Defining "political prisoner" is a risky endeavor, historian Dan Berger notes in the introduction to his recently released book on the topic, The Struggle Within: Prisons, Political Prisoners, and Mass Movements in the United States. Too often, it's assumed that political prisoners are people who "haven't done anything" - who are imprisoned simply because of their beliefs. However, as Berger articulates throughout this engrossing, fact-packed primer, most political prisoners did do something: They participated actively in movements to resist state power, often acting outside the bounds of the law. And so, rather than limiting conversations about political prisoners to determinations of "innocence" and "guilt," it's much more useful to discuss how and why the state attempted to suppress those movements. Through recounting the incarceration of activists fighting for black liberation, Native American sovereignty, Puerto Rican independence, economic justice, the abolition of nuclear weapons and more, Berger illustrates how imprisonment serves as a political tool deployed to maintain the status quo.
The activists Berger introduces us to aren't usually protesting legislation or railing against particular politicians housed within current power structures. They're working to disrupt the deep groundings of those structures - including the legitimacy of the law itself. In other words, they're shaking the foundation of the very laws that are later used to confine them.
