Eric King, Ashanti Alston, and Ray Luc Levasseur—all contributors to “Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners”—discuss their experiences with imprisonment, education behind bars, organizing with fellow inmates, and the ongoing importance of international solidarity with captured revolutionaries.
The following is a selection of the transcription from the full video conversation.
Eric King: So both of you did over a decade in prison. Ray, you did you did two decades during that time. How are you able to maintain or be a part of the struggle–either the struggle inside the prison or the struggle that you were a part of that landed you in prison–how were you able to continue and maintain that struggle if you were?
Ashanti Alston: Well, inside when we were captured in New Haven, Connecticut, there was support groups that was there for us from New York, even ones that I have been a part of and others, but at a certain point I’m underground and some of those same folks when we was in New Haven going to trial that them same defense committees was there for us during the trial and there was one local group in New Haven, which was actually a Trotskyist group that was there for us and they were really solid, really consistent, really great, and also they were the first ones to give me a much better understanding of what it was to be a Trotskyist in the movement because I think I kind of brushed it off because as the the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist, sometimes you don’t really question why do we got this thing with the Trotskyists, why is that anyhow, but they were really solid and really great supporters.
So inside, those support groups, defense groups all also help to keep you in touch with family; they would, if the family needed help to come up to see me, they would help with that process. The letter writings at that time was like really really important because, though our minds at the time during the trial was still ‘we ain’t really trying to here for the process of this trial.’ We really are looking for avenues out, but you got to kind of deal with both reality, both possibilities. You might have to do this trial and get sent or you might find an opening and you’re out of there. They provided that link that kept us hopeful with the course of the struggle.
I think I could say that folks were still carrying on the struggle in our particular case because we were captured in the midst of this expropriation. We had no illusions about getting acquitted. We were fortunate enough to have good lawyers who volunteered their services and two of them, David Rosen and Ed Dolan were also part of Erica Huggins’ and Bobby Seale’s legal defense team and so they just contacted us and said, “Hey, we’re here for you if you want it. We’re here to to defend you.” And we were like, “Well, right on.” And there was another lawyer John Williams, who also had politics.
We knew that this this was going to be a political trial, but during this time our our minds was still ‘we’re at war.’ The process of this trial was just almost like a distraction and it was the connection with the defense committees–the New York ones, the New Haven ones, and there was not a lot of support, but it still kept us connected.
We wasn’t able to get out after a few attempts. We get sentenced–it was federal charges and state charges. So for the bank expropriation, it was a five to 25 year sentence and then for because it was the shootout and two cops got hurt, it was 10 to 20 for that. And after that, they kept us separated. We was never to be in the same prison anywhere again except towards the end and in summers when one of my comrades was transferred there and for a brief period of time I had made parole, we was there at least for several months together.
What I wanted to bring up is that because our minds is still at war, I studied, I trained. My comrades studied, trained, because we had the examples of stories from Huey P. Newton and in prison, we had the stories of George Jackson, so it was almost like if you’re in the cell and here comes the guard, just making his regular rounds, we might just to to play with him pop down on the floor we knocking out 20 push-ups or whatever. Otherwise, we’re doing all the other things because we want to stay ready, that whole Stay Ready mentality. It was not depressing for me. I didn’t go through no depression. It was just the ready mentality.
I read all the time, so going off to prison, the first stop was Oxford, Wisconsin. That was the first one they sent me to because I had to do the federal time first. One of my comrades comes there, who’s down in prison in Georgia now, Kamau Sadiki. It was one of the first times that me and another comrade from the BLA was in the same prison. Same mentality we had: War. We got a brother that’s training us in kung fu and everything else and we got to do it secretly cuz you can’t do it in the open. The guards don’t play that stuff, you know.
Then, I had put in for a transfer to Lewisburg prison and eventually, I got transferred to Lewisburg because it was at least, it was the closest to home. So, Lewisburg was was one of the major maximum prisons, federal prisons, serious place, and I’m a young guy and there was a few other guys in there. We’re young, but there’s a collective there and what the collective does [is] you come into the collective of comrades from different formations, and you’re studying, you’re training, you got other folks in there, prisoners who want to be a part of that kind of revolutionary consciousness raising stuff. It’s like an easy connection still at the time because this is the mid to going into the late ’70s, so still, how can we get out of this big prison with these tall walls and everything?
Support groups kept us connected to the movements, but I will say over and over, it wasn’t like we got letters from a lot of people like the national Jericho movement and other groups will have letter writing nights and all that. We didn’t get that. We wasn’t getting money for commissary. We was just facing this situation, doing this time, looking for openings to get out. But I learned a lot there. I read and even all the times I was in and out of segregation, I’m like, “you can put me in, just give me my books.” Now, I’m reading and I’m interacting with others.
This is when I’m beginning to read the radical psychologies, the feminisms. I’m beginning to read the more in-depth histories of different struggles, like the Irish Freedom struggles with the IRA and the Philippine Hukbalahap and all this stuff, and even more in-depth Chinese Revolution, the Cuban Revolution, because comrades was still able to get books and things in, so there was books always floating around, so I’m also learning in this environment. I don’t give a damn that it’s in prison, and Sundiata Acoli would when we used to correspond–wasn’t supposed to, but we did–he would say, “turn that prison into University.” Yes, it’s all about preparing you for getting out. So that was my experience there.
But the repression inside the prison got to be really bad. This particularly fascist warden came in at a certain point. He was clamping down on a lot of stuff and I worked industry with others at the time and some things happen in industry like industry caught on fire a few times. Hey, by chance, you know, by chance. That’s what I say. But who did they come after? They came after me, a few other comrades, those others who was jailhouse lawyers. Next thing I know they swooping us up, we on the bus on our way to Marion, Illinois.
At Marion who’s one of the first persons we see who’s in general population, but they walking us to segregation uh it’s Rafael Miranda of the Puerto Rican independentistas. He’s letting us know that they already know that we’re on our way there. They had already got the word through the grapevine. Herman Bell was there, other comrades who may not be known… because Marion took the place of Alcatraz. This was supposed to be the most escape-proof prison at the time and it was so electronic…
Those political prisoners and politicized prisoners had one of the most fantastic libraries, so again I’m learning. I’m increasing my understandings of struggle and the anti-authoritarian aspects, the anarchist aspects and moving closer in that direction. I still had connection through the defense committees on some of the movements that was going on, but those numbers were dwindling because they were getting hit with a lot of repression. Safiya [Bukhari, Ashanti’s wife] and others decided to go underground because there was these grand jury searches, trying to get them on different charges of supporting other actions to help free BLA folks or political prisoners, and so wasn’t a lot of letters, wasn’t all that stuff, but we know we’re soldiers. This is what we gonna do.
From there, some of us was like the word was don’t accept general population and so some of us decide to stay in seg to force them to transfer us and they ended up transferring some of us to Lompoc, California. Who was amongst that group? Leonard Peltier… Curly Raul Estremera from the BLA, Puerto Rican BLA and others. So here we are now. Lompoc was just in the process of transferring from medium security to maximum and it was kind of a modernist place and it had fences, but they hadn’t had all the concertina wire up yet, so here we are all doing all this time. We like “man, we got to hit this fence before they get all this concertina wire up,” but in the process, we are meeting other folks, supporters from the outside and especially at this time, some revolutionary groups in California. One was called the Wellspring Collective or Tribal Thumb, which was a very anti-authoritarian group and so they would come up to visit.
So it’s like more and more I am learning different ways that people struggle and are trying to carry it on in that California area, because a lot of them politicized prisoners who was with George or out of them circles were coming out also and getting involved with grassroots organizing. So I feel like that’s always my prison experience. I gotta learn, I gotta be ready and I gotta make sure that I’m interacting with folks who are still carrying us on or figuring out ways to keep the momentum and and many of us was on that same page.
And so then Connecticut and eventually I get parole to the Connecticut state prison and I finished the second half of my sentence there and eventually get out.
Eric: Perfect, thank you, also you mentioned Tribal Thumb and someone I look up to, Bill Dunne was a member of Tribal Thumb.
Ashanti: Just to say about Bill Dunne, I believe that part of the reason he got captured, recaptured was because we needed him to help us. And so there’s a special part of me that’s always for him because, of course, he made a sacrifice for the people.
Eric: And for the people listening, if you’d like to write Bill Dunne, he is currently at the medical facility in FCI Butner.
Ray, would you like to touch on that same topic about how you maintain struggle both or either inside or outside of those movements?
Ray Luc Levasseur: Well, first of all, Bill Dunne, it would be very nice if people could write to him at Butner. I just got a letter from him a few weeks ago. He’s struggling with health issues, but he’s he’s still got the same strong spirit and good sense of humor he always has but he needs a little support, lots of support.
Briefly, we’re talking one struggle here, two parts of it, inside and outside. And I’ve always found it interesting the political prisoners on the inside always gravitate to each other no matter which movement or which organizations they come from, while the support organizations on the street seem to do a lot more squabbling with each other and can’t seem to deal with all the obstacles they need to to form a more united front around political prisoners.
Briefly, my first experience in Tennessee pen and in Brushy Mountain–it was my first prison experience and I had been politically active before I went in Southern Student Organizing Committee, but hadn’t been in the movement that long and so my my support network wasn’t that strong initially. I was able to get books and correspond with people and this is very helpful and like Ashanti pointed, political education inside, but right from the get go, we had a food strike over conditions at the county jail and what was particularly interesting and and pertinent about that was you had white and black prisoners and you had to overcome that racial barrier to get everybody together on the same page and go and strike over these conditions.
So I presented the demands–we threw all our food back out, made a mess and wouldn’t eat and the Goon Squad comes up, the whole deal. I got the demands ready: they have to improve the food and the medical care, which was basically non-existent and they dragged me out the next day to the courthouse and got me a force transfer to State Penitentiary and Nashville. Every joint I’ve been in has been either Max or super Max and right away, I got a jacket and that jacket follows me through the rest of my time in the Tennessee prisons and it shows up again many years later for the next 20 years in the federal prisons.
What my jacket says is “he’s a troublemaker, he’s a radical, and he’s a racial agitator.” That they stuck on me after I got to to Nashville, but the seeds for that was in the food strike because the most radical thing I did and could be done when I got to the state penitentary was cross the color line. It was basically Jim Crow. Those are the exact words they put in my jacket: “he’s a racial agitator.” Why is this guy trying to bring people together? As if there’s something wrong here because prison systems are notorious for keeping people divided on racial lines so cross crossing that racial line is what I did as a matter of principle as already a practicing anti-racist in my time with SSOC.
Then, they stuck me on death row to get me off the compound. I was actually on death row. They had several cells for miscreant that they considered real troublemakers from the population. They put me there. I was in there with brothers from Memphis who gave me an education about white supremacy and killer cops I will never forget. You know, learning is a two-way street inside and we were doing political education.
So then, they sent me to Brushy, which was a connection to the old convict leasing system. I got there in 1970. If I got there in 1965, I would have been mining coal. In 1970, it was a Super Max, one of the early super Maxes, so we were locked up almost all the time they cut off all books, all newspapers, no phone calls, very restricted correspondence: immediate family, lawyer, clergy. And that was another racist place, every single guard in Brushy Mountain–this is in East Tennessee Mountains–was white. Half the prisoners there were black. They moved death row and me there at the same time and most of the prisoners on death row were black and I literally had to fight my way out of that place. I used to tell people I’m a Vietnam vet. I was in a war before I ever got to this War. I was in a foreign war. I’m a veteran of foreign and domestic Wars because it was a battle to get out of there.
Fast forward: I gotta do 20 years here in the feds, most of it was at Marion and ADX. You know about those places. About 13 years of it in some kind of isolation or solitary confinement…
I had to write,that was the key: a pencil, a pen. It became enormously important for me, my codefendants and I like to think of making a contribution to the ongoing struggles on the streets. I wrote prolifically for quite a long time. I wrote one of the first really published widely spread article outside of mainstream media about ADX in prison legal news. So disarmed from whatever you armed yourself with on the street, you know, it changes inside and I was fortunate that we had supporters on the street–this is pre-internet and everything–to take those writings and developments concerning us and amplify and widely distributed it as much as possible… So this was an important Network and was an important method for me to communicate. For Leonard Peltier or Oscar Lopez it was art. Tom Manning: art. There’s different ways it can be done. With Marilyn [Buck]: poetry. There’s any number of ways that you have to keep your spirit and your politics alive and relevant somehow and that was the way I did it.
I think the most important action we took as political prisoners during my time at Marion was we we did a work refusal. They had it set up where they would not release you from Marion until you went to a pre-transfer unit that made military hardware. And we drew the line and said we will not do that as a condition for a transfer to somewhere else because we weren’t there on disciplinary charges. They had just sent us there because of our jackets. We were all radical and so we refused it. Me, Tom Manning, Mutulu Shakur, Oscar Lopez Rivera and others, we refused and then we end up in ADX.
I want to just reiterate what Ashanti said through all this is study, political education, physical conditioning and the one time of year that I always see that happen when I was inside and I got out is in August. And I did it with Mutulu and the other conscious Brothers before I left–we commemorate Black August throughout the prison system, state or federal, which involves fasting, which involves political education, which involves physical exercise, as much as you can do it together. It’s commemorating the sacrifices of those Black Freedom Fighters like George Jackson, Jonathan Jackson and others before them and after them and it continues to this day.
Eric: In the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, we saw more direct action. We saw bank appropriations, we saw people putting their freedom on the line for the Liberation struggle. Why do you think that is banished? Why do you think we do not see that sort of militant action anymore?
Ashanti: It’s a question that is always on my mind and so to try to explain why it’s always on my mind, the ’60s and ’70s, I still feel like, man, that was such a period for me to come of age, joining the Black Panther Party. It was such a time to be alive, it was just in so many ways magical. It’s like you didn’t have all the distractions. You saw that the Civil Rights Movement was getting beat down. You could turn on that television; it wasn’t but maybe six channels on that television. You’re going to see what these fascists are doing to the nonviolent Civil Rights Movement. But it’s also the point where Black Power is coming into being. Stokeley Carmichael’s voice, H. Rap Brown [AKA] Jamil al-Amin, who’s now still in prison. They were raising more of the Malcolm X spirit in the sense of “we want to be free.” Black power also was directing us towards what does self-determination look like, how might we actually take over our communities, the institutions, etc. It gave more of a concrete picture of what are we fighting for here and not integration.
So here also now we beginning to explore socialism, communism and the Panther Party, having to read Karl Marx and and then Frantz Fanon and all these other folks. It made us see more of the reality of this monster we’re facing, that it could not be changed. It could not be even modified. This monster has to be challenged and we have to build the kind of revolutionary movements that can like George Jackson say, bring it to its knees and I don’t know how that sounds to other people, but when you know your history, when you know what this country on the back of Turtle Island did to indigenous Nations, what it has and continues to do, what it did to African people and continues to do, what it had did to the Mexicans and others who come here. This is not something you try to reform. So you see the necessity, even us as teenagers, of fighting this, develop the capacity to fight.
The great thing about the Panther Party was that you know that fight took the form of survival programs as well as Liberation schools. The survival programs were so key because it was pretty much telling people that we can feed ourselves. The free health clinics was basically saying we can take care of our own health issues. The political education classes was like if the schools are not going to teach us what we really need to know then we need to do that. That was that self-determination nationalist attitude. When we talk about Nat Turner and all the other folks, we knew that there were those who did fight back by any means necessary.
And it’s the same thing with the guy now that speaks on Palestine a lot, Norman Finklestein, the thing he brings up about the Nat Turner rebellion and he says clearly, that was a pretty vicious thing, but it was an act of rebellion and an act of necessity, and he went to what the Abolitionist Movement leaders were putting out in their papers and in their talks to give it some perspective and and basically, what the Abolitionist Movement was telling people was, “we told you things like this were going to happen because you have these people enslaved.” So Norman Finklestein was comparing it to the open air prison, Palestine, Gaza and, that was what we were trying to get across also. Don’t call us crazy because we are trying to develop the capacity to be free, which will mean that we have got to confront this monster with all means necessary.
The Panther Party, I feel, came closest to to bringing that into fruition because it started off Black Panther Party for self-defense, but also in its growing process understood this aspect of armed struggle and we need to defend our communities and then we we don’t need to rely on the police to do it because clearly the police is an occupying force. That language at the time was so key. When when Eldridge Cleaver and them talked about this being an internal colony and we’re inside the mother country, he was giving us a way to see what this settler colonialism was and also see our struggle on a much broader level compared with the African Liberation movements, the Liberation movements coming out of Asia, the Revolutionary struggles even in Germany and Japan and other places.
Those of us in the in the Panther Party who went underground, we had always understood that we have to develop the capacity to defend ourselves. Who do we come up against is all those Bourgeois Negroes and others who want to stay connected to the monster and want to convince our people “do not follow them crazy people, stay with the monster, they’re going to give us a few trinkets, they’re going to give us a little bit more.”
Let me tell you what happened quickly after the rebellion in my hometown. This is ’67, this is what pretty much brought me into the movement. I’m like 13, 14 years old. The rebellion in Planfield when black folks took over the black community because they went and got crates of M1 rifles, they was able to hold it for a week. 13, 14 year old Ashanti was like “oh my God.” This is blowing my mind that we are able to do this. But then after the National Guard came in with the tanks and took it over, the first thing that the city government did once they was contained, was to put some swimming pools in the playgrounds and they called that, you know, “y’all should be satisfied with that.” Now Plainfield ain’t been right since.
To this day, even with afterwards, black Mayors, it ain’t been right since because we could not hold that self-determination, that black power perspective because of how that black middle class wanted to just fit in. They wanted to integrate. The lesson we should know from that is that we can’t integrate into this poisonous monstrous Empire. We have really got to figure out that the way forward is to cut it loose. Cut it loose in every way we can.
Eric: Thank you! Shout out to Plainfield. Ray Luc, do you have an opinion or a thought on why this generation—particularly with what’s going on— why we’ve seen such a decrease in militant action or direct action compared to when you guys were comin’ up?
Ray Luc: You know, I agree a lot with what Ashanti said about time, place, conditions. During our early political activist years, it was a much different time in the world. You know, Che said, “1, 2, 3, many Vietnams” and I come out of Vietnam, you know—that seemed like a real possibility.
And, Ashanti, you were talking about 1967; you know, I was in Vietnam in 1967. We got an old Life magazine over there, you know— a very popular American weekly at the time— and it showed pictures of Detroit at the 1967 rebellion. And I saw that when I was in ‘Nam, and I’d done a lot of flying in helicopters, and, you know, the devastation that I saw in the pages of Life magazine looked similar to what I was seeing in parts of Vietnam.
And so I went up to Detroit to look at it myself, after I got back (I was stationed at Fort Campbell.), and I could see there was a real war going on here, too.
When I got out in 2004, one of the things I noticed about the general climate is I felt people were fearful. There was a level of, you know— this was following 9/11, and I was inside during 9/11. But there was this sense of, people has a sense of fear, insecurity, anxiety that I hadn’t sensed twenty years earlier, when I went in. And, it is a real challenge.
I mean, when I’m involved in Palestine work right now, mainly what I’m seeing is certainly a lot of energy has been generated around supporting Palestine. Some for different reasons among different people, but there’s real potential there for this…This movement that’s happening around this country right now to develop to the level it was around South Africa 25 years ago. But that is an exception, and I don’t have a firm answer for what you’re saying. One of the questions I used to get a lot over the years—not so much anymore, but did— it indicates why people were thinking different than they were, you know, decades earlier. There’s a sense about people, you know, that they were kind of overwhelmed by the power of the system, you know? They would say, “How can you challenge something like this? It seems that everything we do or try doesn’t get anywhere.” Because it’s too big, it’s too powerful.
And, the other one was about sacrifice. If you go up against the system, there are consequences.
Eric: Serious consequences.
Ray Luc: You know, we here, on this panel right now are demonstrating what some of those consequences are, but there’s a lot of other consequences. I’ve heard you, Eric, talk about an organization I’ve been very involved with, which is Rosenberg Fund for Children.
Eric: Love ‘em!
Ray: This is an organization that supports children of political prisoners— and if you go and you look at the parents with these children, the activists, how many different ways government can make you pay for your activism. Whether you’re an immigration activist, a climate activist, an antifascist activist…And at different levels of activism, depending on where you are, you know—there’s other factors—but it’s a whole lot of people that are paying a price for their activism and it scares a lot of people.
Eric: Thank you! Thank you so much. Ashanti, you wanted us to come back to you? You had a follow-up?
Ashanti: ….What I had wanted to get back to around here is the difference between then and now. I do think fear is a big, big part, ’cause I think that once they had captured a lot of us, what was put in place— not only the more militarized police but on a cultural level, television has beaucoup cop shows! Beaucoup cop shows that they had millions and millions of people what would watch every week. Because in the cop shows, the cops always got the “criminal.” And, in many instances, the criminals was folks like me and Ray. Right?
Eric: Right, right.
Ashanti: And people were getting convinced, just like they captured us: “Don’t you try to do the same thing, ’cause we’ll get you, too. You cannot escape us.” Because when I went in in ’74, and when I got out at the end of ’85 and I’m living with my lawyer until he could work it out, my lawyer had a close relationship with a lot of black high school students, in New Haven, that had basketball skills…
But one of the young high-school students— ’cause he was being around the legal office— and just out of curiosity, I asked him, “What do you know about the Black Panther Party?” And he asked me, was it a martial arts group? Which helped me to understand what our enemy does in order to recoup, to recover from that revolutionary period that we kinda, like, was on the edge—
Eric: So close!
Ashanti: …Of revolution, and it felt like in so many ways. They know what they’re doing! And so, on the militarized level, and on that cultural level, they was recouping. And not to rule out, also, the influx of drugs into the community around the same time, too! ‘Cause when many of us got out, we saw the proliferation of street organizations that was involved with this murderous drug game? Oh, it made our job, ooooh— this is WAY more than we know how to handle. WAY more. So, all of these things are still with us today. That’s why I wanted to get back to that, because we talked about today. There’s real, legitimate reasons, but we still gotta figure out how to confront the fear.
Because if we don’t, they continue. I don’t wanna hear all that talk about, you know, the Empire is on its last legs; I get tired of that. People make predictions and all that shit. No! And, if it is, who’s going to be the ones who’s really going to suffer, if it really feels it, it’s gonna hit us at the bottom, and we gotta figure out how to still organize…
Eric: Yeah!
Ashanti: …against these things, on multi-dimensional levels, because the trauma— just like what the Palestinians is going through now.
Eric: We’re gonna get to that!
Ashanti: You know, the trauma, and it’s intergenerational, and it’s ongoing.
Ray: Can I just add one quick thing? You know, people are more likely to set up, and do, enter various types of activism around various issues— all of which is needed, that’s clear! Hasn’t been long since we saw all these huge Black Lives Matter demonstrations, right? A good example of what I’m talking about with how the system operates and what we need to do to stop Cop City, alright? We’re talking about intimidating people…
If we—Ashanti knows this, ’cause we’ve been doing this work for decades— if we don’t support the activists who are jailed and imprisoned, then we’re not worth shit. ‘Cause every movement that has succeeded in challenging the System and making some advance are those movements that have supported their prisoners.
People who get locked up, you know? You make a sacrifice, you know— You could lose your life, you know? Or you can be imprisoned. Or you can suffer some other consequences, as I mentioned earlier.
And all you’ve gotta do is…You’re talking about the struggle in Palestine? They don’t forget their prisoners in Palestine! Anyone who’s following the struggle in Palestine…And they never have! For real! And that’s part of what makes their movement and spirit so strong. And if you look at the Irish independent struggle, same thing.
If you look at South Africa, in the anti-apartheid years, Nelson Mandela, there was a lot of others. There was ANC or PAC, they didn’t leave their prisoners behind. They kept support networks going for them. They didn’t abandon them.
It’s been a constant struggle in this country to get recognition of political prisoners and, activists who get jailed, to don’t let them get abandoned. And what [they’re trying to do with] Stop Cop City is, “You’d better abandon them, or we’re gonna have your ass, too, next!”
You know, I know Stop Cop City defendants here in Maine, and I can tell you that, after talking with him in depth a couple of times…He was pretty well shell-shocked when he came out of the RICO indictment against them.
We have another case going on right now, in southern New Hampshire: Three young women being charged with felonies for nothing but a little bit of vandalism at an Elbit plant in southern New Hampshire (Elbit being a major military supplier to Israel). You can’t let these people be forgotten. If people see that they get absolutely no support when they step up and do something, they’re gonna be less likely to stand. Doesn’t mean they don’t see the issue, they don’t think something needs to be done; but they’re concerned about what happens if they do it.
Eric: That’s a great point. Something that I think my generation— 30-to-40-year-olds— noticed is when the Green Scare happened, those people got smashed. They got smashed with sentences that my generation did not think still happened. And I think that scared a lot of people away. When you see the 15-to-30 range with Marius Mason and Eric McDavid, Jake Conroy, all those guys— all those people…
So I wanna switch base real quick and jump to what’s happening right now on college campuses that we’re seeing— and that is, college kids comin’ together, making encampments, and facing extreme police responses, in some cases. Here in Denver, my boss, Zeke Williams, is— and our co-director of our legal firm, Claire— both were arrested just for being at an encampment! Just for showing up to support the students.
So, I was wondering if either of you two had views or had opinions on the positive aspects of the Palestinian movement, where we’re lacking, or anything in between that you would like to talk about?
Ashanti: Yeah. Well, one, I’ma tell you, I haven’t been this excited in a long time-
Eric: Shit’s happening!
Ashanti: -with the support that’s been coming out for the Palestinian people, the Palestinian nation, occupied Palestine. I think what has surprised me so much about it is not only the protests, but especially the, I’ma say “white Jews”— mainly young Jews, but I know there are supporters across the board— who are disconnecting Zionism from Judaism.
Eric: Breaking off that propaganda, not letting it get through.
Ashanti: Who would’ve thought? I mean, who would’ve thought? You know, because the Zionism in the United States is really strong! That hold on that, that consciousness is really strong. And to see these young folks challengin’ that— and older folks, too, I’ve been really watching— It warms my heart. Right?
So they’re comin’ out, and, this is antiwar! You know, when one says “anti-genocide,” it’s because of that war, the genocide war on the Palestinian people, you know?
So it’s at a great time…My fears is, is it going to be syphoned off into this presidential election? Right? And if all these folks who are against genocide and for the Palestinian people to be free, to be liberated, you know, does the act stop there?
You know, one of the things I kinda felt goin’ on in the antiwar movement back in the day was that once that war kind of concluded, there were still issues that we were fighting for. Black folks fighting for liberation, Indigenous folks fighting for sovereignty, Puerto Ricans fighting for independence, you know, Chicanos fighting for liberation of Atzlán, the workers are fighting, the women are fighting. Does it stop there? And that’s my concern that this what we’re doing for Palestine–we should see it as we have our Palestine here, yes, in this Empire that’s on the back of Turtle Island.
I’m really excited about one of the books I’m almost finished with now, Mohamed Abdou’s book Islam and Anarchy. It’s a really great really great book, whose author Mohamed Abdou I’ve known for like 20 years and I think he’s been working on this this book for 20 years… He’s an African Anarchist from Egypt, so he’s got the experience of the so-called Arab Spring. He lived in Canada, so he has that experience of developing deep relationship with the struggles there, particularly the indigenous struggles and connected with struggles here as well, so he’s on the ground. He’s not really the academic only guy. He is really a revolutionary, he’s really an anarchist.
The thing that he brings up that I think is key for folks now–not only those who are are Jews, but those who are immigrants–here he brings up a a term he uses is Settlers of color are those immigrants who come here looking for a better life, but they buy into Empire and so I think one things that can help this expression of massive resistance now in the United States is that there’s got to be a Consciousness that deepens around that this is Turtle Island and there’s still a a struggle going on here. There is African people who were brought here enslaved and if this Consciousness is not there then people will continue to fight for a better America– make America live up to its ideals and all of that. When folks who come here do that then you have to accept that you’re doing it on the backs of those original sins that this Empire has committed and it continues. Empire is not just something that happened in the past. It is a daily continuing thing that just goes on…
So we’re Palestine here as well, and we got to figure out how to get this madness off of us and into the dust bin of History.
Eric: thank you thank you for sharing that. Ray, do you yeah have any views on that?
Ray: Yeah I’m pumped about it too, about the the student movement that we’ve seen rise and it’s a really solid example of international solidarity. I like the cross-pollination of it with this, like Ashanti mentioned, it’s not just students. It’s interestingly enough tied into labor because in the California University system and some of the other big University Systems, a lot of those who have joined the campus demonstrations are actually union members on campus and then you got community people also, and I think that’s important. And of course, it is student leadership and students have have had a historic role in this country, in other countries in terms of social change and challenging the system…
It’s a spark and it could be built on, and I’m hoping and cautiously optimistic that they will continue to build on it. It’s a training ground for the future and the last point is that the seed is there in a lot of the Palestine work that’s going on now for longterm solidarity…
Eric: Do either of you two have have an opinion on what could be done to change or get rid of the prison system in America? Ray, I don’t know if you believe in full abolition. I don’t know where you stand on that, but you have an opinion.
Ray: This is a multistep thing… The fact is if you want to get to get rid of this Gulag as it exists in the United States of America today it requires system change. I’m an abolitionist. It’s an ideal of mine. But how do you do that? I’ve been seeing a lot of problems and issues rising up among the prison abolition thing, and the police abolition thing. I actually was involved in a panel discussion around security abolition, which is get rid of the FBI and the CIA and all the rest of it. I didn’t initiate it–I was asked to speak at it. You’re not going to do that without smashing capitalism, uprooting white supremacy…
Think local and act Global. I’ve been involved in prison work against mass incarceration, solitary confinement stuff for years in Maine… a little local project here in a place like Maine in Penobscot County, here, Wabanaki land, of course, they’re going to name a jail after a Native American word Penobscot. They should put on the outside on that that’s because disproportionately [high] number of Native Americans are inside their jail. They want to double the size of that jail. They want to build a new jail twice the size of the one they got now. Five years ago they came up with an architectural plan to do exactly that, but it requires they need the money which requires it goes to referendum. The county voters going to vote on it. We tore that plan apart… Every plan they put up, we have stopped and now we’re in year number five.
The point is how can you do anything about the largest prison system in the world or talk really realistically about abolition if you cannot stop this expansion of it–larger prisons, larger jails…
The architect that built Marion prison back in 1963 I think it was–the replacement for Alcatraz–is one of the architects on the bid to double the size of this new jail right here in my neighborhood over a half century later. These motherfuckers have been sucking all this money up, building–what kind of resume is that? But if you go on their website and look, they got all the nonprofit industrial complex rhetoric down flat. They say they’re going to have trauma sensitive cells and all that. But the point is it’s a small project but you take that and you amplify and multiply. If every little town, every small city was able to do the same thing, we could make some headway into turning. I think that’s just a a practical step that is almost a prerequisite step as part of moving towards abolition.
Eric: Thank you. Ashanti, do you have a view on this?
Ashanti: I’m definitely an abolitionist. I have some concerns, but I’m going to just tie it into this and not really get too deep into it. Like many things, this system has the ability to co-opt, regurgitate and spit something else back out to us, as if it was their idea, and I think that has been happening. And I think other abolitionists who have been developing this for years see the same thing, that this thing with abolitionist getting distorted and watered down to the point where you got many people who will use the word abolition where they abolitionist, you know, defund the police and all that other stuff.
I’m not really that big on the defund the police because I think that doesn’t show any understanding of the role of the police–that they ain’t gonna stand around like “oh you going to take our job from us.” No no no, “we’re Killers, we’re Shooters, we control you. That’s our job.” No, I think people can be kind of naive.
I am more for tying abolition into real Grassroots organizing that people can see the need to take back their lives. I like the initiative coming from The People’s Senate, which which is putting forth the Spirit of Mandela, a sort of dual power possibility of people developing the capacities to develop their own power in opposition to the white supremacist capitalist powers that be. I really like Dhoruba bin Wahad’s idea that he’s been pushing in terms of developing a united front against fascism, as we tried back in the days of fascism. And I think what is so key about that is that Dhoruba is very analytical and pointed into the role of the technologies of political control. He’s trying to get people to see the role of the police in a much broader picture that we need to get ready for.
And so I would encourage people–you can go to the uh the Spirit of Mandela website. You can even–if you put in united front against fascism, put Dhoruba’s name in there you’ll see where he has the conversation with Jill Stein and Cornell West. Both have a united front aspect and both want to reach masses of people from different communities, from different perspectives, but to be clear about how we need to focus on the role of them Frontline forces who are going to always be there to prevent us from developing this capacity to transform this madness…
Can we stay focused on the need to bring this Empire down as even the best way to help [against] the genocides that’s going on in Palestine and in Africa and other different places. But we don’t really talk about the genocides in Africa as much but those of us out of the Black Liberation struggle…
Like Che Guevara would say, “we’re in the brain of this Empire.” I say let’s get that aneurism going. Bring this thing down so that the role that the United States Empire plays in world oppressions can be disrupted and to help other people to develop the spaces in other countries and other struggles to free themselves.
I’m more concerned with a lot of the Abolitionist rhetoric today and a lot of people that are coming to the fore. There’s no deep class analysis; there’s no deep race analysis; there’s no idea of a settler Colonial situation here. And without them things, then you really talking about “I want to make America live up to its ideals.” And I don’t want to make America live up to its ideals because this is the ideal, regardless of its rhetoric. What we see now is the best that it can do and the best that it wants to do. We deserve better.
Eric: This is going to be our last question here. Ray and Ashanti, if either of you two have any projects you’re working on that you want to talk about, any things you just want to get off your chest or just get out there, I ask you to please take this time to do that now.
Ashanti: Right, I want to make sure to mention the work of Jericho, [supporting] political prisoners–I mean really, we got to be there for folks that take chances, take them risks. Tortuguita in the Cop City thing in Atlanta, was he expecting to die on that day? No. Was all those people expecting to get arrested under new versions of RICO? No. And Martin Luther King, how many times was he arrested? We have to be more real about that.
The other thing that I want to say is I’m an anarchist. So all of you folks out there who are anarchists, I feel we got a lot to offer and I feel like man we need to start talking more and being able to have more of a presence and input into shaping these struggles as they unfold and so I’m asking y’all–let’s figure out how to make that happen.
Eric: Thank you. Ray?
Ray: …I’ll just leave it with a little Parable… I’ve lived and operated in huge cities for a long time, but what I say a lot of times to people that live in less populated areas: there are many of us in small towns, suburbs, small cities. Speaking with people, they raise a lot of issues about, you know, you can say “united front against fascism” sounds good, but how do we get from here to there? You can identify the problem fairly easily: smash capitalism, imperialism and white supremacy and you’re off in the right direction. But how do you get there?
So without coming down a party line. I don’t represent a particular sectarian party, so coming from a working background, I made my living as a carpenter. Until I got old and retired, I made my living as a carpenter, not a hugely skilled carpenter. I’m a frame carpenter, but that means I can build it from bottom to top and when a dude hired me on the job, I was trying to get any kind of job I can because I was on parole and I needed a job. I needed money. So I said, “I’ll be carpenter’s helper” because I didn’t have any skill at all. And he says we don’t want carpenter’s helpers. Everybody is a carpenter, just different skill levels. And he gave me some advice that I’ve extrapolated for use in political organizing and advocacy.
He says, “how many people can just go out there and build a house? It would be overwhelming for the average person.”… He says “don’t try to build a house until you built a shed first.” And I live in the country. I’ve built quite a few sheds, among other things as unskilled as I was. Before I developed those skills, I built a shed, because to build a shed requires the same basic principles and blueprint as building a house…
So take that and put it into Community organizing terms: don’t be overwhelmed. We’re going to build a united front against fascism. You want to deal with white supremacy, you want to deal with Palestine, start with what you’ve got to work with. Build a shed first, get a program going, get us a few people together, get things started and I first got a taste of that because I was with a group that patterned ourselves to a degree after the Black Panther Party, although we were predominantly white, but we took seriously the survival programs that the the Panthers did. You had to start smaller to get people involved in working on their own to see that to get
to a higher level survival ending with Revolution without giving up your politics. So that’s that’s my hard suggestion.
Eric: So as everyone who talks to me on social media knows, what I always always leave people with is please write a prisoner. Please write a prisoner, whether they’re a political prisoner, a social prisoner, whether they’re in the lower custody level or the highest custody level. Please write someone inside. Please start a project with those inside. See what you can do to help them and help make their time and their comrades’ time inside better.
Ashanti, brother, I thank you so much. Ray, thank you so much. It was a real honor talking to both of you.