Rev. Cecil Williams interviews activist Angela Davis, Part 2

I wonder I wonder do do you do you really see this as a as a means of uh committing uh a contrived engaging in a contrived effort on the part of those who make the decisions of eliminating black people can is this a form of suppression all also to to to make sure in other words that that black people are raed into prisons into Jail uh what in in the whole history of uh the United States the impact of racism has been to attempt to contain black people has been to attempt to stifle the uh uh desires towards Liberation one of the ways in which this is accomplished is by trying to convince black people that they're completely powerless before this huge apparatus and that uh the police can just come into the community and and pick someone out kill them as they have done on many many occasions in the past charge them with something they didn't do railroad them to prison send them to the U gas chamber uh this is just one of the many ways that the system and it's not a contrived effort in the sense that it's done consciously by a few men up at the top it's built into the system it's built into uh it's it's built into the nature of this Society getting back to the question of what a revolutionary is a re black revolutionary realizes that uh we cannot begin to combat racism we cannot begin to effectively destroy racism until we destroyed the whole system now I guess the amazing thing is that we've noticed that in the state of California they have what is called the indeterminant sentencing of of prisoners uh the adult Authority has the power to determine when a person is paroled uh what time that person is paroled if in fact that person is parole uh I know I've talked to a number of prisoners who've said this is another means set up by uh a racist system to control the Affairs and the destiny of black people uh do you see this as uh a certain uh direction of providing controls on the lives of those prisoners who are in prison well see it's interesting that when the indeterminate sentence law was first enacted it was presented as uh one of the most Progressive reforms in um the prison system that's one of the reasons among many others that California today is uh ironically considered to be the most Progressive uh uh section of the American Penal system um originally or at least it was stated that uh originally the purpose of the indeterminate sentence law was to uh allow for the greatest flexibility in Rehabilitation that meant that if a prisoner um was say charged or convicted of a of an offense that carried say uh a straight 10e sentence um he would not get 10 years but he might get say two to 15 because it's possible that in two years he might have re quote rehabilitated himself and it would have been uh overly inhuman to U force him to spend eight more years in prison but how is this function in reality um in reality the indeterminate sentence laws law has has has said done precisely what you say it was done it has provided an an an effective very brutal means of control over the lives of uh sisters and brothers who are in prison what does this mean it means that there's an eight-man board composed of composed of and I was just uh looking at this uh paper that was done on prisons not too long ago it gives a rundown on who's on the adult Authority and it says that the six whites on the panel and check this out include a former assistant commander of the Los Angeles Police Department detective Bureau a former FBI agent in charge of the San Francisco office a former deputy United States Attorney for the southern district of California a former district attorney for Fresno a former police chief of Richmond California and a former prison guard at Chino now there's one black man on the adult Authority now however he was a former civil Serv in the prison system there's one Cho however he was uh also in the prison system before he was appointed now I what what does this mean this means they're ex Police ex agents uh ex prosecutors uh all of whom uh have come from a background which is directly uh opposed to to uh the prisoner and of course they're going to take the side of of of the uh um this system they're going to take the side that's directly opposed to the interest of the prisoners and these people these people have the right to set a date a parole date for certainly and of course now with the increased surge of political uh activity and and with the increasingly aggressive posture that prisoners are assuming in prison uh the indeterminant sentence is used as a form of retaliation it's used as a form of repression because uh uh prisoners are either told or else they realize that is that that they continue to engage in any kind of political activity there I'm going to get a date how do you get two burning questions in at one time you know when they they're coming in my head right now and I want to get them in at the same time uh I'll try one first uh it had been suggested by the executive director of the correctional inst institutions of California that uh labotomy that brain surgery be uh be used on those inmates who are who have violent tendencies also we know that at two institutions like uh tadera and atascadera and uh also Vacaville certain drugs have been used on on prisoners uh uh this trend uh we note uh has taken place and yet there was also a very strong suggestion by the executive director that leotus be uh be engaged in uh what does that sound like and what does that remind you of it uh evokes in my mind all of the horrors of Nazi Germany all of the experiments that were done in the concentration camps uh people who accuse us when we say that there are very definite fascist tendencies in America today ought to think for a moment when the director of the Department of Corrections can get up and suggest that uh human beings have brain surgery to uh uh prevent them from feeling to prevent them from reacting because what does the the bottomy do yeah I understand that it damages the front section of the of the brain it destroys through by means of attaching electrodes to the brain it destroys very vital uh sections of the brain I think I'm of course I'm not a doctor but from what I've learned uh uh once you receive this labotomy you uh become uh practically a vegetable you of course uh they maintain that it um uh prevents the patient from being aggressive and violent but uh uh what they really what they're really talking about is uh stifling the political militancy that exists on the inside of the prison yeah I understand that uh labot is have been used and this is undoubtedly well founded to to to to to suppress pain you know I really believe they would have actually uh initiated this policy of of brain surgery had not there been the kind of reaction uh that there was probably the the uh way the news leaked out was an attempt to test what public reaction was going to be like and had it not been what it was uh more than likely a whole series of uh those kinds of experiments would have been would have been um initiated but there's something that um has not received very widespread publicity and that is the use of these drugs in um Vacaville and atascadera that you would talking about before um apparently the drug that is most widely used is called antine MH and it is um used in what they call um aversion treatment I think that's right the term Aion treatment right to avert The Prisoner from any kind of uh assertive uh activity from what I've read the uh experience of taking that drug is so frightening and so horrible apparently when they administer it it it it um causes for a period of about 60 seconds the sensation of dying it completely relax it completely arrests the uh like Suffocation you feel like you're suffocating you feel like you're drowning you feel like you're dying um then apparently there's a psychiatrist who sits next to you and uh discusses what you've done it's used as a disciplinary I measure and that the next time you get ready to uh uh um strike out at a guard or do whatever you're charged with doing you think about what it feels like because you're going to be injected with some more of this connecting that's what they really tell them uh and uh I can imagine that once a person goes through that kind of experience of uh uh the actual sensation of dying it is going to to begin to affect the mind and you see I think that we have to look at what's going on in the prisons today in that respect as being a a signal of what might possibly come in the society as as as a whole no I think that it is uh probably uh a truism by now that in any given Society what goes on in the prisons uh reflects uh uh very important elements of the society as a whole and that you can learn something about the nature of the society by looking at what happens behind its uh walls among its captives

Channel: KPIX | CBS NEWS BAY AREA

Views: 335

Keywords: KPIX 5 News Evening, Rev. Cecil Williams, Angela Davis, Glide Memorial Church

Id: t-QsQTpklW0

Length: 11min 39sec (699 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 23 2024