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POLITICAL PRISONERS
November 21st 2000
How accurate is the current opinion that has been popularized by the recent publication of Jack Olsen’s book, The Last Man Standing (2000), about Geronimo Pratt, who spent 27 years in prison for a crime he never committed, that Geronimo Pratt is the last political prisoner in the U.S.A.? Where do we place Mumia Abu Jamal? Where do we put all the other blacks that are serving sentences unfairly imposed in the U.S.A.? Let us dig a little deeper. Geronimo Pratt is not the last political prisoner in the U.S.A.
At one time during his tenure as the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., which he by no means finished, Andrew Young remarked that there were political prisoners in the U.S. This opinion released a political chill in the U.S. – inevitably. The commentators responded in unison that there were only common criminals in the U.S. prisons.
Incidentally or coincidentally, perhaps over 80% of the prison inmates in the U.S. prisons are black or other minorities. And as every one knows, blacks in the U.S.A. are a very disadvantaged group in all respects – politically, economically and socially and by whatever yardstick you want to use. Andrew Young’s point was that there was a relationship between being disadvantaged and being prone to going to prison. When the context in which people go to prison is analyzed and you find that the disadvantaged group or groups are the majority of the prison inmates, it becomes a political question. These people become political prisoners.
This kind of reasoning received an unexpected support from an unexpected source – Apartheid South Africans. When South Africans under apartheid were criticized by Americans for practicing the system of Apartheid and keeping hundreds of black political prisoners, they responded to these criticisms by saying that the critics had better look at their own society first, before judging other people’s systems. In effect, what they were saying is that the American system was not different from the South African system in essence, that is when it concerned the black person. The black person was at the receiving end under both systems.
The parallel reasoning to this was also seen when the South Africans responded to the criticisms of black African leaders when they denounced them for keeping out black opposition in South Africa. The South Africans quickly responded and justifiably so, that there were no opposition parties allowed either in black African countries. And there was no colour barrier either; so muzzling political opposition was more insidious. There had not been a single answer from black Africa to date to this challenge.
Neither have the Americans satisfactorily challenged the South African charge. Whether the systems were similar or not is another matter. What was similar was that in both systems, prisons were full of people, black people. There must be a common denominator to this.
In the U.S., prisons are so full that there are periodic inmate rebellions like the one in Cell Block B in New York’s Ossining Correctional Facility in the 1980s and at Attica in the 1970s. What has been the answer to prison overcrowding? More prisons! Ontario is copying quite fast. Ontario is now building more prisons and court houses than it is building hospitals and colleges. It is in fact shutting down the latter two.
But surely, more prisons is not an answer. Firstly, because these new prisons will be full again. Secondly, because it does not address the question of why thousands of people find their way to prison. More prisons is a symptom and not a cause or solution. The system that does not analyze the conditions of people who constitute the majority of the prison population or the society that conduces a huge prison population of one group and class of people is testimony to the fact that the system refuses to correct the wrongs and to correct itself. The system is rotten. In which case, it becomes a political question. No wonder people like Andrew Young and others admit that under such rigid regimes that would rather build more prisons than correct the conditions which recruit people to prisons, such prisoners in these systems become political prisoners. They are creatures of the political and economic system that is obtaining there.
Geronimo Pratt is one political prisoner released; he is not the last one.
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