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Speaker 2: it five This is a rip Current bonus episode.
Speaker 1: You don't need to listen to follow the Rip Current storyline,
Speaker 1: but it provides more information, context, and analysis to enhance
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Speaker 1: This is the second of two interviews I conducted with
Speaker 1: experts in prison radical movements. I spoke with Brittany Friedman,
Speaker 1: who is assistant professor of sociology at the University of
Speaker 1: Southern California. She is the author of Carcerol Apartheid, How
Speaker 1: Lies and White Supremacists Run Our Prisons. We talked about
Speaker 1: the connection between freedom movements inside and outside prison, the
Speaker 1: campaign by government and prison officials to eradicate the black
Speaker 1: freedom movement in California prisons, and the alliance between prison
Speaker 1: guards and white supremacist prison gangs.
Speaker 3: Well, I'm Brittany Friedman. I am an assistant professor of
Speaker 3: sociology at the University of Southern California, and most of
Speaker 3: my research looks at institutional predation, so essentially, not just
Speaker 3: bad actors, but systematically how institutions themselves can be what
Speaker 3: we would consider bad actors in terms of enacting policies
Speaker 3: and informally or formally that cause systematic harm, often to
Speaker 3: disenfranchised populations. And one of the ways I tend to
Speaker 3: examine that is primarily through conditions of confinement, so incarceration,
Speaker 3: but also in society and really thinking about how our
Speaker 3: prisons are politically porous and so they mirror similar types
Speaker 3: of control strategies that we see on the outside.
Speaker 1: Can you just explain what you mean by politically porous?
Speaker 3: Yes, So what I mean by that is a big
Speaker 3: part of my work is looking at how the political
Speaker 3: mobilization of the civil rights movement and the larger black
Speaker 3: freedom struggle wasn't just present within prisons. Specifically, I'm looking
Speaker 3: at California prisons, so there was this continuum between the
Speaker 3: prison as an institution of control and the community in
Speaker 3: struggle on the outside and on the outside. What we
Speaker 3: saw during that era were coalitions across racial and ethnic boundaries,
Speaker 3: very key. You know, famous coalitions come to mind in
Speaker 3: terms of imagery when I say that, but also on
Speaker 3: the inside there was a very strong effort to build coalitions,
Speaker 3: and I became interested in studying the ways in which
Speaker 3: the Department of Corrections back by other levels of law enforcement,
Speaker 3: so thinking about cointail Pro at the time, also thinking
Speaker 3: about larger state level agencies.
Speaker 1: Co intel Pro was a controversial FBI program that officially
Speaker 1: ran from nineteen fifty eight to nineteen seventy one. Its goal,
Speaker 1: often employing illegal practices, was to disrupt, infiltrate, and discredit
Speaker 1: organizations that the FBI considered subversive. Most of the targeted
Speaker 1: groups were on the political left, including civil rights, black power,
Speaker 1: and anti war organizations. We will examine co intel Pro
Speaker 1: in greater depth in episode nine of Rip Current.
Speaker 3: So how were they all organizing themselves to try to
Speaker 3: squash these coalitions because we know from the research and
Speaker 3: from popular media, we know about how they tried to
Speaker 3: squash these coalitions on the outside, and so can think
Speaker 3: of very key examples of trying to break up really
Speaker 3: racial and ethnic unity around black freedom struggles or leftist
Speaker 3: struggles of the time. And my research is thinking about, well,
Speaker 3: what was happening in our prisons because they are poorous
Speaker 3: people coming into the prison, are coming in with ideologies.
Speaker 3: They don't just get incarcerated and lose their identity, right,
Speaker 3: they bring it with them. They also gain new identities
Speaker 3: from being in an environment with people who are bringing
Speaker 3: their identities. And then also you have the Department of
Speaker 3: Corrections trying to instill other identities, if you will, such
Speaker 3: as being an inmate and being docile into people also.
Speaker 3: So there's kind of this melting pot happening within prisons
Speaker 3: within this larger struggles that we see historically.
Speaker 1: There was a little break in our conversation to deal
Speaker 1: with some background noise. We picked it up again with
Speaker 1: Brittany continuing her explanation of the concept of political porousness.
Speaker 3: So when I say that prisons are politically porous, what
Speaker 3: I mean is that the political mobilization of the civil
Speaker 3: rights movement and the larger Black freedom struggle wasn't just
Speaker 3: present within prisons, right specifically California prisons.
Speaker 2: There was a.
Speaker 3: Continuum between the prison as an institution of control and
Speaker 3: the community in struggle on the outside. And so on
Speaker 3: the outside, you have at that time longstanding black political
Speaker 3: movements happening, especially within religious groups that you have the
Speaker 3: Nation of Islam, you have Black Christian churches mobilizing all
Speaker 3: of the different cornerstones of the larger black freedom struggle
Speaker 3: and the different sites of organizing. And you also have
Speaker 3: racial and ethnic coalitions right going across the racial boundaries
Speaker 3: that were really codified in state law and protected by
Speaker 3: law enforcement. You have these coalitions working for a larger
Speaker 3: black freedom but also for a leftist freedom agenda. And
Speaker 3: on the inside in prisons you have the same thing happening.
Speaker 3: So prisons they're built with walls, but they allow for
Speaker 3: the transference of ideas, and that's what's key when we're
Speaker 3: thinking about politically porous and ideas are brought in through people,
Speaker 3: They're brought in through knowledge.
Speaker 2: It's why the.
Speaker 3: Department of Corrections for decades has always had a band
Speaker 3: reading list. It's to prevent ideas from infiltrating that are
Speaker 3: coming in from the outside, but also to prevent ideas
Speaker 3: that are generated on the inside from people's experiences with incarceration,
Speaker 3: with a type of political genocide that happens that I
Speaker 3: can speak more about in my research, from getting out,
Speaker 3: from knowledge of that, from getting out, I think what's
Speaker 3: really key is thinking about how state efforts at the
Speaker 3: federal level, thinking of quintil pro thinking of at the
Speaker 3: state level, and then at the Department of Corrections level,
Speaker 3: how they worked in tandem to try to prevent this
Speaker 3: porousness from really spreading even more and generating coalitions from
Speaker 3: the inside of prisons and also on the outside for
Speaker 3: larger movements. And I think what's important to note is
Speaker 3: that racial and ethnic coalitions in particular are essentially threatening
Speaker 3: the racial order of the United States, which is really
Speaker 3: the foundation for much of the other types of dispossession,
Speaker 3: other types of harm that we see in our country
Speaker 3: that are coming from a very classed and racist system.
Speaker 3: And I think that those movements what they were trying
Speaker 3: to do is say, look, you know, we are of
Speaker 3: different colors, we might be of different backgrounds, However we
Speaker 3: have this shared knowledge that the system is organized to
Speaker 3: divide us and also to dispossess us for the enrichment,
Speaker 3: often financial, of a few. And so that's what I
Speaker 3: mean when I say porous, when I say politically porous,
Speaker 3: and also really zeroing in on coalitions and how the
Speaker 3: state is trying to squash them.
Speaker 1: Interesting. There are a few things I took notes on
Speaker 1: that I want to get back to. But what year
Speaker 1: or what era do you start looking at when you're
Speaker 1: taking a look at this dynamic or phenomenon.
Speaker 3: So I start as early as the nineteen fifties, because
Speaker 3: in much of the current work we focus on the
Speaker 3: hyper incarceration of black people and how it rises significantly
Speaker 3: in the nineties, But as early as nineteen six, black
Speaker 3: men were five times as likely as white men to
Speaker 3: be incarcerated. So when we're thinking about a systemic backlash
Speaker 3: or a white backlash against the black freedom struggle as
Speaker 3: really a decisive factor for mass incarceration, then we have
Speaker 3: to shift our timeline into different how and when different
Speaker 3: branches of law enforcement began implementing policies.
Speaker 2: To repress black political.
Speaker 3: Activity, and showcase how this expanded the capacity of ourcarceral system,
Speaker 3: so the capacity of law enforcement, the capacity of prisons
Speaker 3: to systematically squash freedom movements before the late nineteen sixties,
Speaker 3: which tends to be a starting point for scholars, and
Speaker 3: in my work. The reason I do this is because
Speaker 3: I love to dig in archives and find things that
Speaker 3: people would like to hide or would rather not have
Speaker 3: be found. So in doing that that type of investigative
Speaker 3: historical work, I found evidence from institutional records for the
Speaker 3: Department of Corrections in California that there was this systematic
Speaker 3: effort to eliminate the Black freedom movement in particular as
Speaker 3: like a gateway to other movements in terms of rolling
Speaker 3: out protocols to identify, track and neutralize people that identified
Speaker 3: as black militants in prison, also after their release, as
Speaker 3: early as the late nineteen fifties in California, and it's
Speaker 3: very likely sooner, right because I've found records for the
Speaker 3: late nineteen fifties, but it could be sooner. And what
Speaker 3: I mean by protocols, I found memos and formal policies
Speaker 3: instructing correctional personnel on what to look for, what a
Speaker 3: militant might look for, what they might read, what you
Speaker 3: could find in their cell, how they might speak, how
Speaker 3: they might present themselves on the yard, and to note
Speaker 3: that in their file to identify them, and then also
Speaker 3: policies for sharing that information across other agencies once they
Speaker 3: were released. And this is as early as the fifties,
Speaker 3: and even before that time period, as early as nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty three, I found archival documents noting how the California
Speaker 3: Department of Corrections was going to build and expand what
Speaker 3: we now know as adjustment centers, and what these centers
Speaker 3: were trying to do is really they became a key
Speaker 3: site of political repression within California prisons because at first
Speaker 3: they were designed as like a holding place for people
Speaker 3: who were determined to be problematic in the early fifties,
Speaker 3: and the people that the Department of Corrections defined as
Speaker 3: problematic in the early fifties dramatically shifts later. So early
Speaker 3: they used words like psychotic inmates, people that had psychiatric
Speaker 3: problems would be on the list to be identified and tracked.
Speaker 3: But what happens is in the late fifties they start
Speaker 3: to change who is identified as problematic. It becomes people
Speaker 3: who are being identified and tracked using this black militant
Speaker 3: subversive protocol. They began falling into the ranks of who
Speaker 3: the ideal adjustment center prisoner is. And so even though
Speaker 3: these systems were developed separately, they really come together in
Speaker 3: a very short amount of time in the fifties. And
Speaker 3: it's almost like just perfect horrific timing that the adjustment
Speaker 3: center is created in such a systematized way in the
Speaker 3: early fifties that it can then be quickly used once
Speaker 3: they start developing these threat protocols in the late fifties.
Speaker 1: So they go from sort of identifying people who have
Speaker 1: you know, psychological pathologies to sort of pathologizing political views.
Speaker 1: How long did the adjustment centers last or are they
Speaker 1: still around? And I just am ignorant of it.
Speaker 3: Well, the adjustment centers lasted for decades. They're technically still around.
Speaker 3: But the California Department of Corrections really shifted in the
Speaker 3: late eighties, so specifically in nineteen eighty nine with the
Speaker 3: building of Pelican Bay. So when Pelican Bay is built,
Speaker 3: people who were filling those adjustment centers were some of
Speaker 3: the first people sent to Pelican Bay. People that so,
Speaker 3: for example, Hugo Panell who becomes, you know, a very
Speaker 3: prolific figure in the prison movement, Black prison movement in California,
Speaker 3: one of the first people sent to Pelican Bay, who,
Speaker 3: through his writings and through I interviewed people who were
Speaker 3: close to him at the time while he was incarcerated.
Speaker 3: The Adjustment Center was very influential in political development because
Speaker 3: it became this site of torture in the form of
Speaker 3: solitary confinement as a means to adjust, hence the name
Speaker 3: the adjustment center. They were actually thinking that we can
Speaker 3: adjust people's behavior by having them here and then also
Speaker 3: it became a site of torture where officers would allow
Speaker 3: for racialized torture to happen. So people that I interviewed
Speaker 3: talked about experiencing some of the worst acts by either
Speaker 3: white correctional officers or allowing white incarcerated people to assault
Speaker 3: and abuse them because they were basically hidden away in
Speaker 3: this segment of the prison called the adjustment center, and
Speaker 3: this was a way to try to root out their
Speaker 3: political allegiance to a larger black struggle. But it was
Speaker 3: also from one of the arguments I make in my
Speaker 3: work is that the officers were also trying to really
Speaker 3: enforce the racial line to prevent any sort of coalitions
Speaker 3: from happening, specifically with white incarcerated people. They played a
Speaker 3: very active role in keeping the boundary. I could give
Speaker 3: examples of some of the ways they did that. The
Speaker 3: most infamous ways are we know historically in California prisons
Speaker 3: of some of the key shootings that happened that there
Speaker 3: has been evidence to suggest that officers were behind orchestrating it.
Speaker 3: So I'm thinking about the Solidad incident that led to
Speaker 3: the death of three self identified black militants. Officer Opie
Speaker 3: Miller who is a white correctional officer. It's now a
Speaker 3: very famous event right in our history that's leading up
Speaker 3: to the time period that you're looking at with Sarah
Speaker 3: Jane Moore. But in nineteen seventy when Officer Opie Miller,
Speaker 3: he shoots three black militants, shoots them on the yard
Speaker 3: after an incident that is alleged it was orchestrated by
Speaker 3: officers and members of the Arian Brotherhood and in order
Speaker 3: to allow for these three people to be killed. And
Speaker 3: they weren't just they were also leaders. They were very
Speaker 3: well respected leaders in the black incarcerated population. Especially W. L.
Speaker 3: Nolan in particular, is one of the people killed, who
Speaker 3: is really an early mentor to those who end up
Speaker 3: founding the Black Gorilla Family after his murder. So in
Speaker 3: my work I show more of the everyday ways they
Speaker 3: did this. So they would spread rumors to for example,
Speaker 3: the white population that oh, you know, the black prisoners
Speaker 3: are plotting, which would not be true. They would just
Speaker 3: say this because they were trying to keep an environment
Speaker 3: that would prevent them from ever having any sort of
Speaker 3: realization that actually, we're all incarcerated and they're all like
Speaker 3: officers are above all of US, but the officers kept
Speaker 3: trying to foster a unity across these boundaries to use
Speaker 3: for their own strategic ends, because we know what ends
Speaker 3: up happening to some of the groups that they united with.
Speaker 3: My forthcoming book shows how they were uniting with people
Speaker 3: who ended up founding the Rian Brotherhood. But we know
Speaker 3: that over time, once the Arian Brotherhood is no longer useful,
Speaker 3: like they do end up being locked up in Pelican
Speaker 3: Bay in other super federal facilities actually, but in the
Speaker 3: early stages in the fifties, sixties, seventies, they are very
Speaker 3: useful for the type of control strategies that I'm talking
Speaker 3: about to keep this separation. I like to think of
Speaker 3: it as old school divide and conquered.
Speaker 1: The time period that I'm focused on in the podcast
Speaker 1: is early seventies. Where do you see the origins of
Speaker 1: h I guess this is it's like a continuation. But
Speaker 1: where did the particular sort of political ideologies that seemed
Speaker 1: to be really influential late sixties early seventies, when did
Speaker 1: those develop?
Speaker 3: Well, I would say that it's instead of develop, I
Speaker 3: think of them as really crystallizing during the era that
Speaker 3: you're concerned with. In terms of forming. I mean, I
Speaker 3: can take for example, the reading list that people used.
Speaker 3: They had political reading groups during the time period that
Speaker 3: you're interested in, where they would meet in the yard
Speaker 3: or in commissary or in yourselves and have these little
Speaker 3: reading groups and share books. And this was a way
Speaker 3: to generate solidarity, but also to teach and past ideas
Speaker 3: and really for people to become indoctrinated in a particular framework,
Speaker 3: a black radical leftist framework. And these ideas were coming
Speaker 3: about as early as the late nineteenth century. And what
Speaker 3: I mean by that is they were reading sociologists actually
Speaker 3: like Marx, Engles Durkheim. They were reading people from the
Speaker 3: early twentieth century, Marcus Garvey Dubois. So they're reading all
Speaker 3: of these scholars and writers, some of whom were also activists,
Speaker 3: and the time period that I'm looking at is reading.
Speaker 2: Them in the fifties.
Speaker 3: And also, I don't want to leave out how important
Speaker 3: the Nation of Islam was as well in their own literature,
Speaker 3: and there was really a unifying force amongst different black
Speaker 3: militant groups, even if they didn't agree on religion. So
Speaker 3: for me, the era that I look at is how
Speaker 3: this started taking off in the fifties in sixties, and
Speaker 3: then I am very much interested in when does it
Speaker 3: actually crystallize into action, And that's for me, I would
Speaker 3: make the art that it starts crystallizing into action in
Speaker 3: the sixties because you have a series of events that
Speaker 3: happen in California prisons where the Department of Corrections and
Speaker 3: the white supremacist population amongst the incarcerated that would become
Speaker 3: the areaan brotherhood essentially went too far. They amped up,
Speaker 3: if you will, the violence. And it's because during that
Speaker 3: time period in the sixties, you see a big influx
Speaker 3: of black people into California prisons, many of whom do
Speaker 3: self identify as either black militants or having allegiances, affiliations,
Speaker 3: or affinities for the black freedom struggle, which makes sense,
Speaker 3: right They're coming in from the outside, and that goes
Speaker 3: back to my point about it being politically porous.
Speaker 2: But also in the.
Speaker 3: Sixties, you have a very strong contingent of white incarcerated
Speaker 3: people who are also bringing with them their own societal allegiances,
Speaker 3: their own ideas from the fifties and sixties about what
Speaker 3: black freedom would be and their prejudices against it. They're
Speaker 3: also bringing in their experiences in different organized groups. So
Speaker 3: for example, bikers were very influential in the founding of
Speaker 3: the Area and brotherhood. They're bringing in all of these
Speaker 3: ideologies and cultural frames that are very anti black at
Speaker 3: the time. And so in the sixties, this is really
Speaker 3: creating a recipe for potential disaster because the populations are rising.
Speaker 2: That are very conflictual.
Speaker 3: But what the Department of Corrections does, and in particular
Speaker 3: officers white officers at the time, begin to see the
Speaker 3: white incarcerated population, especially the self identified white supremacist population,
Speaker 3: as allies, as allies in a similar fight. And we
Speaker 3: see this with the increase in different actions such as
Speaker 3: setups of black militant prisoners where in a setup meaning
Speaker 3: officers turning a blind eye and in particular areas of
Speaker 3: the prison where black militants could be beaten up or
Speaker 3: fatally injured of there being correctional officers actually arming right
Speaker 3: supremacist prisoners. So that's something that I have also found
Speaker 3: in my data. And when I say arming, like giving
Speaker 3: actual street knives versus black militants would have like little
Speaker 3: shanks that they made. So this starts increasing in the sixties.
Speaker 3: The Arean Brotherhood formally organizes themselves actually in sixty four,
Speaker 3: which I argue they wouldn't have been able to organize
Speaker 3: themselves in that fashion if they did not have backing.
Speaker 3: But they are able to organize in nineteen sixty four,
Speaker 3: And in nineteen sixty five we have the Watts riots
Speaker 3: in Los Angeles that also impacts the climate in California prisons.
Speaker 3: You see in the archival data hampering down more and
Speaker 3: more ideas unification tracking, shifting off, shipping off to the
Speaker 3: Adjustment Center for black incarcerated people suspected. So they start
Speaker 3: casting a wider net after the Watts riots because they
Speaker 3: are sharing information with local police departments, and there's this
Speaker 3: whole information share of how doc should handle their population
Speaker 3: given what's going on on the outside. So all of
Speaker 3: this is coalescing until oh and then in nineteen sixty seven, right,
Speaker 3: we have one hundred and fifty nine race riots in
Speaker 3: the US, and FBI initiates actually Cointail Pro.
Speaker 2: Black Hate, which is a specific.
Speaker 3: Subprogram of Cointail Pro to hamper down on the Black
Speaker 3: freedom movement. And from my archival sources and interviews I
Speaker 3: have in nineteen sixty eight, the Area and Brotherhood kind
Speaker 3: of shifting into a more formal alliance with the Mexican
Speaker 3: mafia as a way to be bigger and have more
Speaker 3: political control against the black population. In nineteen sixty eight,
Speaker 3: also new Estra Familia begins to establish itself and it
Speaker 3: aligns with black militant so it really divides the Chicano
Speaker 3: or Mexican descended population. And then you have a series
Speaker 3: of assassinations that happen in the late sixties. So Bunchie
Speaker 3: Carter and John Higgins are assassinated at UCLA in nineteen
Speaker 3: sixty nine, in January. In December in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 3: you have Fred Hampton is assassinated in Chicago. You also
Speaker 3: have a few days later the shootout, the famous shootout
Speaker 3: of forty first in Central between the LAPD and the
Speaker 3: Black Panther Party. And during all of those happenings, right,
Speaker 3: what's key is how they're informing each other. Because when
Speaker 3: you have the different incidents on the outside, it creates
Speaker 3: a hampering down of doc the incarcerated population, and then
Speaker 3: resistance to it. So there's constantly this repression and resistance
Speaker 3: that's happening on the inside and the outside at the
Speaker 3: same time. And then in the late sixties, you have
Speaker 3: many people who would come to found the Black Gorilla Family,
Speaker 3: which becomes sort of a coalition of different black militant
Speaker 3: clicks into one united front to really take on Doc
Speaker 3: and to take on the Arian brotherhood. That happens from
Speaker 3: my data in nineteen seventy, but just before that, you
Speaker 3: have a series of final incidents that are key. So
Speaker 3: several people who would end up founding the Black Gorilla
Speaker 3: Family in San Quentin. They are transferred into San Quentin
Speaker 3: at the same time, right before the Solidad incident that
Speaker 3: happens in January nineteen seventy or just after it. So
Speaker 3: after Officer Opie Miller is acquitted for the Solidad incident,
Speaker 3: he's acquitted January sixteenth, nineteen seventy, there is a killing
Speaker 3: that happens in Solidad of an officer and the killing
Speaker 3: is essentially pinned on those who were early members and
Speaker 3: founders of who would be early members and founders of
Speaker 3: the Black Gorilla Family, and they are named the Soladad Brothers, right,
Speaker 3: and they're charged for killing Officer Mills, which is a
Speaker 3: different officer, and they're charge February fourteenth, nineteen seventy. At
Speaker 3: this time, also some of the most famous people who
Speaker 3: are involved during this era. Hugo Panels transferred to San Quentin.
Speaker 3: George Jackson, one of the Solodad brothers, transferred to San Quentin,
Speaker 3: and so you have this sort of transfer of people
Speaker 3: who end up leading the early Black Gorilla Family established
Speaker 3: in San Quentin. As I noted earlier, the Arian Brotherhoods
Speaker 3: established in San Quentin only a few years prior. And
Speaker 3: then we have some famous incidents that happened in August
Speaker 3: in nineteen seventy so the Marion Courthouse incident, we have
Speaker 3: the manhunt for Angela Davis. Right, there's a series of
Speaker 3: incidents that happened in the early seventies on the outside
Speaker 3: that kind of culminate with what happens in August twenty first,
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy one, when the Black Gorilla Family attempts to
Speaker 3: free George Jackson. And from the research that I've done,
Speaker 3: so the interviews that I've done, and just to give
Speaker 3: some contacts, I did interviews with early members and founders
Speaker 3: of the Black Gorilla Family. I did interviews with associates
Speaker 3: of Aryan groups, associates of Soriano, which is considered southern
Speaker 3: Mexican and California prisons and Nirtagno groups, which is considered northern.
Speaker 3: It's like the divide. And then I did interviews with
Speaker 3: a political activists from the sixties and seventies who were
Speaker 3: connected to those groups, intimately connected and also new key
Speaker 3: people who are now deceased during that time period, and
Speaker 3: also people who actually worked on the solid Ad defense.
Speaker 3: So from my research, I would stand by the claim
Speaker 3: that on the twenty first of August in nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 3: after these series of events, I had described the black
Speaker 3: role of family attempts to free George Jackson because there
Speaker 3: was a credible, planned attack on his life and it
Speaker 3: was a coordinated attack between members of the Area and
Speaker 3: Brotherhood and correctional officers, which I elaborate way more on
Speaker 3: in the book because I have way more space to
Speaker 3: be able to elaborate on why I say that and
Speaker 3: why how I can make that claim. But when that happens,
Speaker 3: we know from the story right that George Jackson is
Speaker 3: is shot, he's murdered by correction officers, and there's a
Speaker 3: series of uprising so Attica being the most famous, that
Speaker 3: happens in shortly after he is killed, and we know
Speaker 3: what happens at Attica with the repression from Governor Rockefeller
Speaker 3: and doc there.
Speaker 1: The Attica Prison Rebellion took place in September of nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy one. Prisoners protesting for better living conditions and political
Speaker 1: rights took control of Attica State Prison in upstate New York.
Speaker 1: After four days of negotiations, Governor Nelson Rockefeller sent in
Speaker 1: armed corrections officers and state and local police. Forty three
Speaker 1: men were killed, thirty three inmates and ten guards. All
Speaker 1: but one guard and three inmates were killed by law
Speaker 1: enforcement gunfire.
Speaker 3: So that's what I mean when I say there's that
Speaker 3: time period. There's this culmination of of contentious events that
Speaker 3: are really incidents of state violence against movements, and this
Speaker 3: cycle of repression and resistance that is creating a backdrop
Speaker 3: for the events that begin to take place in the
Speaker 3: mid seventies.
Speaker 1: I'm just kind of interested in this whole dynamic between
Speaker 1: what's going on in prison and then what's going on
Speaker 1: outside of prison, and then the authenticity of having been
Speaker 1: a prisoner just seems super super important to a lot
Speaker 1: of people, you know, sort of radical people. That gives
Speaker 1: you some kind of gravitas or some kind of charisma.
Speaker 3: I mean, the first thing I can speak to is
Speaker 3: that so when political activists talk about prison, right, prison
Speaker 3: is seen as being in the belly of the beast.
Speaker 3: That's like a direct quote. So when you think about
Speaker 3: how people who were incarcerated, who were political prisoners when
Speaker 3: they come out, and I say political prisoners meaning the
Speaker 3: different type of tactics that I described earlier that I
Speaker 3: have dated back to the early fifties, right, those specific
Speaker 3: targeting tactics that were not used against the neo Nazis
Speaker 3: in prison. So to make that point very clear, that
Speaker 3: is another reason why we can use this designation of
Speaker 3: political prisoners, because it's a very clear targeting of certain
Speaker 3: types of political groups and a very clear pass given
Speaker 3: to other groups that are seen as useful and as
Speaker 3: useful allies in the same fight. And so to survive
Speaker 3: that is considered a badge when someone gets out, because
Speaker 3: you have survived what it would be considered to be
Speaker 3: the worst of the worst, because you've survived what people
Speaker 3: know happens in society. Right, So we know that in
Speaker 3: society for over a century, we've had connections between law
Speaker 3: enforcement and the ku Klux Klan, often one and the
Speaker 3: same right across the country and people being that being
Speaker 3: a joint alliance to eradicate freedom movements and people you
Speaker 3: know have survived that. I think with political prisoners, when
Speaker 3: they come out, people are thinking that someone was able
Speaker 3: to survive that and generate knowledge from that while being
Speaker 3: behind the cage. It's like imagine having the ku Klux
Speaker 3: plan and officers working together. When you're in a cage.
Speaker 3: It's like a it's a complete nightmare. So I think
Speaker 3: that is why in part, prison is really seen as
Speaker 3: a legitimacy to how much someone has survived and in
Speaker 3: turn being committed to a larger movement. I think because
Speaker 3: there are there's tangible things that they have had to overcome.
Speaker 3: It's not like imagined, right, It's like a material They
Speaker 3: had to overcome material conditions. So I think that's why
Speaker 3: to those especially to those who haven't experienced it, right,
Speaker 3: I'm thinking of, you know, people who might be coming
Speaker 3: from a white middle class or white upper middle class background,
Speaker 3: who might you know, have an affinity for certain political ideals,
Speaker 3: but they've never put them in practice, they've never survived
Speaker 3: them in practice.
Speaker 2: They've just read them in a book.
Speaker 3: They're not embodied, And I think having a close connection
Speaker 3: with someone where it is embodied in their third way
Speaker 3: they live, the way they've survived, the way they talk.
Speaker 3: It is there is a charisma to that that draws
Speaker 3: people in.
Speaker 1: What would you see as being sort of the sort
Speaker 1: of touchstones during that particular period, both if you're within prison,
Speaker 1: but also if you're outside and are sort of politically
Speaker 1: aware enough to be paying attention to what's going on inside.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So I would even take it back to in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy one, right after George Jackson is killed, we
Speaker 3: have Attica, shortly after which everyone from being inside and
Speaker 3: outside saw and witnessed it happened. September ninth, nineteen seventy one,
Speaker 3: we have the Attica uprising, and then we have the
Speaker 3: brutal squashing, and then and then we have the cover
Speaker 3: up that ensues over the years over the truth about
Speaker 3: the fact that it was the state that committed the
Speaker 3: murders of people. We have the next year in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy two, June fourth, actually Angela Davis becomes acquitted after
Speaker 3: the manhunt that began after the Marion County Courthouse incident.
Speaker 3: So all the way back in nineteen seventy right we
Speaker 3: have the FBI initiates this man hunt. She's acquitted in
Speaker 3: nineteen seventy two, which becomes a huge win, right for
Speaker 3: these movements in nineteen seventy to create it's a real
Speaker 3: synergy about what's possible. Because she's acquitted, no one thinks
Speaker 3: she's going to be equitted, but then we have not
Speaker 3: too later, Just about a month later, Geronimo Pratt, a
Speaker 3: leader and the Panthers, is wrongfully convicted in nineteen seventy two,
Speaker 3: and after that within the prisons, we start to see
Speaker 3: a big ramping up of violence because we know we
Speaker 3: have the win with Angela Davis acquitted, but then Geronimo
Speaker 3: Pratt is wrongfully convicted the same year, and then a
Speaker 3: couple of years later we have a really strong cracking
Speaker 3: down against the black freedom movement. And so what I
Speaker 3: mean by that is, in nineteen seventy four, we have
Speaker 3: the Aryan Brotherhood actually declares formal war on the Black
Speaker 3: Rolla Family in tandem with the Mexican Mafia, which is
Speaker 3: it's incredibly consequential because in nineteen seventy four, the black
Speaker 3: girl of the family is still recovering from the fact
Speaker 3: that George Jackson is killed in seventy one who's a founder,
Speaker 3: and many of the leaders and early members are locked
Speaker 3: up in adjustment centers, which really decimates a lot of
Speaker 3: their leadership. And so when that war ensues, it's incredibly
Speaker 3: devastating for the unity of the Black Freedom movement within
Speaker 3: Californfornia prisons, what they were trying to build. It's significant
Speaker 3: because it's sort of this is within the prisons when
Speaker 3: you have this war going on between these different groups
Speaker 3: beginning in nineteen seventy four that lasts for years.
Speaker 2: It's a long term.
Speaker 3: I don't want to say long term beef because that
Speaker 3: doesn't even capture the nature of it. But there's a
Speaker 3: long term cyclical war with the Aryan Brotherhood really dominating.
Speaker 3: There's a lot of reasons that I've outlined as to
Speaker 3: why they would be dominating. But it creates a feeling
Speaker 3: of not just lost, but like kind of can we
Speaker 3: can we win? Like can we overcome this? Because at
Speaker 3: that time you also have as I noted, many of
Speaker 3: the leaders of and early members of the Black Gorilla
Speaker 3: Family are in adjustment centers. They're also uh fighting on trial.
Speaker 3: You have you have a series of things that kind
Speaker 3: of are feeling insurmountable, and I think that that being
Speaker 3: the setting that's happening in prison, there's also a sentiment
Speaker 3: on the outside of feeling like we're not getting enough wins.
Speaker 1: You mentioned the term political genocide earlier. I was wondering
Speaker 1: if you could's expand on that a little bit.
Speaker 3: So the reason I that that term came to mind
Speaker 3: as I was speaking. I have never used it before,
Speaker 3: but as yeah, as I was talking, it came to
Speaker 3: mind because I mean, I speak about it in that way,
Speaker 3: but I don't use the word genocide until just now.
Speaker 3: Genocide is fitting because it is a systematic, coordinated effort
Speaker 3: at multiple levels of law enforcement on the outside of
Speaker 3: prisons and within prisons, in tandem with white supremacist civilian
Speaker 3: allies to eradicate political ideologies, particularly black political ideologies for freedom,
Speaker 3: that are deemed as threatening to an overarching US racial
Speaker 3: capitalist agenda. And that is why political genocide would be fitting.
Speaker 3: It is a targeting. In the data that we have
Speaker 3: on this from other scholars and their brilliant historiography from
Speaker 3: my current work and previous work, the data shows that
Speaker 3: it is not an imagined genocide is not it is
Speaker 3: it is systematic, it is coordinated, and especially I think
Speaker 3: for me, one of the biggest pieces of evidence is
Speaker 3: when you compare the treatment of other groups like white
Speaker 3: supremacist sex, it's radically different. It's very much like what
Speaker 3: we're talking about in our current conversations in society, such
Speaker 3: as the police response to Black Lives Matter protests versus
Speaker 3: the police response to January sixth. It's as soon as
Speaker 3: I saw that, I was like, Oh, that's my research,
Speaker 3: that's my research in prisons. It's exactly what That's exactly
Speaker 3: what I would predict because it is a pattern. It's
Speaker 3: a historical pattern rooted in how our society is organized.
Speaker 3: It's not a coincidence.
Speaker 1: So what haven't I asked you? Or what do you
Speaker 1: think it's important for the audience to know?
Speaker 3: I think it was that last point, that last point
Speaker 3: about connecting history to the present. I think what I
Speaker 3: would want the audience to know is that just because
Speaker 3: something is historical doesn't mean that it's irrelevant, and it
Speaker 3: doesn't mean that it's not currently ongoing. It simply means
Speaker 3: that we've dated it to a past. But it's simply
Speaker 3: that we are creating the past context so that you
Speaker 3: can better understand how it has evolved, how it has morphed,
Speaker 3: how it has spread in the present time, so that
Speaker 3: it is recognizable. So I would want the audience to
Speaker 3: be able to understand and look around in our current
Speaker 3: society and notice, where have we seen this before? Where
Speaker 3: did it never end?
Speaker 1: Thank you to Brittany Friedman, Assistant Professor of sociology at
Speaker 1: the University of Southern California. She is the author of
Speaker 1: Carcoro Apartheid, how Lies and Why Supremacists Run Our Prisons.
Speaker 1: I'm Toby Ball. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
Speaker 1: favorite show. For more information on Rip Current, visit the
Speaker 1: show website at ripcurrentpod dot com.