In May of 1968 Father Daniel Berrigan walked into a draft board in Catonsville, Maryland, with eight other activists, including his brother, Father Philip Berrigan, and removed draft files of young men who were about to be sent to Vietnam. The group carted the files outside and burned them in two garbage cans with homemade napalm. Father Berrigan was tried, found guilty, spent four months as a fugitive from the FBI, was apprehended and sent to prison for eighteen months.
The trial of the Catonsville Nine altered resistance to the Vietnam War, moving activists from street protests to repeated acts of civil disobedience, including the burning of draft cards. It also signaled a seismic shift within the Catholic Church, propelling radical priests and nuns led by the Berrigans, Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day to the center of a religiously inspired social movement that challenged not only church and state authority but the myths Americans used to define themselves.
Berrigan argues that those who seek a just society, who seek to defy war and violence, who decry the assault of globalization and degradation of the environment, who care about the plight of the poor, should stop worrying about the practical, short-term effects of their resistance.
"The good is to be done because it is good, not because it goes somewhere," he says. "I believe if it is done in that spirit it will go somewhere, but I don't know where. I don't think the Bible grants us to know where goodness goes, what direction, what force. I have never been seriously interested in the outcome. I was interested in trying to do it humanly and carefully and nonviolently and let it go." (The Nation)
In August, 1970, Berrigan was living underground as a fugitive from the FBI. He spoke with Harvard Psychiatrist Robert Coles just before he was captured by federal agents: "I have never been able to look upon myself as a criminal and I would feel that in a society in which sanity is publicly available I could go on with the kind of work which I have always done throughout my life. I never tried to hurt a person. I tried to do something symbolic with pieces of paper. We tend to overlook the crimes of our political and business leaders. We don't send to jail Presidents and their advisers and certain Congressmen and Senators who talk like bloodthirsty mass murderers. We concentrate obsessively and violently on people who are trying to say things very differently and operate in different ways." (Time Magazine)
Daniel Berrigan: In May of '68 we entered a draft board in this little town called Catonsville, in Maryland, and we took out about 160 A-1 files, we took them out of the building, downstairs, because we didn't want to risk a fire in the building, and we hustled them into a parking lot nearby — they had these big trash baskets — and threw them in and set them on fire with homemade napalm. We had found the recipe for napalm in a special service handbook in the library at Georgetown U. None of us knew anything about napalm except that it had been used on people, especially on children. We thought that would be a proper symbol of the war as ethical outrage, that we would use this on documents that justified murder instead of on people, that that might speak to the public about this war. So the night before we had a kind of a liturgical service, we concocted napalm at the home of a friend in Baltimore and we mixed that and prayed over it, and prayed that this might be an instrument of peacemaking, as it was an instrument certainly of us taking our lives into our hands. And, uh, so we threw that over the huge bundle of papers and it whooshed up tellingly, and we joined hands around the fire and recited the Lord's prayer, and waited for Armageddon.
Rev. Daniel Berrigan (r.) and William M. Kunstler talk with newsmen after Berrigan and eight other Catholics were sentenced to two years to three-and-a-half years in prison in Baltimore, MD, on November 9, 1968. Credit: AP Photo
Oh, they called the police of course, who arrived shortly and were astonished at these priests and people, and [they] put the fire out and hustled us into the wagon. And of course when we got to the ... I think in the town they didn't have any lock-up so they used the back room of a library and locked us in, and of course we were in a great state of relief. And then this big guy, I still can see the scene, appeared at the doorway, obviously in charge, you know, FBI, and he looked around the room and saw my brother, Philip, and he had been involved in Philip's case in '67 for pouring blood on draft files in Baltimore City. So he looked around the room and he bellowed out, "Berrigan again!" And then he yelled, "I'm leaving the Catholic church." [Laughs.] So I said to Philip, "That's the best thing you did all day — get him out!"
We knew we were going to be arrested, and we knew the chances were very large that we would spend several years in prison. That had to be spelled out, that had to be part of the preparation for this action, you know, so that people didn't go into it blindfolded, or with some sort of utopian idea that we're going to get away with this, which was ridiculous, infantile. So part of the building of the trust ahead of time was to take a close look at family obligations, at your professional life, at your bible, at your friendships, at your ability, as far as you can gauge it, to go into something that's going to cost you, maybe years of your life. Well, that note of realism I think was very, very important. And some people were mature enough to say, "Okay, I can swallow, even though dry, and I can walk with you, even going to the unknown." And then other people bowed out, which was a good thing to do also. [It was] too much.
Let me say something about the intention we had in the trial, which of course had to be dramatized in our style and in our rhetoric and our personal convictions, and so on and so forth. I think we had pretty well agreed ahead of time that going for acquittal was tactically hopeless, and wasn't really speaking for our passion in going into Catonsville. The judge was always intervening, he played it very soft as the trial went on, because he knew he had the last word. But he was saying things to us like, "Well, if you had taken five or ten of those draft files and burned them symbolically, you wouldn't be in this trouble now. But," he said, "you did something very serious." And we said, "Yes, and we understand it was serious." We couldn't really be impressed by a symbol that was not serious, and five or ten draft files as a symbol was not serious. So we took out 165, and that was worth three years, as we well know.
I tried in my statement before the court, I tried to speak about the criminality of burning papers instead of children. And that's one way of putting our argument. We were calling these A-1 files 'hunting licenses against humans,' and we were saying if you carry this document, it's open season on children and the aged and the ill and all sorts of people. And you could be given a medal for it, you certainly won't be tried criminally for it. So we were trying to unlatch some of these myths that were protecting, in our way of thinking, were protecting mass murder. And putting it that way, that this napalm burned papers instead of children, was deliberately shocking and deliberately, as I felt, true. Why not put it that way, put it boldly?
You know, in a sense I think we flew in the face of something we respected very highly, which would be, let's say Gandhian tactics. He often pled guilty to breaking the law … well, that's another way of doing it. Gandhi is not my bible. Gandhi is a mentor in many, many arenas, but I can also respect him by disagreeing with him. And I think the idea of pleading very firmly “not guilty” and saying why — because it's better to burn papers than children — that makes sense to me, even though maybe not Gandhian sense. [Chuckles.]
We frequently invoked, because all of us were people of religious faith, we frequently invoked the Sermon on the Mount. And what is one to make in wartime of this plain stipulation of Jesus, “Love your enemies,” or of a statement to Peter, “Put up your sword, those who live by the sword will die by the sword,” or his words at the Last Supper, “This is my body given for you,” not, “This is your body destroyed by me,” and so on, and so on, and so on. I mean, we have so much evidence that the burning of papers instead of children was a Christian act, a religious act, that war is constantly closing the book and saying it doesn't apply. “We're at war, hate your enemies.” “We're at war — kill them!” As at present, and as during Vietnam. So, we were trying to keep the book open, and say, “No, we think he meant it, we think he meant it or he wouldn't have said it. Love your enemies. Don't kill, for any reason.”
Toward the end of the trial I remember one famous exchange between Bill and the judge, and the judge got really quite annoyed at this point. Bill was invoking an ancient American case of, I think, a printer in New York who had been tried for sedition ... does that ring a bell at all? I forget the name of the printer. But, anyway, at his trial his lawyer, on this very serious charge, his lawyer insisted that the jurors could follow their conscience. Well, that started a furor. And the judge said, "Mr. Kunstler, if you pursue that, well knowing that that was prior to our Constitution and that now one cannot say to a juror that one can follow their conscience, if you pursue that I will dismiss the [case]... or send the juries out and rebuke you." He didn't threaten anything very serious. So Bill had to abandon that, but he did get the appeal across for what it was worth: You could follow your conscience. Now, of course, it's common instruction that the jury has no freedom to follow their conscience, that they must follow the law of the land. It seems to me — I have never served on a jury — but it seems to me that it's a terrible disservice to any kind of human makeup I can understand to say to people, “You cannot follow your conscience. Once you take on this role, your conscience is outside that courtroom, or is dead in the courtroom, but you can't heed it.” Well, if we can't act conscientiously, I wonder how we can call ourselves human beings. And ... I guess those questions don't arise in the ordinary courtroom, but Bill was trying to raise it.
I felt that we had conducted ourselves — the eight defendants — had conducted [our]selves honorably, had not betrayed our convictions, had told about all sorts of service in the third world that brought us to say no to this war, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. It was emotionally a draining week and a very difficult one, but at the same time I felt we couldn't really have done better, Bill couldn't have done better on our behalf, and the outcome was a foregone conclusion before we started. We knew we were going to be convicted, that's why we didn't waste time with the jury, all sorts of things like that. But I was comparing it … in my own heart I was comparing that day to a kind of birthday. I felt reborn. I felt that I had done what I had been born for, and I think the others did, too.
Filmmakers: Do you think that young people still think they can change the world?
Berrigan: I don't hear that kind of talk much. I think it's very tough to be young. It's almost as tough as being old. (Smiles.) You're supposed to laugh.
Filmmakers: Do you think we can change the world?
Berrigan: Well, I think we can live as though we are changed, you know, and that's a start.
Filmmakers: Do you see any progress from the time you started being an anti-war activist to today?
Berrigan: No, I see regress. But it doesn't depress me because you do what you do, do what you can.
Filmmakers: So what's the value of the work?
Berrigan: The value of the work is vindicating your own humanity and that of your friends, and living as though the truth were true. There's a mood that can set in easily that would say, because I can't do a big thing I'm gonna do nothing. But I mean I love the Buddhist teaching that the good is to be done because it is good, not because it goes somewhere. I think that's powerful, and I think, too, that if it's done for the right reason, it will go somewhere.
The Filmmakers: Did you expect the protest outside the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago to turn violent?
Tom Hayden: Did I expect it to be violent? Yes. The reason to expect violence was first of all experiential. That is, since the invasion of Vietnam in '65, the state had been increasingly violent towards demonstrators. Demonstrators had escalated from purely peaceful protest to non-violent civil disobedience to what you could call confrontations in the streets, unarmed, non-violent, but physical — usually started by police attacks on demonstrations. So I had experienced that several times before Chicago '68, and there was no reason to believe it would be otherwise. It didn't mean that one favored violence, it's that one anticipated it and took precautions.
Rennie [Davis] was our lead negotiator. Jerry [Rubin] and Abbie [Hoffman] were kind of in their own way negotiating but that was more like a dream state. Abbie and Jerry offered to leave town if the city paid them $100,000, and that became a side issue where nobody knew what was reality, which was proving their point. Rennie did actually negotiate with the city. The [U.S.] Justice Department under Ramsey Clark sent community relations people out, Roger Wilkins was one of them, Wesley Pomeroy was another. And they sat down with Rennie and Tom Foran in a bar and talked, and they concluded verbally and in writing that our position was reasonable and that the city should accommodate it. That there was no reason, since all kinds of youth organizations could sleep in the parks, there was no reason to deny permits to sleep in parks [even] if it meant that it was going to be chaos. They also favored permits for marching within eyesight of the Convention. And the position of the city of Chicago, which I think was backed by others in the federal government, was 'No, no, no. Why don't you understand. No.'
An article that appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, Wed., Aug. 21, 1968;
Courtesy of Emily and Sarah Kunstler.
We kept thinking that this was the customary tactic to keep people away because of fear — how could musicians come if they didn't know if they had a permit, for instance? — and that at the end the city would give in and give us permits. Well, they never did. And so then it just became a rising self-awareness that the police would be physical, and we should either leave town, surrender our civil liberties to protest, or take to the streets in what we thought was an embodiment of the First Amendment right to protest that cannot be suspended. And maybe, we thought, maybe the shock of the confrontation would force the city and the federal government to back up. There were many in the Democratic party, many in the government who thought it was ridiculous not to allow permits, but it never happened until the final day. Strangely this permit came floating out of City Hall, which was surreal, nobody knew whether to believe it. That was the day of the greatest violence; it was the day we had a permitted rally.
The violence was mild compared to the violence inflicted on the black community after King's assassination when Mayor Daley gave 'shoot to kill' orders. The violence was mild compared to the shooting of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, Black Panthers, during our trial. But I guess for white American middle-class sensibility and for journalism, the exposure of all this violence, all these beatings, all this gassing on a cross-section of American young people was a shock. It was like a coming-out of violence that had been fairly invisible I think at that point in the evolution of television and protests. This is not to belittle the violence, it's to put it in some context.
Scenes from Chicago; Courtesy of Emily and Sarah Kunstler
I was beaten up a couple of times, but I don't remember any bruises. I was gassed. The gas is bad. You know, every serious American should be pepper-gassed once because the police always say, 'Oh, that's our less-than-lethal weapon.' (Laughs) But exposure to it and the way it shuts your organs down and makes you nauseous and there's no escaping it is a form of less-than-lethal torture, but definitely torture. And I think a number of people were hurt more than I was — wounds to the head bleed profusely, so you can't tell how bad it is. Rennie had his head cracked open and blood was all over him, but he recovered without a concussion. One person was shot and killed: A seventeen-year-old Native American the night before it all began in Lincoln Park. He's been completely eliminated from the narrative of Chicago. Medical teams were beaten up. Approximately sixty reporters, mainstream reporters, were beaten up or gassed. Dan Rather was punched by Chicago police on the floor of the Convention. (Watch YouTube video.) It was outside and inside. It wasn't limited to a wild-in-the-streets kind of operatic thing that is portrayed in the media.
Filmmakers: Were you aware that you were under surveillance?
Hayden: We were under surveillance during the whole trial and during the events of '68. Yes, I was aware of it. First, because it was my general orientation. I knew that this was the way police behave. Secondly, it kept getting revealed during the trial that people we knew of were agents. So if they were coming on the stand as agents from the year before, why wouldn't there be agents during the trial as well? (Laughs)
I think that the FBI in coordination with local police departments like the Chicago police infiltrated organizations like the Black Panther Party, the Mobilization, and SDS after 1966, certainly by 1967, and by early 1968 put us on special lists of people, like myself, who were targeted for what they called 'neutralization.' Now I know in James Bond movies that means assassination, it's a loose term. But it usually meant spreading rumors, fabrications, false leaflets, false phone calls, to undermine leadership and get people quarreling with each other.
I'll give you an example. One thing was the famous Black Panther Party letter that was sent to somebody's home, a threatening letter, and used to eliminate somebody from the jury at the very beginning of the trial and put somebody else on the jury. The letter was a classic FBI disinformation letter written in large block, semi-literate print, and it was signed, I think, 'The Black Panthers,' or something. It was signed in a way that the Black Panthers never signed anything. And it was just handed to the unsuspecting member of the jury who was shaken by it, and she was then removed from the jury. To me, and to all the defense, that was a clear manipulation. We called for a complete investigation into it, believing at that time early in the trial that words were to be taken seriously. (Laughs) The judge agreed and then later documents revealed that no investigation was undertaken at all. As a matter of fact, investigation of the sources of the letter was forbidden by the prosecution. The only thing that was allowed to be investigated were fingerprint samples taken from the piece of paper, and I have no idea what resulted from the fingerprint samples.
We know from subsequent records and declassified materials that there were agents all the way from '68 through the trial, that they, FBI and Chicago police agents, shared surreptiously gathered material with the prosecutors and with the judge. We know that by admission on the record. We know that they were listening in at various points by surveillance to meetings of the defense, meetings of counsel. Meetings having to do with evidence, witnesses, basis for appeals, all of that. So there may be more to come, I don't know what it is, but the record shows that our suspicions were not exaggerated.
We were charged by the incoming Republican administration in Washington after the Johnson administration [and] Attorney General Clark had recommend against indictments and wanted it treated as an investigative matter best left to state and local courts if there were some misdemeanors or state felonies. Instead, [Nixon administration] Attorney General Mitchell met with our prosecutors in early 1969. I interviewed those prosecutors in 1987. And they said one reason to go ahead with the prosecution was that they didn't want us to get away with it. On the other hand both of our prosecutors had been in the streets in August, September, '68, and were quite aware of the police brutality and out of control behavior and had actually filed eyewitness reports on it. So they knew that the state had a problem proving its case.
What it came down to, according to prosecutor Foran in talking to me was, as he put it, he wanted us to sit on a needle for a very long time, as if sitting on a needle would keep us inactive and would bring about the demise of the movement. And even in 1987, twenty years later, he believed that they had succeeded but that, as he put it, then came Kent State and it started all over again.
I think for President Nixon … uh, we all replay our past, and he had come to his prominence with Senator Joseph McCarthy and the anti-Communist crusades. And the model was to crack down on a vertically organized Communist Party and take out their leaders, so the same would be true here. You would get the Mobilization, the Black Panther Party, and the Yippies and take out their so-called leaders and somehow the organizations would be immobilized or set backwards.
I think the trial was given a symbolic meaning by the media as a watershed in the '60s — there's always a watershed, there's always a turning point — because it was such an easy thing to see this variety of the Black Panthers, and the SDS, and the Anti-War, and the Hippies and Yippies versus cops, prosecutors, the state, with the war in the background. So it became a kind of visual drama that played its way into the sensibility of all those who were watching. I'm not much on symbols, but I believe that's what it was about symbolically. What it was really about is power. The power of the state to suppress dissent versus the power of social movements to stand up in the face of repression.
The Chicago 8: (top) Rubin, Hoffman, Hayden, Davis; (bottom) Seale, Weiner, Froines, Dellinger.
The trial was an arduous challenge. The workload was very, very heavy. I was a principal attorney even though I'd never gone to law school. I spent every night 'til three, four in the morning going over testimony, transcripts, preparing witnesses, getting ready for the next day while drinking alcohol, then coffee, and then getting up at seven and driving, usually in freezing weather, downtown to voluntarily submit myself to a zoo. To a place where there was no sign of respect for due process or anything like that, and then go home the next day and start again. I thought Abbie was exaggerating but it was an accurate insight when he said, "This is like a neon oven." That's what it felt like to me.
I was chosen to have responsibility for making sure that the whole defense carried forward and I wasn't a lawyer. So I was kind of the shot-caller, the strategist. As for myself I wanted to try to win the case within the system or expose the system in such a way that we would win on appeal. So I was always preoccupied with, you know, what's the government's evidence? What's our rebuttal to that evidence? What witnesses do we have? How can we put on a story of who we are? And my hope was that we would find one juror out of twelve who would go with us and vote for acquittal no matter what the pressure.
I think Bill [Kunstler] shared the view that we should go for that single juror, and he certainly shared the view that we should try to create a record in the trial that would allow us a rational appeal to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. I think all the defendants gradually came to that view. I can't remember the sequence of it, but it became apparent. Jerry and Abbie, um, I-I'm sorry that they've passed, I don't really know if I can tell you accurately what they thought. They did think for sure that there was a chance for theater, and they wanted to have celebrity witnesses and get on television at all costs, with their tactics and with their witnesses. When it came to how to put a witness on, what was testimony and what was gonna be disallowed, what was gonna be the cross-examination, they were less clear. They kind of left that to the attorneys.
And I remember there was a turning point where we didn't know what we were gonna do, and we had a meeting. And I … I was angry, and I said, "Look, there's not gonna be any space for theatrics in prison. You might be sexually molested and have your throat cut by guards that hate you and inmates that they put up to it. So this is your choice. Ten years in prison, which our lawyers have advised us is likely, three years off for good time, which is impossible — to have a good time in prison — so it's probably ten years with all the dangers of ten years in prison. Or, we have to win this case. We have to put on a first-class defense to win the case in the courtroom or before the jury."
So I wanted to turn the jury into an example of, not civil disobedience, but … 'cause we have a right to disobey authority, jurors have a right to nullify a law. It's little used and never mentioned by attorneys or the judge. I wanted one juror to stand up and say 'No,' which they were totally entitled to. As it turned out, there were four who wanted to but they were so browbeaten, exhausted and misled and manipulated that they didn't know that they could or that that's what we wanted. So they went along with an absurd verdict, which was not factually based, which it's supposed to be. (Laughs) It was, 'Well, we'll find them guilty on one charge, which we don't believe they're guilty of, if you'll find them not guilty on the other charge, which you don't believe they're guilty of. So we'll come out with a compromised verdict: Guilty on one, not guilty on the other.' It was ridiculous, but that's what they did.
Filmmakers: What are the myths of the Chicago Conspiracy trial?
Hayden: One of the myths is that it was just a wild time. There's a repeated theatricality about it. There's a play on every year or few years in Los Angeles and elsewhere. There have been attempts to capture the experience in films. This could be because the kind of people who are artists and directors see the theatricality. There's a stage, there's a judge, there are defendants who act out. So it could be as simple as that. But it obviously — the artistic mind captures the essence of my generation like nothing else that's available for performance and for study. And what happens there is that the truth becomes cloudy because there's a certain measure of artistic license. Certain people are more theatrical than others, all of the excitement of the trial and confrontations have to be compressed on stage or in memory so that it just seems like bedlam as opposed to a five-month very slow, gradual process.
In general the moments of confrontation were few and far between. And believe it or not they actually had causes. They were not like random acts of mindless disruption. The first and primary cause, of course was the chaining and gagging of Bobby Seale, the chairman of the Black Panther Party. We don't know to this day, and we may never know, who actually ordered the remedy. Obviously the judge had to be part of it. But who's in the back chamber telling the judge what to do and how to do it? In any event, we knew it was coming, some showdown was coming, and this would be like the first phase of the trial was climaxing before we got to the rest of it. And then it just happened.
I mean, they gave us a noon break and then they ordered the guards, the marshals, apparently, to chain him to a chair, a metal chair, ankles and wrists, and then gag him with a … how would they put it? Put a tape around his mouth so that he could no longer talk. And of course, before you get to the morality of this, there was the folly, the folly of power thinking that this could work. (Laughs) That you could literally somehow silence somebody by wrapping tape around their mouth. You try it. It just changes the sound from words to moaning and, uh, gurgling and yelling. And, it doesn't eliminate the sound at all. And then you have the ghastly sound of chains because you've got metal chains attached to a metal chair. So now you've got a black man moaning in anger with a tape around his mouth and rattling the chains, which re-takes you all the way back to slavery. There, it hit everybody in the room very, very hard. It certainly was not what Bobby had expected or Garry had expected or anybody had expected. But these things are kinetic; they're fluid. They don't … history is not predetermined, this just happened. And then the state had to scramble its way out of it. But it left this indelible impression around the country and around the world that in America treatment of black people like slaves was not over. Far from it.
There were other causes [for confrontation]. One day Dave Dellinger was taken away and put in jail for having given a speech. So that's the first issue. The studies show that most of the contempt citations occurred in three periods of less than two days or three days out of five months.
I suppose there's another myth that the judge was insane or he's demeaned as being senile, because his head bobbed and some of the defendants called him Mr. Magoo. This myth makes it seem like it was a farcical deviation from the logical history of American justice. [It] makes it appear that it was a Chicago phenomenon wired by Mayor Daley and police who were overreacting to mere demonstrations and a judge who was overreacting himself.
There's always a grain of truth in myth, obviously. But in fact, the decision to indict us came from the newly elected and installed Nixon administration in a meeting, I believe, between Attorney General John Mitchell and the prosecutors, Mr. Foran and Mr. Schultz, shortly after Nixon was sworn in. And I think that if you go back to the actual events in '68, the police response was not just a local police riot but it was coordinated by the FBI and intelligence agencies, many of whom had people inside the protest groups. So viewed that way, it was a serious attempt to recreate the repression of the McCarthy period in the early '50s, and to use a cast of characters as symbolic actors to be suppressed in order to achieve a chilling effect on the movement, or to put the movement on the defensive. So those are two examples of the mythology that's grown around the trial. But there are others.
Why is it important to remember the Chicago Conspiracy trial?
Hayden: Well, it's important to remember the '60s. There's no new reasons for advocating memory. I mean there's … some people try to remember in order to propel a legacy of the past forward in a new generation. Some people want to wipe memory out so that those rebellions are never heard about, taught or repeated. Some people in the middle — most people are in the middle — want to manage the memory so Chicago becomes an aberration, a kind of a breakdown of the system that was quickly restored and put back together, as opposed to a window into the true nature of the system and what it does.
So the struggle for memory seems to me all-important especially because I began without memory. I wasn't raised on the Left. I don't know what radicalized me, and many therapists and analysts have tried to figure it out, including my closest friends. I came from a middle-American, lower-middle-class Catholic household with no previous political associations. I was not affected by the progressive movements of the past, by McCarthyism. I came face to face with people of my generation who were going to jail in the South, against segregation and against the lethargy of their parents' generation, and it touched me in a very deep way at a particular time. It laid out a lesson. I fully intended to be a newspaper reporter or journalist of some kind, a writer, and I always have been curious, non-conformist, but oriented to writing. But I just couldn't only write about these students who were taking such risks. I decided very gradually to join them.
I came out of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), I was a community organizer from the South, I was an organizer in Newark. I saw Vietnam as an invasion of my space. I saw it as ending the hopeful first half of the '60s. I saw it as diverting money and resources and time and energy and blood to a foreign war instead of the war against poverty that had been going on for fifty or sixty years and the hundred years of Jim Crow and the rest of it. So I joined the anti-war movement in '65, '66, and gradually realized that I wasn't gonna get about succeeding in my domestic issues if we didn't end this war. So I thought there was a possibility of putting enough pressure on the state, then dominated by the Democrats, to force a choice: To either get out of Vietnam or lose their authorities and possibly lose an election. Remember, our generation couldn't vote. That wasn't an option. So the idea of being in the streets was a forced choice, it wasn't entirely voluntary. It was the only place to be, or so it appeared.
I think Abbie said the same thing in his testimony. "What did you do before 1960?" "Nothing. I think it was called a college education." He knew nothing until the movement came along. So there's a lot to remember about the '60s.
Why Chicago? We can't do anything about it. Chicago has become iconic. It eclipses other things that are equally important or more important, like Kent State, many other things. We have little control over that, how iconic moments get chosen by the public, the historians, the media and so on. So Chicago has to be seen as a case where we're privileged to serve as a stand-in for many others who stood up and sacrificed their time and their resources and in some cases their blood for what we all stood for. So I think of it as an opportunity to make the most of the story of Chicago to tell the larger story. And nothing more, nothing less.
Bill Means: I was in a bunker in Vietnam and I was serving the United States Army Airborne, and they passed out a military newspaper known as 'The Stars and Stripes.' And in that newspaper was a story, a picture actually, of my brother Russell standing on a statue of Chief Massasoit near Plymouth, Massachusetts. They were protesting Thanksgiving. And it said under the picture, gave his name and the fact that they were announcing a national day of mourning for American Indians because we had nothing to be thankful for in terms of government policy and other issues of social concern for our people. And so it was pretty amazing … I kinda felt like "Wow. I'm really missing something," you know. And unfortunately I was in Vietnam and [there was] really nothin' I could do at that time other than finish my time and survive. So [it] made me aware of a new movement that was taking place.
There had always been this underlying treatment of Indian people, whether it be in the courts, in social services, in education, whether it be by the Bureau of Indian Affairs being the trustee of our land and our resources; all these issues were daily issues that Indian people dealt with. For example, when I first went to boarding school in South Dakota, this would have been in 1958 or so, my mother took us to this border town. These are towns bordering on the reservation areas. And she was buying us school clothes. And as we were standing in line these white people kept going in front of my mother and getting waited on, and more or less pushing her to the side. Well, finally I seen her getting one of her … her moods, she kind of stiffened her neck and got that look of sternness on her face and went up to the cashier and said, "My money is as good here as anyone else's." I think I was in sixth grade or seventh grade at the time. And that's my first real experience of racism with my mother.
And so then, through grade school, high school, especially in athletics, when you go to some of these towns that had very high racist feelings against Indians, they would say things, call us Redskins, "Go back to the Reservation," you know, holler from the crowd. And you experienced that throughout life, it was kind of a daily occurrence. And then when you see somebody that's standing up against it …
My college career was interrupted by service in Vietnam, where I got my political education. I began to see more and more this whole idea of colonialism and how it works. [T]he idea of creating conflict, and what it means to the indigenous people, what it means to the people that live in another land the United States is occupying with their military, and how so dedicated people are to a movement, to face the most powerful military in the world with a grassroots movement of people willing to give their lives for their country, for their movement to free Vietnam. And as a soldier I started to understand that and see that I myself played the role of the cavalry. But you know what, you're in a combat situation; you either go to prison or you try to survive every day. And I didn't really think of myself as going to prison. And so I surrounded myself with people that wanted to live as much as I did and survive to come back and then become a part of the movement.
I began to read these books. For example, one was called Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown. I read that in college, a professor gave it to me, and I began to see history from a different perspective, and then when I was in Vietnam to recall those incidents that I had studied about. First, you know, comes the cavalry. Then comes the church, acting as intelligence for the cavalry. You know, Who's coming to church? Who's refusing to be baptized? These are the dissidents. These are the people that we need to put onto the reservation and confine them. So the idea of basically confining people... destroying their economy, their way of life, [so that] they become dependent on the United States government.
Same thing happened in Vietnam. They had what they called strategic hamlets, where we as soldiers would take people out of villages, remove them to a strategic hamlet. Reservation. They would be guarded. Eventually, as colonialism progresses, you even have your own people — in our case Indian police — who guard their own people with weapons to keep them in line. And if they don't stay in line, you go to federal court, and you go to federal prison. So all these things correlated with what I was doing in Vietnam and actually what the cavalry had done to our people: Confine them, destroy their economy, Christianize them, destroy our language and culture, and then create your own police of your own people. So that you become a dissident or you become a militant or you become a revolutionary if you're talking about preserving your own language, if you're talking about having Indian curriculum in the schools, if you're talking about having self-determination and government programming, if you're talking about training your own teachers. These are the types of things that people were looked upon as negative both by the church and by the government officials.
When I came back from Vietnam I still had five months to serve, and I was in a place called Fort Louis, Washington. And part of our training was riot control because of the civil rights movement [and] the anti-war movement, so they would train us how to clear the crowds, how to fight protesters, how to arrest them. And so these Indian people had occupied a military base that had been abandoned in Seattle, Washington. So one night they wake us up out of bed — this is at Fort Louis which is only maybe fifty miles south of Seattle — and they came in and said, "We're on alert. We're on alert!" Which in military terms, you know what to do. You grab your rucksack and your weapon and your helmet and your gear, and you go outside and you get ready to move out to somewhere.
So they load us on trucks and they took us to McChord Air Force Base, which is near Fort Louis. And we were sitting on the runway with all our gear on, rifles and bayonets, and a sergeant comes walking by and I said, "Hey, Sarge, what's the deal? What's going on? Protests?" He says, "Some Indian people have taken over a military base that's abandoned in Seattle and we might have to go get them outta there." I said, "Hey, Sarge, man, I'm not going over there. I just came back from the war in Vietnam and I'm not gonna start killing my own people." So he looked at me and said, "Stand up." So then all these guys started cheering, primarily black guys, saying, "Yeah, Chief. I don't wanna serve over there either. What's going on?" They start asking questions. So they got me out of there, and they took me to stockade, which is a military jail on Fort Louis. But they didn't put me inside, just had me kinda sittin' in what they called the bullpen where you're waiting.
So I sat there, that was the middle of the night, 'til the next morning and somebody had found out about it. Pretty soon there was a protest outside of some anti-war people who found out somehow, I don't know how, that I was in there. They were protesting that they had arrested an Indian for not wanting to fight against his own people. And, boy, they immediately took me out of there through the back door. Just took me back to my barracks and said, "You work around here. Don't leave here. You're confined." Which to me was better than jail. I didn't understand the whole scope of things at the time, but it was kind of a rude awakening of being on a military side and then have to face your own people. And fortunately I didn't have to do that in the end. And I wasn't charged and sent to prison, which I could have been, especially at war time. And so it worked out. But it was for me as an individual a major turning point in my life when I decided to stand up for my own people at that moment and say I couldn't participate.
When I first saw that picture in 'The Stars and Stripes' as a soldier, and you hear about the anti-war movement and you see the evils of war, human bodies torn apart, women and children killed, napalm, you start asking yourself, "Why? Why does this happen?" And then, of course, me being an American Indian, I had a personal reflection of me being the cavalry, and so all these things built up in me to where, when I did see that picture, I felt this is a way to pay back my people. This is a way for me to become involved in something positive to save our culture, to save our way of life, to fight for our land.
And the treaties had always been something that old people talked about, not the young people. But here was these brash, young, long-haired Indian men wearing bead work, of all things, and chokers and ribbon shirts, and just so proud to be Indian. That's the way I felt. Because many times when you're homogenized in the military, people would come up and see your brown skin and they'd say, "Oh, you're a Hawaiian." Or, "You're," you know, "Mexican." And so this was a way that there was no compromise on who you were because you were identified as an Indian. Wearing braids, wearing bead work, ribbon shirts, just, I think, the initial identity and initial pride of being an Indian, it came out all of a sudden when you saw these AIM (American Indian Movement) people. You say, "I wanna wear that uniform. I don't want nobody to mistake me for a Mexican or for an Italian or Hawaiian anymore. I want them to say, 'There goes an American Indian.'" And I think that's what really was attractive and really inspiring about AIM as a young person.
I rediscovered what that means when I went to Latin America. To say the word 'Indio' to someone in Latin America, even today, is somewhat derogatory. It used to be way more derogatory. But as people are taking on the Indian identity, that's no longer true. And that used to be true here in America, because colonialism almost succeeded and assimilation and acculturation, the boarding schools, they almost wiped us out. But because of AIM, that culture and that identity … we began to bring out the drum when we went to protest. We didn't just march, we had our drum, and our songs were a prominent part of the movement. And the elders began to teach us.
And even at Wounded Knee, 1973, probably one of our greatest events we had was the reestablishment of the Sun Dance, one of the seven sacred ceremonies of Lakota. Never been danced in that manner, of four days, for almost one hundred years. And we as AIM were a part of that history to reestablish our culture. All these Indian elders came down to support and teach us the meaning of being Indian, not just wearing the beads and the long hair, but what is the real essence of being an Indian. It's our culture. It's identity. It's our relationship to the Creator, to Mother Earth. I think that's the greatest contribution of AIM to the young people, to reestablish our identity and our culture.
One of AIM's first international organizing efforts was what we called "A Trail of Broken Treaties," in 1972. We all went to Washington in a caravan of cars, maybe 150, 200 cars. Beautiful sight at night to see all these cars. And as we were going we would stop in these different towns, you know, and stay overnight. The churches would help us in terms of support for food, and they'd have public forums and we'd speak about Indian issues. We developed this twenty-point solution paper, which is something I as a young person admired about AIM because not only did they protest against the issues that were affecting Indian people, but they always had a solution as part of the answer to the protest. Like, "Well, what is it you want?" "Well, we have this document." So that's what we did in going to Washington, and we built all this national support for Indian people along the way.
And we started to get press in Washington, and then we took over the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) building because government officials weren't cooperating. And one of the BIA employees even brought us a memo that showed the government had, uh, should we say, very specifically told their employees not to meet with us, etcetera. Well, out of that the United States government brought in this Christian priest who was a tribal chairman at Rosebud, South Dakota, not too far from where I'm from, adjacent to Pine Ridge. His name was Webster Two Hawk. And he came in, and he had a collar on, and he was speaking as a national president of what they called the National Tribal Chairman's Association. He came in and held a press conference in Washington, D.C., while we were occupying the building and said we were outside agitators, we were urban Indians, we didn't reflect the true issues of Indian people, and we were not the good Indians.
Indian people who were aligned with the policies of the United States government were many times pushed to the front to condemn AIM as criminals, ex-convicts, outside agitators, urban Indians, and not the good Indians, not the Indians that truly represented Indian life. These were the people that received the funding. These were the people that were promoted by media and government officials. And so they created this image of AIM as militants, revolutionaries — if you will, antigovernment — basically saying that we did not represent Indian people, that we represented a small faction, a fringe element of Indian people. During those times there was a civil rights movement, there was an anti-war movement, so these were tactics that were used throughout society, be they white anti-war organizations, be they Chicano, Hispanic, Brown Berets, the SDS, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, uh, be they people at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. I mean, people who were against government policies … we were all branded as non-representative of America.
But AIM represented primarily the area of treaty rights as the foundation of our legal relationship with the United States. There's no other people in America, no other minorities have land or a legal and political relationship through treaties that Indian people have. And so as Indian movements, primarily AIM, National Indian Youth Council, the west coast fishing rights people, other organizations … all these people represented the conscience of America because we brought the truth about history, about treaty rights, about land, about resources and how the capitalist system has to always put indigenous people aside, or put them out of sight, out of mind, so that they can grab the resources and the land that's needed for this big, should we say, multi-national — how did Eisenhower put it? — the military-industrial complex. So I think those things about indigenous people, the land and the resources, are what drives America. And we brought out the truth of the history, that … how did America get this land? How did America get these resources? It was through the violation of Indian rights, through the violation of Indian treaties. And they started this principle, which is, America had always been known as a place of democracy, but yet, is it only in America that if you steal something and hold onto it long enough, it becomes yours?
These are questions we asked America. We said, "Why is it that we are at the bottom of every social measurement in America?" Be it education level, lifespan of young males, numbers of Indian people in prison, we could go on and on. Housing conditions, whether we had electricity or not, you know. And so all these things were coming during the late '60s, early '70s, and the anti-war and the Civil Rights Movement were bringing these social conditions of minority people to the forefront. AIM and Indian people, we always represented the conscience of America, the very foundation of what America was built on, and I think that was something that American politicians and certainly government officials refused to recognize.
I think Wounded Knee was a major turning point in history of U.S./American Indian relations because it brought out the issue of treaties so very clearly, especially in court. Even the federal court had to recognize the issue of treaties, as to whether or not they even had jurisdiction on a reservation. A treaty is not taken lightly because in the Constitution itself, Article Six, it says treaty law is the supreme law of the land.
I remember as clear as day those first organizing meetings when we weren't even thinking of going into Wounded Knee. It was the elders and the chiefs and headsmen that decided that's where we were going, is Wounded Knee. They said, "We won't be alone there. The spirits of our ancestors are there from 1890," the massacre. And they said, "We're gonna stand on our treaties, we're gonna stand on our legal foundation." This is what the chiefs and the old people kept saying, that our enemy is not the Goons or the BIA police. Our enemy is the United States of America and what they've done to our people. We have to stand on this treaty to give value, to give truth, to give a foundation to our struggle at Wounded Knee.
And so that, I think, was the turning point, that treaties were brought out to help all Indian people. 371 treaties have been signed by the United States and proclaimed by the president, so it became a national movement of treaty recognition, of sovereignty, of self-determination. These are words that came out of the treaty struggle. Nobody talked about that before because the BIA was always our caretaker, our Great White Father. They always had ultimate authority. Once Wounded Knee came, tribal government said, "BIA, you sit over here. We're gonna take some action on our own, be it in education, be it in land development, be it in all the social services." Tribes began to take on more authority, began to stand up.
I was constantly afraid of being arrested or going to prison or even, in Wounded Knee, of being killed. I thought, "Man, I survived Vietnam, and now I'm gonna get killed on my own land, my own reservation." They promoted this image that we had weapons, because, see, the store at Wounded Knee was selling firearms and ammunition without a federal license, but they didn't care. But that came out in the press, and they were reporting Indians with guns, shootings taking place. And there was collaboration between the FBI and what became know as the Goons, or as they say in Central America, the death squads, people who really are not law enforcement officials but are used by law enforcement to terrorize communities. And so here was young men and women who were basically under the influence of the FBI and the BIA police to perpetrate crimes against their own people.
And so through that idea of militancy, shooting between BIA police and occupiers of Wounded Knee, the authorities say, "We gotta have more help." Because of the legal relationship of Indians to the United States government, state officials don't have jurisdiction on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Therefore you have to go into the Major Crimes Acts, the basis of federal jurisdiction. And so they start charging us with these major crimes, using firearms, so you had the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms agency, FBI, U.S. Marshals, Border Patrol, and eventually the 82nd Airborne observers came in there. So all this response was primarily based on the fact that there was guns that were taken out of the Wounded Knee Trading Post and that shots were exchanged between BIA police and the occupiers at Wounded Knee, or AIM. And therefore outside agencies had to be called in to put down this civil disturbance. And with the media in there showing weapons, you know, on the news every night, it just compounded and started to … like a snowball rolling down a hill.
Pretty soon we had all these federal officers from different agencies surrounding us. They had armored personnel carriers, they had military equipment like Huey helicopters, things that I had seen used in Vietnam. And it was amazing the transformation, how this thing expanded into this military stand-off. So when they came with their APCs and all their federal agents, we had no choice. If we don't want to be killed like the last Wounded Knee in 1890, we were gonna go down fighting at least. And so we took the position you either negotiate with us or kill us.
Other movements started bringing in weapons and ammunition to help us, and so it expanded on both sides. But from our perspective primarily on a defensive perspective. We never carried out any operations against the military while we were in Wounded Knee. We could have because a lot of us were Vietnam veterans, a lot of us were veterans from the street. We had nothin' to lose. We were young people, we had no families at the time to worry about back home. We were ex-military, very, very experienced in weapons, very experienced in military tactics. So we were not afraid of these Marshals and FBI from a military perspective. We were very afraid from a legal perspective, of going to prison, going to jail, being on trial, and how we would eventually wind up after the action.
There was over five hundred people arrested. And for myself I was charged with, I think, six different felonies. And so we established the Wounded Knee Legal Defense Offense Committee, and attorneys volunteered throughout American law schools. A lot of the people had experience in these types of issues, the Civil Rights Movement, what it took down South when they had the Freedom Rides … a lot of those same attorneys and young attorneys offered their services free of charge. And so our job as AIM people, once the stand-off was over, was to start organizing community support, organizing witnesses for defendants, organizing evidence, trying to seek out evidence for the trials, trying to get experts in things like treaty law, getting translators for witnesses who spoke primarily Lakota. And some of our people got involved in going out and interviewing neighborhood people as to how they know this witness, etcetera ... so a tremendous amount of organization had to go into this. Meetings constantly, traveling constantly, and at the same time raising money, which you have to have to make all these things go, you know. And so these are the things that we rolled up our sleeves and got into, the basic idea of providing a good defense for all our five hundred defendants.
The leadership trial was the epitome of the Wounded Knee struggle in that it was on the news daily. Important issues that were discussed in the courtroom — treaty rights, firearms, whatever the issues of the day were in the court — were on the national news for almost a year. At the time I know the leadership trial was the longest criminal trial in history of the United States jurisprudence. And so it was, uh, should we say, a media circus as well. And in the American Indian Movement we got to be good at being able to use the media. The media didn't intimidate us; we knew that we had to use that as one of the tools. So we began to do a certain amount of, you might call, street theater to get our point across.
For example, when the elders came to the trials as witnesses on the issues of treaty rights, they came in their full traditional dress: headdress with feathers and buckskin, braids on. And so it was like … the media loved it. Here was these Indians protesting, now they're on trial, and they're dressed like real Indians. There's feathers, there's drums, there's beads. And so the media became, shall we say, inspired by that. They would organize our daily press conferences around having certain props in the room, having the drum. They always loved to have the drum there, you know. Every time you saw something about Wounded Knee on the news they'd always open up with this drum going. And so we used some of the stereotypes of our people to our advantage, to get the message out.
And so if the media wanted to cover us, they had to see the drum. If they wanted to cover us they had to talk to these elders dressed in traditional costume. They were articulate people, maybe even speaking their own language to a translator to show that our people were still following our traditional language and culture. And we also had well-known, nationally prominent attorneys. So here were these Indians and these well-qualified, nationally prominent attorneys takin' on the United States government, and that itself was a story for the media to really wrap their hands around. So all these things were what made the leadership trials very, you might say, flamboyant. They were a hit with America.
Here was where we came to know people like your father, lawyers who were able to not only deal with the criminal charges, but to bring in the issue of putting the government on trial, rather than just a defendant on trial. Who is the real perpetrator of the crime here? Is it someone who's protecting their rights? Or is it government policy? Or is it police brutality? And it takes skillful people, and you realize an important part of the struggle is to be able to transfer that protest into a defense for a client and to use the issue of the protest as a way of putting the government officials and the police on trial as opposed to only a client. To expose what they do to juries. It takes special kind of people to do that, special kind of experience.
And that's where I began to realize how the legal community, men and women lawyers, play such an important role in a democracy, or in a true democracy. To have your day in court but to be well-represented and what that meant, because many public defenders are really dedicated, but a lot of them are only interested in making a deal. Doing their job everyday, get it done as soon as possible, "Let's negotiate." But a real public defender says "Negotiation's out of the question. We're going to trial. If you wanna put my client in jail, you're gonna have to prove it, and you're gonna have to work hard to prove it. You're gonna have to answer ten trial motions even before we get to trial." And so this is the type of legal defense that was developed and I came to realize was part of the movement, a very integral part of the movement.
It's important to remember AIM and Wounded Knee because it was a turning point in the history of the U.S. government-Indian relations in many ways and the fact of the prominence now of treaty rights. And the issues of sovereignty and self-determination are based on treaties. because when Indian people stand on their treaty rights, they're basically telling America that we are nations of people. We're not tribes, we're not movements, we're not labor unions, we're not non-profit organizations. We're nations. That's what Wounded Knee brought to the American Indian and to the American public, was the federal relationship, political and legal relationship that exists, unlike any other minority in America.
Secondly, and probably more importantly, was the issue of Indian pride, that now Indian people were proud to be American Indian. That, along with the movement in education. We now have established an Indian college movement where about thirty-five Indian colleges have been established. We have Indian Studies programs in the universities across America. We have Indian language in elementary, immersion programs for people that are relearning the language of our people. And so all these developments … I think AIM, we can't say we're responsible, but we certainly contributed to the idea that Indian people have the right to self-determination and sovereignty.
Paul and Oriole Redd being filmed; Courtesy of Emily and Sarah Kunstler.
Initially we saw the apartment in the newspaper here in Rye, and my wife called, and they told her they had, uh, this lovely apartment, so we made an appointment to come over. But being not so … slow, we had a white lady come. Lotte Kunstler, Bill Kunstler's wife, and two other ladies—I think Dorothy Sterling was one of them—went to the rental office to identify the fact that there were apartments available. My wife Oriole and I were parked at the Rye railroad station. After they had identified that there was an apartment available, they came out to the rental office and there was a lady sitting in the parking lot. They gave her the signal to come to get us. The lady came out and gave us a signal, we drove over to the manager's office and asked for an apartment. And he said he had just rented the apartment to those ladies. They said, “Well, we know the Redds need it more than we do and we would be glad to relinquish it to them.” He refused to give it to us. We then had witnesses that he refused to give it to us. We then filed charges with the State Division of Human Rights.
It was in the newspaper a lot, and on the radio, and so people were interested. And we'd get calls from people who wanted to know, What did we want to move into some place that nobody wanted us? We had people who called and said, uh, “I know where you can find an apartment in Scarsdale, New Rochelle, a house.” And we said that is not the issue. The issue is that Oriole's family had been here since 1879, and Oriole and I had a right to live in Rye if that's where we wanted to live and we could afford to do so. And, uh, some of them just simply did not like it.
Every night they used to call for something. They wanna know, uh, “Why you niggers wanna live in a, in an all-white neighborhood? What do you ... they don't want you there. What are you doing there?” Um, “Go to Harlem, or go wherever.” And, um, they just use all kinda words. Uh, Oriole got most of those because I'd be out working or someplace.
Well, we got it from people all over, you know, uh, even from black people who didn't understand why we were applying and were putting up the fight. Because they, just like some whites, believed that if people don't want you someplace, why should you go there? They felt like we were creating a situation of moving in someplace that, uh, we weren't wanted, and, and really had no right to be there. But we believed that we had a right to be here, as American citizens. And when we are standing in the middle of that, that is, uh ... very ... a thing that really, uh, makes you feel bad, because you really wonder, Am I doing the right thing or am I not doing the right thing?
For example, some people said, “Why do you put your kids through this?” See, mind you, during that time, I think my daughter was like nine years old and my son was like four or four and a half. And they said, “I understand what you're doing, but I wouldn't put my kids through that kind of thing.” And we thought about that, too, but we felt like we had to do what we had to do. And our kids caught, um, hell sometimes right here. There were a couple of kids that would play with 'em, and then some wouldn't. So they really had ... I would say they probably caught it worse than we did because the adults, they either would speak to you or not speak to you and just keep on going, you know. But the kids, they're the ones that had to ... Oriole used to take the kids out someplace else to play. You know.
My kids went through school in Rye, and I've learned later, since they're grown, a lot of things that they went through that I just did not know at the time. For example, my son and a white boy were in line, and they did like kids do, push each other. Uh, they took my son to the principal's office and jumped all over him and just left the white kid alone. And that's just one incident. There were a lot of things that went on that I learned later, uh, through my kids, who didn't complain then about it.
Uh, my daughter came home and told us a story about, she was out at the playground playing, and said the, uh, she was sliding down the sliding board and the kids were throwing rocks at her, telling her to get out of the park. So her mother asked her, “What'd you do, Paula?” She says, “I told 'em I had a right to be there as much as they did,” and she said, “I just ducked 'em and kept on slidin.'” And we thought that was great for a nine-year-old.
Paul and Oriole Redd; Courtesy of Emily and Sarah Kunstler.
Filmmakers: Did you have a sense when you were fighting for this house that this was something that was not only for you but for other people as well?
Paul Redd: We had hoped so. We had hoped that our fight for, uh, the right for a person to live where they could afford to live, uh, that this would do it. It didn't do anything. Because we've been here since December, 1962 … they're still no blacks in this complex of 156 units. I'm still mad as hell. I'm just trying to be calm right now, but I'm mad as hell about how the change is. If you'd ever read my columns in my newspaper you'd find out that I am still mad as hell. Um, I remember some lady was telling me about … it takes time. I said, “You want me to wait for something that you've been enjoying all your life.” Um, my mother-in-law died at ninety-nine, and she was discriminated all her life, and it looks like I'm going to die before blacks ever achieve total freedom and equality. So, am I discouraged? I am very angry about the way America treats blacks.
What needs to be done, in my opinion, are these so-called liberal politicians, who claim that they believe in total freedom and equality, need to speak out so their neighbors will know what they feel about it. They give us a lot of lip-service, and they want us to vote for them and all, but they're afraid to even let their neighbor know that they believe in total equality. And that's on the white side.
The blacks need to speak out more, the black politician needs to speak out more, and push legislation that helps them. They are just as bad—if a black does not speak out on discrimination, then why should a white feel that they should speak out? Most of the blacks in this country who are elected, are elected by a majority of blacks in the community they live in. There are very few blacks that are in elected office that are elected in, uh, districts that are majority white. You could practically name 'em. Like, uh, Senator Obama, that's the whole state of Illinois. But you only got one black senator. Um, just about everybody else that's elected in Congress, they're elected from majority minority districts. And that's throughout this whole country. So they need to step up to the plate themselves, instead of being worried about whether they're gonna be reelected. They are elected to represent us, and many of them are not representing us. So if they're not representing us, the whites feel like, if blacks don't open their mouths, why should I stick my neck out? And then what we need is more honest politicians to speak out against racism and discrimination. It's the only way we gonna be able to stop it.
Filmmakers: What do you say to people who think that equal rights have been achieved already, that the civil rights movement was victorious and that, you know, that we've made it?
Paul Redd: Well, some people probably do think they've made it because they have the money and, uh, they're just doing their own things. Some blacks are doing alright, but some blacks have always done alright. But if you just look out here and see, every day you can see people who are being discriminated against for one reason or another. There's still blacks out there ... blacks still compile the largest, uh, number of people who have been out of a job. And why is that? Everybody else who come here, illegals, they're here, they can get jobs. They talk about, uh, jobs that Americans won't take, and you go into diners in this county … How many blacks have you ever seen being a waiter or waitress in a diner or in the fine restaurants in New York City? So those are jobs we never had in the first place. So don't tell me I don't want those jobs, I've never had the opportunity to have those jobs. And that really makes me angry.
It's not just blacks that are being discriminated. It's, uh, the poor are still being discriminated against, the immigrants are being discriminated against, a whole host of people being discriminated against. And those people who think that the … that we have made it are fools. Because all they have to do is just one time to go to the wrong place.
That's happened to me now, you can still see it right here in Rye. I go to the diner, the White Plains diner, not too long ago, sat down at the counter, and the waitress was in the back. And a white guy came up and sat at the counter ... I knew I had a problem. The minute he sat down, I knew I had a problem. And she came out of the back, she went right to the white man. I said, Why didn't you ask who was first? The woman looked at me like I was crazy. I became the person who was causing trouble because I asked her why didn't she ask who was next. If there're two white people standing there and they go to one, and the other one says, “Oh, I was here first,” they say, “Oh, I'm sorry,” and they go to that one. But when I say I was there first, then they look at you like, So what? So she came over and took my order, then went over and took the white person's order. And guess whose order came out first? Two hamburgers ... whose order came out first? The white guy's came out first. And so they get you one way or the other. Don't that make you mad? You better believe that makes you awful mad. Ain't nothing you can do about it ... but create a situation. They call the police on you, the police beat you up because they say you were creating a disturbance, so you lost all the way around. And it keeps happening and happening. That's black rage.
A lot of people do not understand that, that sometimes, sometimes it tips a wire which makes you act, to everybody outside, like you're crazy. You're not crazy. It means that you had enough. Fanny Lou Hamer coined the phrase, “I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired.”
Filmmakers: Do you think it's important that people remember what happened here?
Paul Redd: Oh, yes, I think it's important that people know what happened. Sometimes I wonder, you know, that people don't want to hear about this, but I think it's important. It doesn't seem to have helped this place, uh, integrate, but I think it's important for people to know some of the things that we've gone through, so hopefully they won't have to repeat some of it. Hopefully if another black tried to apply for an apartment here they will remember the fight that they had to try to keep people out and that since we've been here we didn't burn the place down. And, uh, ... that we want the same thing that any other person wants, and that is a safe place to raise our family. Which was all we wanted in the beginning. When we got here that's what we did. Our kids are grown and out on their own. And the place was not burned down.
Yusef Salaam: So it was a normal day. I came home from school and found out that the officers were searching for us, me and some other individuals. And I didn't know why they were searching for us, but I was walking around with Corey Wise and subsequently told him, "You know, look, we should go to the cops and tell them that we didn't do anything, and they would stop looking for us because we didn't do anything." And eventually that's what we did, and we found out that we were very naive to think that the officers would believe us because as soon as we told them who we were they told us that we were basically going downtown to be questioned. Well, we looked at it from the perspective of us being arrested and not just, "Would you like to … do you have a problem going downtown with us to answer some questions?" We didn't think we had a choice, you know.
I remember falling asleep. I remember knowing, just based on my own body and my own sense of time, that many hours had gone by. The officers left me in the room many times for hours by myself, so I would fall asleep and wake up. I just remember feeling extremely tired. I was hungry … it almost felt like an altered state of reality. I don't think I ate anything that night until some time the next day. Whatever was going on, I had never experienced anything like that before, you know.
I didn't know what to think. I mean, I didn't know what was going on. I really didn't understand the depth of the situation, you know. And it wasn't until … I think it really wasn't until we actually got convicted that it sank in. Because up until that time I still in many ways believed in the justice system. I believed that the system would work. I believed that, you know, somewhere along the line they would see that we were actually innocent, and that we would be let go, you know. But, that's not what happened.
The Filmmakers: What do you remember of your trial?
Salaam: Uh, that it was long. (Laughs) I couldn't understand why this system would operate in such a way that you had to really prove that you were innocent, instead of being seen first as innocent. But to me the trial wasn't just in the courtroom. The trial was also on the train going to the courtroom, it was walking around my neighborhood on the weekends, it was walking around anywhere.
I remember one time I was downstairs around my neighborhood and an elderly black woman, you know, she, she looked at me, and it was almost like one of those Malcolm X movie pieces where Malcolm X was walking to the Audubon Ballroom, and he stopped on the corner and the woman was looking at him and said, "I recognize you. You're Malcolm X. Keep on doin' what you're doin'," you know. And so this elderly black woman looked at me and said, "I recognize you. You're Yusef Salaam." And I kinda felt like, well, at least she may, you know, be one of my supporters or something like that. Um, especially a woman who has lived, you know, for some time and probably has experienced a lot of the things that have gone on, like the untold story of Emmitt Till and all of that, you know, just all of the injustices that have happened. And I was so shocked, I mean my face must have dropped, because the next thing she said to me was, "Why did you do that to that woman?" You know. And there was nothing that I could say to her to make her realize that I didn't do anything to the woman.
The media portrayed me as, like, a demon. I was … I was that person who was the worst person that ever lived, who needed to be disposed of, you know. So much so that common citizens, before the trial had even started … like Donald Trump, took out full page ads in some of the major newspapers. I believe he paid with his own money, um, calling for the death penalty to be reinstated specifically for our case. People wanted us to be hanging from a tree by the end of the day, you know, in Central Park, so that their idea of justice could be served.
I mean, I don't know how else to describe it other than they painted a picture of us that was so terrible that anyone who saw it would believe exactly what they wrote, you know. And many times those individuals who read those papers and watched those TV shows believed just that. They believed that we were everything they had said we were. And it wasn't until, um, thirteen years later that they realized— or I shouldn't even say that they realized because there are still a lot of folks who are still on the fence as to whether we were guilty or innocent of these crimes— but it wasn't until thirteen years later that we were vindicated of that.
When I first went to prison some of the inmates came up to me and said, "Man, when we heard you were here we thought that we were going to be seeing this big gorilla-looking person," you know. Back then I must have been maybe 175 pounds. I still was about this tall, about six-three, but I was about 175 pounds. And to them, and to others who saw me on the streets prior to me getting, uh, convicted, it was like … his- his appearance doesn't match what we see in the papers. People who knew me, who went to school with me, you know, a lot of them were like, "Yusef, what they're saying that he did, that's not even … that's not him." You know, "We know Yusef, we've known him for years. This, this … this description of what they're saying is not something that he would do," you know.
I mean, it was rough. Um, being in prison at such a young age and growing up in prison is difficult in that young people, when they're growing up, they think that they're adults. They already think, you know, "Hey, I'm fifteen years old, I can make decisions for myself. I'm an adult," you know, so forth and so on. It's not until you become an adult and have children of your own that you realize that, wow, I was a child, you know. But growing up in … I'd say, missing a lot of what normal people would do, you know, going to a prom, uh, graduating from high school, um, first years in college and things of that nature, um, … I don't have any experience like that. But it's not like I missed it because I don't know what it's like to actually have gone through it in the first place.
While I was in prison a lot of the officers would tell me, "Man, we wish we had all of our inmates like you. The prison would be a lot easier to deal with," you know. (Laughs.) But there was a lot of crazy, a lot of horrific things going on. I mean, I have children myself now and it's like, I can't imagine something happening to them and me not being able to defend them, and that's the position that you're put in, you know. You have no control. No … no say. You don't have anything to do with what happens to them. And you are still their parent, you know, "I'm supposed to be able to do something," but you can't.
Courtesy of Emily and Sarah Kunstler.
I've always held the belief that when you go to prison your whole family goes to prison, you know. A lot of times the parents and loved ones go through a worse prison because they're not inside. They're not behind the walls, so all of the horror stories and the crazy things that are going on in other prisons become like, "Man, is it gonna happen to my child?" So they go through a, uh … to me a more stressful time, a more anxious time, a more scary time, because they don't know, like … once they leave their child, they're leaving them alone again, you know.
I remember there were times when I was in prison, and I may have been on a phone call, the San Quentin yard or something like that, and I'm on the phone and I see somebody creepin' up on somebody else and then stickin' them with an ice pick, you know. And my immediate thought was, wow, what if they were on the phone with their daughter, their mom, their sister, their brother or whoever they were on the phone with, you know, and all of a sudden the line is not dead but they don't know what's going on on the other end, you know? But I was in a position where, fortunate for me, I was able to see the things that were happening to other inmates and those things weren't happening to me. Um, the part that I didn't know until I came home was the … like, people were sending threatening letters, you know, death threats, you know, wishing that something terrible or evil would happen to me while I was in prison, you know. Um, telling my mom that when I come home that I was gonna be killed and things of that nature, you know.
I knew of people who went to prison for a one- to three-year bid who never came home because they were murdered in prison, you know. I also knew people personally who went to prison for crimes that they committed and who are still in prison because they were put in positions to have to defend themselves or they committed more crimes while they were in prison, you know, so they had time added to the time that they had. And the reason why I said that … it might have worked out differently in my case had a person like Bill Kunstler not been my lawyer or had my mom not been there. If they see you out there by yourself … like, flip the story around and say, "Central Park Jogger Case: Yusef Salaam," and there's nobody behind him. That becomes a completely different picture, you know, because then you're left out there for anything to happen to you. Where because I had all of these individuals behind me, people would think twice and say, "Wait," you know, "if we let the inmates beat them up," you know, uh, "his mom is gonna be up here tomorrow," you know. "Bill Kunstler is gonna get wind of it," you know. (Laughs.) Somethin'. "We … we're gonna catch hell for allowing something to go down." So it's almost like you begin to walk on eggshells around me, you know.
I remember my mom came to visit me once and she asked me, "What can I do to make the time easier and better," and, you know, "so that you can deal with it easier." And at that point in time I felt like I was in a very bad situation, but I was alive, you know. I was able to think on my own, and I was able to be okay, I was still able to read books and I had my family members coming to see me. And I looked around and I said, man, there were so many people who don't have that. There are so many people in prison who have never gotten a visit, who have never gotten a letter, who have never gotten a phone call. And that in itself creates a completely different kind of individual, you know. But for me it was like, we need to help them, you know. And from that my mom took it upon herself to create a organization called "People United for Children."
Well, part of what they started doing was going into the prisons, and it was this idea that when Yusef's mom and her organization came, just for that moment, or for those few hours, it's going to be like Thanksgiving. And that's exactly what it was. You know, when they came people were … I mean prison food is some of the worst food … I can't even … I don't know if you've ever seen it, tasted it. It's some of the worst food in the world. But when you put that side by side with my mother coming by, and you're having real cornbread, you know, you're having real fried chicken, baked chicken, real collard greens, you know, uh, real cakes, just stuff that we hadn't had in so long, in years. You know, when Thanksgiving comes around in prison they don't give you anything special. You might get sweet potato, but it's not going to be sweet potato made and cooked in a way that you know. It's probably going to be a can of sweet potato slopped on your plate, you know? I looked at what my mom was able to do and the experience that we had as inmates on the inside and began to realize that on the streets, like, when I came home, there was still a lot of things going on, there was still a lot of work to be done, you know.
And part of my activism came about from realizing that it's not enough for me to get a job, sit behind a desk and make money, if I can't use my situation, my case, to impact the lives of others, you know, and teach them and help them and give them some type of experience. There's a lot of fifteen-year-olds now that I see, and I'm looking at them and I'm like, wow, was I acting like that, you know, when I was that age? There are so many people that are walking around very unaware, very naïve, you know, and it's unfortunate for them that some of them will have to go through what they call … a baptism by fire.
Courtesy of Emily and Sarah Kunstler.
You know, a lot of times people don't truly understand the seriousness of what they are doing. I remember one time listening to a rap artist who has since passed away, his name was Biggie Smalls. This rap artist said, "This song is for all those folks who called the cops on me because I was outside selling drugs so that I could feed my daughter." And it's like, it's not right to sell drugs, you know? But at the same time, some folks think that that's the only option they have. When I was in prison one of the books that I read was the autobiography of Malcolm X. And Malcolm said something like, you know, if you were out here selling drugs, with a little more education, you could become a chemist. If you know how to manipulate what you have to create something else, if you are out here pimping, and so forth and so on, with a little more education you can become an organizer of the masses. You know, if you are out here doing whatever, you can take that negative and make it a positive, and be a productive citizen, as opposed to something else.
But a lot of people don't realize that they have that … I don't want to say that they have that opportunity. They're almost … they have already been sold up the river. So when they try to fight for something for themselves, they are fighting from the bottom going uphill. And this uphill … it's almost like, I don't know if you have been around here in the wintertime, but if they don't clean the streets and the streets ice over, everybody would slide from Broadway to Riverside, you know, because it's a very steep slope. And that's the same type of battle that people are fighting. They're fighting this not only uphill battle, they're fighting this uphill battle where, if the people at the top look and see that you are making any, um, advances, they'll, like, put a little oil out there for you, throw a banana over here so that you could slip … hopefully you'll fall right back down to the bottom. And, I mean, that same idea has kind of like been my case, where I feel that if they could, if the system could, the system would try to put me in a position to be back in prison.
I definitely think race played a big part in the case, you know, 'cause even in our history where there have been individuals who were white who raped white women, the attention that they got wasn't as great unless they were known people. But people who come from a background … who aren't in a position financially or in a position in terms of what people would call classwise, um, it becomes a real big problem, you know. And at the same time, once they can connect such a devious and heinous crime to what they look at as the underbelly of society, those individuals that really don't matter, it becomes even worse. It becomes, "Not only did we tell you you shouldn't trust them, but here is further evidence, you know, to prove that these individuals are not to be trusted, that they are the worst people in the world," and so forth and so on. They paint the picture, and then they put the individuals in play, almost like on a chessboard. Somebody else is moving us around the board, and we don't have control over that, you know.
I mean, to back up a bit, the pictures and the portrayals of me in the media were such where they chose the tallest person in the group, who was me, presumably the darkest person in the group, who was me, and almost made me out to be the ringleader. They wanted all of the negative and foul and harmful things to happen to me, but here I came through that fire. In the Koran it says that they threw Abraham in the fire, but God is in control of everything in this world and outside the world, so God told the fire to be cool and safe for Abraham, and Abraham came out of the fire. Which, I mean, I work at a hospital and I see people who are burn victims, and fire is not a friend, you know. He came out unharmed, you know, it was almost as if someone just blew some air on him and he was alright.
I think that the legacy that Bill Kunstler has left in terms of me being an activist is one that … his fights and his struggles were, or became, also my fights and my struggles. You know, any time you have injustice, or anytime you're faced with any kind of injustice and you're in a position to do something, you have to do something, you know. I mean, part of the religion that I follow states that if you see a wrong, you should change it in one of three ways. If you can, you should change it with your hand. But if you can't do that, then you should speak out against it. And if you can't do that, then you should hate it within your heart. You know, so you realize that you're connected. You are a person just like they are people, and if you have the opportunity to speak up a little louder because of who you are, then you should use that, you know.
Filmmakers: What was it like for you to have the conviction vacated?
Salaam: It was almost like I was being wakened up from a nightmare, you know. Um, even now there's still … I say that justice still hasn't been served. Because when you take things away from someone and you don't put something back, there is this void that needs to be filled, you know. For years there was, like, I had difficulty getting jobs, you know. I had difficulty taking care of my … my family. It's like, I would meet people and I would have to tell them at some point in time, um, "By the way, there's something that happened in my past that I was innocent of, but this is who I am," you know. And some people didn't want to be friends with me anymore, and other folks, it made the bond closer and tighter, you know. But to be at that point in my life when the vindications were coming down was like, I didn't have to say anything anymore. You know, it was no longer, "Yeah, I'm Yusef Salaam, from the Central Park jogger case." It was like, "Hey, man, this is what happened to me, and that was me." And, you know, it was a very happy time, um, like I say, I still haven't been able to really, uh, celebrate that vindication, you know. Because it's still a struggle, you know. It's still rough.
It's still a struggle because, you know, when you're not in a position financially to make an impact on your family, to put yourself in a, in a state of being financially independent. Because, every time you go for a job interview or go anywhere … like right now, I'm vindicated of the Central Park Jogger case, but you can still put my name in Google (laughs), you know, and, and not only will photos come up, the case will come up, everything will come up. So there's this, this, um, cloud, this dark cloud, so to speak, hanging over my head. During the trial, for I believe it was a whole year and a half, we were in the media. They kept that story alive and fresh in the minds of people in New York City and the surrounding areas. But when we got vindicated, it was like, a story here and then it was gone. People still today, you know, … I may meet some folks who may not be aware and they don't know that I was vindicated. There should be as much attention, or should have been as much attention brought to the vindication and then to be able to, uh, repair the damage that was done, so that I would be okay, you know. But, it's almost like only through the grace of God am I okay.
A lot of people say to me, "I'm surprised you're still sane," you know. (Laughs.) Um, because they look at it from the perspective of … it would have been debilitating for them. They would have lost their minds. You know a lot of people when I was in prison did lose their minds. You know, I met folks who may have had a little bit of time to do, or a lot of time to do, and to see that time become a reality for them. It was almost like they're ... it's almost like you see somebody smiling one day and then the next day they had a stroke, you know. That was the difference between them being okay and all of a sudden them being not okay. And, you know, they can't take a pill to be okay again, you know. There was a … there's a lot that needs to be done, you know.
I think now I'm less afraid that it could happen again, although I know that anything can happen. But the difference between now and then is that now I am a person who is aware of the reality of where I am, whereas before I was a person who was very naïve, who believed in the justice system, who believed, you know, that things worked. You know, you could never tell me or pay me enough to have me believe that you could pay off a person, bribe a judge and, and, things like that. I would never have believed you before now, you know, but having that bit of understanding gives me an edge in a way because now I know that in raising my children, in speaking to others, that there is something that they need to know. People need to be educated about the law, because it is not enough to say, "Well, I just don't think that that's right." You need to be able to understand what the law says, why it's stated that way, the implications of it, to be able to deal. Because there are a lot of folks who have used the law and bent it here and there, and still been, so to speak, looking like they are doing things legally, when in fact you know they probably aren't.
Filmmakers: What is it that you would like to be known for?
Salaam: It's hard to introduce yourself and say, you know, as a … an identifier from the Central Park Jogger case, because people automatically know exactly who you are. But it would be good to be known as a person who's a good person, you know. Known as a person who's a good father, you know. Known as a person who has ideas and thoughts, and, and … who's trying to make a difference, you know.
Photo courtesy of the filmmakers.
So, the plans were to have um, a lot of music, uh, there would be rock bands playing while they were making speeches at the Convention Center, uh, to have booths around with information on the draft, information on drugs, um, it was, uh, ... sort of a premonition of what Woodstock turned out to be, you know. A "festival of life" is what we were calling it, to oppose the Democrats', uh, festival of death. And the reason we went there and not the Republican Convention in Miami was, well, first of all, it was off-season, and who wants to go to Miami off-season? Uh, but it was a bipartisan war and we felt that it was under the Democrats' watch then, and so it was more appropriate to go to Chicago.
And, you know, we tried to get permits for the revolution and, uh, were unsuccessful. I mean, literally we tried to get permission for young people to sleep in the park … it has been granted before to the Boy Scouts. Uh, but when we went to try and get permits, we went to see Mayor Daly, we were instead shunted to his assistant, David Stahl, and, um, he asked me at one point, "Come on, what are you guys really going to do in Chicago?" And I said: "Did you see 'Wild in the Streets'?" which was a movie about, um, young people dropping LSD into the water supply and taking over Washington and lowering the voting age to fourteen. And, so, uh, the Mayor's assistant said to me, "'Wild in the Streets'? We've seen 'Battle of Algiers,'" which was a black-and-white documentary-style film by, uh, Costa Gravis, about the Algerian War. And there was one scene where a woman, wearing a chador— just her eyes were showing— and she walked past the border guards smuggling in a bomb, which they showed, and uh, was going to leave it in the cafe, and the camera panned around and you could see the face of innocent children eating their ice cream. And so, this meant that was what was going to happen in Chicago was, uh, our mythology clashing with their mythology. And so, uh, they were prepared for the worst and we were prepared for the best.
We had, um, a band from Detroit on the first Sunday there, the MC5, and in the middle of that the police raided the whole scene with, uh, tear gas. And another time there was just a peaceful demonstration and they just tear-gassed people, uh, and one after another there was provocation like that, which ended in what was officially labeled, um, as a police riot. I was recently at a college and somebody asked me, you know, "Well, weren't the police provoked?" And other people, young people in the audience, you know, tried to shut him up, and I said, "No no, that's a fair question." You know, "Let him talk." And then I assured him, I said, "Look, don't worry, nobody is going to taser you." And so, um, I, I made the point that the police were provoked by police provocateurs who pulled down the flag, who cursed the cops, threw, uh, rocks at them, and at the particular event in Grant Park that triggered, uh, the police riot. So I explained that to him.
And my feeling always is that when the police attack indiscriminately and then don't arrest the people that they've knocked down to the ground, it's, it is really just sadism. And there was a lot of that. And I think it was on a deeper level than, uh, … because they resented, um, … These were mainly white cops in Chicago who weren't concerned about their kids growing up to be Black Panthers, but they were concerned that they, uh, would be influenced by us fun-loving folks, uh, you know, to smoke pot, to practice free love until it was perfect, to, uh, you know … they didn't like the music, uh, so we represented a cultural threat to them in that sense.
Uh, the Yippies, uh, were the Youth International Party and it was an organic collection, coalition—willing— of stoned hippies and, uh, straight politicos and they began to sort of cross-fertilize at various civil rights demonstrations and anti-war rallies and, uh, a kind of new breed came out of that which was stoned politicos. At first there was an adversarial relationship, uh, 'cause the straight politicos thought that the hippies were being irresponsible by not getting involved in the anti-war movement, and the hippies thought that the straight politicos were, uh, playing into the hands of the administration by even recognizing the war. But then, um, as there was this intermingling, the straight politicos saw that the hippies, if they were at a smoke-in in the park, were, uh, committing an act of civil disobedience to protest an unjust law. And the hippies, as they learned more, uh, realized that there was a linear connection between, um, busting kids and making them go to prison in this country for smoking flowers and, um, dropping napalm on kids on the other side of the world. And what that connection was was that, uh, it was the ultimate extension of dehumanization, but there was definitely that link. And so that was, as a journalist I knew there had to be a 'who,' 'what,' 'when,' 'where,' and 'why' for the lead paragraph, and so I came up with that name for that purpose. So they would have a 'who,' and that's what happened. After our first press conference one of the Chicago papers had a headline saying: "Yipes! The Yippies are coming." So, um, now it would be called branding.
Um, humor was an integral part of the Yippies because, first of all, it feels good to laugh. It feels good to make people laugh. Uh, people don't like to be lectured at, and so uh, if you make them laugh, that means they've accepted, for that moment, the truth that you've just told without it being forced down their throat. And, um, it was as much a part of our activities as music was. You know, it was just integral. Um, it was, uh, what Emma Goldman said, "If I can't dance, I don't want your revolution," or something to that effect.
The Filmmakers: What are your recollections of the trial?
Krassner: Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed in the courtroom, um, before I testified because they have the right to exclude potential witnesses. And so the first time I was actually in court was when I testified. And I, I had brought, uh, a few tabs of LSD with me, uh, because I thought we would have a party, and I realized that things were just too tense, too intense to, uh, to have an acid party. Um, but, at the lunch table, when they were passing around a chunk of hash, I decided to take, uh, one little tablet of 300 micrograms of Owsley acid, for those who are brand-name conscious.
And so, um, Abbie said, he looked at me and said, "Is that acid?" And I said, "Yeah." He said, "I don't think that's a good idea." And Jerry Rubin said, "Oh, I think you should do it." I think he was just advertising his book, 'Do It,' at every opportunity.
And, but, um, I ignored both of them and took it, and, um, when I testified … well, I was in the witness room when it began to hit me and everything was swirling around, and, uh, Tom Hayden and Jerry Rubin came to bring me in the courtroom. So at that point it was Looney Tunes, and I was being brought into the courtroom by Tom and Jerry. And, uh, the furniture was kind of dancing around in nice gay pastel colors, uh, Judge Julius Hoffman looked very much like Elmer Fudd, and, um, when the bailiff, who was sort of like Goofy, um, said, (in the voice of cartoon character) "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" (In his normal voice) And um, I said, "No." And um, everybody looked at me, you know, the jury, the spectators, the courtroom artists, and you know, like, "What's he going to do now?" And I looked at me, "What am I going to do now?"
And it was a leap of faith, because the cell of my brain that was awake in junior high school, um, in a civics class when we learned about the Bill of Rights … and, um, I found myself saying, "I choose to affirm, as is my right under the First Amendment, um, which guarantees separation of church and state." And so the judge, Elmer Fudd, said, (in the voice of a Elmer Fudd) "Let him affirm. Let him resort to the goddamn Constitution if that's what he wants ...," you know, "... you pesky radicals." So that leap of faith was justified, but I, I … the acid began to get stronger and stronger, and now I had to psych myself up to do this.
Uh, the previous night I would imagine the prosecutor saying to me: "Now, where did this meeting take place?" And I would say, uh, hoping … hoping not to be able to answer because the reason I took the acid was twofold. I, uh, I wanted to vomit in court, and I knew that eating a big meal with acid would … would do the trick. And so, um, I would say, "This meeting took place …," and "Blaaaaa ..." And, uh, you know, they would say, "Bailiff, get him out of here!" and I would get one more projectile onto the judge's, uh, podium, "Blaa...," and they would drag me out, and I would have made my theatrical statement about the injustice of the trial. So that was my plan. Um, but, um, there were questions crossed at me, and I was waiting, and I didn't … I felt great, I don't know why-- maybe just saying no to swearing on the Bible, uh, was a liberating thing and took away all the tension—but, um, you know, sometimes when you want to throw up, you just can't. That's … that's the breaks of the game.
So I was answering questions, okay, but then there were dates and names and places, which I hadn't … it was like a history exam, and I didn't want to mention them in the first place. So, um, now they said, "Where did this meeting take place on Aug 23rd?" or whatever it was. And I, uh, couldn't think of the name 'Chicago.' You know, it's simple now, and Abbie was kinda going, like, "three syllables," you know, as if it was a game of charades. And, uh, the bailiff ran up to him and said, "No coaching from the audience." And anyway, um, um, Bill Kunstler, uh, did a wonderful job of tolerating what I was doing there. And he would say, "He may need to refresh his memory, Your Honor."
And, uh, anyway ... uh, Abbie stopped speaking to me for almost a year because he thought I was being, um, irresponsible. And in a way I could see it from their point of view, you know. They were facing years in prison, and … but Abbie had the previous night said, "There's nothing you can say that will help us, it can only hurt us because we've mentioned you at all these meetings and we just need you to verify it." And they were different from what I had known as a participant and as a reporter, but I had to, um, commit perjury in order to, uh, verify what they had already testified and give these false dates, and so … which I thought I could avoid by vomiting, and, … uh, so let's see, what did I leave out here?
Uh, of course I felt bad. I felt bad that it interfered with my friendship with Abbie. Um, and I felt bad that I was kind of ostracized from the others, the other defendants, and, um … but, you know, it was a lesson to have more empathy than I must have had during that trial.
Filmmakers: What was the significance of the trial at the time?
Krassner: Um, ... the trial had a different significance for the prosecution, which was to have scapegoats. Originally there were something like twenty-one that were charged with conspiracy to cross state lines. I was among them, and they cut it down to eight because eight police had been, uh, subpoenaed. And so I guess that was the scales of justice trying to be balanced. But Bill Kunstler told me, he said that their records showed that I was not … that I was an un-indicted co-conspirator because to have me on trial, they were afraid that I would use the First Amendment— freedom of the press— defense, and so, um, I was off the list. And also, they, in Chicago, uh, the defendants like Jerry and Abbie and Tom Hayden, they all got arrested during the convention, and so that made it easier to somehow imply that they deserved to be arrested.
Courtesy of the filmmakers.
I mean, they arrested Abbie for having "Fuck" written on his forehead. And, uh, I was in having breakfast with him at a hotel restaurant there, and he had made the mistake of tipping his hat in the morning to the cops who were following us all the time. And, um, so that was his mistake, and so they came into the restaurant and said, "Lift up your hat." So Abbie did, there was the word "Fuck," and they arrested him. And Abbie was struggling, saying "No, no, it's the duty of a revolutionist to finish breakfast." But they took him anyway, and I had to finish his breakfast.
Filmmakers: What was the surveillance by the cops like at the time?
Krassner: Well, um, we were in Lincoln Park, this is before the convention started, and we saw, uh, people just watching us, you know, a lot of people, just out of curiosity and, uh, to see these freaks in action. And I knew there must have been plainclothes cops there too, so I said, "Let's get in the car and see if any guys in suits get up and follow us." And so, um, we got in this car— I think there were like five, six, seven of us—and, um, sure enough, two guys in suits got up and got in the car and it looked like they were following us. And finally, when there was no question about it— we stopped and they stopped across the street— we got out and said, "Are you guys following us?" And they said, "Yeah." And, uh, we said, "Are you federal or painclothes?" "We're plainclothes police from the Chicago Police Department, and you're under surveillance for twenty-four hours." And I said, "Wow! Three shifts just for us!" you know, and the cops said, "No, uh, we're short on manpower, so there are two shifts, twelve hours each." And I said, "Well, it's nice just to be nominated."
And so, um, then they introduced themselves, you know, we shook hands with them. We said, "This is Abbie, this is Paul, this is Jerry," um, and, uh, we shook hands with them. They said, "Oh, I'm Herbie, this is Mack." But then this … because this conversation had been started and it was two-way, and now they said to us, "Aren't you guys tired? You know, aren't you gonna have lunch? We've been following you for an hour now." And so, um, we said "Okay, well, we're new in Chicago. What's a good restaurant?" And one cop said, "I would recommend the Pickle Barrel on North Wells Street in Old Town. They have pretty good food." And the other cop said, "Yes, and their prices are quite reasonable." It was like being in a commercial of the future when all of the authority figures were police, and so, you know, (in an authoritative voice) "Ask your doctor … or else!" And so, um, I said, "Well, uh, what's the best way to get there? We're new in town," and the cop said, "Well, follow us." And this was a, a rare moment, it should have been stored in amber for future generations to see, and, um, so we followed them and got to the restaurant. We sat at separate tables. I think that is what Martha Stewart says, you should sit at separate tables when you are having lunch with the police who are following you.
Filmmakers: What wisdom do you have to share with the next generation of activist dissidents, rebels, nonconformists?
Krassner: Um ... whenever I think about what advice I have for, um, young rebels and iconoclasts and dissidents today, I always feel that I should ask what advice they have for me because they are living in a different era now. You know, they have the Internet, which we didn't have, we had messy mimeograph machines. And the Internet has changed the nature of protest. Instead of getting messy mimeograph ink on you, uh, you just, um, click, send, and, uh, you don't have to distribute a flyer from door to door or at demonstrations, um, so it's cheaper, you reach more people, and quickly, instantly. And so, uh, you know, I have advice for anybody, like, uh, if you're going to a restaurant and order a club sandwich, be sure to take the toothpick out before you bite into it.
And then the philosophy can come, and then, um, the action based on the philosophy. But it has to do with an awareness that when you begin to trust the government, I think it's important to realize that the function of the government is to act as a buffer between the status quo and the force of evolution. And so, you know, you can work with them, but you have to know that they have their own agenda, which is to get reelected and to maintain power. And they will make all sorts of compromises like that. The most recent one I can think of is, the Democrats got some Republicans to vote for the children's healthcare bill by authorizing twenty-eight million dollars for their abstinence programs. So, uh, you know, that's the kind of compromise I'm talking about. And it's a compromise of principle. It's not about negotiation or diplomacy in the purest sense, it's just, uh, mutual bribery.
Ramsey Clark: The one case in our lives that Bill and I worked on together most closely and for the longest period of time was the Attica Prison rebellion case. And we worked over a period of, it must have been—not including the appeal—several years, and we were working night and day. Our major involvement became indictment number one. There were a whole string of indictments, maybe thirty-seven, I don't remember how many. But, indictment number one was the only indictment for the death of a guard or any other person other than a prisoner. The guard, William Quinn, had died in what was called Times Square, the interchange place between the cellblocks. And two youngsters, both eighteen years old at the time and legally not supposed to be in Attica, were being held there pending transfer to a juvenile or a youth facility. And they were indicted for the murder of the guard. It was a central point and occurrence in the Attica Prison rebellion. The guard was injured and the prisoners permitted him, his body, to be taken out. He was unconscious, and he died something like fifty-six hours later. And once he died you knew there was no hope of peaceful reconciliation. And that led up to the final day where thirty-nine people were killed, including eight hostages—prison personnel and contractors who were in there working—all by police fire, even though they lied about it and said that prisoners had emasculated people and cut their throats and all that stuff, and it didn't happen. When the autopsies were done they were all killed with guns, all injured with guns. And no prisoner had a gun.
But Bill and I represented a young guy named John Hill who had … he's a least a quarter Seneca Indian in the blood. And I represented a young guy who at that time was called Charles Joe Pernasalice, who wanted to be an Indian. He acted and dressed like an Indian, sometimes he wore headbands with beads that the judge would make him take off when he got into the courtroom. He wanted to be an Indian. Lots of kids wanted to be an Indian, it was a noble aspiration at that time; I kind of wanted to be an Indian myself. And Bill and I spent an enormous amount of time, effort, and energy and lived together in a hotel that was practically empty through that bitter winter. We were paid ten dollars a day while we were in court and a roundtrip airplane ticket from New York to Buffalo at that time was about ninety-two dollars as I recall. And we never got paid for it. We got the ten dollars, sometimes.
So we had, uh, we had that long close experience that went on over a period of years. It ended, there were convictions. Charlie Joe's was attempted assault in the second degree. But, um, … the impact of the trial and all the other activity and anger and hurt around it and the injustice of it! No police officer indicted for five years, and finally a guy was indicted for practically nothing, and that indictment was later dismissed, when thirty-nine people had been shot and killed by police officers in plain sight of defenseless people laying down. And then they brutalized scores of others, I mean they beat them mercilessly, put 'em on tables and just beat 'em, they would. Uncontrollable anger, unrestrained power. But the final outcome was that, um, … frankly I think we were gonna win, but the thing was all interrupted, and then Governor Carey gave amnesties to everybody. Charlie Joe never served a day. John was in for maybe two years or something like that before he was released.
And the verdict shows that they couldn't even find that Charlie Joe had hit Quinn. He was convicted of attempted assault in the second degree.He was swinging something inside Times Square there, but everybody was swinging something inside Times Square, you know. And there was no evidence that I ever saw that they hit William Quinn, or anybody else for that matter. He was just, he was just trying to do what everybody else was doing. They'd come in from the yard and they were very angry and they were pulling on the gate to Times Square. There were four gates, one to each cellblock, where the prisoners would be marched through going to chow and stuff like that. And it shows you … I mean it's the story of the prison industry. One of the main bars that went down to the ground, that went into a steel tube and into the ground to hold the gate closed when it was down, snapped. And later, when it was examined, they found that the steel rod had broken earlier and been welded, and the weld broke. So some contractor, to save a few bucks, you know, maybe-- I don't know what a new gate or a new single bar to fit it in would cost—but they welded the thing together.
The prison had been called a model prison. It was dedicated by Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the early 1930's or maybe earlier than that, but I think that's when it was. It was just before he ran for president. And, um, that was kind of the story of institutional failure. If you'd done it right, if you'd treated the prisoners right … It's hard to remember that the rebellion was a complaint over prison conditions. At that time there were roughly twelve thousand prisoners in felony detention in the whole state of New York. And today it's five, six times that … unbelievable, just this huge expansion. I mean, the prison archipelago of the United States since then is just awful, and the conditions are worse than they were at Attica. Attica was still a new prison, a model prison. It's not any place anybody, any human being, oughtta be. And certainly no human being in his right mind or with a mind would want to be there. But the physical plant was good and the treatment wasn't as bad as the overcrowding and other conditions that you have in prisons in New York today.
Well, it was called, um, the bloodiest day on US soil since the Civil War. Governor Rockefeller was, um, severely criticized for it. You could tell for the rest of his life through his conduct that he was always very sensitive about, um, the decision to tell the state police to take D-yard back. And it seemed for a while that Attica could lead to prison reform, but, um, history was running against it. The United States is becoming more and more police-oriented, more and more prison-oriented. The prison industry has grown just enormously. We've built more prison cells in the United States in the last thirty years than we have public shelters for families, which is quite an indictment of a society. But it's true. It remains a time when clearly excessive and brutal force that involved the deaths of even nine guards and civilian workers within the prison who were being held hostage was held unaccounted for, that we will simply not hold our police accountable for terrible crimes against our people. And that's not freedom, and it's not justice.
I had an experience, it was quite appalling. I was Deputy Attorney General and I was visiting a prison at Seagullville[?], Texas. And it was in the summer of '64 and hot as blazes, it was August. And I was walking through the yard—I visited all the prisons, with the warden—and I saw an old guy, 'cause he had a white head, lean against, not lean against … sitting against a building and humped over like this in the sun. So I kind of steered over, walked to him, and when I got to him said something like, “Hey, buddy, what are you doing here? It's pretty hot.” And, um, … nothing. So I reached over and I patted him on the shoulder, and I looked down. And finally he lifted his head up, and he was senile. I mean, he clearly didn't, couldn't … had no thoughts. And I turned to the warden and said, “What's he doing here?” He said, “He was …,” the warden said, “He was convicted of the death of an FBI agent in a bank robbery in Oklahoma in 1926.” Said, “We've been trying to get rid of him...”—that shows the gratitude towards and respect for his dignity—“... we've been trying to get rid of him for years. But every time we send a recommendation, we, the prison authority, the warden—'Please release this man, we're not a nursing home. We don't know how to change diapers and do all these things. And it's a distraction, and it's totally improper that he's here. Please release him--' and the word comes back that anyone convicted of killing an FBI Agent will never be released. Signed, J. Edgar Hoover.”
Crew member Matt Ruskin during filming at Attica Prison. Courtesy of the filmmakers.
There's this new contempt for dignity, for human dignity. I mean, just look at their reaction to what they do at Abu Ghraib, or Guantanamo, or places like that. There's a contempt for law for the United States to say, “Yeah, we held prisoners elsewhere, not just in Guantanamo, all over the place. CIA held prisoners. So?” No constitution. No laws. No human rights. No international treaties. Nothing to protect them. And why not just enough common decency not to do it, you know? Does it take a law to tell you you don't torture people? Does it take a law to tell you you don't grab somebody and don't tell his family where he is, you don't tell him where he is, and you stick him in some god-forsaken hole someplace, and you don't tell him what's gonna happen to him but make him know that it won't be good? And leave him there? Uh, we're a long way from the Constitution now. And the struggle is not the struggle, the valiant struggle that Bill Kunstler and those who worked with him in that cause were engaged in. Because then there was some belief that there are fundamental rights, and that, um, we can become a nation that insists upon respect for the dignity of every man, woman, and child on earth and equality in treating them and assessing their conduct. But fairness is always the, the guiding measure. But we're a long way from that now.
The Filmmakers: Do you still believe in the legal system?
Clark: I have the great advantage-disadvantage of being an optimist, so I try to assess things realistically. But I still believe that people can see the truth, finally, however obscure it is because of its complexities, or the numbers, or the confusion of life, or the deliberate distortion, or the power of a mass media just presenting one thing all the time. The capacity to demonize today far exceeds the capacity to demonize in the past. I mean, you can make something so hateful, a piece of cheese, that, um, people want to spit at. You know, they won't have … they can't concede ? the possibility that there's a human quality at all there. You compare someone that you've never met, you've never talked to, you really don't know anything about him, and you say he's a … he's a Hitler, he's a Stalin, he's a Lenin, just every name from the past that evokes evil, as they like to think. But I believe the truth, in time, is possible. If not, then I think the only conduct that's acceptable is believing it's possible as the ship goes down.
Photo courtesy of the filmmakers
Filmmakers: Do you believe in progress?
Clark: I believe in change. I think change is the dominant fact of our lives. I believe we can guide change, um, to a greater degree than ever in the past. If we master technology rather than have technology master us, if we control it rather than have it threaten us, if we bought less things that are dangerous and create things that are good for children, we can change things. I have no doubt that if we wanted to, collectively, or in large numbers, there wouldn't be a hungry child or person on earth. There wouldn't be a homeless person on earth. There wouldn't be a person who couldn't have a full education, all that they desired or could absorb, on earth. That they couldn't have meaningful work from which they could get some sense of fulfillment, satisfaction. That they couldn't be free from violence. That they couldn't say whatever they wanted to say and do whatever they wanted to do that didn't hurt others. I don't have any doubt that we'd accomplish that. If, um, if greed is our master and we think our accumulation will make us happy and safe, we'll reap the whirlwind. And you can feel its gusts everywhere on the earth today.
Filmmakers: Why do you do the kind of work you do?
Clark: Well, I think Bill and me, and people like us, uh, believe that the only thing worthwhile in life is struggling for what you think ought to be. That everything else is fleeting. That you may get some sense of comfort from wealth, from acquisition, from power, but, uh, when you look at the world, and you look at the suffering ... . I mean, look at the violence across the world today. Um, I think people like Bill and so many of us would be destroyed if we turned our backs on it and said, “I'd rather take care of myself. I'd rather have my taxes cut, you know? I'd rather see our economic power concentrated so we can control the world. I'd rather wipe out the cradle of civilization than risk my comfort. And the truth doesn't matter, this is what I want, and this is what we'll do.” I think we turned our backs on the belief that, uh, the worth of every child is of the utmost importance. And you struggle for her well-being. And, um, particularly with Bill, that you enjoy the struggle and, um, let the Devil take the hindmost.
Jean Fritz: Well, as far as the Vietnam War was concerned, I was against it. Very much against it. But I never paraded or anything. I never did anything to try to stop it. I said what I felt to people, but I never, uh, joined. I had a daughter that marched against it. And, uh ... and she marched for a long time, but then when, uh, other people started being nasty she quit. Cause people got nasty. Then she dropped out.
In a way I was against the protests. I wasn't, uh ... I thought they shouldn't be doing this, but I didn't like what [Mayor] Daley was doing, either. Daley's group were beating those boys up and girls up, and I didn't believe in that, either. So it was a hard time, because I didn't, uh ... I wanted these kids to be able to say what they wanted to say, that was important to me, and yet I didn't want all that trouble.
National Guardsman in Chicago. Courtesy of the filmmakers.
'Course it was just almost the beginning of long hair and, uh, I wasn't used to people like that yet. You know, I came from Des Plaines, a smaller town, and I wasn't into stuff like that. So at first I was a little taken back, but after a few days I wasn't taken back anymore and I enjoyed them. I listened to them and, uh, I thought they were pretty good. I thought they were very, highly intelligent boys, and I think we should listen to them.
The Filmmakers: What was the trial like?
Fritz: The conspiracy trial was a very hectic trial. And some days you were actually frightened what was going on, and some days you could laugh. It ... it ... every day was just a little different than the other day. And sometimes at night you couldn't sleep, worrying about what was going on, and the next day you were just fine. So you never knew what was going to happen. But I thought, as a whole, Judge Hoffman was a very unfair judge. He didn't give them ... he didn't give the defendants enough chance. I really felt that, that he, uh ... You could see his dislike for them, and I don't think any judge should show a dislike for anybody in their courtroom.
But yet a lot of times, even the ones that didn't like him had to laugh, which was a miracle. Because when Jerry Rubin and Hoffman came in with the judge's robes on, you had to laugh, I mean you had to laugh ... and you weren't supposed to laugh. But Judge Hoffman got them out right away, got us out, and into the jury room.
Filmmakers: What was the sequestration like?
Fritz: Oh, it was awful. Because I was thinking about my poor husband having to do the work all by himself, because we worked together all those years, and I couldn't see him hardly at all. I could only see him once a week, and it was very frustrating for him more than me. I wasn't unhappy. I was unhappy with what was going on, I was unhappy that we couldn't read anything, we couldn't listen to a radio, we couldn't ... we were like prisoners. We got in our room and we couldn't leave, and I didn't like that one bit.
When I was sequestered anything we did was monitored. We had ... we had absolutely no freedom whatsoever. Sometimes you felt like you were the ones on trial, and you felt like you were a prisoner sometimes because you had no say-so about anything. And every time, uh, you tried to say something, nobody would ever listen to you. If you complained about something, “Oh, you have nothing to complain about. This is how it is.” Even when you were in the jury room there was always an FBI agent standing there listening to everything you're saying. You had no privacy whatsoever except in your room.
Photo courtesy of the filmmakers.
Filmmakers: Can you tell me about the day that Bobby Seale was brought into the courtroom bound and gagged?
Fritz: Ohh ... I think that was the worst day of my life the day they brought Bobby Seale into court tied like that. It was ... it was absolutely sickening ... you could, uh, you just felt that the world was coming to an end that you were actually seeing this in the United States of America. Somebody tied up like he was. Because he wasn't a killer that was going to shoot somebody. He didn't have a gun, he had nothing ... he was only going to talk. And he wasn't allowed to talk, he wasn't allowed ... Judge Hoffman just made him be quiet and had him tied up. I felt so bad for Bobby Seale, I thought it was the most horrible thing I ever saw.
I don't think we ever talked about it to the other jurors. All of us, I mean Shirley and Frida and Mary and I all felt terrible, but we never talked to the other jurors about it, so ... I'm sure that they didn't care at all. That was their attitude. They probably didn't like him in the beginning. So ... they never liked any of the defendants, you know ... you could tell that from the very beginning. They made up their minds before the trial even was into it that they didn't like them, and that was obvious, always.
Filmmakers: How did you feel about the testimony of the undercover officers who infiltrated the organizations and spied on them, and then testified against them?
Fritz: Well, I didn't like it. As far as the FBI was concerned and the undercover officers, you just had the feeling that they were copying what you're saying. We didn't ... I didn't feel free to talk to anybody ... I didn't ... I mean about anything. You got to the point where you were thinking, Well, what if they're doing this to me? What if they're copying everything I'm saying, and you ... we were frightened of, of the undercover people. Because when they go to a college and try to get kids talking and, uh ... I think that's terrible, I mean, uh ... to do that to kids, I think, is ... the whole thing was a great disappointment. It really was. Yeah, that's when I learned not to like my government, and not to trust them. And that's hard to say, but that's how I felt.
Filmmakers: What were the deliberations like in the jury room at the end of the trial?
Fritz: The jury deliberations were very, very tense, because we knew when we entered that jury room that they were going to find all these defendants guilty. They did not like them, they didn't like their looks, they didn't like anything they said. You could just tell that they detested these men. We knew that the minute we entered the room. As soon as we sat down the first words they said, we knew that they wanted them guilty. So it was a big argument, and twice we sent in that we were a hung jury, and twice Hoffman said we had to stay till it was over. And the one man that protected us all, supposedly, was standing there, he made the nice fancy remark, “You know, you're going to be here forever if you don't agree on things and make them guilty.” That were actually his words, and he had no right to say that.
I never thought the defendants were guilty. The only reason the four of us changed in the end was [coughs] Judge Hoffman wouldn't take our answers, and we thought by doing this we wouldn't have another trial for them. We thought, this'll be over and I—we knew they wouldn't go to prison. We knew that. At least that's what we thought. We were pretty positive, but we ... we hadn't really changed our mind at all. It's just that we decided that we should say something.
Filmmakers: Did you feel like you had to compromise with your verdict?
Fritz: We felt we had to make a compromise because Judge Hoffman would not take a hung jury, and also we didn't really want a hung jury if we could help it, because then they would go on trial again, and we just thought they were innocent. But we figured if we did the one count—I think there were ten counts, I'm not sure anymore—that it would work alright, and then we felt very guilty afterwards that we even gave in. At least I did. I felt very ... that I betrayed my belief by doing this. I really did.
The Chicago Eight. Courtesy of the filmmakers.
When the verdict was read in front of the court, I ... I just couldn't believe it. I felt like screaming. I really didn't, uh, ... I said to myself, “Oh my god, I don't even remember the speeches and I'm convicting them on 'em.” And I … that's why ... I was just sick. I was just absolutely sick. I thought, “This is my fault, we shouldn't have given in.” That's how I felt, that I betrayed my own beliefs. That's why I was so upset when I got home, and everything.
When we got home the whole street was full of cameras and reporters and neighbors. The whole street, all the way down. And I was sick, petrified, and I just got out of the car and ran as fast as I could to get in the house. I wouldn't talk to anybody, I wouldn't look at anybody. And then I went in the house and went hysterical. So ... it wasn't easy.
After the trial when I got home, it took a long time for me to settle down. Cause I had customers people around us coming in and telling me how ashamed they were of me, and things like that. And it took me a long time. For a while then I quit going to the store, I wouldn't go. And that lasted for ... I don't know how long that lasted, but I wouldn't even go to work.
I had death threats. And, uh, ... I found a note the other day, god, of the filthiest thing I ever read in my life, that somebody sent me. And then two of my ... one of my best friends wrote me a letter that was unbelievable. Unbelievable. Uh, what I was doing was so wrong, and, uh, things like that. And then I had others like, one of the men that worked for the paper in Des Plaines, he came to this house and he sat down with me, and he said if I ever have to go on trial will you come and help me? He was so ... I have that article ... he was so wonderful. So wonderful. So it was, it was ... not everybody was nasty.
I spent a long time thinking about the trial. I still think about it once in a while. It was something I'll never forget. It was a wonderful experience for me and it was a terrible experience. But I, I, I really cared about it, I cared very, very much about it. And I think it changed my life. I think I became more ... what do you say? ... more tolerant of others. I was never untol- I was never a very intolerant person, but I think I got better. I think I got better with the trial. 'Cause I really ... it did something to me. It really did.
But there was a core group of the American Indian Movement and we sat in on all the meetings. And in this core group there was probably half that were women. Because we were a movement of people. We weren't a movement of an age group or a gender, it was a movement of people, and that meant elders and children, families. So whenever we decided to go anywhere, everybody was involved that wanted to be involved and have a say so.
You look at anything we did in those days as part of the Red Power Movement—'cause it was bigger than AIM, it was more than AIM—generally speaking, most of the time half of the people involved were women. It was just a … it wasn't a big deal. Nobody said, “Well, wait a minute, gee, what are all these women doing here?” you know. That wasn't even an issue. The team that met with the negotiators from the White House [during the takeover of the BIA headquarters in 1972], the majority of those were women. There was maybe three men, the rest were women.
So, um, again, because we didn't have a native press—I think it was just one newspaper at that time but that was on the East Coast—we didn't have our own voice to the media. So the media decided who the 'leadership' was going to be. If it was just men it wouldn't have went anywhere. They would have been all shot and killed. Look what happened to the Black Panthers, look what happened to Rap Brown. They were just gunned down by the feds, you know. But when you have a social movement, it takes everybody.
So as we were going into Wounded Knee we could hear gunfire. And, um, because we had so many children with us and elders, um, I got real concerned right away. When you're in a caravan like that you can't just stop, you gotta keep moving, you know, could cause a pile up. So we kept moving, but we were waiting for, waiting for word. And some runners came up the highway and they were telling us to, you know, slow down and pull over and hit the ditch. So that's what we did. And we just slowly pulled over and stopped, and everybody got in the ditch. And you could hear the … by that time it was a firefight. You could hear rounds going off. And then pretty soon it stopped. So we all got in our cars again, and they said, “Okay, pull into Wounded Knee and take cover cause we don't know what's going on, if they went back for reinforcements or what. But take cover.” So that's what we did.
Uh, I believe it was an Indian police, BIA police car, that started firing at us, shooting at us. So, uh, this one young woman that was with us, she was in the back seat … all we had was a single-shot twenty-two. So she just rolled the window down and she just fired back, out of the back window. And then we just headed down … we couldn't go back and head toward Wounded Knee. So we had to just keep going the other direction. And then we came over the hill and there was a U.S. Marshal road-block.
So they busted us and ended up taking us to Rapid City, where we were processed. And we were held there for a couple days. And then I got word to my parents, so they came and they, uh, got me out. And I said, “Well,” I said, “I'm gonna have to go back in to Wounded Knee.” 'Cause my son was there.
And one of the guys that came into Rapid from Wounded Knee had a list of, of, uh, ammunition that they needed. So he gave me that list. So I just got money from different people, and I just went down the street and saw some Indian guys, and I just told them what we needed, and so they went. And in those days you could just go in any gun shop and buy ammo. I mean they were for hunting rifles, you know, so it wasn't that big of a deal in those days. So then we got this big, you know, backpack full of ammo, and then my folks took us back down to Porcupine and got out. We went to a family there that was using their home as a central gathering place for anybody that wanted to go in. And if you were gonna go in, you had to take in supplies. So that's what we did that night. We walked back in.
Uh, haircuts was segregated, a white guy couldn't cut a black guy's hair or vice versa. Uh, the mail was insane. If I had a letter from a lawyer and I gave it to you to read, and the letter was found in your cell, we both went to the box. You got a year and I got two years. And every two days you did in seg, you lost a day of good time, you know. That was Attica, you know.
And it happened on the regular, you know. They would beat you down, thought nothing of it, you know. Uh, so you just couldn't, or I couldn't, get accustomed to it, you know. And I was there six years, you know. I begged my family to, uh, help me get out of there, get transferred to another joint. And I would tell them stories about what happened in Attica and they said, “No, it couldn't be like that. You're in New York. That's not the South.” And they couldn't believe it, you know. And it wasn't until after the riot and the stories started coming out that they said, “Wow,” you know, I was telling the truth all those years. That was Attica, you know.
The Filmmakers: What was the reason for the rebellion?
Roche: Uh, they say it was a fight between two guys on the football field the night before in A Block. That's what they said. But it was the years and years of humiliation, you know, mental and physical abuse, you know. It reached a head and just exploded, you know. They claim that it was planned, the administration claims that it was planned and this and that and the other. That's a lie, it was spontaneous, you know. And that's how it happened.
It-it was madness, you know. I remember that first night, September 9th, we were in the yard and me and a couple guys were sittin', and a friend of mine, in fact a guy locked next to me, kept walking around the yard, and he's looking up, you know. Uh, he just kept walking around the yard. And it was strange to me, you know. And I asked him, I called him The Owl — his name was Raymond White — and I says, “Raymond, you alright?” He said, “Yeah.” I said, “You sure?” He said, “Yeah.” He said, “Man, this is the first time in twenty-two years I've been out after dark.” And I was like, “Whoa,” you know. And he was walking around looking at the stars. You know, he kept walking around the yard, you know. A lot of strange things came out of that, you know.
Filmmakers: Why was Bill Kunstler called to Attica?
Roche: Bill Kunstler was called to Attica along with the other people to negotiate with the state, Department of Corrections, you know, for us, you know, because it was never really allowed to be known to the public what actually was happening in Attica. Uh, and we needed people from the outside to take the message out there, to tell them what happened everyday in a snake pit, you know. We had no access to the outside world. Our correspondence was censored, you know.
Um, you weren't allowed to ask, or-or-or what they called “beg” for money from people that you would write. You could only write your immediate family, you know, legal wife, mother, father, sister, brother, children, period. You weren't allowed to write anybody else, you know. So they controlled information coming into the institution and going out of the institution. And, uh, if we were gonna get anything from these people, you know, we had to be able to break their control. And Bill Kunstler along with the other observers was brought in, you know, so that they could see and take the message outside what they were doing to us in Attica, you know.
He was respected just for the fact that he came to Attica, you know, and sat and listened to our grievances. We had a legitimate beef, and, I mean, all the negotiators were respected for that, you know. Um, that was the first time in like six years that somebody actually listened to what we had to say, and even guys that were angry, you know, had to give him that. Uh, you could talk and talk and talk and the people that you're trying to talk to are not listening. That's what we got from the administration. When Oswald came to Attica, I think it was in August, he was supposed to come and talk to people, listen to our problems, listen to our beefs, you know. Never saw anybody.
Uh, [Kunstler] said that, uh, they were gonna try to get the best deal possible for us, you know, that we needed to have a consensus, that we needed to be unified in whatever they, you know, present to the state. Uh, it was like a shock to everybody that they knew that Quinn had died and they didn't tell us until Sunday when they came with the ultimatum, you know. “You release the hostages, return to the cells, and then we'll talk,” you know. Nah, it can't work like that, you know. We're giving and getting nothing in return, you know. A promise we'll talk. Well, we had had to promise before, that they'll talk, and we never got anything but a promise, you know.
And, I mean, he, Bill Kunstler actually begged us, you know, to really consider what we were doing. My opinion is that Bill was under the same opinion that we were, that we never ever thought that the state would come in the way they did, you know. Nobody believed that. I mean he told us if we don't give up the hostages, if we don't return to our cells, they comin' in, you know. We knew that. But nobody thought they would have come the way they came, you know, including him. I mean, he can't be blamed for that. Even I didn't believe it, you know. Nobody thought that, you know. I don't think any of the other negotiator observers thought that. Nobody in the yard, none of the prisoners thought that, you know.
On the morning of the 13th it was hazy, it was … it wanted to rain, and, uh, when I woke up that morning, uh … By the way, this is something else about me you may not have known: I used to make booze. I used to make wine. And, uh, I had made a five-gallon pail Friday night, and I was saving it. It was Monday morning and I told the guys, I said, “Come on, man, the bar's open,” and we went and we started drinking. Um, we were standing there and I was talking to a couple of guys, and Frank Smith was one of them, uh, Sabo, a guy Raymond White that I was telling you about who was walking around looking at the stars, and we were standing there, and we was talking, and everybody had their cup, we were drinking.
And that's when the shootin' started. After they dropped the gas and they started shooting, uh, the reality set in, you know, that this was no game, this was no joke, you know. People are gonna die. And it happened just like that: People died, you know. When I seen a guy's head explode, you know, uh, that's when it hit me, you know. I'm glad that they took [the observers] out of the yard, they allowed them to get out of the yard because, uh, when they came in the way they came in, they would have killed them too, you know. They had no qualms on-on who they shot. They killed their own people, you know. And it's — I still think about it, you know, it still bothers me. I-I had never been in a situation where everybody had a gun but me, you know. And they were shootin', you know.
Uh, when I first saw it I jumped in a ditch, but I was on the top of a pile of a lot of other people that were in the ditch. And I looked down towards the door and I could see them shooting people in the ditch, and they were walking around towards me, you know. And I didn't think I was gonna come out of there without being seriously hurt, you know. Uh, guys that was on the ground on both sides of me—one got killed, one lost a leg, you know, they shot it off, you know. And it still amazes me how come I didn't get shot, you know.
And I still, I'm still trying to figure out how I came out of there without a scratch. I didn't get hurt until I got to A Block yard, you know, when they stripped us. Uh, a cop made me stand in the doorway, and he butt-stroked me with the butt of a 12-gauge shotgun, and I was told later on that he had his finger on the trigger when he hit me with the butt of his gun. And he knocked me through the doorway, I never touched the steps, onto the sidewalk. And when I woke up —I was unconscious — another cop was standing on both my hands and broke both of my ring fingers and broke my hand. And I got a ruptured disc in my neck from where I got hit with the shotgun, you know. And those are my memories of Attica, you know, personal memories.
And then they made me walk through that snake pit and run through the gauntlet up to a cell in A Block, yeah. And, uh, I think I got hit once, yeah, I got hit on top of my foot, and I fell, and when I got up I seen another cop winding up to hit me again. And I threw a rolling block at him; I played football. I threw a rolling block at him, took his legs out, and took the cop next to him legs out, came up, you know, and ran to the cell. And, uh, they put me in the cell with two other guys. They took everything out of the cell except the sink, the toilet, and the bed frame. So one guy had to sleep on the floor outside of the bed, another guy under the bed, and another guy on the bed frame. Uh, they cut off the water in the sink and the toilet. That gas was mean. Guys were thirsty, you know, and they were begging the police for water. And the police would urinate in the Styrofoam cups and put them on the bars and tell them to drink it. And when they hesitate, they would lay the barrel of the shotgun on the bars and point it in the cell and say, “Either drink it or we're gonna blow the cell up,” you know. And, uh, that was Attica on the 13th, yeah. Uh, I didn't learn 'til later on that the observers were arrested when they left the yard on the night of the 12th. They arrested them and locked them in a room so they wouldn't get out.
Filmmakers: Why is Attica important today?
Roche: The state hasn't changed. The mentality of 1971 is still the mentality of prisons in this country today, you know. I was sent to Green Haven on September 16th; I was sent back to Attica in February '72. I seen the gun tower in the yard. I was given a job as a storehouse runner, and I was comin' through Times Square one Saturday morning, they was getting ready to let the movies run. I got to Times Square, the police was handing out pistols to other police, you know. The mentality hadn't changed, you know. This is what they felt: We will never allow this to happen again. Before we allow it to happen again, we'll just kill a bunch more people, you know.
Uh, when I went back in '72 there were 1,200 guys in Attica. They had 5,000 rounds of ammunition in there, you know. They put 5,000 rounds in the spot with 1,200 guys, you know, enough ammunition to kill everybody in that prison three times. You know, they hadn't changed. It got worse. And over the years it's gotten worser, you know. Their answer to Attica: More gun towers, more guns, more bullets. And like I said, it's worse, you know. They're not about negotiation. They don't feel they have to. They're in a position of strength. Why should they have to negotiate? We'll just send somebody in there to kill them all.
I can remember when they had a correction officer strike and, uh, they brought in the National Guard. I had a guard then tell me that in, uh, the declaration of martial law, the National Guard comes in and kill everybody in the cell, and they don't have time to go through the records to see who's doing three years, who's doing fifty years, or who's doing life, so they kill everybody. This way they don't have to worry about the prisons, you know. And this is a plan. If they've got it in New York state, the plan is probably nationwide, you know.
Michael Smith: On September 9th I was working in the metal shop on the second floor in one of the buildings in the rear of the facility where they painted lockers, metal lockers for state institutions. I was in charge of about thirty inmates and, uh, several civilian instructors were also in that area. And the prison whistle sounded. And the only other time that I'd ever heard the prison whistle sound was when an inmate had escaped.
I had started at Attica in the beginning of 1971. I transferred from the Eastern Correctional Facility to Attica, and I was probably the low man on the totem pole as far as seniority goes. So my job at Attica prison at the time was vacation relief, so that every two weeks my job changed.
The late sixties and early seventies was a time of political unrest and protest. We were protesting the war in Vietnam, protesting for equal rights, and prisoners across the country were protesting for better conditions in the prison system. And that spring was very tense. It was … you could just feel the tension. And anyone that worked there, uh, knew it was present. The inmates were aware of it. And it was just a very tense time for everybody that was there.
I was aware that prisoners at Attica, inmates, were not … they wanted change. They wanted change within the system. They wanted improvements, and primarily in areas that struck me as, uh, mostly humanitarian. Um, food, wages, education— those were the primary areas. At that time there were no black staff. There were no Hispanics. No one spoke Spanish. The inmates felt that the training was inadequate as far as equipping them for when they got out of prison to find work and have a productive life. So those were some of the areas that I was aware of that they wanted changed.
At the time of the riot I was twenty-two years old. I had been married that previous August and we had our first daughter, she was just a few months old. I was the oldest of eight children, and we were brought up as a Catholic family. We were … we always grew up in a rural area but were brought up to respect life. And both my parents were color blind when it comes to their attitude toward people different than us. And I think that … I know that my parents had a huge impression on not just my attitude but my whole family's attitude.
I had a very good working relationship with the inmate population and also with the staff who worked at Attica. Um, I seemed to be able to balance the two. And the job that I had, where my job would change every two weeks, afforded me the ability to meet a lot of staff, uh, a lot of the inmate population, and also become familiar with the geography of the facility.
So the whistle continued to sound, and I went to the phone located in the front of that room and tried calling the Administration Building. And the phone was dead. Then I tried calling anywhere in the institution, but it was an antiquated operator telephone system that had already been disconnected. So I couldn't communicate with anyone. And the prison whistle continued to sound. And on the south side of that room you overlook the first floor of the garage area, and the inmates that were in the room rushed to those windows along that wall and they were watching something going on outside. And when I went over to the windows and looked myself, you could see inmates running around in, uh, an unusual manner, and conducting themselves in a way that wasn't typical.
They were arming themselves, uh, with anything that they could use to protect themselves. Some had football helmets on. And the inmates that were in the room with me thought that it was some type of gang riot within the prison. They feared for their own safety and tried to find hiding places and take up weapons to protect themselves. I locked the civilian instructors in their offices in the rear of that room and locked the entryway doors to that room, and then just stood there and waited to see what would happen. What would come next.
A lot of the inmates found hiding places, and they were scared. And at the time I had a baton in a holster, if you will, at my side, and I also had my keys there. And you could hear a lot of commotion downstairs, and the inmates were ramming the metal gates with some type of mechanical tow motor, or some type of device they got out of the metal shop downstairs in an effort to break the gates down, which eventually they did.
The rioting inmates … it was like this huge flood of human emotion burst into the room. And, um, they eventually broke into the area where I was, and, uh, they beat me, uh, upon entry. And two inmates, Don Noble and Carl Rain, came to my protection when I was lying on the floor, when I was being beaten against the wall. And both the inmates protected me in kind of a spread eagle fashion and put their bodies over mine to protect me.
And the other inmates went to the rear of the room, broke into the offices and took the civilian instructors hostage. And this huge wave of emotion that broke in went back out, and they left me lying on the floor along with Don Noble and Carl Rain. And Don and Carl tried to come up with a plan to get me to safety, and initially they thought about hiding me but thought that may not be a good idea. So they tried to escort me through the tunnel system, through B Block, through Times Square, and through A Block to the administration and safety. And they helped me through B Block and through the tunnel, and when we got to Times Square, the intersect where the four main tunnels in Attica intersect, the inmates had set up a perimeter across the A Tunnel and directed that all hostages be taken to D Yard, one of the four recreation yards. And so I was taken to D Yard, and that was Thursday morning, and was held there as a hostage until the prison was retaken the following Monday the 13th.
Under the circumstances I was treated very well while held as a hostage. It was a very chaotic first day with the initial chaos of the takeover of the prison, and there were several hostages hurt in the process. All the hostages had been taken to D Yard, and upon our arrival all the hostages were gathered into one area. And the, uh, Muslims set up a protective guard around us, and I can recall that first day the head of the Muslims told us, “Just sit tight and we'll protect you, and don't worry, your people will be in to rescue you shortly.” And that didn't happen. It was interesting watching what you thought was this formidable fortress falling as easily as it fell. And as the inmates organized, uh, I couldn't help getting the feeling that they were organizing much more quickly and effectively than … than our people were on the outside.
I can recall that one of the inmates' first demands was for not a negotiator but an observers committee, a civilian observers committee. And as they indicated who they wanted I was quite struck by the people that they were asking to be there— um, Tom Wicker, um, Bill Kunstler— and that they wanted it witnessed by a civilian observers committee, not to negotiate. I didn't get the feeling that they wanted the observers committee to do anything beyond observe, and I was impressed with that. And also that they invited the press in and wanted them to be witness to, and the outside world to be witness to, this process. That indicated to me that the inmates were requesting that ethical and moral issues and real issues be addressed in the prison system and that they wanted the world past the wall, surrounding Attica, to be aware of it. You know, people on the outside. I think that the inmate population felt that they were not only locked up but that anything that goes on inside a prison is locked up and locked away from the outside world. And they wanted them to see this process and see that it was a reasonable request and how they were conducting themselves in this process so that the whole world could judge them.
Having civilians involved was a good idea as far as I was concerned, uh, personally. And the negotiations seemed to be headed in a positive direction initially. It appeared as though the state was agreeing with and going to go along with a lot of the inmates' demands. However, um, Saturday, with the announcement of Corrections Officer Bill Quinn's death, that was a completely different aspect thrown into it, and it went south from there. The negotiation process definitely started to break down.
With the announcement of Quinn's death, any inmate that was involved in the riot could be potentially convicted for murder. After that point the inmates were very aware of that, and amnesty became the biggest issue for both sides. Amnesty was something that the state at that point couldn't offer, and it was something that the inmates had to have. So when the observers committee came in and Mr. Kunstler said, "Look, this is as good as it's gonna get," the inmates had a negative reaction to that, and it made their job more difficult.
Until the announcement of Bill Quinn's death I was hopeful that there'd be a peaceful resolve and an end to the riot, and it seemed to be headed in that direction. With that development, by Saturday night, a peaceful resolve was looking less likely. On Sunday the situation seemed to be more demanding. Negotiations seemed to break down more, and by Sunday night, uh, the state of New York allowed a priest to come in and administer last rites to the hostages. And, uh, that to me indicated that a peaceful resolve was not likely, that the state was not anticipating a peaceful resolve to the situation.
Uh, Sunday night I still had my wallet and I took some papers out of my wallet, some business cards and some paper money. I borrowed a pen from an inmate, uh, wrote a goodbye note to my family, put it back in my wallet, and put it back in my pocket.
Sunday night the hostages' wrists were bound and our ankles were bound, and we were on mattresses all in one small area of the yard. And I can recall— I think that it was a general feeling among the hostages— a pretty bleak outlook as far as what was going to happen. And, uh, I thought that something may happen in the darkness of … of the night. However, the night went through without incident, and Monday morning the negotiation process was still at a standoff.
The inmates, in kind of a last-ditch effort, had randomly chosen eight hostages from the hostage circle and assigned inmate executioners to each. And they escorted those eight hostages, elevated them to the rooftop of the tunnel system, called the catwalk— it's kind of an observatory area that's elevated from the yard— and I was one of those eight hostages that was randomly chosen and taken to the catwalk, uh, to be executed. I don't think anybody was thinking rationally anymore at that point. I mean, I had the impression that the inmates thought, "Well, we're gonna take these hostages and use them as a last bargaining chip and threaten to take their lives and bargain with the balance of the hostages left in the yard," which was totally irrational. And at the same time the state was saying, "No more negotiating. Release the hostages unharmed and put down your weapons." So it seemed to be a standoff at that point.
When I was taken to the catwalk I was assigned three inmate executioners. And it was probably what you'd envision as a typical hostage setting. They brought me a chair at one point to, uh, make me more comfortable. I was blindfolded and I had three executioners—one on my right with a hand-fashioned spear at my chest, one behind me with a hammer, and an executioner on my left with a knife at my throat. And the executioner on my left was Don Noble. And Don had made it a point to be there that morning and be one of my executioners. And, uh, Don and I had a serious conversation that morning. We made a mutual promise to contact each other's family in the event that one of us didn't make it out, or one of us did make it out, and express our love. And we promised each other that we'd do that. I asked him an additional request, and that was that when the time came that I didn't want to suffer. And Don promised me that he knew what he was doing, and when the time came or would come I wouldn't suffer.
Shortly thereafter the state of New York sent a helicopter over the wall. Uh, gas was discharged. There was a large popping noise, and the discharge of the gas and the popping noise seemed to happen at the same time that the, uh, retaking force opened fire. And there were the retaking force: the New York state employees, New York State Troopers and Corrections Officers. The shooting went on … it seemed like forever but I guess in reality it was about ten minutes. Uh, when they started shooting it seemed like all hell broke loose, and you could identify all kinds of weapons: handguns, large caliber, small caliber, shotguns, rifles, semi-automatic weapons and automatic weapons. And, uh, it was just like they indiscriminately shot everyone.
I watched, uh, which was kind of a surreal experience. The state filmed all of this, all of the retaking, and I can recall that some months after the riot the state wanted me to view this film for, uh, prosecuting purposes, to identify people that I could in the film. And in the process they filmed me … they filmed me being shot. And it was an interesting experience to watch that. Uh, they ran it frame by frame. And when the shooting started I was sitting down in a chair, and Don Noble was on my left. And the inmate on my right with a spear was ... he'd been very vocal. And, uh, he was a very angry individual— I didn't know that inmate— but he kept prodding me in the chest with a spear, telling me he couldn't wait to see my guts spill into the yard. And there was an inmate, an executioner, behind me with a hammer.
The state mounted a huge cover-up campaign and gave false information. For one thing they said that I had been emasculated by Frank Smith and that my testicles had been stuffed in my mouth. And that was reported by state officials to the Associated Press, I think, before I was even out of the facility that day. Total fabrication. Never happened. I wasn't assaulted that way. Wasn't in Frank's nature to begin with, I knew Frank Smith. I thought Frank was a pretty good guy, actually. And how Frank conducted the rest of his life when he left prison was pretty indicative of that, I think. Frank loved everybody, and he did his best to try to get everyone a piece of justice, not just the inmates.
The other thing is I wasn't anywhere around Frank Smith. It just … it was a total fabrication. And as time went on there were a lot of fabrications. Hostages didn't die from cut throats; hostages died from gunshot wounds. Inmates didn't have guns; state employees had guns. And then as time went on and I learned more about the atrocities that were committed, it was very disturbing.
I'm not pro-inmate, but I'm not lopsided toward the state either. I believe that people should be responsible for their actions. The inmates did things that they should be held responsible for during the riot. And the state of New York and their employees should also be held responsible for what they did. Everybody makes mistakes, but you still should be held accountable for those actions. And unfortunately, in this event, I don't think anybody was held accountable on either side. I mean, the state employees murdered people and weren't held accountable, and the inmates murdered three of their own and weren't held accountable. And they also murdered Bill Quinn. Somebody should be held accountable for something.
The state of New York was forced by a federal mandate to compensate, even if on a limited basis, the inmates for what happened to them during the riot and after the retaking of the prison. And the hostages and their families started a group, a grassroots movement called The Forgotten Victims of Attica, and after the state had negotiated some type of settlement with the inmates, the hostages were basically given that same settlement. And one of the things the hostages had requested prior to the settlement, one of the things that they asked the state of New York for, was the records that are held in Albany regarding what happened during the riot and the retaking. And all of our requests were denied. And during that process I FOIAed for those documents that are held in Albany and was denied access to something that I considered public record. And subsequent requests for those documents were also denied. I'm hopeful, though, with a new administration in Albany that maybe they'll reconsider those requests.
I think for me to feel like justice has been served would require an admission of responsibility and some type of action to indicate sincerity and an apology. And not just for one side, for both sides. An apology from the state of New York would include releasing the records.
The Filmmakers: Before this happened did you think that the state was capable of doing what it did?
Smith: I think that [Commissioner] Oswald was basically a good guy and had good intentions, and I think that he really wanted to help change the prison system in New York state. And I felt initially that they were negotiating in good faith and agreed to negotiate, um, with the hopes that this could be peacefully resolved. Anything but how it turned out. And in retrospect, Oswald may have had good intentions but the powers-that-be above him dictated what happened, and I don't think that the hostages' or inmates' safety was ever really a consideration. I don't think there ever was a plan to rescue the hostages. I think that the plan primarily was, uh, "How can we make this go away and cause the least political ramifications?" I think that Governor Rockefeller had his own political ambitions that included the White House at the time, and he wanted to distance himself from this event, just absolutely as far away as he could get.
Filmmakers: Did anyone in an official capacity ever apologize to you for what happened?
Smith: I never had anybody in an official capacity apologize to me for what happened. They were part of the system, as far as I'm concerned, part of the political system, and, uh, that's pretty much a self-serving industry. They were more concerned with what effect it was going to have on their political future than saying, "There were mistakes made, let's fix this and we'll do our best to let it not happen again."
Filmmakers What happened to Don Noble?
Smith: Don Noble survived, and we passed one time in Buffalo in court. And gestured hello. And I understand that Don Noble eventually got out of the prison system and he's since died.
Filmmakers: So, you were shot by a corrections officer? Or was it a trooper?
Smith: A positive identification of the individual that shot me I'm not aware of. However I was shot multiple times, so it may have been two different people who shot me. Most likely it was two different people who shot me. But because of the type of shrapnel that I had, the type weapon that I was shot with, uh, I believe that I was shot by a correctional officer.
Filmmakers: And what does it mean to you to be shot by a fellow corrections officer?
Smith: I think that in a hostage situation there are people that … there are people that have to take care of business. And unfortunately I think that has to be done sometimes without any emotional connection. When they retook Attica prison, there were corrections officers involved that worked in the facility, there were probably troopers that had close friends that worked at the facility, and I think that relationship implied, uh, an emotional involvement that … that disqualifies any objectivity.
Filmmakers: Who do you think ultimately was responsible for Attica?
Smith: Who is ultimately responsible for the riot? That's an interesting question that I think … is complex. It depends on an individual's attitude of the whole system in general. The prison system doesn't work. It doesn't do anything to benefit society. If you lock somebody up in a cage and don't offer them anything to … any tools to make them any better to re-enter society, they're going to only re-enter more bitter than they were when they went in. And it depends, I guess, on how you look at the people in prison. To me prison is just a reflection of what's going on in society. They're overcrowded. They're inadequate. A lot of people in our prison system are there because of drug use. Is that a crime? Or is that an addiction? Should we put them in prison or should we offer them some type of help?
And society—I mean, who's to blame? Society. If it's locked behind a wall they don't … they turn their back on it and don't have to deal with it unless it's directly related to them or someone in their family. So I guess, who's responsible? The inmates, yeah, they started a riot inside a prison and took control of a facility out of desperation that maybe wasn't the right form to bring their issues to the table. But they didn't seem to be able to get anyone to address them in any other fashion. So through frustration they expressed themselves in riot form. Maybe if our prison system would have offered some type of meaningful reform for individuals that need it, that riot would have never happened.
Filmmakers: Do you think it's better today, the prison system?
Smith: I'm not involved in the prison system anymore, other than occasionally to go there for somebody that I meet, that I worked with, or a legal process, uh, following the riot. I've been back to the prison a couple times, and other than what I know in hearsay, I'm not personally involved in the system. But I don't see where it's improved dramatically. Uh, it's more overcrowded now than it ever was … not just Attica but prisons in general are overcrowded. And they seem to be putting an emphasis on security more than helping the individual and helping our society. It's like, to me it's a growing problem. They haven't addressed it. And I don't know if society doesn't have the means to address it, but it sure seems to me that they could do something a hell of a lot better than what they've got right now.
Filmmakers: What did you experience at Attica teach you about the criminal justice system?
Smith: I think the United States has probably one of the best, um, justice systems in the world. However, there are problems. And it seems, it seems that the justice system is politically manipulated, and I think that's unfortunate.
Filmmakers: What do you think people should learn from Attica today?
Smith: Well, I don't think that people realize how important Attica is because they don't see where they are directly affected. But what happened at Attica, and I'm using Attica as a general term, and what continues to happen at Attica affects us all. It affects us socially, it affects us monetarily, and it affects the whole health of our society.
Daniel Berrigan on the Catonsville Nine
The trial of the Catonsville Nine altered resistance to the Vietnam War, moving activists from street protests to repeated acts of civil disobedience, including the burning of draft cards. It also signaled a seismic shift within the Catholic Church, propelling radical priests and nuns led by the Berrigans, Thomas Merton and Dorothy Day to the center of a religiously inspired social movement that challenged not only church and state authority but the myths Americans used to define themselves.
Berrigan argues that those who seek a just society, who seek to defy war and violence, who decry the assault of globalization and degradation of the environment, who care about the plight of the poor, should stop worrying about the practical, short-term effects of their resistance.
"The good is to be done because it is good, not because it goes somewhere," he says. "I believe if it is done in that spirit it will go somewhere, but I don't know where. I don't think the Bible grants us to know where goodness goes, what direction, what force. I have never been seriously interested in the outcome. I was interested in trying to do it humanly and carefully and nonviolently and let it go." (The Nation)
In August, 1970, Berrigan was living underground as a fugitive from the FBI. He spoke with Harvard Psychiatrist Robert Coles just before he was captured by federal agents: "I have never been able to look upon myself as a criminal and I would feel that in a society in which sanity is publicly available I could go on with the kind of work which I have always done throughout my life. I never tried to hurt a person. I tried to do something symbolic with pieces of paper. We tend to overlook the crimes of our political and business leaders. We don't send to jail Presidents and their advisers and certain Congressmen and Senators who talk like bloodthirsty mass murderers. We concentrate obsessively and violently on people who are trying to say things very differently and operate in different ways." (Time Magazine)
Daniel Berrigan: In May of '68 we entered a draft board in this little town called Catonsville, in Maryland, and we took out about 160 A-1 files, we took them out of the building, downstairs, because we didn't want to risk a fire in the building, and we hustled them into a parking lot nearby -- they had these big trash baskets -- and threw them in and set them on fire with homemade napalm. We had found the recipe for napalm in a special service handbook in the library at Georgetown U. None of us knew anything about napalm except that it had been used on people, especially on children. We thought that would be a proper symbol of the war as ethical outrage, that we would use this on documents that justified murder instead of on people, that that might speak to the public about this war. So the night before we had a kind of a liturgical service, we concocted napalm at the home of a friend in Baltimore and we mixed that and prayed over it, and prayed that this might be an instrument of peacemaking, as it was an instrument certainly of us taking our lives into our hands. And, uh, so we threw that over the huge bundle of papers and it whooshed up tellingly, and we joined hands around the fire and recited the Lord's prayer, and waited for Armageddon.
Rev. Daniel Berrigan (r.) and William M. Kunstler talk with newsmen after Berrigan and eight other Catholics were sentenced to two years to three-and-a-half years in prison in Baltimore, MD, on November 9, 1968. Credit: AP Photo
Oh, they called the police of course, who arrived shortly and were astonished at these priests and people, and [they] put the fire out and hustled us into the wagon. And of course when we got to the ... I think in the town they didn't have any lock-up so they used the back room of a library and locked us in, and of course we were in a great state of relief. And then this big guy, I still can see the scene, appeared at the doorway, obviously in charge, you know, FBI, and he looked around the room and saw my brother, Philip, and he had been involved in Philip's case in '67 for pouring blood on draft files in Baltimore City. So he looked around the room and he bellowed out, "Berrigan again!" And then he yelled, "I'm leaving the Catholic church." [Laughs.] So I said to Philip, "That's the best thing you did all day -- get him out!"
We knew we were going to be arrested, and we knew the chances were very large that we would spend several years in prison. That had to be spelled out, that had to be part of the preparation for this action, you know, so that people didn't go into it blindfolded, or with some sort of utopian idea that we're going to get away with this, which was ridiculous, infantile. So part of the building of the trust ahead of time was to take a close look at family obligations, at your professional life, at your bible, at your friendships, at your ability, as far as you can gauge it, to go into something that's going to cost you, maybe years of your life. Well, that note of realism I think was very, very important. And some people were mature enough to say, "Okay, I can swallow, even though dry, and I can walk with you, even going to the unknown." And then other people bowed out, which was a good thing to do also. [It was] too much.
Let me say something about the intention we had in the trial, which of course had to be dramatized in our style and in our rhetoric and our personal convictions, and so on and so forth. I think we had pretty well agreed ahead of time that going for acquittal was tactically hopeless, and wasn't really speaking for our passion in going into Catonsville. The judge was always intervening, he played it very soft as the trial went on, because he knew he had the last word. But he was saying things to us like, "Well, if you had taken five or ten of those draft files and burned them symbolically, you wouldn't be in this trouble now. But," he said, "you did something very serious." And we said, "Yes, and we understand it was serious." We couldn't really be impressed by a symbol that was not serious, and five or ten draft files as a symbol was not serious. So we took out 165, and that was worth three years, as we well know.
I tried in my statement before the court, I tried to speak about the criminality of burning papers instead of children. And that's one way of putting our argument. We were calling these A-1 files 'hunting licenses against humans,' and we were saying if you carry this document, it's open season on children and the aged and the ill and all sorts of people. And you could be given a medal for it, you certainly won't be tried criminally for it. So we were trying to unlatch some of these myths that were protecting, in our way of thinking, were protecting mass murder. And putting it that way, that this napalm burned papers instead of children, was deliberately shocking and deliberately, as I felt, true. Why not put it that way, put it boldly?
You know, in a sense I think we flew in the face of something we respected very highly, which would be, let's say Gandhian tactics. He often pled guilty to breaking the law ... well, that's another way of doing it. Gandhi is not my bible. Gandhi is a mentor in many, many arenas, but I can also respect him by disagreeing with him. And I think the idea of pleading very firmly "not guilty" and saying why -- because it's better to burn papers than children -- that makes sense to me, even though maybe not Gandhian sense. [Chuckles.]
We frequently invoked, because all of us were people of religious faith, we frequently invoked the Sermon on the Mount. And what is one to make in wartime of this plain stipulation of Jesus, "Love your enemies," or of a statement to Peter, "Put up your sword, those who live by the sword will die by the sword," or his words at the Last Supper, "This is my body given for you," not, "This is your body destroyed by me," and so on, and so on, and so on. I mean, we have so much evidence that the burning of papers instead of children was a Christian act, a religious act, that war is constantly closing the book and saying it doesn't apply. "We're at war, hate your enemies." "We're at war -- kill them!" As at present, and as during Vietnam. So, we were trying to keep the book open, and say, "No, we think he meant it, we think he meant it or he wouldn't have said it. Love your enemies. Don't kill, for any reason."
Toward the end of the trial I remember one famous exchange between Bill and the judge, and the judge got really quite annoyed at this point. Bill was invoking an ancient American case of, I think, a printer in New York who had been tried for sedition ... does that ring a bell at all? I forget the name of the printer. But, anyway, at his trial his lawyer, on this very serious charge, his lawyer insisted that the jurors could follow their conscience. Well, that started a furor. And the judge said, "Mr. Kunstler, if you pursue that, well knowing that that was prior to our Constitution and that now one cannot say to a juror that one can follow their conscience, if you pursue that I will dismiss the [case]... or send the juries out and rebuke you." He didn't threaten anything very serious. So Bill had to abandon that, but he did get the appeal across for what it was worth: You could follow your conscience. Now, of course, it's common instruction that the jury has no freedom to follow their conscience, that they must follow the law of the land. It seems to me -- I have never served on a jury -- but it seems to me that it's a terrible disservice to any kind of human makeup I can understand to say to people, "You cannot follow your conscience. Once you take on this role, your conscience is outside that courtroom, or is dead in the courtroom, but you can't heed it." Well, if we can't act conscientiously, I wonder how we can call ourselves human beings. And ... I guess those questions don't arise in the ordinary courtroom, but Bill was trying to raise it.
I felt that we had conducted ourselves -- the eight defendants -- had conducted [our]selves honorably, had not betrayed our convictions, had told about all sorts of service in the third world that brought us to say no to this war, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. It was emotionally a draining week and a very difficult one, but at the same time I felt we couldn't really have done better, Bill couldn't have done better on our behalf, and the outcome was a foregone conclusion before we started. We knew we were going to be convicted, that's why we didn't waste time with the jury, all sorts of things like that. But I was comparing it ... in my own heart I was comparing that day to a kind of birthday. I felt reborn. I felt that I had done what I had been born for, and I think the others did, too.
Filmmakers: Do you think that young people still think they can change the world?
Berrigan: I don't hear that kind of talk much. I think it's very tough to be young. It's almost as tough as being old. (Smiles.) You're supposed to laugh.
Filmmakers: Do you think we can change the world?
Berrigan: Well, I think we can live as though we are changed, you know, and that's a start.
Filmmakers: Do you see any progress from the time you started being an anti-war activist to today?
Berrigan: No, I see regress. But it doesn't depress me because you do what you do, do what you can.
Filmmakers: So what's the value of the work?
Berrigan: The value of the work is vindicating your own humanity and that of your friends, and living as though the truth were true. There's a mood that can set in easily that would say, because I can't do a big thing I'm gonna do nothing. But I mean I love the Buddhist teaching that the good is to be done because it is good, not because it goes somewhere. I think that's powerful, and I think, too, that if it's done for the right reason, it will go somewhere.
All extended interviews were provided by the filmmakers and edited by Andrew Lutsky.
Tom Hayden on the Chicago Conspiracy Trial
Tom Hayden: Did I expect it to be violent? Yes. The reason to expect violence was first of all experiential. That is, since the invasion of Vietnam in '65, the state had been increasingly violent towards demonstrators. Demonstrators had escalated from purely peaceful protest to non-violent civil disobedience to what you could call confrontations in the streets, unarmed, non-violent, but physical -- usually started by police attacks on demonstrations. So I had experienced that several times before Chicago '68, and there was no reason to believe it would be otherwise. It didn't mean that one favored violence, it's that one anticipated it and took precautions.
Rennie [Davis] was our lead negotiator. Jerry [Rubin] and Abbie [Hoffman] were kind of in their own way negotiating but that was more like a dream state. Abbie and Jerry offered to leave town if the city paid them $100,000, and that became a side issue where nobody knew what was reality, which was proving their point. Rennie did actually negotiate with the city. The [U.S.] Justice Department under Ramsey Clark sent community relations people out, Roger Wilkins was one of them, Wesley Pomeroy was another. And they sat down with Rennie and Tom Foran in a bar and talked, and they concluded verbally and in writing that our position was reasonable and that the city should accommodate it. That there was no reason, since all kinds of youth organizations could sleep in the parks, there was no reason to deny permits to sleep in parks [even] if it meant that it was going to be chaos. They also favored permits for marching within eyesight of the Convention. And the position of the city of Chicago, which I think was backed by others in the federal government, was 'No, no, no. Why don't you understand. No.'
An article that appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times, Wed., Aug. 21, 1968;
Courtesy of Emily and Sarah Kunstler.
We kept thinking that this was the customary tactic to keep people away because of fear -- how could musicians come if they didn't know if they had a permit, for instance? -- and that at the end the city would give in and give us permits. Well, they never did. And so then it just became a rising self-awareness that the police would be physical, and we should either leave town, surrender our civil liberties to protest, or take to the streets in what we thought was an embodiment of the First Amendment right to protest that cannot be suspended. And maybe, we thought, maybe the shock of the confrontation would force the city and the federal government to back up. There were many in the Democratic party, many in the government who thought it was ridiculous not to allow permits, but it never happened until the final day. Strangely this permit came floating out of City Hall, which was surreal, nobody knew whether to believe it. That was the day of the greatest violence; it was the day we had a permitted rally.
The violence was mild compared to the violence inflicted on the black community after King's assassination when Mayor Daley gave 'shoot to kill' orders. The violence was mild compared to the shooting of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, Black Panthers, during our trial. But I guess for white American middle-class sensibility and for journalism, the exposure of all this violence, all these beatings, all this gassing on a cross-section of American young people was a shock. It was like a coming-out of violence that had been fairly invisible I think at that point in the evolution of television and protests. This is not to belittle the violence, it's to put it in some context.
Scenes from Chicago; Courtesy of Emily and Sarah Kunstler
I was beaten up a couple of times, but I don't remember any bruises. I was gassed. The gas is bad. You know, every serious American should be pepper-gassed once because the police always say, 'Oh, that's our less-than-lethal weapon.' (Laughs) But exposure to it and the way it shuts your organs down and makes you nauseous and there's no escaping it is a form of less-than-lethal torture, but definitely torture. And I think a number of people were hurt more than I was -- wounds to the head bleed profusely, so you can't tell how bad it is. Rennie had his head cracked open and blood was all over him, but he recovered without a concussion. One person was shot and killed: A seventeen-year-old Native American the night before it all began in Lincoln Park. He's been completely eliminated from the narrative of Chicago. Medical teams were beaten up. Approximately sixty reporters, mainstream reporters, were beaten up or gassed. Dan Rather was punched by Chicago police on the floor of the Convention. (Watch YouTube video.) It was outside and inside. It wasn't limited to a wild-in-the-streets kind of operatic thing that is portrayed in the media.
Filmmakers: Were you aware that you were under surveillance?
Hayden: We were under surveillance during the whole trial and during the events of '68. Yes, I was aware of it. First, because it was my general orientation. I knew that this was the way police behave. Secondly, it kept getting revealed during the trial that people we knew of were agents. So if they were coming on the stand as agents from the year before, why wouldn't there be agents during the trial as well? (Laughs)
I think that the FBI in coordination with local police departments like the Chicago police infiltrated organizations like the Black Panther Party, the Mobilization, and SDS after 1966, certainly by 1967, and by early 1968 put us on special lists of people, like myself, who were targeted for what they called 'neutralization.' Now I know in James Bond movies that means assassination, it's a loose term. But it usually meant spreading rumors, fabrications, false leaflets, false phone calls, to undermine leadership and get people quarreling with each other.
I'll give you an example. One thing was the famous Black Panther Party letter that was sent to somebody's home, a threatening letter, and used to eliminate somebody from the jury at the very beginning of the trial and put somebody else on the jury. The letter was a classic FBI disinformation letter written in large block, semi-literate print, and it was signed, I think, 'The Black Panthers,' or something. It was signed in a way that the Black Panthers never signed anything. And it was just handed to the unsuspecting member of the jury who was shaken by it, and she was then removed from the jury. To me, and to all the defense, that was a clear manipulation. We called for a complete investigation into it, believing at that time early in the trial that words were to be taken seriously. (Laughs) The judge agreed and then later documents revealed that no investigation was undertaken at all. As a matter of fact, investigation of the sources of the letter was forbidden by the prosecution. The only thing that was allowed to be investigated were fingerprint samples taken from the piece of paper, and I have no idea what resulted from the fingerprint samples.
We know from subsequent records and declassified materials that there were agents all the way from '68 through the trial, that they, FBI and Chicago police agents, shared surreptiously gathered material with the prosecutors and with the judge. We know that by admission on the record. We know that they were listening in at various points by surveillance to meetings of the defense, meetings of counsel. Meetings having to do with evidence, witnesses, basis for appeals, all of that. So there may be more to come, I don't know what it is, but the record shows that our suspicions were not exaggerated.
We were charged by the incoming Republican administration in Washington after the Johnson administration [and] Attorney General Clark had recommend against indictments and wanted it treated as an investigative matter best left to state and local courts if there were some misdemeanors or state felonies. Instead, [Nixon administration] Attorney General Mitchell met with our prosecutors in early 1969. I interviewed those prosecutors in 1987. And they said one reason to go ahead with the prosecution was that they didn't want us to get away with it. On the other hand both of our prosecutors had been in the streets in August, September, '68, and were quite aware of the police brutality and out of control behavior and had actually filed eyewitness reports on it. So they knew that the state had a problem proving its case.
What it came down to, according to prosecutor Foran in talking to me was, as he put it, he wanted us to sit on a needle for a very long time, as if sitting on a needle would keep us inactive and would bring about the demise of the movement. And even in 1987, twenty years later, he believed that they had succeeded but that, as he put it, then came Kent State and it started all over again.
I think for President Nixon ... uh, we all replay our past, and he had come to his prominence with Senator Joseph McCarthy and the anti-Communist crusades. And the model was to crack down on a vertically organized Communist Party and take out their leaders, so the same would be true here. You would get the Mobilization, the Black Panther Party, and the Yippies and take out their so-called leaders and somehow the organizations would be immobilized or set backwards.
I think the trial was given a symbolic meaning by the media as a watershed in the '60s -- there's always a watershed, there's always a turning point -- because it was such an easy thing to see this variety of the Black Panthers, and the SDS, and the Anti-War, and the Hippies and Yippies versus cops, prosecutors, the state, with the war in the background. So it became a kind of visual drama that played its way into the sensibility of all those who were watching. I'm not much on symbols, but I believe that's what it was about symbolically. What it was really about is power. The power of the state to suppress dissent versus the power of social movements to stand up in the face of repression.
The Chicago 8: (top) Rubin, Hoffman, Hayden, Davis; (bottom) Seale, Weiner, Froines, Dellinger.
The trial was an arduous challenge. The workload was very, very heavy. I was a principal attorney even though I'd never gone to law school. I spent every night 'til three, four in the morning going over testimony, transcripts, preparing witnesses, getting ready for the next day while drinking alcohol, then coffee, and then getting up at seven and driving, usually in freezing weather, downtown to voluntarily submit myself to a zoo. To a place where there was no sign of respect for due process or anything like that, and then go home the next day and start again. I thought Abbie was exaggerating but it was an accurate insight when he said, "This is like a neon oven." That's what it felt like to me.
I was chosen to have responsibility for making sure that the whole defense carried forward and I wasn't a lawyer. So I was kind of the shot-caller, the strategist. As for myself I wanted to try to win the case within the system or expose the system in such a way that we would win on appeal. So I was always preoccupied with, you know, what's the government's evidence? What's our rebuttal to that evidence? What witnesses do we have? How can we put on a story of who we are? And my hope was that we would find one juror out of twelve who would go with us and vote for acquittal no matter what the pressure.
I think Bill [Kunstler] shared the view that we should go for that single juror, and he certainly shared the view that we should try to create a record in the trial that would allow us a rational appeal to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. I think all the defendants gradually came to that view. I can't remember the sequence of it, but it became apparent. Jerry and Abbie, um, I-I'm sorry that they've passed, I don't really know if I can tell you accurately what they thought. They did think for sure that there was a chance for theater, and they wanted to have celebrity witnesses and get on television at all costs, with their tactics and with their witnesses. When it came to how to put a witness on, what was testimony and what was gonna be disallowed, what was gonna be the cross-examination, they were less clear. They kind of left that to the attorneys.
And I remember there was a turning point where we didn't know what we were gonna do, and we had a meeting. And I ... I was angry, and I said, "Look, there's not gonna be any space for theatrics in prison. You might be sexually molested and have your throat cut by guards that hate you and inmates that they put up to it. So this is your choice. Ten years in prison, which our lawyers have advised us is likely, three years off for good time, which is impossible -- to have a good time in prison -- so it's probably ten years with all the dangers of ten years in prison. Or, we have to win this case. We have to put on a first-class defense to win the case in the courtroom or before the jury."
So I wanted to turn the jury into an example of, not civil disobedience, but ... 'cause we have a right to disobey authority, jurors have a right to nullify a law. It's little used and never mentioned by attorneys or the judge. I wanted one juror to stand up and say 'No,' which they were totally entitled to. As it turned out, there were four who wanted to but they were so browbeaten, exhausted and misled and manipulated that they didn't know that they could or that that's what we wanted. So they went along with an absurd verdict, which was not factually based, which it's supposed to be. (Laughs) It was, 'Well, we'll find them guilty on one charge, which we don't believe they're guilty of, if you'll find them not guilty on the other charge, which you don't believe they're guilty of. So we'll come out with a compromised verdict: Guilty on one, not guilty on the other.' It was ridiculous, but that's what they did.
Filmmakers: What are the myths of the Chicago Conspiracy trial?
Hayden: One of the myths is that it was just a wild time. There's a repeated theatricality about it. There's a play on every year or few years in Los Angeles and elsewhere. There have been attempts to capture the experience in films. This could be because the kind of people who are artists and directors see the theatricality. There's a stage, there's a judge, there are defendants who act out. So it could be as simple as that. But it obviously -- the artistic mind captures the essence of my generation like nothing else that's available for performance and for study. And what happens there is that the truth becomes cloudy because there's a certain measure of artistic license. Certain people are more theatrical than others, all of the excitement of the trial and confrontations have to be compressed on stage or in memory so that it just seems like bedlam as opposed to a five-month very slow, gradual process.
In general the moments of confrontation were few and far between. And believe it or not they actually had causes. They were not like random acts of mindless disruption. The first and primary cause, of course was the chaining and gagging of Bobby Seale, the chairman of the Black Panther Party. We don't know to this day, and we may never know, who actually ordered the remedy. Obviously the judge had to be part of it. But who's in the back chamber telling the judge what to do and how to do it? In any event, we knew it was coming, some showdown was coming, and this would be like the first phase of the trial was climaxing before we got to the rest of it. And then it just happened.
I mean, they gave us a noon break and then they ordered the guards, the marshals, apparently, to chain him to a chair, a metal chair, ankles and wrists, and then gag him with a ... how would they put it? Put a tape around his mouth so that he could no longer talk. And of course, before you get to the morality of this, there was the folly, the folly of power thinking that this could work. (Laughs) That you could literally somehow silence somebody by wrapping tape around their mouth. You try it. It just changes the sound from words to moaning and, uh, gurgling and yelling. And, it doesn't eliminate the sound at all. And then you have the ghastly sound of chains because you've got metal chains attached to a metal chair. So now you've got a black man moaning in anger with a tape around his mouth and rattling the chains, which re-takes you all the way back to slavery. There, it hit everybody in the room very, very hard. It certainly was not what Bobby had expected or Garry had expected or anybody had expected. But these things are kinetic; they're fluid. They don't ... history is not predetermined, this just happened. And then the state had to scramble its way out of it. But it left this indelible impression around the country and around the world that in America treatment of black people like slaves was not over. Far from it.
There were other causes [for confrontation]. One day Dave Dellinger was taken away and put in jail for having given a speech. So that's the first issue. The studies show that most of the contempt citations occurred in three periods of less than two days or three days out of five months.
I suppose there's another myth that the judge was insane or he's demeaned as being senile, because his head bobbed and some of the defendants called him Mr. Magoo. This myth makes it seem like it was a farcical deviation from the logical history of American justice. [It] makes it appear that it was a Chicago phenomenon wired by Mayor Daley and police who were overreacting to mere demonstrations and a judge who was overreacting himself.
There's always a grain of truth in myth, obviously. But in fact, the decision to indict us came from the newly elected and installed Nixon administration in a meeting, I believe, between Attorney General John Mitchell and the prosecutors, Mr. Foran and Mr. Schultz, shortly after Nixon was sworn in. And I think that if you go back to the actual events in '68, the police response was not just a local police riot but it was coordinated by the FBI and intelligence agencies, many of whom had people inside the protest groups. So viewed that way, it was a serious attempt to recreate the repression of the McCarthy period in the early '50s, and to use a cast of characters as symbolic actors to be suppressed in order to achieve a chilling effect on the movement, or to put the movement on the defensive. So those are two examples of the mythology that's grown around the trial. But there are others.
Why is it important to remember the Chicago Conspiracy trial?
Hayden: Well, it's important to remember the '60s. There's no new reasons for advocating memory. I mean there's ... some people try to remember in order to propel a legacy of the past forward in a new generation. Some people want to wipe memory out so that those rebellions are never heard about, taught or repeated. Some people in the middle -- most people are in the middle -- want to manage the memory so Chicago becomes an aberration, a kind of a breakdown of the system that was quickly restored and put back together, as opposed to a window into the true nature of the system and what it does.
So the struggle for memory seems to me all-important especially because I began without memory. I wasn't raised on the Left. I don't know what radicalized me, and many therapists and analysts have tried to figure it out, including my closest friends. I came from a middle-American, lower-middle-class Catholic household with no previous political associations. I was not affected by the progressive movements of the past, by McCarthyism. I came face to face with people of my generation who were going to jail in the South, against segregation and against the lethargy of their parents' generation, and it touched me in a very deep way at a particular time. It laid out a lesson. I fully intended to be a newspaper reporter or journalist of some kind, a writer, and I always have been curious, non-conformist, but oriented to writing. But I just couldn't only write about these students who were taking such risks. I decided very gradually to join them.
I came out of SDS (Students for a Democratic Society), I was a community organizer from the South, I was an organizer in Newark. I saw Vietnam as an invasion of my space. I saw it as ending the hopeful first half of the '60s. I saw it as diverting money and resources and time and energy and blood to a foreign war instead of the war against poverty that had been going on for fifty or sixty years and the hundred years of Jim Crow and the rest of it. So I joined the anti-war movement in '65, '66, and gradually realized that I wasn't gonna get about succeeding in my domestic issues if we didn't end this war. So I thought there was a possibility of putting enough pressure on the state, then dominated by the Democrats, to force a choice: To either get out of Vietnam or lose their authorities and possibly lose an election. Remember, our generation couldn't vote. That wasn't an option. So the idea of being in the streets was a forced choice, it wasn't entirely voluntary. It was the only place to be, or so it appeared.
I think Abbie said the same thing in his testimony. "What did you do before 1960?" "Nothing. I think it was called a college education." He knew nothing until the movement came along. So there's a lot to remember about the '60s.
Why Chicago? We can't do anything about it. Chicago has become iconic. It eclipses other things that are equally important or more important, like Kent State, many other things. We have little control over that, how iconic moments get chosen by the public, the historians, the media and so on. So Chicago has to be seen as a case where we're privileged to serve as a stand-in for many others who stood up and sacrificed their time and their resources and in some cases their blood for what we all stood for. So I think of it as an opportunity to make the most of the story of Chicago to tell the larger story. And nothing more, nothing less.
All extended interviews were provided by the filmmakers and edited by Andrew Lutsky.
Bill Means on Wounded Knee
I Wanna Wear That Uniform
And so then, through grade school, high school, especially in athletics, when you go to some of these towns that had very high racist feelings against Indians, they would say things, call us Redskins, "Go back to the Reservation," you know, holler from the crowd. And you experienced that throughout life, it was kind of a daily occurrence. And then when you see somebody that's standing up against it ...
My college career was interrupted by service in Vietnam, where I got my political education. I began to see more and more this whole idea of colonialism and how it works. [T]he idea of creating conflict, and what it means to the indigenous people, what it means to the people that live in another land the United States is occupying with their military, and how so dedicated people are to a movement, to face the most powerful military in the world with a grassroots movement of people willing to give their lives for their country, for their movement to free Vietnam. And as a soldier I started to understand that and see that I myself played the role of the cavalry. But you know what, you're in a combat situation; you either go to prison or you try to survive every day. And I didn't really think of myself as going to prison. And so I surrounded myself with people that wanted to live as much as I did and survive to come back and then become a part of the movement.
I began to read these books. For example, one was called Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown. I read that in college, a professor gave it to me, and I began to see history from a different perspective, and then when I was in Vietnam to recall those incidents that I had studied about. First, you know, comes the cavalry. Then comes the church, acting as intelligence for the cavalry. You know, Who's coming to church? Who's refusing to be baptized? These are the dissidents. These are the people that we need to put onto the reservation and confine them. So the idea of basically confining people... destroying their economy, their way of life, [so that] they become dependent on the United States government.
When I came back from Vietnam I still had five months to serve, and I was in a place called Fort Louis, Washington. And part of our training was riot control because of the civil rights movement [and] the anti-war movement, so they would train us how to clear the crowds, how to fight protesters, how to arrest them. And so these Indian people had occupied a military base that had been abandoned in Seattle, Washington. So one night they wake us up out of bed -- this is at Fort Louis which is only maybe fifty miles south of Seattle -- and they came in and said, "We're on alert. We're on alert!" Which in military terms, you know what to do. You grab your rucksack and your weapon and your helmet and your gear, and you go outside and you get ready to move out to somewhere.
So they load us on trucks and they took us to McChord Air Force Base, which is near Fort Louis. And we were sitting on the runway with all our gear on, rifles and bayonets, and a sergeant comes walking by and I said, "Hey, Sarge, what's the deal? What's going on? Protests?" He says, "Some Indian people have taken over a military base that's abandoned in Seattle and we might have to go get them outta there." I said, "Hey, Sarge, man, I'm not going over there. I just came back from the war in Vietnam and I'm not gonna start killing my own people." So he looked at me and said, "Stand up." So then all these guys started cheering, primarily black guys, saying, "Yeah, Chief. I don't wanna serve over there either. What's going on?" They start asking questions. So they got me out of there, and they took me to stockade, which is a military jail on Fort Louis. But they didn't put me inside, just had me kinda sittin' in what they called the bullpen where you're waiting.
So I sat there, that was the middle of the night, 'til the next morning and somebody had found out about it. Pretty soon there was a protest outside of some anti-war people who found out somehow, I don't know how, that I was in there. They were protesting that they had arrested an Indian for not wanting to fight against his own people. And, boy, they immediately took me out of there through the back door. Just took me back to my barracks and said, "You work around here. Don't leave here. You're confined." Which to me was better than jail. I didn't understand the whole scope of things at the time, but it was kind of a rude awakening of being on a military side and then have to face your own people. And fortunately I didn't have to do that in the end. And I wasn't charged and sent to prison, which I could have been, especially at war time. And so it worked out. But it was for me as an individual a major turning point in my life when I decided to stand up for my own people at that moment and say I couldn't participate.
When I first saw that picture in 'The Stars and Stripes' as a soldier, and you hear about the anti-war movement and you see the evils of war, human bodies torn apart, women and children killed, napalm, you start asking yourself, "Why? Why does this happen?" And then, of course, me being an American Indian, I had a personal reflection of me being the cavalry, and so all these things built up in me to where, when I did see that picture, I felt this is a way to pay back my people. This is a way for me to become involved in something positive to save our culture, to save our way of life, to fight for our land.
I rediscovered what that means when I went to Latin America. To say the word 'Indio' to someone in Latin America, even today, is somewhat derogatory. It used to be way more derogatory. But as people are taking on the Indian identity, that's no longer true. And that used to be true here in America, because colonialism almost succeeded and assimilation and acculturation, the boarding schools, they almost wiped us out. But because of AIM, that culture and that identity ... we began to bring out the drum when we went to protest. We didn't just march, we had our drum, and our songs were a prominent part of the movement. And the elders began to teach us.
And even at Wounded Knee, 1973, probably one of our greatest events we had was the reestablishment of the Sun Dance, one of the seven sacred ceremonies of Lakota. Never been danced in that manner, of four days, for almost one hundred years. And we as AIM were a part of that history to reestablish our culture. All these Indian elders came down to support and teach us the meaning of being Indian, not just wearing the beads and the long hair, but what is the real essence of being an Indian. It's our culture. It's identity. It's our relationship to the Creator, to Mother Earth. I think that's the greatest contribution of AIM to the young people, to reestablish our identity and our culture.
And we started to get press in Washington, and then we took over the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) building because government officials weren't cooperating. And one of the BIA employees even brought us a memo that showed the government had, uh, should we say, very specifically told their employees not to meet with us, etcetera. Well, out of that the United States government brought in this Christian priest who was a tribal chairman at Rosebud, South Dakota, not too far from where I'm from, adjacent to Pine Ridge. His name was Webster Two Hawk. And he came in, and he had a collar on, and he was speaking as a national president of what they called the National Tribal Chairman's Association. He came in and held a press conference in Washington, D.C., while we were occupying the building and said we were outside agitators, we were urban Indians, we didn't reflect the true issues of Indian people, and we were not the good Indians.
Indian people who were aligned with the policies of the United States government were many times pushed to the front to condemn AIM as criminals, ex-convicts, outside agitators, urban Indians, and not the good Indians, not the Indians that truly represented Indian life. These were the people that received the funding. These were the people that were promoted by media and government officials. And so they created this image of AIM as militants, revolutionaries -- if you will, antigovernment -- basically saying that we did not represent Indian people, that we represented a small faction, a fringe element of Indian people. During those times there was a civil rights movement, there was an anti-war movement, so these were tactics that were used throughout society, be they white anti-war organizations, be they Chicano, Hispanic, Brown Berets, the SDS, the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, uh, be they people at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. I mean, people who were against government policies ... we were all branded as non-representative of America.
But AIM represented primarily the area of treaty rights as the foundation of our legal relationship with the United States. There's no other people in America, no other minorities have land or a legal and political relationship through treaties that Indian people have. And so as Indian movements, primarily AIM, National Indian Youth Council, the west coast fishing rights people, other organizations ... all these people represented the conscience of America because we brought the truth about history, about treaty rights, about land, about resources and how the capitalist system has to always put indigenous people aside, or put them out of sight, out of mind, so that they can grab the resources and the land that's needed for this big, should we say, multi-national -- how did Eisenhower put it? -- the military-industrial complex. So I think those things about indigenous people, the land and the resources, are what drives America. And we brought out the truth of the history, that ... how did America get this land? How did America get these resources? It was through the violation of Indian rights, through the violation of Indian treaties. And they started this principle, which is, America had always been known as a place of democracy, but yet, is it only in America that if you steal something and hold onto it long enough, it becomes yours?
These are questions we asked America. We said, "Why is it that we are at the bottom of every social measurement in America?" Be it education level, lifespan of young males, numbers of Indian people in prison, we could go on and on. Housing conditions, whether we had electricity or not, you know. And so all these things were coming during the late '60s, early '70s, and the anti-war and the Civil Rights Movement were bringing these social conditions of minority people to the forefront. AIM and Indian people, we always represented the conscience of America, the very foundation of what America was built on, and I think that was something that American politicians and certainly government officials refused to recognize.
I think Wounded Knee was a major turning point in history of U.S./American Indian relations because it brought out the issue of treaties so very clearly, especially in court. Even the federal court had to recognize the issue of treaties, as to whether or not they even had jurisdiction on a reservation. A treaty is not taken lightly because in the Constitution itself, Article Six, it says treaty law is the supreme law of the land.
And so that, I think, was the turning point, that treaties were brought out to help all Indian people. 371 treaties have been signed by the United States and proclaimed by the president, so it became a national movement of treaty recognition, of sovereignty, of self-determination. These are words that came out of the treaty struggle. Nobody talked about that before because the BIA was always our caretaker, our Great White Father. They always had ultimate authority. Once Wounded Knee came, tribal government said, "BIA, you sit over here. We're gonna take some action on our own, be it in education, be it in land development, be it in all the social services." Tribes began to take on more authority, began to stand up.
I was constantly afraid of being arrested or going to prison or even, in Wounded Knee, of being killed. I thought, "Man, I survived Vietnam, and now I'm gonna get killed on my own land, my own reservation." They promoted this image that we had weapons, because, see, the store at Wounded Knee was selling firearms and ammunition without a federal license, but they didn't care. But that came out in the press, and they were reporting Indians with guns, shootings taking place. And there was collaboration between the FBI and what became know as the Goons, or as they say in Central America, the death squads, people who really are not law enforcement officials but are used by law enforcement to terrorize communities. And so here was young men and women who were basically under the influence of the FBI and the BIA police to perpetrate crimes against their own people.
And so through that idea of militancy, shooting between BIA police and occupiers of Wounded Knee, the authorities say, "We gotta have more help." Because of the legal relationship of Indians to the United States government, state officials don't have jurisdiction on the Pine Ridge Reservation. Therefore you have to go into the Major Crimes Acts, the basis of federal jurisdiction. And so they start charging us with these major crimes, using firearms, so you had the Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms agency, FBI, U.S. Marshals, Border Patrol, and eventually the 82nd Airborne observers came in there. So all this response was primarily based on the fact that there was guns that were taken out of the Wounded Knee Trading Post and that shots were exchanged between BIA police and the occupiers at Wounded Knee, or AIM. And therefore outside agencies had to be called in to put down this civil disturbance. And with the media in there showing weapons, you know, on the news every night, it just compounded and started to ... like a snowball rolling down a hill.
Pretty soon we had all these federal officers from different agencies surrounding us. They had armored personnel carriers, they had military equipment like Huey helicopters, things that I had seen used in Vietnam. And it was amazing the transformation, how this thing expanded into this military stand-off. So when they came with their APCs and all their federal agents, we had no choice. If we don't want to be killed like the last Wounded Knee in 1890, we were gonna go down fighting at least. And so we took the position you either negotiate with us or kill us.
Other movements started bringing in weapons and ammunition to help us, and so it expanded on both sides. But from our perspective primarily on a defensive perspective. We never carried out any operations against the military while we were in Wounded Knee. We could have because a lot of us were Vietnam veterans, a lot of us were veterans from the street. We had nothin' to lose. We were young people, we had no families at the time to worry about back home. We were ex-military, very, very experienced in weapons, very experienced in military tactics. So we were not afraid of these Marshals and FBI from a military perspective. We were very afraid from a legal perspective, of going to prison, going to jail, being on trial, and how we would eventually wind up after the action.
There was over five hundred people arrested. And for myself I was charged with, I think, six different felonies. And so we established the Wounded Knee Legal Defense Offense Committee, and attorneys volunteered throughout American law schools. A lot of the people had experience in these types of issues, the Civil Rights Movement, what it took down South when they had the Freedom Rides ... a lot of those same attorneys and young attorneys offered their services free of charge. And so our job as AIM people, once the stand-off was over, was to start organizing community support, organizing witnesses for defendants, organizing evidence, trying to seek out evidence for the trials, trying to get experts in things like treaty law, getting translators for witnesses who spoke primarily Lakota. And some of our people got involved in going out and interviewing neighborhood people as to how they know this witness, etcetera ... so a tremendous amount of organization had to go into this. Meetings constantly, traveling constantly, and at the same time raising money, which you have to have to make all these things go, you know. And so these are the things that we rolled up our sleeves and got into, the basic idea of providing a good defense for all our five hundred defendants.
The leadership trial was the epitome of the Wounded Knee struggle in that it was on the news daily. Important issues that were discussed in the courtroom -- treaty rights, firearms, whatever the issues of the day were in the court -- were on the national news for almost a year. At the time I know the leadership trial was the longest criminal trial in history of the United States jurisprudence. And so it was, uh, should we say, a media circus as well. And in the American Indian Movement we got to be good at being able to use the media. The media didn't intimidate us; we knew that we had to use that as one of the tools. So we began to do a certain amount of, you might call, street theater to get our point across.
For example, when the elders came to the trials as witnesses on the issues of treaty rights, they came in their full traditional dress: headdress with feathers and buckskin, braids on. And so it was like ... the media loved it. Here was these Indians protesting, now they're on trial, and they're dressed like real Indians. There's feathers, there's drums, there's beads. And so the media became, shall we say, inspired by that. They would organize our daily press conferences around having certain props in the room, having the drum. They always loved to have the drum there, you know. Every time you saw something about Wounded Knee on the news they'd always open up with this drum going. And so we used some of the stereotypes of our people to our advantage, to get the message out.
And so if the media wanted to cover us, they had to see the drum. If they wanted to cover us they had to talk to these elders dressed in traditional costume. They were articulate people, maybe even speaking their own language to a translator to show that our people were still following our traditional language and culture. And we also had well-known, nationally prominent attorneys. So here were these Indians and these well-qualified, nationally prominent attorneys takin' on the United States government, and that itself was a story for the media to really wrap their hands around. So all these things were what made the leadership trials very, you might say, flamboyant. They were a hit with America.
And that's where I began to realize how the legal community, men and women lawyers, play such an important role in a democracy, or in a true democracy. To have your day in court but to be well-represented and what that meant, because many public defenders are really dedicated, but a lot of them are only interested in making a deal. Doing their job everyday, get it done as soon as possible, "Let's negotiate." But a real public defender says "Negotiation's out of the question. We're going to trial. If you wanna put my client in jail, you're gonna have to prove it, and you're gonna have to work hard to prove it. You're gonna have to answer ten trial motions even before we get to trial." And so this is the type of legal defense that was developed and I came to realize was part of the movement, a very integral part of the movement.
It's important to remember AIM and Wounded Knee because it was a turning point in the history of the U.S. government-Indian relations in many ways and the fact of the prominence now of treaty rights. And the issues of sovereignty and self-determination are based on treaties. because when Indian people stand on their treaty rights, they're basically telling America that we are nations of people. We're not tribes, we're not movements, we're not labor unions, we're not non-profit organizations. We're nations. That's what Wounded Knee brought to the American Indian and to the American public, was the federal relationship, political and legal relationship that exists, unlike any other minority in America.
Secondly, and probably more importantly, was the issue of Indian pride, that now Indian people were proud to be American Indian. That, along with the movement in education. We now have established an Indian college movement where about thirty-five Indian colleges have been established. We have Indian Studies programs in the universities across America. We have Indian language in elementary, immersion programs for people that are relearning the language of our people. And so all these developments ... I think AIM, we can't say we're responsible, but we certainly contributed to the idea that Indian people have the right to self-determination and sovereignty.
All extended interviews were provided by the filmmakers and edited by Andrew Lutsky.
Paul Redd on Experiences with Racism
Paul Redd: My name is Paul Redd, and my family won a case of discrimination in housing which permitted us to move into Rye Colony, December, 1962.
Paul and Oriole Redd being filmed; Courtesy of Emily and Sarah Kunstler.
Initially we saw the apartment in the newspaper here in Rye, and my wife called, and they told her they had, uh, this lovely apartment, so we made an appointment to come over. But being not so ... slow, we had a white lady come. Lotte Kunstler, Bill Kunstler's wife, and two other ladies--I think Dorothy Sterling was one of them--went to the rental office to identify the fact that there were apartments available. My wife Oriole and I were parked at the Rye railroad station. After they had identified that there was an apartment available, they came out to the rental office and there was a lady sitting in the parking lot. They gave her the signal to come to get us. The lady came out and gave us a signal, we drove over to the manager's office and asked for an apartment. And he said he had just rented the apartment to those ladies. They said, "Well, we know the Redds need it more than we do and we would be glad to relinquish it to them." He refused to give it to us. We then had witnesses that he refused to give it to us. We then filed charges with the State Division of Human Rights.
It was in the newspaper a lot, and on the radio, and so people were interested. And we'd get calls from people who wanted to know, What did we want to move into some place that nobody wanted us? We had people who called and said, uh, "I know where you can find an apartment in Scarsdale, New Rochelle, a house." And we said that is not the issue. The issue is that Oriole's family had been here since 1879, and Oriole and I had a right to live in Rye if that's where we wanted to live and we could afford to do so. And, uh, some of them just simply did not like it.
Every night they used to call for something. They wanna know, uh, "Why you niggers wanna live in a, in an all-white neighborhood? What do you ... they don't want you there. What are you doing there?" Um, "Go to Harlem, or go wherever." And, um, they just use all kinda words. Uh, Oriole got most of those because I'd be out working or someplace.
Well, we got it from people all over, you know, uh, even from black people who didn't understand why we were applying and were putting up the fight. Because they, just like some whites, believed that if people don't want you someplace, why should you go there? They felt like we were creating a situation of moving in someplace that, uh, we weren't wanted, and, and really had no right to be there. But we believed that we had a right to be here, as American citizens. And when we are standing in the middle of that, that is, uh ... very ... a thing that really, uh, makes you feel bad, because you really wonder, Am I doing the right thing or am I not doing the right thing?
For example, some people said, "Why do you put your kids through this?" See, mind you, during that time, I think my daughter was like nine years old and my son was like four or four and a half. And they said, "I understand what you're doing, but I wouldn't put my kids through that kind of thing." And we thought about that, too, but we felt like we had to do what we had to do. And our kids caught, um, hell sometimes right here. There were a couple of kids that would play with 'em, and then some wouldn't. So they really had ... I would say they probably caught it worse than we did because the adults, they either would speak to you or not speak to you and just keep on going, you know. But the kids, they're the ones that had to ... Oriole used to take the kids out someplace else to play. You know.
My kids went through school in Rye, and I've learned later, since they're grown, a lot of things that they went through that I just did not know at the time. For example, my son and a white boy were in line, and they did like kids do, push each other. Uh, they took my son to the principal's office and jumped all over him and just left the white kid alone. And that's just one incident. There were a lot of things that went on that I learned later, uh, through my kids, who didn't complain then about it.
Uh, my daughter came home and told us a story about, she was out at the playground playing, and said the, uh, she was sliding down the sliding board and the kids were throwing rocks at her, telling her to get out of the park. So her mother asked her, "What'd you do, Paula?" She says, "I told 'em I had a right to be there as much as they did," and she said, "I just ducked 'em and kept on slidin.'" And we thought that was great for a nine-year-old.
Paul and Oriole Redd; Courtesy of Emily and Sarah Kunstler.
Filmmakers: Did you have a sense when you were fighting for this house that this was something that was not only for you but for other people as well?
Paul Redd: We had hoped so. We had hoped that our fight for, uh, the right for a person to live where they could afford to live, uh, that this would do it. It didn't do anything. Because we've been here since December, 1962 ... they're still no blacks in this complex of 156 units. I'm still mad as hell. I'm just trying to be calm right now, but I'm mad as hell about how the change is. If you'd ever read my columns in my newspaper you'd find out that I am still mad as hell. Um, I remember some lady was telling me about ... it takes time. I said, "You want me to wait for something that you've been enjoying all your life." Um, my mother-in-law died at ninety-nine, and she was discriminated all her life, and it looks like I'm going to die before blacks ever achieve total freedom and equality. So, am I discouraged? I am very angry about the way America treats blacks.
What needs to be done, in my opinion, are these so-called liberal politicians, who claim that they believe in total freedom and equality, need to speak out so their neighbors will know what they feel about it. They give us a lot of lip-service, and they want us to vote for them and all, but they're afraid to even let their neighbor know that they believe in total equality. And that's on the white side.
The blacks need to speak out more, the black politician needs to speak out more, and push legislation that helps them. They are just as bad--if a black does not speak out on discrimination, then why should a white feel that they should speak out? Most of the blacks in this country who are elected, are elected by a majority of blacks in the community they live in. There are very few blacks that are in elected office that are elected in, uh, districts that are majority white. You could practically name 'em. Like, uh, Senator Obama, that's the whole state of Illinois. But you only got one black senator. Um, just about everybody else that's elected in Congress, they're elected from majority minority districts. And that's throughout this whole country. So they need to step up to the plate themselves, instead of being worried about whether they're gonna be reelected. They are elected to represent us, and many of them are not representing us. So if they're not representing us, the whites feel like, if blacks don't open their mouths, why should I stick my neck out? And then what we need is more honest politicians to speak out against racism and discrimination. It's the only way we gonna be able to stop it.
Filmmakers: What do you say to people who think that equal rights have been achieved already, that the civil rights movement was victorious and that, you know, that we've made it?
Paul Redd: Well, some people probably do think they've made it because they have the money and, uh, they're just doing their own things. Some blacks are doing alright, but some blacks have always done alright. But if you just look out here and see, every day you can see people who are being discriminated against for one reason or another. There's still blacks out there ... blacks still compile the largest, uh, number of people who have been out of a job. And why is that? Everybody else who come here, illegals, they're here, they can get jobs. They talk about, uh, jobs that Americans won't take, and you go into diners in this county ... How many blacks have you ever seen being a waiter or waitress in a diner or in the fine restaurants in New York City? So those are jobs we never had in the first place. So don't tell me I don't want those jobs, I've never had the opportunity to have those jobs. And that really makes me angry.
It's not just blacks that are being discriminated. It's, uh, the poor are still being discriminated against, the immigrants are being discriminated against, a whole host of people being discriminated against. And those people who think that the ... that we have made it are fools. Because all they have to do is just one time to go to the wrong place.
That's happened to me now, you can still see it right here in Rye. I go to the diner, the White Plains diner, not too long ago, sat down at the counter, and the waitress was in the back. And a white guy came up and sat at the counter ... I knew I had a problem. The minute he sat down, I knew I had a problem. And she came out of the back, she went right to the white man. I said, Why didn't you ask who was first? The woman looked at me like I was crazy. I became the person who was causing trouble because I asked her why didn't she ask who was next. If there're two white people standing there and they go to one, and the other one says, "Oh, I was here first," they say, "Oh, I'm sorry," and they go to that one. But when I say I was there first, then they look at you like, So what? So she came over and took my order, then went over and took the white person's order. And guess whose order came out first? Two hamburgers ... whose order came out first? The white guy's came out first. And so they get you one way or the other. Don't that make you mad? You better believe that makes you awful mad. Ain't nothing you can do about it ... but create a situation. They call the police on you, the police beat you up because they say you were creating a disturbance, so you lost all the way around. And it keeps happening and happening. That's black rage.
A lot of people do not understand that, that sometimes, sometimes it tips a wire which makes you act, to everybody outside, like you're crazy. You're not crazy. It means that you had enough. Fanny Lou Hamer coined the phrase, "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired."
Filmmakers: Do you think it's important that people remember what happened here?
Paul Redd: Oh, yes, I think it's important that people know what happened. Sometimes I wonder, you know, that people don't want to hear about this, but I think it's important. It doesn't seem to have helped this place, uh, integrate, but I think it's important for people to know some of the things that we've gone through, so hopefully they won't have to repeat some of it. Hopefully if another black tried to apply for an apartment here they will remember the fight that they had to try to keep people out and that since we've been here we didn't burn the place down. And, uh, ... that we want the same thing that any other person wants, and that is a safe place to raise our family. Which was all we wanted in the beginning. When we got here that's what we did. Our kids are grown and out on their own. And the place was not burned down.
All extended interviews were provided by the filmmakers and edited by Andrew Lutsky.
Yusef Salaam on the Central Park Jogger Case
I remember falling asleep. I remember knowing, just based on my own body and my own sense of time, that many hours had gone by. The officers left me in the room many times for hours by myself, so I would fall asleep and wake up. I just remember feeling extremely tired. I was hungry ... it almost felt like an altered state of reality. I don't think I ate anything that night until some time the next day. Whatever was going on, I had never experienced anything like that before, you know.
The Filmmakers: What do you remember of your trial?
Salaam: Uh, that it was long. (Laughs) I couldn't understand why this system would operate in such a way that you had to really prove that you were innocent, instead of being seen first as innocent. But to me the trial wasn't just in the courtroom. The trial was also on the train going to the courtroom, it was walking around my neighborhood on the weekends, it was walking around anywhere.
The media portrayed me as, like, a demon. I was ... I was that person who was the worst person that ever lived, who needed to be disposed of, you know. So much so that common citizens, before the trial had even started ... like Donald Trump, took out full page ads in some of the major newspapers. I believe he paid with his own money, um, calling for the death penalty to be reinstated specifically for our case. People wanted us to be hanging from a tree by the end of the day, you know, in Central Park, so that their idea of justice could be served.
When I first went to prison some of the inmates came up to me and said, "Man, when we heard you were here we thought that we were going to be seeing this big gorilla-looking person," you know. Back then I must have been maybe 175 pounds. I still was about this tall, about six-three, but I was about 175 pounds. And to them, and to others who saw me on the streets prior to me getting, uh, convicted, it was like ... his- his appearance doesn't match what we see in the papers. People who knew me, who went to school with me, you know, a lot of them were like, "Yusef, what they're saying that he did, that's not even ... that's not him." You know, "We know Yusef, we've known him for years. This, this ... this description of what they're saying is not something that he would do," you know.
I mean, it was rough. Um, being in prison at such a young age and growing up in prison is difficult in that young people, when they're growing up, they think that they're adults. They already think, you know, "Hey, I'm fifteen years old, I can make decisions for myself. I'm an adult," you know, so forth and so on. It's not until you become an adult and have children of your own that you realize that, wow, I was a child, you know. But growing up in ... I'd say, missing a lot of what normal people would do, you know, going to a prom, uh, graduating from high school, um, first years in college and things of that nature, um, ... I don't have any experience like that. But it's not like I missed it because I don't know what it's like to actually have gone through it in the first place.
While I was in prison a lot of the officers would tell me, "Man, we wish we had all of our inmates like you. The prison would be a lot easier to deal with," you know. (Laughs.) But there was a lot of crazy, a lot of horrific things going on. I mean, I have children myself now and it's like, I can't imagine something happening to them and me not being able to defend them, and that's the position that you're put in, you know. You have no control. No ... no say. You don't have anything to do with what happens to them. And you are still their parent, you know, "I'm supposed to be able to do something," but you can't.
Courtesy of Emily and Sarah Kunstler.
I've always held the belief that when you go to prison your whole family goes to prison, you know. A lot of times the parents and loved ones go through a worse prison because they're not inside. They're not behind the walls, so all of the horror stories and the crazy things that are going on in other prisons become like, "Man, is it gonna happen to my child?" So they go through a, uh ... to me a more stressful time, a more anxious time, a more scary time, because they don't know, like ... once they leave their child, they're leaving them alone again, you know.
I remember there were times when I was in prison, and I may have been on a phone call, the San Quentin yard or something like that, and I'm on the phone and I see somebody creepin' up on somebody else and then stickin' them with an ice pick, you know. And my immediate thought was, wow, what if they were on the phone with their daughter, their mom, their sister, their brother or whoever they were on the phone with, you know, and all of a sudden the line is not dead but they don't know what's going on on the other end, you know? But I was in a position where, fortunate for me, I was able to see the things that were happening to other inmates and those things weren't happening to me. Um, the part that I didn't know until I came home was the ... like, people were sending threatening letters, you know, death threats, you know, wishing that something terrible or evil would happen to me while I was in prison, you know. Um, telling my mom that when I come home that I was gonna be killed and things of that nature, you know.
I knew of people who went to prison for a one- to three-year bid who never came home because they were murdered in prison, you know. I also knew people personally who went to prison for crimes that they committed and who are still in prison because they were put in positions to have to defend themselves or they committed more crimes while they were in prison, you know, so they had time added to the time that they had. And the reason why I said that ... it might have worked out differently in my case had a person like Bill Kunstler not been my lawyer or had my mom not been there. If they see you out there by yourself ... like, flip the story around and say, "Central Park Jogger Case: Yusef Salaam," and there's nobody behind him. That becomes a completely different picture, you know, because then you're left out there for anything to happen to you. Where because I had all of these individuals behind me, people would think twice and say, "Wait," you know, "if we let the inmates beat them up," you know, uh, "his mom is gonna be up here tomorrow," you know. "Bill Kunstler is gonna get wind of it," you know. (Laughs.) Somethin'. "We ... we're gonna catch hell for allowing something to go down." So it's almost like you begin to walk on eggshells around me, you know.
Well, part of what they started doing was going into the prisons, and it was this idea that when Yusef's mom and her organization came, just for that moment, or for those few hours, it's going to be like Thanksgiving. And that's exactly what it was. You know, when they came people were ... I mean prison food is some of the worst food ... I can't even ... I don't know if you've ever seen it, tasted it. It's some of the worst food in the world. But when you put that side by side with my mother coming by, and you're having real cornbread, you know, you're having real fried chicken, baked chicken, real collard greens, you know, uh, real cakes, just stuff that we hadn't had in so long, in years. You know, when Thanksgiving comes around in prison they don't give you anything special. You might get sweet potato, but it's not going to be sweet potato made and cooked in a way that you know. It's probably going to be a can of sweet potato slopped on your plate, you know? I looked at what my mom was able to do and the experience that we had as inmates on the inside and began to realize that on the streets, like, when I came home, there was still a lot of things going on, there was still a lot of work to be done, you know.
And part of my activism came about from realizing that it's not enough for me to get a job, sit behind a desk and make money, if I can't use my situation, my case, to impact the lives of others, you know, and teach them and help them and give them some type of experience. There's a lot of fifteen-year-olds now that I see, and I'm looking at them and I'm like, wow, was I acting like that, you know, when I was that age? There are so many people that are walking around very unaware, very naïve, you know, and it's unfortunate for them that some of them will have to go through what they call ... a baptism by fire.
Courtesy of Emily and Sarah Kunstler.
You know, a lot of times people don't truly understand the seriousness of what they are doing. I remember one time listening to a rap artist who has since passed away, his name was Biggie Smalls. This rap artist said, "This song is for all those folks who called the cops on me because I was outside selling drugs so that I could feed my daughter." And it's like, it's not right to sell drugs, you know? But at the same time, some folks think that that's the only option they have. When I was in prison one of the books that I read was the autobiography of Malcolm X. And Malcolm said something like, you know, if you were out here selling drugs, with a little more education, you could become a chemist. If you know how to manipulate what you have to create something else, if you are out here pimping, and so forth and so on, with a little more education you can become an organizer of the masses. You know, if you are out here doing whatever, you can take that negative and make it a positive, and be a productive citizen, as opposed to something else.
But a lot of people don't realize that they have that ... I don't want to say that they have that opportunity. They're almost ... they have already been sold up the river. So when they try to fight for something for themselves, they are fighting from the bottom going uphill. And this uphill ... it's almost like, I don't know if you have been around here in the wintertime, but if they don't clean the streets and the streets ice over, everybody would slide from Broadway to Riverside, you know, because it's a very steep slope. And that's the same type of battle that people are fighting. They're fighting this not only uphill battle, they're fighting this uphill battle where, if the people at the top look and see that you are making any, um, advances, they'll, like, put a little oil out there for you, throw a banana over here so that you could slip ... hopefully you'll fall right back down to the bottom. And, I mean, that same idea has kind of like been my case, where I feel that if they could, if the system could, the system would try to put me in a position to be back in prison.
I definitely think race played a big part in the case, you know, 'cause even in our history where there have been individuals who were white who raped white women, the attention that they got wasn't as great unless they were known people. But people who come from a background ... who aren't in a position financially or in a position in terms of what people would call classwise, um, it becomes a real big problem, you know. And at the same time, once they can connect such a devious and heinous crime to what they look at as the underbelly of society, those individuals that really don't matter, it becomes even worse. It becomes, "Not only did we tell you you shouldn't trust them, but here is further evidence, you know, to prove that these individuals are not to be trusted, that they are the worst people in the world," and so forth and so on. They paint the picture, and then they put the individuals in play, almost like on a chessboard. Somebody else is moving us around the board, and we don't have control over that, you know.
I mean, to back up a bit, the pictures and the portrayals of me in the media were such where they chose the tallest person in the group, who was me, presumably the darkest person in the group, who was me, and almost made me out to be the ringleader. They wanted all of the negative and foul and harmful things to happen to me, but here I came through that fire. In the Koran it says that they threw Abraham in the fire, but God is in control of everything in this world and outside the world, so God told the fire to be cool and safe for Abraham, and Abraham came out of the fire. Which, I mean, I work at a hospital and I see people who are burn victims, and fire is not a friend, you know. He came out unharmed, you know, it was almost as if someone just blew some air on him and he was alright.
Filmmakers: What was it like for you to have the conviction vacated?
Salaam: It was almost like I was being wakened up from a nightmare, you know. Um, even now there's still ... I say that justice still hasn't been served. Because when you take things away from someone and you don't put something back, there is this void that needs to be filled, you know. For years there was, like, I had difficulty getting jobs, you know. I had difficulty taking care of my ... my family. It's like, I would meet people and I would have to tell them at some point in time, um, "By the way, there's something that happened in my past that I was innocent of, but this is who I am," you know. And some people didn't want to be friends with me anymore, and other folks, it made the bond closer and tighter, you know. But to be at that point in my life when the vindications were coming down was like, I didn't have to say anything anymore. You know, it was no longer, "Yeah, I'm Yusef Salaam, from the Central Park jogger case." It was like, "Hey, man, this is what happened to me, and that was me." And, you know, it was a very happy time, um, like I say, I still haven't been able to really, uh, celebrate that vindication, you know. Because it's still a struggle, you know. It's still rough.
It's still a struggle because, you know, when you're not in a position financially to make an impact on your family, to put yourself in a, in a state of being financially independent. Because, every time you go for a job interview or go anywhere ... like right now, I'm vindicated of the Central Park Jogger case, but you can still put my name in Google (laughs), you know, and, and not only will photos come up, the case will come up, everything will come up. So there's this, this, um, cloud, this dark cloud, so to speak, hanging over my head. During the trial, for I believe it was a whole year and a half, we were in the media. They kept that story alive and fresh in the minds of people in New York City and the surrounding areas. But when we got vindicated, it was like, a story here and then it was gone. People still today, you know, ... I may meet some folks who may not be aware and they don't know that I was vindicated. There should be as much attention, or should have been as much attention brought to the vindication and then to be able to, uh, repair the damage that was done, so that I would be okay, you know. But, it's almost like only through the grace of God am I okay.
I think now I'm less afraid that it could happen again, although I know that anything can happen. But the difference between now and then is that now I am a person who is aware of the reality of where I am, whereas before I was a person who was very naïve, who believed in the justice system, who believed, you know, that things worked. You know, you could never tell me or pay me enough to have me believe that you could pay off a person, bribe a judge and, and, things like that. I would never have believed you before now, you know, but having that bit of understanding gives me an edge in a way because now I know that in raising my children, in speaking to others, that there is something that they need to know. People need to be educated about the law, because it is not enough to say, "Well, I just don't think that that's right." You need to be able to understand what the law says, why it's stated that way, the implications of it, to be able to deal. Because there are a lot of folks who have used the law and bent it here and there, and still been, so to speak, looking like they are doing things legally, when in fact you know they probably aren't.
Filmmakers: What is it that you would like to be known for?
Salaam: It's hard to introduce yourself and say, you know, as a ... an identifier from the Central Park Jogger case, because people automatically know exactly who you are. But it would be good to be known as a person who's a good person, you know. Known as a person who's a good father, you know. Known as a person who has ideas and thoughts, and, and ... who's trying to make a difference, you know.
All extended interviews were provided by the filmmakers and edited by Andrew Lutsky.
Paul Krassner on the Chicago Counterconvention
Paul Krassner: My name is Paul Krassner, I was most notorious for editing a magazine, uh, The Realist, from 1958 to 2001. And also I, um, do stand-up satire in the tradition of Lenny Bruce and Mort Saul. I had poor posture as a kid ... and, let's see, what else?
So when we realized that we were going to go to Chicago for the counterconvention, uh, I was in on the planning and we held open meetings. We held them at the free university in New York, on Union Square, and twice when it was really nice weather we held them outside, and so, you know, any government agent was welcome to come because we had nothing to hide ... so we thought.
Photo courtesy of the filmmakers.
So, the plans were to have um, a lot of music, uh, there would be rock bands playing while they were making speeches at the Convention Center, uh, to have booths around with information on the draft, information on drugs, um, it was, uh, ... sort of a premonition of what Woodstock turned out to be, you know. A "festival of life" is what we were calling it, to oppose the Democrats', uh, festival of death. And the reason we went there and not the Republican Convention in Miami was, well, first of all, it was off-season, and who wants to go to Miami off-season? Uh, but it was a bipartisan war and we felt that it was under the Democrats' watch then, and so it was more appropriate to go to Chicago.
And, you know, we tried to get permits for the revolution and, uh, were unsuccessful. I mean, literally we tried to get permission for young people to sleep in the park ... it has been granted before to the Boy Scouts. Uh, but when we went to try and get permits, we went to see Mayor Daly, we were instead shunted to his assistant, David Stahl, and, um, he asked me at one point, "Come on, what are you guys really going to do in Chicago?" And I said: "Did you see 'Wild in the Streets'?" which was a movie about, um, young people dropping LSD into the water supply and taking over Washington and lowering the voting age to fourteen. And, so, uh, the Mayor's assistant said to me, "'Wild in the Streets'? We've seen 'Battle of Algiers,'" which was a black-and-white documentary-style film by, uh, Costa Gravis, about the Algerian War. And there was one scene where a woman, wearing a chador-- just her eyes were showing-- and she walked past the border guards smuggling in a bomb, which they showed, and uh, was going to leave it in the cafe, and the camera panned around and you could see the face of innocent children eating their ice cream. And so, this meant that was what was going to happen in Chicago was, uh, our mythology clashing with their mythology. And so, uh, they were prepared for the worst and we were prepared for the best.
And my feeling always is that when the police attack indiscriminately and then don't arrest the people that they've knocked down to the ground, it's, it is really just sadism. And there was a lot of that. And I think it was on a deeper level than, uh, ... because they resented, um, ... These were mainly white cops in Chicago who weren't concerned about their kids growing up to be Black Panthers, but they were concerned that they, uh, would be influenced by us fun-loving folks, uh, you know, to smoke pot, to practice free love until it was perfect, to, uh, you know ... they didn't like the music, uh, so we represented a cultural threat to them in that sense.
The Filmmakers: What are your recollections of the trial?
Krassner: Unfortunately, I wasn't allowed in the courtroom, um, before I testified because they have the right to exclude potential witnesses. And so the first time I was actually in court was when I testified. And I, I had brought, uh, a few tabs of LSD with me, uh, because I thought we would have a party, and I realized that things were just too tense, too intense to, uh, to have an acid party. Um, but, at the lunch table, when they were passing around a chunk of hash, I decided to take, uh, one little tablet of 300 micrograms of Owsley acid, for those who are brand-name conscious.
And so, um, Abbie said, he looked at me and said, "Is that acid?" And I said, "Yeah." He said, "I don't think that's a good idea." And Jerry Rubin said, "Oh, I think you should do it." I think he was just advertising his book, 'Do It,' at every opportunity.
And, but, um, I ignored both of them and took it, and, um, when I testified ... well, I was in the witness room when it began to hit me and everything was swirling around, and, uh, Tom Hayden and Jerry Rubin came to bring me in the courtroom. So at that point it was Looney Tunes, and I was being brought into the courtroom by Tom and Jerry. And, uh, the furniture was kind of dancing around in nice gay pastel colors, uh, Judge Julius Hoffman looked very much like Elmer Fudd, and, um, when the bailiff, who was sort of like Goofy, um, said, (in the voice of cartoon character) "Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?" (In his normal voice) And um, I said, "No." And um, everybody looked at me, you know, the jury, the spectators, the courtroom artists, and you know, like, "What's he going to do now?" And I looked at me, "What am I going to do now?"
Uh, the previous night I would imagine the prosecutor saying to me: "Now, where did this meeting take place?" And I would say, uh, hoping ... hoping not to be able to answer because the reason I took the acid was twofold. I, uh, I wanted to vomit in court, and I knew that eating a big meal with acid would ... would do the trick. And so, um, I would say, "This meeting took place ...," and "Blaaaaa ..." And, uh, you know, they would say, "Bailiff, get him out of here!" and I would get one more projectile onto the judge's, uh, podium, "Blaa...," and they would drag me out, and I would have made my theatrical statement about the injustice of the trial. So that was my plan. Um, but, um, there were questions crossed at me, and I was waiting, and I didn't ... I felt great, I don't know why-- maybe just saying no to swearing on the Bible, uh, was a liberating thing and took away all the tension--but, um, you know, sometimes when you want to throw up, you just can't. That's ... that's the breaks of the game.
And, uh, anyway ... uh, Abbie stopped speaking to me for almost a year because he thought I was being, um, irresponsible. And in a way I could see it from their point of view, you know. They were facing years in prison, and ... but Abbie had the previous night said, "There's nothing you can say that will help us, it can only hurt us because we've mentioned you at all these meetings and we just need you to verify it." And they were different from what I had known as a participant and as a reporter, but I had to, um, commit perjury in order to, uh, verify what they had already testified and give these false dates, and so ... which I thought I could avoid by vomiting, and, ... uh, so let's see, what did I leave out here?
Uh, of course I felt bad. I felt bad that it interfered with my friendship with Abbie. Um, and I felt bad that I was kind of ostracized from the others, the other defendants, and, um ... but, you know, it was a lesson to have more empathy than I must have had during that trial.
Filmmakers: What was the significance of the trial at the time?
Krassner: Um, ... the trial had a different significance for the prosecution, which was to have scapegoats. Originally there were something like twenty-one that were charged with conspiracy to cross state lines. I was among them, and they cut it down to eight because eight police had been, uh, subpoenaed. And so I guess that was the scales of justice trying to be balanced. But Bill Kunstler told me, he said that their records showed that I was not ... that I was an un-indicted co-conspirator because to have me on trial, they were afraid that I would use the First Amendment-- freedom of the press-- defense, and so, um, I was off the list. And also, they, in Chicago, uh, the defendants like Jerry and Abbie and Tom Hayden, they all got arrested during the convention, and so that made it easier to somehow imply that they deserved to be arrested.
Courtesy of the filmmakers.
I mean, they arrested Abbie for having "Fuck" written on his forehead. And, uh, I was in having breakfast with him at a hotel restaurant there, and he had made the mistake of tipping his hat in the morning to the cops who were following us all the time. And, um, so that was his mistake, and so they came into the restaurant and said, "Lift up your hat." So Abbie did, there was the word "Fuck," and they arrested him. And Abbie was struggling, saying "No, no, it's the duty of a revolutionist to finish breakfast." But they took him anyway, and I had to finish his breakfast.
Filmmakers: What was the surveillance by the cops like at the time?
Krassner: Well, um, we were in Lincoln Park, this is before the convention started, and we saw, uh, people just watching us, you know, a lot of people, just out of curiosity and, uh, to see these freaks in action. And I knew there must have been plainclothes cops there too, so I said, "Let's get in the car and see if any guys in suits get up and follow us." And so, um, we got in this car-- I think there were like five, six, seven of us--and, um, sure enough, two guys in suits got up and got in the car and it looked like they were following us. And finally, when there was no question about it-- we stopped and they stopped across the street-- we got out and said, "Are you guys following us?" And they said, "Yeah." And, uh, we said, "Are you federal or painclothes?" "We're plainclothes police from the Chicago Police Department, and you're under surveillance for twenty-four hours." And I said, "Wow! Three shifts just for us!" you know, and the cops said, "No, uh, we're short on manpower, so there are two shifts, twelve hours each." And I said, "Well, it's nice just to be nominated."
And so, um, then they introduced themselves, you know, we shook hands with them. We said, "This is Abbie, this is Paul, this is Jerry," um, and, uh, we shook hands with them. They said, "Oh, I'm Herbie, this is Mack." But then this ... because this conversation had been started and it was two-way, and now they said to us, "Aren't you guys tired? You know, aren't you gonna have lunch? We've been following you for an hour now." And so, um, we said "Okay, well, we're new in Chicago. What's a good restaurant?" And one cop said, "I would recommend the Pickle Barrel on North Wells Street in Old Town. They have pretty good food." And the other cop said, "Yes, and their prices are quite reasonable." It was like being in a commercial of the future when all of the authority figures were police, and so, you know, (in an authoritative voice) "Ask your doctor ... or else!" And so, um, I said, "Well, uh, what's the best way to get there? We're new in town," and the cop said, "Well, follow us." And this was a, a rare moment, it should have been stored in amber for future generations to see, and, um, so we followed them and got to the restaurant. We sat at separate tables. I think that is what Martha Stewart says, you should sit at separate tables when you are having lunch with the police who are following you.
Filmmakers: What wisdom do you have to share with the next generation of activist dissidents, rebels, nonconformists?
Krassner: Um ... whenever I think about what advice I have for, um, young rebels and iconoclasts and dissidents today, I always feel that I should ask what advice they have for me because they are living in a different era now. You know, they have the Internet, which we didn't have, we had messy mimeograph machines. And the Internet has changed the nature of protest. Instead of getting messy mimeograph ink on you, uh, you just, um, click, send, and, uh, you don't have to distribute a flyer from door to door or at demonstrations, um, so it's cheaper, you reach more people, and quickly, instantly. And so, uh, you know, I have advice for anybody, like, uh, if you're going to a restaurant and order a club sandwich, be sure to take the toothpick out before you bite into it.
And then the philosophy can come, and then, um, the action based on the philosophy. But it has to do with an awareness that when you begin to trust the government, I think it's important to realize that the function of the government is to act as a buffer between the status quo and the force of evolution. And so, you know, you can work with them, but you have to know that they have their own agenda, which is to get reelected and to maintain power. And they will make all sorts of compromises like that. The most recent one I can think of is, the Democrats got some Republicans to vote for the children's healthcare bill by authorizing twenty-eight million dollars for their abstinence programs. So, uh, you know, that's the kind of compromise I'm talking about. And it's a compromise of principle. It's not about negotiation or diplomacy in the purest sense, it's just, uh, mutual bribery.
All extended interviews were provided by the filmmakers and edited by Andrew Lutsky.
Ramsey Clark on the Attica Prison Rebellion
But Bill and I represented a young guy named John Hill who had ... he's a least a quarter Seneca Indian in the blood. And I represented a young guy who at that time was called Charles Joe Pernasalice, who wanted to be an Indian. He acted and dressed like an Indian, sometimes he wore headbands with beads that the judge would make him take off when he got into the courtroom. He wanted to be an Indian. Lots of kids wanted to be an Indian, it was a noble aspiration at that time; I kind of wanted to be an Indian myself. And Bill and I spent an enormous amount of time, effort, and energy and lived together in a hotel that was practically empty through that bitter winter. We were paid ten dollars a day while we were in court and a roundtrip airplane ticket from New York to Buffalo at that time was about ninety-two dollars as I recall. And we never got paid for it. We got the ten dollars, sometimes.
So we had, uh, we had that long close experience that went on over a period of years. It ended, there were convictions. Charlie Joe's was attempted assault in the second degree. But, um, ... the impact of the trial and all the other activity and anger and hurt around it and the injustice of it! No police officer indicted for five years, and finally a guy was indicted for practically nothing, and that indictment was later dismissed, when thirty-nine people had been shot and killed by police officers in plain sight of defenseless people laying down. And then they brutalized scores of others, I mean they beat them mercilessly, put 'em on tables and just beat 'em, they would. Uncontrollable anger, unrestrained power. But the final outcome was that, um, ... frankly I think we were gonna win, but the thing was all interrupted, and then Governor Carey gave amnesties to everybody. Charlie Joe never served a day. John was in for maybe two years or something like that before he was released.
And the verdict shows that they couldn't even find that Charlie Joe had hit Quinn. He was convicted of attempted assault in the second degree.He was swinging something inside Times Square there, but everybody was swinging something inside Times Square, you know. And there was no evidence that I ever saw that they hit William Quinn, or anybody else for that matter. He was just, he was just trying to do what everybody else was doing. They'd come in from the yard and they were very angry and they were pulling on the gate to Times Square. There were four gates, one to each cellblock, where the prisoners would be marched through going to chow and stuff like that. And it shows you ... I mean it's the story of the prison industry. One of the main bars that went down to the ground, that went into a steel tube and into the ground to hold the gate closed when it was down, snapped. And later, when it was examined, they found that the steel rod had broken earlier and been welded, and the weld broke. So some contractor, to save a few bucks, you know, maybe-- I don't know what a new gate or a new single bar to fit it in would cost--but they welded the thing together.
The prison had been called a model prison. It was dedicated by Governor Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the early 1930's or maybe earlier than that, but I think that's when it was. It was just before he ran for president. And, um, that was kind of the story of institutional failure. If you'd done it right, if you'd treated the prisoners right ... It's hard to remember that the rebellion was a complaint over prison conditions. At that time there were roughly twelve thousand prisoners in felony detention in the whole state of New York. And today it's five, six times that ... unbelievable, just this huge expansion. I mean, the prison archipelago of the United States since then is just awful, and the conditions are worse than they were at Attica. Attica was still a new prison, a model prison. It's not any place anybody, any human being, oughtta be. And certainly no human being in his right mind or with a mind would want to be there. But the physical plant was good and the treatment wasn't as bad as the overcrowding and other conditions that you have in prisons in New York today.
I had an experience, it was quite appalling. I was Deputy Attorney General and I was visiting a prison at Seagullville[?], Texas. And it was in the summer of '64 and hot as blazes, it was August. And I was walking through the yard--I visited all the prisons, with the warden--and I saw an old guy, 'cause he had a white head, lean against, not lean against ... sitting against a building and humped over like this in the sun. So I kind of steered over, walked to him, and when I got to him said something like, "Hey, buddy, what are you doing here? It's pretty hot." And, um, ... nothing. So I reached over and I patted him on the shoulder, and I looked down. And finally he lifted his head up, and he was senile. I mean, he clearly didn't, couldn't ... had no thoughts. And I turned to the warden and said, "What's he doing here?" He said, "He was ...," the warden said, "He was convicted of the death of an FBI agent in a bank robbery in Oklahoma in 1926." Said, "We've been trying to get rid of him..."--that shows the gratitude towards and respect for his dignity--"... we've been trying to get rid of him for years. But every time we send a recommendation, we, the prison authority, the warden--'Please release this man, we're not a nursing home. We don't know how to change diapers and do all these things. And it's a distraction, and it's totally improper that he's here. Please release him--' and the word comes back that anyone convicted of killing an FBI Agent will never be released. Signed, J. Edgar Hoover."
Crew member Matt Ruskin during filming at Attica Prison. Courtesy of the filmmakers.
There's this new contempt for dignity, for human dignity. I mean, just look at their reaction to what they do at Abu Ghraib, or Guantanamo, or places like that. There's a contempt for law for the United States to say, "Yeah, we held prisoners elsewhere, not just in Guantanamo, all over the place. CIA held prisoners. So?" No constitution. No laws. No human rights. No international treaties. Nothing to protect them. And why not just enough common decency not to do it, you know? Does it take a law to tell you you don't torture people? Does it take a law to tell you you don't grab somebody and don't tell his family where he is, you don't tell him where he is, and you stick him in some god-forsaken hole someplace, and you don't tell him what's gonna happen to him but make him know that it won't be good? And leave him there? Uh, we're a long way from the Constitution now. And the struggle is not the struggle, the valiant struggle that Bill Kunstler and those who worked with him in that cause were engaged in. Because then there was some belief that there are fundamental rights, and that, um, we can become a nation that insists upon respect for the dignity of every man, woman, and child on earth and equality in treating them and assessing their conduct. But fairness is always the, the guiding measure. But we're a long way from that now.
The Filmmakers: Do you still believe in the legal system?
Clark: I have the great advantage-disadvantage of being an optimist, so I try to assess things realistically. But I still believe that people can see the truth, finally, however obscure it is because of its complexities, or the numbers, or the confusion of life, or the deliberate distortion, or the power of a mass media just presenting one thing all the time. The capacity to demonize today far exceeds the capacity to demonize in the past. I mean, you can make something so hateful, a piece of cheese, that, um, people want to spit at. You know, they won't have ... they can't concede ? the possibility that there's a human quality at all there. You compare someone that you've never met, you've never talked to, you really don't know anything about him, and you say he's a ... he's a Hitler, he's a Stalin, he's a Lenin, just every name from the past that evokes evil, as they like to think. But I believe the truth, in time, is possible. If not, then I think the only conduct that's acceptable is believing it's possible as the ship goes down.
Photo courtesy of the filmmakers
Filmmakers: Do you believe in progress?
Clark: I believe in change. I think change is the dominant fact of our lives. I believe we can guide change, um, to a greater degree than ever in the past. If we master technology rather than have technology master us, if we control it rather than have it threaten us, if we bought less things that are dangerous and create things that are good for children, we can change things. I have no doubt that if we wanted to, collectively, or in large numbers, there wouldn't be a hungry child or person on earth. There wouldn't be a homeless person on earth. There wouldn't be a person who couldn't have a full education, all that they desired or could absorb, on earth. That they couldn't have meaningful work from which they could get some sense of fulfillment, satisfaction. That they couldn't be free from violence. That they couldn't say whatever they wanted to say and do whatever they wanted to do that didn't hurt others. I don't have any doubt that we'd accomplish that. If, um, if greed is our master and we think our accumulation will make us happy and safe, we'll reap the whirlwind. And you can feel its gusts everywhere on the earth today.
Filmmakers: Why do you do the kind of work you do?
Clark: Well, I think Bill and me, and people like us, uh, believe that the only thing worthwhile in life is struggling for what you think ought to be. That everything else is fleeting. That you may get some sense of comfort from wealth, from acquisition, from power, but, uh, when you look at the world, and you look at the suffering ... . I mean, look at the violence across the world today. Um, I think people like Bill and so many of us would be destroyed if we turned our backs on it and said, "I'd rather take care of myself. I'd rather have my taxes cut, you know? I'd rather see our economic power concentrated so we can control the world. I'd rather wipe out the cradle of civilization than risk my comfort. And the truth doesn't matter, this is what I want, and this is what we'll do." I think we turned our backs on the belief that, uh, the worth of every child is of the utmost importance. And you struggle for her well-being. And, um, particularly with Bill, that you enjoy the struggle and, um, let the Devil take the hindmost.
All extended interviews were provided by the filmmakers and edited by Andrew Lutsky.
Juror Jean Fritz on the Chicago 8 Trial
In a way I was against the protests. I wasn't, uh ... I thought they shouldn't be doing this, but I didn't like what [Mayor] Daley was doing, either. Daley's group were beating those boys up and girls up, and I didn't believe in that, either. So it was a hard time, because I didn't, uh ... I wanted these kids to be able to say what they wanted to say, that was important to me, and yet I didn't want all that trouble.
National Guardsman in Chicago. Courtesy of the filmmakers.
'Course it was just almost the beginning of long hair and, uh, I wasn't used to people like that yet. You know, I came from Des Plaines, a smaller town, and I wasn't into stuff like that. So at first I was a little taken back, but after a few days I wasn't taken back anymore and I enjoyed them. I listened to them and, uh, I thought they were pretty good. I thought they were very, highly intelligent boys, and I think we should listen to them.
The Filmmakers: What was the trial like?
Fritz: The conspiracy trial was a very hectic trial. And some days you were actually frightened what was going on, and some days you could laugh. It ... it ... every day was just a little different than the other day. And sometimes at night you couldn't sleep, worrying about what was going on, and the next day you were just fine. So you never knew what was going to happen. But I thought, as a whole, Judge Hoffman was a very unfair judge. He didn't give them ... he didn't give the defendants enough chance. I really felt that, that he, uh ... You could see his dislike for them, and I don't think any judge should show a dislike for anybody in their courtroom.
But yet a lot of times, even the ones that didn't like him had to laugh, which was a miracle. Because when Jerry Rubin and Hoffman came in with the judge's robes on, you had to laugh, I mean you had to laugh ... and you weren't supposed to laugh. But Judge Hoffman got them out right away, got us out, and into the jury room.
Filmmakers: What was the sequestration like?
Fritz: Oh, it was awful. Because I was thinking about my poor husband having to do the work all by himself, because we worked together all those years, and I couldn't see him hardly at all. I could only see him once a week, and it was very frustrating for him more than me. I wasn't unhappy. I was unhappy with what was going on, I was unhappy that we couldn't read anything, we couldn't listen to a radio, we couldn't ... we were like prisoners. We got in our room and we couldn't leave, and I didn't like that one bit.
When I was sequestered anything we did was monitored. We had ... we had absolutely no freedom whatsoever. Sometimes you felt like you were the ones on trial, and you felt like you were a prisoner sometimes because you had no say-so about anything. And every time, uh, you tried to say something, nobody would ever listen to you. If you complained about something, "Oh, you have nothing to complain about. This is how it is." Even when you were in the jury room there was always an FBI agent standing there listening to everything you're saying. You had no privacy whatsoever except in your room.
Photo courtesy of the filmmakers.
Filmmakers: Can you tell me about the day that Bobby Seale was brought into the courtroom bound and gagged?
Fritz: Ohh ... I think that was the worst day of my life the day they brought Bobby Seale into court tied like that. It was ... it was absolutely sickening ... you could, uh, you just felt that the world was coming to an end that you were actually seeing this in the United States of America. Somebody tied up like he was. Because he wasn't a killer that was going to shoot somebody. He didn't have a gun, he had nothing ... he was only going to talk. And he wasn't allowed to talk, he wasn't allowed ... Judge Hoffman just made him be quiet and had him tied up. I felt so bad for Bobby Seale, I thought it was the most horrible thing I ever saw.
I don't think we ever talked about it to the other jurors. All of us, I mean Shirley and Frida and Mary and I all felt terrible, but we never talked to the other jurors about it, so ... I'm sure that they didn't care at all. That was their attitude. They probably didn't like him in the beginning. So ... they never liked any of the defendants, you know ... you could tell that from the very beginning. They made up their minds before the trial even was into it that they didn't like them, and that was obvious, always.
Filmmakers: How did you feel about the testimony of the undercover officers who infiltrated the organizations and spied on them, and then testified against them?
Fritz: Well, I didn't like it. As far as the FBI was concerned and the undercover officers, you just had the feeling that they were copying what you're saying. We didn't ... I didn't feel free to talk to anybody ... I didn't ... I mean about anything. You got to the point where you were thinking, Well, what if they're doing this to me? What if they're copying everything I'm saying, and you ... we were frightened of, of the undercover people. Because when they go to a college and try to get kids talking and, uh ... I think that's terrible, I mean, uh ... to do that to kids, I think, is ... the whole thing was a great disappointment. It really was. Yeah, that's when I learned not to like my government, and not to trust them. And that's hard to say, but that's how I felt.
Filmmakers: What were the deliberations like in the jury room at the end of the trial?
Fritz: The jury deliberations were very, very tense, because we knew when we entered that jury room that they were going to find all these defendants guilty. They did not like them, they didn't like their looks, they didn't like anything they said. You could just tell that they detested these men. We knew that the minute we entered the room. As soon as we sat down the first words they said, we knew that they wanted them guilty. So it was a big argument, and twice we sent in that we were a hung jury, and twice Hoffman said we had to stay till it was over. And the one man that protected us all, supposedly, was standing there, he made the nice fancy remark, "You know, you're going to be here forever if you don't agree on things and make them guilty." That were actually his words, and he had no right to say that.
I never thought the defendants were guilty. The only reason the four of us changed in the end was [coughs] Judge Hoffman wouldn't take our answers, and we thought by doing this we wouldn't have another trial for them. We thought, this'll be over and I--we knew they wouldn't go to prison. We knew that. At least that's what we thought. We were pretty positive, but we ... we hadn't really changed our mind at all. It's just that we decided that we should say something.
Filmmakers: Did you feel like you had to compromise with your verdict?
Fritz: We felt we had to make a compromise because Judge Hoffman would not take a hung jury, and also we didn't really want a hung jury if we could help it, because then they would go on trial again, and we just thought they were innocent. But we figured if we did the one count--I think there were ten counts, I'm not sure anymore--that it would work alright, and then we felt very guilty afterwards that we even gave in. At least I did. I felt very ... that I betrayed my belief by doing this. I really did.
The Chicago Eight. Courtesy of the filmmakers.
When the verdict was read in front of the court, I ... I just couldn't believe it. I felt like screaming. I really didn't, uh, ... I said to myself, "Oh my god, I don't even remember the speeches and I'm convicting them on 'em." And I ... that's why ... I was just sick. I was just absolutely sick. I thought, "This is my fault, we shouldn't have given in." That's how I felt, that I betrayed my own beliefs. That's why I was so upset when I got home, and everything.
When we got home the whole street was full of cameras and reporters and neighbors. The whole street, all the way down. And I was sick, petrified, and I just got out of the car and ran as fast as I could to get in the house. I wouldn't talk to anybody, I wouldn't look at anybody. And then I went in the house and went hysterical. So ... it wasn't easy.
After the trial when I got home, it took a long time for me to settle down. Cause I had customers people around us coming in and telling me how ashamed they were of me, and things like that. And it took me a long time. For a while then I quit going to the store, I wouldn't go. And that lasted for ... I don't know how long that lasted, but I wouldn't even go to work.
I had death threats. And, uh, ... I found a note the other day, god, of the filthiest thing I ever read in my life, that somebody sent me. And then two of my ... one of my best friends wrote me a letter that was unbelievable. Unbelievable. Uh, what I was doing was so wrong, and, uh, things like that. And then I had others like, one of the men that worked for the paper in Des Plaines, he came to this house and he sat down with me, and he said if I ever have to go on trial will you come and help me? He was so ... I have that article ... he was so wonderful. So wonderful. So it was, it was ... not everybody was nasty.
I spent a long time thinking about the trial. I still think about it once in a while. It was something I'll never forget. It was a wonderful experience for me and it was a terrible experience. But I, I, I really cared about it, I cared very, very much about it. And I think it changed my life. I think I became more ... what do you say? ... more tolerant of others. I was never untol- I was never a very intolerant person, but I think I got better. I think I got better with the trial. 'Cause I really ... it did something to me. It really did.
All extended interviews were provided by the filmmakers and edited by Andrew Lutsky.
Madonna Thunderhawk on Wounded Knee
A delegation from Pine Ridge Reservation, and they represented the Oglala Civil Rights Organization and also the traditional people, had requested that we come to Pine Ridge Reservation, to several different communities across the Reservation that wanted us to come so they could tell us what was going on. Um, the tribal government at that time, from what we heard from the people, was very corrupt. They were using federal funding that was supposed to go out to the outlying districts for programs, social programs and what have you, uh, was being used for other purposes. There was a lot of corruption going on.
So as a result several people ... I guess you, um, ... I-I don't like to use the term 'leadership' because that isn't what we called ourselves. It was what the media decided, who the leadership was, and of course they were all male, you know. And it was a stereotype, you know, Indian, uh, 'warrior type,' you know, stoic Indian ... that image.
You look at anything we did in those days as part of the Red Power Movement--'cause it was bigger than AIM, it was more than AIM--generally speaking, most of the time half of the people involved were women. It was just a ... it wasn't a big deal. Nobody said, "Well, wait a minute, gee, what are all these women doing here?" you know. That wasn't even an issue. The team that met with the negotiators from the White House [during the takeover of the BIA headquarters in 1972], the majority of those were women. There was maybe three men, the rest were women.
So, um, again, because we didn't have a native press--I think it was just one newspaper at that time but that was on the East Coast--we didn't have our own voice to the media. So the media decided who the 'leadership' was going to be. If it was just men it wouldn't have went anywhere. They would have been all shot and killed. Look what happened to the Black Panthers, look what happened to Rap Brown. They were just gunned down by the feds, you know. But when you have a social movement, it takes everybody.
So we headed out and when we were going to Pine Ridge we just kept picking up more people. More cars were joining in, and pretty soon we had a caravan probably a mile long. So we got to Pine Ridge and we were going real slow. And different people would jump off and go into the store and get snacks and things.
So I noticed that there was a lot of activity behind the, uh, the BIA building. We were moving slow enough where I could see back there; I saw some military vehicles behind in this fenced-in area that the Bureau used. And I didn't realize it at the time what I was looking at, but I saw what they were was Armored Personnel Carriers. And then I glanced up at the Bureau, BIA building, and they had sandbag gun positions on the roof. So later on we found out that they did that because they heard we were coming. We didn't know. We had no idea, no clue.
When we turned north to go to Wounded Knee it started getting dark. So as we turned north and I looked back, you could see this long line of headlights coming from Pine Ridge and turning north behind us. We had a caravan of cars probably three or four miles long by then.
Uh, I believe it was an Indian police, BIA police car, that started firing at us, shooting at us. So, uh, this one young woman that was with us, she was in the back seat ... all we had was a single-shot twenty-two. So she just rolled the window down and she just fired back, out of the back window. And then we just headed down ... we couldn't go back and head toward Wounded Knee. So we had to just keep going the other direction. And then we came over the hill and there was a U.S. Marshal road-block.
So they busted us and ended up taking us to Rapid City, where we were processed. And we were held there for a couple days. And then I got word to my parents, so they came and they, uh, got me out. And I said, "Well," I said, "I'm gonna have to go back in to Wounded Knee." 'Cause my son was there.
And one of the guys that came into Rapid from Wounded Knee had a list of, of, uh, ammunition that they needed. So he gave me that list. So I just got money from different people, and I just went down the street and saw some Indian guys, and I just told them what we needed, and so they went. And in those days you could just go in any gun shop and buy ammo. I mean they were for hunting rifles, you know, so it wasn't that big of a deal in those days. So then we got this big, you know, backpack full of ammo, and then my folks took us back down to Porcupine and got out. We went to a family there that was using their home as a central gathering place for anybody that wanted to go in. And if you were gonna go in, you had to take in supplies. So that's what we did that night. We walked back in.
And, um, every day more people were coming in, walking in, you know, sneaking in, whatever. 'Cause it was just, there was just getting to be too many people. So it was just mostly logistics right away, we were caught up in organizing and making sure people got fed and, you know, people were warm and they could sleep. And then we set up a medic station right away because, you know, people were getting minor things happening. Minor gunshots, stuff like that. So it was organizing and work, you know. It wasn't just standing around.
And the negotiations happened, and pretty soon they let down the road blocks, they let all the news media in, and people got to come in. And then they shut them down again, everybody had to leave, you know.
So ... as the firefights got more intense we realized that we had to have medics go out to the bunkers and be out there in case someone got shot or got hurt, rather than trying to haul them in. 'Cause then they'd really be, you know, opening fire on them. So that's what we did. So there was four of us women that were the medics. Every time a firefight started we just headed out. We had to crawl out there, you know, to ... we divided up which bunkers we were gonna cover.
At the time, because things were happening so fast, I just wanted to keep my son safe. Uh, but there was so many of us, you know. And in a society where you're constantly, uh, persecuted anyway ... I mean, our people are used to trauma. Nobody--nobody flipped out and freaked out, you know. It was just something you have to handle, something you have to deal with. And I think a lot of indigenous people around the world have that same feeling. I mean, why would a small country like Vietnam, you know, win their land from the greatest military might on this planet? The United States gave up and went home. Why? Indigenous population, you know. You're fighting for your land and your identity, you know, and you don't know what you can do when your back is against the wall.
There was a lot of issues at the time. In the urban areas it was police brutality, mainly because the Federal Indian policy at the time was relocation: Relocate the Indian people off the reservations, get them off the land, into the cities, you know, mainstream them into American society and then, you know, take care of the Indian problem. So that was that was how it started. Um, eventually word traveled to the reservations about what was going on in the urban areas with the American Indian Movement, so we started getting requests to come to different reservations all over the country, not in just Minnesota but in the Dakotas--wherever there was land-based tribes, we got calls to go.
And there was so many requests that it was ... you know, the American Indian Movement never sat down and said, "Well, where should we go next?" or, "What should we do?" It was wherever we were requested to go to help them with whatever their ... some communities were totally ignored, where funding and programs would be centered around the local agency rather than out in the outlying districts. So it just depended on what their issue was. And it was across the board: any social, land, resources, whatever. And I think that's why the Movement mushroomed the way it did and we were spread across the country, because, uh, that was what we did, was ... we listened to the people and helped them. We didn't have an agenda.
I think the federal government and other agencies, the state governments, the, you know, the tribal governments ... I believe they were so, uh, afraid of the American Indian Movement because we were a movement of our people. They couldn't isolate us as old or radicals. They tried to label us as gun-toting, uh, militants that were just out to make trouble. During the incident at Oglala the feds had a heyday with that, you know, saying the American Indian Movement did execution-style killings, which was all fabricated FBI propaganda. So they just used every tactic they could to make us, you know, villains and criminals. But they couldn't do that to us like they did with other movements around the country. You can't isolate a people when you're ... you have all ages. It's a social movement, it's not a group of people that you can isolate. And besides that, we had a land base. Our struggle's totally different than the rest of the country. So I believe that's why they had to vilify us and make everything criminal. But, again, we were a movement. We wanted the world to know we were still here, and we have a land base and our native society who could pick up the reigns. We were just a movement. We just kicked the doors open.
By that time, because of the boarding school system, because of the relocation system, a lot of universities and colleges were opening their doors to native students. We had a whole group of our society then that were emerging in the realms of education and, uh, tribal government, all that. So it was an opportunity. But we had to do that as a people, the rank and file ... that we've had enough, you know. We're capable of doing things on our own. We don't need you to ... the oppression was just ... enough, you know. And, uh, we had the support of our people. Like my mother said, uh, "You're doing what we should have done, our generation, but we didn't." And so they supported us one hundred percent, you know. Whatever we did, we had our families behind us, we had our people behind us. So, again, in Indian country it wasn't anything that was, "Oh, new!" and, "Oh, revolutionary!' or anything. It was a continuation of our struggle as a people.
The people in Wounded Knee ... we were under siege. So the negotiating team, the Oglala Civil Rights Organization, were meeting with the whoever, with the military, with the Bureau of Indian Affairs, with the White House. And it covered a whole, uh, area of issues from corruption to land rights. For example, they had a gunnery range on Pine Ridge that was taken during World War II and never returned. Those types of things.
So, um, it was the local organization that did the negotiating with the powers that be, the Feds, that decided that, okay, they reached an agreement and the occupation would end. But we also knew that they were going to make criminals out of all of us rather than having it be our standing on treaty rights, whatever. So when it ended it wasn't our decision as people that were trapped in Wounded Knee, the negotiating team made that decision. And that's the way it should have been because we were there to support their issues and provide a forum for the people to speak.
And I think it's important to remember because each generation of our people has an obligation to struggle to maintain what we have. As long as we have a land base, we are going to be under siege, whether it's by federal Indian policy, by local tribal governments, whatever. We need to know our history, and we didn't have that at one time. Someone else was writing our history for us, telling us. But it's no longer that way. So it's a cycle. When you're struggling to maintain what you have, it's important that each generation knows what the last generation did and learn from that. So when it's their turn, they can stand strong. They'll know what happened in the past through our own eyes, our own writing, our own telling.
All extended interviews were provided by the filmmakers and edited by Andrew Lutsky.
Inmate Carlos Roche on Life in Attica
Carlos Roche: Attica was...it was the craziest place you could possibly think of being in, you know. You talk about New York state, everybody thought it was liberal. But Attica was racist, and racism was sponsored and pushed by the administration, you know. They created it, they allowed it, and, uh, it was unbelievable.
When I first went to Attica, they gave out ice once a year. Frozen water. They would bring it on the fourth of July and say, "White ice!" Bring it in fifty-five-gallon drums, open the door to the yard, throw it out on the ground and say, "White ice!" and only white guys could get the ice. And they would take the drums back to the mess hall, fill them up again and bring it back and say, "Black ice!" and anybody could take the ice, you know. And that was the first thing that hit me, and I mean it blew my mind. I was ... I couldn't believe it, you know. And that went on from '66 to '70. And then they stopped it in '70.
And it happened on the regular, you know. They would beat you down, thought nothing of it, you know. Uh, so you just couldn't, or I couldn't, get accustomed to it, you know. And I was there six years, you know. I begged my family to, uh, help me get out of there, get transferred to another joint. And I would tell them stories about what happened in Attica and they said, "No, it couldn't be like that. You're in New York. That's not the South." And they couldn't believe it, you know. And it wasn't until after the riot and the stories started coming out that they said, "Wow," you know, I was telling the truth all those years. That was Attica, you know.
The Filmmakers: What was the reason for the rebellion?
Roche: Uh, they say it was a fight between two guys on the football field the night before in A Block. That's what they said. But it was the years and years of humiliation, you know, mental and physical abuse, you know. It reached a head and just exploded, you know. They claim that it was planned, the administration claims that it was planned and this and that and the other. That's a lie, it was spontaneous, you know. And that's how it happened.
It-it was madness, you know. I remember that first night, September 9th, we were in the yard and me and a couple guys were sittin', and a friend of mine, in fact a guy locked next to me, kept walking around the yard, and he's looking up, you know. Uh, he just kept walking around the yard. And it was strange to me, you know. And I asked him, I called him The Owl -- his name was Raymond White -- and I says, "Raymond, you alright?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "You sure?" He said, "Yeah." He said, "Man, this is the first time in twenty-two years I've been out after dark." And I was like, "Whoa," you know. And he was walking around looking at the stars. You know, he kept walking around the yard, you know. A lot of strange things came out of that, you know.
Roche: Bill Kunstler was called to Attica along with the other people to negotiate with the state, Department of Corrections, you know, for us, you know, because it was never really allowed to be known to the public what actually was happening in Attica. Uh, and we needed people from the outside to take the message out there, to tell them what happened everyday in a snake pit, you know. We had no access to the outside world. Our correspondence was censored, you know.
Um, you weren't allowed to ask, or-or-or what they called "beg" for money from people that you would write. You could only write your immediate family, you know, legal wife, mother, father, sister, brother, children, period. You weren't allowed to write anybody else, you know. So they controlled information coming into the institution and going out of the institution. And, uh, if we were gonna get anything from these people, you know, we had to be able to break their control. And Bill Kunstler along with the other observers was brought in, you know, so that they could see and take the message outside what they were doing to us in Attica, you know.
He was respected just for the fact that he came to Attica, you know, and sat and listened to our grievances. We had a legitimate beef, and, I mean, all the negotiators were respected for that, you know. Um, that was the first time in like six years that somebody actually listened to what we had to say, and even guys that were angry, you know, had to give him that. Uh, you could talk and talk and talk and the people that you're trying to talk to are not listening. That's what we got from the administration. When Oswald came to Attica, I think it was in August, he was supposed to come and talk to people, listen to our problems, listen to our beefs, you know. Never saw anybody.
Photo courtesy of the filmmakers.
Nobody listened until September 9th, you know. It was like we were non-entities. And that what was one of the things that I admire about Bill. I mean the people that came into that yard didn't have to come in there, you know. And they came in there not knowing what might happen to them, and they not only came in, they stayed. And that's one of the things that made them outstanding to me, you know.
A lot of things were happening at the same time, and we realized that we're gonna need legal representation, especially when they said 'no amnesty.' We're gonna have to be represented by somebody because, uh, they would drag a guy in the courtroom, chain him up and gag him, and he couldn't say anything, you know. And when Bill Kunstler came into Attica on September the 10th, we knew that we might wind up being the guy that's chained and gagged in the courtroom, you know. And, uh, the only way that you're gonna get any justice is if people hear what you got to say. And they could never hear what you have to say if you're chained and gagged. So we knew that a lawyer was necessary, and, uh, we couldn't think of a better person to represent us than Bill Kunstler, because he would advocate for us the way we needed to be advocated, you know.
Uh, I can remember him telling us that Sunday night that [Corrections Officer] Quinn was dead, you know. We didn't know. I mean we actually didn't know. And when he realized that we didn't know, I mean, he was sort of tooken aback, you know. Uh, Quinn died Thursday and we didn't find out until Sunday. Uh, I was with Big Black when Black told him, you know, there was 200 and some guys in that yard out of 1,387 that were doing life, and the announcement that Quinn had died, you know, placed all of those guys in the position for getting the death penalty. And I think at that moment the realization hit everybody, you know, of what we were actually facing. And that was why amnesty was a must, you know. I was doing thirty-five years, yeah, but I couldn't ask the guy that was doing life, you know, to, uh, accept what the state wanted to give us, which was no amnesty, and in turn put him in a position for the death penalty, you know. So, uh, I voted along for the amnesty.
And, I mean, he, Bill Kunstler actually begged us, you know, to really consider what we were doing. My opinion is that Bill was under the same opinion that we were, that we never ever thought that the state would come in the way they did, you know. Nobody believed that. I mean he told us if we don't give up the hostages, if we don't return to our cells, they comin' in, you know. We knew that. But nobody thought they would have come the way they came, you know, including him. I mean, he can't be blamed for that. Even I didn't believe it, you know. Nobody thought that, you know. I don't think any of the other negotiator observers thought that. Nobody in the yard, none of the prisoners thought that, you know.
On the morning of the 13th it was hazy, it was ... it wanted to rain, and, uh, when I woke up that morning, uh ... By the way, this is something else about me you may not have known: I used to make booze. I used to make wine. And, uh, I had made a five-gallon pail Friday night, and I was saving it. It was Monday morning and I told the guys, I said, "Come on, man, the bar's open," and we went and we started drinking. Um, we were standing there and I was talking to a couple of guys, and Frank Smith was one of them, uh, Sabo, a guy Raymond White that I was telling you about who was walking around looking at the stars, and we were standing there, and we was talking, and everybody had their cup, we were drinking.
Uh, when I first saw it I jumped in a ditch, but I was on the top of a pile of a lot of other people that were in the ditch. And I looked down towards the door and I could see them shooting people in the ditch, and they were walking around towards me, you know. And I didn't think I was gonna come out of there without being seriously hurt, you know. Uh, guys that was on the ground on both sides of me--one got killed, one lost a leg, you know, they shot it off, you know. And it still amazes me how come I didn't get shot, you know.
And I still, I'm still trying to figure out how I came out of there without a scratch. I didn't get hurt until I got to A Block yard, you know, when they stripped us. Uh, a cop made me stand in the doorway, and he butt-stroked me with the butt of a 12-gauge shotgun, and I was told later on that he had his finger on the trigger when he hit me with the butt of his gun. And he knocked me through the doorway, I never touched the steps, onto the sidewalk. And when I woke up --I was unconscious -- another cop was standing on both my hands and broke both of my ring fingers and broke my hand. And I got a ruptured disc in my neck from where I got hit with the shotgun, you know. And those are my memories of Attica, you know, personal memories.
And then they made me walk through that snake pit and run through the gauntlet up to a cell in A Block, yeah. And, uh, I think I got hit once, yeah, I got hit on top of my foot, and I fell, and when I got up I seen another cop winding up to hit me again. And I threw a rolling block at him; I played football. I threw a rolling block at him, took his legs out, and took the cop next to him legs out, came up, you know, and ran to the cell. And, uh, they put me in the cell with two other guys. They took everything out of the cell except the sink, the toilet, and the bed frame. So one guy had to sleep on the floor outside of the bed, another guy under the bed, and another guy on the bed frame. Uh, they cut off the water in the sink and the toilet. That gas was mean. Guys were thirsty, you know, and they were begging the police for water. And the police would urinate in the Styrofoam cups and put them on the bars and tell them to drink it. And when they hesitate, they would lay the barrel of the shotgun on the bars and point it in the cell and say, "Either drink it or we're gonna blow the cell up," you know. And, uh, that was Attica on the 13th, yeah. Uh, I didn't learn 'til later on that the observers were arrested when they left the yard on the night of the 12th. They arrested them and locked them in a room so they wouldn't get out.
Roche: The state hasn't changed. The mentality of 1971 is still the mentality of prisons in this country today, you know. I was sent to Green Haven on September 16th; I was sent back to Attica in February '72. I seen the gun tower in the yard. I was given a job as a storehouse runner, and I was comin' through Times Square one Saturday morning, they was getting ready to let the movies run. I got to Times Square, the police was handing out pistols to other police, you know. The mentality hadn't changed, you know. This is what they felt: We will never allow this to happen again. Before we allow it to happen again, we'll just kill a bunch more people, you know.
Uh, when I went back in '72 there were 1,200 guys in Attica. They had 5,000 rounds of ammunition in there, you know. They put 5,000 rounds in the spot with 1,200 guys, you know, enough ammunition to kill everybody in that prison three times. You know, they hadn't changed. It got worse. And over the years it's gotten worser, you know. Their answer to Attica: More gun towers, more guns, more bullets. And like I said, it's worse, you know. They're not about negotiation. They don't feel they have to. They're in a position of strength. Why should they have to negotiate? We'll just send somebody in there to kill them all.
I can remember when they had a correction officer strike and, uh, they brought in the National Guard. I had a guard then tell me that in, uh, the declaration of martial law, the National Guard comes in and kill everybody in the cell, and they don't have time to go through the records to see who's doing three years, who's doing fifty years, or who's doing life, so they kill everybody. This way they don't have to worry about the prisons, you know. And this is a plan. If they've got it in New York state, the plan is probably nationwide, you know.
All extended interviews were provided by the filmmakers and edited by Andrew Lutsky.
Prison Guard Michael Smith on Attica
I had started at Attica in the beginning of 1971. I transferred from the Eastern Correctional Facility to Attica, and I was probably the low man on the totem pole as far as seniority goes. So my job at Attica prison at the time was vacation relief, so that every two weeks my job changed.
When I worked at the Eastern Correctional Facility that was just outside New York City, the inmates there were younger, more politically motivated individuals doing for the most part short terms, mostly for drug-related crime. Attica was maximum security, and most of the inmates there were doing longer periods of time; their sentences were longer. However there was a mix. You had a younger, more politically motivated inmate coming into that inmate population. The older inmate was doing a longer period of time; for the most part that individual just wanted to do his time. That was where he lived, so he wanted to do his time without problem, without incident. The younger inmate, uh, was more politically motivated and outspoken. And the inmate population at Attica at the time was ... the largest percentage was black, there were some Hispanics and the balance was white, Caucasian.
I was aware that prisoners at Attica, inmates, were not ... they wanted change. They wanted change within the system. They wanted improvements, and primarily in areas that struck me as, uh, mostly humanitarian. Um, food, wages, education-- those were the primary areas. At that time there were no black staff. There were no Hispanics. No one spoke Spanish. The inmates felt that the training was inadequate as far as equipping them for when they got out of prison to find work and have a productive life. So those were some of the areas that I was aware of that they wanted changed.
At the time of the riot I was twenty-two years old. I had been married that previous August and we had our first daughter, she was just a few months old. I was the oldest of eight children, and we were brought up as a Catholic family. We were ... we always grew up in a rural area but were brought up to respect life. And both my parents were color blind when it comes to their attitude toward people different than us. And I think that ... I know that my parents had a huge impression on not just my attitude but my whole family's attitude.
I had a very good working relationship with the inmate population and also with the staff who worked at Attica. Um, I seemed to be able to balance the two. And the job that I had, where my job would change every two weeks, afforded me the ability to meet a lot of staff, uh, a lot of the inmate population, and also become familiar with the geography of the facility.
So the whistle continued to sound, and I went to the phone located in the front of that room and tried calling the Administration Building. And the phone was dead. Then I tried calling anywhere in the institution, but it was an antiquated operator telephone system that had already been disconnected. So I couldn't communicate with anyone. And the prison whistle continued to sound. And on the south side of that room you overlook the first floor of the garage area, and the inmates that were in the room rushed to those windows along that wall and they were watching something going on outside. And when I went over to the windows and looked myself, you could see inmates running around in, uh, an unusual manner, and conducting themselves in a way that wasn't typical.
They were arming themselves, uh, with anything that they could use to protect themselves. Some had football helmets on. And the inmates that were in the room with me thought that it was some type of gang riot within the prison. They feared for their own safety and tried to find hiding places and take up weapons to protect themselves. I locked the civilian instructors in their offices in the rear of that room and locked the entryway doors to that room, and then just stood there and waited to see what would happen. What would come next.
The rioting inmates ... it was like this huge flood of human emotion burst into the room. And, um, they eventually broke into the area where I was, and, uh, they beat me, uh, upon entry. And two inmates, Don Noble and Carl Rain, came to my protection when I was lying on the floor, when I was being beaten against the wall. And both the inmates protected me in kind of a spread eagle fashion and put their bodies over mine to protect me.
And the other inmates went to the rear of the room, broke into the offices and took the civilian instructors hostage. And this huge wave of emotion that broke in went back out, and they left me lying on the floor along with Don Noble and Carl Rain. And Don and Carl tried to come up with a plan to get me to safety, and initially they thought about hiding me but thought that may not be a good idea. So they tried to escort me through the tunnel system, through B Block, through Times Square, and through A Block to the administration and safety. And they helped me through B Block and through the tunnel, and when we got to Times Square, the intersect where the four main tunnels in Attica intersect, the inmates had set up a perimeter across the A Tunnel and directed that all hostages be taken to D Yard, one of the four recreation yards. And so I was taken to D Yard, and that was Thursday morning, and was held there as a hostage until the prison was retaken the following Monday the 13th.
I can recall that one of the inmates' first demands was for not a negotiator but an observers committee, a civilian observers committee. And as they indicated who they wanted I was quite struck by the people that they were asking to be there-- um, Tom Wicker, um, Bill Kunstler-- and that they wanted it witnessed by a civilian observers committee, not to negotiate. I didn't get the feeling that they wanted the observers committee to do anything beyond observe, and I was impressed with that. And also that they invited the press in and wanted them to be witness to, and the outside world to be witness to, this process. That indicated to me that the inmates were requesting that ethical and moral issues and real issues be addressed in the prison system and that they wanted the world past the wall, surrounding Attica, to be aware of it. You know, people on the outside. I think that the inmate population felt that they were not only locked up but that anything that goes on inside a prison is locked up and locked away from the outside world. And they wanted them to see this process and see that it was a reasonable request and how they were conducting themselves in this process so that the whole world could judge them.
Having civilians involved was a good idea as far as I was concerned, uh, personally. And the negotiations seemed to be headed in a positive direction initially. It appeared as though the state was agreeing with and going to go along with a lot of the inmates' demands. However, um, Saturday, with the announcement of Corrections Officer Bill Quinn's death, that was a completely different aspect thrown into it, and it went south from there. The negotiation process definitely started to break down.
With the announcement of Quinn's death, any inmate that was involved in the riot could be potentially convicted for murder. After that point the inmates were very aware of that, and amnesty became the biggest issue for both sides. Amnesty was something that the state at that point couldn't offer, and it was something that the inmates had to have. So when the observers committee came in and Mr. Kunstler said, "Look, this is as good as it's gonna get," the inmates had a negative reaction to that, and it made their job more difficult.
Uh, Sunday night I still had my wallet and I took some papers out of my wallet, some business cards and some paper money. I borrowed a pen from an inmate, uh, wrote a goodbye note to my family, put it back in my wallet, and put it back in my pocket.
Sunday night the hostages' wrists were bound and our ankles were bound, and we were on mattresses all in one small area of the yard. And I can recall-- I think that it was a general feeling among the hostages-- a pretty bleak outlook as far as what was going to happen. And, uh, I thought that something may happen in the darkness of ... of the night. However, the night went through without incident, and Monday morning the negotiation process was still at a standoff.
When I was taken to the catwalk I was assigned three inmate executioners. And it was probably what you'd envision as a typical hostage setting. They brought me a chair at one point to, uh, make me more comfortable. I was blindfolded and I had three executioners--one on my right with a hand-fashioned spear at my chest, one behind me with a hammer, and an executioner on my left with a knife at my throat. And the executioner on my left was Don Noble. And Don had made it a point to be there that morning and be one of my executioners. And, uh, Don and I had a serious conversation that morning. We made a mutual promise to contact each other's family in the event that one of us didn't make it out, or one of us did make it out, and express our love. And we promised each other that we'd do that. I asked him an additional request, and that was that when the time came that I didn't want to suffer. And Don promised me that he knew what he was doing, and when the time came or would come I wouldn't suffer.
Shortly thereafter the state of New York sent a helicopter over the wall. Uh, gas was discharged. There was a large popping noise, and the discharge of the gas and the popping noise seemed to happen at the same time that the, uh, retaking force opened fire. And there were the retaking force: the New York state employees, New York State Troopers and Corrections Officers. The shooting went on ... it seemed like forever but I guess in reality it was about ten minutes. Uh, when they started shooting it seemed like all hell broke loose, and you could identify all kinds of weapons: handguns, large caliber, small caliber, shotguns, rifles, semi-automatic weapons and automatic weapons. And, uh, it was just like they indiscriminately shot everyone.
I watched, uh, which was kind of a surreal experience. The state filmed all of this, all of the retaking, and I can recall that some months after the riot the state wanted me to view this film for, uh, prosecuting purposes, to identify people that I could in the film. And in the process they filmed me ... they filmed me being shot. And it was an interesting experience to watch that. Uh, they ran it frame by frame. And when the shooting started I was sitting down in a chair, and Don Noble was on my left. And the inmate on my right with a spear was ... he'd been very vocal. And, uh, he was a very angry individual-- I didn't know that inmate-- but he kept prodding me in the chest with a spear, telling me he couldn't wait to see my guts spill into the yard. And there was an inmate, an executioner, behind me with a hammer.
And it seemed that we fell like dominos. Um, one of the executioners fell down over my legs, and Noble fell on top of the cement catwalk and he laid parallel to me. And we laid there, and the shooting just went on and on and on. I was also shot once in the right arm, probably with a handgun. And as I lay there I can recall, uh, after being shot, I was pushing on my blindfold in the process. But as I laid on the catwalk I was kind of in semi-fetal position with my knees being drawn toward my chest in kind of an uncontrollable, uh, muscular reaction. And Noble lay close to me, his stomach was against my back.
And I can recall laying on the catwalk, and the shooting just seemed to go on and on and on. And bullets were hitting all around. You could hear people crying, people dying. And as the gunfire subsided a state trooper came across the catwalk, and he looked down at me and, uh, pointed a shotgun at my head as I lay there looking up and, uh, told me if I moved he'd blow my head off. And I can recall thinking, "Boy, I made it this far and now he's gonna blow my head off." And he no more than had the words out of his mouth, and had the shotgun at my head, and, uh, a corrections officer who knew me had followed him out onto the catwalk, and he reached under the state trooper's shotgun and pushed the barrel up into the air away from me, said, "Don't shoot. He's one of ours." With that the state trooper brought the shotgun down directly over my ear and pointed it at Don Noble's head. And Noble said to me, "Mike, tell them who I am and what I did for you." So I said, "Don't shoot. His name's Don Noble, he saved my life." And with that the state trooper stepped over both of us and went on. A short time thereafter I was put on a stretcher and taken to a local hospital.
I was shot with an automatic weapon. The weapon issued at Attica at the time for the tower was the AR-50, which is a fully-automatic 223-caliber machine gun. Um, one very similar to the M-16 that the military uses. Uh, when I was hit ... I have four entry wounds, and they're in a vertical order, and they start just below my navel. So whoever shot me was an excellent marksman; it was intentional because the pattern was in a vertical and not a horizontal. And the bullets exploded on impact and, uh, damaged a lot of stuff inside, several organs inside me, and expanded, leaving shrapnel and exit wounds out my back. There was a long recovery period that followed; I had to learn how to walk again. I had a colostomy, um, a temporary colostomy, which I had closed a couple years later. And, uh, there were a lot surgeries involved.
I was taken directly to the hospital because of the extent of my injuries. Um, I was in and out of consciousness for several weeks, but it was very disturbing to find out what the outcome of the event was. And ... and that so many people had lost their lives in the process, not just the state employees but inmates also.
The other thing is I wasn't anywhere around Frank Smith. It just ... it was a total fabrication. And as time went on there were a lot of fabrications. Hostages didn't die from cut throats; hostages died from gunshot wounds. Inmates didn't have guns; state employees had guns. And then as time went on and I learned more about the atrocities that were committed, it was very disturbing.
I'm not pro-inmate, but I'm not lopsided toward the state either. I believe that people should be responsible for their actions. The inmates did things that they should be held responsible for during the riot. And the state of New York and their employees should also be held responsible for what they did. Everybody makes mistakes, but you still should be held accountable for those actions. And unfortunately, in this event, I don't think anybody was held accountable on either side. I mean, the state employees murdered people and weren't held accountable, and the inmates murdered three of their own and weren't held accountable. And they also murdered Bill Quinn. Somebody should be held accountable for something.
The state of New York was forced by a federal mandate to compensate, even if on a limited basis, the inmates for what happened to them during the riot and after the retaking of the prison. And the hostages and their families started a group, a grassroots movement called The Forgotten Victims of Attica, and after the state had negotiated some type of settlement with the inmates, the hostages were basically given that same settlement. And one of the things the hostages had requested prior to the settlement, one of the things that they asked the state of New York for, was the records that are held in Albany regarding what happened during the riot and the retaking. And all of our requests were denied. And during that process I FOIAed for those documents that are held in Albany and was denied access to something that I considered public record. And subsequent requests for those documents were also denied. I'm hopeful, though, with a new administration in Albany that maybe they'll reconsider those requests.
I think for me to feel like justice has been served would require an admission of responsibility and some type of action to indicate sincerity and an apology. And not just for one side, for both sides. An apology from the state of New York would include releasing the records.
The Filmmakers: Before this happened did you think that the state was capable of doing what it did?
Smith: I think that [Commissioner] Oswald was basically a good guy and had good intentions, and I think that he really wanted to help change the prison system in New York state. And I felt initially that they were negotiating in good faith and agreed to negotiate, um, with the hopes that this could be peacefully resolved. Anything but how it turned out. And in retrospect, Oswald may have had good intentions but the powers-that-be above him dictated what happened, and I don't think that the hostages' or inmates' safety was ever really a consideration. I don't think there ever was a plan to rescue the hostages. I think that the plan primarily was, uh, "How can we make this go away and cause the least political ramifications?" I think that Governor Rockefeller had his own political ambitions that included the White House at the time, and he wanted to distance himself from this event, just absolutely as far away as he could get.
Filmmakers: Did anyone in an official capacity ever apologize to you for what happened?
Smith: I never had anybody in an official capacity apologize to me for what happened. They were part of the system, as far as I'm concerned, part of the political system, and, uh, that's pretty much a self-serving industry. They were more concerned with what effect it was going to have on their political future than saying, "There were mistakes made, let's fix this and we'll do our best to let it not happen again."
Filmmakers What happened to Don Noble?
Smith: Don Noble survived, and we passed one time in Buffalo in court. And gestured hello. And I understand that Don Noble eventually got out of the prison system and he's since died.
Filmmakers: So, you were shot by a corrections officer? Or was it a trooper?
Smith: A positive identification of the individual that shot me I'm not aware of. However I was shot multiple times, so it may have been two different people who shot me. Most likely it was two different people who shot me. But because of the type of shrapnel that I had, the type weapon that I was shot with, uh, I believe that I was shot by a correctional officer.
Filmmakers: And what does it mean to you to be shot by a fellow corrections officer?
Smith: I think that in a hostage situation there are people that ... there are people that have to take care of business. And unfortunately I think that has to be done sometimes without any emotional connection. When they retook Attica prison, there were corrections officers involved that worked in the facility, there were probably troopers that had close friends that worked at the facility, and I think that relationship implied, uh, an emotional involvement that ... that disqualifies any objectivity.
Filmmakers: Who do you think ultimately was responsible for Attica?
Smith: Who is ultimately responsible for the riot? That's an interesting question that I think ... is complex. It depends on an individual's attitude of the whole system in general. The prison system doesn't work. It doesn't do anything to benefit society. If you lock somebody up in a cage and don't offer them anything to ... any tools to make them any better to re-enter society, they're going to only re-enter more bitter than they were when they went in. And it depends, I guess, on how you look at the people in prison. To me prison is just a reflection of what's going on in society. They're overcrowded. They're inadequate. A lot of people in our prison system are there because of drug use. Is that a crime? Or is that an addiction? Should we put them in prison or should we offer them some type of help?
And society--I mean, who's to blame? Society. If it's locked behind a wall they don't ... they turn their back on it and don't have to deal with it unless it's directly related to them or someone in their family. So I guess, who's responsible? The inmates, yeah, they started a riot inside a prison and took control of a facility out of desperation that maybe wasn't the right form to bring their issues to the table. But they didn't seem to be able to get anyone to address them in any other fashion. So through frustration they expressed themselves in riot form. Maybe if our prison system would have offered some type of meaningful reform for individuals that need it, that riot would have never happened.
Filmmakers: Do you think it's better today, the prison system?
Smith: I'm not involved in the prison system anymore, other than occasionally to go there for somebody that I meet, that I worked with, or a legal process, uh, following the riot. I've been back to the prison a couple times, and other than what I know in hearsay, I'm not personally involved in the system. But I don't see where it's improved dramatically. Uh, it's more overcrowded now than it ever was ... not just Attica but prisons in general are overcrowded. And they seem to be putting an emphasis on security more than helping the individual and helping our society. It's like, to me it's a growing problem. They haven't addressed it. And I don't know if society doesn't have the means to address it, but it sure seems to me that they could do something a hell of a lot better than what they've got right now.
Filmmakers: What did you experience at Attica teach you about the criminal justice system?
Smith: I think the United States has probably one of the best, um, justice systems in the world. However, there are problems. And it seems, it seems that the justice system is politically manipulated, and I think that's unfortunate.
Filmmakers: What do you think people should learn from Attica today?
Smith: Well, I don't think that people realize how important Attica is because they don't see where they are directly affected. But what happened at Attica, and I'm using Attica as a general term, and what continues to happen at Attica affects us all. It affects us socially, it affects us monetarily, and it affects the whole health of our society.
All extended interviews were provided by the filmmakers and edited by Andrew Lutsky.