|
September
10, 2002
Innocence Bound
Inside Angola Prison
by Anita Roddick
As the billboards and Cajun fishing shacks swooshed
by along the road from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, the swampy
delta landscape looked familiar: 12 years ago, I traveled this
road to the prison at Angola in Louisiana with the Danish vagabond,
Jacob Holdt. We had toured the shantytowns just beyond the prison
walls where families of prisoners settled to be nearer their
shackled kin. But on this day, I would venturing inside the Louisiana
State Penitentiary at Angola for the first time, to meet with
Albert Woodfox, a man who has been kept like an animal in solitary
confinement in one of America's worst prisons for the past 30
years.
I had learned of the Angola Three--of
which Woodfox is one, along with Robert King Wilkerson and Herman
Wallace -- through a remarkable young American attorney named
Scott Fleming. The story Fleming told me a year ago made my blood
run cold in my veins (see sidebar). To my mind, Albert Woodfox
and his friend Herman Wallace, who were framed
for the murder of a white
prison guard, are political prisoners, every bit the victims
of an oppressive government that feels threatened by their intelligence
and activism as any of the men and women in Amnesty International's
campaigns. But for some reason, the fact they wallow in a prison
in America--a reputed democracy and bastion of freedom and civility--their
story has not been told.
In the early 1970s , when the Angola
Three dared to stand up for basic human rights and dignity inside
the prison, Angola had been declared "the bloodiest prison
in America." It was racially segregated, and inmate guards
were permitted to carry loaded weapons. Inmate-on-inmate rape
and murder were nearly daily occurrences. Some say reformers
have improved conditions in some respects, but violence and corruption
still plague the place.
I for one, wanted to hear the story from
the Angola Three themselves, and see the prison for myself. So
I headed back to the swamplands of southern Louisiana to do just
that.
Down on "The
Farm"
There is something unnervingly perfect
about the prison grounds--at least, the parts the public is permitted
to see. The core complex of outbuildings, concrete cellblocks,
and massive dormitories, is surrounded by 18,000 acres of lush
cropland and perfectly manicured lawns. It looked like something
out of a David Lynch movie. So beautiful and ideal, it was vaguely
sinister. Even the miles of coils of razor wire gleamed as if
it were hand-polished daily. Norman Rockwell himself couldn't
have done better. Outside of the constant clanging of keys, a
visitor to this place could almost forget they are in a prison,
and not in some Doris Day movie. Unfortunately, all that is window
dressing covering some ugly truths.
Once inside the prison, I was searched
by guards and sniffed for drugs or weapons by dogs, and permitted
only my passport and a few dollars to carry inside. The guards
noted my British accent and began regaling me with their opinions
on the Royal Family. They had learned all they knew of the Windsors
through the National Enquirer, and argued with good humor against
Prince Charles, who they said was cold and hadn't loved Princess
Diana sufficiently. I defended Charles, half-heartedly and to
no avail. Given our environment, the conversation was ridiculous
and banal. Just in time, dozens of other visitors and I were
whisked off in enormous blue busses to the visiting area, where
I finally met Albert.
The moment he sat down, I knew: this
man is a political animal. In the five hours we spent together,
the depth and breadth of his knowledge about the world gobsmacked
me, He talked about AIDS in Africa, the Palestinians, corporate
globalisation. He consistently showed an amazing antenna for
stories of people who have been marginalized through war or injustice.
His capacity for empathy was breathtaking.
I suddenly felt phony for even being
there, offering to help when he had been waiting three decades
for someone to notice his predicament, suffering in solitude
but with dignity. What did I have to offer, how could I possibly
relate to a man who has been locked up for 30 years in a tiny
cell? For a long time, it was all I could do just to listen.
Listening has never been my strong suit.
Three Decades
in Solitary Confinement
Albert described his cell for me: less
than three metres square, it has a steel bed platform bolted
to one wall with a thin mattress atop it. A small table is bolted
to the opposite wall, and the third wall is occupied by a combination
toilet and sink. He is not allowed to put anything on the walls,
so he lines the perimeter of his wall with books along the floor.
And he has two steel boxes under the bed in which he keeps all
of his earthly belongings. He spends 23 hours a day there. Three
days a week he is given an hour in the "yard," not
much more than a small cage with a dirt floor, where he can exercise
alone. The other four days a week, he can use his hour for a
shower or to walk along the cramped cellblock.
I cannot imagine the heat. The day I
visited it was 90 degrees, and humid. The CCR cellblock has one
fan for every five cells, and no air conditioning. But Albert
did not complain.
Instead, Albert talked about his mother,
who had raised Albert and his siblings alone, keeping food on
the table, clothes on their backs, and a roof over their heads--he
called his childhood home "an oasis in a pocket of poverty"
-- by working as a prostitute. Just before she died, his mother
asked him, "Albert, when those white folks gonna let you
out?" He talked about his sister, who has been his biggest
supporter, who lies dying from cancer in New Orleans, unable
to visit him anymore. Albert hopes to be permitted to attend
her funeral, a hope probably misplaced.
For a man with so much reason to be angry
or hopeless, Albert is remarkably peaceful and calm, focused
on his belief that someday justice will be done. If there is
a Zen word for "waitfulness," Albert is the embodiment
of it. He said when Robert "King" Wilkerson, a fellow
Panther and Angola 3 inmate, was released in 2001 after 28 years
in solitary by proving he had been falsely accused, Woodfox said
he and Herman Wallace "felt that a part of us was finally
free, too."
|