Prisoners Of War: Political Prisoners In The US

Speaker 1: When do we go?

Ashaki Pratt: Now!

Leonard Peltier: One of the things I learned when I was traveling around is that I always thought, growing up on a reservation, I always thought it was just Indian people that were being mistreated, right? I became a migrant worker for a while. I started with my uncle and we started following the crops, you know, the fruit crops. And I was down in California by Sacramento. And we were down by this river, and all of these migrant workers that I seen were poor white people. And some of the training— treatment that I seen them receive from the local law enforcement agencies and the townspeople, the business people, it was quite a shock to me. I just didn't believe— I couldn't believe that—

Speaker 4: That's right.

Leonard Peltier: Other people were being mistreated and treated the way I had or my people had been treated, right? So I, you know, my education began to advance and realizing that the enemy is only going to create one class of people. If you're not that class of people, he's going to mistreat you. And that's the middle class and upper middle class people in the United States.

Mumia Abu Jamal: Thank you.

Leonard Peltier: But that whole era, that whole lifespan that I went through was very educational in an area that was sad, very sad to see some of the treatment that I've seen some people being treated, especially my people, you know. I mean, I've seen my people killed. I've seen my people— I've seen police brutality that was sickening. I mean, made Rodney King A beating looked like a slap on the wrist, you know. There's one incident that we fought so hard for to get these police officers arrested was in Seattle, Washington. They were with the canine department of the police station, right? They were training their dogs, so they went up to this hotel where all the Indians stayed. Sure, these were Indian alcoholics, winos and stuff. But they went in and kicked the doors down and sicced their dogs on them, tore these people all up. I mean, that was just evil cruelty, you know. But things like that, that's what I was against. That's what I wanted to see change. I wanted a right to be able to walk the street and not be mistreated because my hair was black and my skin was brown, or if I looked like an Indian or a Mexican or whoever, you know. I wanted to be able to go into a store I wanted to be able to buy whatever I wanted. I wanted to be able to have a job wherever I wanted to, wherever I was qualified for, without, you know, without the discrimination that I received and my people have been receiving. Those are the only changes that I wanted. You know, I wanted to be able to make a good life for myself. I was taught from a young age to work. You've got to be a good worker. You've got to be a good worker. You know, that's what my grandfather had taught me, put me in the fields at a very young age, you know. But those things weren't happening for us. So I wanted changes. So I got involved.

Speaker 6: Geronimo!

Speaker 7: Geronimo Ji-Jaga Pratt has spent the last 18 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. Substantial evidence has been uncovered pointing to a deliberate FBI frame-up. In fact, the main prosecution witness at the trial was proven to be a paid FBI informant. Despite this and other evidence, the courts refused to grant Geronimo a new trial, and the parole board refuses to release him. Geronimo Pratt is being held for no other reason than his political beliefs. He has said, If I'd actually committed the murder, I'd be out by now. The longer I'm in prison, the more clear it is that the murder isn't why I'm here. Why won't the U.S. government set Geronimo Pratt free?

Speaker 6: I know where this inspiration is at, in a legendary man named Geronimo Pratt. Sing it!

Mumia Abu Jamal: Break the walls down!

Speaker 6: All the world wants to break the walls down!

Speaker 1: Who's the freedom fighter?

Speaker 6: Geronimo Pratt!

Speaker 1: Who's the real terrorist?

Speaker 6: Ronald Reagan!

Speaker 1: Who's the freedom fighter? Geronimo Pratt!

Speaker 7: The movement to free Geronimo Pratt is happening in courts, in communities, in Congress, and internationally. Recently, Congressman Ronald Dellums introduced a congressional resolution calling for An investigation into Geronimo's case and those of other political prisoners. In 1980, Amnesty International stated, the interest of justice can only be served by granting Mr. Pratt a new trial.

Speaker 6: End government conspiracy! Geronimo Pratt!

Speaker 7: In 1987, at a demonstration at the District Parole Board office in San Francisco, Geronimo's wife, Ashaki Pratt, Read a statement from Geronimo.

Ashaki Pratt: I want to thank everyone for your active support, the letters, the petitions and your presence here today. I want you to know that whatever the parole board decides today, I intend to keep on struggling, not only for my own release, but for the release of all political prisoners and the prisoners of war of injustice incarcerated in the dungeons of the United States. All around the world, human beings fight against injustice and for their people and their nations. In Azania, in Ireland, in Cuba, in Chile, in South Africa, in Palestine, in Burma, in In El Salvador, in Chile, and all around the world, governments lock up and criminalize people who resist oppression, racism, and always affirm the right to resist, the right to struggle for freedom. This is something that they can never take away. I'm 100% innocent of the charges for which I have spent 17 years of my life in prison.

Speaker 8: When Geronimo Pratt sits in San Quentin, where he's been for 17 years, He was head of the Panther Party in Los Angeles in 1970, and all of a sudden in '70 he was charged with the murder in 1968 of a Black— a white schoolteacher in the Santa Monica tennis courts. He went to trial in 1972 on some evidence, and he got convicted. What has occurred since 1975 is that people working with him have discovered that there was a massive program to frame him for anything, and this murder was the way they framed him. The program was called the Counterintelligence Program. It was a program by the FBI to get rid of black extremists, and in particular the Panther Party in the late '60s and early '70s, and in particular Geronimo Pratt. And what we can say now is that we know through the FBI's own documents that they had an informant who committed perjury in the trial. He said— this man Julio Butler said, I never worked for the FBI, and Geronimo confessed the murder to me. That man was an FBI informant. The FBI has now admitted it. Right. We know that the FBI put informants in Geronimo's defense team. That is, people who worked for Geronimo's lawyer were FBI agents reporting to the FBI about his defense, something totally important to our system of justice. We supposedly have a right to defend yourself. We know that the witness who ID'd him as the killer, the husband of the woman who died, ID'd somebody else a year before. As positively the killer, but that person couldn't have done it because he was in jail at the time.

Speaker 7: We also know that the FBI withheld documents throughout the trial. The FBI was in possession of wiretaps which might serve to confirm Geronimo's alibi. Those surveillance records have mysteriously disappeared. A retired FBI agent now says that Geronimo And the Black Panther Party were prime targets of the illegal COINTELPRO program.

Speaker 8: We have found out that Geronimo didn't get a fair trial. I'm convinced he's innocent, but the FBI continues to fight to hide the information from us, I think for the same reasons why they initially put him in prison. They don't want strong black leaders in this country. They didn't want him in the early '70s, and they don't want him now.

Speaker 9: Just to complement that, I'd like to just read a little phrase which is actually from One of the FBI's own documents from that period of time, and it talks about the goal of the counterintelligence program that Stuart's been talking about. And one— the first goal, the primary goal, is to prevent the coalition of militant black nationalist groups. In unity there is strength, a truism that is no less valid for all its triteness. Their second Their main objective was to prevent the rise of a messiah who would unify, electrify the militant black national movement. And among other people that they cite as probably the most dangerous was Martin Luther King. This was J. Edgar Hoover and his legacy out to destroy black leadership.

Mumia Abu Jamal: Good job, sir.

Speaker 7: Geronimo Pratt spent 8 years in solitary confinement until he sued the prison system for violation of constitutional rights and won. This forced the courts to acknowledge the political nature of this additional punishment and to order him released to the general prison population. He is still serving a sentence of 7 years to life. We interviewed Geronimo in July 1987 in San Quentin Prison, California. He explained the historical context of his case.

Geronimo Pratt: They painted us, in the eyes of many who still believe to this day, a lot of those lies and myths. And they had to criminalize us, make us criminals, to justify their assaults against us. Fred Hampton had just gotten— he was murdered in his sleep in Chicago. Like 4 days prior to the police coming, trying to do the same thing in Los Angeles, our offices in Seattle was attacked. The one in— this is by the police working in cahoots with the certain elements of the federal government from J. Edgar Hoover's regime that he had control of. The Des Moines chapter of the Black Panther Party was completely Blown off the face of the map. Dynamited. Completely blown up. Luckily, no one was killed in Des Moines. I mentioned Chicago. You had the Kansas City attacks by the police. This was like a nationwide coordinated police attack on the Panther offices throughout. The main reason that I saw, and what attracted me to The, um, this organization— excuse me— was the deep sense of commitment and seriousness that I saw. They started programs such as the Breakfast for Children program, the free clothing giveaway, the free shoe giveaway, give away free shoes and whatnot.

Mumia Abu Jamal: Right.

Geronimo Pratt: And what they were doing were actually trying to realize these things based on self-reliance and independence and building autonomous situations, so the people in the community didn't have to rely on so much on the powers that be. Internationally, we— I wouldn't say posed a threat, but we had a lot of promises. We were very promising. The whole movement was very promising. It was hooking up with a lot of Third World movements throughout the world. See, when, like, the North or the Pondexters or the Reagans and all, When they explain this, it's that, oh, these terrorists spreading out. That's not true. From our perspective, it's beautiful, peace-loving people struggling to come together and to live, you know, people who don't have these nuclear weapons and stuff, who threaten the whole world. You come together and discuss the exploitation and the oppression that we've been under and try to figure out ways to deal with that and basically to survive. The truth of the matter is that we are part of an ongoing years, hundreds and hundreds of years of struggle against the slavocracy and the mentality of it. And I see it as us as being this continuation of this nation of people who were kidnapped, Ancestors were kidnapped wrongfully, brought to these shores against their will, and that we would have to come together as one. I grew up in a small town called Morgan City. It was known as Brashear. It's in the southern part of Louisiana, about 50 miles from the Caribbean, the northern Caribbean, what's known as the Gulf of Mexico, in the Mississippi Delta, where the Mississippi River deltas out into the Gulf. So there's a lot of swamp area there. And I grew up— it was segregated across the tracks. There was no integration there. What was the name of the town? And, uh, it was all like— it was like a Black nation.

Speaker 11: Uh, we—

Geronimo Pratt: main activities were fishing and hunting. We used to fish, catch catfish at the river, and sell the catfish, uh, 10 cents clean and 5 cents if you didn't have time to clean them.

Mumia Abu Jamal: And let freedom come in our very hearts. Hello!

Geronimo Pratt: My mother and father and 3 sisters and 3 brothers— I was the youngest— we were brought up in the church. I was an altar boy until I was, what, 15? We had to go serve on the altar every morning and say the Mass in Latin and all that. And then, that's how we started out today, because our mother would make us come with her. My father was a junkman, was known as— well, you think of Redd Foxx. He wasn't funny like that. He refused to work for any boss. And I think that came to me in my genes, all of us. And that's how he raised his whole family, until he fell with a stroke when I was about 15.

Eli Rosenblatt: Wow.

Geronimo Pratt: What about the community? So far as the community, typical black Southern community, a lot of Creoles in southern Louisiana, a lot of Creole. There's a lot of good feelings, crawfishes, crawfish boils and shrimp boils. So it was a very rich experience for me, you know. When we went hunting and fishing, If Miss Hazel across the street, old Miss Virginia, needed some fish, or she needed some rice, or some— this is largely a sugarcane area where I'm from, sugarcane and whatnot.

Speaker 1: They got that.

Leonard Peltier: It was shared.

Geronimo Pratt: If a hog was killed, everybody got a part of that hog. And so I saw a lot of socialism before I knew what socialism was. A lot of that, you know, closeness, that affinity from a community. But I didn't— I don't recall police coming up, right? I remember I was— the first time I ever saw the inside of a jail, I was about 11 or 12. My brother and I was walking down from playing ball with a friend of ours down by the levee. And there was these other 2 boys who was with us who were sons of a poker fisherman. A poker— now, poker fish is— poker fishermen are—

Leonard Peltier: Fishermen.

Geronimo Pratt: Like migrant farm workers you see out here. They follow the pogo fish. They come from the East Coast all the way down into the Caribbean or the Gulf of Mexico. And so they had been there like about a week, and they were walking with us, and this girl was coming the same way. So, you know, it's customary down in segregated South, you cross the street so you won't pass on the same side. So when she got parallel to us, he— one of the pogo fishers— pogo fisherman's son—

Leonard Peltier: Pogo fisherman.

Geronimo Pratt: Sons hollered her name. Hey, Linda! You know. And this was— you don't do this down there. So we— man, we don't do this down here, you know. And we kept on walking. About an hour later, the first time I ever remember, the police came to our house and put me and my brother in jail for speaking to a white woman. That was the first time I ever saw the inside of a jail. I think I was about 11 or 12. A year after my brother and I and about— let's see— me, About 4 of us, maybe 5, had went trick-or-treating. And, you know, I come from a real kind of close family structure. They wouldn't let you venture out too far. So the place we went trick-or-treating was okay, was clear about our people and stuff. When we got near the tracks coming back, 2 trucks stopped, and it was the Klan. They jumped out, and everybody started running. And so we got to running. And, uh, They got my brother. And I didn't realize it, because I thought he was in the front of me. And they was beating him pretty bad. I started coming back when I realized they had gotten my brother. Before I could get back, my older brother— one of my older brothers was there, my sister, my daddy, my mama, all of the people out the alley from— I mean, it looked like about— shoot, about 10, 15 seconds, it was—

Christof Arnold: 15 seconds.

Geronimo Pratt: You know, stopped what they were doing. It was about 7:00 at night, right? And they backed up right quick, and I grabbed my brother, and it was a very emotional thing. Then we found out later that it was someone had taken their children's trick-or-treat candy way on the other side of the swamps. So they just came to get, you know, like they say, any nigga'll do.

Speaker 9: Yeah.

Geronimo Pratt: But the dignity, the feeling you would feel when things like that happen is very similar to what happened after the shootout in Los Angeles years later, how the community would respond, the feeling you would get after you done backed these dogs down, you see. They shouldn't have been there, and the people stood up, and they defeated them. We get, you know, so that sense of nationalism, that sense of protection that people banded together against these evil forces, worn out.

Speaker 7: Geronimo graduated from high school in 1965 and enlisted in the Army. He served 3 years in Vietnam, receiving many commendations. While in Vietnam, he was sprayed with the chemical defoliant Agent Orange. He continues to experience chronic sinus inflammation from this exposure. The prison refuses to treat this condition.

Geronimo Pratt: It was 1968. I'm getting out of the service. I was riding down the streets. The police, black and white squad cars, they had— it was about 5 or 6 of them, lights flashing. And as I came closer, I noticed this helicopter. Like it come out of nowhere, seemed like. And it had this big bull light. We used to call them bull lights. And that very familiar helicopter, just left jumping out of them in Vietnam, you know. It's right there, and I'm driving down the streets, and as I got closer, I was able to see they had these Black people lying down on their face. I mean, you know, on their stomach. And it was hard. It was a hard pill to swallow. And then I began to draw what I was about to say, the most important thing, the parallels I go through Watts, I go through Chicago, I go through Harlem, and I see that the people in the— what's called the ghetto, or the black communities, or the colonies, or whatever you want to call it, were treated almost exactly the way we just got through treating Viet Cong, or Vietnamese people, in Vietnam. So I begin to draw parallels that The police departments in these various situations in these cities were actually the same thing we were in Vietnam—occupying forces. They didn't live in the communities; they came from another area. They didn't know the inhabitants of that community. So, and they were exploiting; they were imprisoning, killing—a lot of killing just blacks at random—and it's still happening today. So it had a very strong effect. That I had to stand up. I felt as though it was incumbent upon me to stand up and strike out against these things, to stand and to resist these things. And that was one of the main motivations that propelled me into the movement back then, coming from Vietnam. You have these attitudes of the people that if— it's called a plebiscite— was taken as a national vote, if that was taken, I'm willing to, after all I've studied and even being away for so long, still willing to bet That the vote would come out nationhood, that we do not need your president. We do not need your Supreme Court. We do not need your Congress. We have the you know the resources to fend for that ourselves. We have people if we want to have presidents or commissar or whatever you want it to be. We have enough you know to have doctors. We have enough to have our own Supreme Courts. We you know. To have our own nation, then we can fend for ourselves and be recognized as a nation—one of the largest nations in the world. You know, I think it's only about nine or ten nations that would have more of a population than we would have. It would only be maybe about six nations that would only have that would have a larger economy than we would have. Already, it's what? Four hundred billion dollars to the black. We already have the everything. To say that we are a nation. Okay, I'm a prisoner of war because of a secret war that was waged against the Black liberation movement in the '60s. I am a prisoner of war because, number one, I did not do what they accused me of doing, and it's you know we have facts to support that and prove that now. What I did do, I have not. I don't bite my tongue. I'm not ashamed of— and I talk freely about it all throughout these years, which caused a lot of problems for a lot of people, because they don't like to hear it. But this is me, and this is truth. You know, I'm a member, I'm a soldier in the ranks of liberation for our people.

Speaker 1: I just happened to finish just recently a movie about another political prisoner.

Ashaki Pratt: Hello.

Mumia Abu Jamal: Nelson Mandela.

Speaker 1: And I apologized when I met Ashaki Pratt. I apologized for not talking about Geronimo Pratt in my interviews when I talk about Nelson, because it still is the same thing.

Christof Arnold: The same thing.

Speaker 1: They're both political prisoners. Well, here we have a case where the community all around this country is coming out and saying, we want this man free, we want him out of prison. And I just would like to end by quoting a period— a piece in the Oakland Tribune this morning about Geronimo, an editorial asking for his release. And it ends like this: Sounds like a model citizen to me. He'd be a credit to his community. If the state would only let him have one. Well, the state is stopping him. It's the state in here. It's the parole board. It's the FBI. It's the people who have made a career on Geronimo's imprisonment.

Geronimo Pratt: Then, when you begin to view your community as a family, then your nation as a family, then you reach those levels of concern which everybody would like to see. But it first starts with your being concerned about your mother and your father, your auntie and your uncle, your grandmother and your grandfather. Your son and your daughter, your sister and your brother, then on from there, their sisters and brothers, extended family. The humanitarian concern, all this is based on one thing. It's based on love.

Speaker 7: Thousands of people nationally and internationally realize that Geronimo Pratt should be free. The television program 60 Minutes revealed that 4 of the 5 jurors interviewed by CBS would have found Geronimo not guilty if they had known then the facts uncovered since the trial.

Christof Arnold: Today is March 7th, 1996. We are here in Waynesburg, Pennsylvania.

Mumia Abu Jamal: The death penalty is a political creation. It is a creation of the state and a creation by politicians — to obtain political power and higher office, that politicians use the death penalty as a stepping stone for higher political office, and that they project, using people's cases, what people are about on death row. And that's deceitful. It's untrue. It's unreal. In this sense, Yes. That you will hear politicians talk about people on death row are the worst of the worst, and they're this, and they're that, and they're monsters, and so forth. But what you will not hear is that there are many people serving lesser sentences, life sentences, or a term of years, who have been convicted of similar, if not the same kinds of things. Or there are other people who are By virtue of their wealth, were not convicted at all. So what we're really talking about is a system that calls itself a justice system that uses the injustice of wealth, power, rank, status, race, privilege to determine who comes on death row, you see. Why is it that 9% of this state's population is close to 70% or 75% of death row's population. And I speak here of African Americans. And that's because, you know, the city of Philadelphia, like the city of Houston, like the city of Miami and Dade County, are cities where politicians have built their careers on sending people on death row. They're not making people any safer, you see. They're not showing people by their Yeah. Example justice, what they're showing is the partiality of injustice. Because for most of the people on death row, the overwhelming majority of people on death row were poor, could not afford the resources to develop a defense, could not begin to combat the forces of the state, the government. And as we saw very recently, that is, Yes. —all of us across America, if not around the world— in the O.J. Simpson case in California. Well, the kind of defense you get is the kind of defense you can afford. Most of the people who are here on death row, in Pennsylvania, in New Jersey, in Florida, in Texas, in Illinois, in California, are on death row because they could not afford Could you once again say a word what you feel about violence?

Christof Arnold: Is violence needed, or do you believe in a different way?

Mumia Abu Jamal: I believe that violence violates the self, that what the system believes in is violence. What the system practices and what the system preaches is violence. And what the— one thing that we don't want to do is do the same thing that the system is doing every day. If that were the case, why replace the system, you see? We want a new system where people are free and free of the violence of the system. We would hope for a day when there are no bombs, whether of any kind, you know, thermonuclear or conventional, so-called, no guns, no weapons, no prisons, no poverty, because all of these things are tools and weapons of violence, and we reject that.

Christof Arnold: Now, Mumia, what do you feel are several of the most serious What are the problems confronting the children of our present-day society, and what effects could these problems have in the future?

Mumia Abu Jamal: Well, I think, just as Kozol demonstrated in his book Amazing Grace, the most positive thing that all children have innate within them is hope. Those children living in the worst possible conditions in the world, in poverty, in slums, surrounded by drugs and so forth, still have an innate hope. So that's the positive part of it. The negative part, in terms of the problems that they face, and more directly to your question, is that they are, for the most part, Ignored and opposed by the social order, by the system. I remember what probably touched my heart was reading about the little boy David, who talked about how he looked at TV and he saw the mayor of New York City, and he said, I don't like him. And Cazo says, well, why do you say that? He says, because when I look in his eyes, all I see is coldness, and he doesn't understand how poor people have to live. That is the way that most politicians and most people who are wealthy in this system look at those children. They see coldness. They sense that coldness from these people who literally control their circumstances, whether they live or die, you know, the conditions of the neighborhood, the state of their education, all of the very important variables. So those are very serious problems. In terms of hope, I think children are born in a time when Hope. Children are our only hope for the future, a future. Children are the future. It's like Kahlil Gibran says, they are not of us, even though they come from us, that they are like arrows that we shoot towards infinity.

Speaker 6: Yeah.

Mumia Abu Jamal: You know, and where they go, we cannot see. Children are tomorrow. They are hope. They are the closest human beings can come to immortality, because they come from immortality, and they carry every hope with them from us to a future that we can't see. I think in terms of the best thing for them is to nurture that hope, to give them reasons to hope, and to feed that hope so that it grows into something stronger and that sustains them through their life.

Speaker 9: Right.

Mumia Abu Jamal: And the highest form of love is to pay attention to them. It's almost like Elie Wiesel says, the greatest hatred is not the anger of hatred, but the indifference. And the opposite of that, the greatest love is the attention that we can pay to our young people, our children.

Christof Arnold: Now, I believe, Mumia, that you have read the manuscript of my book, Leading Your Child to God.

Mumia Abu Jamal: I have read your book. I have read the full manuscript, every word, and I agree that it does have Very, very significant value to children of the world, because children come fresh, directly from the divine source, from what we call Mama, from life itself, from the God of all creation. That's why none of us— I don't care what our race, creed, religion, politics are— None of us can look at a child and not feel joy. And that's every child on the planet. We look at them, and it just— something thrills us, you know, in the basis of our heart. They are living miracles. And, you know, when we look at them, we know that there is a God, that all is possible, that life itself It's a miracle. You know, there is no father that looks at his child and doesn't feel awe at the source that brings this creation, you know, through mother, through life. Because children are the fruits of our love, of human love and divine love. And they show us With their innocence, with their clarity, the very face of God in human form, you know. So in that very sense, I find a lot of good and value and positive information in your book.

Christof Arnold: Can my book, A Plea for Purity, be of assistance and help to concerned, troubled, and struggling parents?

Mumia Abu Jamal: I think so. And I think so in this sense, that what your book, A Plea for Purity, does very clearly is it praises the concept of marriage. I mean, it embraces it in a way that is not really embraced. I mean, when you hear these politicians talk, it's kind of cold, distant, I mean, you sense, just like that little boy David did when he looked at TV and saw this politician, you sense not caring, not affection, not love, but coldness, you know, because politics is a cold art. They don't care about people. They care about power. I don't sense that in your book. I sense a deep caring about people. Wanting to put together what is fundamental in life: a loving, caring family, a loving, caring marriage, and a loving, caring community. I mean, isn't that really what we all want in, you know, in this world, in life? That's the foundation. Thank you.

Christof Arnold: Mumia, it would be wonderful if you could say a few words, um, how our country needs to rediscover what family means and also expand a bit. In the last decades, the primary responsibility for educating children has shifted from the family to the school. What is your input on that?

Mumia Abu Jamal: Well, I would say that when you look at education generally in this country, and perhaps around the world, but specifically in this country, what you'll see is, from the very earliest years, when a child goes to school and comes back home, the child perceives mom and dad differently than he did before he went to school. He senses that parents, his parents, are somehow not as smart as his teacher. And that means stupid, unintelligent, ignorant, uninformed. He gets that sense that when he needs to learn something, he goes to his teacher. He doesn't go to his mother.

Speaker 9: Right.

Mumia Abu Jamal: He doesn't go to his father, because his teacher knows. His parents don't. I think that at that point, what you develop is a kind of alienization or an alienation of the child from his family unit, his fundamental family unit, mom and pop. And while educators will talk about the school experience as socialization, And this is a good thing. I think what you're really looking at is desocialization, because he is alienated and desocialized from his family unit and put into a secondary unit that he looks at as of worth, of value. And he begins to rank. Well, the teacher knows such and such and such. Well, the parents don't know. You see what I'm saying? And so That family as a unit suffers. You see, I do think that, um, this is precisely because the social order has developed. I'm talking about the socioeconomic order has developed in such a way that in America, and perhaps in other, you know, industrialized societies in this world, in order for a family To make enough material resources and money to support the family, well, you have to have the father working and the mother working. You need a 2-income family. We do what we're taught to do in this social order. And a lot of what we do is not necessarily good for us. It's just customary and traditional. And, you know, we need to develop. The community that can truly educate the children without alienating them from their parents, you know, who, you know, brought them into this creation, you know.

Christof Arnold: Now, one of my topics in the book Leading Your Child to God is about the movement of homeschooling, which is rapidly growing in our country. Now, do you see this as a positive movement or a negative or a mixture of both? What do you know about homeschooling?

Mumia Abu Jamal: Well, I've read some things about it, and my family, the MOVE organization, has been involved with it, you know. So I look at it with both positives and some negatives.

Speaker 4: Yes.

Mumia Abu Jamal: There are some people who utilize this for, frankly, very racist reasons, to try to exclude children from contact with other cultures, other people. But fundamentally, I think, it is a positive thing, you see? I mean, because for the same reasons I said about how a child tends to look at his parents or her parents after he leaves the home and enters that school situation. I think it can be positive if people look at it consciously and work towards those ends. But I think it's fundamentally positive. It can be negative, and it depends on the family that, you know, and the reasons why they do that.

Christof Arnold: To me, I agree with you, but to me the most negative thing is That a child is stopped from relating to his peers if he is schooled at home, and children need to learn to relate with other children their age.

Mumia Abu Jamal: Well, yeah, I think also that it should be noted that the Bruderhof, your family, your community, you have your own, you know, primary schools. So, because you have your own schools, you're conscious of who teaches, and what is taught, and how it's taught, and in what spirit that happens, you see. Many people who live in the city have nothing even remotely close to that, you see. Um, in fact, they have no idea what is being taught. They have no idea who the teacher really is. They don't know who that person is. So I think that the experience that the Bruderhof have is very different from the average person in the city, or even in a rural setting, where they don't know who those persons is. They don't know who that teacher is. They don't know what's being taught. They don't know the spirit. And they don't know how that person really relates to that child. Thank you.

Speaker 14: You see.

Mumia Abu Jamal: You know, you hear it very often when you read the papers or you look at TV about how parents in general society are just so glad when summer is over, because when summer is over, they can take that kid and put them back in school, and their day is kind of free again. You see what I'm saying? So In that sense, the Hollands have an advantage that a lot of people don't have.

Christof Arnold: During the past year, the Bruderhof communities have become deeply involved in your case and in the lives of the MOVE members and in the death penalty question in general. Would you have a message to relay to the brothers, sisters, and children Of the Bruderhof.

Mumia Abu Jamal: First of all, of course, a heartfelt thank you to every member of the Bruderhof, from the smallest, the youngest, to the oldest, the eldest, here in America and abroad, in England and all around the world. We are very, very grateful that the Bruderhof came to our attention. For existing and making just human contact between people.

Christof Arnold: A week ago, we had a class from Columbia University, their journalism class, in religion, come to us. There were about 30 students. We had a communal mealtime, and the children sang, and then they asked questions. That's the second time they have come. You know, Ari Goldman used to He used to be the religion editor of the New York Times. Now he teaches journalism at Columbia University, and he wants to make it a yearly thing to have his students come and experience community.

Speaker 9: That's great.

Christof Arnold: I think it could be quite helpful for the future. What do you think?

Mumia Abu Jamal: I think it could be helpful not so much for the community, but for those journalists. Because journalists tend to be, you know, dyed-in-the-wool, cynical. They believe in, you know, the worst of people, not the best of people. They believe in the negative, not the positive. They really do. And when you think about middle-of-the-road journalism in America, mainstream journalism, Very rarely does spiritual matters or religious matters or even deep social issues really penetrate to the core of that science or that craft of journalism, because it's kind of— it's corny from a journalistic perspective. And I think that any thinking, sensitive human being who sees and hears this out of the mouth of babes, from children, cannot help but be touched in their heart by that.

Christof Arnold: I think they were touched. I mean, sad to say, you tell me if you disagree, to me the mainline media has been bought out by large corporations. And through that it's also being highly censored. That's my impression of the mainline media today. Of course, to everything there are also exceptions.

Mumia Abu Jamal: That's exactly— I believe you're absolutely true. And to give you some examples, if I may, very— when I was down in Philadelphia at my petition hearing, I was being brought back to the prison And the sheriffs had turned the radio on. I was listening to the news. And the newscaster said, this just in, there's a bulletin, ABC, American Broadcasting Corporation, has just been acquired by Disney Corporation. And I laughed. And I was in the back, and I was just laughing. I said, well, I guess we're going to have Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck on the news Good night. Good night, right? But that's just one out of many, you know. We used to talk about— almost the same way I said earlier about politicians— we used to talk about the media being in the hip pocket of big business and being controlled by big business. Well, today the major media are big business. They are part of these Mm-hmm. Multinational huge corporations. And if you think they don't control what comes into that camera lens and out on that TV screen, well, come on. If I own you, I control you. If I pay you, I tell you what to say and what not to say. And when you look at the news today— I'm talking now about a national network newscast— The similarities between— think about this, Christophe— the similarities between a national network newscast and what used to be a local newscast are astounding. Local crime stories become national news stories, not because of anything extraordinary about that, but that's the stuff that they're feeding out there. They don't feed— The good stuff. Pieces that talk about the fundamental relationships of power and rank and status in this country. They talk about sensation, you know. It's almost as if the average newscast is produced by Hard Copy or one of these other, you know, shows like that. Just, it's trash. But it's trash that's designed to Yes. To attract you emotionally, to touch you sensationally, to get you looking, but not to get you thinking, not to question the fundamental relationships of power, of wealth, of justice, of injustice. Those issues, they don't apply, you see. They do not question the relationship and the rightness of things. They take that for granted, you see. And when you ally that and you put that in concert with the political machinery that's in place today— I'm talking about the right-wing shift in American politics— well, you have a dangerous and a deadly and a malevolent concoction. That's what you have.

Speaker 9: Right.

Mumia Abu Jamal: That's what you have. That's what you have. You know, you have a guy who can run for president and be best friends with, you know, a Klansman, and, you know, have Klansmen and Aryan Nation brethren on his staff. Oh, well, that's not important. We're not him. And they can brush it off, and he goes on, and he goes on. Just like in the Um, '30s and '40s in Germany, when you know obviously intimately much better than I, when you talk about the Nazi experience, when you talk about the Hitler phenomena in Germany, you could not have that kind of political explosion of Nazi organization without the undercover but significant support of people of means, of finances, the Krupps and so forth, the Fords here in America. They were supported by people of wealth. They just didn't spring out of the, you know, one day they were here and one day they weren't. They were supported by financial interests because in the last analysis they protected their interests.

Leonard Peltier: Yes.

Mumia Abu Jamal: You know, when you read books that talk about how this government, through its CIA and its FBI, supported and paid and protected mafia hitmen and stuff like that so that they could knock off and destroy socialists and communists, that's not just by coincidence, because they knew that would protect The interests of the wealthy. Fundamentally, what we're talking about is how the U.S. government has allied itself with some of the darkest forces in history for economic gain, for economic interest, to protect the status quo, and continue to do so, continue to do so. None of this stuff that's happening in America is in a vacuum. When you have David Dukes running for governors or Buchanan running for president, Klansmen on his staff, and, you know, everybody talking about, well, it's okay to forget the poor, what we need is more executions.

Geronimo Pratt: That's right.

Mumia Abu Jamal: Poor people have it too good in this country. What we need to do is start chopping people's heads off. I mean, the kind of— the level, the political level of discourse is anti-life. It's death-centered. And that's not by coincidence.

Christof Arnold: I have probably a good chance to speak to many college campuses this I'm very happy about these 2 books, and my message to the young people is one life can make a difference. Would you have a message to the American young people, how they can make our country a better nation?

Mumia Abu Jamal: Yes, Christoph. I would say, first of all, that children and young people who are not children but young adults Yes. I think that all of us who are college students should recognize that at this exact point in life, this is the freest they'll ever be in their life, however they want to look at that. I mean, because marriage imposes obligations, one's career and job imposes obligations. When they're at a point in life where they're able to study, To learn. To learn, to grow in the life of the mind. They're free. They're at a level of freedom that they cannot and will not probably experience for decades. So they should take this opportunity to feed their minds, you know, not just with information, but with, you know, information that feeds the spirit and the deeper inner self. I would invite them to read your books. I would invite them to read my books as well, and to ask themselves questions about what they see there. And because they are at this freedom phase of their lives, to not underestimate the worth and wealth of that phase, because now, at this time, when they're free, is the time when they can move to You know, worlds are changed in people's minds, in their perception. And this is the time for them to do that, the proper time. Thank you.

Speaker 14: At the penitentiary in Lompoc, they have 3 different product operations. They do electronic cable assemblies. They do print shop. And they have a sign factory. Then at the Lompoc low-security facility next door, they do office furniture.

Mumia Abu Jamal: Right.

Speaker 14: At the Dublin facility in eastern San Francisco, they have a drapery factory and a data entry operation, and they're doing mattress recycling as well, taking mattresses apart, not producing a product, but taking them apart into components and selling them to avoid landfill efforts. In Boron, California, we do repair services for the military. We do repairing transmissions and forklifts, and it's a service operation. And then in Terminal Island, California, we have a metal operation that does lockers and metal products for the military and other— GSA and other customers.

Speaker 6: I'm a retired Marine. Release these chains! Release these chains!

Eli Rosenblatt: Hey, I'm Eli Rosenblatt with the Prison Activist Resource Center. And this is a demonstration to protest against the exploitation of prisoners' labor. We're here to point out the human rights violations that Unicor is responsible for and the fact We're here to protest the fact that thousands of jobs have been— just in the furniture industry alone— have been lost to Unicor factories since the 1980s, and as well that Unicor factories are notorious for unsafe conditions, unsafe equipment and poor ventilation. We get reports of that kind of thing all the time. And there's dozens of lawsuits against the federal system for the conditions in Unicor factories.

Speaker 1: We have to let the politicians know. Know that while they profess to be in favor of creating jobs, expanding the economy, doing good things that will benefit the people of this country, that by allowing prison labor of the type that Unicor's involved in, and other companies such as TWA and even AT&T, which has dabbled into the prison labor pool, We have to let them know that we know that they are lying to us. If they really cared, they would never support, in what should be a free society, in, in a so-called free enterprise system, that prison slave labor would be used to line the pockets of any corporate entity in this country. And it must end. And we have to— We have to stop it. Lead the fight, and we will be successful. Thank you. Yeah!

Mumia Abu Jamal: What we need to do is to have a real investigation and a report of what's going on and who is making money. Somewhere along the line, somebody's making money, no matter what they say. They can say we're saving here, saving there, but as far as I know, nobody gets involved in anything just for their health. And this, as I said, inside they say, go ahead, do it, but then they're eliminating the opportunity on the outside.

Speaker 14: Well, every year the board reviews our earnings at the end of the year and our projections for cash flow for the coming year and says, you know, what are the demands going to be, and are we in a position where we could take some of those and give them back to the Treasury? And lately we haven't been able to do that because with the Bureau of Prisons has been requested by the Congress to build so many prisons. There are currently 20 prisons under some form of development right now— siting, construction, activation, etc. And the vast majority of those are going to have prison factories in them. So we're scrambling to just keep the money available to try to outfit the new factories, buy the new equipment. Of course, you can imagine those are very substantial expenses. Startup expenses are always— factories never start making a profit the first day, so there's always some losses to absorb. So we expect that if this ever starts to level off in terms of prison population, that we'll be able to start returning more money back to the Treasury. But right now we're not in a position to do that.

Speaker 6: No prison labor! We need jobs and union wages! No prison labor!

Speaker 1: We need jobs and union wages! No prison labor!

Steve Zeltzer: Well, this is putting working people who need jobs out of work, number one. Number two, it's a racist industry. Because the largest number of people are black and Latino. Number 3, what it does is, instead of providing decent jobs for working people, companies would rather have an expansion of the prison industry. It's one of the fastest-growing industries in the United States. It's a for-profit industry. It wants private prisons. What we're saying is, is the future of this country is not on prison labor. The future of this country is on decent jobs for working people in this country.

Eli Rosenblatt: What are some of the organizations that you're working with?

Speaker 1: End prison labor!

Steve Zeltzer: So the San Francisco Labor Council, the Sign and Display Workers Union, the American Friends Service Committee, the NAACP is supporting the demonstration. There's a broad range— Michael Lerner of Tikkun magazine. There's a broad range of organizations who are against the expansion and the use of prison labor industries.

Mumia Abu Jamal: How are you?

Speaker 16: Any other questions?

Eli Rosenblatt: My name is Steve Zeltzer.

Steve Zeltzer: I'm with the Labor Video Project and the Coalition Against Federal Prison Labor Industries.

Speaker 14: Every dollar that we take in in sales is returned to the private sector in one form or another. And because of the way we operate, in a very labor-intensive way, the number of civilian jobs— forgetting inmates altogether— the number of civilian jobs we create by our existence is actually more than would be created by the private sector to absorb our work if we went out of existence.

Eli Rosenblatt: It's a bureaucratic scam. In other words, you have a There's a level of bureaucracy that's benefiting from this. As far as we can tell, they contract products from different factories. In other words, a factory in Green Bay, Wisconsin, could be contracted to make a tabletop, and that's sent to Allensworth, Pennsylvania, or some other federal prison. And the base of the table's made by another organization, and that's merely repackaged at the prison, repackaged in a nice box that says— The federal government. Well, is that training anybody? Who's benefiting from that?

Speaker 11: Who is benefiting from that?

Eli Rosenblatt: Well, the bureaucrats that want to run a great marketing program. That's who's benefiting, who's getting $40,000 and $50,000 and $60,000 a year salaries. Let's find out how many people at this convention are making this kind of money in marketing prison-made industries' products. And they have a marketing team now. They have a— that's what this whole thing is. Thing is about. That's what this conference is. It's a marketing team that's out here with motivational speakers, the 6-color brochures. I don't know if you've seen the materials that they've put out. It's outrageous. They're sending things out around the country at great expense. How much did this conference cost to put on? And who's attending? For the number of people attending, it's probably the most cost-ineffective approaches imaginable.

Speaker 14: 60% of our sales are to To the Department of Defense. They're the biggest customer. And we do everything from what I would call routine things, like printing and furniture and common things, to ballistic fragment vests for the military, who wear those, to Kevlar military helmets, to cable assemblies that were used on the Patriot missile during the Gulf War. I mean, we do some pretty sophisticated things, too, to very high, exacting standards.

Speaker 6: For political prisoners and politicized What's the connection? There are prisoners in this country who have dedicated their lives to fighting the policies of the U.S. government. UNICOR is an enemy force in the prisons. UNICOR, one of the biggest contracts with UNICOR has been the military. So during the Persian Gulf War and the invasion of Somalia, prisoners were being forced to actually work on military jobs, making military uniforms, Folding military uniforms, making all sorts of— making hats, making all sorts of things. So this is very important. Unicor is not a civilian industry. It is part of the military, or rather the prison-military-industrial complex of this country, and we must fight it.

Mumia Abu Jamal: You're listening to WBAI in New York, by the way, and we're adding some more to This incredible story about Maurice Bikrum in jail in Angola Prison for 38 years. And he's come to speak to the people who in large part are responsible for helping him to get out. What kind of man, knowing the story that we know, could survive with his sanity for all those years inside prison?

Speaker 14: And you can feel that when you sit down with Maurice. And there was There was something—

Mumia Abu Jamal: there was this spirituality about him that struck me and stuck with me.

Speaker 14: And I'm just so thankful that things have turned out the way they have and that Maurice can sit here today with all of us here, a free man.

Speaker 6: You hide behind walls of Jericho. Your lies will come tumbling down.

Speaker 11: Maurice, do you remember first meeting Dave?

Speaker 16: Yes, ma'am.

Speaker 4: I never will forget that day. He was, he was asking me questions about the rose bushes that I was tending. I had about 24 of them around the different buildings. And he said, Bikrum, how you and these rose bushes make it? I said, well, they're my best companion. I said, this is my company keeper. And I said, I got all of them named after my Old used-to-be girlfriends. And I said, but this big, pretty pink one here— the bush was big as a hill, and I only, you know, I had it trimmed nice. I said, this is my, my, my pride and joy. I said, this is named— this one after my wife, Ernestine. And, boy, he went— he took that, and he went with it.

Speaker 16: From his story and from all the corroboration that I received, it was purely self-defense. There should have been no crime. He should have been acquitted. A jury of his peers today would acquit him completely. Instead, he was convicted by a handpicked white jury whose names did not appear on the jury pool. Okay, I obtained the jury pool and I knew who was supposed to be on the jury, and the jurors were not on that list. So they were clearly picked by the judge, and he was convicted very quickly of first-degree murder, sentenced to death. Now, the jury had to decide It was at the discretion in those days whether to impose life or whether to impose death. And that's the reason that Mr. Bikrum's death sentence was later ruled unconstitutional in 1972. The Supreme Court invalidated hundreds of cases across the country when the jury had the unfettered discretion to impose death. It was therefore arbitrary and capricious. In '72, his case was converted to life without parole, and it was there that he lingered through the '70s and '80s. And he was released in 1980. '80s and well into the '90s. But I do want to say, Amy, that this case was cracked by a chorus of voices. This case is really about the voices that came together to break it.

Speaker 4: He said, what they want you to do all the time. I said, well, then, how long I'm going to be done? Until about 2027? You know? I said, I'll be in California on parole and can't go anywhere. So all he coming from there, and I said, but let me tell you, you got a discharge date.

Mumia Abu Jamal: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4: I said, what? You know, it kind of threw me for a loop. He said, you got a discharge date, January the 6th— January the 10th, 1996. I said, Doc Warden, you wouldn't be kidding me, would you? He said, you ain't got your rap sheet? I said, no. He said, it ought to be in the mail. See, when the mailman come and hand me that sheet, and I looked down at what it said, Fully discharged with double good time, January 10th, 1996.

Speaker 11: I really, truly see how they is conditioned to keep acting and holding that same behavior, keeping them down, keeping the people in prison until they drop or be buried there. And it's just a total miracle that he worked out all the system, that is, they're getting credit for each A good day or having good behavior in a prison, when you are not even supposed to be there in the first place? You look at it like this: it's a miracle. I mean, they held him until they couldn't hold him anymore, January 10th.

Mumia Abu Jamal: If there was ever a moment in which this record seems appropriate, it's this moment now.

Speaker 1: The louder you refuse to hear my voice— The louder I will sing.

Speaker 6: You hide behind walls of Jericho. Your lies will come tumbling. You squander wealth that's mine. I like something inside so strong.

Speaker 1: I know that I can make it. Boy, you're doing me wrong, so wrong.

Speaker 14: You're watching Free Speech TV.

Mumia Abu Jamal: Email us at fstv@fstv.org.

Bobby Castillo: OK. My name is Bobby Castillo. I'm a former Marion Control Unit prisoner. I was confined in Marion Federal Penitentiary, along with numerous penitentiaries throughout the United States. I was put in Behavior Modification Unit, which is the Marion Control Unit. And at the time, it was the most maximum penitentiary in the United States.

Mumia Abu Jamal: OK.

Bobby Castillo: What makes me bitter is that the general population can't see what's happening. They don't see what's happening to our young people. They don't understand the laws is taking all of our youth and putting them away into these dungeons, into these monsters— they develop monsters, these human warehouses. It's putting a bunch of kids, man, and developing them into caged tigers. Someday they're going to have to open them cages and let these kids back out in our society. We wonder why they go right back, go straight into a crime? Because we make them that way.

Leonard Peltier: They have to think of other alternatives besides building more prisons and sending people to prison for longer periods of time. You know, I think if they concentrated more on giving those people jobs and building their communities up and putting those kids to work. You know, there's the answer to it. You know, it's just the government doesn't want to spend that money. They want to send the money to— use the money on building a bigger and better war machine. You know, sending— giving all the money to the Weapons industries and stuff like this here. And, uh, that's not the answer. Well, I think we've got to create some jobs for these kids out there. Got to give them some hope.

Mumia Abu Jamal: What do you think about the 3 strikes and you're out?

Leonard Peltier: Well, first of it— first of all, it's a lot of bull. I mean, 3 violent crimes and you're out. I mean, uh, hey, if you commit 1 violent crime, you're out. I mean, uh, it's all a political game. Game. And, uh, I mean, some of the things that they're going to send people for the rest of— to prison for the rest of their lives on, if, uh, commit 3 crimes and, uh, felonies, uh, you're going to spend the rest of your life in prison. Some of this stuff is very petty. And it's a scientific fact that the majority of your criminals, after they reach the age of 40 no longer are interested, or a lot of them no longer commit crimes. They become, you know, law-abiding citizens. So, you know, all this is is just politics. They're playing politics with people's lives is what they're doing. And I don't think it's a good thing.

Speaker 8: What kind of things do you see yourself doing, Leonard, when you're on the outside?

Leonard Peltier: Well, I want to continue in the economic area of our development of our sovereignty. I want to continue in building unity among all Native peoples, indigenous peoples. I, you know, I will concentrate and work in those areas.

Christof Arnold: Thank you.

Leonard Peltier: When I get out. And of course, you know, I hope to build a family and start over and live out what rest of the little life I have left, you know. I mean, it's almost over for me. I'll be 50 years old pretty soon. I got 20, 25 years if I'm lucky. So in a very short period of time, I'm going to have to— if I get out soon, I'm going to have to work very fast and—

Mumia Abu Jamal: What are you going to do?

Leonard Peltier: I'm going to try to build a family again and try to fulfill some of the visions that I had of regaining our sovereignty and taking— getting the natives and indigenous people out of that oppression and poverty that they're in. I will concentrate in those areas.

Mumia Abu Jamal: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah! Falling asleep on death row. I grabbed his gun and he did what I said so. And every man's demand got served along with the time they served, decency was deserved. To understand my demands, I gave a warning. I wanted the governor, y'all, and plus the warden to know that I was innocent because I'm militant, posing a threat. You better— government. My plan said I had to get out in Yeah. Just like Oliver's neck, I had to get off. My boys had the feds in check. They couldn't try. Enough said. We had to force to instigate a prison riot. This what it takes for peace. So I just took a piece. Black for black. It's my time to cut the leash. Freedom to get out to the ghetto. No sellouts. 6 COs we got, we ought to put their head out. But I'll give them a chance, 'cause I'm civilized. As for rest of the world, they can't realize a cell is hell. I'm a rebel, so I rebel. Between bars got me thinking like an animal. Got a woman CO that called me a copter. She tried to get away, and I popped her twice, right? No one to get nice. I had 6 COs, and now it's 5 to go, and I'm serious. Call me delirious, but I'm still a captain. I gotta wrap this time to break as time throws a 10. I got my steel in my right hand. Now I'm looking for the fin.

Mumia Abu Jamal: Hey yo, Chuck, we got the dope plan in effect. G word to the strip, man. I'm looking for that fin.

Speaker 1: Word, I got the 98 YC Professor good for that S1.

Speaker 6: Yo, Chuck, they coming, man.

Speaker 1: As I ventured into the courtyard, followed by 50 true brothers, bruised, battered, and scarred but hard, going out with a bang, ready to bang out. The power from the sky, from the tower, shots rang out. A high number in those jets is something Because I figure I trigger my steel stand and hold my post. This is what I mean, an anti-nigger machine. If I come out alive, then they won't come clean. Then I blew up my steel bullets, blew up into monster, motherfucker, wall of tower blew up. Who shot what? Who? What the bazooka was who? Into my rescue, it was the S1Ws to kill my getaway. So I just got away. The joint broke from the black smoke. Then they threw it.

Speaker 4: Whoa!

Speaker 18: My brothers and sisters, let us be clear. We are disposable to them. This welfare reform and this criminal injustice apparatus, it is their death plan for us. But we are here today not to bury our communities. We are here To fight.

Speaker 6: To fight.

Speaker 18: And our ancestors taught us that when we fight, we must also know how to pray. So I just want to pray for a second. I want to pray for our children, that they still have some kind of childhood left. I want to pray that during this time, we learn how to turn towards each other and not against each other. I pray that out of this darkness and out of this ruination, I pray that out of it we find some kind of hope, some kind of life. But most of all, I pray that we may give each other the spirit, the strength to fight this battle by every and any means necessary.

Speaker 6: Typically what happens is you go into a custody situation, the people there tell you what you don't know.

Ashaki Pratt: Yeah.

Speaker 6: They tell you you don't know anything, you don't have anything, you're not going to be anything, and you should just get accustomed to being where you are. I am here to tell you that the people that I met in custody were some of the most brilliant business people, some of the most wonderful organizers, some of the most active and engaged people I have ever known. What they needed was someone to tell them, you do know enough to take care of yourself. You do have the skills to support you and your family. Don't believe the hype. Don't buy the crap that they're telling you about who you are. And it's up to us in the educational community to make sure that that word gets into the custody system.

Speaker 1: This is the 25th anniversary since George Jackson was executed.

Speaker 6: This is the 25th anniversary since Malcolm X was assassinated. Since Attica.

Speaker 1: And we want to bring it back before the American people, say, let's relook at this.

Speaker 6: Let's look where we have taken the prison system from that day until now.

Speaker 1: And I think there can't be a better speaker to address this than Big Black, formerly of the Attica Brothers.

Big Black: There's going to be a lot of talk going on today, and some of this stuff, if not all of it, is going to embrace you. Most of it is stemming from our communities all the way to the prison struggle. And that's what happened with us in 1971, when we dared to struggle, we dared to win, and we refused to stand up and be dehumanized and treated as animals. So we took control of Attica State Prison and had folks to come in and deal with the grievances that we had to deal with. But being the state, Yes. Which is the state that we see today. They came in and 43 people got killed. Myself and so many hundred people was brutalized and tortured on the retaking of Attica State Prison. And the same thing is going on today. And we need to open our eyes up to it and pay stick focus on the prison movement.

Speaker 20: Attica was the turning point in America for a spotlight on prisons and what was, what was taking place in prisons, because of the number of people that was killed, because of the way in which it was done, and because of the voices that came out of Attica, which were voices that previously had not been heard.

Speaker 4: When I first entered prison in the '40s, Attica was famed for being impregnable. No way could you do anything with Attica, because it was 4 different yards, and they were separated. And these guys did do something.

Christof Arnold: As a member of the New York State Legislature, I was involved in prison reforms for the last 2 or 3 years. So when I heard, I immediately We went to Attica and asked to be allowed to go in.

Mumia Abu Jamal: What kind of structure was there among the inmates? Tightest organization I've ever seen in my life.

Speaker 16: They had a central committee.

Mumia Abu Jamal: They sat at a long table. And then they rotated the chairmanship.

Christof Arnold: We got a list of about 30-some or 31 demands. And we took those back out to the commissioner for him to respond.

Mumia Abu Jamal: The demands were decent food, the right to practice their religion, whatever it was, education. You know, all these things were the demands. People just wanted to be treated like human beings. Nobody was asking that, you know, you exonerate us from what we did. We know we made a mistake. But give us an opportunity to do something about the mistakes that we made, because we're all going back in the community. Give us something to go back into.

Steve Zeltzer: Give us some tools.

Speaker 4: Right.

Mumia Abu Jamal: Now, the inmates were sleeping on the ground. I saw this. I saw it. And they were sleeping on the ground. Some of them had blankets, some of them did not. But all of the hostages were sleeping on mattresses, and they all had blankets. The prisoners sometimes only got 1 square a day. The hostages got 3 squares a day.

Speaker 20: And they were fed I'm talking about square meals.

Speaker 4: When Attica occurred, I was on Rikers Island, and everybody in the cell block was just fixed to the TV. Every time a special report would come in about Attica, we were fixed to the TV, following the developments.

Mumia Abu Jamal: There's Square Control. This is D Yard, where nearly all the prisoners still loose are congregated. You're looking now at a group on top of Square Control.

Christof Arnold: And then we devised a letter, a message to the governor.

Speaker 1: And it went something like this.

Christof Arnold: Governor, please come to Attica to talk to the observer committee. Please come, because we feel that a massacre might take place, that the lives of the hostages and the inmates might be lost.

Speaker 4: And then, suddenly, the 13th occurred. And, I mean, I was just spellbound. I, I, I— it was total disbelief that the government would use so much force.

Mumia Abu Jamal: On the 13th, the morning of the 13th, everybody in the yard knew something was going to happen. I mean, it was just that feeling. It was that feeling that something is going to bend today, something is going to break.

Geronimo Pratt: 10:05 a.m., September 13th.

Mumia Abu Jamal: We're on the roof of A Block waiting for the assault to begin. This is a team of .270 rifle shooters.

Speaker 20: At the time that the prison was retaken, I was in C Block, and I was looking out the window, and on the roof surrounding the yard were National Guard troops and prison guards. They had their rifles and shotguns. Some of them had pistols. And they were looking down into the yard, and then the helicopter came across and dropped the tear gas into the yard.

Leonard Peltier: The big helicopter came over. You heard on the loudspeaker, lay down, put your hands on your head, and do not be harmed.

Speaker 20: And right after the tear gas fell, all of these guys that were lined up wanted Point it down into the yard and just commenced the firing.

Mumia Abu Jamal: And as I'm looking around, I'm laying down, I'm seeing the ground is like literally moving around me. The ground was moving from bullets.

Leonard Peltier: The next thing I remember was waking up in the hospital, bandaged from head to foot, my leg.

Speaker 20: It was the most stunning event that ever happened in my life, to just witness, for me, I think what Attica did, it gave Mr.

Mumia Abu Jamal: and Mrs. America an opportunity to look inside these places and see that, wait a minute, everything is not all right here.

Speaker 20: As a result of Attica, a spotlight was turned on the prison system in the United States, a spotlight that began to ask very hard questions about the conditions of life in these places. Why people were in prison and what happened to them while they were in prison. I mean, I think that it took those 43 lives to bring about this kind of change in the prison system. I'm talking about a radical, fundamental change that went to the core of what prisons were supposed to be about and began to reconstruct prison activities from the ground up. As a result of Attica, for instance, college programs came into the prisons.

Mumia Abu Jamal: Prior to Attica, prisoners had nothing to do in prison.

Geronimo Pratt: There were no programs. They locked in at 4 o'clock. There were no law libraries. There was nothing that a guy can do. And after Attica, there were all kinds of possibilities.

Speaker 4: Now, you, you might say, well, they lost their lives. Yes, but they are heroes because they wrote a page that we are never going to forget.

Speaker 6: Mother, sons, we who believe in freedom and not freedom and not arrest. We who believe in freedom and not arrest.

Speaker 21: Well, since the uprising, we've been housed in a special housing unit, where 7 of the brothers— I think 17— are still To be housed. They, I think, are being held in Erie County Jail pending disposition. However, the maxi maxis, of which we've been hearing for the last several years, are still there for the Attica brothers. And should the indictments be dismissed tomorrow, they will be returned to maxi maxi, which is a special housing unit which keeps you in a 24— 23-hour lockdown, under the same guards, I might add, who came Who are they? They came to Attica from Auburn to put down the uprising in 1971. They are the supervisors of the special housing units in Auburn, where we will be housed. And that is why when we say that Attica is all of us, we try to show the relationship with those who are inside to those who are out here. And we try to reach the people to make them aware of the fact that should the indictments be dismissed— and this is a call that's going out to A lot of people, the struggle continues. La lucha continúa. Because Attica was a continuation of our struggle for liberation from oppression, and we will continue to struggle on for liberation from oppression.

Mumia Abu Jamal: Thank you.

Speaker 11: These brothers and the countless others that are in prison and have been in prison since the '60s and early— and throughout the '60s and to today have sacrificed up to upwards of 17 years of their life. Thank you. I'm so proud of my ancestors who have been martyred in the struggle for the liberation of Black people. They've been away from their families, they've been away from their children. Their children have grown up and they've become grandparents. The whole sacrifice that they've made has been in the interest for the progress that has been made in the Black community among oppressed peoples.

Speaker 7: And the community has moved forward.

Speaker 6: The community has moved forward. And they have remained behind bars.

Speaker 11: It's important that we, in some measure, show our support for the sacrifice they have made by getting involved in the effort to free these brothers and see justice is done.

Mumia Abu Jamal: If we don't get support from people in the streets, then it'll be— I'll be 55 or 56 years before I go to the parole board. I'll just be in here rotting away, and as will my 2 co-defendants, Shalil and Noah. I still believe in the power of the people, OK? And with that power, right, we could be out of prison in 18 months. I'm not one who takes pleasure in the suffering of another human being, regardless You know, one is for religious reasons, because even as a Muslim, you know, like in the Quran, we're taught, you know, like not to defile your enemies.

Speaker 6: We who believe in freedom cannot rest. We who believe in freedom cannot rest. Some of us came together around Mumia Abu-Jamal. As we move forward in this struggle, the struggle in totality, it means that we're going to have to do this together. You know, where a lot of us never worked together before in the coalition itself, we come from a massive different organizations, and we came together to do this. What we've learned What we're saying in this fight is that we— there are other issues, and everything we do from this point has to be done together.

Mumia Abu Jamal: Spring forward into a fresh new lineup of programming from Free Speech TV. We give you the most forward-thinking programs you'll see anywhere on television: the military watchdog America's Defense Monitor, the eco-resource show Life in the Balance: Towards a Sustainable Future, the best of queer programming including Dyke TV and AIDS Community Community television and the outrageous social commentary of Rocks. It's the best of progressive programming each week right here on Free Speech TV.

Speaker 11: The fact that prison programs are being eliminated right and left, you know, educational programs, exercise programs, theater groups, everything is being eliminated, which creates an environment of hopelessness and Where there's no hope, violence thrives. The old-time guards speak of a condition— guards who go back a generation or so, who've been in the business for a long time and who have a somewhat— rare guards I'm talking about— who have a somewhat more humanistic view of their profession. prisoners speak of prisons that have a lot of lifers and very few programs as death-struck prisons, prisons in which there is no hope. Those are very dangerous places because no one has anything to live for. There's another factor that that I wanted to bring up that underlies the high prevalence of disability in prisons, and that is prison labor, which is, as you know, a thriving industry now in this country and internationally. Prison labor is unregulated by federal labor law. That creates conditions that are very hazardous to prisoners. For instance, there's a prison here in California Yes. The prison in California is Tehachapi Prison. Tehachapi Prison manufactures— has a furniture manufacturing industry, and in the process of manufacturing their furniture, they use urethane foam. Urethane foam is highly toxic and causes a condition similar to asbestosis. The particles of the urethane are carcinogenic. Can't organize into unions to protest labor conditions. So those conditions go unchecked and really serious disabilities and illnesses and death are the result of those conditions. So, so the, the prevalence of disability spikes dramatically when you compare the ratio of disabled to Disabled to non-disabled people inside with the ratio of disabled to non-disabled people outside. And actually, those of us who've been doing prison work over a number of years have seen a marked decline, not an improvement, a decline in conditions inside prison. And medical care is an example of that. Medical care is getting worse, not better, for prisoners. So poor medical care or the absence of medical care or medical malpractice or negligence creates disabilities as well. Intentional negligence or— Sometimes it is intentional, yeah. I, I won't say that it's always intentional, but I've seen a phenomenon among correctional There's a kind of attitude on the part of officers and staff in prison toward prisoners with disabilities that I'm at a loss to explain. I'd have to call it sadism. There's a woman I'm working with right now who has MS. She's in a women's prison here in California, Gloria. Her MS has rendered her paralyzed. She has no use of her legs. She's in a wheelchair. arms or legs, and she's legally blind. And Gloria, Gloria is left in her bed to rot in her own juices. Gloria goes from one day to the next without even being turned, so she's very prone to developing pressure sores. And pressure sores are a major cause of death among quadriplegics in third-world countries. They're nothing to mess with. They're very dangerous. I'm sorry, I didn't hear you.

Speaker 9: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 11: If you don't get proper medical care for pressure sores, you die. Because you become septic. You develop infections, they spread to the rest of your body, and you die. What they are is, is a breakdown in, in skin resulting from bad circulation. And there is no excuse for them. They can be so easily prevented by a combination of a proper wheelchair cushion, a good quality wheelchair cushion, Egg crates, mattresses, physical therapy and adequate exercise, adequate diet. Congress has enacted all kinds of ways to block prisoners' access to the courts. The Prison Litigation Reform Act is one of those ways that Prisoners are less and less able to use the courts to, to get justice in terms of improving the conditions of their lives, and disabled prisoners are really up against that kind of legislation. It's real hard for them. There was a class-action suit filed in Cali— in New York State called Clarkson involving deaf prisoners, mostly women, but, but actually it was a mix of women and men, who alleged that they were not being provided sign language interpreters for any of their daily activities. They, they weren't provided sign language interpreters in disciplinary hearings, in parole hearings, in AA meetings or NA meetings or religious services or any of the activities of of their daily life. And the judge who ruled in Clarkson made a decision that these prisoners had been sentenced to a prison within a prison as a result— this is a direct quote— as a result of the communicational isolation they were experiencing through discrimination, discrimination based on their deafness.

Speaker 4: Wow.

Speaker 11: And that is true throughout the country. Blind prisoners like Gloria are not provided any materials in alternative formats. Now, that may sound like a very minor issue to those of us who, who are looking at the sort of bread-and-butter stuff that goes on in prisons, you know, beatings and violence and even wheelchair-using prisoners who are Whose wheelchairs are taken away from them. It may seem like a very small matter that somebody who's blind doesn't— is not provided books on tape. But tell that to Gloria when she's lying in her bed, you know, she's, she's lying, she's rotting is what she's doing. Nobody is providing her with anything. Tell Gloria that, that the failure to provide her with books in alternative formats, taped books, or someone who is willing to read books to her is a non-issue. You know, to Gloria it's a major issue. No one writes letters for her. And what else does Gloria have to do? I mean, how is she going to spend her days, however many days she has left? There's another whole area of issues that non-disabled people don't really talk about or think about in relation to the criminal justice system, and that is people with cognitive disabilities like mental retardation, developmental disabilities, who encounter the criminal justice system and who have been trained from the beginning because of their mental retardation. They've been trained by parents and teachers and whatnot To trust police. Police are there to help you. Be nice to the policeman. Answer his questions. Be polite. So people with cognitive disabilities like mental retardation are, are routinely framed and bulldozed into false confessions. And, and they'll agree to anything because they've been taught that police are their friends. They're on death row. Johnny Lee Wilson was framed and forced into a false confession. And a film was made about Johnny Lee Wilson in which you see exactly how they forced him into a confession. Confession, exactly the kinds of questions, the leading questions that compelled him to provide answers that landed him a life sentence. And what you see is a man with very limited intellectual ability who basically made the mistake of trusting police. He figured, well, they must know what they're doing. They couldn't be intending to hurt me. I was always trained to be nice to them, to answer their questions and be polite, and they say they'll send me home if I just finish answering their questions, so I'd better do it. And so— and the more they pushed him, the more he realized that they wanted very specific answers, which he was happy to provide. He made them up as he went along. And, and the film takes you through that. It takes you through every step of his confession. When the film came out, the governor pardoned him because they were so embarrassed by the violations of Johnny Lee Wilson's rights that were evident. But that happens all the time, and people with Mental retardation and other developmental disabilities are in prisons all across the country as a result of confessions that they agreed to and were coerced into signing.

Speaker 9: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 11: You asked about the Shumate case. Shumate is another major class action in California. It's a class action on behalf of women prisoners in California prisons who allege medical abuse and negligence and discrimination based on medical need. And SHUMADE is about to go to trial in a few short weeks. I'm working with some of the disabled prisoners who are involved in SHUMADE and And we're talking about really hair-raising abuse and discrimination. Women with end-stage AIDS who have only a few weeks to live and who are not provided anything, who are provided no medical care whatsoever, and who are not granted— who are denied compassionate release. Even though they weigh under 80 pounds. Pounds and have a T-cell count of zero. It's very dramatic and spine-chilling material. The depositions of the women plaintiffs in, in Shoemade are hair-raising. It's hard to understand how human beings are capable of that kind of behavior. I mean, we sort of we read about it in history books. We read about we read about the Holocaust, and we sort of we some part of our brains says, well, that was then, and this is now, and we are after all in America, you know. And we hear about cases of torture, and we think, well, that's there, and that and this is here. This is America. This is America. But really what we're talking about when we look at the kind of treatment that disabled prisoners experience in prison is torture. Under the Geneva Convention, it is torture. There isn't any way that that can— it's an inescapable fact. And when I stand up in front of an audience and I describe some of the situations that I encounter in prisons on the part of disabled prisoners in this country, and I don't identify what country I'm talking about, people, my audiences, automatically assume that I'm talking about Turkey or Guatemala or, or someplace where torture is acknowledged to be a fact. And then I say, it's— no, it's here. It's here. We're talking about this country and we're talking about right now. So I— the route of litigation is one avenue that disabled prisoners choose to pursue and I do have some hope for that avenue. I do think that the Supreme Court when it reviews Armstrong will hand down the right decision. It's unimaginable to me that the Supreme Court would decide that prisons do not have to comply, particularly since the Department of Justice, our own Department of Justice, weighed in on behalf of the disabled prisoners in Armstrong. It would be extremely uncomfortable for the Supreme Court to rule against its own Justice Department, our own government's Justice Department. But I'm not someone who puts a lot of store in litigation to the exclusion of other avenues of social change. And so the Disabled Prisoners Justice Fund, which I founded 3 years ago and which is, is an advocacy organization, a national advocacy organization that is established to protect the rights of prisoners with disabilities, doesn't just pursue litigation. I mean, litigation— I see litigation as only one tool in bringing about social change. And, and, and I do think that if we're going to really see dramatic change in the way that disabled prisoners are treated in this country, it's going to have to be a profound systemic structural change.

Mumia Abu Jamal: This is it.

Speaker 6: If we do not openly challenge the criminalization and incarceration of rising numbers of young men and women who are poor, who come from communities of color, then we will be standing by while the repressive power of the state deepens and expands. And as a matter of fact, Right. This is how fascism becomes more palatable. So we should all think about dedicating ourselves to this work. As a matter of fact, every progressive organization in the Bay Area, as a matter of fact throughout the country, needs to place on their agendas a radical opposition to the rapidly developing and highly racialized Prison industrial complex. When we have bills that have been passed upon us, 3 strikes, you're out, it's behind the fact that we have allowed it. I want to point out to you the reason why I say that. Mumia Abu-Jamal would be dead today if we did not force I mean by constant demonstrations, by being up in these politicians' faces and letting them know that you're not going to get a goddamn vote from us unless you deal with this situation with Mumia. And when they resisted us, we went knocking on their doors. We met them in their buildings. I'm saying these people do to us what we allow them to do to us. No longer can we sit back and put this blame on these politicians who are after a goddamn paycheck, regardless whether they Republican or whether they Democrat. We have got to stop being lazy and expect these people to do for us what we got to do for our damn selves. In Philadelphia, we're demanding that people take to the streets. We're demanding that those —politicians who are forced to stand up from San Francisco to New York, from Washington to Canada, from overseas, across the— you know, everywhere, to stand up now and let this government know, who the hell are you playing with? What you're doing is illegal! We're not going to stand for it! I don't care what kind of damn way you try to legalize this murder! It's not legal. It's not right by your own laws! No justice, no peace!