Alcatraz’s Cultural Legacy Extends Beyond Its Prison Past

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 24 July 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The Trump administration is pushing to reopen Alcatraz as a federal prison, requiring the repeal of National Park protections and ending its six-decade transformation from America’s most notorious penitentiary into one of its most popular tourist sites. Throughout its long history, Alcatraz has served not only as a prison, but also as a military base, a site of Native American unity and resistance, a bird sanctuary, and a tourist site for 1.4 million of visitors who journey to it every year. Critics contend that the effort to convert it back into a prison is a wasteful folly. While others decry the loss of the site as a national park and museum, which offers a historical perspective into the American carceral system. We talk about the unique space that Alcatraz occupies in Bay Area cultural history, and its lasting legacy. Guests: Michele Gee, deputy chief executive officer, Golden Gate National Parks Conservancy Kent Blansett, associate professor of Native American studies and history, University of Kansas; author, "Journey to Freedom: Richard Oakes, Alcatraz, and the Red Power Movement" Jolene Babyak, former resident of Alcatraz; author, “Breaking the Rock: The Great Escape from Alcatraz” Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for KQED Podcasts comes from San Francisco International Airport. Why lug your luggage?
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0:19.5	Support for KQED podcasts comes from the San Jose Museum of Art.
0:23.8	Photographer Paul Ho-Hare
0:25.3	explores homeland and family
0:27.2	among her Hmong American Community.
0:30.1	See the imaginative landscape.
0:32.4	Learn more at SJM-U-S-A-R-T.org.
0:37.2	From K-Q-E-D.
0:52.2	From K-Q-E-D in San Francisco, I'm Alexis Madrigal.
0:54.2	So, Alcatraz.
0:56.2	You've heard unless you're living under the rock, and probably even then, that Donald Trump has proposed turning Alcatraz back into a prison.
1:03.7	And yes, we know that Nancy Pelosi has called it the, quote, stupidest initiative put forward by the administration.
1:09.8	Today, we'd like to redirect some of that attention to the real history of Alcatraz and its
1:15.6	importance to Bay Area culture.
1:17.6	Many people somehow still think it's surrounded by great white sharks or don't know about the
1:22.6	remarkable 19-month American Indian occupation of the island.
1:26.6	We'll tell the real story of this place right after this news.
1:40.3	Welcome to Forum.
1:41.6	I'm Alexis Madrigal.
1:43.3	Let's get this out of the way. To my knowledge, no one who is deeply familiar with the current reality of Alcatraz believes that it should or even could be turned back into a federal prison, a status that gave up 60 years ago. There are logistical, financial, and a lot of other reasons for that. And it feels a little absurd to have to recite them
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