Three important stories were released today in the UK, focusing mostly on the UK release of the new movie about the Angola 3, entitled "In The Land Of The Free..."
Gordon Roddick, husband of the late Anita Roddick, writes about his introduction to the Angola 3:
Anita was never the most predictable of people and this time I thought she had taken leave of her senses. She came to me five years ago to enlist my support in the case of the Angola 3. She insisted I join her in Louisiana to meet Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, who by then had each accumulated 34 years in solitary confinement. The third member of the three, Robert King, had won his liberty some four years earlier.
I was more than a little nervous at the prospect of meeting the two men and the whole prison-visiting experience did little to alleviate that.
Visitors have to go through a full body search and then a sniffer-dog routine, then the wait for the bus that drops off visitors within the huge 20,000-acre sprawl that is Angola, Louisiana’s biggest and most forbidding State penitentiary.
Herman and Albert were at that time being held within a closed cell restriction block, which houses the solitary cases on two tiers, with about 13 cells per tier. The cells are no more than nine by six feet; they are kept in there for 23 hours a day, only getting out for a shower or exercise in the yard, where again they are alone. Imagine for a minute being forced to live in your bathroom for the rest of your life.
They are constantly subjected to harassment of a petty and mean-minded nature: Herman was put on a charge and spent three weeks in the dungeon for having too many postage stamps in his cell. Both of them have been subjected to torture over a prolonged period of time.
The recommended time to be spent in Camp J, the punishment dungeon, is no more than three weeks, as it can send strong men crazy. Herman was once subjected to two years in Camp J. What kept him sane was the knowledge of his innocence and a steady flow of Angola 3 visitors and friends.
Through the cacophony of shouting and the clanging of the steel doors, I kept thinking – what kind of men am I on my way to meet? I had prepared a list of questions and topics for discussion and sat down in the little room they have for a non-contact visit. This is a very small room with six cubicles, prisoners are separated by a wire mesh through which you are visible. It is possible to talk without the aid of a telephone. Herman was brought in first, with both legs shackled and with hands tied to a waist belt. They released one hand so he could gesticulate and later on he was allowed to use that hand to join us in eating lunch.
My list of topics and questions was forgotten as we launched into conversation with the ease of friends. Anita had got to know both of them very well, through many visits and long monthly letters. The visit of four hours seemed to fly past very quickly. What struck me most was their quiet, perceptive intelligence and their concern with what was happening in the outside world.
Read the rest of the article here:
http://www.bigissuescotland.com/...
The second article is from the Independent UK:
"It's hard to get dipped in shit and not come out stinking," says King, who walked free in 2001. "But I don't have time to be angry." Two men, Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, who were sent down for murder at the same time, still languish in Angola Prison, properly known as the Louisiana State Penitentiary, after 37 years in solitary confinement, the longest period in US history. King, who is now 67, will not rest until they are released: "Will I fight till the day I die? Perhaps I will."
For decades, the men known as the Angola Three have protested their innocence. Their supporters say the case represents one of the greatest miscarriages of justice of our times ? one that still shames America. When they fought for the rights of black inmates at the height of the civil rights movement, they were framed for murder, thrown in cells smaller than most bathrooms, and forgotten.
The plight of King and his comrades is the subject of In the Land of the Free, a documentary narrated by Samuel L Jackson and out in cinemas on Friday. King hopes the film, which premieres in London tomorrow, will help his fight for justice. "You throw pebbles in a pond and you get ripples," he says. "I see this as a huge rock."
Read the rest of the article here:
http://artsandentertainment.independ...
Last is this article in the New Statesman:
The 14th Human Rights Watch International Film Festival runs until Friday, and there are tickets still available for the European premiere this week of one of the festival's highlights. In the Land of the Free... is a chastening documentary about Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox and Robert King, known collectively as the Angola 3 after the prison where they have spent, between them, almost a century in solitary confinement for a murder which all evidence suggests they did not commit.
The victim was a prison guard, Brent Miller, who in 1972 was stabbed 32 times inside Angola, the Louisiana state penitentiary. Wallace and Woodfox were already in prison for other offences, and were placed at the scene of the crime by an eyewitness who later turned out to be not only legally blind and beset by mental problems, but to have been promised by the authorities a weekly carton of cigarettes, as well as early release, in exchange for testifying. The testimony of that witness became the lynchpin of the prosecution case; for those determined to prolong the men's incarceration, it still is.
But if Wallace and Woodfox did not kill Brent Miller, why were they fingered for the crime? The probable answer lies in their allegiance to a prison arm of the Black Panther Party established shortly before the murder. So comprehensive was the campaign to crush the Panthers that Miller's murder was declared a conspiracy. That's where Robert King came in -- literally. Despite having been serving time in another prison 150 miles away, King was brought to Angola and consigned to solitary along with Wallace and Woodfox. Well, he was an active member of the Black Panthers, and must therefore have been instrumental in the conspiracy. During his first year at Angola, he was falsely convicted of murdering another prisoner. At his trial, where the jury was exclusively white and the witnesses wildly unreliable, King's mouth was sealed with duct tape.
If there is a point at which a typical viewer of In the Land of the Free... will cry out, "What next?" then that is probably it. The film can only be watched in a state of horrified incredulity. King was released in 2001, but Wallace and Woodfox are currently approaching their 38th consecutive year of being held in solitary at Louisiana state penitentiary. I say consecutive, but as the film points out, there have been occasional interruptions in the prisoners' routine. These breaks, which take place in an area of the prison known as "the dungeon", tend to discredit the idea that a change is as good as a rest.
Read the full article here:
http://www.newstatesman.com/...