Gege Jackson will soon celebrate his 30th Betiday-as he has every birthday for the man 11 years-inside a California prison. The Forme " for which he was failed was stealing $75 prom a petrol station. His sentence has been crimally extended for alleged failure to cooperate with prison authorities, Las year, after the shooting of three prisoners by guards at the Soledad jail, a guard was town froma prane balcony and died. Jackson is presertly maiting mial, along with Joim Cluchette and Fleeta Drummo, on the dedious charge of murdering the Soledad guard. George consented to an interview held inside Son Queerin inte Let year with Wildcat,a West Coast resistionany paper In the hot-long interview, George discussed a range of topies, from legal marrers to prison organising. The following text incides excepts from the interview.
- You are about to publish some of your political writings (Penguin, March]. When did you fiest become politically aware?
Jackson: When I first arrived in the joint, early in 1960. 1 was in Soledad when the Cuban Res olution happened. Castro had just taken over and declared himself. I was upset. angry, confused. What I noticed was that the Cuban situation upset the authoritarian types -the little Nam cliques-and the bails. I read the things in the media about proletarian socialism. but 1 had no real sense of the thing I started reading in that are because of the attitudes of these guards and the authoritarian types in the joint toward the Cuban Revolution. I thought that if they felt it was harmful and detrimental to them, then it just might possibly be good for me.
-What were you doing before your arrest and sentencing ("one year to life" for second degree robbery) in 1960?
To be truthful, if 1 hadn't been busted, I'd probably be a small-time gambler or a dope.
fiend. I learned something about butchering.
meat cutting and knives when I was doing time as a Y.A. Iprior to his rubbery arrest at the age of 18, George did time in a Youth Authority institution| at Tracy, When I got out I did try to work, but just before I got arrested I had been laid off on two jobs. 1 yus: didn't bke that type of work it just didn't fit my disposition Lad been trained in boning and meat cutting.
but op the first job they put me to work In November 1970 in response to the call of the unloading these huge carcasses from an overhead pick onto an assembly line table, Well, I quit that job and went to another job with Union Packing, There 1 wurked on a sentiskilled job-all day long 1 would stand there dicing meat. I quit.
You received your high school diploma here in San Quentin in 1967. What do you think of the rehabilitation concept as pructised bere in California state prisons?
Rehabibtation? The whole concept is just a word and hasa lot to do with public relations. Actually, it really means breaking a man, making a man accustomed to restraint. The real purpose behind making a man accustomed to restraint is preparing him for the life he is expected to lead when he hits the streets. Now you can call that rehabilitation, but I think their concept invoives restraining a man rather than reorienting him. The educational facilities here and in all the other joints usually will accommodate no more than one-eighth of the prison population. In any case, the purely academic stuff is right on u par with the mission schools in Southern Rhodesia and Angola. The stuff they teach is outright rationalistic propaganda. 1 got kicked out of two or three of the classes. Eventually 1 ended up buying my high school diplomsu.
-Your brother Jonathan led the Marin Country Courthouse kidnap attempt. Looking buck, how do you analyse the significance of his action? Jonathan's whole operation was ained at the destruction of prestige. I don't interpret it as in any way individualistic. There was really but one way for the pigs to stop the operation, and that was to kill the judge. Of course, Jonathan went in there with the impression that the police would have some respect for the judge's life he was a chairman of the Republican Central Committee. 1 think, knowing Jonathan and James (McClain, one of the prisoners savolved], that they both at one point though!
of the guard as starting to shoot and then all the other guards would chime in with their conditioned reflexes. But that was the clement Si chance beyond that there was nu chance.
With the hostage game it depends on keeping the hostage alive. As long as you eur keep the hostage alive it can be assumed that the pigs are going to have some regard for life and you should be able to walk him right down to Chile alang the Intercontinental highway.
adventuristic) fighters of a nineteenth century prison walls?
It was clectric. Everybody related to it. -Subsequent to the Marin action and u demonstration outside the prison walls protesting trials held in the prison, there was a prison rebellion in the latter part of August. Could you go inte some detail about it?
The rebaition was an effort on the part of the convicts to gain more control over their lives. There were between 2,200 and 2,500 Black, white, and Mexican-American prisoners involved. Two hours after the thing ended, they transported Warren Weils Black Panther Party member convicted last year of attempted murder in connection with the 1967 shootout in which OakJand police murdered 17-year-old Bobby Hutton] and one white and one MexicanAmerican out of the prison. These were the Tastest transfers I've over seen: I've never seen anything happen like that. During the thing Warren made some speeches along with a couple of other guys. The pigs sallied out with fear gas and the convicts threw it back at them. Some shots were fired-that's not unsust. They fire at us all the time. I've had shots hit the wall behind me only a couple of inches from my -It appears that for the first time, Black, Brown, and white prisoners are getting together to fight the prison authorities. How do you Before the whites were threatened and we were threatened and we were just at each other's throats. It was a question of circunstances beyond our control. I think we all understned what was happening all along-that it was really a case of the prison administration using convicts to strengthen and maintain their own position. Racism is the control mechanism. To start off with, it's almost impossible for a small knot of guards to hold down five or six thout and inmates without some kind of divisive tacties. It's part of their standard operating procedure. They use the race issue like they use homosexuals to divide the prison population.
But what could I do? It was all i could do to stay alive. For example, the prison authorities would make the "mistake" every now and then of opening the doors of white convicts at the sume time that we were on their fier, They would attack us. That's the stupid, silly, infantile way the authorities would use to set us. Prior to January 13 in Soledad, there were two specific instances of Blacks being beaten so death by the police in a back room and the doctor certified that he died of a heart attack. That was in Sun Quentin. -How do you account for the increasing inter-racial unity among prisoners?
The reason for the recent success is due to outside support and the attention that revolutionary circles are giving men in prison. It's had a profound effect on the efforts to unite the prison population. The Blacks have recently veered away from the Muslim ideology. In the carly "60s, when I first canie to the jeint, the Blacks wese to some extent responsible for the racism, because we levelled both barrels at the white convicts Of course, we didn't initiate it. We merely responded. Responded in a way ulat precluded any unity. But recently, since Huey Newton and Bobby Sealz and the Black leftists have come in here from the community and the streets. it has been reflected right here in the joint, Ir's gone from just "brother" to "comrude" and from Black to just people. The white convicts have stopped feeling threatened and they're able to respond to the new approach. Add that to the fact that all convicts are intelligent cough to see the advantages of working.
To get back to Jonathan Jackson and the August 7th action, everybody in prison identified with it. I think that this incident did more to solidify the unity effost than anything that's ever happerted in the past nine or ten years. I'm not concerned with the opinion or the oppostion of people who are tied into the establishment. I'm concerned with the people who say they identify with the revolution. And we du have people of the liberal-left who condemn these types of military activity. T'd like to emphasise here that if it's violence they condemn, there's productive violence and there's counter-produc tive vilence. Jonathan felt, and 1 feel, that carefully planned, staged, and ordered political attacks are at least the minimum we have to support if we are going to support the revoltSOLEDAD BROTHERS DEFENSE P.O. Box 31306. San Francisco, 94131.