<Begin Segment 22>

MA: Well, and that's how... from what I read in your memoirs, you got interested in political prisoners and supporting political prisoners.

YK: Yeah, because so many blacks were being arrested. I mean, right from '67, '68, yeah. Actually, by the time it was like early '70s, I think like already hundreds of Black Panthers were arrested. So then we said, "We need to begin an organization and just work on political prisoners." And so quite a good group got together. We called ourselves NCDPP, National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners. And every black or Puerto Rican political prisoner who became incarcerated, we would immediately try to find out what prison, start writing, and start visiting them. And to make sure that they were not being abused and beaten up for whatever.

MA: And that's something that you've continued all these years, right, is supporting political prisoners, even today.

YK: Yeah. Oh, yes, because there's thousands now. And there are, in fact, even maybe not quite a thousand, but over five hundred who have been in prison thirty, forty, and now almost fifty years. I mean, when you think of Ruchell Magee, forty-nine years, Hugo Pinell, forty-five years, and Fitzgerald, forty-three years or so. And even the MOVE 9, thirty-five years and Sundiata Acoli and his group, they were all from thirty-seven to forty-years in prison, they're spread out all over the country. And so the prison support group is, I think, very, very strong. They're all over, we're all trying to do the same thing, and trying to make sure that we could get commissary money to prisoners from time to time, because they need it.

MA: What is your relationship between fighting for political prisoners' rights, and then I know there are some groups who are calling for all prisons to be abolished.

YK: What?

MA: I know there are some groups that are calling for all prisons to be abolished. So what do you think the difference is between a political prisoner and someone who's incarcerated because of their race?

YK: You know, there's such a, there's a different definition. At first, all of us, I think we said that political prisoners had to be political activists before they were captured and became prisoners. The other prisoners we called social prisoners. But a lot of social prisoners, after they went into prison, became politicized. Then we started to support them. But at first it was only political activists.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.