Bonus: Prison Radicalism - Part 1 with Dan Berger

We talk with Historian Dan Berger about activism in California prisons in the 1960s and 70s.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
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Speaker 2 (00:04):
The views and opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those
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it fine? This is a rip Current bonus episode. You
don't need to listen to follow the Rip Current storyline,
but it provides more information, context, and analysis to enhance
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Speaker 1 (00:32):
This is the first of two interviews I conducted with
scholars of prison radical movements. I spoke with Dan Berger,
who is a professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies at the
University of Washington Bothel and the author of Captive Nation,
Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era. We talked
about viewing prisons as a microcosm of society, the development

(00:56):
of the largely black prison radical movement and its ideological
under and the forces a raid to suppress the movement.

Speaker 2 (01:07):
My name is Dan Berger. I'm a professor of Comparative
Ethnic Studies at the University of Washington Baffel and a
scholar historian studying United States social movements and the curseral state,
or what's more commonly referred to as history as of
mass incarceration in the twentieth century United States. And into

(01:28):
the present.

Speaker 1 (01:30):
So how do you date sort of the beginning of
the prison reform movement or I don't even know if
you would call the modern prison reform movement.

Speaker 2 (01:39):
I think we see a few different trajectories into the
modern prison movement, and I would say reform is one angle,
But we also have a revolutionary prison movement, right, which
is a set of people and ideas and actors who
see the prison not just as a site of abuse
and injustice, but one that is a microcosm of the

(02:03):
broader violence and injustices at the heart of American capitalism
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.

(02:25):
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

(02:47):
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

(03:09):
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

(03:32):
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

(03:54):
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

(04:17):
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

(04:38):
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

(05:00):
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

(05:22):
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

(05:44):
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,

(06:04):
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

(06:27):
people in particular were incarcerated.

Speaker 1 (06:32):
I'm interested in the reading I have done is that
it seems like there's a strong sort of Marxist element
to the intellectual underpinnings of the movement, at least in
like the late sixties and into the seventies. Where does
that come from?

Speaker 2 (06:47):
That's not uniformly shared. So that's one thing to keep
in mind, right that there is a kind of Marxist
thread within the Radical prison movement, but it's not the
only thread. But again, I think we have to understand
this context as one in which there's a popularity to
Marxism and socialism and communism within different left wing movements

(07:12):
at the time. So the Black Panther Party is a
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,

(07:33):
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

(07:55):
others sort of analyzing those movements.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
George Jackson was a prison revolutionary who was sentenced for
an indeterminate period of time for stealing seventy dollars from
a gas station. He was a co founder of the
Black Gorilla Family, a member of the Black Panthers, and
an author, most notably of the influential book Soladad Brother.
He was targeted by guards and prison officials for his

(08:21):
radical influence among prisoners, and was shot to death by
prison guards during an escape attempt on August twenty first,
nineteen seventy three.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
People often in the US think about the sixties and
the radicalism of that time period only in a US context.
I think it's important to understand this globally, that this
is a time period of revolutionary movements all around the world,
some of them quite successful, and many of them were
inspired by Marxism in some fashion. So I think particularly

(08:56):
to someone like George Jackson, who was such a foundational
thinker to the radical prison movement, not just in California
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

(09:17):
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.

Speaker 1 (09:30):
So I was interested. You said that that wasn't sort
of universal in that there are other sort of intellectual
frameworks that people work within. Can you talk a little
bit about those alternatives.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
Some of them are parallel, some of them are overlapping,
some of them maybe antagonistic. But I think you have,
particularly by the time we get to the early nineteen seventies,
you have a strong contingent of Marxists. You have a
much more more popular set of Black nationalists. Some of

(10:04):
those Black nationalists were also Marxists, but not all of them,
and I would say the maturity we're not Marxist. I
think you have other strains of a kind of radical
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

(10:27):
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

(10:49):
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

(11:12):
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

(11:33):
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

(11:55):
conversant with people who are not incarcerated. It tended to
be either Marxists or radical nationalists and internationalists, So have
one kind or another.

Speaker 1 (12:09):
So did you in your research do much on Popeye Jackson?

Speaker 2 (12:13):
Yeah, a little bit.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
What's your kind of take on him and how he
fits within this universe.

Speaker 2 (12:19):
So one thing that's really important to understand about California
in some ways, in particular California at this time period,
although it's not exclusive to California, it's how much the
prison system is governing through racism. So the prison system
uses racism as a way to keep people apart and

(12:40):
to either introduce or foster divisions between incarcerated people. And
part of that is that prisoners outnumber guards. One way
that prisons maintain social order is through cells. There's the
physical infrastructure that they use. There is the presence of guards.
By guards implified that by pitting prisoners against each other,

(13:03):
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,

(13:27):
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

(13:51):
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

(14:14):
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

(14:36):
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,

(14:57):
they weren't already committed to a kind of revolutionary project.

Speaker 1 (15:01):
Can you just kind of expand upon that a little
bit about what those sort of fracturing disputes were about.
Are the personalities who are involved in.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
It throughout the decade of the seventies, will put it
that way. You can find the exact number, but you know,
there's something like two dozen prisoners are killed and about
ten guards are killed something like that. That's a lot,
I'm particularly given that the prison system is nowhere near
as vast as it is today. So you know, California

(15:34):
doesn't have but a few prisons in this time period,
and so there were a series of divisions by race.
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

(15:57):
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

(16:19):
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

(16:42):
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.

Speaker 1 (17:00):
Prisoner, a man named Billy Harris, was shot in the
groin but survived.

Speaker 2 (17:05):
A few days later, a different guard at Solidad is
beaten up and thrown off the tier and killed. And
this inaugurates this idea essentially, of that some prisoners felt
right that prisoners shouldn't be the only people dying. If
this is a kind of warlike atmosphere, then prisoners needed
to fight back in that way. And you know, the

(17:28):
prison system took that threat very seriously. But I also
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

(17:49):
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

(18:11):
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

(18:35):
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

(18:58):
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

(19:19):
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

(19:40):
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

(20:01):
with the outside.

Speaker 1 (20:09):
You talked about how this sort of pressured environment led
to sort of a fracturing of whatever kind of cohesive
movement there was, and how that I don't know if
it completely fell apart or just transitioned to something different.

Speaker 2 (20:27):
One of the people who's killed at Solidad that I
mentioned is a guy named W. C. Nolan, and Nolan
was a boxing champ. He had helped kind of bring
together these different kind of informal organizations. George Jackson was
a part of that, and George Jackson helped them, you know,
continue that effort. And after he was killed in August
in nineteen seventy one, it takes on another form, right,

(20:49):
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.

(21:09):
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

(21:29):
of external pressures both from other kind of organized groups
and then constantly from the guards and from the state.

Speaker 1 (21:37):
This is just almost sort ofing a side question, but
did the Aryan Brotherhood did they have like a political
program that they were trying to put forward, or were
they just as sort of defense sort of criminal organization.

Speaker 2 (21:51):
Yeah, I mean, I think an important part of guns, booze, drugs, sex,
and probably other weapons in the prison system, certainly all
of that takes place within a framework of white supremacy,
so that piece of it is sort of inseparable. But
whether there is a kind of political perspective, I don't

(22:13):
know that they're doing study groups, I guess I would say, right,
the way is that like we see black and some
of the Chicano and other Latino prisoners are doing steady groups.
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

(22:34):
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.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
I explained to Dan that I'd asked the question because
of Lynette From's association with the Aryan Brotherhood outside prison
walls as she tried to help Charles Manson during his InCAR.
I wondered how they fit into the prison political ecosystem.

Speaker 2 (23:06):
Fair like the main social force in prison that really
thinks through race and skin color in that way, Like
the basis of black prison organization is much more three dimensional,
Like there is a sort of politics there, there is
a kind of back and forth there. But I think
the Aaron Brotherhood is much more like the assumption that

(23:29):
if you're white, you're in this group and trying to
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

(23:51):
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

(24:14):
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

(24:35):
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.

Speaker 1 (24:52):
It's interesting I was reading a thing about like prisoner celebrity,
and it did talk about George Jackson, but then also
like Donald d. Friese as sort of coming out of
prison with this sort of chrisma of authenticity or something
for people who sort of ideological bent.

Speaker 2 (25:16):
Yeah, I think that's absolutely a dynamic of what's happening
in this time period. And I think by the time
like DeFreeze is on the scene, you know, there's a
good solid decade of formerly incarcerated people serving. It's very visible,
identifiable political leaders, right, and I think leaders with a

(25:37):
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

(26:01):
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

(26:23):
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

(26:45):
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

(27:06):
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,

(27:29):
although there are also romantic relationships as well that come
out of this.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
So what haven't we talked about that you think is
important to know about this era?

Speaker 2 (27:40):
I think that there's a lot of the specifics of
some of these cases that is still kind of shrouded
in mystery at some level. Right, some people are still incarcerated,
some people are dead, and some of that is about
the role of law enforcement. Right that there were a
lot of police infiltrators and spy and provocateurs that had

(28:02):
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,

(28:22):
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

(28:43):
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,

(29:06):
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

(29:29):
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

(29:52):
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

(30:15):
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.

Speaker 1 (30:25):
Just one last question, because you've been great with giving
me this much time. Was any of this successful? I mean,
were there successes that came out of this period.

Speaker 2 (30:35):
It's easy to see the failures, right. I talked about
the failures in terms of the loss of life for
the people that were scared away. I think there's a
larger institutional failure of the time period, right, I mean,
which is the growth of mass incarceration. So think about
in nineteen seventy nineteen seventy one, people like George Jackson

(30:57):
and Angela Davis look out from prison in Jackson's case
jail and Davis's case and say the US is on
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.

(31:20):
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.

(31:45):
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

(32:05):
see that as a victory, but I think there is
something profound in that element.

Speaker 1 (32:16):
Thank you to Dan Berger, Professor of Comparative Ethnic Studies
at the University of Washington Bothel. He is the author
of Captive Nation, Black Prison Organizing in the Civil Rights Era.
I'm Toby Ball. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio, app,
Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite show.

(32:39):
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