Award winning journalist Lance Tapley of the Portland Phoenix speaks about this pressing issue of Maine, the USA and the world, and how the human rights of prisoners are constantly denied and violated.

What was amazing was that there three videographers recording Lance Tapley. Back on January 31, 2008, I had to recruit Joe Friendly of New York to come up to Boston to record Noam Chomsky. The videographers were Jeffrey Phillips of Portland Cable Access, Richard Rhames of Biddeford Cable Access and yours truly. Maine IndyMedia members should be proud of themselves.

Tapley started by noting, “I remember a friend, very progressive, good man, saying to me when I started talking about this subject, ‘Prisoners have rights?’ Question mark! And what that told me was that he didn’t think of them as human beings. Human beings have rights. That’s sorta the premise of this discussion.”

Cushman Anthony, a Portland attorney, long-time advocate for the rights of prisoners and Native Americans and founder of a new organization, Maine Lawyers Against War, expressed the need for rehabilitation services and the total lack of transitional programs for prisoners.

Throughout the talk, Tapley noted how liberals in Maine were concerned about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, but ignore what goes on Maine’s Super Max in Warren. Former political prisoner Ray Luc Levasseur summed it up well when he said “My experience with the liberal progressives since I’ve come back a few years ago in this state is that they wouldn’t recognize class or race if it bit them on the ass.”

Tapley speaks for 50 minutes and answers questions for 48 minutes.

This is a fine companion piece to two RFM recordings, Ruth Wilson Gilmore speaking on The Prison Industrial Complex After 25 Years at Bates College in Lewiston on March 22, 2007 and Raymond Luc Levasseur speaking on Political Prisoners with Lenny Sharon, Defense Attorney for Political Prisoners at the Northeast Regional Meeting of the National Lawyers Guild at the Maine Law School in Portland on April 2, 2005.

Recorded by Roger Leisner on March 7, 2008 at the Meg Perry Center in Portland, Maine.

Available on audiotape cassette, audio CD, VHS video and DVD video.

For information on how to order, please contact

Roger Leisner
P.O. Box 2705
Augusta, Maine 04338

207-242-0643 Cell Phone

rleisnerrfm [at] yahoo [dot] com