Trump’s Alcatraz Prison Proposal Met with Tourist Outrage

In the inclement amnion of the San Francisco Bay, on an austere rock, lies a crumbling above federal bastille that’s now at the centermost of Donald Trump’s latest absolute acreage proposal: “REBUILD, AND OPEN ALCATRAZ!” he appears on Truth Social over the weekend, to “serve as an attribute of Law, Order and JUSTICE.”

On Monday, the day afterwards Trump’s declaration, throngs of tourists queued up for the bear at Fisherman’s Wharf to appointment the island.

Reacting to Trump’s plan, Jonathan Perez, 20, an attitude apprentice from Miami, was curt: “He’s insane.”

Standing central the above bastille cellhouse, Perez looks about abashed at the anticipation that the belled bastille could appear aback to life.

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“He’s already apparent his activity for accumulation incarceration as apparent in El Salvador, and he had mentioned application Guantánamo Bay to apprehend people,” said Perez. “I anticipate it’s horrible. They are alone the bastille for a reason.”

Alcatraz is steeped in bucking – an active attribute of backbreaking accompaniment power, Indigenous attrition and amplitude area tourists are encouraged to reflect on history, memory, and justice. The above bastille is now a building run by the Civic Park Service and is one of San Francisco’s best accepted day-tripper destinations, with 1.4 actor visitors a year. California admiral accepts alleged the abstraction of reopening the prison, which has been shuttered aback the 1960s, a cool and absurd political distraction.

On the island, abounding visitors seemed to agree. “As tourists we’re a bit abashed with that news, because how old it is and how continued aback it’s absolutely been inhabited,” said Janelle Lawson, a day-tripper from Australia. “There’ll accept to be a lot of money put into the basement to be able to accomplish it adequate again.”

“Typical Donald Trump announcement,” chuckled her husband, Wally Lawson, a retired IT teacher. “I anticipate it’s a bit of an achievement to get the media off the added decisions he’s made. There’s alone so abundant a bi-weekly can book a day, so all the added being that’s activity on doesn’t get as abundant coverage.”

Stepping off the bear and on to Alcatraz Island, Matti Oshri, 66, had an added favorable assessment. “Trump – he is the best,” said Oshri, who came up from LA to bout Alcatraz with her ancestors who are visiting from Israel. She doesn’t apperceive why he wants to transform the accepted day-tripper allure into a prison, but she believes he will chase through: “I anticipate he’s gonna do it. He’s crazy, but acceptable crazy.”

No one from the Civic Park Service, which operates Alcatraz, was accustomed to alleging to the press, but aggravation was apparent amid staff.

Two French couples from Toulouse who’ve been touring America’s civic parks collectively shrugged, formed their eyes, and said they didn’t anticipate the angle was serious.

“He’s boot backwards. Tomorrow, he’ll advertise article else,” said Regina Jaquelle, a retired badge officer, as her accompany access into laughter. “As a president, he is not credible.”

“This is aloof addition amount of bullshit,” added her husband, Eric Jacquelle. The two couples mocked the added acreage deals – from axis Gaza into a French Riviera to addition Greenland, Panama and Canada – that Trump has mused about publicly.

Trump’s Alcatraz Revival Plan Blasted as Costly, Offensive to Indigenous Legacy

‘Doubling down’ on an agitated legacy
Alcatraz was bankrupt in 1963 because it was three times added cheer to accomplish than any added federal prison, according to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, in ample allotment due to its island area and abridgement of amenities that meant aggregate from aliment to beginning to baptize had to be brought in.

“With the accompaniment of our abridgement appropriate now, if it was too big-ticket to run then, it’s absolutely gonna be too big-ticket to run now,” said Tolu Ogundele, 22-year-old attitude apprentice at Kennesaw accompaniment university in Georgia. She was aflame to appointment Alcatraz, but didn’t anticipate abundant of Trump’s plan. “Honestly, he doesn’t accept actual abounding acceptable ideas,” she added.

After its closure, the island took on an additional activity as an armpit of Indigenous resistance. In 1969 an accumulation of Native American activists active Alcatraz, declaring it absolute Indigenous acreage in an act of beef adjoin burst treaties and systemic neglect. The 19-month activity galvanized the avant-garde Indigenous rights movement whose bequest endures today.

“I anticipate it should abide what it is, a civic monument,” said Jacqueline Kemokai, a retired assistant from Tampa, who was confused by that history. “They’ve taken so abundant of the accomplished abroad already and there needs to be article larboard abaft to accumulate our memories going,” said Kemokai.

It’s a history that’s animate and able-bodied for Morning Star Gali, a affiliate of the Aju Mawi bandage of Pit River Tribe. For the accomplished 16 years, Gali has been acclimation the better Aurora Ceremony in the US on Alcatraz. The events, hosted in November on Indigenous people’s day and Thanksgiving, allure bags of bodies including associates of over 300 tribes from beyond the US.

Turning Alcatraz aback into a bastille would end the aurora ceremonies, said Gali, who has been accessory them aback she was an adolescent and got her name, Morning Star, there. For her, Alcatraz is an angelic armpit of Indigenous attrition and resilience. “Reopening Alcatraz as a bastille would not aloof be an act of actual abandoning – it would be an acknowledgment that this country is acceleration bottomward on its best agitated legacies,” she told the Guardian by phone. “That’s area the aboriginal California Indian leaders were imprisoned, and that’s a history that’s still not broadly shared,” she added.

“Everything is aloof shock and awe. It’s all allotment of the performance. It’s aloof clickbait,” agreed Louwagie McGill, an affiliate of the Round Valley Indian tribe.

For McGill, Indigenous incarceration is not alone an affair of the past. He spent time central the California accompaniment bastille arrangement and calls absorption to the asymmetric amount at which Indigenous bodies are incarcerated. He now works as a reentry coordinator for Indigenous Amends allowance confined Indigenous bodies reenter association afterwards confined time.

McGill, who goes out to Alcatraz six to eight times a year for the Aurora ceremonies and to accord history tours to students, thinks it’s unrealistic to clean the federal penitentiary there: “That abode is decrepit, it’s bankrupt down, it doesn’t’ assignment well.”

Gali has a altered eyes for its future: “I’d adulation to see it alternate to the Indigenous peoples.”