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NBC News is at the center of a new controversy, this time focused on its chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel. Back in 2012 he and five other members of an NBC News team were kidnapped by armed gunmen in Syria. They were held for five days. Just after his release Engel spoke on NBC News and said this about his captors: "This is a government militia. These are people who are loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. They are Shiite." Well, earlier this week, a New York Times investigation prompted Engel to revise his story and reveal he was actually captured by Sunni militants affiliated with the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army. In an article published on Wednesday, Engel said the kidnappers had "put on an elaborate ruse to convince us they were Shiite Shabiha militiamen." According to the Times investigation, NBC knew more than it let on about the kidnappers. We speak to As’ad AbuKhalil, professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus. He runs the Angry Arab News Service blog. He expressed serious doubts about the circumstances surrounding Engel’s captivity and release when the story first broke in December 2012.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: NBC News is at the center of a new controversy, this time focused on its chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel. Back in 2012, Engel and five other members of an NBC News team were kidnapped by armed gunmen in Syria. They were held for five days. Just after his release, Engel spoke on NBC News about his captors.
RICHARD ENGEL: I think I have a very good idea of who they were. This was a group known as the Shabiha. This is a government militia. These are people who are loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. They are Shiite. They were talking openly about their loyalty to the government, openly expressing their Shia faith. They are trained by Iranian Revolutionary Guard. They are allied with Hezbollah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: That was NBC News chief foreign correspondent Richard Engel speaking after he was released in December 2012.
Well, earlier this week, a New York Times investigation prompted Engel to revise his story and reveal he was actually captured by Sunni militants affiliated with the U.S.-backed Free Syrian Army. An article published on Wednesday, Engel said the kidnappers had, quote, "put on an elaborate ruse to convince us they were Shiite Shabiha militiamen." According to the Times investigation, NBC knew at the time that Engel and the others were held on a chicken farm widely known to be controlled by a Sunni criminal group. NBC was also informed of the identities of two Sunni men possibly involved in the kidnapping, but the network and Engel never relayed this information to the public and repeatedly claimed the kidnapping was done by Shiite militants linked to Syria President Assad.
AMY GOODMAN: The New York Times investigation also raised questions about Richard Engel’s rescue. Engel originally said he was rescued by Sunni rebels after his captors accidentally drove into a checkpoint. In fact, the Shiite rebel groups holding the NBC crew created a ruse to free them and blame the kidnapping on the Assad regime—the Sunni groups that were holding him blamed it on the Assad regime. Engel had also previously said two of his captors died during a gunfight at the checkpoint.
The controversy over Engel’s kidnapping comes just three months after NBC suspended Nightly News anchor Brian Williams after admitting that a story he told about coming under fire in a helicopter during the Iraq War was not true. On Thursday, journalist Glenn Greenwald described NBC News’s conduct in the Engel case to be more troubling than the Brian Williams scandal. Greenwald wrote, quote, "[T]he NBC story was quite likely to fuel the simmering war cries in the West to attack (or at least aggressively intervene against) Assad. That’s a far more serious and far more consequential journalistic sin than a news reader puffing out his chest and pretending he’s Rambo," he wrote.
We’re joined now by As’ad AbuKhalil, a professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus. He runs the Angry Arab News Service blog. He expressed serious doubts about the circumstances surrounding Engel’s captivity and release when the story first broke in December of 2012.
So, let’s begin with what has been revealed now and what you were saying, As’ad AbuKhalil, back then, at the end of 2012, after the newsmen were released.
AS’AD ABUKHALIL: Well, Amy, I was early on skeptical, not only about the conditions in which he was supposedly released and the statements he made at the time, but I was skeptical about the entire enterprise of Western journalistic coverage of Syria, particularly by American correspondents in the region. There was a lot of stuff that’s been told and transmitted that contradicted the realities on the ground. They created this myth about a moderate, secular group called the Free Syrian Army. And they were, in fact, attacking people like myself and others who were saying that the bulk of the fighting force of the so-called Syrian revolutionaries were militant fanatics of the bin Ladenite style. And in reality, we knew at the time that what is so-called the Free Syrian Army is no more than a coterie of criminal gangs and thugs that were running amok throughout the area of the so-called liberated sections of Syria, and they were engaged in sectarian kidnapping, ransoms, murder, indiscriminate shelling, and they would sometimes kidnap people, and they’d sell them to other gangs and so on.
So, but there is also something political, as Glenn mentioned, which is, there is—there was a war lobby. There were people hedging at the time in order to get the United States to intervene militarily on the side of these rebels, along with Saudi Arabia, the same allies that we now have in the so-called war on Yemen. And at the time, the statements that Richard Engel made—and I should mention that what is—I mean, there is a political story, and there’s a journalistic story. I mean, there are questions to be raised not only about the credibility of Mr. Engel, but also about bad judgment. And this is a correspondent, one of the few who’s fluent in Arabic. He can speak it fluently, he can understand it. And yet, upon his release, he taped a video in Arabic for the propaganda arm of the Free Syrian Army, in which he made fantastic claims. And I went and watched it yesterday to my amazement. I mean, he admitted yesterday to The New York Times that in fact he may have lied when he said he witnessed, at the time of his rescue, dead bodies. Now he’s saying he didn’t. But if you watch the video he taped for the Free Syrian Army benefit, he in fact claimed he saw more dead bodies upon being captured. And he also told a fantastic story about how these awful Shiite militias went about to burn somebody alive, but they couldn’t find enough gasoline. I mean, he has to account for that. Plus, I mean, upon his—
AMY GOODMAN: Let us go—let us go to Richard Engel and his crew appearing on NBC hours after their release in December 2012, Engel describing how he and his crew were ambushed by a group of about 15 gunmen while traveling with Syrian rebels and held for five days in captivity. He then described how they were freed.
RICHARD ENGEL: We were being moved to yet another location in the late—around 11:00 last night, local time. And as we were moving along the road, the kidnappers came across a rebel checkpoint, something they hadn’t expected. And so, we were in the back of what you would think of as a minivan. And as we were driving along the road, the kidnappers saw this checkpoint, started a gunfight with it. Two of the kidnappers were killed. We climbed out of the vehicle, and the rebels took us. We spent the night with them.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Richard Engel describing what happened, hours after their release in December 2012. As’ad AbuKhalil, that description, how it has changed, and how much NBC knew? They, you know, used all of their resources to try to free these men, these reporters, their reporters, and their fixer, as well. And talk about who they communicated with to show how they knew who the forces were who were holding him. Again, the story now is that it was both Sunnis that held him and Sunnis that then staged this release.
AS’AD ABUKHALIL: Right.
AMY GOODMAN: But both of them saying that it was Shia affiliated with Assad. And, of course, when you say Shia, people think Iran, as well.
AS’AD ABUKHALIL: Not only that, I mean, Richard Engel, upon his release, went out of his way to invoke the names not only of Iran, of Hezbollah. And he said it, in fact, in one of the tapes early in the program. And when he did the interview with the Free Syrian Army propagandists, which is available on YouTube—I posted it on my blog—he in fact said that their demands were the release of four Iranians in Syria, as well as two militiamen from the Amal Shiite Lebanese militia. But why did he invoke Amal—if it was really Amal, why did he invoke Hezbollah? And then he would say repeatedly, with a straight face, that "We knew they were Shabiha because they told us." That word "shabiha" is colloquial Syrian for "thugs." So, this is the name that is given to pro-Assad regime militiamen by their opponents and the armed rebels. So, imagine somebody identifying himself or herself as a "thug." And that’s the story we were led to believe.
Plus, there was a footage of the actual room in which these hostages were held. You look at this old room with old paint, and suddenly you see fresh paint of clearly, explicitly identifiable Shiite slogans. Plus, he said they were—he said that in the segment which you aired, in fact—he said they were explicitly worshiping in a Shiite manner. I mean, didn’t he in any way, you know, question why that was the case? I mean, look, I am not naïve. Many of these Western correspondents are engaged—have been engaged in part of the war lobby in propaganda effort to champion the cause of the Free Syrian Army. This Free Syrian Army not only kidnapped these journalist. At the time, they were kidnapping innocent Lebanese on the basis of their sect. Some of them they were selling, and some of them they were exchanging. I mean, there are two missing bishops from Aleppo that nobody talks about. They kidnapped even nuns. But there is such a glamorization and such romanticization of these awful rebels in Syria, whether of the criminal type of the Free Syrian Army or the bin Ladenite style in Syria, to the point where nobody wanted to believe that they are capable of such a, you know, dastardly act. And that’s what happened.
But it seems to me there—you know, so the story has two levels: the political one and the journalism one. And on both cases, Richard Engel’s credibility has sunk very low, I mean, in my judgment, if you watch the video and the things he was saying, fawning praise for the Free Syrian Army. And also, let us mention, he in fact credited a group called Ahrar Ash-Sham, which is a bin Ladenite group founded by a friend of Osama bin Laden. He was calling them—the word in Arabic can either mean "rebels" or "revolutionaries." And he heaped praise on them. He even taped a propaganda video for their benefit, as well. So there is a political agenda and a political service that was done. Now, in no way I am saying—I don’t have any evidence—that Richard Engel was part of the plot or he was in it. He looked genuinely scared when—and relieved when he was released and so on. But he made statements that we now know cannot be true.
AMY GOODMAN: As’ad AbuKhalil, we want to thank you for being with us, professor of political science at California State University, Stanislaus. He runs the Angry Arab News Service blog. We will link to your blog at democracynow.org. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. Stay with us.
n an act of mass civil disobedience, tens of thousands of parents in New York state had their children boycott the annual English Language Arts exam this week. At some Long Island and upstate school districts, abstention levels reached 80 percent. Protest organizers say at least 155,000 pupils opted out — and that is with only half of school districts tallied so far. The action is seen as a significant challenge to the education agenda of Gov. Andrew Cuomo and to standardized testing nationwide. More than a decade after the passage of No Child Left Behind, educators, parents and students nationwide are protesting the preponderant reliance on high-stakes standardized testing, saying it gives undue importance to ambiguous data and compromises learning in favor of test prep. We speak to Jack Bierwirth, superintendent of Herricks Public Schools in Long Island, and parent Toni Smith-Thompson, who led the boycott against standardized testing at Central Park East 1 Elementary School in East Harlem.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: In an act of mass civil disobedience, tens of thousands of parents in New York state had their children boycott the annual English Language Arts exam this week. At some Long Island and upstate school districts, abstention levels reached 80 percent. Protest organizers say at least 155,000 pupils opted out, and that’s with only half of school districts tallied so far. The action is seen as a significant challenge to the education agenda of Governor Andrew Cuomo and to standardized testing nationwide.
AMY GOODMAN: More than a decade after the passage of No Child Left Behind, educators, parents and students nationwide are protesting the preponderant reliance on high-stakes standardized testing, saying it gives undue importance to ambiguous data and compromises learning in favor of test prep. Teachers’ unions have also raised concerns about linking students’ test results to teacher evaluation scores. In January, special education teacher Jia Lee from the Earth School in New York City testified before the Senate about why half of the parents at her school are opting out of high-stakes testing.
JIA LEE: Last year, over 50 percent of our parents at our school refused to allow their children to take the New York state Common Core Assessments, what we now have known nationally as "opting out." In New York state, at least, these tests have changed from year to year. The cut scores have changed from year to year, which makes them flawed and invalid. When parents and educators have voiced concerns, they’ve been accused of coddling. I want to challenge that assumption. The great crime is that the focus on testing has taken valuable resources and time away from programming, social studies, arts and physical education, special education services and ELL programs. At my school, we no longer have a librarian, and our Parent Association works full-time to fund the needed arts and music programs that are not covered by our budget any longer.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Earlier this month, New York approved a New York state budget containing many controversial educational changes backed by Governor Andrew Cuomo. These include revisions to teacher evaluations, new rules for the dismissal of teachers deemed ineffective, and changes to the process by which the state can shutter schools it deems failures.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, for more, we’re joined now by two guests. Jack Bierwirth is the superintendent of Herricks Public Schools. Toni Smith-Thompson led the boycott against standardized testing at Central Park East 1 Elementary School, where she’s co-president of the Parents Association. She recently wrote a piece for People’s World called "Gutting teacher tenure hurts the children."
So, I want to welcome Dr. Jack Bierwirth and Toni Smith-Thompson. Dr. Bierwirth, you’re the superintendent of an entire school system.
JACK BIERWIRTH: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: You supported the opt-out?
JACK BIERWIRTH: Legally, I can’t. But I absolutely understand what the parents and teachers are concerned about. I am involved on a lot of things statewide, and we’ve expressed deep concerns about the tests that New York state has put together and also about the evaluation system of teachers and administrators. Teachers ought to be evaluated. Principals ought to be evaluated. Kids ought to be assessed. But there are much better ways of doing both.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: What are some of your main concerns? Because clearly standardized testing has become a major battleground across the state and across the nation. What are your concerns as an educator and administrator about the quality and the importance of these tests?
JACK BIERWIRTH: And a parent. I’ve always—I mean, people said, "Isn’t it terrible to teach to the test?" Well, it isn’t, if what’s being measured on the test is what parents and teachers want the kids to know, because if you’re teaching to something that really assesses fairly and accurately the things that we want our kids, whether they’re our students or our own kids—if it’s measuring that, then there’s no problem with teaching to the test. The problem is that the current assessments are unbelievably long, and there are real questions about how valid they are. And given the time that they’re given and when we get the results, they’re almost useless.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: What about that, the gap in time? Can you explain that, for those who don’t know?
JACK BIERWIRTH: Well, in New Jersey, the tests, the PARCC tests, were given in the end of February, the beginning of March. In New York, they’re being given in April, three months before the end of the school year. Parents and teachers don’t get the results until the end of August. I mean, when I was a kid and when I first started teaching, you tested at the end of the year to see how well the kids were doing over the course of the year, and that was part of what you sat down with a teacher and discussed. How did the year go? How did your kids do on biology? How did your kids compare with the other kids who were taking biology? But if you’re testing in April, and teachers are going to get scores based—even assuming that they were accurate, they’re being measured on six months’ worth of their work and three months’ worth of the teacher of the prior year’s work.
AMY GOODMAN: Who writes these tests? And what about the actual quality of the tests? What about those who say the kids got to know this stuff?
JACK BIERWIRTH: I think you can do a whole lot better. I think that it’s been demonstrated that you can create a whole lot better assessments. I think where education ought to be headed is online adaptive tests where it adjusts for the students’ competence. And you can do that in 45 minutes or an hour and have results as the kids are walking out, and have results that teachers can use, parents can use. I’m not going to name the name of the tests, but there are plenty of tests out there. And there are plenty of other countries that have come up with much better assessment systems that teachers value and that parents value.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Toni Smith-Thompson, I wanted to ask you about—your school is in East Harlem.
TONI SMITH-THOMPSON: Yeah.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: As I said in my column in the Daily News on Wednesday and again today, is that this is an extraordinary act by so many parents, because every individual parent has to send a letter into the school—
TONI SMITH-THOMPSON: Yes.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: —saying, "I want my child exempted, or not taking this test." So, everyone has to take an affirmative action.
TONI SMITH-THOMPSON: Yes.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Talk about what happened in your school.
TONI SMITH-THOMPSON: So, we’ve had a number of students at the school opt out for the past few years, a small number, so parents were already concerned about these tests—again, the length of the tests, the quality of the tests, that they were not age-appropriate. But this year, with the addition of these high stakes attached to the teacher evaluations, really just took it over the top. Kids started talking about, "If I fail, my teacher will get fired." And kids should not be put in that position. And so, really, some of the conversations were started by the kids having conversations in class about what it means to have knowledge and education and power. And they started conversations about whether or not these tests would be valuable for them. And the parents and the teachers echoed those conversations. And we took the initiative to organize a series of informational meetings, to connect with GLE, and to really get the information out to parents. And for most parents, once we had the information about what was in the tests, the length of the tests, like eight hours—plus, you know, for most schools, months of test prep—it was a no-brainer.
AMY GOODMAN: Toni Smith—
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And what were were the results at your school?
TONI SMITH-THOMPSON: Almost 80 percent.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Eighty percent did not—
TONI SMITH-THOMPSON: Opt-out.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Opted out.
TONI SMITH-THOMPSON: Yeah.
AMY GOODMAN: How old are your kids?
TONI SMITH-THOMPSON: I have two school-age kids, fourth grade and kindergarten.
AMY GOODMAN: And explain their response. Presumably, the kindergartners don’t have these tests.
TONI SMITH-THOMPSON: Right, right.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, you never know these days.
TONI SMITH-THOMPSON: Right, you never know.
AMY GOODMAN: You sort of seat-belt them in.
TONI SMITH-THOMPSON: You know, it’s interesting. At the beginning of the year, when testing was first—first came up, my fourth grader asked if she would be taking the test and said she didn’t want to. So I left the decision to her, as many parents did. And then, as more information began to unfold about these tests, which is very hard because they’re so secretive, when it got to that point, I decided, "I’m just going to make the decision for you; this is not a decision that I feel like you are going to have to make on your own, to weigh all of these pros and cons. You’re just not going to take this test." And she was totally fine with that. And we were really proactive in the school to have conversations with the kids, so that the kids were clear that it didn’t mean anything for them and their peers that some of them were taking the tests and some of them weren’t, so it didn’t become this—
AMY GOODMAN: Do they just not go to school that day?
TONI SMITH-THOMPSON: No, they all went to school, and there were just alternative activities.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’d like to ask you about the secrecy issue here of these tests. I got a copy of the instructions that New York City teachers received on giving this test. And in my column today, I quote that teachers were warned not to, quote, "read, review, or duplicate the contents of secure test material before, during, or after [test] administration." Now, I’ve never heard of a teacher being told that she can’t read the very test she’s administering. And what about this issue of Pearson, the company, insisting on complete secrecy of the test, and also not even releasing publicly some of the data that independent researchers could be able to assess the quality of the tests?
JACK BIERWIRTH: Let me answer that, but I want to go back for half a second, if I could. There are a lot of parents who are having their kids take the test. That doesn’t mean that they’re supporting the test. And so, I hope that as this unfolds, that people, that the powers that be understand that there’s widespread dissatisfaction with the quality of what’s going on in New York state, whether people are having their kids take the tests or not.
And now to your question, based on my roles, as far as I can see it, the basic problem is that New York state is—and other states are not investing the amount of money that they need to in the tests to develop large banks of questions. And because they’re not paying for very many questions, then they can’t release very many, because if they did, then they couldn’t have other versions of the test. There’s another assessment that we use, for example, that has a huge databank of questions. And one of the people who was one of the leaders of that organization told me that he could publicly release every single question and every single answer, and that it would make no difference, because with hundreds of thousands of questions, no kids—there’s no point in memorizing the test. Part of our problem is that we’re doing this on the cheap. And with a limited number of questions, then you have to be secret about what you’ve got, because you’re going to have to use those tests—you’re going to have to use those questions again.
AMY GOODMAN: Earlier this week, the chancellor of the New York State Board of Regents, Merryl Tisch, appeared on the MSNBC show, All In with Chris Hayes. She defended high-stakes testing.
MERRYL TISCH: The intent of the test is to give a snapshot of performance and allow parents to know where their children are at any given point in their educational career as compared to their peers. If you talk about income inequality in this country, income inequality is directly tied to the achievement gap for our poor students. Those students, if they are not given access and opportunity to high-quality education, they simply cannot move along at a continuum.
AMY GOODMAN: Merryl Tisch went on to suggest school testing informs teachers how much students are progressing, the same way doctors’ visits tell parents how much their child is growing. Toni Smith-Thompson?
TONI SMITH-THOMPSON: I don’t think that’s an accurate comparison. I mean, when you go for a checkup at the doctor, number one, doctors are not graded and fired based on how healthy patients are. And, you know, I don’t know. I just—I’m not sure. I just—I don’t think it’s an accurate comparison at all.
AMY GOODMAN: Can we go to news of what has taken place in Atlanta, Georgia? Former educators in Atlanta have been given prison sentences of up to seven years for their roles in a massive cheating scandal at public schools. Prosecutors say teachers were forced to modify incorrect answers. Students were even allowed to fix their responses during exams. Twenty-one other defendants avoided trial with plea deals, but the nine sentenced to jail rejected sentencing agreements so they can appeal. It’s said to be one of the largest school cheating scandals in U.S. history. Donald Bullock, an educator who reached a plea deal, apologized for his role.
DONALD BULLOCK: I, Donald Bullock, do hereby sincerely apologize to the students, my fellow staff members, parents and the Atlanta Public School System, as well as the greater metropolitan Atlanta community, for my involvement in the 2009 CRC Administration, resulting in cheating or other dysfunctional acts.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Dr. Jack Bierwirth, you’re the superintendent of schools. Can you talk about what’s happened there? Do you know the superintendent there?
JACK BIERWIRTH: Yeah, actually, I did. Her mother and my mother went to the same church, although we didn’t know that for a long time, and followed our careers. And, yes, I knew her fairly well. It’s really sad. As a country, we need to figure out how to make our schools better and how to improve instruction. And as a number of really smart people have said, we’re not going to fire our way to excellence. And we’re not going to really—beating up on kids, beating up on parents isn’t going to improve the schools. What improves schools around the world is now much clearer than when I started my profession; it’s now much clearer than it was 20 years ago. And you don’t get it by rating teachers as a 78 or a 79; you do it by hiring really good people and putting a massive amount of effort into professional development.
And there are high stakes, but the high stakes should be fair ones, that measure kids accurately, that reflect what parents and teachers want kids to know and be able to do. Regents Exams are much higher stakes than three-through-eight tests. But it’s a system that people understood, that people value. It’s a test that is given at the end of the year. It’s not a student’s whole grade. It’s 20 percent or 25 percent of a student’s grade. It’s what they did in papers. But the test is important. It’s very high-stakes. But interestingly, you can get the results of that test usually within two or three days, not four months, not five months.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, one of the interesting things that has surprised me is the extent to this which the revolt against standardized testing has occurred even more in the suburbs—in Long Island, in the suburbs of Rochester, in the suburbs of Buffalo, in school districts that formerly were not considered to have problems. And in reality, what’s happened is, in 2009, state tests in New York showed over 70 percent of all schools, the kids were at proficient levels. Suddenly, the test was changed the following year, and the numbers dropped statewide to 57 percent. Then they introduced a new curriculum a few years later, and now the proficiency has dropped to 30 percent. So, in a few years, just by changing the test and the curriculum, you’re suddenly told the majority of the schools in New York state, that they’re failing. And I think that’s had an impact on these parents who are paying high taxes in the suburbs, isn’t it? In term—for their schools.
TONI SMITH-THOMPSON: Yeah.
JACK BIERWIRTH: Although I’ll tell you that my rural—my colleagues in rural, small rural school districts, who didn’t experience it at the beginning, are now experiencing it to a higher degree, many of them, than we are in the suburbs. Even if everything that the state is doing is 100 percent correct, the opt-out and the protests are indicative of a massive failure on the part of the state to persuade people that what they’re doing is right. I don’t accept the first part, but even if you did, shouldn’t people take a step back and say, "We’ve really done a terrible job explaining what we’re doing and why it’s important to them as teachers and to kids"? It’s gotten bigger each year the last several years, I think, because people don’t buy the explanations they’re given.
AMY GOODMAN: How would you grade the Obama administration on education?
JACK BIERWIRTH: D.
AMY GOODMAN: Toni Smith-Thompson?
TONI SMITH-THOMPSON: I probably know less than you do, but I think the current course of education is totally wrong. And I would echo what you said, that the impact of these tests—I mean, the movement has gained traction this year, but really the impact of these tests has been felt for years, under the No Child Left Behind Act, and the schools that have been disproportionately impacted are struggling schools, struggling students, English-language learners, students with special needs. And schools have been closed, teachers and students displaced and funneled into already other struggling schools. And so, I mean, when you talk about the achievement gap, these are some of the things to think about. It’s not just blame the teacher because the kids are not performing. There are so many other factors.
AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to leave it there, but we’re definitely not going to leave the story there. We will continue to follow these protests in education in this country. I want to thank Dr. Jack Bierwirth, superintendent of Herricks Public Schools in Long Island, New York, and Toni Smith-Thompson, who led the boycott against standardized testing at Central Park [East] 1 Elementary School, where she’s co-president of the Parents Association. We’ll link to your piece in People’s World called "Gutting teacher tenure hurts the children." And we’ll also link to your articles, Juan, in the New York Daily News. Your piece, "Tests Mutiny," was on the cover of the New York Daily News on Wednesday. Today’s column, "Surge of the opt-out movement against English Language Arts exam is act of mass civil disobedience." This is Democracy Now! We’ll be back in a minute.
We speak with New Orleans-based artist Jackie Sumell about her collaboration with former prisoner and Black Panther, Herman Wallace. As Democracy Now! reported in October of 2013, Wallace died just days after his conviction was overturned and he was released from nearly 42 years in solitary confinement. He was a member of the Angola 3, who was convicted for the 1972 murder of a prison guard, but long maintained his innocence and said they were framed for their political activism. The project Wallace worked on with Sumell began when she asked him, "What sort of house does a man who has lived in a 6-foot-by-9-foot cell for over 30 years dream of?" You can see his response in the exhibit called "#76759: Featuring the House That Herman Built." The exhibit opened this week at the Brooklyn Public Library’s main branch and includes a life-sized replica of Wallace’s prison cell, selections from his correspondence with Sumell, books from his reading list, and, in the library’s main lobby, a model of the dream house that he designed.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We end today’s show with a collaboration between New Orleans-based artist Jackie Sumell and former prisoner and Black Panther, Herman Wallace. As we reported in October 2013, Wallace died just days after his conviction was overturned and he was released from nearly 42 years in solitary confinement. He was a member of the Angola 3 who was convicted for the 1972 murder of a prison guard, but long maintained his innocence and said they were framed for their political activism.
AMY GOODMAN: The project Herman Wallace worked on with Jackie Sumell began when she asked him, "What sort of house does a man who has lived in a six-by-nine-foot cell for over 30 years dream of?" You can see his response in the exhibit called "#76759: Featuring the House That Herman Built." It opened this week at the Brooklyn Public Library’s main branch and includes a life-sized replica of Wallace’s prison cell, selections from his correspondence with Jackie Sumell, books from his reading list, and, in the library’s main lobby, a model of the dream house that he designed. Last night, Jackie Sumell gave Democracy Now! a tour of the installation.
JACKIE SUMELL: I’m Jackie Sumell. I’m really honored to take you through my exhibition at the Brooklyn library. It’s called "#76759: Featuring the House That Herman Built." What you see before you is a model, built to scale, of Herman Wallace’s cell. Herman Wallace spent 41 years in solitary confinement for a crime he couldn’t have possibly committed in the state of Louisiana. Twenty-seven of those years were spent in this cell
The cell is framed out to the dimensions that Herman describes in his letter, which is framed behind the cell. And so, I recreated the cell based on his drawings. So when you engage with the cell spatially, it’s six-foot-by-nine-foot-by-eight-foot. And I have drawn the individual elements inside the cell in the same way that Herman drew the individual components and elements in his cell. So to the left inside the cell is the bed, the sink-toilet combo. Above that is the mirror. There’s a florescent light in the upper right corner.
And then these two drawings are the desk and bench. One of the things that Herman complained about was that they were designed to be uncomfortable and almost impossible to sit at. So you would sit at this excruciatingly low bench, and your knees barely fit under this really small desk. And there was no way to move it. So it actually took up a lot of really important real estate within the cell, and then it was the nonfunctioning. Herman said that he would often take the mattress off of his bed and use his bed as his desk, so he would sit on the floor. So the only space that he could actually walk is up this center channel here and from side to side.
One of the things I think that is super beautiful inside the library is that they have brought together for the first time 108 of the books that Herman asked to be in his library in his dream home. There’s George Novack, Democracy and Revolution. He has a lot of Stalin, a lot of Marx, a lot of Trotsky, and it’s not necessarily that this is the thought that he subscribed to, but he felt like it was important for him to understand Marxist theory. Of course, The House That Herman Built. I asked him, "If you could only read one of the books on your library list, what would it be?" And he said, "Of course, Wretched of the Earth, by Frantz Fanon."
So now we’re looking at a model of the house that Herman Wallace designed over the course of our 12-year correspondence. So he has this very large bottom floor. The top floor is predominantly his master bedroom and in-house greenhouse. There’s an escape chute with an underground tunnel that leads to the bunker. The swimming pool with the Black Panther in the center.
And then there’s a guest house. One of the more remarkable moments in our exchange was that when he first described the guesthouse, and I sent him drawings of it, of what I understood he wanted, he said it was too small, and guests might feel claustrophobic, so let’s build the front out of glass.
To give you a sense of scale, inside that bathroom in the master bedroom, he asked that he have a hot tub that was six-foot-by-nine-foot. And the cell he was currently in was six-foot-by-eight.
In the display cases are letters and envelopes from our exchange—the first time that any letter from myself has been exhibited, because Herman had them all. And after he passed, the prison sent them back to me. I mean, it’s really beautiful. Just the small details of how much I doodled on his envelopes and how much he doodled on mine was just a testament to our friendship. So it’s a mixture of Herman’s drawings and my drawings and some of the communication that went back and forth.
And then here you can see some of the renderings of the house, that then became a model, that then became a CAD model, which is much more formal. So the house is ready to be built, as soon as we have funding.
And in these cases is a continuation of the letter exchange between Herman and I. They’ve also included Herman’s obituary in The New York Times and his final statement, where he remained a servant of the people until his last breath.
I think it’s incredibly brave for the library to host this exhibition, because it’s controversial in and of its content, and it’s also an incredible conversation piece. So it’s a really great honor for me to be amongst the process of this space. And as libraries redefine their purpose in society, the less that people are actually checking books out, this library in particular has been really courageous in cultivating conversations around decarceration and examining the culture of punishment in the United States. And so, to kick it off with this exhibition is an incredible honor for me and, I think, absolutely courageous on their part.
AMY GOODMAN: That was artist Jackie Sumell giving a tour of her show, "#76759: Featuring the House That Herman Built," at the Brooklyn Public Library’s main branch. Special thanks to Elizabeth Press. An updated version of Jackie’s book, The House That Herman Built, has also just been released. All of this comes as the conviction of the last member of the Angola 3, Albert Woodfox, has also been overturned, but he remains behind bars as the state is now appealing his case for the third time. Jackie Sumell joins us now for more here in New York, though you usually live in New Orleans.
Very quickly, when Herman Wallace was released back in October of 2013 by a federal judge, Jackson, who told the warden, if he doesn’t release him—he was dying of cancer—he would jail the warden. And that’s when the ambulance came up to the prison, and they took him out. Three days later, he would die. Talk about this project you have engaged in to remember Herman and to talk about solitary confinement, and where Albert Woodfox fits into this.
JACKIE SUMELL: Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for having me. It’s an incredible honor to be here. The project itself has shifted its storyline slightly, because for the 12 years that I was collaborating with Herman as a living, breathing being, it was about giving him voice, despite the system’s continued prosecution to remove his voice, right? And now this project is more about his legacy, which was a legacy to abolish the prolonged use of solitary confinement and cruel and unusual punishment in our corrections system. And so, this is why we shifted the name and we call it "#76759," to illustrate how the Department of Corrections reduces human beings to numbers, because their number one goal is to dehumanize our families, our loved ones, and anyone who’s been convicted, wrongfully or not, of a so-called crime in the United States.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And how did you get involved with Herman and build this collaboration over so many years?
JACKIE SUMELL: Yeah, I met an amazing man named Robert King, who had just been released after 29 years of solitary confinement, 31 years of wrongful conviction, in Angola. And he came to San Francisco, where I was a graduate student, and addressed the audience with such grace and such ease and was at peace with where he was, but was so fundamental and instrumental in changing the system. I recognized I needed to learn something from this man. You know, this was an incredible person. And so I just asked him what I could do. And he said, "Write my comrades."
And so I started writing both Herman and Albert, at which time Herman got thrown into the dungeon, which is actually more punitive than solitary confinement in Angola. And he got thrown into the dungeon this time for possessing contraband, which was a pamphlet from a Black Panther reunion, a 40-year reunion. And so I started to see Herman’s condition dilapidate through his handwriting, through his ability to hold onto a sentence. You know, his imagination started to drown. And I realized I needed to do something.
AMY GOODMAN: So, Herman has died. Albert Woodfox is still in prison, though his conviction has been overturned three times?
JACKIE SUMELL: Yeah, isn’t that amazing? So just to illustrate some of the flaws of our judicial system, Albert Woodfox’s conviction has been overturned three times. The state of Louisiana—
AMY GOODMAN: In solitary confinement for 40-some years?
JACKIE SUMELL: Yeah, he’s—on April 17th, which I believe is today, isn’t it? is the 43rd year of solitary confinement for Albert Woodfox, yeah. Despite his conviction being overturned, he’s in West Feliciana Parish Prison jail, in solitary confinement, because the state continues to appeal. And right now they’re contesting bail. So he’s got a bail hearing; he’s got an application for bail in front of the federal court.
In Louisiana, former prosecutor Marty Stroud has met with former death row prisoner Glenn Ford to apologize to him for wrongfully charging him with murder. After 30 years in prison, Ford was released from death row last year after the state admitted new evidence proves he was not the killer. Stroud recently wrote a three-page letter in the Shreveport Times calling on the state to stop refusing to compensate Ford, who now has stage 4 lung cancer. We get an update on Ford’s case from his friend Jackie Sumell.
TRANSCRIPT
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
AMY GOODMAN: We only have a minute, and I also want to get to Glenn Ford—
JACKIE SUMELL: Yeah, absolutely.
AMY GOODMAN: —and the work you do with him, who was sentenced to death for the murder of a man in Shreveport, Louisiana. After 30 years in prison, Ford was released from death row last year after the state admitted new evidence proves he was not the killer.
Last week, I spoke with the lead prosecutor in Ford’s murder trial, Marty Stroud, who recently wrote a three-page letter to the Shreveport Times calling on the state to stop refusing to compensate Ford, who’s now dying of stage 4 liver cancer. You’re one of his hospice partners, helping Glenn. Marty Stroud, since we talked, has gone to meet and apologize to Glenn Ford directly?
JACKIE SUMELL: Yeah. I mean, Marty Ford—Stroud, excuse me, has apologized to Glenn Ford. Whether or not that apology is anything significant after enduring 30 years of wrongful conviction on death row in solitary confinement—
AMY GOODMAN: And the state still refuses to compensate?
JACKIE SUMELL: Compensate him financially. So he’s completely underinsured. His medical care is some—a combination of volunteers, like myself, who are incredibly honored to be able to serve and work with Glenn, and then basic care from the state.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, Jackie Sumell, we will link to your exhibit at the Brooklyn Public Library that has just opened.
JACKIE SUMELL: Thank you.
AMY GOODMAN: The book has just come out again, Herman’s House. And [Nightline] is doing a special on Glenn Ford’s case tonight.
That does it for our broadcast. We’re looking to hire a social media producer. It’s a full-time job. Go to our website.
I’ll also be speaking at Colorado College Thursday, April 23rd, at 7:00 p.m. in Colorado Springs. Go to our website for more.
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