[Ppnews] The Mark of Cain: God and Man at Angola Prison
Political Prisoner News
ppnews at freedomarchives.org
Thu Jan 7 20:14:03 EST 2010
The Mark of Cain: God and Man at Angola Prison
http://solitarywatch.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/the-mark-of-cain-god-and-man-at-angola-prison/
2010 January 7
by James Ridgeway
The
<http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2010/01/06/us/AP-US-REL-Religion-Today.html>Associated
Press today put out a laudatory piece on Warden
Burl Cains program of Christian education at the
Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. The
article, which was picked up by the New York
Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and dozens of
other publications, is sure to advance Cains
reputation as a great prison reformer.
The AP piece depicts Angola as a onetime den of
violence and despair that has been transformed by
Cain into a safe and orderly community where
everyone has a job and where students crowd
into classrooms to study toward a college
degree. The prisons bloody past, Cain tells the
AP, was all because of a lack of hopea
situation the warden has treated with the dual
remedy of education and redemption, in part
through a degree program in Christian Ministry.
Theres another side to this story, of course,
and its a whole lot grimmer than the AP piece
would suggest. More than 90 percent of the 5,200
men Angola will die there, thanks to the states
harsh sentencing policies. Much of the work on
the 18,000-acre
<http://www.burkfoster.com/plantationdays.htm>former
slave plantation consists of backbreaking labor
in the cotton, corn, and soybean fields, presided
over by armed guards on horseback. Some inmates
do not work at all because they are kept in
isolation in their cells, in the prisons
notorious Camp J disciplinary unit or in
long-term solitary confinement. (Among Angolas
most widely known prisoners are former Black
Panthers Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox,
members of the
<http://www.angola3.org/thecase.aspx>Angola 3,
who have been in solitary for more than 37 years.)
An inmates fate at Angola depends upon how he
measures up to the wardens standards, which are
rooted firmly in his personal religious dogma.
Cain believes that there is only one path toward
rehabilitation, and it runs through
<http://www.amazon.com/Cains-Redemption-Dennis-Shere/dp/1881273245>Christian
redemption. (According to Herman Wallace, Cain
has at least once offered to release him from
solitary if he renounced his political beliefs
and
<http://www.alternet.org/rights/50663/>accepted Jesus Christ as his savior.)
The warden says it takes good food, good
medicine, good prayin and good playin to have a
good prison, an assistant warden told
<http://solitarywatch.wordpress.com/2010/01/07/the-mark-of-cain-god-and-man-at-angola-prison/%22The%20warden%20says%20it%20takes%20good%20food,%20good%20medicine,%20good%20prayin%27%20and%20good%20playin%27%20to%20have%20a%20good%20prison,%22%20Fontenot%20said,%20referring%20to%20the%20head%20warden,%20Burl%20Cain.%20%22Angola%20has%20all%20these.%22>Truthout
in 2008, Angola has all these. To make sure
there is ample opportunity for good prayin,
Cain has raised funds to construct 18 Christian
chapels on the prisons grounds. (One of several
recent corruption charges against Cain involved
<http://bestofneworleans.com/gyrobase/PrintFriendly?oid=oid%3A38324>shaking
down a contractor for a donation to the prison chapel fund.)
Likewise, inmates at Angola can gain access to
higher education only by embracing Cains brand
of Christianity. According to the
<http://www.doc.louisiana.gov/lsp/educational_progs.php>prisons
own web site, while Angola offers literacy and
GED classes and technical training in things like
auto mechanics, horticulture, and welding, the
only college degree program it offers is in
Christian Ministry from the New Orleans Baptist
Seminary. Only a few hundred prisoners are admitted to his program.
The
<http://www.aclu.org/blog/prisoners-rights-religion-belief/challenging-angola-prisons-religion-policies>American
Civil Liberties Union has filed lawsuits
challenging some of Angolas policies as
constitutional violations of the prisoners
freedom of religion; in one statement, the ACLU
remarked: Cains job is to be Warden of Angola,
not the Chaplain of Angola. But even some
Christians would find Burl Cains vision of both
human and divine justice unsavory.
A glowing 2008 article in the
<http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?id=27125>Baptist
Press<http://www.bpnews.net/bpnews.asp?id=27125>
praised Cain for govern[ing] the massive prison
on the Mississippi River delta with an iron fist
and an even stronger love for Jesus. The iron
fist includes Cains determination to keep
certain dangerous prisoners in permanent
lockdown, a condition that many have denounced
as<http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/03/30/090330fa_fact_gawande>
torture. Cain also presides over the states
executions. The Baptist Press article noted
Cains special dedication to delivering souls
from the death chamber into the hands of Christ.
When he supervised his first execution as warden,
Cain said, I didnt share Jesus with the
condemned man, and as he received the lethal
injection, I felt him go to hell as I held his
hand. As Cain tells it, I decided that night I
would never again put someone to death without
telling him about his soul and about Jesus.
In fact, Cain will get an opportunity to put his
mission into practice a few hours from now, when
the state of Lousiana carries out
<http://solitarywatch.wordpress.com/2010/01/06/a-louisiana-inmates-death-wish/>its
first execution in eight years, in the death chamber at Angola prison.
This post was written in collaboration with Jean
Casella. Full disclosure: We have
<http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/03/36-years-solitude?page=4>written
<http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/06/life-permanent-lockdown>several
<http://motherjones.com/politics/2009/12/herman-wallace-angola-3-solitary-confinement>articles
about the Angola 3 for Mother Jones. Last year I
also requested permission to interview Burl
Cain, as well as Herman Wallace and Albert
Woodfox, and to visit Angola; all requests were
denied by the Louisiana Department of Corrections.
Freedom Archives
522 Valencia Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
415 863-9977
www.Freedomarchives.org
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://freedomarchives.org/pipermail/ppnews_freedomarchives.org/attachments/20100107/f76bb962/attachment.htm>
More information about the PPnews
mailing list