Honestly it is a curse to have spent so many years in school… Academia has a way of making it impossible for a person to write succinctly and clearly. I have now spent the past few years unlearning bad habits from years of graduate school. No one cares about any of this so back to my main point…

I am writing an article about the so-called “war on drugs” and its impact on young women of color. I really hate what I have written so far. When that happens, I decide to listen to music to get my mind off the pain of writing. So I put in my Black on Both Sides CD by Mos Def. Halfway through listening to the song “Mathematics”, I decided to chuck everything that I had just written. I turned off the CD player and went to lie down. Some lyrics just have a way of making things plain.

For example, in under 35 words, System of a Down said what I still could not convey in 3000. Here’s the relevant passage from their song called “Prison Song:”

all research and successful drug policy show
that treatment should be increased
and law enforcement decreased
while abolishing mandatory minimum sentences
they’re trying to build a prison
(for you and me to live in).

There you have it folks. There is no way to top the eloquence and simplicity of these words. So now this is the standard. I am going to tell the editor of the journal that she should call System of a Down and ask them to write the essay about how the war on drugs impacts women of color. They’re likely to send back two sentences that say it all…

Note: When I first posted this I was thinking about System of a Down’s “Prison Song” but I had been listening to “Mathematics” and attributed Prison Song’s lyrics to Mos Def. Thanks to a comment from a reader, I finally re-read the post and recognized my error. My apologies…

I have previously featured Ara Oshagan’s photography on this blog here. I am a fan of his work. Julie Haire, over at the Boy with Grenage blog alerted me to their interview with Ara. I will post some of that article below.

Ara Oshagan’s “Juvies” from Shawn Nee / discarted on Vimeo.

Interview by Shawn Nee and Julie Haire

Ara Oshagan is a Los Angeles-based documentary photographer who delved into the  world of the juvenile criminal justice to make “Juvies,” a moving series about the bleakness and despair of kids who are caught up in a broken system that has nothing to do with rehabilitation.

The project was developed in tandem with  filmmaker Leslie Neale, who created her own documentary on the subject. Oshagan graciously submitted to a long interview with us, and he has a lot of good insights on getting access, his process and the state of documentary photography today.

Leslie Neale’s documentary Juvies focuses on juvenile offenders in an LA County detention center. Can you tell us how you became the set photographer for the film?
Leslie had seen some of my work from Armenia and she invited me to shoot with her. From very early on in the project, I did not consider myself to be a set photographer but in a sense a collaborator, a documentary photographer working in parallel with the aim of developing a parallel project, a book that would be about the same kids and same topic.

For a project like “Juvies,” we’re always interested to know how the photographer was able get to permission to photograph such a difficult subject that involves state government and the prison system. It seems like you must have jump through a lot of hoops while cutting endless strands of red tape. Can you explain how you were able to gain access?
Leslie Neale was a magician when it came to access. She was politically very well-connected in high places (for instance she knew the DA well), and she had some very key people in Corrections supporting her work. She also had an assistant who dealt with access on a continual basis. Often we would get shut down during a shoot and then we would have to wait in a waiting area until Leslie or her assistant made some calls and then we got clearance to shoot again. It was a HUGE and tireless effort on her part because, as you know, no one wants to give you access. I was supremely fortunate to be part of her crew.

What was the routine like that you went through each time you entered the prison?
We came with a cart-load of equipment—camera man’s equipment, sound person’s equipment, myself with my camera gear. A list of all our equipment would have to be sent in ahead of time and then at the entrance to the prison, our equipment would be checked against that list. Then we would be allowed in. Always one or two corrections officers would be with us the whole time we were there.

Photographers are artists who are generally allowed to be creative and free-flowing, so was it at all challenging to photograph inside a place where there are many rules and restrictions?
This was the most challenging part of the work for me. My usual process is to wander and photograph whatever interests me in, for instance, a certain region or around a topic. And I tend to spend a lot of time with people until they are comfortable with my camera and myself. To make the kind of images I am interested in, I need people to be in their natural way of life and ignore my presence. My book Father Land is based on this process. And I always work alone. So, in prison, not only are you not allowed to wander too far away from the two corrections officers who are accompanying you, but you also have to deal with a film crew shooting at the same time and basically shooting the same thing you are shooting. And when you are in the yard for instance, all the prisoners are interested in you and looking at you and want to speak to you. Plus to be able to shoot anyone besides the youths who were in the film, we needed to get signed releases. So, the whole process was very cumbersome and not at all intuitive.

You should read the full interview. It is very interesting.

Wired Magazine has a fascinating article by Ben Paynter about the underground prison economy.

Nothing makes you more powerful inside the joint than a strong grounding in currency arbitrage. Inmates in federal penitentiaries aren’t allowed to have actual money; family members can load up prison commissary accounts, which usually max out at about $300 a month, but the money’s not transferable and can be redeemed only at the commissary. And cigarettes, the former gold standard for securing everything from a bodyguard to starched laundry, have all but disappeared since tobacco was banned at federal pens in 2004. So inmates have to rely on other forms of currency. All of which means the prison economy runs much like a commodities market: Money in a commissary account can’t be traded, but goods sold at the commissary can be. And since the amounts in circulation are tightly regulated, their value can far surpass their price in dollars. So if you’re sent away to, say, the US Penitentiary in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, for “mistakes” you made in the run-up to the Great Recession, here’s how to get the best return on your next investment.

1. Mackerel
Cost $1.40 per 3.5-ounce pouch
Limit 14 per week
Use Tipping for laundry service, cell cleanup, or a haircut.
Value If you don’t open the pouch, it never spoils … which means the fish retains its close-to-a-dollar value.

2. Instant Coffee
Cost $3.35 per 4-ounce bag
Limit 3 per week
Use Getting buzzed cheaply.
Value Prisons just say no to drugs, so caffeine is the licit stimulant of choice.

Read the full article here.

Look at the cover of Ja Rule’s 2003 album Blood in My Eye. See the prison in the background? He is paying homage to George Jackson's book of the same title. Yet the impactful cover art belies the crappy lyrics contained on the actual CD. Ja Rule’s words in no way measure up to the powerful ones written by Jackson.

This got me thinking about the fact that the most successful modern social movements (the black freedom movement, the anti-war movement, etc…) seem to have had an accompanying soundtrack.

What would be the soundtrack for a modern social movement to dismantle prisons? A few weeks ago, in response to a request, I offered a few songs about prisons/jails that I like. However besides Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos by Public Enemy and 16 on Death Row by Tupac from that list, I don’t know that I would include any of the other songs on my anti-PIC movement soundtrack.

This led me to think more deeply about the relationship between rap music and the prison industrial complex. A number of rappers offer prison as a setting for their lyrics, album covers and videos. Yet how often have you heard these performers actually talking about prison abolition or even reform? The answer is simple… very rarely. Why is this?

I have a theory that it is because incarceration among young black men has been and is naturalized in actuality and in representation. I think that hip hop artists don’t talk about reform or abolition because to them prison has been and is a part of the experience of being young and black in America. It is a black boy’s rite of passage so to speak. I have no empirical evidence of the truth of this claim. I am just making an assumption based on very limited knowledge. This will no doubt prove to be problematic when it is shown that I am completely wrong. Yet, how would you explain the disconnect? I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the matter…

I thought that this would be of particular interest to readers of this blog. There is a special radio event that airs tonight on WBAI which will bring together Angela Davis and Michelle Alexander. Here is the description of the program:

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness. Guests: Michelle Alexander, civil rights advocate and litigator, author and Angela Davis, Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz.

The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
with
— Michelle Alexander, civil rights advocate and litigator, author
— Angela Davis, Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz. She is a leading advocate in the movement to end the prison-industrial complex.

Alexander offers a bold and innovative argument that mass incarceration amounts to a devastating system of racial control. “Jarvious Cotton’s great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Klu Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation; his father was barred by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole.”

In her incisive critique, former litigator-turned-legal-scholar Michelle Alexander argues that we have not ended racial caste in America, we have simply redesigned it. Alexander shows that, by targeting black men and decimating communities of color, the U.S. criminal justice system functions as a contemporary system of racial control, even as it formally adheres to the principle of color blindness. Angela Davis explores the range of social problems associated with incarceration and the generalized criminalization of those communities that are most affected by poverty and racial discrimination. She urges us to think seriously about a world without prisons and to help forge a 21st century abolitionist movement.

*************************

Building Bridges: Your Community & Labor Report
Produced & Hosted by Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash

Listen on your Smartphone — WBAI live streams are available on the iPhone, BlackBerry, Android & other smartphones. For more information, click here.

Listen When You Want
Building Bridges and most WBAI Programs are now being archived for 90 Days. These links will be live ca. 15 minutes after the program ends. To listen, or download archived shows go here.

Visit their web site here.

Finally, you can click here to listen to the program tonight at 7 p.m. (eastern).

One of the things that I love about rap music is its worldwide appeal and its openness to improvisation… Here is Akon’s Ghetto remixed with Arab and Dutch performers:

I am tired of writing about cases of police brutality; especially those that involve brutal assaults on black teenagers. But alas… each day brings another such assault to light. Here is the latest incident; this one is out of Houston:

News One describes the content of the video and offers details of the case:

In the video, police kick and punch then 15-year-old Chad Holley, who does not fight back, multiple times. Holley laid motionless on the ground while a group of cops descended upon him.

Holley was a burglary suspect who was later convicted in July 2010.

The teenager has now filed a federal civil rights lawsuit alleging HPD officers beat him during his March 23 arrest.

Four Houston officers were indicted on official oppression charges and fired after a surveillance videotape surfaced reportedly showing them officers beating and kicking Holley while he was sprawled handcuffed on the ground. He was 15 at the time.

I am certain that the tragic irony of filing “official oppression” charges against the police officer involved is lost on the Houston prosecutors’ office.

By Josh MacPhee

My friend Gary shared some excerpts from prisoner zines that were published in the Utne Reader last year.   I was particularly moved and somewhat overwhelmed by the words of Lisa “Lee” Savage who wrote a farewell letter to solitary confinement just before her eventual release from prison:

Dear Lowell CM Unit,

Over the past two years of being trapped within this “hellhole,” your behavior modification (human mortification) chamber, I have written many formal letters against you to your conceivers—the DOC administration, and I’ve penned several articles to inform prisoners and “free world” citizens of your insidious plans to destroy my mind and any chance for a productive life once I am freed from your chokehold. But today is the first time I’ve ever written to you personally and I have many things to say, so bear with me as I’ve had to bear with you every minute of these past two years while locked in your solitary confinement….

First, despite your lies, the stories you would tell me that I will never leave you, I could never leave you and within you is truly where I belong and you were just “trying to help me” become a proper woman, I AM leaving you. I’ve completed my penance and within a couple of days, I will walk out and not look back. I know you find this hard to believe and I can hear you saying, “You’ll be back. You’ll come home to me ‘cuz I’ve taught you to bring yourself back into my walls.”  Don’t be so confident and sure of yourself or your ability to twist my mind. I think you already know I am different from the others you’ve courted and caged before me.

I admit the first time we met and you took me in 6 ½ years ago, I was quite naïve and rather weak in my physical, mental and emotional states. Yes, you definitely had control and I was at your mercy, which I never received any, regardless of how I begged and pleaded with you to stop beating me, to stop hurting me, to stop breaking my heart and PLEASE just let me hold onto ONE LITTLE HOPE. You never ceased in your cruelty and I responded the way you wished, like a feral animal lashing out at any and all human contact. I’ve never felt so ashamed, so helpless, but I found the answer to your abuse…it would end, everything would cease to exist, even me. I would escape you by hanging myself, my spirit would fly free, this I would gladly pay for with this shell of flesh and bone.

It would come to pass: I hang, I die, I’m free.

Fate has a way of placing its hands on the steering wheel of life though and I was revived and brought back to you. It was that anger that helped me live until EOS.

You know, I can’t believe I’m being so civil to you and not ranting.

Yes I can believe it. I’ve changed in this second time I’ve spent so unwillingly with you. I swore that this time, I wouldn’t allow you to destroy me, to steal my life no matter what you did to me. Somewhere along the way, I found that I wasn’t a victim. I would be a survivor, a fighter. I would see my son again. I would enjoy a summer day, a cool winter night or the spring rain. I would bask in the sunshine with my lover. I would defeat you, beat you at your own game, and teach others how to survive and fight you.

There were days, many days in which my strength and hope waned, days when I would fight the guards just to FEEL, to KNOW I am ALIVE, I am REAL. The pain was real, the suffering was real and through all the mental and emotional anguish I held onto that burning rage I had inside and I became a “soulja,” a trained reconnaissance soulja, an urban guerilla who was ready for your warfare on whatever level you chose to fight.

When there was no attack on me, but on my captive sisters, I fought for them. I had to guard and protect those who didn’t understand your tactics. After all, that is “how you roll”—to besiege and then sequester the innocent, the unsuspecting. Isolated, they are then abused and returned to the free world shell-shocked. These are my sisters. I couldn’t just turn a blind eye or a deaf ear, even if it meant that I put myself in the line of fire, targeted.

I admit you are quite the formidable adversary. That is why your reach has grown and now no one is safe from you, not even your conceivers and your capitalist grantors. I’m quite sure you’ve deceived them into believing that you will not bite the hand that feeds. Won’t they be surprised and horrified when even they become trapped within you…

But, as your reach continues to expand, so does my network—my allies, the grassroots guerillas who support my resistance.

Funny, you fail to realize that, even while locked within you, deep in your bowels, my army of one is multiplying. Many armies of one are joining to become an army of many, who will foster and implicate the prisoner resistance movement and who will bring this hidden revolution to light.

I am leaving you and I know you are angry at this, but you see, I am ANGRIER and I MUST take this fight where your scary ass doesn’t want me to—to the streets. For it is outside of your walls that this revolution is about to explode. I will take it to the everyday common hardworking folk, the masses of overworked and underpaid who are your targets, so they no longer remain blind. I will take it to the uncertain and educate them, give them weapons to fight you. I will take it to the elitists on their pedestals and knock them down.

This is a war all right, a war for human rights and I will not allow you to take any more children from their families so that you can train them to become statistics of recidivism. You will not destroy my people. You will not destroy my family. For as much as you hate those you harm, I love them 100 times more.

My visionaries are beside me, inside me, speaking their truths.

My revolutionary sisters and brothers are everywhere, learning their truths.

Abolition has begun and it will not stop now.

I will not stop until all are free.

And this, Lowell Correctional Institution, is such a Savage Reality.

Until there are no more death chambers, I will fight.

Your Ex-Hostage,

(Lisa) Lee Savage

Lee was released on August 1^st,  and continues the struggle from the outside.  To contact her, write to her at:

PO. Box 5453
Gainesville, FL 32627-5453

The following is a very good article from the same issue of Utne Reader that provides a tour of prisoner zines.  If you are interested in prisoner writing, you will find this very informative.

Months ago, the Economist published an article titled Sex and the single black woman: How the mass incarceration of black men hurts black women.  I read the piece and I quickly moved on.

I wanted to avoid the topic. Frankly I am afraid to broach the subject today.  You will wonder why I am so skittish.  You will think that this is irrational.  You might say: “Hey, you write about everything else even tangentially connected to prisons, why not this too?”

Some time ago, I wrote of feeling queasy about hip hop culture’s not-so-subtle admonition that young women of color stand by their incarcerated partners no matter what.  I received some of the most passionate e-mails based on that post that I have ever gotten.  I had hit a real nerve.  I also wrote briefly about that.

The gist of the Economist article is this; the marriage market for single black women is abysmal and:

[J]ail is a big part of the problem, argue Kerwin Kofi Charles, now at the University of Chicago, and Ming Ching Luoh of National Taiwan University. They divided America up into geographical and racial “marriage markets”, to take account of the fact that most people marry someone of the same race who lives relatively close to them. Then, after crunching the census numbers, they found that a one percentage point increase in the male incarceration rate was associated with a 2.4-point reduction in the proportion of women who ever marry. Could it be, however, that mass incarceration is a symptom of increasing social dysfunction, and that it was this social dysfunction that caused marriage to wither? Probably not. For similar crimes, America imposes much harsher penalties than other rich countries. Mr Charles and Mr Luoh controlled for crime rates, as a proxy for social dysfunction, and found that it made no difference to their results. They concluded that “higher male imprisonment has lowered the likelihood that women marry…and caused a shift in the gains from marriage away from women and towards men.”

If you are a black woman reading this, you know what our conversations are when no one is listening.  We talk about the lack of “good” brothers.  Each of us has our own definition of the term “good.”  We lament the state of affairs that sometimes pushes us to have children on our own rather than waiting for Mr. Right.  Something else is palpable in our conversations though; it’s the sadness.  I imagine that outsiders might think that black women would be angrily discussing these issues amongst  ourselves.  Yet, in my experience, that has never been the case.  My disappointment, in fact,  is that we too often keep the conversation at the level of individual solidarity rather than moving towards social justice.  Because after all, the mass incarceration of black men has more than personal implications for our lives, it is also a social justice issue for our communities. But I digress…

I am reminded of a poem by one of my favorite writers Carolyn M. Rodgers.  It is called “Poem for Some Black Women.”  The poem includes these verses:

we live with fear.

we are lonely.

we are talented, dedicated, well read

BLACK , COMMITTED.

we are lonely.

we understand the world problems

Black women’s problems with Black men

but all

we really understand is

lonely.

These words no doubt resonate strongly with other black women.  They speak to what so many of us experience.  The words evoke the symbolic violence that mass incarceration has wrought in our communities, in our lives.  I am apprehensive about writing these words.   I feel that they should be whispered.  I have no idea why this is the case.  It is so much easier for me to write about things from an analytical perspective.  I live in my head.  It feels safer.

I know that the question of the impact of mass incarceration on black women cannot be reduced to a conversation about dating and marriage.  Increasingly more and more black women find themselves locked up too.  But today, I am concerned with the collateral costs for black women of  having hundreds of thousands of black men caged in jails and prisons across the U.S.

My black girlfriends with sons live with the daily fear that they will be harassed by the cops; that our sons will end up, even if we do our very best by them, locked up too.  We keep those fears quiet.  We dare not speak the words.  With one out of three black boys born in 2001 likely to spend some of their lives in prison, we know that the bogeyman is not a fantasy but rather that he is close by, too close for comfort.  My black girlfriends with heterosexual daughters wonder if they will ever find love and companionship or if they will be consigned to living single for life (not by choice).  The worries are there.  Always.  It feels like I shouldn’t be writing this down.  Perhaps these words are best whispered.

Most of the time this blog is about the macro issues that relate to the prison industrial complex.  I focus on the micro when sharing individual experiences of the incarcerated.  Today, I feel like I am writing for a confessional.   I worry about the reception because I know about the reach of racism in America.  Black lives are so cheap in this culture.  Being vulnerable does not serve us well.  Yet we need to talk about the emotional, mental and spiritual costs of mass incarceration.  We need to acknowledge how the prison industrial complex touches our individual lives.  We need to move from abstraction to the concrete to the real.  It is about lived experiences after all.   Isn’t it? I don’t know…

Then I remember being in a room with a group of teenage girls of color five years ago.  We were reading some essays by Pearl Cleage as preparation for a documentary film that they were producing.  As we were discussing one of the essays, a young woman sighed out loud: “I am just looking for a good brother; Is that too much to ask?”  That young black woman was 14 years old.   Her wish led to the writing of a collective poem called “Looking for a Good Brother” that I will share here.  The poem wasn’t specifically about the mass incarceration of black men and yet that young woman’s wish seems somehow connected to the topic. I wanted to tell this young woman that many, many ‘good brothers’ are locked up.  That the system has conspired to deprive her of her wish.  And I wanted to tell her that it isn’t too much to ask for a healthy and abiding love.  I wanted to tell her…

I hope that you will find the young women’s words as poignant and moving as I did.

Looking for a Good Brother – Inspired by Pearl Cleage (collective poem by the Rogers Park YWAT)

It’s time!

Brothers, it’s time to step up

We are waiting

Let’s be clear

We are looking for some good brothers

We are looking for the real deal

A brother who can listen

A brother who can change

A brother who is not afraid of women

We are looking for a real brother

One who loves his people

A brother who doesn’t hit, slap, yell, punch, rape, kill women and children

A brother who doesn’t call us bitch or ho

We are looking for a brother who says I’ll be with you till we get there

Till we get to the place where violence ends

We are looking for a brother who says

“That’s not cool” when his friends down women

We are looking for a REAL brother

A brother who uses his hands to build, not to break

A brother who understands the word “solidarity”

We are looking for a brother

One who gets it

A brother who doesn’t pass the buck

A brother who takes responsibility for male violence

A brother who speaks truth to power

Will you stand with us?

Brother, will you stand strong with us?

Will you be a soldier in an army of peace with us?

It’s time

It’s time to step up

Brothers, we need you

We are waiting.

I wanted to get the word out about an important event that I am privileged to be organizing… If you are in Chicago on Feb 19th, please consider joining us for this event.

2004: Cyntoia within three weeks following her arrest for murder

Me Facing Life: Cyntoia’s Story takes a hard look at some of the complex social issues concerning a 16-year-old girl who is serving a life sentence for murder. Cyntoia Brown found herself in a series of bad situations that led to her killing a man who picked her up for sex. The filmmaker spent nearly six years exploring her life and familial relationships in order to answer a very basic question… why? This documentary pushes aside assumptions about what we think about violence and takes a glance into a startling social mirror that reveals a strong connection between violence in her maternal line and a predestined childhood filled with bad decisions.

Following the film, there will be a reading of a poem written in prison by Jacqueline Montanez, who was given a life sentence in Illinois at the age of 15. Then Mariame Kaba from Project NIA will lead a discussion about the high rate of youth incarceration in the U.S. and the inherent flaws of our juvenile justice system.

WHO:
Shobha Mahadev, Project Director, Illinois Coalition for the Fair Sentencing of Children
Sharmili Majmudar, Executive Director, Rape Victim Advocates
Vikki Rompala, LCSW, Chicago Child Trauma Center at La Rabida Children’s Hospital
Twyanda Major, Visible Voices (CLAIM)
Dominique McKinney, Young Women’s Empowerment Project (YWEP)
Moderator: Mariame Kaba, Founder, Project NIA

WHEN:
Saturday, February 19, 2011, 2:00 PM – 4:30 PM

WHERE:
Chicago Cultural Center
78 E. Washington St., Chicago
In the Claudia Cassidy Theatre

This event is free and open to the public. No RSVP needed.

We are asking attendees to please bring a new young adult book to the screening to donate to incarcerated youth at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center and IYC- Warrenville

To see the trailer, click here.

Presented by Project NIA, The Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, ITVS and WTTW Channel 11 in collaboration with the exhibition, Off the Beaten Path: Violence, Women and Art.

** Me Facing Life: Cyntoia’s Story will have its premiere on the Peabody and Emmy® Award-winning PBS series Independent Lens, hosted by America Ferrera, on Tuesday, March 1, 2011 at 10 PM (check local listings).