[News] The Attica of the Americas
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Mon Aug 30 11:21:07 EDT 2004
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The Attica of the Americas
by Justin Felux; August 28, 2004
Both places have a population of several million, mostly dark-skinned
people. In both places, those who are able to find work can only obtain
poverty wages under conditions that differ from slavery only in name. The
right of the people to vote is not respected. The lights only stay on for a
few hours a day. People are often raped, beaten, and even killed with
impunity. Those who manage to get out of either place are usually
apprehended by the authorities and returned, regardless of whether or not
their return is warranted. One is the country of Haiti. The other is the
U.S. prison-industrial complex. At first glance, the U.S. government's
policy of black mass incarceration and its policy of undermining democracy
in Haiti don't seem to have much in common, but on a basic level, they have
nearly everything in common.
Dostoevsky once said, "The degree of civilization in a society can be
judged by entering its prisons." If this is true, the United States suffers
from a great civilization deficit. Over two million people are in jail or
prison in the U.S., and the whole correctional population (including those
on parole or probation) is almost seven million. When civil unrest was
sweeping across the Haitian countryside earlier in the year, preparations
were made to interdict upward of 50,000 refugees in the infamous Guantanamo
Bay naval base in Cuba, where Arab inmates have made numerous charges of
physical abuse and torture. Incarcerating people of color would seem to be
one of the few things the U.S. government does with any efficiency.
After the recent and unfortunate death of Frank "Big Black" Smith, it is an
appropriate time to be talking about prisons. Smith was one of the leaders
of the 1971 rebellion in Attica prison, during which inmates took control
of the prison and held the guards hostage. The prisoners made several
demands of the government which involved job training, education, health
care, and religious freedom, among other things. Most of the demands were
modest reforms that would allow the prisoners to be treated as human
beings. The standoff ended when Governor Nelson Rockefeller had a thousand
troopers storm the prison, killing 29 inmates and 10 guards in the process.
But it wasn't enough for the guards to simply retake the prison. The
inmates had forced the nation to recognize their humanity for those brief
moments during the rebellion, and it was important to snatch that humanity
away from them as soon as possible. Otherwise, Attica could have been the
first of many rebellions. Big Black later described the torture he and his
comrades endured at the hands of the guards afterwards:
"It was very, very barbaric; you know, very, very cruel. They ripped our
clothes off. They made us crawl on the ground like we were animals. And
they snatched me. And they lay me on a table and beat me in my testicles.
And they burned me with cigarettes and dropped hot shells on me and put a
football up under my throat and they kept telling me that if it dropped,
they were going to kill me ... It just hurt. You see one human being
treating another human being this way and they really hurt me. I never
thought it would happen. I never thought so many would be treated like
animals."
Decades later, not much has changed. According to Human Rights Watch, "In
recent years, U.S. prison inmates have been beaten with fists and batons,
stomped on, kicked, shot, stunned with electronic devices, doused with
chemical sprays, choked, and slammed face first onto concrete floors by the
officers whose job it is to guard them." Prison rape is an epidemic.
According to a study in The Prison Journal, one in five male inmates
reported a pressured or forced sex incident while incarcerated. The United
States also exports its culture of prison terror to the rest of the world,
the most recent example being the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, where
teenagers were tortured, women were impregnated through rape, and detainees
were subjected to now familiar forms of sexual humiliation and abuse.
Many reasons are often cited for the growth of the prison-industrial
complex in America. One is that the prison industry provides jobs and a
Keynesian stimulus to the economy. Another is that prisons provide cheap
labor for American corporations. While these are certainly factors, they
actually provide very little economic benefit to the ruling class. To them,
the real utility of prisons lies in their use as a form of social control.
They help contain the (darker) more troublesome segments of the population
while frightening the rest of the (whiter) population into submission.
Prisons have been a remarkably effective tool in keeping America's
prevailing race and class divisions in place.
As C.L.R. James pointed out in 1943, "The contrasts between their situation
and the privileges enjoyed by those around them have always made the
Negroes that section of American society most receptive to revolutionary
ideas and the radical solution of social problems." This is what President
Nixon was talking about when he said, according to an aide, "the whole
problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes
this while not appearing to." The system he came up with was the
racially-charged "War on Drugs." After the civil rights and black power
movements brought down America's formal apartheid, the prison-industrial
complex took its place as the new means of maintaining white supremacy and
undermining the momentum of black political movements.
Many reasons are likewise cited for the U.S. government's support of the
recent coup in Haiti, such as access to cheap sweatshop labor, control of
the windward passage leading to the Panama Canal, policy differences with
the Aristide government, and others. The main reason, however, is the same
reason our country is littered with so many prisons. Much like African
Americans are a threat to the domestic order of things, Haiti is a threat
to the international order of things. This explains the eagerness of other
rich, white countries such as France and Canada to play an active role in
such a dirty affair. If a poor, black nation such as Haiti were to succeed
in establishing a stable democracy and an economic system that benefits its
own people rather than multinational corporations, then other poor
countries would follow suit. Therefore it was necessary to send a message
to dark-skinned people across the world: know your place, or suffer the
consequences.
In post-coup Haiti, prisons that once held thieves, murderers, and rapists
now hold journalists, activists, and teachers. The former were set free by
the rebel forces, the latter rounded up by the puppet government for their
political views. Rooms designed to hold ten people now have a hundred
prisoners packed in like sardines. A journalist for Radyo Timoun that had
been arrested reported that the drinking water for prisoners was their own
previously used bath water. In Les Cayes, prison conditions are so bad that
epidemics have broken out.
Part of the United States solution to this crisis was sending Terry Stewart
and John Nielsen to help "reform" Haiti's prisons and police units. Stewart
is the same consultant who was sent to "reform" the Abu Ghraib prison in
Iraq. He is also the former director of Arizona's prison system, where the
U.S. Justice Department sued the state's Department of Corrections for
allowing an environment in which female inmates were raped and sodomized by
guards. Nielsen, who will be making a "mid-six-figure salary," formerly
worked in Albany, where the Coalition for Accountable Police and Government
urged that he be fired, "on the grounds that his leadership has resulted in
a climate of distrust both within the police department and between the
police department and the community."
All this is simply the next chapter in a 200-year-old economic, political,
and cultural assault on Haiti's well-being. As Frederick Douglass explained
in 1893, "Haiti is black, and we have not yet forgiven Haiti for being
black or forgiven the Almighty for making her black ... While slavery
existed amongst us, her example was a sharp thorn in our side and a source
of alarm and terror. She came into the sisterhood of nations through blood
... She was a startling and frightful surprise and a threat to all
slave-holders throughout the world, and the slave-holding world has had its
questioning eye upon her career ever since." Back then, Haiti posed the
same threat that it does now: the threat of a good example.
It is no wonder then that Haiti is the country the world powers choose to
make their own example of. Two-hundred years ago black slaves outwitted and
outfought the mighty army of Napoleon Bonaparte. It was one of those
hitherto rare moments in history where justice rolled down, not like water,
but like lava from an exploding volcano. Jean-Jacques Dessalines, the
revolutionary leader who bore the marks of his former master's whip on his
back, would proclaim after his victory, "I have given the French cannibals
blood for blood," and that, "nothing shall prevent us from punishing the
murderers who have taken pleasure in bathing their hands in the blood of
the sons of Hayti." What was once a very profitable colony for foreign
powers now rang with slogans such as "Hayti for the Haytians."
The resilience of the Haitian people even impressed their foes.
Lemmonier-Delafosse was a pro-slavery officer in Napoleon's army. Years
after the revolution, he wrote in his memoirs, "But what men these blacks
are! How they fight and how they die! One has to make war against them to
know their reckless courage in braving danger when they can no longer have
recourse to stratagem. I have seen a solid column, torn by grape-shot from
four pieces of cannon, advance without making a retrograde step. The more
they fell, the greater seemed to be the courage of the rest. They advanced
singing, for the Negro sings everywhere, makes songs on everything ... One
must have seen this bravery to have any conception of it."
The same spirit of courage and resistance can be seen today as young
Haitian activists defiantly hold five fingers -- signifying the five-year
mandate of President Aristide -- in the faces of American occupying forces
with total disregard for the loaded machine guns trained on their bodies.
It can be seen in the recent Lavalas demonstrations held in Cap Haitien,
despite the fact that the armed paramilitaries still control that area of
the country. And it can be seen in the words of Annette Auguste, who when
speaking from her prison cell said, "They may imprison my body but they
will never imprison the truth I know in my soul. I will continue to fight
for justice and truth in Haiti until I draw my last breath."
Justin Felux is a writer and activist based in San Antonio, Texas. He can
be reached at justins at alacrityisp.net
The Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 863-9977
www.freedomarchives.org
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