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Speaker 1: This is the first of two interviews I conducted with
Speaker 1: scholars of prison radical movements. I spoke with Dan Berger,
Speaker 1: who is a professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies at the
Speaker 1: University of Washington Bothel and the author of Captive Nation,
Speaker 1: Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era. We talked
Speaker 1: about viewing prisons as a microcosm of society, the development
Speaker 1: of the largely black prison radical movement and its ideological
Speaker 1: under and the forces a raid to suppress the movement.
Speaker 2: My name is Dan Berger. I'm a professor of Comparative
Speaker 2: Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington Baffel and a
Speaker 2: scholar historian studying United States social movements and the curseral state,
Speaker 2: or what's more commonly referred to as history as of
Speaker 2: mass incarceration in the twentieth century United States. And into
Speaker 2: the present.
Speaker 1: So how do you date sort of the beginning of
Speaker 1: the prison reform movement or I don't even know if
Speaker 1: you would call the modern prison reform movement.
Speaker 2: I think we see a few different trajectories into the
Speaker 2: modern prison movement, and I would say reform is one angle,
Speaker 2: But we also have a revolutionary prison movement, right, which
Speaker 2: is a set of people and ideas and actors who
Speaker 2: see the prison not just as a site of abuse
Speaker 2: and injustice, but one that is a microcosm of the
Speaker 2: broader violence and injustices at the heart of American capitalism
Speaker 2: and American racism. And so that sees the effort to
Speaker 2: undermine prisons, to destroy prisons, to abolish prisons as part
Speaker 2: of a revolutionary challenge to that social, political economic order.
Speaker 2: And I think the California was a centerpiece for both
Speaker 2: of those, right, both that kind of reform movement and
Speaker 2: a revolutionary movement throughout the nineteen sixties. I think there's
Speaker 2: a longer story that we could tell in a lot
Speaker 2: of ways. As long as there have been prisons, there
Speaker 2: have been movements opposed to prisons, coming particularly out of
Speaker 2: the experiences of incarcerated people. But there's a few dynamics
Speaker 2: where there are a few issues that kind of collide
Speaker 2: in the nineteen sixties to make prisons such a central
Speaker 2: place of radicalism. One thing that's happening is connection to
Speaker 2: movements outside of prison. So when you look at something
Speaker 2: like the Civil rights movement, you see mass illegality. Right,
Speaker 2: segregation was the law of the land, and so people
Speaker 2: sitting where they wanted on the bus, sitting at lunch
Speaker 2: counters where they weren't allowed, all of these things challenged
Speaker 2: the status quo, and people went to jail. Right, People
Speaker 2: went to prison for these things. One of the things
Speaker 2: that that did was to show that jails and prisons
Speaker 2: were not all powerful. That people went to prison and
Speaker 2: they came out of prison. In some cases in the South,
Speaker 2: you see people who were incarcerated for activism make common
Speaker 2: cause with people who are incarcerated for other things. But
Speaker 2: even where we don't see that, just the fact that
Speaker 2: people were incarcerated for basic human activity, right going to
Speaker 2: the bathroom, sitting down, riding a bus, trying to order hamburger,
Speaker 2: all of those things. Right. I think part of what
Speaker 2: that gave is this kind of in sipping consciousness that
Speaker 2: prison was wrong, right, that the legal system was a
Speaker 2: part of other forms of inequality, and I think that
Speaker 2: was something that circulated throughout the nineteen fifties. But by
Speaker 2: the time we get to the nineteen sixties, you see
Speaker 2: people really try to sharpen that critique. So you have
Speaker 2: men like Malcolm X and others in the Nation of
Speaker 2: Islam who talked about their own experiences being incarcerated as
Speaker 2: educational as part of how they learned about American racism
Speaker 2: was that they wound up in prison. The fact that
Speaker 2: they survived prison showed that prison could be overcome. And
Speaker 2: Malcolm was quite profound about prison as a metaphor of
Speaker 2: American white supremacy, prison as a metaphor for the kind
Speaker 2: of problems that black people face in this country. Groups
Speaker 2: like the Black Panther Party picked up or carry on
Speaker 2: that tradition. So Malcolm X is assassinated in February nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty five, the Panther's form in October nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 2: and a number of members of the Black Panther Party
Speaker 2: themselves had been incarcerated, sometimes you know, as juveniles. So
Speaker 2: you have people, you know, like Huey Newton, who's a
Speaker 2: co founder of the Black Panther Party who had been
Speaker 2: incarcerated in what was called the California Youth Authority, which
Speaker 2: is basically the juvenile detension system. Nowadays, it's people maybe
Speaker 2: heard about this idea of like the school the prison pipeline, right,
Speaker 2: of these kinds of connections between underfunded schools and contact
Speaker 2: with the legal systems. People tend to think of this
Speaker 2: as a kind of recent phenomenon of the last thirty
Speaker 2: forty years. But actually, if you look at the treatment
Speaker 2: that black migrants out of the South faced in places
Speaker 2: like California, you see this exact thing, right, people living
Speaker 2: in under resourced communities that were heavily policed. That you have,
Speaker 2: you know, kids thirteen years old, eleven years old, eight
Speaker 2: years old, going to prison, going to jail, going into
Speaker 2: the legal system. And I think the movement of the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties really helped provide a kind of political context
Speaker 2: and political explanation for why so many impoverished young black
Speaker 2: people in particular were incarcerated.
Speaker 1: I'm interested in the reading I have done is that
Speaker 1: it seems like there's a strong sort of Marxist element
Speaker 1: to the intellectual underpinnings of the movement, at least in
Speaker 1: like the late sixties and into the seventies. Where does
Speaker 1: that come from?
Speaker 2: That's not uniformly shared. So that's one thing to keep
Speaker 2: in mind, right that there is a kind of Marxist
Speaker 2: thread within the Radical prison movement, but it's not the
Speaker 2: only thread. But again, I think we have to understand
Speaker 2: this context as one in which there's a popularity to
Speaker 2: Marxism and socialism and communism within different left wing movements
Speaker 2: at the time. So the Black Panther Party is a
Speaker 2: communist organization. Part of the political education that the Panthers
Speaker 2: did included readings and Marxism, and the Panthers had a
Speaker 2: big influence on but also learned a lot from the
Speaker 2: Radical prison movement. And so we see someone like George Jackson,
Speaker 2: who is incarcerated in California as a teenager first when
Speaker 2: he was eighteen in nineteen sixty, who becomes this autodidact
Speaker 2: intellectual in prison who is reading Marx and Lenin and
Speaker 2: Trotsky and now as well as some contemporary scholars and
Speaker 2: others sort of analyzing those movements.
Speaker 1: George Jackson was a prison revolutionary who was sentenced for
Speaker 1: an indeterminate period of time for stealing seventy dollars from
Speaker 1: a gas station. He was a co founder of the
Speaker 1: Black Gorilla Family, a member of the Black Panthers, and
Speaker 1: an author, most notably of the influential book Soladad Brother.
Speaker 1: He was targeted by guards and prison officials for his
Speaker 1: radical influence among prisoners, and was shot to death by
Speaker 1: prison guards during an escape attempt on August twenty first,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy three.
Speaker 2: People often in the US think about the sixties and
Speaker 2: the radicalism of that time period only in a US context.
Speaker 2: I think it's important to understand this globally, that this
Speaker 2: is a time period of revolutionary movements all around the world,
Speaker 2: some of them quite successful, and many of them were
Speaker 2: inspired by Marxism in some fashion. So I think particularly
Speaker 2: to someone like George Jackson, who was such a foundational
Speaker 2: thinker to the radical prison movement, not just in California
Speaker 2: but around the country and even around the world. He's
Speaker 2: very inspired by world events. He's looking around at what's
Speaker 2: happening in Angola and South Africa and Vietnam and China
Speaker 2: and engaging with that. He's converson in that. I think
Speaker 2: that helps usher in a kind of interests in Marxism
Speaker 2: for some sectors of the radical prison movement.
Speaker 1: So I was interested. You said that that wasn't sort
Speaker 1: of universal in that there are other sort of intellectual
Speaker 1: frameworks that people work within. Can you talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about those alternatives.
Speaker 2: Some of them are parallel, some of them are overlapping,
Speaker 2: some of them maybe antagonistic. But I think you have,
Speaker 2: particularly by the time we get to the early nineteen seventies,
Speaker 2: you have a strong contingent of Marxists. You have a
Speaker 2: much more more popular set of Black nationalists. Some of
Speaker 2: those Black nationalists were also Marxists, but not all of them,
Speaker 2: and I would say the maturity we're not Marxist. I
Speaker 2: think you have other strains of a kind of radical
Speaker 2: ethnic nationalism. So among some of the Chicano prisoners, for instance,
Speaker 2: among some of the Indigenous prisoners, I think you see
Speaker 2: different different kinds of radical nationalisms. And again, this is
Speaker 2: all very much in conversation with what's happening outside of prison.
Speaker 2: This is a time period of Chicano nationalism and Pan
Speaker 2: Indian nationalism as well. I also think you have there's
Speaker 2: a kind of labor movement inside of prison. I've done
Speaker 2: a lot of research on California. I know you're focused
Speaker 2: on California. A lot of what we're talking about is
Speaker 2: true elsewhere in the nation. We're talking about California, but
Speaker 2: we could find these dynamics rare least similar dynamics in
Speaker 2: Texas and New York and Pennsylvania, like in Illinois and
Speaker 2: lots of other places. But I think within the labor
Speaker 2: movement in prison, again, some of the Marxist some of
Speaker 2: the radical nationalists are there, but also do just people
Speaker 2: who recognize that they're being fucked over and who want
Speaker 2: things to be different. In some ways, they're not necessarily
Speaker 2: that ideological. They are just exploited and oppressed and desiring
Speaker 2: a change. But I also think there's some elements of
Speaker 2: the prison movement that exceed the kind of ideological classifications.
Speaker 2: People are mixed, right, There's some kind of liberalism, there's
Speaker 2: some hyper capitalism right of like, hey, the free market
Speaker 2: says I should be compensated for my labor, and I'm
Speaker 2: not being compensated for my name. It only becomes a
Speaker 2: radical critique because the prison system disallows the remuneration for
Speaker 2: their labor. It's a kind of potpourri. I have different
Speaker 2: ideologies at this time period. But the folks who were
Speaker 2: the most vocal and who tended to be the most
Speaker 2: conversant with people who are not incarcerated. It tended to
Speaker 2: be either Marxists or radical nationalists and internationalists, So have
Speaker 2: one kind or another.
Speaker 1: So did you in your research do much on Popeye Jackson?
Speaker 2: Yeah, a little bit.
Speaker 1: What's your kind of take on him and how he
Speaker 1: fits within this universe.
Speaker 2: So one thing that's really important to understand about California
Speaker 2: in some ways, in particular California at this time period,
Speaker 2: although it's not exclusive to California, it's how much the
Speaker 2: prison system is governing through racism. So the prison system
Speaker 2: uses racism as a way to keep people apart and
Speaker 2: to either introduce or foster divisions between incarcerated people. And
Speaker 2: part of that is that prisoners outnumber guards. One way
Speaker 2: that prisons maintain social order is through cells. There's the
Speaker 2: physical infrastructure that they use. There is the presence of guards.
Speaker 2: By guards implified that by pitting prisoners against each other,
Speaker 2: and race became the way that they did that. And
Speaker 2: to some extent, geography, so where in California people were from,
Speaker 2: and so what I think radicals had to do when
Speaker 2: George Jackson did this, I think pop I tried to
Speaker 2: do this as well, was to bridge those divides, to
Speaker 2: try to get people to work with each other at
Speaker 2: least around some core issues against the prison system. Right,
Speaker 2: this idea that the prison system was the real enemy, right,
Speaker 2: whatever differences divide us. Clearly no one was successful in
Speaker 2: that in any kind of grand totalizing way. Papa Jackson
Speaker 2: became a labor organizer in prison, right, So his kind
Speaker 2: of organizing that he was doing was through the prisoners
Speaker 2: Union within California. The prisoners Union was divided between folks
Speaker 2: who wanted a kind of revolutionary challenge to the system overall,
Speaker 2: and folks who wanted compensation and better treatment for themselves
Speaker 2: for others during their incarceration, but who didn't necessarily contest
Speaker 2: the legitimacy of the institution. So I fucked that. I'm
Speaker 2: paying my dues whatever, but I shouldn't be exploited in
Speaker 2: this way. Right, I'm already in prison. I deserve to
Speaker 2: be in prison, but I shouldn't be avoided. And I
Speaker 2: think that was a real profound divide. And there was
Speaker 2: some racial differences on top of that, Like the latter
Speaker 2: group was a wider group than the group that was
Speaker 2: sort of trying to wage this kind of revolutionary challenge
Speaker 2: against the prison system and the kind of larger social
Speaker 2: order that it represented. So, you know, I think Popeye
Speaker 2: was kind of in that former camp of like trying
Speaker 2: to be involved in this kind of revolutionary movement. But
Speaker 2: my understanding was that he was trying to be more
Speaker 2: conversant with the labor movement or the labor union in
Speaker 2: ways that might also bring in folks that weren't already there, right,
Speaker 2: they weren't already committed to a kind of revolutionary project.
Speaker 1: Can you just kind of expand upon that a little
Speaker 1: bit about what those sort of fracturing disputes were about.
Speaker 1: Are the personalities who are involved in.
Speaker 2: It throughout the decade of the seventies, will put it
Speaker 2: that way. You can find the exact number, but you know,
Speaker 2: there's something like two dozen prisoners are killed and about
Speaker 2: ten guards are killed something like that. That's a lot,
Speaker 2: I'm particularly given that the prison system is nowhere near
Speaker 2: as vast as it is today. So you know, California
Speaker 2: doesn't have but a few prisons in this time period,
Speaker 2: and so there were a series of divisions by race.
Speaker 2: As I mentioned, I think a lot of ways the
Speaker 2: story begins, or at least we can to recognize an
Speaker 2: origin of the story in the murders of three prisoners
Speaker 2: at Solidad in nineteen seventy. After a long period of
Speaker 2: lockdown right where prisoners weren't allowed out of their sets,
Speaker 2: guards finally let them out, but deliberately let out a
Speaker 2: group of black prisoners and a group of white prisoners,
Speaker 2: including several members of the Aryan Brotherhood white supremacist prison gang.
Speaker 2: Several of the black prisoners were black nationalists who had
Speaker 2: been involved in different protests against racism and segregation in prison.
Speaker 2: And so this was a manufactured fight, and this is
Speaker 2: something that California prison system would become notorious for. Different
Speaker 2: prisons became known informally as gladiator schools because the guards
Speaker 2: were just setting up fights between incarcerated people. So guards
Speaker 2: set up this fight. People have been locked down for months,
Speaker 2: and then they get on the yard and they start
Speaker 2: brawling with each other, and sniper opens fire and kills
Speaker 2: three black prisoners and wounds either one or two white prisoners.
Speaker 1: Prisoner, a man named Billy Harris, was shot in the
Speaker 1: groin but survived.
Speaker 2: A few days later, a different guard at Solidad is
Speaker 2: beaten up and thrown off the tier and killed. And
Speaker 2: this inaugurates this idea essentially, of that some prisoners felt
Speaker 2: right that prisoners shouldn't be the only people dying. If
Speaker 2: this is a kind of warlike atmosphere, then prisoners needed
Speaker 2: to fight back in that way. And you know, the
Speaker 2: prison system took that threat very seriously. But I also
Speaker 2: think it entrenched some divisions that already existed. Part of
Speaker 2: how the prison system governs through racism is for the
Speaker 2: prison system to determine that black prisoners, white prisoners, and
Speaker 2: Chicano prisoners hate each other, and Northern Chicano prisoners and
Speaker 2: Southern Chicano prisoners hate each other. Until the California prison
Speaker 2: system delineated four groups, right, white, Black, Northern Mexican Southern Mexican,
Speaker 2: determined that they were at war and treated them as
Speaker 2: if they were at war with each other, right to
Speaker 2: these kinds of fights orchestrated ways in which they would disagree.
Speaker 2: So within that you have these kinds of social formations
Speaker 2: that take root that also think through rates. Right, the
Speaker 2: Aryan Brotherhood is a Neo Nazi organization. You have different
Speaker 2: associations that form among black Mechicano prisoners that are engaged
Speaker 2: in self defense, that are trying to survive. Some of
Speaker 2: them also involve themselves in the illicit economy of the
Speaker 2: prison system. All of those things are grounds for disagreement
Speaker 2: and hostility if different groups are involved in underground economies. There,
Speaker 2: it's the economic competition, but also the self defense training
Speaker 2: that some people are doing gets read as an exacerbation
Speaker 2: of hostilities, right, or ramping up of threats against other people.
Speaker 2: And so you know, I think this really comes to
Speaker 2: define the California prison system of the nineteen seventies in
Speaker 2: some ways beyond in terms of how the state responds.
Speaker 2: But I think what's particular about the seventies is how
Speaker 2: much incarcert people tried to organize themselves. For some people
Speaker 2: that men trying to arm themselves, right, that it wasn't
Speaker 2: just physical you know, the self defense that I could
Speaker 2: do with my body, but you know, trying to fashion
Speaker 2: knives or other weapons that could be used in the
Speaker 2: case of attack. I mean, I interviewed people who were
Speaker 2: participating in study groups right where they're reading books together
Speaker 2: and trying to sharpen their mind, as well as conducting
Speaker 2: self defense classes, right, trying to train their bodies to
Speaker 2: survive that institution. As incarcerator, people became known outside of
Speaker 2: prison and developed support networks who sent letters, sometimes, who
Speaker 2: sent money or other resources, or brought other kinds of attention.
Speaker 2: I think some people were jealous of that, right, some
Speaker 2: people who were poor and desperate and also wanted connections
Speaker 2: with the outside.
Speaker 1: You talked about how this sort of pressured environment led
Speaker 1: to sort of a fracturing of whatever kind of cohesive
Speaker 1: movement there was, and how that I don't know if
Speaker 1: it completely fell apart or just transitioned to something different.
Speaker 2: One of the people who's killed at Solidad that I
Speaker 2: mentioned is a guy named W. C. Nolan, and Nolan
Speaker 2: was a boxing champ. He had helped kind of bring
Speaker 2: together these different kind of informal organizations. George Jackson was
Speaker 2: a part of that, and George Jackson helped them, you know,
Speaker 2: continue that effort. And after he was killed in August
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy one, it takes on another form, right,
Speaker 2: and that becomes called the black Ela Family. In the
Speaker 2: late seventies, the Black Erila Family splits, and part of
Speaker 2: the split is folks who want to pursue a more
Speaker 2: kind of political and politically radical direction and folks who
Speaker 2: are participating more in the informal economies of the prison system.
Speaker 2: And that's just within one formation, right, But the Black
Speaker 2: Rula family is also constantly at war with the Aryan Brotherhood.
Speaker 2: So I think, right there are these sort of constant
Speaker 2: pressures around leadership and personality even within some of the
Speaker 2: groups that incarcetrate people form. But then also these kind
Speaker 2: of external pressures both from other kind of organized groups
Speaker 2: and then constantly from the guards and from the state.
Speaker 1: This is just almost sort ofing a side question, but
Speaker 1: did the Aryan Brotherhood did they have like a political
Speaker 1: program that they were trying to put forward, or were
Speaker 1: they just as sort of defense sort of criminal organization.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I think an important part of guns, booze, drugs, sex,
Speaker 2: and probably other weapons in the prison system, certainly all
Speaker 2: of that takes place within a framework of white supremacy,
Speaker 2: so that piece of it is sort of inseparable. But
Speaker 2: whether there is a kind of political perspective, I don't
Speaker 2: know that they're doing study groups, I guess I would say, right,
Speaker 2: the way is that like we see black and some
Speaker 2: of the Chicano and other Latino prisoners are doing steady groups.
Speaker 2: I genuinely don't know. I'm not saying that they that
Speaker 2: they don't, but I haven't seen evidence. That hasn't been
Speaker 2: my purview so much. I think the Arian brother tries
Speaker 2: to recruit white prisoners as soon as they come in,
Speaker 2: so they're not already committed, right. I think they try
Speaker 2: to inculcate white prisoners into being white supremacists, But I
Speaker 2: don't know if there's a kind of political education program
Speaker 2: beyond that.
Speaker 1: I explained to Dan that I'd asked the question because
Speaker 1: of Lynette From's association with the Aryan Brotherhood outside prison
Speaker 1: walls as she tried to help Charles Manson during his InCAR.
Speaker 1: I wondered how they fit into the prison political ecosystem.
Speaker 2: Fair like the main social force in prison that really
Speaker 2: thinks through race and skin color in that way, Like
Speaker 2: the basis of black prison organization is much more three dimensional,
Speaker 2: Like there is a sort of politics there, there is
Speaker 2: a kind of back and forth there. But I think
Speaker 2: the Aaron Brotherhood is much more like the assumption that
Speaker 2: if you're white, you're in this group and trying to
Speaker 2: enforce that quite violently at times. But I know one
Speaker 2: of the white prisoners who was at San Quentin in
Speaker 2: August nineteen seventy one when George Jackson was killed was
Speaker 2: not ideologically a Nazi, but I was told anyway that
Speaker 2: he was close to the Aaron Brotherhood. And I think
Speaker 2: there was just a certain kind of luidity, for lack
Speaker 2: of a better word, right, that there's a defined hierarchy
Speaker 2: to the AB like any structure of its kind, but
Speaker 2: there's also an assumption that white people are going to
Speaker 2: defend and uphold white supremacy in prison that I think
Speaker 2: led people to be sort of close, even if they
Speaker 2: were not official members. But I think, you know, the
Speaker 2: example that you're pointing to is how much the organizations
Speaker 2: and social networks that existed inside of prison tried to
Speaker 2: develop and deepen relationships outside of prison. And I think
Speaker 2: that is it's definitely not unique to this time period,
Speaker 2: but it is an important part of the dynamics of
Speaker 2: that time period. And I think in the late sixties
Speaker 2: early seventies, the Black Panthers give that kind of political
Speaker 2: architecture to that for a lot of black prisoners in California,
Speaker 2: but the Panthers are undergoing their own pressures and assaults
Speaker 2: from the state as well as their own divisions internally
Speaker 2: that make that a lot less possible by the mid seventies.
Speaker 1: It's interesting I was reading a thing about like prisoner celebrity,
Speaker 1: and it did talk about George Jackson, but then also
Speaker 1: like Donald d. Friese as sort of coming out of
Speaker 1: prison with this sort of chrisma of authenticity or something
Speaker 1: for people who sort of ideological bent.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that's absolutely a dynamic of what's happening
Speaker 2: in this time period. And I think by the time
Speaker 2: like DeFreeze is on the scene, you know, there's a
Speaker 2: good solid decade of formerly incarcerated people serving. It's very visible,
Speaker 2: identifiable political leaders, right, and I think leaders with a
Speaker 2: lot of principle by in large, we're talking about Malcolm X,
Speaker 2: We're talking about Martin Luther King, right, I mean, he's
Speaker 2: someone who's spent a lot of time in jail, if
Speaker 2: not in prison, And so I think that lends itself
Speaker 2: right to this idea that incarcerated people have a certain
Speaker 2: amount of authenticity from the prison experience. I think that
Speaker 2: could open the door to people acting without as much principle,
Speaker 2: and people who did not have the kind of political
Speaker 2: experience in some cases or the political commitments in other
Speaker 2: cases that were still part of the milieu of that
Speaker 2: time period. Right. So place is a high degree of
Speaker 2: power on the written word, right, And again we have
Speaker 2: these profound works of literature that come out of prison
Speaker 2: in this time period. Aldridge Kleeber is a best seller.
Speaker 2: George Jackson is a best seller. Carol Chessman, who was
Speaker 2: a California prisoner who was put to death earlier in
Speaker 2: the sixties, had written several best selling books from prison.
Speaker 2: And so there's this kind of authenticity to the written
Speaker 2: word that comes out of prison in this time period
Speaker 2: that by and large is people are sincere in their
Speaker 2: stated political commitments. You know, George Jackson was very direct
Speaker 2: and very clear about being communists revolutionary, and that's in
Speaker 2: his writings, and I think that's how he tried to live,
Speaker 2: and that's, you know, in a lot of ways, how
Speaker 2: he died. But I think there are some examples that
Speaker 2: people who did not have the same sort of political
Speaker 2: experience or political commitments that they might have presented themselves
Speaker 2: as having. In general, I think people were sincere in
Speaker 2: what they put out for themselves in the world. And
Speaker 2: I think people did build some very meaningful relationships across
Speaker 2: prison walls in this time period. I'm speaking of platonic relationships,
Speaker 2: although there are also romantic relationships as well that come
Speaker 2: out of this.
Speaker 1: So what haven't we talked about that you think is
Speaker 1: important to know about this era?
Speaker 2: I think that there's a lot of the specifics of
Speaker 2: some of these cases that is still kind of shrouded
Speaker 2: in mystery at some level. Right, some people are still incarcerated,
Speaker 2: some people are dead, and some of that is about
Speaker 2: the role of law enforcement. Right that there were a
Speaker 2: lot of police infiltrators and spy and provocateurs that had
Speaker 2: infiltrated the prison movement, you know, particularly outside of prison,
Speaker 2: the ways that people coming out of prison had one
Speaker 2: idea about what they would find in the movement, and
Speaker 2: then trying to navigate some of these complex relationships with
Speaker 2: you know, with some nefarious interventions that's that are harder
Speaker 2: to trace. It I think makes things very complicated. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's very much a part of the George Jackson story.
Speaker 2: I think prison is an isolating institution governed through violence,
Speaker 2: and so the lessons of how political power is accrude
Speaker 2: or established that come out of prison are ones rooted
Speaker 2: in violence. Right, And I think in a context of
Speaker 2: revolutionary movements around the world using violence, the nineteen seventies
Speaker 2: was a time period in which people hoped that armed
Speaker 2: struggle would be a meaningful path toward liberation. And by
Speaker 2: the time you get to the late seventies, you see
Speaker 2: this internaceine warfare that claims a lot of sincere people's lives,
Speaker 2: that claims the lives of a lot of sincere dedicated activists,
Speaker 2: that wounds and injures sincere dedicated activists, and that drives
Speaker 2: people away. In some cases, we are because of that
Speaker 2: violent context. In some cases, it's hard to point out
Speaker 2: what was the state's involvement, right, Where were the police
Speaker 2: informants accelerating violent conflict or pushing for these kinds of
Speaker 2: disagreements and what were people making bad decisions in a
Speaker 2: difficult and bad context. But the end result is that
Speaker 2: we lose a lot of people, literally we lose them,
Speaker 2: and that they are killed or we lose them, and
Speaker 2: that they're they're driven away in some form or another.
Speaker 2: And I think, you know, we get this is the
Speaker 2: kind of second wave of the underground that happens in
Speaker 2: the mid seventies after a kind of earlier wave that
Speaker 2: we get through groups like the Weather Underground under the
Speaker 2: Black Liberation Army. I think, particularly in California in the
Speaker 2: mid seventies, we get this kind of second wave underground
Speaker 2: in the mid seventies that I think has a little
Speaker 2: more like desperation to it for lack of a boat
Speaker 2: a word, because it's more desperate times, right, because it's
Speaker 2: people who are forming these groups or in a time
Speaker 2: period of tremendous loss and violence. And I think that
Speaker 2: adds to the kind of confusion of the time period.
Speaker 1: Just one last question, because you've been great with giving
Speaker 1: me this much time. Was any of this successful? I mean,
Speaker 1: were there successes that came out of this period.
Speaker 2: It's easy to see the failures, right. I talked about
Speaker 2: the failures in terms of the loss of life for
Speaker 2: the people that were scared away. I think there's a
Speaker 2: larger institutional failure of the time period, right, I mean,
Speaker 2: which is the growth of mass incarceration. So think about
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy nineteen seventy one, people like George Jackson
Speaker 2: and Angela Davis look out from prison in Jackson's case
Speaker 2: jail and Davis's case and say the US is on
Speaker 2: the road to fascism. Look at these racist, violent conditions
Speaker 2: inside of its jails and prisons, look at the repression
Speaker 2: of its political movements. This is the path to fascism.
Speaker 2: At that time, the United States incarcerated about two hundred
Speaker 2: thousand people in prisons and jails. Today the United States
Speaker 2: incarcerates two point two million. So there's something very profound
Speaker 2: about their ability. And George Jack and Angel Davis are
Speaker 2: two of many people, but certainly very significant and profound
Speaker 2: spokespeople their ability to reckon with the power of repression.
Speaker 2: Right to see this in an almost prophetic way, that
Speaker 2: prison is bad. Right. Prison is this like violent and
Speaker 2: destabilizing institution that deployed against the most marginalized parts of
Speaker 2: society and if we don't change it to get a
Speaker 2: lot worse. They were right about that. It's hard to
Speaker 2: see that as a victory, but I think there is
Speaker 2: something profound in that element.
Speaker 1: Thank you to Dan Berger, Professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies
Speaker 1: at the University of Washington Bothel. He is the author
Speaker 1: of Captive Nation, Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era.
Speaker 1: I'm Toby Ball. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio, app,
Speaker 1: Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show.
Speaker 1: For more information on rip Current, visit the show website
Speaker 1: at ripcurrentpod dot com