The terror of police power is a recurring fact of American life, particularly in this country’s poorest communities and in communities of color. The power of officers comes not only from the strength of arms, but also from a legal system that is swift to protect its enforcers, yet slow to hold them to account. Where did this virtual immunity from prosecution come from? Has it always been this way? And if not, how has police power and impunity changed through the ages? Historian Joanna Schwartz joins The Chris Hedges report to discuss her new book, Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable.
Joanna Schwartz is a professor of law at UCLA, where she teaches civil procedure and courses on police accountability and public interest lawyering.
Studio Production: Adam Coley, Dwayne Gladden Post-Production: Adam Coley Audio Post-Production: Tommy Harron
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Chris Hedges:
The police in the United States through a series of Supreme Court decisions as well as policies enacted by state and city governments have become largely immune from prosecution even when they commit serious felonies such as murder. Police officers are criminally charged in less than 2% of fatal shootings and convicted in fewer than one third of those cases. When officers injure but do not kill, they are even less likely to be prosecuted. Police in America are virtually omnipotent, prosecuted in a handful of high profile cases that receive national attention, but otherwise free to engage in lawless behavior, especially in poor communities.
University of California law professor Joanna Schwartz, in her book, Shielded: How The Police Became Untouchable, details the myriad of ways the legal system has stripped the citizens of protections from police abuse. The wholesale blocking of civil rights litigation means the police are rarely held accountable for the crimes they commit. Blunting all efforts to enact meaningful police oversight, legal accountability and reform. Joining me to discuss her book, our failed justice system in police forces that function especially in poor communities as rogue militias, is Professor Joanna Schwartz. Let’s begin as you do in the book with the legal antecedents, especially Section 1983 became law in 1871. What was Section 1983? Why was it made law and how did it protect the citizenry and why and how has it been rolled back?
Joanna Schwartz:
Section 1983 was first passed by Congress in 1871 following the Civil War during reconstruction when newly freed slaves, former slaves, black Americans were being tortured and killed by the newly created Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist groups and local law enforcement and government was doing nothing to intervene if they were not themselves participating in the violence. And Congress looking at this evidence, decided that there needed to be a federal law allowing people to sue for violations of their civil constitutional rights in order to give those rights actual meaning. And so they enacted what is now known as Section 1983 for its place in the US code, but was at the time referred to as, the Ku Klux Klan Act. Very soon after Section 1983 became law, decisions by the Supreme Court and by Congress made Section 1983 and other reconstruction era acts lose much of their power.
And it was really not until 1961 when the Supreme Court first recognized that Section 1983 could be used to sue government officials, police officers in the case, which is called Monroe versus Pape, for the violations of their constitutional rights. So after 90 years in obscurity and disuse, Section 1983 was recognized by the Supreme Court as being this tool that could be used to sue for constitutional violations in 1961. But then after a sort of momentary heyday with the power and potential of 1983, the statute has lost progressively its power and it’s lost its power through Supreme Court decisions primarily that have cut away at the ability to sue in a variety of different ways that I outlined in the book that begin at the very initial stage of trying to find a lawyer through pleading a complaint with the court through proving a constitutional violation, qualified immunity, holding local governments responsible and beyond.
Chris Hedges:
So this 1961 decision opened as you write in the book, a kind of flood of lawsuits. I remember talking with the civil rights attorney, Lynne Stewart, and she said this was a kind of golden era in the judiciary where citizens really had the capacity to hold government agencies including police accountable, and that it was essentially that surge in suits that produced the backlash. And including in that backlash as you write in the book or accompanying that backlash was a kind of mythology. Can you explain how that worked?
Joanna Schwartz:
Absolutely, and I should say that the evidence definitely shows that the number of claims that were filed under Section 1983 increased dramatically after 1961 as well, you would expect because it was the first time the Supreme Court said you could sue under this statute. But the claims that were alleged, the story that was told about the effect of these claims really does take mythological proportions. The story goes that courthouses were overflowing or threatened to be overflowing with frivolous lawsuits, that these lawsuits were bankrupting or would bankrupt officers who were simply doing their job in good faith and that all of these lawsuits would discourage people from taking on the job of a police officer or from aggressively enforcing their duties as a police officer and without a robust police force that we as a society would descend into chaos. And truly you can see versions of that story or pieces of that story told by courts, by journalists and by politicians in the years after Monroe versus Pape was decided.
Chris Hedges:
One of the effects was that states passed laws, cities passed laws where they obliged local governments to pay damage awards and lawsuits against police officers. Can you explain that process and what effect it had on police misconduct and what happened when line items and the budgets for damages exceeded the amount set aside for damages?
Joanna Schwartz:
So in the seventies and eighties, particularly, I should say sixties, seventies and early eighties, states and localities across the country enacted what are called indemnification statutes. And indemnification is an idea that we see in private industry all of the time. If there’s a truck driver from a company, the truck hits you, you would want to sue not the driver themselves, but the company that hired them. The idea being that the driver probably isn’t going to have the resources to pay that settlement or judgment, and it’s really the work of the truck owner or the truck company that should be held responsible. This is the same idea that states and local governments had when they created these indemnification statutes which provide that when an officer is sued, they will be given a lawyer free of charge and that settlements and judgments against them will be paid by the local government or by their insurer instead of by the officer themselves.
And these indemnification provisions vary. There’s usually some exceptions to the kinds of things that the city agrees to cover and the coverage is limited to conduct taken in the course and scope of employment. Although when I have researched settlements and judgements and police misconduct suits across the country, what I found was, that virtually all of the money comes from the local governments and from insurers. I found in 81 jurisdictions, a six-year period, 99.98% of those dollars came from the local governments and their insurers. And notably it does not come from the police department’s funds. I did a follow-up study where I looked to see what financial impact these settlements and judgements had on the police departments. And what I found was often the money may come technically from the police department’s budget, but that money was already budgeted to the police department from the central budgeting process.
And when departments went over budget, when they spent more money than expected on lawsuits, the extra money came not from the police department. They weren’t required to cut back on overtime or equipment or anything like that. Instead, the money was taken from other parts of the central budget. And what I found when I looked into how this practice worked in Chicago was that the excess money ends up coming from portions of the budget that were earmarked to go to those least politically powerful people within the community. There was a city attorney for the city of Chicago who said when payouts went up in lawsuits, led paint testing went down. And so the very communities that are disproportionately the subjects of police surveillance, searches and violence are also the ones who have their budgets and the parts of the budgets earmarked toward them stripped away to satisfy settlements and judgements in cases alleging police misconduct against people within their very communities.
Chris Hedges:
And in cases like Chicago where you had Burge and that torture center, that sort of clandestine torture center, we’re talking about millions of dollars.
Joanna Schwartz:
Absolutely. I mean, in the last 10 years, I think Chicago paid half a billion dollars in settlements and judgements and they pay an extra many millions of dollars toward private attorneys that they use to defend their lawyers or excuse me, their officers in some of these cases. And as I describe in the book, there are many instances of cases where the Chicago police officers had extreme egregious allegations against them. Many millions of dollars were spent defending these cases only to lose at trial and have to spend many millions of dollars more. And the police department is playing with house money in these situations. They suffer no consequences of spending extreme amounts of money to fight these cases instead of what would be better for the community as a whole, which would be to resolve these cases, to satisfy the demands of people who have righteous claims and then to work to prevent these things from happening again in the future.
Chris Hedges:
Can you talk about the role of prosecutors and internal affairs divisions and both these two institutions you write in the book really serve as a way to protect police from legal accountability?
Joanna Schwartz:
Yeah, in the introduction I talk about the fact that if you are trying to seek justice following a right’s violation, there are really three paths. And I focus in the book on civil lawsuits, lawsuits seeking money damages or other kinds of forward-looking relief. And in part I focus on that because the other two paths which are criminal prosecution and internal affairs, investigations and discipline are so dysfunctional. As you mentioned previously, officers are very rarely criminally prosecuted, rare when they kill people, but far rarer when they use force or other kinds of misconduct that don’t result in death. And internal affairs investigations are also extremely difficult to have brought and successful. When the Department of Justice has looked at police department internal affairs investigations across the country, it’s found that police investigators don’t use the basic crime fighting tools that they would use if they were trying to solve criminal cases.
They don’t interrogate officers, who offer virtually verbatim statements to their fellow officers about what’s happened. They don’t interview all of the witnesses to the event. And for these and other reasons, officers are rarely disciplined or terminated. In addition, law enforcement unions have worked with passion to create law enforcement officers bills of rights that create a great deal of protection for those officers in the disciplinary process and the ability to appeal and arbitrate decisions that are against those officers. So even in the rare instances in which officers are disciplined or terminated, those decisions are often overruled or overturned through that arbitration process.
Chris Hedges:
Can you explain qualified immunity and how it works?
Joanna Schwartz:
Qualified immunity, which has been in the news a great deal, although it’s a term that remains elusive to many, perhaps because it is so nonsensical, it is a defense that was created by the Supreme Court in 1967. So six years after Monroe versus Pape was decided. And at the time it was described as a good faith defense for officers who had violated the Constitution but who had acted in good faith, thought that they were following the law. That standard for qualified immunity shifted dramatically in 1982 when the Supreme Court said, forget about officer’s subjective intent that will take too long to resolve.
The question is whether officers violated clearly established law. And the Supreme Court’s descriptions and definitions of clearly established law have gotten more and more constrained over the years fueled by these myths about the dangers of making it too easy to sue so that today officers are protected by qualified immunity from damages, awards in civil cases, unless there is a prior court decision holding unconstitutional, nearly identical facts, it’s not enough to find a prior case that offers a general principle like that an officer can’t use force against a suspect who is surrendered. You have to find a prior case in which an officer uses a similar type of force against a person who has surrendered and demonstrated that they’ve surrendered in a factually similar way.
Chris Hedges:
Public attorneys are provided for people convicted of a serious crime who can’t afford one, but they’re not provided for those whose constitutional rights have been violated by a police officer. How has this barrier benefited police?
Joanna Schwartz:
Well, it’s very difficult to bring a civil rights lawsuit without a lawyer. People do it and do it regularly, but when you think about trying to overcome a defense like qualified immunity, it’d be very hard to do that without the assistance of a lawyer. And the Supreme Court has made it more difficult for people whose rights have been violated to find lawyers. The Supreme Court has done this through a series of decisions that limit the ability of lawyers to get paid in these cases. Congress in 1976 created a statute which is called Section 1988, which gives prevailing plaintiffs the ability to get their reasonable attorney’s fees. And Congress wanted to enact the statute to make sure that there were enough financial incentives for lawyers to bring cases alleging constitutional violations, even in cases that didn’t have enormous damages awards from which a plaintiff’s attorney could take their cut.
But the Supreme Court has interpreted Section 1988 to allow that when settling a case, a defendant can offer and a plaintiff can agree to waive that entitlement to attorney’s fees and most cases that are successful settle, which ends up meaning that the sort of contingency fee relationship where lawyers are only expecting to get a portion of their client’s recovery is how lawyers are assessing the risks and benefits of taking these kinds of cases. And so cases involving people who have been killed by police, high profile cases that are expected to garner a significant amount in terms of a settlement are cases that are going to be… They’re people who are going to be able to find representation, but cases involving constitutional violations that don’t result in death or other high damages kinds of harms, even if they’re serious constitutional violations and people who are not going to be sympathetic to a judge or jury for any number of reasons are going to have a really difficult time finding lawyers.
And the problem is not only that those clients will not be able to find lawyers, but my research and interviews with lawyers suggests that the challenges of bringing these cases and the ways in which the Supreme Court has interpreted the ability of lawyers to get paid in these cases has led to lawyers deciding not to bring any civil rights cases at all and focus instead on criminal defense cases or personal injury cases, medical malpractice cases where they have an easier time making a living.
Chris Hedges:
Well, you write that the lawyers are reluctant to take cases and these are your words, unless the victims are, likable, credible, and articulate, and that criteria often cancels out the marginalized. Can you talk about that?
Joanna Schwartz:
Absolutely. So those quotes are from lawyers who are thinking about what clients they want to represent and they’re thinking, looking forward to how a judge who has tremendous discretion over these cases or ultimately a jury if the case gets to trial, is going to think about this client and what they deserve. And as a practical reality that may, it does for some lawyers, cut out anyone who has ever been involved in the criminal justice system before. This is not true for every jury across the country, but particularly in more conservative parts of the country.
Lawyers are concerned that jurors are not going to be sympathetic to a person who’s previously spent time in jail or prison. This may cut out people who have mental health challenges, people who are LGBTQ because of just the biases of jurors, black jurors, indigenous jurors, Latino jurors, excuse me, black plaintiffs, indigenous plaintiffs, Latino plaintiffs, homeless plaintiffs. These are all categories of people who are disproportionately the subject of police violence but may also be considered less articulate, sympathetic, et cetera to a jury. And so may have an especially difficult time finding a lawyer.
Chris Hedges:
Terry versus Ohio Supreme Court decision 1968, the court rejects the notion that stops and frisks are wholly outside the protections of the Fourth Amendment, which was ratified to ensure that Congress would not send government officials inside people’s homes without a warrant or probable cause. Then Chief Justice Earl Warren rejected the notion that police needed probable cause. This case was a significant blow as you write in the book to the Fourth Amendment and the protection against intrusive police behavior, Justice William O. Douglas, who was the loan dissent in Terry wrote, “There have been powerful hydraulic pressures throughout our history that bear heavily on the court to water down constitutional guarantees and give the police the upper hand. That hydraulic pressure has probably never been greater than it is today. Yet if the individual is no longer to be sovereign, if the police can pick him up whenever they do not like the cut of his jib, if they can seize and search him in their discretion, we enter a new regime.” Talk about that ruling and what it’s meant.
Joanna Schwartz:
So Terry versus Ohio was a case that assessed the power of police to stop and frisk. And that was something that even back at that time was happening all of the time. It’s certainly in the news today, but it was happening all of the time on the streets of our country. And there was an open debate about what police’s authority was to stop and frisk. It was the view of law enforcement officers that stopping and frisking was not covered, was not protected at all by the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment protects against unreasonable searches and seizures to the interpretation of law enforcement. This did not fall into either of those categories and to their opponents, to civil rights advocates like the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, stops and frisks should be treated as wholly within the Fourth Amendment, such that you, an officer would need probable cause before doing a stop or frisk.
So Justice Warren split the baby in some ways. He said that this kind of stop and frisk was covered by the Fourth Amendment, but it did not require the full protections of the Fourth Amendment. It did not require probable cause. Instead, it was only a reasonable suspicion that officers needed to have before they stopped and frisked people. And part of this justification, as Justice Douglass suggests in his dissent was related to the fact that the late sixties, it was a time of great upheaval, protests, assassinations, and the like. And so the argument was that police needed this kind of discretion and power in order to keep us all safe.
But the way in which Terry versus Ohio and the reasonable suspicion standard has come to be interpreted and understood, officers have virtually unlimited power to stop and frisk anyone under almost any circumstances. The police can have no reason or an unlawful reason, can stop someone because of their race. But so long as they can come up with a basis that is not unconstitutional after the fact, that is enough for this Supreme Court. And we’ve seen across the country millions and millions of people stopped and frisked, disproportionately people of color. And that power is really the product of the Supreme Court’s decision in Terry. And the subsequent interpretations increasingly expansive interpretations of what reasonable suspicion allows.
Chris Hedges:
You point out in the book that the killings of Michael Brown, Walter Scott, Eric Garner, all began as ordinary police interactions where police were within their constitutional authority to approach, stop and engage, but it culminated with police murder.
Joanna Schwartz:
Yeah. This is a point that has also been powerfully made by my UCLA colleague, Devon Carbado, who points out that, by making the power to stop and frisk as broad as it is, it ends up leading to interactions that can then ultimately culminate in the use of fatal force. Because if the officer exercises their extreme power to stop and frisk and then the person runs away, there is then the power and authority to pursue. Or if a person the appears to the view of the officer to have a weapon, this then authorizes the police under the Fourth Amendment to use fatal force against that person whether or not they actually did have a weapon in their custody. So by making it as easy as it is for officers to stop and frisk and have that initial action interaction, they also pave the way toward more violent and fatal uses of police power over those people.
Chris Hedges:
I teach in the New Jersey prison system through Rutgers and the college degree program, and most of my students are people of color, but very large black men say that because they’re large, and of course George Floyd, Eric Garner, were very big men, that in and of itself, just their size in the eyes of the police constitutes a threat and they have to carry themselves far more carefully on the street because they’re far more susceptible to Draconian forms of force simply because of their size.
Joanna Schwartz:
Yeah, that is not a surprise to me, unfortunately. And the way in which the Supreme Court has interpreted the phrase, unreasonable searches and seizures, is not from the perspective of the person being searched and seized and whether it was unreasonable for them to be subjected to that conduct when they had done nothing wrong, but instead on whether it is reasonable in the eye of the officer in the moment without the benefits of 2020 hindsight under all of the circumstances that appear to them whether force was appropriate under those circumstances. And it is a beyond unfortunate reality that assessment of threat will in some circumstances relate to the plaintiffs, the person, the victims’ race and size.
Chris Hedges:
The Supreme Court has legalized all court forms of warrantless searches. If you could explain how these warrantless searches are legally justified and what effect they’ve had on the public.
Joanna Schwartz:
Well initially, the warrant requirement has been viewed as sort of a hallmark, a key of the Fourth Amendment and of constitutional protections and the need for a warrant before going into a person’s home more than anything which has been described by conservative justices as sort of the pinnacle of constitutional protections. That warrant requirement has been eaten away in part by this reasonable suspicion standard that was first articulated in Terry that we were just speaking about related to stop and frisks reasonable suspicion has come to play an important role in weakening the standards as well for not knocking and announcing presence before entering the home with a warrant and also the allowance of many exceptions to the warrant requirement so that now this notion that you have to have a warrant is being swallowed by exceptions to that rule, all of which, or most of which are justified again by the same notion that you need to give officers maximum leeway in order to protect from crime or to keep people safe.
The whole warrant requirement, the goal of having a warrant, the intent behind it was to have a neutral third party, a judge or magistrate who could sit in and deliberate about whether to allow this most extreme deprivation of privacy and liberty. But that notion and those benefits have been outweighed time and time again by this claim of the need for quick action and shutting out the ability to have that neutral third party come in to assess the circumstances.
Chris Hedges:
Great. That was Professor Joanna Schwartz on her new book, Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable. I want to thank The Real News Network and its production team, Cameron Granadino, Adam Coley, Dwayne Gladden, David Hebden, and Kayla Rivara. You can find me at chrishedges.substack.com
Speaker 4:
And the Chris Hedges report gets some extra time now with a few minutes of bonus material with Chris and his guest.
Chris Hedges:
So I want to ask you about the role of trial judges in litigation. That’s again, something in your book I didn’t really understand until I read what you wrote.
Joanna Schwartz:
Sure. Trial judges have tremendous power and discretion throughout the litigation process and they have power over whether and how to interpret various legal doctrines that are more familiar to many, whether a constitutional right was violated, whether the officer is entitled to qualified immunity, for example. But they also have tremendous discretion and power to decide less obviously relevant things like whether a request for discovery should be granted whether the party who’s requesting the discovery needs to pay for the production of that discovery, whether experts can be allowed to testify, what the timeframe is for the jury or for a jury trial, who can sit as a juror. And at all of those stages, judges are given tremendous discretion within the rules. There is a lot of mays and cans, not wills and musts, in the legal rules. And those decisions, those very discretionary decisions are extremely difficult to appeal because on appeal courts are supposed to look to see whether the trial court abused their discretion and because their discretion is so vast, it’s very difficult to abuse.
What this ends up meaning is, how a judge sitting in your case sees the world and views the case that you have brought, it’s going to have a great impact on how strong that case ultimately is allowed to be. And I tell the story in the book of a family who were before a judge, very hostile to their case, who carved away in multiple ways at their ability to seek a remedy in the case and ultimately led them to settle on the eve of trial a claim for far less than what you might expect it would have been worth because the value of the case really had been lessened and lessened through the litigation of the claim.
Chris Hedges:
Well, you’re right. Not only do plaintiffs lose trials usually against police, but you also write that they’re often rewarded relatively little when they win. Why is that?
Joanna Schwartz:
Well, it’s difficult to know always why juries award what they award or don’t award what they don’t award because juries aren’t required to explain their rationale and their rulings. But the way in which federal juries, and it’s true in many states as well, but I’m focused here on the federal system, the way that they select jury pools and jurors ends up weeding out a lot of people who would be sympathetic or more likely to be sympathetic to plaintiffs and civil rights cases. Anyone with a felony cannot serve as a federal juror. Juries are limited to people who are registered voters. In order to receive a jury questionnaire, you have to have stable housing. In order to fill the questionnaire out and return it and appear when you are called, you likely need to have the time to do all of those things, which may be more difficult with unstable employment.
And when there has been studies looking at jury pools and how they compare to the community, there is upwards of 30, 40% of black community members, Latino community members who are not allowed to serve as jurors in those cases. And then once you actually are in the jury pool, then the lawyer or judge can ask you a question about whether you’ve ever had a negative experience with a police officer and whether you can remain neutral despite those interactions. So at each of those stages, jurors who might be more likely to see the world from the perspective of the plaintiffs and civil rights cases are weeded out.
Chris Hedges:
Well, I live in Princeton and I’ve done jury duty in Trenton, very poor city, and it’s filled with white suburban people, cherry hill in the area, essentially rendering judgment on poor black people they’ve already largely demonized to begin with.
Joanna Schwartz:
And the goal of a jury is to have the opportunity to have your case heard before your peers, before your community. And clearly our system is not doing a good job of that.
Chris Hedges:
Well, of course most of them have to plea out anyway. They’re coerced to plea out. I think less than 94% don’t get a jury trial.
Joanna Schwartz:
This is a separate and important question, but the ABA has just done a report about this and about the damaging effects of really coerced plea bargaining, which I completely agree is a huge problem that we have.
Chris Hedges:
I just want to close your last chapter as a better way. So let’s look at what you propose to address these injustices.
Joanna Schwartz:
So I do offer a lot of different suggestions. In the last chapter of the book, they’re mainly focused on what you can think of as backend accountability, sort of what to do when police have violated people’s rights, how to make that aspect of the system better, and I should say there are a lot of important things that have been done or are being considered also at the front end of the system, ways to make it less likely that police ever come into contact with the people whose rights they ultimately violate. So cities across the country are considering ending low level traffic stops, considering getting trained mental health professionals involved to respond to people in mental health crisis and limitations on things like no knock warrants and choke holds, and all of those kinds of interactions or limitations along with more investment in other aspects of our social support system, are really important and need to be pursued.
My focus on the book and on the last chapter is really on that backend accountability. And there I think that some of the most promising work is being done by state and local governments. I don’t hold much hope in the Supreme Court or Congress taking the kind of action that we need, but there are state legislatures that are stepping up. Colorado in the weeks after George Floyd was murdered, passed a comprehensive police reform bill. Among other things, it created a state law right to sue for constitutional violations and prohibited the use of qualified immunity as a defense. This is a kind of approach that New Mexico and New York City have also adopted and that other states across the country are considering. There’s also a lot that can be done at the local level. Police departments receive a quarter to a third of many local government’s budgets, and I think more could be demanded of those police departments in exchange.
I think that police departments could be required to gather and analyze information from those lawsuits brought against them with an eye toward preventing similar events from happening in the future. I also think that the money to satisfy settlements and judgments in these cases should be taken from police departments’ budgets. They should have an incentive to reduce these costs and taking the funds out of their budgets would be one way to do that. There’s really work that can be done at every stage of government and even individuals reading the book or listening to this conversation have things that they could do, advocating for their state and local legislatures to take these actions and serving themselves as jurors, for example. I mean, this is a place where a lot of jurors have been weeded out of the pool for reasons that we’ve just described. So if you’re called to serve as a juror, don’t avoid it.
Chris Hedges:
Great. That was Professor Joanna Schwartz on her new book, Shielded.
Activists called the arrests an escalation in the state’s attempt to crush the Stop Cop City movement, with participants being hit with increasingly harsh charges.
“This is a major escalation — they’re arresting those who defend the arrested,” wrote Atlanta organizer Micah Herskind. “The implications of these arrests is that not only can you not protest, but you cannot defend those who are arrested for protesting. There is no first amendment in Atlanta.”
In a statement, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) spoke as though the organizers and other anti-Cop City activists were already found guilty of their charges from the GBI. He said that he was “proud” to have arrested the “criminals” who he says “facilitated and encouraged domestic terrorism,” referring to terrorism charges against Cop City protesters.
The city of Atlanta is pursuing a $90 million plan backed by both Republicans like Kemp and Democratic Mayor Andre Dickensto build an 85-acre police militarization compound in a forest in the area. If built, Cop City would be the nation’s largest police training compound, and activists say that it would only worsen brutality by local police, as evidenced by the violent response to nonviolent protesters — all while razing a forest to do so.
The Twitter account for the Defend the Atlanta Forest/Stop Cop City movement, pointed out that the Atlanta Solidarity Fund has aided in lawsuits against the Atlanta Police Department over its arrests of a journalist and protesters in the movement. “This is retaliatory,” the group wrote.
BREAKING: Police in the US state of Georgia have arrested three people for the supposed "crime" of raising bail funds to get peaceful "Cop City" protestors out of jail prior to trial.
Activists have also pointed out that the GBI’s statement about the arrest, as well as Kemp’s, seem to suggest that the state is preparing to use Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) charges against the bail fund, which the Atlanta Solidarity Fund has been predicting for months.
The organizers have said that the state appears to be creating a “flimsy narrative” that the group is a criminal organization. So far, over 40 activists have been charged with domestic terrorism for protesting the compound.
The Atlanta Solidarity Fund has been crucial in the fight against Cop City, helping to provide support for protesters hit with bail amounts that have sometimes exceeded $300,000, according to one of the arrested organizers.
“This is targeting of organizers and movements by the police and the state,” said activist Kamau Franklin, with Community Movement Builders, in a statement. “Bail funds have been a part of organizing the Civil Rights movement and labor movement. We will continue to fight back against cop city and the political arrest of our friends and comrades.”
Activists have long maintained that the charges lobbed onto anti-Cop City activists are bogus and that law enforcement are creating false narratives in order to justify the arrests.
Backing up activists’ argument is the fact that police have already been caught lying about one of the most crucial and inhumane actions taken against protesters so far: the killing of Manuel Paez Terán, whose chosen name was Tortuguita, in January. Though police claimed that Tortuguita shot first, a DeKalb County autopsy found that there was no gunpowder residue on Tortuguita’s hands when police shot them 57 times, killing them.
While the underlying logic of the cash bail system in the US may sound convincing on paper, in practice it has become a means of denying justice to, and destroying the lives of, people who have not even been convicted of a crime. “The US Constitution prohibits ‘excessive bail’” The Bail Project notes on their website. “Excessive bail forces people to stay in jail—even though they’ve not been convicted of anything. Unfortunately, today judges routinely set bail amounts that exceed what most people can afford. The result? Jails are full of people waiting for trial. They are presumed innocent on paper, but in practice, they are being held for weeks, months, and sometimes years as they wait for trial.” David Gaspar, CEO of The Bail Project, joins Mansa Musa on Rattling the Bars to talk about how cash bail creates a two-tier system of justice that punishes people for the “crime” of being poor—and what we can do about it.
David Gaspar is the Chief Executive Officer of The Bail Project, a nonprofit organization that provides free bail assistance to those in need and advocates for better, more humane pretrial policies. A formerly incarcerated individual directly affected by the cash bail system, Mr. Gaspar earned his GED and bachelor’s degree and studied law while in prison, won his appeal, and was released 11 years early.
Studio Production: David Hebden Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
Mansa Musa: Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m Mansa Musa. In this country, he’s innocent or she’s innocent until proven guilty. In this society and our judicial system, this right very rarely gets acknowledged. Mainly when you get arrested and you can’t afford to get out because of excessive bail. An excessive bail might be in the form of the person’s inability to pay the bail. The bail might not be excessive for Donald Trump, the bail might not be excessive for Bernie Madoff, but the bail for the average person would be excessive. Here to talk about cash bail and all things relative to bail reform is David Gaspar of The Bail Project. Welcome, David.
David Gaspar: All right. Thank you for having me.
Mansa Musa: Tell our audience a little bit about yourself.
David Gaspar: I’m currently the CEO of The Bail Project. It’s a national not-for-profit that pays the cash bail on behalf of individuals in a position of need. I am somebody who has been system-impacted. At the age of 22 years old, I got sentenced to 21 years in prison. In large part, I received that sentence as a plea bargain, not understanding what my rights were, not being able to afford bail, and feeling the pressures of the system weighing down on myself as well as my family.
I ended up going to prison and getting my education. I wrote and filed my own appeal and ended up giving the state back 11 years of the 21-year sentence they gave me. But what was most surprising and hurtful to me was that when I went back for resentencing, my lawyer at that time said I had already done five years more than I should have ever done. And when I think about that and about the impact bail had on my life, and my inability to advocate for my innocence or a just sentence, it empowered me and put a fire inside of me that made me want to be part of this work now.
Mansa Musa: Well, tell us about The Bail Project. Give us an overview of what The Bail Project is and how it operates before we go into some of the aspects of cash bail.
David Gaspar: Yeah. The starting point is somebody finding themselves in the situation of needing assistance with bail. So this is somebody who is sitting in county jail and has not yet been convicted of anything. The only thing preventing them from actually having the freedom of being reunited with their family, as well as their ability to continue living their life, is the fact that they don’t have enough money in their pocket or enough money in their bank account.
And so a loved one on their behalf – Could be a wife, partner, could be a child – Will reach out to us and they’ll say, hey, we have a loved one that is currently sitting in jail and could require your help. And then we’ll reach out to the individual. We’ll schedule what we call an interview, but it’s our opportunity to talk to them directly. And if we feel like we have the opportunity and the ability to be able to support them post release, then we’ll go ahead and post their bond and then support them and return them to court successfully.
Mansa Musa: I opened up earlier talking about how in this country, everybody has a right to bail and to not be given an excessive bail. Talk about how this cash bail draconian system got to where it’s at right now in terms of creating a roadblock for people being able to get out for no reason other than not having the ability to pay 10%. I was in the county jail, and I recall a guy came in there, and he had a $1,000 bail, and he couldn’t pay the 10%. So what he did was wound up staying in the detention center for a year, and when he went back, the judge gave him time served. Talk about that.
David Gaspar: So when we’re talking about bail, it’s important to ground that. This is what we see in the Constitution of the US. The protection against excessive bail is the language, but we also have the right to due process, the right to be able to face our accusers, and the right to a speedy trial. And all of these rights, these principles that we stand on as a nation, they look and sound great on paper. It’s when we get to practice that we see this breakdown and what we see on TV also misinforms the public aspect. ‘Cause on TV it’s more aligned with what we see on paper. It’s a script for a narrative for a television show versus the reality that we live in.
And so what The Bail Project’s work is, is first proving that money is the actual driver that brings people back to court. And we’ve been able to do that successfully. 92% of the people that we bail out return to court. So they’re coming back, they don’t have any money in the game, they have no personal interest other than wanting to put this to rest, put closure to it, and be able to move forward in life. And there was an article that came out last year that said more than half of our American population doesn’t even have $500 in their bank account for an emergency. So when you stop and think about how they don’t even have $500 for an emergency, now you’re going to give them a $10,000 bond. You’re going to give them a $15,000 bond. Even if it was a $500 bond, what you’re doing is depleting that household of any means that they have to respond to an emergency.
But that’s for the bond itself. What about the days that they lost at work, what about the potential of them losing their job? What about the potential of them losing their children, their housing, and the ability to make their next car payment? When you hold somebody in jail each and every passing day, you are harming that individual and the family unit they’re part of. And so when we talk about the harms, when we talk about the need that’s there, protecting ourselves against excessive bail is to keep our family units intact, to keep our communities whole, and to allow our actual nation to succeed. When we start to tear that apart, what ends up happening is we cannibalize our communities, those who are the backbone, the Constitution, the preamble, “We the People –”
Well, which people are we talking about? Those with money that benefit from these systems or those without that are harmed by them? And so at the end of the day what we’re trying to do is level that playing field. We’re trying to make money not be the issue that’s standing between somebody and their freedom and allowing them to go home, keep their life as intact as possible, and support them with court reminders and transportation assistance so that they can successfully return to court and put closure to that bad moment of their life.
Mansa Musa: And you made a good observation earlier about the assumption of innocence, and then inherent in that right is the presumption that you have a right to a speedy trial. You have a right to confront your accuser. Now, if all things are perfect – And we know in Law and Order all things are perfect on TV – We know on every TV show where it’s the law and some kind of disorder, then we know that it’s a perfect scenario. But in the real world, we know it’s not. And the fact that a person has a right to a speedy trial when they’re first arrested, they’re offered this right.
Okay, I want a speedy trial. Okay, now you’re not going to give me a bond. Okay, you’re not going to give me a bond and you’re not going to give me a speedy trial. And then what you’re going to do is you’re going to give me a public defender ’cause I can’t afford to get a bond, I can’t afford an attorney. You give me a public defender and now my speedy trial is getting waived because it’s being postponed because they can’t find my accuser. Or they’re playing the waiting game until they get me to a point where I can’t get bail, I can’t get a speedy trial. The only thing I can get is the offer they put on the table. And that’s the plea bargain. And this is premeditated on the part of the state?
David Gaspar: I personally can’t go as far as to say that’s premeditated. What I can say is that we have a system that has been operating like this for decades. So it’s not unknown to people. It’s not one of those things where, wow, I wish I would’ve known that so I could have done something about it. We know this is how it works, we know this is how it moves. And going to the rights you were naming: being able to stand in a courtroom for your bail hearing and have an opportunity to make your case isn’t even afforded to everybody upon incarceration.
You walk in there and sometimes it’s already predetermined and you’re hearing the outcome for the first time. And what we want to do as The Bail Project is create a bail hearing where the defense has an opportunity to put forth their case, the state has the opportunity to put forth its case and there is a weighed decision point that the judge makes on record that can be evaluated. That’s what we all believe is happening anyway, so why are we not moving in that direction? But to get back to your question, if we know it’s not working for the people and we understand that there’s significant harm that’s being caused by it, there is a valid question that should be asked, and that’s why do we allow it to persist?
Mansa Musa: That’s right, that’s right. And, let’s flesh that out about that process, ’cause what you said, that’s the law. This is not a theory, this is supposed to be what takes place. The purpose of a bail hearing is to determine whether or not the person should be released on bail. Now, inherent in that concept – And you can weigh in on this when you want – Inherent in that concept is, the state put on evidence and information as to why bail should not be granted. That’s when there’s no bail. Or, why an excessive bail should be granted or why the state is not opposing being released on recon. The defendant is allowed to present information as to, one, why they’re a good candidate to be released on a low bail, and two, the damage that’s going to be done if they remain in this environment. All of these factors are supposed to be taken into account, am I correct?
David Gaspar: Yes. Yeah, you are.
Mansa Musa: Then the question becomes, why is this going on? And David, I wanted you to flesh this out because we’re not talking about, when we say over 2,000 people in the detention center in Cook County in Chicago, we’re not talking about 2,000 people that have a capital offense. We’re not talking about 2,000 people that are a flight risk. We’re not talking about 2,000 people that are recidivated. We’re talking about people that got caught in a situation that ultimately might result in their innocence, might result in exoneration. But in between then and there, they’re not given the opportunity to get the courts, going back to what you say, being back inside. Why is this, why are we allowing it to exist?
David Gaspar: Yeah, it’s a great question. I’ll try to unpack that a little bit, but I’ll go back to your point. We have over half a million people in our jails across the nation, and more than half of them are there without a conviction. So they’re there for the reasons that you said; they simply can’t afford the money. But what’s important for people to understand as well is that those three areas: being held without bond, being released with bond, and being released without bond, are the three options that a judge has in front of them. But two of them are release, so even though the bond is the triggering factor, the judge has determined that this person is safe to go back into society; this person is, to what they have in front of them, not going to cause any harm. That’s the judge’s decision that they’ve made.
Now, when we talk about the money, why does money need to be the factor when the money disproportionately impacts those within a poverty level? We know that people of color are the most impacted by these decisions, so why do we allow that persistence in that way? And a lot of it goes back to what is easy. When we think about human nature, change is difficult for people. So if we’ve already got a process in place, unless we find an easier way to get people to engage, they’re going to stand their ground on where they are. But there’s something else that we already know: bonds, and bail in general, are about money.
And so we have to ask ourselves, who’s benefiting, who’s profiting at the end of the day? And we can say there’s a whole magnitude or multitude of individuals that benefit from this. But what cannot be lost at any given point in time is that we’re not talking about a few million dollars here and there. We’re talking multibillion-dollar profits being made from keeping people incarcerated pretrial. Once again, people that have not been convicted of anything, people that the judge has determined that, if they’ve got the money, they’re perfectly fine to go back into society.
So we’re not talking about releasing dangerous people. The judge has it within their discretion, if they deem somebody to be dangerous, a threat to the community, they can hold them without bail. They can keep them. The decision point is why is the money still a factor if you’ve already determined this person is eligible for release as long as they’ve got the right amount of money in their pocket? Now we have to ask, well who’s benefiting from this? Who’s potentially profiting from that decision?
Mansa Musa: And on that point, as we wrap up, we know that the prison-industrial complex, mass incarceration, which is a new form of slavery, is profitable. So all hands are on deck when it comes to fueling it, we know the county jails have the fuel. In the few minutes that we’ve got left, let’s talk about bail reform. Where are we in terms of our national movement for bail reform? ‘Cause I’ve been in some spaces where they have made some astronomical progress in certain states, in certain cities. Where are we in terms of having a national movement for bail reform? Because as you said, the effect that it has is people lose their jobs, people lose their houses, people lose their medical, people lose their lives. So where are we in terms of bail reform?
David Gaspar: Yeah, great question. First I’ll start with, you mentioned the prison-industrial complex. Pretrial jail populations being where they are and the impact you named earlier, how people had taken plea bargains to put an end to it, to be able to move forward, is one of the leading factors to the prison population as we see it today. So it’s one of the leading drivers. If we could fix that on the front end, we wouldn’t see all this on the back end. With that said, where’s bail reform?
During these more recent election cycles, we saw the phrase “bail reform” being weaponized. And it confused people as to, what does that mean? What is bail reform and how does that impact me? And we saw them make a close association to the violence, all of the rise in violence that’s happening throughout our nation. And there’s no empirical evidence to say that there is a correlation between bail reform and not. As you said, there are few places that have put forth any meaningful bail reform. But we see the violence that people are pointing to happening in areas where bail reform has not even been part of the conversation, part of the change that could have even potentially contributed to that. So there’s a lot of work that needs to be done to dispel the misinformation that was spread during that period.
Now, what is bail reform and where are we today? Bail reform is about answering the question, is it necessary? Does it serve a purpose in our society today? And we’ve been able to prove that it has no place. Money is not what’s bringing people back to court. Money is not what’s preventing people from being a flight risk. What money’s doing is keeping people incarcerated unnecessarily and causing additional harm to their life. That, we have been able to prove. What taking the umbrella of bail reform has also done is stopped us from talking about specific issues that have led to our jail populations growing: mental health and substance mistreatment. These are things that have been diagnosed as actual medical conditions.
Why are we treating them with a cell? Why are we locking people in a concrete box and telling them their mental health needs to get better on its own for them to be successful, instead of giving them medical attention? Why are we saying that locking you in this box, and the abstinence, or us keeping you away from whatever your addiction is, is going to make you better? Let’s treat those the way that they need to be treated. And first and foremost, let’s treat them with respect by allowing them space and conversation and not bunching them underneath the bail reform umbrella. Then we could talk about homelessness, poverty. These are conditions that people live with. These aren’t choices. Somebody didn’t wake up this morning and say, I feel like I’m going to be broke today. Let’s look at what their opportunities are and how we can support them in being successful in landing, not a job, but a meaningful job that’s going to uplift them and their family unit.
Let’s take somebody who’s homeless and figure out how we get them the help they need so they’re no longer on the streets and in need of assistance. And then once again, let’s give those individuals that have mental health and substance abuse challenges the medical attention they deserve. Then we can start to talk about, well hold up, we’ve already released half the jail population anyways by addressing the underlying causes that led somebody to that potential interaction with law enforcement. And if we can even solve those, we can have a much more honest conversation about what bail reform means.
Mansa Musa: Thank you, man. Look, there you have it, The Real News. We are criminalizing poverty. It’s poverty that’s being criminalized and not criminal activity as we know it. And we ask that our listeners and our viewers take note of this. We’re not talking about bail reform – We’re talking about reforming a society that penalizes and criminalizes poverty. And if they change the poverty paradigm, then we won’t have to be having a conversation about the money ’cause we already know it’s not the money that’s the cause of people not coming back to court. It’s not the money that causes people to remain in prison; it’s poverty and poverty alone. Thank you, David. We appreciate you coming on. How can we get in touch with you? How can our viewers and listeners get in touch with you?
David Gaspar: So you can go to bailproject.org. That is our website, and you can reach out to us today.
Mansa Musa: All right. And we remind our listeners and our viewers to continue to support Rattling the Bars and The Real News. You only get this kind of information from Rattling the Bars on The Real News. You’re not going to get a David on NBC or CBS or Fox News. You’re not going to get a David talking about poverty and how poverty is being used, is being criminalized. You’re not going to get this anywhere but here. And we ask that you continue to support this network and continue to support Rattling the Bars. Thank you very much, David.
When West Virginia resident Caleb Dial found himself in handcuffs in the back of a police car in August 2021, his mind focused on a single question: “What had I done wrong?”
“If I could use one word that did an inkling of justice as to how it made me feel, I would choose the word ‘surreal,’” Dial told The Real News. Just minutes before his arrest, Dial had actually called police himself after a dispute with his father became heated. But when an officer from the small town of Milton arrived, the first thing he did was ask Dial to turn around so he could place him in handcuffs.
Dial calmly complied. However, the longer he sat in the back of the squad car, the more his initial complacency turned to quiet panic. The officer had explained the cuffs were only for his safety. If that were true, why was he now sitting in the car like a suspect? What crime had he committed? Again, what had he done wrong?
“The string of events that had occurred on that one ‘fateful’ evening left me so bewildered [and] wondering how I went from calling them for non-emergency assistance to sitting in jail with a battered face, looking at upwards of nine years in prison,” he said. That query was soon answered in a series of charges that stunned him.
Milton police officer Daniel Higgenbotham drove Dial to the station. There he was told he had assaulted Higgenbotham, been disorderly, and tried to escape. The officer wrote in the statement of probable cause that Dial was aggressive and protesting loudly. He had allegedly cursed at the officer and acted “agitated” while Higgenbotham struggled to force him into the car.
It was a narrative Dial knew to be false. That arrest was the start of a cascading series of events that would turn into a three-year ordeal for the 29-year-old occasional musician, propelling him into a fight to clear his name, and—more importantly—a struggle to heal from the wounds inflicted by what his lawsuit alleges was a false arrest. “That evening led to a downward spiral so fast that not even F5-rated tornadoes could spiral that fast,” he said.
Dial’s story is also a story of perseverance. Three years later, in early May 2023, the MIlton police department settled a federal civil rights lawsuit with Dial. He describes the agreement, which includes compensation for injuries he suffered during the arrest, as fair, even though Higgenbotham remains on the force and the town did not admit to any wrongdoing. For Dial, the settlement has afforded a sense of closure and a deeply personal victory against the overwhelming power of local law enforcement. “I had lost employment, I lost a few friends,” he recounted. “The worst part was I wasn’t able to talk about the case.”
But it’s also a cautionary tale of how a single arrest can wreak havoc on a person’s life even if they’re innocent, and in Dial’s case, an ordeal that could have been worse if not for the presence of a Ring camera.
First there were the rumors, then a ring camera
Shortly after his arrest, the Milton police department shared Dial’s mugshot on the department’s Facebook page. The post included the questionable allegations contained in the statement of probable cause. Unfortunately, the sloppily composed statement (which has since been taken down) alluded to an alleged domestic assault. Since the Facebook page is shared widely among Milton residents, friends and neighbors began to accost Dial and his family with the accusation he had beaten a woman.
“I still had many occurrences where I was being questioned about ‘hitting some woman,’ etc.” he told The Real News. “Even some of my family members were harassed about it because the way the post was worded made it sound like they were showing up for domestic violence, which was not the case.” Worse yet, Dial found himself sitting in the Western Regional Jail for several days, where he suffered a seizure. When he finally made bail, he realized that the mainstream media had already branded him a criminal, before an iota of evidence could be offered in his defense.
Local television station WCHS posted a story accusing Dial of all the charges outlined in the statement of probable cause, accompanied by the unflattering mugshot. “There’s a saying that at times social conviction can be just as bad as criminal conviction,” Dial said in response to the post.
The combination of these accusations made for a turbulent few years for Dial. The whispering about his domestic violence charges continued. Due to court appearances and the local television report he lost his job at an inpatient rehab house. Even more disturbing, the demons that had haunted him throughout his previous struggle with addiction reappeared, sending him into a spiral of heavy drinking that nearly cost him his life. “I ended up attending treatment for alcoholism which was tremendously exacerbated by the peripheral effects that were either directly or indirectly related to everything from that evening,” he said. “On the outside it doesn’t sound like much, but this only scratches the surface.”
Fortunately for Dial, not all the forces of fate were aligned against him: his parents’ house had a Ring camera, and the video of his arrest depicted an entirely different version of events than the statement of charges, signed under oath, by Higginbotham.
The doorbell camera shows Dial calmly complying with Higginbotham as the officer places him in handcuffs. However, Higginbotham wrote in his statement of probable cause: “[Dial] became very agitated and kept on raising his voice at me. I asked him several times to calm down and then decided to detain him for officer safety.”
Furthermore, Higginbotham wrote, “Dial became very irate and pushed me with his shoulder and tried to pull away from me. I asked him to calm down, quit yelling, and get into the cruiser. He got very aggressive once again and was trying to pull away. I asked one more time and then assisted him into my cruiser.”
Again, doorbell camera footage appears to contradict the officer’s sworn statement. At the beginning of the interaction, the camera audio reveals that Dial calls Higginbotham “sir,” and when asked to turn around to be cuffed, Dial does so without conflict. The footage then shows Dial calmly walking towards the cruiser and Higginbotham putting him in the back seat without incident.
After Dial’s lawyer submitted the Ring video as evidence, prosecutors quietly dropped the charges. But the story about his alleged crimes remained, and even though Dial called WCHS to have the story updated or retracted, they, too, refused to delete the post describing now disproven crimes until well after the damage had been done. By Dial’s estimate, the post remained up on the WCHS website for two years before it was ultimately removed. Their refusal to issue any timely correction or retraction led Dial to make the decision to fight back against the false and damaging narrative that had been spread throughout his community. That meant reaching out to independent journalists.
Fighting back against a local political economy forged by law enforcement
After The Real News produced a story on Dial’s arrest, he found a lawyer: a legal advocate that he says was not influenced by the insular politics and interconnected relationships that make it difficult to find representation in rural West Virginia. “It took many months for me to be able to obtain an attorney who is seriously a true individual to his soul. Not only did he obtain some form of recourse, but he also stood up for me quite a bit,” Dial said. That attorney, Tyler Haslam, told The Real News the settlement had been reached and that the case had been closed. A lawyer representing the police department did not return a phone call or email seeking comment.
The lawsuit accused the Milton police department of false imprisonment, unlawful arrest, and intentional infliction of harm, and outlined allegations that the department failed to properly train officers to practice constitutionally sound policing. That problem was highlighted in a Police Accountability Report investigation, which found that the town had written hundreds of tickets and assessed hundreds of thousands of dollars in court fines for a town of roughly 2,500 people—all while nearly doubling police spending since 2014. It’s a trend that continues today.
The latest budget estimates posted by the town show the city billed $500,000 in court costs and fines in the fiscal year 2023, a slight decrease from the previous fiscal year. Despite the recent decrease, the amount of fines has almost doubled in the past decade; the town assessed $275,000 in court fees and tickets in 2014. This uptick in policing has coincided with a substantial increase in the police budget. Since 2014 the police budget has more than doubled, from roughly $528,000 in 2014 to a planned expenditure of $1,333,807 in 2023.
For Dial, his primary focus now is not Milton PD, but healing, and the hope that his battle to clear his name will allow him to rebuild a life that was thrown into turmoil by a pair of handcuffs. For now, the struggle is about righting the wrongs, both for him and the town itself.
“The weight of the world has been lifted off of my shoulders. All I want to do is live a quiet life with my daughter, and for the department to restructure their training,” Dial said.
Editor’s note: At 00:56, host Mansa Musa misspeaks when quoting a report and says that 55 million people are in the system of mass incarceration; the correct number is 5.5 million.
Over 1.9 million people are incarcerated in the US today, and even greater 5.5 million people are subjected to the wide-ranging system of mass punishment from parole, probation, and beyond. One organization, JustLeadershipUSA, seeks to tackle the prison system by building leaders among formerly incarcerated people, and fighting for change from the local level up. JustLeadershipUSA President and CEO DeAnna Hoskins joins Rattling the Bars to explain the work of her organization and how it seeks to bring about to change.
DeAnna Hoskins has been at the helm of JLUSA as the President and CEO of JustLeadershipUSA (JLUSA) since 2018. A nationally recognized leader and dynamic public speaker, Ms. Hoskins has been committed to the movement for racial and social justice, working alongside those most impacted by marginalization for over two decades.
Studio Production: David Hebden Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
Mansa Musa: Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m your host, Mansa Musa. In an essay called Toward the United Front, George Jackson saw that the sheer size of the prison population made it ripe for mobilizing prisons into a non-sectarian united front, with the goal of abolishing the prison-industrial complex, among other things. Since that essay, the prison-industrial complex has grown. Today, over 1.9 million people are behind bars in the US. In a recent report by the Prison Policy Initiative entitled Punishment Beyond Prisons 2023: Incarceration and Supervision by State, [because of] the overuse of probation and parole, along with mass incarceration, over 5.5 million people are in the system of mass punishment and under their control in some shape, form, or fashion. Joining me today to talk about how JustLeadershipUSA sees these numbers – And what they are doing with them – Is DeAnna Hoskins, president and CEO of JustLeadershipUSA. Welcome, DeAnna.
DeAnna Hoskins: Thank you. Thank you.
Mansa Musa: Tell our Rattling the Bars [viewers] a little bit about yourself please.
DeAnna Hoskins: I’m DeAnna Hoskins, president and CEO of JustLeadershipUSA. I’ve been at the helm of the organization since 2018. I actually was a leader who went through the training program in 2016. I’m an individual who’s been impacted by the criminal justice system – Formerly incarcerated – That has been able to break through some of those glass ceilings or places they told us we couldn’t go. Places and spaces. Prior to coming to JustLeadershipUSA, I served under the Obama administration as a senior policy advisor, and I managed all of the federal government’s investment in corrections and reentry, which included the Second Chance Portfolio, the National Reentry Resource Center, Collateral Consequences of Criminal Convictions, and Children of Incarcerated Parents.
I’ve been in this field for about 25 years. I worked in my hometown county government as director of re-entry, establishing re-entry perspectives around that area and also within the state of Indiana. As most people will say, who goes back? Who’s incarcerated and goes back and works in the correctional system? I actually worked as a unit manager at the state of Indiana’s Pendleton Correctional Facility. So I’ve not only been on the inside, I’ve actually come out and worked in the administrative and service side of this as well.
Mansa Musa: Very well-put. And you heard me set this up, George Jackson made this observation. And when he made this observation, he made the observation about the need to build, to utilize the prison population to create a non-sectarian organization for the purpose of abolishing prison and organizing around social change. Now, JustLeadershipUSA has a four-year plan for building local power and dismantling oppressive systems. Tell our viewers and listeners how this came about. How did this four-year plan come about?
DeAnna Hoskins: So one of the things, – Again, having worked in all levels of government, the inside of government from the state, local, and federal government – one of the biggest things that I realized was, anything that is moved from local up to federal almost forces the federal hand to change. Anything that comes from the federal government and rolls down always gets attacked and addressed by the new administration.
And I’ll give you some examples: Same-sex marriage came from the states up to the federal government. Forced their hands. We’re looking at the same with legalized marijuana. It’s rolling from the states, forcing the government’s hand. But things that come out of the government, such as what they titled Obamacare, every time a new administration comes in, they attack anything that comes out that benefits oppressed and marginalized communities. So one of the things we realized was that the oppressive policies that are hindering us are hindering us at the ground level. We don’t need the federal government to try to fix things for us around policies, because – I’m going to be honest with you and one of the things about me, I’m very authentic – Policy and legislation will never free Black people.
Mansa Musa: Come on.
DeAnna Hoskins: A lot of times we’ve got to talk about how we even got here to incarceration and mass incarceration. It’s the legacy of slavery. At the abolishment of slavery, it still was the way to utilize free labor with debtor’s prison and different things of that nature. So when you look at the misdemeanor system, it was created as a way to still incarcerate the bodies to provide free labor. So for me, it’s about understanding my history of how we got here, if I’m going to try to dismantle it. And the only way you can dismantle anything, nothing changes until those most oppressed rise up into power to change it. Every discipline in this country – Whether it’s mental health, substance abuse, veterans, women’s services – Uses people who are directly impacted by the issue they’re addressing.
Mansa Musa: That’s right.
DeAnna Hoskins: The criminal justice system has been the only system that is reluctant to utilize the voices and power of the people that have been incarcerated to help change and address the system. And we’re basically here saying, we ain’t asking for permission anymore, we’ll apologize later.
Mansa Musa: Right there, let’s unpack that. Because I did 48 years in prison, and the entire time I was in prison – Both of us can agree to this – It stands to reason that those on the other side would be more than eager to rattle the bars, more than eager to raise their voices. And in this regard, JustLeadershipUSA is saying that y’all are hanging y’all hats on those that are impacted: those that are locked up, those that are locked out, those that are on parole and probation. That y’all are hanging y’all hats on them and this class of underserved people to be the voice and the face of JustLeadershipUSA.
DeAnna Hoskins: Yes.
Mansa Musa: How do you get them to respond? Because, you’ve got a myriad of things that are going on with people coming out: I ain’t got no place to stay, I ain’t got no job. Baby mama drama. Trying to get back with my kids, trying to link back up with my family. So it’s a myriad of problems going on. What makes you feel so emboldened by this approach?
DeAnna Hoskins: One of the things is, we work with organizations typically led by individuals who’ve been directly impacted across the country to help with those immediate needs. What we don’t do is actually exploit people and say, we’re going to put you on the frontline. We want you to use your voice. No, we’re not going to do that. If you interact with us when you first come home, how do we connect you locally so you can be together? Because you have to be together if you’re going to stand for the people you left behind.
So we don’t even accept a person into our leadership training unless they’ve had three years post-incarceration. But that doesn’t mean we don’t interact and engage with you and try to connect you to what you need with the people and the leaders we have. So one of the things that I want to talk about – Something you said about the myriad of things going on – That’s one of the reasons we’re empowering them, is because the system is focusing on, they say, recidivism reduction. We want to make sure you get out and stay out, but you won’t be focusing on it from the system being successful, not the individual.
Mansa Musa: That’s right.
DeAnna Hoskins: I can be homeless and not go back to prison. I can use drugs and not go back to prison. Does that mean the person is successful, or is the system successful because I didn’t go back to prison? So how do we even hold the system accountable with discriminatory practices that they have? Which is why this JustUS Coordinating Council is important: because it doesn’t take legislation. It actually takes rulemaking to take the word “discretion” out of the housing: a definition of who’s homeless and who has access to housing.
How can you deny us a basic human need that every human on this earth needs? Whether you have a criminal background or not. You have stated that housing is a basic human need. That we got 600,000 people coming out every year that can be blocked from a basic human need and you say, go be successful? Hell, you ain’t even supplied me with the foundation. But any individual needs to be successful, and you allow the discrimination in your policies around giving discretion to local housing authorities to say who can come in and who can’t.
Mansa Musa: I noticed that one of the things I found enlightening in regard to this organization is the policy impact. I work for a group called Voice for a Second Chance, and the supervisor always says, if you’re sitting around the table and it’s not impacting policy, like Malcolm said, don’t call me a diner because I’m sitting there with a plate. I’m sitting around a table.
But let’s talk about policy. Going back to your point, we can be in this space, and you can have me sitting at the table with an empty plate, and I really think I’m a diner. Not so much because I have an empty plate, but because you told me I’m getting ready to eat and I ain’t got nothing on my plate yet. Because you gave me this false narrative. So we know we are confronted with that. How do y’all educate people to understand policy impact and policy versus getting a feel-good response?
DeAnna Hoskins: Right there. I am so happy you asked, because that was one of the biggest challenges when we said we were going to do this. We walked in knowing not only do we have to impact and empower people to build this table, we have to educate them. What I found out, a lot of people, when you say “advocate” or “advocacy,” they think of a t-shirt and a bullhorn. And I’m like, no, this is an inside-out game. One of the things I like to tell people, if you serve time, that means you committed a crime. What I need you to know is, all your skills that were in that lifestyle were not liabilities. I need you to understand some of them are transferable skills out on the road, and you have to utilize that. Part of that is – I use drugs and I tell people all the time that I didn’t wake up one day and know how to use drugs or how to cook up the product that I was using – Somebody taught me.
Mansa Musa: That’s right.
DeAnna Hoskins: If you’re going to work in this lane, you have to be willing to be taught the same way you were willing to be taught in the streets: find somebody. You have to have a mentor, you have to be educated. Because the big thing is, people power equals change, and the best thing that they do to break us apart is if you’re not knowledgeable of what you’re sitting at the table for. The respect comes when you sit at the table with the elected officials, or other people who are making a policy, and you shut them down better on their policies than they can.
Mansa Musa: Let me ask you this. How do you get around the poverty pimps? The poverty pimps are the ones that are in the space we’re dealing with that are grant-chasing. You’re educating me and I acquired these leadership skills and I’m going over here and I’m in an environment where they don’t have A, B, C, D, E, F, G. JustLeadershipUSA, help me get A, B, C, D, E, F, G so I can keep the mission going. Then when I get the return, I keep the money, and the people that’s supposed to get what they are supposed to get don’t get what they get. Get what they always got: nothing.
DeAnna Hoskins: Oh my god. That has always been the thirst of it. JustLeadershipUSA is the training part. We do our training, we raise our funds. We train you to be able to communicate, to go after your own funding for your own organization. Our coordinating council is open to the 70 million of us who have been impacted, to be educated on how – Even from federal money that rose to your state – To go push at your state where that money is and how it ain’t coming to our communities when it’s supposed to be designed.
Mansa Musa: Yeah, that’s right.
DeAnna Hoskins: But, you’re right. How do we stop people from having their own agenda? People are always going to have their own agenda. Our hope is that the JCC stands within itself, because if you start talking about policy, I’m not chasing the grants. So here’s how I break this down, having worked in government. I break it down into games: chess is legislation, that’s the long game; checkers are grassroots that should grab and get funding and all that.
And what I share with them, one of the things I’m going to share with you all, you all are doing criminal justice reform work. Poverty pimping on that level, you’re only in the department of justice and DOL’s pocket. That’s like going to an amusement park and only enjoying a water slide. You ain’t even figured out all of the money in the federal that you can get. So you don’t even know how to play this game for real. That’s why it is so scarce, because they’ve pigeonholed us to one department around funding.
Do you know how much money the Department of Transportation puts out across this country every year to fix roadways and bridges? If they simply adopted a Section 3 process like HUD that says, any federal dollars that roll into your state or your city, 35% of the workforce has to come from the most impoverished zip codes in your area. Do you know the game changer that would be in certain cities? My city is getting ready to overhaul a bridge that is going to cost $20 million.
Mansa Musa: Everywhere you see it’s a brick. One of the presidents used the term “mortar and shovel” as an indication of how the money is going to flow. But let’s talk about that, because that’s a good observation. And I know from experience, all of us had life sentences, so all of us that got out with the exception of maybe two or three out of hundreds were recidivated. Everybody else, they hit the ground running and they have been doing remarkable work in their regard. So how do we coalesce with all of these elements throughout the country that’s like that? In Kansas, in California, in the South, in Virginia, in Maryland. How do y’all go about coalescing with them?
DeAnna Hoskins: So that’s our goal to start building, taking our leaders we have now and saying, oh you’re in Maryland, you’re in Michigan, you’re in Chicago, you’re in Illinois. Now we want to come in and help you build a coalition in your state. Then all of us come together twice a year in DC and show up, because people power equals people. But if you’re working on something in DC and you say, DeAnna, I’m working on this, this needs to be changed in DC. If there’s 70 million of us with a record and we got 10% of that to participate with us – And we all support your issue by sending in letters, signing onto your legislation, whatever you’re doing – That shows you’ve got power behind you, and no matter what state you’re in, that this is an issue. And that’s what we’ve never shown: formerly incarcerated people have been exploited for everybody else’s –
Mansa Musa: That’s right.
DeAnna Hoskins: …People write a bill. Oh, we need the formerly incarcerated to be deleted. They give them a $10,000 check, and they show up. And who am I to tell you not to keep –
Mansa Musa: That’s right. Come on money, come on, come on.
DeAnna Hoskins: …You can make some good money. Therefore you’re still being exploited, but when they get to Congress and they start redlining it, we don’t have a say to say, we got carved out of there. I’ll give you an example. The First Step Act was great for whoever didn’t understand legislation. It was retroactive in the crack cocaine disparity, it was saying you couldn’t over-incarcerate certain people. But here’s what y’all didn’t catch that we came out and said: it legislated a risk assessment tool that had already been racially determined, racially biased.
Mansa Musa: I know that, I know that. Come on.
DeAnna Hoskins: Black people will never score low on a risk assessment, because our communities are over-policed and our schools have more police than counselors.Then y’all didn’t even pay attention when I said, how are you going to say the only people eligible for the crack cocaine retroactive have to be the people who did not have a weapon involved? Well in the hood, drugs and guns started going together like peanut butter and jelly.
Mansa Musa: Yeah, come on.
DeAnna Hoskins: You’re not a drug dealer without a weapon. Whether you used it or not. Whether you brandished it, whether the clip was in it. Y’all allowed them to exclude us because why? Because y’all didn’t have no power. And then y’all didn’t understand how this plays out in our communities. Let’s be honest, the ‘94 Crime Bill was a good policy on paper. Nobody knew how it was going to play out in communities.
Mansa Musa: That’s right.
DeAnna Hoskins: What we’re saying is, you don’t get to push legislation without our voices. As a matter of fact, I don’t want to ask for permission to join your bill. We’re going to build our own table to have enough power that when they push your bill back they say, formerly incarcerated can’t participate in the legalization of marijuana because they’ve got a felony. How are you going to create a policy that white men are gonna get rich off for what we’ve been going to jail for for years, and we can’t even partake in it? We’ll shut this bill down, and if not, we’ve got enough people power to vote you out of office.
Mansa Musa: All right, so as we wrap up, talk about where you are at right now in terms of – Because I know we all just came out of Washington – What’s the next step for JustLeadershipUSA?
DeAnna Hoskins: We just launched in DC to make sure people knew who we were. We were able to empower, directly impact the people. We’re going to hold general call-ins for people to keep joining, we’re going to give them updates. But right now I’m headed to DC to do a sit-down with DOJ leadership around some of our issues that are in our demands. I’m meeting with the department of labor to say this funding that we’re asking for to help us –This is when I talked about the game, chess and checkers.
There’s a middle game called Backgammon. That’s the strategy. We’re Backgammon, strategizing. Nobody flies at that. And that’s the administrative level. That’s the senior leadership who is going to be there no matter who’s in the White House. The NAACP keeps showing up no matter who’s in the White House. because Black people’s issues have not gone away.
Mansa Musa: That’s right.
DeAnna Hoskins: From the incarcerated need, we’re going to keep showing up, because our issues haven’t gone away. So we’ve got to learn to fly at the backgammon level, in the gray zone. It doesn’t matter who’s in the White House, our issues are important. We’re not going to wait for other agencies to say, this is legislation we need to push. This is a policy we need to change. We’re going to understand ourselves and show up and speak for ourselves because typically, the policy and the legislation others push for us continue to entrench harm in our communities. And we always say, if you don’t have a seat at the table, you are on the menu.
Mansa Musa: There you have it. The Real News. Rallying the boss. We’re not playing chess anymore.
DeAnna Hoskins: We ain’t playing.
Mansa Musa: We’re not playing checkers, we’re at backgammon. We’re at the strategy level. And being at the strategy level, we ask that you evaluate this information as it came out today. If you are formerly incarcerated, if you’ve got a number behind your name, if they put handcuffs on you, if they gave you a record, then you are a valuable asset in this coalition called JustLeadershipUSA. Now, you have the last word. What do you want to tell our audience?
DeAnna Hoskins: I want to tell everyone that we have been oppressed and marginalized for too long. If everyone believes in a system of rehabilitation and corrections, they will not have the continued barriers and policies in place that allows us, once we re-enter, to still be blocked out of being productive members of society. One of the things you have to know is that you are valuable, you are a leader, and you have the right to have your voice heard. And that is what JustLeadershipUSA is about: giving you a platform, providing you with the education, and empowering you to elevate your voice so that we can disrupt and change the system that has been oppressing us for too long.
Mansa Musa: There you have it. And speaking of our platform, we ask that you continue to support this platform known as Rattling the Bars and The Real News. It’s only on Rattling the Bars and The Real News that you’re gonna get someone like DeAnna Hoskins to come and educate you on the strategy of getting self-determination. The strategy of being empowered and not sitting at the table with an empty plate and somebody coming and telling you, wait a minute; you’ll be served in one minute. And what’s been like 20 years later, you’re still waiting for something to eat. We ask that you continue to support this organization, this network, and we ask that you continue to rattle the bars. Thank you, DeAnna.
DeAnna Hoskins: Thank you. Thank you for having me.
In 2021, the International Tribunal On US Human Rights Abuses Against Black, Brown, and Indigenous Peoples found the United States government guilty of genocide. The tribunal drew upon the legacy of the 1951 petition submitted to the United Nations by the Civil Rights Congress: “We Charge Genocide: The Crime of Government Against the Negro People.” Jalil Muntaqim joins Rattling the Bars to discuss his life, the US’s long history of genocide, the need for a New Afrikan independence movement in the US, and the strategy to internationalize this struggle beyond compromised institutions such as the United Nations.
Jalil Muntaqim is a former member of the Black Panther Party and the Black Liberation Army. He was incarcerated for 49 years as a political prisoner of the United States, and released in 2020. Muntaqim’s is the author of several books, the most recent of which is We Are Our Own Liberators: Selected Prison Writings.
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 Mansa Musa. And today we have a comrade of mine and a good brother, a freedom fighter, former political prisoner, prisoner of war Jalil Muntaqim. Welcome to Rattling the Bars, Jalil.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Salaam alaykum, jambo, guten tag, peace, whatever your language is, I speak to you and address you in solidarity and peace.
Mansa Musa:
And before we get started, Ramadan mubarak.
Jalil Muntaqim:
[Foreign language], brother, I appreciate that. Thank you for your time.
Mansa Musa:
Yes sir. And tell Rattling the Bars audience a little about who is Jalil Muntaqim.
Jalil Muntaqim:
That’s a good question. That’s a long sense of answer to that question. Jalil Muntaqim, I am a veteran member of the Black Panther Party, Black Liberation Army. I have been engaged in the struggle since age of 16. I actually have engaged in struggle since I was born, you might say. Let me just preface this one. My mom was a student of African dance as a young child and she used to teach African dance to myself and my sister. And her teacher told her that we are of African descent and this is what she taught us, so I was raised with the understanding that I was of African descent.
She did not allow us to be identified or named a Negro or a [inaudible] or a Black person or any other derogatory names that has been launched against our Black people in this country, African people in this country. And so as a result of that I always had been conscious of the reality of our situation here in this country. At the age of 16, I joined the Black Panther Party, became a member of the Black Panther Party. And at the age of 18 I was recruited into the Black Underground. By the time I was 19, I was with Black Underground, that evolved and turned into the Black Liberation Army. By the time I was 19, I was captured.
I was captured on August 28th, 1971, the week after they murdered Comrade George Jackson on August 21st, 1971. Allegedly our action was in retaliation of his murder. The resulted in my being in prison for 49 plus years, almost 50 years in prison, as a result. I didn’t get out until October 6th, 2020. And I’m also an author. I’ve written two books, one called We Are Our Own Liberators, and anybody interested, they can get it from blackdragonmme.com. We Are Our Own Liberators, blackdragonmme.com. And the other book I’ve written have published is called Escaping the Prism: Fade to Black.
And that can be obtained from AK Press. Let me see what else. As a result of my incarceration, I continued to be an organizer. I was an organizer while I was in high school. I started the first Black student union in my high school and I was in San Jose, California. And as a result of that, we was able to get Black study programs established because there was no ethnic programs in the schools back then. And so we was able to get Black studies program going on at that time. And so as my process of my evolving when I went to prison, I continued to organize in 1970-
Mansa Musa:
Well stop right there. Because we want… I got you. But no, that’s good information. And in full disclosure to our audience, I met Jalil as he was getting ready to go into his prison organized. I met Jalil in, I think it was ’73 when they was making a call to take the issue of political prison, prisons of war to the UN. And it’s right at this juncture that I want to open the next question is, walk us through the progression of the strategy to internationalize America’s oppression of Black and Brown people.
Give us a… Because we know that your strategy has been, and your organizational strategy has been to internationalize our struggle. And you find a lot of conversation around why internationalize it when we have a… And people have a tendency to look at the national problem, what’s going on on a national level and feel as though when you say international, it’s almost as if you overlooking local situations. So as walk us through that progression.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Very good. Back in 1975, I returned from New York City to San Quentin Prison. And at the time when I returned back to San Quentin Prison, I was put in Adjustment Center. And as a result of me placed in Justice Center, I decided it was necessary for us to move forward in terms of our struggle. One of the things that when I was in Adjustment Center, I was locked next door to [inaudible 00:05:19], the oldest political prison in the United States today.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Jalil Muntaqim:
And San Quentin [inaudible 00:05:25] on the same gallery, he was in Adjustment Center. The area where Comrade George was murdered at. And I received a pamphlet, a newsletter from a National Committee of the Defense of Political Prisoners, was a committee that was put together in support of the Panther 21 case right back in 1970s, in ’70, ’71. Yuri Kochiyama, who was a friend and member of the AAOU, African-American organization that Malcolm X had put together. She sent me a newsletter, and in the newsletter, they talk about human rights and the issues of human rights.
So at that point in time and knowing that El-Haj Malik Shabazz had told us, he had instructed us that it’s necessity for us to take our struggle to the international arena and that our struggle is more than just a civil rights, it’s a human rights. And with that understanding, El-Haj Malik Shabazz says, “For long as we continue to maintain our struggle within the civil rights dynamics of struggle, that the United States will continue to confine our struggle within those parameters within the jurisdiction of the United States.” That’s been a civil rights issue. And he said that, El-Haj Malik Shabazz, Malcolm X said that we need to take it to the international community and make our struggle a human rights one.
And so at that point in time, when I decided that was necessary for us to establish what I organized, what they called the US Prisons Petition Campaign to the United Nations. And this was the first petition campaign that was submitted to the United Nations that dealt with the issues, not only the conditions of our prison situation, but also the issues of existence of political prisons in the United States. So that’s one other area for which we began to internationalize our struggle. Now naturally, as you well know, prior to that, our struggle has been internationalized due to Black Panther Party.
Was internationalized when Robert Williams went into exile. He had to go to Cuba and went to China. And then for other places talking about our struggle. Eldridge Cleaver, when they established the Black Panther Party office in Algeria, they traveled throughout the country. Huey P. Newton established a working relationship with [inaudible] when he went to China. And so for us, there has always been a means and a method for which we tried to internationalize our struggle and take it out of basically the jurisdiction of the US to codify and/or limit and prohibit to what degree we’re able to fight back to resist a White supremacy and capitalist imperialism.
Mansa Musa:
All right, let’s go right here then, on that right there. All right. So we recognize the progression and we recognize the historical significance and the relationship. But let’s look at this here, it says it is a consensus worldwide that the United Nations… Because that’s where, when we talking about internationalizing, we talking about going to an institutional body to get some type of mandate to come out to say that what the United States is doing is inhuman.
So the mechanism that we’ve been talking about is the United Nations, but it’s the public consensus, ineffective as a body, but mainly when it comes to addressing complaints against United States and human rights. Case in point, going back to your point, Paul Robeson, they took a petition to the UN in ’51, we charged genocide documenting the lynching of Black people and poor people in this country. Then you reference Malcolm X, and as you noted, we made it, we took it in terms of the strategy that you outlined, took it in and put political prisoners and prisoners of war in that space.
But what is it about this body? I understand international context, but what is it about the United Nations that gives you some type of solace that this is a good place to put attention in? When you look at the Palestinian situation, you look at, they allow United States to bomb our Iraq, both under false narrative of trying to get [inaudible] uranium, they killed [inaudible]. So we know that when it comes to United Nations, that it’s really the United States foot-stool for lack of better terminology. So educate our audience on why this particular body under that overview that I just outlined.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Very good. I’m glad you raised that question because there are some contradictions in regards to our movement trying to have the United Nations to support us in the broader scale of which it exists. I think it’s important to understand that the United Nations, in terms of international law, it’s a body of international law. And as much as there are held together by individuals, nation, state individuals and organizations who may be coattailed to the United States because of the money that United States put into the United Nations, it diminishes our capacity to influence the processes.
But that doesn’t mean that we not should try to influence the process. Ultimately what it does is we are by presenting our struggle and our issues to the United Nations, it goes to the people as well. Those individuals will bring those issues to the people. And that’s what we really want to address. We really want to address the people of the world by regard to our struggle. And so this is a body from which we can do so, at least raise the issues, our concerns, our struggle to that body. And so that it can be reached at a broader branch of people. Now we’ve had comments go to Geneva, we’ve had petitions submitted to Geneva on the issues of our struggle.
And we need to continue to do so because it is a body of laws, international law. We are trying to make the United States adhere to the international law, for instance genocide. In 2018 I proposed that we bring the International Jury to the United States and we held an International Tribunal. And the International Tribunal on October 25th, 2021, they found the United States guilty of five charges. This is an esteemed body of international jurors, some of them have working relationships with the United Nations, and they are now promoting their verdict of October 25th, 2021 stated that the United States is guilty of five charges that we brought to them.
Five charges of mass incarceration, police terror and murder of our people, environmental racism, health inequities, and also the exists of political prisoners. The United States was found guilty by an esteemed body of international jurors on the reality of that they have violated international law as it pertained to those five particular issues. And so for us, we are using what mechanism is available to us. If we could create another mechanism for which we can build our international relationship with other folks and people, then we would do so. But that’s the only mechanism that’s working at this point in time. As you stated, Paul Robeson in December 17th, 1951, about two months after I was born, had brought the issues of genocide to the United Nations.
As you well know, the FBI hindered hindered that process. They would refuse to allow Paul Robeson to leave the country. And although William Patterson was able to go over to Geneva and present the petition, they tried to prevent him from coming back to the United States. And so for us it’s always a means, based upon the instructions of El-Haj Malik Shabazz, Malcolm X, to find the ways that we can reach our people on the international platform. When I say our people, I’m talking about the progressives on the international platform. Let them know what is actually going on here in the United States amongst Black people, Brown people, Indigenous people in this country. It is a mechanism, it’s not the end results, it is a method for which we can bring our struggles into the international community.
Mansa Musa:
And that bring me to my next question. Because like you say, it’s a real effective strategy. You have got the international body of people that’s directly related to the UN in some shape, form, or fashion to come-
Jalil Muntaqim:
Which are supporting our movement now.
Mansa Musa:
… To come and review the indictment that we brought about genocide. And you had them review the indictment, and as a result of reviewing the indictment, they came out with the International Tribunal on human rights abuse against Black and Brown, Indigenous people. How are you taking that finding? Because that finding in and of itself, we know don’t have the force of law. It’s a nice document and it’s a nice support mechanism.
How do you plan on taking that document and moving the narrative forward to try to start peeling off more support from countries in terms of recognizing that the United States is practicing genocide against us. How do you plan on taking that document? Because as you said, if that same body would’ve been the voting body of the general assembly in the UN, then United States would be thus duly charged based on that. So how do you plan on-
Jalil Muntaqim:
Let’s look at that on a couple levels. First level is here, United States is a treaty member of the Genocide Convention of 1948. United States has on its books, in its federal books, 18 USC 1091, which simply mimics or copies the genocidal doctrine of 1948. But we know that the United States will not charge itself with genocide, although they’re in violation of their own laws. So what we’re going to do, what we intended to do is build our base so that we can file a legal petition in the federal courts charging the United States having violated their own rules or regulations and according to international law.
And so in that instance, we’ll be able to educate greater people both nationally and internationally of the contradiction that we have with the United States in regards to their… Adherent to this false philosophy, aberrant philosophy of White supremacy, that ensures that other people of color are inferior to White people. And so when we understand that dynamic, we are raised in people’s consciousness, using international law as well as national dynamics where we can engage them by building our base of support. We also are building toward what we call people’s assemblies. We’re building a people’s assemblies based upon what we call a Peoples’ Senate.
And we would have ambassadors who would travel throughout the world and raise our questions, our issues in those particular bodies. We have been over in the Caribbean, we have been the areas of Africa. I went to Greece last year to the International Symposium of Political Prisoners in Greece, African Greece. And I told them at my presentation that you will not be free, the international community will not be free until Black people were free in this country. And so in this way we’re making the connections with the international community based upon the idea and goals and objectives based upon the decision, the verdict of the International Jury finding the United States guilty of genocides.
And so with that understanding, based upon their own violation of their own laws, we can do two things. One, bring them to court, raise it on a national level and continue to send out our ambassadors around the world and speak on these issues, raise these questions. We’ve been to South Africa, we’ve been to Ghana, we’ve been to Barbados, we’ve been to Greece. I got some people once to, they’re thinking about having me go tour parts of Europe and also Latin America. And so this is how we built out our struggle and join the progressive communities around the world who has been engaging, fighting against US imperialism and White supremacy throughout the world.
Mansa Musa:
And now, I like that connection because as our audience would need to be made aware of, when we talk about international struggle, we’ve been able to make the connection in terms of United States own laws and that at some point in time a forum going to have to be held about that. And they going to have to address that at some point in time in the court of law in the United States, which gives them a lot more… People got a local mentality and a national mentality, be able to put them in a space where they comfortable with recognizing that, “We are affected by this because we can see it right here, right now.”
As opposed to trying to get them to take a broader perspective and say, like Malcolm say, “We all in the same boat.” All right, we talk about this here, Jalil. Lastly, so you mobilized the necessary support and you get the necessary results in terms of the United Nation, the courts. So what is the relief that we are asking for? What are we looking to get in return? Because I think most people want to know, are we just rabble-rousing or do we have actually got a strategy of what we want in return and what we going to do with our return?
Jalil Muntaqim:
Okay, well let’s look at this a little bit more deliberately. We know that the United States have been found guilty of genocide. We know they’ve been engaged in the process of genocides for the last 400 years. We know that the system of White supremacy is not going to just disappear. So it is our duty to divorce ourselves from a system that’s engaging in genocides. We have to ensure that we are suffering no more harm. The trauma that we have suffered in the last 400 years is indelible. It has been internalized for the most part. And so we have to do a whole new reeducation, reprocessing of our consciousness.
And that means that we have to decolonize ourselves, when I say decolonize our mentality and our thinking in terms of who we are as a people in this country. And that’s another issue that we have to address. Are we in fact a colonized nation, a colonized people? And if we are, then we need to figure out some ways how to manage that idea that we need to divorce ourself from the conditions of colonization. So that means that we need to move towards independence. I’m saying this here. At the minimum, we divorce ourself from a system that has been engaging in genocide. We have to remove ourselves from harm. That’s what I’m saying, because they been killing us for the last 400 years.
Mansa Musa:
And continue to do it.
Jalil Muntaqim:
And continue to do so. When they just shot this kid the other day, this young man the other day, shot him 60 times. They shot at him a hundred times and shot him 60 times. How many bullets does it take to kill one man? That was not just a message to this one guy or this one family, it was a message to everyone, of police terror. That’s the reason why they found guilty of genocide, by the way that they’ve been murdered us by police terror. You see what I’m saying? Mass incarceration is another issue. Mass incarceration, what they found guilty of by the international jurors of mass incarceration, that’s genocide.
So we got to fight against this mass incarceration. One way to fight against it is to end penal slavery by the 13th Forward. By ending penal slavery, we take the incentive out of mass incarceration. That means they cannot profit off our labor. Our people don’t understand that slavery was never totally abolished in the country, we have what we call penal slavery. They just [inaudible 00:21:26] to the United States Constitution. So that’s another area where we are fighting back. Other, environmental racism. We know what happened in Flint, Michigan. Or Mississippi. Why is it that our people… Health inequities is another area which we have found ourselves confronting the issues of genocide, which we have found guilty of.
Why is it that White people live twice as long as Black people in this country? Where does that come from? Why is it that it has been stated that Black man is an endangered species in this country? Where does that come from? It comes from the idea of White supremacy and trying to maintain a system from which we, Black people, Brown people, Indigenous people maintain inferiority to White superiority. Which again, I say is an average philosophy, it’s an average psychological… And in my understanding, it’s a mental disorder. And White superiority is a mental disorder. And I say that based upon what the DMS-IV book says, the diagnostic book says.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right. That’s their book.
Jalil Muntaqim:
The psychological diagnostic book states that superiority complex is in fact a complex, it is a psychological disorder. And White supremacy is a derivative of the superiority complex where they feel their superiority. So these people are crazy. So we got to remove ourselves from these people because they have been harming us for the last 400 years.
Mansa Musa:
I gotcha.
Jalil Muntaqim:
So for building this outward, both on the national, international level, is extremely important. This is the reason why after the verdict by the international jurors finding the United States guilty on those five charges, we decided it is necessary for us to build what we call a Peoples’ Senate.
Mansa Musa:
Talk about that.
Jalil Muntaqim:
We got to create alternatives to the existing reality of our existence here in the United States. And so what we’re doing now, knowing that the United States functions as a corporation in behalf of other corporations, the law says… Not what Jalil says, the law says, the Supreme Court has stated in, I think Citizens Action, but they determined that corporations are people. So we also know that the United States is in fact a corporation, based upon 28 USC 3002 Section 15A-
Mansa Musa:
Commercial code?
Jalil Muntaqim:
Yeah, commercial code. And it informs that the United States is in fact a federal corporation. And so when they say our people, “For the people by the people,” they’re not talking about sentient human beings, they’re talking about corporations. They function in behalf of corporations, not for human beings. And so when we decided that it’s necessary for what to build what we call a Peoples’ Senate to divorce ourself from a system that’s not working in our best interest and began to create alternative systems, alternative modes of operation, alternative ways of where we can fulfill our prosperity, our goals, our ambitions, our livelihood outside of the dictates of the system that has been engaging in genocides against us.
And so the Peoples’ Senate is important. So we’re going to have Peoples’ Senates across the country. We’re going to build people’s assemblies across the country, and we’re going to establish the financial and economic basis for which we can be able to strive, utilizing the resources that we have available to us in any cities and states across the country. And this process will begin to ensure that our struggle moving forward is safeguarded because we have created a condition for which we have a body of people who are engaged in struggle against a system that has been involved with genocides against us.
Not only that, but we’re also moving towards national liberation independence. And this is a hard one for people to chew on. We know that there are sovereign nations in this country. The Native Americans, the indigenous people in this country for the most part are sovereign nation. How come we aren’t? That’s a question I need to ask. If they can be a sovereign nation, how come we aren’t? If we look at the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution as an example, we realized that we never had an opportunity when they promulgated the 13th Amendment in 1865. We never had the opportunity to do three things.
One, to decide whether we want to stay in the United States, decide whether we want to go to Africa or return back to Africa, or decide we want to create our own homeland, what is called a plebiscite vote. The part of our struggle is to ensure that we have a plebiscite vote, make determination what we want. So the Fourth Amendment imposed the civilization on the 3 million to 5 million African people who were emancipated in 1865. And so for us, it’s always made a question of who are we in terms of our nationhood, that has not been established by us for us.
And so that is another part of this process of separating ourself, divorcing ourself from a system that’s been engaged in genocides against us for the last 400 years. Now that we have law established in terms of international protocols by an esteemed body of international jurors have determined the United States has been engaged in this process of genocides against us. That informs us that we need to separate ourself and divorce ourself from a system that’s doing us harm, has been doing us harm for the last 400 years. And so that’s part of the process.
Mansa Musa:
So how can we get in touch with you and how can our viewers get in touch with the Spirit of Mandela?
Jalil Muntaqim:
Very good question. Go to spiritofmandela.org and tap over to the Peoples’ Senate, or go to Peoples’ Senate, spiritofmandela.org and you’ll find all the information you need to find to be involved with this process. We have what we call in the Spirit of Mandela, I’m raise this up so you can see it. You’ll find this particular document right here, for the Spirit of Mandela Explanation and Recruitment manual. And this is what we are organizing for.
Now, when we first initiated this campaign naturally in terms of our political prisoners, we was moving under the United Nations Spirit of Mandela Rule, which is the basic standards for the treatment of prisoners, which they turned into the Mandela rule. And so we’re using that idea of the Mandela rule, that’s why we came with this name, Mandela Rule, to ensure our people on the inside of these penal slave institutions are granted the same rights that are supposed to be granted to anyone who have been incarcerated or who have been imprisoned. Based upon the Mandela rules, based upon the United States standard treatment of prisoners, which is now the Mandela rule.
And so that’s one of the areas that we’re dealing with. But more importantly, we want to end penal slavery in the United States. When we end penal slavery, we end the school to prison pipeline, we end the issues of mass incarceration. We end, for the most part, targeting our community for mass incarceration. And so that’s one of the ideas of building a Peoples’ Senate and raising this to people’s consciousness and understanding to what degree we have to resist. So yeah, that’s what we’re doing.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, hey, thank you.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Spirit of Mandela.
Mansa Musa:
Spirtofmandela.org.
Jalil Muntaqim:
.org/peoples-senate. That’s what people need to go to.
Mansa Musa:
There you have it. The real news about the campaign to end and abolish slavery in the United States as we know it under the 13th Amendment, how we going to organize to gain our own independence, how we going to move forward on the international level to have the international community weigh in on this issue. We already recognize that United States has been cited for genocide, as Jalil just outlined the case. So we are asking all our viewers and our listeners to look into this and make a decision on what you think you should or should not do in this regard. Thank you, Jalil. Thank you for delighting us and educating us, brother.
Jalil Muntaqim:
Absolutely, brother. Let me make one selfish plug.
Mansa Musa:
Make a selfish plug.
Jalil Muntaqim:
We’re also building what we call decolonization programs across the country. And these decolonization program programs evolved out of the Black Panther party survival programs. The survival programs of the Black Panther party were defensive. We are building what call decolonization programs, which are offensive. We are creating a method from which we can divorce ourselves from the system by creating these alternative decolonization programs.
If anyone want to learn more about decolonization programs, I urge you to get the book, We Are Our Own Liberators that explains the whole dynamics of building towards what we call [inaudible 00:30:43] Liberation, New Afrikan Nation and these colonization programs. And they can get the book from blackdragonmme.com, We Are Our Own Liberators. So if we don’t liberate ourselves, no one else will.
Mansa Musa:
That you have it, The Real News. And we ask you to continue to support The Real News and Rattling the Bars. Where you going to get this kind of information from? Where are you going to get a formal political prisoner, prisoner of war, come in and educate you about genocide, colonialization and decolonialization, and more importantly, give you a strategy on how to eradicate all the above? So we thank you and we ask you to continue to support Rattling the Bars and The Real News. Thank you very much.
On Feb. 1, 1985, prison guards at the Indiana State Reformatory (now Pendleton Correctional Facility) affiliated with a KKK-splinter group known as the Sons of Light chained prisoner Lincoln Love in their office and began to mercilessly beat him. John “Balagoon” Cole and Christopher “Naeem” Trotter led a group of prisoners to the office and demanded entrance. When the Sons of Light responded with more violence, the prisoners took hostages and occupied a cell block for 15 hours, releasing a list of demands to improve inhumane prison conditions. John “Balagoon” Cole and Christopher “Naeem” Trotter were ultimately sentenced to 84 and 142 years for their successful attempt to save Lincoln Love’s life. Cole and Trotter remain incarcerated to this day, and now face major medical complications from old age and decades of institutional neglect.
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. An updated version will be made available as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa: Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m Mansa Musa. Imagine if you will, you had three years left before you was released from prison or two months left before you released from prison and this happened-
Speaker: This third time they came down there in a matter of hours, they riot gear, you know, and this and that. Now, they lined up outside Lokmar’s cell. Now keep in mind, you done passed up four or five more cells, but you had no Lokmar’s cell. We in the middle. You got some more cells before you get to us. Why you lined up outside that brother’s cell? As I seen them going to Lokmar’s cell, he didn’t see what I seen on the side of the wall. There was some more guards lined up, sticks, shields, helmets, you know, ready to do battle. They lined up, man. They got, looked like guns and all type of stuff.
They went in on the brother. Had him subdued, had him handcuffed. And what really caused this riot this particular day, once he was handcuffed, one of the guards took the sticks and hit him in his head. Blood gushed out of his head. I’m right there. I got tears in my eyes because I tell them, “Look, give some of that”, just to take them off of him. So one of the guards say, “Don’t worry about it, y’all got some of that coming.” You know what I mean? [inaudible 00:01:35] So I look over there, there’s more blooding gushing out of the brother’s head. He’s cuffed behind his back.
Speaker: They beat him damn near to a pulp with a solid oak club. once they beat him, they drug him out of his cell. And then drug him down the range of the tier. [inaudible 00:01:53] of the range for all the other prisoners to see. And everybody thought he was dead. They thought he was dead.
Speaker: Hey man, somebody going tell. Hey man, they trying to kill us down here. Once John Cole got the word of what’s taking place, somewhere down that line, him and his brother named Christopher Trotter met up. So now they coming, trying to see what’s going on in this particular unit.
Mansa Musa: Today, I have two people that are instrumental in helping to bring to light and reverse this injustice that’s taking place against the Pendleton 2. And when I say injustice, that’s a understatement. Here we are in 2023 and we have in the United States of America, a prison system and a prison industrial complex in this country that operate racially with impunity, that they don’t have no restraints, have no oversight and continuously to operate in this fashion in a gang mentality. Welcome to the Rattling the Bars.
And Ms. Law, introduce yourself to the Rattling the Bars audience and tell us a little bit about yourself.
Victoria Law: Hey, thank you so much for having both of us and for covering this. My name is Victoria Law. I am an author and a freelance journalist that covers issues of incarceration, specifically resistance and organizing happening both behind the bars and outside to bring people home and to shrink the giant prison system that the nation has become.
Mansa Musa: All right. And Too Black, introduce yourself to the Rattling the Bars audience and tell us a little bit about yourself.
Too Black: Yeah, my name is Too Black, I am a poet and relevant to this conversation. I am the comms director, comms representative for the Defense Committee to Free the Pendleton 2. And I am the producer and editor of the film you just saw, the clip from the film you just saw, excuse me, The Pendleton 2: They Stood Up. So thanks for having me. And I also want to send my kind regards to Eddie Conway. I’ve watched his show throughout the years and I know about his story. So just rest in peace, Eddie Conway, as well.
Mansa Musa: All right. And we appreciate that. And let’s just get right into the heart of the matter. And I’m going to set the table up and then y’all start dishing out the dishes as y’all feel free. All right, so we have two individuals that’s locked up in the Indiana State Prison. And in Indiana State Prison have basically, the guards are basically a part of a hybrid group of the Ku Klux Klan, all Ku Klux Klan, All American Nazis, skinheads, all things racist, all things anti-humanity. And in this regard, they operate the prison system within the prison system with impunity. At some point, they got to the point where these guards got in a state of mind where it was all out assault on prisoners this particular day. Pick up from there.
Victoria Law: So this had been a longstanding occurrence. It wasn’t just that on this particular day, the guards at what is now the Pendleton Correctional Facility decided that they were going to brutalize incarcerated people. This had long been an issue where guards were allowed to brutalize people, to place them in solitary confinement, which is itself a form of brutalization and violence. They were allowed to what they call burn people for meals, for other things, so that they would just not give them what they were supposed to be giving them, such as food. And on February 1st, 1985, and men at the prison had said that there was constantly this tension and this threat of violence from guards. This was not a surprising occurrence.
On February 1st of that day, the guards had placed men in solitary confinement, including a jailhouse lawyer named Lincoln Love, who was very highly regarded by men in the prison. And he was in solitary confinement. And he was being subjected to what they call a cell search, which many of your viewers know is when guards come en mass to a person’s cell and say that they’re going to search the cell. And that means not just rifling through a person’s belongings, but violently tearing through everything that they own.
Mansa Musa: That’s right.
Victoria Law: This could mean that their loved one’s pictures get thrown in the toilet, they get stomped on, their legal work gets ripped up, and the person themself is unable to do anything about this. And on that day, they came to the cell, said that they were going to do a cell search. The man who was directly across the corridor from Lincoln Love said that usually cell searches happen in an orderly fashion. You go to the first cell, the second cell, the third cell.
Mansa Musa: Right, right.
Victoria Law: This time they came directly to Lincoln Love’s cell. And Lincoln Love was supposedly not quick enough to comply, so he didn’t immediately get up and run to the back of the cell to comply with this cell search. Instead he said something like, “You already searched me. Why are you doing this again?” And this to the guards, was their justification for going in and beating him, handcuffing him, and then brutalizing him some more. So he was unable to fight back. He was on the ground, the man locked in the cell across from him, tried to divert the guard by yelling at them and hoping that they would turn away from Lincoln Love and not kill him, to turn their anger and their fury and their violence against him. So he, in that moment, did what he could to save Lincoln Love’s life.
And other men yelled out the window to men who were on the yard that the guards were beating Lincoln Love and they were going to kill him. And men, including the two men we were talking about, Christopher Naeem Trotter and John Balagoon Cole attempted to go to the administration to have them stop the officers beatings. And there they were met by armed guards who refused to let them pass and attempted to beat them. And then they went to a housing unit to get in to escape these guards. And they ended up taking over the housing unit and taking several staff members hostage. And they issued a series of demands, because at that point they said that if they had not done so, it would have been a massacre.
Too Black calls the Attica of Indiana. It is [inaudible 00:09:17] in the prison system. And after 17 hours, the prison finally relented, people inside the prison called media on the outside, including an all-black radio station, which then reached out to other media. So there was media coverage. So the prison was not able to do what they did at Attica here in New York state, just go in, start shooting randomly and killing people. But instead, after 17 hours, the state said, okay, we will acquiesce to these demands. The media accompanied the men to the cells in the solitary confinement unit, meaning that the guards could not then immediately brutalize them. But the following day, they were all transferred. And Chris Trotter and John Cole were brought up on outside charges of attempted murder, rioting, assault, and confinement, which is another word for kidnapping. And they were sentenced to 84 years for John Cole, who had three and a half years left on his sentence. And for Chris Trotter, who had three months left before he went home, he got 142 years in prison.
Mansa Musa: Okay. Now, let’s start right there. In terms of the amount of time they got, but more importantly, when I read the article, I read in there where prior to this, they had filed lawsuits and civil rights suits about the conditions and about the brutality. And from your knowledge, and I’ll get to you in a minute, Too Black, from your knowledge, have the state legislators, have the federal government taken any notice of what was going, ’cause this been going on for a while. This ain’t just happen, like you say, this ain’t just happened that day. This was like, well, this is a good day to be somebody day this. That’s what that amounted to. Wasn’t like it’s not a good day, it’s just like, okay, the day we can do it with impunity or whatever the reason behind the lack of restraint. Talk about that. Who has been doing oversight outside of organization? What government agencies or if any?
Victoria Law: Well, the state Department of Correction operates under the auspices of the state, so the governor has oversight. He has the ability to appoint or remove the director of the prison system. A few years later, there was a report made to the governor’s office about a white supremacist organization called the Brotherhood in the Indiana State Farm, which is now called Putnamville Correctional Facility. And the governor did nothing. There had been outside investigators and state investigators who had investigated this Brotherhood and had not been able to do anything. These people operated with such impunity that when an investigator dared to file a report stating that a member of the Brotherhood, a guard associated with a white supremacist organization beat up a prisoner or beat up an incarcerated man and then falsified documents about the beating, the guard and his buddies went to the local bar and beat up the investigator.
I mean, this is the kind of impunity. They are not just targeting the people inside, but they also feel free to run amuck on the outside, going around to outside bars and beating people up when they’re having a drink or celebrating their birthday with their family members. So you can see that there is a deeper problem than just people who feel that they have so much power over incarcerated men that they can do this. But that ripples out into people feeling that they have the impunity to brutalize and violate incarcerated people and anyone who tries to hold them to accountability.
Mansa Musa: Thank you. Too Black, talk about where we at in terms of the defense. And before you get there, I just want to make this observation that when we find ourselves in these situations, and this is in defense of the actions and the behavior on the part of the individuals that was charged, when we find ourselves in these situations where we are incarcerated and we find ourselves where the guards are brutalizing us, and from a prison mentality we don’t have no choice but to defend ourselves. And from prison mentality, we take whatever necessary measures to defend ourselves. We don’t cow tow mainly when you know that they coming with blackjacks, plastic bullets, mace that take your breath, that you don’t have no choice, you going to die. So it’s better dying fighting than laying on the ground and getting beat half to death. So I’m saying that to say that for our viewers, if you look at what’s happening and you feel like that they did something to deserve this, this wasn’t something that they brought on themselves, this is the environment they in. They have a racist police guard union that this is what they do. Too Black talk about the defense and where we at with the defense for the two brothers.
Too Black: Well currently, they’ve been in prison for just since this case for 37 years and they haven’t exhausted, but they’ve went through several appeals trying to get sentence modifications, PCRs, et cetera. Some of the most recent stuff, ’cause again, we could be here all day going through the different challenges they’ve made. In 2018, Christopher Naeem Trotter, that’s the prisoner who received 142 years, he had his sentence vacated. And again, this is in Madison County, Indiana. Anderson’s the main city, but this is where Pendleton Prison is, originally where the uprising took place. So he had his sentence vacated towards the end, I believe, in October of 2018. For those who don’t know what vacated means, basically the sentence that he had was removed and he needed to be re-sentenced because they deemed that he had ineffective counsel on his original case. So that means he could have been released. The years could have been reduced dramatically to a few years left.
The judge had the freedom, really, to do whatever they wanted to do. But the judge who actually vacated the sentence was removed from the bench, that was Judge Dudley. Then they brought Judge Carroll in. So towards the end of 2019, his sentence was vacated then he was just re-sentenced to 122 years from 142. So effectively nothing happened. They just re-sentenced him to life in prison. It was a sham at that point. And the judge says, I can’t remember the direct quote, so I’m paraphrasing, but something to the effect, he says, we have to have our brothers back. And that was quoted in the Anderson Bulletin Herald. So it was obvious from our standpoint that this is deeper, this is why we call them political prisoners ’cause this is deeper than whatever so-called crime that would’ve committed.
Mansa Musa: And talk about, you made the good observation of, you juxtaposed this Indiana concentration camp plantation with the Attica plantation. Talk about that. And be mindful if you could make a connection between the little small county, because in the Attica documentary that was done, was remarkably done. The producer talked to some of the people in the Attica community and the woman said, “Attica is the major industry in Attica.” She was saying the prison industrial complex, the plantation Attica, was the number one source of income for the population of the people of Attica. From your observation and your insight or study, do you see the comparison in that regard?
Too Black: Maybe not so much in the employment aspect. There is, not a major city, but there’s a city in the county of Madison. But there did seem to be a pipeline from Ellwood, Indiana. Ellwood, Indiana is, again, stationed within Madison County. And a lot of people from Ellwood, Indiana, particularly at the time in which this happened, worked at the Pendleton Correctional Facility, even though that’s actually across the county. And Ellwood, Indiana is actually a known hub for the Ku Klux Klan. We actually have pictures in the film that were Klansmen, were taking pictures in Ellwood, Indiana. So there was always a relationship there. And then a lot of the people who were on the jury were from Ellwood, Indiana. And also, it’s important to know that the jury was all white, even though the county at the time was about 40% black. So most people on the jury from Ellwood, Indiana, and many of the people that worked in Pendleton were from Ellwood, Indiana.
So there’s just kind of a pipeline of white supremacist activity just in that nature. So I think it just becomes culturally where the people that’s, they know that’s their next job ’cause they have family there, they have friends there, and they just hire them on from there. So it doesn’t matter what the other industries are. I think it’s similar to these people, it’s similar to the way we understand maybe factory jobs, where if you have a friend or a family member, they could just bring you through the pipeline. So in the Indiana Department of Corrections, you have people even at the time who were there for 20, 30 years and then these people move up in the ranks of the Indiana Department of Corrections. And it’s also important to note, even the folks who were in this KKK splinter group that were part of the Sons of Light, that’s the name of the group who ran the prison when this occurred.
These weren’t just low level guards. You’re talking about lieutenants, talking about captains, talking about sergeants. You’re talking about people throughout the ranks of the prison. So sometimes, when people think about this, they just think about some just poor white people who do this ’cause they’re bored. And it’s like, no, this is systemic throughout being in the Department of Correction. And as was noted earlier, this wasn’t just in Pendleton facility. And I think someone brought up earlier that there was action taken prior. Yeah, there was a class action lawsuit that was taken against this prison because even some of the guards who worked there, regardless of their beliefs individually, felt unsafe because they treated the prisoners so terribly that they knew that eventually something was going to happen. It didn’t just end there. There was actually another uprising just the following year at Pendleton Correctional Facility, at the time it was Indiana Reformatory. So yeah, this is just the nature of how it works. And Indiana likes to act like these things don’t happen or these are isolated incidents. And this story has been swept under the rug for roughly 40 years now.
Mansa Musa: And in terms of when you made the comparison to Attica, because I know in Attica before the Attica uprising, one, the industry was like, it was slave labor. I think you was getting a penny a day or something to the effect. Two, the housing was oppressive and dehumanizing. You was cramped in small cells. The shower situation was dehumanizing. And the food was something that you wouldn’t even put in a pig trough that ultimately led Attica to critical mass where you had the rebellion. But talk about the conditions at Pendleton, if you can, about what kind of prison is it. A lot of the prisons, after the crime bill, they started modernizing in terms of electronics. Everything was controlled, all movement was controlled. Cameras everywhere. I was in supermax in Maryland. So describe these particular prisons or the prisons in Indiana for our audience to get understanding of how they are?
Too Black: Yeah, well, like you said, similar to Attica. And again, also want to say that I don’t just call this the Attica of Indiana, this is what the people inside say, I’m just conveying what they say. So that’s how it’s understood. It’s actually pretty well known inside regardless of what we know. But when they took over the prison after the uprising, they had 14 demands and many of those demands were addressing the actual conditions of the prison because they were asking for better food, they were asking for cleaning supplies and things that they needed ’cause even part of this started because they couldn’t get cleaning supplies. They couldn’t get the basic needs that they had. So as you know, when that doesn’t happen, often ruckus will occur because young people can’t get these things. So this wasn’t a sanitary place as well as the treatment that they were going through.
This was a place where it was, like you said, it was old and people were getting sick. So that was definitely the nature of it. That’s why part of their demands were to ask for those things. And you go through all 14 of their demands, they didn’t have any wild demands about, they wanted a helicopter to fly away.
Mansa Musa: Right. They just wanted to be treated like human beings.
Too Black: Exactly, exactly. Everything was addressing the situation that they were in. They weren’t asking for a hotel, they were just asking that while they’re there for whatever that’s worth-
Mansa Musa: Basically human rights.
Too Black: [inaudible 00:24:28] some dignity, and they weren’t receiving that. So yeah, it was coming from multiple angles. It’s the treatment of the guards, it’s the state of the prison. Even some of the charges people were getting for petty stuff that made them have to stay there even longer. Even with Christopher Naeem Trotter, for instance, he had a petty theft and he shouldn’t even have been in that prison. He was there technically because he had a military background so they put him in one of these maximum level security prisons, when based on his actual charge, he shouldn’t even have been there. So yeah, you have people who were assigned there, obviously, just because of racism, because of the way that they were treated even prior to getting in prison. So there was all these conditions that definitely led to the day we’re discussing.
Mansa Musa: Hey, Victoria, tell our audience what is the next step as far as from your perspective, in terms of trying to get some justice for the Pendleton 2?
Victoria Law: Well, I think that one of the things we’ve seen in Indiana, and Too Black can correct me if I am mistaken, is that we’ve seen that the courts are not willing to stand up when incarcerated people assert their right to self-defense. And one of the striking things when I interviewed both Christopher Naeem Trotter and John Balagoon Cole, is that they said that they didn’t want this story just to be narrowly about them. Yes, they want their freedom, they want this injustice to be abolished, but they also said what happens to us happens to people in prisons around the state and the country. So it is not just about them, but how do they use this story to ensure that other people who maybe don’t have the same platforms or the same access to folks on the outside, like in Indiana, there’s IDOC Watch, Indiana Department of Correction Watch, but that perhaps are in states that don’t have that kind of outside totally independent oversight that can take action. How to leverage that so that these injustices don’t keep occurring and occurring and occurring. So that Too Black and I are not here three years from now talking [inaudible 00:26:53]
Mansa Musa: Right, exactly.
Victoria Law: So I think that that’s important to note that we can’t look at this as an isolated incident. We can’t look to the same legal system that sentenced people to 142 years and 84 years for an incident in which nobody was killed. And even one of the guards who had been injured during the uprising filed a suit, not against Cole and Trotter, but against the state to say you created these conditions in which I and my fellow guards got hurt because you allowed people to go around, you allowed staff members to go around brutalizing people in custody and that then finally blew up into an incident in which I and other people who are supposedly not the bad apples ended up being hurt.
Mansa Musa: And Too Black, as briefly as you can tell our audience, one, how they can get in touch with you and how they can support your effort to get these men justice.
Too Black: Yeah, well we have a website that will be debuting on Thursday, just Pendleton 2, Pendleton and then the number 2.com. If you want to reach us, you can also reach us at The Pendleton 2. Again, the number, 2, at Gmail. We’re going to be releasing a film on Breakthrough News this Thursday, the Pendleton 2: They Stood Up. And that film documents many of the things that we talked about today. And it also chronicles their time in solitary confinement. We just recently added that addition to the film. So if you want to check that out, definitely do that. That’ll be at debuting at 7:00 PM eastern time this Thursday, March 30th on Breakthrough News. And if you’d like to book a screening of the film, if you’d want to sign the petitions or if you want to donate, you can do it at the website, but we definitely encourage that, particularly the screenings of the film. But you can have those in your local community and we can Zoom in, show up with something of that nature and we can help talk about this further.
Mansa Musa: Yeah, and thank you. Thank you very much, Victoria Law and Too Black. We want to encourage our viewers to check out the Rattling the Bars, all information that’s going to come out on this and review some of the activities going around The Pendleton 2. There you have, the real news about the Pendleton 2, two brothers that for no more reason than to want to be human beings and treated like human beings have been given astronomical sentences, astronomical time, and brutalized in the process. And we want to encourage everyone to look at this and evaluate it and let your conscience be your guide in terms of what you think you should do.
Thank you, Victoria, and thank you, Too Black. And we ask that you continue to support The Real News and Rattling the Bars. It’s our aspirations that you support this mechanism to the extent that it become your primary news source because we are actually the real news. You’re not going to get nothing about the Pendleton 2 on major media. You’re not going to have a author like Too Black or you’re not going to have a author like Victoria Law telling the real news about events that’s taking place in real people’s lives. All right, there you have, The Real News. Thank you very much.
In a special episode of Police Accountability Report, TRNN reporters Taya Graham and Stephen Janis report from the ground in Atlanta, where for weeks forest defenders have been fighting and risking their lives to stop the construction of “Cop City”—a massive planned police training center that would be used to instruct officers from around the country in deadly repression tactics. Speaking directly with activists on the frontlines, Graham and Janis explore the truth behind the police killing of Manuel “Tortuguita” Tehran, and the dark money sources funding the creation of the Atlanta Public Safety Center. This episode features special guests including cop watcher and auditor Lackluster, and Chris Reiter from the For Public Safety YouTube channel.
Studio: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino Footage: Stephen Janis and Taya Graham
Transcript
The transcript of this story is in progress and will be made available as soon as possible.
Across the US, people who attempt to resist the seemingly limitless power of the police often find themselves ensnared in a legal system that ostensibly exists for their protection. When a local police officer approached Paul Brophy of Weymouth, Massachusetts, and demanded to see his identification, Brophy attempted to invoke his constitutional rights. The officer then escalated the situation to an arrest, claiming Brophy attempted to reach for his weapon. Police Accountability Report examines the facts of the case, speaking to Paul Brophy himself about the incident.
Studio: Stephen Janis Studio/Post-Production: Stephen Janis, Adam Coley
Transcript
Taya Graham: Hello, my name is Taya Graham, and welcome to the Police Accountability Report. As I always make clear, this show has a single purpose: holding the politically powerful institution of policing accountable. And to do so, we don’t just focus on the bad behavior of individual cops. Instead, we examine the system that makes bad policing possible.
And today, to achieve that goal, we’ll be showing you this video of an arrest by a Massachusetts cop of a man who refused to show identification. But it’s what the officer did after the man who took the video fought for his rights, and how his charges contradicted what we will see on camera that will be the subject of the show today, an example of how law enforcement can turn mundane situations into life altering trauma.
But before we get started, 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 @eyesonpolice on Twitter. And of course, you can always message me directly @tayasbaltimore on Twitter or Facebook. And if you can, please leave a like or comment to help share our work with other people who care about justice and accountability. All right, we’ve gotten that out of the way.
Now, one aspect of American policing we have covered extensively on our show is a topic that seems simple but isn’t. Namely, the seemingly limitless ability for police to ask for or even demand identification. It’s a question that usually focuses on the legal ramifications. In other words, when can a cop demand your ID? And what rights do you have if you refuse?
But there is more to this question than just criminal code or legal procedures, because the fact that there are so many scenarios when police can make the ultimatum, produce your ID or else, that it’s worth unpacking the broad implications of this power on both our lives and our rights. And no video is a better example of what I’m talking about than the fraught encounter with Weymouth Massachusetts Police I am showing you now. It happened when resident Paul Brophy and a friend were sitting in the parking lot of a convenience store in Weymouth in October in 2019. His passenger had just purchased some snacks and cigarettes when an officer approached their car. Watch.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Police Officer: So let’s talk about what I’m asking you for. You cooperate, give me your ID, we see who you are. We can send you on your way in short time. But because now you’re prolonging this situation because you’re being defiant.
Paul Brophy: No, I’m not being defiant.
Police Officer: I asked you for an ID, a simple request, and you can’t give it to me.
Paul Brophy: I said, respectfully, officer –
Police Officer: That’s not respectfully, that’s actually defiant.
Paul Brophy: Well, you’re escalating now.
Police Officer: What’s that?
Paul Brophy: You’re escalating.
Police Officer: I’m not escalating.
Paul Brophy: I mean, it’s about de-escalation.
Police Officer: Okay.
Paul Brophy: Now, can we talk to each other? You’re a public servant. I’m a public servant.
Police Officer: Then why are you being defiant? Why would you not cooperate?
Paul Brophy: I’m not being defiant.
Police Officer: Ask for an ID, offer an ID.
Paul Brophy: I’m not being defiant. I’m defending my rights that you swore to protect.
Police Officer: Asked for an ID, you offer the ID. You’ll be sent on your way shortly after.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: Now as you can see, it’s clear the officer is completely unable to share what’s known as reasonable articulable suspicion that Paul committed a crime. That is generally the standard for making what’s known as a custodial stop, or where you’re not free to leave until the officer says so. In fact, he seems pretty much at a loss to even articulate why he’s talking to the two men at all. And I see this ironically because it appears the officer thinks that the routine act of parking and purchasing a snack is actually nefarious. Take a look.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Police Officer: Why can’t you produce an ID?
Paul Brophy: Well, it’s about the Constitution [officer laughs]. I’m surprised you laughed at that.
Police Officer: Okay, which part of the Constitution?
Paul Brophy: The First Amendment.
Police Officer: The First Amendment?
Paul Brophy: It’s probably not the First. That’s what, the assembly and all that?
Passenger: The Fifth, it’s the Fifth.
Paul Brophy: It’s the Fifth? I’m not pleading the Fifth.
Police Officer: See, clearly, you don’t even know the Constitution.
Paul Brophy: Off my heart, no, I don’t.
Police Officer: Or your Constitutional rights, because what you’re saying is that…
Paul Brophy: You should advise me of my rights, now.
Passenger: Paul, yo.
Paul Brophy: You should be helping me.
Police Officer: I’m asking you to help me.
Paul Brophy: What is your name?
Police Officer: I’m asking you to help me.
Paul Brophy: Can I ask you, what’s your name?
Police Officer: My name’s Steven. What’s your name?
Paul Brophy: Well, can I see, are you a detective?
Police Officer: No.
Paul Brophy: Well, can I see your name tag?
Police Officer: We don’t have name tags.
Paul Brophy: Okay.
Police Officer: Are you going to operate this motor vehicle?
Paul Brophy: I had planned to leave when he said we were loitering. Yeah.
Passenger: We were just told to leave, officer.
Police Officer: If you’re going to operate this motor vehicle, I need to know if you have a valid license.
Passenger: Got a license. Yeah. Give him your ID. Get it out.
Police Officer: Let me see your ID.
Paul Brophy: That’s not my problem.
Police Officer: Then we can go right from there.
Paul Brophy: That’s not my issue. Come on now.
Police Officer: Well, clearly if you’re going to drive this motor vehicle away, I need to know if you are a valid licensed operator. That way I can find that out. How am I going to find that out? By you producing me an ID?
Paul Brophy: No, I’m sorry. I’m not going to, no.
Police Officer: You don’t produce me an ID. You don’t drive this vehicle away.
Paul Brophy: Okay. Whatever you say, officer.
Police Officer: That’s what I say.
Paul Brophy: You’re in charge.
Police Officer: That’s correct.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: Now it’s worth noting that Paul, at his own risk, refuses to relinquish his rights. In fact, even as the officer escalates the encounter, Paul attempts to de-escalate, all the while simply trying to protect the rights enshrined in the Constitution. Just watch.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Police Officer: So if you’re not going to produce ID.
Paul Brophy: Power and control, it’s all about power and control.
Police Officer: No, it’s not power and control.
Paul Brophy: Yes, it is. Everyone’s a criminal.
Police Officer: It’s me doing my job.
Paul Brophy: Everyone’s a criminal.
Police Officer: It’s me doing my job.
Paul Brophy: Why do you look at people like they’re criminals? Do I look like a criminal to you?
Police Officer: Have I looked at you like a criminal? I asked you for an ID.
Paul Brophy: Yeah. No, you’ve talked to me like I’m a criminal.
Police Officer: No, believe me, trust me when I tell you, I’ve talked to people like they’re criminals. I’m not talking to you like a criminal. So rest assured, I’m asking you for your ID. You want to operate this motor vehicle?
Paul Brophy: I’m respectfully refusing.
Police Officer: Okay, then I’m going to respectfully tell you that you’re going to be getting out of this motor vehicle because you’re not going to drive the motor vehicle without a license that I know that you’re a valid licensed operator.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: Of course, at this point, you’re probably saying, why doesn’t he just hand over his license? Why not just give the cop what he wants? Why be what the mainstream media likes to call a troublemaker? Well, let me briefly address that before I show you what happened next, because the sequence of events you’re about to see will certainly answer that question full stop.
First, what are the point of our rights if they are strictly conditional? How are the First Amendment, which guarantees our ability to move about without government intervention, and our Fourth Amendment, which protects us from unwarranted search, is meaningful at all If we need permission from a person with a gun and a badge to invoke them? Seriously, and if you don’t think how and when we can invoke rights are important, take a look at what happens next.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Paul Brophy: So you’re escalating now again, and you’re getting louder.
Police Officer: Whether I’m getting louder or not has nothing to do with it. Apparently you don’t understand that right now you not producing an ID [crosstalk] means you’re not going to be able to drive this motor vehicle.
Paul Brophy: Is standing up for my rights and I’d stand up for yours too. I’d stand up for yours too. And I did.
Police Officer: Although, be that as it may –
Paul Brophy: He was very aggressive, that guy, when he came to the window.
Police Officer: You’re ignorant. If this situation…
Paul Brophy: You trying to provoke me.
Police Officer: – When the clerk has called us.
Paul Brophy: Yes. What did the clerk say? Can I ask?
Police Officer: I have not spoken to the clerk. But what we got transmission wise over the radio.
Passenger: Yes. What was that?
Police Officer: That he was suspicious about the activity that was going on. Which means there’s a potential for a crime.
Passenger: Okay. Yes. I understand that.
Police Officer: If there’s a potential for a crime, have, are or about to commit a crime, I have every right to ask for your ID.
Passenger: If you believe or under suspicion.
Police Officer: Bingo.
Paul Brophy: Well, suspicion doesn’t give you rights.
Police Officer: It’s called reasonable suspicion. And at that point we have the right to ask for an ID.
Paul Brophy: No, you don’t.
Police Officer: And because you are under suspicion for that potential crime that may or may not be going on –
Paul Brophy: It’s a touchy area.
Police Officer: – It’s for us to investigate.
Passenger: I understand. I understand. It’s a touchy area though. It’s a gray area.
Paul Brophy: I can see the difference clearly.
Passenger: No, it’s a gray area. I know.
Police Officer: But now that we got to the point where he wants to drive this motor vehicle away, he needs to produce an ID, valid license.
Paul Brophy: You don’t if that guy down the street has a valid driver’s license.
Passenger: I have a question. Stop. Stop. Calm down.
Police Officer: That guy going up the street isn’t part of a criminal investigation.
Paul Brophy: A criminal investigation?
Passenger: No, no, no. It’s not a criminal.
Police Officer: There’s a potential criminal investigation here.
Paul Brophy: [Crosstalk] If I assert my rights, I’m not being uncooperative, officer.
Police Officer: You haven’t told me why.
Paul Brophy: You haven’t told me your name.
Police Officer: I did tell you my name.
Paul Brophy: No, I asked you for your name tag and you said…
Police Officer: We don’t have name tags. No name tag.
Paul Brophy: Badge numbers, what’s your badge number? 117?
Police Officer: There’s no number on my badge. There’s no number on this badge.
Paul Brophy: Well, you don’t have a badge number. So how do I know you’re a cop?
Police Officer: Do you see a number on the badge? Because I have a badge, and it says police right on here, and I drive a police car.
Paul Brophy: I can get one of them online.
Police Officer: I have a police car right there. Want to see it? Want to see the police? It says it right on the side of it.
Paul Brophy: Well, in this day and age, you know.
Police Officer: Do you want to see the police? It says it right in the side of the car. Come on out. I’ll show you.
Passenger: Go check it out, man.
Paul Brophy: I can see it.
Police Officer: Come on out.
Passenger: Go check, inspect the car.
Police Officer: Step out. I’ll show you it.
Paul Brophy: Okay.
Passenger: Inspect it. You convince me.
Police Officer: Come out, I’ll show you.
Paul Brophy: I’m not giving anyone permission to go into my car.
Passenger: No. You don’t have permission for that.
Paul Brophy: [Shuffling sounds] Why do you want me to step out of the car? I’m not stepping out of the car. Not a chance. Hold on. Can I close my door?
Police Officer: So you can see the police car.
Paul Brophy: Let me close my door. I don’t want to see it.
Police Officer: I’ll tell you right now, you just put your hands on me. That’s why I’m grabbing you. All right. You just put your hands on me. That’s why I’m grabbing you. Now what we have here is a different scenario. You’re being aggressive. And now I’m going to ask you out of this vehicle.
Passenger: Give him your license.
Police Officer: I’m going to ask you out of this vehicle.
Passenger: Going to let you go.
Paul Brophy: I’m not getting out of here.
Passenger: Give him your ID and we can go.
Paul Brophy: Can I get a supervisor please? Can I get a supervisor?
Police Officer: You can get 10 supervisors.
Paul Brophy: Now? Can I get a supervisor now?
Police Officer: Listen to your buddy.
Passenger: Listen, Paul. Just give him your ID. Can you let go of his arm, officer?
Police Officer: No.
Paul Brophy: Why?
Police Officer: Because I don’t feel safe right now with you reaching out.
Paul Brophy: I don’t feel safe getting out of the car.
Passenger: Oh my God.
Police Officer: I have a taser and I have a gun. You’ve reached out to me, and I feel unsafe with you doing that.
Passenger: Calm down, please. Listen to me. Look at me.
Police Officer: What I’m going to do now is I’m going to take you out of this car.
Passenger: [Crosstalk] Paul, look at me. Look at me. Listen please, guys, don’t be harsh. Be harsh with him, man.
Police Officer: If you do not step out on your own.
Paul Brophy: Okay? I’ll step out on my own.
Passenger: Please.
Paul Brophy: Is that a lawful order?
Passenger: Be easy. Be easy.
Police Officer: It is a lawful order. A lawful order.
Paul Brophy: Why do you want me out of the car?
Passenger: Because they want to talk to you and show you something. All right.
Police Officer: Now you’re going to turn around. Put your hands.
Paul Brophy: No. Let me go. I’m not resisting.
Passenger: Oh man. I don’t know. I don’t know what he did, but you’re just detaining him for a minute? What are you doing?
Police Officer: Just for a minute until we get an ID out of him.
Passenger: Okay. All right. Thank you.
Police Officer: We can get the supervisor for you in a minute.
Paul Brophy: That’s all I’m asking for, a supervisor.
Police Officer: Yeah, you get one of the supers.
Paul Brophy: Oh, you’re bringing me in?
Passenger: No, they’re not bringing you in, dude. They’re just detaining you for a minute.
Paul Brophy: No, he said I’m going to see their supervisor in the station.
Passenger: No, you can call him here.
Police Officer: Actually, you know what? I’m going to charge you. ABPO. You can see him. That’s assault and battery on a police officer.
Passenger: Oh my God.
Police Officer: Assault and battery is any unwanted touching of somebody.
Paul Brophy: I did not touch you. I reached out my door.
Police Officer: I watched you reach out. You reached for me. I have a taser right here. You reached for my taser.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: That’s right. The officer accused Paul of assaulting him and reaching for his weapons. I’m not kidding. After asking him to get out of the vehicle, he actually summons serious charges against him: assault and battery of a cop. all because he was parked in a car outside of a convenience store at the ungodly hour of 2:00 AM.
Now, we are going to talk to Paul Brophy about what happened, why you fought for his rights and how this entire ordeal affected him. But first I’m joined by my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, who’s been looking into the case, researching the law, and seeking comments from the police. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me.
Stephen Janis: Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham: So first, what does the law in Massachusetts say about providing an ID to police when they ask?
Stephen Janis: According to the AC of Massachusetts, it’s really clear. The only time a police officer in Massachusetts can request your ID is when you’re operating a motor vehicle, which clearly was not happening at this time. But really, I think this is a Constitutional case. I think federal law governs here, and he was doing what anyone is allowed to do in this country, which is pretty much peaceably assembled without a cop going in and saying, who are you? So I think this is clearly a Constitutional case, and I think that’s the overriding concern here.
Taya Graham: You’ve reached out to both police and prosecutors. How are they justifying the charges?
Stephen Janis: Well, Taya, I reached out to Weymouth Police. I sent them a video of the arrest. They sent me back the police report, and it is extraordinary and telling. Now the entire probable cause in this case was a man going in and out of a convenience store and getting in and out of a motor vehicle. That was the whole basis for a crime investigation. But even more important, there are no notes about the police officer talking to the clerk in the store and trying to understand or discern why this was so disturbing. But really, there was no basis for a crime. There was no basis for a criminal investigation. If going in and out of a store is a crime, well, I’m a criminal. You’re a criminal. We’re all criminals. It’s pretty scary what the officer used to construe this encounter and this custodial stop.
And then the officer, I think, really embellished – Actually embellished is not even really adequate to describe it. He said that Paul went out and grabbed him by the waist. I think you see on the video, that’s not what happened. So this whole statement of probable cause, this whole police report raises a lot of questions about this entire arrest.
Taya Graham: Now, a judge did rule about the officer demanding the ID. What was the ruling? And more importantly, what are your concerns about what happened during this seemingly illegal arrest?
Stephen Janis: Well, Taya, what’s interesting to hear is the judge actually agreed. The judge ruled that the officer did not have the right to ID Paul at this point, and really said that was not a reasonable or even legal request for an ID. The only problem is the judge did not rule that actually vacated the entire charge of harming a police officer or assault and battery of a police officer. So really it didn’t amount to much. But the truth is, no matter what, Paul’s First Amendment rights were violated.
And also I think the entire charges of assault and battery are insane. Look at the video, read the police report. There is no evidence of it. For example, in the police report, the officer did not sustain any injuries. So how is that assault and battery? So anyway, I think it’s good that the judge affirmed his Constitutional rights. It’s unfortunate for Paul that the legal system didn’t work in his favor.
Taya Graham: And now I’m joined by Paul Brophy, the man who endured this police overreach, and whose life has been profoundly impacted by these charges. Paul, thank you so much for joining me.
Paul Brophy: Really appreciate the work you do. Honest to God, it’s fantastic.
Taya Graham: So this encounter happened in a parked car. How did the police approach you?
Paul Brophy: Well, it’s very simple really. I pulled in, it was a 24-hour store. I was doing two things. It was late in the morning, it was like 2:30, 3:00 from what I recall. And I pulled into the store and my passenger got out and went in, and I was sitting there texting or something, or looking at my phone. He came back out, got into my vehicle, and I reached to start it up. Obviously we were getting going, and next thing I realized that there’s two police cars. One pulled in behind me, preventing me from leaving. And the other, first of all, it was just one car. And he pulled in behind me and immediately came to the window and started asking questions. Said they got a call and can I get your ID? This and that. And my passenger gave up his ID right away.
And I’m thinking to myself, well, wait a minute. Why do I have to give my ID in this position? Because first, I hadn’t done anything wrong. I had no idea why they were there. And secondly, I wasn’t pulled over or anything. And it was then that his backup came and he kind of took over. And as you can see from the video, I think it took him about 15 seconds just to focus in on ID. So it became from then on, ID, ID, ID as opposed to, we’re investigating, we’re asking you to stay here for a few minutes and we’re going to talk to the clerk and do a proper investigation. But it turned out to be none of that. And he told me that they got a call that two people were running in and out of the store. There was nothing happening out of the ordinary, actually. So as you can see from the video then, he just started demanding ID.
Taya Graham: What do you think the suspicion of you and your passenger was? And did he ever really articulate his suspicion?
Paul Brophy: He articulated a suspicion because he said they got a call of two people walking in and out, running in and out of the store. So I told him I had no problem going into the store to talk to the clerk. I hadn’t even been in the store. My passenger went in and came back out. He did spend about five minutes in there. I recall thinking, is he coming or what’s going on? But he did just come out and then we were going to leave. So I guess his articulate suspicion was a suspicion that the store was going to be robbed, I guess. But he did say that the suspicion he had was… I can’t recall his exact words on the suspicion, but he said, we got a call, two guys coming in and out of the store in a truck outside. And that gave him enough suspicion to investigate, which meant that I was compelled to hand over my ID, and I disagreed.
Taya Graham: Now, you chose to stand on your rights. Why did you do that?
Paul Brophy: I think one of the reasons, one of the big reasons was because I had educated myself through shows like yours and First Amendment auditors, and over the past year that I just really got into it. And I could not believe the fact that how the police police here is totally contrary to the rights of the people. I think because most people just follow their demands or their requests that they continue to do it this way with disregard for people’s rights. In particular, where you live, what your social security number is, what your background is. And I figured all you had to do was run my plates anyways. It was my car, it was registered under me, it was insured, I had stickers, everything was okay on the car.
And so that was what prompted me. I’d watched a lot of the videos, and I’d seen so many policemen and government officials just walk over people’s rights. I decided to push back and just to push it and see, get an explanation from him. And really, he came up with this same old tried and trusted methods of, where did you go to law school and this type of thing. So I just answered and tried to stay calm, and I could see he was getting madder and madder. And I actually had to ask him to deescalate a little bit because I could feel his energy. He wanted to drag me out of that car. He wasn’t used to people say, challenging him, and I didn’t want to do it aggressively. I just wanted to be on my way and this not to be an issue. So it turned into a big issue, and it turned into a person losing their freedom and being put in a cell because they’re stopped at a 24-hour store on their way over to drop some money off for my daughter, is where I was going.
And I was giving the passenger a ride to that town. It’s kind of metro Boston. So I was giving my passenger a ride as far as that town, and he was on his own from there. It was very late. I couldn’t drop him to where he needed to go, and he had a bicycle. So I was helping him out, and on my way to do that – Granted it was late in the morning, but that’s nothing new for me. I mean, I’m out and about at all times. It’s not suspicious to be out and about.
Taya Graham: So the officer started to escalate the situation. From my vantage point of watching, it seemed like you were reaching to close the car door. The officer said you were reaching for him. What happened in that moment?
Paul Brophy: Exactly. That’s the crucial moment, if you will, and it’s not clear on the video what happened. But what happened was, for some reason I said, okay, I’m going to get out of the car. But he opened the door. I didn’t open the door. I went to unlatch my seatbelt. He opened the door and came around, whereas he was now between the door and me. So I said to him, well, why do you want me to get out of the car? And I reached out slowly. I know a lot of cops, and I know that you don’t make sudden movements, you don’t do anything silly. And I reached out for my door, but I reached out from my door with the arm. But as I did, he grabbed me like that and we both looked at each other and you can hear it on the video, and he goes, okay, so now everything’s changed.
You reached out for me, and I have a taser and I have a gun, and you grabbed my belt, my duty belt. And I was just stunned. I’m like, oh no, come on now. You know that’s not true, or something I said like that. Pulled me out of the car as you could see, and put me up against the side of my car and immediately cuffed me. And the other officer then said, I’m just going to charge him with assault battery of a police officer. And they ended up doing that and charging me with failure to ID.
Taya Graham: Were you surprised that the police officer escalated this to an arrest and the charges that came out?
Paul Brophy: Well, surprised is an interesting word. I think in one sense, absolutely, I was very surprised. But having educated myself and seen the level of abuse, if you will, towards members of the public, from videos and from your channel and the work you guys do, some of it is just horrendous. And to think that the very fact that you stand on your rights, which is in a perfect world, should be completely accepted, if it’s grounded in fact and law, that they would violate that. Now, call me naive. But I was thinking right from, there’s no way that they will ever get up on the stand or anything and just lie. And when I’d say that to people, they’d be like, really? So I went with the proper course of the way to do things. And sure enough, when I heard that and saw that and the reaction, the nonchalantness in a court of law, I was saddened.
I was really sad about that, and sad for the system and sad for… It’s kind of sad for myself as well. It’s like, my God, they’re not going to go this route, are they? I could go to jail potentially here. So we set a trial. I was offered a trial, and so my lawyer said I had a really good case and blah, blah, blah. And all of a sudden then I got this phone call from her and she said you need to come out to court immediately. After talking to the DA, talking to the judge, and they’re offering you a great deal. And I think you should take it right away. So, I know, I’ve been disappointed with myself ever since. But I felt a little bit, I was pushed into it. I was on my own. I didn’t have an advisor. I didn’t have somebody to go over it with.
But I went down to the court and they were there and she was in the courtroom and the judge, and they had offered me three months probation with no restrictions whatsoever. So this was at the very top and it said, abide by state and local laws and the law, abide by the law and in three months time, this will be dismissed. So I signed it, and that didn’t sit well in me at all. I let it process without talking to my lawyer. And I did say to her, well, I thought we were going to go to trial on this. You seemed very confident and you were, and she was in the text she sent me, but they want to clear cases, I guess.
Taya Graham: Just out of curiosity, did you actually have a license on you?
Paul Brophy: Yeah, I did. Yeah. I had my license on me. And I know, the first lawyer I got, I ended up having a part company with him, but the first, I was so upset, but the first appearance in court where they assigned me a lawyer, the first thing he said to me, and he was actually mad. He’s like, why didn’t he just give him your ID? And I’m like, oh God, is this who’s going to defend me? I don’t know if that’s going to work. And he walked away. He came back with paperwork and he said, there, and walked away. So anyway, it didn’t work out with him. After a while I said, I need a different lawyer. This is not, your attitude is your way of working is fine, but it’s not for me, and I prefer… So I went to the court and they said, okay. They gave me a different lawyer.
Taya Graham: So what were you charged with and how long were you in jail?
Paul Brophy: I was charged with refusing to provide ID to a police officer on demand and assault and battery on a police officer. Those were the two charges.
Taya Graham: Now you told me they didn’t want to take you to trial, which is interesting, because I think you would’ve done great on the stand. You had the truth on your side, no criminal history, well-spoken. I think you would’ve been great. So maybe they didn’t want you to face a jury. Can you update me on the case?
Paul Brophy: Yeah, sure. And thank you for saying that. I appreciate it, in regards to looking good on the stand and everything and believable. And I felt the same way, to be honest with you, because when you’re telling the truth, you don’t have to stammer or you don’t have to make up more stuff. For me just to sit there and talk from my heart and tell the truth about what happened. So what happened from when she was appointed with me, we met a few times, kind of made me feel in a way that she threw me a big favor at times because I said to her, well, at one point I said, well, whose side are you on here? Because she was leaning towards, well, why did you do this and that? And that’s fine. But she said to me, look, I do private cases, and I just take cases from the courts to be helpful in the community and stuff.
And I don’t know about that after what it went through because she needs cases, she wants charges, she needs, it’s all pretty good money for them, and it’s kind of free clients, if you will. Because of COVID, the courts were shut down here in Massachusetts for quite a while. It opened up under Zoom, so most of it was being done on video, and I’m thinking, this is 4 years later here, and what happened to my… I think my Sixth Amendment right here for a speedy trial? Then she called me to the court one day and she said, look, you need to come down here. The judge wants to hear, wants to go over this, and I’ve gotten a great deal for you. I really think you should take it. It’s totally non-restrictive probation for three months and it’ll be all dismissed and it’ll be all gone.
But as you know well, it’s never gone. It’s there. It’s prevented me from getting jobs. This is a disaster, to be charged with this. And then now I suppose I’ve in a way accepted it because I took a punishment. It’s disastrous for my life.
Taya Graham: So how has this arrest affected you? Did you lose time for work or have to pay attorney’s fees or a bond?
Paul Brophy: Oh my god, yeah. Yeah, you’re not going to find out, nobody’s going to email you back and say, well, we can’t hire you because you’ve been accused of assaulting a police officer. But I started testing the water. Here I am. I’ve got a graduate degree and I’m applying for entry level positions to see if I’m going to get any. Now, I took the graduate degree off. I just said I had a bachelor’s degree and I applied for dozens and dozens and dozens of jobs, and 90% I didn’t even hear back from them, because I think the norm now is for… You know how easy it is to look up somebody’s record. And once a person has your name and your address or whatever, which you have on your resume and all. So all I have is gig work right now. In fact, I was out of work for quite a while, long time. I know with COVID it was obvious we were out of work, but I haven’t had a steady job since this happened. And it’s unfortunate, because I did spend 20 years serving the public myself, and I always knew who I worked for, and I treated them with respect no matter what.
Taya Graham: Okay. Now, there are times when I talk about a specific law or right or even policy that directly relates to the misuses of police power. In other words, I try to drill down on one aspect of policing and the law and provide context and comprehension of the way bad policing affects our lives in ways that are often unacknowledged. But today, I’m going to speak in broader terms about what happened to Mr. Brophy and why I think an overlooked consequence of police power needs more attention. There are plenty of people who would look at the video, we just parsed and characterized it as unremarkable. I imagine there are certainly a lot of people watching the show who would just shrug their shoulders and say, yes, these charges have made life difficult for Mr. Brophy, but the cop was just doing his job. What’s the point of delving into this arrest any further?
Well, let me take this question from a different perspective. Let me explore the idea of how police power affects the way we think, act and even perceive ourselves and the freedoms we purport to cherish. Now, first of all, let’s remember that for all of those who think the cop was “just doing his job”, consider for a moment what that actually means. Imagine if the officer’s assertion that he has the right to demand an ID without probable cause is correct. If that’s true, I want you to ponder what kind of power he actually has and what it implies about our rights.
If a representative of the government can ask you to identify yourself anytime, anywhere, for any reason, we might as well just cross out the First Amendment of the Constitution that guarantees the right to peaceably assemble – And while you’re at it, cross out the Fourth because apparently you don’t have the right to secure your personal effects from unwarranted searches and seizures. This means the government can arrest someone for protesting. This means if the government doesn’t like your perspective, it can seize your property and simply do with it as it pleases.
But there is an idea that transcends the law that I think warrants discussion in this case. The psychology, so to speak, of government power that is just as potent as the aforementioned incursion on our rights, but rarely gets the attention it deserves. That’s because what the officer did to Mr. Brophy is not just about an arrest, contemptive cop or simply a grumpy officer taking out his frustrations on an innocent man. It’s not just a story of police overreach, misuse of the law or another glaring example of the overarching power of a single cop. No, I think what we’re seeing is symbolic of the broader contempt the government in general has for the people. I think it’s meant to be a performative sort of power: indiscriminate, excessive, and most of all indifferent, and that so-called performance has a message, to quote our documentary Tax Broke: we are not worthy.
What do I mean? Well, consider this recent series of stories regarding the inability of pharmacies to provide crucial drugs to people who need them. The report recounts how critical drugs to treat conditions like ADHD, anxiety, and opioid addiction are in short supply, prompting pharmacies to reject legal prescriptions. Now, this shortage is not related to the pandemic, the often shaky supply chain, or any other common manufacturing issue. It’s not even a consequence of a lack of raw materials or some sort of effort by drug companies to raise prices. No, the problem is a shining example of how the performative power of policing and economic inequality are not just linked, but actually work in tandem.
That’s because the force behind this life-threatening shortage of crucial pharmaceuticals is no less than the government itself. I am not kidding. It is a result of a DEA settlement with opioid manufacturers who flooded the country with billions of pain pills, raking in billions of profits while hundreds of thousands of people died from overdosing. The settlement with the attorney generals of 48 states and the DEA led to huge fines but no jail time for the greedy executives. It also included a provision to monitor pharmacies for the sale of drugs that aren’t even opioids – On the surface, at least – To ensure the pills don’t flood the market again.
The expansive list includes not just the aforementioned laundry list of critical drugs, but even a medication known as Suboxone, which is used, ironically, to treat opioid addiction through a process called replacement therapy. This system, put in place with little thought for who it would actually punish, is now causing pharmacies to be flagged for legally prescribed drugs, and as a result, cutting off crucial supplies needed by innocent patients.
So let’s unpack this little public policy jujitsu while I explain how it relates to the previously mentioned performative aspect of police power.
So first, greedy drug executives flood the markets like big time drug lords with opioid pills, causing overdose deaths to skyrocket and profits to balloon. The federal government ignores the crisis until it becomes too big to hide under the proverbial protect the rich rock. But then while crafting a settlement, the feds devise a plan that actually punishes average Americans, even while maybe one or two executives ended up behind bars. Included in that stupendously thoughtless plan was to limit the availability of critical drugs that are used to treat the victims of the feckless greedy drug company lords who caused the problem in the first place. I am serious. This is what our own government, which is supposed to serve the people, conjured from its how to screw things up manual – Which, incidentally, is available online for a small fee.
But back to my point at the beginning of this segment, the connection between police power and the ridiculously bungled response to the corporate sponsored addiction epidemic is part of a larger theme. Police in this case serve as a barometer, so to speak, a gauge of how the government actually views our rights and what they truly mean. The job of cops in this particular case is to perform for us the liturgy of the elites, a ritual that demonstrates to us clearly that we don’t matter. But it is more than that because this performative power with of course real consequences also convinces us that unjust policies like the ridiculous drug clampdown are, in essence, our fault. That is, we who are the ones who caused opioid pills to flood the market while companies made billions off of human misery. From the ability to arrest us anywhere at any time flows the entire psychology that the reason your local drugstore can’t obtain crucial medication to fulfill your prescription is actually you.
What that cop told us with his indiscriminate and reckless use of government power is the same message that the elites were sending when they made a mess of a healthcare system already frayed at the edges. Keep your mouth shut, comply or face the consequences of our massive indifference. And if you do push back, we will find the means through a minor arrest, conjured crime, or a straightforward retaliatory sanction to make you take the blame.
That’s why the misuse of police power is not just about bad tickets, false charges, or unwarranted harassment. That’s why a cop being able to demand your ID whenever and wherever they want is not limited to the indignity of the act itself. What it means is what it’s designed to tell us about ourselves, that even though the Constitution says differently, our rights are subject to change. What it tells us is that no matter how many times Wall Street or big banks or big pharma screw us, we only have ourselves to blame.
Which is why Paul’s decision to assert his rights is a more consequential act than it appears at first glance. That is, his insistence that he has the right to not comply with police is even more consequential than simply pushing back on an overbearing cop. It is instead an act of defiance that refutes the neoliberal blame game to punish the many to ensure profits for the few. It’s the most consequential and imperative act there is: saying no to indiscriminate power, no to more policing, and no to the invasive and never ending push to take our rights and sell them to the highest bidder.
That’s why we will continue to report on stories like these, and that’s why we will always unpack and expose the system that makes what you witness on this show possible. Hopefully, by continuing our work, we can make it impossible for cops to act this way, but it is unlikely. But even a small step towards justice is worth taking in the longer journey of making our world a better place.
I want to thank my guest, Paul, for joining us and for sharing his experience. Thank you, Paul. 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, Thank you for having me.
Taya Graham: And of course, I want to thank friends and mods of the show, Noli Dee and Lacie R for their support. Thank you. And a very special thanks to our 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 R and David K, and super friends, Shane Bushta, Pineapple Girl and Chris R.
And I want you watching to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct or brutality, please share it with us and we might be able to investigate. Please reach out to us. You can email us tips privately 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 @eyesonpolice on Twitter. And of course, you can always message me directly @tayasbaltimore on Twitter and Facebook. And please like and comment. You know I read your comments and that I appreciate them. And we do have a Patreon link pinned in the comments below if you feel inspired to donate accountability reports. And please consider doing so. 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.
Maximillian Alvarez: 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 new one-woman play ‘The Road to Damascus’ reinterprets the biblical story of Saul and the tale of Little Red Riding Hood as an allegory for white complicity in the US prison system and the possibility of redemption through anti-racism. Creator and performer Kathy Randels joins Rattling the Bars to discuss her new work.
Pre-Production: Frances Madeson Studio Production: Cameron Granadino, 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 Mansa Musa. And today, I have a remarkable woman. I use these terms a lot: remarkable, extraordinary. But in this regard, she encapsulates all of these things: Kathy Randels. Kathy, welcome to Rattling the Bars.
Kathy Randels:
Thank you so much, Mansa. It’s great to be here.
Mansa Musa:
All right, Kathy. I asked you this off camera, and I was joking with you that it wasn’t going to be easy. How would you describe yourself?
Kathy Randels:
All right. Something new comes out every time, right?
Mansa Musa:
Always.
Kathy Randels:
A preacher’s daughter from Bulbancha, which is the Indigenous name for what people know as the city of New Orleans. Was born and raised here. I am a mother myself to a 16-year old named Emma. I’m a wife to Sean LaRocca. I’m a daughter to some ancestors who have already transitioned.
And I am someone who has worked inside the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women for 26 years. I’ve seen a whole lot that I don’t like, so I have made a performance piece that is trying to rattle the bars right now, Mansa.
Mansa Musa:
And you know what? We going to rattle these bars. Because now, you took a subject matter and turned it into a play. And the subject matter you took in is called The Road to Damascus.
And in the road to Damascus, as anyone of a Christian persuasion know, the road to Damascus is where Saul, who later became Apostle Paul, who was a known persecutor of Christians. Matter of fact, on the road to Damascus, he had got permission to go find some Christians, bring them back and kill them. He had just stoned Stephen.
Kathy Randels:
[inaudible 00:02:15]
Mansa Musa:
And you chose The Road to Damascus-
Kathy Randels:
Yes, sir.
Mansa Musa:
… as a form of generating a play.
Give our audience a overview of why you chose The Road to Damascus, and a little snippet of what the play is about. And on the heels of that, maybe you can grace us with some talent and music. How’s that sound?
Kathy Randels:
That sounds beautiful. Thank you so much. Thanks for this opportunity to speak about it.
I feel like The Road to Damascus chose me. It was one of those moments where sometimes your intention as an artist is met with a calling from a divine source, or even a human source.
In this case, I’ve been working on this piece for about three years now, and there were several things that were swirling around. One, on the political spectrum was that last president who I don’t feel like naming right now.
Mansa Musa:
He will remain nameless.
Kathy Randels:
And especially being in Louisiana, I’m in probably the most progressive area of the State of Louisiana. And being a white person whose family has been in this country, settler colonizers for many years with a tiny bit of Cherokee, about seven generations back.
Yeah, I was very discouraged by the huge rise of white supremacy that was being not just condoned, but sanctified under the last administration.
And I came to something that I think Martin Luther King Jr. came to. He said it much more eloquently than me. But I really felt very deeply that racism is not something that we can legislate away. Racism is a spiritual disease.
And I really felt having grown up in the church and having grappled with church and Christianity for years now; I’m in my mid-50s; I really actually felt like I wanted to go back to the church with this, and to challenge my fellow white Christians, specifically, on the role our church has played in creating white supremacy in all the systems of our country, but especially the criminal legal system. So that’s part one.
Part two is an amazing woman named Mama Glo Williams. Gloria Dean Williams. She was a member of the LCIW Drama Club for over 20 years.
Mansa Musa:
And that’s the drama club you created?
Kathy Randels:
Yeah. I started it. And I have many, many partners in the work throughout the years. My main co-director now is a woman named Ausettua AmorAmenkum, who’s also based here in Bulbancha, New Orleans. And yeah, Mama Glo is the woman who served the longest sentence in the State of Louisiana. She did 52 years at LCIW.
And through another one of our graduates, a woman named Fox Rich, who some of y’all may have already met and heard of. She’s the woman who had a documentary film about her successful struggle to get her husband out of Angola, called Time. That’s the name of their [inaudible 00:06:20], almost on-
Mansa Musa:
Netflix, yep.
Kathy Randels:
Yep, yep. Actually, it’s on Amazon, I think. Amazon, if y’all want to catch that. I’m a big rabbit chaser, so bear with me, Mansa.
Mansa Musa:
Take your time. We having this conversation.
Kathy Randels:
A sidebar about Fox is, she’s in a runoff to become our next congresswoman in the State House of Louisiana. So we’re excited about that.
But I want to come back to the time when Mama Glo was still in prison. After Fox successfully got our governor, John Bel Edwards, to sign her husband’s clemency papers, and when he was out, they were thinking about what they were going to do with their blessing of freedom. And they really felt called to help free more people.
And they started a participatory defense movement chapter in New Orleans. It’s called PDMNOLA. They wanted to tackle a large case at the beginning, and spoke with Ausettua and I about any women in the drama club. And we were like, “Well, Mama Glo’s the one who’s been there the longest.” And they were like, “Well, let’s try to free Mama Glo.”
So we worked together to free Mama Glo. Many, many, many: her family, PDMNOLA, our organization called The Graduates, which is a performing ensemble of formerly incarcerated women out of LCIW, VOTE in New Orleans … Many, many, many folks contributed to helping build a case for Mama Glo to be released.
She was pardoned by the pardon board. And after two years, was still waiting on the governor’s signature. And Fox is originally from a city north in Louisiana called Shreveport. And she shared with me one day that three Black ministers from Shreveport had a meeting with the governor; this was during COVID. Mama Glo had had COVID, and almost died from COVID. And they asked the governor what it would take for him to sign Mama Glo’s papers. And he said, “A Damascus experience.”
Mansa Musa:
Hm.
Kathy Randels:
And I had been thinking about this piece already. I had been thinking about Saul/Paul’s conversion experience. Thinking about this idea that what all white people; but maybe even especially, white Christians in America; need is a major conversion experience, especially around prisons and the whole philosophy of prisons in our country. That was a Damascus experience for me, to hear that that’s what the governor felt like he needed.
So when I first started really diving into making the piece, my intention was to perform it for the governor, so that he would see it and feel so moved to sign Mama Glo’s papers.
Mansa Musa:
You know what? I like the way you took that when he said “A Damascus experience,” and he said that’s what he needed. But the thing is; now, my question to you is; because we know the Damascus experience is the conversion of Saul into Paul. So when he said that, who did you think he meant to be converted? Him or Mama Glo?
Kathy Randels:
I think he was talking about himself.
Mansa Musa:
So he was saying in essence; and you can follow me out on this; that he would have to see something in his thinking that would make him have compassion towards Mama Glo. All right?
Kathy Randels:
That’s [inaudible 00:10:47]
Mansa Musa:
I heard what you said about performing it, that that would be the performance. And if you would’ve been able to see it out, had the performance, had it for the governor, he see the play, he had a conversion, he cut Mama Glo loose, we ride off in the sunset, everybody happy.
But how did you see it in terms of the reality? Because that ain’t happened. But how do you see it in terms of the reality, of having this information out there? And maybe he could see it and have that conversion? Or if he didn’t see it, others would see it, and be converted to have him converted.
Kathy Randels:
Right.
Mansa Musa:
You follow me out?
Kathy Randels:
Totally. Totally. Well, and then the curve ball is that he finally did have his Damascus experience. And he did sign Mama Glo’s papers before I finished making the piece.
Mansa Musa:
Okay.
Kathy Randels:
Halfway through making the piece, one of the initial intentions of it went away. So I had to rethink what I was doing with the piece.
And just on the governor, I will say that he has released a lot of women. Something historic is happening in Louisiana right now. Releasing Mama Glo, he has signed, I think; I have to talk to Ivy Mathis from VOTE, who’s really keeping track of all of this; but he has released at least somewhere between 12 and 15 women within the last six months.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. So he has been converted. I’m thinking about Isaiah 61, saying what: “The spirit of the Lord is upon me.” So what, the spirit of the Lord is upon him?
Kathy Randels:
Yeah. We could use a little more spirit. There’s a whole lot more people on his desk still.
Mansa Musa:
A whole lot more spirit gotta be having.
Kathy Randels:
Yeah. We need a little more spirit. But no, we’re in a quote-unquote red state, Mansa.
Mansa Musa:
I know exactly where you’re at.
Kathy Randels:
And who gets into that position next is scary. We’re looking at … Anyway, don’t let me go down that road!
Mansa Musa:
Hey, but Kathy: talk about this here. Okay, let’s go and unpack, why drama?
In DC they had a group in Lorton. Lorton was the major maximum security prison in the District of Columbia, where I’m at presently. And they had a group down there called the Inner Voices of Lorton.
Kathy Randels:
Nice.
Mansa Musa:
And the Inner Voices of Lorton, they used drama. And to get out of the prison, they had to get Richard Nixon, of all people, to sign their pardons. And Richard Nixon pardoned quite a number of them as a result of the Inner Voices of Lorton.
Chris Hodges, he is a known author and professor; wrote a book and conducted and dealt with around plays that had men look at themselves and be able to unpack their trauma through a drama. But my question to you: what made you, one, look at this as something that could be used?
And two, why did you think that it would be helpful in an environment where it was so much trauma, degradation, a whole lot of ills going on as a result of the system that they inflicted on these women?
What made you think that this right here, your method, would really have an impact on helping them? And ultimately having a Damascus experience that resulted in 12 women being released to this day … or more?
Kathy Randels:
Well, when I started the drama club, I had just graduated from college. I was, I guess, about three years out of college in my mid-20s. And I had just moved back home to Louisiana.
But I went to university at Northwestern in Chicago. And I had made a solo performance piece. I was a performance studies major. So theater has been, I guess, my talent, my gift, my calling from age 12. And I’ve studied it and practiced it all my life.
My final performance for my senior project was a piece called Rage With/Without that was about anger, aggression, and violence in women. Which was something that as a white Southern Christian woman, I was not encouraged to express my anger growing up.
Taking women’s studies classes and also studying theater in college really got me thinking about that. That got me thinking about what emotions do I have access to? And what emotions have I closed myself off from, or not even been invited to experience?
Then three years after I did that performance, a dear friend of mine, Ruth Carter, was working with some lawyers on the Illinois Clemency Project for battered women in Illinois. That was back in 1994.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Kathy Randels:
And we’re still dealing with this, right?
Mansa Musa:
Mm-hmm.
Kathy Randels:
But one of the professors had seen my performance. And I told her that I really wanted to meet some of the women who had killed their abusers to have … My piece was very much based on books. It was a college academic piece. And I really wanted to meet women who had gone through these experiences. So I met them, and I incorporated two of those women’s stories into Rage Within/Without.
One of the women that I interviewed: I told her I was going back to Louisiana. And she kind of put the finger on a third eye. She was another Damascus moment. She said, “Well, Kathy, when you go back home, you need to work with the women down there.”
And I was like, “Okay.” I had no idea how I was going to do it. But I wrote a grant; it was a small NEA grant; and I said that I would perform Rage Within/Without at LCIW and do a six-month workshop afterwards.
I got the grant; I hadn’t talked to anybody at LCIW. Again, the divine channel opened, and the person I called was Lorraine Gibson, who was an incredible social worker. She really believed in serving and helping the women at LCIW, not in punishing them. And she thought this was a good idea.
She let me come in, did the piece, did the six months. And then a woman named Cheryl Keahey, who is an ancestor now, put the finger on me and said, “Now Kathy, you know you can’t leave.”
Mansa Musa:
Oh yeah.
Kathy Randels:
And I said, “Okay.”
Mansa Musa:
Hey Kathy: now while we got a little time left, give us an overview of what The Road to Damascus is.
Kathy Randels:
Okay. So the subtitle is As Told by Grandmother to Little Red. Grandmother is an incarcerated woman; and in many ways, she’s modeled after Mama Glo. She’s been incarcerated for over 50 years. Little Red is her granddaughter, a teenager in many ways modeled after me.
Saul is the prison guard, and the wolf is … Hmm, I was trying to describe the wolf yesterday. The Wolf is the natural order; divinity untampered with by humanity. So the story tells these four characters, and how they intersect.
And maybe now would be a good time, if I may, to sing. There’s an opening song I think lays out the themes that are then explored more deeply in the piece.
Mansa Musa:
Oh yeah, most definitely. Yep.
Kathy Randels:
Is that okay?
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, most definitely. Yes.
Kathy Randels:
All right. Sorry about that, y’all.
(singing)
Mansa Musa:
Yeah. All right. Tell us where our viewers can get in touch with you, and where our viewers can support [inaudible 00:23:49] theater, this particular play.
Kathy Randels:
Thank you. Thank you so much.
Mansa Musa:
How they can get in touch with you.
Kathy Randels:
Yeah, definitely. Y’all can reach out to me at Kathy, K-A-T-H-Y, @artspotproductions, with an S on the end, dot org. And this piece, we just finished performing the piece here in Bulbancha, New Orleans. And we’re taking it to the state capital next, Baton Rouge, to a place called The Red Shoes. That’s going to be on March 11th at 6:00 PM.
Then we’re taking it to the Lafayette area on March 18th. That location is still TBD. And then I’m coming up to the Northeast. Well, first The Graduates are going to be performing at the Beyond the Bars conference. I hope some of y’all can come to that at Columbia University.
We’ll be performing on March 24th, and Mama Glo will be with The Graduates for that performance. And it’s going to be her first time performing in New York. She’s also going to be giving a panel called Mama Glo’s Healing Circle on Sunday, March 26th. That’s at 2:00 PM; that’s also going to be a part of that conference.
And then finally, The Road to Damascus in New York. We’re going to do it at Union Seminary in the James Chapel. That’s going to be on March 31st and April 1st. And Mama Glo is going to speak after the piece with our audiences there. So I think the best way to find out what’s going on is to come to our website, artspotproductions.org, or shoot me an email.
And yeah. Thank you so much, Mansa. Thank you for following my tangents. I know I can travel all over the world with words, but you are an amazing, amazing spirit. I feel blessed to have met you here today, and I’m grateful for the work you’re doing.
Mansa Musa:
It’s my honor. And we like to remind our Rattling the Bars viewers and listeners: that there you have it: The Real News about The Road to the Damascus, a play by Kathy about conversion. But more importantly, a play about healing and uplifting us in our humanity. In this time and day and age, this is what we really need: an upliftment of our humanity.
Thank you, Kathy, for being this remarkable woman that you are, and honoring us and gracing us with your song and with your work.
We ask that all our viewers and listeners continue to support Rattling the Bars and The Real News. As you well know, our comrade, Eddie Conway, has transitioned. And we want to continue to invoke his memory and his good works by continuing this work on Rattling the Bars and The Real News. So we ask that you continue to support Rattling the Bars and The Real News. Thank you very much, and thank you, Kathy.
Kathy Randels:
Thank you so much. Y’all have a great day.
Anncr.:
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.
On Sept. 30, 2020, a SWAT team burst into the Henderson County, Indiana home of Chris Reiter under a falsely obtained warrant. Reiter’s girlfriend, Tiffany Napier, was severely injured as police ransacked the house, ultimately finding nothing before departing without acknowledging any wrongdoing on their part. Reiter has since filed a lawsuit alleging violations of his constitutional rights, and dedicated himself to helping others hold police accountable. Reiter’s efforts recently led to another arrest when he attempted to help the father of a victim of abuse by Clarksville police. Chris Reiter and Tiffany join Police Accountability Report to discuss their efforts to seek justice.
Studio: Stephen Janis Post-Production: Stephen Janis, Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The transcript of this episode will be made available as soon as possible.
Incarcerated people across the US could find their commissary funds depleted by a new proposed policy from the Bureau of Prisons to automatically deduct three quarters of all funds prisoners receive from loved ones on the outside. The BOP is justifying the proposed change by appealing to personal responsibility—claiming that the deductions will go towards covering prisoners’ financial obligations such as child support and court fees. But what about the financial obligations of the federal government? Billions of public dollars are earmarked for corporate contractors profiting from incarceration and war each year, while the costs of operating courts and raising children are pushed onto incarcerated individuals and their families. Tim Curry, Mark Ford, and Jodi Hocking join Rattling the Bars to discuss the new Bureau of Prisons proposal and how incarcerated people, their families, and organizers are fighting back.
Jodi Hocking is the founder and Executive Director of Return Strong, a grassroots organization of families and loved ones of incarcerated people fighting for transparency, accountability, and communication from the Nevada Department of Corrections.
Mark Ford is a formerly incarcerated person who won relief from the BOP’s proposed deductions after advocates won a statutory cap on the new policy.
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 Mansa Musa, and today we’ll be talking to three extraordinary individuals that will be educating us on how the prison industrial complex, mass incarceration is profiting off of prisoners and their families. As if it is not enough to have us be dehumanized by being subjected to some of the most harshest living conditions, now we being subjected to paying for those living conditions. According to a report the Bureau of Prisons is proposing a change of the operations of inmate’s trust accounts. The new rule will automatically apply to 75% of the money received from family members or other outside sources, towards restitution, court costs, child support, and other obligations. That means that if your loved one has court ordered financial obligation, they have not been met and you send them a hundred dollars, only 25 will be deposited into their account.
Here to talk about this proposed policy and how the state has implemented some of these policies is Mark Ford, Jodi Hocking, and Tim Curry. Welcome to Rattling the Bars.
Mark Ford:
Thank you.
Jodi Hocking:
Thank you. Thanks for having us.
Mansa Musa:
All right, Mark, introduce yourself to Rattling the Bars, just tell us a little bit about yourself.
Mark Ford:
Hello, my name’s Mark Ford. I just recently was released from prison. I’ve been out about a week right now. I served 20 years for second degree murder and I’m currently staying at a halfway house and trying to get back in the track of life.
Mansa Musa:
All right. Welcome home. Jodi.
Mark Ford:
Thank you.
Mansa Musa:
Introduce yourself to the Rattling the Bars audience. Tell us a little bit about who you are and what your organization represents.
Jodi Hocking:
Thank you. My name is Jodi Hocking. I am the founder and executive director of an organization in Nevada called Return Strong. We actually came into existence because of this exact situation in Nevada. So we were are a group of family activists, formerly incarcerated people as they return. Mark is a perfect example that he was one of our members while he was incarcerated and comes home and becomes part of the voice of making change. So we work on humanity issues, privatization issues, and ultimately, are abolitionists that are looking to end incarceration.
Mansa Musa:
And Tim, Tim Curry, introduce yourself to Rattling the Bars and tell us a little bit about your organization.
Tim Curry:
Yeah, hi. Thank you for having me. I’m the policy and research director at the Fines and Fees Justice Center. We’re a national organization that’s working to reform the way that our court systems and our governments are funding themselves by taking money from people who are caught up in the system.
Mansa Musa:
All right. Mark, you said that you was recently released from prison after serving 20 something odd years. All right. While you was incarcerated and you was incarcerated in Nevada prison system. Am I correct?
Mark Ford:
Yes, sir.
Mansa Musa:
All right. And while you was incarcerated the policy of taking a percentage of the monies that was received from prisoners, can you explain what that policy looked like in the Nevada prison system?
Mark Ford:
So I have a few examples here. I worked at a prison industries, worked with vehicles, we worked with the casinos, packaging the cards and things like that. With the overhead charges from the prison industries, every time I made a hundred dollars, 34.5% was taken out of my check for victim’s fund, overhead charges, PI fees. After that deduction I was left with $65.50. If your savings wasn’t full, you would get deducted another 10%. So that was another $6.55. So after all that, I would clear $58.95. A little while back, we were getting 80% deduction for the Marcy’s Law, which left me with only $14.73.
Mansa Musa:
$14.73 of-
Mark Ford:
After two weeks from a hundred dollars paycheck, which is a very low amount after working eight hours a day every day, for five days a week. With that rate, to save for a pair of tennis shoes, you do the math, it takes almost four months just to buy a pair of tennis shoes. The taxation is high. It’s rough on everybody. I got the job in prison to relieve some pressure off my family so I didn’t have to ask them for money. With inflation, everything out there in the world, it’s hard for them. I still had to ask for help because it wasn’t enough. So there I am relying on family members again. It’s difficult.
Mansa Musa:
And let me ask you this here. Okay, so we know that they taking a large percentage of your money and they taking it under the pretense for a whole panacea of reasons. But in terms of outside of your hygienic needs that you have to pay for, did you have to pay for phone calls and you had to pay for sick call medical, and if you wanted to go with sick call, did you have to pay for a sick call and you have to pay for the phones? The calls for paying phone?
Mark Ford:
Correct. So the phone system set up where you can buy phone time right there at the phone. A 15-minute phone call, I believe, is roughly a $1.67. So just for me to call my family just to check in and let them know how I’m doing, every phone call is a $1.67. Any medical charges, you would put a request and be seen. It’s $8 to be seen for any medication or anything that is wrong with you. So just showing how much I would clear after two weeks, by medical bills and making a few calls just to let my family know that $14 goes real fast.
Mansa Musa:
Let me ask you this here. What impact did that have on the prison population? Like I said, I did 48 years in prison and I know that whenever a policy came out, it always have a collateral effect on the general population. I know the environments I’ve been in, when you have a situation where prisoners are unable to take care of themselves, it create a hostile environment, it created a black market, it created [inaudible 00:07:40] balance, it created a lot of tension and it created a lot of predatorial behavior. Did you witness that or was that something that took place in the Nevada prison system that you was in?
Mark Ford:
Correct. I’ve seen that with my own eyes. The prison provides very little of hygiene for yourself. It provides you some toothpaste and some soap. So you know, are forced to use your money to buy hygiene from the canteen. Better name brand, better products. Me, myself, I use most of my money for food. The prison food is not the best food due to a lot of strain on the system with officers not having enough to run the system and the inmates just want to go to the kitchen, get their hours done and get out. The food is bad, so I’m forced to spend my money for the canteen. And you see a lot of strain on other people.
And like you said, black market, you see people trying to get drugs in the system to get faster money and support themselves that way. So it does have a ripple effect. It puts pressure on everybody, makes hostile environments between different people. The drugs nowadays are stronger. People act wild, so it does put safety concerns for other inmates, officers. So definitely has a ripple effect.
Mansa Musa:
Okay. And so suffice to say that just draconian oppressive policies are the result of a lot of prison population being unstable. Jodi, your organization was successful in having the initial policy of taking 80% … your organization was instrumental in having that reversed. Talk about how y’all was able to get them to change it and where are y’all at now trying to get it eradicate all together?
Jodi Hocking:
So at that time, and I mentioned this earlier, we’d only been in existence for three weeks and on August 30th, 2020, they implemented this … 31st, sorry. And people woke up on September 1st and their trust accounts, everything had been gutted. There was no money and if you had made a deposit that night, it was gone. They were taking 80 to a hundred percent from everybody’s, anybody who owed restitution is really who was impacted by that at the time. And there was a Board of Prison Commissioners meeting coming up, so the policy had not been passed yet by the Board of Prison Commissioners. And we just started organizing families. There were only 15 of us at the time and we started writing letters to all of our loved ones and asking people to send their families to us. And we just showed up in force at that Board of Prison Commissioner’s meeting.
I think there were well over a hundred people. We don’t even know what the actual number was on phone calls, because it was all virtual at the time, because it was in the middle of COVID. So the phone lines were so clogged that they couldn’t even start the public comment process because people were there and so angry. But typically, angry people organize, so kind of worked to our benefit in that way. And the governor implemented a stay on the deductions, so for five months they stopped. So it was in September they took deductions, then starting on October 8th until March, they stopped taking deductions. What we did is we fought, we actually created a bill draft proposal and we just made as much noise as we could. We used the media, we used legal avenues.
We were brand new at at the time, so really what we did is make noise and we got every family that we could find to help us do it. From inside, our members that were incarcerated, we asked them to write us letters and talk to us about the impact. We collected, I don’t know how many letters at this time, because now we got 3000 letters this year. So I don’t remember how many we got, but we used those in the press. We did op-eds, we did everything we could to elevate this into the public eye so that the Department of Corrections couldn’t just slide it under the radar. Everybody knew what they were doing. And we really, this might sound bad, but we knew generally people didn’t care how it was impacting incarcerated people. But if we framed it from the impact on families that were left outside, people would listen.
And so our intention and concern was our loved ones that were incarcerated. We were very careful to message it so that it would appeal to legislators and decision makers so that they would care about people who could vote for them. We got the stay, we got a bill proposal and we actually passed a bill that, we wanted it to be no deductions, but this was very related to Marcy’s Law in Nevada and that was a constitutional amendment that had happened a few years prior. And so we weren’t able to win, no, that they couldn’t take restitution while people are incarcerated, even though other states do do that.
What we were able to do was implement statutory caps. So all of the deductions included, if you owed court fees and restitution and child support, and I add this to what Mark said is, in Nevada they charge people who work in prison industries, room and board. So you owe room and board, you owe all these things all together. If you didn’t work in prison industries, there’s a 25% cap now. So send my husband a hundred dollars, he’s going to get 75 of it.
Mansa Musa:
Basically, for y’all strategy, y’all was able to identify certain aspects of this concept or this draconian policy and attack them and get them to put a cap on it overall.
Jodi Hocking:
So I think in Nevada, one of the things that is happening is that it’s, one, we were able to do that with the deductions and get the caps on them. But in addition, this legislative session, well even before the legislative session, we’re fighting some other privatization attacks around mail and mail scanning. Which right now, so far, knock on wood, we’re doing really well and kind of leading in that unregulated industry in terms of protecting our mail from being privatized and scanned under the guise of it being drugs. And we also have a bill that we’re working together with the Fines and Fees Justice Center on that would eliminate medical copays, it would eliminate room and board fees, it would eliminate all of those fees. We’re calling it ending the cost of incarceration. And we’re waiting right now for the bill number to be assigned, but we’re doing some really heavy work in terms of how do we end the cost of incarceration and look at how prisons are funded. In Nevada, they don’t fully fund the prisons and they expect families, incarcerated people to make up the difference on that. And they were fighting that extremely hard.
Mansa Musa:
And Tim, I’m going to come to you in a minute. I just want to make this observation. The state’s legislative give, the prison budget is astronomical. So you putting money into the prison, you putting money into it in astronomical numbers. And then you turn around and say you going to charge a person that is in prison for life or in prison for 20 years, a fee for staying there, a fee for getting medical attention that you put money in the budget for medical, for have to go buy some food, that you put money in for food. It just stands to reason that the criminal justice system is actually the new form of slavery.
Tim, talk about where do y’all go at in your organization, talk about your organization and where your organization’s at in terms of trying to educate people and trying to get reversed on some of these policies that Jodi and Mark was talking about.
Tim Curry:
So the examples that Jodi and Mark are giving are things that we’re seeing play out all around the country. Kind of the way we approach this is we got to separate what fines and fees are. So fine is something that the court imposes as a punishment, it’s a financial punishment. But then states and courts add on so many other fees. These are things that they are basically hidden taxes that are only imposed on people in the system to pay for courts, prisons, or other government things. There could be payments for funds on autism research, but they’re only charging it for people who are in the system. And so we’re working around the country, state by state, to try to address some of these things. And when they come up in the federal system, we really try to raise a light on them as well because what happens is, Jodi and her group was successful in pushing back on what was happening in Nevada. But with the Bureau of Prisons trying to introduce something almost identical, it’s just a signal to other states that hey, this is okay to do. Why don’t you go do it too? And this is the stuff that we’re trying to stop.
Mansa Musa:
And talk about, I was reading where the Federal Bureau of Prisons right now, they made this proposal and we know that we got a conservative Congress and a conservative Senate and we got a conservative president when it comes to all things criminal justice or criminal injustice. Talk about y’all strategy in trying to get the federal, ’cause that’s the next leg up right now. And like you say, if the federal government does it, then it becomes the law of the land. Talk about what y’all are doing in terms of trying to educate people on what they need to do to try to get this reversed, because we have a large prison population, 2.1 million people down, incarcerated and a large percentage are federal prisoners.
Tim Curry:
So what we do is we try to shed light and educate both lawmakers, policymakers, but also the public on what’s going on so that they can kind of put pressure on their elected officials because this hits people from all walks of life. What this is really anti-family. And Jodi was talking about how her concern as an impacted family member was that the person who’s incarcerated, but it really is impacting families all across the country. We’re draining wealth from communities all over this country that actually need that wealth to survive. And so what we’re doing, so I’ll give you an example of what’s going on with the Bureau of Prisons proposal. Similar to what Nevada was trying to do, the Bureau of Prisons is now saying that they would like to implement, it’s not yet official. They would like to implement this policy that would take 75% of any contribution to a person in custody’s commissary account. So if your family puts any money in, they would take 75% of it.
And so think about that in terms of a struggling family back at home. If they’re trying to support their incarcerated loved one, and they wanted to get that person a hundred dollars for their commissary, right now, coming up, the Bureau of Prisons would take $75 of that and the person only get $25. So for that mother who’s trying to get her son a hundred dollars, she would now have to come up with $400 to be able to do that exact same thing. And Bureau of Prisons is no different than Nevada in the fact that it’s not providing for the basic needs of inmates, people who are in custody. And so people in custody rely on their commissary accounts to buy food and toiletries and clothing and everything they need to survive.
And so what we’re doing is we’re trying to rally advocate groups from around the country, but also the general population to let them know that the way the federal system works is if the Bureau of Prisons wants to do this, they have to put this what’s called a public comment. They have to put it out online and people can weigh in and say whether they think it’s good or bad idea. And right now, we’ve got nearly a thousand people who have weighed in and said this is a terrible idea and the Department of Justice really needs to listen to the population and say, stop doing this. And so that’s one of the things that we’re trying to do. I think the irony that we see here is that the Bureau of Prisons is a division of the Department of Justice and President Biden says that he is for equity, racial and economic equity in all federal policy making.
He’s issued executive orders that say all of his agencies have to implement policies that are racially and economically equitable.
Mansa Musa:
That’s right.
Tim Curry:
But the Department of Justice and Bureau of Prisons are his agencies and they’re not doing that. So in this proposal, they say explicitly in the proposal that they understand that taking 75% of everyone’s money is unjust, is racially inequitable and it is economically inequitable. And that they could do something different, they could kind of do a tier system. They could take more money from people who have a lot of money and less money from people who have no money, but they decided that that’s too difficult. And so what the Bureau of Prisons has said that equity is just not worth their time and effort, despite what the president and the White House has said they should be doing. And not only are they taking that money in the moment, but one of President Biden’s other policy priorities is helping with reentry, for people who are returning to their communities. But if you are taking any of the money that they’re trying to save for reentry, that’s not helping. And again, the Bureau of Prisons just is taking money, or is proposing to take all this money from affected communities because the money’s not coming from the individual people in custody. It’s coming from outside sources. That’s what the policy says. We’re taking 75% of money from outside sources, friends and families.
Mansa Musa:
Okay, thanks. And as we close, Mark, how much money did you come out prison with?
Mark Ford:
I saved a few thousand working in prison industries over the years. I just want to let the viewers also know my personal thoughts on restitution for the victims in my case. I was never opposed to paying, I just believe that 80%, 75% is very high. I transitioned to a halfway house and it cost me $600 to pay for the first 30 days there. Getting the money sent on my account so I could pay for it myself, the tax was so high that I was not able to do that to get released. So I had family still waste their time to go down there to pay, which is a big inconvenience for them. I also want to let people know that part of my condition on parole, I have to pay the restitution when I’m released. So I’m still making progress to pay that restitution fine off. So it’s not like we’re saying, hey, I don’t want to pay any of this money, but this is very, very hard on your family. Majority of the money that people get in prison is from their family and it takes a toll on them, especially in this hard time out there.
Mansa Musa:
Yeah, and I think that’s really the issue. The issue is not so much is whether person want to be accountable. The issue is whether or not you want to force accountability on me at the expense of my family or give me a double punishment. You give me 25 years in prison, you tell me that upon my release, I’m going to have to pay restitution. Do you want me to stay out but when I get out you taking money from me, money I need to survive. Jodi, you got the last word on this. What you want to tell our audience?
Jodi Hocking:
I just think that all of these issues with prisons, prisons have become predatory on not just the people who are incarcerated, but on families. And that if, as a community, like wide-based community, talking about the country, if we are going to choose incarceration, then they have to fund it themselves. But in the meantime, the reality is, this is not the just or equitable way to do this. It really is predatory on the people who are most vulnerable.
Mansa Musa:
And Tim, tell us how we can get in touch with you, how our audience can get in touch with your organization, and what y’all got plans coming up.
Tim Curry:
Yeah, so right now, first of all, if anyone is interested in submitting a public comment, anybody who’s an individual, can submit a public comment against the Federal Bureau of Prisons proposal and I can provide your team a link to that. The public comments close on February 13th. I’m sorry, March 13th. So you have a couple more days to get that in. But otherwise, we welcome input from the community, so feel free to reach out to the Fines and Fees Justice Center. You can email me directly, we have a form on our website. And we love to work with communities who are trying to make change in this. We know that fines and fees are a local and state issue around the country, predominantly and so we need partners in communities that want to see change and we’re happy to connect with folks.
Mansa Musa:
There you have it, the real news about the prison industrial complex taxing people’s family members by taking money from their families that’s being sent to them, 80%, 75%. They got a state budget that put money into the prison industrial complex for housing, yet they are charging prisoners family members money for housing. You have the state budgets that’s putting money in for medical, yet you have the prison industrial complex taxing people’s family members for medical. You have the state budget putting money in for phone calls, and yet you have the state prison industrial complex taxing family members for phone calls.
We ask that you continue to support Rattling the Bars and The Real News because we know that these things are wrong and we ask that you continue to support it because our comrade, Eddie Conway, passed away. But this was his passion. The Real News and Rattling the Bars thank you.
Speaker 5:
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.
Texas cop watcher Manuel Mata has been jailed again after he confronted a Ft. Worth officer on sidewalk while he was making arrest. The charges of interfering with public duties Mata is facing raise serious questions about the right to film police, and if law enforcement is ratcheting up the pressure on 1st amendment activists.
Studio: Stephen Janis Post-Production: Stephen Janis, Adam Coley
Transcript
The transcript of this story is in progress and will be made available as soon as possible.
“Do your little part. Do whatever you can to help change these conditions. Because we’re moving into a critical period of history, not just for poor and oppressed people, Black people, but for humanity itself. So you need to engage. Do whatever little bit you can, but you need to do something.”
—Eddie Conway in 2019, celebrating five years of freedom
It is with the heaviest of hearts that we announce the death of our friend, co-worker, and comrade Marshall “Eddie” Conway.
Eddie joined the ancestors on February 13, 2023, surrounded by family and loved ones. After falling ill nearly a year ago, while still dealing with the immeasurable toll nearly 44 years of incarceration as a political prisoner took on his body, Eddie had been hospitalized and fighting valiantly to recover. That is who he is, who he was, and who he always will be: a fighter. After a lifetime of fighting, though, the time has come at last for our dear Eddie to rest—and for all of us to carry on his fight.
Eddie was born on April 23, 1946, in a deeply segregated Baltimore—a city shaped by blockbusting, white flight, and the organized disinvestment from Black communities. At 18, he enlisted in the US Army, an experience that would prove to be politically formative for Eddie, throwing into sharp relief the contradictions of a country founded on slavery, structural racism, and genocidal violence that nevertheless professed to defend “democracy” with bombs, guns, and endless war.
Returning home to Baltimore, Eddie confronted the pervasive evils of racism head-on. He was working in the medical sector and at Bethlehem Steel when, in 1968, the city erupted like so many others following the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr.—an explosion of rage and pain and need for action that brought Eddie into the orbit of the nascent Black Panther Party, in which he became a core member of the newly-established Baltimore chapter.
The Baltimore BPP chapter, with Eddie’s support and leadership, built strong community ties through efforts like a free breakfast program, a system of robust internal political education, and an increasingly widespread local distribution network for the national BPP newspaper—despite near constant police harassment, and even high-level infiltration of the branch. This was the era of COINTELPRO, in which local police forces were enlisted by the national security state to crush the successful systemic challenge the Panthers and other associated revolutionary groups were posing to America’s racist, exploitative status quo. It was at the height of this era that Eddie was framed for the 1970 killing of a Baltimore police officer, convicted, and sentenced to life in prison in 1971, after a heavily politicized trial in which Eddie was denied proper legal representation.
Even in the darkest of times, in the most hopeless of places, Eddie’s commitment to organizing for liberation was unwavering. Within his first weeks inside the Maryland penitentiary, he had already emerged as a leader of the incarcerated chapter of the BPP. Despite constant, dehumanizing, and often violent pushback from prison authorities, he would go on to play a lead role in creating organizations like the United Prisoners Labor Union and the Maryland Penitentiary Intercommunal Survival Collective, organizing with fellow incarcerated people to build collective power for self-determination and self-defense. While incarcerated, Eddie worked relentlessly to protect and expand prisoners’ rights to communication and education; for instance, he helped organize the “To Say Their Own Word” seminar program, developed as a way to cross-pollinate radical thought inside and outside the prison. He was also instrumental in the founding of Friend of a Friend, a mentorship program designed to help young incarcerated men prepare for reintegration into their communities upon release.
Year after year, decade after decade, Eddie carried on not only with the tremendous bravery needed to contest America’s brutal system of mass incarceration while he was himself confined within it, but also with an enduring and perhaps surprising commitment to modesty. As he wrote in his autobiography, published in 2011:
Organizing is my life’s work, and even though I initially balked at becoming a prison organizer, that is where most of my work has been done. Friends and family tell me that I have influenced hundreds of young people, but I don’t know. I simply see the error of this society’s ways up close and feel compelled to do something about it; I have tried my hardest to avoid getting caught up in the cult of the personality that often develops around political prisoners. I have walked the prison yard and seen admiration in the eyes of others, but had to remind myself, as I straightened my posture, that it is about something bigger than me. Prisons are the place where society dumps those who have become obsolete, and at present there are perhaps no other people who have become more dispensable in this country than African-descended people. The minute that we began to stand up and hold this country accountable for the many wrongs done to us, the prisons began to swell with black women and men. It is as if the entire justice system is a beast that consumes black bodies, and prisons are the belly.
Eddie’s loved ones and supporters never gave up on him, keeping a decades-long solidarity movement going and agitating persistently for his release, but it was only in 2014—after a 2012 decision by the Maryland Court of Appeals that invalidated many historical verdicts due to faulty jury instructions—that Eddie was finally able to secure his freedom.
Despite the unimaginable toll that 44 years of incarceration had taken on him, Eddie’s organizing did not stop when he walked out of prison. He became our beloved colleague at The Real News Network, where he continued his passion for education and media-making in the service of the fight against mass incarceration as Executive Producer and the host of Rattling the Bars, his weekly video program. He also played a key role in the formation of Tubman House, which, in the wake of the Baltimore Uprising, seized vacant property and land for community needs in Sandtown-Winchester—the neighborhood where Baltimore police killed Freddie Gray.
Eddie never left the struggle he had been waging for so long, even as his health declined. We are endlessly grateful to him for that. And we are grateful that this incredible man, who endured so much, was also able to find years of joy, love, and solace in his marriage to Dominque Stevenson, a true comrade and freedom fighter who supported him inside and outside of the prison walls.
He will be missed—by everyone here at The Real News, by the city that loves him, and by all those around the world who were touched by his light. We will miss his voice, his revolutionary clarity, and his unbreakable commitment to fighting on the side of the oppressed. We will carry on that fight, because that’s what Eddie would do. We are heartbroken that he is gone, but we are grateful that we were lucky enough to know him, and we are sending all our love and solidarity to his family.
Across the US, some 50,000 incarcerated people are kept under conditions of solitary confinement. Advocates and prisoners have pushed to define the practice as a form of torture, pointing to the devastating psychological and physical effects it has on victims. In Texas, dozens of prisoners are now hunger striking against the use of solitary confinement in the state’s prisons, which they say disproportionately targets Latinos. Jorge Antonio Renaud, National Criminal Justice Director of Latino Justice, joins Rattling the Bars to discuss the hunger strike and conditions of solitary confinement in Texas.
Studio/Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Mansa Musa: Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m Mansa Musa, co-hosting with Eddie Conway. And as I always do, I try to update everyone on Eddie Conway, how Eddie Conway’s doing. We ask that you continue to keep Eddie Conway in your prayers, or whatever spiritual medium that you utilize, as he goes through this process of recovery. We ask that you continue to support him and continue to support Rattling the Bars.
Today, as always, we try to bring the news, the real news about events and things going on, particularly in the criminal injustice system, the prison-industrial complex, which is the new form of slavery, mass incarceration, which are chattel. Today, we have an extraordinary story that we shouldn’t even be revisiting, but we are revisiting primarily because of the racism, fascism, and oppression that exists when it comes to people of color, poor people. Today, we have Jorge Antonio Renaud, who is a prison advocate in Texas. He’ll tell you a little bit more about himself. Introduce yourself to the Rattling the Bars audience, Jorge.
Jorge Renaud: Hey, man, so glad to be here. Yeah. My name’s Jorge Antonio Renaud. I’m the National Criminal Justice Director at a group called Latino Justice. First, I want to say the folks in Latino Justice want to send a message of solidarity to the individuals there who… Individuals who are in cages anywhere, but specifically today to the individuals who are incarcerated in solitary confinement in Texas, who have lifted up their voices and banded together into an hunger strike to try to bring attention to the fact that the conditions in solitary confinement are so terrible, they have gotten so much worse with all the money being funneled out to Operation Lone Star here in Texas, to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice being willing to give funds to the apprehension and criminalization of migrants at the border that they’ve ignored those even worse, even more so, the individuals who they deem and the public tend to believe are the worst and the worst, who are locked up in solitary confinement here in Texas.
Mansa Musa: All right. Talk a little bit before we delve into, and which we will, before we delve into the repression that the Texas prisoners are undergoing and the community in general, the suffering as a result, talk a little bit about your organization so we can get an overview [inaudible].
Jorge Renaud: Yeah, thank you. Latino Justice just celebrated its 50th year. It’s a group that specializes in class action litigation based on the model, of course, of the NAACP, that was the first one to do that and focus on ethnicity, because of historic oppression against that ethnicity. Latino Justice originally started as a Puerto Rican legal defense and education fund, and now it tries to, through the legal arena, bring mass litigation to try to lift the burden of oppression and marginalization that has been placed on the Latino community.
About four years ago, they got off into advocacy on the ground. They figured out that what they needed to do was find people who had been directly affected by the criminal legal system or detention and deportation, and they hired me. We’ve got some folks all around the country who are doing this in different states, different regions, Florida, Texas, and the Northeast. We look for people who’ve been affected, directly impacted by those systems. We have them train other individuals, find and train other formerly incarcerated or detained individuals to try to change by using their stories, their direct experiences, to change the systems that have oppressed them and incarcerated them.
Mansa Musa: Okay, now, we recognize that a story came out saying that Texas prisoners are on a hunger strike, and mainstream media really glossed over it. It was alternative media that really set the table in terms of what was going on. Now, when I was researching for this story, I’m looking at the conditions, one – And you can address them as I put them out there – One, they saying that the information that’s coming out is that the Texas prisoners went on strike, specifically the ones that’s housed in solitary confinement, and that they’re on strike primarily because they’re saying that the policies and procedures that’s being utilized to keep them confined to solitary confinement for endless years with no redress or no way to getting out is both draconian, arbitrary and capricious, if not racist.
Address what are the reasons that they’re using for confining men, and women as well, if you are in a female prison, if you are considered a threat. What are they using to justify doing this particular practice that they’re taking these men and women to prove?
Jorge Renaud: Yeah, thanks for that question. The main reasons that TDCJ uses to put people in solitary confinement –
Mansa Musa: What’s TDCJ? What’s TDCJ?
Jorge Renaud: Yeah, I’m sorry. TDCJ is a Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Mansa Musa: Okay, come on.
Jorge Renaud: That is the state prison here in Texas. They use the same excuses that other states do, hyper-violent against guards or other incarcerated individuals, attempt to escape, things of that nature. But by far, the majority of people who are locked up in ad-seg, administrative segregation in TDCJ, are people who have been identified as members of a security threat crew. And, of course, a prison gang. That was policy in Texas since the mid ’80s. In the mid ’80s, they had some gang wars going on after they took the building tenders out, they were fighting for control. Well, TDCJ couldn’t control them, so they started putting them in ad-seg, and they were still using those reasons to put people in ad-seg.
So the thing is that while they may say, well, these folks are really dangerous, that they’re the worst to the worst, you can have a five-year sentence for a non-violent crime, not ever had committed a violent crime, be in the county jail, get confirmed as a member of a security threat group, you hit TDCJ and you immediately get put back in ad-seg. Of course, in Texas, the gangs that are considered the most dangerous are the Latino gangs, the Mexican Mafia, the Aztec Warriors out of El Paso, those folks. So the majority of the people you have back there are Latinos. And there are some people who’ve been there 20 or 30 years, right?
And it’s circular logic. It’s like you’re dangerous because you’re in a gang and the gang is dangerous because you’re in it, even though you may have never committed any violence anywhere. But TDCJ has decided these groups are dangerous. These people are too dangerous to be let out. We have no way to really protect ourself from them. We don’t know how to deal with that, so we’re just going to put them in ad-seg, throw these sham reviews at them, and keep them back there.
Mansa Musa: You know what? [crosstalk].
Jorge Renaud: Go ahead. Go ahead.
Mansa Musa: Go ahead.
Jorge Renaud: No, I was going to say [crosstalk].
Mansa Musa: You made a good point. You made a good point, though, on how this particular attitude is nationwide. Because when I was in, I did 48 years in the Maryland system. When they first came out with, it’s a case called Helms v Hewitt. That’s the case that they came out with that validated admin-seg. That’s the case that gave birth to admin-seg, saying that I think the case was where we used to use the mandatory language, shall, will, and the Supreme Court was saying that prisons you come through legislations and cases to find the mandatory language of, if you do this, that, and the third you will be…
So they came up with this perspective that, okay, admin-seg is legal, and they primarily came into existence because of a lot of the revolutionaries that was being locked up, white radicals, again, Puerto Ricans, and it was more designed around more of the political element. But now going back to your point, it’s designed around, really it’s racist in this intent, because as you just outlined, it’s primarily isolating Latinos and saying that you going to be tagged as soon as you come through the county jail. You going to be tagged. You going to be tagged.
If you Latino, they going to say, tell me who you with. You MS? You Mexican Mafia? They going to go down the list and if you say, I’m none of them, they going to put one on you so they can maintain their thing. But let’s talk about what’s being done in terms of trying to change these draconian policies and racist policies that’s taking place right now against specifically Latino men and women, but in general, the population in general.
Jorge Renaud: That’s a good question. What is actually being done on the ground? You mentioned policies. As you and I know, there’s a huge gulf between policy and practice when it comes to prisoners.
Mansa Musa: Come on.
Jorge Renaud: A family member will call up, and my son says that this is being done, or, my daughter said this is being done. They’ll say, well, ma’am, here’s a policy, we don’t do this by policy, but of course, you and I know Texas has 109 units and 109 prison units. I’m not sure how many of them right now have ad-seg cells, but I want to say a few dozen at the bare minimum. They have two super max units, right?
What’s being done on one, and I don’t know how it is in other states, but in Texas, the warden is God. There are fiefdoms, and what’s being done on the Estelle Unit may be totally different 12 miles down the road on the Eastham Unit.
Prison policy is meant, I hate to say it, but it’s all to the public, here’s how we do things. We do things that’s governed by whatever accredited body is said to come review us. But when they’re gone, but when they’re at the door and the warden’s at the house, the sergeants on the wing are running the unit or running ad-seg. If they don’t like one guy, and if some dude has been rattling on the bars or trying to get his mail or something, he may not go out to rec that day. He may not get to shower for a week. He may not go out to rec for two weeks.
And all the complaints, Texas has no oversight. Texas has the Ombudsman, which is under the Texas Board of Criminal Justice. Texas has a grievance system that’s pretty well a joke. Also, the only oversight is the Texas Board of Criminal Justice, which is a group of usually law enforcement compliant individuals that are appointed by the governor, same thing as a parole board, right? So there is no oversight. So what’s being done is what you’re doing. What’s being done is what Brittany is doing, the woman who’s from Wisconsin and somehow has taken a deep abiding true interest in the plight of incarcerated individuals everywhere, specifically in Texas. So we try to bring attention to it, but I don’t know if legally we can do anything to change the system.
Now, 10 years ago there was 9,000 people incarcerated back in ad-seg in Texas. It has changed. It has changed. I don’t know if that’s because of the review process, if TDCJ went through and said, this person has been there two years for kicking the bars or what… I don’t know. But I do know that the 3,100 back there have been, I want to say, I forget how many hundred of them, I want to say 500 and something have been back there over a decade. Those individuals are members of a security threat group. Pardon me?
Mansa Musa: No, go ahead. Go ahead.
Jorge Renaud: Go.
Mansa Musa: I ain’t mean to cut you off, go ahead.
Jorge Renaud: I was going to say that the ones who have been there long term are almost exclusively individuals who have been back there confirmed as members of a security threat group who refuse to renounce. Because renouncing, as you and I know is going to mean, tell us everything you know about the gangs. Tell us everybody you know who is doing this. Tell us all that.
It goes not only against whatever moral code these individuals have, but it may involve incriminating other individuals, and they’re just not going to do that. But the thing is, they don’t pose a threat. That’s the thing. They don’t pose a threat.
Mansa Musa: Hey, look, and we going to talk about this right here because another good point you made, you have people locked up and secured in the admin-seg or supermax that you are saying that no matter what, if you Latino and you a prisoner, and you in the criminal injustice system, and you on the plantation, you are gang. That’s just the nature of it. I don’t care what you say. You can say whatever you want to say, if you are Latino, you are in a Texas prison, you are in California prison. When you come through the county jail, you are a gang. You’re a gang. So now you don’t have no choice but to say, well, put me with somebody.
Okay, but that aside, this is what I want to talk about. I want to talk about how when if you saying that I’m a gang member, this is what you do. You say based on your intel, I’m a gang member. All right, and that right there, that’s enough. Not that you got information that I stabbed nobody. Not that you got information that I killed nobody. Not that you got information that I’m extorting anybody. All the things that were going in to make me a threat to the disorder of your environment, you don’t have no evidence to that. Talk about why they’re so adamant about a person telling all the intricacies of a gang, when all they want to do is say, well, I’m no longer a part of that, and why is that not sufficient enough? Talk about why they’re so adamant about them divulging information that they might not even know.
Jorge Renaud: Yeah. Yeah. Okay. [crosstalk] You asking me to speak to a policy that I’m not… So what I’m going to have to do is maybe speak to my belief in the way that system operates.
Now, let’s be honest about some stuff. There are individuals in ad-seg, there are individuals in prison, there are individuals walking the street who are violent, who have committed violence, who can be a threat to themselves or others. I’m an abolitionist. I don’t think that putting people in a cage is going to improve that in any way. There are other ways to deal with that: mental health issues, family issues, providing them the dignity that should be accorded to every individual. There are other ways to deal with that other than saying, we can’t do anything with you, so we’re just going to lock you up in a cage and forget about you.
Having said that, if I’m confirmed as a member of a security threat group and they say, well, if you want to start the process to get out, you have to tell us everything you know about everyone who’s involved in that system, everything you know about this crime, that crime, this crime. It could very well be that what they’re doing is that they suspect other individuals who are also involved in this, it could be that they want to bring an indictment on someone who they believed was involved in some sort of violence against another individual or a guard. I don’t know. Or that’s just their procedure, and I think that’s the big thing.
Prisons are slave to procedure. They have a way of doing things. This is a way that maybe worked, again, 30 years ago. In the ’80s, they were locking folks up. In the ’80s, you could get a shank for a bag of coffee, a serious shank. In the ’80s, if you committed a murder or something against somebody, you might get five years if they decide to try you. Well, those were the policies that were used to say, these folks are dangerous, so we’re going to lock you up now. Well, the fact is, in TDCJ now, in 1985, they had 23, 25 people murdered in TDCJ by other encaged individuals. They had 39,000 people locked up there. They got 124,000 people locked up now, and there’s maybe three murders a year now. Security is much tighter. It’s almost impossible to get a real weapon. Things don’t happen like that anymore. But they’re still using those same policies that were put into place 30 or 40 years ago.
So their belief system is still the same. They have not changed. And a lot of that is because the people at the top were guards in the ’80s, the ’90s, the ’70s. They worked their way up, and they have yet to update the policies and their approach toward the individuals who were incarcerated. Let’s use a humanitarian approach. Let’s go and see what the issue is, why that person joined a gang. Does that person not have a family? Let’s find some emotional, personal, societal, community support for this individual. That’s not the TDCJ way. Their thinking is still stuck in the ’80s.
Mansa Musa: I think and I want to venture an observation that, one, when you look at the prison-industrial complex in Texas, and okay, when you look at Texas, California, New York, this might be one of your larger plantations. Then you got a large plantation, you have people that are immigrants, children of immigrants, or haven’t been nationalized according to America’s standard, so you got this large prison population. I will venture to say that you’re using this as more for a control mechanism than for anything else, because the reality is that if you are saying that – And we were talked about this off camera – If you’re saying that I’m a threat, and we recognize that some people could be threats, that’s not even an issue. But if you’re saying that I’m a threat and you review me every year ’cause they got a modicum of due process in the process, in this concept that they put out, admin-seg.
They don’t give you notice, and they bring you up every year to tell you that they not going to let you off, ’cause this is how it come into existence. The concept is that I’m on admin-seg being investigated, I’ve been identified as being a threat. Once you say put me in a security threat group category, then you taking me up. Now you not taking me up to say that I’m no longer a threat, and this is the control mechanism I’m talking about, now you taking me up to say, well you can come off if you divulge information about the intricacies of this group. So therefore, you got complete control over this population, because now everybody that come in, all you gotta do is say, security threat group, you can isolate them, you can lock them down, and you can keep them locked down forever.
But talk about where the strike stands at, or what’s going on with the strike. Because I know that a lot of individuals opted out of it, but the last time I read it was maybe 40 men was holding fast to it, and continued to stay steadfast in terms of trying to get some… Having a hunger strike in order to try to get some attention to the arbitrary and capricious nature of the Texas Department of Corrections.
Jorge Renaud: Yeah. It’s real difficult to get information that you can rely on [inaudible] people who are incarcerated. This ain’t like some other states who just have eight or nine prisons, and really we have prisons scattered all over the state. And of course, they shut down the mail, they shut down visits to those folks. So there’s anywhere from a few dozen to maybe a 100, but who knows. [crosstalk] Even if there’s one, if there’s one individual out there who’s saying that, who we believe that they’re worthy of support.
And I think that what they have been protesting, I’ll go down two tracks. One is, as you said, the capricious nature of assignment to ad-seg, and then the sham nature of the review. It keeps you back there. Two is the fact that TDCJ has historically relied on the definition of a security threat group as something that is dangerous inherently in and of itself, and just being a member of that group means that you are something or somebody who is too dangerous to walk the halls of any prison in general population, and they’ve been assigned back there.
So some of the conditions are, of course, that they’re not getting recreation like a support group, that they don’t like… Most of the people who watch the show probably know prison and ad-seg, I would think. But in ad-seg, you get no contact whatsoever, no human contact with anybody. None whatsoever. Even the guards don’t touch you. Nobody touches you. You go out in the yard by yourself. You have an hour yard, supposedly, every day, or an hour of recreation. It may not be the yard, but recreation.
Mansa Musa: Right, exactly. Yard, shower and [crosstalk]
Jorge Renaud: Right. Right. You get no programming whatsoever, by programming any education or religious studies, or anything that you want to do to occupy your mind. And hopefully, I don’t use the word rehabilitation, but I use the word personal transformation of yourself, or trying to achieve some better version of yourself, as we’re all trying to do, everybody in existence, hopefully. They’re not allowed to get that and to have any personal interaction with anybody. They’re trying to say that, hey, we need that. There’s a ream of studies out there talking about how the denial of personal contact has negative effects on folks.
I hesitate to use that, ’cause I know people who’ve been in ad-seg for a while and came out and seemed to be pretty well. I’m not going to say that ad-seg in and of itself is going to destroy you and your spirit and your mind to such a degree that it affects everybody. It affects us all in different ways. We all have a different degree of resilience. But the practice in and of itself is inhumane. Treating any individual like that is inhumane, and that’s the point that they keep trying to make. So I think those are some of the goals, and they timed this to begin on the first day of the legislative session.
Mansa Musa: Right. Right. Talk about that.
Jorge Renaud: And well, the legislative session in Texas will have it every other year for six months, January through June. There is a legislator named Terry Meza that I’m going to have a conversation with that has filed a couple of bills to amend ad-seg. Now her reasoning is that these individuals are going to get out of prison, and do you want them to be living in your neighborhood if they’ve been in ad-seg the way it is?
I disagree with that reasoning, because what it is doing is saying that if you don’t change it, those people are inherently dangerous. Instead of saying, they could be contributing members to your community if we gave them the program that they need, if we didn’t treat them in such a way, if we didn’t model these things. But it’s hard, that’s a policy arena. Sometimes you have to make alliances with folks. You have to make arguments to get an end. I tend to argue on the revolutionary edge of reform, which comes from a moral standpoint and not a transactional standpoint, which she’s doing. But it might bring about some change, I don’t know.
But that’s what they’re shooting for. I’ve seen quite a bit of media attention being given to it, and that’s driven by individuals such as you yourself, this program, again, Brittany up in Wisconsin and I thank y’all for that.
Mansa Musa: In terms of the legislative disposition, because I remember when I locked up and I was on admin-seg, and when I got on admin-seg because I knew that case that came in Helms v Hewitt, I knew it was a couple of other cases that came out that pretty much said that this is the new way of doing things. At that time, I had a life sentence. I was saying, a life sentence on admin-seg is like being on death row, because I ain’t going to never get no moves.
So I started litigating, but what I came across in the process of it, they had a parallel regulation for protective custody, and they said that admin-seg and protective custody would be treated the same in terms of the way they… Conditions. So we was able to get a lot of things done as a result of that.
But I’m interested in have anybody thought about this being a Eighth Amendment violation, or in terms of a lot of the arbitrariness that’s going on, the fact that you’re not allowed no program, the fact that you’re not allowed no type of information, no type of contact, no type of information that will allow you to even develop some type of social skills because…? Maybe you can speak on this here, because I’m of the opinion that everybody in Texas on admin-seg, on supermax, I’m of the opinion that not all of them are serving life sentences.
Or at some point in time, it might be somebody back there that got 10 years and they going to be released. It might be somebody that they didn’t identify as a security threat, being a member of a security threat group that has a sentence that’s going to ultimately allow for them to be released. So it stands to reason that you would want to try to do something in terms of putting some information out there to allow these people to develop some type of social skills. Have y’all considered filing some type of litigation against the Texas Department of Corrections?
Jorge Renaud: That’s a good question. I don’t know. I’m not an attorney. Like you, I spent a lot of time in law libraries reading stuff when I was incarcerated… So I don’t know. I would assume that individuals in ad-seg have filed every governor under every Amendment that you could think of, that they’ve probably taken every approach. But as you and I know, the courts have taken the approach that every individual during the course of their confinement is going to be faced with the possibility of being assigned to ad-seg, which is what made it an assignment and not a punishment. For those who don’t know, solitary confinement used to be the hole, that kind of stuff. They’d send you back there three days a week, 30 days if they were really cruel, but they let you out. Administrative segregation is an assignment. You are assigned to live 24 hours a day in a cell by yourself.
It’s an assignment, and the courts have said, everyone’s going to face that at some point. As long as they set up a meaningful review, all this other stuff, they can do that to you. Again, I’m not an attorney, so I don’t know if the Eighth Amendment would be a good way to go about it, I’m sure it would be, but I’m sure there’s some folks back to have already tried that. The Fifth Circuit is not going to let pretty well anything pass that. The Supreme Court we have now is not going to let much pass that. They’re very much on the side of law and order.
I think pretty well the only things that we can rely on are caring, compassionate legislators that will file stuff. Again, they have gone down from nine, 10,000 to 31. Movement such as ours that are of people who were formerly incarcerated who can use their direct experience, the lived experience, and talk to, well, you see me now, you say, oh, you’re articulate, all this, or whatever, so prison can’t be that bad. You try to explain to them about your children and your children, how you can subject them to different experiences, and they’re all going to react in different ways. They have different degrees of resiliency or whatever, but is that the humane thing that you want to do to them? Do you guide them by punishing them? Do you guide them by rewarding them and molding them and giving them examples of what you should do?
So I have faith in our communities and our communities moving forward in that way. I don’t know how much time it’ll take, and I don’t know if the legal arena is the way to do that, because that’s so stacked against us. Again, we don’t have a Willie Wayne Justice around anymore. We don’t have people on the Supreme Court saying that there is no… What is it? That there is no law [crosstalk]
Mansa Musa: Law occurring?
Jorge Renaud: Right.
Mansa Musa: Law occurring between the Constitution –
Jorge Renaud: Yes.
Mansa Musa: …And the prisoners’ rights.
Jorge Renaud: Between people who are incarcerated and people out here, yes.
Mansa Musa: Right. Right. Thurgood Marshall –
Jorge Renaud: The Burger Court. The Burger Court. Yeah, we don’t have that anymore.
Mansa Musa: Yeah, the Burger Court.
Jorge Renaud: We got the Roberts Court.
Mansa Musa: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jorge Renaud: Yeah.
Mansa Musa: Hey, I’m going to close on this –
Jorge Renaud: All right. All right.
Mansa Musa: …And let you have the last word. But I want to offer to the brothers and sisters, and mainly the ones that’s on the strike that seem to think that this is a way, and I’m in agreement if you take the approach that you think, I’m going to remind him of Bobby Sands. Bobby Sands was a member of the Irish Republican Army, and the Irish Republican Army was in conditions much like these, that everybody that was locked up, they say if you was in Ireland and you was Catholic, then you was considered a member of the Irish Republican Army. So they put you in the worst plantation that’s known to humanity.
Bobby Sands went on a hunger strike and ultimately perished. But in doing so, it changed the narrative over the prison. It changed the attitude of the prison population. It changed the attitude of society as they looked at Ireland and the occupation that was taking place. But you have the last word. What do you want? What do you want our listeners to know and the takeaway from this conversation that we’re having today? More importantly, where can they contact you at, or how can they get involved?
Jorge Renaud: Yeah, thank you. I would like our listeners to walk away with the idea that judging individuals by things that they may have committed in the past, or things that they did commit in the past, or judging them by those things, or denying everybody’s capacity to use insight into themselves and to the system, to the system that has enslaved them and brutalized them and find some sort of forgiveness and try to transform themselves into somebody different, as we all do. We all go through phases. And that to continue to treat people, every individual matters, not just the individual in ad-seg who’s poetic, who’s good-looking, who maybe isn’t back there for a heinous crime, but the ones that are back there for some really ugly shit, every individual, no human is disposable.
For us to continue in that fashion is a reflection on the ugliest part of ourselves. It’s not that ag-seg itself that molds people into that way, it’s us that rely on that system because of individuals that we fear or can’t somehow control. If we can get away from that idea and try to see individuals as the humans that they are, as the beautiful humans that they are, we won’t resort to that sort of stuff. And that there are people such as yourself, such as these organizations that are the face of people who have been there, and you show dignity and compassion and understanding towards people, then I think if we turn to you for guidance or whatever, then I think this would be a better place. That’s a little wordy, man. I’m sorry.
Mansa Musa: Hey, but well put, well put. How can we get in touch with you?
Jorge Renaud: Yeah. My email is jrenaud, jrenaud@latinojustice.org.
Mansa Musa: Okay.
Jorge Renaud: If y’all want to contact and maybe see what we’re doing or have other conversations like this, and they don’t always have to be on TV, man. They could be at a coffee shop in DC, or at a deli in New York, or in Austin. Come to Austin, man, but come holler at me.
Mansa Musa: Yeah, most definitely. All right. There you have it, the real news about Texas prison and the prison strike. More importantly, what’s behind it? This is a control issue on the part of the Texas Department of Corrections, but it should be a humane issue on the part of society. You can’t treat people like animals and expect them to come out and be human. We’re asking that all our viewers and all our listeners look into this and develop some type of conscience about what you think should take place in this situation. Jorge, thank you very much for –
Jorge Renaud: Thank you. It’s been an honor, man.
Mansa Musa: …Giving us this opportunity and this insight. We look forward to working with you at some point in time.
Jorge Renaud: Anytime. Anytime.
Mansa Musa: We remind our listeners to continue to support Rattling the Bars and The Real News. It’s because of The Real News that you get information like this. You’re not going to get Jorge on main media talking about the conditions that’s going on in prison without him having to endorse some commercial. We are nonprofit, we’re not commercial. We are actually what we say we are. We are actually The Real News. And thank you very much.
Taya Graham and Stephen Janis mark four years of holding police accountable with a lively discussion on how law enforcement has evolved in the past four years, and the challenges of reporting on and investigating police misconduct. Stephen and Taya are joined by legendary cop watchers James Freeman, Lackluster, and Otto the watchdog.
Studio: Stephen Janis, Dwayne Gladden
Transcript
The transcript of this video will be made available as soon as possible.
In this urgent, exclusive interview for Rattling the Bars, Mansa Musa speaks with Carla J. Simmons from inside the Georgia prison system, as well as Page Dukes of the Southern Center for Human Rights. Simmons, who has been incarcerated since 2004, recently published an article in Scalawag magazine on the irreparable psychological damage our inhumane system of mass incarceration inflicts on incarcerated people, prison staff, and the communities returning citizens re-enter upon their release. “There needs to be accountability for the psychological damage caused by incarceration as more and more members of society experience it, for longer periods of time,” Simmons writes. “If society upholds the pretense that jails and prisons act as a rehabilitative service, we must consider what condition these people will be in when they re-enter society.”
Mansa Musa: Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m Mansa Musa, co-hosting with Eddie Conway. And as I always do, I’ll update you on Eddie Conway. We ask that you continue to have Eddie Conway in your prayers or whatever medium that you use to invoke a spirituality towards humanity. We ask that you channel that towards Eddie Conway as Eddie Conway recovers through this journey that he’s undergoing right now.
Today we have Carla Simmons, who is making a phone call from prison, and this is not an easy task. So we ask our audience to really pay attention to this subject matter because it’s important. She’s been incarcerated for 20 years. She recently wrote an article entitled “Sentenced to Trauma: Inside the Volatility and Disorder of Prison”. It was published in the Scalawag magazine. Scalawag is a leftist organization that has the agenda of abolishing prisons, humanizing people that’s coming out of prison, and challenging capitalism as we know it.
Welcome, Carla. First of all, why would you take on such a monumental subject? And second of all, why do you think people in society should care about what a person undergoes in prison mentally?
Carla Simmons: So why I would take on it is monumental, but it’s the thing that I’m most passionate about, the thing that I have been most deeply affected by. So I have experienced all of these different afflictions throughout my incarceration, and trying to soul search and improve myself and survive my experience. I’ve dug down to the root of each of my struggles, and at the bottom of each one I find an aspect of trauma, a way that I have been damaged or affected negatively, in the way that trauma is understood by science, which I’m also extremely interested in. So I feel like it is a very, very important topic. It’s very close to my heart. And also, if I had a career dream or a goal, it would be to research trauma and to work with the Center for Disease Control and really bring to light the science and what incarceration does to the physical mind.
Mansa Musa: Why do you think, and I’m just asking this question more so for the purpose of educating our audience, why do you think people in society should care about the mental… We’re talking about an environment that creates such oppressive and dehumanizing events and circumstances that, mentally, a person lacks the ability to be able to make the necessary adjustment, therefore they suffer some type of traumatic experience and recognize that it has a physiological impact on them. But why should people in society care about –
Carla Simmons: Right. Yes, sir.
Mansa Musa: The mental –
Carla Simmons: It’s so important, and I could think of a lot of reasons why we should care about the humanity of individuals and their health and wellbeing. But from the perspective of society, I think that what they could focus on would be that most people understand the carceral system to be a system that intends to reintegrate its population back into society. And so we could go on and on about all the ways the system fails to prepare people for that, whether it be job skills, social skills, emotional intelligence, and whatnot. So not only does it neglect to provide people those things that would be really helpful and beneficial to society, it damages people, making it harder to see the results or success that they’re looking for with re-entry. So if you expect to understand that 90-something% of them will reenter society, we should be very, very concerned about their mental state when they get there.
Mansa Musa: All right. Now, in your article you wrote that it’s a different type of trauma that comes from long-term imprisonment, because here in your analysis that you was making about trauma in particular, was more specifically the impact that it has on long-term imprisonment. You saying that it’s a different type of trauma that comes from long-term imprisonment. How so?
Carla Simmons: Yes, sir. So the one thing is that there’s science behind that. So we have a parasympathetic and a sympathetic nervous system. And the sympathetic nervous system works like the gas. It’s the thing that triggers our bodies that says that we are in danger. And so when you have a one-time traumatic event, like you’re in a natural disaster or a bad car accident or some sort of an assault, your body hits the gas because it’s in danger, and it’s providing you with what you need to know, fight or flight responses. And then when the event is over with your parasympathetic nervous system [inaudible]
Mansa Musa: …Solitary confinement, I went through being isolated 24/7. But to reflect on your point, I want you to give me some examples. Because as you said, when we find ourselves in a long-term environment, long-term imprisonment, we lack the ability to make the distinction. Or because we are in that hostile environment that we always got our foot on the danger pedal and less on the brakes. So do we find out, is it safe to say that that’s why when we see situations in prison where the issue don’t be that severe, it might just be no more than somebody getting in front of you in the line in commissary, or the shower’s crowded and people standing outside waiting to get in the shower and somebody root the line and wind up come from a minor incident to something more volatile and violent. Would that be an example, or would those type of things take place, or can you give us some examples of what you just outlined?
Carla Simmons: Oh, yes, sir, for sure. I think that those examples are good. They highlight a particular aspect of that, and that when you put a body in a high stress response, a perpetual high stress response for years and years and years, the resilient zone, meaning the place where we can handle life’s ups and downs and little stressors: being cut in line, being in an anxious or crowded environment, maybe having where they say line up, no, get back, no, line up and then all frustrated and running into each other. Those are naturally stressful. But when you’ve pushed people to the breaking point, or when people’s bodies have been stressed to the max here, then those minor aggravations become major because the threshold is very, very small. So those examples are great when you’re talking about how this plays out, where little things become big things.
And I think that another thing to think about is that, in a cumulative nature, is how it all just piles up and piles up and piles up on each other. And it could be, I talk about in the article about how the noise inside the institution is maddening. And so how people are always very vigilantly listening because you never know if there’s a fight or if there’s an instruction or if there’s a fire or if it’s nothing. And so you just get up and look, look, look, look all day long. And of course, at the end of the day, nothing has happened, but you’re exhausted.
Mansa Musa: Right, right, right.
Carla Simmons: …All the time. And then of course, at any time during that, if there’s an actual problem or an issue that would require us to regulate ourselves and to use good social skills and some sort of ethical interaction with each other where we would require patience and good listening skills, it’s very, very difficult to expect people to be able to do that under those circumstances when they’re exhausted and have been exhausted by the sheer unpredictability of the environment.
Mansa Musa: And talk about some of the things that go on in terms of the administration, because we recognize that in the prison-industrial complex and mass incarceration being the new form of slavery, we also recognize that there’s no iron curtain between the guards and the prisoners. So is it safe to say that the traumatic experiences that people are undergoing in prison, is it safe to say that the guards are not immune to it or immune to being traumatized? Or have you made this observation?
Carla Simmons: Oh no, that is a really good point. And I’ve actually been talking about that lot. Because as we see that the staff in our institution, and I’m sure [inaudible] has decreed, that there’s much more pressure on the guards to perform with less and less resources, so they also are experiencing trauma. Personally, I think that there’s a certain moral injury that becomes involved when your career asks you to lock human beings in cages and deny them their basic human rights. Even if you don’t recognize it, I think that there’s something that shuts off inside of us that would make that possible to do as a vocation and have some sort of pride or even feel decent about it, would be to sort of cut off that part of your humanity that is denying another person’s [humanity]. Whether or not anyone is willing to recognize that, from my observation, I see it as a very traumatic act, even on its best day.
And now that the system is getting crippled over time, and the job has become much harder, and they’re exposed to violence more and more and less and less resources, then they in turn become more stressed, more on edge, and less and less able to perform their job in a humane, ethical way.
Mansa Musa: And then, too, we recognize that, from your article, that you made the observation that, I think it was in there, where they were saying, you said that the rec officer and the [inaudible] officer, they was getting ready to go the blows, or something. Am I correct?
Carla Simmons: Oh, yes, sir. Yes, sir.
Mansa Musa: [inaudible]
Phone operator: You have one minute left.
Mansa Musa: Okay, we’ll come back.
Carla Simmons: Uh-oh.
Mansa Musa: Just come back in. Just dial back in.
Carla Simmons: Okay. Yes, sir.
Phone operator: The caller has hung up.
Mansa Musa: Carla?
Carla Simmons: Yes, sir. Hello?
Mansa Musa: Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. We are back. Look. Carla, talk about the correlation between the trauma as it relates to the staff and the fact that we know that if you’re in this type of traumatic environment and you work in this environment to retirement like 20, 30 years, is it a correlation between that and alcoholism on their part, or domestic violence on their part? Or the fact that, is it a correlation between that and the guards being the most, you find guards in prison, some of them to be the most brutal? In your observation, have you been able to discern either of those things?
Carla Simmons: Yes, sir. Actually, and I haven’t done a lot of research to know what research would say about it. From my own experience, though, being here for 20 years, I’ve seen some officers throughout their career, so they would start off as CO1s and work their way up into administration. And I know that on more than one occasion, I watched their health deteriorate, their appearance deteriorate. I heard them talk about alcoholism and their struggle with substance abuse. I’ve seen, or at least heard, of their marriages failing and their estrangement with their children.
I mean, yeah, it is obvious that working under these, and their health, did I mention that? Their health just deteriorates. I’ve seen them experience cardiac arrest and having all sorts of really negative physical responses to the stress of being here and the poor conditions and the long hours, and then the trauma that I’m sure that they experienced by being here, and also that they witnessed being inflicted upon the population. So I would be very, very interested to read studies to see if people have been looking at these correlations. But just from my experience and observation, as narrow as it may be, I would say that it’s obviously a problem.
Mansa Musa: And talk about how, ’cause we spoke on this a minute ago about how we become desensitized to certain things going around us. And you was talking about the noise. And I remember my own personal experience when I was in prison, I did a lot of time on lockup. And one of the environments that I was in, lockup environments, in order to get the police attention when somebody was sick, we were banging on the doors, and the police would shut the door and try to muffle out the sound until it become so deafening they had to respond. But I spent maybe a year, two years, or three years in this environment, and the noise don’t affect me. During the years of incarceration, they could be banging, I go straight to sleep. But I became so desensitized to that type of environment. Speak on that and how you might have witnessed some of the desensitization of some of the women that’s around you in terms of them being traumatized and not being able to process it.
Carla Simmons: Oh yeah, sure. So I think desensitization is a major topic here, because I’ve got tons of examples. And the one that pops to my mind, the most obvious, is where people have seizures. And several years ago it was like an epidemic. People were having seizures all over the place. And I don’t know if it was the medicine or the water or maybe the heat. We don’t have central heating and air, so it gets really, really hot in the summer. But regardless, people would just fall out and have seizures all over the place. And of course, it was hard to get somebody’s attention, so people would be running around trying to get help for the people who were having the seizure. But by and large, most people just carried on with what they were doing while people were just falling out. People would keep playing cards and they would keep eating lunch [inaudible].
Mansa Musa: Right, right, right.
Carla Simmons: And you would just have folks on the ground. And then as the environment has become more violent, I’ve heard stories – Which I’ve been very fortunate, I’ve lived in the honor dorm since our environment got incredibly… Since the shift has happened where it’s not the same place as it used to be. But the stories that I hear. I had a close friend who watched this girl, they had been in a fight and there had been an injury, and the girl had passed out, and they had sort of drug her body by the door into a room to try to revive her or hide her. I don’t know what they were going to do. And she said that she just watched the trail of blood slide past her door, and then she went back to reading her book. ‘Cause she can’t get involved because then she could get hurt. And even if she could, there isn’t really an officer to tell. And so people have just had to turn their heads in many, many circumstances where in another environment, without this sort of conditioning, we would be compelled to intervene and to assist.
And I think more and more, I’ve seen people express how detrimental that is to their humanity and their wellbeing. And they live with all kinds of guilt and shame and regret, but it’s buried down so tight underneath the sense of survival and the sense of not really having a choice. You just get used to this. It’s just the way that it is.
Mansa Musa: And do you think it’s a correlation between people leaving out of prison long-term, short-term, and recidivism? You think it’s a correlation?
Carla Simmons: Yes.
Mansa Musa: If so, how so? How so?
Carla Simmons: Well, we know that life is hard. We know it’s hard out there. And if you’re suffering from some socioeconomic disadvantage to begin with, which there’s many, then you’re already at a higher risk for incarceration to begin with. And then we’re going to add on a felony conviction, which makes it harder to get a job. And then of course, it’s difficult. You have to reinstate your license, which takes money that you don’t have, and a job that you can’t get, and a probation or parole fee that you can’t pay, with transportation that you don’t have. And on top of that, you’ve got your system in an uproar, your resilient zone at an all time low, your stress level incredibly high. And then most people will leave with the subsets of the PTSD problems that make it difficult to socialize and interact in normal ways.
We have this desensitized behavior so that we don’t know when to intervene and when not, and our agency has been crippled. And then what else is there for us to do it? Foucault is one of my very favorite historian philosophers, the French guy. And in his writings, The Birth of the Prison, he says something that I’ve always found as very, very profound. He said that the institutionalized prison system as we know it today was established about 250 years ago. And that 10 years after it was established, there was such a thing as recidivism. And that his claim is that if 200 years later we haven’t freaking figured it out, it’s because it’s not broken, but designed to do exactly what it [inaudible]
Mansa Musa: Exactly, exactly.
Carla Simmons: – Which is to oppress and to segregate. And it’s very interesting, because the act of confinement as punishment in and of itself rose into being at the exact same time that the body began to earn hourly wages for labor. So when the body became a method to make money is when it became held captive for punishment. And so there’s this idea that if we can keep people working and we can keep money and we can keep doing this for free, then the systems designed to do that are perfect. And that clearly we’re not trying to help people or integrate people into successful lives where they can go on and live the dream. It’s just not possible.
Mansa Musa: I know. And I was thinking about my own, when I got out, and I’m working with an agency that deals with men and women coming out, helping them get situated. But when I got out, the first thing I got was mental health for myself and mental health space. I already knew that I had issues, but I remembered one incident in particular where I was getting some dental work done. The dentist told me everything he was going to do, and he was doing it. But somewhere along the line, my teeth became so sensitized that when I started eating, I couldn’t hardly eat. So I’m thinking that he did something wrong.
But in my traumatic thinking, I was thinking about how, when you in prison, you have to go to sick call, and you get in and your arm could be falling off, they say, well, put a sick call slip in. They don’t have no emergency mechanism. So I was telling my sister, I said, look, I’m going down to this dentist, and if you do anything other than fix my mouth, I’m going to wind up going back to prison, so I need you to intervene. And she said, very simple, oh, they got to take care of you because you paying for it. But I had lost that ability in that moment to make the connection that I’m in society and I’m paying for a service. And I consider myself relatively intelligent, but the trauma. But talk about why you don’t think that the prison-industrial complex overall should have a more trauma informed type agenda.
And when I say trauma informed type, CDC that came out with a study on what trauma informed environments look like. And one of the things they talk about is safety would be a key component of it. Peer support would be a key point of it. It would be like a culture, historical, and gender recognition would be a key component of it, but it’s another thing. But why do you think that the prison-industrial complex, overall, recognizing that PTSD exists and it exists in prison, why do you think that there hasn’t been a call to have a more trauma informed approach to the prison environments?
Carla Simmons: Yes, sir. I think that’s an excellent question. And it’s really at the heart of why I started doing this writing, because it occurred to me how beneficial it was for the facility, the institution, the system itself, to continue and to perpetuate trauma in this way. Because what we know is that if we can deregulate, desensitize, and completely destroy people, then they are much less likely to become a security threat. And I would argue that it’s done intentionally. Now, I recognize that it may be just a byproduct of all sorts of other factors, just a lack of organization, a lack of resources and staffing, or whatever. But I also know that counterinsurgency is a thing, where if we can take a population and we can imbalance them to such an extent that they will not organize, they will not communicate, they don’t have the mental strength or capacity to demand their basic needs, to talk about their rights.
And so it’s like if there’s the study from the ’70s with Seligman and he is talking about learned helplessness. They use dogs. And so they just shocked them, shocked them, shocked them. And then when they quit shocking them, the dog had been so deteriorated by the shocking process that when it was free to go it just sat there, because it didn’t know what even else to do. And so I make the connection with, if I have to constantly worry about if I have toilet tissue to wipe my ass, then I won’t even be thinking about how I could get out of here or how I could demand that we have clean water or a new pair of pants. Much less to look to my neighbor and see what maybe we could accomplish together, because I’m too worried about whether or not I’m going to miss lunch and if my socks will come back in the laundry, or if there will even be laundry, or if there will even be lunch.
Mansa Musa: Right, right, right.
Carla Simmons: I don’t know if it’s –
Mansa Musa: Go ahead.
Carla Simmons: Go ahead. I’m sorry.
Mansa Musa: No, go ahead. Finish your thought.
Carla Simmons: I’m just saying that, again, I believe that it’s intentional, but I don’t know that it is. And even if it’s a byproduct of a lot of other flaws in the system, that it definitely works to its advantage. I don’t see anyone stepping in and say, oh, well, let’s make these people healthier, when it’s doing such a good job allowing us to police ourselves in the way that we just become very compliant.
Mansa Musa: Well, we know that, according to penology, the concept of punishment is that the punishment is the sentence, and the carrying out the punishment is not to further punish a person, but to prepare a person to return, ultimately, back to society. And that’s in stages. But talk about where are you at right now in terms of, what’s on the horizon for you? Tell our audience. And tell our audience some of the things that you think that they might want to be doing in terms of helping to raise the awareness of the trauma that goes on in prison, and more importantly, the necessity to have a proactive approach to resolution of trauma in prison.
Carla Simmons: So what I think is that, for me, I know that I’m getting near the end of this, and whether that’s two years from now, five years, within the next 10 years from now I’ll be gone. I’m serving a life sentence here in Georgia, so we don’t know what that looks like. It’s been uncertain in its nature from the beginning. And I used to think that if I could emotionally survive this, that I’d be good. So then I got strong enough to handle it, and I think, well, if I can psychologically make it through it. And so I got some therapy and I’ve been reading a lot of books, and I’ve been examining my own self in the traumatic environment and trying to do healing work and whatever it takes to make myself capable of making it –
Carla Simmons: Lately, I’ve been on this kick where I was like, well, now it’s a physical survival, my body we don’t have vitamins and we don’t have adequate nutrition. And like I said, medical care is scant, and the people around me, they get a really bad cancer diagnosis. Now, if we can just make it physically, then we’re getting near the end of it. But that’s just my experience. And what I know is that there’s young people that come into the system every day and the life sentence in Georgia, it used to be a 14-year policy before you were considered for parole. And then, of course, a long denial process. But the kids that are coming in right now, they have 30-year life sentences where they’re not even eligible for parole until after 30 years.
And they’re coming into this very, very crippled environment where, for me, 20 years ago, it wasn’t quite like this. And more and more, we see this rise in violence, this lack of resources, the staff dealing with their own trauma, and the stakes just get higher and higher. And so I think that what we need to really be focusing on is where we’re headed. And where we’re headed is down the freaking drain. It’s not getting better. People are getting hurt, people are being harmed. And that’s something that we really need to reckon with as a society that has the pretense of rehabilitation.
We really need to decide, are we punishing people or are we trying to help them? And riding the line, using one when it’s convenient and the other when it’s convenient is bullshit. And I think that when we confront that and say, no, we really need to be clear about what it is that we’re doing, and then once we get clear, we need to do that. And then that requires society to really take a good hard look at their values, their collective values: who are we and what are we aiming to do? And then taking accountability for the steps to back that up, leave that in. Really, it boils down to policy.
Mansa Musa: And Carla, there you have it. The real news about trauma and the impact that trauma has on the prison-industrial complex. Carla, how can our audience get in touch with you? How can our audience become more aware of some of the things that you are doing?
Phone operator: You have one minute left.
Carla Simmons: Oh yeah. I don’t know. Keep reading, keep watching, keep listening for the voices that go unheard. I think a lot about power and how it is that we try to generate power from this point in society, this very oppressed place. And I know that, culturally, is the only place that I can interject any kind of power. And that’s through art, through writing, through recording this experience. And so as we continue to cultivate these records in our culture, then it becomes ingrained and it becomes, in its own way, powerful. And then one day it will affect the values of an upcoming generation.
Phone operator: Thank you for using Securus. Goodbye.
Page Dukes: It looks like Carla may be trying to call back. Do you want me to try and patch her back in? Okay.
Mansa Musa: Yeah, yeah. Tell her to come back so we can wrap her up. And then Page, at the end, you can say something like –
Phone operator: An incarcerated individual at Arrendale State Prison. This call is not private. It’ll be recorded and may be monitored. If you believe this should be a private call, please hang up and follow facility instructions to register this number as a private number. To accept this free call, press one. To refuse this call… Thank you for using Securus. You may start the conversation now.
Mansa Musa: Looking forward, you expect to be out maybe in the next two to five years. Looking forward, what can we expect from Carla from that point on out?
Carla Simmons: Oh yeah. Okay. That’s a good question. What can we expect? Well, you can expect me to keep writing and to keep talking and to keep reliving the hell that we’ve seen and been through. I know that there’s members of my family who would like me to walk out of here and never look back, and I think that that’s impossible. And I think it’ll always be a part of who I am and what I do. And anything that I can do for the rest of my life that can reach back and bring some awareness, that would shed some light to make this a more humane experience while it exists. And I hope to live to see one day when we’ve erected justice to such an extent that it doesn’t look like bars and wire and cages and punishment and torture. So I want to keep writing and I want to keep talking.
I do a lot of art. I hope that somebody can find me out there expressing this experience and this trauma and the healing that I hope to one day accomplish. I also want to get involved in the scientific side of these things so that we can make real hard proof that it’s not just criminals talking about not getting their way or not having what they want or wanting less steel and more cushion or something, but that we’re talking about a real human experience and real psychological damage that’s irrevocable, and that we can have scientific evidence that proves that it’s wrong. And that way, if we can’t do it on the moral side, then we can do it with the hard evidence that things need to change and that we can do better.
Page Dukes: Hey, Carla, do you want to stay on or do you want to go?
Carla Simmons: Oh, it doesn’t matter. Yeah, I’ll stay on a while, if that’s okay.
Page Dukes: Okay, cool. Carla and I met in prison. We were both in the choir, the Voice of Hope Choir together. We also took a lot of classes together about trauma and how we could manage that with things like zen meditation. We took a class on cognitively-based compassion training, and so we had a lot of conversations about trauma and the way that we could mitigate it in our own lives and also help other people to cope.
Mansa Musa: And overall, what do you think about the overall attitude of the criminal justice system or the prison-industrial complex in terms of their approach to resolving the impact of trauma?
Page Dukes: I think that it is nonexistent. There’s not much of an effort to mitigate the impacts of trauma. At least in my experience, the prison response to mental health is to give you a level. They assign you to a mental health level, and then often they prescribe medication, sometimes very heavy medication. And so medicating people, sedating them might work for the prison-industrial complex, it might work for an individual on the level that they’re able to survive or cope on a medicated basis, but it’s not really doing anything for a person to deal with their trauma, either the trauma that they came with or the trauma that was impounded by incarceration. So I think we have to support each other, because the prison’s not doing anything to help us resolve that trauma.
Mansa Musa: All right. Thank you. We appreciate you being the link between us and Carla. This is a good opportunity for our listeners to be able to get a broader perspective of the overall effects of the prison-industrial complex and mass incarceration. A lot of times people have an attitude or a tendency to think that people incarcerated have a cushy life, but we recognize that overall it’s not like that. It is really brutal, hostile, and dehumanizing. Thank you very much, Page.
Page Dukes: Thank you so much. I’m glad I could be a part.
Mansa Musa: All right, there you have it. The real news about trauma in the prison-industrial complex where we recognize that the ultimate goal of imprisonment is to help a person change from what they was to becoming a better human being. But as we see from this interview will Carla, the prison-industrial complex is using the most harsh, brutal living condition to affect the mentality of most men and women that’s incarcerated, damaging them beyond repair, and not taking any effort to provide them with the necessary mental health that would allow them to remain in society upon release. Thank you, Carla, for this enlightening conversation, and we hope to see you out here making an impact on the prison-industrial complex.
Carla Simmons: Well, thank you so much. It’s been an honor to speak with you.
A Bullock County, Georgia, resident attempted to file a complaint against local police after being denied medical care and placed in an “uninhabited” cell at the local jail. Instead of receiving a case, the man ended up in handcuffs. Police Accountability Report investigates the claims of retaliation.
Studio: Stephen Janis Post-Production: Stephen Janis, Adam Coley
Transcript
The following is a rush transcription and may contain errors. An updated version will be made available as soon as possible.
Taya Graham: Hello, my name is Tara 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 breaking down this arrest by Bulloch, Georgia, police of a man who was visiting a county building to file a complaint about his treatment during a previous arrest.
But it’s not just about how the man who took this video was treated during the ordeal that we will focus on today, rather, it’s also a story about the courage it takes to preserve our rights and to hold power accountable, even when it’s aligned against you.
But first, I want you watching to know, that if you have 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 tips privately at PAR@therealnews.com. Ensure your evidence of police misconduct.
And please don’t forget to comment and share our videos. I may not be able to respond to every comment, but I promise you, I read all of them and I appreciate them.
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All right, we’ve gotten that out of the way.
Now, as we have often noted on this show, holding law enforcement accountable comes with a specific set of challenges, to say the least. Risks that come with law enforcement’s unique ability to retaliate against critics with arrests and charges.
And it’s because of this overwhelming power and its implications, I’m showing you this video we will be focusing on today.
It depicts a confrontation between Bulloch, Georgia resident, Maurice Minas and Bulloch County officers outside a county building. An encounter that began with the simple, yet apparently questionable, act of filing a complaint against law enforcement, an act which would lead to troubling behavior by police. We will show you later.
That’s because, after Maurice entered this building to file a complaint against the corrections officers who he said had been abusive after a previous arrest, a confrontation ensued, which led to a group of deputy sheriffs confronting him outside this government building. Let’s watch.
Maurice Minas: Your name?
Captain Casey: That’s not a complaint form.
Maurice Minas: What is your name?
Captain Casey: Captain Casey. C-A-S-E-Y.
Maurice Minas: Captain Casey. Badge number? You, what’s your name and badge number?
Chief Deputy Bi…: Chief Deputy Bill Black. Badge number 2.
Maurice Minas: You?
Deputy Gabe: Deputy Gabe. Badge number 59.
Lieutenant Greg…: Lieutenant Greg Collins. Badge number 6.
Maurice Minas: And this guy, one more time?
Captain Casey: Captain Casey. C-A-S-E-Y.
Maurice Minas: Okay. So what’s-
Captain Casey: Badge number-
Maurice Minas: … your point-
Captain Casey: … 3.
Maurice Minas: … of coming out here, four deep and hostile like this?
Captain Casey: Nobody’s hostile.
Maurice Minas: Yeah, you came out here, big guy. Now the camera’s on you, you calmed down a little bit. So I’m trying to see what’s going on. I’m not out here harassing nobody. Who came and told you-
Captain Casey: I will give you the complaint form.
Taya Graham: Now, it’s worth noting that Maurice encountered no issues when he first entered this building. In fact, no one even noticed him when he requested a complaint form. But as soon as he did, the cops inside decided he warranted their attention. Take a look.
Maurice Minas: … Nobody. Who came and told you-
Captain Casey: … complaint form.
Maurice Minas: … And I might fill these out-
Captain Casey: Fill it out.
Maurice Minas: … right here.
Captain Casey: [Inaudible 00:03:11] back.
Maurice Minas: Now, who told us-
Captain Casey: Now, after you’re done-
Maurice Minas: … Who told you that I was harassing him?
Captain Casey: … Listen to me. After you’re done, you’re to leave.
Maurice Minas: Okay.
Captain Casey: I’m serving you criminal trespass here. If you come back, you’ll be arrested.
Maurice Minas: Am I trespassing?
Captain Casey: Do you understand?
Maurice Minas: Where’s the criminal-
Taya Graham: Of course, you’re probably saying now, “Taya, he’s obviously been in trouble before. Why focus on him? Why worry about some guy who had been arrested before?”
Well, let me answer that first. As well as hearing from Maurice later, his crime was a run of the mill FTA, or failure to appear for a court date. But for that arguably very human error, Maurice was thrown in jail, later put in solitary, and abused by several corrections officers, according to him.
But on top of that seemingly disproportionate punishment, Maurice’s dilemma also raises a fundamental question. Should our right to petition the government be conditional? Are those same rights contingent on who is exercising them?
Well, I want you to think about those questions, as you watch Maurice deal with officers who followed him. Take a look.
Captain Casey: If you come back, he’ll be arrested.
Maurice Minas: Am I trespassing?
Captain Casey: Do you understand?
Maurice Minas: Where’s the criminal trespassing?
Captain Casey: Do you understand me? I’m verbally serving you, criminal trespass.
Maurice Minas: You’re going to trespass me from a public place? From a public?
Captain Casey: Do you hear me?
Maurice Minas: Where’s the criminal tres-
Captain Casey: Do you hear me?
Maurice Minas: Where’s the trespass, sir?
Captain Casey: I’m verbally serving you, criminal trespass. Do not come back once you fill this paperwork out.
Maurice Minas: Lower your tone, dude.
Captain Casey: If you do-
Maurice Minas: De-escalate, dude.
Captain Casey: … you will be arrested.
Maurice Minas: Okay.
Captain Casey: Do you understand me?
Maurice Minas: Tomorrow, if I come back here, I’m going to be arrested?
Captain Casey: Yes.
Maurice Minas: What? You might as go and arrest me now.
Captain Casey: Still have the paperwork.
Maurice Minas: You might want to arrest me now.
Captain Casey: You need to leave.
Maurice Minas: Ma’am, please? Can I borrow a pen from one of you fellas, please? Oh, y’all supposed to give me a pen. No, I can’t come up here. I’m up here, filling out forms.
Chief Deputy Bi…: You can bring it back and drop it off.
Maurice Minas: I got a pen in my car. Since y’all want to be like that. I’ll be right back for these. Got all y’all back. Y’all think y’all finna do me like that? What law am I breaking?
Captain Casey: Fill it out.
Maurice Minas: What law am I breaking?
Captain Casey: You’ll be criminally trespassing.
Maurice Minas: For what law am I breaking? What? You haven’t said anything. You just said-
Chief Deputy Bi…: Criminal trespass law.
Maurice Minas: … For what?
Captain Casey: Criminal trespass.
Maurice Minas: For criminal trespassing.
Captain Casey: You’ve been served.
Taya Graham: Now, after Maurice asked the officers for their respective badge numbers, the officers decided to give notice, so to speak.
At this point they tell him, in no uncertain terms, he is facing arrest. Just listen.
Maurice Minas: For what?
Captain Casey: Criminal trespass.
Chief Deputy Bi…: Criminal trespassing.
Captain Casey: You’ve been served.
Maurice Minas: Why have I been served?
Chief Deputy Bi…: If you don’t leave here [inaudible 00:05:25].
Captain Casey: Fill out this paperwork.
Maurice Minas: That’s my official business.
Captain Casey: You’ve been told to leave, after you fill out this paperwork.
Maurice Minas: So I can’t come back tomorrow?
Captain Casey: Yep.
Maurice Minas: To even talk to the sheriff?
Chief Deputy Bi…: Yep. You call up here and make an appointment.
Captain Casey: Yep.
Maurice Minas: Where’s my criminal trespass? I need it in written.
Captain Casey: You’ve been served.
Maurice Minas: I need it in writing.
Captain Casey: You don’t get it in writing. [Inaudible 00:05:39].
Maurice Minas: No, I need it in writing. I need it in writing. I’m pretty sure you got to [inaudible 00:05:43].
Captain Casey: I’m not going to argue with you anymore.
Maurice Minas: You guys are going to beat me up, though.
Captain Casey: If you’re going to be tricky and take this paperwork-
Maurice Minas: I know how y’all work.
Captain Casey: … you’re just going to go to jail.
Maurice Minas: That’s why y’all came out here like that.
Captain Casey: Do you understand?
Maurice Minas: I’m going to get my pen to fill this out to appease you.
Captain Casey: Hurry up.
Maurice Minas: And I’m only going to leave and not come back tomorrow under threat and arrest.
Captain Casey: There’s no threats.
Maurice Minas: Yeah, you threatened me.
Taya Graham: And so while Maurice tries to comply with their threat to leave the premises, he still insists on filing a complaint, an attempt to defend his right to file a grievance that leads to further chaos. Just look.
Captain Casey: There’s no threats.
Maurice Minas: Yeah, you threatened me.
Captain Casey: I told you [inaudible 00:06:11].
Maurice Minas: You just said you’re not.
Captain Casey: That’s not the right [inaudible 00:06:13].
Maurice Minas: For what law? What law have I broken?
Captain Casey: That’s not a threat.
Maurice Minas: What law have I broken?
Captain Casey: That’s not a threat.
Maurice Minas: What law have I broken? What statute?
Captain Casey: Get your pen and come fill this paperwork.
Maurice Minas: I’m about to. It’s going to take me all day to fill out all these complaints I got to fill out on all y’all.
Chief Deputy Bi…: Yeah, we [inaudible 00:06:27].
Maurice Minas: No, I don’t need y’all following me to my car.
Taya Graham: Now, after the video ends, Maurice was arrested and I will be talking to him later about what happened and how it affected him.
But first I’m joined by my reporting partner, Stephen Janis, who’s been looking into the case. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me.
Stephen Janis: Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham: So first, you’ve reached out to the sheriff’s office. What are they saying?
Stephen Janis: Well, I did better than that. I got a hold of the documents that actually led to the charges against him, against Maurice.
And it is astounding. They literally state in the documents, which I will show you on the screen now, that the reason that they harassed him is because he was filing a complaint.
And really the transom here was when they tried to get him to identify who he is complaining against, then they got testy with him. And that’s literally what’s in the documents. I mean, I can’t even believe what I’m reading.
Seriously, you’re going to charge a guy for filing a complaint? And then he comes back to file some more complaints and you get agitated and you’re like, “I’m going to arrest him.”
Well, that’s what it says in these documents in the United States of America. Constitutional or not, I don’t know. It’s bizarre. But that’s what they’re trying to do.
Taya Graham: Is this arrest going to move forward? Are prosecutors actually moving forward with the case?
Stephen Janis: Well, I put a call into them. I don’t see how they can. I don’t see how this is constitutional. I don’t see how this holds up in court. I don’t see what law he’s broken.
So really, if this prosecution goes forward, it’s just a sham. I mean, no, I don’t think it will. I’m going to keep calling them until I get an answer. But, no.
Taya Graham: The inflection point in the video seems to be when Maurice asked for the officer’s badge number and name. What is the law on that in Georgia and anywhere else, for that matter?
Stephen Janis: Well, let me say this. And states do pass different laws, but I’m not going to speak to the law because there can be no law. This is a First Amendment right, to petition the government. There’s no law that any government, any local municipal government, any state government, any government should make against the right of us to ask a police officer to identify themselves. That is clearly the Constitution. And I just don’t believe there is any law that should be able to actually abrogate the Constitution. That’s my opinion.
Taya Graham: And now to get more details on the events that led up to his arrest and what happened after he was put into cuffs, I’m joined by Maurice. Maurice, thank you for speaking with us.
Maurice Minas: Thank you for having me.
Taya Graham: So first, why were you at the Bulloch Sheriff’s Office?
Maurice Minas: To file a medical request practice form. Well, I was actually trying to get a practice form first.
I called ahead and asked him could I come and get a practice letter. And a clerk, I believe it was, told me yes, that I could come get a practice letter.
So I came and got a practice letter. Everything went smooth with that. They were being more than cordial about that.
But as soon as I asked about complaint forms, the whole demeanor just changed up.
Taya Graham: So when did the deputies become aggressive? What were they doing that made you feel like you had to record the encounter?
Maurice Minas: When I asked, “Can I get some complaint forms now?”
And she’s like, “Oh, complaint forms?” Literally, she goes, “Oh, complaint forms? You can’t be out here harassing people.”
I’m like, “Harassing people? I’m not harassing anybody.”
Her whole demeanor, she was being nice and cordial, even though she didn’t want to let us sit down or whatever, she still was being polite, I guess.
But after that, I could just see the snarky attitude.
So she’s like, “Okay, I’ll go get some complaint forms.”
Let me back it up a little bit. Before she gets the complaint forms, I asked to speak to the captain of the jail. It’s Captain Thompson. I asked to speak to him and she’s like, “Okay, I’ll go get him. Wait right here. I’ll be back.”
So I’m waiting. And that take probably like 20, 20 minutes, maybe.
I’m waiting. And she comes back, she goes, “Well, Captain Thompson isn’t here. He went out for lunch. We waiting on him to come back.”
So I’m like, “Okay, can I speak with the sheriff?”
She goes, “Okay, let me see if the sheriff is in.”
She leaves, maybe 20 more minutes. Then she comes back, “Well, the sheriff gone for today. He won’t be back here.”
So that’s when I asked for complaint forms, after that, because I’m like, I see what she’s doing. Even if they were here, I wouldn’t know it.
So I asked for the complaint forms and that’s when she goes, “Oh, well. You can’t be out here harassing people.”
And I literally look around like, “Miss, there’s been nobody here but me the whole time. Who am I harassing?”
Nope, I got to rewind it again. I guess this is what made her say it.
While she was going to get the sheriff or whatever, the nurse who I asked, that’s the main person who I wanted to complain on, she came to the front. She had her name tag turned around.
And she goes, “Hey, I remember you.” Like as soon as she seen me, as soon as she opened the door. I never went inside. I’m still outside.
She goes, “I remember you.”
I’m like, “You do?”
I’m smiling, trying to be cordial, because I know they tactics.
And I go, “You remember me? What you remember about me?”
She goes, “I know you don’t like me.” Literally just like that. “I know you don’t like me.”
So I’m like, “Miss, what’s your name?”
She’s like, “I don’t have to tell you my name. I don’t have to tell you anything.” She literally turned around and walked off.
She said, “Okay, I’ll go get your complaint forms,” with an attitude. Leaves, comes back with the four officers, and I seen them walking down the hallway.
So I got my camera and I started recording. That’s where the video started.
Taya Graham: So after you walk to the car to get a pen, what happened? I mean, it seems like the officers are following you to the car. What happens next? What don’t we see on camera?
Maurice Minas: I’m the type of person, if you do something out of the way, even though I’m behind these walls, I still got rights. And if you do something, it’s only one way to know who this person is doing what. And that’s to identify them.
So much stuff going on in there and I’m standing up for myself and I guess they go, “Well, we got to show him that it don’t matter what you say. You’re here now. We can do this, so we’re going to do this.”
Investigate what? There was nothing to investigate on me, except maybe the incident where they beat me up and did all that. Maybe investigate that. But nobody wanted to do that. I guess it was the CYA, as they would say.
Taya Graham: How long were you held? And what did they tell you?
Maurice Minas: It’s people that came in there, actual criminals. These two guys came in there, caught with a gun and drugs, like pills and powder and stuff.
And me, all I want to do is file complaint forms, got to sit for two days.
But these guys within hours, because they got an attorney, I guess or whatever, they can bond out.
Taya Graham: That really is a serious problem with the criminal justice system, that money can buy your freedom, while innocent people can remain incarcerated due to lack of funds.
So tell me, what charges are you facing? And what is the possible outcome for you?
Maurice Minas: It’s been a little over two years since this happened. I obviously pled not guilty and I’ve had maybe three or four court appearances for this, where I go and they ask me if I want to change my plea or whatever.
And I tell them the same thing, because the first time when I went, I had a little counsel with me.
It’s this pastor called Pastor Eli Porter. Good man. Great man. He’s a head of an organization called the Poor Minority Justice Association, where he takes cases like this, for the community.
And he went with me and he seen the bargain, I guess or whatever they give me, the plea. It was, I think, a year of probation, 40 hours of community service and maybe almost a $2,000 fine, I think, maybe $1,800.
And it kind of bothered him. He’s like, “Hold on. Who came up with this? Did you not watch the video?” He was talking to the prosecutor like this. He’s like, “Ma’am, did you not see the video? The young man didn’t do anything and this what you want him to plead to?”
It goes deep. They’re all friends. They all sit down together and have lunch and talk about everything that goes on in a small town. And you can’t trust none of them, it feels like.
Taya Graham: So how has this affected your life?
Maurice Minas: It literally dampened like everything I had. I ain’t going to say dampen. It bounced out everything I had going on, because I hadn’t been having the best of jobs. I wasn’t staying at jobs, but I found the job that I thought that I could do, as long as I wanted to. Uber and Instacart, I started doing that. So I’m driving. Yeah, easy money making at least $20 an hour, if not $10 an hour. That’s something better than nothing.
It makes you not want to go out. And it’s the anxiety of seeing the police and then be like, ‘Is that one of them? I didn’t get his name. It’s been a while ago. He kind of looked like that guy, but I don’t know.”
It’s that paranoia of not knowing who did what to you, and they could make up anything, basically. So I’ve just been going through my life, stressing about it, but not stressing about it, because it is what it is, I guess. But I have noticed that I got a couple more gray hairs in my beard. I’ve lost plenty of nights of sleep and every day I obsess over it.
Taya Graham: Okay, the arrest of Maurice is not just about the ability of police to retaliate. I also think it reveals something significant about a problem with law enforcement that gets less attention than it deserves. Namely, there are just too many cops dedicated to problems that have little to do with public safety.
Just take a headcount for Maurice’s encounter and you will see what I mean, as he takes a spontaneous sidewalk roll call, in the beginning of his video, you see at least four different officers reluctantly giving their names and badge number. That’s four cops with full police powers. They have so much time on their hands, they can follow Maurice into the parking lot and effectuate what can best be described as a questionable arrest.
But the reason I make this point is not just because the number of cops involved in his arrest seems excessive. It’s more important, I think, as an example of how we have misallocated resources towards policing and how those misplaced priorities are at least partly responsible for the lack of trust in law enforcement.
So let me use the failed war on drugs as an example. And before you say it, I know. It’s an easy target that a lot of people have criticized and rightly so. But I have something specific that might shed new light on how the so-called war has distorted the very fabric of our country’s social compact.
First, as we all know, the war on drugs was a pretense to use law enforcement to diminish the rights and political agency of the working class and minorities. The idea to criminalize addiction was simply a way to monetize the poor and bolster the power of agencies like the Drug Enforcement Administration, that have wreaked havoc on poor and minority communities for decades.
It’s worth noting that even as billions and billions of dollars have been spent on this war, the US continues to notch a tragic 100,000 deaths a year from overdoses, an overwhelming tally of suffering and malaise that has not diminished in the least, in spite of millions of arrests, raids, cops, and prison time. The key ingredients, I might add, of America’s punitive recipe for extracting whatever they can from the people who can least afford it.
But what really caught my eye this week was this article in the Washington Post. A piece that, for me, reveals what happens when you use the process of law enforcement to monetize a problem and how it distorts every subsequent effort to solve it.
The article recounts the lack of availability of a critical drug called naloxone. For those that aren’t familiar with it, naloxone, otherwise known by one of its trade names, Narcan, is what’s known as an opioid antagonist, a drug delivered in the form of a nasal spray that can literally revive a person in the midst of an overdose. It has, quite frankly, saved thousands of lives.
But it could do more, because at the moment, oddly enough, you need a prescription to obtain it. I guess the idea is that when someone you know is overdosing, you’ll hop right on the phone, call a doctor, get a diagnosis, get the prescription from a pharmacy, pick it up and then administer it. You get my point? It’s absurd.
Which is why the Washington Post editorial explores the reason that this lifesaving drug and the aforementioned overdose crisis has not been made available over the counter, like aspirin and cough medicine. The piece asks very vexing and serious questions. With so many people dying, why on Earth wouldn’t we do everything we can to get this drug to everyone who needs it and eliminate the need to jump through hoops to get it?
The conclusion of the piece was another key ingredient of the aforementioned American recipe for communal despair. Corporate greed. Put simply, pharmaceutical companies were worried that the margins for the prescribed product would be greatly diminished if it could be bought without the prescription.
Now, it’s worth noting that the FDA had asked several companies to make Narcan available years ago. In 2017, the article asserts these same companies did nothing to respond, namely Evzio and Adapt Pharma. Neither would explain fully to the post why they hadn’t taken up the mantle and worked to get lifesaving medicine into more hands.
But it raises a fundamental question about how this country works and often does not, and who it prioritizes and why. Because over the period of time the FDA sought to make this drug more available, hundreds of thousands of people died, a toll that perhaps might not have been fully prevented by making naloxone an over-the-counter drug, but certainly could have prevented thousands of deaths.
It really makes you wonder, doesn’t it? Because spending tens of billions of dollars on the war on drugs didn’t require any hand-wringing. Investing in punishment, expanding prison capacity, and putting more officers on the streets, isn’t that hard to approve. In fact, as our sister show, “Rattling the Bars,” aptly reported, the effort to close a prison in California met with stiff resistance even though the state simply didn’t have enough inmates to fill it.
My point here is why is it so easy to make four cops available to arrest a man for filing a complaint, but not to provide a life-saving drug to fight a national health crisis? Why was it so easy to ratchet up the war on drugs by building prisons and funding an extensive investigative agency, but really hard to make a life-saving treatment, easy and inexpensive to buy? Why? And I ask this question, with all the compassion and concern for humanity I can muster, is it easier to slap handcuffs on a person than to administer a drug that literally brings them back from the dead?
These are questions we have to answer, if we want to live in a just and compassionate world, not a country of cops, courts, and prisons, but a community that values health, wellness, and our lives first. Nothing less is acceptable. It shouldn’t be acceptable. We all deserve better.
I want to thank my guest, Maurice, for joining me and sharing his story in his fight for accountability. Thank you, Maurice.
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 friends of the show, Noli D. and Lacey R., for their support. Thank you.
And a very special thanks to our 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 R. and David K. and super friends, Shane Busta, Pineapple Girl, 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 @eyesonpolice on Twitter.
And of course, you can always message me directly, @tayasbaltimore on Twitter or Facebook. And please like and comment. I do read your comments and appreciate them.
And we do have our 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.
This story originally appeared in Truthout on Jan. 31, 2023. It is shared here with permission.
Over 1,300 climate, justice and community groups are calling for Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens to resign over the police killing of anti-“Cop City” activist Manuel “Tortuguita” Terán on January 18, issuing a strong rebuke to Dickens for his refusal to even condemn the killing.
In their letter, the groups said that Dickens has stood firmly on the side of law enforcement as Georgia Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has sent in the National Guard to crack down on protests in a continued escalation of the violence and threats of violence against protesters.
“Mayor Dickens has stood by as police violence and rhetoric towards protestors has steadily ratcheted up, including the use of chemical agents and militarized raids on small groups of protestors engaged in civil disobedience,” the letter reads. “Less than a month ago, Atlanta City Council members and activists rang the alarm about the dangers of escalated police violence after an aggressive raid on peaceful protestors on December 13th. Rather than use this as an opportunity to listen or reverse course, Dickens ignored the concerns of council members and his own constituents.”
“Mayor Dickens’ lack of intervention in protecting Atlanta protestors and residents led directly to the fatal raid,” the groups continued.
The letter was signed by groups like climate justice coalition People Vs. Fossil Fuels as well as local, Indigenous and abolitionist groups.
The groups wrote that Dickens has not only parroted Kemp’s and law enforcement’s talking points and narratives on the killing, which activists have questioned, but has also refused to display basic respect to the protesters. Though it has been nearly two weeks since Tortuguita’s killing, Dickens has not offered condolences to their family, the letter points out — but just hours after the killing, he tweeted in support of the police officer who was allegedly injured during the raid of the activists’ camp.
Dickens, a Democrat, has continually supported and championed “Cop City,” a proposal to raze nearly 100 acres of forest in Southeast Atlanta to build an intensely militarized police training facility, despite the vast amount of community opposition and the threat that the project is already posing to the public.
He was one of 10 city councilors who voted in favor of leasing land to build “Cop City” before he became mayor and has not come out against the domestic terrorism charges lobbed against protesters over what appears to be nothing more than alleged trespassing charges — charges that experts say are baseless. Further, Dickens has disparaged people protesting in Atlanta after Tortuguita’s killing and said that protests like these and those of the Movement for Black Lives in 2020 are evidence that policing must increase.
“Mayor Dickens can somehow find $90 million dollars for cop city, one third of which will come from tax payer money. Still, he can’t find money to keep our already overwhelmed hospitals open or to finance much-needed affordable housing,” the groups wrote. “The evidence is clear: we no longer have confidence in Dicken’s ability to govern the City of Atlanta.”
The letter also calls for Dickens to terminate the forest lease, and for an independent investigation into Tortuguita’s killing, separate from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation’s probe, which has ties to the Atlanta Police Department — the same department involved in the killing.
“Climate justice and police brutality are interconnected, which is why we are joining the Stop Cop City calls to action with the frontline communities in Atlanta,” ikiyA collective, a member of People Vs. Fossil Fuels’s steering committee, said in a statement. “It is imperative that we demand an independent investigation into the police murder of Manuel ‘Tortuguita’ Paez Terán.”
Endless expansion of the system of mass incarceration is one of the few guarantees of American politics. Across the country, communities are embroiled in fights to halt the growth of new jails. In a special episode of Rattling the Bars, the Prison Policy Institute convenes activists fighting jail expansion from coast to coast to discuss strategies and methods to fight back.
Stop Building Prisons (podcast) with Sashi James, Maggie Luna, and Avalon Betts-Gaston (Failed Architecture) (featuring members of the National Council)
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 Mansa Musa, co-host for Eddie Conway. And as I always do, I try to update everyone on Eddie Conway’s progress and Eddie Conway’s condition. We ask that you keep Eddie Conway in your prayers, whatever spiritual medium you identify with, as he go forward in his recovery and getting his health back. Today we have a remarkable program. The Prison Policy Initiative is a organization that’s in the forefront of raising people’s consciousness about all aspects of the criminal injustice system, the prison industrial complex and mass incarceration, the new form of slavery.
Through the Prison Policy Initiative’s research, people are made aware of how these blood sucking institutions are exploiting and oppressing people, but more importantly, how people can organize and advocate to change this exploitation and oppression. The webinar, Fighting Jail Expansion, is such an example. Naila Awan, Director of Advocacy for Prison Policy Initiative, hosted a webinar with five remarkable women who offer strategies and taxes on how they effectively organize to stop the expansion of a jails and prison within their community.
The webinar is a textbook example of advocacy and organizing and can be used to raise people’s conscience on how to be effective in doing both. The Prison Policy Initiative has always did outstanding research, and it’s through their research that this particular webinar has come into existence. The Real News and Rattling the Bars is thankful to the Prison Policy Initiative for allowing us to be able to share this webinar with our audience. We hope that in doing so, it will spark a purifier of consciousness and cause people to become more focused on organizing and advocating against injustice everywhere.
As one of the women said, there’s nothing more powerful than the power of the people, and this reminds me of when the Black Panther Party first came into existence, one of the slogans that we had was, all power to the people. So we say, all power to the people, and thank the Prison Policy Initiative for giving us this opportunity to share this remarkable webinar with our listeners and viewers. In closing, we ask that you continue to support Rattling the Bars and the Real News. It’s because of your support that we’re able to bring this type of information to you. Thank you very much and enjoy.
Naila Awan:
Across the country, counties are proposing to build new, larger jails. Community groups, organizers and activists have successfully pushed back on a number of these proposals. However, they often see the proposals being reinitiated year after year, causing them to focus resources on defensive fights, and having less time to push and explore progressive reforms aimed at reducing the number of people incarcerated. Today we’re going to talk to organizers who’ve successfully pushed back on proposals to build bigger jails and explore an alternative strategy aimed up pausing the year in and year out fights to prevent counties from moving ahead on jail expansion. We’re also hoping to have time to discuss how records request, technical challenges and interventions in jail assessment processes and analysis of such assessments can help in these fights.
I’m just going to double look at the poll results now and share the results with you all. So it looks like a number of folks here are here because of a general interest in the topic, but also a good proportion of you are in counties where a new jail is being proposed or where you’ve actively been involved, or are engaging in a fight to stop a jail from being expanded or constructed.
As we head into our discussion today, I just wanted to do a quick introduction. My name is Naila Awan, and I’m the Director of Advocacy at Prison Policy Initiative. Today I’m excited to have Mallory Hanora, Executive Director of Families for Justices as Healing in Massachusetts, and a proud member of the National Council. And Sashi James, Director of Reimagining Communities at the National Council for Incarcerated and Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls. Mallory and Sashi’s organizations are both leading an important legislative effort in Massachusetts to establish a five-year moratorium on jail and prison construction or expansion.
And Crystal Kowalski, founding member of Building Justice in Berks, which is located in Pennsylvania. Building Justice in Berks has been actively and successfully pushing back on the county’s proposal to build a larger jail and aims to monitor the planning and building of the new Berks County Jail. You’ll also likely hear from two additional Prison Policy Initiative staff members, Wendy Sawyer, our Research Director who might be providing some additional information during this discussion, and Emily Widra, our Senior Research Analyst who will be reviewing your questions as they come in and fielding them at the end of today’s webinar.
Now Crystal, I’d like to start with you. Your Pennsylvania County was trying to build a bigger jail based on community action, focused on reducing the jail population. And pushing back against the need for a larger facility, you’ve all gotten the county to change its plans. Can you tell us how you first learned about your county’s plan to build a bigger jail, how your coalition came together, and maybe most importantly, how your group managed to get a seat at the table during the jail assessment phase, when we frequently see that only criminal legal system actors like sheriffs, prosecutors, judges, and jail administrators are being consulted?
Crystal Kowalski:
Thank you, Naila. First, I want to thank you, Naila, for holding this webinar, Prison Policy Initiative, and for having me be a panelist and for also your incredible data and reports. We have used those and they have been really helpful. I want to thank everybody who’s attending the webinar, and it is really an honor to be on this panel with Mallory and Sashi. I’ll start with how we knew we were building a new jail, and that was by attending county commissioner’s board meetings.
I initially went, because I guess I saw in the newspaper, the county was thinking about privatizing the jail. And so I went to a commissioner’s meeting, and then I just stayed attending those meetings. And by attending on a weekly basis and studying agendas and paying really close attention to budget proposals that happened, like presentations happened in November, you can see what’s coming down the pike, and what we saw was that they would be building a new jail and contracting with CGL.
Our core group of Building Justice in Berks, came together also through county commissioner’s meetings. The core group of us knew each other from a previous battle to keep our county owned nursing home in county hands. This was a long and pretty involved fight. It went on for about a year and a half. So during that time we built relationships with each other, and we figured out how the county works, how they make decisions and how we could impact those decisions. So that was a group that had done something previously together, we were the core group. Our first action was to send a private letter to the stakeholders, the prison board, which is the commissioners, the DA, other stakeholders saying, we understand that you’re going to contract with CGL. We are asking you to also get information from agencies that do criminal justice reform and have current data. So we recommended Prison Policy Initiative and we recommended the Vera Institute.
We had this letter signed by community leaders. So we basically tried to gather the most powerful, impactful people we could that looked like broad-based community support, not just activists. So this letter went out to them, that was the initial action. We had a couple responses. Then the core group got together and we expanded by holding a criminal justice film series, and we also, in that, reached out to a bunch of community groups to partner with us. And by holding this series, the audience that gathered was really diverse and amazing, and we invited all the stakeholders in the county to attend, and to our surprise, they did. We had commissioners come, we had people from Saint Berks come. It was a series of four films, so they were week after week. Once we started getting some people coming, I think there was a feeling of expectation maybe that they should attend.
So they did, and that really helped us to connect. CGL also sent representatives to this film series. We got press coverage and that also helped us broaden our reach. Originally, Naila, we were talking about what the greatest challenges were that we faced, and I think that’s an important thing to bring up. I think, staying ahead of upcoming action items and decision points and getting press releases out prior to decisions being made by the county, so the way that, that’s done, is by covering every single meeting if you can. And that was operations meetings, jail board meetings, commissioners meetings, steering committee for the jail project meetings. An example of why this is important was, I was at a prison board meeting, and at the end of the meeting they were saying, “Oh, something about this meeting on Thursday at 11:15.” And I thought, wait, there’s not meetings on Thursday at 11:15, they’re at 10 and one.
So I contacted the county, I said, “Oh, I heard this in this meeting. What is this meeting?” And they said, “Oh, it’s the visioning session with CGL.” And I said, “Oh.” And they said, “Well, you can come if you want.” And so, that day before, three of us in the core group changed around our schedules, got to that visioning session the next day, and it was a really important meeting to be at. We would not have been notified or known about it had we not been at that other meeting.
All right, now to the, being able to speak with CGL, the people who did the assessment. I thought about this, and I think it happened for a number of reasons. I would say, I’m going to enumerate them. One, our history here in Berks County. Berks County had a bad history in criminal justice.
Berks County had a woman die in our jail in June of 2014, she was in there, serving a 48-hour sentence on an inability to pay truancy fines, $2,000 in truancy fines. The woman who was in the jail cell with her, was in there on parking tickets. She notified them that she was having problems. She died of a heart attack, because she didn’t get medical service, and that got national attention. Losing my place. Sorry. Okay. So that got national attention and it also woken local activists. That’s how I got involved in all of this. I was reading that article and I’m like, everything about it was shocking, literally everything. So that was number one that happened. Then we held other records.
We had the highest constable pay, we had the highest amount of non-traffic cases in one MDJ’s office. We had the highest amounts of incarceration on failure to post collateral. And this is in Pennsylvania, so in all the counties in Pennsylvania, we were twice as high as the second place county, which was York, on incarcerating people for failure to post collateral, that’s bail on very low level summary offenses. On all these things, we had fantastic press coverage and really in depth investigative reporting, and at that time the newspaper was giving a lot of room to this reporting. It connected us together, it connected us with the ACLU, which really helped. Number two, we have at least one commissioner who I believe has a true interest in criminal justice reform, and he happens to be the head commissioner and a Republican. This helps us a lot that he has these feelings.
Number three, the Board of Commissioners saw how we fought to keep Berks Heim, that was the nursing home, in public hands, and they knew we had the drive and the connections to collect the data and to make it public. So from the beginning they emphasized how transparent this jail building project was going to be, and we tried to hold them to it. We attended every meeting, we commented, we placed right-to-know requests, we held a very public film series with broad-based community partners and invited all the stakeholders.
Number four, So CGL also attended our film series, which helped connect us with CGL. On the model of CGL and how they were going about business, we conducted our own stakeholder meetings. We had meetings with the MDJs, Pretrial Services, Parole and Probation, some of the commissioner’s community leaders, the warden and the deputy warden.
And on a regular basis, if we had a question, we just emailed CGL directly, and they would get back to us and they would answer our question. We submitted daily right-to-know requests for the daily jail admission logs. This gave us information about jail population and level of offense. And I mean, the people who were in jail on a introductory level, but it also let, I think the county know and CGL know that we knew all this.
And then last one, number six, we were a constant presence for years, and we always approached every comment using the subject, we, presuming that these decisions will be made with input from the community. This past November, the commissioners announced that they were taking the next year to reduce the jail population to below 700 people, and we plan to help them surpass their goal. I’m open to any questions and talking after this, I know that was a barrage of information. Thank you, Naila.
Naila Awan:
Thanks, Crystal. And Mallory and Sashi, as mentioned at the outset, jail expansion efforts frequently like revive year-after-year in counties, but you all are trying to flip the script in this bite against jail expansion and construction by leading an effort to get the Massachusetts legislature to pass a Jail and Prison Moratorium Bill. Can you describe what that looks like, why you chose this strategy, and the obstacles you’ve faced in advancing that legislation?
Sashi James:
I’ll start. So my name is Sashi, and I’m with Families for Justice As Healing in the National Council. And we started, we wrote the [inaudible 00:17:05] bill following the leadership of formerly incarcerated women. Our organization is a abolitionist organization that’s founded by formerly incarcerated women, so it was founded inside of a prison and we do believe that they have the vision and that we follow their leadership. And so, formerly incarcerated women directly impacted women to wrote a Prison and Jail Moratorium Bill, because one, we tried many angles, which was, write letters to the Board of Directors, two of HDR who actually has the contract in Massachusetts for the women’s prison, but we tried to have conversations with architects. Some were successful, which thank you to the architects that actually pulled out and chose not to move forward with this project.
But some architects, one primarily being HDR, decided not to pull out of this project and also decided to blatantly ignore formerly incarcerated women, directly impacted women and our allies from across Massachusetts and even broader from across the country, because they’re the second largest architectural firm in the country that’s just building prisons and jails everywhere.
And so, we wrote a Prison and Jail Moratorium Bill, because our first attempts were just being ignored. And the Prison and Jail Moratorium Bill is a five-year pause on all construction prisons and jails for five years, which first, we believe that this could be a beautiful model across the country, because one, it’s exhausting to keep fighting prisons and jail construction. We don’t have the capacity as the people. We’re trying to heal people. We’re trying to create what- I’m going to scale back. We’re not trying to create what different looks like, we are creating what different looks like, and that takes a lot of our time and energy and everything in itself. So to continue to fight prisons and jail construction, when we know that if they build a bed, they’re going to fill the bed. It’s exhausting.
And so, the Prison and Jail Moratorium Bill gives communities like mine, which I live in Roxbury, which is primarily a Black and Brown community, it just happens to sit in the most incarcerated court of the commonwealth of Massachusetts. And so, we know that this new prison and jail is only going to impact communities like mine, and it’s just going to cause further harm. And so, five years looks like we’ll be able to just have a breathing period of, look at all the beautiful things that we are creating that $50 million can actually go towards, versus why would we be spending $50 million on a new woman’s prison? And in addition to saying, we want a five-year moratorium, we’re also saying that, because in Massachusetts it’s a plan to spend $200 million on new women’s prisons over the next 10 years. It might even be 500.
I’ve been saying so many millions of dollars that’s not getting funded to us, but to DOC and all these architects to build prisons and jails. So I apologize if that number isn’t completely accurate, but we’re also challenging and saying, the amount of money what you’re planning to spend on prisons and jails over the next five years, you need to give that directly to the communities that are mostly impacted, that would have been impacted once we get this prison and jail infrastructure moratorium in place. The beautiful process of it all is that we know, as movement people, there’s no power greater than the power of the people, and the power of the people in Massachusetts has spoken. We did a 90-mile walk across Massachusetts, which was just a raising awareness walk, where we talked to people that were not impacted by incarceration and actually had yard signs in their community that said, Back the Blue.
And it was so funny, because in our community is the total opposite. You know what I mean? Here’s a community where you see grass, trees and happiness. And then you go into our community where it’s just a gloom, and you can see we’re like, “Keep the police out.” And then they’re like, “No, we want the police.” And well, obviously we can see where resources are lacking, and why shouldn’t we be creating what different looks like? But out of the 90-mile walk, we were able to shift the conversation from, yes, to building new prisons or even Backing the Blue, to saying, you know what? We need to be giving communities what they need, and a jail and prison is only going to cause more harm. And it’s also setting us back generations and decades and just beyond, because when you talk about building a new prison, you are not talking about my generation, although my generation is impacted, but you’re also talking about my daughter, my daughter’s daughter, my daughter’s daughter’s daughter.
Because that building is not going to just get destroyed out of nowhere. And so, that’s where we’re headed, and we have a beautiful infrastructure which we call Reimagining Communities. And so, I love the fact that when we talk about creating what different looks like, everybody’s like, “Oh, well, why should we have a Prison and Jail Moratorium Bill? Because why don’t you want to build a new prison and jail, and what should we be doing instead?” And the answer is that we should be investing in communities. If you see a problem, invest in it. Figure out how we can respond to the harm, and create healing. So that way we know that if you create a healthy, thriving person, then they can go off and create healthy, thriving communities, and that should be our only focus. I’m going to kick it to Mall, in case you would like to add something.
Mallory Hanora:
Sure. I think I can, I don’t know if we’re out of time, I can definitely answer the next question.
Naila Awan:
I was going to say, if you want to take a few minutes, please go ahead and take a minute.
Mallory Hanora:
Okay, awesome. I mean, Sasha, you said it beautifully. I think the only thing I would add is, we have the dubious distinction of MCI-Framingham being the only, I mean to say, the oldest operating women’s prison in the United States of America. So what we are saying in our organizing is, MCI-Framingham, close it forever and never rebuild or replace it. And so, when we talk about conditions of confinement, we’re led by women who have lived in some of the oldest, most decrepit, most disgusting prisons in the United States. They survived that. And they know that any building anywhere is going to become that same level of devolved and disgusting.
And the harm that happens is both physical in the environment, as well as cultural. Everything that women go through when they’re separated from their children, all of the sexual violence, all of the abuse that our incarcerated community experiences. So for us, as Sashi mentioned, it’s really talking about what else is possible, what different looks like. So the Prison and Jail Construction Moratorium does leave room to make needed essential repairs for the quality of incarcerated people’s lives. What it prevents is massive construction projects for the purposes of doing exactly what Sashi said, which is extending the capability of that building to incarcerate people for 150 more years. And Massachusetts and your states probably have unique histories as well. We have a record of county leaders meeting in the 1870s, talking about what they should do for incarcerating women, because it’s not safe to incarcerate women with men.
And the best thing that they could come up with, was building MCI-Framingham the women’s prison. So part of our organizing has been 150 years later. Shame on you if the best thing you can think of is another version of MCI-Framingham. We refuse to accept that, we won’t go along with that. But what we’re absolutely not saying is let women sit in there. So all of our organizing on the ground, our participatory defense work, our campaign work to free the mothers, free individual women, we’re doing everything possible and exploring every single pathway to release and talking with people about how that’s possible as we’re organizing for this pause. And just to emphasize, that’s what that five years is for, to focus on doing that work, instead of digging holes in the ground where we’re going to bury women for another four generations.
Sashi James:
Naila, if you don’t mind, I just wanted to just add one more thing. I’m really sorry, this question gets us going. But I also wanted to put it out there that we’ve done a listening tour. That was a two and a half year listening tour where we asked women across the country, women and girls, what people needed, and what caused them to end up on a prison bunk? How could we have supported? Even a question of, what made you happy so that way you would never end up in a prison bunk, which is something that even as a young black girl in the community, I have never been really asked. Except for my mom, who’s Andrea James, she’s always like, but she’s a little bit different. But what makes you happy? And so, we the research to show what our people need, so that way we’re not spending $167,000 in Massachusetts on incarcerating a woman.
And the most important thing that I always lead with, is that when we did our listening tour in Massachusetts, one of the things that came out of the listening tour, which as a mother, it hits me so hard, is that the number one reason why women ended up incarcerated in Massachusetts, is because of lack of access to affordable housing. And so, I like to always emphasize that 82% of those women are mothers. And so, when you say that a mother doesn’t have access to affordable housing, we’re also talking about children. And then we’re also thinking about the most vulnerable thing you would do as a mother to be able to ensure that your child has access to housing or food or just basic needs that most communities have, that hours does not.
And so, when you talk about spending $167,000 a year to keep a woman incarcerated, and then you think, for me, I pay about maybe $28,000 a year for housing, the numbers are not adding up. And that’s literally four or five women that we could provide housing for if we actually focused on what the people needed, versus not keep allowing a business to keep oppressing a certain group of people. I just wanted to uplift that.
Naila Awan:
No, I really appreciate that, because I think it really points to how we need to be looking at different strategies that will in fact reduce the number of people coming into contact with the criminal legal system in the first place, and reducing the number of people who ever experience incarceration. I want to take us a little bit to talk about some other strategies next. So besides public awareness campaigns and legislative strategies, I’m interested in hearing about other kinds of tactics you’ve all tried to pause, delay, obstruct jail construction and expansion. And Mallory and Sashi specifically, I’d be interested in hearing about the technical challenge you all brought using the Massachusetts RFP process. Maybe explain what an RFP is. And then Crystal, if you could discuss how you all have used public records in Berks County, I think that, that would be helpful for folks.
Mallory Hanora:
Sure. We’re organizing to stop the new women’s prison by any means yet necessary, so we’re using all the tools in the toolbox. And we found out that they were going to build the new women’s prison, because overnight in a move of crisis and chaos that was incredibly harmful to women’s lives, they shipped out about 200 women from the state prison. These are county sentence women and women being held before their trial, they had been at the state prison. They moved those women to South Bay, which is a county jail. We immediately raised the red flag about that and said, why is this happening? Women weren’t notified, their families weren’t notified, the community was not engaged at all. What else is possible besides trapping women in yet another jail, a jail that’s locked down for even longer, and also terrible conditions. And through that, that’s how it got exposed that just months later, an RFP came out, a Request for Proposal.
It’s the bidding process for companies to win the contract to do the first phase of the work. So I think that’s another thing that I would say is, anytime you can intervene, even if it’s already in process, you should do it. And if there’s shovels in the ground, get your people together for some civil disobedience. But in any case, in every phase of the process, there’s hopefully an intervention that you can find. The first phase in Massachusetts is a study and design phase. It’s still incredibly expensive, $550,000. And like Sashi mentioned, what grassroots groups can do on the ground without money, is far different than what these multi-billion dollar, sometimes global companies can do just business as usual. So we’re talking about HDR that was awarded this contract, built 270 jails and prisons in the United States, absolutely directly affected. People are trying to hold them accountable for profiting off our people’s suffering and bondage.
And so, that’s ongoing. But in any case, in Massachusetts, and I’m sure where you are, there’s some laws and statutes that govern how you have to advertise these projects. And they very often don’t follow them, because this is a old boys network where they’re trying to give whoever they want to give the money to, where they’re trying to do it as quickly and as expeditiously as possible and cut out the public from any feedback. So we did some research on what the state statutes are, and in fact, there’s this old part of it where you have to list the request for proposals, you have to publish that the job was announced in multiple newspapers. And so, we have a crew of allies and supporters to help us do this type of research. We did the legal research, we had folks look in all the newspapers when it was supposed to be published.
They didn’t follow the law. And so, the way that you file a complaint about that in Massachusetts, is with the attorney general’s office. We had no idea. We know that the attorney general’s a top cop, we know she does some consumer stuff. We’re like, “Okay, whatever.” But as it turns out, there’s something called a bid unit office that is responsible for oversight for how these contracts are distributed and awarded. And it’s actually super important, and some of you might already be engaged in this work, because it’s also a massive racial justice issue. So in Massachusetts, the overwhelming majority of all state contracts go to white-owned companies. So there’s tons of issues in this area, no matter which way you look at it. And so anyways, part of the reason why we want to pass the Jail and Prison Construction Moratorium is because this takes months of energy and effort to figure out how this works.
So formerly incarcerated women, women with incarcerated loved ones, community members, are sitting at a table in our office with our computers open, literally teaching ourselves how the process works in local government to get from, here’s their vision, their plan. And by the way, you should read it anyways, because reading the state’s language about what they want to do with our people, really grounds you in why we have to be on point about our resistance every step of the way. They’re trying to build this as a trauma informed prison. All these disgusting words that we know is just synonyms for suffering and harm. It’s just business as usual in a different building. So in any case, we learned a lot about what they were planning to do and we had to teach ourselves the process.
But what we were able to do, we were right. It was as plain as day that they did not follow the law. And so, interestingly enough, what they did in order to not have the ruling that, and again, I’m sorry, I should say that in Massachusetts, the agency that governs, that manages these projects, basically has a project manager role. It’s called the Department of Capital Asset Management and Maintenance. So you and your team can figure out which of your state or local agencies actually does the day-to-day work of pushing these contracts. It’s likely not your Department of Correction or your Sheriff’s Department. There’s another agency that’s managing the land and managing the water issues, et cetera, all points of where you can push. But they very clearly didn’t follow the law. And so, in order to not get a ruling from the attorney general’s office that they were out of compliance, they actually withdrew the bid.
And that bought us months and months and months more time. Then we challenged them again, because they knew that we were now looking, they knew we were mobilizing, they knew we were making noise, and they tried to bury this project inside of another contract called a House Doctor contract, which is basically an architect on retainer. I don’t need to go on all those details, but they tried a shady way to hide it from public scrutiny within an existing contract, so there wasn’t a public bid process. That actually got leaked by a staff person of DCAMP.
And so, we filed yet another administrative challenge, and there’s no arguing that they were clearly wrong about this as well. And so again, we were prepared for a hearing at the attorney general’s office. We had submitted pages and pages of documents. The 11th hour or the night before the hearing, they yet again withdrew the proposal, which again bought us months and months more time, and they had to refile it a third time. And so every time, that meant that we got to show up to more hearings, we got to talk to more leaders, we got to build more power, and we got to delay the process so that we could keep organizing. And Sashi, do you want to add anything?
Sashi James:
No, I know we are at time, but the most beautiful process is that we also got to learn more and more. That’s why we can give all our knowledge to the people in the movement, so that way everybody else doesn’t have to go through this draining process.
Crystal Kowalski:
That was amazing. I was so involved with what Mallory and Sashi was saying that I forgot the question. So right-to-know requests and how they impacted the fight, was that it? Okay.
Yeah, I went along first, so I did touch on this. We do a daily right-to-know request for the jail logs. I think basically it just shows that we know what’s going on. So recently, a little example would be, well, a couple examples. During the pandemic, our county was putting people in jail, weekenders in jail during the pandemic. So when you saw that and you’re thinking, what’s this stop the spread? You’re taking people in and out. And we’re seeing people going in for non-support now, which we had not for years, and that’s happening, low level offenses. And Sashi mentioned, it’s exhausting. It’s exhausting work to have to just every single day put this in. But you know if you don’t do it, and they don’t feel you watching, that it’s going to go back to the way it was.
Naila Awan:
Right. And Wendy, I think maybe you have something you can briefly add about how we saw one other partner organization in Michigan used public records request.
Wendy Sawyer:
Yeah, that’s right. Some folks from Utica County in Michigan reached out to us for the umpteenth time. The county was trying to push this new jail, and they reached out just for some outside perspective. But it was very similar to, Crystal, the way you described your coalition. It was just folks who were very new to the issue and were just going to meetings and trying to figure it out. But they had an attorney amongst their numbers who realized that they could do a public records request, because they had this argument they were using to try and justify or rationalize having a bigger jail, which was, “Oh, we’ve got 1,100 outstanding warrants”, as if all these people are roaming the streets and are so dangerous. So they actually did a public records request to see what those outstanding warrants were for.
And a ton of them were just bench warrants that were a million years old that were for, oh, someone missed a court appearance, so there’s a bench warrant out, but very, very little of it was anything that would actually be jailable, especially because this jail was being proposed after the state had just passed all of these pretrial reform. So a lot of these offenses that folks were getting arrested for, were not jailable offenses anymore. So we were able to break down that list of outstanding warrants and go, okay, well only this many actually look like they’d even be jailable, so this is no way to rationalize a bigger jail. And I think that was pretty persuasive for folks, because that was a key part of their communication strategy in that county.
Naila Awan:
Yeah, and I think what all of this underscores, is just the importance of understanding the rules and the laws and your county and your state, and knowing what different levers there are to pull, because folks have sometimes been able to stop construction by forcing something onto the ballot. One other person we talked to actually got communication between the county and the jail assessment authors where they basically were like, “Oh, the sheriff wants us to actually propose a larger jail, so we should include that in the assessment.” And that was used to publicize it and defeat the jail.
So I mean, really understanding what these different mechanisms are, I think are important, because you never know which ones are going to be the strategies that can help you win in your county. Now again, a slight shift in topic, Mallory and Sashi, when you all were talking earlier, you were talking about what the alternatives might look like to incarceration. And I know you’ve worked to redirect the conversation in that way, away from incarceration and one that’s directed towards alternatives. Can you talk a little bit more about the alternatives to incarceration people should be thinking about and advancing and how shifting the conversation in that way fits in with your strategy?
Sashi James:
Well, I like to think of it, and this is just from a visionary perspective and a person that is on the ground and directly impacted, I like to think of it not as an alternative, but as preventatives. And so, what can we be exploring that does not include incarceration? So for an example, we’re actually working on the ground, and I’m not going to say that it’s only us, because we have a beautiful infrastructure that is called, Reimagining Communities, that was created through a listening tour from across the country. So it’s not only the National Council’s work, it’s not Families for Justice as Healing’s work, it’s the people’s work, because we really got on the ground and listened to what the people said that they wanted, and then we created an infrastructure that really addressed the root issues of what even had people land on a prison bunk.
And so for an example, there are crisis response teams where we know that in Massachusetts we’re working to create, every four blocks, we’re going to have a crisis response crew, that if there’s any mental health breakdown, mental health issues or anything in beyond that are just day-to-day issues that need to be addressed, the crisis response team will be able to provide that resource to the people. But in addition to that, they’re not going to be people that come from other communities, they’re going to be people that are from that community. And we know that if we have people that are from the community responding to people that are in the community, you’ll get a better outcome immediately. You have a better chance of deescalating situations, you have a better chance of just preventing situations. You have just a better conversation with people that you know and you can trust.
And then even beyond, we have the basic income, we have basic housing. We mentioned earlier that the number one reason in Massachusetts that even ends up to have women have any interaction with incarceration, is because they don’t have access to affordable housing. We have a basic housing program where we are providing housing for women that have children that just need a place to stay, and they can feel safe, though they don’t feel like they have to take from Peter to pay… What is it? Pay Paul, or whatever. You can actually pay your rent, feed your children, and survive. Speaking of surviving, the community that I live in, we have been in survival mode forever. And this is what is leading us directly to incarceration, because of the pain, the suffering, the oppression, the unheard visions that people don’t want to believe in.
And so, while we’re creating all of those things, we’re really allowing women to just live in the community. And I mean, how beautiful is that to actually see women that have been directly impacted, oppressed, struggling to take care of their kids, fighting to keep their kids, rebuilding their relationship with their kids, because they were incarcerated on a prison bunk and were separated from their children, and now they’re reestablishing their children. But now they don’t have to worry about all the things that would have landed them into prison, because all they need to worry about, is focusing on healing. And so, we’re giving communities the tools that they need. We have three hydroponic farms. One is in Pittsburgh, one is in Roxbury, which got landed a couple of weeks ago, which we’ll be able to teach people how to grow vegetables. And then we’ll be also giving the vegetables away for free, that’s responding to food justice.
I mean, we have so many infrastructures, and it’s not only us, its other states across the country that are also doing these things, so that way they can stop the transgressions in communities from communities causing harm, just because they need specific things and they don’t have the things that they need. So communities are actually working, community members are working to provide the tools that people need. And I was on a call the other day, and we were just talking about what communities need and the different infrastructures or whatever, what people need. One of the things that came out was welfare versus basic income. I just really wanted to emphasize and show that, yes, they have systems that provide welfare and food stamps and Section 8 and all of these things, but we have to also understand that a lot of the city implemented structures only cause further harm, and literally keep people oppressed.
And I know, one of our basic income recipients had said to me, when she got a student loan because she’s in college, when she got a student loan, the housing authority threatened to take away her housing because she got a student loan. So now we’re telling people who are on housing, who are trying to get more education, that they can’t get education. So you just have to understand the barriers and the difference between what basic income looks like. We’re seeing is, sometimes people need a extra push. Sometimes people need to just be given $500 a month just because they need to pay their phone bill, they need to buy extra food. I always love when I’m like, “Oh, I got a stipend.” Sometimes I get paid to do a call and I’m like, “I got a stipend”, which is very rare, but I’m very appreciative of it as a single mother, and the struggle. And so many other people are appreciative of that.
And that is very different from you asking a person for their social security number, you having all of the restrictions on the way people should and should not spend their money, or you just having restrictions on how much education they should get. And so, we’re really just trying to figure out and we are figuring out what we can do to support the people, build the people, empower the people, and just be all about the people, and not create systems that cause further harm. And that means that we have to dismantle the current system that we have and build a system that is for all people and not a specific class of people. Is this a perfect time for me to just jump right in with my FreeHer Institute, because I’m really proud of that. And speaking of creating what different looks like, the National Council, Families for Justices as Healing, the women in the community, we are really working to create a space where women can work on policy research.
They can go to a space where we can cook breakfast together, we can train each other, we can just exist. I always use this as an example, but I want to say this. In Massachusetts, I learned that there is a retreat area for police officers. It’s called Police Academy or something like that, maybe I’m mixing the name up with Chicago, but the Police Academy that they had built in Chicago, HDR also built that. But anyway, they have a center where if they witness maybe an aggressive situation or they go through a traumatic experience or mental health, they can go to a home and they can be around animals and milk cows and get males cook for them, and just woo off for three or four days.
It’s covered by their insurance. You can go whenever you want. It’s a small grant that just covers them. They cook, they get separated from their family, they just take a deep breath. Communities witness all of this and above, we actually live in it all day long, community members. And we still have to go inside the house, especially women, mothers still go inside the house and cook meals for our family, still provide, most of our households are single family households. Now we’ve been at a 700% increase of incarcerated women. Sometimes our grandmothers are taking care of the family, because our mothers are now incarcerated as well. But the point is that our people need the same resources and beyond, so that way we can heal. As I mentioned earlier, healthy, thriving people create healthy, thriving communities. And so, we have an inherited land on Martha’s Vineyard on Oak Bluffs, which is a historical landmark for Black people.
And we’re working to build a retreat center that is $1.5 million, because we did the land survey and everything to build the most beautiful street retreat center that will support the people. And so, we are selling FreeHer T-shirts. They’re called the FreeHer Institute T-shirts. This is really going to be a groundbreaking retreat center, because it’s going to allow women to come and learn research, think and do all of the work that Mallory and I talked about around the Prison and Jail Moratorium Bill. I mean, that was work that we just were head banging on walls to just try to get, but being that, we literally created an infrastructure, we can now go to the retreat center and show women the blueprint of what we have, so that way women are not spending wills in their community and doing the same thing that we had to do and beyond.
What does Reimagining Communities look like? What does it look like to create basic income? What does it look like to create a housing program? What does it look like to bring a hydroponic farm to your neighborhood? Just all of these beautiful processes. And then also, what does it look like to just sit there and relax, or maybe go read a book on the beach, or maybe go see some greenery. I told you already, I’m not into the greenery, but some people may be into the greenery. I know Andrea is, but that’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to build a center that is for the women, and we need people to buy T-shirts to support all the processes.
All the fees from the T-shirts go directly to building this retreat center, and it’s for the people, and I’m really excited. This is what we need when we say, we need to create and build what different looks like. And of course, like I said, there’s no power stronger than the power of the people, because this is one of the most beautifulest centers that will probably be built in my lifetime for me. That’s because of the power in the people, not because of the government or anybody else. It’s because we are believing in the power of the people, which has directly impacted women and girls or the most vulnerable population.
Naila Awan:
Thank you so much, Sashi. We’re going to just jump into sharing some of the different resources PPI has that folks might find helpful in some of these fights. We’re then going to be going into the question and answer, and we’ll be giving each of the panelists a few minutes to make a brief closing remark. So just to shift over to that very quickly, let’s see. Before turning to the question and answer segment, like I said, we want to quickly share a few resources PPI has been made available for folks fighting jail expansion.
The first two slides I’m going to go over just provide information on materials, ranging from reports to briefing to training documents that Progressive Policy Initiative has created that you might find helpful when a jail proposal is being advanced. Does our county really need a bigger jail? Outlines mechanisms for decarceration, the county should take into account before a new jail is even proposed or any progress is made, like a proposal. Smoke and mirrors provides an in-depth look as a jail assessment report completed by a private group asserting that a Michigan County needed a new jail. Arguments against jail expansion provides findings about jail overcrowding, counter-arguments against jail expansion, endpoints of intervention in jail fights. And our how-to guide for critically reviewing jail assessments provides questions that should be asked and considerations that should be taken into account when examining a jail assessment.
I’m going to quickly outline some of what’s provided in this final guide, given the jail assessment analysis are really one of the things we receive the most questions from groups that are fighting jail expansion about. To start jail assessments, which may be referred to by several names, are analysis often conducted by private companies who have been hired by a county to analyze the operations of the current jail, and make recommendations for building a new jail or expanding an existing one. These assessments are done before any final decisions are made and often are filled with faulty assumptions, misleading data, and are rife with other problems. So we put this guide together to help folks spot some common problems that exist in jail assessments. Problematic assumptions are often made. It’s often important to consider what those assumptions are. For example, most assessments assume no change in the status quo.
That means that if reforms are moving, there’s no analysis of what the impact of those reforms might be. And even when reforms have passed that will directly reduce the number of people being incarcerated, the assessments may entirely ignore the impact in realities of those already enacted reforms. Oftentimes, only individuals whose opinions are taken into account in assessments, are those who work within the current criminal legal system, like the police, the sheriffs, jail administrators and district attorneys. The voices of community members, people directly impacted by the criminal legal system, mental health and substance use disorder providers, are not even part of the process in most instances.
The numbers, the data, the graphs and the trend lines themselves can be highly misleading. For example, if the image on the top had started with any year after 2012, it would’ve shown a decline, rather than an increase in the number of cases pending, or the trend line on the image furthest to the right of the screen shows an upward trend, despite the final year, 2017s numbers being below those of 2008, and there have been a significant downward shift in the final few years on that graph. Also, keep in mind that the data provided in the assessments themselves can be used to identify reforms that, if implemented, could immediately reduce the jail population. For example, what would the jail population numbers look like if the county were to end reincarceration for technical or noncriminal violations of probation or parole, or enact bail reform and reduce its pretrial population?
These assessments are also often advocating for jails that place what should be community provided services available to people with substance use disorders, mental illness, and sometimes even chronic or terminal conditions into the jail. Questions helpful to ask as well as common themes or problems to look for, are provided throughout our training guide. We’re now going to move to the question and answer portions of the webinar. And as we do that, I’m putting up a slide with all of our panelists, as well as Wendy and my contact information. That information’s also going to be being shared in the chat. So don’t worry if you don’t get this down right now, it will be in the chat of the webinar. And Emily, would you mind getting us started with the questions?
Emily Widra:
Sure. I think the first question we can start with, I’m just going to go a little bit out of order how they were coming in, but one question we got is, what is the best way for larger organizations to help support more localized movements like you folks have been taking part in, in pushing back against jail expansion? I think that’s for everybody or whoever chooses to answer. It’s not specific.
Sashi James:
I think one of the most important things that we follow our own, just from the National Council’s perspective, is that we never go into communities without getting to know the community, the organizations that are on the ground that are doing the work. And so, we have ecosystem check-ins, and we are like, “Hey, how can we be supportive of you?” Versus a lot of organizations would just jump in and say, “This is what you need to do.” But what is important as a national organization, is to whatever state you’re trying to work with, go in there and figure out what is the problem, pay homage to the land, and also get to know the people that are on the ground that are doing the work. And they will be able to tell you, you got to listen to the land. They’ll tell you what needs to be done and how you can plug in and what support you can give as a national organization. That’s my perspective.
Naila Awan:
And I guess, I’ll just briefly answer as a rep from another national organization. And I think it’s really about capacity building. The folks that are on the ground, like Sashi was saying, they know what needs to happen. They know what reforms will be most impactful in their community. They know what other alternatives should be being designed, what preventive measures should be being put in place. What we’ve found is that we tend to get asked for things unsurprisingly, like data that groups might find helpful, like reviewing jail assessments. And we really do just try to help groups in whatever ways are additive to their campaigns without imposing any ideas on how things should be moving forward.
Emily Widra:
Great. Thank you. Oh, sorry, go ahead, Crystal.
Crystal Kowalski:
No, I would just say that you do in fact do that, and that’s been our experience as a local group, is that the groups that have helped us Prison Policy Initiative in the ACLU, have really been respectful of our knowledge and have supported us.
Emily Widra:
Okay, great. So another question that’s come in is about, if anybody has been able to partner with local public defender offices on these efforts, because they often have access to data to support these movements or other information, like insider information, have any of you utilized that or do we know of anybody who has?
Mallory Hanora:
I’ll speak to this in a more broad way. I think, individual defense work of our people, either to stop our people from going in or to bring our people home, is incredibly important. So we are a participatory defense hub here in Boston. So Participatory Defense is the movement strategy developed by Silicon Valley De-Bug in California, and then the National Council also helped to increase the reach of this and increase the number of hubs across the country with our Director of Participatory Defense, Justine Moore, training. So many of us across the country to use this strategy, and it’s just building on what people and families have done forever, which is fight for our people, instead of just stopping outside the courtroom. I can picture Raj in my head doing this part of the training. We have the free so-and-so signs outside, and we would just stand there and look in the court.
But really, it’s about going into the court and shifting the power dynamic, so many of you might already be practicing this. There might be a local hub that you work with, so public defenders can be brought into that process, with a people-led strategy, a community-led strategy to fight for our people, to represent our people as whole and needed and valued to offer our own crafted alternative sentencing, or diversion from conviction in the first place. And really bringing public defenders in to be part of process, as opposed to just another person in the system that’s there for business as usual, asking you to accept a plea deal that you don’t want, or facilitating incarceration as the norm.
One thing that we’re thinking about is, what does it look like to have individualized case review for those folks that have smaller jail or prison populations? Every single person getting an exit strategy, every single person getting a plan A, a plan B, a plan C about how they could come home. And that could look like engaging with law students to help with that review, that could look like engaging with folks that are in other type of law practices to come in and support in other ways. Or that could be really pushing your local defender’s office to join you in the resistance to the project, and to show how many people are in on certain types of charges or how they could come home anyway. Defense work is an incredibly important part of both stopping people from going in, and bringing people home, so definitely a strategy that we’re using.
Emily Widra:
Great. Thank you, everybody. All right, another question that’s come in is, do we have any advice for how to work against the alternatives to jail that include things like other types of carceral techniques, like home incarceration, surveillance, other things that aren’t technically jail, but might sound good to folks who aren’t totally involved, but these are still punishment and still take up resources.
Sashi James:
I think that participatory defense is a really good tool to help fight against those, especially if you’re talking about case-by-case situations. But also, I think that it’s also important that we start, why shifting the public opinion and changing the conversation is important, because a lot of people are advocating for ankle shackles. A lot of people are advocating for air incarceration. And then after we spend 10 years saying, oh, everybody needs an ankle shackle, and then when everybody gets an ankle shackle, they realize that it’s another form of incarceration, and they’re upset about the ankle shackle. And so this is why we need to listen to directly impacted people and the people that are leading the ground. And this is what we say, this is what we are talking about when we say dismantling the system and not just putting a bandaid on there or turning it to the left or turning it to the right, because it’s only causing further harm we know we’re in.
I mean, on my corner right now, they just installed another camera that I’m like, they’re just going to watch us go to the corner store. Meanwhile, there’s the police cruiser on the corner as well. These are all forms of that system of open air prisons and it only causes more harm. So that’s why we have to watch the bills that we pass. This is why we have to watch the organizations that we support, especially the national organizations that are not really connected to the ground, but think they’re connected to the ground but want to speak to the ground. And so, it’s important and that’s all.
Mallory Hanora:
Yeah, that’s such an excellent answer and a massively important question. And I just want to affirm what Sasha said, it’s just like all of us holding the line that those are not alternatives. So when we say, we do try to answer proactively the question, what else besides a jail or prison? And we are very clear that those are not alternatives that we’re trying to build systemically. In the immediate, do we recognize that on individual freedom campaigns, that people are going to take certain arrangements on an individual level for their own freedom toward the goal of liberation? Yes. But systemically, are we ever advocating for the expansion of incarceration either in the open air or in the jail or prison? Absolutely not. And we talk about why that’s not. So some of it is offering, what’s working on the ground in your community?
What we always say is, that doesn’t have to be a program that specifically says we are an alternative to incarceration. Free housing is an alternative to incarceration. It is not a jail or a prison. Giving money directly to women, is an alternative. It is giving people what they need to live so that they’re not entrapped in the system, so we broaden the idea of what’s possible. And then I think the other thing that’s even more insidious and something that we’ve had to really push around allies, is also just shifting the responsibility of incarcerating people to a different agency, for example, the Department of Mental Health. We know that women have unmet mental health needs who are incarcerated, and just shifting the owner of the building who locks the doors at night, to being DMH rather than DOC, the Department of Mental Health. First of all, our members are like, “Absolutely, we do not trust DMH.”
They’re very clear about their relationships with the Department of Mental Health, so we don’t have any question about that. But for people outside that are like, but what about this? But what about this? That’s also part of it, is that we’re not just changing owners of the building. We’re really, really exploring what else is possible and what does different look like in pathways out of the system. It’s a really big challenge, but we’re in it together, and we’re developing what those things look like, so we have offerings to show that other things are possible. And also just frankly, it’s made up. I know I’m going on, but there’s so many loved ones of us, close members of ours that come to our women’s circle every Thursday that their parole officers insist on shackling them. They are in their 60s. It is just outrageous.
Literally, one of our members who we brought home, who the state said she was supposed to die in prison, miss Angie Jefferson, and her family and community led her fight for liberation. She is home after 31 years to be a mom and a grandmother. She has arthritis and significant… I’m not going to share her health business, but her ankle shackle is hurting her. Physically, it’s hurting her. And so, it’s made up that people have to be on their shackle when they come home on parole. That is something that does not have to exist. We should fight about it. We should get people’s lawyers engaged in fighting these restrictive conditions of release.
We should show up and say, as a community, we don’t accept this and we want our people home, and this is how we want our people to live, and just continue to fight those battles too, because it’s shameful. It’s shameful, like Sasha is saying, at this point it’s become so normalized that even people who have perfect records of compliance with every other condition, are still forced to be shackled, and just people go along with it because they don’t have the support or resources to challenge it, so we should absolutely be doing that as well.
Emily Widra:
All right. I think we have time for probably one more of the questions that have come in, but definitely feel free to reach out to the panelists, to everybody here, where everybody’s willing to tackle any other questions that don’t get answered live in the webinar. I think for the last question, we’ll go with this one, which is about, what to do if the decision has already been made to expand a jail or to begin construction on a new jail. Is there anything left to do? What can people do? Where should they be looking for next steps? It sounds like there’s a specific situation in California where there’s not a lot of opposition to the jail, and so the folks here are obviously in opposition and trying to figure it out. I don’t know whoever wants to answer that one, please go ahead.
Sashi James:
I wanted just say one thing, because we know that the system is doing exactly what it was designed to do. And so, they might still build a new woman’s jail. And it’s just, when we talked about the Prison and Jail Moratorium Bill, one thing that we didn’t mention, Mallory, is that through all of our hard work and public awareness, we actually got the Moratorium Bill passed, and the governor vetoed the bill. So the people spoke, but the governor just was like, “I don’t really care what people said, it’s what I want.” So that shows that the system is going to do what they want to do regardless.
And one of the beautiful things that our founder, Andrea James said, also my mom, she said that if Reimagining Communities is so important and giving people the tools that they need, so that way we can create healthy, thriving people, so they can create healthy, thriving communities, is so important because, yes, if they go build all these new prisons and jails, then imagine a world where like in the Planet of the Apes, we have given our people all the tools of success that they have needed that they won’t even have any interactions with the police in jails and prisons, because they have what they need to be successful.
And so, the prisons and jails will be just, she had a vision of these green trees just growing over it and just being all rotten, because nobody’s in there, because we’ve given the people what they needed. So this is why we are on the ground, creating the tools and giving people the tools and the infrastructure that people need so we don’t even have any interactions with jails and prisons. So I’m really sorry in California, that y’all at a space where it feels like y’all have nowhere to turn, but the best place to turn is to the people, and figure out what can we give to the people so that way they’re not even going into the prison and jail.
And then we start to talk about clemency, so that way we can bring our long timers home. I want to uplift Miss Angie, because Miss Angie was incarcerated to die in prison, but she’s home right now, and she was just on participatory defense with us last week, and she’s probably going to be on with us this weekend. We have beautiful conversations. So don’t ever think that if your family member or loved one is sentenced to die in prison, that there is no avenue for them to come home, because there is always a space for them to come home. You just have to fight and you have to just keep chucking along and have faith, and that’s it. And just remember, the system is going to do what it is designed to do. And that’s why, until we dismantle it, we have to create our own system.
Mallory Hanora:
Yeah, absolutely. I would say, just keep on building the resistance, like the beautiful organizers on this call that are resisting, like Sasha said, turn to the community, door knock, canvas, let people know about it, because so often our people would be against it, but we’re busy working, we’re busy parenting, we’re drowning in our own stuff, and the states and the cities try to hide this from our people.
So educating to prevent any further, or engaging people in ongoing resistance, like what could creatively be done at or near the site to raise an awareness that there are community members that don’t want this, there are people that are loved and cared about that they’re planning to move into this building, and that they should be moved home and come home instead. So yeah, keep going. Keep going, for sure.
Sashi James:
Yeah, and one thing that I was taught is that we don’t fail, but if they do build a prison jail in that state, and we keep going and shifting public awareness and having people move towards what different is, we have to remember that the organizing we’re doing is impacting generations, seven generations forward and seven generations behind us. So yes, this year they built a new jail, but if we keep going and keep fighting, next year they won’t build no new jail, and the year after that and the year after that or the generation after that, that might be the last jail that they might ever build in the history of jail building. So we have to have faith.
Crystal Kowalski:
I love that, having faith. The other thing that here in Berks County, people are like, “Well, why do you think the commissioners changed their mind a bit?” And I was thinking about it, and I’m thinking, I think it might be inflation and the recession. So if you’re in a community, the question asker, and they haven’t started building yet, and you probably already done this, but know how much every little bit of it costs, because in one of the meetings, they said, “Oh yeah, we’re going to not have work release anymore, and that’ll bring down a pod and that’ll be $8 million in building costs for one pod.” And then that pod has to be staffed 24/7, the amount of money. So if you can say, “Hey, in a time of record expense for construction, you’re going to build this?” I feel like that’s what impacted some of the decision in our county.
Naila Awan:
Thank you, everyone. And I’d also just refer folks back to the RFP technical challenges Mallory was mentioning too. Sometimes there still haven’t been decisions on the number of beds. There might be certain interventions that are-
Mallory Hanora:
I’m so sorry, I just put in the chat. I don’t know where my… Don’t forget about the architecture firms that probably have an office in your state, and the construction companies. And so, our union siblings could be a source of power, the union member to union member. How do we communicate about actually the people that are building the walls and pouring the concrete? Individuals are choosing to advance the project, and it’s always an opportunity to talk to people about what else is possible, build something else instead. We don’t want to take money out of our community member’s pockets, and we want to create a vision of what we could be building instead. And so, lots of opportunities to talk to all types of decision makers, even decision makers that are showing up to their job site for the day.
Naila Awan:
Absolutely. And I realize we’re hitting the time we told folks we’d be wrapping up at, so I just want to give each of the panelists, maybe if you could keep it to one, one and a half minutes, just share some advice for folks who are getting started or actively involved in fights to stop jail expansion, or any challenges you faced that were anticipated that folks might find useful.
Crystal Kowalski:
I could go first. This is basically what we did. Attend every meeting, take notes, collect data, question their assumptions, broaden your community connections, get press coverage, attend the budget proposal presentations, make the fiscal arguments, know who is in your jail and make it public. Make sure everybody knows who’s in your jail, and presume that you have a place at the decision-making table.
Mallory Hanora:
I’ll go and then pass it to Sashi. I just saw a couple questions about conditions of confinement really being heavy on our hearts. We know people by name. We love people in these jails and prisons. They’re our siblings, they’re our friends, they’re our cousins, they’re our children. And at the end of the day, there is no such thing as a safe prison for women or for people. All of our people who survive, tell us that. And then also, the politicians conveniently wants to improve these conditions only when it’s good or right for them or there’s a benefit for them. For years, people languish and try to raise issues and they fall on deaf ears. And it’s only when it’s profitable or beneficial to the people in power that, that ever gets addressed.
So I would say, as coming from a state with the oldest women’s prison in the United States, that DOC is going to DOC, and any building we put women in with them. So we’re fighting for our women’s freedom and we’re fighting for what else is possible and that we’re really holding a line around that, to bring our people home and showing that we can do it with individual cases and continuing to do it. And then, supporting each other across the country by echoing what we’re saying. So FreeHer, and good luck to y’all, and hopefully we can come right, and I’ll pass it to you, Sashi.
Sashi James:
No, I really feel like I’m really happy to have this platform, and then also have the solidarity, and I hope that this conversation that we had today reaches people to, one, think about the alternatives that we can think about, or not the alternatives, like I said, the preventative methods that we can take to not have anybody incarcerated. And then also, to begin to listen to the blueprint that formally incarcerated women are giving you. So that is grounded in abolition, that is grounded in the people, and that is really creating what different looks like, so that way we can finally get out into the world that this is not an imaginary world, this is really happening on the ground. People are really creating a crisis response team. People are really creating housing programs. All these things are really happening, and I would love to connect with more people.
So if you reach out to the National Council, Families for Justice as Healing, like I said, I know that there are people in the community that are doing the same type of work, but maybe in a different shape and form that works best for their city or state or wherever their community. And we would love to figure out what does that look like, because we’re all student teachers and we all have a lot to learn, and then we all have a lot to teach. And so, I’m excited and cheers to a future with no jails, prisons or police, and cheers to a future that is grounded in the healing and wellbeing and support of all people.
Wendy Sawyer:
I just want to quickly make a pitch. I mean, there’s no way to follow all that, but to just question any information that’s put forward by the architects or the construction, whoever’s doing these assessments, I have yet to see an assessment where we didn’t find some hole in it that we could push back on. So yeah, don’t assume that those are written by people more expert than you. And feel free to reach out to other folks, folks here at PPI, or folks wherever people, and have them help you read that with a critical eye, and try and find some opportunities to push back, because that’s very persuasive for folks when they start to see, oh, the experts messed something up, or they’re trying to put one over on us, or something. So I think that’s a pretty successful strategy that I’ve seen folks use. Obviously, it’s only one of very many, but it’s something that we here at PPI can also help with. That’s my pitch.
Naila Awan:
Amazing. Thank you everyone, and thank you everyone who attended, for your time. I know we didn’t get to all the questions. We had a lot come in. Again, if you have a question that wasn’t answered, don’t hesitate to reach out to any of today’s panelists. Everyone’s information was shared in the chat. We hope that this webinar is helpful and will be helpful to your future efforts. Materials shared by our presenters are at the link in the chat and will be shared with you along with the video of this presentation when it is online.
You’ll see a survey when you close your web browser as you exit, and you’ll receive it by email tomorrow as well. Please respond if you’d like to provide feedback, or let us know about other topics you’d like to hear about in the future. If you’d like to receive more information from Prison Policy Initiative about future programming or our work, please sign up for our newsletter through our website, and follow us on social media at Prison Policy on both Twitter and Instagram. Thank you again everyone for joining today. Have a good rest of your day.
In this special edition of the Police Accountability Report, Taya Graham and Stephen Janis discuss what this extrajudicial killing says about the continued emphasis on militarized policing and how its ongoing evolution is both anti-democratic and fundamentally destructive.
Production/Post-Production: Stephen Janis
Transcript
The transcript of this story is in progress and will be made available as soon as possible.
The trial of Ft. Worth police officer Aaron Dean for the killing of Atatiana Jefferson ended in a conviction for manslaughter and 12-year sentence. But in this episode, PAR investigates how the judge retaliated against supporters of Jefferson’s family who attended the trial, throwing one cop watcher in jail for refusing to be sworn in as a witness.
Studio: Stephen Janis Studio/Post-Production: Stephen Janis, Adam Coley
Transcript
The following is a preliminary transcript and may contain errors. An updated transcript 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 man who was arrested while observing the sentence of a cop involved in a high profile killing of an innocent civilian. It is a stunning set of actions by a judge and a defense attorney that threw a well-known cop watcher into jail. But it’s also a stark reminder of how the judicial system can enforce power indiscriminately with little justification and how the consequences of this overreach can be devastating for the people affected by it.
But before we get started, I want you to know that if you have video evidence of police misconduct, please email it to us privately at par@therealnews.com, and please like, share and comment on our videos. You know I read your comments and appreciate them even if I don’t always get a chance to comment on each one. And we do have a Patreon link for Accountability Reports pinned 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. Okay, we’ve gotten it out of the way.
Now, as you know on this show, we cover the excesses and abuses of American policing, but the point of this process is not just to highlight or call out bad policing. We also try to make the connection between the broader system of inequality that drives it and how both work in tandem to diminish the rights of people in ways both unseen and unacknowledged.
And no case embodies this idea more than the video I am showing you right now. It’s not a depiction of a bad arrest by an out of control cop. No. Instead, it shows the actions of a judge in concert with the defense attorney to send a man to jail who was simply observing a process that is the right of every American, the sentencing of a corrupt cop.
That’s right. A man sitting quietly in a courtroom watching the proceeding was suddenly hauled away into a cell without committing a crime. And it wasn’t just any case, mind you. It was the sentencing of a cop who killed someone. The story starts in a courtroom in Fort Worth, Texas last month. There, Officer Aaron Dean was facing sentencing for gunning down a Tatiana Jefferson. Jefferson was shot while looking out her window after a neighbor called police for a wellness check for an open door. Dean, spotting her, fired almost immediately without provocation. The shooting led to charges of manslaughter. Dean was convicted by a jury in 2021. And so this past December he was sentenced and that’s when the events that led to the controversial arrest we are reporting on today started. That’s because cop watcher Manuel Mata, decided to attend the sentencing as you can see here. During the proceedings, the judge abruptly stops and calls him to be sworn in. Let’s watch.
Judge: Mr. Burset.
Mr. Burset: Your Honor, I believe Mr. Mata has graced us with his presence. We ask that he be sworn in and put under the rules.
Judge: Is there a Mr. Mata in the courtroom?
Speaker 4: Can you stand right there at the rail for me, please, sir and raise your right hand for me? Do you solemnly swear or affirm testimony given in this cause be the truth, whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you God?
Mr. Mata: I don’t know what this is about.
Speaker 6: Hey, judge, may we approach?
Mr. Mata: I don’t understand what’s going on.
Speaker 4: I’m swearing you in as a witness so-
Mr. Mata: On What argument, sir?
Speaker 4: All right, jury, go to the jury.
Taya Graham : Now. Why the judge decided that Mr. Mata should be sworn in remains unanswered. According to people we have spoken to, the reason was frankly bizarre. The defense attorney asked him to swear at least four other activists in the courtroom as witnesses. Seriously? That’s right. After the verdict and the sentencing, the judge allowed the defense attorney to, it seems, retaliate against the people who attended the trial that the defendant didn’t like. Now, Stephen has reached out to authorities in Fort Worth and will report back what he learned shortly. But this startling request was just the beginning of a long series of inexplicable actions. Take a look.
Judge: All right, jury, go to the jury. The one may be seated Mr. Mata?
Mr. Mata: Yes.
Judge: Is your name Manuel Mata?
Mr. Mata: Yes, sir.
Judge: Your date of birth is 7/8 of 1980?
Mr. Mata: Yes, sir.
Judge: All right. I have issued you an oath to tell to testify truthfully. Are you going to take that oath?
Mr. Mata: I have a question, sir.
Judge: No. Are you going to take that oath?
Mr. Mata: No.
Judge: All right.
Taya Graham : Now, just a little background on Mr. Mata. He is a cop watcher who has been involved in some controversial cases. Still, on this particular day, he was not cop watching or protesting or saying anything for that matter. All he was doing was observing an officer who was facing charges of an extra judicial killing. But apparently his presence was enough to prompt the country’s powerful judiciary system to react inexplicably. Let’s watch again so you can see how surreal this action really was.
Judge: … truthfully, are you going to take that oath?
Mr. Mata: I have a question, sir.
Judge: No. Are you going to take that oath?
Mr. Mata: No. All right.
Judge: You are on bond on some cases, is that correct?
Mr. Mata: Yes, sir.
Judge: Those bonds are being declared insufficient. Sheriff.
Mr. Mata: What? What’s going on? What did I do? I need my lawyer present, sir.
Judge: We will get your lawyer.
Mr. Mata: You questioned me without a lawyer present, and I don’t know what y’all doing. I don’t know what’s going on.
Mr. Burset: [inaudible 00:05:53].
Mr. Mata: For what? For what? I asked him a question. I don’t have no knowledge of this case, and I just wanted to know who’s asking for me to be sworn in. The defense? The DA or the defense, the judge? Who’s asking it? Those are questions I need answered if you’re going to revoke me, you ain’t [inaudible 00:06:19].
Taya Graham : Now, at the time, the judge randomly withdrew his bail. Mr. Mata was in a precarious spot. That’s because he was in the process of defending his right to film cops. This means that when the judge revoked it, Mr. Mata was carted off immediately. Not as I said before for misbehaving in the courtroom, just simply sitting there. And for more on why this happened and the consequences, we’ll be talking to both Mr. Mata and hbomatt. But before we do that, I’m joined by my reporting partner, Stephen Janis. Stephen, thank you for joining me.
Stephen Janis: Taya, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.
Taya Graham : So first, you’ve been looking into the circumstances surrounding this odd courtroom drama. What have you learned?
Stephen Janis: Well, like many things, it’s pure weird on the surface. There is an underlying reason, and I think this has to do with the defense fighting back against the community’s disapproval of this officer. There was a controversy about moving the case earlier in the trial, moving it out of Fort Worth because of the idea that the community was somehow predisposed to judge’s officer without evidence. And I think that’s where this is rooted in because it seems like the defense attorney in this case is driving the entire ordeal and driving the fact that these witnesses were sworn in at such a late date in the court process.
Taya Graham : Do the rules of procedure even allow this? I mean, can you call witnesses at a sentencing?
Stephen Janis: Well, that’s the thing. The reason the defense attorney gave for calling a witness at this point was that they wanted to use this for a so-called appeal. However, I think the real reason was is because once you’re a witness in the case, you cannot sit in the courtroom. I think the idea was to get rid of all the activists in the courtroom and to use procedure to do that, which on the surface seems okay, but it’s not because the intention is just to remove people from the courtroom who wish to observe the legal process.
Taya Graham : Finally, did the mainstream media cover this and what was their take on what happened?
Stephen Janis: Well, their take was kind of disturbing and illustrative at the same time. The mainstream media accused Mr. Mata of making terrorist threats. This accusation didn’t come from charges, but came from the same defense attorney that tried to remove him from the courtroom. So I think it raises a lot of questions. I think this is rooted in the community’s sort of passion about this case and the judge trying to control it because early on in the case, they actually swore in the mayor and a city councilperson as witnesses too about moving the trial. And then when they criticize the verdict as being too lenient, the judge hauled them into court for a contempt of court hearing. So I think what you’re seeing here is a very troubling way of covering. Also, good to note that they accuse Mr. Mata of terrorist threats, but they did not ask him for comment, nor is his comment anywhere in, and that’s just bad journalism 101. Always seek comment no matter what.
Taya Graham : And now before we’re joined by Mr. Mata, I want to go to an important Texas cop watcher, known as hbomatt. As you might recall, he’s facing charges of organized crime from Levinson, Texas Police for cop watching, which are still pending, and which he will update us on shortly. But I also want to get his perspective on how Mr. Mata’s ordeal fits in with the broader assault on cop watchers by Texas law enforcement. Hbomatt, thank you for joining me.
Hbomatt: Glad to be here, Taya.
Taya Graham : So first, who is Manuel Mata? He’s a police accountability activist, right? Why is he cop watching and risking arrest?
Hbomatt: Very simple of Manuel. He’s been arrested for a felony and convicted before. So he’s got a meat to pick, but he only goes after the cops that are doing the crazy stuff. He still doesn’t usually just go after the random cop for doing nothing. But yeah, he started because he spent time in jail and he’s come across a lot of bad cops, and now they keep coming after him, so he wants that accountability.
Taya Graham : We see him taken out the courtroom for the trial of Aaron Dean, the officer who shot a Tatiana Jefferson through a window in Fort Worth, Texas during this wellness check. Can you describe what happened to Manuel? Why was he there and what happened?
Hbomatt: He was purely there to cover the case, to watch it, to be an observer. The night before, there was a protest against the Dean family for people who weren’t happy with only a manslaughter conviction and not murder. So at the beginning of the trial that day, we’re in sentencing now, not actual trial. The defense attorney calls him up by name to swear him in as a witness. Now, the game we’re pretty sure the defense attorney is playing is to just kick people out of the courtroom he doesn’t like. There is absolutely no legit reason for him to call Manuel up. And if he wanted the video from the recording the night before at the protest, he can just subpoena it for whatever appeal he is going to do later on. And Manuel’s not there yet. So he looks around the courtroom and recognizes a second person who was thereat the protest that night says, Hey, who are you? He doesn’t even know who the guy is. Makes him give his name, come up, kind of brown skin too, maybe just a coincidence. That guy just goes along with it. The judge swears him in as a witness, kicks him out of the courtroom.
At some point in there, the defense attorney and the judge and some other people we’re not sure who yet conspired, started trading info on who’s Manuel Mata and what’s he done and what can we do with him? And so about three o’clock at the end of the trial day, Manuel is there as a witness. Defense attorney calls him up. Manuel’s like, “What the heck’s going on?” Judge says, “I’m going to swear you in.” He’s like, “What? How?” Judge kicks the jury out and goes through this predetermined plan they came up with to judicially kidnap him, doesn’t hold him in contempt. Doesn’t say, leave the courtroom. Doesn’t say, you’re a security threat. This is going to be important later. Just says, Hey, Mr. Manuel Mata date of birth, such and such. You’re out on bonds, aren’t you? Well, I’m holding those bonds insufficient. Take him away. And they just take him to jail. And he sits there for about four days in jail before the judge reinstates his bond.
Taya Graham : What do you think it is about Manuel’s work that has caused him to be targeted like this? What is he exposing that authorities are willing to misuse the law to deter him?
Hbomatt: The cop watching has just been pure retaliation from the cops. It’s been pure revenge. He’s recording, he’s very mouthy. Manuel does not like bad cops. So he’s one of those guys like Eric Grant was that’ll cuss up a storm in front of these cops and just cut their ego off at the knees. So as a group, the entire Fort Worth area police just want to do everything they can to arrest him because they don’t like him.
Taya Graham : And now, to speak with the man himself about what happened and the consequences for him, I’m joined by Manuel Mata. Mr. Mata, thank you for joining me.
Manuel Mata: You’re welcome. It’s a pleasure.
Taya Graham : So first, let me ask you, why were you in the courtroom to watch the trial of Officer Aaron Dean? Why were you there, and why does this case matter to you?
Manuel Mata: Well, I actually been following that case for about, I think, two plus years because this case happened right down the street from where I live. So it’s not like it’s something that I heard about or it’s something that affects my whole neighborhood because she was my neighbor. The same thing could have happened to my sister or anybody. And this is the type of thing that we’re trying to expose because this is a division that’s built on basic corruption and not telling the truth, and that’s all we’re asking for. That’s all any of us have ever asked for this whole time. Accountability, honesty, transparency, and it seems like they go out of their way and waste taxpayer monies to avoid those things instead of just being what they designed for, to protect the community and serve us.
Taya Graham : So you’re in the courtroom watching the outcome of this murder trial when you’re called up to be sworn in as a witness. Is that correct?
Manuel Mata: Yes. When Judge Gallagher called me and it was like, I didn’t know why, because in this trial, I expected to be out of a trial setting when I was in court, so that’s why it was all weird to me that he was calling me up. And then when I went up there, to me, truthfully, honestly, saying yes and agreeing to something in courts during my experiences haven’t turned out well for me. That’s the whole reason why I’m trying to ask for transparency and accountability because of what happened to me. So for me just to go into a courtroom blindly when I have nothing to do with it and agreed to it, I wasn’t going to. That’s why I wanted to ask what was the reason? Why am I being sworn in? And I never got one. And that’s why I couldn’t do it, because I didn’t know what the ulterior motive was, because that’s the cases I’ve dealt with because there’s always an ulterior motive.
Taya Graham : Now, you were taken out of the courtroom in cuffs. What happened next?
Manuel Mata: The whole thing was weird to the [inaudible 00:15:16]. And honestly, if they would’ve just told me, Hey, walk back here, I would’ve walked. I wouldn’t have ran. I wouldn’t… For what? I didn’t do nothing wrong, so why would I? And it was just weird. It’s like they wanted me to see their show of force. They wanted me to say, we are running the show here. You do what we say or else. The judges, whatever. And when they took me to the back, it was like there was two guards and the white one was somewhat chill. It was the other one that was getting aggressive. And that’s when I told him, “You don’t have to get aggressive with me. I’m complying. I ain’t tripping. It’s not your fault. I understand y’all just following orders. It’s that effort that is making y’all do this.”
Taya Graham : You were able to be removed from the courtroom because your bonds were revoked. What were these bonds for?
Manuel Mata: They’re for filming cops in traffic stops. That’s all I’ve been arrested for. I’ve been arrested for interfering with public duties. And the resisting arrest comes after I either refuse to identify myself because it’s not a lawful arrest, or they seem to think that… I’m already in handcuffs, but they seem to think by me telling them, Hey, stop doing me like that, or that’s not how you’re supposed to handle me. And telling them you better write the use of force, I end up with these other charges.
Taya Graham : What about the personal costs? Surely the legal fees, court costs, time incarcerated. I’ll take their toll. Why do you keep doing it?
Manuel Mata: And I had a back and forth with this, so I’m glad you asked me that. I think the way I was raised and what I went through prepared me for this situation. Because everybody I’ve met along my two three year journey doing this, they were able to silence them. They were able to stop them by either criminalizing them. If they were parents, they took their kids and threatened them with their kids. And if they were outstanding citizens, they turned them into criminals. So I grew up in those environments and these upstanding citizens that’ve been asking for this simple thing for years, the one thing they’re able to do is those three things to each individual person in that situation to make them be quiet. I don’t have kids. I can’t have them. The good job that I had, they already took it from me. This is my job to expose all of them.
Taya Graham : Now, I think it’s worth breaking down not just what happened to Manuel Mata, but the message it’s intended to send. Because as we’ve tried to point out over and over again on this show, the pushback against policing isn’t just about bad cops or law enforcement overreach. In fact, what Mr. Mata and hbomatt experiences reveal is that holding cops accountable also means fighting back against our inherent bias for law enforcement that gets overlooked. Oh wait, I guess you’re probably saying now, bias Taya? What do you mean by bias for law enforcement? Is that your opinion or is that a fact? Aren’t we getting a little bit ahead of yourself and saying, we have some sort of bias towards law enforcement in this country? How can you prove it?
Fair question. Now let me explain. First, I want to talk about a study in an academic journal that has been largely overlooked, but illustrates exactly what I mean. It was a piece published by the National Library of Medicine that looked at how the largest cities prioritize services. In other words, where do our biggest municipalities put their money and what does it say about their priorities for serving the residents who live there? Well, interestingly, the paper focused on one specific aspect of municipal spending. How does cities balance health and wellness outlays with policing? What do cities emphasize when it comes to the wellbeing of residents? Do they allocate more dollars to cops or do they invest more in public health? And what that paper found clearly affirms my point about bias for police. Researchers found that of these top cities, only seven spent more on and emphasized social services over law enforcement. And because of that imbalance, a majority of the 50 largest metropolitan areas studied were designated carceral cities, communities were cops predominate and wellbeing suffers.
Honestly, I understand this imbalance pretty well when I was just a city hall reporter here in Baltimore years ago, our health department was almost exclusively funded by grants with very little spending coming directly from our city budget. Meanwhile, police spending went up and up and up and up. And what happened? Well, it’s complicated, but I can tell you this: crime didn’t go down. That is for sure. We are not considered a safe city. In fact, we regularly sit at top the list of the country’s most dangerous places to live. My point is that in a country where people can’t afford to pay medical bills, where social services go unfunded and where tens of thousands of people remain homeless and on the streets, why is law enforcement the number one priority? Why do political leaders spend so much on cups and tasers and guns when the work to simply improve people’s lives gets tossed aside?
As we have made clear on other shows, it’s not just because of the main excuse city leaders give: crime. Because quite frankly, the police can’t really prevent crime. And if they could, the spending by all these cities collectively would make this country the safest place on earth. Instead, I think what we see in this study is the same affliction that prompted a judge to toss a man in jail over nothing. A system that is self-perpetuating and insular despite the evidence that it truly doesn’t work. What we are witnessing in courtroom dramas like Mata’s, the prosecution of hbomatt and the lack of resources for health are all part of the same lineage of an irrational fixation on law enforcement as a cure for all that ails us.
I mean, I think it’s truly embarrassing that our greatest cities are also labeled as carceral. I think it’s shameful that we’ve pretty much created a system that tries to solve complex social problems with arrests and imprisonment. It’s even more disturbing when you consider that the cities which don’t qualify as carceral, namely New York, Washington DC, San Francisco, Seattle and Philadelphia are some of the safest. All cities say Philly, that have much lower crime rates than the communities which emphasize policing.
Now, I understand that this could also be viewed as a chicken and the egg problem. What came first? Crime or spending on police? What’s the causation here? Does the lack of spending on social services create the need to ramp up law enforcement by exacerbating poverty and neglect? To answer that question, I’m going to take a broader view and throw it back at you. I’m going to try to answer it from an entirely different perspective. See if you can answer what came first, policing or inequality? What birthed this whole law enforcement industrial complex we are dealing with now, poverty or the need for safety? I ask this question because I think it gets to the crux of the problem. Police are not the answer to a system that cannot provide for the people in need. And it is definitely not the answer to a world built upon a foundation of unequal treatment and enforcement for people who struggle to survive and have access to healthcare.
I mean, maybe it’s not carceral cities we need to worry about. Maybe we need to consider the possibility we all live in a carceral country. Maybe that is what we should be debating, not whether we are pro-police or anti-cop, but if we are truly pro humanity. That’s the question that really needs to be answered.
I want to thank my guests, hbomatt and Manuel Mata for their work to hold police accountable and for taking the time to speak with us. Thank you both. And of course, I want 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 want to thank friends of the show, Nolee D and Lacey R, for their support. Thank you and a very special thanks to our 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, John R and David K, and Super friends, Shane Busta, Pineapple Girl, and Chris R. Thank you. I appreciate you.
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 @EyesonPolice on Twitter. And of course, you can always message me directly @tayasbaltimore on Twitter or Facebook. And please like and comment, I do read your comments and appreciate them. And even if I don’t answer every single one, I assure you I read it. And we do have a Patreon link for Accountability Reports pinned in the comments below. So if you do feel inspired to donate, please do. We don’t run ads or take corporate dollars, so anything you can spare is greatly appreciated. My name is Taya Graham and I am your host of the Police Accountability Report. Please, be safe out there.
The start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 exacerbated the existing crisis of incarceration in the US, which has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. During this time, a group of women with loved ones incarcerated in Nevada’s prison system founded the organization Return Strong to fight for decarceration and the successful re-entry of formerly incarcerated people into society. Return Strong Executive Director Jodi Hocking and Community Organizer Ashley Gaddis join Rattling the Bars to discuss the fight against mass incarceration in Nevada.
Studio/Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
Transcript
The following is a preliminary transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated as soon as possible.
Mansa Musa: Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m Mansa Musa co-host with Eddie Conway. As I always do, first, I want to say Happy New Year to all the Rattling the Bars listeners and viewers and The Real News watchers and listeners. I want to update you all on Eddie Conway. I had the opportunity to visit his wife Dominique and Eddie Conway is doing great.
At some point in time, we hope to have Eddie Conway make a cameo appearance on this program that he created and the network that he loved. Today we have an extraordinary group of people, but more importantly, we have an extraordinary example of what George Jackson described in his essay towards the United Fronts.
He said that the sheer number of people that are incarcerated, when you compare that with the people that are incarcerated and their family members, the only logical conclusion you can draw is that we have a massive amount of people that, if organized, could really have impact on the way the system is structured and the way the system treat people.
Here today to talk about just that are two extraordinary women. One is Jodi Hocking and Ashley Gaddis. Welcome to Rattling the Bars.
Jodi Hocking: Thank you.
Mansa Musa: First, let’s start with you Ashley. Tell the Rattling the Bars a little bit about yourself.
Ashley Gaddis: Well, my name is Ashley and I’m from Las Vegas and I’m formally incarcerated. I have been in and through both systems, the federal and state system. I’ve been directly impacted by the conditions of prison and the justice system as a whole. I am part of Return Strong now as staff to try to make a difference within the system and policy and hope for better conditions.
Mansa Musa: Okay. Jodi, tell us a little bit about yourself. Tell the Rattling the Bars viewers and listeners a little bit about yourself.
Jodi Hocking: Yeah. Hello. Thank you for having us. My name is Jodi Hocking. I have been a Labor Organizer for a very long time and am impacted, my husband’s incarcerated. I founded, and now I’m the Executive Director of Return Strong, which is an organization that is really two-sided.
On one side, we really center the voices of formerly incarcerated and currently incarcerated people, and then on the other hand, we work with families of the incarcerated to actually be the hands and feet of this movement.
Mansa Musa: Okay. You all primarily located on in Nevada, right?
Jodi Hocking: We are primarily located… Well, let me say this. We are focused on work in Nevada because what we have in common is either loved ones who are incarcerated in Nevada, but our activists really are all over the world because our loved ones are incarcerated in Nevada, but we don’t all necessarily live there.
Mansa Musa: Okay. That’s good. All right. Let’s start by examining, because we’re talking about Return Strong, which is a grassroots organization that was created by the family members of men and women that are incarcerated. As you outlined just a minute ago, as the men and women return, they become a part of Return Strong.
But let’s talk about… Before we go into talking about the organization, and I’m going to direct this to you, Ashley, because you experienced a lot of the horrendous conditions that take place in the prisons.
You can weigh in on as well, Jodi. But let’s talk about the prison industrial complex in Nevada. Ashley, you served federal prison and you served state prison as well. Talk about the prison industrial complex in Nevada as you understand it.
Ashley Gaddis: Okay. From my experience, I started my time in a private prison here in Nevada when it was CCA. I’ve been involved in this system from privately ran institution to a state ran institution. Basically, I’ve seen it go from reform to human warehousing, meaning conditions just worsen.
The problem or the major issues that are happening are, there’s a lot of abuse, physical, mentally, and verbal abuse within the institution. A lot of the staff that work there have worked at a man’s prison so they come there treating the women like men.
Mansa Musa: Right.
Ashley Gaddis: Any complaints that happen, for the most part get ignored, get shift around, not heard.
Mansa Musa: Okay.
Ashley Gaddis: Unfortunately, it’s a system that really doesn’t take women prisoners serious from our mental needs, our medical needs, our physical needs and we’re just categorized as one.
Mansa Musa: Let me ask you this here, because I know from doing previous reports on dealing with women prison. How many women prisons, to your knowledge, are in Las Vegas or are in Nevada?
Ashley Gaddis: There’s approximately 800 to a thousand between the main prison, which is Smiley Road, Florence McClure, and our camp in Jean, Nevada.
Mansa Musa: So 800 to a thousand women?
Ashley Gaddis: Yes.
Mansa Musa: But how many prisons do they have? Because for example, in the state of Maryland, they have one woman’s prison for the state of Maryland, and that one woman’s prison is consist of security-wise, maximum, minimum and because they don’t have no pre-release system, they don’t have the right to progress through the system.
I’m trying to think and see if this is the consistent concept when it comes to women prison throughout the United States. So how many women prisons do they have?
Ashley Gaddis: Yes, you’re correct. We have one prison that holds medium maximum and we have one camp.
Mansa Musa: Okay. So this goes… Go ahead.
Ashley Gaddis: No, and this goes from… Our Florence McClure prison holds the approximately 800 to 850 women now. That’s just recently because of Covid, but they’ve been over-populated over a thousand, which is not supposed to happen and housing women in the gym or in other units on bunk beds because of the overcrowding.
Mansa Musa: So this is consistent. When we’re talking about the prison industrial complex and mass incarceration, which is the new form of slavery, the narrative is consistent throughout the nation that, as if prison in and of itself is not [inaudible 00:08:24] and horrendous, now women are discriminated against in society.
Misogynistic society, racist society, a sexist society, but then they find themselves incarcerated and discriminated against again in the form of not being given no equity. Jodi, talk about how did Return Strong come into existence.
Jodi Hocking: We started like many places did in reaction to some circumstances that were going on in 2020. One, was my own personal response to the murder of George Floyd and feeling as a middle-aged white woman, what do I do to start to… ?
If you remember really the racial divide that was going on in the country at that time and I had done a lot of anti-racism work. I started with a book club and I worked with teachers across the country. And then I decided my husband was incarcerated and had just gone back on a violation.
I started to really think about how families of the incarcerated, a lot of times over accentuate personal responsibility and somebody’s personal piece of a crime or conviction, and that they miss some of the systemic issues that happen in addition to that.
I decided to start. Really, it was supposed to be just a family Peer Learning Circle, was where it started. My background is in organizing though. I’m a Labor Organizer and believe so deeply in the power of collective action and that we’re always stronger together.
We started, on August 6th, 2020, we had our first family meeting. There were about 10 women there, and three weeks later, Nevada Department of Corrections in response to Marcy’s Law, implemented an 80 to a hundred percent deduction of any money that went on people’s books, any money they were making from prison industries.
I felt like we had to make a choice. We were either going to fight for everyone or we were going to try to figure out how to pay for ourselves, our loved ones’ restitution. We took on that fight and we really weren’t even in existence yet.
We had had one family meeting and people who knew us back then, I kept telling people, I don’t know what we’re doing, but we have to do something. Which is my standard answer to everything is, I don’t always know the answers.
I just know the only thing we can’t do is stand still and watch this stuff go down. We started fighting that. We actually were able to get a stay within the first month of it happening.
We got to stay from the governor for about five months and eventually stole a bill out from under NDOC, flipped it and put statutory caps on restitution and deductions, which was amazing. They had to repay people any money that they had taken without [inaudible 00:11:38]. It was a huge win. I would’ve loved to get it to go to no restitution.
Mansa Musa: Zero. Right.
Jodi Hocking: Sometimes you have to fight for the best case scenario and then we don’t have control over all of it. But it made a huge difference for people who were in prison and owed any money to the prison system because they were literally, if you put a hundred dollars, I know my husband was getting $8 out of that a hundred and they were taking all the rest of it.
As soon as we got the stay on that, the Covid outbreak happened in Nevada and Warm Springs Correctional Center went from zero cases to about 400 cases within days. We had been tracking that information and so had been going to the media saying, NDOC, they’re lying about their numbers. That can’t be true. This isn’t true.
When the outbreak happened, it created a lot of questions for NDOC. Even though we don’t win every battle we’re in with them, we have gotten the attention of media really across the country and then other grassroots organizations. It’s created a situation where we have won multiple fights with them, where nobody has ever won before. It’s just created a huge difference.
Mansa Musa: Ashley, as it stand right now, you’re formerly, you are in the halfway house?
Ashley Gaddis: Yes, I’m in a special… I’m in a specialty program that gave an early release and this program is through the courts.
Mansa Musa: All right. How did you become involved with Return Strong, or when did you become aware? Because Jodi, you all have been in existence since 2020 what? Two?
Jodi Hocking: 2020. Our non-profit formed in 2022.
Mansa Musa: Okay. Ashley, how did you become involved with Return Strong?
Ashley Gaddis: Okay. There used to be another group called Nevada Cure that helped inmates. They fell off and then I started to get literature from Return Strong. As an inmate, we’re always leery on these organizations because are they just talking? What do they do? Are they going to help us? Do they care?
All those questions go [inaudible 00:14:16] until we see the existence of it and the actions behind the organization. Like Jodi said, the restitution issue came up that affected many people. We started getting literature from them and I’m like, okay, they want to know.
They sent these surveys through asking who has been affected how. And I’m like, wow, okay. They’re engaging, they want to know. I reached out to them. I didn’t necessarily have a restitution issue, but I knew many people that did. They don’t know how to reach out so I guided other people at first.
Here, this is who you need to talk to, this is who you need to contact. And then as I saw Return Strong making moves and really making noise and making a difference, I’m like, yeah, this is who I need to connect with. I stayed connected.
Because I do have my paralegal cert, so I know what kind of system that I’m dealing with. I’m dealing with the system that, anything we do is obsolete. But anything constitutional as far as violations of our rights, I will jump.
I got involved with that, be it through the grievance, be it through reaching out to Jodi because that’s what matters, not curling irons and stuff, but [inaudible 00:15:57].
Mansa Musa: Right.
Ashley Gaddis: Yeah, as more problems started progressing, Covid hit, like Jodi said, and we had another issue that was upfront. I organized and I communicated and I got people involved and stepping out of prison into a specialty court, I stayed connected and reached out to Jodi and here I am. I know Nevada’s policy is real trickery and it’s a lot of words [inaudible 00:16:41].
Mansa Musa: What do you mean by that?
Ashley Gaddis: The laws and the AR policies, the prison policies. They use a lot of meaningless language and there’s a lot of confusion with it. But because I’ve done a lot of time in this system, I got very familiar with the language and that’s what I help Return Strong with is interpreting some of that language where there’s a lot of confusion.
Mansa Musa: Jodi, because Ashley just talked about how from her own personal experience and being a victim of a lot of the abuses, how when they became aware of you all, the way they vetted you all in terms of making sure that you all was serious about the work that you all was doing, because I’m familiar with that as well.
Being formally incarcerated people oftentimes come in the system, but they’re not prepared to do the heavy lifting in terms of staying the course. They’ll give a lot of lip service to our issues and concerns.
Talk about why is it that you all have been so successful at mobilizing the prison population? Because according to you, you all got over 4,000 people that’s involved. Talk about how you all have been able to mobilize the prison population, to have the impact that it has had in terms of changing policies. We’ll talk about some of you all future objectives.
Jodi Hocking: Ash, feel free to contradict me if you don’t think this is accurate. I think what happened is in the beginning, we right away started writing to people because I was like, I wanted to hear from people who were being impacted by deductions, by what’s going on with Covid.
Are they feeding you? All of the different issues that were happening and I used to beg them. I would ask questions. Here’s some questions about Covid. What’s going on with bed transfers? Because we were hearing from… I’m a big Howardson fan.
Howardson always talks about, during any period, there’s always the government’s version of history and there’s the people’s version of history. I was listening to NDOC at every one of their meetings and I was like, they are lying. That’s not what people are telling us. They would come to meetings and give this false testimony.
I got my team together and we just started begging people practically to just communicate with us, tell us what’s going on with Covid. Tell us what’s going on with bed transfers, food, medical care, whatever it was. We wanted to know what was going on.
I used to tell them, and I still do the same thing when we send newsletters in is, I can’t promise we’re going to work on every issue right now. Tell us the story. We now use a database that catalogs every letter that we get.
If you wanted to know about how many people have written to us about solitary confinement conditions, I can run a report, we can pull those letters and I can answer that. When we first started it was a box of letters. Do you know what I mean? But we now get thousands of letters.
I think we’re probably close to 4,000 letters in 2022. We tell people, we set the expectation that we’re not going to be able to answer everyone. We’re working full-time jobs. This is not… Up until a few months ago we were unfunded. We were just open and honest.
I think I wrote to people more like I was writing to friends of mine than I was writing a professional letter, which is how, the way that I interact anyway. But it was a two-way street. They would share information with us and we would use that information to move forward an agenda that took what they were the most important thing that they were bringing.
Mansa Musa: Right.
Jodi Hocking: In addition, we had to balance that with areas that we thought we could win and what resources. But then I would explain to them, this is why we’re doing this instead of this or we’re trying to file a complaint with the DOJ, we’re trying to do…
It’s something where we worked together. So really what we did is organize and we really used a union structure to organize inside the prisons. As people would write to us, we had people that were jailhouse lawyers or unit organizers so I would have a contact and our goal is always to grow that.
If I need to get a message in, Ashley was a unit organizer and a jailhouse lawyer. Another role we have is key documentors. Those people who can take what the issues are and break them down into ways that when we read them, for people who haven’t been incarcerated that we’re like, that’s what they mean.
That’s what matters. Right? [inaudible 00:21:41] of issues and we use their letters to change hearts and minds. We’re the hands and feet of this work, but formerly incarcerated [inaudible 00:21:49].
Mansa Musa: Sound like in terms of organizing, you all have the perfect union. Jodi, what’s you all strategy going forward?
Jodi Hocking: I think going into 2023 and 24, we’re a biannual legislature. We only have legislature every other year. This year we have a double opportunity, which I always like to look at everything as opportunities. We have a new governor. He is 30 years in law enforcement, so there are some challenges that are going to be there.
But we also have a new Director of Prison. Right before Covid hit, we had a new director who was forced to resign, I believe in October of last year. There’s some hope there that they don’t want the bad press that the old administration had.
There’ve already been some moves. The new director is already meeting and we’re planning some meetings, but we have a plan that we are delivering a letter and asking them for certain meetings and the first 100 days of their administration.
Mansa Musa: Okay.
Jodi Hocking: The first thing we’re asking for them to do is to meet with formerly incarcerated people and stakeholders. We’re also asking them to come to the table with NDOC to talk about issues that are happening within facilities.
And then to also hold a public meeting where people can come and actually express what their concerns are and what the stress has been of the past several years, in order to really pivot the direction of corrections.
With this new administration, I feel like it is an opportunity to pivot into a new direction of what do we want corrections to look like in Nevada in five years and 10 years and 15 years. We don’t want more of the abuses that are going on now. We don’t want our prisons to be on the top 20 worst prisons in the United States that Ely is always on the list of.
It’s time to do something different. While we’re dealing with administration that may be more conservative in some ways, as an organizer, I look at, there’re going to be parts that we completely disagree, but the sweet spot of where we can make change is on the areas that we agree.
We agree that [inaudible 00:24:11] need to be treated humanely, that solitary confinement isn’t the answer. That rehabilitation is more important than punishment and pain. Focusing on those areas that we can change. We’re working on that in the hundred-day plan.
The other thing that we are working on is, I think one of the struggles for our in organization has been that corrections can keep us fighting things that are the tip of the iceberg. They’re not feeding people, they’re not doing this, all the things they’re doing wrong, the restitution, Covid.
We could fight those things at the tip of the iceberg and we’ll never run out of fights. But one of the really core changes that we want to make is, how do we change the culture around incarceration?
We’re abolitionists, well, not all of us are, but we’re founded on abolitionist beliefs that we have to deconstruct these systems while we’re also building communities that are ready for worlds without prison. How do we educate people who are not touched by incarceration? I think…
Mansa Musa: Right and I think that conversation is going to be the larger conversation because that’s a conversation that’s starting to take shape nationwide. But Ashley, talk about what you see in terms of the prison population and the future as it relates to your role in Return Strong.
Ashley Gaddis: Well, I am hoping that the system becomes more conducive with reform and eliminating the stereotyping of high risk offenders, not giving them the opportunity to reform and keeping that stigma there as well as the conditions.
I mean it’s just something has to break. What’s going on right now can’t continue to be happening and the whole thing with Covid, a lot is being blamed on Covid. Well, we’re out of Covid and it is time to move forward in a new direction.
Mansa Musa: Right.
Ashley Gaddis: Yeah.
Mansa Musa: And [inaudible 00:26:42].
Ashley Gaddis: I just [inaudible 00:26:43].
Mansa Musa: Go ahead, come on.
Ashley Gaddis: I’d like to highlight something real quick with Nevada and the women, okay. Because it doesn’t start in prison. It starts with the sentencing and the courts. It starts with the disappropriateness of the sentence structures. You have women and men committing crimes together.
You have the man with a record and he’s getting less time than a woman, than a mother, a wife, and that’s a big number in Nevada’s prison of women that are on co-defendant conspiracy charges.
You have women coming in there just broken off the top. Spiritually, mentally, physically, all of that and then you have a system that is abusive and neglectful and there’s no dignity there. There’s no humaneness there. So what do they expect to happen [inaudible 00:27:51]?
Mansa Musa: I think this is a attitude nationwide when it come to women in general and this deal with this racist, sexist, misogynistic society that we find ourselves in. Like I told you, they got one woman’s prison in Maryland, maximum security and medium security and mental security.
But women can’t get to work release because you don’t have no work release environment. But Jodi, give us a contact for your organization and how people can get in touch with you all and what you want people to know, what you want people to do in terms of supporting you all.
Jodi Hocking: I think there’s a few things. One, we always are looking for volunteers and you would easily reach our social media on our website, everything is the same. It’s Return Strong NV for Nevada. Maybe someday we’ll drop the NV and just be nationwide. Who knows?
That’s the easiest way. If you go to the website, we’re on Instagram, we’re on Twitter and we’re on Facebook with that same. The other thing that we are opening up this year and that really people are welcome nationwide is, we are going to be implementing, they’re called Peer Learning Circles.
One of the things about the change that needs to happen is that it’s not just… I think it needs to be led by people who are impacted, but Peer Learning Circles are really a space where everybody’s a learner. You can learn from a harm reduction specialist, somebody can learn from you if you have a loved one that’s incarcerated or you were formally incarcerated.
We will be starting Peer Learning Circles. I think the first one is actually in February and we’re going to open that up to anybody. It’s going to be on Zoom. We can have up to a hundred people. We can break out into small groups.
It’ll be once a quarter, but it gives you the opportunity to really, not even network, but just come and learn from other people. No matter how you learn, what you learn, it’s a space that really respects that. I think that is how we start getting to the root of the problem is…
Mansa Musa: Okay. There you have it. The Real News about Return Strong and the Nevada prison system as we just was given this information by Jodi and Ashley. We wanted to remind our listeners and our viewers to be mindful of, we’re talking about prison industrial complex and we’re talking about mass incarceration.
We are also talking about the blatant discrimination against women in the Nevada prison system as Ashley just outlined. We encourage everyone to go to the Return Strong website and check out what they got to offer. Thank you ladies for this and delightful conversation.
Daniel Alvarez first appeared on the Police Accountability Report in June, 2021 after an LA sheriff put him in handcuffs for stopping at a stop sign. Since then, Alvarez has documented numerous instances of LASD officers continuing to target and harass him. Alvarez has been arrested eight times since his first encounter with LASD—always on charges that have later been dismissed due to lack of evidence. Officers have used everything from broken taillights to false DUI allegations as a pretext for continuing their harassment campaign against Alvarez. Daniel Alvarez returns to the Police Accountability Report to share how LASD officers have tormented him in the past years.
Studio: Stephen Janis Post-Production: Stephen Janis, Adam Coley
Transcript
The transcript of this video will be made available as soon as possible.
Former Maryland state medical examiner Dr. David Fowler testified at the trial of police officer Derek Chauvin in 2021 that the cause of George Floyd’s death ought to be ruled “undetermined.” Hundreds of doctors across the country repudiated Fowler’s testimony and called for his previous rulings to be investigated. After an independent review of Fowler’s handling of 1300 cases of deaths in police custody, the State of Maryland is now reinvestigating 100 of these deaths. The 2018 death of Anton Black, a 19-year-old African American man, is included in the cases to be reviewed. Fowler ruled Black’s death an accident in spite of video footage showing three white police officers and one vigilante chasing the teen, tasering him, and pinning him to the ground for six minutes until he stopped breathing. In the latest episode of Land of the Unsolved, journalists Taya Graham, Stephen Janis, and Jayne Miller dig deeper into Dr. Fowler’s disturbing record, and the patterns it reflects in police killings across the nation.
Post-Production: Stephen Janis
Transcript
Stephen Janis: Anyone who watches crime dramas could reasonably conclude that when someone is murdered, barring bizarre and extenuating circumstances, the case is solved. That is through high-tech forensics, moral resolve, or simply the near mythic competence of American law enforcement, killers are ultimately sent to jail. But as an investigative reporter, who has worked in one of the most violent cities in the country for nearly 15 years, I can tell you this is not true.
Taya Graham: And that is the point of this podcast, because unsolved killings represent more than just statistics. It’s a psychic toll of stories untold that infects an entire community, the final violent moments of a victim’s life that remain shrouded in mystery.
Stephen Janis: I’m Stephen Janis.
Taya Graham: I’m Taya Graham.
Stephen Janis: And we are investigative reporters who live in Baltimore City.
Taya Graham: Welcome to the Land of the Unsolved.
Taya Graham: Hello, my name is Taya Graham, and welcome to the Land of the Unsolved, the podcast that explores both the consequences and politics of unsolved murders. Today, we’re going to be examining, not a specific case, but a person who works behind the scenes at a critical role, a juncture between the body on the street, and a murder investigation. It’s an often overlooked back office position that, actually, in Maryland, has become the center of controversy, which we will recap today along with my co-host, Stephen Janis and Jayne Miller, we’ll talk about the person who occupied this position here for roughly two decades. We’ll examine why how he ruled on cases is under intense scrutiny now. We will also explore some of his odd practices in the past that may have foreshadowed the future concerns that are now front and center, all that coming up on Land of the Unsolved. So Jayne, let’s start with you. What is a medical examiner and what role do they play in death? Investigations?
Jayne Miller: Well, they’re a critical element of a death investigation. A medical examiner performs an autopsy, and an autopsy is used to determine both cause of death and manner of death. So when you have a suspicious or questionable death, it’s up to the autopsy determine what were the factors that contributed to the death of an individual, and then was it suicide? Was it an accident? Was it homicide? And oftentimes, we see a finding of undetermined, which means there’s not enough information that the medical examiner could see or find to lead to a specific conclusion. But there is no question that an autopsy will guide an investigation. It will be the force as to whether it is a homicide investigation or if it is kind of close the book because the finding is suicide.
Taya Graham: So Jayne, I’m glad you brought up the manner of death. Because Stephen, I want to know, is there a difference between the cause of death versus the manner of death? And why is that so important?
Stephen Janis: Well, yes, there is. For example, just a good example. The medical examiner can cite something as a cause of death being a gunshot, but is that gunshot a suicide, self-inflicted, or is it a homicide? And so critical to these cases is the manner, because the manner, as Jayne said, will determine. So there are five manners of death, as Jayne said, undetermined, suicide, accident, natural and homicide. If a medical examiner, as Jayne points out, decides to rule something undetermined, for example, where they say, “Hey, we can’t determine what happened.” It pretty much can kill a case for a homicide detective or anyone investigating it, and there are many cases that we’ll get to that have had that sort of problem. But it gives the medical examiner the manner of death, gives him medical examiner tremendous power because that ruling, that final determination can really make, in the case of a lot of police involved, killings, make it impossible for prosecutors to move forward, so those five manners of death are critically important and that’s really where the rubber meets the road with the medical examiner.
Taya Graham: So Stephen, despite the fact that the Office of the Medical Examiner is normally not highlighted in our political conversations, our former medical examiner here in Maryland has been in the spotlight. Can you talk about why and who it was?
Stephen Janis: So his name is Dr. David Fowler, and he, I think, became Medical Examiner of Maryland. Now just a brief overview. There are two types of coroner medical examiner people that perform autopsies. One is elected, which is a coroner, which doesn’t really have to be a doctor. And then, in our state of Maryland has a medical examiner system, which is a person who’s appointed to supervise all autopsies for cases that require autopsies. So Dr. David Fowler was the head of that here for about 17 or 18 years in Maryland, and he really was worked behind the scenes. I don’t think he really… I mean, Jayne, would you say he became controversial in a broad sense, I think, it was more just for people like us who would push back on him.
Jayne Miller: Yeah, exactly. Reporters had more dealings with that office than the average person. But certainly, his testimony that would come in the George Floyd case is really what put him on the map in terms of his rulings.
Taya Graham: So Jayne, why don’t you tell me about some of the cases where Dr. Fowler’s rulings were found suspect, a great deal of those involved police in custody deaths?
Jayne Miller: There are questions about some of the rulings in Maryland. There’s a particular finding of, what’s called excited delirium. I did some stories related to this particular finding and the controversy around that finding and those cases in particular, which involve individuals who died in police custody, and these are not cases that involve a gunshot or something like that. Generally, we’re talking about people who died as a result of or during restraint. I’ll tell you about a case in particular that I actually uncovered in just a couple of years, like a year ago was a case that actually occurred in 2001 of an individual who was restrained by five or six police officers who essentially sat on him and according to their own reports, and he died. The ruling from the medical examiner’s office in Maryland was that it was a cocaine induced excited delirium, oftentimes excited delirium has that attachment of some kind of drug use at the same time, and the manner of death was left undetermined. So in that case, that means the case just kind of sits there.
I went back to that case in 2021 to really take a look at it and had Dr. Zerweck, who’s a pretty well known pathologist, take a look at it. Based on the autopsy, he said, this is positional asphyxia, and that is oftentimes, in these cases that are controversial with medical examiner rulings, what is overlooked? Is that a good way to put it or not written down or not found? Well that, and that I think becomes the question and why we are at this situation, at this juncture in Maryland where we have rulings from the medical examiner’s office during the tenure of David Fowler that are now under question.
Taya Graham: So I really appreciate that you mentioned excited delirium. Stephen, can you talk a little bit about what excited delirium is? I think it’s known as a state of mental and physical agitation where supposedly, a person is insensitive to cold, to pain or to even instruction. Can you describe what excited delirium is and what the science is behind this?
Stephen Janis: First of all, not to jump to the conclusion, but there is really no science. But to explain that. Let me paint a little picture about how my encounters with excited delirium.
During the OTS, there were a lot of taser related deaths for people who don’t know what tasers are, they’re sort of stunt guns, I guess, would be the best description, where they put a tremendous amount of voltage through your nervous system and kind of shut it down. During that time, I would head down to the medical examiner’s office. At that point, around University of Baltimore, it was kind of this black sort of building with blacked out where it was kind of eerie, actually. But the weird thing about it was that Dr. Fowler was kind of accessible. I don’t know, Jayne, if you ever had experience, but I could just walk in and knock on the door and I would get into, let’s call them debates, but with arguments with Dr. Fowler. Now, one thing people should know about him is he’s an interesting guy because he’s kind of got this Afrikaner accent. He’s from South Africa.
So he would come out and kind of give you these lofty statements, and I found it confusing. So one of my first debates with him was about this idea of excited delirium because he was ruling in these taser cases, the underlying cause. As we said before, the cause was cardiac arrhythmia. But then he would say, “But that’s only secondary to excited delirium.” And the point to me was that, I think, and Jayne, you can talk about this if you want, but I think the point was to kind of say that it wasn’t the taser that was responsible, and that’s why I got into fights with him about cardiac arrhythmia. So one day, I come in and I’m arguing with him about it and he says, “Here, Stephen. Here’s a book, and it was a book called Excited Delirium.”
I’m like, “Okay, I’m going to read this book because this will be interesting. This will give me all I need to know about excited delirium.” I open it up, and it says, “The basic science was rooted in this condition that would happen to people in the 19th century at sanatoriums, where they would inexplicably become excited over a period of several weeks and then eventually die.” And that was in the book that he gave me, and I came back to Dr. Fowler and I said, this can’t be true. You can’t be using this as your basis. And he just refused to back down. And he especially refused back down.
Now, later, when I looked into the whole taser issue, what was very interesting was that I talked to American Association of Medical Examiners, and he told me the taser would sue medical examiners who ruled that the primary cause of death was a taser and so there was fear in the community. So that kind of showed you that people in Fowler’s position are being buffeted by a lot of different forces that we don’t see. So that was my experience with Excited Delirium. Is there any signs? I don’t think so. From my research and what I’ve read about it’s totally BS. It has nothing to do with anything. But it has become a very convenient way to put a buffer between things like tasers or police behavior and the actual cause of death, in my opinion.
Jayne Miller: I can add a little bit to that, but based on a statement I used from the National Library of Medicine when I did this story in 2021, on the death of an individual, “Excited or agitated delirium is characterized by agitation, aggression, acute distress, and sudden death. But it is not a currently recognized medical or psychiatric diagnosis.” And this gets to this debate about, as Stephen has said, its use in really important cases, obviously involving police custody deaths. Now, in Maryland, there were, at the time, as of last year, there were about two dozen cases that had been ruled excited delirium involving police and custody deaths.
Taya Graham: So I just wanted to add something here to emphasize how subjective the diagnosis of excited delirium really is. This isn’t a problem just in the state of Maryland, in Colorado, since 2018 to about mid 2020, medics in Colorado dosed 902 people with ketamine for suffering from excited delirium. And later, investigation showed that these EMTs were administering ketamine at the behest of police who were trying to control a suspect. So this case was highlighted by the death of Elijah McClain in Colorado in 2019. So excited delirium is very often cited in cases where police officers are forcibly restraining someone, and it’s not just a problem in Maryland. It’s also a problem throughout the United States, this diagnosis.
Stephen Janis: It’s amazing to think about how something, as Jayne pointed out, is not a scientific diagnosis or even psychiatric diagnoses, ends up in tons and dozens of autopsies as a primary cause of death. It’s not just there to add a little flavor, it’s the primary cause of death in many cases.
Jayne Miller: And like I said, the thing that an autopsy does is it really guides an investigation. It steers it, probably a better term, it steers it. We can look at these cases that… The reason we’re talking about this is because these cases are now under review is to what really went on in them, what else does the evidence show, and how did that finding come to be? And there were used not just on this particular finding, this is just one of the findings that has raised questions under the tenure of David Fowler.
Taya Graham: Okay, so let’s recap. We have a controversial but very influential medical examiner, a person who thrusts themselves into the spotlight by testifying at the George Floyd trial, and now someone who is facing even more scrutiny from a panel, which is reviewing critical cases. But of course, this is the Land of the Unsolved. And there is another reason we want to talk about Dr. Fowler and the Medical Examiner’s Office, specifically some of the history Stephen, you, and Jayne had with Dr. Fowler long before it hit the spotlight. So Stephen, let me start with you. Can you talk about some of your encounters with Dr. Fowler and why you had, let’s say, some run-ins with him over time?
Stephen Janis: Working as a reporter, I think Jayne can attest to this. Well, actually, I’ve seen this in Jayne more than me and I’ve never seen it so intense in a person, but when you see something anomalous, you start to question it. You know you ask questions, you’re like, why is this? So Maryland, and specifically, Baltimore has a high homicide rate, but also we had these huge number of deaths that were put in that classification that Jayne just talked about, undetermined. I just kind of found it troubling.
When I checked other cities, we had a higher proportion of undetermined death than any other city of the similar size, like in Pittsburgh, and it’s a category, as Jayne said, we’re the medical examiner kind of throws up their hands and says, “We just don’t know.” And then when I probe deeper into it, there were a lot of cases. Some were gunshots, some were strangulations. It was all sorts of stuff that really raised questions, and here’s this big haystack of cases where there’s no determination by the medical examiner. So basically these cases are in sort of a limbo, which is not a good thing, and when that came really to focus for me was when a young woman named Tyra McClary was found with her legs tied in underneath some trash and some leaves.
Taya Graham: She was underneath trash and leaves found in an alley, partially disrobed with a trash bag tied around her ankles. This was a case that Dr. Fowler ruled was undetermined, as well as there was some evidence of possible strangulation.
Stephen Janis: That’s what really caught my attention, because in the autopsy, the medical examiner working for Dr. Fowler, who’d written, “Well, we can’t rule it out because there was a hemorrhage of the thyroid gland, there was a hemorrhage of one other gland…” Parietal, right. So they said, “You can’t rule out asphyxiation.” And I just thought to myself, how many cases are there like this? So I started probing into it, but of course, I ran into a lot of resistance because the Medical Examiner’s Office wouldn’t share with me, for example, the location of autopsies. So I couldn’t really track deaths. It was very hard to get an autopsy. I had to pay for it. My employer didn’t want to pay for a lot of autopsies. It was funny because at the time, I didn’t know Jayne, but the only other reporter who had reported on undetermined deaths that I could find in Baltimore was Jayne.
So he would come out with his Afrikaner accent and he would say, “These are mostly just drug addicts. It would be intellectually dishonest to say I knew exactly what happened because I don’t know how the drugs got into a person’s system.” Someone could have given them what’s known as a hotshot. So I’m not going to rule, I’m going to leave it open, even though the tradition was, throughout the country, was to actually say, “Hey, these are accidents because no one wants to die from doing drugs, and we’ll figure it out.”
Taya Graham: It seems like there was an unusually high number of undetermined deaths being found in Dr. Fowler’s office. Is it unusual to have so many, and what would be the motive behind finding these deaths as undetermined?
Stephen Janis: Yeah, I did a comparison with other cities across the country and it, Maryland and particularly Baltimore was huge. Baltimore would have 300 to 400 undetermined deaths a year during the year as reporting. So I developed a little bit of a theory, which I feel I can discuss here, which was that, the homicide rate in Baltimore is highly political, as Jayne can attest to many politicians, including the mayor then, Martin O’Malley, had based their reputation on reducing the homicide rate.
To me, looking at the case of Tyra McClary, in other cases, it was like Fowler had created this haystack into which to throw a couple needles. If you could shave a couple homicides off here and there, it was worth creating this big gray area of undetermined land, in which certain cases that were on the borderline could be shoved into undetermined. One famous one that both Jayne and I worked on was Ray Rivera, who was the subject of a Netflix series, the Unsolved Mysteries Season one. A man who supposedly jumped off the building at the Belvedere. But again, Fowler ruled it undetermined, leading to a lot of speculation.
Jayne Miller: And it sits there.
Stephen Janis: It sits there. And you know, Jayne, and you can talk about this, it not only sits there, but because it’s undetermined, it’s kind of open.
Jayne Miller: Undetermined open, right. You mean, the public information request is going to get denied. So yeah, there’s no ability to really go after the paper trail in the case, et cetera. That’s what it does. It just puts the case in limbo.
Stephen Janis: One thing people don’t understand behind the scenes in the Baltimore homicide unit, they’re working very hard to massage the stats, and these become, it’s not questionable, it’s pending. So any undetermined case where they found a body and their explanation goes into a pending file. If Fowler rules it undetermined, it stays in the pending file. Unless he rules it a homicide, it stays there and it doesn’t get added into the stats, even if they find a bullet written body, which I’m not saying has happened, but it creates a nice little buffer, I think.
Jayne Miller: Well, and these… We can get back to the issue that at hand here, which are specifically the police in custody deaths. When you rule them undetermined, the case that I covered just a year ago, et cetera, they just kind of go away. Nothing happens.
Taya Graham: I wanted to ask, because you’re mentioning the undetermined deaths, and I just have to go back to the Derek Chauvin trial for the death of George Floyd. Because Dr. Fowler asserted that George Floyd deaths should be ruled undetermined rather than a homicide and that prompted 431 doctors across the country to sign a letter questioning Fowler’s credibility and disputing his analysis. So fortunately, there’s going to be an audit to review at least a hundred of his autopsies. But Stephen, you were there with me as we watch Dr. Fowler speak to the nation and testify in this trial. Why don’t you share what we were both shocked by?
Stephen Janis: Well, it was a surreal moment because, for my whole life, I had been writing about the problems in the Medical Examiner’s Office and had gotten a lot of heat for it, to be honest with you, and kind of like you’re a crazy reporter. We had gone through the situation with Anton Black, the medical examiner’s office spokesperson tried to get us fired from a free gig because he didn’t like our reporting.
Taya Graham: It’s true. They called up our editors and tried to get us fired.
Stephen Janis: A friend of mine at the ACU said, “You know, Fowler’s testifying in the Chauvin case.” And I’m like the George Floyd case? I’m like, no, that can’t be true. I don’t believe it. But I never thought that he would go on national television in a case like this, and literally, to me, tell on himself in terms of…
Taya Graham: He’s the star witness for the defense.
Stephen Janis: I know.
Taya Graham: Now show his defense.
Stephen Janis: Come on. When you saw that, you must have been like, oh my God.
Taya Graham: Sure. Right. But I’m saying he was the star witness.
Stephen Janis: I know. As I was sitting there and he starts leading towards this undetermined conclusion, my jaw just dropped 10 floors.
Taya Graham: And part of that undetermined conclusion, if I remember correctly, was he was saying that it wasn’t the knee to the neck and the two other officers kneeling on George Floyd that contributed to his death, but it was actually the exhaust coming from the police car along with an underlying heart condition that perhaps caused the death. But because he could not say for sure, it had to be ruled undetermined. Jayne, what was your reaction?
Jayne Miller:
Well, first of all, everybody who was seeing the testimony of Fowler in the Chauvin trial, and to hear his explanation was like, “What?” And then this comes during defense testimony. So there’s already been extensive testimony on the State’s direct case from the coroner who did the autopsy, et cetera, and his cause of death and all of those factors. I can tell you that from the minute that the video of George Floyd being restrained on the pavement by those police officers became public, a very good police buddy of mine called me and said, “That is positional asphyxia. You never put somebody on their stomach like that.” And for a veteran forensic examiner coroner to testify under oath about his interpretation in the Chauvin case, I don’t think we should be surprised at what happened is that hundreds of medical examiners wrote a letter saying his work needs to be reviewed.
Stephen Janis: But I think the question is, Jayne, why? You and I reported about it, but he never really, even with cases that were controversial, for example, a young man named Tyrone West who died in police custody in 2013 and had become… Tawanda Jones had protesting for years. But there had been controversial cases, but Fowler never really rose to become a topic politically related.
Taya Graham: No, and not even in a reporting topic. There are only a few of us that were reporting on…
Stephen Janis: Absolutely.
Taya Graham: Cases that involved some of these rulings. Hey, look, he ruled in the Freddie Gray case. That was a homicide.
Stephen Janis: But he never really rose to the…
Jayne Miller: He did not testify in that case, but it was his office that ruled it a homicide.
Stephen Janis: But it never seemed like… It seemed like pretty much… What’s interesting about that position while we’re talking about today and talking about Fowler in particular, is that it’s an office that didn’t really come under scrutiny, no matter how controversial the rulings were, and particularly, we were talking about the Anton Black case, who was a young 19-year-old African-American male on the eastern shore, who was accosted by police, ran home, and then they laid on top of him during arrest, and again, Fowler was…
Taya Graham: And also, I’m sorry to interrupt, but I believe they also put him in a chokehold as well.
Stephen Janis: Yes.
Taya Graham: While laying on top of him.
Stephen Janis: So it looked like a classic case of situation, but when Fowler ruled it an accident and all the media picked it up uncritically and said, this is an accident. I think the reason we’re talking about this is because it really took a national spotlight to have anybody question Fowler, which is where we are today, which is, we have a hundred cases basically at this point, roughly a hundred cases changed.
Jayne Miller: Right, and we don’t know what they are.
Stephen Janis: After this letter was written, the state came up with a list, actually, the medical examiner’s office of 1300 cases in police involved deaths, and that was sent to this panel. And now they’ve whittled it down to about a hundred cases, all of which include, or at least some include excited delirium, correct?
Jayne Miller: One would assume.
Stephen Janis: One would assume.
Jayne Miller: That would be exactly right. One would assume.
Stephen Janis: As Jayne points out, we don’t know which specific cases they have not released the lists. But yes, that would be it. But just to say, I think what’s extraordinary to me as a reporter is that Fowler didn’t receive any real attention until he went on national television.
Jayne Miller: And testified in that case. That is correct, and that now is causing this reflection on the work that he did over two decades. It’s an interesting kind of where we are. So now we have a hundred cases that are going to get extra scrutiny, then what? Are we going to reverse rulings? What are we going to do? I may have a whole bevy of investigations that have to start, because I can tell you the case that I did worked on. Nothing’s happened on the case.`
Taya Graham: Well, Jayne, like you said, we don’t know what’s going to happen and in the case of Anton Black’s family, they filed a lawsuit against several of the police officers and Eastern shore municipalities, and that was settled for 5 million. But what stands out to me is that a portion of the lawsuit alleges misconduct and conspiracy in the Office of the Medical Examiner. They mentioned that 57 autopsies of the people who died in police custody. In this lawsuit, it says, “They determined the death was not a homicide in 88% of the cases, despite the person having either been tasered, pepper sprayed, struck with a baton or placed in prone restraint.” So the allegations of misconduct and conspiracy to commit misconduct is incredibly troubling.
Jayne Miller: Well, the medical examiners in this country and the pathologists in the country who have been so critical of these kinds of rulings. That’s their concern is that it has cover up as a… That’s a very harsh term, but that’s exactly what they allege, is that they’re using some of these rulings that then divert from the attention on the police officer and the action of the police officer, and they stop our thorough investigation in its tracks, and that’s what I’m saying. We now have a hundred cases with the potential to cause full fledged investigations, some of them five, 10, 12 years old.
Stephen Janis: I mean, if you Google Anton Black cause of Death, you’ll see hundreds, dozens of headlines that it was an accident and that really changes the whole tenor of the case. I mean, people just accept it uncritically that it’s a medical examiner who ruled this, so it becomes part of the fabric of the narrative. Also, as James pointed out, just because it’s ruled a homicide, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a crime, right?
Jayne Miller: That’s correct. It can be…
Stephen Janis: Homicide’s just death at the hands of another.
Jayne Miller: Could be justified. That’s correct, and we certainly have had those, obviously. Police officers shoot someone fatally, it’s a homicide. But it’s a justified homicide and I mean, that’s generally the ruling, right?
Stephen Janis: Yes. What’s troubling about that is that these cases, if it was ruled in accident, in Anton’s case, the investigation, if it’s a homicide, at least maybe we had hoped they would do more due diligence of investigating the case if they’re dealing with a homicide, because they have to justify it. Whereas if it’s an accident, or as Jayne has pointed out, the police don’t have to justify their actions in this case. So I don’t think coverup is too harsh a term, but I’m willing to use it. That’s what it seemed to me, that Fowler took his playbook at George Floyd and exposed it to the world and said, here’s how I do this. This is what I do, and it goes back to my early theory. I just saw enough doubt so that we can squeak through on these things.
Jayne Miller: It excuses behavior, that conduct. That’s what happens.
Taya Graham: I just want to emphasize, this issue of excited delirium is not localized just to Baltimore, Maryland, cases of excited delirium, Natasha McKenna died in Virginia in police custody. Daniel Prude died in Rochester in police custody. Elijah McClain died in Colorado in police custody and these were all cases, allegedly, of excited delirium. So this particular pseudoscience is being used to cover up police instances where force was used, and they don’t want to rule it a homicide.
Stephen Janis: I think we have to think about this for a second because, and this is a Land of the Unsolved, and our main primary focus is unsolved murders, because that is a real horrible stain and source of pain and trauma for a community when a case is not closed. But you should think about that you’re talking about bogus science that ends up being determinative in many cases of people who have died primarily through homicide at the hands of another.
How that gets into the system, just like when we talked about ketamine, how ketamine was being used extensively in Colorado, but with no real medical basis. How do you have a system that incorporates junk science as a way to justify a ruling on a death in police custody? Which in some sense is a much more serious case because it’s the government that killed the person, not some crazy criminal. So think about how a system incorporates that, and almost uncritically is able to use it, except for people like, Jayne, who report on it. But really, you were on your own on that too, and how does that happen? That gives you some sense of what kind of system we’re dealing with and some of the problems in terms of reform.
Taya Graham: So I want to thank my guests, Jayne Miller and Stephen Janis. My name is Taya Graham, and thank you for joining me for this episode of The Land of the Unsolved.
Jan. 11, 2023 marks the tenth anniversary of the death of Aaron Swartz. Swartz had a prolific career as a computer programmer: At the age of 12 he created The Info Network, a user-generated encyclopedia widely credited as a precursor to Wikipedia. Swartz’s later work would transform the internet as we know it. He helped co-found Reddit, developed the RSS web feed format, and helped lay the technical foundations of Creative Commons, “a global nonprofit organization that enables sharing and reuse of creativity and knowledge through the provision of free legal tools.” In 2011, Swartz was arrested and indicted on federal charges after downloading a large number of academic articles from the website JSTOR through the MIT network. A year later, prosecutors added an additional nine felony counts against Swartz, ultimately threatening him with a million dollars in fines and up to 35 years in prison. Swartz was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment from suicide on Jan. 11, 2013. TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez speaks with the co-hosts of the Srsly Wrong podcast, Shawn Vuillez and Aaaron Moritz, about the life and legacy of Aaron Swartz.
Pre-Production: James Daley Post-Production: Jules Taylor
TRANSCRIPT
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Maximillian Alvarez: Welcome everyone to the Real News Network podcast. My name is Maximilian Alvarez, I’m the editor in chief here at The Real News, and it’s so great to have you all with us. The Real News is an independent, viewer supported, nonprofit media network. We don’t do ads and we don’t take corporate cash, which is why we need each one of you to support our work so we can keep covering the voices and issues you care about most. So please take a moment and click on the link in the show notes or head on over to therealnews.com/support and become a monthly sustainer of our work, and a huge shout out to all of our members who already contribute. January 11th, 2023 marks the 10 year anniversary of the death of Aaron Swartz. Swartz was a prolific computer programmer, an activist, a prodigy. By the time he was just 12 years old, Swartz created The Info Network, a user generated encyclopedia that is widely credited as a precursor to Wikipedia.
When he was in his teens, he was involved in the founding of the website Reddit. He helped develop the RSS web feed format, and the technical architecture for Creative Commons, a global nonprofit organization that enables sharing and reuse of creativity and knowledge through the provision of free legal tools. Throughout his life, Swartz remained a fierce opponent to the enclosure of knowledge for the sake of profit and control. He was a generation defining advocate for the democratization of information and access to that information, and for the not yet fulfilled promise of the digital age to bring humanity closer than we’ve ever been to realizing that goal. And like so many other whistleblowers and advocates fighting for the public to know what the public has an inalienable right to know, from Chelsea Manning, Daniel Hale, and Reality Winner, to Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, Aaron Swartz was persecuted by our government and vilified by many in the media, all for the crime of downloading too many academic journal articles from the website JSTOR, including many that were in the public domain, from a building on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Refusing to accept a guilty plea bargain, Aaron faced trumped up charges by an Obama led Department of Justice looking to make an example out of him. In July of 2011 he was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of wire fraud, computer fraud, unlawfully obtaining information from a protected computer, and recklessly damaging a protected computer. Then in September the following year, federal prosecutors filed a superseding indictment adding nine additional felony counts, increasing his potential prison time if convicted. And then on January 11th, 2013, Aaron was found dead in his Brooklyn apartment after taking his own life. As the great writer, activist, and friend of Swartz, Corey Doctorow wrote in a blog post the day after Swartz’s death, “Aaron snuck into MIT and planted a laptop in a utility closet, used it to download a lot of journal articles, many in the public domain, and then snuck in and retrieved it. This sort of thing is pretty par for the course around MIT, and though Aaron wasn’t an MIT student, he was a fixture in the Cambridge hacker scene, and associated with Harvard and generally part of the gang.”
“And Aaron hadn’t done anything with the articles yet, so it seemed likely that it would all just fizzle out. Instead, they threw the book at him. Even though MIT and JSTOR, the journal publisher, backed down, the prosecution kept on. I heard lots of theories. The feds who tried unsuccessfully to nail Swartz for the PACER RECAP stunt had a serious hate-on for him. The feds were chasing down all the Cambridge hackers who had any connection to Chelsea Manning in the hopes of turning one of them, and other less credible theories. Aaron had an unbeatable combination of political insight, technical skill, and intelligence about people and issues. I think he could have revolutionized American and worldwide politics. His legacy may still yet do so.” Now I never had the chance to know Aaron personally, but as someone who works in digital media, I’m reminded every single day about the debt that we all owe to Aaron. About how much worse things would be if we weren’t fortunate enough to have him with us for 26 years, however short they were. And I’m reminded of the duty we all have to carry on his fight.
To commemorate the anniversary of Swartz’s death I recorded a special conversation for the Real News Podcast with Shawn Vulliez and Aaron Moritz, the brilliant hosts of the Srsly Wrong podcast, and co-creators of the animated series Papa & Boy on Means TV. Frankly, we didn’t know if it would be right or appropriate to have Aaron, Shawn, and I try to recount Aaron Swartz’s life and to go through beat by beat the federal government’s persecution of Swartz. And if you are looking for that kind of breakdown, I would highly encourage you to check out the documentary which is titled The Internet’s Own Boy, which in characteristic Swartzian fashion, is freely available to watch online.
In this conversation, though, Aaron, Shawn, and I reflect on Swartz’s impact on our own lives and on the world we live in today, and we examine the Gorilla Open Access Manifesto, which was written in 2008, and bears Swartz’s name on the byline. And we hope that this conversation will at least be a worthwhile tribute to Aaron Swartz and the movement that he helped grow. So as always, I want to thank all of you for listening, and thank you for caring. And without further ado, here’s my conversation with Aaron and Shawn from the Srsly Wrong Podcast.
Shawn Vulliez: Hey, I’m Shawn Vulliez, one of the hosts of Srsly Wrong,
Aaron Moritz: And I’m Aaron Moritz. And yeah, thanks for having us on the show, Max.
Maximillian Alvarez: Well, it is really, really great to have you guys on The Real News Network. I’ve been a big, big fan of your work for a number of years. And to anyone listening, if you don’t already listen to the Seriously Wrong podcast, then frankly I envy you because you have a real feast before you. Seasons and seasons worth of incredible podcasting that Aaron and Shawn have done. And I’ve been fortunate enough to be a guest on their show a couple of times, and I think it was through listening to you guys that a lot of the stuff that we’re going to be talking about today, your show more than most others I can think of, has really gotten those juices flowing and percolating in my head over the years. And I know that it’s not only a intimate aim of your work that syncs up with everything that Aaron Swartz stood for, everything that the Gorilla Open Access Manifesto is about, but that you yourselves also have your own sorts of histories with this movement, as it were, this open access, open information movement.
I wanted to just maybe start there before we dig into the manifesto itself and ask if we could go around the table and just… I suppose to honor Aaron on the 10 year anniversary of his tragic death, if we could just say a little bit about how our lives and political and intellectual paths have intersected with Aaron’s and the movement that he was a part of, and just use that as an occasion to help set the table for listeners who may not have known a whole lot about Aaron until now and what he stood for.
Aaron Moritz: Yeah, I feel like the open access movement and the online activism of the late 2000 early 2010 area was one of the things that really got me interested in politics in the first place. Partially just being a teenager and pirating things that I couldn’t afford and feeling like it was wrong for information not to be able to be free, even in the sense of art I was trying to consume as a kid without a lot of money. But then the side of it coming from Wikipedia and access to information and knowledge and the connections to access to information online, to information freedom and the ability of people to think for themselves and learn for themselves without gatekeepers in the way of it was really always inspiring to me.
And reading back about Aaron’s story during the run up to this, it really struck me how many different things I use all the time he contributed to, like Creative Commons music we use on the show all the time. We also pay for licenses to music, but Creative Commons stuff, especially early on, was something we used a lot. And also anyone who listens to any podcasts is using RSS all the time. When you submit your podcast to iTunes or Spotify or whatever, it’s input your RSS feed, and each episode comes out through RSS. So I feel like so much of what we do every day, especially us hosting a podcast, is related to Aaron and his work, and the values expressed in the manifesto are like… Always been very dear to me.
Shawn Vulliez: When I first got involved in politics, when I ascended from being a teenager who didn’t care about politics and thought that politics was a realm of assholes in suits, that was sort of an intractable place of the assholes in suits playing games together in ways that were meaningful to them, but meaningless to me, when I had the kind of transition to becoming a teenager who read Noam Chomsky and started being like, “Oh, holy shit, the news is lying to me,” one of the things that was a paradigm shift for me where I became interested in radical politics was the thought of a paradigm shift around the way we conceive of the internet, rooted in that same kind of stuff around just the abundance of experiencing web piracy as I grew up as someone without any money to spend, and just feeling like it was this incredible… There was a paradigm shift, there was a twist on what was going on.
We were told that copying is stealing, that listening to music is illegal unless you pay for it. But then at the same time, everyone was doing it and it was completely around you all the time. People giving each other burned CDs and stuff like that. And there was this discontinuity there that the information liberation movement, the open access movement, it flicked a switch in my head of holy shit, the internet could be a library. The internet already is a library, except it’s just illegal to contribute to, it’s illegal to take out books from it. Swartz makes this argument really well in an essay he wrote when he was, I think, 17 in 2004, of just making the basic point that copying isn’t theft. When you steal something, there’s one less thing where you stole it from. But copying is distinct because just because you’re listening to music doesn’t mean someone else can’t listen to it. And it’s absurd to talk about lost potential sales as a legally enforceable thing.
And he gives this great example in one of the interviews he gave of… If we’re going to be criminally liable for any sort of lost potential sale, then the list would never end of things that stop sales from happening, and that could include brick and mortar libraries, it could include used bookstores, but it could also just include a friend of yours coming over and you spend the afternoon talking to them and going to see a movie, and it’s like, “Do you owe James Cameron now? He lost a potential ticket sale because you got really in enraptured in a conversation with your friend.” So when I look at the trajectory of Aaron Swartz, and there’s all of these ideas that he talks about at different times, and they resonate with me at different times in my political development, but really my key starting point was the piracy question, the information question, the exact things that he’s most famous for is how I became interested in serious politics for the first time.
And another sense of kinship I feel with him is that he was… As a prodigy and internet kid, he’s going online at 14, interacting with adults in spaces where he got to be treated seriously as an adult and that was part of his development, part of his story, and that resonates so deeply with me, with my experience of being a kid on the internet and the space that the internet gave me to step into the shoes of adulthood, to take the world seriously and be taken seriously. I’ve got a really deep affinity for Aaron Swartz, and knowing his story, there’s so many connections that it’s too many to list.
Maximillian Alvarez: And I mentioned that listening to your guys’ show over the years was one of the ways that… I guess one of those vectors through which I kind of connected late to Aaron Swartz and the open access movement, and I think it caught my ear when, God, I think, yeah, it must have been in Michigan still listening to the show, and I heard Shawn talk about his time in the Pirate Party in Canada. And I wondered, Shawn, if you could just say a little bit about that for folks listening who may not be familiar with it.
Shawn Vulliez: So the Pirate Party is a political party movement. There’s pirate parties in a number of countries around the world, some that they’ve been elected in include Germany, Iceland, in the European Union, started in Sweden, I think, in 2006. And when I became interested in information liberation politics and the piracy question, it turned out that the Pirate Party of Canada had just recently registered to run candidates for election in Canada. And I got involved as one of my early political organizing experiences. And because of, I don’t know… There’s a little bit of a… When you’re talking about stuff you did when you’re a kid, it’s hard to… When you’re talking about stuff that you did when you were a young person, the boundaries between what you’re proud of and what you’re a little embarrassed of kind of blur a bit, but I was elected leader of the Pirate Party when I was 21. I was the youngest party leader in Canada.
I wish I could go back in time and tell myself the things that I know now that could have helped me be a much more effective advocate, but our whole thing was drawing attention to the issue of piracy, access to information, open information in government, giving people access to information that affects their lives, information that affects the way they conceive of government. And that was something I was involved on and off with for a handful of years, maybe four or five. And yeah, definitely really formative political experiences there, and I learned a lot doing that. I think I knew who Aaron Swartz was. I wasn’t super keeping up to date with him. I didn’t know him super well at that time, but the whole sphere, the whole milieu of ideas is so clearly influenced by him, and he’s so clearly influenced by information liberation spaces.
That experience is part of why I feel such a deep affinity for Aaron Swartz, because he also kind of walked this line between… There’s both the anarchistic side to his politics, like the Gorilla Open Access, the smash and grab, anarchistic, let the scientific papers free to the world, open the doors, WikiLeaks kind of stuff. But then there’s also… He had a very pragmatic, political, he was involved in the formation of progressive super PACs, and he talked about the importance of making tiny tweaks to laws, tiny amendments that could make big impacts. And he had both those kind of sides with him. And that really connects with the way that I think of the Pirate Party, is both having these very radical, reframing, outlandish things, but then also pragmatic step-by-step scientific tactics to achieve that end at the same time. But yeah, I think the Pirate Party’s still elected in Iceland with a handful of people, and they’re kicking ass as far as I know.
Maximillian Alvarez: Pirate Party going strong. It was so fascinating to kind of hear more about that because I feel like I missed the boat, at least in terms of being part of that movement, being really, I think, aware of and invested in that movement beyond a surface level. I guess folks who listen to the Real News know my story. I grew up quite conservative in Southern California. There weren’t too many occasions for me to, I suppose, just bump into, I don’t know, folks who were members of the Pirate Party and folks who were, I guess, like y’all really developing a political consciousness as part of your engagement with this movement, or at least with the people and ideas that were involved in it. I feel like I’ve learned a lot about that after the fact, and I feel this nostalgia for a time that I didn’t even get to experience as a member of that movement, or as someone who was thinking really critically about these things when Aaron was still alive. And I regret that.
But in another sense, I think there’s something heartening to the fact that there’s still so many ways that I can see my own interaction with the very things that Aaron was interacting with and prompted a lot of the same thoughts and questions that they prompted in him. I think about the fact that, first of all, I didn’t actually know that Aaron Swartz and I were born in the same year, 1986, and it got me thinking about… There was a kind of viral tweet that went around recently because the famous American broadcaster Barbara Walters just passed away on December 30th. And the person this tweet rightly pointed out that in actual fact, Martin Luther King Jr., Anne Frank, and Barbara Walters were all born in the same year, 1929. But we just have such a hard time grasping those timelines together because Anne Frank and MLK just feel so far in the past, and for that reason, they feel more locked in time, they feel older, but in fact, if they lived in different circumstances, they would’ve been alive as long as Barbara Walters had.
So I’ve been thinking about those parallel timelines of Aaron and I being born in the same year, being in that very particular space that I guess the three of us are all into some degree, of being in that millennial generation that spent a crucial formative decade of our youth in the analog world, and then we’re the first real generation to be sucked into the transition to the digital world. And I think that there’s something peculiar, there is something that makes our generation unique in that sense, and it’s written into the experiences that are common among us. And this is what I meant when I said that even though I wasn’t thinking the same way way that Aaron Swartz was, like you guys mentioned, I still remember my folks coming home with those bulk packs of burnable disks, because the idea that you could download and mix your own CDs, not as arduous as making a mix tape à la High Fidelity and all that stuff.
There was something just so catalytic from that. Everyone was doing it. Everyone was excited by it. It really introduced people to a lot of different kinds of music and ways of remixing that music, so on and so forth. And then at the same time I think we all ran up against the same sort of begrudging frustrations as the backlash inevitably came and the tightening of copyright, the pursuit of piracy online, just the receding of that open access back into what felt like a familiar form, what felt like the digital version of going into a Tower Records, and once again, being feeling like, “Well, I have enough money for one of these albums,” or if that. So just I would say that that was a thought that has been really rattling around in my brain while I’ve been preparing for this conversation. But the other thing I’ll say, and then I’ll shut up is, I think that one of the aspects of Aaron Swartz’s life and work and the movement that he was a part of that really started to sink in for me over the past decade is the way that our sense of self and our sense of individual agency is conditioned by the digital environment in ways that many of us don’t ever see. And that was one of Aaron’s big things, right? It’s like once you learn to see the sort of structures and rules and institutions and code, all these things that condition us to believe that reality is meant to look a certain way and that it is permanently supposed to look that way, naturally supposed to look that way, once you see the cracks in that ideological artifice, there’s really no going back.
And I think that the epiphany that I had when I first left the United States to study abroad, overseas, it was like my first time ever being across the Atlantic. I was very nervous. I was very scared. We did not have the money to be taking trips to Europe when I was a kid. So it was a very new experience to me. And I remember just wanting to walk around everywhere that I was, whether it was Paris or Bristol, England and stuff like that. And I did. And it was great to walk around and explore these places that I’d never been before. And then I realized that I started to walk the same streets while I was there. I started to beat a path as it were, and then I would keep taking that path.
That was the sort of metaphor for how we navigate the digital realm that I think Aaron was really trying to get us to understand is that there’s so much about the digital era and the technologies that we all take for granted now, whether they be our smartphones, our smart TVs, our computers, our web browsers, our social media apps, so on and so forth. It really does give you the sort of feeling, the illusion of individual agency, like the internet is open for you to navigate and find yourself in whatever corridors you choose to go down, the infinity of all human knowledge is at your fingertips, so on and so forth. And yet we all go to the same five websites. We walk a similar beaten path and there are algorithms and a myriad, other digital functions and forms of conditioning that sort of set us in these paths that make us still believe that we’re free, but act as if we are not.
In the same way that I think being in a place and thinking, man, I could walk all over this town and find something new, and yet I don’t. I just keep taking the same bus to work and I take the same route back. It’s like I need the fiction of the access that I’m never going to take advantage of to keep me in place. But what I think Aaron and the Open Access movement really pointed out was like, actually, you don’t have as open access as you think of. You think the rest of the city is there for you to walk, but you never actually go down this alleyway. And if you did, you would find that your path was barred.
Shawn Vulliez: We were kind of sold this vision of a liberatory internet and what’s happened over time, including in the time since Aaron’s passing. On one hand, we have this sort of vision of this open, ultimately accessible internet where everything is at your fingertips, where it’s a participatory world and everyone’s finally empowered. That really is part of the story of the internet. There is incredible potential in the internet, but the Open Access movement is looking to actually actualize those potentialities.
For example, there’s stuff in the public domain that no one’s able to access online, so people don’t have easy access to it. And by definition it’s public domain. It belongs to everyone. It should be something that people have access to. So then you have things like archive.org steps in there to be the change as it were, and try to create a space for the public domain to be made public. But without that political intervention, without the political intervention of Aaron Swartz and other activists, we have an internet that’s increasingly closed off, increasingly monopolized, increasingly run for profit with paywall after paywall, after paywall that takes the complete liberatory potential of the internet and instead turns it into a shopping mall.
Aaron Moritz: Yeah. One of the things I really loved about that early period you were describing, and too, I remember bugging my parents to get me a CD burner because the idea was so wild to me that I could just put any songs I wanted on my own CD and just make it, that shift you were describing, I think I was 13 at the time, is very palpable to me. But one of the things I really loved about the early internet culture, and one of the ways Shawn and I met initially actually was because I was making these little video essays on YouTube and wasn’t really thinking of it as something that would make me money.
So I was using all this copyrighted images, copyrighted footage from TV shows and movies and copyrighted music and feeling like, oh, all these things that have inspired me from the world around me, I can just mix them all together into these little videos I’m making and create something new with them. You can still kind of do that, but there’s a good chance your video will get taken down. It’ll definitely get demonetized and ads put up on it at the very least, but there’s a good chance it would just be taken off the website completely for using copyrighted stuff. So there’s been this real limiting in how you can remix and reuse creative works online. That’s really, it’s felt like a decrease in the available freedom between now and 10 years ago when I was doing those YouTube videos.
Shawn Vulliez: Yeah. There was a feeling you could just do anything back then in the Napster days and still the sites exist. And actually, I think in some ways the Open Access movement has had some of the biggest successes in the last 10 years. Things like Sci-Hub, Z-Lib, Rest in Peace, LibGen, there’s a number of online libraries that have just been completely awesome, completely in the spirit of this stuff. But at the same time, there is this sort of closing in these walled gardens, the Netflixes, the Spotifys, the things that use the copyright system and all the right ways. And unlike you, nasty, dirty pirates, we’ll give artists one penny for every 10 million downloads they get because we’re not thieves like you dirty, dirty pirates. There’s definitely been a shift over time and talking about the era of CD burners really makes me nostalgic. I wish I could share that feeling with some younger people who maybe never had that era.
Maximillian Alvarez: Yeah. I mean, I’m feeling quite nostalgic about it too, for more reasons than one. I mean, I think that obviously it was still a moment where it felt legitimately open what the future of the internet was going to be and what the future was going to be with the internet in it. And I don’t know, I just don’t feel that anymore. I feel like, again, the sort of forces of control and formalization and surveillance and profit extraction and the enclosure of knowledge, the sort of domination of certain tech giants, whether they be Google or Facebook or something like that, it just feels like as we have progressed down that historical path, my sense of the open potentiality of the future in the digital era feels way less exhilarating, feels way less open as it were.
And I don’t know, I may be wrong, but that is certainly a distinctively different feeling that I have now compared to the one that I had in, say, the late ’90s and early ’00s, just as an average millennial user of this newfangled thing called the internet. But just by way of getting us to the manifesto itself, we’ll kind of round out by doing a bit of a close reading of that. But I think maybe to make the metaphor a bit stronger, maybe if I can try to salvage this a bit, do you guys remember the movie with Jim Carrey, The Truman Show?
Aaron Moritz: Yeah. Yeah, I love that.
Shawn Vulliez: Absolutely. Great film.
Maximillian Alvarez: We should do an episode about that someday, because I really liked that movie and I don’t think I realized how much I liked it when I first watched it. But I think that’s a perfect example. I mean, one of the creepiest things about that movie, I guess for anyone who hasn’t seen it, it’s this kind of psychological satire movie where Jim Carrey is the first human being to be essentially owned by a corporation. And this god-like director, producer, decides to build an entire world to make a show out of this man Truman, this boy Truman’s life. And so everything in his life is filmed, everyone but him is an actor. Everything is filmed in this giant indoor microcosm where Truman lives his life. And it’s not until, I don’t know, his late 20s, early 30s where he starts to realize that something’s wrong and starts to yearn to escape.
But what always struck me as a kid watching that and as an adolescent watching that was like, man, he went that long in his life without realizing that something was off. That’s what I’m talking about, right? Because you can create this sort of world that is in fact very enclosed like the world in The Truman Show is, but if you are able to maintain the fiction of openness, if you are able to keep the viability of the dream of exploring someday or someone else could explore if they wanted to, even if I’m not doing that now, even if I’m just going through the same routine, that’s all you need to maintain that system. And that’s what happens in The Truman Show. And that’s like what I think the sort of dissolution, the gradual fading away of the techno utopianism of Web 1.0, right? It started to become clear to me as like, okay, maybe when we talk about the internet as opening all of human knowledge to us and putting it at our fingertips, is that knowledge actually accessible? What do we do with it? Who has access to it?
And that’s where I think we really get into the meat and potatoes of Aaron Swartz and the Guerilla Open Access Manifesto. We’re going to link to it in the show notes for this episode, but I’m sure many folks are familiar with the kind of contents of this manifesto. Or if you’re not, you’re going to at least be familiar with the target of the manifesto. And this is the last thing I’ll say by way of prefacing my connection to Swartz and the manifesto is like, this is something anyone who’s ever spent time on a university campus has experienced, right? Because you go there and through your library access, you now have access to these vast archives that have aggregated all academic journals, academic monographs. I mean, one of the great digitalization projects was Google Books going to libraries and scanning a billion of them. And yet whenever anyone searches for it, you can only see one or two pages of that book. So you know it’s there, but it’s like who gets to actually see it?
And that’s how it feels when you go trying to do academic research is like you begin to realize how weird it is that all of this knowledge that has been produced, not just recently but in human history, but if you’re talking about recent scholarship, the vast bulk of it, which has been subsidized by public funds for public universities, is now captured and enclosed by for-profit academic journals hidden behind these aggregator archives like JSTOR that are only accessible to people who are paying a lifetimes’ worth of debt in the form of tuition to get access to. There’s something fundamentally fucked up about that. And that is in fact what Aaron Swartz felt. That is why at MIT, he downloaded so many files from the JSTOR archives and that inevitably led to the tragic circumstances and string of events that ultimately led the US government to try to make an example out of him and drive him to taking his own life.
But I don’t know, it can just seem both so incredibly huge when you think about what he was fighting for. And it can also seem just incredibly, not mundane, but when people hear it, that it’s like, “Wait, Aaron Swartz died because of JSTOR? How the fuck did that happen? These are academic journals?” There does seem to still be some sort of, I think, cognitive dissonance for people in wrapping their heads around why this was such a commitment for Aaron and for other folks who were part of that movement, and also why the government saw such a threat in what he and others were doing in relationship to JSTOR.
So with that in mind, we’re going to kind of take a page from the Srsly Wrong Podcast, which again, everyone should listen to. Aaron and Shawn not only do great analysis and interviews, but they do incredibly fun and well-produced skits and dramatic readings. So I thought, why don’t we actually read this manifesto because it’s short enough for us to read it, really put people in the mind frame of Aaron Swartz and the co-authors that also helped produce this. Aaron’s name is the one that is on the byline of this manifesto, but others contributed to it. And it was in fact because Aaron’s name was on the manifesto, that the federal government felt justified in saying that they knew exactly what Aaron intended to do with all the files that he downloaded from JSTOR, from the MIT library. And so with that in mind, Aaron, Shawn and I are going to do a dramatic reading of this manifest for you guys…
Shawn Vulliez (reading Aaron Swartz’s manifesto): Information is power. But like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. The world’s entire scientific and cultural heritage, published over centuries in books and journals, is increasingly being digitized and locked up by a handful of private corporations. Want to read the papers featuring the most famous results of the sciences? You’ll need to send enormous amounts to publishers like Reed Elsevier.
Maximillian Alvarez (reading Aaron Swartz’s manifesto): There are those struggling to change this. The Open Access Movement has fought valiantly to ensure that scientists do not sign their copyrights away but instead ensure their work is published on the Internet, under terms that allow anyone to access it. But even under the best scenarios, their work will only apply to things published in the future. Everything up until now will have been lost.
Aaron Moritz (reading Aaron Swartz’s manifesto): That is too high of a price to pay. Forcing academics to pay money to read the work of their colleagues? Scanning entire libraries but only allowing the folks at Google to read them? Providing scientific articles to those at elite universities in the First World, but not to children in the Global South? It’s outrageous and unacceptable.
Shawn Vulliez (reading Aaron Swartz’s manifesto): “I agree,” many say, “but what can we do? The companies hold the copyrights, they make enormous amounts of money by charging for access, and it’s perfectly legal, there’s nothing we can do to stop them.” But there is something we can, something that’s already being done: we can fight back.
Maximillian Alvarez (reading Aaron Swartz’s manifesto): Those with access to these resources, students, librarians, scientists, you have been given a privilege. You get to feed at this banquet of knowledge while the rest of the world is locked out. But you need not, indeed, morally, you cannot, keep this privilege for yourselves. You have a duty to share it with the world. And you have: trading passwords with colleagues, filling download requests for friends.
Aaron Moritz (reading Aaron Swartz’s manifesto): Meanwhile, those who have been locked out are not standing idly by. You have been sneaking through holes and climbing over fences, liberating the information locked up by publishers and sharing them with your friends.
Shawn Vulliez (reading Aaron Swartz’s manifesto): But all of this action goes on in the dark, hidden underground. It’s called stealing or piracy, as if sharing a wealth of knowledge were the moral equivalent of plundering a ship and murdering its crew. But sharing isn’t immoral, it’s a moral imperative. Only those blinded by greed would refuse to let a friend make a copy.
Maximillian Alvarez (reading Aaron Swartz’s manifesto): Large corporations, of course, are blinded by greed. The laws under which they operate require it. Their shareholders would revolt at anything less. And the politicians they have bought off back them, passing laws giving them the exclusive power to decide who can make copies.
Aaron Moritz (reading Aaron Swartz’s manifesto): There is no justice in following unjust laws. It’s time to come into the light and, in the grand tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to this private theft of public culture.
Shawn Vulliez (reading Aaron Swartz’s manifesto): We need to take information, wherever it is stored, make our copies and share them with the world. We need to take stuff that is out of copyright and add it to the archive. We need to buy secret databases and put them on the Web. We need to download scientific journals and upload them to file sharing networks. We need to fight for Guerilla Open Access.
Maximillian Alvarez (reading Aaron Swartz’s manifesto): With enough of us, around the world, we’ll not just send a strong message opposing the privatization of knowledge, we’ll make it a thing of the past. Will you join us?
Shawn Vulliez: Aaron Swartz is right about information and history has only proven him more right. The Guerilla Open Access Manifesto is like 110% right. The only critique I have is that he didn’t read Marcus Rediker on pirates. They didn’t actually plunder and kill crews historically. But that’s a really minor point. The whole thing is on fucking point and more relevant than ever. It gets more relevant with every passing year. It’s absolutely knockout true. And when I think about the shape of my political development and the access to illicit streams of information, legal online libraries, which I used to access books that I wanted to read, I wouldn’t be the person I am today if it weren’t for the civil disobedience of people who break those copyrights.
And so I owe a debt. I owe a lifetime development. I am who I am today because of this civil disobedience. I wouldn’t be the person I am without it. And it’s something I get really passionate about because there are people… It talks about, okay, people at Google can read whatever book they want, and then there are people at universities in the developing world who can access whatever they want. Their schools don’t have the subscriptions to the publishers. We’re talking about a legacy of information that goes back to the enlightenment. Hundreds of years of scientific articles, hundreds of years of studies and information that can help people to better understand the world, to create their own experiments, to participate in public science, to participate in public technology, to develop the world in a better direction through shared knowledge. It’s being shut down for profit, for a small group of people who don’t even create the knowledge, that have no reasonable claim to the knowledge because it’s an enormous industry.
And out of all the things in the world, why is the government trying to make an example of the person who stands up to this of all things? We’re talking about someone who’s involved in a variety of political actions. We’re talking about a political milieu, which has a variety of political actions, some more legal than others. But for some reason, Aaron Swartz downloading articles from JSTOR, he gets the book thrown at him. They charge him with things that are unreasonable. There’s no argument to say that he’s committing two counts of wire fraud. There’s no argument to say that he is violating computer espionage laws. Even if you look at this article and what it says, what this manifesto says, and you take it at its word that this is his exact motivation for doing what he’s doing. He’s talking about breaking copyright law. He’s talking about violating the terms of service of JSTOR. Fair enough. Civil disobedience, he violated the terms of JSTOR well, maybe there should be a proportionate response to that and he can serve time or he can be criminally punished, however, proportionally to what he’s actually done. And then there can be a public discussion in public politically. We can talk about the values of it. That’s how civil disobedience works. But instead, the secret police of the United States surveilled him creating 1500 pages of documents about his movement, about his politics, about his connections. They opened up his computers.
They looked at all of his private communications, including with his lover, and they threatened and humiliate him with it to the point where it compounded with invisible disabilities. He had been struggling with his whole life, autoimmune issues and depression. And he tragically took his own life because they wanted to use him as an example because he was arguing politically something correct, that people 100s of years from now are going to read aloud and say, he was right. He’s talking about the future of politics. He’s talking about the future of information society. And he was made a martyr for it. And it’s absolutely disgusting. The government killed him. That’s what his dad said. And his dad is right. The government killed him because these ideas about information are too true for the secret police’s mind. The literal secret police fucking tracked him. They threatened him.
They opened up all his communications. They charged him with things that were totally disproportionate to what he was doing, and they hounded him into suicide because of these ideas. And it’s not because these ideas are so ineffectual, they’re so irrelevant. It’s because these ideas are the most impactful, most relevant ideas of our political generation. Things that deserve to be shouted from the rooftops that everyone should actively participate in, that everyone should actively underline and integrate as core of their politics. And I don’t care what other political trajectories you come on, what you’re interested in, integrate this into your politics. This is the politics of the digital age. Aaron Swartz was right. He was fucking right. You read his other political blogs. He’s right about most stuff he says. He’s a very right guy. And it is extremely, extremely tragic that we haven’t had 10 years of his work behind us. The last 10 years missing out on Aaron Swartz.
That’s part of the reason why we don’t have the utopianism of the internet anymore. People have this sense of the internet is not a utopian place anymore, is because they fucking killed the Aaron Swartz. Political leaders who are prosecuted and chased down and humiliated because of their impact, shape the trajectory of how people think about the internet. And this is a little bit of a tangent, but I think another reason why the utopianism of the internet has kind of faded over the last however many years is because of Bitcoin, taking all the energy out of the room, both literally and figuratively. Bitcoin became this sort of utopian project of the internet, even though it fundamentally never made sense. And it was a money-making grift. And that’s part of the reason why we don’t see the internet as a utopian place anymore.
I think the loss of Aaron Swartz is another part of that reason. And what we need I think, is to integrate these into our politics actively and to make sure that we facilitate and help grow and develop the next generation of truth tellers. The next generation of people like Aaron Swartz, who can see through the bullshit of society and have moral clarity on issues that are dominated by rapacious profit-seeking. And the way that we do that is by valuing the voices of youth. Aaron Swartz became who he was because he was a youth on the internet. On the internet, no one knows you’re a dog. He was taken seriously. He deserved to be taken seriously. As we de-anonymize the internet, we risk losing that, if we devalue the voices of young people, we risk losing that. We need their clarity. We need their voices. We need to work together. We need to integrate this as not just part of our politics, but core to our politics. That information belongs to everyone. The legacy of human knowledge belongs to everyone. It doesn’t belong to a small group of publishers and Aaron Swartz was right.
Maximillian Alvarez: Man, preach, brother. I think that was beautifully put. And honestly, this is another reason why I thought having you both on, granted, I was being a little bit selfish because as I afore mentioned, there are parts of this story, Aaron’s story, the movement that he was a part of, the movement that he was an integral part of that, that I still feel like an outsider looking in about. But I think that actually I mentioned, Dear Real News listeners, that I have been on Aaron and Shawn’s show Seriously Wrong before. The first time that we collaborated was for a big crossover episode between Seriously Wrong and my show Working People on the Winnipeg General strike of 1919 to date the largest strike in Canada’s history. And we did a deep dive into the history of that. We did some fun skits, but we recorded for a long time really trying to unpack the ins and outs of that historic strike that happened over a century ago in Winnipeg.
And one of the things that I recall us talking about in the beginning of that episode was the fact that just in doing the research about the Winnipeg General strike, there is about, I’m trying to recall because I feel like this archival discovery was made around the 1980s, if I recall correctly. So there was over 50 years in 20th century history where essentially no one knew how involved this infamous collection of the local bourgeois Z in Winnipeg at the time, right? They called themselves, it’s like the Council of a 100 or something like that. They called themselves the Citizens Committee of 1000. And it truly was a handful of mustache twirling top hat wearing rich people essentially meeting in secret and talking about how they were going to conspire to crush the strike. Even going beyond the bounds of the law or even forcing the government to essentially deputize this local bourgeois Z to exceed the limits of legal recourse into essentially take control of the local governance for the explicit purpose of squashing this general worker’s strike.
And it was in the trials that were held after the strike was over, that a judge essentially granted the request from the members of the Citizens Committee 1000 to have their records permanently sealed. And the judge granted that request. And so again, entire books of history were written about the Winnipeg General Strike, documentaries were made about the Winnipeg General Strike, with no access to those communications of the people who were most integrally involved in breaking the strike. And it wasn’t until a random sociologists just happened to be in a certain archive and got access to those files that suddenly the history of this momentous event in Canadian history and labor history in general became a lot clearer. And we talked about how fucked up it was that what the judge essentially did that day, what the ruling class serving establishments that we entrust with maintaining and upholding the order of our society for ostensibly just and righteous reasons.
What this judge did was denying the people their ability to know their own history and just how sinister that is. And now magnify that by truly incalculable amounts because that is what is Aaron Swartz saw in the system that we’re talking about. That’s what we read in the Gorilla Open Access Manifesto, is that you have this incredible wealth of human knowledge, not just recent scholarship that’s been produced since the Internet’s been around, but everything before that that has been digitized, all of that has made accessible in that it can be accessed, but then that access is dramatically cut and dramatically cinched. Rebecca Gibbon and Cory Doctorow, I had the honor of interviewing them here in Baltimore a couple months ago about their incredible new book, Choke Point Capitalism. But that’s the image I think of. And in fact, they talk a lot about academic publishing as an example of Choke Point Capitalism because it’s like all that knowledge is there.
And again, a lot of it has either already been produced for the public domain or it has been publicly subsidized in some way. And there are people who have devoted their entire lives of researching these things, writing these papers. And then at the very point that they’re ready to share it with the world, they’re supposed to just give up all rights to it, hand them over to bloodsucking institutions like Taylor and Francis Academic Publishers who then just choke point that thing. They grip it like a hand squeezing the neck because they are not producing any value, they’re not producing the research. They are literally just at the choke point where the producers of that knowledge and the people who want to access it meet. They are just the vampiric middlemen squeezing as much value out of something that they offer no value to. And that is a crime, especially when you think about what the example I just gave, how consequential this is in that documentary I mentioned in the introduction. Which everyone should go read for a fuller accounting of Aaron’s life and the trial and all of that.
It’s called The Internet’s Own Boy. And thank you to Shawn for actually reminding me about that documentary. But I just mentioned Cory Doctorow. Cory has a great example at the end of that documentary where he says, there was a kid here in Baltimore who ended up becoming, basically making the discovery that would allow us to detect pancreatic cancer sooner because he had access to the kind of medical journals that he was able to just fart around and look around through and eventually hit on an idea that saved countless lives. We can’t predict what the effects of opening that access would be, but what we do know is we live in a world of very curtailed access and that limits the capacities of what we as people can do and what we as people can even know about ourselves and our own history. And I believe that is as much of a crime as Aaron said it was.
Shawn Vulliez: It is a question of what type of society do we want to live in? Do we want to live in a society where people waste their lives doing drudgery and toil things that they would never be interested in doing if it weren’t necessary to make their living? Or do we want to live in a society where people are actively involved? Everyone is actively involved in the curation and re-curation of information, the interpretation of our shared history, the interpretation of science. Another great example of an every man layman contributing greatly to progress of our understanding of our history and science is there’s this recent example from the UK where there was a guy who works in furniture, he works at, I can’t remember his specific job. He works in the furniture industry and he took it on himself to try to understand the meaning of Neanderthal cave paintings and determined that these little dots that they were drawing near the animals on these famous cave paintings actually represented lunar cycles or reproductive cycles of the animals.
And he passed that on to experts in the field who took them seriously, even though he’s a layman. Because of his access to information, he was able to formulate this hypothesis, pass it on to people in the field who thankfully took him seriously and then were able to prove that he was correct. And there’s numerous examples of everyday people participating in history, participating in science, and by giving the basis of the hypothesis is the information, the shared information, it’s usually funded publicly. There’s all these different various reasons to argue that these things are public knowledge or should be public knowledge. And then from having access to that information, they’re able to contribute greatly. And you just think about the scale of an entire planet full of people, full of thinking minds. I’m also reminded of the Stephen J. Gould quote about, I don’t care about the weight of Einstein’s brain only that there’s similar brain powers and sweatshops and factories, et cetera.
When you’re talking about, there’s brilliant, brilliant people all over the world who have no access to the legacy of human scientific knowledge. So we’re missing out on all of the things that they would have to contribute if they had the basis to form their own hypotheses, the basis to participate in their own things. So on one hand, going on [inaudible 00:57:21] Hub and being able to look up something I want without having to bother one of my friends with institutional access to get them to download it for me, that’s incredible. But what it also represents in the world stage, if we can step out of where we are in the world and look at the overall context, we’ve got a world where the vast majority of knowledge is pay walled and held off to people who are essentially a global financial elite. People who go to the biggest universities in the world, and there are billions of people who have things to contribute that are locked out.
And so I think the question is, the information question is really fundamental and it’s a question of what type of society do we want to live in? How do we want to value and encourage people to participate actively in the co-development of knowledge, which is where all knowledge comes from, all knowledge advancement comes from. So the more people that we can bring into the system of thinking through these things together and having access to the information that’s required to make sense of it all, the potential for social scientific technological progress that’s unlocked for that, that is incredible. And that still remains to be the libratory potentiality of the internet, which is still with us. The flame is still lit, they’re still numerous information clearing houses on the internet where you can find illicit libraries. And I think if we ever lost them, it would be a profound tragedy. It’s hard to overstate what a profound tragedy that would be, when you’re talking about shutting out billions of people from human scientific knowledge, historical knowledge and so on.
Aaron Moritz: I also just want to tie the open access of information to the open access of resources in general. We’re talking a lot about how much people could contribute if not for being held back by these vampiric corporations who insert themselves as middle men in the access to human knowledge and in the realm of human knowledge, and with the internet, their role in this situation is more clear than any other part of the human endeavor of having a society where we interact and take care of one another because you can copy things for almost free technically, and you have to invent these paywalls to put up in between things.
Whereas with physical items, it works a little bit differently, but a lot of the principles are the same where you have people spending their days working to produce useful items for people, whether that’s food, shelter, clothing, healthcare, et cetera. And then you have these corporate boards and corporations, profit-seeking entities that insert themselves as middlemen, taking the profit from the sales of these items that they didn’t produce themselves, that they paid workers to produce for them, inserting themselves as the people who get the vast majority of the benefit, while limiting the access to these vital things that we all need, our physical needs.
Through this process of corporate profit seeking and just having access to information for all people would greatly accelerate the amount of progress and the amount of good ideas and innovation that we could have as a species, providing everybody with all of the basic things that they need to live would do the same thing on a much greater scale. I’m just thinking about the history of it and when I first got into piracy and information, open access and seeing those kind of things, I didn’t identify as a socialist or a communist or anything like that.
But I think over time seeing the same principles, applying the same ways in which the output of human creativity and human labor was being instrumentalized for the benefit of a very small amount of people, really just led me directly from this type of political awareness about open access to information, to thinking about open access of the entire common heritage of human people, that all human resources, all of the planet’s resources should be commonly held property used for the benefit of all people and not just for the benefit of a small group of people and also the ways that they’re erecting these artificial barriers in the information space have started to move into the real world space of physical objects as well.
With so many things now, having computer chips in them, you have things like ventilators or tractors or these really physical mechanical objects that are being locked behind DRM codes where your machine is perfectly fine, but you don’t have the intellectual property rights to run your ventilator. So sorry, we can’t repair this one. We don’t have the rights to do it. They’re bringing these artificial barriers into the real world to be able to monetize even more and to limit access to things people need for their own profit. Even more so, even if you see the information access thing as not the biggest deal compared to some of those more vital human needs, the two issues are really deeply interlinked and becoming more interlinked as the digital is making its way into so much of the analog world.
Shawn Vulliez: Another great example of that, interlinked-ness. I think a lot of the absurdities of intellectual property are more apparent for the reasons that Aaron mentioned, but it’s also a lot of these absurdities apply just to private property, full stop. And an example of one of these overlaps is we were recently researching the history of libraries and the history of the written word for an upcoming episode of our show. And one of the things that I found in research about ancient libraries when reading about the origin of libraries is that the premiere ancient library experts in the world don’t have access to all the information that humans as a whole have on ancient libraries. Because there was this treasure hunting, there was this phase of history where there was this big boom of treasure hunting. So untrained people who didn’t know anything about history were doing all these basically, I guess tasteless, I’m trying to think of the best term for it.
These just like scoop and grab all the historic artifacts you can. Put them away in archives, sell them to rich guys. There was like this gold rush boom for historic artifacts. And so people as a whole in private containers owned mostly by the rich. We have huge amounts of our human legacy. These are fundamental questions. Where did writing come from? Is a question that we haven’t fully answered. What were the reasons for early libraries? Why did the leaders of the ancient world value libraries so much? What was the philosophy behind that? These are questions that we don’t have full answers to because private treasure hunters did tasteless expeditions to smash and grab as much as they could and sell it to the rich, and they’re sitting un-analyzed in archives as investment commodities right now. So that is another example of this intersection between information, private property, intellectual property, and our shared legacy as a species.
These are fundamental questions. I would love nothing more than to know more than humanity does about ancient libraries. For my research, I reached the limit. It’s like, this is what we know, this is what the best experts in ancient libraries in the world don’t know. And it’s because we don’t have all the documents. We don’t have all the surviving clay tablet records. Things have been removed from their context where if all these objects had been together at the same time using our expertise brains from all of our studying, we could figure out how they relate to each other. But that was all taken away by, again, the rapacious search of prophet and a tasteless exploitation of our common heritage.
Maximillian Alvarez: Yeah, I think that’s beautifully put. The example that I always think of is all the Maya codices that were deliberately destroyed by the Spanish conquistadores because they were viewed as un-Christian, this savage knowledge, just like vast, vast stores of knowledge from people in Mesoamerica that had been accrued over centuries just suddenly smashed. And the only reason we know about them is because this famous, or infamous, I believe he was a bishop from Spain, basically wrote his own version of them and preserved some form of them. But it’s just so much of what we know about our past is contingent on things like that, like you both were just sort of saying. We either know a shockingly small amount about our own past because the records and the people have been destroyed for greed, for conquest and domination, or just unfortunate historical accidents like a library burning down.
But I mentioned that just by way of kind of rounding us out, because I know I got to let you guys go, but I think that’s a really important point to note both kind of connecting us to the legacy of Aaron Swartz and also thinking about what that legacy looks like for all of us who are fighting the good fight wherever we are, however we can, in the year of our Lord 2023, as we continue down the gullet of what I think is shaping up to be a pretty horrifying century. There is so much absurdity that results from the efforts to preserve those mechanisms for protecting private property, for prioritizing the needs of profit seeking, rent seeking enterprises.
In a past life, I was a media historian. That was the through line of my academic work. And I remember reading about just the cluster fuck it caused when Xerox technology was made kind of widely available because publishers were freaking out about people being able to copy their books and pass them on to people. Or there’s always been concerns about the “secondary market” of used books because once that initial sale is made, any revenue that comes in isn’t going to the publishers. And so I would encourage folks, I’m not going to go through it all here, but I would encourage folks to look at examples that, read up on that, because then you’ll start to see how the things we take for granted, the systems we take for granted, the protocols we take for granted, the laws we take for granted, how actually so many of them are founded in an absurd fucking premise, and have actually produced absurd results because it’s an unnatural jerry rigging of the potential of technologies.
It’s a jerry rigging of the law to defend the indefensible, to create systems of capture and control that benefit these otherwise pointless and useless and vampiric entities like the ones that are retaining all the copyrights to academic publications. We have created these ghastly, absurd systems to support these ghastly, absurd premises of denying people access to information that is part of the public domain. All the ways that, like you said Aaron, these middlemen kind of insert themselves and extract value, but do nothing other than limit access. And I think there’s something really important there that I wanted to for us end on, because obviously the absurdity… There’s perhaps no more absurd conclusion to what we’re talking about than humanity essentially destroying itself and our shared civilization, and even endangering our potential continued existence on this planet for many of the same reasons.
For many of the same reasons that we have built entire economies around the notion of people as consumers who all have to have their personal copy of the same product, instead of sharing one of those things between 10 people or sharing in general. We have built up such a Frankenstein’s monster of consumer culture, of an economy to the point that we have produced our way to destroying the ecosystem that we all depend on. And that’s why I thought of you guys when I was rereading the Gorilla Open Access Manifesto, because I know that that library socialism, the concept of library socialism as a different way of approaching this kind of thing, is fundamental to what you all do on the show seriously wrong. And I thought of you when I read this one sentence from the Gorilla Open Access Manifesto where Aaron writes, “Sharing isn’t immoral, it’s a moral imperative.” I wanted to, by way of rounding us out, just sort of ask you guys what that sentence means to you.
Shawn Vulliez: I mean, at a basic level, all human sociality, all human progress, everything that’s worth anything in life is predicated on people sharing with each other, people not locking things down, but being open and social. And inhuman systems that would tell us that having a friend over to listen to music together is immoral unless both of you buy the CD, that’s the level of absurdity we’re talking about with these intellectual property extremists. It’s inhuman, it’s bizarre, it’s robotic. And it’s fundamentally contrary to I think the things that make us human, the things that caused humans to develop into the species that we are over time. It’s absolutely correct and another great example of Aaron Swartz being completely fucking right. Sharing is a moral imperative. It’s not immoral to share information, it’s not immoral to share experiences. It’s important. It’s what makes the world work, it’s what makes everything good in the world work.
Aaron Moritz: Yeah. And I think possibly going far beyond what Aaron meant when he said that in this context of information, information freedom, like you were saying, our sort of determination as a society right now to never share things, that everybody should buy a new bicycle, everyone should own their own lawnmower, everybody should have their own everything. And then when you’re done with it, you should throw it out and someone else should buy a new one, has led to a situation where we are burning through the resources of the planet at a rate that is unsustainable. And we’re not integrating our human society with the natural imperatives of the ecosystem under which we exist.
And sharing is a key way that we can change that, that we can produce less, get more use out of it, provide more positive experiences, more ability to access the things that they need to everyone while producing fewer things, and therefore acting in a more ecologically sustainable way. The power of sharing, again, is really obvious online where it takes a few cents of data and half a second of processing speed to copy a file, to copy an academic paper or a book. And you can just see how absurd it is to prevent people from doing that. But the fact that we have the entire social system set up, not to maybe prevent people from sharing physical items, but certainly not to facilitate it on an institutional level, has had massive consequences for the planet and for our society.
Maximillian Alvarez: And I mean really just as a final kind of postscript to that, I think that there’s also something really important in the line from the manifesto that says, “There’s no justice in following unjust laws.” Because I just really wanted to underline what you both said about that during this incredible conversation. And I thank you guys so much for giving me so much of your time to talk about this. But that’s the other, I think, real essential lesson that all of us have to sit with. Thinking about Aaron, his death, and what lies ahead for all of us is that Aaron, like everyone that I imagine has had similar versions of the conversation that we’re having now, or similar thoughts to the ones we’re expressing now, has realized that there is, again, a fundamentally abhorrent absurdity at the center of laws that are designed to prohibit sharing, laws that are designed to restrict people’s access to information and knowledge.
And laws that, again, are there, that are the sort of prosthetic outgrowths of the absurd system, that are there to serve the absurd function of protecting that system, even if it comes at the expense of us knowing our own history, even if it comes at the expense of our ability to create lifesaving vaccines or conduct medical research because we have access to the research that’s been done previously. Going from that and the Kafkaesque absurdity that Aaron Swartz died to the Kafkaesque absurdity of grocery store workers getting arrested if they take home any of the food that’s expired and is going to be thrown out anyway. You look at that and you just see, “Oh no, the law says this has to be wasted because it can’t be recouped for a profit, therefore no one gets it.”
Or we’re in the midst of a pretty much global housing crisis right now, and yet Wall Street has turned housing into a financial instrument to the point that there are just innumerable apartment buildings, condo complexes, and even houses lying empty because they’re worth more to their investors and owners in that position than they are serving their actual function, which is to house people. So I just want to leave people with that sort of thought, as we again confront the reality of the climate crisis, as we continue to head into pretty what has already been a pretty terrifying century and I’m sure has a lot of other things in store for us.
I think we all have an imperative, as Aaron himself would say, to question the absurdities and the arbitrariness of these sorts of laws, these sorts of systems that are ultimately designed to protect property and profit at all of our collective expense. And it was very baffling to me reviewing all of this to think, how can we live in a country that is just constantly, almost by a desperate existential need, we are constantly reminding ourselves of the righteousness of the police and the criminal justice system and all that it’s meant to uphold and protect. And yet there’s so many examples like the tragic death of Aaron Swartz, where you’re just like, “This system was designed to impose and enforce the law, even if the law itself is incredibly unjust.”
And I feel like everyone can look at Aaron Swartz and see that and be like, “The government killed this man for a reason that it was fundamentally absurd and abhorrent, but was still defined as illegal.” And I think that I’m not going to get us in trouble here and say, “Everyone go out and do crime.” But again, it’s a truly Kafkaesque story, and I think it’s incumbent upon all of us to carry on that fight by not just accepting the immorality and the unchangeability of these unjust and absurd systems that are designed to enclose rather than open, to control rather than liberate. That I think is a really important way that all of us can carry on Aaron Swartz’s fight. So Aaron, Shawn, co-hosts of the SRSLY Wrong podcast and co-creators of the animated series, Papa and Boy, which you can watch on Means TV. Shout out to our friends over there at Means TV. Aaron, Shawn, any other final words or plugs that you’ve got for the good Real News listeners before I let you go?
Shawn Vulliez: Yeah, there’s something I kind of want to say about the story of Aaron Swartz, and I’ve been reflecting on it for a little while and I guess I have two takeaway lessons that I think are really important, and a kind of request to people listening. And the first lesson is that Aaron Swartz shows the incredible power of one person dedicating themself to doing things. He shows that any of us can do what we set out to do and we can have a profound impact in the world, a more profound impact than we’d ever imagine, and we don’t even notice our impact while we’re doing it. I don’t think that Aaron Swartz had a full idea of how impactful he was, unfortunately. And I think that’s a really key lesson is that if we’re bold enough to step to the plate and participate, we can shape the future of our society. And Aaron Swartz shows that.
The second lesson is that you, all of us, everyone here, everyone listening, is worth more to all of us alive than dead. Fuck martyrdom. Aaron Swartz dying did nothing for information freedom. The things that Aaron Swartz did when he was alive contributed to information freedom, and we’d all be so much better off if we had 10 more years of Aaron Swartz contributing to our culture and helping move us along, and being an intellectual leader, and being someone who contributes through code and through discourse and through writing. Fuck martyrdom. You’re worth more alive than dead. And my plea is to activists, there’s a lot of things that distract us as activists: interpersonal drama, fighting over micro-celebrities’ aggression, micro-celebrities’ mistakes, re-litigating the historical disputes that are so far removed from our everyday experience.
And it’s tempting and it’s fun and it’s so tempting as an activist to get caught up on disputes and sectarianism and arguing about the political policies of some country and some obscure year and stuff, but my plea is to take Aaron Swartz seriously, to take these ideas of information openness seriously, and to integrate them in your politics as fundamental. There’s no politics which is more contemporary than this. There’s no politics which is more egalitarian than this, which is more liberatory than this. And it doesn’t need to overwrite the other things you care about, but I hope that someone listening to this thinks about this very deeply and helps all of us by becoming more of a relative expert on this issue and contributing, using their time and energy to contribute to all of us understanding this better. So that’s my sincere, deep request, if you’re listening. And the two lessons are, you can do anything you want and you’re worth a lot more to me alive than dead. So thank you for bearing with me through that.
Aaron Moritz: Yeah, I just want to say thanks for having us on. I agree with Shawn.
Shawn Vulliez: I agree with Aaron. Thanks for having us on.
Maximillian Alvarez: Well, Aaron, Shawn, again, thank you both so much for sharing so much of your time and brilliance and insight with us on the Real News Network podcast. I really appreciate it. To everyone listening, you should definitely go check out Aaron and Shawn’s Show, the SRSLY Wrong podcast, spelled S-R-S-L-Y W-R-O-N-G. We will link to it in the show notes. And also definitely go check out their animated series on Means TV, Papa and Boy. Before you go, please head on over to the realnews.com/support and become a monthly sustainer of our work here at The Real News so we can keep bringing y’all important coverage and conversations just like this. Thank you so much for listening.
The state of Louisiana is considering transferring at least 20 minors incarcerated in its juvenile correction system to be housed on death row. The state alleges these children are amongst its most problematic incarcerated minors, and that placing them on death row is in line with government obligations to rehabilitate juvenile offenders. Lana Charles, who has worked to provide arts programs in Louisiana’s juvenile justice system for 15 years, joins Rattling the Bars to explain the situation of incarcerated youth in her state.
Luliana “Lana” Charles has worked with youth for over 15 years in the capacity of the arts, enrichment and cultural programming and the juvenile justice system. Lana is a social worker and trained artist, and a member of PAIMI Advisory Council and Louisiana Human Trafficking Prevention Commission and Advisory Board. She also serves as board chair at The Beautiful Foundation.
Studio/Post-Production: Cameron Granadino
TRANSCRIPT
Mansa Musa: Welcome to this edition of Rattling the Bars. I’m Mansa Musa, co-hosting with Eddie Conway. As always, I update everyone on Eddie Conway’s state. Eddie Conway is making a remarkable recovery, and at some point in time, we expect him to make a cameo appearance on the show that he created and the network that he loved.
It was a recent report that Louisiana State was considering, or are in process or have, sent juveniles to Angola Prison in Louisiana to have them housed on death row. According to the state of Louisiana, the reason behind this is these are considered the most problematic youth in the juvenile system. Here to talk about this and some of the social ramifications of what’s going on with our youth is Lana Charles, a social worker from Louisiana. Ms. Charles, introduce yourself to the Rattling the Bars audience.
Lana Charles: My name is Lana Charles, and I’m a social worker in New Orleans, Louisiana. I work with the Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights on the Children’s Defense scene.
Mansa Musa: Okay. Now let’s just go right into the subject matter. All right. In Louisiana, the law says, child code, and I think this might be considered its preamble, maintain a safe environment for youth. It says, youth and residential and secure care facilities have the same rights. It is the state’s duty to act as a parent to the youth placed in custody. It says that, according to the Child’s Code, Article 801, in those instances when a child is removed from the control of his parent, the court shall secure him, care as nearly as possible equivalent to that which his parents should have given him. It says, according to the state, in the interest of the state, the purpose of incarcerating a juvenile is treatment and rehabilitation. Due process requires that the conditions and program must be reasonably related to that purpose.
In terms of what’s going on in Louisiana with our youth, and maybe you can update us on whether or not this is actually taking place. There was a report that came out a couple of months ago that said that the state of Louisiana was in the process of sending at least 20 youth to Angola Prison and having them housed on death row. The reason behind this is allegedly these are the most problematic youth in the juvenile facilities, and can’t be managed by the juvenile facility. To your knowledge, has this taken place, or can you give our audience an update on what is going on with this?
Lana Charles: Yes, for sure. Obviously this is a very serious concern that we have as social justice advocates, especially for the youth of our city, who are mostly Black youth, who are being sent to Angola. It’s an outrage, definitely. According to the law, the juvenile justice system is supposed to be committed to rehabilitation and treatment of children, no matter what. So however, according to what is actually happening, particular kids in custody, they’re not receiving this rehabilitation. We know that youth who enter the system are some of the most vulnerable youth in our communities who experience significant trauma. Unfortunately, youth in juvenile prisons are experiencing punishment, and not rehabilitation or treatment. So especially at the new facilities, OJJ, which is the Office of Juvenile Justice, has recently created, including Angola, they’re resembling adult prisons, where these kids are staying. Also at St. Martinville, which is another OJJ facility.
So there’s limited treatment and programming, and kids are locked in cells, they’re shackled. It resembles an adult prison. Imagine what that does for the young mind. A former incarcerated youth mentioned this when he testified at the state Capitol for the House Bill 746, which is to restrict the use of juvenile solitary confinement. This young youth, he’s 21 years old right now. He quotes, “See, when you in jail, the only thing you got is your mind. So what you transform into is based on your environment and the influence around you.” So this is what’s happening right now in New Orleans, in Louisiana, in our state of Louisiana. The system and principle is to provide public safety and accountability. It’s far from how it is implemented. Instead, it’s a mechanism to keep people oppressed forever.
Mansa Musa: Yeah. Yeah.
Lana Charles: And our young people, at that. So the large difference between the goal of the system and the reality that is actually happening now is a real problem here for kids and our community as a whole.
Mansa Musa: To dial down on that, when I was researching this, I noticed that in one voice they’re talking about in theory that they’re supposed to be providing rehabilitation and treatment, but in application, some of the juvenile facilities that now exist are just about as big as Angola. In your experience and in working in Louisiana in particular, in general, has it been your experience that… Is the attitude of the state just like Draconian when it comes to our children? Do they not get it that we’re talking about young minds and impressionable minds that need to be treated as children as opposed to being treated as adults? Because it looks like once you get in the juvenile system, then the system is set up such that you are going to be treated as an adult in that system until they ultimately graduate you to an adult facility. Has that been your experience? That the attitude of the state is, when it comes to understanding the mentality of the juvenile, is it a disconnect to your knowledge?
Lana Charles: It’s definitely a disconnect. I think that the right people are not in position to make these major decisions for youth and for our communities. It’s sort of blatant attitude in a way. There’s so much research out there that’s provided that no one is really paying attention to. It’s like it’s non-relevant information, so that’s disappointing. That’s upsetting, that the voices, the research that is out there is not being heard and listened to. It’s like a slap in the face or a hand in the face. The main point is that kids should be treated like kids. Jail is not developmentally appropriate, and can and does inflict further trauma. That’s common sense. It’s common sense in life, period. And these are children.
These are children who are still developing. They are impressionable, at that, and they’re being sent to these facilities like St. Martinville and Angola. They’re living in cells rather than dorms. This means kids who are placed there, they’re in cells alone for a large portion of their day, and practically shackled, only being released outside of their cell to shower. Like showering is an activity. It’s a necessity, it’s not an activity.
Mansa Musa: Right.
Lana Charles: So this is truly the outrageous things that are happening right now. That is, it’s out of reach it seems for the powers that be, who should be well equipped enough to understand the ramifications of these outcomes and these things that are being put forth for our youth.
Mansa Musa: To go back to a point you made, we’re talking about children and that the mind’s not developed. The Supreme Court came out, and recognized that children don’t have the state of mind to commit certain crimes. Even though the crime called for a certain minimum intent, but the Supreme Court then came out and said, well, children don’t have that, what they call mental right state of mind to be able to do that.
But let me ask you this here: who is responsible for when they’re evaluating and doing intake on our youth? Because if the reality is that most of these children come from traumatic environments, if not all of them, this is a fact that single parents, abusive environments, and even according to their own child code it says that once this child is turned over to the state then, in theory, the state should take the attitude of adopting the child as a parent. The way our children are being treated in juvenile facilities, this is, in every sense of the word, child abuse. From your understanding, who is responsible for doing intake and communicating the mental concern or the mental considerations that need to be factored into when dealing with our children?
Lana Charles: Well, there’s many players at play here. When a youth goes into the juvenile facilities, there are medical and mental health professionals that are there. Even before they hit the medical and mental health professionals, there are intake professionals that are supposed to be gathering collateral information about this youth and determining what a treatment plan will look like –
Mansa Musa: That’s right. That’s right.
Lana Charles: …When we have no treatment plan for them. So it does not seem like that is being done, to be quite honest with you. Or if it is being done, it’s not effective. It’s not based on research and the best evidence that there is out there for juvenile justice systems. So those are the people that are seeing the kids initially and who are creating these plans. It doesn’t seem like there are any plans that are being created, to be quite honest with you. Especially when we’re meeting with our kids to see how their day is and if they’re going to school, if they’re speaking to their families regularly enough, if their mental health is being taken care of, if they’re getting their medication, vitamins, going to appointments for eye exams, for teeth, for dentist’s work or whatever it may be. It’s not what we would do as caring parental adults to our own children. So there’s many responsibilities that are out there that may not be taken totally seriously, and being accountable for your role in this industry.
Mansa Musa: We recognize that when you’re dealing with young minds and itemizing, I served 48 years in prison prior to getting out. Matter of fact, yesterday I’ve been out of prison all of three years. But I recognize that period of time that I went through and the mental impact that it had on me, emotional impact that had upon my release, I had to do some internal work. I was doing internal work while I was in, but my mind at some point in time got developed. But now we’re talking about kids who you lock them in a cell, your attitude is that they know that the environment they’re in is punitive. So they know that they’re not in an environment that’s not punitive. So you put them in a punitive environment. Why do you think the state expects them to act any other way than they acting if you create this hostility towards them? Do the state just don’t get it?
Lana Charles: I think there’s multiple things at play, and multiple people at play, and they are not working together on one accord. That’s the biggest issue. I think that there’s definitely different stakeholders within this system, including us as juvenile public defense. We are there to present what the issues are, but on the other end, we need those who are receiving it and hearing it and understanding it and who is willing to make those changes. A lot of times, it has to do with money.
Mansa Musa: I knew it was going there. That’s the root of all evil.
Lana Charles: Yes, with investments –
Mansa Musa: Right. That’s right.
Lana Charles: What are we investing in? Do we want to just invest in putting them into jail and letting them sit there and rot? Or are we going to try to give some more money to these community organizations that could help deliver what we need, those changes that we need, and provide them that trauma-informed care. So rather than providing that extensive treatment and rehabilitation, the OJJ, the facilities that they rely on punitive measures, rather, like cells and restrictions, punishment. You do wrong, you get punished. That’s it. But again, these are children.
We all do wrong as children, but we have to learn a lesson. We learn the lesson the way that is more fitting for the person and for the community. So when you continue to punish a child who doesn’t know or have the skills or the tools to change or to do things differently, then you are going to get the same outcome, the same outcome over and over again.
So from research, we know the most successful model for juvenile programming is to provide mental health treatment –
Lana Charles: Yes, trauma informed care to youth, not punishment. Instead, what we are getting is, you get locked up in your cell for the majority of the day. I don’t want to see you, I don’t want to hear you. Your interactions are limited, and there’s limited engagement with activities and to help the child grow mentally, physically, emotionally, and to build healthier relationships. That is the moment right there. If you want to rehabilitate and have a better community, why not give them what they need?
Mansa Musa: Do y’all have any allies in the state legislation that really understands this and are willing to sponsor back and endorse alternatives? Because, as you say, this is about mental health. You not going to physically change these children. The only thing you going to do is they either going to become more hardened, or they going to have a broken spirit. At any rate, they not going to be an asset to the community. They’re not going to be an asset to nobody. The way it looks, it’s almost as if they saying, well, if we ignore them and we treat him with all this brutality and hostility, they’ll be the next one up in Angola prison. They’ll be the next one on the death row. They’ll be the next one to commit. We can wait on the juvenile and turn them into adult. Do you have any allies in the state legislature anywhere outside of the community-based organizations that’s willing to give voice to this problem?
Lana Charles: Yes. Yes we do. We definitely do have allies on that level, on a legislative level.
Mansa Musa: What kind of legislative bills or directions are being taken in terms of trying to reverse this? Maybe you can update us on the Angola thing, because when I was reading it and I was doing the research on it, this in and of itself is traumatic. I don’t care how brave I appear to be as a kid, I don’t care how unruly I am as a child, when you tell me that and you threaten me and say, yeah, we getting ready to send you to Angola. We getting ready to send you to death row. I don’t care what I present, it’s traumatic. It’s going to be traumatic for me, the uncertainty of where I’m going to go or where I’m going to be confronted with is really going to compound my trauma. So can you update us on one, what’s going on with that, and two, what type of legislation is being introduced to try to change this mindset of the Louisiana Juvenile System?
Lana Charles: Yes. We recently had House Bill 746 pass with a supportive legislative –
Mansa Musa: Can you give us an overview of what that entails?
Lana Charles: Yeah. So House Bill 746 was created to restrict this solitary confinement use. It requires OJJ, which is the Office of Juvenile Justice, to swiftly inform the parents and the attorneys of solitary confinement use, and requires the agency to record and track its use. Because before, that wasn’t happening, and youth would be in solitary confinement and we would not even be aware of it. So that would be the most recent legislative activity in regards to changing that, changing that type of behavior on that level, and hoping for the best, that that could change some outcomes with the youth that are being housed in these facilities.
Mansa Musa: In terms, what is your organization doing, or give us a little bit of information about what your organization do?
Lana Charles: Yeah. Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights, we are a public defense office, and we provide legal representation to youth that are coming through the juvenile justice system. With that, we operate on a holistic model. It not only consists of attorneys, but it also has social workers like myself and youth advocates. The youth advocates are the ones who are out there in the community doing the real work, being with the children and mentoring the children and assessing and figuring out next steps along with the assistance from social workers. We have investigators that are on the defense team as well. So our main goal is to provide that zealous advocacy work, that footwork. The type of work that lots of people are limited in doing, we take it and go for it. We go out there and do our thing for the youth and we are directed by the youth and the parents.
And in order to make sure that whatever it is that we are trying to get them through and to, it’s something that they want to do. It’s something that they could do if they have the capacity to do so. You have to be an equal player within the treatment plan. You have to be an equal player. You can’t force it down people’s throats on what we think is needed, because everybody’s lives are different. So that is what we try to provide to our client base and their parents within this juvenile justice public defense sector.
Mansa Musa: One last question. In terms of the parents and the parents of the children, what has been their reaction to what’s going on with their children? Because a parent can not have the ability to deal with their child, so they think by turning them over to the state, the child will get the necessary treatment that will help the parent better manage their child. That’s just oftentimes, that’s just the reality.
I remember hearing a friend of mine, he was a counselor, and he was in court. The parent came into court and said, look, take my child. I can’t do nothing with him. I’m asking you to do something with my child to help so my child won’t wind up dead or wind up in prison. So most of the time, parents look to these institutions and think that these institutions are going to really be genuine in terms of what I just read, the preamble, be the surrogate parent and treat the child as if they were the parent. But this parent, the institution, is definitely inflicting child abuse. What about the parents? You mentioned involving parents in the decision-making. What do you say about the parents?
Lana Charles: So the parents, they need help, and they may try to get that help with the court. That’s alarming that you would have to go to court in order to get the help that you need within your community. But that is the mindset, that the court will solve it. This is how we get what we need within the community. But not so. That’s not truly how you get what you need, by going through the court system. Because it’s so evident here in our community in New Orleans, there’s not enough front-end investment in kids. If we did have that, likely the parents won’t be showing up at court saying, lock up my kids. Right?
So there has been little to no investment in kids before kids are exposed to the system. So the parents are doing as much as they can. And not all parents, it’s not everybody’s experience. I don’t want to say it’s everybody’s experience. But for those who need the extra assistance, it’s a requirement that we make more investments in the kids, in the community. So we gotta get ahead of the exposure and make initial investments in our kids, got to get ahead of the game.
So once a child enters the system, there is an investment. It’s just in security, not rehabilitation. The investment is in punishment and not rehabilitation. So at this point, we are trying to make due of a crisis that’s out of hand. It’s all out of hand at this point. So in New Orleans, the investment is less than $1 per day for children. That’s alarming.
Mansa Musa: That’s crazy.
Lana Charles: That is alarming. Yeah.
Most of our kids are dealing with post-traumatic stress disorders. Our Orleans Parish School System reported that 60% of their students, the children, have PTSD and are 4.5 times more likely than their peers nationwide to show signs of serious emotional disturbance. So lots of our kids are living life with these events that have happened within their lives and not getting the support that they need in the community or right along with their parents. So it’s like, where are we investing our money?
Mansa Musa: Therein lies is the problem, because if you invest the money into the community and you create the network, such as dealing with y’all and other organizations that’s grassroots organizations out there dealing with social conditions and changing attitudes, then the parent would be less likely to rely on the establishment and law enforcement and this brutal system to change their child, because they would see the lack of investment. So this is where the problem lies at. The state of Louisiana, all states are investing in the prison-industrial complex, the preschool prison-industrial complex, the juvenile institution, the adult prison-industrial complex, the major facilities.
But Lana, you have the last word on it. What do you want to tell our audience, and what do you want our audience to take away from these events that’s going on in Baton Rouge and in Louisiana, and in general?
Lana Charles: In general, yes. I think that there’s just too little attention paid to trauma and the causes of behavior. The youth who enter the juvenile system are the most vulnerable kids in our communities. So instead of getting the support that they need, they’re often deprived of necessary care and education and those attachments that they need with their families, which we know it’s critical to their rehabilitation. So that would be something that needs to change, definitely needs to change. We need to be more trauma-informed mindset, think with that in mind, that that is the necessary need. And not take it lightly with past experiences.
For an adult, an adult may be able to fall on the ground, pick up, and go about they business. But a child cannot do that, and it’s important for us to not see them as adults or mini adults, they’re children. You may feel like they’re adults by the situations that they’re putting themselves into, but that’s only because of the environment that they’re living in. That’s because of the community that is around them, that is surrounding them. They’re being influenced by that. So it’s important for an adult to realize and not get confused by roles. You have to remember, these are children. And don’t hold them accountable in a sense where you can’t hold yourself accountable.
We’re the ones in charge. We’re the ones that have the capacity, the money, the opportunities to make changes happen. So with all of that authority that we do have, we have to utilize it a little bit better. We have to come together and get away with the bureaucracy of all of this that has been going on. So that would be my parting advice.
Mansa Musa: There you have it, the real news, saving our children. We’re talking about children here, 10-year-olds and upward. We’re not talking about adults. As Ms. Charles just outlined, an adult can pick themselves up off the ground, make the mental adjustment, and keep it moving. A child is scarred for life. When you take a child that just needs to be given some sympathy and understanding and be empathetic towards, when you take a child and belittle them and lock them up and put them in shackles, isolate them, and expect them to act any other way than inhuman or savage or whatever way you characterize them after they’ve been subjected to this, then something wrong with you for even thinking that you treat them like this here and they going to come out any other way than the way that they come out of.
We have a moral obligation. This is not a social obligation, we have a moral obligation to take care of our children. If we do this to children anywhere else in the world, this country would be calling it child abuse. This country would be up in arms about the way children are being treated. If you sold pictures of children being shackled to a bed or talking about sending children to a concentration camp or DACA or Auschwitz at this time and day, everybody would be in an uproar. But we’re talking about the same type of mentality of treating our children the same way.
Thank you, Lana, for coming in and educating our audience on this, and enlightening us about the tragedy that’s taking place and that’s being inflicted on our children in Louisiana. Thank you very much.
Lana Charles: Thank you so much for having me.
Mansa Musa: We want to encourage everyone to continue to support Rattling the Bars and The Real News. As you’ve seen, this is the real news. You’re not going to get this kind of insight from nowhere else in major news networks. Nobody going to come and tell you about the children being abused. Nobody going to come and tell you about misappropriation of monies that could go towards curbing this problem. Nobody going to come and tell you about how this is basically premeditated on the part of the state. Nobody going to tell you this but us. We ask that you continue to support us and continue to make contributions and donations to The Real News and Rattling the Bars. Thank you.
Editor’s note: This video was recorded prior to Ray Liotta’s passing.
Police Accountability Report show hosts Taya Graham and Stephen Janis kick off the holidays with a spoilers-free review of the exceptional film Cop Land. Taya and Stephen take a tour behind the scenes of police culture and explore how difficult it really is for individual officers to hold other police accountable for their crimes. Decades later, Cop Land remains one of the most revealing and honest movies about the current state of policing in America. As copaganda only becomes more pervasive, this blast from the past is a breath of fresh air that offers a more realistic look at the commonplace corruption and impunity rife in police departments around the country.
Studio: Taya Graham, Stephen Janis Post-Production: Taya Graham, Stephen Janis
Transcript
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 do so by striking back at one of the key enablers of bad policing: Copaganda. That’s right. The movies and popular culture that tout police as underpaid heroes who dutifully enforce the law, which is sometimes true, but sometimes is not.
Well we’re going to do so by using a piece of popular culture that has long been forgotten but actually might be the best antidote to copaganda we have ever seen. It’s a movie called Cop Land, and we’re going to break down how this story of police corruption and mayhem is actually the most accurate and telling depiction of law enforcement in the history of Hollywood.
But before we get started, I want you watching to know that if you have evidence of police misconduct, please email it to us privately at par@therealnews.com, and please like, share, and comment on our videos. You know I read your comments and that I appreciate them. And of course you can always reach out to me directly @tayasbaltimore on Facebook or Twitter. And of course there’s a Patreon donate link pinned in the comments below, and we do have some extras for our PAR family. Okay. We’ve gotten that all out of the way.
Now, as we’ve discussed before on this show, American culture is awash in what we call copaganda. Movies and TV series that paint police not just as a savior of our democracy, but literally the human dividing line between good and evil. And that type of mythos has become more extreme as policing has expanded its grip on our country. Let’s remember American taxpayers fund police to the tune of $120 billion per year, a number that continues to grow. Meanwhile, even as the funding for police has increased in 2020, homicides have shot up by 30%.
My point is that if police were really the solution to crime and violence, then all the spending we devote to it should produce better results. And that’s where copaganda comes in. Because if you can’t deliver the basic underlying premise on which the entire institution is based, then you have to use other means to keep the dollars flowing. I mean, let’s remember that many of the stories we cover on this show are illustrative of the fact that police spend far more time writing bogus tickets and making unnecessary car stops than they do investigating serious crimes. And let’s not forget that we have reported time and time again how police abuse their powers even when there are clearly enumerated laws that are supposed to limit what they can do, but often don’t.
So as the godfather of modern propaganda and advertising Edward Bernays explained, the best way to convince people to accept bad policy is to use clever techniques to appeal to their emotions and make the worst appear the better cause. And no industry has done a better job at this task for American law enforcement than our prodigious American culture industry. I mean, it’s not just how these shows portray cops; Always honest, hardworking upholders of civilization. It’s also how many darn cop shows there are. I mean, it’s almost like no story can be told about us unless it’s through the eyes of a cop. Take, for example, a show produced in our hometown in Baltimore called The Wire. The Wire is often touted as an auteur’s honest take on the intersection of poverty, politics, and policing. A riveting deep dive into the realities of a crumbling urban core.
But don’t you think it’s odd that the entire narrative of the series is told through the eyes of the police? I mean, isn’t it strange that the primary characters of the show who explore urban decay have a badge and a gun? I mean, it seems a little strange that police have become the primary narrator of our lives. But of course that’s why in this show we’re going to review a movie that actually gets policing right. A film that has been relegated to the dustbin of history, but actually depicts the true imperative of contemporary policing better than any piece of popular culture we know of. It’s called Cop Land. A movie starring Sylvester Stallone who plays a small town New Jersey sheriff in a town that is quite literally owned by the cops with a stellar cast, including Robert De Niro, Ray Liotta, Harvey Keitel, Michael Rapaport, and Robert Patrick. It was released in 1996 and it opened to mixed reviews and meager box office success. But like many pieces of great art it has gotten better with age and become more relevant now than ever when it first hit theaters more than 25 years ago.
That’s because the film does something many films do not, which is to reveal through expert storytelling the underlying forces that drive the problematic law enforcement-industrial complex we live with today. And the film accomplishes this goal not by proselytizing, but instead reveals these truisms through complex characters, expert acting, and a riveting narrative. And to show you exactly how this film accomplishes this and also contradicts the aforementioned copaganda, I’m joined by my reporting partner, Stephen Janis. Stephen, thank you so much for joining me. Stephen? Hold on. I think we’re having a technical problem, but you know, Stephen does spend an awful lot of time outside and some people are even concerned that we just leave him out there. So to be nice for the holiday season, just this once, I’m going to go get him.
Stephen Janis: Taya, thank you for… Taya? Taya? Can you hear me?
Taya Graham: Hey, Stephen.
Stephen Janis: Huh?
Taya Graham: Surprise.
Stephen Janis: What?
Taya Graham: Just this once –
Stephen Janis: What are you doing here?
Taya Graham: You can come inside.
Stephen Janis: You’re going to let me… I really feel much more comfortable being outside.
Taya Graham: Look, there have been some requests from our kind viewers who are a little bit worried about you, and they said you should come inside, just this once for the holidays.
Stephen Janis: All right. Great. I guess I’ll do it. Sure. Why not? I’ll see you guys later.
Taya Graham: Come on in.
Stephen Janis: Okay. Oh, we’re going –
Taya Graham: Come on over.
Stephen Janis: Okay. You want me to sit here?
Taya Graham: Right here.
Stephen Janis: All right. This is just weird. I’m sorry. I’m just not used to being inside.
Taya Graham: I know.
Stephen Janis: I know it seems a little strange, but I spent the past year outside.
Taya Graham: That’s true.
Stephen Janis: So being inside is a little weird.
Taya Graham: I don’t want him to get used to it. This is a one time deal.
Stephen Janis: Okay.
Taya Graham: So let’s set the scene for Cop Land. Sylvester Stallone is the sheriff of the small town in Garrison, New Jersey, just over the George Washington Bridge. And let’s listen to Robert De Niro, who plays Moe Tilden, talk a little bit about what Cop Land is.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Robert De Niro: Back in the seventies, every cop wanted out of the city, but the only cops allowed to live outside New York were transit cops because the Transit Authority was also run by Jersey and Connecticut. So these guys I knew at the 3-7, they started pulling overtime at subway stations and got the city to declare them auxiliary transit cops. They bought some land in Jersey, got some cheap loans from people they knew. They made themselves a place where the shit couldn’t touch them.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: So there’s this arrangement that’s alluded to but is not fully discussed. It gives us the idea that perhaps there’s something more sinister behind Cop Land, right?
Stephen Janis: Right. Because what basically Moe Tilden tells us, or what we learn later on, is that this town was sort of bought and paid for by the mob, so that those cops that got out of New York would allow them to run drugs through that neighborhood, which I assume is in the Bronx. But nevertheless, the point is that there’s a separation between the police and the community. And not only do the police leave the community but they also use the community to finance their little suburban paradise in utopia. So it sets up a very interesting premise. We don’t know this at first, but it’s kind of alluded to that they got themselves out, they were working as transit cops. They kind of game the system but also separate themselves from the community that they were supposed to serve which is, I think, a big, big theme in American policing right now.
Taya Graham: Absolutely. Now, one of the things that is so extraordinary about this movie is how many times police officers actually commit crimes during this movie. So we have our sheriff, our hero, Freddy Heflin, who, one of the first acts we see him do is, he’s in a bar playing pinball. He runs out of quarters, so he breaks into a parking meter to help himself, right?
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Sylvester Stallone:[Sound of coins falling] Shit. Dammit. [Coins clinking together]
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Stephen Janis: Yeah, no, it’s an extraordinary sort of casual event. Ray Liotta, who’s one of his friends, is watching him and kind of chuckling, when really he’s committing misconduct in office clearly. Clearly you can’t, as a cop, just help yourself to a parking meter, but it kind of sets the tone for the movie because he says, you know what? There’s different rules for us. If I need quarters for my pinball machine, I’ll just go into a parking meter. I think it’s a really important, it’s subtle, it’s small. But at the same time, it speaks volumes about how Cop Land is run and how laws are one for cops and one for everybody else.
Taya Graham: Okay. So a big scene that moves the movie forward is when Michael Rapaport, who plays the character Super Boy, is driving along – And he may have actually been intoxicated during this drive, but we don’t know for certain – But he is driving along and he ends up in a hit and run situation with two other gentlemen in a car. He ends up shooting those two unarmed young men. Let’s take a quick look at what happens.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Michael Rapaport: [Music playing on radio][car crashing, tires screeching] Oh fuck.
Radio Announcer: …Angels today. Chili Davis had two run homers from either side…
Michael Rapaport: Hey! Pull over. NYPD, pull over. Hey, you hear me? Pull over. [tires screeching, car crashing] Fuck, shit. [gunshots] Fuck, cocksucker. [tires screeching, car crashing]
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: All right. So Stephen, what’s happening here and why is it so important?
Stephen Janis: Well, this is really the conflict that sets up everything that cascades from it. And when Super Boy’s car is hit, he thinks that these young men are shooting at him, but all they have is a tire iron. So then the scene that evolves on the bridge is really, really illustrative, because after he shoots and kills these guys it’s like the sort of mechanisms of policing all jump into action. And you have the union rep, both union reps are on the bridge, including Harvey Keitel. Who immediately says, oh, I’ve got a gun in the trunk and we’ll plant the gun. One of the cop friends of Super Boy plants the gun and then all chaos breaks out.
So what’s interesting is you see how police protect themselves. First of all, you can’t just shoot someone running away from you. Even if they hit your car, get their license plate. But he shoots them. After he kills them, then they go into another coverup. Rather than investigating this properly they literally start a cascade coverup where, as you know, Super Boy jumps off the bridge.
Taya Graham: Now, what I thought was really interesting is that when Super Boy finds out that he has killed two young men, the first thing he says is, they’re going to take my shield.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Michael Rapaport: [crosstalk] Take my fucking shield away from me.
Speaker 1: Hey, put it down, chico.
Speaker 2: Chico this, motherfucker. What?
Speaker 1: Frankie, don’t be starting anything.
Speaker 2: What the fuck you going to do? [crosstalk].
Speaker 1: [crosstalk] Oh my God. Oh my God, Leo. Jesus. He jumped, oh my God. Jumped. He jumped. Shine a light down there.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: Why do you think that is so important? I think this says so much that his first thought was not for the young men, but for his badge, his gun, and his authority.
Stephen Janis: Well, it’s like the shield is like a barrier, right? It’s literally a shield. It’s like a social shield. It says, I’m not going to be… I can’t be part of the regular population where I have to follow the rules of everybody else. I can’t just be a normal citizen of this city. I’ve got my shield. And I think that’s really great that you brought that up, because it’s a very interesting word. He didn’t say, I’m going to lose my job, or I’m going to go to jail. I’m going to lose my shield. And I think that’s a metaphor, an effective metaphor, for what it means to be a cop in Cop Land and in New York in this movie.
Taya Graham: So one of the things that we promised at the beginning of this is that we were going to talk about how copaganda works and the strange way that crime, or what our idea of crime is, is normalized and set by law enforcement officers. Stephen, maybe you can talk a little bit about this effect.
Stephen Janis: Well, one of the things really interesting is that when you start getting into the movie, and you see Super Boy jump, and you see Sylvester Stallone break into the parking meter, and you see the gun pulled out and planted, and you see crime after crime, after crime. And you start realizing that in this world of policing that’s just the way things are. They’re not cognizant. It’s not like someone says, oh, don’t plant that gun. That’s a crime. Or someone says, hey, Freddy, Heflin, stop taking the quarters. And of course, Sylvester Stallone’s character gets into an accident just shortly after that. And he’s trying to come up with excuses. He said, what did you tell the people down at the station what happened? And let’s just watch that for a second, because it’s very revealing.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Sylvester Stallone: What’d you tell Lenny about the accident?
Speaker 3: Chasing the speeder.
Sylvester Stallone: What?
Speaker 3: Sheriff was chasing the speeder.
Sylvester Stallone: [scoffs]
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Stephen Janis: So of course even this sort of everyday sheriff is in on this… Freddy Heflin or Sylvester Stallone’s character is not immune to this sort of feeling of… He didn’t say, you know what, that’s not true. I wasn’t chasing a speeder. I was a little intoxicated and hit a deer. He’s like, oh, okay. And I think it’s really interesting because when we talk about policing this country and the scene we talk about being one set of laws for police and one set of laws for the rest of us. I think this sort of tells you, or shows, gives you a sense of how that culture develops and how it becomes sort of calcified in policing. Yeah.
Taya Graham: Now one thing that I thought was also interesting, and this is when the plan is that Super Boy allegedly jumps off this bridge. When you mentioned how one of the officers ran to immediately plant a gun in order to make Super Boy’s assailants look dangerous and as if they deserved to be shot. There was an EMT there, and the EMT stood up to the police officers and said, you’re planting that gun. You can’t do this. And the EMT does something amazing. Let’s watch.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Speaker 3: We got it.
Speaker 4: Yo, yo, yo, yo. What the fuck are you doing, man?
Speaker 3: I found their piece.
Speaker 4: Found their piece?
Speaker 5: Oh Jesus.
Speaker 4: That wasn’t in there.
Speaker 3: What do you mean it wasn’t in there? It was underneath the floor mat.
Speaker 4: Bullshit, man. You can’t do that.
Speaker 1: – Come on. Shut the fuck up.
Speaker 3: Do what? It was underneath the fucking floor mat. [crosstalk].
Michael Rapaport: Take my fucking shield away from me.
Speaker 1: Hey, put it down. Put it down, chico.
Speaker 2: Chico this, motherfucker.
Speaker 1: What?
Speaker 3: Frankie, don’t be starting anything.
Speaker 2: What the fuck you going to do?
Speaker ?: Kiss my ass.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: Now, when I saw this scene, I couldn’t help but think about all the times that I read about EMTs being pressured. For example, in Colorado, EMTs have been pressured to administer ketamine to suspects, perhaps against their own better medical judgment. They’ve been influenced by the police to do so. And there have been other instances where I know EMTs have been asked to turn their heads and not see what’s going on. What did that scene say to you?
Stephen Janis: Well, that scene said to me that that’s not a normal EMT because I mean it was… But it also, I think, demonstrated that there was a tension, existing tension. You had two African American young men, you had an African American EMT. He was very conscious of what was going on and he wasn’t going to stand for it. And I think he was very frustrated by what he saw as a corrupt police force sticking up for itself. And I think that frustration boiled over pretty early. And I think it was a very interesting scene to say that this type of corruption affects the community. Right away, we see the community represented there saying, hey, what are you doing? And I think that’s a very important scene because you’re so in this insular Cop Land world, like I said, everything’s upside down. But in this case, we saw the community pushing back.
Taya Graham: So now we know for certain that Super Boy did not jump off the bridge, and it is part of an elaborate coverup being created by these cops. And this is where the crimes that these officers commit really begins to accelerate. And there’s a scene with one of my favorite actors, Robert De Niro, and he’s playing an internal affairs officer, an officer who is tasked with investigating the wrongdoings of other cops. There’s an interesting scene where he approaches Freddy Heflin, the Sylvester Stallone character, and explains to him why they have to investigate.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Robert De Niro: My jurisdiction ends, in a sense, at the George Washington Bridge. About half the men I watch live beyond that bridge where no one’s watching.
Sylvester Stallone: I’m watching.
Robert De Niro: I can see that. You got a crime right here of about what?
Sylvester Stallone: Lowest in northern New Jersey.
Speaker 5: Yeah. You got Hoboken and Jersey City over here. Newark.
Sylvester Stallone: Well, we try to do a good job with what we have.
Robert De Niro: With a staff of three? No, sheriff. What you got here is a town that scares the shit out of certain people.
Sylvester Stallone: Lieutenant, I told you, I’m watching. I mean, if you look around you see none of these people are wearing silk shirts. Their pools are above ground. You know? You know, you raise your family somewhere decent, I guess that’s a crime now.
Robert De Niro: We buried a suit today. That doesn’t bother you?
Sylvester Stallone: He jumped off the GWB.
Robert De Niro: Yeah, but his body never hit the water. That doesn’t bother you? What does? That I investigate cops? Being a man who always pined to be a cop?
Sylvester Stallone: I am a cop.
Robert De Niro: Pined to be NYPD. Three, four saps in 10 years. Appeals of hearing tests. Right? You may be law enforcement, and so am I, but you are not a cop. Now I may watch cops, but tell me if I’m wrong. Every day, out these windows so do you. You watch cops too. And since we are both law enforcement, we share a duty. Do we not? If there is a stink, we must investigate. We must gather evidence because evidence makes us see the truth. Is this a stink of a criminal act or is it a turd in a bag? Babitch isn’t dead. You know that and I know that. Ray got him off that bridge alive before he could talk. But he wasn’t so lucky the last time when the shit hit the fan with Tunny. That boy he took care of later.
Robert De Niro: But now what? What does Ray do now? That’s the $64,000 question. And that’s why I’m here. That’s why I’m here, sheriff. Because you’re on the inside. And besides the church traffic and the cats in the trees and all that other bullshit, okay. There isn’t much here for you to do to keep your mind busy. But I look at you, sheriff and I see a man who’s waiting for something to do. And here I am. Here I am saying, sheriff, I got something for you to do.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Stephen Janis: Taya, I love this scene because, I think, it’s where the rubber meets the road, where Sylvester Stallone has to make this weird decision. To actually enforce the law, he has to betray law enforcement in some ways is what Robert De Niro… And then Robert De Niro kind of says, you got nothing going on in your life. You might as well do something exceptional with it. Here I am. I think no other actor could pull that off. But I think what’s extremely important about this is the fact that Sylvester Stallone’s choice is A, do I stick with my law enforcement friends, or B, do I betray them by actually investigating a crime which has become a citywide thing. Yeah. And so how do you feel about Robert De Niro’s performance there?
Taya Graham: Okay. First off Robert De Niro’s performance was, as usual, exceptional. But I think what was really interesting is the way that it was set up as if it was going to be a betrayal. If Freddy Heflin helps him investigate these cops, who are committing a crime, it’s somehow a betrayal. It’s somehow a betrayal of their oath, it’s somehow a betrayal of the blue brotherhood. And that’s what I found really interesting, because I thought the task of a law enforcement officer is to enforce laws wherever they’re broken and wherever that is found. So I thought that had a… It was a really interesting conundrum.
Stephen Janis: That’s a really great point. He says their pools are all above ground. They don’t wear silk shirts. I guess it’s a crime to raise your family someplace nice. That is so manipulative. That’s perfect copaganda.
Taya Graham: So I think the way that the police officers in this movie perceive internal affairs is really interesting. There’s a moment where the character played by Harvey Keitel, Ray Donlan, says this.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Harvey Keitel: Hey, Moe.
Robert De Niro: Hey, Ray. Sorry to hear about your nephew.
Harvey Keitel: Yeah, he was a good kid. We were up all night with him. I know you need to talk to me. I’ll come in next week sometime. How’s that? Jackie here is coming in early for you tomorrow.
Robert De Niro: Right, Jackie. Moe Tilden.
Speaker 6: Hey.
Robert De Niro: Moe Tilden.
Harvey Keitel: [inaudible] Moe here was my classmate at the academy back in the day. Before he fell in love with this redhead at IA and transferred.
Robert De Niro: Is that how it went, Ray?
Harvey Keitel: So what brings you to our fair city? Checking up on us?
Robert De Niro: I heard it was a way of life out here. Thought I’d check it out for myself.
Harvey Keitel: What are we, like the Amish now?
Robert De Niro: See you tomorrow.
Harvey Keitel: Fucking rat.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: So I think the scene says a lot about how police do not like to have anyone looking over their shoulder.
Stephen Janis: And how difficult it is to look over their shoulders. Because you’ve got veteran cops with a long history calling him a rat. I mean, he’s just doing his job, but no one likes to be investigated, but all the inner relationships to the police are made clear in this movie. Moe Tilden knows Harvey Keitel’s character from way back. It shows you sort of how entangled they are, how difficult it is to have an agency investigate itself. I think it’s pretty clear.
Taya Graham: So one thing I think the movie got really on target here was the way the police were able to feed a narrative to the media, and the media swallowed it whole and gave it out to the public. Let’s take a listen, and keep in mind, we know that Super Boy is alive. We know these other officers are committing crimes, but listen to what the public is being fed.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Speaker 7: It was the system that drove Murray “Super Boy” Babitch off that bridge. Murray Babitch was a hero cop. He deserved a fair hearing, but he knew this would not happen. Not in this city.
Speaker 8: Activists Johns met the parents of the slain teens calling for a human blockade on the bridge tomorrow.
Speaker 9: A drunk cop jumps off a bridge but does not embrace the murder of two Black children.
Speaker 8: Attending the Yankee game, Mayor Ferelli responded to reports of cops attempting to plant evidence on the bridge.
Speaker 10: We are looking into it. There may have been some irregularity on the bridge, but as I say, [crosstalk] we are looking into it. No more comments, please. I’m here to enjoy the ball game with my wife. Thank you very much.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Stephen Janis: Yeah, Taya, I love the way that they’re all kind of sitting in the bar kind of chuckling, right? I mean, they’ve got this kid who supposedly jumped off a bridge, an entire investigation of the city and they’re all sitting in the bar, it’s kind of like, whoa, look what we did?
Taya Graham: Right? They’re in the bar.
Stephen Janis: Hugging, they’re kind of on top of each other.
Taya Graham: They’re literally celebrating while they’ve essentially fooled the entire city.
Stephen Janis: You make a really good point. We don’t notice any reporters driving out to Garrison, New Jersey, looking around for Super Boy. Everyone kind of, the mainstream media kind of swallows the narrative. And that is a really important point. Because if one reporter kind of drives out to Garrison and said, is he really dead?
Taya Graham: If one reporter had shown up to that bar to interview any of the officers about him, they might have actually seen Super Boy was alive.
Stephen Janis: But instead, as you point out, the narrative is a hero cop takes his life because he thinks the justice system is unfair to cops. That’s an extraordinary narrative.
Taya Graham: And it’s an amazing twist that the public was swallowing whole except for a few community leaders that we see in the movie.
Stephen Janis: Yep. Great point.
Taya Graham: So I think there’s a really important moment where the character Ray, played by Harvey Keitel who’s a union rep, essentially gets the entire investigation shut down with a single phone call. And Ray Liotta tries to explain to Sheriff Freddy why this is happening, why it was so easy for him to do it, and why it’s going to be so difficult for him to do an investigation. And I think this is one of your favorite scenes.
Stephen Janis: Yeah. Well it’s one of my favorite lines from the scene. Because I think it sort of embodies many, many types of things. You want to watch? Let’s watch it.
Taya Graham: Yeah. Let’s watch.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Speaker 8: The New York Times is quoting one friend [knocking on door] of Royster as saying that the guy had an IQ of 160.
Michael Rapaport: I need your help. They’re trying to kill me.
Ray Liotta: Who?
Michael Rapaport: Who? My friends tried to kill me. Ray Donlan tried to kill me.
Ray Liotta: Shit. Holy shit. [footsteps] Speak of the devil. [running footsteps].
Speaker ?: Ray. Forget it.
Speaker 11: I don’t get this. This doesn’t make any sense. Why did you get Super Boy off the bridge and bring him back here to kill him?
Speaker ?: Ray had a plan. It got very fucked up.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Stephen Janis: I just like the way he says it.
Taya Graham: I know, Ray Liotta’s such a great actor.
Stephen Janis: He says, things got really fucked… Ray had a plan and it got –
Taya Graham: Really F’d up.
Stephen Janis: Well and the way he said it, kind of pauses. it got really –
Taya Graham: And that little chuckle that comes out when he’s saying it, it was just perfect.
Stephen Janis:Yeah. And I think it shows the absurdity of this kind of thing that Ray had conjured this plan. Did he ever think about how, what are you going to do –
Taya Graham: What are you going to do if he supposedly jumped off the bridge and committed suicide, what are you going to do when he’s alive?
Stephen Janis: Right. And which brings us a scene where not only have they committed the murder of two young men, not only have they covered up the murder, but then they try to murder Super Boy.
Taya Graham: Right.
Stephen Janis: Let’s watch.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Michael Rapaport: I always said to my mom, Uncle Ray doesn’t like me, but…
Harvey Keitel: I always liked you, Murray. You just sweat too much.
Speaker 12: Hey, let’s do it. Hey, Super Boy.
Michael Rapaport: So what are we going to do now? I’m going to go meet some people. How does this work? I got all my bags packed and everything, Ray. I’m just, I’m a little buzzed. You know, maybe we could do this tomorrow or something. I’m really tired, Ray. Where’s Joey?
Harvey Keitel: He’s working tonight, kid.
Michael Rapaport: Yeah?
Harvey Keitel: Yeah.
Speaker 12: Sorry it came out this way, Murray.
Michael Rapaport: It’s not that bad, Jack.
Speaker 12: Yeah, it is, Murray. [crosstalk][sounds of drowning][motor revs][gunshots][shouting].
Speaker 13: What is this? What are you doing? What are you doing? What the fuck is this. Ray, you said PDA was going to set him up with a new life.
Harvey Keitel: You think I’m all that, Joey?
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Stephen Janis: I mean, come on. You’re talking about multiple counts –
Taya Graham: How many counts of murder? So there’s a murder. There’s a conspiracy to commit murder. There is planting evidence. Then we have an attempted murder, an assault. I mean, it’s just mayhem. And I think actually, I’ve actually caused mayhem actually, that might be a crime too.
Stephen Janis: Well, yeah. I mean, it’s extraordinary when you think about it. If these guys had lawyers, they would be spending the rest of their life. I mean, the series of crimes that are committed by the time they try to kill Super Boy, and then they’re going to just dump him in the river so that someone can find him. I mean, that’s pretty ruthless.
Taya Graham: So this brings me to one of my favorite scenes with Ray Liotta. He is having an issue with the cops in the bar. He feels like they’re not keeping him in the loop, that they’re making these plans, and that they’re going to try to push him out. And they essentially say to Ray Liotta’s character, well, you do drugs, you steal evidence. And this is how Ray Liotta’s character responds.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Ray Liotta: What is this, [inaudible 00:31:19]? Huh? Listen, if IA’s going to fucking hang me by the balls, it ain’t going to be over some fucking missing evidence.
Speaker 14: Figgsy. You’ve been a cop 12 years. Six grams missing. It’s not a white size violation, babe.
Ray Liotta: Come on.
Speaker 15: You bought that big old house. Maybe you’re trying to get out from under.
Speaker 16: Hey Jack.
Ray Liotta: What the fuck’s up your ass? You can tell me you’re getting by without gravy, any of you?
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: So I thought that was really interesting because he says, Hey, isn’t there any, there’s nobody here that’s not getting by without some gravy. So think about it –
Stephen Janis: He didn’t mean gravy.
Taya Graham: No, he meant being on the tape, getting money.
Stephen Janis: Because they were talking about six ounces is not a white, six ounces of cocaine. That’s pretty expensive.
Taya Graham: Right. And he’s saying that all of you are getting some form of cash. All of you are somehow on the tape.
Stephen Janis: Taking it off of suspects, selling drugs, whatever. I mean…
Taya Graham: Right. It’s amazing. And the thing is that these officers, when they say it’s gravy, that’s a euphemism that I think helps keep some distance between the impact of their crime and the crime itself. They don’t have to admit to committing crimes because they’re the good guys that chase criminals. Instead they’re like, we just get some gravy. We just take a little money off the top. We just take a little money from the bad guys. We’re not actually doing anything wrong. And I think that euphemistic way of talking and thinking is really a point of psychology that’s very, very specific and very, very, it has a strong imperative behind it.
Stephen Janis: Well, he didn’t say, is anyone getting by without stealing. And the gravy sort of sounds like a tip or something. Something that is a –
Taya Graham: Just a little on the top.
Stephen Janis: We saw this in Baltimore and the police, when they would regularly take all this overtime. It was kind of like, we just deserve it. We don’t have to work it. There were lots of people, we had the gun trace task force, where they literally would say easy money. They would joke about getting overtime while they’re on vacation. But it was more, I think, entitlement. And I think that’s what you see with –
Taya Graham: That’s the word, that’s the imperative behind it.
Stephen Janis: What Ray Liotta is talking about. We’re entitled to this because we’re going into that horrible city. And when we go over there, we’re entitled to take whatever we want and it doesn’t matter. So I think that’s a great point, Taya.
Taya Graham: Okay. So there is another great scene where Ray Liotta and Sheriff Freddy Heflin, Sylvester Stallone’s character, are talking, and Stallone’s character is trying, is basically saying, well, I think I’m going to have to do this. I think I’m going to have to investigate these crimes. And Ray’s character gives him some advice.
[VIDEO CLIP BEGINS]
Ray Liotta: All right, brother’s in deep shit. He’s down, he’s bleeding and you’ve got to get there, but there’s lights, right? All over the city, red lights.
Sylvester Stallone: You go through the red lights.
Ray Liotta: Sure. You fire up the roof. You wail, you go through the red lights. But that’s slow, Freddy, fighting your way through traffic. The goal is perpetual motion. You turn the wheel when you hit a red light, right? You don’t drive down Broadway to get to Broadway.
Sylvester Stallone: But how does this apply to what you were saying?
Ray Liotta: It applies, Freddy. It’s just as easy to tail a man walking in front of him. Now you butt heads with these friends of ours, you’re going to come at them head on. They got lives, Freddy. Families. No, you move diagonal. You jag.
[VIDEO CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: So Stephen, you love this diagonal rule. Why don’t you talk a little bit about what you think this means?
Stephen Janis: Well, I think first of all, I think it means that Ray Liotta does a lot of coke during the movie.
Taya Graham: Oh my goodness. Whether it was Goodfellas or this movie, he plays someone on cocaine the best I’ve ever seen.
Stephen Janis: Makes one wonder. But I think what’s interesting about this is that Ray Liotta is saying you can’t confront this power. This power is so immense and it kind of gives you a sense of how powerful cops can be when they’re corrupt. Because there’s no way to confront them head on. You would think you could say, okay, they broke the law. We’re going to go and arrest them. And he’s like, no, Freddy, if you confront these people head on, these are cops. These aren’t, these are like the worst mob or the worst gangsters you’re ever going to confront. And in our own town, we saw that with the gun trace task force, who was robbing residents and a group –
Taya Graham: Dealing drugs and stealing overtime.
Stephen Janis: While the Department of Justice was in town investigating the department. So I think what’s important about it, when you have a force like this, like policing or people with guns and badges, who are going to say we’re going to do what we want to do. What Ray Liotta is saying in his coke-infused haze is, hey, you can’t come at these people. You’re going to have to find a way around this to be kind of sneaky and make this happen. And that is very illustrative of the power of a badge when it’s corrupted. It’s almost omnipotent, it almost has all power.
Taya Graham: Okay. So I hate to do this, but we are going to end the review here so that we don’t spoil the rest of the movie for you. And I hope everyone who’s watching this is inspired to go rent my favorite movie, and I’m sure it’s Stephen’s, Cop Land.
Stephen Janis: Yeah. And one thing I want to make sure is clear and sort of takeaway, we talk about how this movie is a metaphor for American policing as a whole. And I think what’s important is that there is an underlying premise of the movie, which is that these guys got cop land, they’re in Garrison, because the mob gave them loans, low interest loans to buy houses so that they’d let them run drugs. But what that really is to talk about is a relationship between elites, economic elites, sort of profligate capitalism, and policing, and how police sort of have this special relationship with the powerful, the rich, who they really police and who they… Not really police, but really protect. And it gives them, affords them a certain social status and a certain amount of economic security that the people they police don’t have.
Taya Graham: Right. Pensions, lifetime health benefits.
Stephen Janis: Overtime. Yeah, it’s amazing. I mean, we have so many cops in Baltimore making $100,000 a year that only have a high school education. You couldn’t get a job like that anywhere else. And so I think that’s what makes this movie a different kind of cop movie, because it’s really exposing the relationship. It’s not hitting you over the head with it. It’s saying, think about this. So these cops escape to a suburb, they all get houses. They’re really given a land of economic opportunity and utopia that cannot be afforded to the people they left behind in the Bronx. And because they have a special relationship with mob, which I think really is the economic elite to this country, and because of that –
Taya Graham: You could definitely call some of our uber capitalists members of a mob.
Stephen Janis: Right. In a sense, also an original sin, right? Because from that sin of not really being a part of the community, of being economically separate, they then commit a myriad of sins. They feel empowered to set the rules for themselves and break any law they want.
Taya Graham: And I just want you to know that if you have a favorite cop movie, please be sure to leave it in the comments for us, for us to discuss. And I might even post the list, I went through the movie and wrote down every single crime that I could find. I might post that as a little list. And if you see any crimes I missed, please let me know because I kind of love geeking out over this movie. So please feel free to do so.
So I wanted to thank you for joining us for our special end of the year PAR. We wanted to do something a little bit lighter for the holidays. And we also wanted to just say thank you to everyone that is in our PAR audience. We read your comments. We appreciate that you watch us because we know that it means that you really care about fairness in your community. We know that because we’ve read your comments, we’ve read your thoughts. And we know that the reason why police accountability matters so much to you is because you care.
Stephen Janis: And you want to make a better community.
Taya Graham: Absolutely.
Stephen Janis: And that’s why we do it. We want to do it because better policing means a better community, and you can’t give power to someone without holding them accountable. And that’s why we do what we do. And we appreciate the fact that you watch our show because it gives us the ability to report on this. So it’s very important. Now, Taya, do I have to go outside?
Taya Graham: You will.
Stephen Janis: Okay.
Taya Graham: You will have to go outside, but before we do, I just wanted to say, if you have any evidence of police misconduct or brutality, please feel free to email it to us privately ar par@therealnews.com. Of course, you can always reach out to us on Facebook or on Twitter at Police Accountability Report. On Twitter, it’s @eyesonpolice. On Instagram, it’s @PoliceAccountabilityReport. And of course you can always message me directly @tayasbaltimore on Facebook and Twitter. And please do like and comment on this video. You know I read your comments and appreciate them, and I’ll try to answer your questions if I can. I’m Taya Graham.
Stephen Janis: I’m Stephen Janis.
Taya Graham: And we are the Police Accountability Report. Please be safe out there and have a great holiday.
After spending multiple years socially distancing and taking other measures to mitigate the spread COVID-19, millions around the country have found a renewed appreciation for seeing and being with loved ones during the holiday season. For those who are locked away in prisons and jails, however, the dehumanizing separation from family, friends, and community will continue. Having spent 44 years as a political prisoner, TRNN Executive Producer Eddie Conway has an intimate knowledge of just how painful the holidays are for incarcerated people and why suicides, violence, and depression spike for prisoners this time of year. In this episode of Rattling the Bars, Conway and TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez have an open and emotional discussion about what it’s like to be locked up during the holidays and about the importance of doing what we can to help prisoners maintain contact with the outside world.
Eddie Conway: Welcome to this episode of Rattling the Bars. Since it’s the holiday season, we thought we would have a conversation about the impact of holidays on prisoners in the prison-industrial complex. Joining me today as an honor and a special guest is our editor-in-chief, Max Alvarez, of course. Max, thanks for joining me.
Maximillian Alvarez:Hey, Eddie. Thank you so much for having me on the show. It’s a real honor and a pleasure to be here.
Eddie Conway: Okay. Max, you talked to me earlier about what it’s like being in prison during holidays. Are you still interested in that?
Maximillian Alvarez:Yeah. I mean, it’s something that’s been on my mind a lot. I mean obviously I watch Rattling the Bars every week and we’re truly honored to be putting it on every week, and you and Cameron do such incredible work covering the violence and victims of the prison-industrial complex week in and week out. And obviously you yourself have a very intimate knowledge of just how brutal this prison-industrial complex can be. And I don’t know, I guess just, there were moments over the past couple of years where I think, for those of us who were kind of socially distancing or even quarantining ourselves, that may have been the first time people really felt that sort of distance and isolation from their families. I know that I personally, over the summer I saw videos that my family was sending of the family getting together in California. And I was looking at them and it felt like I was sitting on the moon looking at pictures of something that was just so far away that there was no way I could get back there.
And I mean, that’s not even close to the kind of isolation that prisoners feel on a day-to-day basis. And so, I just wanted to make sure that as we wrap up a really incredible year of work here at the Real News, as folks are perhaps heading back home to see friends and family after perhaps not being able to next year, that we all spare a thought for our… The folks who are locked away right now and who are kind of living deep in the gut of an incredibly brutal prison system completely separated from their loved ones and their communities. And I think it’s important for all of us to think about what that’s like, to think about what we can do to bring some semblance of humanity back to those who have had it ripped away from them in the prison system.
And so, I figured there’d be no better kind of chance than for maybe you and I to chat a little bit and talk to viewers about what that’s like. I mean, I know that there’s probably no way to communicate what it’s like, but I guess, if you were talking to someone who asked the question, what do you think people need to know about what it’s like being locked up around the holidays?
Eddie Conway: It’s interesting though, because of the pandemic I have been telling people, because people have cabin fever, they’re bored to death, they’re jumping out of their skin because they can’t have contact. Some of them are even so desperate now that they’re willing to even take risks to go to events. And I was telling them, that’s just a small fraction of what prisoners feel when they’re isolated in cells surrounded by strangers, because you’re never alone except maybe in solitary confinement and so on. But most of the time there’s people coming in, people going out, but there’s never really close friendships. There’s a few here and there. Then there’s a certain amount of macho-ism that goes with being a prisoner. You can’t show kind of weaknesses, you can’t show that you’re vulnerable to certain things, you can’t cry, you can’t even hug prisoners man-to-man. They might come up and do a manly hug and a slap on the back and whatnot.
But the most debilitating time of the year for prisoners is the holiday seasons because that’s the memories that they bring into the prison system from their childhood: The happy times, the good food, the grandma’s cooking, the presents, the interacting with families. All that’s taken away, and it’s taken away and it’s not replaced with anything. There’s no packages. Used to be Christmas packages, you could get stuff. There’s no special events during the holiday season because the guards are taking off their vacations and so on. So, most of the time you are locked in the cell, and so you don’t even get to talk to your family on a regular basis on the telephone. And the depression is so intense throughout the whole area that it creates a sense of doom.
Everybody’s sad. People that can get high are getting high. People that can get drunk, get drunk because they can make… jump study or whatever. People that have no recourse at all might go out and run the yard, or might do calisthenics all day. But the absence of relief that you get during the holidays with the family and friends and all that stuff, it’s so intense that every little incident is exacerbated. I’m angry. I’m mad. And so, it’s the transfer of hostility and it’s transferred because the oppression of the prison system doesn’t allow you to speak out and say we want this or we want that or so on. And so, we transfer it to each other. You bumped into me. Watch where you’re going.
But it’s really about the turkey. It’s really about mom and grandma’s cooking, but it translates like that. And so, you get not just violence but then you get a level of depression that leads to suicides. So suicides during this particular period. This is the worst time in the world to be in prison and be cut off and isolated from your family, because that’s the time that’s more depressing and people tend to opt out or to end their life, or get reckless.
Maximillian Alvarez:Right. Well, I –
Eddie Conway: So, it’s… Yeah. Yeah, Max?
Maximillian Alvarez:Well, I was just going to follow up on that because I know this is something that you have talked a lot about yourself, not only on this show but even when you were on the inside organizing, right? You were constantly bringing up the importance of maintaining some semblance of connection between folks on the inside and the outside because of what it does to you, the ways that it dehumanizes you, the ways that it almost turns you in and your soul starts eating itself, if you are completely cut off from the outside world. And that is something that you see happening, especially… It becomes very apparent in times like these where maybe in the past loved ones could travel to jails or prisons and touch their sons, their spouses, but now they’re behind glass or they can only talk to them behind these video phone calls.
I guess I just wanted to ask if you could connect that to what you’ve spoken about before of what it does to you as a person to be so thoroughly disconnected, even in the sense of being able to touch your loved ones, what that does to you?
Eddie Conway: Yeah, and I think I would kind of reinforce that a little bit because cards, letters, pictures, phone calls, or anything that you get during that time helps you kind of survive through that time. Because not only do you suffer the consequences of wearing uniforms and being a non-entity, and recognizing because of the 13th Amendment that you’re treated as a slave, but then you’re further dehumanized by the guards, by them coming in happy and joyous and celebrating and then, and talking and high-fiving each other and all of that. And you’re tucked away in that cell with nothing and no contact, no comfort. It’s really, I mean, that’s kind of like the final level of dehumanization, because you can’t even develop the memories that we need to have experiences with our family. In other words, holidays and those kinds of gatherings, that’s what we remember. Being with Aunt Lou or Cousin Billy or so on. We remember those experiences, but when you take those memories away then you have not just a blank slate of what’s going on with the family, you’re not part of it, but you’re not part of anything.
And so then – And in fact I just want to go a step further, because it’s important for people to reach out to their people while they’re inside. It’s very important to do that. But a step further is that it causes most people to try to make up for that lost time, and that’s what creates the recidivism. They go out and they try to catch up. They try to get the memories, the experiences, the resources, the stuff that they know that they missed for the last 10 years. And they try to get it within a year, and they end up running afoul and end up back in the prison system within a year or 18 months, and that’s 80% of the people that get released. But it’s the missing experiences. It’s the missing comradery with the family. It’s the missing good times that they remember that they’re trying to catch up. And you can never catch… They’re lost. They’re lost forever. You can’t catch them, that’s an empty hole. You have to bury them, and you have to put them to rest and move on.
But most prisoners don’t do that, and most prisoners end up suffering a big, empty space in their life, like 10 years. And they come out and they’re desperate to fill that space, and you can’t. So it’s long-term consequences, too. And so, I think it’s just very important for any and everybody that can reach out. It is through the glass now. It’s through the emails. It’s through, even when you send pictures you’ve got to send them certain ways. Even when you buy books you’ve got to send them certain ways. The prison-industrial complex, it’s getting rich off of this, but it’s important to keep your loved one, your family member, as whole as possible. That means you have to suffer some of that exploitation in order to reach out and to have that person whole, and have that person share as many family photos around the [inaudible] and that kind of stuff. It seems trivial, postcards. Even $5 in the commissary. It seems minor but it’s so important to that person in that cell.
Maximillian Alvarez:I bet. I mean, and like you said, the stakes here are incredibly high. I mean, I guess it’s not surprising, right? That this is the time of year where suicides go up, where, like you said, you take all that hurt and you turn it towards one another and so violence inside the prison goes up. And I guess, again, that’s just something I wanted to stress for folks watching and viewing. If you have it within you to please look for ways that you can, in some little way, help someone out, help them maintain that connection with the outside world, help them maintain that shred of humanity in a very inhumane system. And I guess, obviously, the overarching theme of Rattling the Bars is that we don’t need a kinder prison-industrial complex, right? The system itself is violence. It is perpetual violence. This is what it’s designed to do.
So we’re not saying, let’s do this as a sort of salve while keeping the system in place, but while that system is in place there are things people can do to, again, keep that sort of fire of humanity burning, however weak it is, and do something that may mean only a few minutes or a few dollars for you, but it’ll mean everything for someone on the inside. And so, I just wanted to kind of end up there, Eddie, and ask if you had any kind of final thoughts for people about what they could do and what that does mean for someone who’s there on the inside, and at the holidays like now.
Yes. And I’ve said it and you’ve said it. Reach out in any kind of way you can. Send a card, send a letter. If it’s an email system, email. Send money for the commissary. Send books. You can definitely send pictures. You have to go through some process. But try to reach out and make as many contacts as possible with your loved one. Encourage the family members to do the same thing. Every little bit helps. Every little bit lightens that burden of the massive depression that holiday seasons bring in the prison system. And you will hopefully bring somebody home that’s less damaged than the prison system intended to make them. Max, I want to thank you for joining me. Hope –
Maximillian Alvarez: Eddie, it’s always a pleasure, brother. Thank you so much for having me.
Eddie Conway: Okay. And thank you for joining this episode of Rattling the Bars.
An unnamed motorist was stopped by Baltimore County police, held at gunpoint, and manhandled by multiple officers before being arrested. Body cam footage reveals the motorist, who has requested anonymity, requesting multiple times to speak with a supervisor and know the crime he was being arrested for to no avail. Police claim the 60-year-old motorist was doing donuts in his car in a local parking lot. TRNN reporter Stephen Janis was unable to find any sign of skid marks at the scene, and further deduced that the area was likely too narrow for such activity. The police statement further reveals that the motorist was known to local police as a citizen watchdog, raising the question of whether this arrest was a form of political retaliation. Police Accountability Report reviews the available footage and the details of the case, as well as what this man’s ordeal can tell us about the police war against our civil rights.
Studio: Stephen Janis Post-Production: Stephen Janis, Adam Coley
Transcript
The transcript of this video will be made available as soon as possible.
