An American Radical Read online

  Advance Praise for An American Radical

  “Susan Rosenberg’s An American Radical is remarkable—and terrifying. In taut, unadorned prose, she recounts her sixteen years imprisoned in American jails, much of that time spent in isolation and high-security units. That she survived at all is something of a miracle. Her stark, harrowing story is all at once mesmerizing, horrifying, and deeply saddening. Her revelations about the U.S. prison system and its various forms of torture and diminishment should forever prevent glib distinctions between our ‘democratic’ system and that of totalitarian countries. Rosenberg herself emerges as an admirable, remarkably resilient, and honorable figure.”

  —Martin Duberman, Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus, City University of New York, and author of more than twenty books

  “Walt Whitman wrote: ‘My call is the call of battle, I nourish active rebellion.’ Our dear sister Susan Rosenberg did just that in the 1960s. And her journey is part of this American history/herstory of radicalism. We thank her for sharing her life of introspection, activism and resistance. And we thank her for resisting … resisting … resisting.”

  —Sonia Sanchez, poet

  “Susan Rosenberg’s struggle as an American radical is retold in this story of her life and those of her ‘sisters in punishment’ as political prisoners here in the U.S. Incarcerated in some of the worst prisons, Rosenberg documents not only the oppression of women in prison but also the great strength and courage she and her politically oppressed sisters demonstrate in these penal colonies. She is simultaneously aware and respectful of the awful situation of the majority of women—black, brown, and poor—who are incarcerated in the U.S. today. As she grows and changes, she does so as An American Radical. A must-read book to understand prisons in America today.”

  —Natalie J. Sokoloff, professor of sociology,

  John Jay College of Criminal Justice

  “This book is for every American—one woman’s story that puts us all on trial. ‘I have met death in the cold / of this prison,’ Susan Rosenberg writes, and shows us forty pounds of shackles on her hundred-pound body and how it feels to struggle for years against abuse and deprivation, how it feels to change, to find purpose, solace, even love. Executive clemency from the President of the United States finally freed Susan Rosenberg. You won’t want to believe her words on these pages, but they’re both true and truly well written, and none of us is free to ignore them.”

  —Hettie Jones, author

  “In the decade of the ‘90s, Nelson Mandela was freed, apartheid was ended, the Soviet Union collapsed, and most Americans talked about a world led by a well-intended, peaceful United States. Susan Rosenberg witnessed these developments from the vantage point of a tiny cell in America’s most notorious prisons. A political prisoner in her own country, Rosenberg endured the most heinous conditions, designed to break her will. As in the most backward nations, renunciation of her political beliefs was the price of decent conditions. Rosenberg never surrendered. Her haunting memoir vividly depicts what life is like for a radical woman in maximum security. Rosenberg also gives voice to the tens of thousands of female prisoners, mostly Black and poor, who lived and died through the AIDS epidemic that ravaged America’s incarcerated. It is bitterly ironic that Rosenberg, an activist who tried to change the world, found herself in conditions where even the smallest change requires intense struggle. Her battles to change the lives of the women around her are inspiring; this book is a testament to the strength of the human spirit.”

  —Ron Kuby, civil rights and criminal defense attorney

  “Surviving oppression is, as Susan Rosenberg shows us in this powerful prison memoir, a creative act of camaraderie and solidarity. Even in the face of the unfathomable brutality, the nonstop assault on humanity that is the American prison system, Rosenberg shows us how women prisoners took care of each other in their battles against AIDS, sexual violence, police brutality, and political repression.

  Rosenberg’s evocative prose, interspersed with poems she wrote in prison, demonstrates that we must celebrate humanity in order to dismantle mass incarceration.”

  —Dan Berger, editor of The Hidden 1970s: Histories of Radicalism,

  and author of Outlaws of America: The Weather Underground

  and the Politics of Solidarity

  “Rosenberg tells a compelling story in An American Radical—an intimate portrayal of life as a political prisoner and a potent analysis of the ongoing failures of the American form of incarceration and punishment. She inspires with her story of active resistance to really tough conditions at a time when the label and preoccupation with ‘terrorist’ is again a collective obsession, as it was in the early 1970s in America. An American Radical will rouse readers to forge ahead with their own commitments to genuine patriotism through opposition to oppression.”

  —Don Hazen, executive director of the independent Media

  Institute and executive editor of Alternet.org

  “In her powerful and harrowing quest, Susan Rosenberg’s amazing story drives us to examine our own relationship with justice. You can feel the heat coming off the pages of this book as it bears witness to the industry behind our wretched penal system—while at the same time her odyssey leads us to discover unforgettable places within the human heart and soul. This is a journey that most Americans could never even imagine, let alone take.”

  —Jackson Taylor, director, PEN Prison Writing Program

  “Anyone teaching a course relating to the American prison system will obviously find Susan Rosenberg’s An American Radical to be a fine choice as a required text. But the book would also have great relevance in any course exploring our epoch of America’s permanent wars. Rosenberg’s odyssey takes us from the liberation movement of the 1960s, through the nightmarish worlds of federal prisons, into a twenty-first century where the American prison has expanded into a global gulag of secret prisons and unspeakable torture, government secrecy, and a culture that defines radical dissent as beyond the bounds of American normality. It’s hard to imagine a classroom where this book would fail to provoke invaluable discussion.”

  —H. Bruce Franklin, John Cotton Dana Professor of English

  and American studies at Rutgers University, Newark

  “Susan Rosenberg takes us on an astonishing journey—from a tiny underground revolutionary cell into the vast underground of the American penal system. En route, we see the desperate, isolated idealism that led to her prison term become grounded and compassionate, centered on the cruel plight of her sister inmates. Her lifelong commitment to racial equality and justice bears fruit in this impassioned memoir. ‘Write it down for the record,’ her lawyer insisted when she and other women political prisoners were subjected to experimental torture techniques. An American Radical is indeed that intimate record of the suffering and solidarity of women in America’s toughest prisons.”

  —Bell Gale Chevigny, professor emeritus of literature, Purchase

  College, SUNY, author and editor of Doing Time: 25 Years of

  Prison Writing, a PEN American Center prize anthology

  “The bravery and courage, and the original voice of Susan Rosenberg carries the reader with it—every moment of her sixteen years in prison. Her deep self-analysis for precious sanity, in search of truth—past, present and future—for herself and the world, is nothing less than astounding. The book’s gift redefines radicalism itself. It also elicits that rare, silent ‘Ah!’ of unexpected recognition experienced in compelling theater and art.”

  —Doris Schwerin, author and composer

  “Susan Rosenberg has gone into the hell of the American prison system and come back miraculously unembittered, her soul intact and bringing us the news that Abu Ghraib and Gu
antanamo are not aberrations but business as usual. What ‘we’ did to foreign terrorists ‘we’ do to our own every day of the year. America is a one-eyed jack, but Rosenberg has seen the other side of its face.”

  —Henry Bean, writer and director

  “In this gripping book, Susan Rosenberg tells a harrowing story that is painfully personal and an important part of American history. The psychological torture and physical cruelty of American prisoners can so often seem abstract. But not when you read An American Radical; its pages are packed with adventure, claustrophobia, heartache, constant political struggle, and Rosenberg’s indomitable will to survive.”

  —Christian Parenti, author of Lockdown America

  and The Soft Cage

  “Windowless underground prisons, unfounded charges, years in solitary confinement with no clarity on when that will end have been American practice well before Guantanamo. This is the story of a woman, imprisoned for a crime, sentenced for her politics, and treated horrifically in U.S. prisons. It describes a journey that is both personal and political. It reveals how the American criminal justice system has little to do with justice. It undermines our notion that our current human rights violations, so vividly demonstrated by the War on Terror, are recent overreactions to the threat of international ‘terrorists.’ Susan Rosenberg was considered a ‘terrorist’ in the early 1980s. Her story gives us perspective. It reminds us that these rights violations are not idiosyncratic of a failed Bush policy. Perhaps most important, however, through the clarity of her vision and relentless spirit, Susan Rosenberg gives us hope.”

  —Jane H. Aiken, professor of law,

  Georgetown University Law Center

  An American

  Radical

  Political Prisoner in My Own Country

  Susan Rosenberg

  All copyrighted material within is

  Attributor Protected.

  CITADEL PRESS BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2011 Susan Rosenberg

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  All Kensington titles, imprints, and distributed lines are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, educational, or institutional use. Special book excerpts or customized printings can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write or phone the office of the Kensington special sales manager: Kensington Publishing Corp., 119 West 40th Street, New York, NY 10018, attn: Special Sales Department; phone 1-800-221-2647.

  Some names of individuals have been changed to protect their privacy.

  CITADEL PRESS and the Citadel logo are Reg. U. S. Pat. & TM Off.

  First printing:March 2011

  10 98 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Printed in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2010931894

  eISBN-13: 978-0-8065-3500-5

  eISBN-10: 0-8065-3500-8

  This book is dedicated to my loving parents, Bella and Emanuel Rosenberg, and to all the people who have been disappeared and exiled in U. S. prisons.

  [This] is sent out to those into whose souls the iron has entered, and has entered deeply at some time in their lives.

  —THOMAS HARDY,

  Jude the Obscure

  The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.

  —FYODOR DOSTOEVSKY,

  The House of the Dead

  Contents

  Advance Praise for An American Radical

  Foreword by Kathleen Cleaver

  Acknowledgments

  Part One: Arrest and Trial

  Chapter One. Explosives

  Chapter Two. Arrested

  Chapter Three. Detention

  Chapter Four. Conviction

  Part Two: Tucson

  Chapter Five. Transport

  Chapter Six. Tucson Federal Prison

  Part Three: Lexington

  Chapter Seven. Lexington High Security Unit

  Chapter Eight. Litigation

  Part Four: Washington, D.C.

  Chapter Nine. D.C. County Jail

  Chapter Ten. AIDS Epidemic

  Chapter Eleven. Cancer

  Part Five: Mariana

  Chapter Twelve. Mariana Maximum Security

  Chapter Thirteen. Breaking Rank

  Chapter Fourteen. My Father

  Part Six: Danbury

  Chapter Fifteen. Danbury General Population

  Chapter Sixteen. AIDS Epidemic

  Chapter Seventeen. PAROLE

  Chapter Eighteen. Political Prisoners

  Chapter Nineteen. Cancer

  Chapter Twenty. The Hill

  Afterword

  Notes

  Foreword

  by Kathleen Cleaver

  THE MASSIVE PROTEST movements and freedom struggles of the 1960s mobilized young people all over the world. Thousands were injured, arrested, jailed, and killed; thousands more watched, and millions of young people were inspired to act. Mass social movements surged during those days, marked by urban riots and insurrections, guerilla uprisings, and the scandalous murder of leaders such as Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, and Fred Hampton. Evening news broadcasts showed horrendous scenes of warfare in Vietnam, while thousands of young men were drafted to fight there. My conscience was seared when four young girls were murdered at the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing in Birmingham, girls who were part of the children’s campaign of constant protest marches during 1963. It happened in Alabama, my home state, the year I started college. For Susan Rosenberg, who grew up in New York, watching the televised National Guard assault at the Attica prison in New York State, which left 29 prisoners and 10 hostages dead in 1971, had a life changing impact. The massacre happened during her junior year in high school.

  The prison memoir had not attained recognition as literature when Susan Rosenberg entered Barnard College two years later, but the political prisoners taken during insurgent independence movements or revolutionary uprisings were making a profound impact on our generation’s world view. The leaders of Third World national liberation movements had spent time in colonial prisons, and if not captured or killed, after independence was won some of them became the leaders of their countries. The startling rise of Patrice Lumumba to prime minister in the formerly Belgian Congo during 1960 set off waves of liberation struggles to end imperial white rule in Africa; that, combined with the revolutionary struggles we learned about in South Asia and South America, helped inspire our own brand of radicalism. In the United States, the most confrontational leaders of our black liberation struggle were being arrested, tried, and sent to prison—if not shot in the streets.

  In 1967, at the height of antiwar protest, we saw world champion boxer Muhammad Ali ordered to prison for refusing to fight in Vietnam. UCLA professor Angela Davis was hunted and jailed on charges of assisting the escape of a prisoner, during which a judge was killed, from the Marin County Courthouse in 1970. Just as years later demands that ANC leader Nelson Mandela be free circled the world, young African American revolutionaries launched the “Free Huey” campaign and spread the Black Panther Party across the country. Both at home and at school, Rosenberg was sensitized to challenge fundamental wrongs, her consciousness nurtured in New York’s liberal political culture during a decade when race, economic injustice, and the Vietnam War were polarizing the entire country.

  I met Susan Rosenberg at a crowded welcome home party held in New York City in 2001. The event was at the Walden School on the Upper West Side, where Susan had graduated from high school. Before her time, Andrew Goodman, one of the three civil rights workers murdered in Mississippi in 1964, had graduated from this progressive school. It was a damp winter evening, the gathering of many supporters and activists filled the hal
l in clumps and rows around small tables. I loved the festive air the bouquets of flowers gave to the room, and the feeling of joy that everyone radiated. The guests buzzed with the warmth of reunions, like families and old friends coming back together. I saw some faces from the political prisoner movements I’d worked with before, but most of the guests I did not recognize. After the formal part of the program ended, I had a chance to see Susan for the first time. I was excited—she looked more frail than I had imagined her—but we shared friends and comrades. The one I knew best was one of her codefendants, Marilyn Buck, who was still behind bars, which gave us a special bond. We hugged each other, spoke briefly, and agreed to meet later in the month.

  The party was pulled together within weeks after President Bill Clinton commuted Rosenberg’s sentence in January 2001, during those same last days when the rumored pardon for Leonard Peltier never materialized and the controversial pardon of Marc Rich generated frenzied news coverage. Outraged cries against Rosenberg’s parole back then originated within the police and the FBI, but they never provoked a national controversy. In 1984, then-U.S. attorney in New York Rudolph Giuliani had withdrawn the indictment against her for participating in the Brink’s robbery in Nyack, New York, but that legal fact never prevented the local press from vilifying her as a “cop killer” along with those who had been convicted, nor did it stop the fraternal organizations representing New York police from hounding her and her family for being a “terrorist.” Thankfully, President Clinton had commuted her sentence months before the anti-terrorist political obsession gripped the city in the wake of the destruction of the World Trade Center that September.