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by Daniel Burton-Rose
02.15.99
Rita "Bo" Brown drives a tow truck—a massive tow truck—for 40-plus hours a week. With the rest of her time, she organizes, mainly for prisoners’ rights and freedom for lesbian political prisoners. Back in the day, Brown was a bank-robbing, jail-breaking, capitalist-terrorizing revolutionary. In the early ‘70s, when the U.S. imperial war machine was wracked with what hopefuls perceived to be its death throes, Brown and a small group of radicals in the Pacific Northwest formed the George Jackson Brigade to do what they could to help the process along.
Brown is one of several hundred activists across the country who did their time in the ‘60s and ‘70s, either in prison or in underground insurrectionary activities, and who remain active today on the front lines of struggle for social change.
Bo’s specialty was bank-robbing ("expropriations"), a necessity for underground living. Bo was known as "The Gentleman Bankrobber" because she was so nice to the tellers and because, with a little help from a costume shop, she had law enforcement looking for a man for almost two years. Brown estimates that she participated in seventeen Brigade actions—from bombings to jail breaks—before she was finally arrested. When asked about the Brigade’s goals, Brown quickly replies: "The overthrow of the United States government. That was everybody’s goal at that time. To build a new world, a better world, this shit wasn’t workin’. Too many people were getting messed over. People were starvin’, people were being neglected. Medical care was shit. Same things that we’re talking about now."
Once They’ve Got You,
They Never Let You Go
o what do former urban guerrillas do in the decidedly un-revolutionary ‘90s? First off, they work. Ed Mead, another former George Jackson Brigade member, served 18 years in prison after his arrest following a shoot-out in an overly ambitious bank robbery in the Seattle suburb of Tukwila on January 23, 1976. He’s fifty-six and can expect close to nothing from social security when he retires. While incarcerated, he fought for prisoners’ access to computers and learned enough to start his own computer repair shop in Seattle upon his release in October of 1993. He moved to the Bay Area in March of 1997 for a higher paying job designing software in the Noe Valley, with the purpose of working as long and hard as he could.
But beyond survival, many veterans of earlier periods of radicalism are still actively fighting for social justice. A sizeable number—including Brown and Mead—choose to continue chipping away at the most blatantly repressive institution in society: the criminal justice system.
"I think that imprisonment has a way of remaining with you all of your life," says Angela Davis. Davis did sixteen months in both New York City and the Marin County jails on persecutorial charges of kidnapping, murder and conspiracy. The charges stemmed from an August, 1970 shootout in which Jonothan Jackson—the brother of famed black prison revolutionary and the Brigade’s namesake, George Jackson—was killed at the Marin County Courthouse in an attempt to free his brother by taking hostages.
Now a professor at the History of Consciousness program at the University of California at Santa Cruz, Davis was a driving force behind Critical Resistance, an anti-law and order strategy session that took place on the UC Berkeley campus in September of 1998. She is working on at least two books on prisons.
"In the aftermath of my own imprisonment I just couldn’t make the memories go away," says Davis. She adds: "In a sense, this is my life’s work."
Other veterans of ‘60s and ‘70s foment have had the same experience: they couldn’t avoid the prison system if they tried. Brown states: "It seems that ever since I became a little politically aware I’ve either been in prisons or fighting against them."
Regarding support work for political prisoners, Brown knows she’s just returning a favor. As she told Free Radio Berkeley in 1997, "In all my years inside, there was never a period of more than several weeks when I didn’t at least have people sending me stamps and letters . . . I know that people don’t have to be left alone and isolated. People don’t have to be forgotten in those pits. We know how to do it—because it was done for me and I owe my community much for that."
Janine Bertram, who served four and a half years for being the Brigade’s post-bank robbery get-away gal, now lives in Washington, D.C. and is active in prison reform. She gives her reasons for continued activism as opposition to the way in which prisons have become the government’s tool of choice for dealing with the urban poor and adds that she thinks "the worst conditions that exist in this country exist in institutions—prisons, mental hospitals, nursing homes. I lived in a prison. I saw what it does to people. I can’t imagine not trying to change that after experiencing it."
Mead feels somewhat guilty about his level of activism today. "If there’s one thing I regret at age 56," he laments, "it’s that I don’t have an antagonistic relationship with the FBI." He maintains the website for California Prison Focus, and he and his wife were instrumental in getting a parole date for Mark Cook, the last imprisoned George Jackson Brigade member, but Mead still feels it’s not enough. He recently finished his own parole and, freed from the stipulation that he have no contact with other convicts or ex-convicts, his activist efforts will surely increase.
Luis Talamantez, co-founder of what has become the human rights group, California Prison Focus, was one of twenty-seven prisoners in the infamous San Quentin Adjustment on August 21, 1971, the day George Jackson was murdered in an escape attempt that was likely encouraged by the prison administration so that Jackson would be gunned down. He was then one of six prisoners, known as the San Quentin Six, who were charged with the murders of guards and prisoners that took place that morning. (Talamantez was eventually acquitted). Talamantez maintains deep ties to the women and men still in prison, but doesn’t have the luxury of remaining inactive for a different reason: he’s a two-strike offender. "In a sense, the criminal justice system still controls my life," he says. "The work I do is also out of a struggle for self-preservation."
Keeping the Home Fires Burning
rown’s activities provide an illustration of the amount of work some of the ‘70s veterans are engaged in. In 1987, Brown co-founded the Out of Control Lesbian Committee to Support Women Political Prisoners, a group of queer women that continues to educate around and send support to women imprisoned for radical armed activities in the ‘70s and ‘80s. She was also involved in the Jericho ’98 Campaign to Free Political Prisoners and Prisoners of War and sat on two Critical Resistance subcommittees. The Norma Jean Croy Support Committee, of which Brown was a prime organizer, met its goal of freeing Croy, a wrongfully imprisoned Native woman who won her freedom after 19 years. Brown also directed and produced Shasta Woman, a video about Croy’s case.
Brown feels the work she and other steadfast radicals have done has laid the groundwork and maintained the infrastructure for the current resurgence of prison activism. "We’re the steady plodders. My best work in the last twenty years has been grassroots stuff. What Out of Control is really excellent at is grassroots work in the lesbian and broader gay community around women political prisoners—the reality of political prisoners, the reality of women in prison. We’ve done a lot of outreach and work, and I think that’s reflected in the level of general knowledge in our community."
