On April 22, imprisoned activist Mumia Abu-Jamal was able to give the following address the Attica to Abu Graib Conference via a mp3 recording. A former Black Panther, Abu-Jamal was convicted of killing a cop on scandalously contradictory evidence and is now on death row. For more of his writings and speeches, visit <http://www.prisonradio.org>.
When we think about the atrocities of Attica [in 1971 a rebellion at the prison was viciously suppressed, with prison guards fatally shooting 29 prisoners and 10 guards], and the abominations at Abu Ghraib, we are sometimes caught searching for a common denominator. What could it be, we wonder, as we look at the brutal state assault on both prisoners and staff at Attica, and the human rights violations, and yes — torture, that marked US behaviour at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq?
The commonalities, however, are more than first meets the eye. Of course, they are both prisons (but that's obvious). They both came to public consciousness through the actions of people who were prison guards. And they both were, initially, defended by the state by a flood of lies.
What matters really least, is that they occurred in different countries. They both happened in the same empire.
What marked the differences between them is the critical element of time, and even this quality does not speak well of things to come. For, as time is the difference, yet it tells us how far things have fallen; how the 30 years between Attica and Abu Ghraib have marked a coarsening of the American character, and a brutishness of imperial defenders.
Attica opened up an era of prison reform across much of the nation, and fuelled the movement to attempt to eradicate the most depraved elements of the nation's repressive prison systems.
Abu Ghraib was met by quasi-official justifications, government obfuscation, and the incredible spectacle of right-wing pundits likening the torture and human rights abuses there to "college pranks". The humiliation of naked Arab men was compared to the field displays of cheerleading squads!
There is, of course, another monstrous difference: the architects of Abu Ghraib, and high-level defenders of torture, have been rewarded by higher, and more prestigious posts in government!
In a nutshell, torture pays!
We have not spoken of the pivotal US issue of race.
Without prisoners actively advocating Black liberation, there would have been no Attica.
The tortured, maimed, and humiliated prisoners at Abu Ghraib were targeted by the US Army because [the Army was] seeking to intimidate and eliminate people who were trying to fight to free their country from foreign occupiers. In other words, they were fighting for their own national liberation. In an empire, which picks puppets for other nations, this is not acceptable. It wasn't acceptable under the Roman Empire, the British Empire, nor its North American successor empire, the US Empire.
To this latest global incarnation of the white nation, Arabs are but sand niggers, to be beaten into submission and obedience. It is the refusal to accept this status that is fuelling what the US media calls "the insurgency".
There is another element that arises from the evidence: US cruelty. Big Black, the late veteran of Attica, told stories of the torture and beatings that he endured, as he was naked, and held under gunpoint. It is an eerie precursor of the treatment of Arab prisoners at Abu Ghraib.
Nor is it mere coincidence that some of the most brutal, most vicious actors at Abu Ghraib were US Reserves, who, in their civilian lives, were prison guards. How else could they learn it?
One of the most infamous was from SCI-Greene, in Southwestern Pennsylvania, named Charles Graner. Recently his ex-wife came forward to tell of the terrors to which she was exposed daily. She said Graner promised to cut her into little pieces, and that no one would ever find her body.
Welcome to US "corrections" as the prison nation goes global.
[You can write to Abu-Jamal at Mumia Abu-Jamal; AM 8335; SCI-Greene; 175 Progress Drive; Waynesburg; PA 15370; USA.]
From Green Left Weekly, June 1, 2005.
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