We converse with Jose Saldaña, director of Launch Getting old Individuals in Jail, a few wildcat strike by New York jail guards who declare limits on solitary confinement have made their work extra harmful. “The people who find themselves residing in a harmful setting are the incarcerated women and men,” says Saldaña, who notes the strike started the identical week homicide fees had been introduced towards six of the guards who brutally beat to loss of life handcuffed prisoner Robert Brooks in an assault captured on body-camera video. “The entire world noticed it, and so they’re questioning: How lengthy has this been happening within the jail system? This unlawful strike is to erase that consciousness that’s constructing,” says Saldaña. We’re additionally joined by anthropologist Orisanmi Burton, who research prisons and says the proliferation of solitary confinement and different harsh measures is straight linked to political organizing behind bars beginning within the late Sixties. “Prisons in the USA are greatest understood as establishments of low-intensity warfare that masquerade as apolitical devices of crime management,” says Burton, writer of Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Jail Repression, and the Lengthy Attica Revolt.
TRANSCRIPT
This can be a rush transcript. Copy will not be in its ultimate type.
AMY GOODMAN: That is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
We finish as we speak’s present right here in New York, the place state jail guards are on the second week of a wildcat strike over what they are saying are unsafe situations. The Nationwide Guard have been known as in.
Some say the timing of the strike is curious. It began the identical week fees had been filed towards jail guards on the Marcy Correctional Facility in Utica, New York, who brutally beat to loss of life handcuffed prisoner Robert Brooks in an assault captured on video footage by physique cameras. Brooks was Black. All of the officers who took turns beating him look like white.
In the meantime, jail officers have responded to the jail guard strike by indefinitely suspending provisions in New York’s HALT Solitary Act, which stands for Humane Options to Lengthy-Time period Solitary Confinement, which limits solitary confinement to fifteen consecutive days or 20 days over a 60-day interval.
For extra, we’ve acquired two company with us. In Washington, D.C., Orisanmi Burton is assistant professor of anthropology at American College, writer of a guide in regards to the 1971 Attica jail rebellion, upstate New York, titled Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Jail Repression, and the Lengthy Attica Revolt. And right here in our New York studio is Jose Saldaña, director of Launch Getting old Individuals in Jail, generally known as RAPP. He was launched from New York state jail in 2018 after 38 years behind bars.
We welcome you each to Democracy Now! Jose, welcome again to Democracy Now! You’re simply again from the state capital right here in New York, from Albany.
JOSE SALDAÑA: That’s right.
AMY GOODMAN: Discuss in regards to the significance of the wildcat strike and the way it’s affecting the prisoners.
JOSE SALDAÑA: Nicely, to begin with, you already know, for many who don’t know, that is an unlawful strike. The correction guards had simply completed negotiating a contract a couple of months in the past, and now they’re going on strike. And the rationale why they’re going on strike is as a result of the world noticed that video. We name it a lynching. Fourteen to 16 correction jail guards lynched a Black man. And the entire world noticed it, and so they’re questioning: How lengthy has this been happening within the jail system? So, this unlawful strike is to erase that consciousness that’s constructing. We’re constructing a consciousness to dismantle that kind of racial brutality and sexual violence within the jail system that’s been happening for many years. They’re attempting to erase that.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Jose, may you speak about their demand that the reforms round solitary confinement be eliminated?
JOSE SALDAÑA: Sure. They need the Solitary Confinement Act repealed. And the Solitary Confinement Act doesn’t solely limit them from placing folks within the field for many years, precise many years, it additionally stops them from placing pregnant girls within the field, girls breast-feeding within the field, individuals who have psychological well being issues, individuals who have bodily disabilities, paralyzed folks, wheelchair-bound. It prohibits them from placing these folks in solitary confinement. They’re attempting to repeal that. They’re attempting to say that this complete Solitary Confinement Act has made their work harmful, it has created a harmful setting. They usually truly are attempting to erase what we noticed in that video. The people who find themselves residing in a harmful setting are the incarcerated women and men.
AMY GOODMAN: Is it true {that a} prisoner died this week? I’m not speaking the one who was overwhelmed to loss of life.
JOSE SALDAÑA: Completely. One which has been reported —
AMY GOODMAN: A 61-year-old man?
JOSE SALDAÑA: At the very least one particular person has been reported to have died since then.
AMY GOODMAN: And that is after the Nationwide Guard —
JOSE SALDAÑA: After the Nationwide Guard, sure.
AMY GOODMAN: — had been moved into these jail services.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Yeah, I needed to usher in Orisanmi Burton, assistant professor of anthropology at American College, writer of the Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Jail Repression, and the Lengthy Attica Revolt. Might you discuss considerably in regards to the position of correction officers? Particularly in your guide on Attica, you went again in time, after all, the Attica revolt being one of many greatest in American historical past in its influence on reforms throughout the jail system.
ORISANMI BURTON: Sure. Nicely, the position of the guards is basically to implement domination. And Jose was precisely proper in speaking in regards to the position of solitary confinement in all of this. After all, a repeal of the HALT Act is basically the first demand of the guards. And this can be a legacy of Attica. So, within the wake of the Attica rebel, we noticed nationally the proliferation of solitary confinement and the extension of the lengths of time to which individuals had been subjected to solitary confinement. And this was actually an effort to claim management and domination over the jail inhabitants. Individuals would possibly pay attention to this well-liked narrative that solitary confinement is about confining the worst of the worst. However you simply heard from Jose the completely different classes of those who the HALT Act was designed to stop from being put into solitary confinement.
And there’s additionally a pronounced political dimension to the usage of solitary confinement. So, for example, within the Nineteen Eighties, the warden of the Marion management unit, which is a supermax jail in Illinois, stated that the aim of the Marion solitary confinement unit is to regulate revolutionary attitudes throughout the jail system and throughout the society at giant. And so, a part of that is the usage of the jail as a type of counterrevolution. And the guards are actually in place to implement that dominance and to make sure that prisons stay quiet. And for essentially the most half, folks don’t hear about it, however as a result of this video was launched, folks haven’t any selection however to be confronted with the sorts of violence that occur on a regular basis in prisons.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor, should you may speak about — and also you discuss lots about this in your guide — what you suppose must occur now, the entire concern of abolition versus reforms because the legacy of what occurred after Attica? And clarify what occurred then.
ORISANMI BURTON: Proper. So, I imply, the dominant narrative of Attica is that it’s a four-day rebel that unfolded largely inside Attica jail and that the calls for had been primarily oriented in direction of bettering jail situations. I don’t suppose that that’s mistaken. I simply suppose that it’s incomplete. My guide reveals that Attica was a protracted battle that lasted for not less than 13 months, that it traversed a number of prisons, and that it was revolutionary and abolitionist in its politics, that it was knowledgeable by anti-colonial actions unfolding all through the world and that it had materials hyperlinks to these actions.
A part of the response to Attica was large repression and violence, as a lot of your viewers will know. However the deal with the extraordinary violence waged by the state usually obscures the extent to which reforms had been used as a counterinsurgency technique designed to suppress political consciousness and suppress activism. And so, a kind of reforms was the proliferation of solitary confinement, as I simply talked about. Different reforms had been simply the proliferation of prisons on the whole, which had been used as a technique to separate out extra prisoners in order that they couldn’t set up.
However, importantly, the proliferation of prisons was additionally used as a option to market jail development and growth to white rural populations whose economies had been ravaged by deindustrialization. So it was a option to type of shore up assist for rural white employees who had only a few different employment choices, particularly in gentle of the truth that through the repression at Attica, the New York state assault power that went in to suppress the rebel additionally killed a number of of the guards, 10 guards. And so, the constructing of prisons grew to become a advertising software to attempt to construct assist for jail growth amongst rural white populations. And far of that is what we’re coping with now when it comes to the — a few of the calls for and conversations round what’s taking place with the strike need to do with animosity across the latest closure of prisons that has been unfolding in New York over the previous decade.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And also you talked about earlier solitary confinement used as a method of political repression of revolutionary actions. Might you speak about what your guide discovered when it comes to Attica particularly, the extent of political activism that occurred within the prisons? I do know once I was within the Younger Lords again within the ’70s, we truly had members in Attica as a part of the Inmates Liberation Entrance. However the Black Panther Social gathering, the Nation of Islam, many different political teams, Republic of New Afrika, had membership and developed membership in Attica and different prisons, as effectively.
ORISANMI BURTON: Completely. And the Inmates Liberation Entrance is mentioned in my guide. I imply, a part of what I would like folks to know is that prisons in the USA are greatest understood as establishments of low-intensity warfare that masquerade as apolitical devices of crime management. And so, a part of what we see within the late Sixties is the usage of prisons to repress and comprise and neutralize political activism on the surface, teams just like the Black Panthers and the Younger Lords, as you simply talked about.
However, the truth is, what occurs is that the technique backfires. And prisons, the truth is, change into faculties of revolutionary political schooling. And these teams, the truth is, proliferate within the prisons. And that politicization interacts with the extraordinary repression that these teams had been dealing with, which provides rise to those completely different types of rebel that emerge all all through the prisons. Attica occurred to be one of the vital brutal prisons in New York state and, the truth is, within the nation, the place lots of the most political and most mental, most charismatic folks had been transferred and repressed. And it was a tinderbox.
AMY GOODMAN: Professor Burton, that’s the place the wildcat jail guard strike is. Jose Saldaña, we simply have 20 seconds. What you’re calling for?
JOSE SALDAÑA: That is to say that they’ve engaged in criminality, and they’ll proceed to escalate that illegality. We’re constructing a motion to dismantle this racial brutality. However within the meantime, we have now to get folks out of that brutal system. Now we have laws, elder parole, honest and well timed, second take a look at. These legislations will assist relieve folks out of those programs of brutal oppression and unite them again to their households.
AMY GOODMAN: I wish to thanks each for being with us, Jose Saldaña, director of RAPP, and Orisanmi Burton, writer of Tip of the Spear: Black Radicalism, Jail Repression, and the Lengthy Attica Revolt. He’s additionally professor of anthropology at American College. That does it for our present. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.
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