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hat was the Lincoln Detox Center? How did it start and why? 

This article is a sneak peek from The Abolitionist No. 19: Mental Health. Subscriptions keep us going!

In the late 1960s and early 1970s in New York, we were living through a drug epidemic. In November of 1970, I was 19 years old and had been a heroin addict for five years. I began using heroin when I was 14, which was very common for young men and young women of my generation. Fifteen percent of the population was addicted (communities in the South Bronx, Harlem, the Lower East Side, Bushwick in Brooklyn, including everyone from a newborn baby to an elderly person ready to pass on). The concentration of addiction was on teenagers and people in their early 20s and 30s. Addiction at that time was primarily to heroin.

In the 1960s, the U.S. government engaged in a war in Southeast Asia commonly known as the Vietnam War, but the United States was involved in all of Southeast Asia. There was an airline that was an operation of the CIA transporting heroin from Southeast Asia to the U.S. We see now in Hollywood movies “gangsters” importing heroin, but the bulk of heroin imported to the United States was a United States government operation, targeting poor communities of color, black and Latino communities.

In New York, heroin devastated most of Harlem and the South Bronx. Young people utilized heroin very publicly, sniffing heroin at dance halls or in school bathrooms, which led to shooting up intravenously. This was an epidemic that Black Panther Michael Cetewayo Tabua, one of the New York 21, wrote a pamphlet on called “Capitalism Plus Dope Equals Genocide,” which we used widely. In 1969, the Black Panther Party in New York City was decimated by the indictment of 21 Black Panthers and needed to focus on the trial, becoming inactive in other areas at that time. Because of the relationship the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords had, together we began looking at the heroin epidemic, the general health of our communities and the public health positions of institutions against our communities.

Lincoln Hospital was built in 1839 to receive former slaves migrating from the South. By 1970, it was the only medical facility in the South Bronx. It was a dilapidated brick structure, from the previous century that had never been upgraded. It was known as the “butcher shop of the South Bronx.” In the old Lincoln Hospital (and even today) you walk down the hall and see blood everywhere—blood on the walls, the sheets, the gurneys, your shoes. Doctors were assigned there for internships and learned on Blacks, Puerto Ricans and a very small diminishing white community in the South Bronx.

In early 1970, there was a woman by the name of Carmen Rodriguez who was butchered in the hospital and bled to death on a gurney. Following that death, the Young Lords, with the participation of some Black Panthers, took over Lincoln Hospital for the first time and demanded better health care delivery for people in that community.

During the takeover, the Young Lords, Panthers, supporters and translators set up tables where people came to document their experiences of the medical treatment. A major part of the takeover focused on how there were no translators at Lincoln Hospital. South Bronx is a predominantly Puerto Rican community, primarily of Spanish-speaking people newly arrived or second generation who spoke little-to-no English. People would walk in Lincoln Hospital for medical treatment and there was nobody there to understand your ailment or problem. The hospital administration had also been confronted about the lack of services for people with addictions, primarily heroin addiction. The community had told the hospital one of its shortcomings was that you come to the hospital and you get no treatment whatsoever. The hospital administration paid no mind to it.

Months later on November 10, 1970, a group of the Young Lords, a South Bronx anti-drug coalition, and members of the Health Revolutionary Unity Movement (a mass organization of health workers) with the support of the Lincoln Collective took over the Nurses’ Residence building of Lincoln Hospital and established a drug treatment program called The People’s Drug Program, which became known as Lincoln Detox Center.

The police surrounded us and we said we weren’t leaving. By day two, the takeover had spread by word of mouth and we had hundreds of people lined up wanting to get treatment for addiction. About a month later, the administration had to come to terms with the fact that we weren’t leaving. They had been sitting on the proposal of some monies that had been earmarked for treatment that hadn’t been implemented. The money was brought and staff was hired from the very volunteers of the Lincoln Detox program we started. Of course the powers that be did not want us there but could not figure out how to deal with people saying we ain’t going. We’re staying and we’re going to serve our people.

We were very effective in doing so, and kept our program running until 1979.

What was your involvement? 

I joined the building of Lincoln Detox from day one. Before that, my primary objective was to go get drugs, until one time Cleo Silvers and I were sitting on a stoop and she pointed some important stuff out to me. She told me to look at the New York City Police patrol car where two officers sat selling heroin. She said, “Look, those are cops. Look who you’re giving your money to!” The climate in our communities at the time is very important. On the one hand we have the drug epidemic, but there was also revolution in the air—change was something that you could breathe, that you could taste, that you could feel, because the movement was very vibrant. Some days before October 30, there had been a massive demonstration called by the Young Lords and I attended the demonstration even though I was still addicted.

Because of the way I felt that day, I told myself I couldn’t continue to be a drug user. I couldn’t be a heroin addict and a revolutionary, and I wanted to be a revolutionary. I made a decision to kick a dope habit. Coincidentally, that day I called Cleo, who told me to go to this place with these people. I met a couple of young brothers from the Puerto Rican Student Union and they escorted me over to Cleo at Lincoln Hospital. It had just been taken over a half-hour before. As I was withdrawing from my addiction, I did not detoxify in Lincoln Detox, but detoxified on my own, cold turkey, a challenge I placed upon myself.

I was recruited out of that experience into the Young Lords Party, maybe a month after the first day of the program. The presence of the Latino movement within the revolutionary movement in the U.S. hadn’t occurred yet in New York. It had occurred in the Southwest with the Brown Berets, but the Latino community in New York was predominantly Puerto Rican. When I joined the Young Lords, I was assigned to Lincoln Detox where I worked as a counselor.

What did the Lincoln Detox Center do? What approaches did it use?

We provided detoxification. We had support from medical doctors providing us with methadone, which we then provided to people in increasing dosages over ten days for people to withdraw, replacing the heroin with methadone and then decreasing it by milligrams every day. After the tenth day you would be physically clean.

This was also right around the time that Richard Nixon opened up relationships with China. A lot came out about Chinese way of life and how health care was provided to the people of China. We heard about acupuncture. We read a magazine article about a situation in Thailand where an acupuncturist used acupuncture to treat someone with respiratory problems and an addiction to opium. We read that the stimulation of the lung point in the ear was the key of the treatment. We went down to Chinatown, got acupuncture needles and began experimenting on one another. We then developed the acupuncture collective within Lincoln Detox.

We also understood that an individual’s addiction wasn’t just a physical problem, but a psychological problem. It was a widespread problem in our community, not because we as a community were psychologically deficient, but because oppression and brutal living conditions drove us to that. There was a book called The Radical Therapist that some of us read.

We developed therapy that integrated political education into therapeutic discussions. We held group sessions with overwhelmingly Black and Puerto Rican participants, and engaged in conversations around what it felt like to be Black or Puerto Rican, what it meant for someone who was called a “spic” to not understand what Puerto Rican was. Puerto Rican people are colonial subjects of the United States. You ask a Puerto Rican generally, an unconscious Puerto Rican and they’ll say, “I’m a U.S. citizen.” Well, you are an un-welcomed U.S. citizen, so what does that feel like and mean? The effects of colonialism and the treatment Puerto Ricans receive stateside are not understood because they become internalized. You have to start with what it means. How do you feel about your family’s inability to provide for you? Why do the cops hate you? Why does the school hate you? I went to public school, didn’t know English in 5^th grade, and was placed in a class for the “mentally challenged.” There are people who need that support, but I don’t get it. What are the impacts of that kind of treatment by the institutions of society? What happens to a person who lives in those conditions, who gets beaten by police and called a “dirty spic” or who gets denied friendship because the person is white and you’re of color? There is a cumulative impact of this kind of existence and we would discuss it.

How did Lincoln Detox incorporate grassroots organizing into its ongoing work?

Art by Ricardo Levins Morales.

When you’re consumed by chasing a bag of drugs, chasing the money to get the bag of drugs, being high, or being in an environment with other people you get high with, it becomes a way of life. When people want alternatives, you have to provide it for them. We did not have the resources to say: Okay, you’re 17, you can benefit from finishing school. Here’s a school with caring teachers, caring counselors and so on to bring people up to speed in education or to direct people to get employment, particularly people who had been out of the work force. Given the natural power of the therapeutic approach, this was all very important that it was voluntary, that it was people’s will to do. If they learned things from our educational program and therapeutic sessions, they wanted to do something about those problems. We would direct them to get involved, to get engaged in campaigns that were going on in the community.

We had people advocating for people in welfare centers, training people on the rights of welfare recipients, and translators who would advocate for people who were Spanish-speakers. We played a part in the founding of a coalition for minority construction workers, because construction work was a good paying job and the industry excluded minorities. Those were a few things we did, in addition to political campaigns. Some people that came through our programs joined the Young Lords, Black Panther Party or the Republic of New Afrika. Some became Muslims and got deeply involved. Some got involved in the campaign to free political prisoners or began building collectives.

We fought everyday—we fought for the right to eat, the right to get paid, the right to be respected, the right not to be fucked with by the cops. We never asked for anything in return.

What were some of the strengths, successes, challenges and weaknesses?

There were strengths and successes throughout, but it wasn’t all glory. There were a lot of challenges and weaknesses. From the first day, November 10, 1970, we had a constant influx of people everyday seeking help. Hundreds and hundreds came—I’m not talking about one or two-dozen people—as the word spread about Lincoln Detox, the opportunity for people to walk in and get effective help from everyday people (not white professionals but their own people) who had a loving heart, developing an understanding of things they needed to articulate. People came from all over New York and Connecticut, Long Island, New Jersey, too. The Lincoln Detox program became so successful and effective that a United Nations delegation visited and gave us recognition for it.

At that point acupuncture became controversial because it was “non-medical” people providing medical care. Laws then were passed about who could do acupuncture, making it so that it could only be done under supervision of a medical doctor who might not have a clue of what acupuncture is about. Those kinds of political struggles—to maintain funding for the program, to keep the program alive, against the local police as well as the hospital police who continuously tried to make their way into the program (Lincoln Detox was a sanctuary where addicts could go and not be afraid of the police)—were big challenges. Then we struggled with the hospital to provide meal expenses for the program. People were coming off the streets, didn’t have anything to eat and needed treatment. We struggled and eventually figured it out.

We also struggled with developing our skills in treatment, acupuncture and detoxing. At the time we started the program, there was a big push to promote methadone maintenance as a treatment modality. Methadone is a scary drug, originally developed by Nazi scientists in order to furnish themselves with opiates. It’s highly addictive and the withdrawal is different from heroin. People slowly developed a protocol for detoxing off methadone. We could detox somebody from heroin in ten days and they’d be fine physically. Methadone was very painful for many months—three or four sometimes.

The existence of the program was a thorn in the government’s side. We were revolutionaries and radicals doing work, recruiting people to do work the government didn’t want to happen.

One morning in 1979, we went to work and the Lincoln Hospital was surrounded by police checking the identification of everybody walking in. They had a list of names and members of the Young Lords, Black Panther Party, and Republic of New Afrika and other people were excluded from entering the facilities, and were to be arrested if they tried to enter. They dismantled Lincoln Detox. One component they were very interested in was the acupuncture, because it was a money mill. Some people today say the Lincoln Detox still exists, but it doesn’t. There’s an acupuncture clinic at Lincoln Hospital but the program was dismantled.

Was the collaboration between different groups such as the Young Lords, the Black Panther Party, the Republic of New Afrika and Muslim communities spontaneous, automatic or a more intentional effort in developing the program?

That’s a deep question. There’s the overriding principle of unity and respect and there’s the reality that we were all works in progress. It’s not like you go to sleep one night a junkie and wake up the next morning a revolutionary. There’s a process in growth and change. As products of today’s society, we are not examples of the society we’re building for tomorrow.

Collaboration and solidarity were very important to Lincoln Detox and there were a lot of struggles. We considered the Black Panther Party the vanguard of the revolutionary movement at that time, and there was the reality that the Black Panther Party was disintegrating. There were some people in the Black Panther Party and the Young Lords who were extremely arrogant. We had to struggle against and combat those tendencies. We would always go back to the principle of what is the best interest of the people. The outcome was very positive and we learned so much from each other. In 1973, when the American Indian Movement confronted the FBI at Wounded Knee on Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, there was no question for us. It was automatically our responsibility to support and engage with that. We developed a philosophy, a practice that made it possible for us to do those things.

What lessons were learned that could strengthen work today?

I think that a lot of organizing that takes place today is funded. You don’t hear about many initiatives that are independent efforts. One of the things that Lincoln Detox was very much a part of was support for the Attica brothers during the Attica Prison takeover in September 1971. We did 20-something rallies in 15 days throughout New York City. We didn’t have the Internet or cell phones, or institutions financing copy machines or any of that. We hustled to type fliers, cut and pasted pictures and burned stencils.

We built a movement and we looked for ways to make the movement survive without government funding. Nobody could tell us what we were going to do. Today a lot relies on foundation monies, and people focus on the money and don’t engage in campaigns. Even though we forced the government for years to underwrite our work, eventually they had the power and took it out. We didn’t have the power to continue that institution. If we were not in their facility could they have shut us down? I don’t know, but it would have been different.

We need to recognize we can’t have institutions within the institutions. I mean we eventually end up in one way or another in a place where Lincoln Detox ended. We need to think in terms of short range and longer-range efforts. How do you get rid of prisons under imperialism? You have to get rid of imperialism. In the mean time you may take on some struggles that may take on some reforms and that needs to be studied and discussed.

We can look at it from the humanist viewpoint and see that we saved and changed a lot of lives, people who would have been dead from heroin. I’m one of them, one of a lot of people. A lot of people became contributors to progress, but in changing the world the obstacles change too. After heroin came crack. We did not stop the drug scourge in our community.

What are some of the legacies or long-term impacts of the Lincoln Detox center?

Humbly, I don’t think there would be the new Lincoln Hospital without our work. If it weren’t for the struggles that we took on, the new Lincoln Hospital would never have been built, because all political interests had nothing to do with the interests of the people in the community. We had to fight to put the interests of the community at the forefront and demand that hospital be built. When they shut down the old and moved to the new Lincoln Hospital, they made space for every department except Lincoln Detox. The legacy spreads beyond that, too. If you go into any New York City public hospital, you see the Patient’s Bill of Rights on the wall. That came out of the first takeover at Lincoln Hospital. We made it come alive at Lincoln Detox.

Vicente “Panama” Alba was a member of the Young Lords Party and counselor at Lincoln Detox Center in the South Bronx, New York in the 1970s. He now lives in Puerto Rico. 

Molly Porzig is a member of Critical Resistance, Oakland, and is an editor for The Abolitionist.

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• Letter from the Editors.
• Watching the Olympics: Understanding and Resisting Surveillance of Mass Events. By Rachel Herzing and Isaac Ontiveros. The 2012 London Summer Olympics saw an increase in surveillance throughout that city. Such events are sites of legalization and normalization of a culture of surveillance: they extend and expand the criminalization of populations labeled as threats by the state.
• Letters to the Editors. Readers chime in about Irish political prisoners and Marilyn Buck’s passing.
• Your Cellphone, Surveillance Device. An infographic by Renee Perry, using info from mobileactive.org. Cellphone security basics.
• Networking Rebellion: Digital Policing and Revolt in the Arab Uprisings. By Ian Alan Paul and David Zlutnick. On censorship and policing as well as resistance in the Arab Uprisings.
• Nothing to Lose But Our Chains: Organizing Under Surveillance. An interview with Ashanti Alston and Masai Ehehosi, with Molly Porzig. The Critical Resistance and Black Panther Party/Black Liberation Army organizers talk about how to organize under the threat of surveillance.
• California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation’s Secret Surveillance Program. By Kijana Tashiri Askari. Pelican Bay prison’s “Communications Management Unit” surveils prisoners to try to keep them from organizing inside.
• Fertilizer for the Grassroots. By Inger P. Brinck. Conservative foundations and other funding sources attempt to eliminate radical activism by withdrawing their financial support.
  
• Surveillance vs. Social Security. An infographic by Oliver Spires. The incredibly high costs of state surveillance, as compared to the cost of living.
  
• Surveillance: 1900s to Present. Compiled by Kamau Walton. A timeline with major state surveillance landmarks.
  
• Exodus 2012. By D’Andre Moore. A current prisoner’s call to end surveillance of oppressed people, particularly immigrant communities.
• USA’s Prison Industrial Complex Moves South of the Border. By Nasim Chatha (reprinted from the Alliance for Global Justice). The United States exports its draconian style of imprisonment to Central and South America.
• Book Reviews. Frank M. Ahearn with Eileen C. Horan: How to Disappear: Erase Your Digital Footprint, Leave False Trails, and Vanish Without a Trace (Lyons Press, 2010); review by Jay Donahue. Eric A. Stanley and Nat Smith: Captive Genders: Trans Embodiment and the Prison Industrial Complex (AK Press, 2011); review by David Gilbert. David Gilbert, Love and Struggle: My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground and Beyond (PM Press, 2012); review by Eric A. Stanley.

Thanks to all our contributors and translators!
Ashanti Alston
Kijana Tashiri Askari
Inger P. Brink
Nasim Chatha
Jay Donahue
Masai Ehehosi
David Gilbert
Rachel Herzing
Larry James DeRossett
D’Andre Moore
Isaac Ontiveros
Ian Paul
Renee Perry
Oliver Spires
Eric A. Stanley
David Zlutnick
Kentaro Kaneko
Andrea Salinas
Luigi Celentano
Susana Draper
Leah Furumo
Armando Hernandez
Alma Muñoz
Sylvia Romo
Andrea Salinas
Gabriel Torres
Alfonso Tovar
Alia Trindle
Benjamin Wood

From The Abolitionist No. 18: Surveillance

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ditors Note: In exploring the role of surveillance as a cornerstone of the prison industrial complex (PIC), The Abolitionist wanted to examine it through its history, how it has been used and continues to repress struggles for liberation and self-determination. We interviewed two long-time revolutionaries and Critical Resistance members, Ashanti Alston and Masai Ehehosi, to outline some of this history as well as their own experiences organizing under surveillance during for more than 40 years.

A lot of people have very different definitions of surveillance. Can you explain what surveillance means to you?

Ashanti: It’s really important that people have a historical understanding.  We have to always deal with what surveillance meant when there was this European conquest of the African continent–capturing and enslaving millions of Africans over to what became the United States; setting up slave ports and always having to have people keep an eye on those you’ve captured and on possible opposition to your quest to conquer the world. The whole system of slavery is one that is constant surveillance, as it is part of the mechanisms of conquest. When have colonized people not been under surveillance?

It’s important to understand what that means for those of us who are still victims of that original surveillance that came with the conquest of our people that we still have not been able to get off our backs yet in 2012.

Masai: That relates to how I see surveillance–it’s continuous. Years ago when Ashanti and I first started working together, we started to be surveilled and have been ever since. One of the definitions of surveillance is the continued observation of a person or group, especially if they are from one perspective doing something “illegal”. Revolution is always illegal to the oppressor since the independence struggle began. Independence is always considered illegal; just struggling for a just society is always illegal to the oppressor. If we’re talking about anything to cause real change, then we’re also talking about surveillance.

How has surveillance changed over time? What tactics have been used, how have they developed and how are they used now?

Masai: There’s always a greater use of technology to evolve more serious surveillance as time goes on and more advancements are invented. A lot of people who are targets or potential targets help a lot more now with surveillance than before, in the sense of smart phones, Facebook, [credit] cards and things that we do every day and we just don’t think about as surveillance. It may not be a thing where someone is visually seeing us, but our movements, actions and choices are being tracked. We contribute to it. We just don’t think there’s any other way. 

Masai Ehehosi

When I used to work for the health department as a Communal Disease Control Investigator, we would ask people questions about their relationships, their lives, lots of private things. This was over 20 years ago and even back then a lot of people didn’t really realize what was going on. They would just give up information–about who partners were, gave network information and so on. Some the government already had, but a lot they didn’t. They then could make links of people based on information one person gave.

In terms of technology like cameras, some of those things that we got now couldn’t have even been done openly twenty years ago, because people would challenge it, but now people are accepting it. It comes back to the level of organizing that people are actually doing, because obviously a lot of the time people don’t actually feel safe, so they rely on the system’s tools either directly or indirectly. Some of us aren’t doing the organizing that we should be doing in the community that will actually make people feel and be safe. There’s a reason why they don’t feel safe—they’re buying into the propaganda, and we’re supposed to counteract that.

Ashanti: Technology is doing a hell of job, and those of us who want to challenge it have to think of how to do this differently. There’s an evolution of these agencies of conquest, but I keep focus on the role of the police, government, agencies, government programs, non-profit organizations, religious institutions, neighbors, business, media—all of these things are here to surveil or to create the conditions whereby the people that rule this country can keep the people under control, abiding by the law or rule. In some ways, things have changed drastically and in other ways not, because the key groups of people are still under this specific surveillance. This system does what it’s supposed to do to maintain white supremacy. I want people not to be naïve in what we face when we say we want to change this world. This reality and the history behind it, calls for abolition, not reform.

One example is a young activist brother in Cleveland, Ohio, saw them cameras up in the neighborhood and he also knew people in the neighborhood were calling for cameras because of the level of crime. He was trying to explain to everyone what those cameras really meant, but it fell on deaf ears. So he took it upon himself to actually start knocking them cameras out, regardless of what people thought. After so many generations of conquest, even those most impacted by the system begin to call for their own surveillance, repression. This tells you what the new challenge for those of us who say they want change. How do we get people to see that some of the very things that they’re asking for from government are not in their best interest?

How have you seen the surveillance of particular communities shift or intensify over time, specifically in terms of surveillance of immigrant communities, Muslim communities and young people?

Ashanti: I’m from Plainfield, New Jersey, and Plainfield’s a small town. It has a small police force, which may have contributed to the rebellion there in the’60’s, when Black folks were able to get weapons and run the police out. It wasn’t a magical thing, it was just doable and it was done.

In the mid 70’s to mid-80’s when I go to prison and came out, there was a large increase in the numbers, sophistication, as well as the resources that the police departments have access to in terms of technology, weaponry, and military training. Police forces were recruiting soldiers involved in imperialist wars to become police officers. That was a big change for me to see.

Things were so different from before we were captured and imprisoned, but we still came out with that same can do attitude. I don’t care how large the police get. I don’t care how terrified my people get. We have got to figure out how to get people to say, “No! We do not accept this occupation army!” I know we haven’t figured it out yet. But the idea is still valid that we must be self-determining and nothing should stop us from being that. We are up against a consciousness in our communities that really has been convinced that we cannot win, we must accommodate.

Masai: I agree we can do it, and I think sometimes folks don’t really want to acknowledge surveillance, so long as they’re struggling for certain things and it’s going to happen. I think they tend to gloss over it. For those who consider themselves to be leadership or politically aware, I think there’s an obligation to study what has happened and what is happening.

I come from the New Afrikan community, so what I see happening now is nothing new.  It’s what I would have expected. People often assume when talking about the Muslim community that we’re talking about this whole different category of people or region of the world–of what we call the Middle East–and we sometimes forget a large number of Muslims actually are indigenous. If in fact we as Muslims are doing what we’re supposed to be doing, that is struggling against oppression, being heavily surveilled comes with it.

In the Muslim community, some folks speak in opposition of policies of the U.S. government and face serious charges and disappearance. People haven’t said anything other than what they felt. The U.S. government doesn’t really make an attempt to come up with any evidence or anything. In many cases the U.S. government agents in fact initiate the plots, provide equipment, and when folks voice opposition, they’re hit. It has had a way of making those folks in those communities skeptical of saying anything.

Ashanti: When I was living in New York, very conscious South Asians that were dealing with a lot of immigration issues were being picked up and kidnapped to so-called detentions. All of this caused intense powerlessness in terms of being able to stop government agencies in coming and just snatching them up. The state used all kinds of flimsy pretenses. Even some of them have been in the United States for decades. That pushed us to confront the issues that were going on in immigrant communities.

After 9/11, in Brooklyn, folks of color–Black and Latino–were attacking who they thought were Muslim. The Desi community got involved and they contacted Critical Resistance (CR) and Liberation Action Network out of Hunter College, asking for our help. It made us confront repression of oppressed people acted out on other oppressed communities, as well as the many different oppressions that happen within the same communities. Muslim communities and immigrant communities are so vulnerable especially because in many ways they’re being scapegoated for so many things. If you are their comrades, you got to figure out how to be in mutual solidarity, if possible providing protection from the government and corporations and from ignorance within oppressed communities acted out in pathological patriotism towards other people deemed to be different or the new enemy.

Can you talk about the NYPD surveillance of CR in relation to a document was released earlier this spring that revealed some surveillance the NYPD has been doing around the U.S.?

Ashanti Alston

Ashanti: CR was very active, doing a lot of really concrete grassroots work and trying to raise this consciousness around the need to get rid of prisons, to get people really thinking about abolition and how it could be meaningful for them. As we had an office [in Brooklyn] and we were doing programs out of there, we noticed certain individuals started to get harassed more. We’ve always assumed the phone was getting tapped. It really came to a head when some of us went to the first Anarchists of Color Conference in Detroit. Coming back, we wanted to raise some money to help pay for some the costs. The police used that fundraising activity to vamp on us. They used the excuse that someone reported a minor drinking alcohol on the sidewalk. The next thing you know, asmall army of police are bursting in through the door, and there’s chaos.  They ended up arresting a bunch of people. We knew the reason was because CR was building a foundation in the community and was helping to coalesce other organizations around this idea we do not need prisons. It didn’t look good for the police to just let this go, so somebody gave the order for them to shut us down.

CR made it through and was able to be stronger. A reason why we survived was because people came to each other’s aid–from protecting each other during the assault and getting pepper spray out of people’s faces, to taking care of people’s emotional trauma, to the work of jail support and getting the message out. CR broadened its work. People from many different organizations and communities were coming to the office to help. In a sense it’s like what Mao said: when your enemy attacks you, you must be doing something well. Things were coming together, because we knew concrete programs or ideas had to be the things that we organized around and not all the abstract stuff.

How has surveillance (or the fear of it) shifted the culture or practice of organizations and how has that impacted the work?

Ashanti: I want people to understand that as they are getting this from two individuals who have been doing this work for like 40 years or more, and we ain’t won yet.  In the last 10 to 15 years, young folks know more than what we knew. They read more. More information is available.  What I see is that they’re still or even more afraid to take risks when it comes to action whether its organizing or even doing those activities that require secrecy. People are looking at the consequences and they’re not taking the strategic risks. They’re doing actions and organizing in the kind of activism that is safe. I see it within organizations I’ve been a part of and it saddens me, knowing how bright these younger generations are and how energetic, but how they limit themselves in terms of so much they can do but it takes risks.

I know folks want to be as free and happy as we do. But if you cannot accept the system is going to come down on you, that very knowledge keeps you within a certain confine of what you do, and we’re going to keep perpetuating. How can you be free if you just do safe stuff? No matter how much people want to glorify the ‘60’s, especially the Panthers, people will not take them other steps to entrench themselves in the kind of organizing we did and begin to move on other extralegal organizing we had to do for our very survival. Therefore, a lot hasn’t changed in 40 years. Some good signs come up, but once the first group of people gets arrested or hurt, we’re back to nothing happening. We can still win if we prepare and take risks.

Masai: I know there’s a lot of fear amongst folks, but I don’t think it’s necessarily among the young, and it’s not just fear holding us back. I think, especially among younger folks now, people think it’s a legal struggle and that holding demonstrations will change things. Even the masses at these demonstrations that get a little unruly—I can relate to them, but as far as organizing and doing the things that need to be done, I just don’t know if they know what’s really necessary. The prisons are filling up. We have more control units now than ever and the folks in them ain’t even being heard out here. To think we can just keep petitioning is bullshit to me.

For example,enough of us out here don’t know the role gang units or gang related charges play on the inside. Not only is it hard for certain reasons to organize due to the guards and whatever, but also organizing itself is deemed a gang related activity. When prisoners do attempt to organize they’re thrown into the gang units. How those units work is in order to get certain things that you may need or to be released into general population in the prison, you have to name somebody as part of gang. I know CR has played a major role in supporting the hunger strikes that came out of Pelican Bay in California, running the media team, connecting with prisoners and family members and what not. I did similar work connecting with folks in these units when I worked at American Friends Service Committee, so I know a major challenge is struggling through the prisons control over communication and letters being used with surveillance to put more people in the gang units and to stop the organizing. We know from these situations that it’s about organizing, that’s all gang activity really means. It’s not about things being negative it’s about what poses a threat to the system.

What lessons have you learned that you think could strengthen the work that is happening now and that needs to happen?

Ashanti: As somebody who’s come out of CR, I understand abolition to require knowing the weapons they used to capture Africans have evolved today—the same shackles; those slave forts became prisons, and those same armed forces are there to control people so American life can keep on going. You’ve got to raise all issues that made this empire possible. We need to acknowledge our differences while being willing to do whatever is necessary to bring the monsters of imperialism down, whether we are Panthers, Zapatistas, struggling in other parts of the world, even the Arab countries. We cannot just confine to nonviolence as if we’re not trying to take anyone down. For those of us at the bottom, we’re watching the physical and spiritual devastation of our people every day.

Understanding the prison industrial complex, we’re not only dealing with something that includes the physical structure of prisons but also what that imprisonment really does– imprisoning our entire communities. Every agency in our communities uses surveillance whether you’re going for a job, going to the hospital, for a place to live, or you need funding. These are the hard truths we have to accept if we seriously want to change the world. When we accept this, we see we can actually bring this thing on. One of these generations we’re going to actually be free.We’re here. Masai, myself, Kai Lumumba Barrow–we’re here, so this is intergenerational. Everything that we have learned we are making available with the hope that kind of intergenerational collaboration continues.

Masai: When people get involved with PIC abolition, if they’re serious about their involvement, I don’t need to tell them certain things to do. If they’re serious about it, they’re going to run up into it. Back in the ‘70’s with the [Black Panther] Party, radicalizing folks wasn’t the words of the Party or other organizations, but it was participating in the programs in the community. Our work had an effect on them, so when the police started to shut down the breakfast programs and other programs, the community came out. They didn’t immediately rise up all the time, but they came out and they saw and understood why it was happening. I didn’t need to explain who are enemy was.

People need to read up on things like COINTELPRO and they need to do the work. If people have studied their history, and you are serious about this, then you know back in the day we were very serious about all this and still are. I know it was called being underground but I used to think of it as being above ground. We weren’t talking about supporting prisoners we were talking about liberating prisoners. Ashanti and I spent time and we actually left a lot of folks behind. When we were inside, folks inside were being politicized and we were working in there. The revolution didn’t stop for us. People were being trained to go back outside. We got out and it was like the revolution had stopped.

Is there anything else you want our readers to know?

Ashanti: I know it’s harder inside, and it’s gotten harder. Prisoners today are dealing with a different phenomenon. The prison administration created madness inside the prisons by manufacturing the growth of prison gangs, the flux of drugs, etc. That consciousness that was there during the revolutionary prison movement with George Jackson–that’s not there anymore, but there are individuals inside doing that Malcolm X transformation. They are trying to find themselves and be relevant, but they don’t get the support. A lot of people don’t know about them. I think those inside that are moving that way are getting the consciousness that they can play role, and they should continue to do that. Folks on the outside should figure out ways to support them, because some of them want to be a part of something that’s giving their life new meaning. So can we send them money, hook them up with other resources, go visit or get a lawyer on to help get them out? We on the outside got to keep finding ways to reach and connect with them. Prison is a microcosm of what we got out here, and there are definitely street organizations out here that we have a hard time reaching. That challenge can’t stop us. We got to brainstorm; we got to be creative.

For those in Pelican Bay and beyond in every prison: keep writing, learning, bonding with each other, and trying to create those revolutionary spaces you can use to survive and grow. Hopefully at some point we can begin to connect these struggles again like in the late ‘60’s and early ’70’s when the revolutionary prison movement and movement on the streets were solidly connected. We have to work towards that again.

Ashanti Alston is a former member of the Black Panther Party and soldier in the Black Liberation Army, for which he was a political prisoner and prisoner of war for a total of 14 years. Since that time he’s been working with political prisoners building revolutionary movements mostly in the New York area. He has been a member of Critical Resistance and was CR’s Northeast Regional Coordinator. He has also been a part of The Institute for Anarchist Studies, Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, Student Liberation Action Movement and Anarchist People of Color.

Masai Ehehosi also a former member of the Black Panther Party, has been a prisoner of war both as a member of the Black Liberation Army and as a citizen of the Republic of New Afrika. First and foremost, he is a Muslim now. Masai is a founding and current member of Critical Resistance.

Molly Porzig is a member of Critical Resistance, Oakland, and is an editor for The Abolitionist.

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From The Abolitionist No. 18: Surveillance

On January 25th, 2011, demonstrations erupted in cities across Egypt. Eighteen days later one of the world’s most-entrenched dictators was forced from power.

In the Egyptian uprising, digital technologies were used as both a catalyst for the revolution as well as a tool of repression. The events in Egypt, like others of the so-called “Arab Spring,” is complex, nuanced and deeply entangled with the various forces who have a stake in the region’s geopolitical future. A look at the Egyptian security forces’ efforts to police the uprising with the aid of digital surveillance and censorship technologies shines a particularly strong light on the intersection of the former (and most-likely current) regime’s interests and those of the US government, as well as U.S. private contractors. This also provides an example of the increasingly dangerous terrain in which these new channels of communication place activists.

An online revolution?

“We use Facebook to schedule the protests, Twitter to coordinate, and YouTube to tell the world.” -Tweet from an anonymous Egyptian activist

When the first “Day of Anger” was organized in Egypt following the Tunisian uprising, word was largely spread across the country by a series of Facebook event pages. Because Egyptian television and radio were state-controlled, the internet became a means to publicize the demonstrations and evade state censorship. As a result, the Egyptian and other Arab uprisings have largely been described as a series of “Twitter” or “Facebook” revolutions. Implied by these descriptions is that these American-based social networking websites have manifested as a force for global democracy, allowing repressed peoples to find each other and network in ways which were previously impossible or too dangerous under authoritarian regimes. While it’s undeniable that social networking was a prominent tool in the uprisings, it is an oversimplification to say it was the catalyst in the mobilizations and overlooks the conditions and access of the majority of Arab participants.

Actually there were real limits to the reach of these technologies. As one Egyptian organizer reflected on why mass text-messaging and flyering was utilized over simply online organizing, “Reaching working-class Egyptians was not going to happen through the Internet and Facebook.” And while the initial calls for protests may have come from tech-savvy middle-class activists, it took millions to overwhelm the security state and bring down Mubarak. For these numbers to reach the street more traditional forms of networking and organizing took place.

In many instances it was not the technology of activists that brought people to the streets, but that of the Mubarak regime. On January 28th, 2011, internet and cellphone services were cut in a desperate attempt to stop the escalating protests. But the consequences of this action actually increased mobilizations. As Yale graduate student Navid Hassanpour wrote in his study, “Media Disruption Exacerbates Revolutionary Unrest”:

The disruption of cellphone [sic] coverage and Internet on the 28th exacerbated the unrest in at least three major ways. It implicated many apolitical citizens unaware of or uninterested in the unrest; it forced more face-to-face communication, i.e., more physical presence in streets; and finally it effectively decentralized the rebellion on the 28th through new hybrid communication tactics, producing a quagmire much harder to control and repress than one massive gathering in Tahrir.

Tahrir Square, Cairo, November 25, 2011. Photo by Hossam el-Hamalawy

In fact, it’s hard to believe the Egyptian uprising would have succeeded had organizing been limited to online social networks. The real key to its success was the expansion of involvement to other actors such as the country’s militant industrial labor movement or the Muslim Brotherhood’s rank-and-file activists–two of many such groupings not known for their use of digital technologies.

Censorship, Surveillance and Policing in the Arab Uprisings
While digital censorship may have in some ways catalyzed Egypt’s protests, it doesn’t mean there were not dire consequences for activists. Surveillance and the resulting detentions of those perceived as central organizers of the uprising along with widespread censorship of news and communication formulated one of the key strategies of repression employed by Mubarak’s regime. The decision to cut off communication technology could have just as easily had disastrous effects on mobilization had people not used alternative means of organization. The authorities’ ability to so easily disable these services was as a direct result of access to sophisticated Western technology. Likewise, many organizers were quickly arrested–or worse, disappeared–in the days following the initial demonstrations, largely thanks to digital surveillance technologies operated by the government and supplied by U.S. private contractors.

While the U.S. government eventually lent its support to the pro-democracy protests, its longtime support for Mubarak and its massive aid to the Egyptian military highlighted the hypocrisy of U.S. foreign policy. This was only made increasingly clear when the surveillance and monitoring of activists by security forces was largely made possible by technology provided by US contractors under the tacit approval of the U.S. government. Most notably, the company Narus–started by Israeli security experts, and now a Boeing subsidiary–had sold the Egyptian government what are known as “Deep Packet Inspection” devices, which allow for monitoring and recording internet traffic including e-mail, website visits, online chats, as well as text messages.

Additionally, Deep Packet Inspection enables geographic location and tracking. Now-famous Egyptian activist Wael Ghonim–a Google employee who set up one of the largest Facebook pages for the “Day of Anger”–was arrested on January 27th for his online activity, and imprisoned for eleven days before an international campaign resulted in his release. His arrest and many others resulted directly from government tracking of online data enabled by surveillance technologies supplied by companies like Narus.

Meanwhile, Elsewhere in the Region… The Surveillance Industry Thrives
While the U.S. government was quick to champion certain uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa as a triumph of democracy it has failed to acknowledge its complicity in the repression of activists in countries where the uprisings have failed, most notably Syria and Bahrain. In these instances we see two very distinct types of assistance coming from the U.S.: willing and unintended.

In Bahrain the crackdown on protesters was willingly supported by the U.S. in the forms of decades of military aid, tacit approval of direct Saudi military assistance, and conscious diplomatic silence on human rights abuses. Also significant were repressive technologies supplied by Western companies such as the German-Finnish partnership of Nokia Siemens, which is also a player in Egypt. This backing of the Bahraini monarchy was seen by the U.S. as a strategic gamble to maintain a government friendly to its interests in the region.

In Syria, however, U.S. complicity in the crushing of protests is a bit more ambiguous, and may have actually weakened a desired outcome. While it clearly fears what might follow the stability of the Assad dynasty, there is definitely no love lost between the U.S. and the Iran-, Hezbollah-, Hamas-, etc.-allied regime. But like in Egypt and Bahrain, Assad’s security services have relied on surveillance to monitor, arrest, and assassinate dissidents, especially in the early phases of Syria’s uprising prior to its militarization.

And that is where NetApp, a Sunnyvale, California-based tech company enters the picture. As detailed in Bloomberg’s excellent “Wired for Repression” series, which examines complicity between Western tech companies and authoritarian regimes, NetApp storage hardware and software is being used in a Syrian Internet surveillance project that was headed by Italian company Area SpA. Also involved is U.S.-based Blue Coat Systems Inc., whose technology filters websites. Separately, technology from the Irish company Cellusys Ltd. is currently aiding Syrian cellphone companies in blocking text messages.

The interests of these companies, however, have not necessarily matched those of the Obama administration, which has responded to the above by instituting new sanctions against those providing information technology to Syria (as well as Iran). But much of this technology is already in place, and deals between contractors and authoritarian states serving US interests are still perfectly legal, with no sanctions on the horizon.

Much of the security technology purchased by repressive regimes is sold at the Intelligence Support Systems expo, organized by the company TeleStrategies. Jerry Lucas, the president of TeleStrategies, denies companies have any responsibilities when it comes to how their products are used:

The surveillance systems that we discuss in our seminars are available all around the world. Do some countries use them to suppress certain political statements? Yes, probably. But it’s not my job to sort out who are the good and bad countries. That’s not our business, we’re not politicians.

It’s estimated the global industry for mass surveillance now brings in over $5 billion annually. This privatization of state surveillance projects across the globe has allowed for the U.S, to both publicly support the democratic uprisings against dictatorial regimes while also profiting off of their suppression.

Digital Resistance and Solidarity
While the Egyptian government attempted to use digital technologies as a way to repress the uprisings, networks of activists from around the world quickly mobilized in solidarity with the pro-democracy movement. Egypt’s decision to shut off Internet access in the country was unprecedented, and it was the first time in history that an entire country disconnected itself from the Internet. Telecomix, a decentralized organization of Internet activists, quickly organized to provide free fax numbers and dial-up internet access to activists in Egypt so they could publicize the events and demonstrations occurring across the country. Telecomix also plays a key role in exposing the business ties between repressive regimes and Western technology companies, most recently in Syria.

While uprisings and revolutions will always be about physical bodies in public spaces, technologies still remain an important tool in transmitting information and spreading news of repression. For example, in Syria, where attempts to organize protests on social networks were quickly hindered, information technologies have been important avenue for communicating with the outside world. The Tor Project, a free piece of software that allows users to anonymously connect to the internet and evade state surveillance, has been critically important in allowing activists to avoid identification and repression. The Tor Project, like Telecomix, is organized through the cooperation of programmers and activists from across the globe in hopes of assisting people’s movements. Having learned from earlier examples of surveillance and repression, Arab activists are using software like Tor with increasing frequency in order to hinder attempts to quell access to information and communication.

Like all technologies that came before them, digital-information technologies both provide activists with opportunities to communicate and network while also enabling new modes of repression, censorship, and surveillance. Whether these tools help or hinder global social movements and uprisings will depend on the participants’ understanding of these assets, and their abilities to adapt to efforts of state policing and control.

Interested in learning more about protecting yourself against online government surveillance and censorship? Visit the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Surveillance Self-Defense Project at https://ssd.eff.org/

Ian Alan Paul is a writer, artist and programmer living in the Bay Area of California. His work can be found online at www.ianalanpaul.com

David Zlutnick is a documentary filmmaker and video journalist living and working in San Francisco. His work can be found at www.UpheavalProductions.com

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