The Angola 3: Torture in Our Own Backyard

About Angola Penitentiary, Louisiana:

“a hundred black men are in the field, bent over picking tomatoes. A single white officer on a horse sits above them, a shotgun in his lap … It’s the same as it looked 40 years ago, and 100 years ago.”

Read the rest of the article here.

Filed under: Fighting oppression, Justice, justice, Prison Industrial Complex

From the Bottom of the Heap

Robert Hillary King

What: From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Black Panther Robert Hillary King

When: April 21, 1pm-3pm

Where: Konover Auditorium, Dodd Center, UConn Storrs

In 1970, a jury convicted Robert Hillary King (formerly known as Robert King Wilkerson) of a crime he did not commit and sentenced him to 35 years in prison. He became a member of the Black Panther Party while in Angola State Penitentiary, successfully organizing prisoners to improve conditions. In return, prison authorities beat him, starved him, and gave him life without parole after framing him for a second crime. He was thrown into solitary confinement, where he remained in a six-by-nine foot cell for 29 years as one of “the Angola 3.” In 2001, the state grudgingly acknowledged his innocence and set him free.

In his recently published autobiography, From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Black Panther Robert Hillary King, King begins his story at the beginning: born black, born poor, born in Louisiana in 1942. At the age of 15, King journeyed to Chicago as a hobo. He came back to Louisiana, married and had a child, and briefly pursued a semi-pro boxing career to help provide for his family. Just a teenager when he entered the Louisiana penal system for the first time, King tells of his attempts to break out of this system, and his persistent pursuit of justice where there is none.

The conditions King endured in Angola almost defy description, yet King never gave up his humanity, nor his tireless work towards justice for all prisoners. That work continues to this day, now “from the outside” — as he speaks out against the failures and inequities of the criminal injustice system, and fights to free his Angola 3 comrades Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, who have been behind bars for 35 years, most of them in solitary confinement.

Robert King’s story is one of inspiration, courage, and the triumph of the human spirit. He will be touring the U.S. Northeast beginning in March of 2009, telling his powerful personal story and raising awareness about the campaign to clear the Angola 3 of all wrongful charges and release the two who remain locked inside Angola.

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WHAT PEOPLE ARE SAYING

“For a person to go through 29 years in one of the most brutal prisons in America and still maintain his sanity and humanity, that’s what makes people want to listen to Robert.” —Malik Rahim, Co-Founder of Common Ground Collective (New Orleans)

“Friendships are forged in strange places. My friendship with Robert King and the other two Angola 3 men, Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox, is based on respect. These men, as Robert reveals in this stunning account of his life, have fought tirelessly to redress injustice, not only for themselves, but for others. This is a battle Robert is determined to win and we are determined to help him.” —Gordon Roddick, Co-founder of The Body Shop and activist

“When there is a train wreck, there is a public inquiry, to try to avoid it recurring. Robert King’s conviction was a train wreck, and this book is perhaps the only way the world will get to understand why. There are more than 3,000 people serving life without the possibility of parole in Angola today, some as young as 14 when they were sent there, and many of them innocent but without the lawyer to prove it. We owe it to them, and others in a similar plight around the world, to read this book.” —Clive Stafford Smith, Director, Reprieve

Filed under: Fighting oppression, Justice, justice, Prison Industrial Complex

Courant tackles the bloated prison system but avoids some unpleasant realities

Maybe it’s an easier pill to swallow if it doesn’t include the bitter reality of racism.

Today’s Courant article tells the shocking statistic that nationally one out of every 31 adults is either in prison or on some form of community-supervised release from prison.  According to one of the sources for the article, a study by the Pew Center on the States, that figure is actually one in 33 for Connecticut.

On its face the figure is a shocking one, and perhaps many of us need to see it in that form to be able to relate to it: incarceration, parole, probation, community-supervised release are not relegated to a tiny fraction of the population who can be dismissed as “the criminal element.”  Perhaps we also need to be reminded that the United States has the highest rate of incarceration in the world and accounts for nearly one-quarter of all the people in jail in the world.

But these statistics literally tell only half the story.  The other half – and it seems to be the other half of an awful lot of our stories about how we live in Connecticut and in the United States – is about race.  Connecticut’s African-American  population is less than ten percent . . . but blacks account for nearly one-half of all of the people in prison.

So kudos to Mark Spencer  at the Courant for today’s piece on Connecticut’s prison population, both its size and its cost.  Kudos too for pointing out the sometimes successful efforts of Corrections Commissioner Lantz to reduce the prison population in the state, and for pointing out that the single biggest obstacle to that reduction was the fear-mongering that took place two years ago after the murder  of the Petit family in Cheshire.

But we can’t talk about why the prison population is so big unless we talk about who is being locked up.  That requires a discussion of race and especially of the intersection of race and class.  For example, is there a connection between the incarceration rates for black people and an unemployment rate that is two and a half tmes greater than for whites, and an underemployment rate that is double that of whites?

And what about evidence that in some communities in Connecticut youth of color are being arrested and jailed at a disproportionate rate to white youth for the same in-school offenses?

Discussion about the bloated size of Connecticut’s prison system and what it will take to reduce it is long overdue.  But such a discussion can’t avoid the ever-present reality that like the U.S. as a whole, Connecticut is a state divided, with race being one of the harshest boundaries.

Filed under: Fighting oppression, Prison Industrial Complex

PAI in New Haven organizing to fight “3 strikes”

A good article from the New Haven Independent tells about a meeting of the community group People Against Injustice and its plans to organize to fight new efforts for a harsh “three strikes” law in Connecticut.  Three strikes is the name given to laws passed in several states in which a third time felony offender automatically gets a life sentence in prison.  It has not been shown to be effective in reducing crime and has been shown to produce completely illogical results, such as giving someone a life sentence for passing a bad check.

Conservative efforts to manipulate public sentiment about the Cheshire murders failed in the last legislature, and as CT News Junkie points out, many of the strongest proponents of three strikes lost re-election recently.

Preparing for the possibility of a resurgence on this issue, however, PAI is discussing strategies to win over suburban communities to understanding that three strikes will not make them safer.

I agree with much of what PAI members have to say.  I think an important addition, though, is a discussion about what it is that predominantly white and suburban voters are really afraid of.  I believe that these kinds of get-tough-on-crime measures, just like campaigns to deport immigrants, have much more to do with peoples’ fears and uncertainties about their economic future than about crime or immigration.  I believe that part of a successful struggle to defeat these knee-jerk proposals is to constantly remind working class people of the real dangers that are making them feel afraid: lay-offs, foreclosures, the collapsing value of their retirement funds, the danger that a catastrophic illness could take away everything that they own.  The tough on crime crowd are manipulating those real fears by looking for scapegoats and quick fixes.

Filed under: Prison Industrial Complex