Page Two
MARS HILL, NORTH CAROLINA
Saturday, April 24, 19^ Way, April 2
Are Societal Demands On Prisons
Spawning Political Revolutionaries?
by Polly Howells
New York, N.Y. (CPS) — Prisons
have always spawned revolution
aries. And this past year one of
the most vital of America’s revolu
tionary movements is growing within
the country’s prison walls.
It has been said that all prison
ers are by definition “political.” That
is, the prisoner is accused or con
victed of a crime against society,
and Is declared “outside the law,”
an “outlaw.” And the law is de
signed to maintain a very specific
economic and social equilibrium.
But today this conception of all
prisoners as “political” is becoming
less and less metaphorical. More
prisoners are beginning to see the
societal forces that led them to be
come “Outlaws.” George Jackson
writes In one of his prison letters;
“Most of today’s convicts have
come to understand that they are
the most abused victims of an un
righteous order.”
Prisoners are beginning to see jail
as a microcosm of the society they
are fighting, and actively identify
themselves as enemies of the
established order. Ken Gender, in
dicted in last fall’s prison uprisings
in New York City, writes: “When
someone has been refused his birth
right to live a full life socially and
economically, and is deprived of the
money, power, and influence to
achieve justice, he has Indeed be
come a political prisoner of this
society.”
Last summer and fall there were
a series of uprisings in New York
City prisons which gained wide
sympathy. The rebellions occurred
in detention facilities where men
and women were imprisoned up to
year or more for lack of $500 or
$1,000 bail, while awaiting trial.
Many people are familiar with the
facts of the New York prison re
bellions — along with the beatings
and the further indictments of par
ticipants who demanded rights of
food and health care in the deten
tion centers. Prisoners who were
heard by the outside world were
later punished, even though elected
officials agreed their were just. The
prisoners do not miss the Injustice
in this.
Folsom Prison Blues
manded that prison negotiators be
allowed to meet with officials to
settle on a series of 31 demands.
The negotiators were to be Huey P.
Newton, Charles Garry and Sal
Candelaria of the Chicago Brown
Berets. Unlike the rebellions in
New York, the negotiators were not
inmates. Presumably this choice
was so inmate “leaders” could not
be picked off later by beatings and
indictments as happened in New
York.
The strike was broken after three
weeks, when guards with clubs en
tered each man’s cell and physically
forced him to go to work. The
strike was broken by direct, brutal
repression, without the hypocritcial
promises of reform and “no re
prisals” that characterized the New
York response.
Racial Unity
White men and women experience
in prison the degradation that non
white people experience every day
in the streets outside the prisons.
White people as well as black peo
ple in these institutions are recog
nizing how racism is used to divide
and weaken all men and women,
white and black.
George Jackson speaks of this in
a recent interview with Liberation
News Service: “The prisons are
only a microcosm of this whole
society, whose purpose is to control
—to divide and rule by fear and
terror. It doesn’t take much to set
it up: racism is planted in the minds
of 90 percent of the population.
Racism is the backbone of both
domains — the society and the
prison.” .
John Cluchette, of the Soledad
Brothers, elaborated: “Most people
become political in prison; in gen
eral, the whites are driven to the
radical right and blacks are driven
to the black right . . . But recently
there’s been a shift from the black
right to the internationalist left — in
the past few years since they’ve
been busting Panthers.”
A letter signed by the “Queens
Eight,” the eight men indicted as
“leaders” of the Long Island City
rebellion, was sent to Victor Mar
tinez shortly after he too was in
dicted. It says: “You are guilty of
opening the door so that people
can see what goes on behind these
walls. For this they ask that you be
imprisoned for life. Neither you nor
us sparked the flames of rebellion
that spread throughout the entire
city. For we know that injustice
and the disregard for human lives
are the true cause of the blaze.
But someone must pay, someone
must be made example of. We, Vic
tor, have been elected. Elected to
be made weapons of fear to still
our brothers when they need to cry
out from being brutalized, mained,
and murdered.”
The Berkley TRIBE asked Tony
Martinez, one of the Los Siete
brothers, about these changes:
“Guys that have done a lot of time,
ten, fifteen, twenty years, they talk
about the changes, political
changes, that have been made in
the prisons, like before how black
guys would be fighting against the
white guys or the Chicanes. Now
slowly but surely everybody’s been
getting together in a political war,
which is amazing.
Mental Murder
A major prison uprising this fall
occurred at Folsom Prison in Cali
fornia. Inmates there declared a
strike, refusing to leave their cells
and work in the prison factories for
the wages they receive (six cents an
hour making such items as auto
mobile license plates). They de-
Witnesses to the Folsom strike
felt the only thing that kept the
strike going for three weeks despite
efforts to crush it was the interracial
unity. One inmate wrote his lawyers
afterwards: “It is almost unbelieva
ble the rapport between the different
ethnic or racial groups that exists
here. The change in thought pro
cesses that necessarily preceded
this rapport is equally unbelievable
when viewed in the context of the
racial and clique animosities that
were existent just a year ago.”
The rebellions in New York City
took place In detention facilities,
which are over 90% black and
brown, since men and women are
held In these jails only If they can
not afford bail. For these inmates,
as Mary Kaufman, director of the
Today more and more prisoners
are turning their anger on the state
in a conscious, deliberate, con
trolled way. If things continue this
way, the person who becomes a
“professional thief” in prison will
soon be outnumbered by the person
who becomes a revolutionary in
prison. The revolutionary has no
better chance of getting out of jail
than the professional thief” but he
or she will resist the “psychological
murder” Cender speaks of.
MHC Republicans
At Conventions
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
Mass Defense Office of the New
York City chapter of the National
Lawyers Guild, said in an interview,”
. . . prison is only an extension of
the ghetto, the highest form of the
brutalization and dehumanization
that begins in the ghetto. The fight
inside these prisons is the same as
the fight against racism and pover
ty in the ghettoes.”
Ken Cender describes what being
in prison can do to people: “In all
these years under this system (Cen
der has been in jail off and on for
18 years, since he was 12 years
old), I’ve come to know brutality
comparable with that of which the
Jews suffered under Hitlerism. I
have seen men, myself included,
come into this system for petty of
fenses and go out professional
thieves. It’s here that they are edu
cated for crime. It is here that they
lost their status as human begins,
and go out with pure vindictive
hate in their hearts, and a perennial
resentment for authority. Rehabili
tation within this system has no
meaning whatsoever. I’ve come to
learn how men are murdered
psychologically. And that’s where
he’ll be treated so bad that he
eventually weakens and ends up
hanging from the bars of his cell.
They call it suicide.”
A Note Of
*
•'TH' CL05K WE eer TO GRAPUATlOff Ttf fT I5» TO SFOT
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Linda,
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SGi
ill
by Laine Calloway
How are the sunburns? Don’t you guys know that exams are cc
Study .... yeah, sure.
Right now I’m going to give all you sunbathers a real lecture'^
other day I went out behind the girls’ dorms to Huffman Beach
place looked like a trash dump. You know there is no excuse for h ,|
and ”
chan^®'
Dinner Di
tindi
a,
1,
Dispose of your garbage. You can’t gripe about foul air
if you pollute the land yourself. Wise up while you’ve got the on
The Library hearby declares hours:
Monday - Thursday 7:15 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Friday 7:45 a.m. - 5:00 p.m.
Saturday 10:00 a.m. - 3:00 p.m.
Sunday 3:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m. and
7:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m.
Free flicks will be shown at the Mars Theatre Sunday through
0^.
days for summer school students. Come and enjoy the fringe ben® ^
hursday evenii
’ and staff will
‘Pr of four of
P retiring: Mr.
. Mr. B. H. T
''^owell, Sr.
ID |*rill, of course,
'!|P for this sp(
ini J’Pf will nect
I'HjP in procedure
P necessary to
Pair evening m
j a balconies.
'PPvenience th
solicit the
J Cooperating o
?ana Bierbaun
Pintian, Planni
'irement Dinnc
19
Stephanie Stimpert, junior from SL Petersburg, Fla., became ff*e
winner of the 1961 Chevrolet BIscayne raffled by the MHC Ch"
Alpha Phi Omega. The brothers wish to thank everyone who J
Proceeds will be used for the club’s service P fr
do'l
Jeannie McDuffie and Keith Burns
were delegates representing the
MHC Republicans Club at the Spring
Convention of the North Carolina
Federation of College Republicans
March 23 in Winston-Salem. All
North Carolina colleges and univer
sities that have Republican Clubs
and that are a member of this Fed
eration were represented by dele
gates. The main purpose of the
Convention was to elect officers of
the Federation for the coming year.
On Saturday morning a luncheon
was held and Jim Gardner, the 1968
Republican gubernatorial candidate
for North Carolina, was the speaker.
After the luncheon the convention
was held and the following officers
were elected: Sam Currin of Wake
Forest University, Chairman; Kathy
Garrick of Wesleyan College, Co
chairwoman; Jim Godfrey of East
Carolina University, Vice-chairman;
Bill Chisolm of North Carolina State
University, Secreatry; and Rick
Smith of Pembroke State University,
Treasurer. Keith Burns was appoint
ed to the Executive Committee.
this worthwhile project,
and internal needs.
One of Alpha Phi Omega’s service projects this year was |
educational games for the special education classes at the Mars H
tist Church. The fraternity is now buying park benches for the
Officers of Alpha Phi Omega for 1971-72 are: Bill Early, President'^^, |(i
Plumly, Vice-President; Larry Pfaff, Secretary; Mike Stevens, Treasu’^
Sherrill, Pledge Master; Randy Hedon, Sergeant at Arms;
Parrot, Historian. New brothers are David Harrington, Buck '
Stair, Gordon Davis, John Foster, David Rathmore, and Gerald
Let me see, there was once a trite phrase people used to 9°
saying; let me ask you .... what goes on? One thing for
Laurel, called Avis in Hilltop circles, comes out next week.
sur®'
Every°j
eluding the Hilltoppers, awaits the arrival of No. 2’s rendition of a j. ®ll over the
We shall see what we shall see and then we shall do something a rs
This week’s NoDoz Service Award goes to whomever picks up
from Huffman Beach.
Dirt Dilemi
Sda,
v®''6ry commur
jlii ^®’ing home th(
ij^ironment is
' .nD®® ’’’an hi
endangered
students a
^ftionstrated 1
^''I'areness by
® e National £
J’ant to devis
'^®''ing the ei
L-ounty, home
Many similar
5il
’9
After convention adjournment a
picnic supper was given at the home
of Jim Culbertson, North Carolina
Young Republican National Com
mitteeman.
Around 125 college students at
tended the convention. Mrs. Jean
Briggs, advisor to the MHC Repub
lican Club, accompanied the stu
dents from Mars Hill.
the Mars Hill College
hIUtop
H ^ ’ship of such
j' Priends of the
^atnber of the
concerne
every othe
- classificat
® Concern for
®rivi
Editor-in-Chief
Managing Editor
Feature Editor
Sports Editor
Advertising Manager
Typists
:d/
Laine
-Linda rrj
’onment. A:
(that each
j|,®®iderate of o
'iCg
John
Frank '"‘TjH
Dan* '
of Mothe
^ If is sugges'
I5/"ore conscloi
of our ca
,''®y and thouc
Circulation Manager
Gayla Green, Cathy constants
Perry Sp’l™/
Photographers Norman Carter, Joe Franklin, Ken St®P
iC'j
John McNutt
Charles Revis
Sally Grant
Melody Sue Lake
Gayla Green
Dianne Stepf’^|«tl
.^9 it and ke
attractive.
®f every me
'Stnlly
'•'■Illy becon
irij our physical
® acts are r
Published by students of Mars Hill College, P.
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O. Box 486-T,
establis
^Mper the
JHE BEAUl
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5y^HAN CAUSI
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