america know at some level prisons and jails are places rooted in violence punishment racism neglect incompetency dysfunctionality and hate guards ignore medical needs perpetrate direct violence against prisoners and connive to stir up violence among prisoners themselves supervising authorities often are in conflict or  incapable or both of carrying out protocols which are often arbitrary irrational inhumane or just plain stupid prisoners die of homicide suicide and medical neglect every day a rich white guy jeffrey epstein hangs himself and america is astounded and still wonders and asks how when why attorney general barr is appalled quote unquote at the quote unquote serious irregularities that's appalling and astounding itself one of our guest today on the radical magination is stanley howard has been locked up in the illinois prison system for the past thirty five years ever since he was tortured by chicago police into confessing to crimes he didn't commit over a one hundred other black men were also tortured by chicago cops some like howard wound up on death row and were later released by the governor howard remains in prison up to this day on other charges he's co author of a new book tortured by blue this chicago police torture story and he argues the public needs to hear the truth from the victims of police torture and he'll be calling into the show in just a few minutes from the illinois prison where he's incarcerated our other guest is alan stalls are long time activist in the anti war going to zation military initiative where stanley is also a member alan has been working tirelessly for years in the peace movement and to establish justice for stanley and other members of the chicago torture victims who have spent more than one hundred years in maximum security prisons on illinois death row welcome alan thanks to the radical measures thanks police torch a story tells a little bit about your connections here to stanley to your own organization how you've been involved in this how do you get involved with service our organization the military an initiative which prime purpose is to outreach to the military right our anti war message based on in certain ways what happened in vietnam because there was a tremendous g i movement military movement against the war at that time  we formed as the military project in two thousand and three almost directly after the iraq invasion stanley was one of the original members and to give you some idea of his organizational capabilities he organized a group called prisoners against the war in person ready a w and he organized several people and they had a running organization at that point i began my correspondence with him  which has been going on so he all these years independently organized in prison and then you heard about and then connected with well he was a member of our group right but i believe you took that  himself i mean that's the kind of personality who has right he's not an ordinary individual believe me i was involved with the campaign to end capital punishment as well yeah he was in prison too he was a big part of that he was on death row for eighteen years  death row means that almost any time you can be called for execution and in the year two thousand the governor of illinois governor ryan i believe was his name pardon stanley and three others a nd also community the sense of one hundred and seventy six other prisoners which was something that was unprecedented and historical and i do remember on gil knoebels show like it is that they had a great community   that are already in need to understand as you were saying before this is a cultural this is a political this is a exceedingly profound examination of the criminal justice system by one of the victims itself  person a couple of years ago he's a person that can maintain two or three subjects at the same time switch back and forth whenever he wants to i've met while i was sitting there and listening to him for about an hour i reminiscent of malcolm x right he's that kind of individual and hopefully when the next couple of years he's going to be released by that time who served about forty years and they kept him on ice for a long time and the initial charge was one i believe it was homicide he was tortured in a barbaric way i so many more and and stanley is very specific about it in the book necessarily and in my opinion it not only illuminated the the type of criminal justice that's issued here it's historical about what africans and african americans have had to go through for four hundred years not just a bit to kill or police routinely right and the head of the the police department that performed this was the notorious john birch is dead now and the who was up on trial was accused but the statute of limitations ha passed he could be charged with torture but he was charged with perjury and convicted and he did about thirty three dollars and a half years in atlanta did he's dead now but none of the other officers ever not got so that they're all understood to this point this not only takes in the police's right it's the whole mechanism it's a whole apparatus a prosecutor the state's attorneys a state's attorney's mayor daley was aware of it a lot of people are aware of it and they just did nothing about it but this book begins to reveal all that so i think it goes beyond the essential story and the broad is out the things that are necessary and it's like the central park five i mean we're talking at this sort of level of  of understanding that has to happen right to see the connections and again it you have to really dig because this isn't going to happen it's not going to happen in the mass media and it often has to happen c three others who co wrote the book they're out now they're on this side of the wall and they can be accessed they have phone numbers for interviews and such things so he now is capable of calling out you can't call him in you can't call him but he can call out and i can also e mail him because i'm registered to do so and instructed me at it to do so and it takes another three days to get the e mail and but the other three co authors mark clements mark marvin reeves ronald kitchen can be accessed and so they're available to the truck to also be interviewed and to sort read the work because again that's very important that's part of the reason we're doing it the right right to get that word out get the media to start paying attention well to list everybody in that book he doesn't skip anybody no one he he had no access to a computer he had to use a typewriter he said to us and what i eventually had to do is i had to retire all of it either word process all of it so to put it on file electronically then i would send it to his wife in chicago i proof it and sooner or later we got it together it was presentable for publication   case itself and the situation there he's where until now i do we he's in dixon illinois which is ronald reagan country it's about two hours west of chicago  louder it is great it's wonderful to have you on our show allen has been filling us in a little bit on the case and i know you don't have a whole lot of time so please tell us in your own words  why this is such a profound case such an important case for america to begin to understand and to recognize become aware of what part of i'd like to thank you also give we are hoping that if we change how prosecutors prosecute cases because they are able to live with this is the last falsif personal stories but obviously they touch on structural institutional issues prosecutors the police judges state attorneys and so on the cruelty  were tortured what would you do if you found out that the prosecutor did it at the you've done twenty five years in the penitentiary or twenty five years on death row what would happen what would you be willing to  talking about this book and promoting it on this program we also really like to know our audience would also love to know how you've been organizing with in prison the campaigns in the death penalty for example also the  give often is is unbelievable and we're we're so lucky to have heard your story and to hear your from your fight inspires us all and the audience here is just spellbound i'm sure if i what you're talking about we know you have family too that's working with you right you have a wife that has stood by you and gives you support and help as well so you have people on the outside here and they'll be more and more of us who will get the story and and bring it out and we await your swift return to the water society where and really it is a sister of ours and myself or i'm a player so we involved and stanley is very optimistic he believes so like well that's how fortune society got started right developed and it's a little different communicating with stanley's you know oversee everything right so we can get to whenever we want to write is always a delay but if you want to do it we'll do yeah that would be fantastic the thing that gets to me is the cultural aspect of it that this inhumanity this barbarism is taking place at this point i mean it's thirty years ago thirty five years ago but nevertheless it's done in such casual fashion i think this book is in showing how deeply rooted is and how important it is to smash you don't legislate it you have to smash it and there's a lot of force that has to be  accrued in order to confront it in that way it's not something that you can say oh we'll take care in the next election no no the rest goes back four hundred years so you as a political organizer too and connecting this to your interests and struggles as an anti war activist see the connections here the racism current political oppression and so on so when you talk about talk a little about your own actions of course that's when we met  marine nd street exactly that and yeah we want up there many times we had some very very interesting experience i was one i must tell you that the c e o stopped us one hundred and he said this is ten years ago right and he said for that matter what that's true i mean it was it you know what they were uniform but the point is that now and in the future when you want them on our side when you want it is not only to help out in natural disasters but possible political turmoil shall we say in the future don't you want them and i loosely absolute so on that basis it doesn't matter we have results at this very moment it's for the future that's important so we need to do all we are trying to do is keep that seraing pulse alive they know we've been complet meant it many times or other times they've troops have shown us the difference and other times contempt but very often very often they have been very very and he took it down one time also in the break room there with the national guard patrols in the three major commuted terminals of the books that we hand out for example we've been continually hand out handing out soldiers in revolt which is the well known burn pits which is about the burn pits that were provided in afghanistan afghanistan and in iraq with any without any controls and everything was thrown in there burn very dangerous material and many people have become ill in the burn military against political dissent against any opposition so there's as i don't think i need to tell you fear that that is one of the things he's also attending to prepare the country for so again the resistance of the small interest in fact it's over the resistance in vietnam you know that the soldiers that revolted most of them were not draftees they were enlisted and they discovered that they i had been lied to and taken for a ride and they took a very very negative turn on that and reacted in fashion so we consider them to be an actual certainly potential ally in any kind of struggle about the oppression that we're facing there may take a most even more serious form in the future right but you do have optimism that the military a military  he spark an initiate this that or the other thing i really can't say but from this is from a person i'd much rather talk about stanley but yeah a personal point of view calvin coolidge once said the business of the american people  talk about hoping to talk about struggling man been away for thirty six years and if you hear the clarity of that mind and what he is up to and how he is an activist still in prison imagine what he's going to be when he gets out the leadership went to see him i sat there i couldn't believe that this guy been away this long and still maintain his mentality it's number one insanity alone and he's a remarkable you and me i think the political organizing has been the system needs to be shocked and so that in so many words to me among other things stanley is the essence str from where he has been personally and how he manages to collectivize and forget about his own personality i've known the man for years i've never heard a syllable of complaint from him not he grew up in say but one it is obviously tempted to say it's logical to believe it came from is his family line he's genealogy or whatever it may be but i'm just saying well we got him i mean it kills me that he's where he is but considering where he is he's never going to let that never never right you make that up in the interview as well right he's never going to let that defeat and he's going to come out still relatives and he's with me what sixty or so yeah so he's still incredibly vigorous and vital and so on so if you give me a very very significant leader that's exactly right the sky's the limit with him i've never met anybody like him know i mean his intellectual capacity as we interrupted i don't remember he'll he'll bounce two or three subjects and have a back and forth between each one and they'll just pick up and down and i never  what else would you like to say that we haven't talked about yet about the book well tortured by blue yeah it's it's more than just a kind of cop story it's more than just the torture stories i was implying before wearing it has tremendous cultural potential and because the graphic truth of it reverberates it brings echoes back of what happened four hundred years ago  hundred years or something for so we're jamestown young and all the things that took place much of it has been suppressed and it only really began leaking out to white people if you could talk about a mass scale as i can remember in the thing about me when i was i was a school we were nothing like that it was even approach never mind that it was the indigenous people were never spoken about either any kind of reasonable well as i implied also in the opening there we're to have this done tells you something else about what is wrong with the system because this is not anything unusual in this is happening daily to people all across the country that's right and so we need to as we speak as we speak as we speak and we do we do have a few more minutes here so so how can we support steadily more what else can we do you well if you're in a community if you're part of an organization if people are all concerned about all these mass killings that take place more here than anywhere else in the earth on earth they happen people flip out wherever you go where not nearly as frequently as they do here something's wrong pay to see the sopranos because s dark side of the american dream right right the godfather godfather two well that's its st that's more classic right but it's young so how do we break out of people out there can think that you have to bring new ideas and not the old left this ideas necessarily but new ones in terms of approaching these problems i mean you just said listening to stanley right that's a suspect not leadership i don't know what is right you're you're you're really opening up a tremendous conversation here we only have two minutes to go but but please spend a little time connecting what stanley was talking about and this collective more milton action nonviolent well i mean not nonviolence is always had its place but if you're going to ask me personally yeah i've always been a great believer in self defense self defense ok and there's a lot of people who  again this is the book tortured by blue the chicago police torture story everybody should pick it up i hope you've enjoyed the show this has been terrific alan thank you so very very m we can reach you at the military initiative yeah we're on org ok dot org so thank you so very very much as jim bridles for the radical magination we're going to go out with sam cooke and then a short clip of malcolm x talking about moses christ and jail working on the chai