Part 2

The second interview focuses on Merretazon's experiences coming home from Vietnam in the summer of 1968. He plotted the robbery of an armored vehicle transporting more than $300,000 in outdated currency that would be incinerated by the Department of the Treasury. Although no one was injured, Merretazon was sentenced to life at Lorton Reformatory, a federal prison outside of Washington D.C. Reports indicated that Lorton Reformatory consisted of more than 95% Black men.1 But during this time, he found a calling advocating for veterans. He organized for education opportunities and self-care programs for incarcerated people and founded the Incarcerated Veterans Assistance Organization. Staffed entirely by incarcerated veterans, the Incarcerated Veterans Assistance Organizatiob became the first Veterans Affairs office inside a prison. Their efforts organizing for disability rights and veterans benefits captured the attention of the Washington Post in 1975 and eventually the White House.2 Merretazon met with President Jimmy Carter and later testified on issues facing incarcerated veterans before Congress in 1979.

Coming Home in the Summer of 1968

Jason Higgins: I'm curious about how did the killing of an icon of nonviolence, of civil disobedience. He was an anti-war activist. He was an organizer against poverty. How did that affect your own ideas about the United States?

Ari Sesu Merretazon: Well, you have to go back to the short bit of time, my last six months in the war. That's when the Black soldiers really came together. We really understood we had a common bond and we understood what was happening in Vietnam in terms of Black, white relationships. We always received the bad end of the deal. The worst jobs, the last to be promoted. Even in combat when clearly can be seen that you made some heroic act that should have been acknowledged and they just don't do it. They give you a little commendation medal and stuff like that, but it has to be very obvious and the Black soldier had to totally put his life on line for the whole period of that particular battle.

Look, the Black soldier in Vietnam was very heroic. Don't let anybody tell you that they were not. Some of these military pictures, army pictures, Vietnam movies showed them in a calorie mode like Platoon. Platoon for me reflected my recon platoon because it was the same division, the 25th Infantry Division. It was a headquarter platoon. I mean, we went anywhere for any 25th Infantry Division action was or any soldiers were. That for me, coming home had that traumatic effect. I understood that DC was on fire, Martin Luther King had got assassinated, other cities on fire. I knew I needed to take a step back and I stayed with my mom and dad for 30 days. Then I went and enrolled myself into a computer operating course that flimflam me, took my money and ran off, closed down and all that type of thing.

Disconnected after the War

We actually disconnected because nobody was talking to me. It was just me and my readjustment issues which was anger. Anger was not at anybody but the federal government. My anger was because I had to fight two wars in Vietnam. One against the Vietnamese in the Viet Cong, and also the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, and [NOISE] the racism in the military in Vietnam. Now, I'm not going to attribute [NOISE] all the soldier who ended up in the stockade in Vietnam Long Binh Jail, 95 percent of the Long Binh Jail population was Black soldiers. Now, there's something wrong with that. We all knew what was wrong with that. It was the racism in the military. You get the wrong end of the stick. You get to bad end of the deal. I came home understanding. In fact, the group that was with, my 4, 5 brothers, we was basically talk to us about what we're going to do when we got home. We knew that we were going to come back and help our communities out. We used to talk about that. We used to reinforce each other about that. When I saw an opportunity to do that, that's what I did. I got back involved in my community, all the culture as things of being a descendant of African slaves in the United States. I went to work for the post office for a while and doing that dynamic a year period of working for the post office. In my reconnecting with my culture and the community, I saw an opportunity to bring some resources into the community level, that was the Dead Presidents piece.

An Act of Repair

Jason Higgins: I want to talk about that a little bit more because in Bloods, it talks about you donated some of the, I think it was $320,000 total that was robbed. What specific organizations did you donate that money to?

Ari Sesu Merretazon: Well, there was a Student Medical Center at Howard university. We gave them some money. We gave the tip of Blackness also money, we gave the Capital East Business Management Associates some money. We was doing those types of things with the resources we had and then there was just one of the participants decided to just start throwing money anywhere. Police that we were giving money, they had the wherewithal to clean up the money. One of the actors on my side of the fence, he started passing money all out in DC, New York, California and all that type of stuff, and that's what lead back to [00:25:00] our capture and incarceration.

Jason Higgins: Because that's federal money and you're trying to give it back to the community, did you see it at the time as an act of reparations?

Ari Sesu Merretazon: Yeah. Absolutely. I saw it as an act of repair. The federal government is the major enslaver of descendants of Africans here in the United States. I always been clear about that. I always be in the clear about Blacks and White relationship in this country and if you're not clear about why you're in the military, you'd never get clear. They promote that there's no races in the military, if it is, low and whatnot, don't believe that. Government developed a system around it where those below the command can still engage in those type of relationships. Denied promotion, denying of good jobs or in the military or what is it?

MOS's and that type of thing, promotions. My whole thing was I'm ready to go back into the workplace now. I enrolled in school, hired at the post office, and I'm socializing with people at the post office. I come to find out what's going on. I understood what was going on. I thought I could make it happen. I could make sure that happened, all the resources to come back to our community and I did without putting anybody's life in danger. It had high social community notary about the crime, was a half public, they thought somebody else other than Black folks did it. That's really what went down because nobody's life was put in danger. The guard in the driver of the truck, they said they'd never feared anything. It's all based on what I've found out about the sources of money is coming into the post office in Washington DC.

Hollywood Portrayal

Jason Higgins: It's been awhile since I've seen the Hollywood version of that story but it doesn't seem to fit what you're talking.

Ari Sesu Merretazon: It doesn't fit. Look when I went out to Hollywood to the producers premier, where all the producers come together and watch the movie and make comments, whatever, I stood up, I said, "That's not my story." I told him, it's not my story. They told me, we said it's loosely based on your story. That's how it went down. I took my position on that and they took theirs and we got along. I got paid. Obviously, they made a pay of $20 million off the movie and maybe more now because it's still out there.

Jason Higgins: For someone who's trying to understand the struggles of Black Vietnam veterans, how would you explain that difference between how Hollywood portrays it versus reality?

Ari Sesu Merretazon: Well, you see Hollywood usually, very rarely show and depict Blacks in leadership in the military in those movies. They either make a squad leader, some lower level like that, down on the ground type folks. Even there, there is really no real Black leadership is allowed. That type of thing just connected me with my readjustment problems because I came back home angry. I was angry when I came home. Based on what I understood was happening to the degree I understood it, it was enough to get out, my anger just explored it and I said, "I've got to do something." I just didn't feel right just being having that presence again in my community and not doing anything. Because in Vietnam, where we came out in the field, the Blacks talked about who was going to do when he came home. I was committed to that and I did something and I was going to go out and let them know that did my piece. I did that to a certain degree in terms of connected with few of the veterans that came home with me.

The Trial

Jason Higgins: Let's talk about from the trial until your incarceration. What was that experience like for you?

Ari Sesu Merretazon: Well, I tried, I didn't testify, I didn't get on the stand. None of us got on the stand and the law's basic issue was to distinguish what extra crime was committed, whether or not it was an armed robbery or just a mail robbery. Because the sentence structure is different for both. For mail robbery, which we actually did, we leave in the custodians of the mail or the US mail, that's how it leaves out in the statute. That was a mandatory five years. You couldn't get him no more than five, but you had to get five. They knew the crime was got a lot of publicity about it and what have you.

The courts decided they're going to make an example of us and gave me 10-30 years. I told you before that I had this vision from the creator that I was going to go to war, and went to war and I was going to be imprisoned for five years. Imprisonment, you not staying home for about a year-and-a-half of that time. But on an occasion when I was being realized that it was a losing battle for me to continue to go up against that system as one individual, because I protests and everything as an individual. I wasn't cooperating with none of the system and the do's and dont's they've been doing. I stayed in home for quite awhile in and out. I wouldn't work. They finally decide and say, "Look, this guy is not going doing it and this guy, this is a veteran and so we got to be a little sensitive with him." When I came back out of maximum security the last time, instead of putting me into one of their regular job like the print place, the print office or whatever. I was able to manipulate the situation where I end up just being a custodian around the main office of the prison. I would just sweep up, and what have you and that type of thing around the cabinet of that type of thing. I loved that because it gave me all my independence. That took for 30 minutes. Mark Davis totally mine from that point on in that incarcerated environment. That's what every man in prison want; being able to have his own independent space, and time, and not be hunted into working. Grouped into work, and demanded that you work, and cover that. There is no law that required us to work while incarcerated. At least it wasn't in DC. I say, look, I don't have to work. Okay, I came here to do my time. That's the attitude I had for a while.

Solitary Confinement and Veterans

Jason Higgins: What prison were you incarcerated in?

Ari Sesu Merretazon: DC Department of Correction. It had a facility outside of DC, about 26 miles outside of DC called Lorton Reformatory, the infamous Lorton Reformatory. It's no longer existing. It was crazy. It's like being on the street. [LAUGHTER] It was just like being on the street, anything that you wanted you could get. You could do anything in the penitentiary because it's an open dormitory type of setting except when you go behind the wall, which is maximum security. You could do anything in Lorton Reformatory. There's a lot of background information about that dynamic by Lorton Reformatory, and it was like 26 miles from DC, and so it's close to home than most prisons.

The last time I went to the hole, it dawned on me my status of being an honorably discharged veteran, and that I could use that to organize around, and they would have to respect my organization, organized around veterans affairs in prison, which we'd call an incarcerated veteran. That's to the bone and it's called Incarcerated Veterans Assistance Organization.

Jason Higgins: Quick follow-up question, Ari. I'm really interested in the effects of solitary confinement on human beings. But it seems to me that if you're dealing with undiagnosed trauma, and PTSD, you would survive the Vietnam War. That would be especially hard to deal with. How did you survive or cope with a year-and-a-half in the hole?

Ari Sesu Merretazon: This unit have over different time frames of that five years. . . Total, a year-and-a-half in the hole. It's about 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. There was a rare amount. That's been about over the five years, probably about a year and a half in the hole. I realized I was working against myself.
When I came back up to the general population, I realized there was other Vietnam veterans. Twenty-five percent of Lorton Reformatory were veterans. I decided to organize and that's in my blood and so I organized them into what we call the Incarcerated Veteran Systems Organization, and was approved by the VA. We had an office approved by the VA inside the prison. For that development, I was acknowledged at the White House by Jimmy Carter, with Jimmy Carter doing the acknowledgment. I think I should share a picture with you at the time. That type of commitment to veterans that I had because it means we were to war together. Anytime you go to war with somebody, and they're on your side, and you all survive, there's a very close blood, love, bond. That's what happened. Just with blood, love is all about in the war. You're willing to die for the man next to you. Simple as that.

Full Interview Part 2