Bonus: Prison Radicalism - Part 1 with Dan Berger

and American racism. And so that sees the effort to undermine prisons, to destroy prisons, to abolish prisons as part of a revolutionary challenge to that social, political economic order. And I think the California was a centerpiece for both of those, right, both that kind of reform movement and a revolutionary movement throughout the nineteen sixties. I think there's a longer story that we could tell in a lot

of ways. As long as there have been prisons, there have been movements opposed to prisons, coming particularly out of the experiences of incarcerated people. But there's a few dynamics where there are a few issues that kind of collide in the nineteen sixties to make prisons such a central place of radicalism. One thing that's happening is connection to movements outside of prison. So when you look at something

like the Civil rights movement, you see mass illegality. Right, segregation was the law of the land, and so people sitting where they wanted on the bus, sitting at lunch counters where they weren't allowed, all of these things challenged the status quo, and people went to jail. Right, People went to prison for these things. One of the things that that did was to show that jails and prisons were not all powerful. That people went to prison and

they came out of prison. In some cases in the South, you see people who were incarcerated for activism make common cause with people who are incarcerated for other things. But even where we don't see that, just the fact that people were incarcerated for basic human activity, right going to the bathroom, sitting down, riding a bus, trying to order hamburger,

all of those things. Right. I think part of what that gave is this kind of in sipping consciousness that prison was wrong, right, that the legal system was a part of other forms of inequality, and I think that was something that circulated throughout the nineteen fifties. But by the time we get to the nineteen sixties, you see

people really try to sharpen that critique. So you have men like Malcolm X and others in the Nation of Islam who talked about their own experiences being incarcerated as educational as part of how they learned about American racism was that they wound up in prison. The fact that they survived prison showed that prison could be overcome. And Malcolm was quite profound about prison as a metaphor of American white supremacy, prison as a metaphor for the kind

of problems that black people face in this country. Groups like the Black Panther Party picked up or carry on that tradition. So Malcolm X is assassinated in February nineteen sixty five, the Panther's form in October nineteen sixty six, and a number of members of the Black Panther Party

themselves had been incarcerated, sometimes you know, as juveniles. So you have people, you know, like Huey Newton, who's a co founder of the Black Panther Party who had been incarcerated in what was called the California Youth Authority, which is basically the juvenile detension system. Nowadays, it's people maybe heard about this idea of like the school the prison pipeline, right, of these kinds of connections between underfunded schools and contact

with the legal systems. People tend to think of this as a kind of recent phenomenon of the last thirty forty years. But actually, if you look at the treatment that black migrants out of the South faced in places like California, you see this exact thing, right, people living in under resourced communities that were heavily policed. That you have, you know, kids thirteen years old, eleven years old, eight years old, going to prison, going to jail, going into

the legal system. And I think the movement of the nineteen sixties really helped provide a kind of political context and political explanation for why so many impoverished young black people in particular were incarcerated.

communist organization. Part of the political education that the Panthers did included readings and Marxism, and the Panthers had a big influence on but also learned a lot from the

Radical prison movement. And so we see someone like George Jackson, who is incarcerated in California as a teenager first when he was eighteen in nineteen sixty, who becomes this autodidact intellectual in prison who is reading Marx and Lenin and Trotsky and now as well as some contemporary scholars and others sort of analyzing those movements.

but around the country and even around the world. He's very inspired by world events. He's looking around at what's happening in Angola and South Africa and Vietnam and China and engaging with that. He's converson in that. I think that helps usher in a kind of interests in Marxism for some sectors of the radical prison movement.

ethnic nationalism. So among some of the Chicano prisoners, for instance, among some of the Indigenous prisoners, I think you see different different kinds of radical nationalisms. And again, this is all very much in conversation with what's happening outside of prison. This is a time period of Chicano nationalism and Pan Indian nationalism as well. I also think you have there's a kind of labor movement inside of prison. I've done a lot of research on California. I know you're focused

on California. A lot of what we're talking about is true elsewhere in the nation. We're talking about California, but we could find these dynamics rare least similar dynamics in Texas and New York and Pennsylvania, like in Illinois and lots of other places. But I think within the labor movement in prison, again, some of the Marxist some of the radical nationalists are there, but also do just people who recognize that they're being fucked over and who want

things to be different. In some ways, they're not necessarily that ideological. They are just exploited and oppressed and desiring a change. But I also think there's some elements of the prison movement that exceed the kind of ideological classifications. People are mixed, right, There's some kind of liberalism, there's some hyper capitalism right of like, hey, the free market says I should be compensated for my labor, and I'm

not being compensated for my name. It only becomes a radical critique because the prison system disallows the remuneration for their labor. It's a kind of potpourri. I have different ideologies at this time period. But the folks who were the most vocal and who tended to be the most conversant with people who are not incarcerated. It tended to be either Marxists or radical nationalists and internationalists, So have one kind or another.

physical infrastructure that they use. There is the presence of guards. By guards implified that by pitting prisoners against each other, and race became the way that they did that. And to some extent, geography, so where in California people were from, and so what I think radicals had to do when George Jackson did this, I think pop I tried to do this as well, was to bridge those divides, to try to get people to work with each other at

least around some core issues against the prison system. Right, this idea that the prison system was the real enemy, right, whatever differences divide us. Clearly no one was successful in that in any kind of grand totalizing way. Papa Jackson became a labor organizer in prison, right, So his kind of organizing that he was doing was through the prisoners

Union within California. The prisoners Union was divided between folks who wanted a kind of revolutionary challenge to the system overall, and folks who wanted compensation and better treatment for themselves for others during their incarceration, but who didn't necessarily contest the legitimacy of the institution. So I fucked that. I'm paying my dues whatever, but I shouldn't be exploited in this way. Right, I'm already in prison. I deserve to be in prison, but I shouldn't be avoided. And I

think that was a real profound divide. And there was some racial differences on top of that, Like the latter group was a wider group than the group that was sort of trying to wage this kind of revolutionary challenge against the prison system and the kind of larger social order that it represented. So, you know, I think Popeye was kind of in that former camp of like trying

to be involved in this kind of revolutionary movement. But my understanding was that he was trying to be more conversant with the labor movement or the labor union in ways that might also bring in folks that weren't already there, right, they weren't already committed to a kind of revolutionary project.

As I mentioned, I think a lot of ways the story begins, or at least we can to recognize an origin of the story in the murders of three prisoners at Solidad in nineteen seventy. After a long period of lockdown right where prisoners weren't allowed out of their sets, guards finally let them out, but deliberately let out a group of black prisoners and a group of white prisoners, including several members of the Aryan Brotherhood white supremacist prison gang.

Several of the black prisoners were black nationalists who had been involved in different protests against racism and segregation in prison. And so this was a manufactured fight, and this is something that California prison system would become notorious for. Different prisons became known informally as gladiator schools because the guards were just setting up fights between incarcerated people. So guards

set up this fight. People have been locked down for months, and then they get on the yard and they start brawling with each other, and sniper opens fire and kills three black prisoners and wounds either one or two white prisoners.

think it entrenched some divisions that already existed. Part of how the prison system governs through racism is for the prison system to determine that black prisoners, white prisoners, and Chicano prisoners hate each other, and Northern Chicano prisoners and

Southern Chicano prisoners hate each other. Until the California prison system delineated four groups, right, white, Black, Northern Mexican Southern Mexican, determined that they were at war and treated them as if they were at war with each other, right to these kinds of fights orchestrated ways in which they would disagree. So within that you have these kinds of social formations that take root that also think through rates. Right, the

Aryan Brotherhood is a Neo Nazi organization. You have different associations that form among black Mechicano prisoners that are engaged in self defense, that are trying to survive. Some of them also involve themselves in the illicit economy of the prison system. All of those things are grounds for disagreement

and hostility if different groups are involved in underground economies. There, it's the economic competition, but also the self defense training that some people are doing gets read as an exacerbation of hostilities, right, or ramping up of threats against other people. And so you know, I think this really comes to define the California prison system of the nineteen seventies in some ways beyond in terms of how the state responds. But I think what's particular about the seventies is how

much incarcert people tried to organize themselves. For some people that men trying to arm themselves, right, that it wasn't just physical you know, the self defense that I could do with my body, but you know, trying to fashion knives or other weapons that could be used in the

case of attack. I mean, I interviewed people who were participating in study groups right where they're reading books together and trying to sharpen their mind, as well as conducting self defense classes, right, trying to train their bodies to survive that institution. As incarcerator, people became known outside of prison and developed support networks who sent letters, sometimes, who sent money or other resources, or brought other kinds of attention.

I think some people were jealous of that, right, some people who were poor and desperate and also wanted connections with the outside.

and that becomes called the black Ela Family. In the late seventies, the Black Erila Family splits, and part of the split is folks who want to pursue a more kind of political and politically radical direction and folks who are participating more in the informal economies of the prison system. And that's just within one formation, right, But the Black Rula family is also constantly at war with the Aryan Brotherhood.

So I think, right there are these sort of constant pressures around leadership and personality even within some of the groups that incarcetrate people form. But then also these kind of external pressures both from other kind of organized groups and then constantly from the guards and from the state.

I genuinely don't know. I'm not saying that they that they don't, but I haven't seen evidence. That hasn't been my purview so much. I think the Arian brother tries to recruit white prisoners as soon as they come in, so they're not already committed, right. I think they try to inculcate white prisoners into being white supremacists, But I don't know if there's a kind of political education program beyond that.

enforce that quite violently at times. But I know one of the white prisoners who was at San Quentin in August nineteen seventy one when George Jackson was killed was not ideologically a Nazi, but I was told anyway that

he was close to the Aaron Brotherhood. And I think there was just a certain kind of luidity, for lack of a better word, right, that there's a defined hierarchy to the AB like any structure of its kind, but there's also an assumption that white people are going to defend and uphold white supremacy in prison that I think led people to be sort of close, even if they

were not official members. But I think, you know, the example that you're pointing to is how much the organizations and social networks that existed inside of prison tried to develop and deepen relationships outside of prison. And I think that is it's definitely not unique to this time period, but it is an important part of the dynamics of

that time period. And I think in the late sixties early seventies, the Black Panthers give that kind of political architecture to that for a lot of black prisoners in California, but the Panthers are undergoing their own pressures and assaults from the state as well as their own divisions internally that make that a lot less possible by the mid seventies.

good solid decade of formerly incarcerated people serving. It's very visible, identifiable political leaders, right, and I think leaders with a lot of principle by in large, we're talking about Malcolm X, We're talking about Martin Luther King, right, I mean, he's someone who's spent a lot of time in jail, if not in prison, And so I think that lends itself right to this idea that incarcerated people have a certain

amount of authenticity from the prison experience. I think that could open the door to people acting without as much principle, and people who did not have the kind of political experience in some cases or the political commitments in other cases that were still part of the milieu of that time period. Right. So place is a high degree of power on the written word, right, And again we have these profound works of literature that come out of prison

in this time period. Aldridge Kleeber is a best seller. George Jackson is a best seller. Carol Chessman, who was a California prisoner who was put to death earlier in the sixties, had written several best selling books from prison. And so there's this kind of authenticity to the written word that comes out of prison in this time period that by and large is people are sincere in their

stated political commitments. You know, George Jackson was very direct and very clear about being communists revolutionary, and that's in his writings, and I think that's how he tried to live, and that's, you know, in a lot of ways, how he died. But I think there are some examples that people who did not have the same sort of political experience or political commitments that they might have presented themselves as having. In general, I think people were sincere in

what they put out for themselves in the world. And I think people did build some very meaningful relationships across prison walls in this time period. I'm speaking of platonic relationships, although there are also romantic relationships as well that come out of this.

the role of law enforcement. Right that there were a lot of police infiltrators and spy and provocateurs that had infiltrated the prison movement, you know, particularly outside of prison, the ways that people coming out of prison had one idea about what they would find in the movement, and then trying to navigate some of these complex relationships with you know, with some nefarious interventions that's that are harder

to trace. It I think makes things very complicated. I mean, that's very much a part of the George Jackson story. I think prison is an isolating institution governed through violence, and so the lessons of how political power is accrude or established that come out of prison are ones rooted in violence. Right, And I think in a context of revolutionary movements around the world using violence, the nineteen seventies was a time period in which people hoped that armed

struggle would be a meaningful path toward liberation. And by the time you get to the late seventies, you see this internaceine warfare that claims a lot of sincere people's lives, that claims the lives of a lot of sincere dedicated activists, that wounds and injures sincere dedicated activists, and that drives people away. In some cases, we are because of that

violent context. In some cases, it's hard to point out what was the state's involvement, right, Where were the police informants accelerating violent conflict or pushing for these kinds of disagreements and what were people making bad decisions in a difficult and bad context. But the end result is that we lose a lot of people, literally we lose them, and that they are killed or we lose them, and that they're they're driven away in some form or another.

And I think, you know, we get this is the kind of second wave of the underground that happens in the mid seventies after a kind of earlier wave that we get through groups like the Weather Underground under the

Black Liberation Army. I think, particularly in California in the mid seventies, we get this kind of second wave underground in the mid seventies that I think has a little more like desperation to it for lack of a boat a word, because it's more desperate times, right, because it's people who are forming these groups or in a time period of tremendous loss and violence. And I think that adds to the kind of confusion of the time period.

the road to fascism. Look at these racist, violent conditions inside of its jails and prisons, look at the repression of its political movements. This is the path to fascism. At that time, the United States incarcerated about two hundred thousand people in prisons and jails. Today the United States incarcerates two point two million. So there's something very profound

about their ability. And George Jack and Angel Davis are two of many people, but certainly very significant and profound spokespeople their ability to reckon with the power of repression. Right to see this in an almost prophetic way, that prison is bad. Right. Prison is this like violent and destabilizing institution that deployed against the most marginalized parts of society and if we don't change it to get a

lot worse. They were right about that. It's hard to see that as a victory, but I think there is something profound in that element.