‘Seize the time’: an interview with Stephen Jones

Abstract

There is a long and substantial history of prisoners’ rights movements in the US, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, which was spearheaded by Black prisoners, notably figures such as George Jackson, subsequently murdered by prison guards. They were forging a new politics and understanding of the role of incarceration in a capitalist state, a politics echoed in prisons around the world. On the fortieth anniversary of the Attica uprising, in which prisoners seized control of the prison and issued a series of political demands, and which was subsequently crushed with overwhelming force, leaving thirty-nine dead, this article reflects on that history. The lineage of radical Black politics, forged in the increasingly harsh and increasingly generalised conditions of the prison industrial complex, continues not only through the writings of prisoners like Mumia Abu Jamal, but also through the work and teaching of formerly incarcerated Black activists like Stephen Jones, whose insights, analysis and history are presented through his interview here.