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