T. E. Hannon made a statement yesterday that they had met with us over thirty times. That’s kind of weird, because I’ve never seen him around, except for about three times. I can actually name things that were said. Yeah, well, anyway, we told the government, no, we don’t plan on leaving. Well, the situation was, they said that it’s [Alcatraz] going to be a national park with an Indian flavor and that they were removing their officials from the lighthouse. They encouraged us to leave too. So today they cut off the electricity, and yesterday they took our water barge. We were told we’d get it back by today, so we would have plenty of water for the weekend. This is the story we were told, then they ripped us off. They took off with that water barge. Took the GSA personnel off the island. There are only Indians here now.
So we have a good food supply coming, and water is limited now because of what they left us with. We are starting to ration the water, but the morale is really high you know. Everyone is starting to pitch in when the boats come in down there. I don’t think we will be losing any people out of it—the intimidation[s] they have put on us. I don’t know, I think things are going to start getting tight now, but then actually to me they are just intimidating us, you know, waiting for us to make some kind of move, because we have been out here six months and they haven’t done anything. So I feel they will continue the waiting game in hopes that we will all give up and go home. I feel they will probably come in here and rip us off, ripping us off the island, because they’ve done everything else in the last couple of months and have gotten away with it. But we need water. So anyone out there, jump in your boat and bring us some water. We will let you land. I mean, we will let you come in and give us some water anyway. Because water is going to become a problem. If we have any big problem, that is going to be it, water. ~
SOURCE: Johnson, Troy R, The Occupation of Alcatraz Island, 1996.