asking for him to free our women, and free them now.
Star:
We are tired of giving the Democrats what they want, and they don’t give us what we need.
Speaker 3:
So what do we want?
Star:
We want freedom for all women and girls. We want rehabilitation, and alternatives to incarceration.
Speaker 9:
We want Michelle West Free!
Miquelle West:
I’m Miquelle West, Michelle West’s daughter. My mom was incarcerated when I was ten years old for a drug conspiracy case. And she’s serving two life sentences and 15 years.
Speaker 9:
I represent the women that want to be free. Let our women be free. Let our women out of [inaudible 00:04:06].
Music:
Music
Group:
Cut it down!
Speaker 10:
[inaudible 00:04:36].
Group:
Cut it down!
Speaker 10:
[inaudible 00:04:39]
Speaker 11:
Stop criminalizing us for poverty, stop criminalizing us for how we cope from this trauma that has been put on us historically, and continues into this present day. Free my sisters.
Speaker 12:
The women get treated badly. The women get raped in jail. All kinds of things. I served federal time, and I know what it’s like to be in there. And I say free women today.
Andrea James:
We told them to free those women, and they didn’t do it. They’re sending them to other prisons that, guess what? Also are raping our sisters inside of the federal system. So we’ve got a lot of work to do, people.
Laura Whitehorn:
The response is to move all the women at once, all of a sudden to just throw them out into places all over the country with no preparation, no bathroom facilities. They’re being, as one of them said, the men who raped them, should, and are, going to prison. And the women are being punished now because they’re saying that the BOP, which can’t control their own staff, has to close the prison because they can’t manage it. And they take the women. I’ve been walking with different friends of mine who were in Dublin with me.
Speaker 3:
Right.
Speaker 14:
It was not a low-security place at that point. And we’re all having flashbacks of what it was to be transferred in that way, where you’re treated like a sack of laundry, except that you’re chained up. You’re chained at the waist. You can’t use the bathroom for hours, you get no food. They sat on a bus for five hours in the parking lot of the prison. And then at the end of five hours, they were taken back into the prison. They said, “Oh, we don’t know where to take you.” So the way that they’re being treated and then their families… Some people have children and their families are in the Bay Area. So the children were able to visit their moms in the prison, and now the moms have been sent like across country.
Mansa:
All this is the remedy for their abusive behavior. The remedy for their abusive behavior become more abusive.
Mansa Musa: Hear Andrea James, founder and executive director of the National Council for incarcerated Women and Girls and Families for Justice as Healing.
Andrea James:
We were incarcerated in the federal system. We were in prison with sisters who are never coming home unless their sentences are commuted. So it’s kind of different when you determine what space you’re going to work out of when you haven’t had the full experience of what we’re talking about here. But if you were like us, if you were women that were incarcerated in the federal system, who were mothers, who were wives, who were aunties, and grandmothers and sisters, and moms in particular, we have been separated from our children, but some of us had the opportunity to go to prison and come home. So we’re fighting for sisters that unless we get clemency for them, they’ll never come home. And we’ve got to really understand that. We’re talking about is the liberation of our people, and we want to bring attention to the intentionality of incarceration of our people and the policies that led up to that. Now, we started our work after, we started organizing in the federal prison for women in Danbury, Connecticut in 2010, and brought the work-out with us starting in 2011. And then other sisters inside Justine Moore, Virginia Douglas, Big Shay, they started to come home. So it wasn’t rocket science for us, but in the federal prison, you would see this from all over the country, sometimes from different Black communities around the world.
And so it wasn’t rocket science for us to stop this work. But we started in the prison realizing not really totally clear about what clemency was as a tool. But after coming home in 2011, that became crystal clear to us. We met Amy Povah at CAN-DO Clemency. She taught us a lot about clemency as a tool. And then of course, President Obama, who we got in front of and who centered women and brought us to the White House. But also we should not be going backwards from what President Obama did with clemency.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, let’s pick up on right there because, all right, now for the benefit of our audience, clemency is a federal mandate and it’s top heavy in its bureaucracy. Honest you know-
Andrea James:
It’s a tool, it’s a privilege bestowed upon. It’s not a mandate, it’s a tool. It’s bestowed upon the President of the United States to grant relief to people from their sentences. And that takes many forms. It could be freedom, immediate freedom, commuting your sentence, meaning it only stops the sentence that you are serving from within a carceral place, a prison.
We decided at some point you can only go so far with what’s happening in Congress right now, who’s controlling Congress, what they’re paying attention to. We fought so hard against the passage of the First Step Act, the way it was presented, because it’s been a big smoke screen. And we knew when Congress passed First Step that it really wasn’t what we needed. It didn’t address the people who needed to get out. It called out the very people that needed the most relief and so how could we ever support a bill like that. And we never crossed over in support of it, even though we fought valiantly to try and add retroactivity and other things to the first step. And then it was put into the hands of the most vile regime of a think tank called the Heritage Foundation also responsible now for project 2025 to implement the First Step Act. And it’s just, we are one of the few, I don’t know if any other organizations have done it, but our legal division led by our senior council, Catherine Sevcenko, has followed the implementation of the First Step Act. And it’s been just a sham. It’s been a [inaudible 00:13:59], but the PR on it would make anybody think that everybody who’s come like 30,000 people got released because of First Step Act. That’s not true. But I digress.
So when we talk about the FIX [Clemency] Act, at some point, yes, we have to weigh in. We need legislators who are directly affected like Congresswoman Ayanna, Pressley, to carry these bills forward for us and to at least put them into existence knowing that we got a big struggle to get them to go anywhere because the members of Congress were satisfied with the First Step Act. As abysmal as it is, they weren’t going to center criminal justice reform in any significant following that for years, we knew that. That’s the path of how things go. We haven’t heard a peep about criminal justice reform other than Trump wanting to bring the death penalty back for drug dealers. We haven’t even heard. It’s not even on the current candidates platforms.
And so we had to shift our energy to, and it’s not really a shift, it’s just, what are we picking up now to being present and to make sure that the concept of liberation of our people isn’t just left to hope somebody’s going to keep it at the forefront? That’s our job. Nobody’s coming to save us. If nobody gives a shit about our issue. If you’re going to do this work, you have to be consistent in finding ways of staying in the public eye, of showing up, of taking up space, of getting in the street. And so that’s what we did with the 10th anniversary.
We did this, did this 10 years ago in 2014, and that’s how we got the attention, because of the work of civil rights lawyer, Nkechi Taifa who brought the National Council and the sisterhood to the attention of President Obama and Valerie Jarrett to say, “Yo Prez, we see you. We see you equating. We see you connecting clemency to racial justice. That clemency is racial justice. We see you going into the federal prisons.” How could it be that he was the first President of the United States to go to visit a federal prison? How could that be?
Mansa Musa: In August, The Real News’s Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez and I talked to David Schultz, a criminal reform and social justice advocate, about How poor and working-class voters navigate an electoral system that doesn’t serve them.
Max: So I wanted to ask just as two guys on the front lines of that struggle, what do you think the pundit class covering the elections in mainstream media should learn about the conversations that y’all are having and that folks in these communities are having about the election right now?
David Schultz:
Okay, yeah. So I’ll start with that one. So I would say it’s important for individuals. I think being in Washington DC obviously puts us in a unique position because we’re obviously a very political city. I guess it’s different when I go to different areas, different cities. I was just traveling. Recently, I was in Chicago, and of course it was very political there because we’re getting ready to have the Democratic and national convention. But usually it’s not.
So that puts us in a unique perspective to see how politics really affect our everyday lives. I think you’re a hundred percent correct. I think that individuals that are from smaller, more rural areas really want to see and are more concerned with that direct impact. And so elections for them kind of seem like this far away thing. It’s like they kind of drop something in a box and if they’re the person they like personality wise really, or who agrees with them on more things than the other, then that’s how they go for.
But they don’t really do their research on the candidates as well as they should to see really are they living up to what they’re saying? Are they voting this way even though they’re saying they might be voting this way? And so I think that it’s important for the pundits, so to speak, to really listen to grassroots individuals because we are the ones that matter. We are the people that they say in the constitution. We are the ones that are the make everything one. We’re the working class. So at the end of the day, our vote matters and they want our vote. So I think it’s imperative that they listen to what our needs and specific asks are.
Mansa Musa:
I think on the grassroots, when you’re dealing with a grassroots level, it’s imperative that we educate the people that’s affected because like you say, people want jobs. People want quality education. People want safe living environment. People want food quality, cheap food. As far as food prices being so high. People want rent control. They don’t want to be living in squalor and then paying astronomical fees to live there.
So it’s important that we educate… When you’re dealing with the grassroots, it’s important that you educate the population to understand that you have to find a candidate that’s going to represent your interest. When the Black Panther Party bring Bobby Seale for mayor. They wasn’t running Bobby Seale for mayor, to try to get Bobby Seale to be the mayor, they was educating people about how, like Dave said earlier, where the monies come from, how the monies are allocated, and how you can have a voice in monies being allocated to your neighborhood, to clean up your neighborhood, to have the trash collected.
How monies could be allocated towards medical or universal healthcare for everyone. So when I look at it from the grassroots level, I’m always in my mind… My mind is always in this area, educating the people about the electoral process, educating the people about, “Okay, if you get involved with this process, then make sure you had a candidate that’s going to represent your interest because the candidate is going to come and say what they think you want to hear.”
They’re going to put on all kinds of activities to motivate your interest. But when it does settle and they leave, trash hasn’t been collected. It’s high unemployment rate in your neighborhood, housing, you live in a squalor. You’re not safe and your children being targeted because you’re not safe. So when I look at it from the perspective, I look at it from a perspective that it is incoming from me and people that’s in that space to educate the people on the budget, educate the people on electoral process, educate the people on how to go about vetting account. Like you say, candidates have listening sessions.
So when a candidate have a listening session, then it’s coming from people like myself and Dave to get people to come down there and educate in electorate like ask questions about, “Okay.” Because if you don’t do what we say you supposed to do, same way we elected you in, we can get the recall and get you out.
David Schultz:
Can I just add one quick thing? Can I just say from a grassroots level to answer your other question is what the individuals are saying is the basic needs is what they’re struggling with when it comes to housing and especially affordable housing, it doesn’t matter if you’re a returning citizen, if you’re just a working class individual, that basic need is a struggle that basically grassroots individuals are really looking to have fixed this election cycle.
And just the basic necessity of being able to keep food on their table and be able to feed their kids. So I know it sounds basic, but that’s what I’ve been hearing a lot of in the community and what they are really focusing on this election cycle.
Mansa Musa: And we recently sat down with Jeronimo Aguilar and John Cannon to talk about Prop. 6, initiative to have removed from California State Constitution it’s version of the 13-amendment legalizing slavery.
Mansa: I want you to give us a history lesson on how the code that came to exist that’s legalized slavery in California. Because you made an interesting observation before, and we was talking about it again, how we got this perception of California as being the big Hollywood, Rolls Royce.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Yeah, thank you, Mansa. Yeah, no, you’re right, man. We got this idea of what California is. Not only the palm trees and the Rolls Royce, and it’s always sunny, but also that we’re soft on crime, and that criminals are out able to just do whatever they want out here, and there’s no law and order, and all that kind of stuff.
The reality is, the prison-industrial complex out here is as crooked and oppressive as it is in any state of the union. And so, when you talk about especially this exception clause, and specifically here in California, it’s the exception to involuntary servitude. But like we say, as you can see on my background there, one of our main messaging points is that involuntary servitude is slavery.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
So, they try to lessen it or give it a fancy name, but the reality is the practice is the same thing, of subjugating human beings to work against their will.
So, when you talk about involuntary servitude in California, the history, like you mentioned, it goes all the way back to when California became a state. So, back in 1849. Remember, this territory here was territory of Mexico up until then. You had the expansionist, I wouldn’t even really call it a war, but an assault on Mexico in 1848, which ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
That treaty was not honored. Or like most of the treaties that the US [inaudible] with folks of Indigenous ancestry, them treaties were nothing but opportunities for the forked tongue, as they say, to get what they want.
And so, what happened is the land was taken, and Indigenous folks, Indigenous mixed with Spanish folks, became immigrants overnight. And with that said, what you started seeing was the first Constitution of California in 1849 has that exception clause that we see today. It says that involuntary servitude is prohibited except for punishment for a crime. It’s not that exact wording, but it’s the same exact practice.
And so, that set things up. That set the stage for 1850, you started seeing this. So, this is the year right after it became a state and the constitution was introduced. You see the 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians.
And again, the forked tongue. The way that they named the act, you would think, oh, they’re protecting Indians, when in fact, it was a vagrancy law that they used to criminalize Indigenous people, and subsequently enslave them under the exceptions to involuntary servitude.
And so, I want to add to that. Indigenous peoples were already being enslaved by the Spanish colonial powers. We’ll talk about the mission system. So, the Southwest and California, a lot of it was already built by the enslavement of Indigenous peoples.
When you talk about colonization, and once the Spanish came and that era of terror, and then Mexico getting its independence, and you’ve seen Mexico actually outlaw slavery for a period of time while that practice of servitude was brought back once the US took the land from Mexico.
And so, like I said, from 1849 on, up until now, you’ve seen the consistent criminalization of Indigenous, Brown folks, later, obviously, our African brothers and sisters that were enslaved and brought to this continent, and also that ended up migrating, trying to find free states, trying to find places where they can actually be free from the subjugation of slavery, only to find the same kind of practices happening over here in the Southwest.
And so, following that 1850 Act of Government and Protection of Indians, which actually turned what’s now LA Federal Courthouse, was a vibrant slave auction. Based on that law, you saw acts like the Greaser Act, which passed in 1855. It’s another vagrancy law. If you look at the actual statute, the statute reads, “Dealing with the issue of those of Spanish and Indian blood.” And so really, you’re talking about folks like me. Chicanos, Mexicans, those that are of Spanish or Latino and Indigenous ancestry.
And I think the point, and the benefit for our audience, I think you well represented the case to how they codified laws —
Jeronimo Aguilar:
That’s right.
Mansa Musa:
…To make sure that this exception clause could be enacted under any and all circumstances.
John, so now we’re at a place where in terms of y’all organized around the abolishment of slavery, the legal form of slavery as we know it now. Talk about y’all Proposition 6, John.
John Cannon:
So, Proposition 6 would us actually be reversing Article 1, Section 6 of the California Constitution, which is basically just like the 13th Amendment of the United States.
So, Proposition 6, what it would do right now is give a person autonomy over their own body, give a person choice whether they want to work or not. Because as it is now, you have no choice whether to work or not. So, Proposition 6, it would prioritize rehabilitation over forced labor.
So, what that will look like is, right now as it stands, if you’re inside and you’re working, they assign you a job automatically. And whether you want to do college courses or rehabilitative courses or anything else, you’re not able to, because you’re assigned a job. You don’t get to pick the job. You don’t get to choose if you want a job. If you’re assigned the job, you have to do it.
So, if you did want to, say, take an anger management course, or seek anything to rehabilitate yourself, and that aligns at the same time as your job, you’ll have to go to that job or you’ll be punished for refusing to work.
Whether you have a death in the family, you have to go to work, or you’ll be punished for refusing. And all these cases happened to me while I was incarcerated, and you’re getting punished for refusing to work. You’re losing days off your sentence, you’re losing phone time, you’re losing all type of things if you refuse to work. So, Prop 6 would actually give a person their own choice over their own body, over their own rehabilitation.
Mansa: how do y’all address, or how will y’all address… We know Proposition 6 coming to effect, but we also know that prison has become privatized on multiple levels. The privatization of prison is the food service is private, the commissary is private, the industry is private, the way the clothes is being made. Everybody has got involved in terms of putting themselves in a space where they become a private entity.
How will Proposition 6 address that? Because what’s going to ultimately happen, the slave master ain’t going to give up the slave freely. They’re going to create some type of narrative or create some kind of forceful situation where, oh, if you don’t work, you ain’t going to get no days, and you can come over here and work, and… You see where I’m going there with this?
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Yep. Yep.
Mansa Musa:
So, did y’all see that? Do y’all see it as a problem? Or have y’all looked at that and be prepared to address it?
Jeronimo Aguilar:
No, no doubt, Mansa. I think that this is really the first step for us, because it’s going to be a long road. And those of us that have been incarcerated or have fought against the carceral system, you know that every time you do something, they’re going to figure out a way to retaliate, and to find a way to try to circumvent it, they’re going to try to find a way to basically make whatever you’re doing obsolete so they can continue their practice.
And so on our end, it was a really long and tedious process with the language, but we wanted to make sure was that we weren’t just passing something that was symbolic, that ended up just being, oh, okay. We’re removing some words out of the constitution, we all feel better about ourselves, and people that are incarcerated are going through the same conditions.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Status quo. Go ahead.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Status quo. Exactly. So, the language in Proposition 6, and what was ACA 8 when we passed it in the legislature to get it on the ballot, actually says that any person that’s incarcerated cannot be punished for refusing a work assignment. Cannot be [crosstalk].
So what that does is, it’s not going to stop CDCR from definitely trying to circumvent things. But what it does is it gives folks a pretty strong legal stance. So, if they do continue to be forced to work and disciplined for refusing to work, they can go to court. And we feel, with the language that we now have in the constitution, which is supposed to be the highest letter of the law, they’re going to have a pretty strong legal stance to stand on when they get to court.
Mansa Musa: We have amplified the voices of the abolition movement. We don’t give voice to the voiceless, because everyone has a voice. We just turn up the volume. Thank you for watching Rattling the Bars on The Real News Network.
Hurricane Helene devastated western North Carolina, including its prisons. Yet rather than evacuate incarcerated people, the state left prisoners locked up in their cells without running water or light to survive the storm on their own. Schuyler Mitchell, who recently covered this story for The Intercept, speaks to Rattling the Bars about this manmade disaster and its consequences.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. Imagine you are told that a major storm is coming your way, a hurricane of Katrina proportion is coming your way, and you’re told to evacuate. Would you evacuate or would you remain where you at? But more importantly, imagine that you cannot evacuate because you are incarcerated, because you are a prisoner in the prison industrial complex, in a carceral system that has no evacuation plans for the people that are incarcerated, or are imprisoned, or on the plantation. Joining me today is Schuyler Mitchell, who wrote an article called Hurricane-Struck North Carolina Prisoners Were Locked in Cells With Their Own Feces For Nearly a Week. Welcome, Schuyler.
Schuyler Mitchell:
Hi, thank you so much for having me.
Mansa Musa:
All right, and tell our audience a little bit about yourself, Schuyler.
Schuyler Mitchell:
Yeah, so I’m an independent investigative journalist. I am a columnist at Truthout, and then I also report for places including The Intercept, which is where I wrote this investigation. I report on a lot of different things, but lots of different instances of power, corruption, cases where the people in power, or powerful corporations, or whatever it is, aren’t treating people with dignity or kind of doing what they’re supposed to be doing. So I do some reporting and research on the prison industrial complex. So yeah, I started working on this story after Hurricane Helene.
Mansa Musa:
Right, and I’m going to open up by saying, well, it’s a quote that you had in your article, say, “We thought we were going to die there. We didn’t think anybody was going to come back for us.” Did anybody come back for them, or if they did come back, how did they come back?
Schuyler Mitchell:
Yeah, so for context, so Hurricane Helene hit in the middle of the night, late Thursday night, early morning hours, Friday, September 27th. And at this one institution called Mountain View in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, from late that night until Wednesday, October 2nd, nearly a week, they didn’t think anybody was going to come back for them. They had no running water, no potable water. There was a shipment of potable drinking water that came several days in. But before that, they were drinking from the sinks is what family members told me, not knowing that what they were essentially drinking was sewer water, because it was non-potable water after the hurricane hit.
They didn’t have lights in their cells, there were some emergency lights that a generator supplied in common areas. And the generator supplied, I heard, power to the prison guards’ laptops or computers, but they didn’t have power in the cell. So yeah, so for five days, thinking about being in darkness, some people reported having water in their cells from flooding if you were on the bottom floor of the facility. Very few food rations. You know, crackers for breakfast or a piece of bread with peanut butter for dinner, and the response was slow.
So there were several facilities throughout Western North Carolina that were eventually evacuated. It was very disorganized is what family members told me, right, where in the case of Mountain View, it’s less than half a mile away from another facility called Avery-Mitchell. And Avery-Mitchell also, their power went out, their water lines were busted, but they got evacuated 24 hours before Mountain View did.
And when you’re in those conditions, 24 hours, and you don’t know if anybody’s going to come save you, that’s a long time, when they’re right next to each other. So the family members were saying they didn’t understand why one facility got evacuated first, and even that one, they had a multi-day delay. And there was a period of many days where family members were trying to get information about what was happening at these facilities, but prisons are by design a black box. It’s really hard [inaudible 00:04:37]-
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Schuyler Mitchell:
… information about what’s going on.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, let’s talk about this, then. Okay, how did you become involved? Somebody reached out to you and asked that you could possibly intervene or make some noise about their conditions? That’s how you initially got involved, or was you just doing your due diligence?
Schuyler Mitchell:
Yeah, so it’s actually the second. I knew that Western… I’m originally from North Carolina, I’m not from the mountains, but I know, I grew up going there a lot, I spent a lot of time there, I knew that there were lots of facilities that were in the path of the hurricane. And so I just started doing some research to see if I had seen any other reporting about what happened at those prisons. And there was actually a press release on the morning of October 2nd from the North Carolina Department of Corrections that said that they’d evacuated a certain number of facilities. [inaudible 00:05:33]-
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Schuyler Mitchell:
… was five. And so then, what I did was I actually took the names of the different facilities from that press release, and I put them on Facebook, because after the hurricane, Facebook was still a big place for where people were exchanging information. There were all these different Facebook groups, like Hurricane Helene Safety Check-In, where people were posting, trying to find their loved ones. It was a horrible situation across the western part of the state. But what I saw when I put in the name Mountain View or Avery-Mitchell were posts for days of people posting in these groups, commenting on the Department of Corrections Facebook page, saying, “What’s going on? Do you have any information for me?”
And then, finally, after several days, on October 2nd, there were a couple posts from people who said, “I finally heard from my loved one, he gave me a call. He’s been evacuated, but for days, they were in horrible conditions.” And people were posting that, and so I just reached out to them and I spoke to… There were at least five people I spoke to that had direct knowledge of what happened at Mountain View, but then I also spoke to like five or four more family members as well from other facilities.
And everybody had the same story about lack of communication and just utter panic for nearly a week, just not knowing what was going on. And then, specifically in the case of Mountain View, everybody told me the exact same things about their loved ones calling them, finally, after nearly a week and saying, “I’m okay. I’m now on the eastern part of the state, but the things that I saw in Mountain [inaudible 00:07:11] for nearly a week were just horrible.” And having to defecate in plastic bags because the toilets are full.
You know, I went to the Department of for comment. Obviously as a journalist, it’s something that you have to go to them for comment. And what the spokesperson said to me, they acknowledged that this had happened, and they were like, “That was a solution that they devised on their own,” and were kind of dismissive, which is interesting, because the question is, “Well, why did they have to devise that solution?” So yeah, I actually found the story just from looking on Facebook and reaching out to people who had been impacted.
Mansa Musa:
And in terms of the information, and you definitely was able to capture what was going on in real time. Talk about the… Because you just mentioned about the Department of Corrections or the Division of Corrections response, and they sanitized it in certain quotes. You know, “No, no, we had water,” plausible denial. But talk about, in your investigation, was you ever able to discern from them, do they have evacuation plans for these type of events?
Schuyler Mitchell:
I mean, they said they did. Again, it’s like a black box, so it’s really hard to know. I think what we do know from what happened is that there was not a proactive response. If they’d had a proactive plan in place, there wouldn’t have been a five-day period where people weren’t knowing when their next meal was coming, or not knowing if they would have enough water. One of the things that I heard was people making decisions about, “Should I use this water to bathe myself or drink it?” You know, because there were limited rations.
So I don’t know what the plan was. Eventually, they did follow through on a plan, because they did evacuate certain facilities. But who’s to say what if things went according to their plan that they already had in place, that either way, the outcome was not what it should have been. And I did see that there is actually a petition circulating, asking the federal system… And so I should clarify, these were state prisons, but the federal DOJ, they also have a Bureau of Prisons. And yeah, there was a petition circulating, asking the government to have a clear evacuation plan in place. And I think we saw this happen then again in Florida, right, with Hurricane [inaudible 00:09:53]-
Mansa Musa:
Right, right, talk about that.
Schuyler Mitchell:
… after. Yeah, so less than, what, less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene, Hurricane Milton was barreling towards Florida, and there were state correctional facilities that were in the mandatory evacuation zones that were not evacuated. Ultimately, I didn’t see any reporting after that said… There was a lot of coverage of Florida before that happened I think because of the situation had just happened in North Carolina. I think people were more attuned to the fact that this was something that they needed to keep an eye on, the fact that incarcerated people just are often overlooked and [inaudible 00:10:30]-
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Schuyler Mitchell:
So there was definitely a lot more pressure on the State Department of Corrections in advance of Hurricane Milton to evacuate facilities. I don’t believe they did, but it’s just another example of different state systems also have different policies and respond in different ways. And one of the things that the family members I spoke with fed again and again was just people, they feel overlooked, they feel like nobody cares. And obviously, lots of people are really hurting across Western North Carolina from [inaudible 00:11:07] hurricane, but people often just don’t think about people who didn’t have any choice to evacuate or any choice of what they were going to do when the storm hit.
And we know there were lots of people that were missing after the hurricane, but these are all people that are in the state’s care, right? It’s the state’s responsibility to ensure their well-being. There should have never been a period where people didn’t know where their loved ones were. They knew, they were in the state system. Yeah, and it’s just going to be an issue that’s going to continue.
The Intercept actually did a project several years ago called Climate and Punishment, where they mapped DHS data about prisons across the country, with different information about wildfire, heat, and flood [inaudible 00:11:54]-
Mansa Musa:
Right, right, right.
Schuyler Mitchell:
And they did this in-depth investigation about the impact of the climate crisis on prisons. But whether it’s flooding, or severe heat, or wildfires, this is just an issue that’s not going away. And I think it’s right to call for more transparency about what the plan is in these.
Mansa Musa:
And I want to unpack some of you say for the benefit of our audience. Like you say, a mandatory evacuation site, a lot of the plantations in the prison industrial complex is in areas that will be evacuated, because of any type of climate situation, or be it, like you say, fires, or hurricanes, or rain, or inclement weather, like frigid weather. A lot of these prisons or a lot of these plantations are in these areas that they designate. They designate this as an evacuation zone, “This is a mandatory evacuation.”
So the reality is that they could look at it and say, “Okay, this is a mandatory evacuation zone. Oh, we got four facilities that house anywhere from 2,500 to 3,000 people collectively, or more.” And in terms of, all right, you recognize that the population that need to be evacuated, but when you start making an assessment of evacuation, they don’t even include them in the conversation. They’re not even included in the conversation in the sense of, “Okay, they’re in the path of Hurricane Helene. We know it’s coming, we telling people to get out of town. What is our plan for this population right here?”
They don’t have no plan, because that’s by the design. It’s by design. You know, according to the 13th Amendment, we are slaves under the system of the 13th Amendment. So therefore, the value that’s associated with our lives is not. Was you able to glean this from your research, or from this particular article, or your study in general?
Schuyler Mitchell:
Yeah, I mean, so the interesting thing in Western North Carolina was there weren’t the same mandatory evacuation orders, just because I think that region is not used to seeing these types of hurricanes. So I think it just really walloped the area. And it did take people by surprise, even though there were warnings and forecastings. But unlike in the case of Florida, where there were absolutely mandatory evacuation zones, where they’ve made the explicit choice not to evacuate those prisons…
I think, yeah, I mean, but in reporting on the prison system, you see this time and time again, where it’s incredibly hard, for example, for incarcerated people to win cases that they bring against prisons or prison guards for mistreatment, or for instances where their human rights have been violated. The bar for winning those lawsuits and getting any sort of justice is intentionally set really high. One of the women that I spoke with for my article, her husband was one of the people at Mountain View. They have three kids, a teenager and two young kids. And she said to me that she herself has also been in prison before. And she said, “When he was telling me about some of his experiences in the past, I didn’t really believe it could be that bad. But then, I actually was on the inside and I saw it myself.”
And that’s something that didn’t even make its way into the piece, but she was saying… But she was the one who said, actually at the end of the story, “When you’re in there, you’re treated less than a human. You’re treated like a rabid dog,” and that was an exact quote. And so yeah, once you start talking to people, lots of people have similar stories, and I think the climate crisis really exacerbates these existing inequalities, and really reveals how neglected people can be. And when I went for comment to the Department of Corrections, they said, “Well, lots of people in Western North Carolina have it way worse.” That was almost exactly what the response was. And even just in the official statement, there wasn’t a full, of course, acknowledgement of what people had said that they had gone through.
One of the other things that was interesting to me about Mountain View was actually a day before the hurricane hit, somebody committed suicide at that facility. And what one of the women said to me, she was asking questions about, “What was it like there, that he decided that he needed… That was his only way out?” And Mountain View, it’s single cells, so people are locked in their cells for most of the hours of the day, and they’re allowed to do their job for the lunch hour. But it was pretty high, it was a medium-security facility, but there wasn’t a lot of freedom of movement at that facility.
And it’s not the exact same thing as solitary, but everybody I spoke to… I spoke to somebody also who was incarcerated and who lived through everything that happened at Mountain View. His partner was able to connect me with him through the Department of Corrections phone system. And I spoke to him, and they all say that it’s a pretty… Even when there’s not a hurricane, it’s not a great place to be. I guess nobody expects prisons to be great or anything like [inaudible 00:17:58]-
Mansa Musa:
Right. No, I understand. [inaudible 00:17:58]-
Schuyler Mitchell:
… learn about it. It’s quite bad, the conditions that people have to-
Mansa Musa:
And the crazy part about that is, like you say, it’s medium security, and the security paradigm, you have max, medium, minimum, and pre-release. So in the case of Mountain View, most of these individuals are transitioning out. So it’s not like they’re having served significant time. But more importantly, the reality is that the system in North Carolina or throughout this country is really designed to dehumanize us, to ignore our humanity.
And when, like you say, global warming, climate crisis that’s developing in the world, people that’s incarcerated or on the plantation, we got it bad, because we’re not considered human to begin with. We’re considered slaves. And in terms of the monies that’s going to be invested in trying to get us out of a situation that’s a natural disaster, is not priority for the state. But answer this question, have you ever been able to glean, like is it a FEMA response that could be used for this type of situation, in hindsight?
Schuyler Mitchell:
I’m not sure about how the FEMA response would overlap with the State Department of Corrections, unfortunately. Yeah, I think that again, what we do now is that this is a population of people that are always an afterthought, and yeah, whatever resources that can be made available to prevent this from happening again, clearly, there’s a need for that. But yeah, I don’t know about FEMA specifically in this case.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, and in terms, as we get ready to close out, because you talk to the family members, and tell our audience how your sense coming from them, their anxiety and their stress, as it relates to this type of situation? Because really, we need people to understand that, okay, “You saying that I did something to go to prison, got that. You’re saying that I’m serving a sentence, got that. You’re saying that I’m going to be confined to a prison, got that. But you’re also saying, according to the Constitution of the United States, I can’t be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. I got to be treated like a human being at some junction. But at the same token, my family is not locked up, my family is not sentenced to a certain time, and my family is my family, and taxpayers, and have a right to know what’s going on with me.” Talk about the family members or your conversation. What did you take away from them?
Schuyler Mitchell:
Yeah, I mean, my conversations with family members were incredibly moving. And I spoke to people who… This was an all-men’s prison, so it was people’s sons, partners, husbands, yeah, siblings, whatever that were in there. And one of the things that someone said to me, she was like, “Nobody cares or pays attention to this until someone like you, a journalist starts looking into it.” That was one sentiment that I heard. There was another woman where her 26-year-old son was one of the people in the prison, and she was saying, “He might be 26, but he’s still my son. And I called around and I got a voicemail for somebody who works in the prison system, and the voicemail said, ‘Please only leave messages in the case of emergency. Don’t leave a message if you’re asking about the whereabouts of a certain inmate’,” was the voicemail. And she said to me, she was like, “How dare he say that? Because it is an emergency if I don’t know where my son is.”
And another person said, “My Sammy, my loved one, he did something bad. He deserves to serve his time, but he’s still a person [inaudible 00:22:18]-“
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Schuyler Mitchell:
“… and he’s still very much loved.” And that was, of course, the message over, and over, and over again was like, these are people, people love them. They knew they were going to prison. They didn’t sign up for being cruel and unusual punishment, days of not being evacuated. And yeah, I think if everybody could have the conversations that I had… I mean, I was very grateful to these people for opening up to me and trusting me with their stories. I think there’s so much more coverage that needs to be done on this issue.
I mean, there’s just no end to the amount of abuses that take place across the federal and state prison system. I mean, this wasn’t even a private prison, so that’s a whole other layer. But yeah, everybody just really was saying that they felt like no one cared and they felt unheard. And I think one of the things that is good about doing this work is you do see how many people do care and want to talk about this issue. And I think as many people that can to spread important information about the prison system, like what you’re doing on the show, and report on the issue, it’s so important, and people really, really value that.
Mansa Musa:
And as we close out, I want to make sure that I always understand what we’re talking about, because if this same situation took place in a foreign country, that United States citizens was being held in captivity, that a national disaster came through there, and it came back to this country that they were standing in their feces, they was drinking sewer water, they didn’t know whether they were going to live or die, they was given food that was not nutritional, we would be up in arms and an uproar, protesting, everybody, the four winds, talking about taking any funding we giving this country, stopping everything.
We are coming short in sending a [inaudible 00:24:21] courier over there to take our people out there or take their citizen out. We’re talking about right here in the United States of America, and where we don’t have the common decency as a state to recognize that we are dealing with human beings, no matter what they did, that this is human beings that we’re dealing with. As we close out, what do you want our audience to take away from this article, Ms. Mitchell?
Schuyler Mitchell:
Yeah, I mean, I think what you just said is a really great point. I think yeah, what I want people to take away from this article is this is one specific prison, one specific case after one specific hurricane. I mean, think about it on a national scale, think about how many people we have in this country that are incarcerated. We have a massive prison industrial complex. Yeah, and I think just as we are all increasingly impacted by natural disasters and are able to make choices about what we do in those situations, this is a massive population of people that has, by definition, had choice taken away from them. And they don’t [inaudible 00:25:37]-
Mansa Musa:
Exactly.
Schuyler Mitchell:
They don’t have a say, and they don’t have a voice, and it’s really hard to get information in and out. So yeah, it’s just many layers of problems that are piled on top of each other. And yeah, that’s I think my biggest takeaway. And what you said is so important. If this happened anywhere else, people would be able to, I think, kind of see it for what it was. But it’s hard to see it when it’s in your own country, for a lot of the time.
Mansa Musa:
And if our audience, and the viewers, and listeners want to follow your work, how can they stay in touch with you or track your work?
Schuyler Mitchell:
Yeah, I am on Twitter. It’s my first name, Schuyler, with an underscore in between the Y and the L. And I think my email should be on my website, but if people actually have any insights, have anybody that they know that’s in a prison or anything that they want me to look into or cover, I’m super passionate about this issue, and I love to do investigations. So if you need somebody to dig deep, I’m your girl. So yeah, feel free to reach out to me with any tips as well.
Mansa Musa:
There you have it. Real News, Rattling the Bars. Schuyler, you rallied the bars today. You brought to the attention to raise the national consciousness about how do we treat people as human beings. How do we treat people? Should we treat them as human beings or should we treat them as numbers? It stands to reason that the state of North Carolina is looking at people as numbers, and in both sense, a number in terms of how much money they can make off of them, and a number in the sense of when they don’t have to do nothing for them, they just write them off.
We want our audience to understand, and we want our listeners to be mindful of this here, we’re talking about human beings. This is a humane issue. This is not an issue that’s dealing with whether a person did something or didn’t do something. They are wards of the state, and when you say you’re a ward of the state, the state is obligated to provide for your safety, and your safety is important, and your safety should be not compromised by virtue of you not having an evacuation plan in effect, for you not having the necessary infrastructure to ensure that people that are under your custody that’s coming home, it wasn’t like they not coming, they coming home at one time or another, and that you treat them less than human. Schuyler, we appreciate you. We appreciate your advocacy, and we look forward to staying in touch with you. Thank you very much.
This story originally appeared in Jacobin on Oct. 23, 2024. It is shared here with permission.
This month, when Emmanuel Macron’s newly chosen prime minister, Michel Barnier, laid out his first government agenda to the National Assembly, much attention was naturally focused on the budget and immigration. But a seemingly throwaway line pointed to another aspect of security and policing. “We will generalize the methods experimented with during the Olympic and Paralympic Games,” Barnier promised.
I have previously written for Jacobin about the controversial algorithmic video surveillance that France rolled out in advance of the Olympics — a test that was supposed to last through March 2025 and concern only large-scale public events like sporting matches and concerts. Experts in surveillance and human rights told me about the debilitating effects that such mass surveillance can have on dissent and peaceful protest — creating a dissuasive “chilling effect.”
“You get people used to it in that happy face, ‘celebration capitalism’ environment of the Olympics, and then that new technology that was injected during the Games in that state of exception becomes the norm for policing moving forward,” Jules Boykoff, a political scientist who has published multiple books about the Olympics, warned at the time.
As if on cue, as soon as the Olympics ended, a steady drumbeat of Macronist politicians began manufacturing consent around the need to keep this technology, which has not yet been independently studied or analyzed.
In September, less than two weeks after the Paralympic closing ceremony, Paris police chief Laurent Nuñez declared himself “in favor” of extending the technology. The news channel France Info, citing a government source, reported that Barnier’s interior minister also envisioned making the technology permanent. (Currently, a bill floated by a member of his right-wing Républicains party proposes a three-year extension.) Barnier’s speech, while not specifically mentioning the algorithmic video surveillance tool, pushed in this same direction.
“The government is going to do everything in its power to entrench [algorithmic video surveillance technology],” Élisa Martin, a member of the left-wing France Insoumise, told me over the phone. “We’re absolutely certain of this.”
“A Security Showcase for the World”
On July 26, as hundreds of boats carrying Olympians made their way down the river Seine during a rain-soaked opening ceremony watched by twenty-five million viewers worldwide, another show was taking place underground. On the French capital’s metro platforms, nearly five hundred state-of-the-art surveillance cameras were capturing and analyzing human behaviors in real time, assisted by an artificial intelligence tool called CityVision. The AI-based technology, produced by a French start-up, was rolled out across the metro system.
Above ground, 45,000 national police and an additional 20,000 military operatives patrolled the city. An estimated fifty-three drones were shot down by military anti-drone units in the first several days of the Games.
“The Olympics, and especially the opening ceremony on the Seine, were sold as “a security showcase for the world and a moment of experimentation,” Noémie Levain, a legal expert at La Quadrature du Net, a digital rights NGO, told me.
After the National Assembly passed an omnibus Olympics bill on May 19, 2023, which included, among other things, the legalization of AI-assisted mass surveillance tools, French tech start-ups presented offers for Olympics contracts — with several then selected in January 2024. One has been likened to a French version of Palantir — the Peter Thiel–owned surveillance company best known for its discriminatory policing tool used in cities like Los Angeles, which is set to host the next summer Olympics in 2028.
“The bread and butter of these companies is the analysis of human bodies,” Levain told me. “The idea is to analyze them, classify them, and come up with data points.”
The tool, as currently intended, is supposed to catch “predetermined events,” such as a terrorist attack or an “unusual crowd movement.” But researchers worry that the increased use of algorithms in predictive policing, which use racially biased statistics as their initial input, creates a pipeline for additional surveillance of vulnerable communities. “Increasing evidence suggests that human prejudices have been baked into these tools because the machine-learning models are trained on biased police data,” Will Douglas Heaven wrote in MIT Technology Review.
In the French case, little is known about how the technologies actually operate and at what point they’re deployed by police, Yoann Nabat, a jurist and lecturer at the University of Bordeaux, said. “It’s a black box,” he told me.
Algorithmic video surveillance “is only supposed to be a decision aid,” Nabat added. “It is supposed to alert the person behind the screens to say, ‘Be careful, you have to look in this place, at this time.’ Except that there’s a thin line between automation and human interaction. We know that with the lack of existing resources that decision support often turns into the decision itself.”
From Experiment to Fait Accompli
Much has been written about the shock doctrine — the period often following a natural disaster when vulture-like private companies swoop in to take over public services. According to Boykoff, a similar process takes place before, during, and after mega-events like the Olympics.
Katia Roux, the head of advocacy at Amnesty International France, described a similar phenomenon in France. “We haven’t had the balance sheet yet,” she told me of the Olympics surveillance tools. Yet, “there’s a clear political desire to legalize this technology and the Olympics were just a way to get a foot in the door.”
Elia Verdon, a member of France’s Observatory on Surveillance and Democracy, agreed. “I think we have to be careful with periods of experimentation,” she warned. “We end up accepting a technology at a given time in response to a possible threat, and then the next threat, they go even further.”
Since pronouncing themselves in favor of the new technology, Barnier and Nuñez have since walked back their statements about the extension of the measures, saying that they are still waiting for the results of a government report that must be presented before parliament by the end of the year. But it seems that the French public may have already been swayed by government rhetoric — with a recent poll showing that 65 percent of French people supported augmented video surveillance in public space.
“If it’s deemed successful, they’ll extend it,” Levain, from La Quadrature du Net, said. “If it’s not, they’ll say we need more experiments with it. There are so many actors involved, so much money, so much lobbying, they’re not just going to say, ‘Alright, let’s just stop.’”
With an increasingly hard-line government using immigration as a wedge to pass restrictive policies, it’s hard to imagine that the army of private companies in what Macron calls his “start-up nation” won’t step up with more offers.
This November, California voters will have the chance to pass Proposition 6. This ballot referendum would nullify the state constitution’s exception for involuntary servitude as punishment for a crime, and institute additional protections for incarcerated people. Jeronimo Aguilar of Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, and John Cannon of All of Us or None join Rattling the Bars for a breakdown of Prop 6.
Studio Production: David Hebden Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa.
It might sound odd, it might sound strange, it might even be mind-boggling to believe that in this country, these United States of America, slavery is still legal in some form, shape, or fashion. The 13th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States codified slavery under the circumstances that anyone duly convicted of a crime, they can be a slave. They can be held accountable as a slave, their labor can be processed like slave labor, and they have no rights to say nothing about that.
Joining me today are two extraordinary men in this fight to abolish slavery. And I was amazed when Jeronimo reached out to me. We had talked before, and I was amazed when he reached out to me, and they came full circle on their strategy on how to eradicate slavery as we know it. And so, I’m going to let them explain it.
Introduce yourself, Jeronimo and John.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Right on, man. Jeronimo Aguilar here. I go by Jeronimo, I go by Geronimo. Either one is fine with me. I’m a Chicano activist, also organizer with all of us in West Sacramento, and also a policy analyst with Legal Services for Prisoners with Children, and just honored to be a servant to the movement, man. I’ll pass it over to John.
John Cannon:
My name is John Cannon. I also go by John John. I’m also an organizer with All of Us or None. I’m out here with the Oakland chapter. And did 10 years incarcerated, so being able to get out and just fight for the same things I saw behind those walls just gives me a real purpose.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. And all of us probably been in this space where you bring an expert witness in to court to testify. Before the expert witness testify, they run a list of all the things they have accomplished in terms of qualifying them to be an expert. So, it’s sufficed to say, we are an expert in this matter when it comes to being slaves, or being on the plantation, under the prison-industrial complex.
But Jeronimo, let’s start with you. All right. I want you to give us a history lesson on how the code that came to exist that’s legalized slavery in California. Because you made an interesting observation before, and we was talking about it again, how we got this perception of California as being the big Hollywood, Rolls Royce.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Yeah, thank you, Mansa. Yeah, no, you’re right, man. We got this idea of what California is. Not only the palm trees and the Rolls Royce, and it’s always sunny, but also that we’re soft on crime, and that criminals are out able to just do whatever they want out here, and there’s no law and order, and all that kind of stuff.
The reality is, the prison-industrial complex out here is as crooked and oppressive as it is in any state of the union. And so, when you talk about especially this exception clause, and specifically here in California, it’s the exception to involuntary servitude. But like we say, as you can see on my background there, one of our main messaging points is that involuntary servitude is slavery.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
So, they try to lessen it or give it a fancy name, but the reality is the practice is the same thing, of subjugating human beings to work against their will.
So, when you talk about involuntary servitude in California, the history, like you mentioned, it goes all the way back to when California became a state. So, back in 1849. Remember, this territory here was territory of Mexico up until then. You had the expansionist, I wouldn’t even really call it a war, but an assault on Mexico in 1848, which ended with the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
That treaty was not honored. Or like most of the treaties that the US [inaudible] with folks of Indigenous ancestry, them treaties were nothing but opportunities for the forked tongue, as they say, to get what they want.
And so, what happened is the land was taken, and Indigenous folks, Indigenous mixed with Spanish folks, became immigrants overnight. And with that said, what you started seeing was the first Constitution of California in 1849 has that exception clause that we see today. It says that involuntary servitude is prohibited except for punishment for a crime. It’s not that exact wording, but it’s the same exact practice.
And so, that set things up. That set the stage for 1850, you started seeing this. So, this is the year right after it became a state and the constitution was introduced. You see the 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians.
And again, the forked tongue. The way that they named the act, you would think, oh, they’re protecting Indians, when in fact, it was a vagrancy law that they used to criminalize Indigenous people, and subsequently enslave them under the exceptions to involuntary servitude.
And so, I want to add to that. Indigenous peoples were already being enslaved by the Spanish colonial powers. We’ll talk about the mission system. So, the Southwest and California, a lot of it was already built by the enslavement of Indigenous peoples.
When you talk about colonization, and once the Spanish came and that era of terror, and then Mexico getting its independence, and you’ve seen Mexico actually outlaw slavery for a period of time while that practice of servitude was brought back once the US took the land from Mexico.
And so, like I said, from 1849 on, up until now, you’ve seen the consistent criminalization of Indigenous, Brown folks, later, obviously, our African brothers and sisters that were enslaved and brought to this continent, and also that ended up migrating, trying to find free states, trying to find places where they can actually be free from the subjugation of slavery, only to find the same kind of practices happening over here in the Southwest.
And so, following that 1850 Act of Government and Protection of Indians, which actually turned what’s now LA Federal Courthouse, was a vibrant slave auction. Based on that law, you saw acts like the Greaser Act, which passed in 1855. It’s another vagrancy law. If you look at the actual statute, the statute reads, “Dealing with the issue of those of Spanish and Indian blood.” And so really, you’re talking about folks like me. Chicanos, Mexicans, those that are of Spanish or Latino and Indigenous ancestry.
And so, again, following that, I believe it was, man, 1858, ’59, you saw a Fugitive Slave Act that was [crosstalk]. And a lot of you are familiar with the federal Fugitive Slave Act, but California had its own Fugitive Slave Act that they passed. Don’t quote me on those years, but it was definitely in this era of oppression.
And in that Fugitive Slave Act, what they did is that they gave slave owners from the South a year to recapture their slaves that ran off to California looking for freedom.
Well, that one year that they gave them actually turned into a sunset clause that ended up lasting five-plus years. And basically, anybody that was African-American, that was Black, that was here in California, could be kidnapped and trafficked back to the South without any evidence.
All the slave master had to say was, oh, yeah, he used to be my slave. He ran off. He didn’t need no proof. He didn’t need to know nothing. Just by his word. And they were capturing folks that never had even been enslaved.
Mansa Musa:
And I think the point, and the benefit for our audience, I think you well represented the case to how they codified laws —
Jeronimo Aguilar:
That’s right.
Mansa Musa:
…To make sure that this exception clause could be enacted under any and all circumstances.
John, so now we’re at a place where in terms of y’all organized around the abolishment of slavery, the legal form of slavery as we know it now. Talk about y’all Proposition 6, John.
John Cannon:
So, Proposition 6 would us actually be reversing Article 1, Section 6 of the California Constitution, which is basically just like the 13th Amendment of the United States.
So, Proposition 6, what it would do right now is give a person autonomy over their own body, give a person choice whether they want to work or not. Because as it is now, you have no choice whether to work or not. So, Proposition 6, it would prioritize rehabilitation over forced labor.
So, what that will look like is, right now as it stands, if you’re inside and you’re working, they assign you a job automatically. And whether you want to do college courses or rehabilitative courses or anything else, you’re not able to, because you’re assigned a job. You don’t get to pick the job. You don’t get to choose if you want a job. If you’re assigned the job, you have to do it.
So, if you did want to, say, take an anger management course, or seek anything to rehabilitate yourself, and that aligns at the same time as your job, you’ll have to go to that job or you’ll be punished for refusing to work.
Whether you have a death in the family, you have to go to work, or you’ll be punished for refusing. And all these cases happened to me while I was incarcerated, and you’re getting punished for refusing to work. You’re losing days off your sentence, you’re losing phone time, you’re losing all type of things if you refuse to work. So, Prop 6 would actually give a person their own choice over their own body, over their own rehabilitation.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, let’s talk about this. And both of y’all been wearing this. You can go first, Jeronimo. Okay, I understand what you’re saying, and I come out of that space. I did 48 years in that space.
So now, how do y’all address, or how will y’all address… We know Proposition 6 coming to effect, but we also know that prison has become privatized on multiple levels. The privatization of prison is the food service is private, the commissary is private, the industry is private, the way the clothes is being made. Everybody has got involved in terms of putting themselves in a space where they become a private entity.
How will Proposition 6 address that? Because what’s going to ultimately happen, the slave master ain’t going to give up the slave freely. They’re going to create some type of narrative or create some kind of forceful situation where, oh, if you don’t work, you ain’t going to get no days, and you can come over here and work, and… You see where I’m going there with this?
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Yep. Yep.
Mansa Musa:
So, did y’all see that? Do y’all see it as a problem? Or have y’all looked at that and be prepared to address it?
Jeronimo Aguilar:
No, no doubt, Mansa. I think that this is really the first step for us, because it’s going to be a long road. And those of us that have been incarcerated or have fought against the carceral system, you know that every time you do something, they’re going to figure out a way to retaliate, and to find a way to try to circumvent it, they’re going to try to find a way to basically make whatever you’re doing obsolete so they can continue their practice.
And so on our end, it was a really long and tedious process with the language, but we wanted to make sure was that we weren’t just passing something that was symbolic, that ended up just being, oh, okay. We’re removing some words out of the constitution, we all feel better about ourselves, and people that are incarcerated are going through the same conditions.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Status quo. Go ahead.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Status quo. Exactly. So, the language in Proposition 6, and what was ACA 8 when we passed it in the legislature to get it on the ballot, actually says that any person that’s incarcerated cannot be punished for refusing a work assignment. Cannot be [crosstalk].
So what that does is, it’s not going to stop CDCR from definitely trying to circumvent things. But what it does is it gives folks a pretty strong legal stance. So, if they do continue to be forced to work and disciplined for refusing to work, they can go to court. And we feel, with the language that we now have in the constitution, which is supposed to be the highest letter of the law, they’re going to have a pretty strong legal stance to stand on when they get to court.
So, all of those things are going to be… We’re going to have to be following and monitoring things, implement it. We know that, like you said, man, they’re not going to just give this stuff up. All of the money that’s being made. California, fifth largest economy, CDC’s got a $14 billion budget.
And so, that money… I mean, what we’ve seen here in California, Mansa, is we’ve literally reduced the prison system. We’re under 100,000 now. We’re at about 90,000 incarcerated, and their budget has gone up. So, make that make sense. They’re figuring out ways to make money.
Mansa Musa:
And tell our audience what CDCR is.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Yeah, that’s California Department of Corrections. The R is for Rehabilitation. And like John says, CDCR, we really call it CDC. But we’re trying to get that R to actually mean something by having rehabilitation, access to rehabilitation, education, and other things be prioritized as much as labor, giving folks the opportunity to work.
Because we know folks are still going to want to work inside. We’re not trying to take away that opportunity for folks. But you shouldn’t be forced into a job, and then you want to take a class, but you’re not able to because of that. They’re prioritizing that exploitation over anything else.
Mansa Musa:
Hey, John. And talk about the feedback that y’all got from the inside, in terms of educating the population about what is expected. Because ultimately, it’s going to be on the inside that’s going to be monitoring the effect of the legislation. It’s going to be on the inside where we know from our own personal experience that we create programs to help us rehabilitate ourselves and to socialize. So, this would be a golden opportunity for that kind of initiative on the part of those of us that are still behind the walls and still on the plantation.
Talk about that, John. What kind of feedback are y’all getting from those of us that’s still on the plantation?
John Cannon:
So, we have members on the inside. And some of the feedback we’re getting is, we got a lot of letters that were written to us about people’s personal experiences, and it’s a lot similar to mine. I understood a lot of what people were saying and how some people, they want to prioritize being able to continue their education. They want to be able to do stuff that’s actually going to help them for when they get out, so they are rehabilitated when they get out here into California, on the outside world.
And also, some of the feedback we’re getting, just like Jeronimo said, is that this doesn’t mean people are just going to stop working. There’s a lot of people… There’s a waiting list to get on some of these jobs in prison.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right, right.
John Cannon:
So, it’s not the fact that people don’t want to work. People do want to work. But for those people that don’t want to be forced to work, some people want to prioritize certain courses that are offered. You have anger management courses, you have drug rehabilitative courses, and you can’t even access these courses if you’re assigned a job duty. So, those courses are there for no reason if you can’t access them.
So, this is some of the feedback that we’re getting from the inside from our members.
Mansa Musa:
All right. And Jeronimo, talk about where we at in terms of how y’all assessing the Proposition 6, because you don’t have no opposition. That’s a given. I think I was looking at some of the footage, and I think, since from ACLU say, who going to come out and say we agree with slavery? So, talk about where y’all at in terms of getting this passed or getting people to vote on it.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
So, those of us that worked on the legislation, ACA 8, it was ACA 3 once upon a time, three, four years ago, and it failed in the California Senate the first time around. We brought it back with ACA 8, and man, it was —
Mansa Musa:
What’s ACA?
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Assembly Constitutional Amendment.
Mansa Musa:
Okay.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
And so, the author of the bill was Assemblymember Wilson. She was in the assembly. Before her, it was Assemblymember Sydney Kamlager, who’s now actually in Congress, I believe. So, yeah. It was a couple of assembly members that had brought it up.
So, there were ACAs. And just the fact that it failed one time, it showed us that it’s not as much as an afterthought as folks think, as you would think, especially here in California.
And, I mean, it goes back to that history that we were talking about. I mean, shoot, California’s first governor was actually a slaveholder, Peter Hardeman Burnett. You talk about the founder of San Quentin was a California senator named James Estelle, and he was also a slave holder.
So, that I think a lot of the stuff that we have even subconsciously in the population here in California, they don’t understand that they’re aligning with… Sometimes it’s not so much of like who’s going to agree with slavery, but they buy some of this stuff that the Tough on Crime or CDCR puts out around, oh, yeah. Well, that’s true. They should work, man. They’re criminals. Or, they should do this and that. And they’re not understanding that they’re actually buying into the whole thing on slavery.
And so, with the proposition itself, man, it hasn’t pulled us as high as we would have liked. I could have told you that because ACA 8 was so hard to pass. I knew it was going to be a struggle.
And then, here in California, we’re in a pretty big crisis as it comes to the criminal justice reform. You got Proposition 36 that’s on the ballot as well, which is trying to repeal some of Prop 47, which was a landmark proposition that we passed that reduced a lot of felonies down to misdemeanors. It allowed folks to not have to end up in the prison system for low-level offenses, non-violent stuff, drugs. Stuff that it’s common sense, that it should focus [crosstalk].
Mansa Musa:
Fueling the plantations. That’s it. Fueling the plantations.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Exactly.
Mansa Musa:
Y’all got that. Y’all been successful at taking the source away from where they’re getting the labor from, and now y’all killing the utilization of the labor.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
Right.
Mansa Musa:
Y’all been fighting on all fronts.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
We’ve been fighting on all fronts, and they’re pushing back, though.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, most definitely. Most definitely.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
The system is definitely pushing back, and we’re filling it right now with Prop 36 on the ballot. And it’s being funded by — And this is to your point, Mansa. We just learned that Walmart dropped another $1 million to support what’s going on with Prop 36.
And so, why would Walmart be so invested in making sure that Tough on Crime passes, that more prisons get filled up? Well, that’s because they rely on that labor.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
They’re exploiting that labor. They’re using that labor of Black and Brown people. And so, people need to see this, maybe. What I’m hoping this episode really is is public education for folks so they could really see, even in a state like California, it’s so invested and married to the idea of exploitation and cheap labor. California and the US has never lost its appetite for cheap labor.
And so, when you think about it, it’s going to find ways to do that. It’s always going to go back to the same thing that it knows. And so, that’s what we’re seeing.
So, Prop 6, it’s polling… We’re at 50/50 right now. I mean, we’re a little bit on the side of… The last polling that came out was not favorable to us, but I think that we’re getting closer to that 50/50 range. It’s going to be a tough, drag-out fight.
I think, really, the thing is, the real positive is what we’re seeing that there’s a huge percentage of folks that are uneducated on this subject. And when you’re able to explain the stuff that we’re talking about here, all these different factors are at play, with the corporations and all these different people that are making money, and they don’t care about the regular person that’s struggling to pay his bills, even if he hasn’t been locked up. But he don’t care about that taxpayer.
Prop 6 actually will benefit the taxpayer because they’re getting return on their investment in the criminal justice system. You got $133,000 it costs to incarcerate somebody for a year. And our people in there, they’re not learning how to read, they’re not learning how to write, they’re not learning nothing. They’re just being forced to make money for these corporations.
So, once they start seeing all this stuff and we’re able to educate them, we’re able to move them to a yes at a pretty good rate. So, I feel confident.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. And John, you say you in Oakland, right?
John Cannon:
Right.
Mansa Musa:
And so, what are y’all doing now? Because just like Jeronimo said, it’s the fight to the finish. So, the fight is, we know the election’s coming up in November, but we know that we have to educate people to understand what the prop is, and now, how to counter the opposition. What are y’all doing in Oakland to get the vote out, get people out to respond to the proposition?
John Cannon:
The main thing we’re doing in Oakland is educating our folks on slavery, on the history of slavery and involuntary servitude, the history of what our constitution is, and also getting people engaged with voting.
There’s a lot of people that haven’t voted. Making sure people know their rights in California, because we’ve been encountering a lot of people that didn’t even know they could vote. People on parole could vote. In California, you can vote on parole. Technically, you’re allowed to vote while you’re in jail, you just can’t vote in prison. So, that’s the main part, is making sure people know.
Even myself, when I was released from prison, I didn’t even know I could vote until I came to All of Us or None, and we were actually one of the organizations that was on that proposition to get people to vote on parole.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. All right. And as we close out this for both of y’all, all right, so, what do we expect in November based on y’all taking the temperature of the climate out there? What can we look forward to? And then, two, how can our viewers always become more involved in the process of getting Proposition 6 passed? We go with you, start with you, Jeronimo.
Jeronimo Aguilar:
I think I’m hopeful. I’m very hopeful about particularly Proposition 6 in California. Like I said, there’s an all-out assault on criminal justice reform happening right now in California, so it’s a tough time. And this last legislative session, it was probably… The four or five years that I’ve been working on the policy side, trying to pass statewide bills at the Capitol, this is probably the most challenging year. The majority of our bills just didn’t make it through the legislature.
So, for us to pass ACA 8 in a climate like this, it shows you we got some very talented and skillful organizers. And so, I have that same faith and confidence in them that we’ll get Proposition 6 passed. God willing, we can defeat Proposition 36 as well.
But with that said, I think the way folks can activate, we have a website, voteyesprop6.com. Folks can check us out there. We also got our organization’s website, prisonerswithchildren.org.
And then, on social media, All of Us or None Action is basically housing all of our Proposition 6 work. And so, we’re teaming up with some… trying to get some influencers and high-level folks out there to get the word out, make sure they hit the polls and vote.
We’re doing big regional events out here in California on Oct. 8. We’re doing a statewide day of action. So, we’re going to be in here at Sac State. I’m doing something at the University of Sacramento. UC Berkeley is going to have a big event. They’re doing something out there in LA, Bakersfield, Stockton. So all over the state.
And like John said, the main thing, our mission as the grassroots ballot committee is really to activate our people, man, those that have been disenfranchised. Those that typically don’t vote, and they got every reason not to vote because of the way this system is designed.
But at the same time, there’s certain stuff that is important for us to get out and get active on. And so, this is one of those. We have the historic opportunity to end slavery and stop the forced labor and exploitation of our people inside.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. And John?
John Cannon:
Yeah. And I would just say, spreading the information, spreading the knowledge as much as you can. And we have materials that we’ll send out. If you’re in California, you want to do any type of outreach, you could reach out to me at john@prisonerswithchildren.org. I can send you a whole package with materials, postcards, flyers, and just make sure we’re spreading the information to everybody.
And also getting people aware that voting is coming up, and it’s important to vote. I know that I actually was one of those people that thought voting didn’t matter. And I remember my sister, she told me what someone told her, what my grandma told her, and she said, if our vote doesn’t count, then why they’ve been trying to take it from us since forever, or keep us from voting? So, it made sense. So, it does count. We’ve got to get out there and just spread the news to everybody we can.
Mansa Musa:
And I want to add this as we close out. It does count, but the reason why it does count is because of y’all. Y’all making it count. Y’all educating people on the importance of understanding how to utilize their voice. Y’all educating people on understanding where it came from, the history of their voice.
But more importantly, y’all mobilizing people and franchising people to change and dismantle the prison-industrial complex. Y’all rattling the bars today.
There you have it. The Real News and Rattling the Bars. I really appreciate both of y’all, man. Y’all, look, y’all really made me feel good today because I’m one of those that was cynical when it came to the electoral process. I was one of those that didn’t believe in it. But then I remember what Tip O’Neill said, that all politics are local. But more importantly, y’all skill organization, y’all skill strategy, has now enlightened people on how to be effective in raising your voice and voting to get effective change. Thank you.
John Cannon:
Thank you.
Mansa Musa:
And we ask you to continue to support The Real News and Rattling the Bars. Look, this is the only way you’re going to get this kind of information. Two skilled individuals in the state of California, Sunshine State, where you got a big Hollywood sign up. But behind the Hollywood sign is slave labor. Now we got people that’s challenging it and attacking it, and ultimately going to be a drama, or say this is a historical event. This is going to go down history as the few that tackled the many and won. I’m out.
This story originally appeared in Truthout on Oct. 17, 2024. It is shared here with permission.
The Nebraska State Supreme Court ruled this week to allow a state law passed earlier this year to be enforced, enfranchising thousands of people who were formerly convicted of felony level crimes and thwarting efforts by Republican state officials to deem the law unconstitutional.
In a bipartisan vote this summer of the unicameral state legislature, Nebraska lawmakers enacted a veto-proof law that ended a prohibition on residents voting for at least two years after serving a sentence for a felony, overturning a 2005 state law that had enacted the restriction. However, Attorney General Mike Hilgers and Secretary of State Bob Evnen, both Republicans, claimed the new law was unconstitutional, and before it could take effect, ordered election officials across the state to bar people with felony convictions from registering if that two-year period hadn’t elapsed.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Nebraska, representing state residents who would be restricted from voting under the action from Hilgers and Evnen, implored the state Supreme Court to intervene, and in a split decision from Tuesday, the court did just that.
Hilgers and Evnen asserted that only the state’s board of pardons could restore voting rights. The state Supreme Court, however, issued a split decision on Wednesday that overturned their attempt to block the new state law.
In Nebraska, the state Supreme Court must have a supermajority of justices deem a state law unconstitutional in order for it to be blocked. Only two of the five justices on the bench came to the conclusion that the new law was unlawful, while two others couldn’t bring themselves to rule either way on the matter. A fifth justice found that the new law was constitutional, as ruling otherwise would give too much power to the two executive branch offices in question.
The split decision means that the new law is now enforced, and that state residents with past felony convictions can vote right away if their sentences have been completed.
The ruling allows a small window for such residents to register to vote. The deadline to register for this year’s election is this Friday. Residents can still register to vote in person through October 25.
The ruling could influence two important elections. A contentious Senate seat is up for grabs in the state, between independent candidate Dan Osborn and Republican Sen. Deb Fischer. And since Nebraska allocates one Electoral College vote per congressional district, the ruling could affect the district encompassing the state’s largest city of Omaha, where most of the formerly disenfranchised residents currently live, potentially tipping the scales of the presidential election as well.
The ruling from the Nebraska Supreme Court was celebrated by people who would have otherwise been restricted from voting this year.
“For so long, I was uncertain if my voice would truly count under this law. Today’s decision reaffirms the fundamental principle that every vote matters,” said Gregory Spung, one of the petitioners in the case who intends to register as an independent voter.
“It is a weight off my shoulders, and not just because of what it means for me,” said petitioner Jeremy Jonak, a Republican voter who was affected by the actions of Hilgers and Evnen. “Over the years, so many of us have earned a second chance. We live in every part of the state, and the truth is most of us are just trying to live our lives and leave the past behind us.”
Dakaria Larriett was driving a friend home at 3:00 in the morning when he saw the flash of a Michigan State Trooper’s siren. Although Larriett was stone-cold sober, he soon discovered this would not be enough to protect him. After accusing him of a minor traffic violation, Officer George Kanyuh began to speculate over Larriett’s sobriety. A lawsuit brought by Larriett alleges that, after subjecting Larriett to a series of sobriety field tests, Kanyuh spent over two minutes unsuccessfully looking for drugs in his patrol car to use as planted evidence against Larriett. Once this failed, Kanyuh and his partner, Matthew Okaiye, took Larriett into custody and forced him to endure even more humiliating ordeals at the police station—including requiring him to defecate in front of them. It’s only thanks to body camera footage that the truth of this incident was revealed, but there are countless cases of similar behavior by police across the country which has never come to light. Taya Graham and Stephen Janis of Police Accountability Report review the case and its implications, speaking directly with Dakaria Larriett about his ordeal.
Written by: Stephen Janis Production: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham 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. 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 we’ll achieve that goal by showing you this video of a bogus DUI stop that led to the false arrest of a man who is still suffering from the consequences of it. A harrowing encounter with Michigan State troopers that led to questionable charges, a humiliating search, and allegations of an officer attempting to plant drugs. But, it also calls into question the whole idea of how DUIs are investigated, all of which we will break down for you as we unpack yet another problematic use of police powers.
And 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, you know I read your comments and appreciate them. You see those little hearts I give out down there. And I’ve even started doing a comment of the week to show you all how much I really appreciate your thoughts and to show off what a great community we have.
And of course, we have to thank our corporate sponsor. Oh wait, that’s right, we don’t run ads or take corporate dollars, but you can donate below, and we have a Patreon Accountability Report, so if you feel inspired to donate, please do, because we don’t run ads or take those corporate dollars, so anything you can spare is truly appreciated. All right, we’ve gotten that out of the way.
Now, there is no crime more potentially destructive or dangerous than driving while drunk here at the Police Accountability Report, we support efforts by law enforcement to prevent it. However, we have also noticed a troubling trend, as we’ve reported, on questionable DUI arrests across the country. Sometimes it seems that police are overly eager to charge someone driving while drunk, overreach that can have devastating consequences for the people subject to it.
And no DUI stop embodies this problem more than the video I’m showing you right now. It depicts the highly-suspect arrest of a Michigan man who’s being put through a grueling field sobriety test. Despite passing every facet of it, he still ended up in handcuffs, but that was only the beginning of his ordeal. That’s because even after his detainment, police weren’t done subjecting him to the cruelty and violations of our criminal justice system. The details of which we will share with you shortly, but first, the arrest itself.
This story starts in Benton Harbor, Michigan in April of 2024. There, Dakarai Larriett was driving a friend home at 3:00 A.M. when he was pulled over by a Michigan State trooper for, ostensibly, not coming to a stop for a flashing red light. An accusation Dakarai firmly denies. However, from the beginning, the officer began accusing him of being drunk. Take a look.
Kanyuh:
Hey, how you doing?
Dakarai Larriett:
Good.
Kanyuh:
Good. You got a license on you?
Dakarai Larriett:
Yep, it’s in my bag.
Kanyuh:
In the back?
Dakarai Larriett:
In my bag.
Kanyuh:
Oh, go for it. Yeah, the reason I’m sobbing, there’s two red lights there. Make sure you come to a complete stop.
Thank you.
Where you coming from?
Dakarai Larriett:
St. Joe’s.
Kanyuh:
St. Joe? Where are you trying to get?
Dakarai Larriett:
I’m dropping him off right here.
Kanyuh:
Oh, okay. This address here? With the fence?
Okay. Do you have any paperwork for the vehicle?
Dakarai Larriett:
I’m sorry?
Kanyuh:
Any paperwork for the vehicle like registration insurance?
Dakarai Larriett:
I do.
Kanyuh:
Can I see that please?
Dakarai Larriett:
Sure.
Kanyuh:
Does alcohol impact your ability to drive today?
Dakarai Larriett:
[inaudible 00:03:51]
Kanyuh:
Okay. When was your last drink? Has it been at least two hours?
Dakarai Larriett:
Yes.
Kanyuh:
Okay. All right. Two hours you said? What was it specifically? Smelling fruity and a little bit of something else on you.
Dakarai Larriett:
There was no alcohol in on me.
Kanyuh:
I can smell it on your breath. Something fruity like what were you drinking?
Dakarai Larriett:
There was no alcohol in here.
Kanyuh:
No? But it’s been at least two hours.
Dakarai Larriett:
There’s no alcohol on me.
Kanyuh:
All righty. Just hop out for me. I’m going to verify, okay.
Taya Graham:
Now Dakarai again politely denied the accusations. As you can see, he’s calm and collected in his answers. The officer did not accuse him of driving recklessly or swerving, instead, he simply ordered Dakarai to get out of the car as he continued to question him. Let’s watch.
Kanyuh:
You do the open carry for protection at all or no?
Dakarai Larriett:
I don’t.
Kanyuh:
Okay. You should, it’s kind of crazy out here. Right back this way for me.
Why are you changing your story on that? I said two hours, and then I said I smell it on your breath, and now you’re denying it at all that’s suspicious to me.
Dakarai Larriett:
I am not commenting any further. I’m not [inaudible 00:05:13].
Kanyuh:
Okay.
Taya Graham:
And so, it appears that based on a “fruity” smell and Dakarai invoking his right not to answer questions, the officer begins what can only be called the most potentially treacherous aspect of American DUI enforcement: the field sobriety test.
Now I want to make something clear before we watch, field sobriety tests are not as scientific as they’re portrayed. The six studies cited by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to justify the use of these tests were not peer reviewed, and reveal a harrowing number of false positives anywhere between 20-40% of the time. Nevertheless, it has become a key tool of law enforcement even though it is important to note that you can refuse to take it. Still, unfortunately, Dakarai is put through a grueling battery of examinations starting with the horizontal gaze test.
Kanyuh:
And then arms down at your side like a pencil dive. Yep, just remain like that and then don’t move until I tie you move. Okay? Do you understand those instructions?
Dakarai Larriett:
Yes.
Kanyuh:
Okay. Is there any reason why you couldn’t stand there like that?
Dakarai Larriett:
No.
Kanyuh:
Okay. Weird question I got to ask you. I’m going to check your eyes. What I want you to do is just follow the tip of my finger with only your eyes. Do not move your head, okay? Do you understand?
Is there any reason you couldn’t do that?
Dakarai Larriett:
No.
Kanyuh:
Okay. Are you wearing contacts right now?
Dakarai Larriett:
I am.
Kanyuh:
Okay. Same thing, just keep following with your eyes and only your eyes. You got to rub your eyes or something?
Dakarai Larriett:
No.
Kanyuh:
Okay. You’re just not tracking it.
How long you had your contacts in?
Dakarai Larriett:
An hour or so.
Kanyuh:
Hour or so? So they’re not dry or anything?
Dakarai Larriett:
They’re fine.
Kanyuh:
They’re fine? Okay.
Taya Graham:
Next, the officer asked Dakarai to do the so-called Walk-and-Turn Test, an assessment, by the way, that can generate false positives 30% of the time and, truthfully, isn’t easy. Take a look.
Kanyuh:
Good.
See this line here?
Yeah, we can use this line.
See this crack? Go ahead and stand on the crack with your left foot on it, and then your right foot in front of it, heel to toe. See how mine are heel to toe? Go ahead and do so.
When I tell you to do so, you’re going to take nine steps heel to toe, when you get to your ninth step, I want you to turn, taking a series of small steps, come nine heel-to-toe steps, back up that line, all the way to nine. It’s important you’re keeping your arms down at your side, you’re looking down at your toe, and you’re counting out loud. When you begin the test, don’t stop until you’ve completed it.
Taya Graham:
Now, even though he performs the test meticulously, the officer persists in putting him through even more stressful examinations. At this point it seems crystal clear Dakarai has no problem with doing exactly what the officer demands, but he still makes him continue.
Kanyuh:
Do you understand those instructions?
Dakarai Larriett:
Yes.
Kanyuh:
Okay. Is there any reason why you couldn’t do that?
Dakarai Larriett:
I don’t think so.
Kanyuh:
Okay, I’ll stand back here, and whenever you’re ready, you may begin.
Dakarai Larriett:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 3, 9.
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.
Kanyuh:
Good.
Taya Graham:
But now, the officer ups the ante. That’s because even though Dakarai passes the so-called Standard Field Sobriety test endorsed by the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration, the officer turns to a battery of non-standard tests that are even less scientific, raising even more questions about the process that includes asking him to recite the alphabet. Let’s listen.
Kanyuh:
So you know your alphabet? Okay, I’m not having you say it backwards, that’s not a real thing. Can you say your alphabet starting at A as in Adam, stop at R as in Robert, A to R. Do you have that ability? Okay, go ahead and do so.
Dakarai Larriett:
A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P-Q-R.
Kanyuh:
Good.
Taya Graham:
Then, venturing further into non-scientific territory, he asked Dakarai to count backwards.
Kanyuh:
Starting at the number 99. Can you count backwards from 99 to 81?
Dakarai Larriett:
99, 98, 97, 96, 95, 94, 93, 92, 91, 90…
Taya Graham:
But Officer Kanyuh is not done, not hardly, because even though Dakarai passed each test flawlessly, the troop returns to another questionable exam, the One-Leg Stand Test, which once again has been accused of being non-scientific and inaccurate, 30% of the time.
Kanyuh:
I want you to stand just like this again, the same drama we’ve always been doing. Good. Remain like that and then don’t move ’til how to move, okay? Do you understand these instructions? Okay. Is there any reason why you couldn’t do this? No? Okay. Whenever you’re ready, you may begin.
Dakarai Larriett:
[inaudible 00:10:22].
Kanyuh:
Remember to look down at that toe.
Dakarai Larriett:
[inaudible 00:10:36].
Taya Graham:
Now as each of these tests unfold one after another, I want you to think about how Dakarai is feeling.
First, he’s flawlessly following orders. One can only imagine how gut-wrenching it is taking these vague, imprecise, if not scientifically questionable, tests with your life hanging in the balance.
And even though he is clearly under duress, he is respectful and steady, and he is obviously not drunk and not high, and yet the endurance test continues with another scientifically-sketchy request that requires him to decide when 30 seconds has elapsed. Just watch.
Kanyuh:
Go ahead and just take one step forward. Good. Hit same heels and toes touching just like this. Arms down at the side. When I tell you to do so, I want you to tilt your head back, close your eyes, and when you believe 30 seconds has passed, bring your head forward and say stop. Okay. Does that…
Dakarai Larriett:
Closing my eyes?
Kanyuh:
Yep, closing your eyes. When you believe 30 seconds has passed, look forward, say stop. You understand the instructions?
Dakarai Larriett:
I think so.
Kanyuh:
Okay. Is there any reason why you couldn’t do that?
Dakarai Larriett:
No.
Kanyuh:
Okay. Whenever you’re ready, begin.
How much time was that?
Dakarai Larriett:
About 30 seconds.
Kanyuh:
And then how’d you get there?
Dakarai Larriett:
I’m sorry?
Kanyuh:
Did you count 1, 2, 3? You didn’t do one Mississippi or anything like that?
Dakarai Larriett:
No.
Kanyuh:
Okay. So just 1, 2, 3. Okay, cool.
Taya Graham:
And there’s more. Yes, there’s more. The officer, not satisfied, veers into another non-standard test known as the Finger-to-Nose test, which again is non-standard and is not an accepted test from the National Highway Safety Administration. Still the officer persists. Just look.
Kanyuh:
You’re going to keep your hands down to your side, and I’m going to call out an arm, so if I say left, you’re going to take your left arm… This is the tip of your finger. This is the tip of your finger and this is the pad of your finger. Okay? This is the difference. I want you to take the tip of your finger, the tip and touch, the tip of your nose.
Go ahead and tilt your head back and close your eyes. Left, right, left, right, right, left. Good. You follow me.
Taya Graham:
And finally, the officer asks Dakarai to incriminate himself, requiring that he assess his own drunkenness even though it appears he has passed every single test thrown at him. Just listen.
Kanyuh:
On a scale of zero to five, as far as five being unsafe to operate a motor vehicles the most drunk and high you’ve ever been, and then zero being sober, where are you at right now?
Dakarai Larriett:
I don’t know. Is that relevant? I really know what you’re talking about.
Kanyuh:
It is relevant, but if you don’t want to answer it, I don’t care.
Dakarai Larriett:
I have not had any alcohol.
Kanyuh:
Not had any alcohol.
Dakarai Larriett:
I have not.
Kanyuh:
Okay. Now how about marijuana? Did you have had that?
Dakarai Larriett:
Excuse me?
Kanyuh:
Marijuana?
Dakarai Larriett:
I’m sorry, I didn’t understand. What did you say?
Kanyuh:
I said how about marijuana?
Dakarai Larriett:
No.
Kanyuh:
No marijuana? No.
Dakarai Larriett:
Okay. You want to hang out right here for me?
Taya Graham:
Now, apparently the officer has already reached his conclusion about Dakarai’s condition. You can listen here as he discusses it with another trooper who just arrived on the scene. It’s also a rare glimpse into how officers interpret a field sobriety test. Even if, for all intents and purposes, you passed, the point is it seems that no one passes.
Kanyuh:
Booze and marijuana. His eyelids fluttered worse than that guy’s.
Okaiye:
He’s got neck pulsation too.
Kanyuh:
He had numerous clues on the walk and turn like crazy
Okaiye:
I didn’t catch the standard, but you said walk and turn one night thing and all that?
Kanyuh:
One night stand was the wobbles [inaudible 00:14:52] was 23 seconds, fly with flutter, sways. Finger-nose. Terrible.
Okaiye:
What’s all that? Romberg?
Kanyuh:
99 to 81, he stopped at 89. So even his mental, short-term memory. He’s going to refuse and then search warrant, but…
Okaiye:
He’s showing?
Kanyuh:
In the driving.
Okaiye:
What do you think you? You think is just number [inaudible 00:15:14]?
Kanyuh:
I think he’s got a medication he’s not telling…
Okaiye:
He’s got medication and I’m guessing it’s a medication for… He may be… I think he’s got a medication for that. And with that would be consuming substances like THC, marijuana, alcohol, whatever. You know what that does.
Kanyuh:
Yeah.
Okaiye:
Explaining what you’re seeing.
Kanyuh:
His driving behavior, I saw lack of smooth pursuit, but he wasn’t very good at following my finger.
Okaiye:
Lack of smooth, and divided attention, abilities affected. Whenever you speak with him, he’s looking away and moving his head, so I think it’s a combination of THC for sure. I didn’t really evaluate him, but you can definitely see impairment for THC. And then I think in his medications, describing medications affecting it, too. It’s performing effects of I’m going to take them,
Taya Graham:
But let me play some audio for you here that brought to Kari a lot of concern. Apparently at roughly 3:25, officer Kanyuh can be seen on body cam rifling through the trunk of his squad car for about two minutes, and then the video goes dark. During those moments. Officer Okaiye seems to say, “Drugs?” And Officer Kanyuh responds, “I don’t think I have any, I had a stash in your somewhere, but I don’t know where it’s at.”
But you take a listen and judge for yourself.
Kanyuh:
I don’t think I have any.
Okaiye:
[inaudible 00:16:59] in the box.
Kanyuh:
Yeah, I had a stash in here somewhere. I don’t even know where it’s at. [inaudible 00:17:11] Don’t know why he thought, but yeah, I’m assuming weed and alcohol.
Taya Graham:
Now I am unfamiliar with any part of a field sobriety test where an officer needs to search for a stash in his own patrol car, but perhaps Michigan State troopers have a unique investigative technique.
And I do understand, as I said before, that drunk driving is incredibly destructive, but it’s equally pernicious to accuse someone of it who’s ostensibly not guilty, and perhaps even worse is to fabricate a crime to make the innocent guilty. Remember, our system is designed to protect the innocent, and yet those safeguards fail as you what the officer does next when he says, “I’m going to take him.”
Kanyuh:
Is it Dakarai? Am I saying that wrong?
Dakarai Larriett:
It’s Dakarai.
Kanyuh:
Darkarai, I told you the reason for the stop was there’s two red lights. Okay? I know they’re flashing, but that’s still, you have to treat it like a stop sign at nighttime. At midnight the lights turn from red to flashing. Flashing red still means stop.
I walk up to the car and I can smell alcohol, whether it’s you or your passenger, that’s why I asked the question, “Have you been drinking?” To which you responded it was two hours ago, and then you denied drinking alcohol.
Dakarai Larriett:
Actually what you stated was, “Was it at least two hours?” Something like that. You kind of inferred something, but no, I’ve not been drinking.
Kanyuh:
Well, I didn’t mean to give you a leading question.
Dakarai Larriett:
No, but to be clear, I have not been drinking.
Kanyuh:
You haven’t had any alcohol?
Dakarai Larriett:
I did stop. Correct. And I did stop at each of those lights.
Kanyuh:
I do have an on camera.
Dakarai Larriett:
Okay.
Kanyuh:
So it is recorded.
Dakarai Larriett:
All right.
Kanyuh:
Along with all my sobriety evaluations, which have led me to determine you are under the influence and driving. So now I have to bring you in for a blood draw, and then you have to sit a detox window. I can’t let you operate safely, because I don’t believe that you can.
Dakarai Larriett:
Please explain to me what test I failed.
Kanyuh:
Well, they’re not pass or fail, okay? But I’m noticing several signs of divided attention, not being able to focus on the instructions as I’ve given them.
Dakarai Larriett:
Well, I’m being tired.
Kanyuh:
And then fine motor skills being impaired, such as not being able to touch the heel to toe, the rigid body movements, you have sway, and on and on and on. I’ll type up a whole, probably be an eight-page report on this. And then here’s the deal, if you’re right and there’s nothing in your body, everything gets thrown out.
Taya Graham:
He said, “If I’m wrong.” Well that’s an awfully big if, and you will soon learn what happened when Dakarai was tested when we speak to him, and what we showed was just the beginning of the way that Dakarai’s rights and body were violated by these troopers and he will share what happened to him in jail.
But first I’m joined by my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, who’s been looking into the case and going through the documents to report back to us. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me.
Stephen Janis:
Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham:
So, Stephen, what were the results of the blood test? Was the officer wrong?
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, it turns out the officer was absolutely wrong. The blood test showed no sign of any alcohol or anything else. So really it was a completely negative and actually inaccurate assessment of Dakarai’s state at that time. And so really it shows how flawed these systems are for evaluating people. And so yeah, absolutely nothing, zero, negative, although it took five months to find out.
Taya Graham:
Can you discuss some of the questions surrounding the field sobriety tests and what concerns it raises in these types of cases?
Stephen Janis:
Well, I think one of the concerns it raises is pretty simple. You have something masquerading a science that isn’t as scientific as it seems.
If you look at the studies, they were controlled environments that aren’t similar to what happens when you’re out in the field, and they’re also highly inaccurate, like showing inaccuracy rates of sometimes up to 35%. So I think it’s very, very, very critical to look at these with a cautious eye and not be so willing to embrace an officer’s interpretation of some very subjective test and say, “Well that person is drunk.”
Taya Graham:
Stephen, you also researched a strange statement the officer made, which is that he had over 800 hours of field sobriety training.
Okaiye:
Well, like I said, we’re trained in standardized field sobriety evaluations. We’ve had over 800 hours that, and let’s say he’s wrong, let’s say I’m wrong, let’s say that you are completely fine. In our professional opinion through our training experience, we don’t believe you can operate their motor vehicle safely, so it’s our job as we swore to take an oath to make sure that you get home and everybody else gets home safe. We’re not going to chance it.
What we’re going to have to do is we’ll allow you to park your vehicle, let your friend park your vehicle, whatever, we’re not trying to cost you the money, but we do have to take you to hospital, make sure you’re okay, because the substance we believe you’re taking with your medication, and then get the blood draw done. After blood draw is done, you’ll be detoxed and be free to go. There’s no added charges, nothing like that.
Taya Graham:
We researched the updated Michigan field sobriety test. Does that number sound right to you?
Stephen Janis:
Taya, it’s really interesting. What’s required right now is 24 hours of training for officers, including field training and some classwork, so 800 hours seems highly excessive. The guy really is doing a lot of time in the classroom. I don’t know if that really measures up, or if we can say that’s actually accurate, but right now the standard is much, much lower, and so I think questions remain about this entire arrest.
Taya Graham:
So do you have any insight into why these field tests occur at all? I, Wouldn’t it be easier just to do a breath, or urine, or blood tests and just let the science speak for itself?
Stephen Janis:
Well, I think that’s the big, big question. I know officers need tools to evaluate people, and they need tools to come up with probable cause, but we’ve watched so many of these where there’s so many questions and people really seem to pass them on every ostensible measure, and yet they still end up being arrested. So I think there needs to be a full and thorough evaluation of this process to make sure it’s really generating the results that are helpful in the sense that you’re arresting drunk drivers, but not innocent people, Taya.
Taya Graham:
And now to learn what happened after he was detained, the humiliation he endured at the hands of police and the consequences for him. Since I’m joined by Dakarai Larriett. Dakarai, thank you so much for joining me.
Dakarai Larriett:
Thank you so much for having me.
Taya Graham:
So tell me how this begins. Where were you headed before you were pulled over?
Dakarai Larriett:
Thanks for asking. So I was just dropping a friend off at his home.
Taya Graham:
When you were pulled over, how did the officer approach you? Did he describe why you were pulled over?
Dakarai Larriett:
So when he pulled me over, he mentioned that he believed I ran some blinking red lights a couple of miles away.
Taya Graham:
So the officer put you through a sobriety test. Can you describe what that was like for you?
Dakarai Larriett:
Well, it’s funny, I used to be a ballet dancer, and studied at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, and the way he was describing all of the steps, I thought to myself, “Is this a dance routine?”
It started out initially as an inspection of my eyes and my ability to follow his finger, I believe. And from there it became standing in one place, counting, I guess determining my perception of time and space, and a very complex heel-toe routine. I was asked, do I know the alphabet? And from there I had to do A through R. I did a number countdown and that was just with Officer Kanyuh. Officer Okaiye also inspected me and asked a number of different questions about my ability to drive.
Taya Graham:
I’ve tested myself and my friends stone-cold sober sobriety tests and found them difficult. What was going through your mind during this extensive test?
Dakarai Larriett:
So, I was wearing pajamas. It was 3:00 A.M. I planned to drop my buddy off and then hit right back to the house and go to sleep. So I was not dressed for the weather. We have to remember this was Michigan on April 10th, it’s still winter weather, and I was shivering. I was in this dark alley. It was scary. I thought I was about to be murdered, frankly.
So imagine having to do those tests and you’re thinking this is your last moment on this planet. I was thinking of my family. I had been in Cleveland, Ohio earlier that day for the solar eclipse, and spent some time with my sister, and it just really hit me that that might’ve been my last time seeing her or any of my family members, and I thought about my dog.
Taya Graham:
I’m so sorry.
Dakarai Larriett:
Sorry.
Taya Graham:
I know it’s traumatizing.
Dakarai Larriett:
My dog was in daycare, because I was in Cleveland for the weekend for the eclipse and I was just thinking, “What if my dog was at home by himself all this time when something happened to him?” He’s a nearly thirteen-year-old dog, he’s a senior dog, I’m sorry.
Taya Graham:
Trooper Kanyuh said you were wobbling excessively, that you fluttered and swayed during the one leg stand, and that your walk and turn were terrible, and that there were numerous clues that you were intoxicated. In truth, it’s a blessing to have the body camera, because it shows that you held your leg in the exact position you wanted for 26 seconds, on one foot, with not a single error.
When you listen to the body camera, does it shock you to hear what the officer was saying and how he mischaracterized what happened?
Dakarai Larriett:
I guess the other interesting thing for me, and I guess surprise if you will, was what was happening to my friend in the passenger seat. So, that is not in the video that has gone public, and I have not shared that body cam video, because it is obviously altered. All the videos are altered.
In fact, I made my freedom of Information Act request two, three days after this incident. It took them five months to give me video, and there are missing chunks in the video, audio between the officers even when they’re standing next to each other is inconsistent. So it sounds like it was dubbed, and there are sections that are completely missing audio. You can tell they were obsessed with the car, “Nice car.”
It was just humiliation and my survival mechanism was, “Dakarai, you’re not going to win this battle in a dark alley at 3:00 A.M. two cops. You will not. Be quiet, comply. You can win the war because you are going to have all the evidence on your side. You’re sober, you don’t use drugs. All the evidence is going to support your side of the story.”
And I guess that’s why I was so heartbroken when I heard the word “drugs” uttered by Okaiye because then I thought, “Well you can’t even win when you’re doing the right thing. If they had just found the stash, I would still be in jail and my life would be ruined.”
Taya Graham:
So if I understand correctly, you were pressured into a blood draw at the hospital. It was the best thing, considering that you had no drugs in your system, but still you were pressured into it.
Dakarai Larriett:
Yes, I was absolutely pressured to do the blood draw.
And how did I arrive at the decision to do it? Well, I was told that I would get six points on my license and a suspension if I did not comply. But I thought it was so odd that they wouldn’t just give me a breathalyzer, like something objective, besides a dance routine.
Taya Graham:
The way the officers treated you, I thought, was very demeaning, and I hate to bring this up, but you were accused of swallowing drugs and you were made to go to the bathroom in front of Trooper Kanyuh. This officer appeared very polite on the early body camera, but forcing you to do this is violating.
Dakarai Larriett:
Going into the jail, it’s a typical booking process As one was seen on TV, because I’ve never been through this process before, ever, never been stopped like this, but name, all my identifying factors, et cetera, and fingerprints. All that is collected. And then they put me in this machine that looks like something from TSA and they are scanning me, I presume for any type of contraband.
And there is a novice that is running the machine, and very unclear on how to operate it and they identify what they called an anomaly. And from there on throughout the night, I am being sent through this machine, I presume x-rays, again, and again, and again. So I’m not even really lodged, if you will, in the jail. I go to the cell, I come back, I go to the cell, I come back.
Finally, they brought on a technician that seemed like she actually knew what she was doing. She looks at it and she goes, oh, those are gas bubbles. In the midst of all of this going on, Kanyuh goes, “That looks like a bag of drugs! Confess now or you’re going to face a trafficking charge, too!” At some point I’m going back and forth, back and forth to the cell, and I asked if I could use the restroom.
Kanyuh comes behind me and says that’s where I need to go. It’s just this open toilet that anyone in the room can see and he yells, “Don’t flush!” It was so dehumanizing.
Taya Graham:
It seems to me the officer is very performative in his behavior of being a good guy and a professional on camera, but in the jail he really does change.
Dakarai Larriett:
A couple of follow-ups on that.
So, when he was playing the good guy, good cop and Okaiye obviously tried to do it as well, I just want to go back to something you said. They offered to park my car for me. And I was discussing this with the passenger this morning, and we both just like light bulb moment realized that would’ve been the opportunity to plant.
Taya Graham:
So something that concerns me, is that for about two minutes the officer’s really been searching through his patrol car and then he says to another officer that you seem confused, and then he says he’s trying to find his stash. What do you think this means?
Dakarai Larriett:
It’s a hundred percent drugs, and it’s all written there in very plain, easy-to-understand language not even coded. And you really have to think about not only do we have that which is mind-boggling, but the context of it all.
So the context is he spent two minutes digging through his cop car, the backseat, then he moved to the trunk, whatever he was looking for, he wanted it badly. Okaiye comes around to the back of the car probably trying to figure out what’s going on with this guy, because think about it, I’ve been standing in the cold, waiting after the sobriety test while he’s fumbling around in the car.
So Okaiye comes around to see what’s going on. He says “drugs.” Kanyuh responds, “I don’t think I have any, I knew I had a stash in here.” So he connects drugs to stash. Then there’s a little bit of mumbling, but listen to it intently. They then basically make a comment to each other that I’m going to refuse anyway, meaning I would refuse an opportunity for them to get in my car, to search my car, to park my car, and that’s when they ultimately decide “We’ll just charge him on weed and alcohol.”
Taya Graham:
Did their dash camera show that you allegedly ran through this flashing red light? You calmly told them you committed no moving violations. Can you tell me what the dash camera actually showed?
Dakarai Larriett:
I believe the light they’re referring to was completely green, so that one was thrown out. And then the light that they alleged that I did not stop at, the one that actually was red, I pulled two, I paused, I put my signal on and I turned.
Taya Graham:
I read that it took over five months for you to receive your negative drug and alcohol results. Is that correct?
Dakarai Larriett:
At the hospital, I immediately tested negative for alcohol, and because the hospital was connected to my own healthcare plan, I managed to get that report in real time, and pulled it for myself when I got home that afternoon. And then, of course, they confirmed the result to me when I asked at the jail.
Now in terms of getting the drug test results and Michigan State Police’s version of the alcohol test results, that did not happen until the very end of September. But if you look at the timeline in the request for testing, they knew by middle of April that everything was negative, and it seems like they continued to test, and test, and test. I don’t know if that’s a standard procedure or they were just incredulous that I was negative.
Taya Graham:
Can you tell me what you went through during that time, that five months waiting to be proven fully innocent? It must have been incredibly stressful.
Dakarai Larriett:
My first responsibility was to confirm that there was not a criminal matter at all against me, and the case actually was thrown out within a week, but they refused to give me a receipt or confirmation or anything like that until I received that formal test. But I still haven’t received anything that says that the case is a hundred percent closed. I have not.
So two and a half months I did not have a plastic driver’s license card, couldn’t rent a car. I traveled extensively, and I would contact the sergeant, who I believed to be the bosses of the two troopers, almost weekly. Like, “Hey, what’s going on? Did you guys get the results? This is really inconveniencing my life.” And I would get answers that were very opaque, like, “we’re still working on your test” which really confused me and worried me that there was some tampering happening.
Taya Graham:
What do you want as the result of sharing your experience? What do you hope that outcome will be?
Dakarai Larriett:
I made a commitment that when I was mistreated I would use my resources, my privilege, to help those behind me. And I could have easily just walked away, and took my driver’s license, and been fine, but I decided I have got to expose this, I’ve got to get these troopers off the streets, and I’ve already reached out to some major, major law firms and encouraged them to look into what’s going on in Southwest Michigan. I am already protected. I’m not under any criminal investigation, but when I was in that jail, I knew that there were innocent people in there.
Taya Graham:
If you could speak directly to the troopers who arrested and harassed you, what would you want to say to them? What would you want to tell them if you knew they were listening to you right now?
Dakarai Larriett:
I would want them to know that I’m a person. I’m a human being. People care about me. Think about that. Think about what you’re supposed to be doing in your job. You’re supposed to be taking care of people protecting, not inventing crimes.
Taya Graham:
Now, I want to reiterate what I said at the beginning of the show, drunk driving is a dangerous and destructive crime. And I, for one, understand why police departments and the public emphasize efforts to thwart it. Drunk driving deaths account for roughly one third of all traffic fatalities every year. Roughly 11,000 died in 2023 due to people driving while intoxicated.
But also, I think that what we witnessed in the video of Dakarai’s arrest shows the pitfalls of abandoning common sense and sound science as we try to prevent it, or more precisely what happens when a zeal to address a problem with cops and cuffs overwhelms common sense and the nuance that comes with it.
This is certainly not the only false DUI arrest we have covered. There were the bogus charges against a Dallas firefighter Thomas C, who was forced to retire from his lifelong job as a first responder when officers used another specious field sobriety test to accuse him of driving under the influence, because he freely admitted using his doctor-prescribed Adderall. It took him two years to get his test results, which, although they were negative or too late to save his job.
Or we shared the story of Harris Elias of Colorado, a professional pilot who was pulled over and again, thanks to a biased interpretation of a field sobriety test, ended up with false DUI charges, charges that took months to clear, that threatened his ability to do his job, and later resulted in a major civil rights lawsuit.
All of these share some common problems. Cops are overly eager to bring DUI charges, and because of that, ignoring the evidence that is contrary to their opinions. Add to that a very subjective and flawed field sobriety test, a diagnostic process that seems easily susceptible to the concept of confirmation bias, where the officer administering the test already believes the subject is intoxicated, and thus interprets the results to confirm what he already believes, no matter how the person performs.
And yes, there are imperatives that often lead to the incarceration of the innocent. Well-intentioned organizations like MADD, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, run DUI Ticket Competitions that frequently encourage officers to hand out DUIs in order to receive grants, awards, public acclaim, and promotions. Even the most wholesome goals can be warped when law enforcement is incentivized by quotas and financial rewards.
But I believe something else lies deeper at the very root of these bogus arrests we’ve covered, something more profound than just an officer making a bad decision, or not maintaining an open mind about how to enforce the law. I believe that flawed field sobriety tests are just like the other unjust forms of governance that were originally designed to solve a problem, but in the end seem only to perpetuate them. So what do I mean?
Well, Stephen and I have spent a great deal of time reporting across the country on a variety of issues, and that includes our hometown of Baltimore where we spent five years documenting the use of tax breaks to spur development. As you may or may not know, Baltimore is a city beset by poverty and housing segregation that has struggled to stem population loss. It’s often deemed one of the most violent cities in America, and it has some of the highest concentrations of poverty, with thousands of abandoned homes, and to top it all off the highest property tax rate in the state, almost double the surrounding counties.
Put simply much of Baltimore is part of America’s great inequality machine, incapable of producing enough affordable housing or reasonably priced healthcare for all of us, while increasing the amount of wealth concentrated among the top 1%, a symbol in many ways for how our current system consistently fails to address the needs of the many. And to my point about our flawed system for catching drunk drivers, Baltimore’s response has been equally flawed in addressing the root problem that afflicts our community.
As we outlined in our documentary Tax Broke, one of the city’s primary solutions to population loss has been to award huge tax breaks to these developers. These carve-outs have allowed the wealthiest suburban builders to avoid paying the high rate that the city’s working class is regularly subjected to.
And this is no pittance. Some estimate the city has given away billions in future revenues in order to build luxury developments that ironically do not include affordable housing. Instead, future tax revenue that should help pay for critical services and investment in the city’s future has been handed over to the already wealthy.
Now of course, you’re probably asking at this point, “Taya, what are you talking about? How are tax breaks for development related to unfounded DUI arrests? What on earth are the commonalities between a bad development strategy and an overeager DUI cop?” Well hear me out.
Here’s where it all ties together, and I will even give it a title: America is the Land of the Perverse Incentive. In other words, our country and its great neoliberal project have abandoned the idea that the government can do good and productive things. Instead, the elites have exchanged that idea for the false narrative that only incentives laden with cash can prompt real productive behavior.
In this land of perverse incentives, medical companies are incentivized to bill people for diseases that they do not have. As stated in this report by the Wall Street Journal that found billions of dollars spent on patients who did not have the underlying disease that the medical insurers submitted to the government.
In the land of perverse incentives, private equity firms take over stable companies and load them up with debt so they can pay themselves a dividend. Then, they fire staff and neglect investing in the firm itself, selling a carcass to Wall Street for the vultures.
In the land of perverse incentives, people make more money trading money than they do building things like affordable housing. In fact, Wall Street creates huge funds to purchase single-family homes across the country and then they jack up rents, so middle-class families are stuck without options.
And of course, in the land of perverse incentives, cops who make more DOI arrests are given awards, and departments that make more drunk driving stops are given more money, and thus we have the stories we reported before. And finally, in the land of perverse incentives, one of the poorest cities in the country has doled out billions in tax breaks to wealthy developers who don’t need it, in fact, it’s so absurd that luxury condos on top of the Four Seasons hotel in Baltimore received millions in tax breaks for environmental mediation, even though the records we uncovered showed none was done, and that the condos in question were literally hundreds of feet above the ground where the non-existent pollution was actually supposed to be.
All of this is why we end up with sketchy DOI arrests based on shaky science, or a poor city that can’t build affordable housing, but can fund wealthy developers to build luxury apartments. Why a city rocked with poverty is neglected, while a system that monetizes the sick, so wealthy Wall Street investors can get rich over billing them and pushing them into bankruptcy, is called, ironically, health care.
It’s this thread that connects all the dots of the realities that often seem to contradict themselves. Why would the wealthiest country in the world not be able to deliver affordable medical care to all who need it? And why would one of the poorest cities in the country not be able to build affordable housing if it is at the same time capable of giving away a billion dollars of tax revenue to the ultra rich?
All of these questions are worth asking, because the outcomes are just so difficult to comprehend. Being sick should not be a prerequisite to bankruptcy. Being poor should not mean you pay higher taxes than someone who is unfathomably wealthy. Being sober, by having difficulty balancing on one leg, which was decidedly not the case with our guest, should not lead to an arrest charge and a shattered life.
These apparent destructive inadequacies of governance affect all of us. This inability to use the resources of the people to serve the people ensures that we all suffer. This type of incentivized mayhem that finds form in bad policing should make us all question the priority of those who hold and wield the power. It’s incumbent upon us to hold them accountable and remind them that they serve us, not the other way around.
I would like to thank my guest, Dakarai, for coming forward, courageously sharing his experience and shining a light on this abuse of power. Thank you so much for speaking with us.
And of course, I have to thank Intrepid reporter Stephen Janis for his writing, research and editing on this piece. Thank you, Stephen.
Stephen Janis:
Taya, thanks having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham:
And I want to thank mods of the show, Holy D and Lacey R for their support. Thank you.
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 live stream, especially Patreon Associate Producers, John E.R., David K, Louis P, and our super friends, Shane B, Pineapple Girl, Chris R, Matter of Rights, and Angela True.
And I want you to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct, please email it to us privately at par@therealnews 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 can actually help our guests, and you know I read your comments and I really appreciate them.
And of course, once again, we have to thank our corporate sponsor. Wait, that’s right, we don’t have a corporate sponsor. We don’t take corporate dollars. We don’t run ads, but we do have a Patreon, Accountability Reports. So if you feel inspired to donate, please do. You know you never see an ad on this channel, and we’re never going to be sponsored, so anything you can spare is truly appreciated.
My name is Taya Graham and I am your host of the Police Accountability Report. Please, be safe out there.
On the heels of 2023, a year when Baltimore’s annual homicide number significantly declined for the first time in nearly a decade, the Baltimore Police held a press conference to celebrate what public officials and the Department of Justice called “a significant milestone.”
That early 2024 “milestone”: two of the many reforms required by the federal consent decree—the result of a civil rights investigation following the 2015 police killing of Freddie Gray—were recently completed to the approval of the Department of Justice. These completed reforms are related to transporting people in police custody and “officer support and wellness practices.”
At the press conference, City Solicitor Ebony Thompson suggested that 2023’s violence reduction was the result of these reforms. “This milestone is occurring at a time when the city is achieving a recent and historic reduction in violent crime,” Thompson said, calling the reforms “a testament to the effectiveness of constitutional and community focused policing.”
The arrest data in Open Baltimore demonstrates that, contrary to what would be expected, data gathering by police has become less comprehensive and more faulty since the implementation of the federal consent decree.
Another way of looking at this “milestone”: over the previous seven years, only around 5% of the consent decree-mandated reforms have been completed. Following the 2015 death of Freddie Gray, a Department of Justice civil rights investigation revealed a staggering pattern and practice of civil rights violations and discriminatory policing. As a result of that investigation, the Baltimore Police Department entered into a federal consent decree in April 2017. Seven years later, the most significant elements of the consent decree, regarding police misconduct (including use of force), have barely even begun. WYPR reported that “about 15% of the decree hasn’t been touched yet.”
This means the claim being made, really, is that murders have declined because police are reducing the number of “rough rides” and also receiving more wellness support—a specious connection, and an example of how reform is regularly misrepresented to the public by political leaders and police.
As the Baltimore Police Department goes through another year under the consent decree, with changes to the department slow going, TRNN found that Baltimore data transparency and retention has gotten worse and its numbers have become increasingly unreliable.
The Baltimore City Police Department provides Open Baltimore, the city’s publicly accessible data hub, with data about crime and police activity. Baltimore’s political leaders and police pride themselves on data access and transparency. These datasets are often used as research tools for citizens, reporters, and those in policy development and law enforcement. Indeed, everyone is encouraged to consult Open Baltimore.
But we found these datasets to be deeply flawed in ways that would make any conclusions drawn from them unsound—especially for governance and policing. The arrest data in Open Baltimore demonstrates that, contrary to what would be expected, data gathering by police has become less comprehensive and more faulty since the implementation of the federal consent decree.
Specifically, there are significant differences between Open Baltimore arrest data and Uniform Crime Report data (UCR). UCR is provided to the FBI by law enforcement offices all over the country each year and was, for decades, the most referenced and most frequently cited dataset about crime. There are flaws with UCR, including the problem with all law enforcement data: it is self-reported by law enforcement.
That said, UCR data for 1990-2020 was provided to TRNN by Baltimore Police via a public information request, making it the most comprehensive data set available for such a long period of time.
The number of arrests recorded in Open Baltimore data varies significantly from the numbers in UCR, often by thousands. Baltimore Police provide data to both the FBI and Open Baltimore, making the cause of differences between the two datasets especially confounding. Additionally, there are a significant number of arrests not included in the Open Baltimore dataset, and the differences between the numbers recorded in UCR and Open Baltimore data have widened over time. Arrests seemingly disappear from Open Baltimore.
In February 2023, we pulled an arrest data file from Open Baltimore. In the arrest data between the years 2010-2020, a total of 335,805 arrests were shown.
That same arrest file was pulled four months later in June 2023. There were 386 fewer arrests.
An additional data analysis was completed in January 2024. The same trend continued, at a much greater rate. In the course of nearly a year, more than 4,300 arrests were removed from the total for 2010-2020.
Year
# of arrests 2/8/23
# of arrests 6/23/23
# of arrests 1/24/24
Difference (Feb. 2023-June 2023)
Difference (Feb. 2023-Jan. 2024)
2010
45,560
45,515
45,224
-45
-336
2011
43,704
43,667
43,364
-37
-340
2012
42,681
42,632
42,333
-49
-348
2013
39,866
39,821
39,542
-45
-324
2014
37,495
37,447
37,078
-48
-417
2015
26,084
26,059
25,732
-25
-352
2016
23,420
23,402
23,089
-18
-331
2017
22,493
22,428
21,989
-65
-504
2018
20,940
20,912
20,543
-28
-397
2019
19,622
19,601
19,407
-21
-215
2020
13,940
13,935
13,162
-5
-778
Total
355,805
335,419
331,463
-386
-4342
Table 1: Total arrests recorded for years 2010-2020 as retrieved Feb. 2023 vs June 2023 vs. Jan. 2024 from Open Baltimore.
When we spoke to Baltimore City employees, including representatives from Open Baltimore and Baltimore Police, their reason for removing previously-recorded arrests from Open Baltimore’s data was unclear. Arrests that are documented but do not result in a charge, or are accidentally duplicated or inaccurately entered are removed during reviews by police. Additionally, the police explained that expungements may have something to do with the lower numbers of arrests. They could not tell us how frequently arrests are removed for either of those reasons.
This arrest data is frequently cited. One recent example of Open Baltimore’s flawed year-to-year data being cited is the Baltimore Banner’s 2022 analysis of arrests. At the end of 2022, the Banner reported that arrests had increased for the first time in nearly a decade. While the broad conclusions are correct—based on the data, arrests did slightly increase in 2022—the year-to-year arrest numbers cited by the Banner are quite different from past UCR numbers and contemporaneous reporting because the number of arrests recorded in those years in Open Baltimore have declined.
Whatever the reason for the lowered arrest numbers, it means that Open Baltimore provides an increasingly incomplete picture of police activity from the past as each dataset gets older. It is not a record of those people who were handcuffed and arrested at a specific point in time—their lives put on hold for weeks, months, or years—but a record of how some of those arrests were processed long after that, based on an unknown and unnamed number of factors.
A recent review of Open Baltimore shows that, months after our year-long analysis, arrest data continues to decline.
TRNN also looked at geographic location data within Open Baltimore’s arrest data. Over the past 13 years, Open Baltimore’s arrest data is missing locations in, on average, 37% of arrests. That percentage increased from 4% in 2010 to as high as 61% in 2022.
The percentage of missing data has increased significantly since 2015 when the city police were put under increased scrutiny following Freddie Gray’s death (46% missing location data) and in 2017 (49% missing data) when the consent decree was implemented.
Year
# of arrests with missing location data 1/24/2024
Total arrests 1/24/2024
% of arrests with missing location data
2010
1,646
45,224
3.6%
2011
13,573
43,364
31.3%
2012
12,640
42,333
29.9%
2013
11,876
39,542
30.0%
2014
14,485
37,078
39.1%
2015
11,727
25,732
45.6%
2016
10,836
23,089
46.9%
2017
10,814
21,989
49.2%
2018
10,545
20,543
51.3%
2019
10,550
19,407
54.4%
2020
7.394
13,162
56.2%
2021
6,434
11,130
57.8%
2022
7,605
12,360
61.5%
2023
7,971
13,594
58.6%
Total
138,096
368,547
37.5%
Table 2: Missing location data by year per Open Baltimore.
It is unclear whether this location-based data is missing from police records as well, or if police records maintain this data with locations and, for reasons unknown, it was not given to Open Baltimore.
One more example of how poor data entry has been in Baltimore: throughout the ’90s, there are entries in Maryland Case Search in which the officer name is “Officer, Police” or “Police, Officer.” Over 500 of these results are for arrests in Baltimore City where the last name is “Officer.” There are over 300 where the first name is “Police” and nearly 300 where the first name is “Baltimore.” That data entry in the ’90s was poor is hardly a surprise. That these “Officer, Police” permutations have stood for decades in the database shows that data cleansing and validation has never been prioritized.
Representatives from city government, including Open Baltimore, seemed entirely unaware of these problems with Open Baltimore’s data until we brought them to their attention. After months seeking comment or explanation, Open Baltimore was not able to provide a thorough explanation.
In a city where policing is scrutinized for bias and professionalized for data gathering, and police enforcement itself is informed by targeting “microzones,” the lack of comprehensive location data (nearly 40% is missing) available to the public is troubling.
Open Baltimore provides an increasingly incomplete picture of police activity from the past as each dataset gets older. It is not a record of those people who were handcuffed and arrested at a specific point in time—their lives put on hold for weeks, months, or years—but a record of how some of those arrests were processed long after that, based on an unknown and unnamed number of factors.
A History of Dirty Data
While there are problems with the police records provided to Open Baltimore, the unreliability of Baltimore crime data has been a decades-long problem. Collection and reporting of crime data has been a hotly contested issue in Baltimore and the data provided has been frequently insufficient, unsound, and in some cases, manipulated.
In the ’90s—the decade leading up to “zero tolerance”—then-Councilperson Martin O’Malley and others accused Mayor Kurt Schmoke of adjusting statistics to make crime seem lower than it actually was. Police Commissioner Thomas Frazier’s report in the mid-’90s about nonfatal shooting reductions was also challenged.
After O’Malley was elected mayor in 1999, he commissioned an audit which found violent crime was frequently downgraded. As a result of the audit, thousands of felonies were added to the official number for 1999. This also had the effect of making any decrease in crime during the first year of the O’Malley administration even more dramatic.
O’Malley would later be accused of the same sort of stats manipulation. In 2001, O’Malley said there were 78,000 arrests, but the official number was 86,000. Official arrest numbers for 2005 are around 100,000, while the ACLU claimed the number was 108,000.
In 2006, WBAL Investigative Reporter Jayne Miller (a TRNN contributor) revealed that police were simply not counting all of the violent crimes reported. For example, Miller found that “police wrote no report of a shooting… despite locating and interviewing the intended target, who was not hurt. Instead, the officers combined the incident with armed robbery that occurred earlier that night in the same area—a practice known as duplicating.”
After 2006, the department shifted away from mass arrest towards what they framed as more “targeted” styles of policing, focused on violent offenders rather than low-level offenders. In Part Two of this series, we noted that the data from these years showed a decrease in low-level offenses but did not show an increase in the enforcement of violent crimes. A policy of greater focus on guns and gun possession during this period is also not reflected in the data. Gun seizures were much higher in the ’90s than in the period where gun policing was supposedly the focus.
Here We Go Again
The short history and long tail of Baltimore’s “zero tolerance” policing.
In our reporting, we also learned that gun seizure data—another metric often cited by the police to illustrate how hard police are working to get guns “off the street” and reduce violence—includes guns given to the police during gun buyback programs. For example, in 2017 there were 1,917 gun seizures. In 2018, there were 3,911. The reason for that jump was not the result of increased enforcement or a jump in the rate of illegal gun possession, it was because the city resurrected its gun buyback program. That 2018 buyback resulted in 1,089 guns handed over to police.
Willingly handing over a gun to police in exchange for cash is most likely not what the public imagines BPD is describing when they announce the total of gun “seizures” in a year.
Baltimore Police do not provide data about nonfatal shooting numbers before 1999 because, police told us, the department does not have the ability to easily extract this number from the broader aggravated assault category that shootings were once categorized under. This means that the police department, whose strategies are often informed by data on shootings and murders, does not have information about the number of nonfatal shootings that occurred before 1999. There is seemingly no way to easily look at how that crucial number has historically changed.
“We Have No Idea What Is Happening”
These problems with data and the lack of transparency are costly. Baltimore spends more per capita on its police department than any other major American city, but the city and department have consistently failed in their oversight of how that money is actually spent, especially on police overtime. Exorbitant overtime is a commonly used indicator when searching for problem police officers and police corruption. For example, members of the infamous Gun Trace Task Force were among the officers who were nearly doubling their salary with overtime. And, as Baltimore Brew reported, the same overtime offenders appeared year after year; the Maryland State Office of Legislative Audits recently found that Baltimore Police “failed to effectively monitor $66.5 million in overtime.”
Police quarreled with the auditor’s conclusions and assured overtime practices would now be reformed and ready by the end of May 2024. They were not. Since 2016, the Baltimore Police has failed overtime audits each year—and each year, police explain that the department needs a little more time to fix overtime.
Melissa Schober, a community advocate, has been calling attention to the failed overtime audit by the Baltimore Police for years. She told TRNN that her concerns extend to the broader metrics used by police, not just overtime. Metrics remain oblique and undefined and, according to police, cannot improve because they are contingent upon a police budget they claim is inadequate. The Baltimore City police budget is nearly $600 million per year, Schober stressed.
The refusal to properly share, let alone collect, this data also enables police misconduct.
“My fury isn’t just at the overtime overspending. It is that years after the Fiscal Year 2016—that’s July 1, 2015, so nearly a decade ago—we are still somehow ‘in progress’ on documenting metrics because carrying those things out are ‘budget dependent’ but they never manage to say how much they’re short and when they expect to complete the work,” Schober said. “Until and unless the BPD can say, ‘Here’s our outcome and here is the numerator and denominator and here’s how we validate those numbers (or counts), here’s our data dictionary and here’s how we train our folks to count things,’ we have no idea what is happening with money.”
While the city celebrates the “progress” police are making with the federal consent decree, data remains incomplete. Some data-gathering related to the consent decree has not even begun.
The consent decree requires the police to record stop and search data, but, as the Baltimore Banner reported, that has not even started, even though it is perhaps the most crucial way, data-wise, to get a sense of discriminatory and unconstitutional policing. The Baltimore Sun recently reported that Baltimore Police do not keep track of how often their officers get in police chases. Soon after the Sun published their story, police released the data they previously said they did not track.
The refusal to properly share, let alone collect, this data also enables police misconduct. There is no way to determine how often questionable stops occur, because it is only when police stops result in arrests that they are recorded. For defense attorneys, this is not only a gap in data, it’s a convenient way for police not to account for constitutional violations.
The lack of stop and search data means constitutional violations are revealed only when they happen to someone arrested for a crime—at which point the constitutional violation is often ignored by prosecutors and judges because the arrestee was found to have broken the law.
“Police are never discouraged from crossing the line when they stop and search someone without probable cause—and they are actually encouraged to cross the line any time they find a gun,” defense attorney and former public defender Natalie Finegar told TRNN.
Since 2017, Baltimore Police have relied on an expansive—and controversial—plainclothes policing unit called DAT (District Action Team) whose primary job is gun and drug interdiction. They do this in part by searching people they deem “suspicious” or representing “characteristics of an armed person.” The Baltimore Police argue that this kind of “proactive policing” and these types of questionable stops are vital to violence reduction. The police lack data to back up this claim.
“When auditors looked at percent of time spent on proactive policing, the BPD was unable to produce documentation detailing how and why they selected that as a performance measure, and then how they monitored, controlled, and analyzed data.”
Melissa Schober, community advocate
“While it can be difficult to correlate officer proactivity and visibility to what crimes have been prevented, we have seen that when these units are deployed, they have an impact on crime suppression and calming for the community,” Baltimore Police spokesperson Lindsey Eldridge told TRNN.
According to Schober, the problem is not only the inability of police to provide data, but to even explain why certain data points such as “proactive policing” were even analyzed.
“When auditors looked at percent of time spent on proactive policing, the BPD was unable to produce documentation detailing how and why they selected that as a performance measure, and then how they monitored, controlled, and analyzed data,” Schober said.
Data’s Inconvenient Truths
Last year, Baltimore recorded 262 murders, a decline of 70 from 2022—a “historic” reduction. This drop in murders is notable and important. Far fewer people died in Baltimore from gun violence last year compared to previous years, and these declines have continued into 2024—as of June, murders had declined by another 36%.
Our data analysis in Part Two noted that, due to population decline, the current drop in murders puts the city’s murder rate—people killed per 100,000—at almost the exact same place it was in 1990. The use of that 300 number as a benchmark, as we explained in Part One, dates back to the early ’90s when the city first surpassed 300 murders per year, and also had a significantly higher population. When accounting for population decline, 1990’s 300 murders-per-year number is around 240 murders.
In 2024, Baltimore will likely have far fewer than even 240 homicides. At the end of June, Baltimore had recorded 89 homicides, which makes the city on track to endure fewer than 200 murders for the first time since 2011.
The mayor and others have already credited the one-year reduction to its Group Violence Reduction Strategy (GVRS) and other interrelated initiatives. But there is simply no way to look at one or two years of data and make any serious determinations as to what caused that decline—especially when violent crime is “dropping fast” nationwide. In 2024, homicides have declined at rates that are even more impressive than last year’s reductions.
As we saw in the ’90s, New York City’s violence reduction was prematurely credited to “zero tolerance” policies. Within a couple of years, the supposed success of “zero tolerance” meant it was exported to cities such as Baltimore and New Orleans. While many scholars have since questioned if “zero tolerance” had much to do with crime reduction, the policy itself, which led to Baltimore police arresting hundreds of thousands for low-level crimes, inarguably caused irreparable harm—especially to Black communities.
Baltimore’s crime numbers game
For decades, “common wisdom” regarding violence reduction has failed a city that regularly surpasses 300 murders a year and spends the most per capita on policing.
Data informs policy creation, so the data should be vetted. During our conversation with city employees who handle and publish data, they described themselves as “like Uber,” which is to say, they are a neutral transporter of data from one place to another. The police send Open Baltimore data and they post it, no questions asked.
So, returning to our initial question, why are arrests being removed from Open Baltimore? If part of this gap between Open Baltimore and UCR data is actually due to expungements, as police claimed, that still creates a problem in the data. An expungement does not mean the arrest did not occur. It means the person who was arrested went through the lengthy process of removing an arrest or charge from their personal criminal record in order to gain employment, rent an apartment, or apply for a loan.
If recorded arrests are leaving Open Baltimore because of expungements (or any other reason), police who provide data to Open Baltimore and Open Baltimore itself should account for the change by maintaining a record of removed arrests in the data provided to Open Baltimore. When someone consults Open Baltimore for arrest numbers, they reasonably assume they are getting a record of those arrests for that year, not how those numbers look currently, with arrests removed for reasons that Baltimore Police cannot adequately explain.
With nearly 40% of arrests lacking location data and Open Baltimore’s removed arrests, the data contains too many unknowns.
Past policies have been built upon incomplete and frequently flawed data. Data collection begins with fingers on a keyboard. Data-driven policies are only effective if the data collection and cleansing processes are logical, consistent, and thoroughly understood. Poor data collection, for example, can lead to sloppy data entry, which, in turn, leads to dirty data, which then, in turn, leads to potentially wildly inaccurate conclusions—and, therefore, faulty and ineffective policy decisions.
Recent changes to data input methods and analysis—that is, changes in the system used to record and categorize this data—make comparisons between years much more difficult. This means residents, reporters, and other members of the public cannot easily fact check claims by city officials and law enforcement.
Cities sometimes change the methods they use to measure crime. In 2021, the FBI retired UCR and began using the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) instead. NIBRS categorizes data quite differently than UCR. This means that certain crimes may appear to increase or decrease as an effect of recording them in the NIBRS system, not because of a difference in the number. “This does not mean that crime has increased; it just means the way crimes are reported has changed,” Baltimore Police explain on their website.
Recent changes to Baltimore’s police districts mean even short-term comparisons between years or areas of the city are going to be much more difficult. The redistricting of Baltimore’s police department’s districts—for the first time in over 50 years—makes it “impossible” to easily compare police metrics going forward. Indeed, at a Public Safety Committee hearing in late 2023, the data on homicides and nonfatal shootings by district that was presented simply stopped in early July because of redistricting.
Data does not lie, but it often reveals inconvenient truths. But data can only be as truthful as it is complete and accurate. Interrogating the city’s publicly available data reveals ongoing and historic systemic flaws in collection and reporting to such an extent that it’s likely not possible to derive reliable or even usable conclusions from the information shared in the name of transparency.
Epilogue: ‘Excessive Force’
It was May 23 around 1PM when members of Baltimore Police Department’s District Action Team, looking for a robbery suspect, ran up on 24-year-old Jaemaun Joyner. Tackled by police, Joyner lay on his back on the pavement gasping, arms and legs pinned. One of the cops announced that Joyner reached for something. “I ain’t reaching for nothing,” Joyner screamed. “I can’t breathe.”
Police went through Joyner’s pockets. He asked what they were doing. That’s when Detective Connor Johnson grabbed Joyner by the throat and pressed his service weapon against Joyner’s temple. “He put something in my pocket! He put something in my pocket,” Joyner screamed over and over again with a gun to his head.
Joyner was arrested on gun and drug charges.
Joyner’s lawyers said that a detective holding a gun to someone’s head was clearly an example of excessive force, and outside the bounds of anything acceptable by a police officer, especially one in a city under a consent decree. “I’ve read the consent decree and BPD policy, and nowhere does it say it’s reasonable for an officer to hold a gun to someone’s temple,” defense attorney Jessica Rubin told the Baltimore Banner. “Point blank, period. That’s the most egregious thing an officer can do.”
Joyner’s lawyers stressed that the statement of probable cause—a police officer’s written and sworn description of an arrest—did not describe Johnson holding a gun to Joyner’s head at all.
Had the stop not resulted in an arrest, there likely would have been no documentation of the incident.
The police report also suggested Joyner remained a suspect in the robbery even though the victim confirmed he was not involved. After spending 54 days in jail, Joyner was released— his charges dropped only after his lawyers showed the shocking body-worn camera footage to the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office.
Johnson has made the news before. He was involved in a fatal shooting last year. Residents have complained about his questionable traffic stops and searches. His Internal Affairs summary, obtained by TRNN, shows a complaint marked “sustained” for failing to properly seatbelt someone who was arrested.
In a moment when officials celebrate consent decree “milestones” such as proper seatbelting, Baltimore’s criminal defense attorneys see a department reverting to the very tactics that got the department investigated by the Department of Justice nearly a decade ago.
“This is what we’ve been trying to get away from since Freddie Gray,” defense attorney Hunter Pruette told TRNN. “And they’re trying to walk it back. I think these are the same tactics that led us to the problem we had before.”
Baltimore police appear unconcerned. Police said they had been aware of the incident and saw no reason to suspend Johnson while it was being investigated. When Commissioner Daryl Worley was asked about the incident at a press conference, the 25-plus-year veteran of the department defended Johnson’s behavior.
“He was out there doing his job, in an area where we want him to be, and going after individuals with guns,” Worley said.
Earlier this month, the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office announced they would not criminally charge Johnson for holding his service weapon to a restrained man’s head.
This investigation was supported with funding from the Data-Driven Reporting Project. The Data-Driven Reporting Project is funded by the Google News Initiative in partnership with Northwestern University | Medill.
For nearly half a century, Russell ‘Maroon’ Shoatz was a political prisoner of the United States. Prior to his incarceration, Shoatz fought against US capitalism and imperialism as a member of the Black Panther Party, and then as a soldier of the Black Liberation Army. Due to his two successful escapes from prison and organizing behind bars, Shoatz spent two decades in solitary confinement. Despite this brutal repression, Shoatz continued to struggle for liberation, leaving behind a trove of political writings that continue to inspire revolutionaries to this day. Shoatz’s children, Russell Shoatz III and Sharon Shoatz, join Rattling the Bars for a discussion on his newly published memoir, co-written with Kanya D’Almeida, I Am Maroon: The True Story of an American Political Prisoner.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
Mansa Musa: Welcome to this edition of Rattling The Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa.
Back in the ’60s, we had an organization that formed a formidable fighting formation. It was known as the Black Panther Party. The founder of Rattling the Bars, Eddie Conway, was a former member of the Black Panther Party. He was set up, framed, and locked up for almost 40 years before he was released.
During this time, while he was incarcerated, he organized a collective of prisoners that we developed. A collective called the Maryland Pen Intercommunal Survival Collective, [inaudible] as a hybrid form of the Black Panther Party.
Joining me today is the children of Russell Maroon Shoatz, who also found himself in the same situation that Eddie Conway and other members of the Black Panther Party found themselves in. They dared to struggle and they dared to win, and as a result of that, they found themselves captive, enslaved, and fighting for their freedom.
Joining me today is Russell Shoatz and Sharon Shoatz. Welcome to Rattling the Bars.
Sharon Shoatz: Thank you.
Russell Shoatz III: Thank you for having me.
Mansa Musa: All right, so recently — And if not, y’all can correct me as we go along — Y’all have a new book coming out called I Am Maroon, and it’s a memoir of your father, Russell Maroon Shoatz. And it’s slated to come out this month, or is it already out this month?
Sharon Shoatz: Yeah, the pub date, September the third, the publication date. September…
Mansa Musa: OK. So let’s unpack. Let’s unpack. First of all, who was Russell Maroon Shoatz? You can start with this one, Russell. Sharon, you can fill in — And it’s not a chauvinist thing, it’s just the way I want to do it at this time.
Russell Shoatz III: So my father was, basically, a young Black person growing up in a community, a Black community in West Philadelphia. At that time, pre ’60s and pre Civil Rights time, there was a gang culture in Philadelphia. He was a part of that. There was a doo-wop culture in Philadelphia, he was a part of that, singing on the corner, drinking wines, all that stuff.
Went to some juvenile detention centers for his youth involvement in some of that gang and street activity, then became older and got politicized through going see Malcolm in New York. And then was involved in a political action, which was the retaliation shooting of a police officer after Amadou Diallo style, George Floyd style shooting of a youth in Philadelphia. And that’s kind of a nutshell bio of my dad.
Mansa Musa: And Sharon, in terms of your father’s maturation, because y’all was young when he got locked up, how did you process his maturation in terms of, like your brother said, growing up in Philly, being subjected, like all like Watts, Compton, Southeast DC, you name it, any ghetto that was being colonized by the country and policed by the police. How did you look at your father’s growth and development in terms of his ultimate maturation to become a political figure?
Sharon Shoatz: For me, I think I lived in two worlds, one in which I knew my father was a part of something larger that I couldn’t actually define as a child. But I know my family was instrumental, his family in particular, my aunts and uncles were definitely there for us growing up and keeping us in that realm of consciousness about what was going on with my father, but not really cluing us in on it as we know it in his autobiography.
And then, on the other hand, we were children growing up, and we weren’t subjected to the type of bullying that we see today. But I know when my father escaped both times, we then encountered questions about who we were. Because the Shoatz name, it’s not a common name, and when you see that plastered all over the newspaper, “Cop Killer”, you then as a child, then get those questions.
But I didn’t feel that our community wasn’t there for us. The community was still very supportive. And again, the Shoatz family, my aunts, my grandmother, they were always there to help us understand some of what was going on, but not really the level that I know it to this day.
Mansa Musa: Right. And OK, let’s talk about how did this particular project come about? Because do y’all have another book that was written, or was this the first book that’s written?
Sharon Shoatz: So his first book was the Maroon the Implacable, which was a series of writings that he had did over a number of years that was out there in the ether. A lot of anarchists was publishing it, and people were reading it all over the world, really.
And then, this project in particular came about, I would say, in the ’90s, particularly in 1990 when I moved to New York City. He had asked me to get his dossier to the tribunal. They were having a tribunal at that time for US held political prisoners, the human rights abuses. And I was new to New York, the geography and the landscape, so I didn’t find it. It was on Hunter’s campus, and I didn’t know the campus, and I didn’t know where I was going.
But in the process, I end up meeting members of the Black Panther Party and the BLA. And that was like Safiya Bukhari and [inaudible], the Holder Brothers. And these people actually knew my father. So here I was meeting these 20th century revolutionaries in the Black Panther Party, and it was on the hills of the landscape of Nelson Mandela being free. I had went to LA, I happened to see him at the Coliseum.
So they started telling me stories. So it allowed me to lean in on these stories that I had never heard. I had visited them all through my life. My family was there and supportive, but they had never really shared any stories. And so from that, it allowed me to press my father, like who are you? Who are you? And I know you my father, the seed and the genetic piece, but —
Mansa Musa: But who are you?
Sharon Shoatz: Yeah. So that started us writing back and forth until we had this family document. And then, he wanted to then use that document to get out of solitary. And that’s the collaboration where Kanya comes in.
And now we have what you have today, which is the publication of I Am Maroon, which was a family document that was used to try to secure his freedom from solitary. Fred Ho had suggested that he use it. They brought Kanya in, and then that collaboration began. And here you have this final production of I Am Maroon.
Mansa Musa: And Russell, like Sharon said, she found herself, at one point in time, after being exposed to our comrades, members of the Black Panther Party and other revolutionaries and people fighting our struggle. At one point, she became enlightened that, OK, my father’s my father, but he’s somebody else. Did you have that same experience, being exposed to people that ultimately gave you a different perspective of your father, or you always had this perspective of your father’s being a freedom fighter and a revolutionary?
Russell Shoatz III: No, no. Yeah, I had this similar experience —
Mansa Musa: Talk about it.
Russell Shoatz III: So I had been visiting my dad and doing work around him for a couple years before my sisters joined in that movement to liberate my father. And just like her, and all of us, and people after my sister, Sharon, my other sisters and brothers, as we all came to support him at different times, would ask him, who are you, dude?
Even if I had conversations with my sister and be like, oh, dad said this, or whatever, it’s still that because it’s your biological father or whatever. It’s still that, I guess, interpersonal conversation that you want to have with that person, with your dad and say… My first question, in my naivete, my first question was, who was the shooter? Did you shoot the cop or did one of the other [inaudible].
And that question was for me to be to the next question was, if you did shoot them, then why don’t you let them dudes go? And if you didn’t shoot them, why don’t you try to get out? But that wasn’t their rubric, that wasn’t their understanding. That wasn’t going to happen. They all kind of went to death. They would die before they would tell on each other or try to get out of the situation. But yes, it went very similar. Everybody wanted to know who their father was.
Mansa Musa: Right. And let’s frame this situation, because we’re talking about Philadelphia and Rizzo and the Gestapo. LA had a Gestapo unit, but Philadelphia had a Gestapo unit of police that even your father spoke about in the early years when he was young, that they just randomly walked down on Black youth and commenced to beating them and then lock them up.
But let’s talk about that period, to your knowledge, in terms of what led to them ultimately being captives. What was that environment, from your knowledge, because he talk about in the book, what was that environment like during that era that gave birth to Maroon?
Russell Shoatz III: If people don’t know, they should Google Rizzo. Rizzo was the police chief in Philadelphia. He is the forerunner of the police states that we see today. They had a Gestapo unit in LA. They had a couple units around the country at that time.
But even prior to those days, when Rizzo came into office, he was the first police chief to say, let’s send our officers over to Israel and train over there with them. Let’s be tactical with the dogs and stuff like that. Let’s strip the Panthers naked in front of their office. Let’s do all of these radical things, policing-wise, to keep, for lack of better terms, the people on edge. And it really did keep people on edge.
And also, the sentencing and the judicial followed his lead in the context of Philadelphia having the most lifers, the most juvenile lifers, the most people without parole, juvenile lifers without parole, lifers without parole, just the toughest sentencing in the country over a mass group of people. And so that’s just a part of that culture.
But you also see it in the activism ideology of Philly all the way from my dad, through MOVE, through the juvenile lifers. And so it’s a certain type of energy that came out of that tough, tough repression that you’re seeing bloom 30, 40 years after.
Mansa Musa: Sharon?
Sharon Shoatz: And I would also just add to that, not much, but the fact of the racism was more entrenched with Rizzo, as well as the brutality and oppression. But even that racist mentality of law and order, and we have to keep these Black or minority people in their place. With housing, with discrimination, it was just rampant in Philadelphia.
So it is not a wonder that there were people taking up arms in Philadelphia to deal with oppressive state and injustice where they saw it, right in their communities where they lived at. They saw it every day.
Mansa Musa: And also, I remember, before they dropped the bomb on the MOVE, I remember looking at an article in a radical newsletter where they had a picture of the police taking the butt of the gun and bashing one of the MOVE members’ head in. It was almost like the My Lai massacre where they showed that picture of the police shooting the brain out of that kid in Vietnam.
Russell Shoatz III: Oh yeah.
Mansa Musa: I like what you say about Google it, but more importantly, you don’t have to Google to find out who Rizzo is, all you gotta do is read I Am Maroon to get an understanding on who the Philadelphia police were, how they operated. That’ll give you context that this is a real live person that’s regurgitating or recounting this event.
Talk about your father in terms of working his way out and ultimately getting to a point where he was positioned to get out, and how the death of 1,000 cuts had took its toll on him in terms of his health and everything.
Sharon Shoatz: I think Maroon, my dad, never relented from freedom. And it didn’t matter what it took or what toll his body was going to take, because ultimately, those beatings… When you escape from prison, don’t think they just rush you back in nice. I mean, he took a few beat downs.
Mansa Musa: Yeah, I already know.
Sharon Shoatz: He took several beat downs to the point where his body ultimately succumbed to some of that, of course. And then the brutality of solitary confinement. To come out and not being able to walk up and down steps because you hadn’t walked up and down steps for 22 years.
And when he came out, we was happy, but we didn’t think about the physical toll that it would take on him. And to know that the prison, the food is unhealthy. And it’s up to the point where the medical is non-existent.
Sharon Shoatz: [Inaudible]. My sister, I mean, she was really on his medical health, and she held them to a standard. So they was calling her and reporting what his status was. You got to hold them accountable in the prison system, if not your loved one is languishing there with the run around they give you on the phone.
Russell Shoatz III: I know that, actually, all the way up to the warden, but also all the way up to the Deputy of the Prisons, who controls all the prisons in Philadelphia, they were probably actually glad that my father was released just on the strength of my sister’s constant calling them, constantly being on them. So just one less person, all right, Maroon’s out of here. Won’t got to hear Teresa no more. We won’t hear Teresa Shoatz calling us every day about follow up, what’s going on, blah, blah, blah.
So when you talk about that ongoing struggle for freedom, there were a lot of different people involved over the years, a lot of different moving parts. And definitely towards the end, because we had pretty much threw a lot of things at the wall, but we had not engaged the medical community within the prison, the nurses, the doctors.
The doctors, when he would get sent out to other institutions, all the way up to the deputy of all of the prisons, and engaging them and saying, our father is in this situation, it was COVID, all these things. He got stage IV cancer. You guys don’t have the apparatus or anything to really take care of anybody with these conditions. Allow us to have him. And they fought that, they fought that.
Mansa Musa: And speaking, I did 48 years in prison prior to getting out, and I did a limited amount of time in solitary confinement. I was in the super max. But more importantly, I can identify with that situation because I remember that when a police officer had got killed in the Maryland pen when they was doing an investigation, and the legislators was coming in to justify pumping more money into building more prisons, and barbed wire, handcuffs.
And they had the speaker of the House on the state level, on the Senate and the delegate side, and had the attorney general for the state of Maryland come in. They came in the South Wing, which was like the lock-up wing where most of us did our time. And when they left out of there, when they left out of that wing, left out, they was only over there for maybe a good, maybe, maybe five minutes — Maybe.
They came outside. They were like this here [panting]. Saying, we just came from the innermost circle of hell. Now imagine your father being in the innermost circle of hell 20-some years, inside and maintaining his faculties.
So the torture, it’s because of Mumia Abu-Jamal that they got medicine for Hepatitis C, that they was able to get the pill that helped to correct a lot of that ailment for people that’s locked up. Going back to your medical, it wasn’t that they got an attitude of like, we take a [hippocratic] oath and that we going to do the best. No, we are hypocrites in taking the oath that we are not going to apply. And it’s because of y’all work that your father was able to at least get out and live a semblance of life before he transitioned.
Talk about where y’all going there with the book at this time. What’s on the agenda, and what do y’all want people to know about the work and the importance of the work as it relates to raising people’s [consciousness] about the struggle and the struggle continue, and the contribution and sacrifice your father made, either one of y’all?
Sharon Shoatz: Well, we’re on a book tour trying to get it out through the book tours, through programs like yours. So we thank you, definitely —
Mansa Musa: Most definitely.
Sharon Shoatz: …For having us on. And we are just trying to promote it throughout as many ways as we can, throughout media and the tours. So we’re in Philadelphia on the 22nd. I’m in Ohio next week at a [inaudible] conference with the book. And then, we’re in Philly on the 22nd. We’re in DC and Baltimore on the 28th. And then, we’re heading to Atlanta, Texas, and then we’re heading to the West Coast.
November the second, we’ll be with Mike Africa from MOVE and his book. He has a new book out, On A Move, and we’ll be with him at the Huey Newton Foundation on Nov. 2.
So we’re taking it on the road and we hope that people, for me, it’s twofold. One, that my father’s an incredible, complicated, beautifully flawed person, but he never relented from the struggle for freedom for oppressed people all across the globe. And secondly, the part for our family, they never really knew who he was.
From this perspective, I have cousins. Oh yeah, we always heard about Uncle Russell. But until he came home for those 52 days, and it was a line of family to see him, and I’m glad they were able to meet him. But again, as I didn’t know who he was, neither did they. They only knew the legend and the myth and oh, Uncle Russell.
But this story lays it out very well. And if you’re from Philadelphia, the geographics is —
Mansa Musa: Come on, come on. That’s important.
Sharon Shoatz: …Extraordinary because he lays it out the middle-class stronghold. And now Philly is, what, I think, the poorest city in the country? Clearly, back then there was a middle-class stronghold, and he talks about it in depth.
And so I think from those two perspectives, the part of freedom and this oppressed system and where we see an oppressed system and injustice, we need to be doing something about it in our own little way. I can’t be Maroon. I have the genetics, but he’s something special. And I can’t be him, but I can take from what I know.
And like Maya Angelou said, when you know better, you do better. When you know better, you do better. And we have freedom fighters that are still locked up.
And why? Why? And I don’t know why people aren’t on board with that. Black Lives Matter, they stood on the shoulders of these revolutionaries. There’s no reason why there shouldn’t have been an agenda regarding political prisoners. With regards to that, my brother talks about every other revolution, they free their freedom fighters.
Mansa Musa: That’s right.
Sharon Shoatz: I’ll stop there and let my brother —
Mansa Musa: Come on, Russ.
Russell Shoatz III: Well, it’s a catch-22 for me. And it’s a little tougher for me to envision what I would like people to see. Because what I would like people to see is probably further down the road and maybe either another publication, because this publication is actually, my dad wrote this long before he got out, long before he even got sick and stuff like that. And so there’s actually a part of his life that’s not there.
And then, there’s a part of his life right when he’s transitioning, and then there’s a part of a life when he gets out and comes home and he’s actually home and not in prison. That’s not in a book. There’s a part of his life where he turns into a whole different person than we know what’s in the book that he probably even knew of himself or what he just turned into a whole nother different person that nobody knew, nobody ever saw before, any of that. And so those things are important to me.
Also, I don’t want people to get mixed up and think that this is some more of his teachings. These aren’t his teachings. This is just him saying, this is my life. This is what I did, blah, blah, blah. You can get knowledge and jewels and teachings out of that, but if you really wanted to know his teachings, the final teachings kind of, sort of, you would want to look towards his comment, or in court, his transcripts from court.
Also him being like, I’m a Muslim now and everybody should take the Shahada. Everybody should blah, blah, blah. Like, really fundamental Islamic stance. And not just Islamic, but a spiritual space, the space that most people are in when they’re about to transition. And so that transition space is a whole different space with more information, knowledge, and jewels that you really only get only if you’re there or around or hear about it or what have you.
But he was on a mission to get people to contemplate their mortality because he was at that space of really, really contemplating his mortality. But most freedom fighters have already contemplated their mortality. If you are thinking about going over that wall, you trying to escape, then you got to think about them killing you.
Or if you in some prison and they put on the Star Wars uniform and knock on the door and come in to beat you up, that’s just part of it. If you are fighting for liberation and you incarcerated, nine times out of 10, there’s going to be some situations where you got to think about, well, are they going to come in here and try to do me?
And so contemplation of mortality added with your life as a tool of liberation, because that whole book is just about him saying, you can use your life actually as a tool for liberation, if that makes any sense. So those two things, you can’t do anything. You’re not going to be real effective, you’re going to be fearful and scared if you don’t contemplate your mortality.
And people in Palestine, people in South America, people all over the world every day wake up, have to contemplate their mortality. Every day in Palestine, when you wake up, you got to be like, what’s cracking today? Is it a bomb? Is it a bullet? Is it a beating? What is it? Because it could be all them things, but I contemplated that. And now from there, I’m moving on to here.
I thought about it. Yeah, it may happen. It’s a possibility. We all came here to leave. But that was something in my dad’s last teaching, that was part of his last teaching. Are you ready? Are you ready? You built for this? You ready?
Mansa Musa: There you have it, The Real News Rattling the Bars. You have The Prison Letters of George Jackson, you have The Autobiography of Malcolm X, You have Revolutionary Suicide, Seize the Time. You have Martial Law. You have The Greatest Threat by Eddie Conway. And now you have I Am Maroon. But in each one of these books is a story that’s woven all the way out about people fighting for their liberation. The story of us always, since we’ve been brought to these shores, fighting for our liberation.
And it’s important that y’all, our listeners and our viewers, understand this and look to the book, I Am Maroon, and enlighten yourself. And like both Sharon and Russell said, it’s not about the individual, it’s about the collective. It’s about the struggle, the struggle for liberation, and the struggle to free humanity.
Thank y’all for coming on. Really appreciate y’all, and we definitely going to be posting this information, and we’ll see y’all when y’all get on this end at Sankofa, if I don’t come to Philly and check y’all out.
Sharon Shoatz: See you.
Russell Shoatz III: Yeah. Come to the brunch, come and eat some of that food. It is a free brunch, you don’t want to miss that.
Mansa Musa: All right. All right. Thank you. All right. All power to the people.
Like many cop watchers, Carolina Ft. Worth has an in-depth understanding of the dynamics of her local city. So when she noticed Fort Worth police seemed to be targeting the vehicles of bar workers late at night, she set out to investigate. According to Carolina, many of the tow companies in the city are operated by retired police officers, raising questions about the possibility of a racket being run from within the police department. As she was filming police towing cars in the downtown area, an officer familiar to Carolina confronted her and began to arrest her. The ensuing police-initiated altercation left Carolina bleeding and unconscious on the ground with a dislocated shoulder and elbow. Carolina Ft. Worth joins Police Accountability Report to discuss her harrowing ordeal, and how police across the country are engaged in similar kinds of suspicious behavior driven by municipal and even potentially illegal private economic incentives.
Studio Production: 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 we 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 we’ll achieve that goal by showing you this video of an officer throwing a well-known cop watcher to the ground and causing severe physical injuries for simply filming them. An example of police reacting violently for being watched, raising questions about just how dangerous it can be to hold police accountable.
But 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 can help get the word out and it can even help our guests.
And of course, you know I read your comments and appreciate them. You see those little hearts I give out down there, and I’ve even started doing a comment of the week to show you how much I appreciate your thoughts and to show off what a great community we have.
And we do 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.
All right, we’ve gotten that out of the way. Now, as we have documented rigorously on this show, filming cops is not easy or without risk. For one thing, they have the power to retaliate with an arrest, but also they have the threat of using violence to subdue those who dare to turn the camera in their direction. And that’s exactly what happened in the video I’m showing you now.
It depicts a Texas cop watcher, Carolina in Fort Worth, as she tries to film police for what she believed were unwarranted parking tickets. But how police responded and the severe consequences for her is what we address today in detail.
Now, just to note, this story has received a lot of attention within the Cop Watcher community, but today we are going to break it down with new footage and an interview with the victim of the arrest herself, Carolina in Fort Worth. And believe me, she has a lot to say. But first, let’s review what happened.
The story starts in June of this year in Fort Worth, Texas. There, Carolina was filming police in a parking lot. She believed cops were running a bit of a scam, writing unwarranted tickets, and in the process, unjustly saddling, hardworking bartenders and waitstaff from a nearby entertainment district with excessive fines and towing of their cars.
Bear in mind, this was 3:30 in the morning when she initially started filming. Let’s watch.
Carolina In Fortworth:
They’re saying, “Okay, we’re going to tow this, we’re going to tow that. Let’s see, what are we going to do?” I bet it’s a cop car that’s broken. That’s hilarious if it is. Predator tow truck drivers, they’re the worst. They’re towing a bunch of cars off. They’re trying to build the entertainment district up, right? This is a great way to do it. This is great for community relations and it’s a great idea for community relations to start towing people’s cars. I think that’s a wonderful idea.
Taya Graham:
Now, at this point, it is undeniable that Carolina in Fort Worth is doing nothing wrong. She isn’t interfering with police, simply filming them and for good reason. As you can see, police, were having cars towed from the parking lot right in the heart of one of Fort Worth’s most vibrant gathering spots.
But soon things get tense when police decide they don’t want their towing dragnet scrutinized, take a look.
Carolina In Fortworth:
That’s great for community policing. They’re trying to build up the entertainment center, but now you’re going to tow everybody’s shit. That’s a private parking lot. How the hell are you going to tow off a private parking lot? Are you allowed to tow off a private parking lot? Are you allowed to tow off a private parking lot? Oh, you’re going to ignore me. Okay. Do you see any towing will be strictly enforced signs? I don’t see any.
So there’s no signs that say towing will be enforced. What does this say? This is validated parking. It says, “Please register upon parking. Validated parking. Please register upon parking. Business is [inaudible 00:04:16], validated parking for Folk Street Warehouses.
Ways to validate. You can scan the QR code or text pay. Failure to pay or extend time may result in boots.” Okay, so how do they know if they paid or not? How do you know if they paid or not ladies? Hey ladies. Hey ladies. Hey ladies. Hey, Krueger.
Taya Graham:
Now, shortly after she begins questioning the ticket-writing officers, another cop shows up on the scene, a member of the Fort Worth Police Department that she was more than familiar with, and it doesn’t take him long to confront her. Take a listen.
Officer Krueger:
[inaudible 00:04:48] sounds [inaudible 00:04:49].
Carolina In Fortworth:
No, I’m not going to the floor. There’s no investigation. There’s no nothing.
Officer Krueger:
You can go to the other side of the street or you’re going to get arrested. I’m not warning you again.
Carolina In Fortworth:
What are you talking about?
Officer Krueger:
Go to the other side of the street right now.
Carolina In Fortworth:
Why? Wait, tell me why first.
Taya Graham:
She asked a simple question that we hear quite often on this show, but is rarely answered, why? Why do you, Officer Krueger, believe you have the right to arrest me? What law empowers you to put me in handcuffs?
Krueger doesn’t answer, but not being able to articulate a reason also doesn’t stop him from deploying the powers of the state in a highly questionable manner.
Officer Krueger:
You’re under arrest. Turn around please.
Carolina In Fortworth:
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, okay.
Officer Krueger:
Stop resisting. Stop resisting.
Taya Graham:
Stop resisting. Seriously, how many times on this show have we heard that phrase, cops who say, “Stop resisting,” when the victim clearly isn’t. However, this time we have several other camera angles to in fact, check on Officer Krueger’s camera performance.
First, let’s watch the officer’s body worn camera and you be the judge. If she was resisting.
Officer Krueger:
Hey Carolina, we’re busy. Go to the other side of the street.
Carolina In Fortworth:
There’s nothing to report. There’s no investigation, there’s no nothing.
Officer Krueger:
You can go to the other side of the street or you’re going to get arrested. I’m not warning you again.
Carolina In Fortworth:
What are you talking about?
Officer Krueger:
Go to the other side of street right now.
Carolina In Fortworth:
Why? Wait, tell me why first.
Speaker 4:
We’re doing an-
Officer Krueger:
You’re under arrest, turn around, put your hands-
Carolina In Fortworth:
No, no, no, no, no.
Officer Krueger:
Stop resisting.
Speaker 4:
She’s bleeding.
Officer Krueger:
[inaudible 00:06:34]
Taya Graham:
Okay. How exactly can you resist if you are lying on the ground bleeding? I mean, seriously. Resistance cannot occur when you are unconscious. That is simply an indisputable fact. You can’t resist if you’re lying on the ground in a pool of your own blood.
But just to be sure, let’s watch the footage from an entirely different angle, courtesy of the CCTV video released by the Fort Worth Police Department.
Officer Krueger:
Hey Carolina, we’re busy. Go to the other side of the street. You can go-
Carolina In Fortworth:
You did this before, there’s no investigation, there’s no nothing.
Officer Krueger:
You can go to the other side of the street or you’re going to get arrested. I’m not warning you again.
Carolina In Fortworth:
What are you talking about?
Officer Krueger:
Go to the other side of the street right now.
Carolina In Fortworth:
Why? Wait, tell me why first.
Speaker 4:
We’re doing an-
Officer Krueger:
You’re under arrest. Turn around, put your hands behind your back.
Speaker 4:
Okay.
Officer Krueger:
Stop resisting.
Speaker 4:
She’s bleeding.
Officer Krueger:
[inaudible 00:07:34] in ambulance.
Taya Graham:
Again, it’s hard to understand why the officer chose to be so aggressive. Yes, she was following the officers with a camera, which can be annoying, but that comes with the territory of having a badge and a gun. And yes, Carolina in Fort Worth is a stickler for accountability as you will learn later.
But why he decided that a cell phone camera justifies near deadly force is simply hard to understand.
Let’s just listen to his reaction after Carolina in Fort Worth is literally snoring. Snoring because she was literally knocked out.
Speaker 4:
She’s bleeding.
Officer Krueger:
[inaudible 00:08:17], I need a supervisor and an ambulance.
Taya Graham:
Being knocked unconscious was just one of several severe injuries, Carolina in Fort Worth endured. She also suffered a dislocated elbow and shoulder along with bruising and abrasions on her face, which I am showing you on the screen right now.
She also suffered damage to her orbital ridge and needed stitches to repair the damage around her eyes and lips. But of course, none of the aforementioned injuries include the trauma of being taken to the ground for nothing.
Now, the incident actually attracted local media attention and was widely decried as excessive. But when she and fellow cop watcher, Manuel Mata, confronted Officer Kruger just a few days later, he was not receptive to their complaints.
Take a look.
Carolina In Fortworth:
When’s the last time you falsified the police report?
Officer Krueger:
I have never falsified a police report.
Carolina In Fortworth:
You know what jaywalking is? Jaywalking occurs between two lights. There wasn’t two lights in here.
Officer Krueger:
Are you referring to jaywalking as a concept or jaywalking as a statue?
Carolina In Fortworth:
As a statute.
Officer Krueger:
You’re stupid. There’s only one. This was in the concept.
Carolina In Fortworth:
Oh, no, no. Jaywalking is not a real thing.
Manuel Mata:
Remember, I told y’all to give me a ticket. What’d you say? You’re going to jail for jaywalking. And then how do I end up with [inaudible 00:09:40]? Because y’all plain lie, right? It’s all on your cameras. And didn’t you just say it’s not a third degree felony to turn it off or mute it, right? Yeah, that’s how I like my servants, closed mouthed.
Taya Graham:
But there’s so much more going on behind the scenes than the questionable arrest you just watched, and that includes some intriguing background on the officer and his contentious relations with Carolina Rodriguez.
And for more on that, we will be talking to her later. But first, I’m joined by my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, who’s been looking into and examining the evidence. Stephen, thank you so much for joining us.
Stephen Janis:
Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham:
So Stephen, what did the Fort Worth police charge her with?
Stephen Janis:
Well, I’ll tell you, it’s really amazing. It’s resistance, interfering, evading arrest, and false report all from what you see on video. It’s kind of hard to believe that they would use these charges, but it seems to me that it’s actually kind of purposeful because they’re trying to make her look as bad as possible because a video makes them look bad.
So those are the charges. They’re kind of shocking. We reached out to the police department. They said, “We don’t have media credentials.” We need to present them before they will answer our questions about whether they’re going forward with these charges.
Taya Graham:
Okay, wow. Interfering, but resisting and evading arrest? That really does seem like a stretch. You reached out to prosecutors about the case. What are they saying?
Stephen Janis:
Well, first of Taya, the prosecutors have not gotten back to us. But secondly, you’re right. It does seem really weird to charge you with things like that when she’s actually unconscious on the ground.
I don’t see how you evade an arrest when you’re lying on the ground snoring. I don’t see how you resist an arrest when you’re incapacitated.
So really, I think these charges are very questionable and hopefully prosecutors will back off on this, but we haven’t heard yet. When we do. We’ll say something in the chat.
Taya Graham:
Now this officer has had problems before. Can you talk about that and the concerns that it raises?
Stephen Janis:
Well, as Carolina in Fort Worth herself will tell us in the interview later, he has been noted for being very aggressive with the community.
Now, we reached out to Fort Worth Police Department and asked them specifically what they’re going to do about this officer. And they have not gotten back to us, but I think it raises concerns to see how quickly he turned to force.
He could have talked to her, he could have engaged her, but he didn’t. And I think that’s problematic. I think that might be emblematic of some of the he has as a police officer, Taya.
Taya Graham:
Now to get her take on what happened and how her relationship with Fort Worth police presages much of what happens and what she thinks about cop watching and why she will continue to fight for transparency and accountability.
I’m joined by Carolina in Fort Worth, our cop Watcher. Carolina, thank you for joining me.
Carolina In Fortworth:
You’re welcome. I’m glad to be here. Glad you asked me.
Taya Graham:
So please help us understand what we see in this video. First, we see you approach officers asking them questions about their car impounding practices. You’re a cop watcher. What were you investigating that night?
Carolina In Fortworth:
It was about three o’clock in the morning after the bars are already closed and most of the teenagers and everybody are gone. And I just noticed a bunch of activity going on at the end of the street.
So I walked down there to see what was going on, and I’m really into community policing, just like the chief says he’s in the community policing, but I noticed that there’s a row cars that were parked on a private parking area, but you had to pay for the parking spot. And so I was trying to figure out what was going on, but nobody would really tell me. And you have to really look at the clues to kind of guess because they won’t tell you what’s going on.
So I was trying to just put guesses together. So I heard this one lady say, “Well, I paid $31 to park here and you’re not taking my car.”
And I saw a man walk up, a cop walk up to her and go, “No, no, no, no, we’re not taking yours. You’re leaving in yours, right?” So I assumed that they were going to take that whole row of cars because there’s a tow truck there already.
Now the tow truck driver, I have a good reporter to tow truck drivers, but this one I’ve had bad karma with before. And so I said, so I asked him what’s going on? And he didn’t tell me. He totally walked by me like I wasn’t there. He totally ignored me. Didn’t even say, “I can’t tell you,” or, “You know I can’t tell you,” or anything like that. He just totally ignored me and he walked right on by me to go to his tow truck.
So I just assumed that they were going to tow that whole row of cars. And I thought, well, that’s not very good community policing because why don’t they just put a note on the car and say, “Hey, we’re going to tow you next time you’re here.” It was a private parking area. It was 3:30 in the morning. Those people that were in those cars were probably too drunk to drive and drove home with somebody else or maybe working at a restaurant somewhere and still haven’t finished their job yet.
So I think it’s pretty dirty that they’re pulling these cars out without any kind of type of warning. It’s not community policing. Who’s the crime hurting that they’re parked like that on a private parking area?
Taya Graham:
So the officers didn’t seem interested in responding to your questions, but it suddenly became violent. Can you help me understand what happened?
Carolina In Fortworth:
I’m still asking myself that to this very day because what happened was is after the tow truck driver walked by me and ignored me, I noticed two female cops walking by me. And I’ve talked to those two ladies before, but they were just strolling. They didn’t look like they were busy doing anything. They were just strolling, really just strolling along like you’d see two ladies at the mall doing, just strolling.
So I started to ask them what was going on and they ignored me. They totally ignored me. So I tried to get their attention and I said, “Fire, fire, fire, fire,” and they still ignored me and they kept on walking. So I thought, okay, I let them walk up to where they were and I said, “Well, I’m going to go find out what’s going on.” So I started to walk up towards them, right? And then I saw Krueger jump out of the vehicle.
Well, first I talked to the girls. I was like, “Girls, do they have to pay? How do you know they haven’t paid that you’re towing them off like that?” And they were starting to answer me and then Krueger jumped out of the car and said, “Hey Carolina, I need you to go across the street. I’m not going to tell you again.” He said it to me one time.
I said, “But there’s nothing going on. What do you mean I have to go across the street?” I was questioning his unlawful order to go across the street. I figured it was an unlawful order because I didn’t see anything going on. The girls were strolling. I saw two officers in the street, they were talking to each other like on a break. I didn’t see anything going on at all.
And so he walked toward me and he said that, “I’m going to arrest you if you don’t go across the street.” I said, “Okay, okay, okay, but just tell me first what’s going on?” And that’s when he attacked me.
I didn’t know where it came from. I have no idea what I did to cause him to do that. I asked him, just tell me what’s going on first. What’s wrong with asking? He only asked me one time to move, right? And I just wanted to know what was going on because that’s what I’m trying to portray to the people. But he never said anything. He just grabbed my wrist and then I mean, threw me down on the ground. And that’s the last thing I remember from there.
Taya Graham:
So for all of us who were watching the live stream, it was horrifying and quite obvious you’d been knocked unconscious. What were your injuries and were you medically treated?
Carolina In Fortworth:
Well, like I said, I don’t remember anything that happened after I hit the ground. Nothing. I don’t remember the ride to the… If I rode in an ambulance or if I rode in somebody’s car. I don’t know if they carried me. I have no idea. But I woke up in a hospital bed with my arm. My good arm chained to the size of the bed. I was like, “What the heck is going on here?”
In the meantime, I’m going in and out of consciousness. So I passed back out again after I saw my arm was attached. And then I felt them shaking me and they woke me up and they said they were giving me something in my IV. I didn’t even know I had an IV and they were starting to just put my arm back into the socket. My arm had been out of the socket the whole time, didn’t even know it.
I just couldn’t believe it. And then I couldn’t see because both my eyes were swelled shut. So I didn’t know why my eyes were swelled shut and I just didn’t know what was going on. There was no mirror there. All I know is that I was chained to the bed. Nobody was answering any questions to me. And there was a female cop sitting at the foot of my bed. And that’s the only thing I remember from there, because I went back later and found out that I only was there from four to nine, not enough time to treat my injuries and monitor me at all.
The doctors there at the emergency room told me that this whole eye socket right here is broken. It’s still broken and if I touch it, I can feel little pieces of bone moving, right? I can feel the little pieces of bone moving.
I still have the black eye on this side and on this side. And I had a, my lip was split open and so they weren’t going to do anything about it. And I asked him to sew me up. Can you please sew me up, doctor? And he goes, “Are you sure you want me to sew you up?” He goes, “I think we need to wait for one of the orthopedic people to come.” I’m like, “No, just sew me up.” So he sewed me up.
So it looks like I have collagen on this side because it’s a big old bump right there. So I have to have that fixed. But the bad thing is I can touch my bone right here and I can feel it moving. Every once in a while my eye will go blurry. And then I have ringing in my ears constantly now, constantly. So I’m going to have to get all that taken care of.
Taya Graham:
So after you were briefly given medical, you were taken to jail, right?
Carolina In Fortworth:
Okay. This is amazing. So when I went to the first… Here in Fort Worth, you go to the city jail first and then they transfer you to the county jail and you have to go and a tunnel underneath like a rat, underneath the street.
So recently we’ve had overcrowding at the jail, and so they’ve been holding the people at the city jail for longer than they can handle. So usually you’re only at the city jail for about 12 hours while they just check you in. But they’ve been holding people there for three days.
So when I got to the city jail, they all knew who I was. They already knew who I was. And they said, “Well, she’s in really bad shape. We don’t want to take her because we don’t have any medical stuff over here. We don’t have any way to give her meds. We don’t have any way if she goes into a seizure, we don’t have anything for her. So we don’t want her.” And they made me stay there.
And I remember crawling on the floor from the front door to where I got checked in over to the cell, my regular cell that we always go to over there. So I crawled on the floor over there and they just let me do it. And she goes, “I don’t know what to tell you, but we’re having to make you stay here three days.” But next thing I know, I passed out on the floor. They put me in a wheelchair and they wheeled me into the tunnel.
And they were going to use one of my old mug shots, but one of the jailers said, “No, you need to take a picture of her now. You don’t need to use one of her old mug shots.” I remember that. I told him, I said, “Yeah, you can use my old mug shot. That’s fine.” I didn’t realize that that would be an important piece of evidence, that mug shot. That mug shot was really important. And I’m glad that that woman, whoever it was, insisted that I take that mug shot picture.
Taya Graham:
So what exactly were you charged with and how were you treated and how long were you kept incarcerated?
Carolina In Fortworth:
My first charge is interference with public duties. Okay, we have a clause that says, “Speech can be used as a defense to interference.” It really has to be physical. I really have to come in between whatever they’re doing or working on. I didn’t see myself do that.
If I walked into their crime scene, it’s because they didn’t have it marked, right? But I didn’t see a body with a cover on it. I didn’t see anybody taking notes. I didn’t see anybody measuring anything. I didn’t see anybody taking pictures of anything. I saw tow trucks towing off a vehicle. So I don’t know how I interfered with that just by asking what’s going on.
My next charge was false reporting. False reporting, because when the girls were ignoring me, I said, “Fire, fire.” That’s what you’re supposed to do when you want someone to take your attention. You say fire, but it was not in a crowded theater and they totally ignored me and didn’t take the report. So I got charged for that.
Then I got charged for resisting, which I suppose was resisting after I was knocked out because that’s when he started saying, “Quit resisting.”
All right. And then also evading. So that means running away, running away from them. So I don’t know how I can interfere and run away at the same time. That doesn’t make any sense. And also if you look at his body cam footage, my arms are behind my back, I put my arm behind my back to be arrested. I didn’t resist whatsoever.
Supposedly he grabbed both my arms and threw me on the ground. That’s what happened. So I don’t know what I did to be handled that way. I have no idea what I did. I didn’t know that asking a question would cause you to be thrown on the ground and knocked unconscious.
Taya Graham:
Did you have to pay bail? And are there any conditions around your release?
Carolina In Fortworth:
Well, there was no really conditions except for I had Harvey and Manuel and a lot of other people, they helped me get out of jail. They helped get that 10% to get me out, and I have to report there every week. And I’m surprised that they’re still going pressing forward with these charges. I’m really surprised because I don’t know how they can justify any one of them, any one of them at all.
But I have to report there every week to the bonds people and that’s about it. So it was $4,000. They had to get 10% of that. So each bond was a thousand dollars.
Taya Graham:
Now the officer who slammed you onto the ground, his name is Officer Kruger and he has a bit of a history with cop watchers. Can you share with me a little background about him?
For example, I believe he pulled a gun on Manuel Mata, who’s been of course a guest on PAR before.
Carolina In Fortworth:
Well, see, I knew Officer Kruger before this happened, only because he was the same officer that arrested Manuel Mata at gunpoint for walking across that very street that he told me to walk across. Manuel and I do a lot of cop watching down there, and what we do is we go on separate sides of the street and we walk together simultaneously down the street and we keep an eye on each other to see, to watch each other.
I had turned around just briefly to get my equipment ready to go, and when I turned around, he was gone. He totally disappeared. I was like, what in the world? I’m looking for him across where we were he was supposed to be. He didn’t see him. Then all of a sudden I get a phone call. It’s Manuel Mata said he’s in jail, that they had arrested him when I had my back turned.
So he was arrested at gunpoint for jaywalking. Well, you can’t bring somebody to jail for jaywalking because the punishment is not jail time. You can only take somebody into jail if the punishment is jail time.
So they added a charge onto his little arrest there and they added evading. So he walked across the street, was held at gunpoint, made to lay down on the ground, but he was evading too. That didn’t make any sense. That’s why that charge got dismissed for him.
Come to find out is that we found out when Manuel Mata got arrested that this man had been fired from the Irving Police Department for hurting two women in two different occasions, pulling one out of a car, and that was one of them, within 28 seconds of arrival. And the other one was jumping a woman who had turned to go back to her house, and he jumped her, and both of them were hurt. I don’t know if they’ve had any lawsuits or anything like that, but he sued the city of Irving because he was fired and he got his job back. But it had stipulations and the stipulations were psychiatric help, meetings with the psychiatric thing, drug testing, all sorts of little stipulations he had to do for a whole year if he came back. And I guess he didn’t want to do the stipulations because he was hired at the Fort Worth Police Department right after that.
Taya Graham:
Now you’ve recently won a lawsuit against another Texas Police department. What can you tell me about that suit?
Carolina In Fortworth:
So I was just sitting on the bench filming them and a man came out from behind from where he was supposed to be watching stuff go through the X-ray machine, and he took a camera and he put it like two inches away from my face and started daring me to hit him.
My lawyer took that and we won a small lawsuit. The man was already retired and everything, but it was very small, pretty insignificant, but at least it sent a message saying that they can’t do that to us anymore. They just can’t do that to us just because we’re filming something.
I was sitting on the bench. I wasn’t instigating. I wasn’t interfering. I was sitting on a bench just filming that new equipment that we had and that was it.
So they feel like… I think they talk among each other that we’re instigators, that were bad guys, that we just try to make trouble. We’re just trying to get views and all that sort of thing. But most of us are really trying to find, we’re doing investigative journalism work and they don’t seem to understand that. They don’t watch our videos either. They just judge us by hearsay.
Taya Graham:
Now, something that really amazed me is that you went out cop watching and live-streaming practically the day after you were released. Why are you so dedicated to cop watching and why are you willing to risk jail and even injury to do this work?
Carolina In Fortworth:
I went right out the next day because the reason why we do this is to make sure that people don’t get hurt. We were watching their rights. We’re making sure that they don’t get violated, and we actually have saved a lot of people with our cameras, and I was not going to let them think that they had taken me down or put me out.
I want them to know that I’m going to be doing this until my very last breath. I don’t care. And I mean, of course I was sore. I had my arm in a sling and I have the ringing in my ears, but I’m still going to do it. I’m still going to make as much time as possible to do it because we’re out there protecting the citizens is what we’re doing, and trying to teach them their rights and bring awareness to the rest of the country or the rest of the world that it’s not fair what they do to us. It’s not fair.
I mean, I was lucky. I mean, I had a camera. How many times have they done this to people that don’t have cameras? How many times have they hurt people that actually die? Three people a day are killed by police every day, and we don’t want one of them to be here in Fort Worth, and that’s why we’re out with our cameras every single day.
Taya Graham:
You told me you like to protect the underdog. What inspires you to cop watch?
Carolina In Fortworth:
I guess because what happens is that these cops are allowed to lie to the people. And I hate that we’re brought up as little kids to trust the police that listen to what they say because their heroes, they’re out there protecting you and making sure that nobody gets hurt. But in the meantime, what we’re finding out is that they break the rules to get people, they break the rules to get people.
In other words, would they stop a vehicle and they take everybody’s driver’s license or everybody’s ID to check them, all for warrants, to see if they can catch anybody that has a warrant out maybe instead of just taking the drivers. And I feel like if we have to play by the rules, they should play by the rules, and I don’t think they should be able to lie to us.
Taya Graham:
Okay. Now, the treatment of Carolina in Fort Worth prompts quite a few reactions from me. None of them I would add are particularly charitable to the institution of law enforcement.
For one thing, I still can’t really reconcile the officer’s behavior with Carolina’s simple act of filming. I mean, if there’s any example of the excessive use of law enforcement in our country against transparency, this one really takes the cake.
But there is something else going on here that I think is perhaps revealing about how policing in general has become misguided to say the least. It’s an idea that actually sheds light on the imperative that informs what the officers were actually doing that evening that’s been overlooked, if not ignored, but deserves further examination.
So let me put this simply. The officers in question weren’t investigating a murder, tracking down a burglar, or otherwise pursuing the laudable goal of public safety.
They weren’t helping a cat out of a tree or helping a distraught family search for a missing loved one. No, that’s not what was happening.
Instead, they were writing parking tickets at 3:30 in the morning, no less. That’s right. The officers who were uncomfortable under the gaze of the cop watchers cell phone were exacting fees and fines from the hardworking people who I assume really can’t afford it. They were even towing the vehicles of the entertainment district workers who were more than likely finishing a night-long shift in a bar or a restaurant.
Now, I want you to think about that, what it means and why it matters. I mean, we spent billions in this country on law enforcement. We train and equip cops to work for roughly 18,000 police departments spanning small towns to big cities across the country. And the idea, at least in theory, is that this investment will somehow translate into better public safety.
But how? And I asked this question seriously, how does writing parking tickets achieve that goal? How does towing cars in the middle of the night advance the off-sighted imperative to protect and serve?
Well, clearly it doesn’t, and that’s sort of the point, right? I mean, time and time again on this show, we encounter examples of overreach by the law enforcement industrial complex that seems more designed to simply punish than to protect. A clear lack of consideration for the people that ultimately pay for it. Something that I think speaks to the broader issues about why the uniquely American process of enforcing the law seems predicated on a philosophy that’s far removed from the idea of a collective common good.
What do I mean? Well consider this article in the Washington Post. It recounts how a group of former police officers participated in a mind-boggling crime that sounds like it’s lifted straight from a Hollywood script, not just troubling but profoundly disturbing.
The officers included two former members of the LA County Sheriff’s Department, which we’ve covered often on the show for some pretty questionable arrests.
Now, these officers were working at the behest of a Chinese national who wanted to extract money from his former business partner. The person who hired what were described as mercenaries was not named in the indictment. She allegedly had a dispute with the man whose home was raided and she wanted to collect the money she felt was her due.
The officers showed up with expired badges and forced their way into the victim’s home. The cops then proceeded to pressure him to sign paperwork to turn over roughly $37 million. They tore his shirt, threw him against the wall, and threatened to deport him. All of this while his two youngest sons cowered in fear, unsure of what would happen next.
At one point an officer said he was in fact not law enforcement, suggesting that the man was facing an immediate threat to his life.
All of this prompted him to sign over a $37 million stock under the threat of a bunch of cops who actually weren’t even cops.
But I think the broader point of this story about bizarre police behavior goes beyond a faux raid and a bit of boneheaded extortion, a tale of policing for profits that isn’t just isolated to a group of former cops turned bill collectors.
No, I think this is in fact a symbol or what drives bad policing and our historic economic inequality and the reason that Carolina was confronting a bevy of police in a nondescript parking lot at three A.M. in the morning. All of this really is not about morality or crime or law and order. It is though about a particular type of cruelty that underlies the fragile system of democracy in which we all hope to flourish.
It is put simply a regime of enforcement, not tethered to any idea of bolstering or building a community, but rather exacerbating the inequality that greases the wheels of penalties for the people who aren’t part of the fabulously wealthy.
I mean, you can’t maintain the historic concentration of wealth without some type of system that extracts and enforces the inequitable reality that we all share.
I think we can see this imperative at work in the story I just recounted and the near deadly encounter with Carolina not just the aggressive behavior alone, but the deeper systemic failures that drive police to do things that really make no sense.
I mean, let’s face it, parking tickets are supposed to encourage the most productive use of space, not impose usury fines on unwitting people. They aren’t supposed to be deployed like a weapon to burden the working class with fines and tow truck fees and costs that can drown a person who’s barely getting by.
Meanwhile, the fact that a bunch of retired cops thought they could turn into a crew of paramilitary bill collectors shows the same inherent disregard for the rights of the people that often put law enforcement at odds with the people they purport to serve.
But what really strikes me about both stories is that each, in its own way, tells a story about us, about how we are not respected and how we often suffer in silence while the government uses the police we fund to make our lives miserable.
Now, this is not to suggest that a parking ticket is the end of the world or that a $300 tow will necessarily destroy a person’s life. And this is not to say that an errant mob squad that illegally raided a man’s home got away with it. In fact, the only reason we know about it is because they’re actually being prosecuted.
But what this does tell us is that government power must be kept in check, and by extension, the government’s ability to employ, deploy, and empower people with guns and badges. Now, I know I make this point often, but the work to hold police accountable is vital, not just because cops are inherently bad or they’re always doing something wrong.
I would say just the opposite. They behave better when we watch them just like anyone else would. But what’s really important is to understand the fluidity of power or rather who it really serves, how it concentrates at the top and flows down until it envelops the working people of this country in a deluge of fines, fees, and petty arrests. How it leads to a country where a just release report noted that America spends more on healthcare than any other wealthy country, and yet we have the worst outcomes in terms of life expectancy and wellness to other comparable nations.
That’s why we have to comprehend the true nature of the punishment regime that makes all of these incongruous realities possible, how it accumulates power in institutions that are supposed to serve and then swallows whole the communal benefits and turns into over-policing and an invasive attempt to shape our lives in ways that are often punitive and destructive.
The broader point is that inequitable power is not reluctant or discreet. It doesn’t watch over us to be constructive or helpful. Ultimately, it is intended to prescribe a reality where we don’t matter, our rights don’t matter, and our pursuits of happiness don’t matter. Where cop watchers are just a nuisance. The working class is ripe for exploitation, and every single one of us is diminished by a system predicated on denying our humanity.
That’s why we need cop watchers, activists, journalists, YouTubers, and perhaps even a show that reports on all of them.
That’s why we need to be vigilant, demanding and skeptical, and that’s why we need the community that you are all a part of, the people that refuse to be ignored or forgotten.
I want to thank Carolina in Fort Worth for speaking with us, sharing her experience and being willing to get back on the streets and filming police. Thank you, Carolina. And of course, I have to thank Intrepid reporter Stephen Janis for his writing, research and editing on this piece. Thank you, Stephen.
Stephen Janis:
Taya, thanks for having me. I really appreciate it.
Taya Graham:
And I have to thank mods of the show, Noli D and Lacey, our further support. Thank you and a very special thanks to our accountability report, Patreons. We appreciate you and I look forward to thanking each and every single one of you personally in our next livestream, especially Patreon Associate producers, John ER, David K, Louie P, and Lucille 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.
Reach out to us. You can email us tips privately at par@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 Taya’s Baltimore on Twitter and Facebook. And please like and comment. You know I read your comments and appreciate them. And we do have a Patreon link pinned in the comments below for accountability reports. So if you feel inspired to donate, please do. 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.
This story was originally published by In These Times on Sep. 25, 2024. It is shared here with permission.
In a lot of ways, an attack on Nabala Cafe always felt inevitable — and we didn’t even have a Palestinian flag hanging in the window when we first opened in July.
So many sellers of Palestinian flags also sell Israeli flags, so it didn’t feel right to give them money. But a community member donated a flag after our first week and we hung it up proudly in our front window — as visible as possible.
“A community member donated a flag after our first week and we hung it up proudly in our front window—as visible as possible.”
I named the shop Nabala Cafe as a tribute to my ancestral home in Palestine, Bayt Nabala, a village that was destroyed during the Nakba in 1948. Three thousand villagers (called “Nabalis”) mostly fled east towards Ramallah. As Israel occupied more and more Palestinian land over time, Nabalis continued to be displaced. Some stayed in Palestine or across the eastern border in Jordan, but we’ve all been forced to find homes in different parts of the world.
Chicago is home to the largest population of Palestinians in the United States, and we have a strong community of hundreds of Nabalis living in the area. The concept of Nabala Cafe started here, building on the deep community roots of Nabalis that have remained strong over decades, all centering our home of Bayt Nabala.
Nabala Cafe offers a selection of free books to community members, and those who come to the cafe frequently grab a book off the shelves and spend time reading there. Photo by Steel Brooks
For years I felt dejected and disconnected from the world, spending my time and energy in corporate sales. Each day I was pushing consumer data to companies who would leverage it for financial gain while irreparably damaging the communities and environments they exploited. During that time, the most rewarding aspects of my life were a long way from the office. They were in Uptown where I’d spend much of my free time connecting with community members and providing food, water and resources to unhoused neighbors.
But this was never enough. There was always more to do in the community — more time needed to build relationships, more space needed to share skills and develop a well-rounded community, and more energy needed to develop sustainable mutual aid networks and broader social movements.
“During that time, the most rewarding aspects of my life were a long way from the office. They were in Uptown where I’d spend much of my free time connecting with community members and providing food, water and resources to unhoused neighbors.”
But instead I was spending most of my time and energy downtown, empowering the consumerism of the Loop and all of the global corporate entities with deep ties to Chicago’s business sector.
Nabala Cafe was a way to address this problem — shifting my time and energy to my community, with hopes of adding support, capacity, nourishment and care. With some encouragement from loved ones, I started the project in earnest in 2022. About two years later I was finally putting up our decorations honoring Palestine and opening the doors to the public.
Palestinians and Palestinian businesses have been frequent targets since the genocide in Gaza began. When we opened, we thought that it would only be a matter of time before someone attacked us. And on a recent evening, someone smashed the window where we displayed our flag.
After a window was smashed at Nabala Cafe, a board was put up to cover the open space. Community members came together to paint a mural on the board, so even after the window was fixed, Nabala Cafe owner Eyad Zeid decided to keep the board facing inward as a reminder of the community support the cafe received after the attack. Photo by Steel Brooks
At least two other nearby businesses, the bookstore Women & Children First and the clothing store Naaz Studios, were also attacked in recent months in similar ways. And as we know all too well, attacks on businesses that support Palestinian liberation are just a small slice of the overall violence we have seen over the past year.
There have been evictions handed out to residents displaying Palestinian flags on their apartments and employments terminated for the simple act of wearing a keffiyeh. Three college students who were speaking Arabic and wearing keffiyehs were shot in Vermont. A woman attempted to drown a 3-year-old Palestinian girl in Texas. And right here in the Chicago area, 6-year-old Wadea Al-Fayoume was violently murdered in October 2023.
“Nabala Cafe was a way to address this problem—shifting my time and energy to my community, with hopes of adding support, capacity, nourishment and care.”
It’s not just the murderers and vandals attacking Palestinians. It’s the police too. So many cops have ties to white supremacist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, and so many police departments have had training exchange programs with the Israeli Occupation Forces — the same forces who have likely murdered hundreds of thousands of Palestinians in Gaza in the last year alone.
It’s the Federal Bureau of Investigation that is calling and trying to intimidate Palestinian activists like In These Times columnist Eman Abdelhadi. The same FBI and federal authorities who have taken Palestinians away from their families with horrifying regularity since September 11, 2001.
So for those of us who have been attacked in these various ways, questions we hold are: What can justice look like when anti-Palestinian racism is so deeply embedded and so violent? How are we supposed to respond? How can we focus on continuing to build community and relationships and not resign ourselves to searching for solutions from those who are explicitly oppressing, surveilling and attacking us?
After our window was broken, many people suggested involving police — but for what exactly? Consider the hypocrisy of collaborating with law enforcement that enacts such violence of its own. And even if the person who smashed our window was arrested and jailed, and even if the U.S. carceral system was somehow — in some alternate universe — a truly rehabilitative force, there are still too many people empowered by genocidal rhetoric against Palestinians and deeply indoctrinated by Zionist propaganda.
But there is one thing I know for certain: We can’t arrest our way to liberation and we can’t jail our way to community.
“But there is one thing I know for certain: We can’t arrest our way to liberation and we can’t jail our way to community.”
Instead of turning to police, we turned to what Nabala Cafe is all about: community. As soon as word got out about the attack, our community came through to support us. We raised more than 10 times the money we needed to replace the broken window in less than 24 hours. Our business flourished in a way that we could not have ever imagined, and people got to work immediately beautifying our space, including painting a mural on our boarded-up window and covering the sidewalk with chalk artwork.
Our community was there with love and care when we needed it. But I also know we’re lucky and benefit from Palestine currently being the center of so many discussions. One thing I couldn’t help thinking about during all of this is what I would have done if our community hadn’t shown up, or if I was somewhere else and didn’t have the support we have here. That is the reality for so many others.
The Palestinian flag at Nabala Cafe still hangs proudly in the window. Photo by Steel Brooks
The stress and fear that I felt the moment I found out about the broken window was paralyzing. The only thing I could think to do was let people know what happened and call the insurance company. I didn’t even think to sweep up the glass until a friend came by with a broom. And I didn’t even consider that we’d need to board up the window until another friend reached out and offered to do it.
So many businesses and individuals who experience a violating attack like this are not met with even a fraction of the support that we received. Often, they are completely alone.
How can we fault these folks for mobilizing police and the carceral system when they have no one else to turn to? Even if they would prefer a different course of action, their fears and stresses are valid, the violence is real and present and, for businesses similar to ours, the threat to so many people’s livelihoods is palpable and frightening.
It’s our duty to show up for our communities in every way possible, because when we do not show up, that void is taken by police. I hope that one of the lessons we can take away from the attack on Nabala Cafe is that we need to make a collective effort to serve and support one another, so that relying on police for anything is a non-starter. We’re better off without them.
And police seem to always make that calculation for us. When I arrived at the cafe to deal with the broken window, it was about 7 a.m., more than seven hours after the window was broken. Police were on the scene overnight, and their biggest accomplishment was using police tape to hang a black garbage bag over the wide open window.
Nabala Cafe features artwork by Palestinian artists and about Palestine which can be purchased by those at the cafe. For owner Eyad Zeid, the artwork is part of an effort to spread the beauty of Palestinian culture throughout the neighborhood. Photo by Steel Brooks
When I called them to file a report in the morning (unfortunately required for insurance claims), they absurdly asked me what happened. I had just arrived, how would I have known? Then, when I asked them what happened, and what had occurred while they were there overnight, they said they didn’t know and that they didn’t document anything because “there was no victim present.” They didn’t say anything about considering it a targeted attack and just handed me a piece of paper reading “criminal damage to property” and that included a report number. That was that and I haven’t heard from them since.
Good riddance. The police do not care. But our communities do, and we need to get better at showing that care to one another in our day-to-day lives.
“Good riddance. The police do not care. But our communities do, and we need to get better at showing that care to one another in our day-to-day lives.”
It’s of course challenging because so many of us are putting our time and energy into making a living that also unfortunately benefits the ruling class; we have limited free time, so showing up for community becomes that much more difficult.
But the fundamental question is how we can continue to use our collective power to build community strength — and we do have some key examples to draw from.
One surrounds a Palestinian woman who faces eviction in Logan Square for hanging a Palestinian flag outside her apartment, and who has courageously left it hanging through a time-consuming legal battle. An incredible community formed around her — a true multiracial and religiously diverse community (including both Palestinians and Jews) — who protested, created artwork, and planned many different events in support of her and in service of free expression. It’s been nearly a year and this community is stronger than ever.
Nabala Cafe owner Eyad Zeid prepares Karak Chai. Many associate Karak Chai with community, comfort and supporting loved ones. Photo by Steel Brooks
Another surrounds the firing of a woman who was wearing a keffiyeh at her job at an Apple store in Lincoln Park. The way the staff at the store advocated and fought for her was so inspirational, and months later so many of these folks are embedded in more supportive and impactful community spaces.
These are small, but courageous acts. But that’s what we need right now, and that’s how we can protect each other, keep each other safe, and build community together.
And our actions don’t even need to be courageous to have an impact. It can be as simple as striking up conversations with neighbors and community members we’ve never met, or those that we continue to be in relationship and friendship with. Ultimately we need to consistently show up for one another on a massive scale, but there’s no telling what small acts can bring.
I’m incredibly grateful for our community, and more proud of Nabala Cafe than ever. I’m more optimistic than ever that it can be a space of connection and bonding, of love and nourishment.
Because we can’t arrest our way to liberation, we can only get there by building together.
The role of the death penalty as a toll of the racist system of criminal punishment has been long documented. In the case of Alameda County, California, the inside story of how prosecutors influenced jury selections to increase the likelihood of death penalty convictions demonstrates how the racism of capital punishment remains with us in the 21st century. For decades, prosecutors worked to limit jury participation from Black and Jewish individuals in order to produce juries that were more likely to support capital punishment. Michael Collins, Senior Director of Government Affairs at Color Of Change, joins Rattling the Bars for a revealing discussion on prosecutor misconduct, and what it tells us about the state of the criminal injustice system.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling The Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa.
The death penalty in the United States of America. At one point in time, the Supreme Court had put it on hold because of the manner in which it was being given out. At that time, the way it was being given out is upon a person being found guilty of a capital offense, the judge made the ultimate determination whether they got the death penalty or not. Throughout the course of litigation and the evolution of the legislative process, the death penalty started taking on the shape of a jury determining whether or not a person gets the death penalty or not after they were sentenced.
What we have now, in this day and age; and when I first heard it, it startled me to even believe that this was taking place; but in California, they have, in certain parts, the death penalty being given out, but more importantly, the death penalty given out by the prosecutor and the courts through their systematic exclusion of people’s juries of their peers. The prosecutors, along with the courts, have systematically set up a template where they look at anybody that they think is going to be fair and impartial and have them removed from the jury. Subsequently, a lot of men and women are on death row in California.
Here to talk about the abuse of this system and the discovery of the process and exposing it is Michael Collins from Color of Change.
Welcome, Mike.
Michael Collins:
[inaudible 00:01:54] to be here. Thank you for having me.
Mansa Musa:
Hey, first, tell us a little bit about yourself, then a little bit about your organization before we unpack the issue.
Michael Collins:
I’m originally from Scotland, as you can probably tell.
Mansa Musa:
Mm-hmm.
Michael Collins:
In the US since 2010, so like 15 years or so. Was in Baltimore for 10, 12 years off and on, and then I’m now in Atlanta.
Color of Change, where I work, is one of the largest racial justice organizations in the country. I oversee a team that works on state and local policy issues. We do a lot of work on prosecutor accountability and criminal justice reform, which is how we became involved in this death penalty scandal.
Mansa Musa:
All right.
And right there, because when I was at the conference in Maryland, [inaudible 00:02:50] Maryland, one of the panelists was one of your colleagues, and the topic they was talking about was prosecutorial misconduct. And in her presentation she talked about, and you can correct me as I go along … And I think it’s Alameda County in California?
Michael Collins:
Yep. That’s where Oakland is. Yeah.
Mansa Musa:
Right. In Oakland, they had … Since 2001, the prosecutors always had set up a system where they systematically excluded minorities, poor people; anyone that they thought would be objective in evaluating the case, they had them excluded, therefore jury nullification, and stacking the jury that resulted in numerous people getting the death penalty.
Talk about this case and how it came about.
Michael Collins:
Yeah, it really was shocking when we first heard about it. You know, we had been doing work on prosecutor accountability in Oakland in Alameda County, and there was a prosecutor elected, a Black woman, called Pamela Price, who was elected on a platform of trying to reform the justice system and use prosecutorial discretion to kind of right the wrongs of racial injustice and do more progressive policies within the office. And she discovered, or one of her staff discovered, that over a period of three or four decades, prosecutors in the office had been systematically excluding Black and Jewish people from death penalty juries.
Now, in other words, how this happened was, when you go into a trial, there’s a process of jury selection, and prosecutors and defense lawyers can strike certain people from juries. Maybe people have seen some of this on TV.
Mansa Musa:
Mm-hmm.
Michael Collins:
You’re not allowed to … Constitutionally, you are not allowed to strike people for race reasons, for religious reasons. But there was a sense from these prosecutors, who were very tough on crime prosecutors, who wanted to … They saw the death penalty as a trophy almost to be achieved, and they wanted to win at all costs. And so they believed that Black people and Jewish people would be less sympathetic to the death penalty and more likely perhaps to find an individual not guilty; more squeamish, if you like, about finding someone guilty who would then get the death penalty.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Michael Collins:
And so what Pamela Price, this district attorney, discovered was a series of notes and papers that documented the ways in which individual prosecutors were excluding people from juries in this way and really giving people an unfair trial.
And California has, for a number of years now, had a moratorium on the death penalty. They’ve essentially hit the pause button on the death penalty. But for a number of years it was really a state that carried out the death penalty [inaudible 00:06:28].
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, you’re right.
Michael Collins:
And also, one of the more startling things about this is Pamela Price, she came in, she discovered these notes. I think her reaction was, “This is crazy. How does this happen?” And it actually turns out that somebody sort of raised the alarm bell about this as far back as 2004; a prosecutor in the Oakland office who came out and he was like, “Listen, I was leading the trainings on this. I was somebody who was part of making these policies.” And the admission went before judges, it went before courts of appeals, and they threw it out, they didn’t believe this guy. And they kind of hounded this guy, the death penalty prosecutor, who essentially had a change of heart, and they hounded him out of town. And he now lives in Montana and practices law.
And I think he probably feels a sense of vindication about this, but it’s very troubling for us, the cover-up that’s gone on and the number of people that are implicated. So far, we know of at least 35 cases of individuals, but the DA is investigating this; it’s probably going to be more than 35 cases. Right?
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Michael Collins:
It probably extends beyond the death penalty to be honest. It probably extends to other, I would say, serious crime cases where, as I say, prosecutors wanted to win at all costs and used any tactic to get a guilty verdict, including essentially tampering with the jury.
And we are in a position now where I think what we want is some level of accountability. We want these individuals who have been sentenced to be exonerated. They were given an unfair trial. That’s abundantly clear. The judges and the prosecutors who were involved in this scandal, who stole lives and who essentially put people on a path to the death penalty, what is the accountability for them? And so that’s something that Color of Change is really pushing.
Mansa Musa:
All right, so talk about the … Because now you’re saying over three decades. First, how long has the moratorium been on?
Michael Collins:
Since the current governor took office. So I think it’s four or five years.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, so four or five years. So prior to that, they was executing people.
Michael Collins:
Yes.
Mansa Musa:
All right, so how many people, if y’all have this information, how many people have been executed in that period [inaudible 00:09:30] period?
Michael Collins:
We don’t have the numbers on that. I think what we are looking at just now is 35 cases where they’ve identified that are people who are now serving life sentences as a result of the moratorium. Because when the governor said, “We’re not doing the death penalty anymore” and hit the pause button on the death penalty … And again, I’ll stress that it is a pause button, right?
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, right, right.
Michael Collins:
A new governor, a new person could take office. It’s not like it’s been eliminated.
But when we kind of hit the pause button on the death penalty, there were a number of people who had their death penalty convictions converted into life sentences. And that was how part of this process was uncovered, because Pamela Price, this district attorney, her office was working on what kind of sentence that people … They were working with a judge to try and figure out some sort of solution to these cases where people were having their cases converted to another sentence, like perhaps a life sentence, life without parole, something like that. And in the process of working with a federal judge, that’s when they discovered these notes and files and [inaudible 00:10:49].
Mansa Musa:
Let me ask you this here.
Michael Collins:
Yeah.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, so I know in the state of Maryland where I served my time at, and I’m in the District of Columbia now, the sentencing mechanism, as I opened up, was a case came out, Furman Act versus United States. That’s the case that … Furman versus United States. That’s the case that they used to change the way the death penalty was being given out back in the seventies.
Because during that time, Andre Davis had just got arrested, so there was a campaign out in California to abolish the death penalty. But what wound up happening is they had a series of case litigation saying they violated the eighth amendment. So what ultimately happened was that the Supreme Court ruled that the way the death penalty was being given out, which was the judge was the sole person that gave it out, they changed it to now they allowed for after the person was found guilty, then the jury would determine whether or not they got the death penalty, that was based on the person that’s being looked at for the death penalty, or have the opportunity to allocute why it shouldn’t be given.
But how was the system set up in California? Is the person found guilty and then given the death penalty? Or is the person found guilty and then they have a sentencing phase? How is the system in California?
Michael Collins:
Yeah, I think a person’s found guilty and then there’s a sentencing phase. And there were a lot of articles about this and about the different lawyers in California.
I mean, I think there’s obviously a movement to end the death penalty, and it’s gathered a lot of momentum in the last five or 10 years. But I think if you go back to the eighties and the nineties especially, this era, whether you were in Maryland or whether you were in California, whether in Kentucky, just across the country, this very tough on crime era and harsh sentences, I think that the death penalty for prosecutors, or what we’ve been told and what we’ve read, the death penalty cases were almost like a prize for the prosecutors [inaudible 00:13:06] do the cases. It was the most complex cases, it had the most prestige attached to it, and they were really valued on their ability to win these cases. And so they would send their best prosecutors to do these cases. They would ask for the death penalty frequently.
And that’s why we have a situation where … At the very least, we know in a place like Oakland, which is not a huge place, we have 35 cases right now that they’re looking at; one of the cases has already been overturned, the conviction has been quashed of an individual. We expect that to happen in a lot of these cases as they examine the evidence, how much the death penalty was … The jury selection was a key factor in the conviction.
But yeah, I mean, it certainly was the case that the death penalty was used very frequently in California.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. So in terms of … And the reason why I asked that question, I’m trying, for the purpose of educating our audience, to see at what juncture was the exclusion taking place? Or was it across the board, because [inaudible 00:14:21]-
Michael Collins:
Yeah. So my understanding is the exclusion took place as they were selecting the jury. Right? You start off with a pool … Maybe some of your audience have been selected for jury duty, when you go in and you’re sitting in a room and there’s maybe a hundred people, and then eventually they whittle it down to 12 people and some alternates. And in that process, as a prosecutor and as a defense lawyer, you’re striking people from the jury and saying, “No, I don’t want this person.”
The reasons for doing that are supposed to be sort of ethical and constitutional, like, “What do you think of the … ” You’ll be asked, “What do you think of the police? What do you think of law enforcement? Do you trust the judicial process?” They’re trying to figure out, “Are you going to be able to properly serve on this jury? Are you tainted in some way?”
But the notes were really about a feeling that Black people were not sympathetic to the death penalty [inaudible 00:15:30] not convict; or Jewish people, because of their beliefs, because of their religion, were also not sympathetic to the death penalty. And so the prosecutors were trained and instructed to make sure, if they found out a person was … If they had a Jewish last name or something like that, or if a person was Black, ask some questions, figure it out, but essentially get them off the jury.
And there was even a case … I mentioned before, we’re talking a lot about prosecutors, judges were involved in this as well.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Michael Collins:
There was a case where a judge pulled the prosecutor after jury selection into his chambers and said, “You have a Jewish person on the jury. What are you doing? Get that person off the jury.”
Mansa Musa:
Oh my Goodness.
Michael Collins:
And so the sort of depths of the scandal are beyond kind of prosecutors. It’s a real institutional crisis.
And that’s why we want the governor to get involved, Governor Newsom to get involved and provide resources to investigate this. We want the Attorney General to get involved and investigate this. Because this is a very clear and obvious scandal.
And it’s not enough to, in our opinion, re-sentence these individuals, exonerate them. Other people did some very, very shady things and very unethical things and illegal things and ruined people’s lives. And as far as they were concerned, these people were going to be killed. And so we want to make sure that there’s accountability for that. They treated this like it was a sport, like it was a competition, and people’s lives have been ruined as a result. And we want to make sure that people are held accountable for what they did.
Mansa Musa:
Talk about the … Okay, so talk about this prosecutor, the one that came in with this reform. Was this something she campaigned on and then carried it out?
Michael Collins:
No. So-
Mansa Musa:
What’s her background? What’s your information on her?
Michael Collins:
Yeah, it’s a good question.
So Color of Change has worked a lot on trying to reshape the way that prosecutors operate. I mean, historically, prosecutors, they are the most powerful player in the system. They will decide how much bail you get, how long you’re going to be on probation. Everybody likes to imagine trials like judge, jury and [inaudible 00:18:00]. Most cases are a guilty plea that are executed by the prosecutor themselves. So they have tremendous power. And very often, as we’ve seen with this scandal, prosecutors are just old school tough on crime; “I’m going to get the heaviest sentence and put this guy away for as long as possible.” That was their vision of justice.
And Color of Change, along with a number of other organizations, wanted to elect prosecutors that were more justice oriented, that were more reform minded, that were people who had a different view of the justice system and wanted to use some of that tremendous power within the prosecutor’s office to do good, to do justice, to reform them.
And so roundabouts of 2016, 2017, you saw a lot of prosecutors get elected that were more interested in things like police accountability; Marilyn Mosby in Baltimore, Kim Fox in Chicago. There was also Larry Krasner in Philadelphia.
Mansa Musa:
Philadelphia. Right.
Michael Collins:
And they came in and they did things like exonerations. They would investigate previous cases where the office itself had convicted somebody and they would find wrongdoing, and then they would overturn that verdict and the person would go free. They did things like non-prosecution of low level offenses or diversion, stuff like that.
Anyway, Pamela Price came in as the Oakland DA, a historically Black jurisdiction. She herself had a civil rights background, was not a prosecutor, and took office to really try to reshape the office after decades of having a tough on crime prosecutor, mostly white led office that [inaudible 00:20:07] locking up Black people and throwing away the key. And she came in with a lot more of a nuanced approach.
And I think … She didn’t campaign necessarily on this scandal, but I think it’s true to say that a lot of other prosecutors, the traditional tough on crime prosecutors, would’ve discovered these files and been like, “Just put that back. Forget it.”
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Michael Collins:
Because you’re opening a hornet’s nest here, because if you think about … There’s victims involved, there’s family members, there’s cases; some of these cases are sort of 20, 30 years old. It’s not easy what the office is going to have to go through to reinvestigate these things.
Mansa Musa:
Mm-hmm.
Michael Collins:
But I think this crop of prosecutors that has a different vision of justice and what justice is, and they do want to hold people accountable for wrongdoing, whether it is somebody who commits a homicide or a prosecutor who commits misconduct or a police killing, they apply that kind of one standard of justice.
And so she was very open and sort of found these files and then approached a federal judge and said to the judge, “Look, here’s all this evidence that there was this of systemic racism, anti-Semitism that resulted in people getting the death penalty.” And the federal judge was the one who said, “Okay, you need to review all these cases. You need to move forward with a full [inaudible 00:21:42].” So that’s what’s happening right now.
So that’s kind of Pamela Price’s story. Incidentally, she’s actually being recalled in California.
Mansa Musa:
Oh yeah, yeah. Larry Krasner. He was like … In Philadelphia, it was the same thing we have with them.
Michael Collins:
Yeah, it’s the same thing. There was a big backlash [inaudible 00:21:54]-
Mansa Musa:
Kim Fields. Yeah, yeah. Same thing we have with them.
Michael Collins:
… Prosecutors in this sort of … You know.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, yeah.
Michael Collins:
And it’s hard because if she is recalled in November, I don’t really know what’s going to happen to these cases.
Mansa Musa:
Oh, I know. You know what’s going to happen. They’re going to go to the defendants and they’re going to sweep it up under the rug.
Michael Collins:
Yeah. Well, that-
Mansa Musa:
But talk about the community, because that’s what that lead me right into this because of what you say about her and the prospect that she might be recalled. Talk about your organization’s work in educating and mobilizing the community, because ultimately, if the community is engaged in the process because it’s their family members that’s being … Oakland is the birth for the Black Panther party. Oakland has a rich history of civil disobedience, police brutality. The list goes on and on. If the community … Where are y’all at in terms of organizing or mobilizing or having some kind of coalition around this-
Michael Collins:
Yeah, we have a coalition on prosecutor accountability where we try and … You know, we are not sort of … Prosecutors are part of a very broken system, right? We don’t want to be cheerleaders for these prosecutors. We talk more about accountability, so prosecutor accountability.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Michael Collins:
So we have a coalition that we’re members of with Ella Baker Center and ACLU and a number of other local groups, where we meet regularly with the DA, but we try and push her to embrace more progressive policies. We try and push her to move more quickly on some death penalty cases. But at the same time, if she’s doing the right thing like she’s doing on these death penalty cases, we’re certainly going to defend her and go out there and support what she’s doing.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right, right, right. Because … Yeah. Right.
Michael Collins:
So we do community events. I’m actually in New Orleans just now where we’re holding an event with around about a hundred folks from across the country from different groups to talk about, how do you … Including people from Oakland, to talk about, how can you push your prosecutor and what should you do about it?
But as you know, it’s a very tough time for criminal justice reform, right?
Mansa Musa:
[inaudible 00:24:02] That’s right. That’s right.
Michael Collins:
[inaudible 00:24:02] public backlash, where coming out of the killing of George Floyd, there was actually a lot of mobilization of people on the streets calling for reform. And very quickly that’s disappeared and we’ve been attacked relentlessly. Anybody who engages in reform, police accountability, the establishment wants rid of them, the conservatives.
And to be honest, especially in a place like California, what we see is a lot of centrist Democrats running scared-
Mansa Musa:
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Michael Collins:
… Using the same talking points as Donald Trump on crime. And that’s just very unfortunate.
So it is an uphill struggle because there’s so much misinformation out there about crime and about prosecutors and about progressive policies. But we’re trying, we’re trying to educate people. And when you see something like this happen, we try and tell people, “Look, other prosecutors would look the other way.”
And that certainly is what happened. As I mentioned before, this scandal goes back decades [inaudible 00:25:11].
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, that’s crazy.
Michael Collins:
And this woman is in office and she has had [inaudible 00:25:13].
Mansa Musa:
But the thing about the thing that … To highlight your point about reform and how we had the upper hand in terms of George Floyd, but George Jackson said that, and he was the best [inaudible 00:25:30] person, he would describe it as reform; all the call for police accountability and divest, all those, the fascists and capitalists, they took them conversations and they twist it, and they twist it to the form like Cop City where we saying like, “Well, we’re doing this to create the reform that you’re talking about, so we want better educating, better training. But you’re trained to be paramilitary.”
And the same thing with what’s going on right now in terms of any type of social justice movement around prosecuting misconduct and what they call progressive prosecutors. I interned with a organization that that’s what they did. They got prosecutors, they educated them, got them involved and become progressive prosecutors. But all the progressive prosecutors are just doing what they was mandated to do, to find the truth for justice, search for the truth and justice, all them are being recalled, targeted, and organizations like yourself.
Talk about where y’all at now in terms of y’all next strategy around this issue.
Michael Collins:
So we are having conversations with the Attorney General’s office because the Attorney General plays this role where they themselves can identify that misconduct has happened, the unconstitutional jury instructions, and they can make a ruling. And they have more resources and more [inaudible 00:27:04] than the local DA.
So we met two weeks ago, I think, with the Attorney General’s office to try and push them to get more involved. We’re pushing the governor to dedicate more resources and get more involved in this, you know, somebody who himself opposes the death penalty. And we’re trying to keep the drum beat going in terms of [inaudible 00:27:31] attention. Good organizations like you guys; really appreciate you reaching out to us on this because it is so important that more people know about this.
I’m always surprised that it isn’t a bigger story. When I found out about this, I was like, “Oh, this is going to be front page.”
Mansa Musa:
Right, right, right. It should be. Yeah. Yeah.
Michael Collins:
But I guess there’s so much going on just now, I don’t know, you never can tell what’s going to [inaudible 00:27:55].
Mansa Musa:
But in terms of, how can our viewers and listeners get in touch with you and how do they … Tell them how, if they want to support y’all efforts, what they can do to [inaudible 00:28:07].
Michael Collins:
Yeah, so Color of Change has a website called Winning Justice, which is our prosecutor accountability work. And if you go on there, you’ll see a number of actions that people can take around this death penalty scandal, even with their own local prosecutors, trying to get involved, set up coalitions, actions that can be taken where you can push your own prosecutor, whether they’re progressive or not, to do more justice and engaging [inaudible 00:28:34].
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Michael Collins:
So yeah, it’s Winning Justice is our website. And if you search for it, you’ll find it and you’ll see a ton of actions and just our positions on a bunch of different issues and what we try and do with prosecutors to get them to engage more in reform.
Mansa Musa:
Well, thank you, Mike.
There you have it. The real news rattling the bar. It might be strange, it really might be a stretch of your imagination to believe that elected officials would actually say that if you are Black and you are Jewish, that you don’t have a right to serve on the jury because you might be sympathetic to the defendant, be it the death penalty, be it the defendant’s economic and social conditions.
But because they think that you might be sympathetic to that, that is saying like, “Well, you might just be objective to see that it’s a set of circumstances that contributed to the outcome of the charge. But no, as opposed to do that and search for the truth, what I do as a prosecutor, I put a playbook together and say, ‘These people, under all circumstances, cannot serve on the jury’, and do it for over three decades, not knowing how many people has been executed as a result of this malicious behavior.”
Yet ain’t nobody being charged, ain’t nobody being indicted, ain’t nobody being fired. They’re being awarded a medal of honor for this dishonorable act.
We ask that you look into this matter and make a determination. Do you want your tax dollars to support this type of behavior? We ask that you look into this matter and check out what the Color of Change has to offer in terms of their advocacy and see if it’s something that you might want to get involved with.
The State of Missouri is scheduled to execute Marcellus “Khaliifah” Williams on Sept. 24 for a crime that even prosecutors now say he did not commit. On Sept. 12, a Missouri judge denied a motion filed by prosecutors to vacate Williams’ conviction and death penalty. Despite more than half a million petition signatures demanding Williams be freed, Missouri is set to proceed with the execution. Michelle Smith, Co-Director of Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty, joins Rattling the Bars to explain Williams’ case and the fight to free him before it’s too late.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa.
In this country, according to the Constitution of the United States, a presumption of innocent goes with a person that’s arrested. They’re presumed innocent until they are found guilty. It’s not they’re presumed innocent until they exonerate themselves. It’s the burden is always on the state to prosecute a person beyond a reasonable doubt.
We have a situation today, where a man that is innocent, not by me saying this, but by the very people that prosecuted him saying this, that he’s innocent. Not me saying this, the evidence, the DNA evidence is saying this. Not me saying this, but a preponderance of evidence and people coming out on behalf of Marcellus Williams Khaliifah, better known as Khaliifah, who is slated to be executed the 24th of this month.
Joining me today is a supporter and an advocate for Khaliifah, is Michelle Smith. Welcome, Michelle.
Michelle Smith:
Thank you so much. Thank you for having me on. I appreciate the space to talk about Khaliifah’s case.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, so let’s start right here. First, tell us a little bit about what you do, then we are going to what’s going on with Khaliifah.
Michelle Smith:
Sure. So, well, as far as myself and my organization, I am the co-director of Missourians to Abolish the Death Penalty. We are the only statewide entity in Missouri that primarily fights to get rid of capital punishment. That is our main goal. And, in doing that, we do a lot of different things.
We do things from legislative advocacy, trying to change the actual law, to connecting with our community, and educating our citizens about the usage of the death penalty in Missouri. And also, we advocate for people who are on death row, which is what we’re doing currently for Khaliifah. So, we do a lot. And, this case right now, it is very dire. He has an execution date in, what, 11 days, and so we’re really trying to amplify his case, this injustice, and what is happening in our state concerning the pending execution of an innocent Black man.
Mansa Musa:
All right, so let’s right there.
Okay, an innocent black man. All right, make the case based on what the facts say, why he’s innocent, but start with what they say that he allegedly done.
Michelle Smith:
Sure.
So in 1998 there was a, the victim’s name is Felicia Gale, and she was in her home and there was a person who entered her home, and brutally killed her, and it was a tragic situation for sure. I never want to take away from that. A family lost [inaudible 00:03:30].
And so after this happened in 1998, a few months prior, another person, another woman, had been murdered in her home in a similar fashion. And the medical examiner at the time said they looked similar, but also the way that they were killed with a knife from their home, and also this knife was basically left sticking out of their bodies. So the medical examiner thought that there was some similarities, maybe it was some type of serial killer situation, but both of the cases went cold for a very long time. There were no suspects and no one arrested in either of those cases.
A little over a year later, the victim in this case, Mrs. Gale, her husband, who was a doctor, he decided to offer a $10,000 reward for someone to come forward with information because he and his family wanted justice for the killing of his wife. So once he offered that $10,000 reward, several people came forward basically saying that Khaliifah had confessed to killing this victim. And those people were… One was a girlfriend, someone he was dating, and another person was a person he met in jail.
So we all call that a jailhouse informant, or a jailhouse snitch. So these two particular people who I’ve actually learned knew each other, the informant, and the person in jail, and the girlfriend. So they both said Khaliifah basically told them that he had killed this victim, and the main crux of the case during that time… And he went to trial in 2001…
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Michelle Smith:
So several years after the murder, he went to trial. The informants both received money, they received $5,000. In one case with the jailhouse informant, he actually met the victim’s husband at the prosecutor’s office where the victim’s husband handed him $5,000 in cash. So it’s just egregious.
But, the main crux of the case at that time was these two people’s statements, and the fact that Khaliifah was in possession of the victim’s laptop computer. Now, you and I both know that there is a time, and even still today, stolen property is sold, handed off, et cetera. And so the fact that Khaliifah had her laptop was not necessarily surprising to me, because people do trade in stolen property.
And, interestingly enough, the girlfriend at the time, who said Khaliifah had the laptop, it was later found out that she’s the one who gave him the laptop, because she [inaudible 00:06:18] off the street again. At that point it had been stolen property. So he had been in possession of the victim’s laptop, and these people said that he told them that he had done this.
But, when we look at the actual evidence, and when I say evidence, I mean physical evidence, not only blood at the scene, but things like footprints. There was a bloody footprint left at the home from the person who had did this. Those did not match Khaliifah. Also, the victim, of course, she struggled, this was a brutal situation, and the victim was clutching hairs in her hand of the perpetrator, the person that had harmed her, and when they tested those hairs that were clutched in her hand, they did not match Khaliifah either. Any fingerprints in the home did not match him either, and the blood on the knife also did not match Khaliifah.
So there is no physical evidence that actually matches Khaliifah in this case. Again, the only thing that the prosecution originally put their case on is these two “witnesses” who said that Khaliifah told them that he did it, and the fact that he had item of the victims in his possession, including her laptop.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, answer this for the benefit of our audience…
Michelle Smith:
Go ahead.
Mansa Musa:
Because the error that you talking about, that he got locked up, The Innocence Project, the DNA became like the national standard for exonerating. Kirk Bloodsworth, they got a law I call Kirk Bloodsworth law, but Kirk Bloodsworth was locked up with me, and Kirk Bloodsworth was locked up in the 80s, ’85 or ’86. And Kirk Bloodsworth was locked up for allegedly raping and killing a little young girl. They had the underwear of the little young girl in their possession, the state did, and never tested it. So when they ultimately tested it, it exonerated him. But what that did that started this national campaign to give value to DNA evidence. That’s what this did. And I’m setting this backdrop up.
So whenever DNA evidence came up during that period, during the late nineties, or in that whole ’90 and 2000, and the OJ, you had… DNA evidence was like the crux. It was like the end of all. Why wasn’t this evidence taken into, if you know, why wasn’t this evidence, which is evidence that’s scientifically sound evidence, because you got hundreds of thousands of people that are locked up to this day based on DNA evidence. Why was this evidence excluded and didn’t go towards his innocence to your knowledge?
Michelle Smith:
Well, I’ll say a couple of things.
First, getting DNA tested in cases is always and often contentious. So, often the courts don’t approve the testing. You assume that when a case has some type of evidence, it is automatically tested. That’s not necessarily the case. So in Marcellus’ or Khaliifah’s case, the forensic evidence, the DNA was not tested until 2015, and I mean the current good DNA testing, not just like a blood test, but actual…
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Michelle Smith:
So it was conducted in 2015.
And during that time what happened was the DNA on the weapon, it was not Khaliifah’s DNA, but whoever’s DNA was, it was unknown. They didn’t know who. So of course the assumption is the DNA must match the perpetrator, and they did not know who that was. They were not allowed to run the DNA through the FBI system, I think it’s called CODIS. They were not allowed to run it through the system, so for many years that DNA went unknown.
However, a few weeks ago, probably mid-August, some DNA testing was conducted further on that knife, and when that testing came back, they had tested the prosecutor who originally prosecuted the case in 2001 and one of his investigators. And, interestingly enough, the DNA came back to match them. So what that told the current prosecutor’s office is that the evidence was contaminated, because obviously the prosecutor didn’t do it himself. So the fact that the DNA on the knife matched him, meaning that there was some contamination that happened, there was some mishandling of the evidence. And so the fact that the reality is the prosecutor’s DNA is on the weapon and also that investigator means that there was some type of breakdown in the chain of custody and the handling of that material.
A few weeks ago, August 28th when the hearing was held, that original prosecutor, he got on the stand, and testified, and he basically said that “Yes, I did handle the knife without any gloves.” He said the trial again happened three years after the murder, and because they had already run the fingerprint testing and the blood testing, he felt like it was okay for him to handle the knife without gloves. Actually said he did it all the time, which is concerning to me. And so that’s how his DNA got on the knife.
He handled it without gloves. He said he pulled it out of the package, and put the evidence sticker on it, and he showed it to several of the witnesses to confirm that that’s the knife that they saw, witnesses being the police officers, and he did. So the fact that the weapon was mishandled and the evidence contaminated obviously means that there’s something going on, because had the prosecutor not done that, it’s possible that the actual perpetrator’s DNA would have still been found on the knife, but because it had been mishandled, right now the DNA, again, does not match Khaliifah, but it has proven the evidence has been mishandled. So that is why there such contention around the DNA evidence in this case.
Mansa Musa:
All right, talk about this here. What about the hair follicles? Did anything come out in terms of testing that against Khaliifah’s hair follicles?
Michelle Smith:
Yes, and none of the other evidence matched Khaliifah, the hair, the footprints, the fingerprints, there is no physical evidence in that home, in that murder scene, that matched Khaliifah. The only evidence they had was the fact that he was in possession of the victim’s laptop and that these two people said that he told them he did it. They didn’t see it happen. They weren’t there either, but they both said that he told.
And the person from jail, interestingly enough, he did not know that man. He had just been in jail with him for a few days up to a week, so the fact that you would even be in jail with someone and just confessing to them that you killed people, that doesn’t make any sense to me.
Mansa Musa:
But that’s a common phenomenon in prison. People, they sit around, and they look at the paper, and they read about somebody’s case and they use that to get out. They call the state’s attorney, state’s attorney, don’t even look and see whether or not it’s any validity to it.
But let’s talk about, excuse me, the current prosecutor. And the current prosecutor and them and the states representative saying they are saying that he should be released or he should definitely not be executed. Talk about that, talk about that right there.
Michelle Smith:
Sure. So in our state, in 2021, there was a law passed in Missouri. And that law says that the local prosecutor, which is the office that prosecuted a person, that local prosecutor has the right to bring forth a case, a motion to court, to ask the court to set aside conviction, and that happens when the attorneys for the person who was convicted brings evidence to the prosecutor and then he himself in his office reviews the evidence.
So it’s not that a prosecutor just brings any case, he actually has his own staff review the evidence, his investigators, he runs the testing, et cetera. And once he was done reviewing this case, he decided that, “Yes, this case is not something I would have brought to court if I had been in court at that time. Our office messed up, our office mishandled evidence, and our office convicted someone who we today believe, who is not guilty, who is innocent.”
And so because of all of those reasons, the prosecutor brought the motion to court, asked the judge to review it, and to vacate that conviction. But, there is another party in this matter, which is the state attorney, the Attorney General of Missouri. And so the Attorney General of Missouri has the right to challenge the local prosecutor’s assertions. And this has been done several times. Now in the past three times, it has been used since 2021, the person was exonerated and freed and none of those people were on death row. All three of those people had life sentences. One was prison 28 years, one was in prison 34, and one was in prison for 42 years, and all of them were black men. Each of those black men have been exonerated and released after decades incarcerated.
But in this particular case, when the prosecutor brought forth the case and asked for to be reviewed, the State Attorney General has tried to block him at every point, at every turn. They were going to take a Alford plea, which is basically a plea deal [inaudible 00:16:36] some evidence, but that still there is doubt in that conviction. And the judge was going to accept that Alford plea, and in exchange they were going to give a Khaliifah a life in prison sentence.
Now life in prison is still a conviction and incarceration, however, it would’ve saved his life. He would not be facing execution. But, the State Attorney General went to the Supreme Court that evening, asked them to throw out this plea deal and hold the hearing, and once that hearing was held, the judge then reviewed the evidence… And it came out yesterday, so the judgment came out yesterday and it said that basically the DNA evidence that again points to the prosecutor, meaning that it was contaminated, is not “clear and convincing.” There’s a very high bar, when we’re talking about innocence, there’s a very high bar and person has to meet and the judge does not feel that this case meets that high enough bar in order to vacate the conviction. So the judge denied the motion to vacate the conviction.
So at this point, again, Khaliifah is facing execution on September 24th. His attorneys as well as the local prosecutor are trying to figure out their next legal move in court. I’m not quite sure what that is, but of course they can go to the state Supreme Court, they can also go to the US Supreme Court, and so we anticipate them doing that, and I’m sure that they’re going to keep fighting to bring justice to this case, and to exonerate Khaliifah, and also stop his impending execution. But we are in [inaudible 00:18:20]
Mansa Musa:
I got you. This is literally like you say, the 11th hour, but also from my information is the family members came out and said… Took a position on Khaliifah. What was that?
Michelle Smith:
In these cases, the victim’s families don’t always agree with the prosecution, and I think that’s a fallacy that people assume so. But the victim’s family, Mrs. Gale’s family have stated publicly that they don’t believe in the death penalty.
Again, her husband is a doctor and I’m sure that him being a doctor, a person that is tasked with saving people’s lives, is what grounds his own ideology in this, but the family is not for the death penalty. Now the family believes that Khaliifah is guilty of the murder. They have stated that as well. They don’t believe he’s innocent. They believe he’s guilty, but they also don’t believe in death penalty. So they would be satisfied if he was just incarcerated. But I explain to people often that the prosecutor, they don’t always align with the family. The prosecutor is a political position, and the decisions that they make in the office are often politically motivated. It’s not always about the family.
I’ve seen cases where… There’s one case of a man who family, the victim’s family was his own family, because in his case, when he was 19, he killed a member of his family. I believe she was a great aunt who was an elderly person, and he was doing drugs, sadly, and he killed his great aunt trying to get money. But the victim’s family, his family are same family.
And that victim’s family went to the governor, I believe it was Texas, and went to the governor of Texas and told him, “We don’t want our loved one killed. We understand what he did. We are a family of faith. We are a family of forgiveness, and we want him here, and we believe that he’s a better person, and we don’t want to lose him.” And the state said, “we don’t care what you think” and executed him anyway.
So the prosecution is not always about the victim’s families, or the victim’s loved ones, or justice for the victim’s family, because in Khaliifah’s case, the victim’s family does not agree with the death penalty, however, the state is still pushing for Khaliifah to be executed. So it is not always what the victims want.
Mansa Musa:
We want to educate our audience on this point when they offer Khaliifah an Alford, because the Alford plea is a plea that’s saying that I’m innocent, it’s just that the circumstances, I can’t overcome these circumstances at this time. It’s not that they can’t be overcome, it’s just they can’t be overcome at this time. So this is a better course.
So given the Alford plea, he still would’ve been able to pursue his quest to be exonerated, which is really what this is about, an innocent man. Talk about an innocent man getting ready to be legally murdered. Talk about the state of Missouri and how they do the… Overwhelming numbers of blacks on death row, or is this generally that they go out, and they execute or they try to get the death penalty across the board, or is just systemically poor and poor people?
Michelle Smith:
Interestingly enough, when we talk about… Of course, racism is embedded in the capital punishment, death penalty system, it is the crutch of it is how it was done. There was a time where we were lynched.
Mansa Musa:
Come on.
Michelle Smith:
They made it legal and they made it state and they made it in the gas chamber, or an execution chair, but it’s still state-sanctioned murder. And since it is still embedded in racism, there is a little bit of difference. It’s not necessarily the race of the defendant, which that has a part, but statistically it’s the race of the victim.
Being a white female means that you’re three and a half times more likely to receive a death sentence. So if the victim is a white woman or a white female child, whoever the perpetrator is, nevermind [inaudible 00:22:33] whoever. But that goes to show you who’s valued in society. Because if Khaliifah’s victim was a black man or a black woman, he very likely would not be on death row right now. That’s just the reality of the situation.
So, racism does definitely play a part, who the victim is plays a huge part, but it is also who the defendant is as well. And in our particular state, because we are a state that held onto slavery, actually Missouri was a [inaudible 00:23:05] only state.
Mansa Musa:
Yes.
Michelle Smith:
So Missouri is the South. I tell people that often Missouri is the south, and when we look at it, we look at the lynchings in our state, and we can really overlay a map of the executions and they almost match. So places that did lynching, extrajudicial murders, now carries out the death penalty, capital punishment. It is definitely mostly black men, for the most part, but the overwhelming majority of people are poor. And that’s what we need to talk about, too.
People who are facing capital punishment, or lengthy sentences in prison are poor, don’t have access to the best legal help. In Khaliifah’s case, his attorneys, back at that time, his defense attorneys today, those two men are judges, and they came to court and they said, “Listen, we were ineffective because we had another death penalty case at the time, and we were stretched thin, we were busy, we had more than one capital punishment case, and we did not do everything that we could for Khaliifah because of that other case.” And they actually admitted that in court as well. So the representation for people, most of the time get public defenders, and they don’t have the robust representation. Everybody’s not OJ. Everybody cannot afford Johnnie Cochran and a great legal team.
Mansa Musa:
Dream team.
Michelle Smith:
Exactly. And so most poor people are facing these particular punishments because they don’t have access to their robust legal representation, and that’s the crux of it.
Even right now in our state, there are approximately 10 to 12 pending capital punishment cases, meaning they’re sitting in jail, waiting to go to trial, and they’ve been charged with murder and facing a death penalty. And guess what? All of those people right now are white men from rural Missouri. So they’re from small towns in Missouri, they’re all white men. And it is really an indictment, again, of our system. So when we talk about racism and the division and the biases, we truly need to understand that our system, our country, hates poor people overall.
Mansa Musa:
Criminalize poverty.
Michelle Smith:
[inaudible 00:25:16] tell you is, if you’re poor and you don’t have access to resources, or access to amazing litigation, et cetera, you are going to be victimized in this system.
Mansa Musa:
They criminalize poverty.
But talk… Look, before as we get ready to close out, talk about Khaliifa. I asked you earlier, I said, make the case why you think he’s innocent, and I’ll leave that up to our viewers based on the preponderance of information that you gave us, the facts of his case is in public record, but talk about Khaliifa, how is he doing and what kind of person is Khaliifa, for the benefit of our audience?
Michelle Smith:
So Khaliifah is again, his birth name was Marcellus Williams. He has been a very devout Muslim for many, many years and he took upon the Islamic name Khaliifah upon his shahada, which is that naming ceremony. He is also the Imam at the prison he’s in. So he is a person that is looked up to that is very admired. He guides the other Muslim men in that prison, and he’s always trying to make sure that he stays in alignment with Allah. So because of that, he keeps his faith right up front, and he is doing okay. We talked a few weeks ago and he honestly encourages me, because I’m not… Sadly, I don’t have the faith that he has. He’s always concerned asking me how I’m doing, telling me everything is going to be okay, because I’m a worrier, but he is very much that person that really stays calm, keeps other people calm around him, and has their perspective that everything is going to work out because he is such a faithful individual.
He’s also a father, a grandfather. He is very involved in his family, and he’s a poet. Khaliifah writes amazing poetry and we put together a collection of his poetry as well. He’s written poems about, one is called the Perplexing Smiles of the Children of Palestine, and it is an amazing poem about just the atrocities that are happening to the Palestinian people. He’s written a poem about George Floyd and the issues of what happened in 2020. So he’s very in tune with what’s going on today, and he has written some amazing poetry. So he is a beautiful-spirited person. He is definitely someone that has so much to give to others, and we are truly fighting for his innocence and his life so that he can go on impacting people in a positive way.
Mansa Musa:
So tell our audience right now, what can they do, how they can support and try to help reverse this process that we know that going to take place unless we get some support and raise the voices of Khaliifa.
Michelle Smith:
So of course, his legal team are doing all they can in court and we appreciate that, but as far as the community, locally here in Missouri and nationwide, just amplify Khaliifah’s story in his case, talk to your community members, talk to your family, talk to your loved ones about the fact that death penalty does not solve anything, and actually killing innocent people should be something we as a society should not be doing.
We have a petition for Khaliifah. We also have a webpage, which is www.freeKhaliifah.org. His name is spelled K-H-A-L-I-I-F-A-H, and it has a toolkit where we have graphics, and we have information that you can share on social media. You can print also and share as well. We have a little email template that you can email our governor, especially if you live in Missouri, you can definitely utilize that. So we’re really asking people to learn and to amplify the case, amplify Khaliifah’s life and humanity, and we would love this to get as big as possible. Some people have made videos on TikTok and Instagram, and those are amazing as well, because those get a lot of views and really inspire other people to learn more, and so that’s truly what we’re looking to do, amplify Khaliifah’s case.
Next Tuesday the 17th, from six to nine P.M. we will be going live on Instagram, bringing on several people to talk about Khaliifah’s case and trying to do a social media push really just to amplify the case, again, and to amplify his life because a lot of people don’t know what’s happening, so we definitely want more people to understand what is going on and how it not only affects us in Missouri, it affects us nationwide because we should have a stop at killing innocent people. That definitely is not something we should be doing.
Mansa Musa:
Thank you. There you have it. The Real News, Rattling the Bars. We ask that you review this information about Marcellus Khaliifah Williams. We ask that you asked yourself if you was in this situation, would you want to get a fair trial? Would you want people to really look at the information and the evidence when you confronted with this information and this evidence? Ask yourself, would you, as a juror, if you knew all this as a juror, would you have found Khaliifah guilty of murder? Ask yourself if you as a juror, would not be able to discern when person have interest over humanity, where a person would take and sell somebody out for $5,000? Ask yourself what would you do?
We’re asking that you look at this information and follow what Michelle was saying as far as on the Instagram, on their webpage is very interactive, and make your voice known. Because if we continue to allow this country to execute people, legally with impunity, then as Angela Davis say, “If they come for me at night, they’ll come for you in the morning.” And this is them coming for us in the morning and we don’t raise the voice of Khaliifah. Thank you, Michelle.
Michelle Smith:
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Mansa Musa:
And we asked you to continue to support Rattling the Bars and the Real News because we’re actually the Real News.
Darcy Layton was pleasantly surprised with a free sweater and fruit from her local convenience store—but what she didn’t know was that a more sinister surprise was awaiting her outdoors. Without explanation, local police confronted Layton and ordered her to show ID. Police body camera footage reveals the officer got physical when Layton was slow to give her full name, and arrested her under questionable pretenses. Suddenly facing charges, Latyon was hit with another shock from police: if she did not accept a guilty plea, she would be involuntarily committed to psychiatric hospitalization. Taya Graham and Stephen Janis of the Police Accountability Report investigate the case and examine how it reveals the role of police in enforcing social boundaries by criminalizing mental illness and homelessness.
Production: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham Post-Production: Stephen Janis, 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, we will achieve that goal by showing you this video of a cop making an inexplicable arrest of a woman who was simply standing on a public sidewalk. A questionable use of power to detain and cage a person who had not committed a crime. But it’s an arrest which reveals the destructive consequences of over-policing and why cops need to be watched at all times. But first, 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.
You can email us tips privately at par@therealnews.com and share your evidence of police misconduct and please share and like and comment. It really helps us and it can even help our guests and you know I read your comments and appreciate them. And please consider joining our channel and if you click that blue fundraising button over here, you can make a huge difference to help keep us going. If you donate $75 or more or become a $10 a month supporter, you’ll receive an exclusive Real News T-shirt as a special thank you so please consider helping us. You never see ads here and you know we don’t take corporate dollars.
All right, we’ve gotten that out of the way. Now, as we reported on the show repeatedly over and over again, police power is often used in situations that do not justify it, but in fact call for entirely different solutions. There are incidents where people simply need the help of another human being, not a gun, a badge or a set of handcuffs and no use of police power is more indicative of our penchant for applying it to the wrong situations than the video I’m showing you now.
It depicts an encounter between Darcy Layton and an Ogden, Utah police officer that ended with horrible consequences for her and questions about how the department treats people in need at their most vulnerable moments. The story starts in Ogden, Utah in April 2023. There, Darcy Layton is experiencing what she’ll tell us later was a moment of personal crisis. Not violent, as you will see, or even alarming. She’s just dealing with the consequences of her tenuous housing situation and she’s struggling with the stress of it. She happened at the same time to be standing on a street outside of a 7-Eleven, which is a fact that will be important later. That’s when an Ogden police officer drove to confront her for reasons that remain unknown. Take a listen.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Hey, excuse me. Hey.
Darcy Layton:
Hi.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Hi. What’s your name?
Darcy Layton:
I’m sorry, I was kind of praying to God for a minute.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Okay, no, that’s fine. It’s just the people at 7-Eleven don’t want you here so can I get your name?
Darcy Layton:
Oh, they didn’t tell me that [inaudible 00:03:01] been in there.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Okay, well what’s your name? What’s your name? Hey, stop. Stop.
Taya Graham:
Now, you will notice as the officer exits the vehicle, Darcy was clearly standing on a public sidewalk, not on the property of a 7-Eleven. And as is her right, since the officer had not expressed reasonable, articulate suspicion that she had committed a crime, she had declined to identify herself and simply exercise her right and walk away, but the officer decided to pursue. Take a look.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Hey, what’s your name ma’am? Ma’am, what’s your name?
Darcy Layton:
I’m okay. I just would go for a walk, I’m okay.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
What’s your name?
Darcy Layton:
I didn’t shop with [inaudible 00:03:51].
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Okay, what’s your name?
Darcy Layton:
I’m going to go. I’m fine. I haven’t done anything wrong.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
You’re not leaving.
Darcy Layton:
I’m fine.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
You’re trespassing. They want you out of here.
Darcy Layton:
I am walking off the, wait, wait. I’m not trespassing. I’m on public road.
Taya Graham:
First of all, the officer has not established that she has committed a crime. Yes, as you heard, he accused her of trespassing. But given that she seems far removed from the actual property of the 7-Eleven, that is at best, a questionable allegation. Still, without any evidence of intent of a crime, he continues to try to detain her – watch.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Come back to my car.
Darcy Layton:
I was on a public road.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Come back to my car.
Darcy Layton:
Public road, public road.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Come, stop.
Darcy Layton:
Let me go.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Stop.
Darcy Layton:
What the you fuck [inaudible 00:04:30].
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Stop.
Darcy Layton:
Fuck, fucking God. Oh my God.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Stop.
Taya Graham:
Okay, so for some reason that I cannot conceivably justify legally he puts his hands on her and I will note at the time this occurred, she was not threatening anyone and she was in the process of leaving the area, as I will repeat, is her right. Therefore, the question at this point is why did the officer put his hands on her? What exactly is the crime? Take a look for yourself and decide if this use of force is justified.
Darcy Layton:
[inaudible 00:05:03].
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Stop.
Darcy Layton:
Fucking stop, fucking God. Oh my God.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
If you don’t stop.
Darcy Layton:
Fucking hell.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Get the fuck off [inaudible 00:05:17].
Darcy Layton:
Rick, you got a PP.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Hey, don’t feel my leg.
Darcy Layton:
Rick you got a PP. God, damn you.
Taya Graham:
Before I weigh in on the legality of this arrest or what the law entitles the officer to do, at this point I want you to take a look at something that we see quite often when watching police body cameras, but rarely discuss, the way the officer initiates pain compliance. Now you can see how the officer bends her arm up into her arm socket. This is an extremely painful maneuver that can have lasting physical effects. Just recall our last show when Eddie Holguin was still suffering from the ongoing nerve pain of a previous arrest when the police arrested him again and caused pain in the same arm. Still, despite the risks, along with the obvious fact, Darcy is hardly a physically formidable detainee, the officer continues to press her arm up and into her shoulder, see for yourself.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Stop.
Darcy Layton:
Fucking hell.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Get the fuck off [inaudible 00:05:17].
Darcy Layton:
Rick, you got a PP.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Hey, don’t feel my leg.
Darcy Layton:
Rick you got a PP. God, damn you. [inaudible 00:06:44] Fucking bullshit [inaudible 00:06:44]. God damn.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Okay, give me your other arm. Give me your other arm.
Taya Graham:
Now, I really want you to think about what you’re seeing here. A woman pressed into the ground on the wet sidewalk, her arm dangerously pushed up into her back and is facing this physical duress for doing what exactly? What was the crime here? What was the threat to the public safety? A couple of 7-Eleven employees didn’t like her. Is that how we justify the use of force? Let’s just listen and see if the officer shares the particulars of the crime upon which he bases his use of force.
Darcy Layton:
Fuck.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
You’re being ridiculous.
Darcy Layton:
Don’t you dare, mother fucker. Fuck, your mother.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Sit up.
Darcy Layton:
It’s okay, fucking your mother.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Sit up.
Darcy Layton:
If you’re okay with fucking your mother. Fuck you, bullshit, [inaudible 00:07:36].
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Please stand up.
Darcy Layton:
Fuck Eddie. God damn it. Fucking, what is your problem?
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Come on.
Darcy Layton:
What did I do?
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Put your shoes on.
Darcy Layton:
What did I do?
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Let’s go.
Darcy Layton:
What did I do, please? What did I fucking do? You, God damn it.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
What did I do? What crime had I committed? A fairly simple question and yet the officer does not answer it. Now, instead, he ridicules Darcy and continues to implement pain compliance, a situation that only gets worse as he forces her into the patrol car all the while maintaining his silence about her alleged crime.
Darcy Layton:
Please, what did I fucking do? You God damn it.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Stop. Stop. Do you have anything on you shouldn’t have? What’s your name? Huh? What’s your name? I’m going to add another charge.
Darcy Layton:
I’m sorry please be nice.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Get in.
Darcy Layton:
Fucking bullshit.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Get in.
Darcy Layton:
Please be nice. Who are you?
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Police, get in.
Darcy Layton:
Please, who are you?
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Get in.
Darcy Layton:
Who are you?
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Get in. Get in please. Can you put your feet in the car please?
Taya Graham:
I’m going to add another charge. Well, that’s interesting. For what exactly? Because you can’t have a secondary offense without an underlying crime to justify it, right, officer? So what exactly is the first offense that justifies the second? Because as far as I can tell you never really made clear what the initial reason for the arrest is. And let me say this as well, this particular arrest up until this point embodies many of the problems people endure when they push back on the state of law enforcement in this country.
This is why people don’t trust the police because so far the officer has been less than forthcoming about his justification for this violent arrest, and yet he has been more than articulate about his disdain for Darcy, which incidentally, is not a crime. In other words, you can’t arrest people that you don’t like. But still the officer persists and continues to refuse to answer questions. Just watch.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Get in, please. Can you put your feet in the car please? It’s soaking [inaudible 00:09:57].
Darcy Layton:
I’m very hot.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
What’s your name?
Darcy Layton:
I’m sorry.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
What’s your name?
Darcy Layton:
Ah.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Huh? What is your name? What’s your name?
Darcy Layton:
I don’t know.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Huh?
Darcy Layton:
I’m sorry.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
What’s your name?
Darcy Layton:
I just kind of daydreaming for a minute.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Okay. What’s your name?
Darcy Layton:
I don’t know. I don’t remember. [inaudible 00:10:23]
Taya Graham:
But now perhaps the officer realizes that he has made an arrest for no good reason so he starts to make an accusation on body camera, the one that seems problematic, if not impossible. Take a look.
Darcy Layton:
I’m sorry I fucking [inaudible 00:10:39] myself I didn’t mean to you.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Lean your up a little bit.
Darcy Layton:
Am I dead?
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Why did you scratch me? Did you bite me?
Darcy Layton:
They drowning me in the fucking hole.
Taya Graham:
Did you bite me, seriously? This is what we like to call body worn camera performance. You know, I don’t have reasonable articulable suspicion or probable cause to make an arrest, but what I do have is the ability to perform my own version of stop resisting on body worn camera to justify any actions that might not meet the actual legal threshold for putting someone in handcuffs. Now, I’m not going to review the entire video, but here are a few excerpts and you tell me when and where she had the opportunity or inclination to bite the officer. Let’s watch.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Stop.
Darcy Layton:
What the fuck.
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Stop.
Darcy Layton:
Fucking, fuck. What the hell?
Ogden, Utah Police Officer:
Stop.
Darcy Layton:
Fucking dick.
Taya Graham:
So I, for one, didn’t see it and if you did, please leave a comment sharing where you did if you do indeed think she tried to harm the officer. But for the record, the bite may have been literally impossible because as Darcy shared with me later, she didn’t have her dentures in. But in the meantime, there is much to reveal about what led up to the arrest and the way police in Ogden, Utah have been aggressively targeting members of the community that we will unpack for you when we speak to Darcy and her boyfriend, Eddie Clegg, details, which only make the circumstances surrounding this example of over-policing even more questionable. But first, I’m joined by my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, who’s been reaching out to the police and examining the evidence. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me.
Stephen Janis:
Tay, thanks for having me, I appreciate it.
Taya Graham:
So Stephen, how are police justifying the arrest? What crime did Darcy commit?
Stephen Janis:
Well, I looked at the charging documents. We obtained them from the police department. Pretty simple. They charged her with some very questionable crimes that don’t seem to match the body-worn camera, namely trespassing and then interfering. But of course interfering would be a secondary offense to trespassing. And if you look at the video, you could see that she’s clearly on the sidewalk, I think, although the snow is covering, but not on the property.
But what they did because of those charges is that they had her plead guilty to the trespassing, threatening to charge her with that other bogus charge, which is injuring a police officer, which again, on video clearly contradicts what the officer was saying. So really it’s an example of law enforcement using their powers, to strong-arm someone into giving up their rights.
Taya Graham:
Okay, so wait, you’re saying Ogden, Utah prosecutors actually threatened her with charges of assaulting an officer. What was the plea offer and what eventually happened?
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, I mean Tay, it’s amazing. What they use is that very, I think questionable charge of trespassing to then intimidate her and saying that she was going to have to plead guilty of something that clearly wasn’t on body-worn camera, which just shows you how ridiculously ill-equipped I would say, our justice system is to defend people who can’t afford a high-priced lawyer. I’m sure if she had an expensive lawyer, that case would’ve been tossed in a second, but instead she ended up spending time in jail having plead guilty to a crime she didn’t commit.
Taya Graham:
Stephen, it seems to me that police are targeting this area’s unhoused population. What does this use of police power say about the underlying imperative of it and how does this jive with some of the theories of police power and its role in capitalism?
Stephen Janis:
Well, Tay, let me go back to what I just said. Let’s do a little thought experience. Imagine if all these unhoused people had expensive lawyers who could fight back and question the police, question the charges, question the legality, put officers on the stand and put the legal system on the stand as well. Let’s imagine what would happen. Do you think they’d be harassing these people? Do you think they’d be arresting them and pulling them in for charges they didn’t commit? Do you think so? I don’t think so. And that just shows you that our justice system is for sale and it goes to the highest bidder and that’s the problem we see here. People don’t have a way to defend themselves. They don’t have access to the same services that rich people do. And so police mess with them. That’s all this is. That’s what it is.
Taya Graham:
And now to talk about their encounters with police prior to the arrest we just watched and how law enforcement continues to harass them, I’m joined by Darcy Layton and her boyfriend, Eddie Clegg. Darcy and Eddie, thank you so much for joining us.
Darcy Layton:
Thank you Taya for having me.
Taya Graham:
So first, what were you at the convenience store before you were grabbed by police?
Darcy Layton:
I had gone for a walk but forgot my ID, my wallet and keys and I had somebody mail it to me, that was mailed to my address and I was just kind of asking if anybody knew where they might’ve moved to because I’d been living there for three years already in my apartment and still receiving mail to this person. Yeah, so I was just taking a break from my house for a minute. I was getting ready to head back home and somebody offered to buy me a drink. I wasn’t panhandling by any means, but it was cold and raining so somebody offered me, they put a jacket on me and offered to buy me a drink and they bought me some bananas and that’s why I was there.
Taya Graham:
An officer approached you but did not seem to explain why you were being stopped or detained or articulate any kind of reasonable suspicion. Did the officer ever explain to you what your crime was?
Darcy Layton:
I wasn’t catching on, I’m hard of hearing in my left ear and he approached me from my left side and at the time I was saying a prayer and I even mentioned that to him and then he said, “Stop.” So I thought he meant stop praying. But I couldn’t see him. I had been offered a ride home by two people in two white cars and thought it was one of them coming back to offer me a ride again. So I didn’t look. I just kept my eyes closed, praying still when he said to stop. At some point after I saw the video, but I didn’t hear it while I was standing there because of the deafness in my left ear, after they finally released the video over a year later to me, that’s when I heard him say that the store didn’t want me there, but I was already off the property.
Taya Graham:
The officer appeared to be strongly twisting your arm behind your back and then put you face down on the wet sidewalk. Was any reason given for using these pain compliance techniques or even for cuffing you?
Darcy Layton:
There was nothing given to me, nothing I heard at all. He basically told me that I wasn’t wanted on the property, they wanted me to leave, so I was walking away from the property. I was already off the property. I started to walk away when he said, “Stop.” And so I continued on my way By then I was on the public road, which is not their property anyway.
Taya Graham:
Did the officers identify themselves or give you any information?
Darcy Layton:
No, they didn’t and would not, I asked them repeatedly afterwards. Even at that point, who are they? Who are you and what’s going on? What did I do? And they would not respond to me and give me an answer whatsoever so I was uncertain of them even being official officers at all. Whatever happened to a rights to remain silent because they never even said anything about that. And so I was just remaining silent and then I felt like I must’ve been so confused because I didn’t realize, know what was going on because they wouldn’t give me any information whatsoever about who they were even when I asked who they were. So I didn’t feel comfortable giving them information about who I was because I’d heard on TV or on the news to make sure that if you don’t trust that they are true officers, to call 911 and go to a store or somewhere where there’s more people and get some real officers on board before contacting or telling them anything. So I didn’t feel I was doing anything wrong here by not giving them my name at first, but I did give them my first name, but it’s not in the video.
Taya Graham:
Darcy, were you injured during the encounter? It looked very painful.
Darcy Layton:
Yeah. Well I also have previous injuries in my lower back, a slipping disc. It is slipping. There’s no fluid in my, between L-4 and L-5. It just, it’s completely gone so it’s bone on bone already. They were putting their knee in my back pushing so hard that I lost control of my bladder with all their weight on top of me and up in my cervical C-spine now and my neck also with more damage as well. It was hurting pretty bad. Yes, that’s why I was swearing so much. Definitely causing me pain.
Taya Graham:
So the part with multiple officers being on top of you wasn’t shown in the body camera video we have because that body cam was not available because of the cost, right?
Darcy Layton:
Because I am on SSI for disabilities that I have and I only get, well right now, back then it was just a little over $900 a month. I had been going to that store at least three times a week every month for three years. But the income level is not high enough to retain that. They want $2,000 for the entire footage. So after asking for over a year and getting the run around of nothing coming back to us, they finally released seven minutes of the video to me just last week or week before. So yeah, I had nothing to go on yet, but they still want $2,000 for the entirety of it. And on SSI you’re not allowed to have anything more than $2,000 at a time on hand so how would I survive?
Taya Graham:
If there were three officers present and one of them was on top of you, I have a feeling, and now this is just speculation that the body camera video probably looked pretty bad to have three officers on top of one woman and perhaps they don’t want the world to see that.
Darcy Layton:
I was face down so it was hard for me to see anything. But when they first pulled me up, I was totally soaked because they had me down in the gutter with a lot of water coming down. Then they were giving me a hard time. They were saying, “Okay, miss no name.” And then they said, “Come on [inaudible 00:19:57]” I mean I’m white, I’m as white as they come and I also read part of his police report and it said he was working overtime and I don’t see crime in the area being necessity for any cop to work overtime in the area. Generally, it’s a pretty calm town.
Taya Graham:
I have seen officers make double their salary with overtime in Baltimore, so I know it’s a precious commodity. What were you charged with and how long were you in jail?
Darcy Layton:
It was like interfering with arresting officer and failure to disclose information and then they were trying to say that I assaulted the officer and I bit the officer and I scratched the officer. However, I was face down with my arm behind my back the whole time. I don’t see how any of that could have possibly happened and I had no teeth. So yeah, my dentures do not fit right. I choke when I try to eat with food so I don’t even wear them at all, but I’m cool with that. It’s fine.
Taya Graham:
Now, something I noted during the body cam video was the officer started pointing at his arm with his smartwatch and suggested that maybe you had bitten him or was that even possible or was it likely he reddened his own arm while cuffing you? I mean you didn’t even have your dentures in, right?
Darcy Layton:
Oh yeah and face down like I was, I thought they were going to drown me right there on the spot in the gutter with so much water coming down and then as much pressure as they applied to me with their knee in my back and I could not hold my bladder whatsoever, like I was getting ran over almost by car. It was stupid. And then I believe, they don’t really have calendars in the jail anyway. They don’t treat you very well here in Ogden in the jail. I believe it was like nine days that I stayed there in the jail before they let me out with no medication. I’m schizophrenic, I got Alzheimer’s or not Alzheimer’s, sorry, what is that called? Parkinson’s like movements and Parkinson’s going on, early stages, but I did not get a single visit from a nurse of any kind.
Also, I did read their written report down at the police station. Just recently, they finally allowed me to see that. He stated that I had said my head hurt, which I never did. They said that they brought a paramedic down there to have me checked out before he brought me to jail. It never happened. There was never a paramedic brought by and the whole time I was there for nine days in jail, zero medications brought to me for my conditions.
Taya Graham:
Darcy, that’s awful you didn’t receive your medications while you were in jail. How are you feeling right now though? I mean how are you processing this? What you describe is really awful.
Darcy Layton:
I have a real hard time being around the officers. Eddie likes to play these videos trying to get them to, he’s just wanting to learn as much as he can about police brutality and them making them do things better and be accountable for their actions and I am stressed out post-traumatic stress disorder and I have to keep getting out the vehicle because he keeps planning so much he doesn’t understand how it causes me stress and I have to go for a walk to get away from it. But I’m having some serious issues. I went and spoke with a therapist just yesterday and it makes me shake. I mean I’m dealing with it, I’m working on it, not letting it bring me down like it was. But yeah, I had some serious, serious issues there and I’m going to get through it though. But yeah, I don’t trust them.
Taya Graham:
So you told us that you’re homeless right now living out of your truck with Eddie. Have the police offered you any help?
Darcy Layton:
In a truck right now that’s just what we do. Most of them have been a hindrance. We’ve run into a couple of real good ones though that are very helpful. We’ve even had them come to a court hearing just to be there for support with us, a couple months back. She was a really nice lady. She did show up because I was having some real uncomfortable feelings about going around police officers and feeling safe at all and triggering my post-traumatic stress disorder coming in and she showed up and she’s very cool.
Eddie Clegg:
She’s an advocate.
Darcy Layton:
An advocate. And she even gathered us up some clothes and stuff and a pill medication holder to help me with my medication because I could lose them sometimes in here and sometimes I forget or I’ll fall asleep before I take my nighttime ones. Not purposely, I just check out though. So yeah, it was good to find at least one out there.
Taya Graham:
How did the police generally treat homeless people in the area? Now you’re living out of a truck and at the time of arrest Darcy, you actually still had an apartment. How do police handle homeless people and do they offer any support services?
Darcy Layton:
At the time of the 7-Eleven incident when I was tackled by the officer or yeah, I was living in an apartment. I had been there for a year and I had just come out on a rainy day with no makeup on and looked like a wet cat already so when I was put into the jail, they were treating me as if I was homeless and the judge even said, or the representative even said, “Well what are we going to do for her address? Where do we send the information?” Because they automatically assumed I was homeless and didn’t even ask me so I don’t know. They have harassed people on Washington Boulevard just because they’re homeless. They stop them and check their bags. One, the other day had just barely gotten released from jail. I don’t know what from, but Eddie got out to record, to make sure he wasn’t bothering him. This guy’s frail and shaky, he’s not doing anything wrong.
Eddie Clegg:
Just got out of jail.
Darcy Layton:
He’s got his backpack and his belongings, whatever he can carry and you can’t carry hardly anything. You need more things with you than you can carry already, but he’s not doing anything wrong. He’s minding his own business and this guy is messing with him. He picked it up and got out of the vehicle, pulled over the side of the road, got out and started to film, record the guy.
Eddie Clegg:
I watched him go through his backpack. The guy’s telling me somebody stole my wallet, I don’t have any ID, but I got my paperwork. I just got out of jail. He didn’t care about the paperwork, he wasn’t trying to find out who he was.
Darcy Layton:
And they give camping tickets to people who are laying out on the parks they don’t let you be at the shelter property during the day.
Eddie Clegg:
And he found a beer bottle in the backpack, so he went to his car and he was going to write him up. I know he was. But he hadn’t seen me yet. Talking to the guy, I got it on video and he was telling me, “Yeah, I tried to tell him that I had ID in here, show my paperwork but he didn’t want to see it.” And then when he seen me recording, he got out of his car, he went back over and says, “Well, I’m not going to charge you with anything, you’re free to go.” And he actually zipped his backpack back up. He zipped it back up and they don’t do that. So he knew he was doing something wrong and I was so happy that he did that. I told him that pretty cool of him to zip your backpack up and let you go and I gave the guy $20 and said, “Things are looking up for you, hang in there.”
Taya Graham:
How do you think the police should have handled this encounter? I mean you were off 7-Eleven property when they approached. I mean how do you think this could have been handled differently?
Darcy Layton:
Well, afterwards when I finally, like a year later, by the time they finally let me see the real video, they should have called for probably paramedics or took me to the hospital because knowing, I took some college courses myself in physiology and psychology and all that. I know, based on watching the video that I needed to go get checked by a doctor mentally because I was a little out there that day because of the schizophrenia, but I still was not doing anything wrong and he is the one who needed to be checked out, not really me.
Eddie Clegg:
So yeah, he had no right, he wasn’t called there. They didn’t tell her to leave. They would’ve told her.
Darcy Layton:
Rogue. He’d gone rogue.
Eddie Clegg:
Yeah, he told her they didn’t want her on property, she started to leave, he should have let it go with that.
Darcy Layton:
Because that’s what he told me. Basically, they don’t want you here, they want you to leave. And so I started to leave as he told me and then he grabbed me for no God damn reason.
Taya Graham:
I think it’s so important for people to understand how people who are on hard times are treated in your area and how an arrest can really alter the course of someone’s life. Thank you. Darcy and Eddie.
Now, as with many of the police encounters we unpack on this show, there is always more to comprehend than just the questionable actions of an overly aggressive cop, motives and imperatives so to speak, that need to be fully understood so that we can get to the root cause of what makes such questionable police behavior possible. Now, one aspect of police power we witnessed in this arrest that is critical to the broader mission of law enforcement is how the officer was able to control space. In other words, as you watch the arrest, you notice the officer has the ability to set arbitrary boundaries and use them to put it mildly to entrap Darcy.
Now when I say entrap, I use that word for a reason because as you witnessed on the video, the officer didn’t care about what was a public sidewalk versus what was private property and he wasn’t the least bit interested in what constituted a public roadway versus what was the private purview of the 7-Eleven, the nuances of space were not of concern, instead, he became the arbiter of it. While this fact may seem trivial, it is not because all of the consequences of policing that we have covered on this show, this arbitrary control of space, is the most essential aspect of what makes excessive law enforcement a threat to our civil liberties. It is the malleable ability to deem a person occupying space to be illegal that gives cops one of the most severe holds over our lives. I mean, think about it. There’s a reason the right to peaceably assemble is part of the First Amendment, not the 10th.
There is an important underlying intention to forcefully stating that the people have the right to redress their government in public space that goes beyond the legal text and into the realm of the truly profound. And what makes it profound is that in effect, those several dozen words preclude just the sort of policing we witnessed in that video. It should at least in theory, make it impossible for an officer to simply determine that anyone standing anywhere could be construed as a criminal simply because they say it is so. Now, imagine for a moment if those words did not exist, imagine for just a second what police could do if the text of the First Amendment had somehow been different. Well, in a sense we live in that reality because as Stephen just told us police had the power to intimidate. Ms. Layton pleaded guilty despite the fact she did not commit a crime.
Cops could literally fashion a crime that does not legally exist just to deny Darcy her right to peaceably assemble. It’s hard to see this type of policing as anything but punishing someone for simply appearing to be homeless. This is a specific expansion of police power that has come under scrutiny by an innovative thinker who is warned the consequences of allowing it to grow unchecked. His name is Mark Neocleous and he is the author of the book called The Fabrication of Social Order, A Critical Theory of Police Power. Now it sounds complicated, but I promise it really isn’t because what the book concludes about police power simply exposes the imperative that drives arrests like we saw today. The book’s thesis is that policing in our modern capitalist society is more about order than it is law enforcement, that police play a critical role in maintaining the order of society based upon profit.
In fact, the primary purpose of police is to in fact fabricate an order that would not otherwise exist to create a world where labor is at the mercy of a capitalist elite, and power is a tool of inequality warriors armed with guns and badges. Neocleous argues that the fabrication of order and the resulting influence of police power start with the types of arbitrary power we have just witnessed. In other words, while Darcy’s arrest might seem trivial and insignificant in the broader story of the battle of America’s flawed law enforcement industrial complex, it’s actually where this entire story starts. That’s because the power has to be at its essence, arbitrary. In other words, it has to be applied solely at the discretion of authority. It can’t be precluded or prescribed by law. It simply cannot be limited or curtailed by a set of amendments outlined in the Constitution.
It has to be random, chaotic, and most of all indiscriminate. And what I mean is that in order for this type of police power that Neocleous envisions to proliferate, it must be random, unknowable and infallible. It must be indiscriminate, contradictory, and most of all unfair. And it must embody all of these seemingly contradictory concepts to adhere to the underlying principle that drives it, to sow chaos in the lives of people who can least afford it, to create and fabricate crises in the lives of working-class people that seemingly strip us of our rights and thus our political power. I mean the biggest fear of the elites that run this country is the working class rising up and opposing the political order that currently profits off a record level of wealth inequality. They really don’t want us to figure out that their catastrophic greed is in fact a problem, not us.
Now having a small handful of people living like kings plundering on natural resources and flying private jets is not what ails us, but it is in fact the result of the underlying chaos caused by intractable poverty that is actually making our beautiful planet uninhabitable. In other words, it’s you, not us, who are the problem. And that’s the point of the policing we watched earlier. It’s overarching control over what should be public space is the most potent facet of bad law enforcement because as the officer manipulated space so too did he manipulate Darcy. As he was able to turn a public sidewalk into an illegal no-go zone. So too was he able to put Darcy in handcuffs, and as he was able to deem the otherwise legally protected actions of Darcy into a crime worthy of the use of force, he was also able to wipe away her civil rights and turn her into a menace to society.
And it is worth noting as Stephen reported from the charging documents and as Darcy related to us, that there was no legal code or law violation recounted in the charging documents. I mean, the officer didn’t even try to cite a law to justify her nine-day incarceration. The only accusation he did make was the unsubstantiated claim that she bit him, an allegation the body worn camera certainly calls into question and as I said, she told me and Eddie that she didn’t even have her dentures in the morning the alleged bite occurred. My point is this is exactly why the growth of police power seems, in essence, to be antithetical to our constitutional rights, why processes like civil asset forfeiture continue to grow unabated as our entire legal system sits by and watches. All of this is the result of police power that has been allowed, or perhaps I should say, encouraged to become as indiscriminate as possible.
It’s just a result of a system expanding its influence through illogic that rather than create a law enforcement system that is rational, predictable, and fair, what we have is a set of protocols that are intended to be exactly the opposite, irrational, unpredictable, and most importantly indifferent to the notion of justice. In this sense, what we have is policing that does not in fact fabricate order, but instead manufactures disorder. What I mean is that police aren’t the gatekeepers of civilized society as some cop-agandists like to argue, but instead, agents of chaos. They literally wreak havoc in our lives like they did with Darcy. And in doing so, only make difficult problems worse for the people who are already suffering. It’s an update on the aforementioned theory of police power and how this power unchecked, moves to our lives. We have to recognize it for what it is and what it is to keep it in check. And when we see it like we did in Darcy’s case, we have to call it out and reveal it as a real threat to civilized society.
We have to let the powers that be known that we see what you are doing and we know what you want to diminish our civil liberties, and we have to be clear that you can’t have them because we are willing to fight to not just keep them but expand them, bad policing or not. We know we deserve better and we will not compromise until we get it.
I want to thank our guests, Darcy and Eddie for reaching out to us. We really do wish you both the best and I hope that by shining a light on your experience, certain officers will be a bit kinder. And of course, I have to thank intrepid reporter, Stephen Janis for his writing, research and editing on this piece. Thank you Stephen.
Stephen Janis:
Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham:
And I want to thank mods of the show, Noli D and Lacey R for their support, thank you Noli D. And a very special thanks to our 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, Johnny R, David K, Louis P, and Lucita Garcia, and our 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 for you. Please reach out to us. You can email us tips privately at par@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 Tayasbaltimore on Twitter and Facebook. And please like and comment, you know I read your comments and appreciate them. And we do have the Patreon link pinned in the comments below for accountability reports. So if you feel inspired to donate, please do. We do not run ads or 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.
Speaker 9:
Thank you so much for watching The Real News Network, where we lift up the voices, stories and struggles that you care about most and we need your help to keep doing this work so please, tap your screen now, subscribe and donate to the Real News Network. Solidarity forever.
The issue of mass incarceration has been far less central to the 2024 election thus far in comparison to the 2020 presidential race. However, that doesn’t make the matter any less pressing for incarcerated people, their loved ones, or the activists fighting tirelessly to free prisoners. There are a range of ways presidential candidates could commit to ending mass incarceration, but one tool stands out as a quick fix that can be implemented through presidential prerogative alone: the power of clemency. For months, activists with the FreeHer campaign have been building pressure for the next president to wield their clemency powers to swiftly release women serving extended sentences. Andrea James, founder and executive director of the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls, and Families for Justice as Healing, joins Rattling the Bars to discuss the importance of clemency.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bar. I’m your host, Mance Mosley. Today, we’re continuing our conversation about elections and how poor working class and oppressed people can navigate a system that wasn’t built to serve our needs. What does it mean to vote and mobilize for key policy issues rather than for a political party? And what are the issues that people impacted by the prison industrial complex are mobilizing around? When I was reporting for the Real News at the FreeHer March in Washington DC in April, I saw a lot of folks wearing stickers saying, “I’m a clemency voter.” What does it mean to be a clemency voter? Here to talk about this today is Andrea James. She’s the founder and executive director of the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls. She’s the founder of Families for Justice as Healing, and she’s the author of Upper Bunkies Unite: And Other Thoughts On the Politics of Mass Incarceration. Welcome Andrea to Rattling the Bars. How you doing today?
Andrea James:
Doing okay. Doing all right.
Mansa Musa:
All right, so let’s get right into the gist of things. When we was at the march in April, the FreeHer Rally March, we recognized a lot of signs and a lot of the slogans and a lot of the shouts and a lot of the information coming from the podium was a hundred women get clemency in a hundred days. This being indicative of President Biden’s first 100 days of administration. But more importantly, the more salient point was that the clemency should be used as a mechanism to release women that are being held captive on these plantations known as prisons.
First of all, talk about why y’all went in that direction first, the clemency, why did y’all focus? Because y’all done did a lot of things. Y’all got a lot of things on y’all platform, but this right here is the more strategic and more direct approach that when you look at the results, the results will be either the person get out and we’d be celebrating the release, but more importantly, the momentum is going to come out. We’ll talk about some of the things that y’all doing to get it, but talk about how, why are y’all getting that space right there?
Andrea James:
We were incarcerated in the federal system. We were in prison with sisters who are never coming home unless their sentences are commuted. So it’s kind of different when you determine what space you’re going to work out of when you haven’t had the full experience of what we’re talking about here. But if you were like us, if you were women that were incarcerated in the federal system, who were mothers, who were wives, who were aunties, and grandmothers and sisters, and moms in particular, we have been separated from our children, but some of us had the opportunity to go to prison and come home. So we’re fighting for sisters that unless we get clemency for them, they’ll never come home. And we’ve got to really understand that. We’re talking about is the liberation of our people, and we want to bring attention to the intentionality of incarceration of our people and the policies that led up to that. Now, we started our work after, we started organizing in the federal prison for women in Danbury, Connecticut in 2010, and brought the work-out with us starting in 2011. And then other sisters inside Justine Moore, Virginia Douglas, Big Shay, they started to come home. So it wasn’t rocket science for us, but in the federal prison, you would see this from all over the country, sometimes from different Black communities around the world.
And so it wasn’t rocket science for us to stop this work. But we started in the prison realizing not really totally clear about what clemency was as a tool. But after coming home in 2011, that became crystal clear to us. We met Amy Povah at CAN-DO Clemency. She taught us a lot about clemency as a tool. And then of course, President Obama, who we got in front of and who centered women and brought us to the White House. But also we should not be going backwards from what President Obama did with clemency.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, let’s pick up on right there because, all right, now for the benefit of our audience, clemency is a federal mandate and it’s top heavy in its bureaucracy. Honest you know-
Andrea James:
It’s a tool, it’s a privilege bestowed upon. It’s not a mandate, it’s a tool. It’s bestowed upon the President of the United States to grant relief to people from their sentences. And that takes many forms. It could be freedom, immediate freedom, commuting your sentence, meaning it only stops the sentence that you are serving from within a casserole place, a prison. It doesn’t mean that you’re off of, you are still convicted, you still can leave there and be on federal parole, what they want to call supervised release with all shenanigans, with semantics of language. You’re still under the auspices of the Federal Bureau of Prisons or sentence. But you are no longer required to serve that from within the prison. Now, that takes all different levels depending on what the clemency is that you are given. Some people are given full clemency ban. You hear them come down the hall telling you to pack out. You’re like, “Where am I going?” They’re like, “You’re going home.”
Mansa Musa:
You ain’t going to pay for nothing. You gone.
Andrea James:
You going home. Our director of clemency, Danielle Metz, young woman, sentenced to triple life sentence plus 20 years for being Glenn Metz’s wife, basically and took her away from her 7-year-old and months old babies to put her in a prison for triple life sentences plus 20 years.
Mansa Musa:
And we going to get into some of the crimes they alleged committed. Yeah.
Andrea James:
But it could be a president could commute your sentence, but tell you, instead of life, you’re going to do 30 years or anything in between that. It’s not always a guaranteed immediate release. So what President Obama did was to connect the power of the tool of clemency that the President of the United States and only the President of the United States or the governor of individual states, that’s the power. No questions asked. His or her only power to commute a person’s sentence. Okay? So that’s what clemency is.
Mansa Musa:
Let’s talk about this here. Okay. Now, so we got that [inaudible 00:07:54]. And in terms of y’all introduced a bill called the Fixed Clemency Act and I-
Andrea James:
Well, we didn’t introduce it. It was introduced by, we supported it, we poured a lot of information into it. It was our Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley’s bill, because we need to fix women.
Mansa Musa:
I wasn’t able to track the stand. So what happened with it? Where did that stand by you?
Andrea James:
Nothing happened with it. Nothing happened with it.
Mansa Musa:
So it’s dormant?
Andrea James:
I mean, it’s a valiant effort to keep and we have to do that, but we also have to have people who are elected to office like Ayanna Pressley, she’s my congresswoman out of Massachusetts, to we need people like her that are willing to push the parameters of what we hear every day now, people talking about democracy, right? What is democracy? Well, so far in this country, democracy isn’t inclusive. It is a white male dominated vision of democracy and the parameters of what democracy and what needs to be discussed as democratic values, it’s defined to be not inclusive still of the majority of people who find themselves caught and entangled in the criminal law system, which in this country is Black people. The majority, disproportionality we’re talking about. And so we have to take this very seriously because we’re in a state in this country right now where we got this selection going on. There’s all kinds of language being thrown around, but we’re also talking about candidates and we’re still talking about it under the Biden administration with President Biden, who was one of the catalysts of the drafters of the 1994 Crime Act.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right. Come on.
Andrea James:
The drafters of the Adoption Safe Family Act. Those two things were targeted at us intentionally. The drug war started under the Nixon administration, intentionally targeted towards us to oppress and control Black communities. And so if democracy, when we’re using that term now like we’ve got a state democracy, what exactly are we talking about saving?
Mansa Musa:
That’s like Frederick Douglass saying like, “What’s your 4th of July mean to me?”
Andrea James:
Well, yeah.
Mansa Musa:
I’m on plantation.
Andrea James:
It’s still holding in place these two parties that are elitist and capitalist in ways that still do not include everyday Black folks who are entangled in the criminal law system at a disproportionate number in this country from every state and every federal prison around the country. So until we grapple with that, until we’re not afraid to talk about, well, what does democracy in this country really mean? And really have candidates and legislators, state, federal, president, governors who are willing to actually engage in that conversation about, “Yeah, we fighting to save democracy, I guess.” But how is that being defined in this country?
Mansa Musa:
Let me ask you this here, Andrea, on the clemency thing. Now, as it stand right now, it’s top heavy in dealing with bureaucracy because everything goes through the Justice Department. Justice Department is the front line in terms of getting an application.
Andrea James:
They’re prosecutors so [inaudible 00:11:51]
Mansa Musa:
Right. And now I’ve seen what y’all were saying. So this is what I wanted to unpack for our audience benefit so going forward they can understand y’all strategy. Now, when I was locked up, in the state of Maryland, they had a thing where the only way life could get paroled, it had to be signed by the governor. It had to go through the governor. So what happened is the parole board recommend you for parole and it would sit on the governor’s desk three or four years before he say no. So what we did, we lobbied and got a bill passed to take it out the hands of the governor. Now I seen, like you say, in this bill that was introduced, but one of the things that y’all was saying, in y’all position was that what clemency would do is take it out the hand of the prosecutor, the Department of Justice. So how do y’all mobilize or where are y’all at in terms of mobilizing around getting the autonomy that’s going to be needed in order to get some type of equity towards the women that deserve to be released?
Andrea James:
Yeah, I mean, we decided at some point you can only go so far with what’s happening in Congress right now, who’s controlling Congress, what they’re paying attention to. We fought so hard against the passage of the First Step Act, the way it was presented, because it’s been a big smoke screen. And we knew when Congress passed First Step that it really wasn’t what we needed. It didn’t address the people who needed to get out. It called out the very people that needed the most relief and so how could we ever support a bill like that. And we never crossed over in support of it, even though we fought valiantly to try and add retroactivity and other things to the first step. And then it was put into the hands of the most vile regime of a think tank called the Heritage Foundation also responsible now for project 2025 to implement the First Step Act. And it’s just, we are one of the few, I don’t know if any other organizations have done it, but our legal division led by our senior council, Catherine Sevcenko, has followed the implementation of the First Step Act. And it’s been just a sham. It’s been a [inaudible 00:13:59], but the PR on it would make anybody think that everybody who’s come like 30,000 people got released because of First Step Act. That’s not true. But I digress.
So when we talk about the [inaudible 00:14:16] Act, at some point, yes, we have to weigh in. We need legislators who are directly affected like Congresswoman Ayanna, Pressley, to carry these bills forward for us and to at least put them into existence knowing that we got a big struggle to get them to go anywhere because the members of Congress were satisfied with the First Step Act. As abysmal as it is, they weren’t going to center criminal justice reform in any significant following that for years, we knew that. That’s the path of how things go. We haven’t heard a peep about criminal justice reform other than Trump wanting to bring the death penalty back for drug dealers. We haven’t even heard. It’s not even on the current candidates platforms.
And so we had to shift our energy to, and it’s not really a shift, it’s just, what are we picking up now to being present and to make sure that the concept of liberation of our people isn’t just left to hope somebody’s going to keep it at the forefront? That’s our job. Nobody’s coming to save us. If nobody gives a shit about our issue. If you’re going to do this work, you have to be consistent in finding ways of staying in the public eye, of showing up, of taking up space, of getting in the street. And so that’s what we did with the 10th anniversary.
We did this, did this 10 years ago in 2014, and that’s how we got the attention, because of the work of civil rights lawyer, Nkechi Taifa who brought the National Council and the sisterhood to the attention of President Obama and Valerie Jarrett to say, “Yo Prez, we see you. We see you equating. We see you connecting clemency to racial justice. That clemency is racial justice. We see you going into the federal prisons.” How could it be that he was the first President of the United States to go to visit a federal prison? How could that be?
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Andrea James:
Right? But at the same time, Prez, we don’t see you talking about women.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right. Exactly. Come on, talk about that.
Andrea James:
He did. He brought us into that White House with the help of Nkechi Taifa, Sakira Cook, Jesselyn McCurdy, these Black women lawyers, civil rights lawyers in the district, and we were able to come in and talk about it, did a whole forum about women and incarceration, an armchair discussion with Valerie Jarrett. So we have to always find ways to center ourselves. Now, since 2014, we were able to work with CAN-DO Clemency, Amy Povah. We were instrumental in using our voices and experiences that helped more than 50 women come out of the federal system. President Obama did that. Now we certainly should not stand to go backwards in any way. Trump made a complete mockery of pardons and clemency and good for the people who got them. It was his cronies and people who supported him, and they were good. It was great. You got a pardon, I’m happy for any formerly-
Mansa Musa:
Anybody getting out the dungeon.
Andrea James:
And convicted person, right?
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, anybody getting out the dun?
Andrea James:
But it also derailed the momentum around clemency that President Obama had built up. So we anticipated going forward when Biden got back in that seat. We met Vice President Biden. We were in the White House. You know who we are, who the women are of the National Council, women from across this country who were buried in prisons, who are using their voice to create significant and meaningful change. You know what this is and you also know what happened and who came out under President Obama with just impeccable stellar records of what they’ve done with their lives since then. What are you afraid of? We’ve got women who are elderly, who are sick, who are long-timers. Michelle West just exceeded her 31st year, going on her 32nd year of incarceration. What a [inaudible 00:18:56], you’re talking about three decades ain’t enough for drug war sentencing. But what [inaudible 00:19:02]
Mansa Musa:
Let me ask you this here. Okay, because I seen the video that y’all did on the clemency and we be pressed for time. All right, so map out, because this right now for like you say, for most women that got triple life, that got death by a thousand cuts, that’s locked up in prison right now, for most of them clemency is some type of change in the judicial system where a case come out that affect them. Clemency is probably the only way they going to get out.
Andrea James:
Only way.
Mansa Musa:
Going forward, what do you want to say to our audience about how do they get involved in this issue? Because this is, like you say, this is a human rights. It’s not a civil rights. This is a human rights issue. You lock people up for drug offenses, no violence involved other than the fact that they was connected with somebody that did something and they get the bulk of the sentence. So how do we deal with people going forward? What do you want our people to understand going forward? How do they get involved with this fight? The free women.
Andrea James:
All you got to do is follow the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls. The nationalcouncil.us. It’s easy. You can reach out to us, but you can do very simple things. Go onto the White House website and you can send a message on the White House website, anybody, anytime, any day, and just say, we vote clemency. We’ve got a campaign that is making it very clear. Listen, you’ve got to be using your clemency power. This is an extraordinary opportunity for President Biden to correct the wrongs of the 1994 Crime Act of the drug sentencing policies. Just understand and be strong about it. Yeah, clemency is racial justice. I am creating some injustices that were directly targeted to Black people in this country who are buried in prisons, who will never come home unless I bring them home.
And we’ve given him, when we created the list of a hundred women, it’s 99 now because Martha Ivanov died. If we’ve given him the lowest hanging fruit that exists, who’s going to deny elderly women that have served decades in a prison who are sick, have dementia, don’t know who they are, don’t know why they’re in prison. I have terminal conditions. How are you going to put a mom in prison like Michelle West and leave her there for 30 plus years and say you still aren’t going to get any relief from the legislation that was passed. So President Biden, this is the only chance these sisters have and they’ve got skin in the game. You got decades in a prison and the atrocity of rape of women. That has happened in 19 of the 29. Now, we say it’s every single of the 29 federal women’s prisons, but they have, the Justice Department has determined that in 19 of the 29 prisons, the most egregious case coming out of Dublin that we did fight to get closed, but not in the manner they closed it. They literally shut it down in a week after… they had a brothel running out of there. The warden, the chaplain was raping women in that prison for years this went on and they finally closed it. And guess what, we said, give clemency to all of those women.
Give clemency to every single one of those women that was raped in that prison. And let’s look at who else across the federal system should be released because of the atrocities that they have been subjected to. You know what they did instead? They attacked them. They sent them to other prisons where the gods used all kinds of punishment and told women when they arrived. “Don’t think you’re going to pull that shit here at this prison because we’re not having it.” They sent women to prisons where women who were unpoliticized and had been buried in a prison and just don’t know and are underneath the control of male prison administration and gods who told them, junk these women, beat up these women because they have disrupted everybody, all of you in the federal system now. And sent them to prisons also that were some of the 19 prisons where they are currently raping women in those right now.
Mansa Musa:
All right, Andrea. So as we close out, first all, we want to acknowledge that this is like a human rights issue. That the abuse of women in the criminal injustice system on these plantations is beyond anybody’s imagination and conscience. They get treated way worse than men could ever be treated. But going forward, and we know about the clemency, what’s the next thing on y’all platform? And we’ve got two minutes.
Andrea James:
Doing a 11 city tour, it’s called Nobody’s Coming to Save Us. It’s a photographic exhibit in 11 cities across the country that were photographs taken by formerly incarcerated brothers, Malik and Johnny Perez, and also a very professional photographer, David who was there who took some incredible pictures for us. We are screening that video that your group did for us that people will see with y’all’s permission, but it’s on the table to be screened as people come into this exhibit. We’re doing a community forum in each of these cities that we’re going to 11 cities, Chicago, Philadelphia, Boston, you name it. We’re going there and holding the conversation about this issue.
They’re building 11 prisons as we’re talking about this, women’s prisons across the country as we speak. And so when we talk about these issues, we’ve got to help the public understand that we need to not be building prisons, we need to be decarcerating people, not just women but women, we unapologetically advocate on behalf of women, but free them all and stop with decarceration. Not one prison should be being built in this country. The problems and the ineffectiveness, police in prisons don’t create healthy, thriving communities. Healthy, thriving people do. So talk about democracy when we call out democracy like it’s some sort of savior for this country. And if you’re for one candidate, you’re not for democracy. If you’re for another, you are. Well, for us, for our people, democracy has not expanded to cover us. And so what does that mean?
We are creating the abolitionist think tank called the Free Her Institute. And we are not doing it with any kind of C3 grant money. We are doing it by selling T-shirts and a cup of coffee. We want people to commit, buy a T-shirt or for one year commit to donating to the FreeHer Institute the cost of one cup of $5 a week for a year. You can go to freeherinstitute.com and you can click a button and you can make that commitment for one year. And if you decide after a few months, I can’t do this anymore, just call us and we’ll stop it. But help us. We are building the abolitionist FreeHer Institute think tank so that we can amplify and elevate these issues the same way that the Coke brothers, that the Heritage Foundation, that Project 2025, that these people that get flooded with all of these billionaires dollars that we don’t have.
We are formerly incarcerated, predominantly Black women that have to get out there and beat the bushes to raise every dime. And to be an independent voice, we can’t take grant money in the same way that we run our programming through for the think tank because we have to have the space to say what needs to be said without the threat of funders feeling like we’re encroaching upon what they think we should say. So we’re asking people, “Go to freeherinstitute.com, help us. We need it. We’re building this abolitionist think tank.” And it’s the work that I’m focused on right now. We’ve got to get these sisters out, send an email to the White House and the Justice Department encouraging clemency, and let’s elevate and amplify the voices of these sisters who are doing this incredible work.
Mansa Musa:
That you have it. The Real News Rattling the Bar. Andrea, you rattle the bars today. You could hear it and we ask everybody’s support, the Real News and Rattling the bar. But more importantly, look at this podcast and make a decision. Do you think one cup of coffee is worth the lives of people? Do you think one cup of coffee, just one cup of coffee, that’s it. This ain’t just, we simplify it to the most simplest term. I’m buying one cup of coffee. I do it every day anyway. So instead of me buying, I’m putting my money where I know that the result is going to be somebody going to be free. Thank you Andrea.
Andrea James:
Thank you.
Mansa Musa:
And we salute you. It’s…
Andrea James:
One cup of coffee-
Mansa Musa:
This is Black August month. We salute you in your struggle and continue work.
Andrea James:
One cup of coffee for true democracy.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right. That’s right.
Andrea James:
Let’s redefine what it looks like. So thank you so much. Thank you for always supporting us, and we’re grateful for helping us to amplify and elevate our voices. Thank you.
On Aug. 9, 2014, Officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. Police left Brown’s lifeless body in the hot sun for four hours, plainly demonstrating the contempt of law enforcement for the local community. The righteous rebellion that followed in Ferguson shook the nation and the world, turning the Black Lives Matter movement that had begun following the earlier murder of Trayvon Martin into a global mass movement. Ten years later, some things have changed, but most things have not. Reforms have been passed at various levels concerning the power and accountability of the police. Yet the culture of impunity and the reality of racialized police violence as a daily occurrence in the US continues. In this special episode of Rattling the Bars, Taya Graham and Stephen Janis of Police Accountability Report join Mansa Musa for a look back on the past decade of attempts to stop police violence, and a discussion on why justice for Michael Brown and so many others continues to elude us.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. We’re in a period of Olympics. If we was to deal with the Olympic analysis of my guests today and we had an event, the event would be watching the police run around the track and see who cheat and get a medal for exposing them. That would be the medal we would get, the medal for exposing police corruption and police brutality and fascism as it relates to the police department. Here, welcome Jan and Taya of the police accountability.
Stephen Janis:
Thank you.
Mansa Musa:
They’re on the dream team at The Real News Network, and I’m honored to have y’all here. When we was talking about doing something about Michael Brown and I said, “Yeah, it’s Michael Brown’s anniversary,” and we was talking about it. I said, “Maybe we can get Jan and Taya to come in,” because it’s like the highlight of my doing this is working with y’all and talking to y’all because y’all-
Stephen Janis:
Thank you.
Taya Graham:
Thank you.
Stephen Janis:
Thank you.
Mansa Musa:
One, y’all got depth. Now, y’all real cool people.
Stephen Janis:
Thank you.
Taya Graham:
Thank you.
Stephen Janis:
Well, thank you.
Taya Graham:
[inaudible 00:01:18].
Mansa Musa:
Let’s start. This is the 10th year anniversary of Michael Brown.
Taya Graham:
Yes.
Mansa Musa:
All right. We know that what came out of Michael Brown was a civil upheaval of demonstrations all around the country and all around the world.
Stephen Janis:
True.
Mansa Musa:
But more importantly, the way it was looking in Washington, DC, and the way it was looking in the United States, the fact that it was consistent and it was long. People came out, and people made it known that they was tired of police running them up.
All right. Let’s talk about where was y’all at and how did y’all cover that?
Stephen Janis:
Yeah. Well, it’s interesting because I was still part of the mainstream media sort of, as you know, at a mainstream media television, actually Sinclair Broadcasting, when the uprising around Michael Brown. So I wasn’t able to cover it, but we did end up starting to work here, both of us, when Freddie Gray died in police custody. So we were thinking about it because you had mentioned to us you wanted to talk about how things had evolved over 10 years.
One of the things that we both thought about when we discussed it was there has been, since Michael Brown and since the subsequent George Floyd and Freddie Gray, there has been tremendous amount of reform on the civilian side. In other words, even in Maryland for example, you used to have the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights, which give police special privileges in the legal system when they do something wrong. That was repealed. So there have been things that have happened.
We have a consent decree in Baltimore. Many things that have happened. But I think on the side of policing, in terms of the culture of policing, I don’t think that has changed as rapidly as the civilian side of expectations. In other words, for a long time, the idea of police brutality was buried and not covered. I know, as a reporter when I covered it in the aughts, it was just my word against the police. Now that there had been body camera and things and there’s evidence, and Taya will talk about that in some specific cases, that makes a different type of way to process it and to push back against it.
However, I think still at this point in the actual bastion of policing, I think some of the same attitudes that create the sort of horrible situations we witnessed still persist. I think police are still trained to be very violent, to be very suspicious, especially with people of color, and to act out violently, preemptively, not as a last resort. Or I don’t think any of this talk about being able to deescalate, I don’t think that’s true.
In fact, there was just an article written by Samantha Simon in The Atlantic where she went to four different police academy trainings and what she talked about was how the police were trained to view us, and I mean the people-
Mansa Musa:
People, right.
Stephen Janis:
… as violent, possible murderers at any second and how that has persisted. So I think one of the things Taya and I talked about was you can’t say there have not been attempts and there have not been some real substantive changes. But I think police are still in this back and forth war with us that has been precipitated by the culture of policing.
Mansa Musa:
Before I go to you, Taya, let’s talk about a point you made, and I think our audience need to really understand this, is the fact that there has been some changes on the civil side. That’s the society looking for a place where the police represent their motto, serve and protect.
Stephen Janis:
Exactly.
Mansa Musa:
With the culture being what it is, how do we make inroads into that?
Stephen Janis:
I mean I think that’s very difficult because, so for example, Taya and I attended the Republican National Convention, and there was a sign, Back the Blue. The conventioneers were touting these signs, I think, because police have become a part of the political process. I mean one of the things in this country, we try to separate the military from politics because we know that people with guns and badges enforcing political ideologies can be an extremely fraught authoritarian experience.
But when you’re down in the convention, you turn around and you see all these signs, Back the Blue, it just makes policing feel like it’s in a different realm than where it really should be, which is municipal service. I think that’s a political battle, unfortunately, that is still being fought because Republicans are using it as a kind of wedge issue. You still hear this silly, and I would say extremely silly, Defund the Police mantra, which anyone who knows anything about municipal budgeting, covered cities and policing, police departments have excess funding many times.
You still hear this. They’re still throwing out, “Well, you said, ‘Defund the police,’ without ever thinking about can a municipal agency be held accountable?” So the problem is that it’s become so political that I think it’s going to be hard to change that culture because the police see the support from the right side, from our more authoritarian side, and they say, “Well, we need to just embrace this and ratchet up, and we don’t need to respond to what the civilian side wants.” So I think it’s going to be very difficult.
Mansa Musa:
Tay? Go ahead.
Taya Graham:
Can I add to that? Because you brought up something really interesting in relation to the way policing is politicized, and it’s something that we always joke. So if somebody from the DPW was supposed to-
Stephen Janis:
The Department of Public works.
Taya Graham:
… for the Department of Public Works was supposed to recycle and instead of recycling, they took all our recycling and just dumped it somewhere, would we be wrong to criticize them? Would we be attacking the very fabric of society to say, “Hey, they’re supposed to do their job this way and they didn’t?” No, of course not. That person who took all our recycling and did whatever they wanted with it would probably get reprimanded, if not fired.
But if we say, “Hey, Baltimore City Police Department has been shooting unarmed people. We have a problem with it,” suddenly, the politics are involved. Suddenly, we are anti-American. Suddenly, we’re not being patriotic. We’re not supporting our boys in blue. Well, wait a second. They are paid by us, the taxpayers. They are supposed to protect and serve. That police culture that we’re talking about, unfortunately, really hasn’t changed.
I think we have some really strong signs of that. I mean I think what we covered with Sergeant Ethan Newberg, that’s a Baltimore City police officer, one who was making $239,000 a year-
Mansa Musa:
Right. Of taxpayers’ money.
Taya Graham:
… of taxpayer dollars. But thanks to this body-worn camera program that was started in SAO Mosby’s office, they were reviewing the body camera video. They looked at about six months’ worth of it, just six months, and they found nine occasions in which he committed 32 counts of misconduct in office, 32 counts, just nine occasions in six months. Can you imagine what that man was doing before there was a body-worn camera program?
Mansa Musa:
That’s right. Yeah, yeah.
Taya Graham:
Can you imagine all of the crimes he committed against our community that we don’t even know about? Guess how much time he spent in jail?
Mansa Musa:
How much?
Stephen Janis:
Six months?
Taya Graham:
No, no. He got six months probation that he could spend at home.
Stephen Janis:
Home detention.
Taya Graham:
Home detention.
Mansa Musa:
Home detention.
Taya Graham:
Home detention. He didn’t even spend a night in jail for terrorizing our community-
Stephen Janis:
I mean it’s really kind of-
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, exactly.
Stephen Janis:
It’s really kind of interesting because I was just looking at the community report. There’s a report, State Senator Jill Carter passed a law that required a certain type of reporting mechanisms for the police department. What’s really interesting about it is right now the Baltimore Police Department in the latest survey has about 2,100 sworn officers, which is about 700 or 800 officers short of their capacity and what they normally are staffed at.
However, we are in a year of record … We probably will have a record low homicide rate, and we did last year under the kind of circumstances where there’s low police staffing. So what does that tell you? That tells you that this idea of this equation that underlies the whole political argument of police-
Mansa Musa:
Come on.
Stephen Janis:
… that more police make us safer is absolutely false. But it doesn’t really get into the political equation. Now, in Baltimore, people had a choice. They could have elected Sheila Dixon, who was more the pro-police, or they could have gone with Brandon Scott, who had a more … What was it called? GVSR? A gun-
Taya Graham:
Oh, it was a gun violence reduction safety-
Stephen Janis:
Which was a complete community program, which is what he created with this. They chose the community program because we’ve seen this up close. But really, I think on the broader scale of American politics, this hasn’t been digested by people that, you know what, your main argument for more police and giving police the powers to do things that are unconstitutional is that we’ll be safer. There’s no proof of it, and Baltimore is an perfect exemplar of the fact that that’s just not true.
We have less police and less crime. So to the police partisans, I say, “Explain that to me. Why has that happened?”
Taya Graham:
Exactly.
Stephen Janis:
So it’s just a very interesting dynamic because it-
Mansa Musa:
Really, the issue it underlies is this, is that, one, the police never have been put together as representative of the community. So that’s the beginning. There’s always been there to serve and protect the property interest of corporate America and capitalists. Here we come along and we say, “Okay, but that’s not what your mandate say. That’s not what your oath say.” So we try to hold you accountable to the things that you’re supposed to be doing.
Let’s walk back. So we had Rodney King. The response to Rodney King was a spontaneous Riot, looting, killing, whatever. That was the response because of what people seen, the visual aid of what people seen-
Stephen Janis:
Yes. Absolutely.
Mansa Musa:
… more importantly, and it was in California. They showed you how the relationship between the police and Californians. They acquitted OJ because they said the police. When they interjected the police in this case, it don’t make no difference what you did, in their mind, we got empirical evidence and examples of the police being bad. So can’t nobody be worser than them in the situation. All right. All right. We got Trayvon Martin. Then we got-
Stephen Janis:
Michael Brown.
Mansa Musa:
Michael Brown. Then we get Freddie Gray-
Stephen Janis:
Freddie Gray.
Taya Graham:
Eric Garner.
Stephen Janis:
Eric Garner.
Mansa Musa:
Right. Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, and then George Floyd. Not talking about what’s happening in between that.
Stephen Janis:
Because there are a lot of cases on top of that.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Taya Graham:
Sandra Bland-
Stephen Janis:
Sandra Bland.
Taya Graham:
… in 2015, all of that recorded by the dash camera. It was absolutely heart-breaking.
Mansa Musa:
And in each case, the cry from the public and the masses has been, “Change the police,” whatever we say that is. We Come up with terminology like defund, when we saying defund, better training. We come up with a whole host of things that we want to see done around the police, and the system and the capitalist response is, okay, we’re going to take what you say and we’re going to interpret it the way that advances our narrative-
Taya Graham:
Absolutely.
Mansa Musa:
… ergo Cop City. They saying what they offering in Cop City is that, “Oh, we’re training police to better serve and protect.” Okay. But going back to your point, Jan, why do you need military-style training? Why do you-
Stephen Janis:
Right. Well, you know-
Mansa Musa:
Go ahead.
Stephen Janis:
One thing that Taya and I always not laugh about, but we covered very extensively the consent decree between the Baltimore City Police Department and the Department of Justice, which was the result of the uprising after Freddie Gray. But what was amazing about it is we both looked at each other and they announced $70 million in new funding for the police department.
So the police department literally wreaks havoc in the community, creates the conditions in which people felt the need to literally rise up, and their response was, “Let’s give police more money and training.” Right, Taya?
Mansa Musa:
Money.
Taya Graham:
Absolutely. You know what? When you brought up Cop City, you took the thought right out of my mind because when you said capitalism, you said policing, and you said, “What is the real comparative policing?” The Cop City that they want to create, guess who’s funding it?
Stephen Janis:
Yeah. Corporations.
Taya Graham:
Coca-Cola, Home Depot, Wells Fargo.
Stephen Janis:
Private companies. The Atlanta Police Foundation.
Taya Graham:
I mean if this doesn’t show you the tie between capitalism, the protection of property, and what police are really there to do, I don’t know what will.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah. So it always is, in these situations, more money doesn’t flow to the community, even though community programs are shown to be really more effective. Instead, more money flows to police. No matter what happens, it’s like heads, I win, tails, you lose. The more money comes to them in the form of this police reform infrastructure you’re talking about. It becomes almost a business opportunity-
Mansa Musa:
It is.
Stephen Janis:
… because there’s just so much money available to people who will say, “Oh, I can help reform the police.” I forget the police, the thing that there’s-
Taya Graham:
Like the ROCA?
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, ROCA. Not ROCA per se, but there’s just so many organizations and people who can take advantage of the funding that flows to policing. Go ahead.
Mansa Musa:
And the Fraternal Order of Police in everywhere, they’re like a lobby beyond a lobby because-
Taya Graham:
Because they have the power.
Mansa Musa:
… no matter what goes on, they always going to paint the narrative that we’re here to serve and protect, and you taking our ability to do that. Bump the fact that we’re killing people indiscriminate. Bump the fact that we fabricating cases against. Bump the fact that we taking and manufacturing evidence against people or like in the case that you talk about all the misconduct.
The connection is that you’re doing this with impunity. So you can take and say, “Oh, well, I’m going to cook the books or I’m going to misappropriate money and I’m doing it with impunity. But in the interim of me doing that, I was out on the street shaking down people. I got numerous of people arrested. I locked up and swore an oath that what I say they did, they did, and you take me at my word because I’m the police.” But the person that’s the real victim of it is the person that you supposed to serve and protect.
But let’s talk about the reactions from each one of these periods because, like I said, in the era of King, the beating, it was rioters. People literally was outraged because of what they seen, and it was more the visual than anything else and what they seen. And then when you had Trayvon and you had the other one, you didn’t have as much of a reaction in terms of when you got to Michael Brown. Why do you think that Michael Brown had that type of impact?
Stephen Janis:
Well, I think because I just saw from a reporter covering police brutality prior to the cell phone camera and the visuals that you would see, that it was very difficult sometimes. You’d write about really what you knew were horrible police shootings where someone would get shot in the back and you just knew it was wrong, but you didn’t have visuals.
I think in the case of Freddie Gray, you saw Freddie Gray being taken into the van. Michael Brown, you saw his body lying on-
Mansa Musa:
Just laying out there.
Stephen Janis:
Eric Garner, you saw him being in the chokehold.
Taya Graham:
Being put in that chokehold, all those officers on top of him.
Stephen Janis:
I honestly think it’s like the civil rights movement of the ’60s where-
Mansa Musa:
Right. Edmund Pettus Bridge.
Stephen Janis:
… video finally could show people and when people could finally see it, even if it wasn’t always directly what happened. I mean everyone saw Freddie Gray being put in the van on the second stop when he was hogtied. I’d say he was hogtied with handcuffs and thrown into the back like a piece of trash. And then he ended up hitting his head, but whatever. Everyone could see that. When you can see it, I think it has a bigger effect. The cell phone cameras were instrumental just as much as a body camera.
Taya Graham:
Absolutely. Cell phone cameras, CCTV footage, and now finally, body-worn camera are one of the most important tools that this civil rights movement has because just like you were talking about the Fraternal Order of Police, they’re often arguing, “The Constitution is getting in the way of our cops doing good policing. It’s getting in the way of it.”
Mansa Musa:
That’s an oxymoron.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah.
Taya Graham:
It’s ironic, that idea, well, you’re going to have to bend or even break the law to be able to uphold it and be able to serve it. When you were talking about in Ferguson, I think that moment where you saw him. He had his hands up, and he said, “Don’t shoot.” We saw that he had nothing in either hand, and that officer still gunned him down anyway. I think the visual of that, the visual of seeing Eric Garner have six officers on him with one in a chokehold-
Mansa Musa:
Chokehold.
Taya Graham:
… and knowing that all he was doing was selling some loose cigarettes, and they’re on top of him like that. You could tell he’s a big man. He’s got breathing issues. You could tell that they were harming him. You could tell that. He’s saying, “I can’t breathe.” So I think seeing those moments on camera in the same way that you mentioned with the ’60s civil rights movement, I think it’s when those images from Vietnam came home-
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Taya Graham:
… and they saw little children being harmed, being devastated by war, when they saw those images, that really helped motivate people in the same way. Seeing those images of African Americans being unarmed and being harmed and gunned down, people really started to understand that what we had been saying all along was true, that these officers were killing our people.
Stephen Janis:
To your point, I mean the one case that really influenced Maryland’s legislation, where most of the legislative action was not actually Freddie Gray, but George Floyd, because, visually speaking, George Floyd was so direct and graphic and so unambiguous. I mean it ended up actually exposing our corrupt medical examiner ruling in favor of police, Dr. David Fowler, because he ended up testifying that George Floyd did not die from positional asphyxiation, but rather the tailpipe that was next to him.
Taya Graham:
Yes, it was carbon monoxide. This is what our medical examiner-
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, who had been ruling controversial.
Taya Graham:
… the medical examiner that we had over 20 years, the one we had here, the same one who ruled that the death of Tawanda Jones’ brother-
Stephen Janis:
Tyrone.
Taya Graham:
… Tyrone West was accidental and due to him having a heart condition. It had nothing to do with the police officers that body-slammed him on the ground.
Stephen Janis:
And Anton Black.
Taya Graham:
The death of Anton Black down in Greensboro, Maryland, a 19-year-old young man that was a track star, and you can see in the body camera video, these big officers-
Stephen Janis:
Just sitting on top of him.
Taya Graham:
… sitting on top of him.
Stephen Janis:
Positional asphyxiation.
Taya Graham:
They said, “Oh, he died because he had a heart abnormality.” That’s the type of rulings that Dr. David Fowler gave.
Stephen Janis:
So-
Taya Graham:
So when he went in front of the entire country in that courtroom-
Stephen Janis:
And testified.
Taya Graham:
… and testified that it wasn’t positional asphyxiation, the police officers were not a contributing factor, that the fact that he had drugs in his system and that the car tailpipe was near him, that was most likely carbon monoxide poisoning that contributed to his death. Literally, over 400 Pathologists and medical examiners around the country said, “You need to audit this guy. You need to audit him.” They signed a petition.
Stephen Janis:
I guess my point was that George Floyd, I think, from our perspective of covering policing, had the greatest impact on legislation and just change. So that’s why I would say it’s the visual component that makes the difference.
Mansa Musa:
The thing about George Floyd, unlike the other ones, was like you said, the visual aid, but it went national and worldwide. But this was the issue with it. The only way you wasn’t affected by it, you ain’t had no conscience. I don’t care what station in life, where you at in your politics, I don’t care who you like, “Yeah, I’m all for Trump, but I can’t be for that,” because it was so graphic.
Stephen Janis:
Yes.
Mansa Musa:
That’s what caused the reaction because, in that reaction, and I want y’all to speak to this, in that reaction, you had the movement, Black Lives Matter. You had a more strategic push which led to legislation or led to people who was conscious trying to talk about this more so than anywhere else.
So why do you think that at this stage right now? We know we had that. We know we seen that. We know we seen the upheaval. But at this stage right now, the problem hasn’t changed.
Stephen Janis:
No.
Mansa Musa:
They just shot is boy in the back in Baltimore City. Go back to I think what you say, Taya, or you, Jan, where they say the training was to look at us as us as being-
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, you know-
Mansa Musa:
… look as that first. It ain’t a matter of me what I’m doing. It’s a matter of you in my view, running with your back away from me. But in my training say you a threat or I got to subdue you to stop you from being a potential threat, and the way I do that is I kill you.
Stephen Janis:
Yeah. I mean so there’s a couple things because, for example, just so people understand, despite all these reforms, in 2017, 981 civilians were shot and killed by police. In 2023, it was 1,161. So it has continued to increase, unfortunately. I think what we have to understand, there’s this idea that Taya and I wrestle with all the time about police corruption because the idea being that there’s this police force that if you just reform them to a certain extent, they will suddenly be good or whatever.
But I think what’s more important to understand is that policing just reflects the underlying problems with the society that it purports to serve. In other words, Baltimore City, the way Baltimore City’s economically and racially constituted, the way Baltimore City violated the rights of African Americans, all those things were reflected in the policing. So unless you reform society’s corrupt … As you pointed out, the idea that property is more important than human life-
Mansa Musa:
Right, than human life, really.
Stephen Janis:
Unless you reform those elements, policing is always going to be responsive to the power and the corrupt power of the society in which it is situated. So I think that’s what is very difficult about this reform problem because you really can’t just say you’re going to be able to, in isolation, reform police.
If the society or the city or the county or the country in which this policing is situated is not reformed first, I think policing will continue to be memetically reflecting what is going on in that society. What perverse incentives there are, what racial problems there are will always be reflected in policing.
Taya Graham:
This conversation’s got me thinking about so many different things. We’re talking about these lethal uses of force, and I was thinking of Sonya Massey, 36-year-old woman, Springfield, Illinois.
Mansa Musa:
Come on now. Come on. Come on.
Taya Graham:
You see her. She calls police because she believes there’s been an intruder around her home. She calls 911 for help. Officers go take a look around. They see a car that’s had its windows broken into. So perhaps she was right. Perhaps there had been an intruder around her home. She comes to the door, and she’s just wearing a bathrobe. You can tell that she has no armaments on her whatsoever. The officer goes very close to her and speaks to her, but then insists that he needs to see a form of ID. So that’s when she’s like, “Well, I have to go in the house and look for it.”
When we get to the point where he says to her, “Turn that pot of hot water off. I don’t want a fire,” she says, “Okay.” She goes over there. Until that moment, they had been somewhat laughing and joking together. She goes over there, and she makes a comment. He’s like, “Get that hot water.” She’s like, “Oh, I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.” And he’s like, “I will shoot you. I shoot you in your effing face,” and he immediately pulls the gun up.
I reported on this, and I had people say, “Well, it’s possible she threw that water in his direction.” I was looking at the distance. There was a counter between her and them. I was like, “No one said, at any point, they could have left. They could have backed away.” What happened to de-escalation?
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. What happened to all that? Yeah, what happened to all that? Yeah.
Taya Graham:
Although personally, from what I saw of the body camera video, I do not believe at any point she was genuinely threatening either one of those officers with that pot of hot water, if they truly believed that what was occurring, they should have retreated. There was no reason to shoot an unarmed woman in her face three times and then not give medical aid. It’s absolutely incredible.
Mansa Musa:
See, that go back to something you said earlier is they’re being trained to be assassins. They’re occupying forces in our community. They’re being trained. De-escalation is like a no de-escalation in their mind is problematic for them because I can gain control by de-escalating, but that’s not control for them. Control for them is I kill somebody and the threat of me will shoot you and kill you. It’ll help you de-escalate, get out my face. Because, like you say with Sonya Massey, it was no threat there.
When you running away from the police, when you running away, it’s only in the movie where somebody running from the police and shooting back like this here and the police get hit. That’s only in the movie. I don’t care what you got. When you run away from the police, the very act of running away is saying I’m trying to get away. So, in your mind, what do that mean? That mean that you’re trying to, what, hurt me?
But let’s talk about the reforms and how they’re not being implemented or how they’re being played because we know right now, the George Floyd Bill hasn’t been passed.
Stephen Janis:
Right. The George Floyd Act, yes, it has not.
Mansa Musa:
George Floyd Act. Every time something come up with the woman, Sonya Massey, “Oh, look, we need to sign the George Floyd.”
Taya Graham:
Oh, that bill died in 2021. It died in Congress. You know what? That bill was so reasonable. They’re saying, “Hey, let’s codify that there should be no chokeholds. Hey, let’s codify that there shouldn’t be no-knock warrants. Hey, you know what? Let’s stop the 1033 Program and stop giving small-town police officers BearCats and literal tanks to police their communities with.” There was not a thing in there that would be considered radical, just some really reasonable reforms, and it died.
So with all the public outcry, with all the pressure, the organizing, the activism, and like you said, we have the body camera that shows exactly what happened, they still couldn’t get that bill passed.
Stephen Janis:
One program that strikes me as very interesting that it’s worth thinking about in the context of this discussion is the Safe Streets Program in Baltimore because I’ve watched it evolve from having absolutely no dedicated funding to growing and getting some state-dedicated funding. But throughout that process, there’s been this pushback from police partisans specifically through our local Sinclair Broadcasting affiliate, which has continually questioned and continually pushed back and questioned the spending, which is minuscule compared to the police department.
But the main component that I think that the police partisans don’t like and is revealing, I think is the fact that Safe Streets is not an armed force. It is supposed to be de-escalation. It is people in the community who are trained and who have knowledge of the community to simply de-escalate, not shoot anybody, not put anybody in handcuffs. It’s really supposed to be a community mediation program.
I don’t know how you feel about it, but with the people that I interviewed who participated in the program struck me as extremely courageous and dealing with very difficult circumstances, and I thought it was really interesting that a program that was really saying, “We don’t need guns and badges and arrests. We need members of the community who are empowered to mediate,” I always thought it was interesting that places like FOX45, Sinclair, the people who have been very police-focused, found it to be threatening. What is threatening about mediation exactly?
Mansa Musa:
The person that started it, Leon Faruq, we was locked up together. When he got out, he created that concept-
Stephen Janis:
That’s amazing.
Mansa Musa:
… for the purpose of making the community safe and educating the community how to interact with the police, and more importantly, to get the police involved in the community and understanding the community. So what they did over the years, like you said, you get this pushback, and then you vilify some of the people that’s in it.
Stephen Janis:
You vilify people. They definitely did that.
Mansa Musa:
So now you’re saying you shift the focus off of the work that they’re to the individuals that’s involved in the group. But going forward, how do y’all see this playing out in terms of because we know that right now it’s shifting? I know in DC, when they passed their last bill, Safe Street or whatever, she put in there about chokeholds. They passed a policy about you can choke them, but you just can’t put this on them. You can put this on them.
It’s a different hand gesture. You can’t choke them with an L, just choke them with both of your hands, and it’s not lethal. But I guarantee you when you look back over all these cities that, mainly with the uptick of what they call crime, that they have went back and undid a lot of the common sense reforms.
Stephen Janis:
I agree. But I mean I think there needs to be a reckoning with what is evolving in Baltimore where you have a large reduction in violent crime, like police shootings and homicides, and yet you have fewer and fewer police. We, as media, need to force people to reconcile with that, to answer the questions about that because the narrative that has driven the excesses and abuse of police that we have seen is the narrative that more policing somehow means more safety or, as Taya mentioned, allowing police to ignore constitutional rights. Or constitutional rights are a barrier to good policing and safety and all these things.
All these things are absolutely hinged upon the fact that somehow unleashing a militarized force in a civilian society can somehow make it safer. We, as media, have to really, really push that question and question that underlying assumption. It is so important, and it really frustrates me because no one’s asked that question. It’s right there in black and white. The Baltimore Police Department is staffed at historically low levels. Why are homicides going down?
Well, it’s because Mayor Scott, and I’ll give him credit for that, invested in community-oriented violence intervention programs, not because of the police. If we can dislodge policing from that idea that somehow they’re the barrier between civilization and chaos, I think we’ll go a long way to getting real police reform.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, I agree. Taya?
Taya Graham:
But the other part of the discussion about how media should handle this is that when we report on police misconduct, we can’t have the public or the government come out to kill the messenger.
Stephen Janis:
That’s a good point.
Taya Graham:
The example I would want to give of that is when we were covering Sergeant Ethan Newberg. He’s the officer I mentioned earlier, making over a quarter million dollars a year for literally terrorizing our community. We sat in that courtroom and watched him read, I would say, what was a less than heartfelt apology to the victims of his criminal misconduct against them. During that speech, he was looking over at us, and he mentioned, “I don’t think I would be standing here today if it wasn’t for certain members of social media.” He looked over at us a couple times.
Stephen said, “He’s looking at us.” And I’m like, “No, he’s not. You’re just being paranoid.” He’s like, “No, he’s looking at us.” After he was told that he was going to get just six months home detention, another reporter came up to us and was like, “Well, what did you do? Kick his dog? Why did he keep looking at you like that?” The thing I realized is that he blamed us. It was our coverage that put him in that position, not his unconstitutional behavior.
Stephen Janis:
That’s a good point.
Taya Graham:
There are members of the public that feel that way, that if we highlight a police officer doing harm against the community, that we’re creating a problem. No, it’s the officers who are breaking the law-
Mansa Musa:
The law, yeah.
Taya Graham:
… who are harming the community that are causing the problem. So that’s the other thing that when you are a member of the media and you do step out and you do say the truth and you speak it out and you show the body camera footage and you give the victim side of the story, people turn on us and say, “You’re making it worse.” We’re saying, “No, you guys need to clean this up.”
Mansa Musa:
As we close out, y’all got the last word. We’ll start with you, Jan.
Stephen Janis:
Well, no, I mean, again, I think police reform will not really occur unless you see fundamental shifts in the way we discuss things like violence and poverty and unless we address those underlying issues. Police is a really simple solution for late-stage capitalism to suppress people’s political efficacy and suppress their ability to say, “This is wrong. I shouldn’t be going broke because I can’t pay my medical bills.” All those things are intertwined.
I think if we recognize that, that is where the real reform will occur. Recognizing police role that we talk about a lot in our show in the inequality equation and enforcing racial boundaries, that has to be discussed and fleshed out in order for real reform to occur.
Taya Graham:
The only thing I would add to that is the fact that the culture of policing is a serious problem. And it’s not just Dave Grossman’s Warrior Cop training or his Killology training or the New Jersey Street Cop training, which I would suggest anyone look up what those events look like. That Street Cop training was absolutely insane. You can understand why police would go out and just be terrible to the community after attending an event like that.
But that the culture of policing, I think the best way to think of it is what we saw with George Floyd, that veteran officer kneeling on Floyd’s neck and the two other officers just going along with it, just going along with it, not one of them spoke up and said, “Well, maybe we should render some aid now. Maybe we should stop.” They went along with it.
So as long as the veteran cops keep on replicating this unconstitutional, to say the least, style of policing, we’re going to continue to get it. So we have to attack the heart of this police culture or we will continue to get the same results.
Mansa Musa:
There you have it, Rattling the Bars, Real News. We have to attack the culture. As Jan said, you have low homicide incidents in Baltimore City and a low police force. That mean that whatever the alternatives they’re doing, they’re working in terms of making the community safe. So why are we not investing in that? Or why do we continue to invest in a police force as an occupying force in our community? We need to ask these questions.
As this is the 10th year anniversary of Michael Brown, we recognize that some changes have been made, but more importantly, the biggest change that’s being made is the consciousness of the community and people becoming more and more aware of police. This is because of people like Taya and Jan and the Police Accountability Report. Thank y’all for-
The number of homeless people in the United States, either without shelter or in temporary housing, is steadily rising towards a million people. Faced with this crisis, municipalities, counties, and states across the country are responding by criminalizing those experiencing homelessness. Advocate and activist Jeff Singer joins Rattling the Bars to discuss the Grants Pass v. Johnson ruling, and what it means for America’s poor.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host Mansa Musa. According to the Department of Housing and Urban Development report, 653,140 people are homeless. Bottom line, sleeping on the streets. Nearly 327,000 people in the United States live in transition housing. They live in situations where at any given moment, they’ll join the 653,140 without having a place to stay. What do this say about the United States of America? What do this say about the world when we have a situation where people don’t have a place to stay for no other reason then they can’t afford to live in certain environments because of the cost of living? Here joining me to talk about a recent Supreme Court decision, but more importantly, his work in trying to eradicate homelessness and trying to elevate people’s consciousness about the sense of humanity we should have about people that don’t have a place to stay. Joining me today is Jeff Singer. Welcome, Jeff.
Jeff Singer:
Thank you so much, Mansa.
Mansa Musa:
Hey, Jeff, tell our audience a little bit about yourself.
Jeff Singer:
I’ve been working on homelessness, poverty, racism for a very long time, since about 1965, and a lot of that time in Baltimore and some of that time in Washington DC and there’s a lot of work to do. I especially liked what you said about changing people’s consciousness because we certainly need to do that.
Mansa Musa:
Right. And we was talking off camera, I was talking about Ms. Schneider and for the benefit of our audience that don’t know, Ms. Schneider was also probably one of your compadres in this fight in terms of combating homelessness, but more importantly, raising people’s awareness and educating people on the need to have a sense of humanity about people that don’t have a place to stay. And I was telling, I was in a meeting where one is a guy that he mentored told a story and say that, “Well Ms. Schneider, because the population became so bad, people didn’t have a place to stay, that he was involved with all the homeless encampments.” And he just one day said, “Look, we got to find a place to stay.” And they went down there and took former Federal City College, which is UDC now, and took it and made that a place, what they call it 2nd & D now, and the Army is we talking about something that happened almost 40 years ago and 2nd & D hasn’t gotten better.
2nd D is just a transition place where people who don’t have no place to stay come. And that wasn’t the intent of Mitch or that’s never been your intent is the intent has, from my understanding, has always been to get people in permanent housing, to try and get people to get up and have that dignity to have their own. Okay. So let’s talk about the Supreme Court recently came out with a case that said, and I think it started in Oregon, and said basically that homeless organization or advocacy organization filed a suit saying it was a violation of the Eighth Amendment, which is cruel and unusual punishment for the benefit of our audience, there’s cruel and unusual punishment to have people living in the streets, to have people living in the streets during the winter, to have people living in the streets during 110 climate, to have people living in the street through all the elements.
It was a cruel and unusual punishment to have people not have food, not have adequate clothing as a result of living in the street. Walk us through this case and what this case means in terms of how this country has criminalized, started to criminalize, poverty.
Jeff Singer:
Well we hardly have time for a full exploration of that, but to be relatively brief, in 2018, there was a court case in the northwest, the Martin versus Boise case, which ruled that if people couldn’t find a place to sleep that wasn’t outside that it was a violation of the Eighth Amendment to criminalize them, to put them in jail and/or to fine them. And that case changed a lot of the policies that cities were using to punish people who had nowhere to live. Well the cities didn’t like that so they found other means to get people experiencing homelessness out of sight to hide them. And in this small place called Grants Pass, Oregon, the city was arresting people for sleeping outside and using a blanket or a pillow.
They made that illegal, for people who had nowhere to live and nowhere else to sleep. Well some of the folks who were arrested decided, they got some lawyers and they appealed that. It didn’t make sense to punish people who had nowhere to live for sleeping outside.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jeff Singer:
Right? Well the federal district court agreed, oddly enough, with the folks who thought it was wrong for them to be arrested because they had nowhere to live. And the city of Grants Pass then appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court on April 22nd of 2024, this year. The Supreme Court heard the arguments about whether or not it is cruel and unusual punishment to jail or fine people who have nowhere to go because they’re sleeping on the street. And just a couple of weeks ago, the Supreme Court ruled that arresting people who have nowhere to go is not cruel and unusual punishment.
Our common sense and even logical understanding surpasses that. It seems impossible, but the decision says that the Eighth Amendment, the ban on cruel and unusual punishment, does not apply to what jurisdiction, city, state, the federal government, doesn’t apply to what they do. It just applies to the way that they do it. I don’t really understand that. I’ve read the decision. Twisting logic that way just eludes me, but the result of this is that now jurisdictions, cities in particular, have the right to put people in jail if those people have nowhere to live.
Mansa Musa:
And I won’t flush this out a little bit, right, because the lunacy in this whole thing with the Supreme Court. Sotomayor said that, “If you don’t have a place to sleep and you get caught sleeping on the street, you’re going to jail,” and she was saying this as a dissenting opinion saying that the court has to reduced itself to this type of lunacy where you criminalize a person. Now you criminalize a person for having a blanket and a pillow and sleeping on the street. Now you saying that to me in the United States of America, the land of plenty where we have unlimited, we have unlimited monies to send to countries to bomb people, we have unlimited money for people in countries where we don’t like the country that’s sending them, we have unlimited money to house them, clothe them, and give them tax breaks, but for the people that’s United States citizens, we don’t have no sympathy or money to house them.
Talk about the impact of this decision on, and I said 600,000, but we know the population is much larger than that and then I said that in regard to what HUD’s site, but when we look at city by city, I was in Las Vegas and I seen pockets of homeless people, people that didn’t have no place to stay, but I was seeing randomly and one day we turned around the corner and this overpass where, like large overpass, multiple highways coming and going. So it created a large shelter and it looked like a city of nothing but people that was unhoused. And we know, we see this in California and the District of Columbia, they had, we talk about 2nd D, but they had places where they just can’t have a canvas and you might look and see 10 tents, a week later you see 30 tents, a month later you see 150 tents.
And I think the District of Columbia got a number and when it reach that number, they come and round them up, take their property and destroy their property, and try to force them to go in a shelter or just flush them out, but talk about the impact that this going to have on that kind of, because that’s the reality. The reality is that no matter what, you don’t have enough prison cells because you got 2.5 million people right now or more in prison. So you don’t have enough prison cells for the 600 or 800,000 people that don’t have a place to stay and that’s their crime, “I don’t have a place to stay. My crime is I just fell asleep from exhaustion on the street and where you found me at, it was a matter of whether the car was going to run over me or you was going to pick me up and take me to jail or I was going to be dead. So that was my option. Somebody running over me, you taking me to jail, or I die right there.”
So talk about that. Talk about the impact that’s going to have on that because we need our audience to understand that this decision is not talking about rounding up wild animals or deer hunting season. This decision is saying that people, human beings, don’t have a right to fall asleep.
Jeff Singer:
Yeah. It’s really disturbing to think about it that way and that’s a correct way to think about it. I suppose if people want to invest money in the US, it might be wise to invest money in the people who build and operate prisons, the Corrections Corporation of America. That might be a good place to invest money. The fundamental problem of course is capitalism.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Jeff Singer:
And until we start to have an economy that meets people’s needs rather than creates profits, we won’t be solving the homelessness problem, but it’s not new. People have been thinking about, talking about it, writing and acting on this problem for thousands of years in the United States, which isn’t thousands of years old of course. We’ve had waves of homelessness after every war. After the Civil War there were thousands and thousands of people who wandered around the country looking for a place to live because they couldn’t find one, thousands. After World War I, most people remember hearing about hobos.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Jeff Singer:
Hobos were just people who had been displaced by the war and had nowhere to go. They rode railroad trains looking for a place to stay. They created encampments, hobo jungles they were called at the time. And then during the Great Depression, of course, millions of people were homeless, again because capitalism couldn’t work well at that point, and there was homelessness everywhere. In Baltimore, 20,000 people gathered in front of City Hall in 1933 during the Great Depression demanding a place to live. And there’s pictures of this. There’s good historical exploration of it. In fact at that time, two encampments were created in South Baltimore toward Glen Burnie.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jeff Singer:
And why were there two? Well there was one for white people and one for African-American people. They were segregated.
Mansa Musa:
Segregated homeless camp.
Jeff Singer:
Yeah. And the white one, the people there were given places to live. In the African American one, they weren’t. They had to build their own shelter. They even built a little golf course. So that’s the Great Depression. That housing problem was solved, by the way, by the creation of public housing. Public housing began to be built in 1937 to give people a place to live because there were so many tens of thousands of people without a place to live. And of course, public housing was segregated in Baltimore and in many places. Well there’s more to the story of course, but today, public housing is in the process of being destroyed-
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Jeff Singer:
By both parties, Republicans and Democrats, and Baltimore had 18,000 public housing units 20 years ago and today Baltimore has about 5,000 public housing units. They’ve given them away to corporations and to some nonprofits. They’ve taken away the rights of the people who lived in public housing and until we restore public housing, Nixon administration created something called the Section 8 program.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jeff Singer:
People have heard of that. Well it was the privatization of public housing and the creation of profits for the people who owned the buildings. Right?
Mansa Musa:
Right because in DC it called the voucher system.
Jeff Singer:
Yes. Yeah.
Mansa Musa:
Right. What your analysis is correct is to who profit from the voucher system.
Jeff Singer:
Right. Right. And then of course racism, which some have called the original sin of America, is so intertwined in housing policy, not just public housing and housing vouchers and Section 8, but also racism is deeply embedded in the larger, the market for housing so that we have had redlining, which was a denial of loans and mortgages to people of color and also to Jews and Syrians by the way who we were not permitted to get mortgages. We had restrictive covenants and I’ve seen some of these documents like I’ve seen the one from Northwood, which is part of Northeast Baltimore. And when you buy a house there, and it may still be in the mortgage, you have to agree not to sell that house to a person of color. This is true all around the country. In 1948, the Supreme Court ruled that that was illegal in the Kramer case, but in any event.
Mansa Musa:
We’re talking about, after every war, we’re talking about veterans, we’re talking about people that fought in the war. So we’re talking about, like right now, right today, a lot of the people that’s homeless, a lot of them are veterans and return to citizen, people that’s formerly incarcerated. But more importantly, I worked for an organization called Veterans on the Rise in DC and it was an organization primarily for a veteran, but it got created by a veteran that was homeless and start advocating that, “This ain’t right. We fought for this country. Why shouldn’t we have a place to stay when we come back to this country? We’re being treated like refugees when we return to this country.” So that’s not a farfetched analysis in that regard, but I want you to talk about going forward because now we have a situation where being poor get you locked up if you steal loaf of bread.
You stole the bread because you were hungry. That’s a crime because that’s theft. But now the crime that you’re guilty of now is you don’t have a place to stay and from exhaustion, if I walked around all day long I don’t care who you are, people, I don’t care who, this is only in the movies when somebody walk across the desert and fall out when they get to the town. No. This is real life where people be on their feet all day long and from exhaustion and 90 degree heat, 115 degree heat, fall out, that because you fell out, you’re considered a criminal.
So I want you to talk about going forward, where are we at now in terms of trying to reverse or trying to raise people’s awareness that your tax dollars should be being invested in housing people or holding the creed, the constitution. All men are created equal and have inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Is not my life worthy enough for me to have a place to stay? Is not my happiness worthy enough for me to pursue having a place to stay? Talk about that, Jeff.
Jeff Singer:
Well American law and jurisprudence doesn’t really provide solutions to these problems. As long as capitalism is the fundamental principle of American society and political economy, as long as that’s the case, we’re not going to solve these problems, but it doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t try. It means we should try and we should understand how all of these issues are interrelated. There’s so much to do. Lately the Supreme Court has been an important force of making things worse and they use torture logic like, cruel and unusual punishment doesn’t mean getting sent to jail because you have nowhere to live. No. It just would mean that if they sent you to jail and purposefully embarrassed you while they did that, then that would be cruel and unusual punishment.
So this makes no sense. It also, the Supreme Court has ruled that the President can do anything that he wants to do. And if he’s the President, then it’s legal. There have been many sorts of rulings that are laughable from a logical perspective, but that’s not what all this is about. What it’s about is there’s a small group of people, we call them the ruling class, who make the rules and the laws are designed to uphold the rules that they make. So the Constitution be damned I suppose.
Mansa Musa:
And I like to echo this point. I think we speaking off camera and I was saying the crisis is not the lack of home. Unemployment is not the crisis. Poverty is not the crisis. The crisis is that we let 1% of the people control the country. The crisis is in the thinking of them, that it is a crisis in morality. It’s a crisis in humanity. That’s what the crisis. You got more than enough money, more than enough wealth. I remember I heard someone where they said like, “The $48 billion they gave to fund the wars abroad could end homelessness in the country.”
Jeff Singer:
Right.
Mansa Musa:
And we are in a political climate right now as we speak. The Republicans are having their convention today. Only their platform is not going to be make America great by giving people a place to live or something to eat, some shelter. Making America great is making corporate more wealthy. And the more wealthy corporation get, the more money they’re going to want to want. But at the end of the day, Jeff, what are you doing right now? What are some of the works that you’re doing right now in terms of working around with this population and helping people understand the needs to look at them with some dignity?
Jeff Singer:
Well that’s a wonderful question and the most important work that all of us can do now is to study and learn and teach and teach. My profession I guess, I’m a teacher. I’m a professor at the University of Maryland in the Graduate School of Social Work. So some of the work I do is trying to raise up new social workers to understand that social work isn’t just about helping individuals. It’s about a dialectic between service and advocacy. And all social workers should not only be provided services to people who are experiencing homelessness, domestic violence, child abuse, these are all important issues, but they don’t get solved one person at a time. They only get solved by people acting together, mobilizing and organizing.
So in fact, I’m teaching a class right now called Communities and Organizations. So that’s part of what I do. And then I do help a lot of people individually. I mean, it’s just something I’ve done for the last 50 years or so. And it’s important, but it doesn’t solve the problems in a structural way. So helping people gain a structural analysis of how capitalism actually works and how we can change it, that’s as important as anything we can do.
Mansa Musa:
Right because I think as it stand now at the rate that we’re going, you spoke on this, the Supreme Court has constantly coming out with rulings that solidify capitalist control, that solidify fascism, that solidifies the imperialist thinking. The courts is coming out on all levels, the lower courts and the high court is one bookend, locking it in. So when we’re confronted with that, we’re confronted with a situation where our only redress is to organize around the idea that we have a right to be treated human, we have a right. This is not something that’s given to us by a corporation. This is our human right to be treated as human beings. And with that, Jeff, you got the last word. What you want to tell our audience about and how they can get in touch with you?
Jeff Singer:
Oh, well, I will answer that, but after I answer that, I want to say something else.
Mansa Musa:
No, you can always say that and then answer that.
Jeff Singer:
Okay. Well just this morning I learned that one of the few heroes of the homelessness struggle in Baltimore died this morning because he was homeless. He’d had a place to live off and on.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right, no, that’s neither here nor there because conditions create the situation. It’s not, I told you earlier, people don’t wake up. People don’t wake up and say, “I want to live an impoverished life.”
Jeff Singer:
Right.
Mansa Musa:
It’s a certain social construction, certain things that go into that that create that situation and conditions that find a person, find themselves at the crossroad between not having a place to live and blowing their brains out or doing something more, committing a crime.
Jeff Singer:
Yeah.
Mansa Musa:
It’s this country. Yeah. And we want to send out our prayers and speak his name so we know who we’re talking about.
Jeff Singer:
I will. Damien Haussling was his name. And Damien was one of the founders of our street newspaper called Word on the Street. It’s not around anymore unfortunately. Damien was one of the founders of Housing Our Neighbors, which is an advocacy organization of people experiencing homelessness and their supporters. And Damien was also the founder of the Baltimore Furniture Bank, which provides free furniture to impoverished people who get a place to live. And he died in the Furniture Bank. He was working there last night and there was no air conditioning and I think he died from heat stroke.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, yeah.
Jeff Singer:
But he’s sort of a martyr to the notion that this country, in its documents, says, as you said earlier, that, “All men are created equal and that they have inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” And those are just words because they’re not concretized-
Mansa Musa:
Now come on. That’s right.
Jeff Singer:
In the actual life of people. There are hundreds of thousands of people just in Baltimore who don’t have enough food to eat.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Jeff Singer:
And yet there’s food. There’s food everywhere. It rots off the farms and in warehouses. It rots, but people don’t have enough food to eat because of the distribution and the profits that are being made.
Mansa Musa:
It’s more important than feeding people. And I think that, on that note, I think that this is what this conversation should end on. This is about humanity and this is not about nothing other than that. This is about, if you say that you believe in humanity, if you say you believe in anything that has any semblance to a God, if you say you believe in anything to have any type of morality, then when you walk past a person that is sleeping on the street, you should at least stop and look at them, even if you’re not going to do nothing for them you should at least stop and act like they don’t exist because then you’re taking, to yourself, you’re taking in your mind suppressing a reality of this country.
You’re not suppressing the reality of this individual. You’re suppressing the reality of this country, this country that you hold up to be so great that has an attitude that, “No, it’s not life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” It’s money, money, money, and more money. With that being said, there you have it, the real news, Rattling the Bar. We wanted to remind all our listeners, as Jeff said earlier, that one of our heroes passed away doing this work around people that don’t have a place to stay. We want to remind our listeners that don’t change the term from unhoused to because it’s more a sanitized term than homelessness. The term is not indicated of the conditions that the people find themselves in. These are human beings that are in dire need and help and we as a nation should be thinking about where we stand at when it comes to our morality. Thank you, Jeff, for educating us today. Thank you for giving us this opportunity to educate our audience about the state of America as it relate to people that don’t have a place to stay. Bottom line, just homeless. Okay.
The Holguin family’s troubles with the El Paso Police Department began in 2022, when Adzari Holguin, then a high school senior, was asked by relative to film the police while they responded to a call about a domestic dispute. After police became aggressive once they noticed Adzari was recording, her father, Eddie Holguin, stepped in to escort his daughter home. That’s when police staged an illegal raid on the Holguin residence and arrested Eddie and Adzari. After the raid, the Holguins filed a lawsuit to demand justice. Now, they say the El Paso police are deliberately targeting their family. Police Accountability Report examines the evidence, and what this case tells us about cops in America today, who in many places not only operate with virtual legal impunity, but also conduct themselves more like a mafia than like law enforcement.
Production: Stephen Janis, Taya Graham Post-Production: Stephen Janis, Cameron Granadino
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.
Today we will achieve that goal by showing you this video of how El Paso police planned and plotted to retaliate against a family that had sued them over an illegal arrest, a disturbing move by police that ended in yet another questionable set of charges and even more pain for the family that has to endure it.
But before I 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.
Please like, share, and comment on our videos. It helps us get the word out, and it can really help our guests. You know I read your comments and appreciate them, and I even write back. You see those hearts down there, I’ve even started doing a comment of the week to show you how much I appreciate your thoughts and show what a great community we have.
All right. We’ve gotten that out of the way. Now, as we’ve discussed repeatedly on this show, the greatest obstacle to holding police accountable is their power to retaliate. That is, police are afforded unusual latitude and discretion to use the law against their critics. No case better illustrates this idea than the video I’m showing you right now. It depicts the El Paso Police Department surveilling a family they had illegally arrested before, a previous violation of their rights that led to a lawsuit against the department. But after the lawsuit was filed, the police began a protracted investigation into the family. A possible case of harassment that proves our point about how police can target and terrorize the people who push back against them.
The story actually starts in 2022, that’s when high school senior and El Paso resident, Adzari Holguin had been asked to phone police at the request of a relative who had called them because of a domestic disturbance. The relative wanted the interaction recorded to ensure her rights were respected, but when Adzari started to film, the police reacted. Take a look.
Adzari Holguin:
You just grabbed my phone out of my hand and physically assaulted me. Recording is within my full right.
Officer 1:
[inaudible 00:02:25]-
Adzari Holguin:
You cannot have to-
Officer 1:
… just stand back.
Adzari Holguin:
Can I get your name and badge number, please?
Officer 1:
It’s [inaudible 00:02:29].
Adzari Holguin:
No. Can I have your name? If Pinera, okay, but there’s no reason for her to get physical with me.
Officer 2:
If you don’t want to go for interference I suggest you take off. Now. You want to be arrested for interference or take off? Your choice.
Adzari Holguin:
Interference with what?
Officer 2:
My investigation.
Adzari Holguin:
Investigation of what?
Officer 2:
Family violence.
Adzari Holguin:
But what am I doing? Why are you doing this? What am I doing?
Officer 2:
Investigation, ma’am.
Adzari Holguin:
You have to do that.
Officer 2:
Do you want to go in for interference or can you leave please?
Adzari Holguin:
Interference of what? For what am I? How am I interfering?
Officer 2:
I’m give you one last chance.
Adzari Holguin:
How am I interfering?
Officer 2:
Do you want to be under arrest for interference or do you want to take off?
Adzari Holguin:
There is no reason for you to arrest me. Why are you touching her? You cannot touch her.
Speaker 14:
I will not hit you, but `do not touch me.
Officer 2:
All right?
Speaker 14:
I will not [inaudible 00:03:17]
Officer 2:
I want to get you both for interference.
Taya Graham:
After Adzari’s father, Eddie, intervened and escorted his daughter home. El Paso police decided that leaving the premises was not enough. Instead, they raided the family home, cuffed and arrested both Adzari and her father. Just watch.
Eddie Holguin:
Leave us alone. Get the fuck out of here. She [inaudible 00:03:46]
Taya Graham:
Now after this troubling arrest, the family fought back. The charges of resisting and evading police were dropped and they filed a lawsuit alleging the department violated their civil rights. And that case is still being adjudicated.
But roughly one year later, Adzari was home one day when to her shock, she spotted police surveilling her driveway. Concerned, she grabbed her camera to document their actions. Let’s take a look.
Adzari Holguin:
I’m here. [foreign language 00:04:29] I think they took your license plate.
Taya Graham:
The police soon scattered. But the video footage shows what appears to be the officers writing down the license plate number of her father’s work van. Azar confronts them and they refuse to answer her questions. See for yourself.
Officer 3:
[inaudible 00:04:57]
Taya Graham:
Police leave without explaining the intrusion, but that’s not where the story ends. Not hardly. Because roughly one month after they surveilled his van, detectives show up the family residence again.
Adzari Holguin:
Can you call my dad real quick and him know that there’s some cops here? Can you call my dad real quick? Let him know that there’s some cops here. May I ask for your name and badge number, sir?
Det. Armendariz:
Detective Armendariz, number 2720.
Adzari Holguin:
And you, sir?
Detective 2:
Detective [inaudible 00:05:27] 2425.
Adzari Holguin:
Okay, thank you so much. May I ask what you’re doing here?
Det. Armendariz:
Your dad’s an adult, we got to explain to him over here.
Adzari Holguin:
I’m in a adult as well and he’s not here at the moment, so I’d appreciate if you explain it to me. Cause I also live here. Okay.
Det. Armendariz:
Is he here or not?
Taya Graham:
Can I ask what you’re doing here, sir?
Det. Armendariz:
Okay. Easy. I’ll just drop it off with you and give it to him please. Thank you.
Taya Graham:
Can I ask what you’re doing here sir?
Detective 2:
Investigation ma’am, it’s an investigation.
Det. Armendariz:
Criminal investigation.
Adzari Holguin:
For?
Det. Armendariz:
Don’t worry, he’s an adult.
Adzari Holguin:
I’m worrying about it and I’d appreciate it as my public servant if you answered my questions.
Detective 2:
Have a good day.
Det. Armendariz:
Have a good day ma’am.
Detective 2:
Thank you.
Det. Armendariz:
A lovely day outside, isn’t it?
Adzari Holguin:
It would be lovelier if you explained what you were doing here.
Det. Armendariz:
It’s a criminal investigation.
Detective 2:
The department is hiring just in case you’re interested.
Adzari Holguin:
How professional. So professional of servants to not explain their reasons here.
Detective 2:
Have a good day ma’am.
Taya Graham:
Now, Adzari calmly asked them what crime they’re investigating. The detectives again refuse to answer. Why they refuse to justify their apparent secrecy is unclear. It’s a Kafka-esque moment that only raises more suspicions about what police are actually up to.
But the police are not done. Just a month later, they pull over Eddie and Adzari and claim the insurance and registration on his van have expired. Take a look.
Eddie Holguin:
Hey, why right now?
Officer 4:
How’s it going? Officer Burrow El Paso Police Department, sure your insurance, your registration’s expired.
Eddie Holguin:
It shouldn’t be.
Officer 4:
No.
Eddie Holguin:
I’s not. I have insurance and everything.
Officer 4:
No. Okay. My partner’s coming on the other side.
Eddie Holguin:
It’s a goddamn, the accountant. He’s the one that takes care of that not me.
Officer 4:
Yeah. Your work truck, do you work here?
Eddie Holguin:
I’m looking at an address. I live over there.
Officer 4:
Oh, you live over here?
Eddie Holguin:
Yeah, but I’m looking for an address right here.
Taya Graham:
Now Eddie pushes back, but soon police change tactics. First without explaining why, they ask him to step out of the vehicle. Notice that Eddie is nursing an injured arm. And why? Because the last time they arrested him, police pulled him up from the ground as he was handcuffed, wrenching his shoulder and wrist. And now, and you’ll learn more about this later, he shares with us that he can’t fully control his arm or make fine motor movements with his hand. But again, the police don’t seem to care.
Officer 4:
Slowly. Okay, I’m going to see your hands, okay?
Eddie Holguin:
That hurts a lot.
Officer 4:
You put your stuff down, okay sir? You don’t have anything on you, all right? Ahead.
Adzari Holguin:
He’s hurt. He’s hurt.
Officer 4:
Can you step out of the vehicle?
Adzari Holguin:
Don’t hurt him. Please.
Officer 5:
So listen, you have a criminal warrant, okay? That’s why we’re taking you in.
Taya Graham:
A criminal warrant? For what?
Officer 4:
Turn around. Turn around.
Officer 5:
I don’t have the details yet, but they advised that he has a criminal warrant.
If you want to put two handcuffs, we’re going to put two handcuffs is that cool?
Eddie Holguin:
[inaudible 00:08:22] with my hand bro.
Adzari Holguin:
Be careful with his hands.
Officer 4:
Face the van please.
Adzari Holguin:
Please don’t.
Officer 4:
We will take it off. we’ll take it off.
Taya Graham:
Now suddenly police reveal that Eddie has a warrant. What the warrant is for. They don’t initially say, but they commence to arrest him anyway, just watch.
Officer 5:
Don’t reach. Don’t reach.
Officer 4:
Stay in the car.
Adzari Holguin:
I’m, okay.
Officer 5:
She’s in the car.
Adzari Holguin:
I’m in the car. I’m in the car.
Officer 5:
If you want to record that’s fine.
Adzari Holguin:
Let me just have, please.
Officer 5:
What do you need?
Adzari Holguin:
I need his [inaudible 00:08:55] and I need, can I go get it? I don’t want you to hurt me. I’m just,
Speaker 7:
I’ll give it to you right now.
Adzari Holguin:
Can I have his wallet?
Taya Graham:
And now Adzari concerned about her father’s wellbeing. Asked the police the one question they should always be able to answer. Why did they put him in handcuffs? And their answers are revealing. Let’s listen to their responses.
Adzari Holguin:
Wallet.
Officer 5:
I’ll give it to you right now. Give me a minute, okay?
Adzari Holguin:
Okay.
Officer 5:
I’ll give you his wallet and his [inaudible 00:09:20] .
Adzari Holguin:
Why are you arresting him?
Officer 5:
He is a criminal.
Adzari Holguin:
For what? He hasn’t done anything. He doesn’t even leave the house.
Officer 5:
I don’t know about the details. I just know he has a criminal warrant.
Taya Graham:
Okay, so no details, not a single justification for putting someone in handcuffs. Not one iota of evidence, but fortunately for Eddie, his daughter Adzari does not relent. In fact, she demonstrates clear resolve and personal courage that perhaps the officers could learn from because Adzari does not back down, which prompts the officer to pepper her with questions or face losing her family’s van. Let’s see what happens next.
Officer 5:
How old are you?
Adzari Holguin:
I don’t answer questions.
Officer 5:
I’m asking, so you, do you want to take this car or do you want me to impound it?
Adzari Holguin:
No, don’t impound it.
Officer 5:
That’s why I’m asking. How old are you? Do you have a driver’s license so you can take the car?
Adzari Holguin:
I don’t answer questions.
Officer 5:
Okay, just step out of the vehicle for me. If you don’t have a driver’s license, I can’t let you take the van. Okay?
Adzari Holguin:
Let me call someone here please.
Officer 5:
Who are you going to call?
Adzari Holguin:
My neighbor. Let me just.
Officer 5:
How old are you?
Adzari Holguin:
Let me just figure out a way to get this home. We don’t have, just please don’t impound it. I’ll get someone to bring it, drive it home and I’ll sit in the passenger seat.
Officer 5:
It could only be you. Do you have a driver license with you?
Adzari Holguin:
Why does it have to be me?
Officer 5:
I’m not going to ask somebody else. That’s me. Do you have a driver’s license, girl, yes or no?
Adzari Holguin:
But why does it have to be me?
Officer 5:
Because you’re the passenger.
Adzari Holguin:
And? I have a neighbor, I have family, I have friends.
Now, besides the fact that Adzari does not have to answer any questions because she’s in fact a passenger, the officer here is also taking part in what we like to call policing and the inequality divide. That’s because this entire confrontation with Adzari takes place over the disposition of her father’s work van. Basically his entire livelihood hangs in the balance and now the officer is threatening to confiscate her ID and perhaps entangle her in the same web, now closing in on her dad.
Now bear in mind, Eddie has not been accused of a traffic violation. And bear in mind that the notion that the passenger has to drive the truck home is entirely a fiction. Still, the officer continues to threaten to take the van and to extract personal information from Adzari. Just watch.
Officer 5:
All right, can you just step out and you can go wherever you want.
Adzari Holguin:
Wait, let me, because let me just call real quick.
Officer 5:
I’m asking nicely. Can you step out of the vehicle and then call whoever you want?
Adzari Holguin:
Okay?
Officer 5:
Yes. Thank you ma’am.
You’re good to see home?
Can you get a tow truck for.
Adzari Holguin:
Don’t get a tow truck. We don’t need a tow truck.
Officer 5:
So do you have a driver’s license? I’ll be glad to give it to you. Do you have one with you?
Adzari Holguin:
I don’t answer questions. I’m waiting for someone to come pick it up.
Officer 5:
Okay, then we’ll impound it. Ma’am, I’m giving you an opportunity.
Adzari Holguin:
Oh my god, people are insufferable. You get a kick out of being a pig, don’t you? You love making people’s lives miserable. Well, I need to get my things out of the vehicle before you impound it. What do you mean no?
Officer 5:
You can’t do that.
Adzari Holguin:
Yes, I’m getting my.
Taya Graham:
Now this is not where their story ends because there is so much more going on behind the scenes, including the shaky evidence behind the questionable charges, what the family is doing to fight them and why they think the police are targeting them. And these details will be explored when we speak to Adzari and her father Eddie.
But first I’m joined by my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, who’s been reaching out to police and investigating the case. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me.
Stephen Janis:
Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham:
So first, are the police saying anything about Eddie’s arrest? How are they justifying the charges?
Stephen Janis:
Well Taya, like many police departments that I have tried to press for answers on troubling cases there, huge communications department seems to be disproportionate to what they will say about it. I have asked them, I will continue to press them, but no, they haven’t said anything and they don’t seem like they want to talk even though a lot of people are getting paid to answer questions.
Taya Graham:
So the officer said that the passenger has to drive the vehicle. Is that actually true? And what eventually happened to the van?
Stephen Janis:
Yeah, this is for Pinocchios here, Taya. There is no law in Texas as a passenger has to drive away a car that has been either impounded or stopped by police. It is absolutely untrue. It’s totally false. It’s one of those things cops like to do, I think in these situations to suit their purposes, make up laws on the fly. Totally untrue. Totally. Really. I’m obviously disturbingly untrue, but I’ll keep looking. Maybe I can find something, but I really, really doubt it.
Taya Graham:
As we watched the video, I mentioned that this arrest was a perfect example of how law enforcement plays a critical role in our current unequal system. Maybe you could talk a little bit about that.
Stephen Janis:
Well, what’s amazing to me is how police departments want to show us that this is actually true. This has been a theory of ours and we’ve had plenty of examples, but it’s amazing to me how police will go out and say, yeah, I’m going to actually show you how this works. I’m going to take this guy’s van, I’m going to arrest him for something, a crime he didn’t commit. I’m going to put his picture up on TV and make him a scary criminal, who no one’s going to want to hire. So they’re really cooperating and proving our theory. It is unfortunate, it is tragic, it is horrible, but it is the truth. And I think this particular arrest shows exactly what we mean when we say that.
Taya Graham:
And now for more on their protracted ordeal and their suspicions about the motivations driving the El Paso Police Department, I’m joined by Adzari and Eddie Holguin. Thank you both so much for joining me.
Adzari Holguin:
Thank you so much for having us.
Taya Graham:
So my first question for you essentially is to help people understand the video. You and your father were just working on a job, when your car was pulled over. What was the reason that the police officers said they were pulling you over?
Eddie Holguin:
They said that my inspection sticker was expired.
Taya Graham:
Now how does it go from an inspection sticker being expired to you being placed in handcuffs? How does that happen?
Eddie Holguin:
Well, that’s what they told me, but it was kind of weird the way they were acting. They were stalling or telling me to wait and then they’d be going back and forth, back and forth. But what they were doing is waiting for more of them to show up. Because you know how they are that one or two can’t do nothing. They need more than four or five, six of them. They won’t do anything by themselves. They’re too scared.
I guess I can’t really walk real good and my hands all messed up so I can’t really do anything. But then they said that I had a warrant for my arrest for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Taya Graham:
So Eddie, let me follow up with you here. What is this aggravated assault with a deadly weapon that created this warrant? What were these officers describing? What was the alleged incident?
Eddie Holguin:
Two detectives came down here in May 30th looking for me and I wasn’t here, Adzari was here. They asked her but, I think you have the video of that because I wasn’t here. I was working. So when she went to where I was working, she said this cops went to go look for you. Here’s a card.
So I got the card and looked at it and he told me to tell you to call him. Well you know that ain’t going to work. I don’t call him. I got no business calling him. But the next day he called me and then he called me when I answered, he says, “Mr. Holguin?” And I said, “yeah”. He says, “This is Detective Armendariz. And I said, “Yeah”. He says, “You want to give me a statement?” I said “A statement of what?” They said, “Well you know.”, I don’t know.
I don’t know what you’re talking about. He said, “Well, what happened?” I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know what happened. Tell you, tell me. He said, “Well, they said that you shot somebody with a BB gun.” I don’t have a BB gun, I don’t have a pellet gun. I have no kind of guns. The only thing I was doing was cutting the grass. That’s it. That’s all I know. I never saw anybody out there.
And then he says, I got up to go forward. I told him, that’s it. You’re trying to make chicken soup out of chicken shit. You’re lying. And I hung up. And then on Friday, the next day, that’s when we were coming back from work and that’s when I got pulled over. That they said it was for a sticker. For an inspection sticker, but that’s not what it was. They’re already looking for me. Well, but they know where I live.
Taya Graham:
So let me turn to you, Adzari. During the traffic stop, we are seeing your father being put into handcuffs. What is your understanding of this? What’s going through your mind when this is happening?
Adzari Holguin:
I was so scared. It was like my nightmares were coming true. When they started grabbing at him and then hurting him and arresting him, I didn’t know what was going on.
Eddie Holguin:
That’s why you were recording?
Adzari Holguin:
I was recording for that reason, I felt it in my gut that I needed to record because you can never not record around them. Something bad always happens when it comes to cops. And it did and my mind was so all over the place. I couldn’t think. My only thing that I could think of was to make sure that I kept my dad on camera because I didn’t want them to do anything to him off camera.
Taya Graham:
So you actually shared a photo with me of your father’s arm and wrist being swollen. Eddie, do you want to talk about what happened to your arm and what the injury is and if it was re-injured during that arrest?
Eddie Holguin:
Yeah. Well I have my wrist, it’s all swollen. I can’t use my thumb and this finger. These two fingers? I can’t use them. I can’t move them hardly because it hurts a lot. This is where they hurt me the first time.
When they came three years ago, Gonzalez, that officer or whatever, Gonzalez, she’s the one that pulled me out of the car, started banging me on the car and then she pulled the handcuffs up and messed up my two shoulders and my wrists. I heard something pop in my wrist and it got really bad because they left me handcuffed for 12 hours on that bench over there at the substation.
They’re supposed to only leave me there for two. They left me there 12 before they took me to the jail and took off the handcuffs. And now with this time they left me handcuffed another 12 hours. So it got even worse. I got more swollen and then I had gone to some of the therapy. The next week I went to therapy and they saw my wrist and they said, what happened to you? So I told him, he said, I don’t know. We can’t do therapy, you can’t even move them. Before you started to move them, now you can’t move them anymore.
Taya Graham:
Can you tell me what kind of charges, if any, that you are currently facing?
Eddie Holguin:
I’m facing aggravated assault with a deadly weapon.
Adzari Holguin:
It’s a second degree felony that they’re trying to put on my dad.
Taya Graham:
And I just have to make this clear for everyone to understand. I was absolutely shocked when I was told that you were considered a fugitive. So you’re facing aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and you’re considered a fugitive. Can you just explain to me where this accusation came from?
Eddie Holguin:
When they arrested me on Friday, I got out on Saturday about 2:30 in the morning. Then I came home and Saturday in the evening they put on the TV that they couldn’t locate these people and I came out there. But they have already been here in my house. I don’t know how many times. They don’t know where I live? I know they do. They already came two or three times just for this case.
Adzari Holguin:
My dad had been arrested earlier that day on Friday around two in the afternoon. And by the time he got out he was already a wanted fugitive and they were saying that they can’t find him and he came out on the KTSM website and he came out on Channel 10 news. Until this day, it’s still coming up, you can look it up on the website, he’s still listed as a wanted fugitive even though he is already been arrested and he’s already out. It was funny when I saw that, I was like, what? Turn around. He’s right behind you. It was ridiculous.
Taya Graham:
Thank you both for your answers and I really appreciate that you explained to me that even though he had already been in jail and they had already processed him and given him charges, he was still listed as a fugitive. And I think that’s very important for people to know how this can damage your professional reputation or your personal reputation to be listed this way. So I think it’s really important to clear the air here.
Eddie Holguin:
I already lost two jobs because of this. I went to the other one and they told me that they didn’t need my services anymore, because they saw that on the TV. And then the other one, they called me and said that they would call me at a later date to go do some work. So I already lost two jobs. And now I haven’t had any work for over a month. Nothing.
Taya Graham:
So a very significant aspect of this case is that you and your father were suing the El Paso Police Department already for another incident of police misconduct and brutality. I understand you might not be able to talk about the lawsuit in detail, but in your opinion, do you think this warrant and arrest was perhaps a form of intimidation or even retaliation for your family filing a lawsuit?
Eddie Holguin:
That’s what I believe because why would somebody come and say that I did something when I haven’t even been out there? Shooting somebody with a BB gun at 2:30 in the afternoon? I don’t have a BB gun or a pellet gun. Like I said, we were back there taking the blankets off the sweat lodge. Then I came out here to start cutting the grass and that happens. Then two months later, this detective comes and ask me questions, if I want to give a statement. Two months later, but I don’t know anything. Like I told him the first time, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Tells me two months later, I still don’t know what they’re talking about.
I didn’t do anything to nobody. I don’t know where they got somebody to say something about me or how they did it. I believe this has to do with that lawsuit. That’s what I believe. I don’t know for a fact, but sure looks that way.
They don’t have no evidence against me. There’s nothing. That’s why the cops left. And then two months later, what is he doing for two months? Trying to get somebody to sign something to arrest me? Because he has no evidence? Something’s really bad, smells bad.
Taya Graham:
Adzari, one of the things I was so amazed by is that you were barely 18 years old and you handled that situation so well. You started recording, you asked for name and badge number. How did you know how important filming the police is? How did you learn how to do that?
Adzari Holguin:
It’s all thanks to my dad. I had a really good teacher these past few years. If it weren’t for him, always watching the Real News Network, Direct D James Freeman, Audit the Audit, Watch the Watchdog, all of them. We watch them on a daily basis and you kind of pick some of these things up over the years. If it weren’t for that education that I got from my dad, I wouldn’t have known because I didn’t know before. They don’t teach you this stuff in school.
Eddie Holguin:
And I’ve always told my kids, “Don’t call cops. If you see them, don’t get near them. Don’t talk to them. Turn around, walk away. Just keep away from them.” Because those people are no good. They’re really not. And they have, I don’t know what kind of training? Four months of training? Four months! A child walking around with guns.
Taya Graham:
I know this is a difficult question, but I have to ask you, Eddie, how are you coping with this? I mean whether financially or physically or even emotionally, how are you coping with the assault and injury that you had with police three years ago and then this new encounter, which must have been very intimidating?
Eddie Holguin:
It was really hard because, first of all of that happened three years ago. I don’t go out hardly nowhere. Only if I got to go to work and come right back. I don’t go to Walmart because they got cops there. Anytime they have cops anywhere, I will not go there.
I don’t go anywhere. I don’t even go to the store because I’m afraid of those cops. I go out of the house and I’m going down the roads. I see a cop, I’ll turn around and come right back to the house. I’m not even going to the store. Adzari has to go on her bike because we don’t have another car and she doesn’t drive the van. It’s too big for her. So she has to go on her bike to get groceries because I won’t go. I will not go. I’ll just stay home.
And it’s so difficult staying in this house for so long and I had cops coming down here after one year after my mom had passed. I started having problems with cops. They kept coming down here. They had already accused me of other things, but they always go away because I didn’t do anything. I don’t leave the house, I just sit here.
Only time I go outside to the front is to cut the grass. I don’t like to be in the front because a cop passes by, I’m afraid they’re going to stop. The day I cut the grass, I was out there at five o’clock, five 30 in the morning cutting the grass. While it’s still, the sun’s barely coming up because at that time I go out and pray. But after I prayed and I start the lawnmower, because I’m afraid to be out there when there’s people out there because I’m afraid they’re going to show up again. I can’t do this anymore. I hate it here so much. I want to leave, but I can’t. Then they don’t let me work now.
Taya Graham:
I know that was difficult to share and I really appreciate it. My last question is this, if you could speak to the police department in El Paso, Texas, if you could speak to them directly right now and you knew they were listening, what would you want to tell them? Adzari, what would you want to ask of them?
Adzari Holguin:
How dare you? How dare you live with yourself, eat breakfast in the morning, be happy, enjoy your life and sleep comfortably, knowing that what you did to us on a daily basis, to everyone around here? How dare you walk these streets thinking that you’re above us and how dare you believe that you own me and you can tell me what to do and I have to bow down and listen to you? You do not have the right, you do not have the knowledge that I have. How dare you.
Taya Graham:
And Eddie, what would you want to tell the El Paso Texas Police Department?
Eddie Holguin:
Just leave me the fuck alone. Go do whatever you want. Just leave me alone. I do not like them. I can’t stand them. I see them. I want to run away. I start shaking. Why? Because I know how they are. They have a sign on the side of the car that says, serve and protect. Serve and protect who? Yourselves! You sure as hell don’t serve and protect us.
Taya Graham:
Thank you both so much for being open with us and coming forward to share what happened. We really appreciate you.
Now, I think the case we just reviewed is indicative of a phenomenon that plagues this country today and does not get the attention it deserves. It’s sort of an institutional malaise, which I believe leads to the type of police behavior we just witnessed, especially the efforts of cops to silence their critics.
In part it’s simply the cruelty that arises when people are given indiscriminate power they can use to settle personal scores like it appears police did in this case. But it’s also a structural problem that I think arises from a system that cannot care for the people who actually do the work to make it work.
To explain what I mean, I will start with an example. This is a site the El Paso police use to inform the public about dangerous fugitives. It’s supposed to make residents aware of violent criminals who are a threat to the community and are still at large. But as you can see here, the El Paso Police Department also decided to feature someone who seems a little out of place, namely Eddie Holguin.
That’s right! The man we just interviewed, a hardworking contractor, who runs his own business, and has been raising his wonderful daughters, was such an imminent threat to society that the police had to broadcast his image to the world. A man who has worked his entire life to support his family and contribute to society was now apparently an irredeemable criminal.
It is truly shocking to say the least for a variety of reasons. The first one being that it seems based upon the videos we showed you, police actually knew where Eddie was when they posted his photo. I mean, they had his address, apparently. And even if he wasn’t home all the time, it’s not like there was any evidence that Eddie was engaged in some sort of effort to evade them.
And that’s the point I’m trying to make. An aspect of the broader unjust system boiled down into the life of a single man. Because the fact that the El Paso police have thrust Eddie into the spotlight is indicative of how the system itself processes the cruelty that defines it.
In other words, what we’re really witnessing in the case of Eddie and Adzari is how the system that is based upon injustice perpetuates that same injustice in the lives of the people who are forced to endure it. So what do I mean?
Well, think about it after you watch the interview. Is there any logical reason to humiliate Eddie by publicly announcing him to be a menace to society? From what you’ve learned about his life, is there any plausible justification for turning him into public enemy number one? So then why do it? Why turn his life upside down?
Well, think about how I described the criminal justice system just a few moments ago. Imagine what that really means. The idea that there is something else going on inside this process of policing that has nothing to do with law enforcement or public safety.
Think of it as a new form of symbolic exchange. And okay, before you start saying Taya, what the heck are you talking about? Please, give me a moment to explain. Symbolic exchange was an idea postulated by French cultural theorist, Jean Baudrillard. If you’re not familiar with him, he’s a postmodern thinker who coined the term “hyperreality”. For example, a digitally conjured reality with no meaningful anchor or authenticity in the tactile world.
But Baudrillard also thought a lot about capitalism and his theory of symbolic exchange was part of it. In it he argued that symbolic exchange was the process of conferring a benefit on someone beyond a physical good or possession. Meaning a benefit that is not material, but perhaps spiritual or metaphysical, a gift that is enriched through passion and meaning, rather than price.
He argued that capitalism and the material world it creates erodes the value of symbolic exchange, which is one reason he thought contemporary capitalism defined by goods and services was also personally alienating.
But I think his theory could be applied to the present, especially to what we’ve seen in the behavior of law enforcement that we have demonstrated again and again on this show. Because honestly, so much of what law enforcement does in cases like Eddie’s is symbolic, like the most wanted picture. And that symbolism is not only impactful, it can be defining.
And of course I can hear you now commenting in the video saying, Taya, why are you talking about this? I mean, I know you’ve taken some discursions before, but seriously, a French philosopher? Cultural theory? Are you serious? Please just give me another minute to hear me out.
I think if you really drill down into the current state of American society, you can see that the glue that holds our unfair system of inequality together is largely symbolic. And by shaping and controlling the flow of signs, the dominant powers that be can influence perceptions, behaviors, and ideologies.
I mean, how else can anyone explain a system that facilitates private equity firms buying up doctor’s practices and then slamming patients with surprise medical bills that bankrupt them? How else can you justify a country where the top 1% holds $38.7 trillion in wealth more than the combined wealth of the country’s squeezed middle class, which possesses just 26% of it?
How do you explain a country that has seen its economy grow exponentially over the past few decades and still has roughly the same amount of people living in poverty since the 1970s?
It doesn’t sound rational does it? It doesn’t even seem logical. And yet I think it explains quite a bit about how this system works and perhaps how it doesn’t. And why when it does, it swallows the lives of people like Eddie with unquestionable cruelty because the system that rewards unjustifiable wealth can only be justified by something other than logic.
When a reality simply doesn’t make sense, we as human beings often make sense of things through symbolism. Think about how we ascribe so much meaning and import to concepts like love without truly understanding it. But boy, we do represent it through songs and lyrics and what we can’t deduce through logic, we explain through symbols or art or concoctions of poetry, what we can’t justify through numbers or data we explore through imagery and metaphor and art. It’s just the way we’re wired.
But with all human expressions comes the duality of light and dark. This means that when we want to perpetuate an injustice that defies logic, symbolism often makes it work. And in this sense, policing and law enforcement are the purveyors of a symbolic war on the working class all at the behest of the elite. What they can’t justify by the logic of economics, they facilitate with the image of the arrest.
When the persistence of poverty calls into question the system that created it, law enforcement steps in to make the poor unworthy through over-policing and unwarranted charges.
That’s why El Paso police have gone to such extreme lengths to make the lives of Eddie and young Adzari a living hell. Because when us, the people, fight back, we puncture the symbolic logic of late stage capitalism. When cop watchers turn their cameras on cops who harass them, we reverse the symbolic exchange and reveal the true imperative that drives excessive policing. When we make symbols that contravene theirs, they simply don’t know what to do.
Well to make sure they can’t turn our guests into symbols of scorn, I’m going to leave you with this symbol. It’s a picture of Adzari and her father Eddie, two human beings who just want to live a normal unencumbered life. Not criminals, not threats to society, just two shining examples of humanity. And we don’t want the El Paso Police to forget it.
Again, I want to thank Eddie and Adzari Holguin for coming forward to share their experience. I know it was difficult and on a personal note, I wish I was as well-informed and brave as Adzari was at her age. She stood on her rights to protect her family, and I think we can all appreciate that courage.Thank you both and I have to thank Stephen Janis for his writing, research and editing for this piece. Thank you so much, Stephen.
Stephen Janis:
Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham:
And I want to thank mods of the show, Noli D. and Lacy R. for their support. Thank you! And a very special thanks to our Accountability Reports Patreons, we appreciate you and I look forward to thanking each and every single one of you personally in our next livestream, especially Patreon associate producers, Johnny R., David K., Louis P., and Lucita Garcia, and our 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 for you. Please reach out to us. You can email us tips privately at PAR@therealnews.com and share your evidence. You can also message us at Police Accountability Report on Facebook or Instagram, or @eyesonpolice on Twitter. And of course you can always message me directly @tayasbaltimore on Twitter and Facebook.
And please like and comment, I read your comments and appreciate them and we will have a Patreon link pinned in the comments below. 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. My name is Taya Graham and I am your host of the Police Accountability Report. Please be safe out there.
A 42-year-old Black woman, Adrienne Boulware, has died in the custody of the California Department of Corrections at the Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla. On July 4, prison guards exposed Boulware to extreme temperatures outdoors during a heatwave for 15 minutes, leaving her with just a small glass of water in the over 110 F heat. Boulware began to exhibit symptoms of heat exhaustion almost immediately after returning indoors. Two days later, she passed away while receiving medical care. Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura of the California Coalition for Women’s Prisoners joins Rattling the Bars to discuss Boulware’s tragic death, and what it reveals about the dangers prisons place incarcerated people in as the climate crisis intensifies.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rallying the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. It’d be unimaginable to think that if I left a dog in the car with the windows rolled up under these heating conditions that I would not be held accountable by the animal and Humane Society. But the same thing is taking place right now in California with the women in Central California Women’s Facility. The same thing is taking place right now where women are being held in environments where the heat has reached a temperature of 110. As a result, a woman has died, and not to say how many more will die or what the state of these women are at this current time. Joining me today is Elizabeth Nomura. Welcome, Nomura. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what organization you’re representing at this juncture.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
Again, my name is Leesa Nomura. I am the statewide membership organizer for the California Coalition for Women Prisoners. We are a organization that’s been around for almost just shy of 30 years, and I have been a statewide organizer for close to three years, but have been connected with CCWP since I was incarcerated. And I’ve been home in January, it will be five years I have been released from prison. I am of Pacific Islander descent and I am very grateful to be here calling from Tonga Land, or commonly known as Los Angeles. Thank you for having me.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. Yeah. And thank you for that. Okay, so let’s get right into it. According to a report that just came out on July 6th, a woman died from heat exhaustion in Central California Women’s Facility. Talk about what’s going on with them conditions right now as we walk back through what happened with this system.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
Yeah. Tragically, a 42-year-old black woman, a very good friend of mine, of our sisterhood inside, Adrienne Boulware, just shy of coming home next year. It was 4th of July and she was being released for her meds and the institution was locked down because of course, on the holidays, there’s a lack of staff. And so because of that, on those days, the institution will be locked down because of lack of staff. And so it was med time. She was popped out for her meds. And in the configuration of the institution, the meds are not distributed to the cells like in some of the men’s joints. They have to leave their room, walk out of the unit and walk across the yard to the medical unit, stand in line with all of the other folks from the yard, and then wait in line for their turn to go up to the med window and then get their meds and then walk back to the door and then wait for whenever the housing staff in their air-conditioned cop shop is to walk to the door and unlock it and let them in.
And so apparently what the story is from our folks inside who we have direct communication with and tell us that Adrienne was out there in addition to the time it took for her to stand out there, wait out there and be exposed to above 111 degrees, I believe it was that day. What the temperature is and what the feels like temperature is always different, right, especially in the armpit of California, which is central California. And so Adrienne is standing out there and they said about 15 minutes. She’s waiting, she’s looking at the CO, he’s seeing her, she’s seeing him, and he is leaving her out there. And the whole time, there’s no water, there’s nothing out there for her to drink. And the only water she’s had the whole entire time is a little cup.
Mansa Musa:
Right, they give you water with your meds.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
They give you water, and that’s all she’s had that whole entire time. And so by the time she went inside, she was let in, went inside, she was suffering from heat exhaustion, she was sweating, her roommates were concerned for her, helped her into the room. She was shaking. In the configuration of these units, the rooms hold up to eight people and there’s a shower, a toilet, and two sinks in there so they have access to shower anytime in those cells. Her roommates helped her into the shower. She went in and once she went in there to try to cool off, she collapsed. And she collapsed and she became incoherent.
They said that her legs were shaking uncontrollably and they then called out for medical help, in which case the call-out for medical emergency is 222. So if you can imagine that scene, all of the roommates pounding on the door screaming [inaudible 00:06:37]. So it was very frantic, and they’re just trying to do the best they could because of course they’re the first responders.
Mansa Musa:
Right. You’re exactly right.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
They’re doing the best they can to keep her coherent, to keep her there and to monitor her health at that time and see how she’s doing. And so finally, medical comes and takes her away and they don’t hear anything until they receive the word Saturday morning that she had passed.
Mansa Musa:
How long did it take? Okay, because like I said, I’ve been in this space. I did 48 years prior to being released. I got five years coming up. I’ll be out five years December the 5th, but I did 48 years. When I first went in the ’70s, you had fans on the wall. It was these steel cells. It’d be so hot that the paint would literally be peeling off the wall and we ain’t get no ice. Back then, you ain’t get no ice.
But talk about how long, first of all, how long did it take for them to respond before we go into unpacking the conditions? Because it’s my understanding this is not new to this environment. How long did it take for them to respond to her, to get to her before they was able to get her to a unit where she would get treated properly to your knowledge?
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
They said the total amount of time, it was about 12 minutes. So it took about three minutes for the CO to get down the hallway, unlock the door, assist the situation, hit the button, and then go to the door, let wait for the medical staff, bring the gurney, walk to them, and-
Mansa Musa:
Take another 15 minutes to get across to y’all.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
Yeah, to get across the yard.
Mansa Musa:
So all together is a total of 35 to 40 minutes.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
No, no, actually it wasn’t that long because remember, each yard has their own medical unit, has their own medical thing, so the nurses there came with a gurney. It was about 13 minutes.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, it’s 13 minutes too long.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
It’s 13 minutes too long. She’s already suffering.
Mansa Musa:
And the reality is, the reality is that, okay, we recognized and this is in the United States of America, this is not isolated to this California prison, we recognized that the heat wave was going across this country. We recognized… I was in Vegas and it was 115 and I went outside and I did something every three minutes and came back in. That’s how burned the heat was. But it wasn’t so much the heat, it was just like the lack of air. It was just like not told. So I know from experience, but more importantly, I know from experience from being in that space.
Talk about now… My understanding is that this is not the first time that this institution or the California prisons has been cited for not being prepared to deal with the heat or elements, period. Talk about, to your knowledge, has it changed? How long did you do before you was released?
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
I did 10 years.
Mansa Musa:
All right, so you can walk us back. So has the conditions staying there, have they gotten any better during the course of your incarceration?
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
No, they’ve only progressively gotten worse because of course the equipment is becoming more and more dilapidated and over time and it hasn’t been replaced. And I worked on those maintenance crews that did the preventative maintenance that’s supposed to happen every winter in preparation for the summer. So I know what those preventative maintenance procedures look like. They’re just walkthroughs and just procedural and just checkoffs as opposed to actually things being really done to actually prepare. And so those cooling units or those swamp coolers actually are not doing the jobs that they’re doing.
Mansa Musa:
So what exactly are they for our audience? Because I know they got… I told you, the women at the correction at the county, the detention center in Baltimore City, they had got an injunction. They brought coolers, what you see on the football fields. They grown a cooling station. They grown and ran these pipes and ran these conduits all through the prison was popping in air the whole entire time because it got so hot that they didn’t have the amenities that modern prison have in terms of fans or air or be able to cool down the [inaudible 00:12:08], So they was able to get that done. So talk about what they got compared to what they should have.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
So they have swamp cooler systems that sit at the top of the roofs of every unit. However, those units, those units are connected to piping systems that pump water because of course swamp coolers need a flow of water in order for them to work. So what’s happened is that each of those units, when you run them, now the water leaks into the ceilings and now they leak into the buildings when they run them and cause more problems. And now you have leaking into the day rooms, leaking into the rooms, and so they’re causing more issues where the ceilings are falling in.
So what they end up doing is they end up not running them because of the fact that they know they’re going to cause more problems in the end and then they don’t have the people to come in or they don’t want to repair them and so they just don’t run it. And so they refuse to run or they run the air but not the water or the cut off the water line and just run the air but what ends up happening is the air will run, but after a while because the water’s not running, the engine will run hot and then it’ll pump out hot air.
Mansa Musa:
Hot air.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
And so that’s what happened on Friday.
Mansa Musa:
Right. I see. Yeah.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
That’s what ended up happening on Friday afternoon when we started Friday morning to get desperate pleas and cries for help. In the early morning hours of a lockdown status, we were getting… No, it was Saturday morning. Everyone had found out that Adrienne had passed away and they were all distraught about the passing, but then they were also all locked down and they were calling out to us and they were just getting ahold of all of us advocates saying, “We are locked down and the vents are pumping out hot air and we can’t breathe,” and they were saying, “We can’t breathe,” and then women were throwing up, they were having headaches, leg pain.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Heat exhaustion.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
And already it’s 113 that day, so the pipes were all running hot. They had no ice water because all of the ice machines in the institution except for one were all broke down. So they had no access to ice water, lack of staff, so nobody was out there trying to-
Mansa Musa:
Get ice.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
… solve the problem or get ice or make any phone calls outside to get any ice shipped in. And so nobody cared. And so everyone’s locked in their cells, up to eight people in a room, and then to add insult to injury, they’re pumping in hot air-
Mansa Musa:
Hot air.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
… from these things and they’re not even popping the doors open so that people can breathe. And half of the staff there that doesn’t give a crap is ignoring the women asking and begging to at least be let out a hallway by hallway to breathe in the day room. They’re not going to stab them. This is not the men’s joint. This is the women’s institution. All they want to do is just come out hallway by hallway.
Mansa Musa:
Breathe, so they can breathe.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
Let them get some reprieve out of these ovens, I mean, these practical death chambers that are… I mean, it’s just crazy because not only… I mean, it would be better to be outside in 113 degree weather where you can actually breathe air and to be confined in a space that has no windows, no ventilation and then you’re pumping in hot air on top of that on top of breathing the air from your friend that’s-
Mansa Musa:
Everybody, all air being sucked up.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
… pressed up against you.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Let me ask you this, Elizabeth. Okay, you just outlined that this been going on for a minute, right? Why haven’t they fixed this? Because we’re talking about at least it’s been in existence for at least five years, this system of cooling, air, water, cold air. Hot summer, California, always going to be hot. The environment ain’t going to change. You ain’t going to put no windows in it, you ain’t going to knock no windows off. You ain’t going to do none of that. You ain’t going to bring no air conditioning. Why haven’t this changed? What is the reason why the state of California has not invested money into changing this situation?
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
They don’t care. They don’t care.
Mansa Musa:
All right. What’s the status of the environment now? Since now we got death and potential deaths on the way or potential irreversible injuries because of heat exhaustion, what is being done now by the California State Prison system, the Department of Correction in California? Because this ain’t only… If they got this attitude towards women prison, and this is a general attitude towards prisoners in general, women prisoners, men prisoners, juvenile prisoners, kid prisoners, prisoners in general, you going to die, well, so be it.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
Right? I mean, so in terms of California Department of Corrections, or specifically for what has happened following our advocacy at CCWF, we had immediately after these cries for help, we immediately put out a press release in response to Adrienne’s passing or Adrienne’s death, and also too, putting out specifically the cries for help, and we did it quoting folks and quoting the emails and text messages we were receiving with their permission. And we put it out to every news agency that would listen to us and all of our social media, all of our social media platforms so that folks could see and we could get as much support that we could in the general public.
And the response was overwhelming. We went viral within the hour of placing that out. And so I spent the good part of the rest of that day and the following next day doing interviews and talking with people and sharing just the stories of my folks on the inside, what they were going through and how it consistently continues to be this way year after year, summer after summer, and they’re burning them up in the summer and freezing them out in the winter.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, freezing them out in the winter.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
That’s how it is. And it never changes. And so in response to our advocacy, our ongoing pressure that we were putting on CDCR and the administration there at the institution, they had immediately went to work on getting those ice machines back online. They immediately went to work on purchasing additional igloos so that each unit could have two igloos at all times. And then they immediately started to open up each of the trailers that have a AC units in those trailers that they usually have like NA, AA classes.
Mansa Musa:
I got you, I got you.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
So they open those up as cooling stations when the temperatures go up, when they go up to above 90 degrees. So these things have aggressively gotten better. However, in order for those igloos to be filled with ice and filled with water, to get those in there, you have to have staff that want to do it. So then we’re getting those staff members that are petty, and so then we’re finding out, oh, we’re getting staff that will fill the ice chest with 80% water and only a small scoop of ice and then by the time you get the igloo from the kitchen to the unit, that thing is already melted, so that’s the kind of attitude you get from inside from people from those, I’m sorry, from those pigs, that don’t give a crap-
Mansa Musa:
Yes, yes, they are.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
… that don’t give a crap and they’re retaliating against for what? For people, all they’re trying to do is stay alive and they don’t want to give people that right to advocate for their own lives. They’re not asking for much, they’re just asking [inaudible 00:22:26]-
Mansa Musa:
Let me ask you this, what’s the security status of that particular concentration camp?
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
Well, women’s prisons… Well, this particular women’s prison is the highest security women’s prison.
Mansa Musa:
So it’s max? It’s max medium?
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
Yeah, because actually, CCWF was the only institution in the state that housed death row.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, so it’s max medium.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
So you had everyone from death row to level ones.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right. Let me offer this though, for clarity, right? The sister that passed away, her name was Adrienne?
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
Adrienne Boulware.
Mansa Musa:
Well, Adrienne was murdered. That wasn’t-
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
Yes, yes.
Mansa Musa:
That’s murder. There’s no way you can describe that but when you take [inaudible 00:23:15]-
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
Let me be clear that the institution and CDCRs went on the record to state that she had passed away from a preexisting health condition.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. The preexisting health condition was neglect of taking care of me and providing me with the adequate medical attention that I need. That’s neglect, neglect turned into murder. But okay, going forward.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
In any heat advisory in the free world that comes up on every billboard, on every [inaudible 00:23:48], when they tell you to be aware or be careful, they tell you to be careful in this heat of your family members and your elderly who have what? Preexisting health conditions.
Mansa Musa:
Right, and-
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
They’re at risk.
Mansa Musa:
And then we not confused by this because we recognize that if she was in society and left in a car by anybody under the same conditions and died, they would lock them up for a homicide or involuntary manslaughter. So the fact that she was held on a plantation, under the new form of plantation, prison industrial complex, the fact that she was in that environment, they tend to minimize her existence and her being a human being, but we here to tell them right now that this is murder.
And I’m imploring y’all to at some point in time come to that place where y’all try to get some redress around that, around why did she have to die, because as you said earlier, okay, they’re putting these things into place, which is good, but the fact of the matter is if you don’t change the attitude of the pigs, if you don’t change the attitude of the institution, then somebody else is waiting in the wings to die and they justify it by saying, “Oh, they died because they had preexisting conditions and it wasn’t the fact that we was neglectful in getting them treatment or putting them in an environment that did not exasperate these preexisting conditions. That ain’t had nothing to do with it. It was just the fact that they wasn’t healthy and their health contributed to them dying.” But going forward, what do you want our audience to know?
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
So basically what I would like your audience to know is that California Coalition for Women Prisoners is not done with this fight. We are going to take this fight to the legislative level and we are going to take specific asks to the legislation and these asks are going to look like short-term asks, but also some long-term asks. At the short-term level, we want every person inside every institution in California to be given state-issued cooling rags. Such an easy thing. Just cooling rags, just something that could provide immediate relief that you and I and the free world no big deal could get at the 99 Cent Store.
Also, too, is that we want also state-issued fans issued to every person that’s incarcerated. That is not a hard ask because a fan that’s issued is cheap. They are not expensive compared to the medical expense to deal with heat-related issues that come up because of the heat, extreme heat. Issuing a fan upon a person’s intake or person being booked into the prison is actually a cheap ask. If any legislator wants to push back on that because of budget, that is one of our asks.
The other thing is we want cold water dispensers accessible in every unit and not cheaply. We want it always to stay cold. So we want that to be accessible and we don’t want it held back from anyone in any lockdown situation. If someone needs that water, there needs to be a protocol in a way that that person, whether they’re in their cell or outside, be able to access that water or get that-
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, water. We talking about water, cold water.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
[inaudible 00:27:38] at any time they need.
Mansa Musa:
That’s all. Yeah. Cold water. That’s all. Cold water.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
Cold water and not tepid water. They can get that from the [inaudible 00:27:46]-
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, we asking them for cold water. Cold water, that’s all.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
Cold ice water.
Mansa Musa:
We didn’t ask for you to go melt the ice glacier to bring it in there and import it from Alaska. We just asking you to make the water cold and give us access to it as we need it. Come on.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
So long-term asks, we would like AC, not swamp coolers.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, we want the same thing they getting cool with. Same thing they getting cool with. We want the same thing.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
We want two units installed because the inclement weather is not getting any better. Climate change is causing it to get worse. And so it’s unavoidable. AC units must be installed in every unit in every prison, and I’m just saying starting with the Central Valley, because the weather there is more clocked 100 degree weather, simultaneous 100 degree weather in the Central Valley than any area of California statistically. So that’s a great place to start.
And I will say this. I received Intel that a year ago the institution had purchased brand new chillers and signed a contract to have those installed and installed one in one unit in the institution and somehow ran out of the funds to install any chillers.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, what happened to the money? What happened to the money? Yeah.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
All of those chillers are sitting in the warehouse.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. What happened to that money? Yeah. What happened to that money?
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
What happened to that money? Who misappropriated those funds to complete the installation project and why did Adrienne have to die because of it?
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. And also, I think that y’all need to ask that they do an internal investigation on that right there because this been going on far too long.
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
Don’t you worry about the thing, brother. I got that.
Mansa Musa:
See, one thing, I just recently became aware of it but this been going on for a while and then Adrienne was murdered. Her murder should be the reason why they should feel like they should be hard-pressed to resolve it. But how can our audience get in touch with you and support what y’all are doing?
Elizabeth “Leesa” Nomura:
Well, right now, the Adrienne Boulware family is asking for support to help them not only with funeral expenses, but they would like to fund their own independent autopsy. And so we are assisting them in supporting their GoFundMe fundraiser. And so I do have a link for that. I will forward that to you if you don’t already have it already, and also to an ongoing support of the work that CCWP has. CCWP, California Coalition for Women Prisoners dot org, is our webpage and you can connect with us or you can also connect with us on our Instagram @ccwp and that’s our Instagram handle.
Mansa Musa:
Thank you, Liz. And there you have it, real news rattling the bars. This is not a big ask. Just imagine somebody asking you say, “Listen, just give me a wet rag, cool wet rag to put on my head to lower my temperature.” That’s not a big ask. Just imagine somebody ask, you say, “Can I just get a cold drink of water?” That’s not a big ask. All the women in California ask to be treated like human beings. And as a result of being treated inhuman, someone has been murdered, not died from preexisting conditions, but died from the fact that they was neglected. We ask that you look into this. We ask that you evaluate this report and support the women in the California prison system, but more importantly, we ask that you write your congressmen or get involved with this because this is a problem. There you have it. Rattling the bars, the real news. Thank you.
The modern prison system’s origins in slavery can be seen in telltale signs throughout the system. The system of chattel slavery had no incentive to keep Black families together—in fact, separation was deliberately used to punish the enslaved. Today, the prison system mirrors this in its treatment of families of the incarcerated. Prisoners are denied the opportunity to be fully present parents by the nature of their condition, and further separation from family through visitation denial, relocation, and other means are used as a way to punish and torture inmates. Ernest Boykin, a father of seven, speaks on his personal experience as a formerly incarcerated parent—and everything he did to ensure that he would remain in his children’s lives despite the system’s efforts to deny him that right.
Studio / Post-Production: Cameron Granadino Audio Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa.
Today, we’ll be doing a series on Father’s Day. And more importantly, we’ll be doing a series on the impact the criminal injustice system has on incarcerated parents, or more importantly, on the family overall.
Joining me today is an extraordinary individual to talk about being a parent, being a Justice Impact parent. More importantly, being a upright, standup Black man. Ernest, welcome to Rattling the Bars.
Ernest Boykin:
Hey, I’m sorry I do call you Mr. Hopkins. But yeah, Mansa, thank you. You made me feel like I was on a Shannon Sharpe Show, man, with that introduction.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, we a little better than Shannon Sharpe. Plus, we not trying to get the ratings.
Ernest Boykin:
Exactly.
Mansa Musa:
We trying to get the story out, The Real News. But let’s talk about Father’s Day.
Now, in full disclosure, me and Ernest was in a program called Georgetown Pivot. That’s where I first met Ernest at.
We was either doing something about telling something about ourselves. We was going around; this was our first introduction to everybody coming on in that space together. We had seen each other when we was registered up at the school. But this was during the time of COVID, so we was on Zoom.
And when they got to you, this is what impressed me the most about everything that you said. But then once I got to know you, I really realized that you are an extraordinary individual.
Ernest Boykin:
Well, thank you.
Mansa Musa:
You might not present yourself like that all the time, but in terms of who you are as a person, I recognize that.
But this is what stuck out with me on something you said, when you talked about your children. I’m going to let you tell our audience, first of all, a little bit about yourself and some of the things that you’re doing. Then, we’ll get into that.
Ernest Boykin:
Okay. Well thanks, Mansa. Yeah. My name’s Ernest Boykin. I’m a father of seven. I have probably every age child that you could think of. No, I’m sorry. I have two in college. I have two under two years old right now, I have a couple in the middle, and I’m proud of them. They’re all the lights of my life.
When I was away, that’s what kept me grounded. Looking at their pictures or talking to them on the phone and things like that.
Currently I’m the part owner of a Straight Route Trucking. We’re a trucking company out of Washington, DC. We move cargo from point to point all across the United States of America. I started that with my life partner, Brisa, and we’ve been in business since 2022.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. Now let’s talk about your children. How much time did you serve prior to being released?
Ernest Boykin:
I served approximately six-and-a-half years.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, in the six-and-a-half years you had, how many children did you have when you left the street?
Ernest Boykin:
I had five children. And I’m not just talking about biological.
Mansa Musa:
I know, yeah. We talking about children.
Ernest Boykin:
Children, yeah, people that I was responsible for. Five individuals.
Mansa Musa:
All right. And in terms of when you got arrested and ultimately sentenced, who was responsible for taking care of your children?
Ernest Boykin:
Well, their mom; it fell all on their mom. It fell on my parents too, because my kids’ mom and I really weren’t getting along.
So during the school year, the court had awarded me custody and guardianship over the children, because I was sending my kids to private school. When the kids were living with their mom, she tried to put them in public school. But the court felt like they were getting a better education in private school. So they sided with me and let me control that.
Mansa Musa:
While you was incarcerated?
Ernest Boykin:
No, no, before I was in prison.
Mansa Musa:
Before you got in. Okay, go ahead.
Ernest Boykin:
Before I went to prison. So it was a situation where my parents kept them until school let out, and then they went with their mom. So my parents shared in some of the responsibility, and my kid’s mom. It was pretty much her responsibility to deal with all the children herself.
Mansa Musa:
Because this is important for our audience to understand that when a parent is incarcerated, the impact that incarceration has on the family. But more importantly, when the parent has children, men or women.
How did you maintain your relationship with your children, and then maintain that relationship? What type of impact can you say you had on them that you can look at today and say, “Because of this, they’re like this”?
Ernest Boykin:
Yes, it was very difficult to maintain that relationship. But the reason why I was able to do it was because I wanted to do it.
Mansa Musa:
Come on.
Ernest Boykin:
Anytime I tell myself I want to do something, I do it. And it didn’t matter that I was in prison versus being free.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Ernest Boykin:
I felt like I was still going to be a parent to my children. I didn’t feel like the walls could stop me from being a parent to my children. So where there was opportunities for me to talk to them on the phone multiple times a day, I would do that.
If I had to write them multiple times a day, or multiple times a week or once a day, whatever I felt was necessary at that time for me to keep a connection and bond with them, I did it.
Mansa Musa:
In that regard, because that’s the thing I’m going to flesh out. Because that’s the thing that I think that society in general don’t recognize how impactful that is.
I’ve been in spaces where I’ve seen men, biological children, or not biological children, would raise them from behind the door, behind the wall, behind the fence. And they come to them for all the advice. They come to them for guidance, they come to them from a direction.
How did that play out in your relationship with your children? How did your children respond to you in terms of, 1), being incarcerated, and 2), respond to you in terms of recognizing that regardless of your location, that is my father and I’m going to listen to what my father say? Or was they defying, like, “Well, you ain’t here, man. Why you going to tell me what to do?”
Ernest Boykin:
It is funny you say that because it does happen. If your kids’ mom shows you respect to the kids-
Mansa Musa:
Come on.
Ernest Boykin:
… then it makes it easy for the kids to show respect to you. But if they see conflict between the kids’ mom and yourself, then the kids are forced to choose a side between parents.
And that’s where the difficulty comes in to parent your children: especially if you have girls and you’re a man, they’re going to naturally side with their mom.
And then also if you have boys, boys are going to feel protective of their mother, so they’re going to side with their mom. So you’re kind of in a lose-lose situation a lot of times. And you can’t get aggressive with them because if you get aggressive with your children while you’re away, it doesn’t hit home the same way you might think it would.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Ernest Boykin:
When you’re face-to-face with your child, you may have to discipline them by talking to them more stern or whatever you have to do to discipline your children. It does not hit the same over the phone, because they definitely know that you’re not there.
But it’s up to Mom or Grandma or Grandpa or uncles to reinforce things that you say. And say, “Hey, don’t forget your dad said that, or your dad said this. I’m going to tell your dad when your report card gets here.”
Or, “Yeah, your dad said that if you do good in school, he’s going to send you some money.” Things like that, it helps out a lot.
Mansa Musa:
And you know what? That right there, how much of a strain was that on you in terms of maintaining your mentality? Because we looking at prison and then okay, you trying to be a parent. This is the foremost thing on your mind: getting out so you can take care of your children.
But at the same time, you in the gladiator school. You in a joint where at any given day, like on lockdown: something that happen lockdown. How was you able to stay focused, and not get caught up in the environment because of frustration from not being able to hug, hold, or console your children in time of need?
Ernest Boykin:
I think I was, I mean, for lack of a better word, lucky. I just think that I was blessed, fortunate to get through that because I’ve seen people get hurt for less, for nothing.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Ernest Boykin:
People just get beat up or abused by the staff or the officers for nothing.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Ernest Boykin:
So fortunately enough, the way that I maneuvered my way through it was just to mind my business, focus on me, and invest every minute of the day and to try to better myself. So that when I got another shot, because I knew I was going to get another shot.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Ernest Boykin:
It was all about when I would get another shot.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Ernest Boykin:
It was like, “Just be ready so that when I get my next shot, I can do everything that I need to do to win.”
Mansa Musa:
Right. Let’s unpack some of what you spoke about about the prison environment.
Why you think the system, the prison industrial complex, the new plantation, why you think they don’t encourage or they don’t promote or they don’t support building a family unit? Or aid and assisting the parents in maintaining some type of connection with their children? Why you think that’s not on the radar?
Because I know for a fact, and you know this yourself, every program that exists in the prison system, if it deal with anything relative to family, if it deal with anything relative to counseling, if it deal with anything relative to networking with society, prisoners came up with ideas in them laboratories, in them thinking tanks, and put them things into effect.
Why do you think this is not something that the Bureau of Prisons or any institution doesn’t try to perpetuate?
Ernest Boykin:
Yeah, it’s funny you asked that question. Because I remember these guys in the law library said that in the prison handbook, it says it’s the responsibility of the prison to maintain family ties.
Mansa Musa:
Come on.
Ernest Boykin:
It says that in the handbook. And we would use that line right there when they try to justify sending you far away from your family, or when they try to justify leaving you in the hole without phone calls or without visits and things like that.
Just like you said, man, the prison industrial complex is a direct reflection of slavery. If you’ve ever watched Roots or did any research about slavery, you’ve seen how families were split up and divided. That was a way that they used to discipline people, and they continue to do that through the BOP.
They split up families and send you far away to make it hard for your family to come visit you as a way to discipline you if they don’t like you. And that’s not right.
Also, anything that you can see on a slavery movie or documentary or anything, when you think about it, it’s kind of the same thing.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, yeah.
Ernest Boykin:
You got people working for nothing.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Ernest Boykin:
If you in prison, you got people working for nothing.
Mansa Musa:
Come on.
Ernest Boykin:
You got people for years and years and years. They can’t leave this one little-
Mansa Musa:
Plot of land.
Ernest Boykin:
… spot of land.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Come on.
Ernest Boykin:
And you got people in prison doing the same thing, walking around in a circle.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Ernest Boykin:
All day long.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Ernest Boykin:
You know?
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, come on.
Ernest Boykin:
And then when you get mad for people for sticking up for themselves, you beat them. You give them diesel therapy.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, yeah.
Ernest Boykin:
Or you [inaudible 00:14:17]
Mansa Musa:
Tell them about diesel, because our audience don’t know know diesel therapy.
Ernest Boykin:
Diesel therapy; I’ve been through it; is when they put you on that bus for weeks and weeks at a time. And you’re just eating out of a bag; you’re only eating bag lunches. You’re not getting a hot meal ever. Your mail doesn’t catch up with you.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that’s torture.
Ernest Boykin:
You can’t get a visit, you can’t use the phone. You waking up in a different city every day, and you’re sleeping in the hole of every jail every time you stop. It’s a lot.
Mansa Musa:
Let’s talk about this here. Okay, because we recognize that the prison industrial complex is the new form of slavery. 13th Amendment justifies that.
We recognize also that when it comes to family unification, and that’s not even on the radar when it comes to the prison industrial complex. Why why do you think this system right here as it exists now continue to stay in this space?
Like you say, 1), like in the District of Columbia, if you’re under federal jurisdiction, you might wind up in wherever United States territory. Wherever it’s United States territory, that’s where you could wind up at.
Ernest Boykin:
Mm-hmm.
Mansa Musa:
2), in terms of allow you to have access to your family.
Ernest Boykin:
[inaudible 00:15:55] Excuse me.
Mansa Musa:
They don’t. And lastly, what impact does that have, from your perspective, on the general population? How did you see that plan out in the general population?
‘Cause we know when they had Lorton, and Lorton was the prison that was in under the District of Columbia’s government. We know when they had Lorton, that it was a correlation between the community and Lorton.
When people got out, came out of Lorton, they went back to the District of Columbia. And they did progressive things in the community, because that was their town. That’s where they was from.
But now you have a situation where you in Walla Walla, Washington. Next time you look up, you in Florida. Next time you look up, you in South Carolina. Next time you look up, you on your way out. Now you in Ohio.
From your experience and your insight, how did that play on the mentality of the prison population?
Ernest Boykin:
Well, most people don’t have to experience going outside of their boundaries. But the people who usually have to experience that are the Washington DC inmates.
Mansa Musa:
Come on.
Ernest Boykin:
And if you’re a 007 inmate or 016 inmate or 000 or something like that, then nine times out of 10, the BOP will send you out of boundaries because they had a label on guys from Washington DC.
They tried to take it out on the DC guys by sending us far away from home, so that we couldn’t get visits. Because they felt like if we got visits, then that would just empower us more. Or it just would be too much like right.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, yeah.
Ernest Boykin:
So just because guys from Washington probably were a little more aggressive or more joking about doing the time because of the culture; people coming from Lorton, they was doing time. And they wasn’t doing time like that in every other prison across the country.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Ernest Boykin:
So the people’s attitude was totally different.
Mansa Musa:
Let me ask you this here. All right, so now you get out.
Ernest Boykin:
Yes sir.
Mansa Musa:
Right? Now you get out of prison and you got the opportunity to be with your children.
What was that like? When you got out, and now not only do you got the opportunity to be with them, but now in your mind, what?
Ernest Boykin:
When I got home and saw my kids for the first time without having a CO or a window, a partition or some chains on or something, that was a magical feeling. It was great.
They all hugged me and they didn’t want to let go, every last one of them. I mean, when I got home, my kids was grown, most of them. Well, not most of them, they were older teenagers.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right, right.
Ernest Boykin:
I had one that was 20. And he hugged me probably for 10 minutes before letting go, crying like a baby.
Then I had my baby boy at the time, he tried to slide $30 in my pocket. He said, “Hey Dad, I was cutting grass because I wanted you to have some money in your pocket when you came home.”
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, yeah.
Ernest Boykin:
And that really touched me. Then my other son, he fired up the grill. And he was cooking some hot dogs and burgers on the grill for me. So I really felt great in that moment.
My daughter, I was just shocked to see how mature she had gotten. I felt like she didn’t have enough clothes on, and I tried to say something to her about it. I just wasn’t ready.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Right, right.
Ernest Boykin:
She was not the little girl that I left.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Ernest Boykin:
And just to let you know, my first day was magical. But every day after that was very hard, because I had expected the kids to be one way and feel one way about me coming home. And the kids that had expected me to be another way, and they thought that I owed them something.
I was like, “Hey man, you guys, don’t you remember everything I’ve done for y’all? And don’t you remember when Dad was home, we had good times? And there are going to be good times again.”
And it had been so long that they really had forgotten the stability that a father brings to their family and their household. So they were really not trusting. They were really damaged.
Mansa Musa:
That’s the part that this prison industrial complex plays on. Like you say, it’s designed to create an atmosphere in the families that there’s no trust. It’s designed to create a thing where there’s no unity. It’s designed to create a situation where there’s no respect.
So if I’m getting visits, I’m taking care of my children and I’m trying to do things with my child over the phone and in the Visitors Room. But once I get out, because I didn’t have the opportunity to do that, or they didn’t create a mechanism within the prison industrial complex for me to have that kind of opportunity and access. Now, like you say, when you get out, it’s an expectation on everybody’s part.
But looking forward, because you said that it’s a struggle. And I think all parents coming out of the system are confronted with the [inaudible 00:22:16].
A friend of mine, he talking about he’d be struggling with his eldest son. They respect him, but at the same token, he had to be stern with him sometimes to try to get their attention. Like, “Look, I’m your father, no matter what. And I will put hands on you if that’s what it come to.” Right?
Ernest Boykin:
Right.
Mansa Musa:
But that’s the reality. But that don’t change. It’s no love, it’s lots of love there.
But looking now as we get ready to close out, looking ahead and looking where you at right now, what would your children say?
First off, what would your children say if I say, “Your father Ernest, how is your father? What’s your father like? What do you think they would say?
Ernest Boykin:
Oh, they imitate me all the time. They probably think I’m burnt out for real. Honestly, that time would burn you out a little bit, because it’s like I have so many stories from there. I always reference that period of my life when I’m trying to teach them a lesson.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right, right, right.
Ernest Boykin:
It could be anything. It could be like, “Yeah, don’t cut the line. Because if you cut the line in some places, man, some people might go upside the head.”
Mansa Musa:
You feel some kind of way about it, right?
Ernest Boykin:
“They’re not going to like it, and they might try to put the knife in you for that.”
And they be like, “For real dude, for cutting the line?”
And I’m like, “Yeah, it’s that serious.”
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Ernest Boykin:
So they probably might say that they definitely respect me. They’ve seen me start over from nothing, and actually build our family back up to better than it was before I went away.
Mansa Musa:
And what would somebody say like, “Man, what’s up with your kids, man?” What would you say about your kids? How would you identify?
Ernest Boykin:
I have great children. They’re very intelligent. They are all handsome and beautiful in my eyes. They’re generous people. They’re stand-up individuals. They don’t condone none of the things that society is making okay.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, that’s right.
Ernest Boykin:
They’re not on none of that. Right?
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Ernest Boykin:
They definitely understand that people who tell on people ruin people’s lives a lot of times. So they’re living in that culture where now they having to see, “Okay, what’s the difference between people snitching and what’s the difference between people trying to have a nice community?” You know what I’m saying?
Mansa Musa:
Right. I got you. I got you.
Ernest Boykin:
My kids are growing up now, and I don’t try to influence them to do anything other than to be good people and to be financially responsible.
Mansa Musa:
Let me ask you this here as we close out. How can people get in touch with you? And what are some of the things you’re doing now that you think people should be made aware of?
Ernest Boykin:
Yes. Oh, thank you. Well, you can always reach me at straightroutetrucking@gmail.com in reference to trucking, and in reference to just if you wanted to talk to me about justice reform or have me come out and speak or write, because I am an author. I should be publishing a book about re-entry in the end of this summer.
Also, I write for FAMM. I write articles about people who are over-sentenced or wrongfully accused and things like that.
But yeah, you can reach me at ernestboykiniii@gmail.com. That’s E-R-N-E-S-T B-O-Y-K-I-N I-I-I @gmail.com. You can even call me at 202-285-1153.
I really appreciate this opportunity, Mansa Musa. I really love what you guys are doing here. And I love this platform that you’ve built up, because you’re really, really giving a voice to the voiceless. And I’m big on that.
Mansa Musa:
You heard it, there you have it. Real dude Rattling the Bars. This is Ernest Boykin. You would never believe that after hearing this conversation, that this man was one time justice-involved, raised his children to be what he, by his own definition, responsible children, responsible members in society.
In the face of all the problems that our children are being confronted with, his children has risen above. And it’s because of his influence. And we can’t take this lightly.
We implore you to think about this. You can listen to what Ernest say. And it’s millions of other people like Ernest in the criminal injustice system: fathers, mothers that are raising their children from behind the walls and behind the fence.
Whereas you continue to support Rattling the Bars and The Real News. Because guess what? We really are the news.
After more than a decade of persecution, Julian Assange has returned home to Australia a free man. He almost didn’t make it. The FBI and the Pentagon considered every available means—legal and otherwise—to prevent Julian from winning his freedom. Chip Gibbons and Kevin Gosztola return to The Real News to discuss the inside story of Julian’s fight for freedom, and the monsters who tried to crush him.
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino Post-Production: Alina Nehlich
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Welcome everyone to the Real News Network Podcast. My name is Maximillian Alvarez, I’m the editor-in-chief here at The Real News, and it’s so great to have you all with us.
Eleanor Goldfield:
And I’m Eleanor Goldfield, a journalist, filmmaker, and the co-host of the Project Censored radio show. And I’m really excited to be teaming up with Max to co-host this very special episode of the Real News Podcast today.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Before we get going today, I want to remind y’all that the Real News is an independent viewer and listener supported grassroots media network. We don’t take corporate cash, we don’t have ads, and we never put our reporting behind paywalls. We have a small but incredible team of folks who are fiercely dedicated to lifting up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle around the world. But we cannot continue to do this work without your support and we need you to become a supporter of The Real News now. Just head over to therealnews.com/donate and donate today, it really makes a difference. Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, founder of WikiLeaks is finally free. On June 24th, Assange left Belmarsh Prison in London, a maximum security prison where he is been incarcerated for over the past five years, awaiting what many expected to be an extradition order to the United States. Assange then boarded a plane and was flown to the island of Saipan, part of the Northern Mariana Islands, a US territory in the Western Pacific. There he was taken to a federal courthouse where he pled guilty to one criminal count of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified US national defense documents in violation of the Espionage Act of 1917. As part of the plea deal, he was sentenced to time served in Belmarsh, and he was released to return home to his native Australia, finally, which he did on Wednesday, June 26th.
Eleanor Goldfield:
So firstly, there’s absolutely no question that Assange’s freedom is thanks to the tireless efforts of his family and tens of thousands of people around the world, including in no small part to our guests today who work to raise awareness and support for Julian. The US government deserves exactly zero thanks for this, much like with the case of Chelsea Manning. It is no evidence of benevolence or justice to free the person whom you wrongfully imprisoned such moments as these are evidence of the power of the people. Let’s take that time to celebrate and recognize this win, a sustaining reminder for the many fights that we have before us. Fights that Julian’s work has bolstered and illuminated. Indeed, Julian’s contributions to our movements are hard to quantify, as one of our guests on this show, Kevin Gosztola covers in his book on Julian called Guilty of Journalism.
There is no issue, be it government corruption, climate change, or the military industrial complex which WikiLeaks has not shed light upon and given us organizers and journalists and indeed citizens vital facts and fuel for both our struggle against oppression and our push to build a better future. At the same time, Julian’s work cannot easily be cast in a left-right paradigm. It’s far more elegant and indeed simple. It’s just about the truth and the right of we the people to know what governments do in our name as journalists, as organizers, as citizens, and really just human beings, we’re excited and relieved to know that Julian is free. And at the same time, we are intensely aware of what this case against Julian, and not least of all the guilty plea, mean for our dwindling access to a free press. Something that our guests will speak more to.
Maximillian Alvarez:
As Chip Gibbons journalist, researcher, and policy director of the nonprofit advocacy organization, Defending Rights in Dissent. And another one of our guests today wrote for Jacobin on June 27th. “There is zero question that Assange going free is cause for celebration. Assange is a journalist who exposed US war crimes. As a result of this work, he has suffered vicious and relentless persecution at the hands of the US government. Yet Assange’s freedom was attained in a bittersweet victory. Until the very end the US government refused to drop its claim that basic journalism can constitute a violation of the Espionage Act. A plea deal does not set a legal precedent, but the steep price extracted from Assange will undeniably have a chilling effect on journalism”. So what effect will the US government’s relentless persecution of Julian Assange and this plea deal have on journalism worldwide, the people who produce it and all of us who depend on it, and what effect will it have on the world we live in and how we live in it?
What effects has it already had? As this bitter, twisted, monumental 14 year saga comes to an end we want to take some time to not only walk through the latest news and the conditions under which Assange finally secured his freedom, but to appreciate what this all means. We need to also reflect on the real substance of the US government’s persecution of Julian Assange on what this case was “about” in the popular mind and what it was actually about and on what our response to all of it or lack thereof these past 14 years says about us, our media and the society we live in.
Eleanor Goldfield:
And to do that, Max and I have brought in two incredible guests who have covered and publicized this case and advocated for Julian’s freedom for years when so few others would. Kevin Gosztola is the author of Guilty of Journalism, the Political Case against Julian Assange and the editor of the Dissenter Newsletter, which regularly covers whistleblowing, press freedom, and government secrecy. He’s one of the few reporters to report on both Chelsea Manning’s Court Martial and the extradition proceedings against Assange. Kevin has also been a frequent guest on the Project Censored Radio Show and indeed Guilty of Journalism comes to you from the Censored press collaboration with seven stories. Chip Gibbons is policy director of Defending Rights and Dissent, where he has advised multiple congressional offices on reforming the Espionage Act. He covered Assange’s extradition for Jacobin Magazine and he is currently working on a book on the history of FBI political surveillance for Verso books. Kevin, Chip, thanks so much for being here.
Kevin Gosztola:
Thank you.
Chip Gibbons:
My pleasure. My pleasure.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, gents, it really is an honor to have you both here on a rare occasion when we do have some good news, albeit we will get into the details of how good, how bad this news is. But after this 14 year long saga in which y’all have been fighting so hard, and of course Julian and his family have been fighting relentlessly against the onslaught they faced as Julian was persecuted by the United States government. This is indeed a cause for celebration, a moment to reflect, and we are going to talk about your impressions and larger reflections when we get to the end of this conversation here.
But I wanted to start where we are right now and jump right into the context of the news that people are hearing about over the past couple days and weeks. Now, back in February, Real News viewers watched our on-the-ground coverage from London, where the high court heard the Assange team’s request for permission to appeal his extradition order to the US where he faced 18 charges under the Espionage Act, despite not being a US citizen. So let’s quickly bring folks up to speed on how we got from there to here. Also, like I said, we want to take some time to get your larger takeaway thoughts and reflections at the end of the conversation but for now, tell us about where you were when you heard the news and what was going through your mind at that moment. So Chip, why don’t we start with you then, Kevin, we’ll go right to you.
Chip Gibbons:
Sure. So in February, Julian Assange’s defense team requested nine different grounds for appeal. I believe it was nine. Each of these grounds of appeal are tied to a specific point in UK Extradition Law or European Human Rights Law. But at the heart, what they were arguing was that Julian Assange was a journalist and that it violated who was being persecuted for exposing state criminality. He got the information from Chelsea Manning, a whistleblower, and that this was impermissible to extradite him to the United States. They raised a number of issues from the fact that it would violate his free expression rights to be tried for his journalism, for exposing war crimes, that it would be a political offense. And the UK US Extradition Treaty is very clear, you cannot extradite someone for a political offense. And they also made a number of arguments about the fairness of the trial he would receive, that he might be prejudiced as a result of his nationality, and that he might face the death penalty.
The UK judges heard these nine arguments and they rejected the vast majority of them as grounds for appeal. They found some very limited grounds for appeal. First, the lack of death penalty assurances. Under UK statutory law, you cannot be extradited if you will face the death penalty. Death penalty assurances are routine for the US because most of the world doesn’t share our belief that governments can kill their citizens. So they have to offer those types of assurances if they want to actually extradite people. The other two assurances came from comments that Gordon Kromberg, one of the lead prosecutors in the case made. Kromberg is a notorious figure. He was involved in the Daniel Hale prosecution. He was involved in one of the many attacks on Sami Al-Arian, a Muslim civil rights Palestinian civil rights activist, who has since been deported from this country thanks to the government attacks on him.
And he has a history of making really inflammatory anti-Muslim comments. I believe he’s also a very sort of die-hard Zionist who has a personal blog where he refers to the occupied Palestinian Territories, Judea and Samaria. And he just has a real history of making inflammatory remarks, which have led a lot of people to question why the US government lets him handle sensitive cases. He told the British courts in an affidavit that Assange would have a really fair trial in the US because he could challenge his indictment for violating the First Amendment, for violating the Fifth Amendment, saying the Espionage Act was too vague. And then he came in with, but of course the US government wouldn’t accept these arguments. And he listed, and this is where he made his mistake, he listed all of the areas where they would challenge them. Including that Julian Assange as a foreign national might not be entitled to First Amendment rights, at least with respect to national defense information.
And Julian Assange’s legal team seized on this. And they said, if he can’t rely on the First Amendment, that’s a free expression violation and he would be prejudiced as a result of his nationality. And these two UK judges couldn’t find anything in violation of freedom of expression for prosecuting Julian Assange for exposing war crimes. They said all but three of the charges brought against him had no free expression nexus. That’s of course not true. And of those three that did have free expression nexus, the information wasn’t in the public interest to share. But in spite of that, they said if he can’t have First Amendment rights as a foreigner, he would have his right to free expression violated and he would potentially be prejudiced as a foreign national. But they said he could appeal in those three grounds, death penalty, free expression, prejudice as foreign national, unless the US gave satisfactory assurances.
And the US has been allowed to give assurances in this case before to basically short circuit the legal process in the UK and get rubber stamps. And they literally told the US what to say. So I thought they were going to just rubber stamp this again. But they had a hearing. The defense agreed that Julian Assange, the death penalty assurance was sufficient. But they argued about this assurance the US gave where they said he could seek to rely on the First Amendment, but the US government said only a court could decide what were the scopes of the First Amendment. And that’s true, and they were a bit in a corner with that one. But they also refused to say that Kromberg wouldn’t even raise this argument about being a foreign national.
So it was a really hubristic thumbing of their nose at the British legal system, which from my standpoint of having sat through these hearings and having watched it for five years was ready and willing to rubber stamp the persecution of a journalist for exposing war crimes. But they just thumbed their nose at them over this last assurance. And we’ve learned from the Washington Post that the British lawyers who represent the US didn’t think they could win on this point. And at that point, they agreed to the plea deal in it. And I can talk more about what’s in the plea, but I’ve been talking for a long time and I want to let Kevin get a word in edgewise as they say.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Kevin Gosztola, hop in here, brother.
Kevin Gosztola:
All right. Well, thank you for laying that all out, Chip. I’ll go ahead and share where I was when I heard this news because I had an opportunity to hop on a live stream with Chip after I was informed of this unbelievable development. I must stress that I didn’t exactly think that Julian Assange would be walking out of Belmarsh prison this year or next year or the year after. My imagination or my ability to think that we could create the scenario where he would be a free man did not get to that point yet. And CIA whistleblower, former CIA officer John Kiriakou, gave me a phone call. Usually I call John Kiriakou because of who he was and who he has been, and invite him to come on a show and do a live discussion of developments with an Espionage Act prosecution or something related to government secrecy.
He was calling me and he was very serious. He said, “Have you seen the news?” And I was like, “What?” “It’s all over”. “What’s all over, John?” “Well just look at it, it’s everywhere”. I thought somebody had died, but nobody was dead. And in fact, it was the opposite. Something remarkable had happened, and Julian Assange had been able to break free from the clutches of this US government from, I believe, a security apparatus that would’ve been happy if he had died in prison. And we hopped on and did a quick reaction to it. And then I slowly processed what had taken place. And as I paid attention to the Assange legal team and their reactions, and then as we were treated to the reporting from the Washington Post based on insiders sources, it became clear that this case had collapsed. That in fact, it’s the fault of the US Justice Department that Julian Assange was free.
We created the space, the global movement undoubtedly created a space for plea deal negotiations. But it became clear to me that the reason they were not pushing forward with an extradition, and the reason why they had offered such a favorable plea deal, which we’ll get to those terms, is because they were now fearful of losing. There’s an email that’s referenced in this Washington Post report that says, “The urgency here has now reached a critical point”. This is from a Justice Department trial attorney. “The case will head to appeal and we will lose. It doesn’t get more evident than that. We overcame an unprecedented prosecution against Assange”. And we will get to the fallout, the aftermath.
Eleanor Goldfield:
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you both for contextualizing that. And I want to go even further back, and obviously as the saying goes, you could write a book about this, and, Kevin, you did. So I don’t want to try to force an entire book into this little space, but I want to get to some of the basics of the case. And, Kevin, I think that one of the things, like you and I have discussed before, that feels more shocking. To listeners who aren’t as familiar with the case as you are, is the role of the CIA, and as you pointed out the fault of the Justice Department here in taking up this case, I was wondering if, Kevin, you could talk about this and then Chip also with your expertise, talk a little bit about the basics of the case that was originally brought thanks to the CIA and indeed how that has gotten to us to this point where it did all fall apart.
Kevin Gosztola:
Yeah. And what you’re saying, it’s not some kind of kooky conspiracy theory that we’re making up. We’re not trying to do our own progressive left version of Infowars here. We have a Yahoo news report that was put out by Michael Isikoff, Sean Naylor, and Zach Dorfman that dug into, they had conversations with over 30 people. They were former officials from the Trump Administration. They were people who had a connection to US intelligence, presumably some of them at some point worked in offices at the CIA. Were in a position to know that there were discussions led by former CIA Director Mike Pompeo, where war plans, it’s called War plans, they were sketched out to try and target Julian Assange as part of a pressure campaign while he was living in Ecuador’s London Embassy under political asylum. And he was there from June 2012, I believe, to April 11th, 2019 when he was arrested, expelled.
And the British police put him in a van and took him to Belmarsh Prison. And we learned in this article that they are discussing plans to kidnap, even poison, Julian Assange. And that they were willing to entertain the possibility of a rendition flight, basically, to try and get him outside of the embassy, put him on this plane and bring him to the United States. That created a panic inside the Justice Department. They don’t have indictments ready for Julian Assange, and they’re wondering what charges they’re going to bring exactly against him. And that spurs them to develop an indictment so that he doesn’t arrive on the shores of the US at some point in need of an arraignment hearing, and then the Justice Department would be caught with their pants down and have no indictment against Julian Assange ready to go. This would be an extra judicial act on the part of the United States.
So that’s important as the context for the charges that get issued. Mike Pompeo is a key player in labeling WikiLeaks a non-state hostile intelligence service, signaling that they’re going to try and destroy this media organization. And as I look at it, something that Chip can dig into deeper with his deep knowledge of the FBI is that I believe the CIA was willing to employ co-Intel pro-style tactics against WikiLeaks by turning people against each other. But the charges that get brought up first, we see a sweetening of the media landscape so that people will be malleable to the idea of the Justice Department prosecuting Julian Assange. They come forward with a computer crime charge, and they say that he conspired with Chelsea Manning to crack a password and help her move inside of a military computer anonymously. And then a month later, after everything has been laid so that they can create this narrative that Julian Assange was some sort of a criminal who went beyond being an ordinary journalist, they then reveal the 17 Espionage Act charges. And at that moment, the Press Freedom organizations, the human rights organizations, every single civil liberties’ organization understands they must take this seriously. There’s no applause for the US Justice Department showing restraint. The misguided attitude that some journalists and other players had beforehand, they aren’t using that logic anymore. They’re not justifying the Justice Department’s actions. And so I’ll let Chip continue from there.
Chip Gibbons:
Yeah. And the CIA played an incredibly important role, given that they plotted to kill and rendition him. As someone who is writing a book on the FBI, I want to also remind us that the FBI played a pretty strong role here. We know during the Obama years, they drafted potential charges against Julian Assange and that they argued that unless Julian Assange, this is the intelligence division, unless they charged him, there wouldn’t be a deterrent against this type of activity. And we know at one point, both the FBI and the CIA demanded a meeting with Obama. I’ve filed many FOIA requests with the FBI about WikiLeaks. I’ve gotten the response in the past that there was an ongoing legal process.
There is no longer an ongoing legal process so I’ve refiled that request, and I’ve sued the FBI over FOIA a number of times, and I’m prepared to do so in this case as well. So hopefully we find out what it is they sent over in 2013 to Obama in the charging documents and compare it to what they actually charged him with. I think we’ll find it’s the same case. So Julian Assange is indicted under eventually an 18 count indictment, one count of conspiracy to violate the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. And then the remaining counts are brought under the Espionage Act. All of the charges are from [inaudible 00:22:56] in 2010 to 2011. Julian Assange and WikiLeaks received information from Chelsea Manning, a heroic…
Chip Gibbons:
… and WikiLeaks received information from Chelsea Manning, a heroic whistleblower about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, about the creepy criminal backroom dealings at the State Department as well as about the U.S. prison at Guantanamo. This information was newsworthy and they partnered with a number of media outlets, including mainstream ones who threw Julian under the bus as soon as they could, as well as more independent ones. There’s a really fascinating series of articles published between WikiLeaks, The Nation, and I believe it’s HaitiLibre about what the documents show about U.S. interference in Haiti, including that we tried to stop them from raising their minimum wage. You have just everything from U.S. soldiers massacring civilians, and covering up to U.S. interference in the Spanish judiciary process in order to prevent the prosecution of U.S. soldiers for murdering a Spanish photojournalist to just helping, I think Levi, a jeans corporations prevent Haiti from raising their minimum wage.
It’s an incredible document set. For this good act, Chelsea Manning was tortured and received, at that point, the longest sentence in history for giving information to the media. I think it might not have been as long as the Schulte sentence, but that was quite recent and quite complicated. Under the Espionage Act indictment, Julian Assange faces three unprecedented counts of pure publication, that is he posted the information on the WikiLeaks website. He faced four counts, I believe it was, of receiving national defense information. Of course, you can’t publish national defense information if you don’t receive it. He faced a number of aiding and abetting charges where they wanted to impose criminal liability on him for actions that Chelsea Manning took. I believe they actually had more aiding and abetting charges for Manning’s conduct, which was heroic other than Manning actually faced in her court-martial.
I believe she was only charged under 793E at the court-martial, and they… Was it more than? Other than espionage. They put in a whole range of other charges as well. He’s facing liability for what Chelsea Manning did. He’s facing liability for having information and he’s facing liability for publishing it, and there’s also a conspiracy count. In the final part of the prosecution where they take the plea deal, he pleads only guilty to the 793g conspiracy provision, which requires two or more people to plead to have committed other offenses under the Espionage Act. That conspiracy is brought under the conspiracy they allege in the criminal information, which is like an indictment, is that Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning conspired to break the Espionage Act.
Manning broke the provisions under the Espionage Act for giving information to someone unauthorized to receive it. Knowing he would publish it, Julian Assange broke the provision of receiving it. Then, it’s a little bit ambiguous to me as to whether or not they include the final publishing in the criminal information because the charge that Julian Assange faced for pure publication is also one of the aiding and abetting charges that Manning faced. They just list out the parts of the indictment, but they don’t give more information. The criminal conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act is that Chelsea Manning gave information to a journalist about war crimes knowing he would publish it. That journalist accepted the information and he received it. If you look at the statement of facts, and they were laying this case out in the courtroom in February, there’s this theory that WikiLeaks begins the conspiracy essentially by existing since WikiLeaks exists as a website that is willing to publish information at the hearing in February, the prosecutor stressed without the permission of the person who owns the information like, “Yes.” In investigative journalism, you generally don’t get the person’s permission, that they were inciting people to break the Espionage Act.
Believe also in the February hearing, inciting people or soliciting them to break the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. They also make a deal about the fact that Manning and Assange are in contact to learn to transfer of the documents, and that Assange said to Manning when she said, “I have no more information,” curious eyes never run dry. I would love to take that before a non-Eastern District jury, if that’s what the conspiracy hangs on that very ambiguous line. Kevin, what is Julian Assange guilty of?
Kevin Gosztola:
He’s guilty of journalism. Actually, Chip, if you don’t mind… Also, Max and Eleanor, if you don’t mind me just coloring in some details that I know from the Chelsea Manning court-martial, which I believe are relevant. There was never any attempt by military prosecutors to argue that Julian Assange was part of some conspiracy or that Chelsea Manning was a co-conspirator with Julian Assange during that court-martial. I always thought that was worth raising as we see on the flip side that the Justice Department is accusing Julian Assange of working with Chelsea Manning. There wasn’t really ever this allegation of trying to help her move anonymously through military computers and crack a password. The reason being was because it is known that Chelsea Manning had access to those military databases. It doesn’t actually make sense. The allegation or the narrative in this prosecution never added up.
In fact, a lot of holes were poked in it by a former forensic military examiner. Actually, I think he still works. His name was Patrick Eller, and he was hired by the Assange legal team to give some really crucial testimony going over evidence from Chelsea Manning’s court-martial. It shows that she didn’t need help because her security clearance cleared her to be in these computers. In fact, the discussion about cracking a password, if you look at the record of the court-martial, it had more to do with the fact that soldiers in this particular unit in Baghdad were trying to install movies, music and software on their computers without being detected by their superior officers. That is they wanted to have unauthorized downloads and being able to crack a password on their computer to get through as an admin without somebody knowing was something they were interested in doing, so they didn’t get brought up on some kind of charge of violating the good order and discipline in the U.S. military.
That’s nothing that the Justice Department ever wanted to address or take seriously. I also should remind people that when this trial was unfolding in Chelsea Manning’s case, WikiLeaks did not have this stigma that develops within the U.S. Government and gets more intense past 2016 and 2017. There’s an actual Army counterintelligence document that treats it as a media organization, treats Julian Assange as a staff writer for a foreign media organization, and says that the documents that he has about U.S. military equipment that he’s handling with attention to the newsworthiness of the material in that document.
Yochai Benkler does a good job during Chelsea Manning’s court-martial, demonstrating to the judge and Chelsea Manning’s court-martial, Colonel Denise Lind, that, in fact, WikiLeaks is performing a role that is no different from the New York Times. We know that that becomes a reality for the Justice Department because all of the reporting from that time proves and indicates that the Justice Department was not comfortable going forward with charges against Julian Assange because it would endanger the editors and the publishers and reporters at these organizers that had partnered with WikiLeaks like the Guardian, Der Spiegel in Germany, El Pais in Spain, Le Monde in France and so on.
Chip Gibbons:
The conspiracy is incredibly weak that they were arguing. I sat in the courtroom in February and very few words were made about the password hash, which is weak on a technical level, but in terms of a legal one, it’s the strongest part of the government’s case because that type of conduct does not have a clear First Amendment protection that you can make it the way the other ones do. So much of it was just WikiLeaks exist and therefore, they’re liable for other people breaking the Espionage Act. I actually think the CFAA too. In the second superseding indictment, the third indictment they bring against them, they expand the narrative against them. There’s a whole section of overt acts that’s not clear if they’re under the Espionage Act or the CFAA or both. The overt acts are going on Democracy now to talk about Edward Snowden, which I hope is not a felony, giving talks, extolling the virtue of whistleblowing, which I hope is not a felony.
They label it continued attempts to recruit systems administrators that by Julian Assange, by talking about the importance of sources in journalism as well as saying if people have classified information, WikiLeaks will publish it. He did say that, that he is recruiting people and at this whole theory of recruitment and solicitation in the government’s indictment in the government’s theory. Apologist for the government’s case like to hone in on the password hashing. They like to hone in on some of the later stuff about LulzSec that’s in the third indictment. The password hashing came up in the court, but none of the other stuff did. It always was they have a website that says they will publish secret information and therefore, they are soliciting people to hack and steal national defense information. That’s really very dangerous.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, I want to talk about a point that you all both raised, which is how the rest of the media contributed to making this narrative hold some water. In fact, the complicity of so many other media outlets, either in their complicit silence and refusal to talk about this or in their outright complicity in painting Julian Assange as somehow not a journalist in WikiLeaks as something other than a resource for journalistic material, trying to isolate and make Assange doing everything in their power, of course, to try to isolate Julian Assange and make this case make sense within those conditions. Now, I know you all have talked about this in past interviews, but I definitely think it bears revisiting and wanted to ask you all if we could just talk a bit about the role of the media and the public response to this, right? Because this case is 14 years old.
Fourteen years ago, I was working as a temp in a warehouse in Southern California in the Great Recession. I had no idea what the hell was happening with this. I fully admit that like so many others in the country for many years, I just felt like it was too big to wrap my head around. I also admit that the reports I would see from trusted media sources that painted this case as something that was too opaque, too heavily concerned with national security for me to have any worthwhile opinion on, I stepped back and had none on it. I wanted to ask you all if you could just say a bit about the role that the consent manufacturing apparatus played, including by outlets that would go on to win journalistic awards for using the content of the WikiLeaks.
Kevin Gosztola:
Yeah. We have to highlight the New York Times. We have to highlight the New York Times in particular, because they play a role in stigmatizing Julian Assange. They play a role in giving everyone a language for demonizing him. It’s executive editor Bill Keller who gives us this depiction of Julian Assange as a kind of bag lady who’s stinky and he doesn’t change his socks, and they promote that hacker stereotype as much as they can to create this image of an unreliable media partner. They go above and beyond to emphasize on and on that he is not an equal to the New York Times, that WikiLeaks and the New York Times are on a different level. They say that Julian Assange is a source, which is not true. Because to me, working in this space as long as I have, and I cover this for 14 to 15 years, my understanding of journalism is that the source is the originator of the documents.
The originator of the documents is Chelsea Manning. If Chelsea Manning had gone directly to the New York Times, in fact, she actually tried to do that. But if Chelsea Manning had handed over these documents to the New York Times, then that would be a source and a journalist relationship. Julian Assange is functioning as a publisher and editor of this new kind of media organization that wants to create a clearinghouse for government documents from governments all over the world. The New York Times is basically thumbing their nose at Julian Assange and refusing to be an equal. That creates an incredibly contentious relationship. We even see later that the New York Times goes behind the back, convinces the Guardian to pass along U.S. diplomatic cables that WikiLeaks is no longer willing to share with the New York Times because they don’t trust the New York Times. Part of the problem is that the New York Times holds this position in the media ecosystem of reviewing their national security and military stories with the U.S. Government sharing what they’re about to do.
WikiLeaks doesn’t believe that that’s how you should act if you are engaged in investigative journalism, if you are serious about this kind of reporting. There’s more to say about this back history, and I’m certain that Chip will get into it and color some more context. The other point that I want to raise before I give the floor back, before I share the floor with Chip here is to say that someone like Charlie Savage at the New York Times who contextualized what this president means, he was very clear that this was a chilling precedent for the press that Julian Assange had pled guilty, that the Justice Department was able to secure a plea deal. He mentioned that this would now be a deterrent for reporters and media organizations that were thinking about publishing stories in the national security arena about intelligence agencies and about the U.S. military.
The problem with that is, Charlie, you work for the New York Times. The New York Times withheld stories about Bush warrantless wiretapping in 2004. James Risen, very famously well-known case of this media malpractice tries to get this out before President George W. Bush’s reelection, and they don’t want to publish the story. They sit on this evidence of criminality and an abuse of power. Only by saying he’s going to include it in his book, State of War, do they eventually run a story. He shares the byline with Eric Lichtblau.
They reveal this. It’s a major, major scoop, but they sit on it. There was no threat of prosecution in that case that I’m aware. Yes, there were Justice Department people and FBI agents that went hunting for sources. In fact, it’s argued that NSA whistleblower, Thomas Drake got caught up in that dragnet and trying to find somebody that they could hold responsible. They went after Thomas Tam for challenging the Justice Department’s endorsement of this illegal and unchecked mass surveillance. I just share that to illustrate that what we are experiencing now may not fundamentally change a whole lot. I know we’re going to have a larger discussion about what happens next after Assange, so I’ll give the floor back to Chip.
Chip Gibbons:
Kevin, your memory might be better here than mine, but in 2011, the New York Times published a lengthy insider account of working with Julian Assange that painted him in completely negative terms about what an uneasy relationship it was. I think it’s worth remembering what journalism was like in 2010, which is unfortunately what it’s like in 2024 as well. We had just come out of a period where there was little trust in the corporate media because they had all served as stenographers for the Bush administration. They cheered on the war in Iraq. They didn’t report civilian casualties properly in Afghanistan. They were not willing to speak truth to power, especially in the Iraq war. I think that was really… I was talking to a Italian newspaper reporter the other day, and she mentioned even 20 years after that, she’s in Italy, not in the U.S., people will cite the Iraq war media coverage is why they don’t trust the media.
That has had a huge impact people perceived the media. When WikiLeaks and Julian Assange come on the scene, they’re very courageous. Stefania Maurizi who wrote a fascinating book about her time working with WikiLeaks. She says, “Technology is part of the story, but courage is a huge part of the story.” Just seeing someone who was willing to stand up as a journalist to the U.S. national security state when all of these other people were acting as stenographers was really inspiring. I think they despise Julian Assange for that. Also, the New York Times view of journalism is you parrot what the Pentagon says, whereas Julian Assange’s view of journalism is if wars can be started by lies, peace can be started by truth, sort of the I.F. Stone type perspective of journalism. They don’t recognize that as valid. They don’t recognize, “If you believe journalism can be used to speak the truth, to challenge injustice.” They don’t view that as journalism.
I think that’s a huge part of the story here. As a result, these media outlets were willing to throw Julian under the bus. I do think part of the reason why they came for Julian Assange and not for the New York Times and not for the Guardian, is because Julian Assange had that vision. WikiLeaks was challenging military policy. They were challenging U.S. foreign policy, what you might call imperialism and empire. I believe that’s why the U.S. Government came for them. Yeah. He’s challenging U.S. military policy, challenging U.S. foreign policy, where so many people in the corporate media view themselves in partnership with U.S. national security state. Sometimes they expose them in ways they don’t want to be exposed, but they don’t view themselves as on different teams.
Kevin Gosztola:
Well, is it okay if I just put an exclamation point on that? Because I think that’s such an important point to make. Because oftentimes, it’s been a criticism of Julian Assange that he didn’t do enough to recognize U.S. politics. Maybe he didn’t do enough to boost Hillary Clinton or understand that Democrats are the bulwark and they’re supposed to be able to fend off Republicans and you’re not supposed to take certain positions. He’s outside of the United States. He doesn’t understand US politics first and foremost, I don’t think, but he also is someone who is on the outside experiencing this oppression against him and WikiLeaks that is being carried out by both of these political parties.
Navigating it is a little bit like what people feel every day who don’t have a leader in any of these parties. More importantly, it is that fact that he’s willing to challenge U.S. empire and challenge the American Empire Project, if you will. I do see him as somebody who’s carrying on the kind of work that we’ve seen, the scholarly work that we’ve seen from people like Noam Chomsky, Chalmers Johnson, Greg Grandin, Andrew Bacevich, and so on, and that his work is hard to swallow for these media people and for the U.S. Government for that matter, because he’s not controllable, and so…
Kevin Gosztola:
… because he is not controllable, and so that is the fear. I mean, the reason I think that this indictment, these charges had to be generated against Julian Assange is primarily because they knew that when they go to him to negotiate, he does not share their interests. So when you go to a New York Times editor or you go to a New York Times publisher and you say, “Well, we’re trying to do this, we want to counter Chinese influence in the Asia-Pacific region, so we need you to hold this back,” I don’t think Julian Assange is going to go along with that.
He’s going to make the case that what he has is in the public interest, and we need to expose the way in which the US is abusing foreign policy to justify human rights abuses, to justify the expansions of wars, that justify the destabilization of countries around the world. And you can’t tell him, “Oh, we’re engaged with great power competition, we’re engaged with trying to maintain US influence around the globe,” and have Julian Assange and WikiLeaks sit on a whole set of documents, and not include them in their complete archive.
Eleanor Goldfield:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think, I mean, what you’re both speaking to is the tagline of WikiLeaks, which is, “We open governments,” and that’s not about whether the Democrats are doing this or whether the Republicans… It is, as I said earlier, it’s about the truth, and it is that elegant and that simple. But of course, since it is that, there has to be some kind of character assassination. And we saw this with Snowden too, like, well, and Lee Camp, the activist comedian has a joke about this, about how when Snowden came forward with his findings, it was basically like, “Oh, we have to scramble.” Like, “Oh, he didn’t graduate from college, right?”
And Lee Camp’s joke is like, “If your house is on fire and some dude walks by and says, ‘Hey, your house is on fire,’ are you going to react or are you going to turn to him and be like, ‘Hold on, did you not graduate college?’” Like, no, the point is over here that your house is on fire. And so the character assassination machine has to get rolling, because Assange and WikiLeaks have such a simple, and focused, and indeed elegant goal.
And I’d also like to point out that this is why critical media literacy is so important, so that you can read between the lines and see, “I don’t actually care whether Julian Assange showers regularly, like, what does this have to do with what WikiLeaks is doing, and why are they trying to highlight this? What are they trying to hide and shift my attention away from?” And of course, at Project Censored, one of the things that we really focus on is this critical media literacy, to understand how we’re being propagandized and lied to every single day by the very same outlets that threw Assange under the bus. And I mean, we could talk about this for the next several hours, but I want to get to what we’ve kind of been discussing a little bit, which is this plea deal, and y’all’s feelings on this plea deal, the good, the bad, and the ugly, as it were?
Chip Gibbons:
Can I just respond to something you said about sort of the character assassinations or changing the story to the whistleblower or the journalist thing? One of the most famous whistleblowers in US history is Deep Throat. He is the person who gave information to two Washington Post reporters that brought down the Nixon administration. Who was Deep Throat? Deep Throat was Mark Felt, the one of only two FBI agents to be criminally prosecuted for the counterintelligence programs. Between being prosecuted, which is, I believe, his defense was funded up by Nixon, and Reagan pardoned him. He was the massive campaigner for reviving the Hoover-like programs for defending them, including defending the illegal acts.
He had no concern, he participated in black bag jobs. Richard Nixon actually testifies in his defense, which is free legal break-ins, said, “Oh, actually, legal break-ins are normal in the executive branch.” Of course, Nixon would know that. His concern was not with democracy, it was with Nixon passed him up for a promotion he wanted to take over for Hoover. No one says, “Let’s throw out the Watergate reporting because Mark Felt is unlike Snowden, unlike Manning, unlike Assange, actually a really bad guy, who actually had done harm to our democracy.” But we don’t ever say that, nor should we. It doesn’t change that the Watergate reporting was correct.
Kevin Gosztola:
I’ll go ahead and jump in on the plea deal, and then Chip, you can go ahead and add to… What’s been on my mind, so one of the things that’s been out there in the ether about this plea deal is that it is a win for US intelligence agencies, and I have serious doubts about whether this is a victory. I think that it’s been spun that way by figures like former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, because they don’t want to admit that it failed.
I don’t think the end goal of prosecuting, putting all this time, energy, and resources tarnishing the US image that they wanted this to end in a plea deal, where Julian Assange was never put on trial. I do believe that the security agents, the intelligence agencies, military officials even who were offended by seeing their information published, certainly people at the State Department, because believe it or not, the State Department spokespeople were more aggressive in the last months in defending Julian Assange’s prosecution than the Justice Department itself, that I don’t think that they wanted to just see Julian Assange hop on a plane and fly home to Australia.
Okay, he made a pit stop in a US territory, but fly home to Australia, and be welcomed like it was a homecoming parade that he was given. There was jubilation from the Australian people. He got a phone call from Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, basically saying, “Welcome back to Australia,” it sounds like. So I don’t believe this was the outcome that they were hopeful for. I think this is the spin to cover up the fact that the Justice Department botched this case and failed to secure Julian Assange’s extradition to the United States. The other point that I believe is that this isn’t as much of a chilling precedent for free press, the plea deal is not. I think it’s an unmitigated victory for freedom of the press, freeing a journalist and ensuring that they don’t slowly continue to die in prison and to ensure that they survive.
Freeing a journalist from this persecution is always a victory for freedom of the press, whether we’re talking about it being an attack by China, Russia, Iran, the Israeli government, Turkey, you go down the list of offenders, India, Pakistan. Freeing somebody who is going through this kind of ordeal is always a victory, no matter what kind of chill, shock waves are being sent through the profession. But what’s the chilling precedent is the fact that the US government ever thought that it was okay to bring charges against Julian Assange, who is an Australian citizen, not a US citizen, somebody who is a foreign national, who the US Justice Department decided they should extraterritorially apply the Espionage Act to Julian Assange, even though he had never held a security clearance, he never signed a nondisclosure agreement, like any of the other whistleblowers who have been unjustly punished.
He had no allegiance to the United States that he was supposed to file the loyalty that he had to show to the United States, he never pledged to protect state secrets. So he was free, like any journalist or reporter, to do with the information whatever he pleased. Now, there might be ethical questions, there could be ethical considerations. We can have discussions about how media organizations handle material that they receive, but that’s not the law. Irresponsibly handling information does not mean that you’re now a criminal and you should be prosecuted by a government on that. We should all agree.
Chip Gibbons:
It’s really hard for me to figure out what the US government thought the end game was here. Part of me agrees with Kevin that they didn’t want a plea deal, and we saw in the Washington Post a story that there were people within the Justice Department who absolutely want to drop this case, and they were being stifled to doing so from higher-ups. Obviously, those types of leaks are self-serving. I do think in some ways, though, the indictment is such an egregious act of charge stacking that it’s difficult to not read it as an example of an attempt to coerce a plea deal. Most of these Espionage Act cases do end in pleas because of this. I’m not going to go through all 18 counts, but let me just, with the counts from the State Department cables, just to illustrate how this is charge stacking.
First, we have a charge that Chelsea Manning obtained the documents in violation of the Espionage Act and Assange is guilty under an aiding and abetting theory. Then, we have that Chelsea Manning had lawful possession of the State Department cables, and she unlawfully communicated them to Julian Assange, and Assange is guilty of this under an aiding and abetting theory. Then, we have Chelsea Manning, who in the previous count, just had lawful possession, now she has unauthorized possession of the same document set, and unlawfully communicated them to Julian Assange.
Then, we had Julian Assange receive the documents, and then we had Julian Assange publish them. These are just the counts from the State Department documents. We could go through this with the Iraq rules of engagement, the detainee assessment briefs, the significant activity reports, and everyone will be falling asleep, because this is pretty dry. So I do think, I too, I am stunned that they turned this into an 18-count indictment, especially when the final plea agreement, 793(g), encompasses almost all of this conduct, right?
The conspiracy between Chelsea, alleged conspiracy between Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange, is just the rest of the indictment charges, and they hit him with the conspiracy charge and all these other charges. So I do think this was an abusive indictment to escalate the potential sentence. I think one theory for that would be to try to coerce a plea deal. I think one theory could be to try to game the sentencing, and I also think that there’s also a potential of a split jury verdict, because the aiding and abetting charges would be about what standard you hold Chelsea Manning to. It’s an open question, what the government has to prove to convict someone who’s not a government employee.
And on top of that, there is case law about the First Amendment, that when you have a pure speech issue, you have to prove a very high level of intent that has never been applied to these Espionage Act cases, because the government said there isn’t pure speech. But there’s three charges that I think the government could not get out of arguing for pure speech. And if you look at what the UK judges said, I mean, these are the three charges that they ruled undeniably had a free speech nexus, and I just decided the documents weren’t that interesting, and we don’t have that kind of balancing test. So you could have a real disaster if you took this to a jury. Of course, they were in the Eastern District, which is very stacked.
And so I don’t know, part of me thinks there are people in the FBI and the CIA who would’ve taken this to the very end, and part of me thinks there are… But I think there are also people in the political part of the Justice Department who wanted an exit ramp. I think the plea deal, I think the stacked nature of the charges could also be explained by the vindictiveness of the FBI and the CIA, or it could be this sort of standard practice in the US justice system of stacking charges against people to coerce pleas. I will say, I do think there was a schism between the career intelligence officials and the FBI, the career intelligence officials or career national security officials, and the Department of Justice National Security Division, the CIA, although they may be their own third block, since they were more interested in illegal activities than the prosecution, and sort of the more career- or the political-minded people, political appointees who just don’t want to touch this.
So what is the impact of this indictment? Kevin is 100% right in his assessment. The plea deal sets no legal precedent and the precedent that was set, the political precedent, the chilling precedent was set by the fact that the government brought this case in the first place, that they pursued it for five years, including appealing adverse rulings in the UK system. Remember, originally, a judge in the UK rejected the free expression arguments, but blocked the extradition based on the US prison conditions, which would’ve allowed the US to walk away but still claim a victory with the Espionage Act. And not just the five years in Belmarsh, but the seven years he spent in an embassy that a United Nations working groups said was arbitrary detention, the fact that a UN special [inaudible 00:59:56] said he was tortured.
I mean, you look at Julian Assange’s ordeal, and I don’t think anyone is eager to repeat it, any aspect of it. Yes, Kevin is shaking his head. Yeah, so I think the precedent was set by bringing the indictment, I think the precedent was set by punishment by process, and I think the precedent was set by 14 years of extralegal, extrajudicial warfare on Assange and WikiLeaks, and that precedent is very scary.
Kevin Gosztola:
Yeah, and I just want to quickly add specifically from the plea deal that Julian Assange’s legal team did an excellent job of winning him some inclusion of items that sweetened him pleading guilty to this felony charge, and I don’t actually presume that it’s going to make too much difference to his life in Australia. He was able to get a pledge in writing or a commitment in writing that there will be no criminal cases brought by the Justice Department, that they will not try to extradite him from Australia for the publication of any other documents that he obtained and published prior to the plea deal negotiations.
So he can never be prosecuted for publishing CIA hacking materials that were really the source of Mike Pompeo deciding that he needed to act out his revenge against WikiLeaks. Julian Assange will never receive an indictment for anything related to the Clinton campaign or DNC emails that were published in 2016, but of course, we already know that there weren’t really charges to bring, and there were First Amendment issues with indicting Julian Assange, because that’s what special counsel Robert Mueller determined during the course of his investigation.
And there’s no gag order, he can talk about his case openly. There’s nothing that he has to follow. There’s no restrictions, there’s no supervisory release in Australia, and he’s free to go back and be editor-in-chief or work in some capacity, helping WikiLeaks rebuild itself now that he is free from prison, which I think is another reason I believe the US national security state would be unhappy with Julian Assange walking free, because now, there’s more likelihood than ever that we’ll see a resurgence from WikiLeaks, that they will try to publish once again. And I’ll say this, that it’s my conviction, I believe this to be true, that the US government is not just upset about Julian Assange and the information that was published in 2010 and 2011. They don’t just want to destroy WikiLeaks and stop it from operating because of the documents that we have discussed briefly in this conversation today, but they are fearful of the next leak.
They are fearful of some kind of an organization that has such a high profile to convince and inspire whistleblowers around the world to pass along documents. And they have a long way to go to prove that people could securely submit documents and not have them intercepted by agents, and that people in the different security apparatuses throughout the world wouldn’t be able to find out those whistleblowers’ identities. They have work to do to prove that they are a credible place that you could turn to. And they also have competition. There are over 75 media organizations that now have secure submission systems. So they’re no longer the novelty that they were back in 2007, 2006, 2007, when WikiLeaks first came on the scene. But that being said, I think they will try to return, with or without Julian Assange, because they don’t want the United States to have the final say in whether WikiLeaks can operate and be a participant in journalism.
And we spoke about the media earlier. We spoke about the way that journalists have reacted to WikiLeaks, and Julian Assange, and just, I know we’ve been talking for a while, we’re probably going to start winding down, I’m kind of weaving in some of my larger takeaways before you put that question to me. But the thing that I think most of all is that journalists in the US prestige media were always reticent and afraid of showing too much solidarity for Julian Assange, too much solidarity for what WikiLeaks was going through, and that’s because they themselves don’t like what he did. He embarrassed them and the whole institution of journalism that they’re a part, they showed how much they rarely actually exercise their freedom of the press.
So here’s Julian Assange practicing freedom of the press to the fullest, being guilty of journalism, and here they are, actually limiting the kind of impact that they could have to effect change, to protect and preserve human rights, to ensure that there is wider democracy. So that’s how you see these frivolous debates that we were pulled into, that actually fed into the US Justice Department and their prosecution by saying things like, “Julian Assange is not a journalist,” or that it doesn’t matter whether you think Julian Assange is a journalist or not, it just matters that the First Amendment protects the acts of journalism.
But I insist and will forever insist that it was crucial to grapple over this and argue with people over this, because the Justice Department was trying to and successfully stigmatized Julian Assange as not being a journalist, so that they could persuade us that this Espionage Act prosecution was an exception to the rule. Part of getting the wheels going on this was to say, “Oh, don’t worry. We’re just going to prosecute him with the Espionage Act. It won’t be other reporters, it won’t be other journalists on down the line.”
And we fed into that. Anybody who ever allowed and ceded ground to the Justice Department by saying, “Yeah, okay, it doesn’t matter if you think he’s a journalist or not,” I feel like it made it easier for the Justice Department to continue on with their case. And so that’s why I was always frustrated with organizations like Committee to Protect Journalists that wouldn’t include him in their jailed journalist index, not because I’m opposed to the Committee to Protect Journalists, but because I really wanted to struggle with them over this.
And I was pleased that the Reporters Without Borders organization, Rebecca Vincent did some tremendous work for them as their International Campaigns Director, to observe the extradition proceedings. I was pleased that he was included in their list of detained journalists annually. I was upset and frustrated that Amnesty International wouldn’t classify Julian Assange as a prisoner of conscience. I felt that there were more things that organizations and media organizations could do, but I think that the reason why they were always reluctant to go as far as they should was because they were afraid to show this solidarity.
Chip Gibbons:
I’m fairly certain Defending Rights & Dissent, the organization I work for, was the only press freedom organization that was consistent in calling Julian Assange a journalist as well as a political prisoner. I’ve been in the meetings on the Hill with the big press freedom groups, and they would all go around in a circle and say, “We don’t think he’s a journalist,” or, “It doesn’t matter if he is or isn’t a journalist.” I would always say, when I was in public appearances, from a First Amendment standpoint, it doesn’t matter if he is or isn’t a journalist, but I think he’s a great journalist, which I do.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, and on top of that, just to throw in one additional critical media literacy layer here, is that it didn’t even have to go that far for so many of us. What we also got trapped in was this discussion of whether or not you like Julian Assange as a person, and what you think of his character, or what you’re told about his character, as if that supersedes our basic civil and human rights, that rights are rights, unless the guy’s an asshole, right? Then, suddenly, we can just throw our human rights out the window, and if we’re already engaging in that kind of discussion, we have already lost. And I think that that is one of many kind of takeaway lessons that we should really beat into our brains, moving forward, for all of us, so that I’m not asking everyone listening to this to whip yourselves for not being the best Assange advocate, but I am asking you to do better moving forward, and to learn.
Maximillian Alvarez:
But I am asking you to do better moving forward and to learn from this as we are all trying our best to do. And we owe so much to the work of folks like Chip and Kevin to showing us what was kept from us and what we in fact also obscured ourselves in the ways that we would participate in these discussions over these past 14 years. And gents with that, I wanted to kind of round out because we’ve kept you for a long time, and Eleanor and I could talk to you about this for eight more hours, but we know that we got to wrap things up and let y’all go. And so we don’t know exactly what comes next for Julian Assange and WikiLeaks as y’all said, but of course, from here at The Real News, from Project Censored, from all of us, more than anything, we just hope that he and his family find some peace and healing after this incredibly hellacious ordeal.
But I wanted to ask you guys what comes next for you both and also what your reflections are after this saga has come to an end that frankly none of us expected even a couple months and weeks ago. And I’ll pose it to Chip and Kevin by way of a final thought here and what I’m trying to reflect on. Because one thing that I think is still very much an open question is, it’s not just that so many of us regular working people, citizens of the world, people who consume some news, who care to a reasonable degree but are also dealing with our own lives, your average person, I think that so many of us had different reasons for not engaging with this case. We have a lot of excuses, but a lot of really legitimate reasons. People are dealing, like I said, with their lives, they’re struggling to get by, they’re caring about their kids. There are other stories that may be they’re really concerned about and our brains only have so much room.
But I think that there’s a much larger problem here about our political and intellectual attention spans in the digital age. Because for as frustrated as I know you all have been, and Eleanor, I include you in this as well as someone who’s been covering this for a lot longer than I have, the lack of care from the public has been a constant source of frustration for you all as people who have cared so deeply about this and have understood the consequences and the weight of this case in a way that the rest of us, frankly, didn’t.
But what I’m also wrestling with is that that’s the case for practically any story that we cover. I mean, people forgot about Ukraine four months after that war started. And I was standing in East Palestinian, Ohio a couple months ago where that train derailed and where the citizens of that town have just been left to flounder in this toxic hell, and they feel just as forgotten as a Julian Assange would. And I stood there in that town and I told them, as someone who interviews other working people around the country, it’s not that folks have forgotten about you, it’s that they all feel as forgotten as you do. And so what do we do with that?
How do we build enough sustained attention, let alone political commitment to win a strike, free a journalist who’s being persecuted by the largest imperial power in the world, stop a genocide happening in our name across the country? A big part of that is how much we ourselves in this mediad environment can stay focused and stay committed. And I don’t think that’s all a personal failing. I think it’s like our brains don’t know how to adjust to this world that we’re in, and that’s a real political liability for any of us who want to build something, let alone fight for something that’s going to take a long time to build.
So that’s my final thought. Chip, Kevin, I wanted to toss it to you and ask what your kind of big takeaway reflections are here. And also, please do take a bow for your incredible fucking work and tell us what you are doing next and where folks can find you. And then Eleanor, I’ll let you close it out with your final thoughts.
Kevin Gosztola:
Go ahead, Chip. You can go first.
Chip Gibbons:
Okay. So I will say this. A lot of people will ask me, was any of this worth it? Do people care about the revelations that Manning gave and that Assange published? Do people care about the truth or publishing the sort of information? And my response to them is always, the governments of the world are incredibly invested in silencing the truth. They spent 14 years trying to destroy WikiLeaks, trying to break Julian Assange, trying to send a message to future journalists. In Israel right now where there’s a genocide in Gaza, we see them assassinating journalists, we see them shutting down Al Jazeera. We see in the US the Congress wants to, they always want to ban TikTok, but now they want to ban TikTok because they blame it for people getting full information about Gaza. So the governments of the world are incredibly invested and will go to extraordinary lengths to silence and suppress the truth. So we should not be cynical about the importance of this work, about the power of the truth, because the governments aren’t., The US government isn’t. The Israeli government isn’t.
Where I’m going next, you can find me as a journalist on Twitter at ChipGibbons89. The organization I work for is Defending Rights and Dissent rightsanddissent.org. They are one of the only organizations who have consistently struck the right tone on this case over 14 years. We were the ones who were the first group to go on the Hill and talk to members of Congress. I was involved in setting up those meetings, including bringing Jeremy Corbyn to talk to American members of Congress, I guess I’m still not supposed to name who they were. But we did a lot behind the scenes on this case. I did a lot of journalism. So please visit us at rightsanddissent.org.
Where we’re going next. I mean, I think a couple things we have to think of next. First, the Espionage Act is still on the books. Julian Assange has said that he thinks his actions are protected by the First Amendment, and he thinks they violate the letter of the Espionage Act. He’s 100% correct. And now is the time for us to strike at the Espionage Act to make sure we don’t have a law on the book that criminalizes First Amendment protected activity when journalists reasonably rely on the First Amendment every day to do things the Espionage Act says is unlawful. And the Espionage Act doesn’t just apply to journalists, it doesn’t just apply to whistleblowers, it applies to anyone who reads the newspaper and talks about the story that they’ve just read.
On top of that, I will say, we are back in the landscape that WikiLeaks emerged in, in that we have a government that is lying to us about a war, in this case, a genocide and we have a media that is parroting those lies. If ever there was a time that called out for a Dan Ellsberg or a Chelsea Manning or a Julian Assange, it is this time right now where we have a genocide being perpetuated based on lies. And I think it’s really important for us to stand up for those who are telling the truth about Gaza, to stand up for the journalists who are being assassinated, for the public officials who are resigning. And I don’t quite know what solidarity looks like in this exact moment, I’m still figuring it out. But I do know that working with the Gaza, the truth tellers, to uplift them and support them and show my solidarity with them along with going after the Espionage Act are going to be a huge role of where I’m going next because there is a collateral murder happening every day in Gaza.
Kevin Gosztola:
Like Chip says, there’s a lot of work that still has to be done. And I should just mention that, Chip, you’ve done some incredible work on the Hill to advance Espionage Act reform. And that’s a crucial going forward that that’s the next thing in my mind after following this case, you just paraphrased Julian Assange. But everyone around the world, outside of the United States, but global, we’re talking about this mostly in a domestic context, but all around the world, it’s now been clear that if you are an international reporter or a correspondent for a news media organization, especially if you’re reporting on wars or foreign policy of your country and there’s some United States involvement and you obtain primary source material about what is happening, you could be at risk. It just depends on if you’re in a location where the US could get its hands on you, if there’s a government that would be willing to open you up to this prosecution. If you’re in some limbo, if you end up trying to claim asylum and then there’s a pressure campaign and you get forced out and then detained. I believe that that should really alarm many who have not considered this fully up until this point about how unsafe the US government has been making the free press or freedom of the press around the world.
And so on these things like Espionage Act reform, we must probably engage. I think we should all be invested in a reporter’s shield law. We don’t have a national reporter’s shield law here in the United States. The Press Act, this is something that the Freedom of the Press Foundation has been working on very aggressively. It’s available, it’s there sitting in Dick Durbin’s wet paper towel hands. All he has to do is hold a vote on it. And then I don’t know what Joe Biden will do, but he should sign it. And then I also think that we should be following more closely anytime there are national security or police subpoenas or we see that there are things like censorship regimes that are imposed, like what we are seeing as Chip raised the issue of the war on Gaza, Israel, the Israeli government have this incredible censorship regime that they’ve imposed. It’s led to the banning of Al Jazeera. And not to mention the fact that at least 100, 1,020 journalists have been killed by the Israeli military at this point. And that should be a focus of us because of the US’s role in that conflict.
I know that there are other imprisoned people that are political prisoners. There is journalism under attack in places like India and Pakistan that the US is complicit in the way that they’re being mistreated. And so there are journalism cases, there are attacks on freedom of the press that we should support or attend to that they’re not the boutique causes like many of these press freedom organizations hold them up all the time. We’re talking about things that fall under the radar.
I know we need to wrap, so just a personal reflection as we close. Thank you to The Real News and thank you to all of the scrappy independent media organizations out there that ever invited me on their shows to be interviewed and to speak about this. I mean, I’m indebted to you because without having this platform and being able to share this work I don’t know that I would’ve been able to reach so many people. I’m indebted to Project Censored and The Censored Press for giving me the ability to write this book, Guilty of Journalism. This is 14 to 15 years of my life. Now, fortunately, I didn’t spend it in prison or in any form of arbitrary detention. I wasn’t being persecuted. But I mean, this is a long time. It’s a feature of this case. The passage of time was an issue in this extradition case. I just think of all the incredible people I’ve managed to meet. I don’t think I would’ve met Chip or Max or Eleanor. Eleanor and Max, you’re both very supportive of the book, and I have immense gratitude for that. But I’ve met whistleblowers, I’ve met journalists, I’ve met attorneys that I’m sure I never would’ve encountered.
I had the ability to meet Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, and I’ve been so disappointed this past several days that he wasn’t able to live to celebrate this moment. I’m disappointed that another supporter of my work, especially covering Chelsea Manning’s court-martial, human rights attorney Michael Ratner is not alive to celebrate seeing Julian Assange walk free. And since many people are familiar with Ellsberg and maybe less familiar with Michael Ratner, it is worth taking a moment to laud him for what he did at a very dark time in the Assange, WikiLeaks timeline, because there was all of this contempt and derision directed towards Assange saying, oh, he’s just paranoid. He’s talking about how the US government wants to come after and extradite him. He won’t go to Sweden because he says that the US government is going to try to get him in his grips and bring him to the US and prosecute Julian Assange. Well, that’ll never happen. That could never take place.
Michael Ratner would go on news media shows that invited him and very clearly articulate the grounded fears for why Julian Assange needed to be protected and why the Justice Department needed to shut down and close their grand jury investigation and announce very clearly that there would be no charges. So I celebrate him.
And finally, I’m professionally indebted to Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange. I can tell you, I would not be the journalist I am today without them. And much like a war correspondent can get an award for a summary execution and maybe feel a little bit conflicted inside about how they’re being celebrated for capturing that brutality. I’ve been documenting and chronicling both of these cases, and I’ll continue that work with The Dissenter Newsletter at thedissenter.org. I’ll continue to follow whistleblowers, government secrecy and threats against freedom of the press. I’ll cover attacks on journalists, mass surveillance, secrecy, abuses. And do all of this work that should be an extension based upon the understanding, and I’ll end on this, that what we have seen illustrated through Julian Assange’s case is not only that he’s guilty of journalism, but that the war on whistleblowers is a war on journalism. It’s been said by many in this space before, but those individuals are correct that these are not just people who are whistleblowers or leakers, they are media sources. And the Julian Assange case and Chelsea Manning’s case are both clear examples in the past 15 years of the US government waging a concerted attack on investigative journalism.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, Kevin Gosztola and Chip Gibbons, again, on behalf of The Real News and all of our audience, let me just say that we are indebted to you. And Eleanor, I wanted to toss it to you to share your final thoughts and round us out.
Eleanor Goldfield:
For sure. So I’m reminded, I worked on a film years ago called Killswitch about Snowden, and it shares a quote from him that one of his biggest fears that nothing will fundamentally change. And that has stuck with me since I worked at that film and since I’ve been doing this work. And I think, I mean not to try and sugarcoat it because I’m not. But the reality is that things have changed. You changed Max, like you pointed out, when this case started you were working in a warehouse and now you are bringing these stories to light. I mean, Kevin, you pointed out that this has been 14 years of your life. Chip, this has changed you and therefore it’s changed the people around you and the orbits in which we organize and share this information.
I think that that quote from Snowden, it means that it is on us to not just personally change, but to change the way that we interact. It’s also changed how I do journalism. I mean, my journalism career started in recording magazines telling people how to mend their cables. I mean, I’ve obviously veered away from that, although I can still help people fix their cables. But I think that it does show the power of these actions by these whistleblowers and by journalists. And again, I agree with both of you who point out Assange is a journalist and it shows the power of truth. It shows the power of journalists doing that incredibly important work that like in Gaza, like Chip pointed out, there’s a reason that these journalists are being targeted because Israel is terrified of the bits of truth that they carry with them.
And so I think it’s really important to highlight that and to highlight that journalists are there, to your point, Max, not just ensure that the folks who feel forgotten are not forgotten, but also to ensure that that support is built around these issues and these stories. And people might say, oh, well, the job of a journalist is to be objective. I say bullshit, there’s no such thing as objectivity. The way you cover something, your angle, it shows who you are and it shows how you feel about a certain topic. And so I think that that’s the really important role that we have as folks who do this kind of work. And also, this shows that people, truth tellers, whistleblowers, have people on their side. And that might feel like a small comfort when you’re being tortured. It might feel like a small comfort when you’re confronting genocide. But I think this is also where we find each other, like Vaclav Havel said, the solidarity of the shaken. I think that that’s so important that we use an opportunity like this to remind each other that we have that and that this is our role. And however that manifests going forward for y’all, for you Max, for me, I think that is a really important lesson to take with us.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Hell yeah. Yeah. Just by final note, I really, really wanted to underscore for our listeners, please support this work however you can. Support Chip’s work, support Defending Rights and Dissent. Support Kevin’s work, buy his book. Support The Dissenter Newsletter. Support Project Censored. Please support The Real News. I mean, I know you can’t support all of them at once, but we need it. And if you want this work to survive, you got to support the folks that are doing it. So please, please do that.
And by way of rounding out, I just wanted to sort of make a quick announcement in that vein because I’m so honored and excited to have this kind of space where I can talk to incredible warriors and journalists like yourselves. And we want to do everything we can to lift up your work and to broaden its reach and to collaborate together. And so yeah, this will not be the last time that y’all hear me and Eleanor on the pod together, or you’ll be hearing more of Eleanor and the great Mickey Huff on The Real News podcast feed because I’m excited to announce that The Real News will be syndicating the Project Censored show, which many of you have probably already listened to on Pacifica Radio. It’s an excellent show. Kevin was just on there a couple weeks ago talking about this case. It’s incredibly mission aligned. It’s smart. The guest that you guys have on our great. We’re really excited to bring it on our podcast feed.
And Real News listeners, if you’re digging this, you’re going to get a lot more great content coming at you from this feed. But please go check out all the great stuff that Project Censored is doing. We’re going to link to everyone’s work and everyone’s website in the show notes for this episode. And of course, we’re going to link to our website, our newsletter, which you can sign up to if you never want to miss a story. And please, please, please donate to The Real News if you want to keep hearing more important coverage and conversations just like this. You can do that by going to TheRealNews.com/donate and become a donor today. We really appreciate it, y’all.
For now, this is Maximillian Alvarez signing off. Take care of yourselves. Take care of each other. Solidarity forever.
One of the most persistent myths about the US prison system is that the system of mass incarceration helps deter and change harmful behavior. Yet according to the federal government’s own statistics, more than 80 percent of formerly incarcerated people will be arrested within a decade after their release. The astronomical rate of recidivism reflects two realities: the prison system targets people for political reasons, and fails to address the roots of social problems. Dominque Conway joins Rattling the Bars to discuss her experience leading prison-based mentorship programs behind bars, and how she and others have used political education as a tool to not only address social problems, but transform people into active agents of change within their communities.
Studio Production: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino Post-Production: Cameron Granadino, David Hebden
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Dominque Conway has an extensive history with working with prisoners in the prison industrial complex. Beyond her work she was doing to free her husband, Eddie Conway, who was the creator of Rattling the Bars here at The Real News Network, Dominique was committed, and continued to be committed to educating people, raising their conscience, and having them organize to change the conditions that poor and oppressed people are subjected to. She, along with others, created the program called Friend of a Friend, that was responsible for organizing and raising prisoners’ consciousness. Welcome, Dominique.
Dominque Conway:
Thank you for having me.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, so let’s start here. You have an extensive involvement with the prison industrial complex throughout this country. You’ve been in some FCIs, you’ve been in some detention centers, you’ve been in some county jails. And I met you in the Maryland prison system. What brought you to this space, in terms of finding yourself where you were constantly involved in going to institutions? What got you into that frame of mind to be a part of that? Because that, in and of itself, anybody involved with prisons, and to the extent that you have been committed to, they get burned out quick. It’s not a place where you see a constant change and progress in terms of what’s going on. It’s a lot that goes on, but it’s hard not to get burned out. I Have been in a space where I’ve seen people come and go. But when I look at your tenure in this environment, it’s different. Why?
Dominque Conway:
Well, first of all, I started the work because of my relationship with Eddie. Initially, I was really more interested, obviously in his case, which was to me, the epitome of injustice. But anybody who knew Eddie Conway knows that working with him always involved working with the people. So, from that interest, and wanting to really play a role in getting him out of prison, it led into, okay, let’s do this for the population. Let’s develop this program to engage the population. Part of that, and you know this, a lot of the men who had been in prison for a while, who were older, knew that you needed programming, you needed to engage young people. Without that, a lot of that idle time would just simply lead to violence. So, working with Eddie sparked it, initially, at the House of Corrections in Maryland. We worked with the veterans group there, because you always had to have this group that you worked through.
Through that group, we were able to bring in people who could speak to very specific issues, who could actually, really, do a lot of political education. We couldn’t tell the prison system that’s what we were doing. So everything we did was under the guise of conflict resolution. But, don’t get me wrong, a lot of the men also wanted to do that conflict resolution, and a lot of them were doing it. And not in the way that people may think. But these were men who could intercede in violent situations, and step between two people wielding knives.
I feel like I learned a lot from that, too, just from working with folks inside. It was never a one-way situation, where I was just simply bringing in people who were educating. The people who came in, often talked about how much they got from the experience of going into the prison system, and working with folks. And that just continued to spread throughout the system in Maryland, until, I think, it really became a threat to the administration, because of the fact that we were able to work with people from all walks. Different religions, different street organizations/gangs. Friend of a Friend came out of that programming that started at the House. Friend of a Friend became more of a formalized mentoring program. But Friend of a Friend became big. And at one point, I was working with hundreds of men in the Maryland prison system. And then, we spread into the federal system as well.
Mansa Musa:
Let’s talk about that, so we can educate our audience on exactly what Friend of a Friend. I remember when Eddie came into… I was at JCI when he came to JCI. I hadn’t seen him in a long time. We were up in the library talking, and he told me, he said, “Look, I got this group that we’re getting ready to bring in here.” He ain’t say we getting ready to start. He said, “I got this group. We’re getting ready to bring in here, and I want you to be a part of it.” And I’m telling say, “they ain’t going to let you start no new group.” They had real rigid system of allowance. I said, “It ain’t going to be kind of [inaudible 00:05:31]. Don’t worry about that. Oh, this going to happen. It’s just a matter of when we get to the right people and talk to them.”
And that became Friend of a Friend. And I was given responsibility of helping to coordinate some of the things that was going on. Explain what Friend of a Friend is. And you briefly touched on how it came about, but talk about how it came about and how it morphed into what it ultimately turned out to be really a course that you could teach in college.
Dominque Conway:
So once the Maryland House of Corrections was closed, they dispersed these men to different prisons throughout the system. At that point, we had been there for a few years, working with that vet group. So we went to Department of Public Safety, and we’re like, “We want to continue this work.” Basically, they sent Eddie to Hagerstown, we’re like, we’re following Eddie to Hagerstown. At the time, Mary Ann Saar was the head of public safety. A liberal, but that got us in the door. And that’s what we needed to happen. So we went into the Maryland Correctional training center at Hagerstown. That’s where Eddie was. And Eddie had pulled together men from the population. Very diverse group in terms of who and what they represented. And I met with those men and pretty much asked them, “What do you want to do?” Which was a different approach this time. It’s like, “Okay, what do you want to do?” And they chose a mentoring project.
From there, we developed a curriculum, but we always, always, always, had a very political component to the work, and always did political education. Because one of Eddie’s concerns was trying to… And all of our concern, and I give a lot of credit to Eddie, but the reality is, it was me, it was other men [inaudible 00:07:45] put this together. But the concern was, you have these young men, some of whom have come into the prison system already broken. And it’s a system that just continues to break people.
So we wanted to really send people back out into the community more whole. And so that was a part of it. And I feel like with Friend of a Friend, what we were able to do that we weren’t able to do with the VETS program, is we created this sense of community, a sense of family. People had this feeling that they belonged to something that was bigger than themselves. And even when we were in the Feds, it was like that. Because also we would tell them the story, and the name itself came from a code word that was used on the Underground Railroad, which was kind of our view. It’s like, hey, trying to help people get free.
Mansa Musa:
Right, exactly.
Dominque Conway:
I may not have had a Winchester or whatever Harriet Tubman carried, but we were certainly [inaudible 00:08:48].
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, we had Winchester IDs,
Dominque Conway:
Yeah. Trying to help people get free. And that freedom first came through their minds. So we would tell this story about how that term, Friend of a Friend was used on the Underground Railroad when people were escaping slavery, and they go to a safe house. And they’d ask, “Who sent you? “A Friend of a Friend” and so we were working in that tradition as far as I was concerned, and as far as the men that I worked with were concerned.
Mansa Musa:
You know what, in terms, you made a good point about getting people to change their thinking, and changing their thinking changed their behavior. Ultimately, their behavior will be reflected in what they do, and not only in the environment where we was at, but also in society. Because I remember that when we would come out of a meeting and one of the guys that might be a participant or participating in Friends of a Friend, and he might be talking to somebody, and it might be a conflict. The person he’s talking to is getting ready to go do something to somebody. And the guy would come and say, this happened one time, the guy come to us, me and Eddie was staying there.
He said, “Yeah, I’m just talking to him. And he got this problem.” He getting ready to go do X, Y, Z. Eddie said, “Well, what did you do? Did you talk him out? What did you do [inaudible 00:10:13]? What did you tell him?” He said, “Well, I told him I’m going to catch up with him when we get back on the tier.” So Eddie said, “No, well go get him now and try to de-escalate what was going on.” But my point is the fact that Friends of a Friend’s allowed for us to be able to have that kind of relationship with the population, that when you was in Friends of a Friend’s, you felt like you had to be involved in the population to the extent that conflict problems and issues, that you felt as though you had to be a part of resolving them because of the harm it was doing to the population, and more importantly, to yourself. Talk about what some of the things that we was doing, how the curriculum came about. Because we had a curriculum.
Dominque Conway:
Yeah. It’s funny, because for the most part, we were winging it early on, which worked fine. Because I at that point wasn’t thinking so much about structure. But the reality is, it was like my supervisor suggested it. I hate to give him credit, but it was good, because we were able to pull together a curriculum that really reflected the work that the men were doing. So if we’re talking about conflict resolution, what you see represented in the curriculum, was based on what really happens in prisons. I asked them, “What are the number one conflicts in here?” Telephone, microwaves.
Mansa Musa:
Right, exactly. Right, right. Exactly, though. That’s the reality.
Dominque Conway:
Yeah, we center the curriculum around those kind of situations. But there was always stuff that was never put in writing, that we did, and we worked on, because of the fact that we were doing a lot of political education. And even in the curriculum, I slipped a little bit of The Red book in there.
Because we knew that the curriculum was going to be viewed by prison officials. So I had to really be mindful of who else is looking at this, and [inaudible 00:12:22] developing it. But I feel like the richness came from not just the curriculum, but from what the men also added to that, from what I was able to add to that. And also just those initial trainings, because when I would go into the feds, I would be there for maybe three days, working with the men and doing the training. And then from there, they’d be on their own.
Mansa Musa:
And when we talk about, which I’m going to go into next, is the political education aspect of it, because in JCI, we brought Moon Works in, or Mama K, Mama Rashida, their cultural collective. And they did a play. But up until that point, they had never done anything like that in JCI. But more importantly, when the people that we was bringing in, like Mama K, whose husband is… both of them were Panthers. And her husband is-
Dominque Conway:
You mean, Mama C?
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, Mama C, right. And her husband Naz, and they in Tanzania. But we brought people in that had that, ordinarily, people in the prison would just say like, “Oh man, I would never have access to these people.” Because it is just not something that I’m doing individually. But when we brought these people in, it opened up a new world to the prisoners, and they started actualizing. Avion. Remember, he could write real good. He always had good writing skills. But when he got in contact with Friends of a Friend, he developed some real political poems that reflected just how he felt. Talk about why it was important to have that political aspect associated with Friend… and just as opposed to having, like you say, “Okay, we giving you information about how to resolve conflict over the microwave, how to resolve…” When it ain’t that life or death situation. You got to out think this situation. Why was the political component important in Friends of a Friend?
Dominque Conway:
I think, because at the core, that’s who we were. That’s who Eddie was. And everything that we did was going to be political. It would be easy to look at Friend of a Friend and think of it more as a reformist kind of measure. But we never viewed it that way, because we knew that in between actual revolution, you got to do something for the people.
Mansa Musa:
Right, exactly.
Dominque Conway:
Survival pending, okay. And also that abolition is a ways off. So in that time, what do you do? Do you just leave people to their own devices? No. You work with them. And I mean, we were always very clear that we weren’t trying to tell, particularly the young people we work with, we weren’t trying to tell them what to think. We were just simply trying to encourage them to think.
Mansa Musa:
To think. That’s right.
Dominque Conway:
And I feel like in that environment, even that was political. The political education was important, because we also wanted them to understand the role that they had previously played in the community. Because the hope was, and this occurred in very different ways, that folks would go back into the community and put into the community. Whereas before, maybe they were taking, maybe they were doing harm. You could tell a person, “Well, you know you are really doing bad things in the community,” but where does that get you? We wanted them to understand why were your choices limited to selling drugs. That requires political education. You have to help folks develop an analysis to really see what their world is like, and begin to understand the role that they can play in changing it. So that was really critical. And I think also at the core of a Friend of a Friend, is it was a love movement.
And love is political, love is revolutionary. I think it was James Baldwin who said, “Love has never been a popular movement.” And that was the truth. Because the other part of it, was loving each other and also getting folks to love themselves. So, if you love yourself-
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, exactly. That was a big thing.
Dominque Conway:
Yeah. You go about the world in a very different way when you have that kind of regard. But a lot of people had grown up in environments where not only were they not loved, but the world didn’t love them. The world said bad things about them, and still does.
Mansa Musa:
And you know what? And I like that, because I recall we had young guys in there, and they had this personas machismo about them. And then we had people in there was built that. They liked that, like the term, “I like the smoke.” We had individuals, they like the smoke. And so we had to deal with them and get them to understand that, “You need to look at yourself as well. Because you’re not here as a bouncer. You’re not here as the Sergeant Arms. You here like everybody else.” But I remember one incident with Timmy Poole, and for the everybody, Timmy Poole is a well-known individual in the Maryland system. And this kid was going back and forth, and Poole just said, “Man, all you need is a hug,” and grabbed him and hug him, and the kid started crying.
Because, up until that point, nobody never hugged him. But the thing about the political aspect, and you can talk about this, is… because you mentioned how people was taken from the community. Now everybody that I know of that was involved in Friends of a Friend, that’s out in society right now, or in the institution that was impacted by it, they’re doing things in terms of giving back to the community. They taking ideas and seeing some of the things that might need to be done, violence interruption, clothing, feeding people, having Friends of a Friend type activity in terms of within the community. Talk about your experience in witnessing some of this from individuals coming out, that you actually witnessed or that you knew was impacted by it.
Dominque Conway:
Yeah. I feel like early on, maybe 2009 or so, one of the first guys… because you know for a long time, we were working with folks, and our folks were serving long sentences and [inaudible 00:19:18] getting out like that. One of the first guys, Omari, was released, and I actually hired him. And that started a whole process of me hiring some of the men who were coming out, to do some work in the community, and engage the community. Because also I felt like it was important for us to mirror the very things that we’re talking about. And I worked for a nonprofit, and I was like, they need to put their money where their mouth is. [inaudible 00:19:47] talk about how great the program is, we need to be able to hire these men.
And so over the years, I hired quite a few of the men who were returning. But then you also had men who gradually came out and just engaged in very different ways. I think about Hussein Muhammad or William Freeman, who, he started going to classes inside, through Goucher University. He got out, continued at Goucher. Actually during graduation, he was the speaker. From there, got accepted into Hopkins, but also on the side continued to do work. He was involved with organizations, but he also attempted to help other folks. And that was actually how it was inside, because he was that person inside who was also trying to help, and trying to help folks negotiate their way out of street organizations. And I remember there’s a story that I have about him where we were actually paying our mentor stipends. Yeah, we did.
Mansa Musa:
Right. Right, right, right. Yes, right, that’s what we did. That’s what we did.
Dominque Conway:
I’m sure the DOC didn’t appreciate that, but we did. And he used his stipend to actually buy somebody’s way out of the gang. And I was like, “Wow, that’s deep,” because everybody else is buying Game Boy, whatever.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right. And that’s the paradigm shift. Because, when they took the Pell Grant out of the prison system, and prior to taking the Pell Grant out, this is where everybody went to school, because this was in Maryland… we had a oppressive warden that was pretty much saying that, if he think that you’re doing something, he going to put you on admin. So everybody started going to school to get around that. But in going to school, it put us in an environment we had to think, because we constantly aware like our classes.
But in terms of Friends of a Friends, that’s the takeaway. Because most of the guys that was in there, like I said, they went back on the tiers, or they got out, they thought about, their perspective about society changed, and their relationship with society, but more importantly, their relationship with the community. Their perspective changed. And then when they changed their perspective, their practice changed. And they started implementing ideas around things that could better improve their relationship with the community and better get the community to understand their value and their worth. Talk about how at the end of the process, what happened when… Because I know Eddie got out, and I think at some point in time, we got a stumbling block with Friends. Talk about that.
Dominque Conway:
So, after Eddie got out, I still continued to go in, and actually also was at that point doing trainings in the federal system in a couple of different prisons, to spread the program too. And prior to Eddie being released, there were always these hangups that we would run into, with the Department of Corrections. There were periodic bans. One time it was because I had a floppy disk in a planner that I stuck in a metal detector. I was banned for months at that point.
Even though, I was like, “You guys can look at the floppy disks, because you also are the only people who actually have computers that…
Mansa Musa:
Right, right, exactly.
Dominque Conway:
[inaudible 00:23:30] put the floppy disk in.” So that created a lot of frustration. And for me, that kind of sealed the fate of Hagerstown. Because once that ban was lifted, I didn’t feel comfortable going back to Hagerstown. I felt like that represented their desire to get rid of us, and I wasn’t sure what they might do beyond that. Especially because we won, in terms of the whole fight to get back in. So I continued to do the work down in the Jessup area, in the prisons there, and in the federal system. But even that, after a while, because like I said, we were also paying the mentors stipends.
I felt like that was important. It’s like these folks were doing work that people get paid well to do, out in the community. I was like, “Why are we not doing it?” We were actually even writing that into grant proposals. And one particular funder was giving us the money to do that. And so there was at some point though, at which there was a conflict. I think one of the mentors, they found a check or something, and that created a problem. And at that point, I was like, I’m not going back to meet with these [inaudible 00:24:51].
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, because yeah, you’d be fighting another fight. The fight ain’t worth that.
Dominque Conway:
Yeah. I was like, I’m not explaining anything. We did what we did because it was the right thing to do. There are rules and regulations, and usually, particularly when you talk about prisons, those are intended to really suppress people. We weren’t about that. We were about really uplifting folks. So once that occurred, I just made that decision. And Eddie was like, “Yeah, it’s time.” He was like, “You know, you did a bid too.” And it was time for me to stop the work anyway, because it was time for us to live too, and live outside of the system…
Mansa Musa:
Right. Outside of… Yeah, uh-huh.
Dominque Conway:
… that for so many years, had him.
Mansa Musa:
And you know what? And another part of the impact of Friends of a Friend that I see, is that, when guys was getting the stipend, it created income for them. When guys got out, they was being hired. We have this perspective in this country, and I want you to weigh in on this. We had this perspective in this country, we had the abolition movement, and people actually opened up and say… I was on a Zoom the other day, and the woman, she did her spiel and she said, “Oh yeah, by the way, I’m an abolitionist.” And her platform, and I’m not questioning her strategy or tactic, her platform is to engage in trying to get laws changed, that impact people. Mandatory minimum, trying to get mandatory minimum changed.
But then you had this purist mentality out there about abolition. And the purest mentality that’s coming, like all movements, the contradictions become apparent to me, based on a person’s level of conscious and awareness, when they make the analysis. But you had this purest movement like, hey, all buildings, all everything, prison industrial complex related, abolish it. And like the same way abolishing slavery. Talk about that, in terms when they’ll see some Friends… or they’ll see people coming in, interact with self-help groups, and might have a ulterior motive for coming in an interactive self-help group to create a political education class, network with people around, educating them, networking around [inaudible 00:27:33] coming in veterans group, but talk about, “You have a right to post traumatic stress disorder, and I got this radical lawyer coming in.” Talk about that part of the abolition as it relates to the concept of abolitionists.
Dominque Conway:
Okay. Yeah, it’s funny because that dialogue goes back so far for me in terms of doing this work for, I guess it was almost 20 years, and that ongoing dialogue about abolition. And I always avoided calling myself that. I personally don’t even believe in labeling myself. I don’t feel the need to.
Mansa Musa:
Right, exactly. Exactly.
Dominque Conway:
Your work will speak for you. But one of the things, especially being a student of history and having really looked at slavery, is that people were calling for the abolition of slavery, but they didn’t stop engaging with black folks who were enslaved. Okay?
Mansa Musa:
Exactly.
Dominque Conway:
It didn’t stop people from teaching people to read, it didn’t stop people from helping people get free. You always have to be willing to engage with the very population that you’re talking about. Because one, you shouldn’t be talking about them if you’re not really engaging with them. Because also people can speak for themselves and what they want. And it’s not that I don’t believe that prisons should be abolished. I do, but I also understand that there’s a long way to that, and we have to be willing to engage folks. Also, the communities that generally are impacted by the prison system, they’re still, for many people, a sense that they’re not safe.
And don’t get me wrong, I know police do not make people safe. Okay? That’s part of The lack of safety in the community. But also there are other things going on in the community that we have to be willing to address, and we have to look at ways to address those things. We have to create alternative economy for folks. People have to be able to live and eat, or they will revert to crime. That’s not a black thing, that’s not a Latino thing, that’s just a thing.
Mansa Musa:
That’s a social construct. Yeah.
Dominque Conway:
Yeah. So I feel like there’s a need to always be engaging with the people who will be affected by abolition. And not just engaging in a way that’s providing resources or telling people what to do, but actually finding out what people need and want, what they desire, what abolition really means for them. Because like I said, during slavery, you still had various people who were engaging with folks, who were preparing them for that point, who were educating, who were helping people sneak out, get to the north, cross them state [inaudible 00:30:35] do all of that work. And it’s still very necessary. Particularly with prisons, because I just feel like people inside just become more invisible over the years. And over the last decade, it seems to be that way. And it’s not to say that people aren’t doing work. I think a lot of those people who are doing work, it’s just simply not amplified. And the issues that they’re representing are not amplified in a way that they really need to be.
Mansa Musa:
Right. There you have it. The Real News. Thank you Dominique Conway, for coming on and educating our audience on the importance of the community, people in the community, as activists, however they define themselves, come into this environment and give this the prison environment some exposure to society. But more importantly, some of the political elements that’s in society, to change their thinking. Thank you for coming in. You definitely rattled the bars today. Appreciate you.
Dominque Conway:
Thank you.
Mansa Musa:
There you have it. The Real News rattled the bars. And guess what? We actually are The Real News.
It’s been 40 years since supervised release was first introduced into the federal court system by the 1984 Sentencing Reform Act. Supervised release, which replaced federal parole and probation, is a secondary sentence judges can impose that only comes into effect once people have already served their time in prison. The legality of the widespread use of supervised release, not to mention its overall constitutionality, is highly controversial. Jabari Zakiya joins Rattling the Bars to make the case for the abolition of supervised release.
Studio Production: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino Post-Production: Cameron Granadino, Alina Nehlich
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Jabari Zakiya is an expert on supervised release, a system that is being used by the prison industrial complex to keep people on the plantation. Is it unimaginable to think that a person receives a sentence, serves it out, only to be released on supervised release and serve more time than his or her original sentence? Jabari Zakiya brings this truth to reality. All right, as we unpack this, we need to first establish, not so much as the problem with supervised release, but what is supervised release?
Jabari Zakiya:
Well, supervised release was created in 1984 with the Sentencing Reform Act of 1994 in the middle of the Reagan year. And, two things came out of that act. The first thing was the creation of the Federal Sentencing Commission, and the other major thing was the abolishment of the use of parole and probation in the federal system, they replaced that with this thing called supervised release. So, supervised release is an extra sentence that gets put onto people’s prisons term and it only becomes effective after you have fully served your prison term. And then, when you get out, then they say you’re on this thing they call supervised release.
Mansa Musa:
All right, and supervised release came through the Reagan administration. And are we talking about specifically DC code offenders or are we talking about nationwide, anybody that’s under federal jurisdiction?
Jabari Zakiya:
Any federal conviction. Any federal sentence from a federal conviction. Since November 1st, 1997, that’s when supervised release became effective. That’s when federal courts start to oppose the sentences, that included supervised release. So yes, DC, anywhere across the country.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. So now, for the benefit of our audience, because we just don’t want to assume that everybody got an understanding of the sentencing mechanism in the prison industrial complex. So, walk our audience through the sentencing mechanism. So, once a person is convicted, walk them through it and to the whole process, you will use yourself as an example.
Jabari Zakiya:
Okay. So, currently, for federal convictions, once you get convicted of a federal crime, you have a sentencing hearing in front of a federal judge. At the sentencing hearing, the judge imposes the sentence, which concludes a prison term, could include a prison term, it could include other provisions. But usually, in the case that we’re talking about includes a prison term of so many years or months. And then, a term of supervised release that follows the prison term.
Now, supervised release is not mandatory for the widest sets of categories of crimes. Statutorily, supervised release only has to be imposed by statute on a certain category of crimes, such as terrorism, child molestation, etc. All other categories of crimes or all other categories of people that get convicted of crimes, it’s at the discretion of the court whether to impose or not a term of supervised release, but by practice they dole out supervised police like jelly beans.
Mansa Musa:
Okay.
Jabari Zakiya:
But most people don’t know that. Most criminal defense attorneys don’t act like they know that. And most public defenders don’t act like they know that, because they don’t challenge during the sentencing hearing, “Why are you giving this person a term of supervised release? What is the legal basis of it?” Why are you giving them a certain time period? What is the legal basis of why are you giving somebody a three-year term of supervised release?” Like in my case, I had a 16-months prison sentence and a 3-year term of supervised release. Well, why is the term of supervised release almost twice as long as the prison sentence? I didn’t know anything about that at the time. My public defender didn’t do anything to contest it. So, the system keeps rolling along by practice through inertia. Everybody just lets it go and very few people challenge it. The good thing is, people are starting to challenge.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, so let’s talk about this here. All right? I get convicted of a crime.
Jabari Zakiya:
Mm-hmm.
Mansa Musa:
I got 16. The maximum penalty for the crime is 24 months. That’s the maximum time I can get for the crime. I can only get 24 months for the crime. That’s it. So you can give me 24 months, you can give me one year sentence, and then you give me one year probation. But it can’t go beyond two years in my sentence. So now, under this guideline of supervised release, is that term of supervised release a part of the penalty? Would my sentence be 24 months plus three years supervised release? When I look at the statute, what’s the sentence for this crime I committed, would it say, “And supervised release”?
Jabari Zakiya:
And this is one of the greatest problems, the prison sentence is the punishment.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jabari Zakiya:
Okay, when you talked about the 24 months, that’s your prison sentence. Supervised release is this unconstitutional second sentence, because supervised release allows the government to put you back in prison without the benefit of having to convict you of any crimes. In fact, all the people who go back for revocations of condition supervised lease, those are for non-criminal activity. Those are for what is called administrative technical violations, such as dirty urines, such as being in the presence of other felons like your cousin, or your mother, or your brother
Mansa Musa:
Or nobody you might not even know committed a felony.
Jabari Zakiya:
Or for not getting a job within a certain period. Or for merely not calling back your probation officer or meeting with them at a certain time. These are technical violations. They are totally unconstitutional, because essentially, there’s no place in the constitution that allows the government to supervise people after they have completed their prison term. The prison term is their punishment under the fifth amendment.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, let’s go now. Now, we got to understand supervised release. Recently, as of May the 6th, the ACLU filed a suit against the government, claiming supervised release and parole status said people with disabilities are forfeited. And in this suit that they filed, the ACLU, the Public Defense Department, and a few other legal organizations filed, they were basically saying, under the supervised release, it doesn’t take into account a person’s disability or mental state, but more importantly, in the suit… And we look at the body of the suit, they’re suing parole and they suing the Office of Supervision, which is known as CSOSA, which is the mechanism or the institution that deal with supervision.
Jabari Zakiya:
In DC.
Mansa Musa:
In DC.
Jabari Zakiya:
Right. District of Columbia. Right.
Mansa Musa:
All right? But, in the suit it talks about the way they go about assessing once a person is put on supervised release, the way these entities that’s responsible for the supervision, the way they make a determination on how you’re going to be supervised, they use a metric.
Jabari Zakiya:
Right.
Mansa Musa:
And, in the metric, the metric in turn say, “Okay, this person should have drug tests. This person should meet twice a week with their PO. This person should have a job in 30 days. This person should have a place to stay or be in an identifiable shelter. Because all these things that I’m putting in this mechanism, if you don’t do these things, those are the things that’s going to lead to a technical violation.”
Jabari Zakiya:
Right.
Mansa Musa:
Right? How did that play out? Now, in this lawsuit, they’re saying that this mechanism doesn’t take into account circumstances. It’s arbitrary, capricious, and too general. And what they’re saying specifically as it relate to people with disabilities and mental health, is that the case across the board?
Jabari Zakiya:
Right. What they’re dealing with are obvious egregious collateral damage from the whole structure of supervised release.
Mansa Musa:
Come on.
Jabari Zakiya:
Right. So, when they abolished parole and probation in the federal system, they claim in the creation of supervised release that the purpose of supervised police was for rehabilitation. And, it was supposed to give people a way to transition back into coming out of prison into society. And that this was supposed to help people, which is the exact opposite of what its actuality is. The practice of it is, it’s just another means to control and punish people after they have already served their full prison sentence. So what the ACLU is finally doing, because in 2019 when we created the Coalition in Supervised Release, we actually met with the DC probation office… Excuse me, Public Defender’s Office and the Federal Public Defender’s Office who deals with the federal cases on the side. The DC deals with the DC cases.
So, what they’re doing is attacking the collateral mechanism. They’re not attacking the legality of the system. All right? What I’m saying is… An analogy would be, say you could either say slavery is bad and unconstitutional, or you could say certain conditions under slavery are bad. Or you shouldn’t be able to just rape people arbitrarily. You shouldn’t be able to cut people’s feet off. You shouldn’t be able to beat people. But, slavery is all right.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right, right.
Jabari Zakiya:
But just don’t make it so onerous that you make it so ugly and heinous that these things occur. That’s the approach they’re taking when anybody who has their rights restricted is unconstitutional, because you’ve already served your prison sentence. So, they’ve created this facade and the courts have gone along with it and most organizations go along because you have to attack the full fundamental principle of the idea that once you have served the prison system, that is your punishment. There is no other means for the government to have any supervisory or administrative authority over you, because you have served your prison sentence, you are a free person, you can do what you want. The government has no authority. The constitution doesn’t give the government any authority to supervise anybody. It only says they can punish people for a crime where they have been duly convicted.
Mansa Musa:
And okay, let’s examine the whole application of supervised release. All right, so you say it’s only certain crimes can be given a prison-
Jabari Zakiya:
Are mandated.
Mansa Musa:
… Yes, are mandated. And that’s in the law.
Jabari Zakiya:
That’s in law.
Mansa Musa:
But, outside that, it’s discretionary.
Jabari Zakiya:
It’s totally discretionary.
Mansa Musa:
All right. And, as it’s mandated, they passed a law to say it’s mandated?
Jabari Zakiya:
It’s by statute.
Mansa Musa:
Okay.
Jabari Zakiya:
The statute 18 U.S.C. 3583 lists the categories of offenses where the courts are mandated to impose a term of supervised release. Every other thing is discretionary.
Mansa Musa:
All right. So now, in terms of where the disconnect comes in, it comes in that when it’s being done arbitrary and capricious. Or, is it a disconnect in the sense that it should never be in existence?
Jabari Zakiya:
It should never be in existence.
Mansa Musa:
Why?
Jabari Zakiya:
Because the government has no constitutional authority to supervise. You’re an American citizen. You’re supposed to be American citizen. So, when you are convicted of a crime, the prison sentence is the one punishment under the fifth amendment that they can impose upon you. Period. You do your 5 years, 10 years, or whatever that prescribed sentence is for that particular offense, that’s it. You come out, “Okay, I’ve done my time. I’ve served my sentence. I’m now a full and functional citizen.” Presuming that you were a full and functional citizen in the beginning. But, that’s it. So when you had probation and parole, what happens is you get a 10-year sentence. You come up for parole after 30% of your sentence, or let’s just say, three years. Because there’s nothing in the constitution that says, “You have to go to prison.” It says, “Punishment.”
So, under the former system, before they created supervised release, you had a 10-year sentence. You come up for parole after three years, the government can decide how to punish you. They can say, “Well, we’ll keep you in prison.” Or, “We can allow you to serve the remaining 7 years of that 10-year sentence after you come up for parole in 3 years. You can serve that outside of prison. But you’re still under administrative control of the court, which is your parole officer. So if you violate whatever conditions that were part of your parole supervision administrative plan, then you can go back.” But you only have one sentence. And after that 10 years over, that’s it.
Mansa Musa:
So they send you back, say, you got 60 months, 5 years, you do 40 months, they let you go out on parole.
Jabari Zakiya:
Mm-hmm.
Mansa Musa:
All right. And you got two years left on your sentence, you violate, they send you back, you got a year left on your 60 months. At the end of the year-
Jabari Zakiya:
That’s it.
Mansa Musa:
… That’s it. Okay. But then, under supervised release-
Jabari Zakiya:
You served your whole sentence.
Mansa Musa:
… They gave you.
Jabari Zakiya:
They gave you five years, you served your whole sentence. Then, the day you walk out of prison, your term of supervised release starts.
Mansa Musa:
Oh, okay, I see the problem then. So now, you really… Then it gave you an extra sentence.
Jabari Zakiya:
They gave you an extra sentence. But this time, they can put you back in prison for a non-criminal offense.
Mansa Musa:
Right. Until your term of supervised release… Or they could keep nitpicking you, like in the case of the people they sued.
Jabari Zakiya:
Right.
Mansa Musa:
They send them back for a year, they’re going to let them go, they send them back for another year. They can keep doing that back and forth. But under the traditional system, they can send you back and say mandatory out, say just bring it to the door.
Jabari Zakiya:
And so, many people under the conditions of parole and probation, you can max out in prison if you choose.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jabari Zakiya:
And many people did, or chose to do that, especially if you have a shortened sentence, because they didn’t want to go through the hassle of being ping-ponged from halfway houses back, and da-da-da, and try to find a job and stuff, and then getting caught up. So many people would say, “No, I’m going to just max out.” So then, when they left, it’s like, “Goodbye. See you later. You don’t have no control over me at all.”
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jabari Zakiya:
Under this system, you do your max time, they can ping-pong you back for, like I say, all these little trivial so-called administrative violations that are not crimes. And the whole point of this system, those white males in the middle of the Reagan administration with the complicity of the Democrats put this in place with that explicit purpose. Because, Reagan, he became president in 1981. We had gone through the Vietnam War. We had gone through the Vietnam protests, the student riots, the Civil Rights Commission. At the beginning of the Reagan administration, the federal prison population was somewhere around 20,000 people. 20,000 people total across the nation in the federal prison.
Mansa Musa:
Mm-hmm.
Jabari Zakiya:
After he left, that population rose from 20,000 up between 80 and a 100,000. So, one of the whole purposes of his administration was those rabid confederate white racists said, “You know what? We can’t allow these people to go out and protest these policies, to confront the government. And so, we’re going to need to put more of them in prison.” And of course, they did the mandatory minimums, they did the crack cocaine deference. All that was designed to put particularly black people, black males in prison, and to keep a revolving door to keep them in prison.
Mansa Musa:
Why you think so… Why? Okay. If supervised release is so draconian, and it applies nationwide, why you think you don’t have more kickback nationwide about it? Because according to your argument, one, it’s unconstitutional, it’s not mandated by lawyers discretionary under certain circumstances. But yet, it’s being practiced all across the board. Why you think we don’t have no more opposition to it in terms of trying to get it reversed?
Jabari Zakiya:
That’s a very good question. Part of it is just inertia. People just go along with the system. But, the arguments I’ve just told you, they are being made and they have always been made from day one. Unfortunately, the groups that should have been the natural people to argue these things from the beginning, like the NAACP, the Urban League, ACLU, they were asleep at the wheel. Even again, these laws were passed with the complicity of Democrats too.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jabari Zakiya:
It wasn’t just Republicans, and it wasn’t just Reagan. They existed under Clinton. Clinton made it worse.
Mansa Musa:
Mm-hmm.
Jabari Zakiya:
Obama didn’t do anything about it, right? So, it’s not just a one-party thing. It’s a total acceptance by both the Republican and Democratic Party that we need to put more particularly black men in prison and keep them there for as long as possible. And the courts have basically rubber-stamped it, because they haven’t really done the serious analysis that is now being forced upon them by the ACLU that should have been done in 1987 when these sentences started to be put down.
Mansa Musa:
This is what they say in the quote, ACLU, “There are just absolutely no policies or procedures to assess their accommodation needs or to provide the accommodations that people need just to have an equal shot at completing supervision and staying in their community.” Now here, you preference this with, they’re talking about people with disabilities.
Jabari Zakiya:
Right.
Mansa Musa:
But, could you apply that across the board, there is no provisions being provided for people in general?
Jabari Zakiya:
The government has no authority to supervise anybody.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jabari Zakiya:
If they wanted to provide a system for harmonious and stress-free reintegration back into the community, they could do that. They could absolutely do that. But it wouldn’t have nothing to do with punishing people and sending them back to prison. It would just be a transitional period that has nothing to do with re-incarceration. They could do that, but they don’t want to do that. They have to create a means to put people back in prison. They’d rather put people back in prison, than actually help people transition. Because then, that whole mindset, that group of these rabid, right-wing racist white men don’t want black people, don’t want brown people being able to walk the streets, and be full citizens, and compete ideologically, financially, and every other way with their whole whiteness dominating. That’s this whole thing with these white people now. They are scared out of their wits that they are a declining minority in this brownification of the United States. And they want full and complete control of everything. And they know they don’t have the numbers. Their numbers are dwindling.
And so, these mechanisms are being put up. That’s why all across the country, in Florida and all these people, they want to say, “You can’t read these books.” They want to call anything black people do, black extreme organizations, which has no constitutional meaning whatsoever, et cetera, et cetera. This is an ongoing war. Most black people don’t understand that this is a war. This is an overt war that these white males are continuing, because they, never in their mind, thought they lost the civil war. Right.
Mansa Musa:
All right. So, as we look at the supervised release, right? Going forward… So, what were some of the work that y’all did and how far did y’all get in terms of trying to get at this mandate?
Jabari Zakiya:
Okay. One thing that most people don’t know and your attorneys won’t tell you, the judge won’t tell you, is that, there is a part of the statute on the supervised lease, after a year on supervised lease, you can petition your sentencing court, your sentencing judge to terminate the remaining part of your supervised release. So, one of the things we did, I used that provision and I helped get one person’s three-year term of supervised release terminated after 18 months. This is in the statute. This is a right that everybody on supervised release has. You can just file a motion after a year and say, “Please terminate the rest of my term of supervised release.” Usually, the probation officer won’t tell you, your offense attorney won’t. This should be just structurally streamlined. It’s like, “Okay, you’re…” Like with the probation part. After a year, you should go back and automatically go back in front of the judge and say, “I want to terminate the rest of the…”
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jabari Zakiya:
But they don’t do it that way. They don’t even tell you that you have a statutory right to request this.
Mansa Musa:
And if people wanted to try to get it reversed or try to get in the advocacy space of getting it removed altogether, what is your recommendation?
Jabari Zakiya:
Well-
Mansa Musa:
If there was something that was feasible.
Jabari Zakiya:
… Well, there’s two ways attack this systematically. You can attack it through the courts, which is what the ACLU. But ultimately, you have to attack it through legislation, because the appellate courts and the Supreme Court have shown no inkling of abolishing the whole system. Even though, as you noted, you can cite all these collateral unconstitutional consequences of its mechanical imposition. There’s no way to impose the system constitutionally.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jabari Zakiya:
There’s no way to do it. So, they don’t even try.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Jabari Zakiya:
So it’s like slavery. Either you abolish it or you keep it going.
Mansa Musa:
Mm-hmm.
Jabari Zakiya:
Right? So, you got more cases from the Supreme Court upholding slavery, than you do abolishing it, right?
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jabari Zakiya:
At some point, you just have to build enough momentum where enough people finally say, “It’s wrong.”
Mansa Musa:
Right. All right, so now, as we get ready to close, let’s look at the impact this has on families.
Jabari Zakiya:
Right. Well, like you say, a common condition of supervised release is you can’t interact with other felons. So if everybody in your family was convicted on a case… So if you go to a summer barbecue and your brother’s there or your cousin in there and they were convicted on the same count or whatever, you could be in technically a violation of your supervised release.
Mansa Musa:
And in terms of from your own personal experience and your knowledge, how often do they revalidate people, like just nonsensical stuff?
Jabari Zakiya:
Actually, they have studies by the Sentencing Commission that actually documents this. But what we know absolutely that in the current federal prison population, somewhere around 30 to 35% of the people in federal prison are there for revocations of supervised lease, not for convictions of new crimes.
Mansa Musa:
And so, that means 30% of the population that they send back. And, from your knowledge, is this a continuum? Do they keep this number fluid? I’m going to make sure I got this ability to keep this population back to a number by 30%. In addition to people being on parole, I know they subject to violate, I got probation, they subject… But now, I got a sure thing in supervised release because I can knit-pick, from your knowledge, is this something that you see as a common practice?
Jabari Zakiya:
It’s a common practice. You can get the numbers from the actual Bureau of Prisons, because they list that. The sentencing commission comes out with their yearly reports. So yes, this number is known. That’s why I can say it’s between 30 and 35%. And, they can tell you what are the types of offenses people are getting revoked from, right? So, what I’m saying is that everybody who goes to prison has a number. Everybody who goes to prison has a term of imprisonment.
Mansa Musa:
Mm-hmm.
Jabari Zakiya:
So, all that information is empirical. It’s not random.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jabari Zakiya:
You could go by every person they put and you can compile, “Why you’re here? How long you here?” Etc. Etc. So, what they don’t want to do though is show you that the whole purpose of the system is not rehabilitation. Because, see here’s the constitutional argument. If they claim a prison sentence is your punishment, then how can putting you back in prison for revocation of a technical violation be rehabilitative when it’s the same actual remedy for two supposedly different things, right?
Mansa Musa:
Mm-hmm.
Jabari Zakiya:
So how can prison be a punishment under one condition and a rehabilitation under another condition? It doesn’t make any sense.
Mansa Musa:
No, it doesn’t.
Jabari Zakiya:
And that’s the whole thing. People have to be engaged in extreme acts of cognitive dissonance to justify how doing the same thing… Putting people in prison has two totally separate and opposite purposes.
Mansa Musa:
All right. As we close out, what do you want people to know and what are you advising them in terms of trying to get this?
Jabari Zakiya:
Okay, here’s functioning what people need to know. People who are about to go have a federal trial, and 85% of the people are more in the federal system plea bargain, they don’t even go to trial. So you just copped to a plea. Again, first you need to know that supervised release is discretionary. And you need to first know, “Is the offense that I am convicted of or pleading to, does that have a mandatory term of supervised release?”
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Jabari Zakiya:
If the answer is no, then when you go to sentencing, you need to make your attorney contest the requirement or any discretion to impose a term of supervised release, because they’re supposed to explain why under their discretion they think you deserve a certain-
Mansa Musa:
Okay.
Jabari Zakiya:
… And what the length in that term is. So, you need to contest that at sentencing, because if you don’t contest in that sentencing, you can’t use it as an appeal. Right? And so, systematically, all these people need to understand, contest your whole sentence, contest it, contest it, contest it. Also, you need to know again, after a year on supervision, you can petition to have the rest of it terminated. So, these are the mechanical things people need to understand, because if people just started exercising your statutory rights, you could really make a dent in the re-incarceration of people.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, thank you, Jabari.
Jabari Zakiya:
Okay.
Mansa Musa:
There you have it. The Real News, Rattling The Bars. Jabari is rattling bars about supervised release. It’s unconstitutional, it’s draconian, it extends a person stay in prison. It supposed to go from punishment to rehabilitation, but only thing it’s doing is rehabilitation according to the definition to restore you back to your rights. So basically, what it’s doing is putting you back in prison. That’s what it’s restoring you to, put you back in prison. We ask that you continue to support The Real News and Rattling The Bars.
We ask that you look at this information that we just brought you about supervised release. If you have a family member, or some of you know it’s on supervised release, or getting ready to get convicted of a sentence, or getting ready to plead, then take Jabari’s advice. Have them look into whether or not their sentence or the crime they committed, mandate supervised release and if it don’t, have them contest it. Have them be aware that if they do get supervised release, after a year, they can appeal to have it revoked, or they can have their probation terminated. There you have it, The Real News. And guess what? We are The Real News.
Two years ago, Michigan-based cannabis entrepreneur Coty Cecil’s camper van broke down in Milton, West Virginia. As he was awaiting repairs, Cecil was confronted by Milton police at his door. Despite appearing without a warrant, police demanded entry into the camper van. During the subsequent raid, police smashed Cecil’s window and confiscated eight hemp plants. Cecil now faces a 10-year sentence. Meanwhile, Cabell County, which Milton is located in has a development deal with the billion-dollar cannabis company Trulieve, which is expected to build a grow facility in the planned HADCO Business Park, an economic initiative being funded by millions in local taxpayer money. Trulieve was quietly benefitting from tax payer funded subsidies while Cody was sitting in jail. Thanks to previous reporting from Police Accountability Report and the support of viewers, Cecil was able to get his bail reduced and return home. Cecil now returns again to Police Accountability Report to discuss his fight against the 10-year prison sentence looming over him. Police Accountability Report has previously investigated use of public fundsin Milton.
Production: Taya Graham, Stephen Janis Post-Production: Stephen Janis, Cameron Granadino
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 we’re going to show you this shocking footage of an illegal raid by police in West Virginia that has turned into something even worse for the person whose rights were violated. A problematic case to say the least, that threatens to imprison a man for years for doing something that has been decriminalized across the country, but that a local judge may decide warrants separating a young man from his family for years.
But 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 you know I appreciate your comments. I’ve even started doing a comment of the week to show you all how much I appreciate your thoughts and what a great community we have.
All right, we’ve gotten that out of the way. Now, two years ago we told you a harrowing story about a young man named Cody Cecil. In December of 2022 he got stuck in the small town of Milton, West Virginia, after his camper broke down. So Cody had been paying to stay at a campsite while a faulty brake line was being repaired. But one morning he awoke to police inexplicably banging on his door. At that moment, despite police surrounding his camper, Cody started live-streaming. Take a look.
Cody Cecil:
Well, there’s cops all around the RV beating on my door and I don’t know what for, so they’re going to have to come in and get me. So I figured I’d just lay back and smoke a cigarette and let this progress. A bunch of unmarked cars out there. I’m not answering the door. They can get a warrant and come get me.
Taya Graham:
Now, as you will learn later, Cody has struggled with addiction nearly his entire life and only when he discovered the benefits of marijuana was he able to break the cycle. And that prompted him to start a growing business in Michigan where pot is legal. Because of all this, he became an evangelist, so to speak, for the benefits of it, which is why I think it’s interesting that Cody takes such a courageous attitude towards the looming police presence outside his door. Let’s listen for a moment as he asked the police why they’re trying to break down his door.
Cody Cecil:
What is going on?
Police officer:
Open the fucking door now.
Cody Cecil:
I was back there asleep. What is going on?
Police officer:
We have a search warrant. Open the door.
Cody Cecil:
I just want to know what is going on.
Police officer:
Open the door-
[Inaudible 00:02:58].
…now or we’re going to pop it.
Cody Cecil:
I have no arms or anything. You guys got me scared for my life. Why should I open the door?
Police officer:
Open the door.
Cody Cecil:
I’m not doing anything wrong. I’ve been asleep all morning. What’s going on?
Police officer:
[inaudible 00:03:09] door.
Cody Cecil:
I just want to know why.
Police officer:
We’ve got a search warrant.
Cody Cecil:
For what?
Police officer:
Open the door.
Cody Cecil:
Can I see it?
Taya Graham:
Now, Cody demanded a warrant, which was his right. That’s because while police can search a motor vehicle while it’s being operated on a public road with just probable cause, they need a warrant if it’s on private property. Still, despite the law affirming his request, police continue to demand he opened the door without one. Let’s watch.
Cody Cecil:
I will open the door if I can get a copy of my warrant.
Police officer:
We’ll give you one. Open the door.
Cody Cecil:
So you’re going to break my stuff violently anyway?
Police officer:
You’re going to get a copy of the warrant. Yeah. Open the door.
Cody Cecil:
Look, my hands are right here. All I’m doing is recording this. That’s it.
Taya Graham:
Now, unable to produce the warrant, the police decided to become even more aggressive. Ignoring the law, they upped the ante by resorting to force. Take a look.
Police officer:
Open the door.
Cody Cecil:
I just don’t understand why and what’s going on.
Police officer:
[inaudible 00:04:04] the door.
Cody Cecil:
I need to have a lawyer present.
Police officer:
You don’t have a lawyer present for a search warrant.
Cody Cecil:
For a warrant, why not? This can be done completely peacefully. I just need to see a warrant first. Why are you guys breaking my stuff?
Police officer:
You won’t open the door.
Cody Cecil:
I haven’t seen a warrant yet. Right now I look like I’m surrounded by a bunch of wolves trying to attack me.
Police officer:
[inaudible 00:04:30].
Cody Cecil:
Okay, so as soon as I get a warrant, I’ll open the door. What’s the issue? Whoa, whoa.
Police officer:
Open the door.
Cody Cecil:
I don’t understand why you guys are being so violent towards me. That’s all.
Police officer:
We’re not being violent.
Cody Cecil:
Yes you are. You just smashed my whole window in.
Taya Graham:
That’s right. Police begin breaking the window of Cody’s camper, literally destroying the property that is an invaluable asset for him. Now we have a copy of the undated search warrant, which was later given to Cody. It was included in discovery related to the eventual charges against him, and Stephen will have more on that for us later. But a review of the warrant shows that the entire reason that half of the Milton West Virginia Police Department was pounding on his door was not for drug dealing or some sort of theft or other serious crime, but rather in the pursuit of nature. That is, of eight immature pot plants. A fact that Cody points out.
Cody Cecil:
All right. Well here we go. This is what they’re after. Just so people know the real truth.
Taya Graham:
But even as Cody continues to ask for a warrant, police respond with more force.
Police officer:
We are effecting a search.
Cody Cecil:
What kind of a search? Can I get any response at all?
Police officer:
The hell do you got in [inaudible 00:05:57]?
Cody Cecil:
It’s a deadbolt. I’ll unlock it.
Police officer:
Unlock it.
Unlock it.
Cody Cecil:
I want to see a warrant.
Police officer:
Unlock [inaudible 00:06:03]-
Cody Cecil:
I want a warrant first. This is my constitutional right to see that I am being searched with a warrant.
Police officer:
You are being searched with a warrant as soon as it gets here.
Cody Cecil:
Then I will be sitting right here, not doing anything, trying to comply with the police that are breaking into my home for no apparent reason.
Taya Graham:
Now, Cody decides, I think understandably, to take some edibles to help with the stress of the situation. I mean, the police have yet to answer his request for a warrant and are still trying to break down his door, so he decides again to partake in a natural plant that is legal to consume in 26 states. See for yourself.
Cody Cecil:
Eat some edibles.
Taya Graham:
Now I just want to pause here and comment briefly on something I think we as Americans overlook when we watch videos like this. That is, despite the protections of the constitution, the laws of our country have been construed to allow police to use violence over a plant, a thing that grows from the ground as freely and naturally as a weed. Something that is now legal in more than half the country, as I noted, but is still apparently dangerous enough to allow police to break into private property. It literally makes no sense, and it’s this bizarre legal standard I think that causes what happens next. Legal empowerment has obviously affected the police who have been granted it, as we can hear when they reply to Cody’s repeated request for a warrant.
Cody Cecil:
Why? It sounds like a pride issue. I just want to see a warrant, that’s it, and I will come out. I don’t have nothing in here. I don’t have nothing to hide, but you just beat my door down and you’re trying to make me look like a straight criminal. I don’t know what I did wrong. I’ve been sleeping in my RV since last night. What did I do wrong, officer? Can you explain it?
Police officer:
We’ll explain everything as soon as you open this door.
Cody Cecil:
I need a warrant.
Police officer:
I know what you need.
Cody Cecil:
See what I’m saying? Why isn’t that my constitutional right?
Taya Graham:
“I know what you need.” Seriously, you, a law enforcement officer tasked with upholding the constitution are mocking someone who evokes their rights? Is it funny to you that someone’s home and worldly possessions, basically his entire business, is about to be trashed, seized, and otherwise disposed of? But it actually gets worse, much worse.
Police officer:
It is your constitutional right and we will give you the warrant as soon as it gets here.
Cody Cecil:
So you had to break in my door before you gave me it?
Police officer:
The judge has signed it and it is on the way.
Cody Cecil:
Okay, so why did you have to break my stuff before I could come out?
Police officer:
‘Cause you won’t open the door asshole!
Cody Cecil:
Because I haven’t seen a warrant.
Police officer:
Fine.
Cody Cecil:
I will come out peacefully. My hands are right in your face. I promise I’m doing nothing. I just want to see why and see that this is justified, what you just did to my house.
Police officer:
Just open the door.
Cody Cecil:
This is outrageous. I will open the door as soon as I get the warrant. I don’t understand any of this. I’ve been asleep in here since last night. What is the issue? What did I do that caused you guys just so much turmoil to come here and smash my house in? Seriously. What? So you can arrest me and beat my ass for not unlocking the door? No, thank you. I’ve been in this spot before.
Police officer:
You either open it or I’ll smash every fucking window there is.
Cody Cecil:
I know that’s right.
Police officer:
We’re going to get in.
I don’t care if you’re recording. Open it. I got a search warrant to get in there.
Cody Cecil:
For what? What did I do? Can I have my warrant and I’ll come out.
Police officer:
This is not Tennessee, son. Open-
Taya Graham:
“This isn’t Tennessee, son.” I mean, what does that even mean? I mean, is West Virginia post-Constitution? I do think the exchange is revealing, beyond the officer sets. I mean it seems to me that the police are not just mocking his request to protect his rights, but they are using ominous language to intimidate him into opening the door by suggesting that they are not law enforcers, but actually privateers enabled to do just about anything.
Finally, realizing he had little choice, Cody opens the door and the police pounce. Not just one cop, but multiple officers all in pursuit of a couple of plants. Not a violent criminal, not someone who had robbed someone, stolen a car or committed an act of violence. Just a young man using a plant to enrich his life. See for yourself.
Cody Cecil:
I don’t understand what I did wrong. I feel like you guys are going to hurt me for no reason.
Police officer:
We’re not going to hurt you.
Cody Cecil:
Then why have I been in here asleep since last night and now you guys are here to attack me?
Police officer:
Not here to-
Cody Cecil:
I haven’t been doing anything wrong. What am I doing wrong?
Police officer:
Open the door.
Cody Cecil:
What am I doing wrong?
Police officer:
We’re coming in, asshole.
Cody Cecil:
I’m coming out.
Police officer:
Right now.
Cody Cecil:
Okay, you guys got me scared for my life, dude.
Police officer:
Right now, unlock the door.
[inaudible 00:10:55] window.
Cody Cecil:
I’m trying to come out. You guys got me scared for my life. Here, I’m coming out. I’m coming out, guys.
Police officer:
Put your cigarette down, let me see that-
Cody Cecil:
Okay.
Police officer:
…you understand me?
Cody Cecil:
It’s the other way, guys. The other way.
Police officer:
Comes this way.
Cody Cecil:
Please. I’ll help you. Don’t break my house. This is all I own.
Police officer:
There’s supposed to be another guy in here.
If there’s anybody else in here make yourself known.
Cody Cecil:
It’s just me. I’m by myself.
Police officer:
Where’s your partner [inaudible 00:11:21].
Cody Cecil:
My partner? Who are you talking about?
Police officer:
That’s what he’s doing, he’s in here eating all this shit.
Cody Cecil:
What are you talking about?
Taya Graham:
That’s right. Cops pick through Cody’s belongings, buoyed by their top-notch investigative skills, behaving like a bunch of unrepentant frat boys basking in the glow of their mercenary bounty. Of course, eventually this collection of Sherlock Holmes realizes there’s a cell phone running which prompts him to act. Let’s take a close look at these few moments.
Cody Cecil:
Big issue dude?
Police officer:
[inaudible 00:11:49] in here-
Cody Cecil:
[inaudible 00:11:49] Because you guys didn’t even show probable cause or a warrant. [inaudible 00:11:56].
Police officer:
You get all these, dude?
Here we go.
That’s what he was doing. He was in there eating this shit.
Yeah, he was eating edibles is what he was fucking doing, see.
[inaudible 00:12:07]
Taya Graham:
Now I can’t read lips, but I think that officer was again expressing his contempt for both Cody and the law. And it’s not really surprising given what we’ve learned about this police department throughout our investigations over the past few years. It is a fraught set of facts because since then, rather than acknowledging the futility of the raid, prosecutors and police have doubled down. And for more on what that means and how it will affect his family, we will be joined by Cody and his mom soon. But first, I’m joined by my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, who’s been reaching out to prosecutors for comment and looking into the case itself. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me.
Stephen Janis:
Taya, thanks having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham:
Now first, you’ve reviewed the warrant and the case file. What are your thoughts?
Stephen Janis:
Well, basically it looked like a yard sale sponsored by police and where they’re going to go and just take everything out of your home and load it into the car and drive away with it. They confiscated a vehicle. They confiscated the camper. They confiscated grow materials. They confiscated books, they confiscated checkbooks, they confiscated deposit stamps. It was insane. It was just like they went in there and just took whatever they wanted and the whole justification was eight plants. Now, they also confiscated a gun, that actually didn’t belong to Cody because he did not own this camper. But they took everything he had all on the basis of eight marijuana plants and a so-called chemical smell. It is one of the worst statements of probable cause I’ve ever read. The warrant, as far as I could see, should have been rejected.
Taya Graham:
Now we’ve done a lot of reporting on the Milton West Virginia Police Department. Can you provide some of the background on this department and the problems they’ve had?
Stephen Janis:
Well Taya, Milton is a perfect example of over focusing on policing creates bad policy. The Milton Police Department has almost doubled in size in terms of budget over the past four or five years. Meanwhile, they’ve doubled ticket writing and ratcheted up fines. So it really shows you that they’ve incentivized policing in a bad way. Meanwhile, the town gave a tip or tax increment, finance tax break to Jeff Hoops, who is a failed coal baron who actually took money out of miners paychecks when Blackjewel coal went bankrupt and then gave himself money. It was a terrible, terrible mess. But meanwhile, he gets a tax cut plus 170 acres in free land that we’re giving him for $20 that belonged to the city. So really these two things go hand in hand and that’s why Cody’s, the arrest of Cody, the seizing of his property is really, really suspect.
Taya Graham:
Stephen, you’ve reached out to prosecutors and the judge. What are they saying about the case and what sort of prison time is Cody facing?
Stephen Janis:
Well Taya, this is what’s most alarming about the case. Eight pot plants could be 10 years. I’m not kidding. I know you think I’m making this up, but just eight pot plants could be 10 years because this judge apparently is sentencing Cody under Schedule I for marijuana, meaning it’s very dangerous substance, after the federal government has reduced it to Schedule III. Now just really set aside for a moment that they’ve been giving a big tax break to a legal grower and this young man could be facing two sentences, which could be served consecutively, not concurrently, meaning at the same time, and be in jail for 10 years for what you saw on camera. Tell me what the crime is. It is really a travesty of justice and I think everyone has a right to be concerned.
Taya Graham:
And now to get a sense of the toll this ordeal has taken on Cody, the risks he is facing out of sentencing and some of the questionable courtroom statements by the judge, I’m joined by Cody Cecil. Cody, I just want to say thank you so much for joining me again on the Police Accountability Report. We really appreciate you being here.
Cody Cecil:
Absolutely Taya. I appreciate you guys and everybody at the Real News Network for all the support and all the help.
Taya Graham:
So can you just describe for me what we’re seeing in your camper? I mean suddenly there’s pounding on the door and you pull out your cell phone camera. Can you describe to us what we’re seeing on that cell phone video and what you were thinking at the time?
Cody Cecil:
Yeah, so I woke up that morning with loud, aggressive knocks on the door. So then I kind of peaked out my bedroom window and I seen that it was a couple of cops and I thought, well, I don’t feel like answering this. I’m just waking up, so I’m just going to ignore the morning intrusion for the day. Well, the knocks started getting more aggressive and they weren’t going away. So at this point I took out my phone and I went live. ‘Cause I was just confused as to why they were there. So the phone and me recording was really just for my self-defense.
Taya Graham:
Now, something I noticed in the video it was that you were very wise to ask for a warrant before allowing police into your home, your camper. What happened when you asked for that warrant?
Cody Cecil:
Well, I was persistent in asking for the warrant. And after about 20 or 30 failed attempts of asking, “Just show me a warrant and I’ll let you in, and this can be done completely differently. I just want to understand what’s going on.” Finally, after about the 30th time or so that I’ve asked, he said, “You’ll get a warrant when it gets here.”
Taya Graham:
So we see the officers break into your camper, they break in and they start to drag you out. Did you even understand what was happening at that time? I mean, did you have any idea of what they were doing? Did they explain anything to you?
Cody Cecil:
No, not at all really. Even I didn’t get explained anything to me until I got basically to the police station. And I was just in complete shock, not understanding what was going on. Yeah, I had no clue. And that’s really all I kept asking for was just a little bit of information on why they’re here and what’s going on. Because at the time I was, after so many times of asking for a warrant and certain things, I was starting to honestly believe if they were even really cops or not. I was trying to do my best to de-escalate the situation and keep everybody calm, and as these guys are just getting more and more aggressive, it just felt completely off.
Taya Graham:
So they forcefully drag you out and take you into jail. When the police took you in, what was your bail and what were the charges that they told you at that time?
Cody Cecil:
So when I finally got there, they gave me obstruction of justice for recording with my phone, cultivation, distributions with intent, and bringing substances across the state line. And they gave me a cash bond of $100,000.
Taya Graham:
So I first learned about your troubles in West Virginia when your mom contacted me. She said, “My son was just put in jail for two days before Christmas. He’s been there for a month and her heart was breaking.” What was that like and what were you thinking during that time in that cell?
Cody Cecil:
To be honest, just the way that they were acting like I was a cold-blooded killer basically. It was such high bond and I thought everything was over. I didn’t know if I was ever going to make it home.
Taya Graham:
Also, let’s take a moment to hear from Cody’s mom Joni.
Speaker 5:
We know that Cody made some bad choices and that he needs to stand accountable for what he did. But I don’t understand, the judge gave him the max sentence on a Schedule I charge.
Taya Graham:
It’s okay, take your time. I understand.
Speaker 5:
To take him away from his whole family for five years. My mom will probably die while he’s in there. She’s 70 something years old and that’s her baby.
Taya Graham:
Now we ran your story and fortunately our community reached out and your bail was lowered, but the past two years you’ve had this hanging over you. What have you done for the past two years? Have you had to travel for court? Has there been any sort of impact on you during the past two years while this has been hanging over your head?
Cody Cecil:
So when you guys came in and actually wanted to shed light on the case and the tyranny that was happening, then they decided to actually give me a bond reduction, which wasn’t happening until everything went public thanks to the Real News Network. So they dropped it down to 20,000. But part of my bond stipulations was I was banned from the state. I was only allowed in the state for court. But upon doing so, when I got released, I got taken immediately up north back home and I didn’t have the resources to go grab the RV. It was broken down. So my RV, my house, my home got taken away and impounded.
By the time after the couple months that I did spend in jail waiting on bond and everything to change, they tried to say it was six, seven, $8,000 to get my RV back, which I did not have nothing. I was completely, they took most of my legal business stuff, my legal seeds, my laptop, everything that I owned of value and completely took me back down to absolutely nothing. I was absolutely nothing, square one. And so the last couple years have literally just been me rebuilding my bond with my sons. ‘Cause they were kind of upset that I was gone for the couple months, ’cause I was already gone a month prior to that for work. So at that time it was going on four or five months before I could see my sons and then… So it’s been a lot. I had to rebuild from scratch the last couple years, then going back and forth to court and everything else has just been… It definitely hasn’t been the easiest. So they knew what they were doing when they banned me from the state. I’ll say that.
Taya Graham:
Now one of the charges was cultivation, but you work for a legal marijuana company and you have a medical card. And the federal government has moved marijuana from Schedule I drugs, like heroin, to Schedule III. And West Virginia has had medical marijuana since 2018 and now is even giving millions of dollars in tax breaks to cultivators. Do you have any idea why they’re coming down so hard on you?
Cody Cecil:
Well, and I’m just going to say that this is my personal opinion, ’cause I know we all have in the cannabis community, we all have our regards towards officials and their position and role they play. But in my professional opinion, I truly believe it’s because I’m not buying sets of golf clubs for these officials and I’m not pushing my funds towards their political agenda and I’m not donating to their political parties and I’m not buying lunches and pizzas and everything else. I don’t have the big bank accounts backing me, which would in turn back them, so therefore I’m null and void. Which honestly, in more retrospect for a business standpoint, I’m in the way.
Taya Graham:
Now, I just want to make sure people realize this. Some seem to think you were there possibly to distribute seven or eight little hemp plants and 10 to 15 grams of bud, but you actually had no interest in being in West Virginia. I mean you were just traveling through.
Cody Cecil:
So after the couple years and rebuilding and everything and the publicity that came to the case, I know that Milton had some troubles after me with the way that the police force was working thanks to the Real News Network shedding light on another case. And they were allowing me to stay out of state. And then the public defenders, which I was using throughout this, trying to save resources for the fam and still rebuilding resources of my own, I had to use the public defenders. They was more leaning towards the fact that they just kind of want to just get through this as much as I do, that the state just wants to make sure that, in my opinion, again, this is in my opinion, that they just want to make sure some charges stick so that I have no chances of suing the state and going back after them, but also keep it to where they can put me on probation and send me home.
And they dropped a couple charges, and they were just the charges of cultivation and the charges of possession with intent to deliver. And I was under the impression, because the leniency that he showed allowing me to be free and home, that I was going to ultimately end up possibly more than likely with probation at home so that I could definitely showcase that I’m not a bad person and not doing these things, but still get the case onward and out of their dockets. And so it’s one to five on each.
And I went back to court, and like I said, I guess I was naive in the fact of thinking they’re just wanting to get through this as much as I was and just get it over with and move on with their lives. And that wasn’t the case. He completely disregarded the rest of the possible sentencing guidelines and he gave me the most severe and he gave me one to five prison on the cultivation, and I go back July 2nd, 9:00 AM for the final sentencing and the other charges sentencing, the possession with intent to deliver, and that is possibly up to another one to five. So he has to decide if I’m going to get one to five on each and run them concurrent or consecutively on the next sentencing.
Taya Graham:
I have to admit, I just don’t understand why a judge would want to pursue this. I see a young man who has been clean for years, who has a family, two children of special needs, and he actually wants to help people with medical marijuana because you believe in it as a real healing medicine. I mean, does this judge see you as some kind of dealer? Does he see the fact that you believe in marijuana as a medical drug as lack of remorse? I mean, what has this judge said to you? What have you heard?
Cody Cecil:
Yeah, at the time of this, Virginia was just becoming recreationally legal and legal in their own rights. And my family I had in Virginia was looking for consulting and help in agricultural realms and help producing their own medicine and becoming sustainable in their own medicine. So I was down in Virginia and I was trying to help, not trying to, I was starting legal businesses and consulting and trying to navigate my way into legality through Virginia as I’ve already been in Michigan. So I was down there for about a month and a half helping people and getting public relations started and certain things. And then about a month and a half into that, I was like, okay, I got to go home and visit my family and visit my sons. So I was driving up back up to Michigan through West Virginia and my brake lines blew, so I pulled over and got a campground. And when I got the campground, that happened about a week or so later. I truly don’t believe this would’ve happened if my RV wouldn’t have broke down.
Taya Graham:
Now something that I think is very important is how your family is dealing with what you’re facing and how you are handling it. I mean whether or not this is concurrent time or consecutive, this is a lot of time, especially to be away from small children. And it’s potentially so much time for a crime that is not a crime in the rest of the country. How is your family handling this?
Cody Cecil:
Well, I think that we were a little naive in the fact that we were thinking that the country was going to be a little bit more, the judge or anybody in the country would be a little bit more understanding towards the cannabis thing. And I was absolutely thinking, yes, he’s going to make me go home and be on probation. I want to see that he’s doing good and he’s wanting to do the right things, but I don’t think that my family didn’t realize how severe the outcome could possibly be.
And so we went to court and then all these things came out on his end and he let his views be known on how he feels about the cannabis space. I just don’t think that he’s pro-cannabis at all. He told me, he said, “You don’t think there’s anything wrong in what you do and what you’re doing.” He said, “you’re just going to go back home and continue to grow cannabis and do what you’re doing up there and think that nothing you’re doing is wrong and okay.” And then he went a little further and he said, “I’ve read a lot of character letters from you, and others might see you as a good man, but what our views on what a good man are are completely different.”
Taya Graham:
Now I want to do something a little different today. Usually I use the example of a bad arrest to make a point about a broader problem with policing that affects the entire country. But in this case, what is happening in Milton is just such a perfect example of the essence of the idea that bad policing leads to other government miscues. So that I want to drill down into the story still unfolding in the small West Virginia community to make a point, and I want to start with a press release from HADCO, or the Huntington Area Development Council. This organization touts itself as the driving force behind the economic growth in the area surrounding Milton. In a press release, the organization touts the finalizing of a deal between Cabell County, where Cody was arrested, and a cannabis growing company called Trulieve. The deal would allow the firm to build a grow facility there.
The deal includes the use of land and facilities of the so-called Hadco Business Park. What is the Hadco Business Park? Well, it’s a taxpayer funded facility designed to lure businesses to West Virginia. What they will be doing at the grow site, according to the same press release, is exactly what Cody was arrested for, growing marijuana for medical use. And Hadco was not just celebrating this fact, it was touting their commitment to medical cannabis and put it at the forefront of a new economy. Let me just read a quote. “This project will provide good paying jobs for our residents and will place Huntington West Virginia at the forefront of a rapidly growing cannabis industry in West Virginia.”
Okay, I’m really trying to unpack this idea. Why is pot a godsend for the county and legally supported with actual government tax breaks for one set of people and totally illegal and warranting jail time for another? What makes it okay for a huge corporation to grow pot for profit while the cops can seize the property of another growing company and never return it? Would you like to take a guess?
But let’s not stop there at assessing the idea of what makes a criminal in Cabell County versus a hero of capitalism. Now, remember Stephen mentioning the deal to build the Grand Petition Hotel in Milton? As he pointed out, the recipient of the communal largess was one, Jeff Hoops. Hoops is the notorious failed coal baron who clawed back the paychecks of miners around the country. The ensuing economic calamity caused incalculable pain for working people and left a trail of environmental devastation for which he has not been held accountable. Even the company he bankrupted, Blackjewel coal, sued him for fraudulent transfers for allegedly shifting millions of dollars, equipment, property, mining permits, inventory, and assets into his own family belongings.
But that didn’t stop Cabell County for awarding the aforementioned $15 million tiff to Hoops to build the Grand Petition Hotel. And wait for it, in 2018. The project, as Stephen noted, was supposed to be an expansive and economic boon to the area. So much so that the city of Milton turned over 170 acres of city-owned land for just $20. The hotel itself was projected to be opened in 2020. However, as this video we found on YouTube shows, the structure itself hardly seems close to being finished.
But of course, a big question I’m sure you’re asking is, Taya, how does this all fit together? I mean, what does a hotel, and ganja growing, and a cannabis crusader say about the state of American law enforcement and the role it plays in working class communities across rural America? Well, think of it this way. As Socrates noted in Plato’s seminal work the Republic, one of the most important questions facing any society or civil government is the fundamental notion of justice. Or in short, can a society be just, and if so, what constitutes a just society?
In other words, is the government fair to people who are governed? And does this fairness equate to better lives, open opportunity, and the type of social equilibrium in which anyone can thrive? This is of course a vexing question bereft of easy answers. I mean, it would literally be oversimplifying the entire concept if I said I could answer what this looks like and how it could be implemented in the world we live in now. However, I think pretty clearly I know what does not constitute a just society. And I think that rendering can be found in Cabell County. Let me lay it out in simple terms. Growing eight plants in your private camper is a crime punishable by 10 years in prison. Asking taxpayers to fund your billion-dollar business to exploit a plant derived from nature and yet restricted by law for some is heroic.
Trying to cure your addictions by spreading your love for a plant that some would say has practically magical healing powers. Oh, that’s a crime that requires the seizing of all your hard-earned assets, cleaning out the bank accounts of innocent coal miners while you pay yourself millions, which incidentally was alleged in a series of lawsuits against Jeff Hoops. Well, that noteworthy behavior will earn you free land and millions in taxpayer assistance. Sitting in your camper, minding your own business, waiting for it to be fixed warrants a full-on raid by law enforcement. Not building a hotel or explaining why it’s taking so long to do so even with mounting taxpayer assistance, well, that’s just great business. And if you’re interested if the hotel will open any anytime soon, take another look at this video of the state of construction posted last month. Doesn’t look great at the moment.
The point is, as we have witnessed time and time again on the show, the difference in this country between criminals and upstanding citizens is not always measured by their deeds. Rather, it seems we equate personal morality with the weight of their bank accounts. Too often what dictates a crime is not the impact it has on all of us, but rather the social, capital, and political connections of the perpetrator. How else can you explain the county of Cabell, West Virginia, where a giant corporation can grow all the weed it wants while Cody is being stripped of his last dollar and his rights for a few plants? How else are they supposed to accept the legal justification for giving free public land to a disgraced coal magnate versus seizing the property of a man who grew eight plants for his own use?
Truthfully, the case as it has unfolded, proves an unfortunate and troubling point about both our laws and how they’re enforced. They protect the powerful and afflict the powerless. They bolster the rich and burden the poor. They shower the already wealthy with largess and strip the struggling of their meager wealth. They bolster the riches of the richest while caging the working class for trying to better themselves. It’s a social imbalance that I think fully answers Socrates’ simple question: is a society just? Well in Cabell County, if Cody Cecil goes to prison I think we all know the answer.
I’d like to thank my guest, Cody Cecil, for speaking with us, and we wish him and his family the very best during this difficult time. Thank you so much, Cody. And of course, I have to thank intrepid reporter Stephen Janis for his writing, research, and editing on this piece. Thank you, Stephen
Stephen Janis:
Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham:
And I want to thank mods of the show, Noli D and Lacey R for their support. Thank you and a very special thanks to our Accountability Report Patreons. We appreciate you and I look forward to thanking each and every one of you personally in our next live stream, especially Patreon associate producers, John E.R, David K, Louis P, Lucia, Garcia, and my 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 for you. Please reach out to us. You can email us tips privately at par@therealnews.com and share your evidence of police misconduct. You can also message us at Police Accountability Report on Facebook or Instagram, or Eyes on Police on Twitter. And of course, you can always message me directly at tayasbaltimore on Twitter or Facebook. And please like and comment, I do read your comments and appreciate them, and you know I give out those little hearts down there. And we have a Patreon link pinned in the comments below for 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.
My name is Taya Graham and I’m your host of the Police Accountability Report. Please be safe out there.
Speaker 6:
Thank you so much for watching The Real News Network, where we lift up the voices, stories and struggles that you care about most. And we need your help to keep doing this work, so please tap your screen now, subscribe, and donate to the Real News Network. Solidarity forever.
This story originally appeared in Jacobin on June 23, 2024. It is shared here with permission.
Atlanta residents are awaiting a court decision on whether they will be allowed to vote on the construction of a massive new police training facility, dubbed “Cop City.” The $110 million Atlanta Public Safety Training Center would draw police trainees from across the country and contain an entire mock city, a model strikingly similar to the Israeli military’s “mini-Gaza” used to train Israeli troops for urban combat.
Atlanta’s Cop City was proposed after the 2020 George Floyd uprising, the mass protest movement sparked by the murder of George Floyd by then officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis, MN, and other instances of racist police violence. As with earlier waves of Black Lives Matter protests, 2020 led to some policing reforms — many imposed by voters through ballot initiatives — but in general, police institutions responded to the movement by preparing for war. Just over a year after George Floyd took his last breath, the Atlanta city council voted to green-light Cop City.
From the moment it was announced, many Atlanta residents have fought bitterly to stop Cop City, while the city government is doing its best to build it anyway. The effort to ram Cop City past public opposition is dovetailing with antidemocratic measures and increasingly draconian anti-protest laws across the country, in a bipartisan spiral toward authoritarianism that we ignore at our peril.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that the struggle against authoritarianism doesn’t always revolve around far-right Republicans. In urban centers like Atlanta — think also of recent police responses to protests in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis — Democrats are paving the way to the society far-right Republicans dream of, where decisions are made by and for those already in power and the police are armed and ready to keep everyone in their place.
The Referendum on Cop City
In June 2021, Atlanta city councilmember Joyce Sheperd introduced Ordinance 21-O-0637 proposing to lease 381 acres of publicly owned forest to the Atlanta Police Foundation for the construction of Cop City. The facility itself would be built on eighty-five acres of clear-cut land in the Weelaunee Forest, adjacent to a majority-black area of Atlanta. Dozens of cop cities have been built or are under construction since the George Floyd uprising, but Atlanta’s would be the flagship — the largest and most public-facing police urban warfare training center in the United States.
The fight to prevent construction brought together people of all stripes, including anti-racists and opponents of militarized policing, environmentalists sounding the alarm about the potentially disastrous climate impacts of destroying so much of Atlanta’s green space, and residents who see Cop City as part of rampant gentrification or who simply think taxpayer money could be better spent on underfunded public services. Local activists mobilized demonstrations, direct actions at construction sites, a network of forest encampments, and a nationwide solidarity campaign.
Atlanta’s Cop City would be the flagship — the largest and most public-facing police urban warfare training center in the United States.
In June 2023, after two years of escalating protests and repression, the Atlanta City Council met to vote on public funding for Cop City’s construction. Residents again packed city hall, with public comments lasting for over thirteen hours, the vast majority dead set against the project. Once again, the city council ignored its constituents and voted to appropriate tens of millions of tax dollars to build Cop City.
The next day, Atlantans turned to a more formal type of public comment, one with some teeth — a referendum campaign to repeal the 2021 ordinance leasing land to the Atlanta Police Foundation. It would be the first time a popular referendum (meaning a vote on a policy instead of a politician) has been used in Atlanta.
One could be forgiven for expecting that the response to a proposed referendum on an ordinance supported by the mayor and twice approved by the city council would be a public awareness campaign to persuade residents that Cop City is in fact a good thing. That’s how democracy is supposed to work, right? Instead, the city government threw up every roadblock they could to prevent a popular vote.
The first version of the petition was rejected on a technicality; when it was resubmitted and eventually accepted, the city of Atlanta sued both to restrict signature collectors to Atlanta residents and to invalidate the petition altogether, saying that it was unconstitutional in Georgia. A district judge kicked the can on the second objection, saying it would get adjudicated if the referendum were to make the ballot. On the first question, he ruled that anyone could circulate the referendum petition, and he extended the sixty-day deadline to submit signatures.
But when the campaign submitted their 116,000 signatures by the new deadline — significantly more than all votes cast in Atlanta’s last mayoral election and almost double the amount required to get on the ballot — the city rejected them on the grounds that the campaign had missed the original deadline, arguing that since the lawsuit was being appealed, the new deadline was false. That appeal is currently with the Eleventh Circuit.
On top of this, the City Council voted to adopt signature-matching procedures, which experts criticize as riven with problems that result in the exclusion of marginalized people. But that procedure only kicks in if the process is allowed to proceed. As it stands, 116,000 signatures sit in boxes and the referendum is at a standstill while construction of Cop City moves forward.
Antidemocracy in Action
Switching out mayors and city council members — all Democrats in the first place — has had no effect. After the 2021 vote to lease land for Cop City, many longtime city councilmembers, including Sheperd, were ousted by a slate of younger Democrats running on progressive platforms. Yet the 2023 vote to fund Cop City was almost identical to the 2021 vote to lease it (11–4 and 10–4, respectively). Likewise, the mayor who initially supported Cop City, Keisha Lance Bottoms, was replaced with Andre Dickens, who had previously signaled some willingness to stand up to police. Since taking office, however, Dickens has overseen the bureaucratic suppression of the referendum and brutal police repression of protesters.
Not only has changing Democratic representatives been unsuccessful in aligning the city with its constituents on this issue, but the tactics that Atlanta Democrats are using against the Cop City referendum have directly mirrored Republican attacks on the direct vote elsewhere.
Ballot initiatives and referendums are the only large-scale means of direct legislation we have, and as such are a good barometer for democratic institutions. Where the local party in power is uncomfortable with people having a direct say in legislation, it’s a good bet that those politicians aren’t governing in most people’s best interests. That’s because when voters are allowed to legislate for themselves, they tend to agree on a lot of core issues.
The tactics that Atlanta Democrats are using against the Cop City referendum have directly mirrored Republican attacks on the direct vote elsewhere.
For example, every single state initiative to raise the minimum wage has passed going back to 1996, with an average of 60 percent support in red and blue states alike. During Barack Obama’s presidency, Republicans made opposition to Medicaid expansion a pillar of their platform, but when voters have petitioned to put the expansion on the ballot in Republican states, it has passed almost every time. Abortion is supposed to be the polarizing issue par excellence, but all seven votes on abortion rights or bans since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision have gone for reproductive freedom (four initiatives to protect abortion rights passed, while three to ban abortion failed).
As a decision-making mechanism, ballot initiatives themselves are highly popular, and voters from both parties are acutely hostile to legislators trying to take away the direct vote. So when state or local governments want to do just that — typically connected to an initiative that is popular with voters but unpopular with party leaders — they usually try to avoid appearing as though they’re simply against democracy. Instead, they tend to take a more subtle, death-by-a-thousand-papercuts approach — legislation that makes the process more expensive and less accessible, bad-faith bureaucratic obstacles, overly burdensome technicalities, and lengthy court challenges.
Some of the most common methods state and local governments use to weaken citizen initiatives have been trying to increase the winning percentage it takes to pass initiatives; upping the number or widening the geographic distribution of signatures required (which hikes up costs for campaigns); arbitrarily changing deadlines and paperwork requirements; imposing “single-subject” rules that can sound like common sense but in practice enable courts to toss initiatives by claiming they relate to more than one thing; imposing divisive or misleading ballot language; sponsoring competing measures meant to confuse voters; and so on.
When all else fails, legislators have resorted to gutting initiatives they oppose through bills that undo the intended effect, and courts have overcome popular citizen initiatives by ruling them unconstitutional, sometimes on absurd technicalities. In rare cases, often involving the carceral system, government agencies have simply refused to comply. This is where the role of the police comes into focus. When push comes to shove, who is going to enforce the rules, and who do the enforcers answer to?
Around the country, wherever ballot initiatives are being used to pass policy that the majority wants but the ruling party opposes, state and local governments are resorting to rigging the game to prevent a popular vote. That’s exactly what we’re seeing in Atlanta. In many instances, initiative campaigns have managed to overcome gerrymandered rules to win. Whether or not this is possible in the future may come down to how barefaced the police can be in suppressing dissent.
The Police State
The job of police is to enforce the status quo, and a deeply unequal status quo requires heavy-handed enforcement. Historically, the institution of police was imported from England, where constables were used to defend the rule of monarchy against the masses since the thirteenth century. A similar practice developed in the seventeenth century via deputized bands of armed white men enforcing the system of slavery in the American and Caribbean colonies.
The first formal police departments in the United States were the ruling class’s response to abolitionist calls for rebellion. Modern policing did not develop to defend everyday people from criminals, but to protect the beneficiaries of a racialized and exploitative system from those who wanted to change that system.
Today reasonable people might disagree about the ideal role of policing on the road to a more just society. But we should all agree that to the extent police exist, they should be accountable to the communities they police, not just to the people in power. It would be difficult to overstate the danger that militarized police, armed with the weapons, tactics, and attitude of war, pose not just to the safety of our communities, but to any chance we might have of democratizing the US political and economic systems.
It is no accident that Cop City emerged in reaction to the 2020 racial justice uprising, itself a popular rejoinder to racist police violence. During that moment, police brutalized protesters and attacked journalists with impunity. The Department of Homeland Security even admitted to using unmarked vans to kidnap activists at gunpoint. Cop City was proposed in the aftermath of these events to train police how to better operate as though they are an occupying force in hostile terrain of a majority-black city.
One of Cop City’s prime inspirations, the Israeli military’s “mini Gaza,” speaks volumes. It’s hard to find a single person, whatever their stance on Israel and Palestine might be, who wants cops to police their neighborhood the way Israeli soldiers operate in Gaza. Supporters of militarized policing implicitly understand that those guns will be pointed at other kinds of people in other places.
In January, 2023, as if to leave no doubt about the type of policing Cop City would supercharge, Atlanta police raided the Stop Cop City protest encampment, shooting activist Manuel “Tortuguita” Paez Terán at least fourteen times in the process, killing them on the spot. Police claimed Tortuguita had a weapon and fired on police, but recordings from the raid indicate police likely shot at each other by accident, while the district attorney has refused to make forensic evidence public.
The fight to stop Cop City is emblematic of a broader struggle to govern through popular will against a political class that appears increasingly ready to swap out democratic institutions for a police state.
Later that year, just as the referendum campaign was gaining steam, Atlanta police arrested dozens of protesters for domestic terrorism, racketeering, and other felonies carrying twenty-year prison sentences or more. Then they arrested three people running the Atlanta Solidarity Fund, which helped provide bail for Stop Cop City activists.
The targeting of support activities like the bail fund, as well as the outrageousness of some of the charges — terrorism charges for having muddy shoes, felony intimidation for handing out flyers about Tortuguita’s murder — make it clear that getting honest convictions is not the priority. These police and prosecutor actions, like recent legislation across the country criminalizing dissent and enabling vigilante violence against protesters, are about breaking the movement.
Shortly after the crackdown on activists and supporters, the Atlanta city clerk published the referendum petition online with all signatories’ personal information, effectively doxing everyone who wanted a public vote on Cop City. When activists demanded that information be redacted, the city council directed the city clerk to comply, but the clerk has yet to do so. As with obstructions to the referendum, the bureaucracy has a way of fluidly taking the shape of repression. Through it all, organizers on the ground refused to be cowed, and continued to press the fight against Cop City.
People Power vs. Police Power
The most direct threat of authoritarianism clearly appears to come from the Republican Party. With the accompanying media parade focusing on two-party candidate elections, it can be all too easy to overlook the ways Democrats in liberal cities are putting pieces in place for the authoritarian transition. The fight to stop Cop City is emblematic of a broader struggle to govern through popular will against a political class that appears increasingly ready to swap out democratic institutions for a police state.
Right-wing Republicans are not the immediate problem in Atlanta, where the ruling Democratic political establishment came to power in the wake of the civil rights movement. But knowingly or not, that Democratic political establishment is laying the far right’s groundwork in repressing voting and civil rights to prepare the police for war against their own population.
This phenomenon is by no means limited to Atlanta, and the impacts of the fight over Cop City will not stay local. Through antidemocratic measures, the criminalization of protest, and the militarization of police, the ruling class is attempting an encirclement maneuver around possibilities for change from below. The more of these battles we lose, the fewer our options become.
For the past 54 years, Thomas ‘Tahaka’ Gaither has lived behind bars as a political prisoner. A former member of the Black Panther Party Baltimore Chapter, Gaither was a close associate of ‘Marshall’ Eddie Conway Jr., who spent his last years as host of Rattling the Bars. Although Gaither was released on parole decades ago, he was forced to return to prison in the late 1990s when Gov. Glendering revoked parole for anyone who had received a life sentence. Tahaka Gaither and his daughter, Tara, return to Rattling the Bars to discuss his life, their family’s shared struggle to release Tahaka and live on in spite of the prison system, and what Tahaka’s incarceration has meant for generations of his family.
Studio Production: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling The Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. Joining me today via phone and in the studio as well via phone is a comrade of mine, Thomas Gaither, better known as Tahaka.
Tahaka is a political prisoner in every sense of the word. Tahaka is a former Black Panther. When we was in the Maryland Penitentiary, we had a collective called the Maryland Pen Intercommunal Survivor Collective, which was patterned after the Black Panther Party under the leadership and guide of Eddie Conway. Tahaka spent a numerous amount of years on lockup for allegedly being involved in an assault on an officer, along with Eddie and four other comrades.
Tahaka, welcome to Rattling The Bars. Hey Tahaka, tell our audience a little bit about yourself.
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
Like the brother said, my name is Tahaka, as you know. And I’m a member of the original Black Panther Party under the leadership of Marshall Eddie Conway, one of the Maryland Penitentiary Five, which included Eddie Conway. That’s my rap buddy. You know?
And I met Eddie when we first went in the penitentiary around the same time, man, about 54 years ago. I was a kid. Eddie just went and he mentored me. You know that. You know I was his right-hand man the whole time we were there.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. That’s right.
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
You know. Yes indeed. So I’m just sitting here, like I said, I’ve been here for 54 years now since 1970, trying to get my freedom. And like Mansa Musa said, I’m definitely a political prisoner.
Mansa Musa:
Oh, you political prisoner in every sense of the word. Hey, Tahaka, walk us through those 55 years, more importantly, about where you was at in that process, because we need our audience to understand-
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
Okay. All right.
Mansa Musa:
We need our audience to understand that-
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
Well-
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Where you was at, what went on through that 55 years.
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
Okay. Well, in 1970, at the age of 19, I entered the Maryland State Penitentiary in East Baltimore. Maximum security prison, the only maximum security prison at the time in the state of Maryland. I was 19 years old, as I said. I went in there with a life sentence. And I was one of the first teenagers in there. Prior to that, it wasn’t like it is today where everywhere you look it’s a bunch of youthful guys-
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
… teenagers, 18, 19 years old. Back then I was like, I think it was only one other prisoner in there that was my age. It was like coming into the belly of the beast. I had never into a situation like that before. And the Maryland Penitentiary at that time was known as one of the most dangerous prisons in the United States.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
Not just in the state of Maryland. You know? It had a death row. It had a death row chair in there, and death row inmates. Maryland was unique in the fact that; and you know, because you was there; that the death row inmates, they circulated with everybody. They weren’t isolated like in other prisons. And some of my nearest and dearest comrades was on there, like Sam Feeney. You know?
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
He mentored me. Sam Feeney took me under his wing when I first went in there.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
And Soldier Gerald Ditt right there with you. My comrades. These guys, they raised me. They raised me up.
At that time when I entered the penitentiary, Eddie Conway was still in Baltimore City Jail waiting to be tried on the trumped-up charges. But they charged him with a shootout, with assassinating an officer that wounded another officer; an incident where he wasn’t even present at the time. And they railroaded him to get him off the street because of his political influence in the community and his leadership.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
But he was at City Jail at the time and I was in the penitentiary. So we were waiting on Eddie to come in. When I went in the pen, they had a small cadre of Black Panthers in the penitentiary and under the leadership of Rob Kasa-Vubu Folks. Do you remember Kasa-Vubu?
Mansa Musa:
Yes, sir.
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
And Eddie wrote about him in his book, which the Marshall Law. I think it was in the second book that he wrote, Life of a Baltimore Black Panther, because Kasa-Vubu was running the party at the time. So I had met Eddie prior to coming into penitentiary. He came to my community with a group of Panthers. They were on a fundraising drive. They were selling Black Panther papers and Free Huey buttons and stuff like that. And they came to my neighborhood. And my mother invited him in and gave him some Kool-Aid and some cookies and stuff and bought some pens and some papers.
That’s when I met him, but I wasn’t to see him again until after that incidental play. They had him over there on court side in Baltimore City Jail. They subsequently railroaded him and found him guilty and gave him a life sentence, something like life and 30 years and put him in the penitentiary. So his mission at that time was to organize the brothers in penitentiary. And he took over leadership from Rob Folks. And you know, the rest is history, man. You know. You was there. I remember when you came through.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. You recruited-
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
You remember when you came through-
Mansa Musa:
You recruited me. You recruited me.
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
Huh?
Mansa Musa:
You recruited me.
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
Yes, I did.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, I remember you came-
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
I remember like it was yesterday, man.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Hey, Tahaka, tell-
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
Yeah. How old were you?
Mansa Musa:
I was 19 when I came in there. I came there two years after-
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
Yeah. Yeah, I think you-
Mansa Musa:
I came in there I think a year after you came in there. Or two years. Hey. Hey, Tahaka.
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
Yeah.
Mansa Musa:
Okay-
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
And so I was given… Yes, sir?
Mansa Musa:
Nah. Okay. Now, you’ve been locked up all this time, right? Talk about how you was at one point in time during your incarceration or your imprisonment or enslavement that you was allowed to go out and be on work release. Talk about that period where you was out working on the street.
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
Okay. Well, all right. Well, what happened last year most was I stayed in the penitentiary for like 14 and a half years. And during that time I basically grew up in… I was 19 years old when I went in. But the Black Panther Party always taught us to seek higher education. So I got my GED, I went to college, I got my Bachelor’s of Science degree in Sociology. And I went up for a transfer from maximum security trying to get to medium security.
But the warden said that as long as I was in the college program, he was going to keep me there until I graduated. So I wound up staying almost 15 years. I graduated from Coppin State University with a Bachelor’s of Science degree. And after 14 and a half years, they sent me to the Maryland House of Correction, which is medium security. So I progressed from maximum to medium. So that was in 1984. I went into pen in 1970, and 1984 they finally transferred me to the Maryland House of Correction medium security institution. And I went in there. And, you know, the House of Correction was “The Cut” as it was called at the time.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
They tore it down since then. They had a reputation in there too. That was a very tough prison. You know? But at this time, I mean, I grew up in the penitentiary, so everybody basically knew who I was. They knew me. And I went in there and I started programming in medium security, trying to get to minimum security.
And eventually they sent Eddie Conway [inaudible 00:08:33] me and Eddie were in there together. And we were running a self-help organization called South Incorporated. And after five years in the Maryland House of Correction under medium security, they transferred me to minimum security. And I was [inaudible 00:08:51]. So I went from maximum to medium to minimum. And so in 1984 to The Cut after, and then 1989 is when I went through pre-release system. Stayed in the pre-release system for four and a half years, from ’84 to ’89 when I made a work release status in pre-release.
And I was basically on the street, man. I was coming out every day going to work. I started working on the road through and cleaning trash and trimming trees and going all this stuff, you know, on the highway stuff. And finally they reduced my sentence. Well, they didn’t reduce my sentence, but they reduced my status from minimum security to pre-release. And I received work release, which is the highest status you can get in the pre-release system.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Right.
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
Yes, sir.
Mansa Musa:
All right now. Okay. So we talking… I just wanted the audience to get a nice overview of you so they can understand who you are as a person and more importantly who you are as a man. This show is primarily about Father’s Day. And I got your lovely daughter here, Tara, who is your wingman, so to speak.
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
Yes, sir.
Mansa Musa:
Every time I would tell Tara, I say… Every time I’m trying to do something for you or around you, I say, “I’ll call one of your family members, right?” And they’ll say, “Oh yeah, okay, yeah I got somebody.” And they’ll put Tara. And look, Tara might be-
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
[inaudible 00:10:33].
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Tara might be on… Look, Tara might be getting ready to work. Tara might be… Look, we was on the phone, and they say, “Tara can you come in?” She say, “When?” “This time.” And she’d be like… You could hear her calculating in her head. “Oh well, yeah, I’m going to take off…” Yeah. Because of her father. But, Tahaka, talk about how old was Tara when you left the street?
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
Hey, Mansa Musa, when I left the street, Tara was one. She was 1-year-old. She was 1-year-old, man. You know? The sweetest little girl, man. And it just broke my heart, man, to have to leave her and her mother and coming to the penitentiary. But you know I had no control over it. But she was 1. And-
Mansa Musa:
And look-
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
One thing I can tell you, man, my mother… You know my mother.
Mansa Musa:
Oh, I already know-
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
You met my mother before, right?
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Your mother was a soldier. Your mother was a soldier. Yeah.
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
Yes indeed.
Mansa Musa:
Hey-
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
So my mother would bring Tara every week to see me [inaudible 00:11:37]-
Mansa Musa:
That’s right. Yeah, yeah. And look, I remember when you used to talk about it when… I was down at Cut with y’all for a minute till I tried to escape, but I remember-
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
Yeah. I remember.
Mansa Musa:
Every time we was around each other, right? Because we comrade. We family for real. We be talking about each other. And I remember we used to always talk-
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
We family. We definitely family.
Mansa Musa:
I remember we used to always talk about Tara. Hey, Tahaka, you proud of Tara?
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
Oh man, you know I’m proud of my daughter, man. She’s beautiful. She grew up to be an outstanding young lady. She’s beautiful. Her morals are tight. She raised her family. She has two beautiful daughters and she raised them. And each of her daughters had four children. She helped to raise them. And the family is just beautiful. She held the family together. And she’s been by me, she’s been by my side the whole time. Like I said, my mother would bring her every week after church. She would bring her without fail to visit me. You know? And any time we had a function or a social or something at the prison, Tara was there.
And when she started having children, she brought her children. And when her children started having children, they brought them. So you’re talking like three generations. Tara, her children, and her grandchildren. All three generations were raised up coming through these prisons to see Pop-pop.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right. Hey, Tara-
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
We have a strong family, man.
Mansa Musa:
Hey, Tahaka, I got her right here. Look. She look like she’s getting ready to cry too. Look. Hey, Tara, talk about-
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
She better not cry.
Mansa Musa:
Okay.
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
She know we don’t do no crying.
Mansa Musa:
Talk about… Your father just said that your grandmother, which I knew… Matter of fact your grandmother was like… We called your grandmother the collective mother. Seriously. Because every time we got packages she would bring… Like, whoever couldn’t afford family ain’t afford no package, she would give packages. She would make sure Tahaka had more than enough stuff. And basically we always broke down and shared. But she was always in that space.
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
That’s right.
Mansa Musa:
As far as like… We called her the collective mother. Talk about that experience, your grandmother bring you over to see your father and all those years, what kind of impact did that have on you?
Tara Gaither:
I think that if it weren’t for my grandmother that I would not have the relationship and bond with my father that I had because she was bringing me to the penitentiary. I didn’t know where I was going. I just knew that I was going to see my father and I knew that… I mean, back then when you look at the penitentiary, it just looked to me like a big old castle.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, that’s right.
Tara Gaither:
So I thought that I was going to this big… I mean, I can remember sliding down the brass staircase when I was little. But if it wasn’t for my grandmother, I owe a whole lot to my grandmother for keeping me in contact and making sure that I knew who my father was and that I had a bond with him.
Mansa Musa:
Right. And then he also talked about… And that right there, if you pass that on, that became like a thing with you, with your children to make sure they knew who their grandfather was. Why was that important?
Tara Gaither:
It was just a natural thing that, to me, that this is my father and this is my children’s grandfather. So they ought to be just as tight with him as I am. And the same thing with my grandchildren. I brought my grandchildren when they were first born to see my father. You know? And so my grandchildren know who Pop-pop is. Even down to the youngest, the two-year-old, she knows who Pop-pop is.
Mansa Musa:
And Tara, Tahaka talked about how long he’d been locked up, and the fact that at one point in time he was actually going out on the street. When he was going out back and forth on the street, did y’all have contact?
Tara Gaither:
We were in contact. I actually was coming… I never stopped going to visit him. I was actually coming up to Jessup Pre-Release Unit to visit my dad. So yeah, I was seeing him. I don’t remember a time in my life that no matter where he was, even when he had been to Hagerstown that I didn’t see him. If I was old enough to drive, I knew how to get in the car and turn the key and get up the highway.
Audio:
You have 60 seconds remaining.
Mansa Musa:
And for the benefit of our audience-
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
You hear me?
Mansa Musa:
… Tahaka, you get ready. They’re getting ready to cut you off, right?
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
Yeah, they getting ready to cut me off, man.
Mansa Musa:
Okay.
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
But I just want to say, man, I want to thank y’all for these Father’s Day programs, man. It means a lot to me, as well all the other guys in here. They know about… I told them what was going on, man. Most of them love you and they respect you, bro. But Tara, God bless you. And you always-
Audio:
You have 30 seconds remaining.
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
We got a saying, “Every day is Mother’s Day, every day is Father’s Day.” You understand? We don’t just wait one time a year to celebrate.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right. That’s right.
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
All right, man.
Mansa Musa:
All right, comrade.
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
You all carry on, man. God bless you, man.
Mansa Musa:
All right, comrade. Yeah. And Tara, look-
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
All right. I love you, man. Told you I love you folks.
Mansa Musa:
All right. Love you too, comrade.
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
Tara, you be good. You be safe.
Tara Gaither:
I will.
Thomas “Tahaka” Gaither:
I’ll talk to you later, Tara.
Tara Gaither:
Okay.
Mansa Musa:
And Tara, like you say… Now he getting ready to go off. But let’s talk. Let’s talk about how your father, your impact your father had. And we know because he, even by his own admission, he already say how he feel about… You know. So that’s no question about how he view you and your growth and your maturation and coming into your womanhood.
Talk about what influenced, how he influenced that, the person you are today. Because remember, he say you was, what, one years old? So talk about them, that experience, the influence he has on you to be the woman that you are today. What type of influence did he have on you?
Tara Gaither:
A large impact basically because after a certain time my grandmother wasn’t taking me to see my father, but I still had a desire in me to have a relationship with him. So even as a teenager, as soon as I was able to get in by myself, I was there. And it was important. And it was a time in the middle when I was older and on the weekends I wanted to be with my friends or whatever, whatever. So I wasn’t always at my grandmother’s house. So that was at the point where it was really important because he never left me, because he continued to… I was getting them phone calls. And sometimes I can remember when my father was in The Cut, we would talk on the phone all day just chilling, sitting back-
Mansa Musa:
I remember. I remember.
Tara Gaither:
… on a summer day-
Mansa Musa:
I remember
Tara Gaither:
… you know, chilling, talking to my dad. And I have the kind of relationship with him where I can tell him anything and he can tell me anything. So it was important to be able to have that bond. It’s important to be able to have… Every child needs a father.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Tara Gaither:
And I needed my father. And I seen some stats where it said that children that grow up with their fathers incarcerated, it affects them more than if their parent were dead. And that’s some serious stuff right there. But it’s up to you what you want it to be.
Mansa Musa:
And that right there, that’s the part of this system that is designed to do that. It’s designed to create that mentality in the family, that if your loved one is… And on the plantation, talking about be dead or she dead, but the fact that by your own admission and the reality is that he said he never left you because, like he said on early, you heard him when he left, when he got locked up, it hurt him to have to leave you. And that right there drove him to say, “That no matter what, I’m going to make sure that my daughter know that I’m her father. I’ll make sure that my daughter know that… Treat me like your father. Look at me like I’m your father. Don’t look at me where I’m at. Look at me as your parent under these circumstances.”
And in terms of that right there, what do you tell other children of parents that are in incarcerated? What do you tell them that might be struggling with that? What do you tell them? Because you’re an example of what to do or how to maintain or how to process it by your example of that.
Tara Gaither:
The sad realization of being a person whose parent is incarcerated is that when you realize that it’s generational. As Black people, right now we’re striving for generational wealth. Okay? It’s this thing all about generational wealth, how to get generational wealth. But we don’t understand that incarceration is generational.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Tara Gaither:
I have a brother, my brother has a son, my brother has been incarcerated. And we just recently found out yesterday that my nephew may be going away for a long time. You know? It is important that people know that children need their parents regardless, no matter wherever they are, whatever they did, the parenthood is so needed. It’s so needed. Just remember that they say that out of every eight children, one of those children has an incarcerated parent. That’s a lot of people. That’s a lot of children.
And then you get to the road, are you going to go this way or are you going to go that way? A lot of that depends on what you’re getting from your parent that is incarcerated. A lot of it. So my father was feeding me, my father was feeding me, “What about your grades?” You know? It’s all about doing right. What are you up to? Keeping in contact with me. On some of them summer days when I could have been out in the street doing anything, I was on the phone talking to my dad.
Mansa Musa:
Right. And you know what? And that right there, what you just say, that’s the genesis right there. That is the line and the saying what the parent that’s incarcerated do with the children. How they [inaudible 00:22:57]. And I had two people coming here interview prior to you. And both of them… One was incarcerated, dad, he out. And other one was a woman much like yourself whose father was still locked up. But all of them had the same… Going back to your point, all of them, everybody had the same perspective. He was in touch with his children while he was locked up. He made sure that he had access to them by phone. The father or the young lady, much like yourself, they got the kind of relationship that… Y’all will be mirror images. If y’all run y’all stories by side by side, y’all be remember images in terms of how much the parent that’s incarcerated made sure that they stayed in touch with their children.
And this will give me… Talk about… Maybe you want to talk about it, why you think the system don’t encourage that. Why you think the prison system is so hell bent on, oh yeah, making you feel uncomfortable when you come to visit? Like, I’m going to make you… If you had to come to Hagerstown, okay, I’m going to make it where you come, but I’m going to make it where it be so uncomfortable when you coming to see… Like, you doing something wrong by seeing your family. Or I’m going to make it like, oh, you get there, then I’m going to say like, “Ooh, visiting hours is over.” You only been there five minutes. And, like, what do you mean visit, something happened? Why do you think the system is so hell bent on stopping that and not encouraging that?
Tara Gaither:
That’s a good question because I was in the computer and I was looking up stats and I was like, “I can’t believe they got all these stats.” They know how many children have incarcerated parents. They know out of the children that who had incarcerated parents, how many ended up incarcerated. They know the effects that having incarcerated parents has on a child. They have all of this information. But I couldn’t find anywhere where they did anything positive with it.
So I sat back and wondered to myself, well, maybe they wanted the information because they wanted to use it against us. I don’t see anybody doing anything with that information to help any children that have incarcerated parents, whole families. I was the only child for my mother. But you have families where men with multiple children that nobody’s doing anything for these kids. I have any idea. I’m going to tell you. I have been to just about every visiting room in the state of Maryland. And let me tell you, the officers need to have sensitivity training. They need to be trained not to… Because they have a way of looking down on you like you are lower than them. And a lot of things that you want to say to them, you can’t say because you’re not going to get your visit.
But it is amazing how they treat the families and the children. I had one of my grandkids with me. I took her to see my father and she had barrettes in her head. They made me take her barrettes out of her hair. Family Day. She told me I couldn’t take the bottle in. I could take the pamper. What I’m going to do with a baby? This was recently. The last Family Day they had up there. What am I going to do with an infant with no bottle? I’m like, “Come on, this is ridiculous. I’ve been coming up here since I was was this age. You’re not going to tell me she can’t have a bottle. She can have a bottle.” I mean, all my grandkids have been up there.
So it depends on the government. These people that are running these institutions, they need to do something about it because what they don’t realize is that the more communication and time that people have with their families kind of tones them down a little bit.
Mansa Musa:
It does. Yeah.
Tara Gaither:
Could have a lot of problems in those facilities. If you bring the parents closer to their children, they have a reason to have hope and a reason to want to come out and do better. But if you keep them separated and the baby’s mother doesn’t want to come out because she don’t want to go through this and she doesn’t want to go through that, it just makes the whole matter worse.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. And talk about this since we are doing this Father Day show. How did you process Father Day every Father’s Day? How did you process it, if you can recall?
Tara Gaither:
For most of my life, on every Father’s Day, I was on either the highway or going somewhere to see my dad. Most Father’s Day, it got to a point where the prison stopped letting you send cards or greetings cards. So now I’m at the point where it’s just like I can’t even send them my greetings card because-
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. They won’t allow it.
Tara Gaither:
… they don’t allow it.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, I know.
Tara Gaither:
But Father’s Day, to me, and Mother’s Day have always been pretty much the same. I spend Mother’s Day with my mother and I spend Father’s Day with my father.
Mansa Musa:
And that’s the other part of this narrative, because, like I said, I was locked up 48 years. And me and your father, like I said, that’s my comrade. He outlined that early. He recruited me when I was on [inaudible 00:28:30]. Both of us looked alike. Both of us was young, red, and big bushes. Right? So matter of fact, we look almost like twins.
Tara Gaither:
I’m sure.
Mansa Musa:
And he recruited me. And in terms of recognizing in that environment, how many parents, how many people have children that’s in that environment, how many children that don’t have that ability to see their parents. But we created Family Day. See, we created what they call function. We created family days and we created… One year we had… One time, you said like, we let adults in. We created one way to say like, okay, before we created what was known as Family Day, one organization would create for their program and say like, “We have children. A parent can come in and bring their children.”
So it always been, for us, and I’ll go on record and say this is all throughout the United States, it always been for us. Those of us that’s in constant, always have access to the community, always have access to our family, always have access to people, because we want to hold onto our humanity.
Tara Gaither:
Right.
Mansa Musa:
It’s them that’s trying to take our humanity.
Tara Gaither:
Yeah.
Mansa Musa:
It’s the system depriving us of our humanity. And for those of us that can’t process that and don’t see that, much like your father who can, 55 years, they start them out on parole, but yet he still got hope, yet he still stay… He’s the same person.
Tara Gaither:
Same person.
Mansa Musa:
You know, he’s still on the phone. He’s still talking. He’s still being the parent that he is being whoever he is in y’all family’s life being Pop-pop. You know? He’s still being there because he’s not giving up hope. But as we close out, what do you want our audience to know or viewers to know about your father and what we can do or what we should be doing to try to get him some relief?
Tara Gaither:
I don’t know if everybody heard it, but my father said that when he was incarcerated, he was 19 years old. I was a one-year-old. I am 55 years old. And I can’t think of anything that I did as a teenager when I was 19 years old that I deserve to be punished for right now.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. For 55 years. Yeah.
Tara Gaither:
For 55 years.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Come on.
Tara Gaither:
Because I’m the same person, but I’m not the same person.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Tara Gaither:
Because when I was 19 years old, I was a 19-year-old.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. That’s right, Tara.
Tara Gaither:
You know what I’m saying? I was doing what 19-year-olds do. And I wasn’t exactly thinking the way a 55-year-old woman thinks. I can’t understand that my father is 72 years old, has been incarcerated since he was 19 years old, has come out and worked on the street and never caused anybody any problems, hasn’t done anything to hurt anyone, educated himself. Because he didn’t have to do that. He didn’t have to go to school. You know? He could have have just sat there and could have figured out some trouble to make or something like that. You know what I’m saying?
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. That’s right.
Tara Gaither:
It’s a lot of things that we need to look at when we are holding people for so long. And it’s overincarceration, it’s overpunishment, and it hurts the community.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Tara Gaither:
Because my grandfather has sons out in the community. He has grandsons out in the community. And they’re having children. And he’s the patriarch since 19 years old. And he is the one person that could put his hand out and say, “Listen, you don’t want to do that.”
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Tara Gaither:
“You don’t want to do that. I’ve been there. Let me tell you what it’s like. Let me show you a better way.” But like I said, incarceration is now generational. So we need to save ourselves. Sometimes in order to save ourselves, we got to speak up and we got to say, “This is the right thing to do. This is the right thing to do.” Let that man come home, let him be with his family. Let him have contact with the young men that are in the family because maybe one of them might be going a little bit this way. Maybe he can guide him the right way.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Tara Gaither:
You know? And keep him out of trouble. But to me, a 19-year-old and a 72-year-old?
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, [inaudible 00:33:26].
Tara Gaither:
What is that?
Mansa Musa:
And we want to remind our audience that we’re talking about someone who was locked up at 19 years old. Science already came out and say that at the age of between 16, 19, 24, you don’t have the memory rate or the mental capacity to have an adult make an adult decision regardless of what they say the age is. And science came out and said this. And now the Supreme Court then came out and say that because of that you have to evaluate people in this age bracket differently.
But more importantly, we’re talking to Tara Gaither, Tahaka’s daughter, better known as… His real name is Thomas Gaither, but we call him Tahaka. We’re talking to her about her father. She was one years old when he got locked up. 55 years later… She’s 55. What we want our audience to understand about this particular episode is this is a remarkable individual. One, he was out on working on the street while he was locked up. They closed down the system that he was under because of something they did, not because of something he did.
Number two, he’s an accomplished musician. He can go anywhere and play with any band anywhere in the world without missing a note. He’s an accomplished musician. That’s number two. He graduated from Coppin. He got his master’s degree. I mean bachelor’s degree. But more importantly, he has served 55 years. What more do you want from this man? We ask that you look into this case. We ask that you research this case. And we ask that you come to your senses about what you would do if you was locked up 55 years for something that you did at the age of 19. And the suspect is whether he did it or not. But at the age of 19 when it happened, we ask that you continue to look in this case and continue to support Thomas Gaither.
Tara, thank you for coming and joining us today. We really appreciate you taking your time out there to give us some insight to your father and yourself.
Tara Gaither:
Well, thank you for having me. Yeah, any time that I can let people know what’s going on, I’m right there with it. So thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. And there you have it. The real news. Rattling The Bars. We ask that you continue to support Rattling The Bars because it’s only through Rattling The Bars you get this kind of information about Thomas Gaither, better known as Tahaka, or have his daughter come here and express the influence that he has on her and the generations, which she talked about generational incarceration. But he has been able to break that cycle in her family by being a positive influence in his child’s family. And he could also be a positive influence in other people’s family and be a mentor. So you only get this information from Rattling The Bars. And by the way, as far as the real news, guess what, we’re actually the real news.
The prison system keeps millions of families from celebrating Father’s Day together. For Alexia Pitter of Families Against Mandatory Minimums, separation from her father, Gasi Pitter, has been a lifelong reality. Kept from even embracing her father during prison visits as a child, Alexia’s struggle to build and maintain a relationship with Gasi has required taking on the entire prison system. After believing for many years her father would never be released, Alexia is now fighting for her father’s release. Rattling the Bars explores this story of a brave daughter’s love, and one family’s determination to resist.
Studio Production: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
Mansa Musa:
Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa.
Joining me today is Alexia Pinter, the daughter of an incarcerated, imprisoned, enslaved Black man. More importantly, he’s her father, and we’re doing a series on Father’s Day.
But more importantly, we are trying to highlight the impact that the prison industrial complex, the new form of plantation, has on families: and why this system that’s supposed to be designed around humanity ceased to apply humanity, or humane behavior, towards families. Welcome to Rattling the Bars, Alexia.
Alexia Pitter:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
Mansa Musa:
All right, tell our audience a little bit about yourself.
Alexia Pitter:
Absolutely.
Mansa Musa:
Yes.
Alexia Pitter:
So as you said, my name is Alexia Pitter. I work for an organization called FAMM, which is Family Against Mandatory Minimums.
I’m a senior associate there of Family Outreach and Storytelling. I tell a lot of stories from the formerly incarcerated perspective, but then also people who are still incarcerated. So I’m able to have that dialogue.
My loved one, my best friend in the world, is my father. He’s been incarcerated since I was three years old. I’m now 27, so I really grew up seeing my father in prison. I don’t really know him outside of being behind bars, and that was very hard for me.
I remember when I was around three, four years old, and I went to visit my dad for the first time. I wanted to just give him a hug. Like any child does, I’m just rushing and I’m like, “Daddy!”
The guards came over, the correctional officer, and said, “No, you’re not allowed to hug him. You’re not allowed to touch him. You need to sit right there.” They were just watching us the whole time in the visiting room.
I remember trying to understand why I was here with my dad.
Mansa Musa:
Right, right.
Alexia Pitter:
I’m three, four years old and I can’t hug him and I can’t touch him. And that’s what I need so much in that moment; I need that love.
After a while I was numb to it. If I was seeing my dad, the way I was able to process it was, “Well, this is just his home. This is where I see my dad. I’m not able to touch him. I’m not able to hug him. But this is his home, and this is just our new norm.”
Then when I was about 15, 16, I went to see my dad. And I looked through the window as he’s getting ready to go in the visiting room. He has handcuffs and foot cuffs on, and his head is down. And that truly changed my life and my perspective, because to me, my dad was my hero.
He’s the one who taught me how to heal. He’s the one who taught me about Marcus Garvey and Malcolm X and all the amazing work of the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Panther Movement. Everything that I really knew about my identity, where I came from, healing, mental health and things like that, came from him.
But in this moment he just seemed so small, and I just couldn’t understand why he was in chains. And to process that was so hard for me.
I remember asking my mom, “Why is Daddy in chains? He would never do anything wrong. Why do they have him confined in this way?”
And she was just, “This is the way it is, and this is just his lifestyle. And unfortunately, this is where we are.”
So that was the first time that I really acknowledged that this wasn’t just a separate home for my dad.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Alexia Pitter:
This was prison, and he couldn’t leave when he wanted to. I couldn’t see him when I wanted to. And that just opened more of a dialogue with us. Because for a long time, I didn’t ask my dad why he was in prison.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Alexia Pitter:
And I really believe that my fear was if I knew, it would be too scary that we just couldn’t continue to have our relationship.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Alexia Pitter:
And so as time progressed, one of my best friends; her name was Jess; she came to me and she said, “You know, your dad’s been in there for 20 years. I have some organizations. We can come together. Let’s try to get your dad out.”
I remember just looking at her, being so confused. I didn’t know what to say, because I never thought that that was possible.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Alexia Pitter:
To me, this was his existence, this was his home, this will always be his home, nothing else outside of that. I couldn’t really process that. So I was just like, “Sure, I guess. But I don’t even know where to start, what that looks like.”
After that, I decided to go the clemency route and I had different organizations working with me. And me and my dad had one of the most open, honest conversations that we ever had. I’m getting already a little emotional-
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, [inaudible 00:05:26]
Alexia Pitter:
… because what that looks like.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Alexia Pitter:
Yeah, thank you. What that looked like was me, for the first time, not having to survive, and me learning that mentality. Because when I was younger, I think what I realized is that by me saying that he couldn’t come home, that it wasn’t possible. That was my way of protecting myself from disappointment and not getting my hopes up.
So when my best friend brought up this idea of him coming home, we did have to have that honest conversation. Because for the first time in a long time, I didn’t have to be the strong child. But I was allowed to say, “Honestly, I want you to come home, Dad. I need you to come home.”
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Alexia Pitter:
“I need you to be at my graduation. I need you to help me to become an adult. I need your advice. I need you to physically be there.”
And that was the toughest thing that I’ve ever had to go through, because I had to be honest with myself. It’s almost like when you have that wall up and you just have to let that wall go.
Mansa Musa:
Let’s flesh that out. Because see, that right there is the part of the conversation that most of us don’t get when we talk about the impact that this prison industrial complex has on family, and the impact that it has on children of the parent, the person that’s incarcerated.
Because you just outlined that, and you outlined early, your father had done some amazing things and educate you and gave you a sense of knowledge that made you the woman you are today.
But then you went on and expressed that psychologically, you had positioned yourself to say, “Well, my dad is never coming home and I got to find comfort. I got to find some way to rationalize that, because I want my dad home. But I don’t want to say nothing because I don’t want to create a disappointment.”
Alexia Pitter:
Yeah.
Mansa Musa:
How did you ultimately come to the point where you was able to process that? And as we know now, you are moving forward in terms of organizing and doing the things that would ultimately result in him coming home? I know that to be a fact.
Alexia Pitter:
Thank you. Thank you. No, that’s a great question. I say this a lot, especially as a Black woman: we’re so used to taking care of everyone around us.
Mansa Musa:
Come on.
Alexia Pitter:
And I would say my mom led by example. My mom had me at 18. She was kicked out when she was pregnant. I lived in Jamaica for quite some time. I came back.
And with my mom, no matter how much she was struggling as a single mother, she always said, “When we see your dad, I need you to put on your best-dress clothes. He doesn’t need to know that we’re struggling. He doesn’t need to know that we feel him not being here. He needs to know that we’re okay. He has enough to deal with. He needs to know that we’re okay.”
And so following that example, at a young age, that’s what I knew when I came to see him, I wanted to laugh with him. I wanted to joke with him. I don’t want to tell him about the things that I’m going through. He has enough going on.
And so for me to get into that transition, like I said, when my best friend told me, “Yeah, we can do this. This is a possibility.” I would even go as far as her saying, “I had a dream that your dad will come home.”
Mansa Musa:
Oh, yeah, right.
Alexia Pitter:
She was doing some other work in the community. And she’s like, “I feel in my spirit that it is my job to help you with this. I’ve only spoke to your dad two times, but I feel like this is in my spirit that I have to help.”
And being able to go through this clemency process: one thing we did leading up to the clemency process is we meditated and we fasted for, I want to say 15 days leading up to clemency.
We meditated at the exact same time. And we did journal prompts of, “Okay, what would happen when he came home? How would you feel?”
And we were talking to each other over the phone about it. He was just very emotional because I think in his mind he kind of put away the idea of being home as well, or not wanting to tell me that it’s a possibility, because he doesn’t want to get my hopes up.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Alexia Pitter:
But I would say that was the first time that we were vulnerable with each other and allowed our deepest, darkest thoughts to come out.
And even to that extent, I want to say two days before his clemency, he told me on the phone, he said, “Look, I was trying to help someone. They were gang-affiliated and I was trying to be a mentor and I was trying to help them get them out of the gang. I’m trying to mentor them. And they died right in front of my cell, and there was nothing I can do.”
And he said, “Baby girl, I’m not okay. And I want you to know that I’m not okay.”
Mansa Musa:
[inaudible 00:10:41]
Alexia Pitter:
And I was able to say as his daughter, “I’m not okay.”
And I think that’s the thing that changed: is as much as he’s taught me so much, and as much as we’ve had these amazing conversations as a Black man and as a Black woman, for the first time there was a space where we were allowed to say that we were not okay.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Alexia Pitter:
This prison system did affect us, that we did feel broken down. He even went as far to say, he was reading this book by Ta-Nehisi Coates, Something Torn and New, that talked about re-remembering.
And he said, “I think about what my ancestors went through. It’s hard to process, because although I don’t know exactly what they went through, I know what it is to be chained. I know what it is to not have my freedom. I know what it is to feel so locked up in this body, and I can’t breathe, and I’m suffocating.”
So I think to answer your question, that was that breaking point. We needed to be vulnerable. Because in this life, we’re taught that you can’t be vulnerable, that you’re vulnerable when you have time for it. You work, and then one day maybe you’ll have time for that.
So I hope that answers your question.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, that answer my question. Yeah. And I want to flesh this out. 1), I told you I did 48 years in prison. The whole entire time I was locked up, this was my prayer. I could die on the other side of the fence, on the other side of the wall, but I refused to die in prison. I refused. This is what drove me. I refused to.
I don’t care if I went on the other side of prison and fell right out dead. As long as I didn’t fall out dead on the side there I was still held in captivity.
But the thing that I think that what you just outlined is how it’s hard for your father, or any individual in the prison industrial complex, on the plantation, to express any vulnerability. Because the system is designed to dehumanize you, demoralize you, and break you.
So the only thing that you have left George Jackson said in prison, let’s say, “The whole fight for them is to take our individuality. You take our individuality and you put us in a collective mentality, in a herd instinct. To everything we do, we do it in a herd instinct.”
So for you and this breakthrough between you and your father, to have this moment where; this is the part about the Father’s Day, and this is the part about the impact that the father have on the child and child on the father; to allow y’all to find a space where y’all could be vulnerable. And therefore allow his humanity to come out in a space where he could be human.
Because just like you saying, when y’all going on a visit, put your best face forward, wear your best dress. When he coming in there, he coming in like, “I’m putting my best face forward. I’m putting my best foot forward. I can’t let them know that somebody just died in front of my cell. I can’t let them know that they just put somebody in my cell and he got mental issues and it might be a problem. It might not be. I might have to do something to him or for fear of having something do to me.”
But what you was able to do; and this is the part I wanted our audience to recognize; is that when you talking about fathers and their children, the children and the parents, they make each other. They create that sense of humanity in that inhumane environment. Did you feel that?
Alexia Pitter:
Yes. Yes. I absolutely feel that. I do. That’s one of the things that I admire about our conversations now, especially as I get older, I feel more comfortable talking about how I feel. We push ourselves to be human, and allow ourselves to be human, and to laugh and to talk about things, but to feel.
And that’s something I realized too is I would say that when I recently spoke with him, I want to say about a week ago, I was on the phone with him. We have a book club; we are always talking about our books, and we read the same at the same time. But this time I heard something in his voice. And I said, “What’s wrong?”
He’s like, “It’s okay. We don’t have to talk about it, baby girl. We don’t have to talk about it.”
I’m like, “Mo, I want you to know that you’re able to talk to me. I may not have the answers. I may not know who to call. But I want you to know that if something is going on, you can talk to me the same way I want to talk to you.”
And he said, “Well, to be honest, I feel so guilty about not being in your life that I feel like for this 20 minutes on this phone call, the least I can do is hear what you’re going through and be there for you.”
And I said, “Well Daddy, you know we’re both doing that. If I’m doing that because I don’t want to stress you out, and you’re doing that because you don’t want to stress me out; well, now we’re just holding everything in. And the prison is winning in a sense.” And-
Mansa Musa:
And talk about this, Alexia.
Alexia Pitter:
Yeah.
Mansa Musa:
Not to cut you off, but talk about this here because I want these moments right here to be snapshots: to get people to understand the system, and the impact this system has on us in terms of our inability to be able to be in a space where we can have a normal conversation.
Talk about why you think this system is so caught up on, or so hell-bent on destroying … that right there, destroying any humanity that we have in us, mainly as it relates to why the system don’t have a mechanism where families can reunite?
Alexia Pitter:
Yeah.
Mansa Musa:
Why the system don’t have a mechanism where the father can have more access to the child in an environment where the child doesn’t feel like they have to suppress feelings and emotions, but can be able to express? Why you think this system is hell-bent on that?
Alexia Pitter:
That’s a great question. The best way I can answer that: I was interviewing a formerly incarcerated individual; I can’t think of the name at the moment. And I said, “Well, how did you know you were ready to be free?”
And he said, “Well, I had to be mentally free before I could ever be physically free.”
And the first thing I did, I was like, “I have to tell my dad this, because I found the key. I know what we have to do now. I know what the next step is.”
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Alexia Pitter:
I was very excited. And so with this prison system and the prison industrial complex, it’s not just what they say: “You do the crime, you do the time.”
Mansa Musa:
Come on.
Alexia Pitter:
It’s a psychological thing. They want you to feel small. They want you to not only be physically in chains, they want you to mentally be in chains. And what that looks like is not allowing certain books to come into prison. They don’t want you to learn too much. I tried to send my dad to Malcolm X books, and they turned that down really quick.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, right.
Alexia Pitter:
They don’t want that.
The next thing is, as a family, when you walk in, you’re being searched.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Alexia Pitter:
They’re touching you in places that’s uncomfortable. The correctional officers won’t even look at me. And especially because it’s a rural town, I’m spending three hours to see him. That’s about $100 in tolls, then paying for the vending machine.
And at this point, I’m mentally and psychologically thinking, “It is inconvenient to see my dad because I have to pay this much money. Because I have to be searched, right? Because I have to make this long trip.”
And him, they’re teaching him, “Well, you don’t deserve to be loved. You don’t deserve for someone to come to visit you. And if they do, it’s going to be on a two-hour timeframe. You don’t deserve to have these kind of discussions.”
They want him to psychologically continue to feel enslaved, to know that there is no other option. And they’re trying to teach him that he is defined by his mistakes.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Alexia Pitter:
And I think that’s another thing that’s very specific: is when you tell someone your one mistake is going to define you for the rest of your life, how is someone ever going to think that they’re more than that mistake?
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Alexia Pitter:
How are they even going to process what it is to heal, or even that healing is possible? How are they going to know that they can do better?
And it causes this issue, this strong … taking a minute to process.
Mansa Musa:
Come on.
Alexia Pitter:
It makes us engage in the self-hatred and the self-destruction.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. Yeah. This is hopelessness.
Alexia Pitter:
It’s hopelessness. And as long as you stay in that hopelessness, you’ll never come home. You’ll never see outside. You’ll never think outside of this mental slavery.
And that’s why I told my dad. I said, “Right now, I don’t know if Governor Pritzker is going to say you’re coming home. But what I do know is you have control over how mentally enslaved you are. So what we’re going to do, we’re going to read books, you’re going to learn about your ancestors.”
When we’re on the phone, I always say that on every 20-minute phone call for the last five minutes, I make sure I tell a joke to make my dad laugh.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, right. That’s right.
Alexia Pitter:
I have to get his spirits up, and end every conversation with, “I’m proud of you.” Because especially as Black men, they don’t hear that enough. And sometimes especially as Black women, we’re having our own things that we’re going through.
Black men are fighting against society, we’re fighting against society. And by the time we come together, we’re just all over the place. And sometimes you need someone to say, “I’m proud of you.”
Mansa Musa:
Yeah.
Alexia Pitter:
And to bring that a little further, my dad’s mother passed away when he was very young. And he told me, he said, “I feel like you’re a reincarnation of my mother. And the reason I said that is because my mother was the only one that I felt believed in me.
“And here you go. I wasn’t at the graduation. I’m not there to physically walk you down the aisle when you get married. But yet you still show up for me, yet you still answer the call. Yet you still say that you’re proud of me.”
And he says all the time, “The reason that I knew that I could have a second chance is because you believed in me.”
And that’s the thing with the prison system. They don’t want them to believe that there is another option. And it creates this deep dark hole that brings you back to the 1800s-
Mansa Musa:
Have mercy.
Alexia Pitter:
… that brings you back to the 1700s-
Mansa Musa:
Have mercy.
Alexia Pitter:
… because you do identify with your ancestors. Because you know what it is to be enslaved, and you know what it is for you not to see family. You know what it is for you not to be able to read.
And that type of connection between your ancestral self and your enslaved self in 2024, that can create self-destruction.
Mansa Musa:
[inaudible 00:22:22]
Alexia Pitter:
And that is what their purpose is.
Mansa Musa:
Let me ask you this here. Because I know our audience probably are asking the same question, and it might be rhetorical for me.
Why do you believe in your father, despite the fact that he’d been incarcerated, left when you was three. But as you express your belief in him and your love for him, why do you have this for him in the absence of?
Because that’s the thing that it’s a two-way street, the parent on one side and the child on the other. But now we talking from the child’s perspective, the young woman’s perspective. Why?
You got all this passion about your father, despite the circumstances he find himself under. Why?
I mean, people want to know. Somebody would probably be screaming right now, “This is just a hopeless situation. Why she got this much respect and revere him so much in the face of all this that she has to go through, to even spend a couple of hours with him? All she has to go through to have a 20-minute phone call, all she has to go through to not be able to say, ‘Oh, let me call my father and tell him I’m going to be ready to do X, Y, Z.’” Why?
Alexia Pitter:
That’s a great question. My father, and like I told you, I never wanted to know why he was in prison. But I started to ask questions.
He migrated to America, I want to say, when he was 16. And when he came here, he didn’t have a visa and he didn’t have any way of making money. Then he found out he had a child at 18.
In his mind, he felt like, “I needed to do whatever I could do to make sure my child did not go through what I went through in Jamaica in poverty.”
So he became a part of a gang-affiliated organization and things like that, and just talking to the wrong people, being in the wrong spaces. And he made a mistake.
As I’m getting older; I’m from three years old to five years old, to 10 to 20; I see how he says, “Well, I’m going to meditate today. I’m going to journal today. I really want to know what is healing. I want to learn what it is to forgive myself. I want to understand, who was that little boy growing up? Why did he need love in all the wrong places? Why did he make these actions?”
He was asking himself these questions. It wasn’t for a six-month period and then we never talked about it again. It happened throughout my entire childhood.
And so now I’m at home and especially growing up without a father, I’m already a statistic. “You’re not going to make it to college. You’re not going to be financially stable. You’re going to end up in prison just like your dad.” That’s what I heard my entire life.
I’m in school and I’m struggling and it’s hard to keep up. I’m being bullied in school. I’m being physically abused. I’m dealing with sexual abuse, and I’m trying to process all these things as a child. And I’m still trying to make it to college, and I’m still trying to be the best that I can be.
And I had this moment and this understanding: “If my dad can be in chains, can be in this small room to use the bathroom in front of someone, for someone to tell him when he has to eat; if he can go years without medical treatment, without speaking to a therapist and still make the effort every single day to be a better man, there’s nothing that I can’t do.”
That is what he taught me at a very young age. And his strength and his determination and his willingness to always make sure that he is mentally free, no matter what is against him.
I knew. I knew. And he has taught me that there’s nothing that I can’t do. So when I fight for him, it’s not just fighting for him, I’m fighting for me. He’s a part of me. We are together.
Mansa Musa:
Right.
Alexia Pitter:
And I have to believe that. Because I will be honest: I’ve spoken to formerly incarcerated individuals. They even said like, “Hey, can you call my daughter, explain to her my circumstances?” And I absolutely do, because it’s just so much that he doesn’t have access to, and I have access to so much.
And if 20-something years later he can still answer the phone and still give me advice, despite someone dying in front of his face and still showing up for me, there’s no reason why I wouldn’t show up for him.
Mansa Musa:
And you know what?
Alexia Pitter:
To me, that’s community.
Mansa Musa:
And you know what? That’s the part of this process and the part of this experience, the prison industrial complex, the plantation.
I remember reading after slaves was freed, what they did, they put want ads in the paper. Ads were saying, “Do you know where Mary Jane or Betty Jo is at?” To find their family members to link up with them to go build a community.
But you just talked about how that’s done in the spirit world. This is the spirit that you’re talking about that got you motivated to stay in that space. But more importantly, this is the same thing with your father.
If somebody was to ask you about your father, how would you describe your father?
Alexia Pitter:
Where do I even start? First, every time he sends me a letter, it says, “Negus Gasi.” His name is Gasi Pitter. And “Negus,” for a lot of people who don’t know, is “King.” That’s what it means.
And so even in his letter writing, he always says, “You better write ‘Queen.’ I’m not answering. I’m not opening the letter unless it says ‘Queen Alexia.’”
So even in that way, he set the tone of what it is to step in a room and believe that you are enough, and hold a crown on top. And that was the thing that he’s taught me so much that really describes him.
He never makes excuses. To this day, he still feels guilt about the crime that he made. And he still mourns the losses of the victims in that circumstance. And he always says, “It’s not the mistakes that you make. It’s how you recover from it.”
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Alexia Pitter:
“What do you do? What do you do after you’ve made that mistake?”
And so to describe him, he’s very spiritual, he’s very grounded. I’m very jealous sometimes, because I’m like, “How in this world of chaos are you so grounded?”
Even when I call him, I’ll say, “How are you doing?” And his answer never changes. He says, “I’m peaceful.” And he always says, “That doesn’t mean that my environment is peaceful.”
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Alexia Pitter:
“I have found peace within myself so that I can exist in this environment for now.”
And so hearing these things, especially as a woman and hearing the adversity, he’s resilient. He manifests beauty. He pours so much love into the world, even when he didn’t receive love.
He mentors individuals that maybe he never talked to. But he sits down with them and he walks them through what he’s went through in life, and why you have to make a difference.
And then he always connects it to the ancestors. “They’ve worked so hard so we can be where we are. So we have to do better. We have to pay our respects.”
He’s very spiritual and he loves to laugh and he makes jokes. And it never feels like he’s my father. It just feels like that’s my best friend.
Some daughters don’t want to tell their parents certain things. That’s not the case. Sometimes we tell each other too many things and it’s like, “Okay, slow down.” But no, he just represents light and love.
And he really taught me that, “Just because you didn’t feel loved at a point in your time doesn’t mean you need to give love. In fact, it is your job to give even more love to make up for the love that you didn’t receive.” And to me, that’s the best way to describe him.
Mansa Musa:
As we close out, if somebody seen your father and said, “King, describe Queen Alexia to me. How is she?” What do you think he would say?
Alexia Pitter:
I’ll be honest. He just told me this. He said, “I don’t think you truly realize the power that you have.”
He describes me as a warrior with a lot of battle scars, and he describes me as resilient. He believes that I give a lot of love to this world, although I may not have felt a lot of love.
He describes me as a leader and someone who’s always, always going to tell the truth and show up as my authentic self despite where I am. And a lover and a forgiver and a mentor. I love to mentor people, and I learned a lot from him.
But then also I would say a person of community. Community is very important to me. I always try to surround myself with community and always giving back.
So I think he would say that I’m the nuclear system of each community that I go in. I bring people back and I help ground others. And I think that’s the best way he would describe me.
Mansa Musa:
Let me ask you this. How can our audience and our viewers get in touch with you? We know that you’re doing the clemency, y’all working on the clemency. How people can get involved with your effort to get your father free? Or more importantly, any other work that you’re doing?
Alexia Pitter:
Thank you. That’s a great question. We have a petition right now on change.org. If you just type in Gasi Pitter, G-A-S-I P-I-T-T-E-R, you can sign the petition.
Also writing a letter to Governor Pritzker and saying that he does deserve to come home; he is a changed man, and that he will have support when he comes home. So sending those letters are important.
Then you can also email me at A-P-I-T-T-E-R @ famm.org, F-A-M-M.org, and share what you thought about today’s podcast and just what you think in general about second chances. Those are probably the best ways that you can support us in our journey.
And just always continue to fight for prison reform, and know that people are humans outside of the crimes that they’ve committed. He was 18 when he committed this crime. He’s now going to be, I think, 43 years old. That’s a large amount of time to make a difference.
So really just open up your hearts and minds, and turn away from what you’re hearing in the media because everyone is not bad. In fact, there’s a lot of people who come home and do so many things for the community.
And because they’ve been through that similar thing, they know exactly what to say to the young people coming up. And so just really thinking about that. That’s the best way you can support me and all the other people waiting to come home.
Mansa Musa:
There you have it. The Real News, Rattling the Bars. We just got finished talking to Queen Alexia.
And I would like to offer this point of view. If someone was to ask her father what did they think of her? He would say, “Here come the Queen, because she’s definitely representing her father.”
This is about Father’s Day. But more importantly, this is about humans, human beings. Alexis is a human being. Her father’s a human being. We got 2.5 million people that’s incarcerated on these plantations that are human beings. And we got a society and a system that says, “Despite your humanity, we’re going to do everything to take it away from you.”
But we have this storyteller today telling us, no, that’s not the case with her father. And that’s not the case with her.
Thank you Alexia-
Alexia Pitter:
Thank you.
Mansa Musa:
… for coming in and joining us today.
Alexia Pitter:
Thank you.
Mansa Musa:
And we ask that y’all continue to support The Real News and Rattling the Bars.
Rattling the Bars is here to give voice to people like Alexia and her father. Rattling the Bars is here to give voice to the voiceless and The Real News. Well, as we always say, because we are actually The Real News.
