[Pnews] Albert Woodfox Speaks About Living in Solitary Confinement

[Prisoner News]

*Albert Woodfox Speaks About Living in Solitary Confinement*
by Albert Woodfox and Why Am I Not Surprised?
/Tuesday Apr 29th, 2014 12:52 PM /

    Now, all these years later, the hearing on the civil case related to
    our long-term solitary confinement is approaching. So they sent this
    psychiatrist to question me. What he was doing, of course, was to
    try to get me to say that forty years in solitary confinement hasn't
    really been all that bad. "You seem quite well adjusted," he said. I
    told him that unless he sits in a cell 23 hours a day for forty
    years, he has no idea what he's talking about. I said, you want to
    know what I'm afraid of? I'm afraid I'm going to start screaming and
    not be able to stop. I'm afraid I'm going to...

/The essay featured below, /Albert Woodfox Speaks to the Experts 
<http://whyaminotsurprised.blogspot.com/2014/04/albert-woodfox-speaks-to-experts.html>/, 
from the /Why Am I Not Suprised?/ blog is reprinted in full with 
permission of the author. /

/Now 42 years since Albert was first put in solitary, Amnesty 
International 
<http://blog.amnestyusa.org/us/i-believe-them-to-be-innocent-teenie-rogers-on-the-men-accused-of-killing-her-husband/> 
has renewed its call for Albert's immediate release (view Amnesty's 
recent statement 
<http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/AMR51/026/2014/en/2d67583c-aa47-47b9-8c78-789f04748d75/amr510262014en.html> 
and essay 
<http://blog.amnestyusa.org/us/42-years-of-injustice-when-will-louisiana-wake-up/>). 
If you have not yet done so, please sign the Amnesty petition today 
<http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/ActionItem.aspx?c=6oJCLQPAJiJUG&b=6645049&aid=520358&msource=W1401EAIAR1A>./

This past weekend, I visited Albert Woodfox 
<http://dissidentvoice.org/2014/01/a-moral-outrage-albert-woodfoxs-41-years-in-solitary-confinement-despite-three-overturned-convictions> 
for the umpteenth time in the last five years 
<http://whyaminotsurprised.blogspot.com/2009/07/mountain-comes-to-mohammed.html>. 
All but one of the visits have been at the David Wade Correctional 
Center in Homer, Louisiana, five hours from where I live.  At the 
beginning, it was a grueling trip because I wasn't used to it and I have 
to go up on Saturday and come back the following day for a total of ten 
hours behind the wheel in one weekend. Sometimes it rains and once, it 
poured all the way up and all the way back.

I know I could take someone else along, but visiting somebody that's 
been in solitary confinement for what has now been forty-two years is 
emotionally draining and I don't want to have to be nicer than I really 
am for two solid days when I've been visiting people in prison since 
1971 and every visit eats my lunch.

So I load up on coffee and listen to music or audio books and, over 
time, I've gotten used to the trip. But I'll never get used to the 
visits and all the fol-de-rol they put us through just because they can.

Originally, the "rules" allowed us to have two 4-hour visits in a 
weekend because I live so far away. Though Albert was shackled when he 
left his cell, the shackles were removed when he got to the visiting 
room and our visits were conducted sitting at a table where we could eat 
vending machine food and drink sodas or water. And on holidays, I could 
purchase a cake at the front door for us to share. The "rules" allowed 
us to hug at the beginning and at the end of each visit and, on one 
occasion, the "rules" even allowed us to have a bunch of photos taken, 
one of which can be seen above.

The most interesting thing about prisons, however, is that the "rules" 
change all the time, especially for individuals who ostensibly deserve 
extra punishment for whatever reason. I'm not talking about a prisoner 
who breaks a rule and goes through a due process that is the same for 
everyone. I'm talking about a prisoner -- like Albert Woodfox -- who has 
been continually tormented for more than forty years because he was one 
of three men who organized a Black Panther Party chapter in Angola 
Penitentiary back in the early 1970's and has now become an 
international icon of resistance to oppression. Oh, yes. And let's not 
forget all the legal suits he's won and the legal precedents he has set 
during all those years.

Anyway, the "rules" keep changing for our visits. First, the visits went 
from four hours to three hours and then they went down to two hours 
each. So instead of driving ten hours to get eight hours of visiting 
time, I now drive ten hours to get two 2-hour visits. But it gets worse.

The "rules" now require that Albert has to wear the shackles for the 
entire time we're visiting (with his hands chained to his waist and his 
feet shackled to the floor despite the fact that there are anywhere from 
one to four guards in the room with him the whole time). The "rules" 
also mandate a glass window between us now and a heavy mesh we must 
speak through. We can see each other clearly through the glass, but if I 
want to hear halfway well, I have to give that up, lean down until my 
head is almost on the counter and peep through the mesh. We get no hugs 
and he gets no food or soda, so I don't feel like having anything either.

On top of everything else, until he took them to court and won an 
injunction to prevent them from doing so, the "rules" suddenly demanded 
that he be strip-searched and anally probed every time he left his cell 
for the past year or so. And the pat downs I receive at the front desk 
have gone from being peremptory to being foreplay.

I know I'm not the only one that goes through this. Albert has regular 
visits from a number of folks. But I want you to get a feeling for the 
ugliness of this situation and its arbitrary nature. Are you with me so 
far?  Because now that I've set the stage, I want you to imagine you 
were sitting there next to me this weekend, looking through the glass, 
listening through the mesh to a man who knows he may be forced to endure 
this treatment for the rest of his life. In particular, he chose to 
relate -- and I have recreated here from memory -- what he said to a 
psychiatrist who is helping the Department of Corrections build their 
case in defense of long-term solitary confinement.

/*Albert Woodfox speaks:*/

"When I look back to some of the things I did as a youth learning how to 
survive from the Sixth Ward Highsteppers in New Orleans, I realize that 
society was teaching me to be an enemy of the poor, the ignorant, and 
even my own people. I feel bad about some of the things I did back then. 
And sometimes I wonder what I would have become if none of this had 
happened the way it did.

"But being introduced to the Black Panther Party in jail in New York 
City gave me an alternate option to survival. It changed the game. The 
Black Panthers were the first Black people I ever saw who were not 
afraid. Watching them, talking to them, learning from them changed my 
life forever. It was the first time I ever heard a voice louder than the 
voice of the street. And when I came back to Louisiana and went to 
Angola, the Black Panther Party's Ten Point Plan came with me.

"The Ten Point Plan was about self-determination, taking responsibility 
for your decision-making, for your life, for your community, and I began 
to see that I could make a difference in the world. I wanted to do that 
and I was on /*fire*/. I was every kind of radical and absolutely 
convinced that major social changes in America were right around the corner.

"When Brent Miller was murdered and they rounded up [Herman Wallace] and 
me and put us in the hole, it never crossed my mind that I would spend 
the next four decades locked up 23 hours a day in an 8' by 10' cell. It 
didn't even /*occur* /to me that we would be convicted. We were 
innocent! I was /*positive* /that the people -- our brothers and sisters 
outside -- would rise up and organize and keep us from being railroaded.

"Then, when they were taking us out to be arraigned, one of Brent 
Miller's brothers came tearing up the road in a truck, skidded to a stop 
near the van we were in and jumped out with a pump shotgun, screaming, 
'Where are those niggers? Let me at 'em! I'm gonna kill those sons o' 
bitches!' Suddenly, it was /*serious*./ In that moment, the realization 
that our lives were at stake and the law might not protect us flooded 
over me.

"Now, all these years later, the hearing on the civil case related to 
our long-term solitary confinement is approaching. So they sent this 
psychiatrist to question me. What he was doing, of course, was to try to 
get me to say that forty years in solitary confinement hasn't really 
been all that bad. 'You seem quite well adjusted,' he said.

"I told him that unless he sits in a cell 23 hours a day for forty 
years, he has no idea what he's talking about. I said, you want to know 
what I'm afraid of? I'm afraid I'm going to start screaming and not be 
able to stop. I'm afraid I'm going to turn into a baby and curl up in a 
fetal position and lay there like that every day for the rest of my 
life. I'm afraid I'm going to attack my own body, maybe cut off my balls 
and throw them through the bars the way I've seen others do when they 
couldn't take any more.

"No television or hobby craft or magazines or any of the other toys you 
call yourself allowing can ever lessen the nightmare of this hell you 
help to create and maintain.

"I have been sustained in my struggle by three men. Nelson Mandela 
taught me that if you have a noble cause, you can bear the weight of the 
world on your shoulders. Malcolm X taught me that it doesn't matter 
where you start out; what matters is where you end up. And George 
Jackson taught me that if you're not willing to die for what you believe 
in, you don't believe in anything.

"I know you're only doing your job, Doc. You have your job and I have 
mine. I am a teacher. And I am living proof that we can survive the 
worst to change ourselves and our world no matter where we are. I do not 
want to die in a cell, but if I must to make the lesson clear, then I am 
willing to do just that."

_*Write to Albert:*_

Albert Woodfox #72148
David Wade Correctional Center
670 Bell Hill Road
Homer, LA  71040
http://www.angola3news.com
-- 
Freedom Archives 522 Valencia Street San Francisco, CA 94110 415 
863.9977 www.freedomarchives.org
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