\nAMY<\/span> GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> And how do you feel today? How have you adjusted, after 43 years in prison?<\/p>\nALBERT<\/span> WOODFOX<\/span>:<\/strong> Well, hopeful. You know, Rob and I still travel around, across America and outside of America, to talk about solitary confinement, which we believe is the most horrible and brutal nonphysical attack upon a human being by another human being. Throughout my four decades-plus of solitary confinement, I\u2019ve watched men go insane, I\u2019ve watched men physically hurt themselves, you know, trying to deal with the pressure of being confined to a 9-by-6 cell 23 hours out of every 24-hour period.<\/p>\nAnd being free now, I still suffer, you know, claustrophobic attacks. I\u2019m able to address them better now because my physical movement is beyond nine feet now. And so, you know, I can walk in my house. I can go in the backyard of my house. I can go on the sidewalk, or there\u2019s a park, which I often visit, a block and a half away from my house. So, the only remedy for me when I had claustrophobic attacks was the space. So this has made it easier to deal with those attacks.<\/p>\n
AMY<\/span> GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> And you write, \u201cGassing prisoners was the number one response by security to deal with any prisoner at Angola who demanded to be treated with dignity. \u2026 In the seventies we were gassed so often every prisoner in CCR<\/span> almost became immune to the tear gas.\u201d You were being gassed in solitary confinement?<\/p>\nALBERT<\/span> WOODFOX<\/span>:<\/strong> Yeah. Well, you know, the sergeants were provided with these little \u2014 it\u2019s like a little deodorant can. And if you would try to get a certain, like, more toilet paper, or you complained about the toilet in your cell not working, you know, and if the officers didn\u2019t like the way you were talking, or if you were trying to defend yourself from being handled in a disrespectful manner and stuff, they would squirt the gas in your face, you know? And usually that would be followed by \u2014 they would come into your cell and beat you and handcuff you, then bring you and put you in what\u2019s called the dungeon.<\/p>\nJUAN<\/span> GONZ\u00c1LEZ:<\/strong> In the book, you describe, very graphically, the situation at Angola when you first got there, before you were in solitary, and the rampant rapes that were occurring in the prison. And once you became politically conscious and you were returned there, you talk about how you insisted that on your \u2014 in your section, that there was going to be no more rapes. Talk about that and the impact that your political organizing had on the way you dealt with your fellow prisoners.<\/p>\nALBERT<\/span> WOODFOX<\/span>:<\/strong> Well, the incident that started the prison chapter of the party to form anti-rape squads was, I was in my dormitory \u2014 I was housed in Hickory 4 at that time \u2014 and this young kid was assigned a bed across from me. And the saddest thing I\u2019ve ever witnessed in my life is to look at another human being and see that his spirit has been shattered. And this kid, you know, he was just sitting there, and I could see tears rolling out of his eyes. And, you know, I always have believed that, in life, an individual incident raises your level of consciousness. And so, once your level of consciousness is raised, you become aware of whatever conditions, individuals. And so, how you respond to that, you know, is pretty much determined on that level of conscious. And I think at that moment that I said, \u201cI can no longer accept this. I can no longer tolerate this.\u201d<\/p>\nSo, the next day, I had a talk with Herman Wallace. And we used to go out on the football field. That\u2019s how we used to have our meetings, like we were practicing football, throwing the football around and having political discussions and stuff. And so we discussed with the other members about the rape and slave trade that was going on in Angola. And so we decided to start providing protection for these kids coming in, to let them know that they had other options, other than being made victims.<\/p>\n
AMY<\/span> GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> How did you maintain your sanity, 44 years in solitary confinement?<\/p>\nALBERT<\/span> WOODFOX<\/span>:<\/strong> Well, I think the fact that, you know, I was a member of the Black Panther Party. I had a political consciousness. I had values and principles instilled by my mom that I grew into. You know, I didn\u2019t realize how much my mom had built and set a foundation in me, even though I was resisting it. And, you know, over the decades, we had programs geared toward making the men better. We had schools. We used to hold schools and political classes. But, you know, as many battles as we won, as many men as we saved, as many men as we helped keep their sanity, we lost twice as many men, you know. And there were times when I had to fight really hard for my own sanity. And I thank the fact that what I was doing.<\/p>\nYou know, throughout all this, I developed an unbelievable love for humanity and dedicated myself to doing whatever I can to better humanity. And so, I remember reading something from Mr. Mandela, and he said, \u201cIf a cause is noble, you can carry the weight of the world on your shoulders.\u201d And I thought what we were doing was a noble cause. So we were prepared. And so the beatings and the gassings and the decades of solitary confinement, you know, was really \u2014 although painful and difficult, it never got to the point where they were able to break us.<\/p>\n
AMY<\/span> GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> It\u2019s amazing to me that rather than just leaving it all behind \u2014 I mean, it already consumed so many decades of your life \u2014 you are spending your life, free, talking about what\u2019s happening inside. I think, to say the least, it\u2019s impossible for anyone who hasn\u2019t gone through this to understand what it means to live in a 6-by-9-foot cell for more than four decades. How did you maintain your sanity? Describe for us being in that cell, what it felt like.<\/p>\nALBERT<\/span> WOODFOX<\/span>:<\/strong> You know, actually, the measurements to the cell are 6 by 9, six feet wide, nine feet long. But there is actually less space available, because you have two bunks attached to the wall that takes up half of the cell, and you have a toilet bowl, face bowl combination on the back wall, and you have an iron table with a bench on the thing. So you have a very narrow pathway in which you can move back, forward in the cell. You know, when you\u2019re first put in solitary confinement, you go through this period where you want to scream, you know, because nothing you can do to fight this. In hindsight, I would say it was probably the early stages of claustrophobia, you know, but it depend on the individual.<\/p>\nAs time goes on, you learn to control your emotions, your feeling of being smothered and being confined. And so, but then, you know, when we\u2019re first put in solitary confinement, you could only have like two or three pair of underwear and a T-shirt. And, you know, you couldn\u2019t have books or radios and those things. Those things were gained later as a result of our resistance and organizing and hunger strikes and stuff like that. We won the right to, you know, change.<\/p>\n
AMY<\/span> GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> Albert, you wrote, \u201cMy proudest achievement in all my years in solitary was teaching a man to read.\u201d<\/p>\nALBERT<\/span> WOODFOX<\/span>:<\/strong> Yes.<\/p>\nAMY<\/span> GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> How did you do that? And who was this man?<\/p>\nALBERT<\/span> WOODFOX<\/span>:<\/strong> Well, his name\u2019s Charles, and we became good friends. And since, you know, my mom couldn\u2019t read or write anything but her name, you know, there\u2019s certain things people that can\u2019t read or write, certain techniques they use and stuff. And so, I picked this up on him. And, you know, the CCR<\/span>, the cellblock, is 15 men to a cell. And the uniqueness about, I guess, in Louisiana, is the front of the cell is made out of bars. It\u2019s not a completely concrete enclosed cell. So, I just asked him one day. I said, \u201cMan, you know, don\u2019t get mad, but can you read and write?\u201d And he said, you know, \u201cNo, I can\u2019t.\u201d And I just told him. I said, \u201cWell, I can help you learn how to read and write, but you\u2019ve got to really want it. You\u2019ve got to want this badder than anything.\u201d<\/p>\nAnd so I used the dictionary, starting off. You know, in dictionaries, at the bottom of each page, there\u2019s a sound key on how you pronounce words, as to how they\u2019re spelled. And I taught him about, you know, vowels and adjectives, and, you know, just basically, I teached him how to shape words. And he really wanted it, you know, because I told him \u2014 I said, you know, \u201cAny time, I don\u2019t care what, night or day, you hit a wall, you call me.\u201d And he called me 2 or 3 in the morning, you know, and \u201cI can\u2019t pronounce this word.\u201d And so I would ask him to spell it, and then I\u2019d remind him of, you know, the voice key at the bottom of the page and how you pronounce alphabets, and help him, you know, think.<\/p>\n
AMY<\/span> GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> He was in solitary, too.<\/p>\nALBERT<\/span> WOODFOX<\/span>:<\/strong> Yeah, he was about three or four cells down from me.<\/p>\nAMY<\/span> GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> How do you communicate? How did you communicate with other people in solitary?<\/p>\nALBERT<\/span> WOODFOX<\/span>:<\/strong> Well, you talk, holler up and down the tier. You know, this is one of the ways I developed the habit of waking up in the very early a.m., because the tier stops showering. There\u2019s no noise. The doors are not opening and closing. And, you know, so you are able to really concentrate on what you\u2019re doing. So, even now, you know, I wake up 3, 3:30 in the morning, and this is when I do most of my reading. I still read, try to read at least two hours a day. So, there are some things, habits that I developed in prison, I still try to hold onto.<\/p>\nAMY<\/span> GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> Your final thoughts, as you go out into the world, as you travel the world taking advantage of every moment in the free world?<\/p>\nALBERT<\/span> WOODFOX<\/span>:<\/strong> Well, you know, my hope has always been for a better humanity and to try to be a part of that, to try to say something or do something that will make, if it\u2019s no more than one human being, stop and think and, you know, start a dialogue that can leave into \u2014 that can change into a movement. You know, I\u2019ve always said that one individual can cause chaos; mass movements can cause change. So, you know, I still firmly believe in that.<\/p>\nAnd so, that\u2019s \u2014 you know, Robert and I and Herman, you know, when we were in prison, the one thing we always noticed is that we didn\u2019t have a voice. And because of the men and women and children that were hidden behind the walls of prison and in solitary, nobody knew what we looked like. So we had made a vow that we would be the voice of those men and women and children, and we would be the face.<\/p>\n
You know, I think what people in America and around the world have to realize, that prisoners don\u2019t come from another planet. They come from your family. They come from homes. And they might make mistakes. Usually, the economic system brings depression. And, you know, I mean, I know that there is a very small percentage of human beings who do some horrible things, you know, but the overwhelming majority \u2014 you know, you come from a family. You don\u2019t come from an alien planet. And they need to, you know, remember that. And they need to love them and support them, you know, because prisons or any state institution, without oversight and without consequences, unchecked power corrupts. And that\u2019s the situation you have in prisons in this country.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
AMY<\/span> GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> Former Black Panther Albert Woodfox, speaking<\/a> on Democracy Now!<\/i> in 2019 shortly after the publication of his award-winning book, Solitary: Unbroken by Four Decades in Solitary Confinement. My Story of Transformation and Hope<\/em>. He died Thursday of COVID<\/span> at the age of 75. We\u2019ll speak to his loved ones after break.<\/p>\n[break]<\/p>\n
AMY<\/span> GOODMAN<\/span>:<\/strong> \u201cNeither One of Us (Wants to Be the First to Say Goodbye)\u201d by Gladys Knight & the Pips, a favorite of Albert Woodfox.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Woodfox spent 43 years in solitary confinement due to a wrongful conviction.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1462,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[51748,12928,304,463,1206,564],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770102"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1462"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=770102"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770102\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770102"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770102"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770102"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}