By a young woman at JTDC (August 2010)

I have spent a big chunk of this week organizing two self-care events for incarcerated girls that will take place this weekend. I am doing this as part of a great program called Girl Talk.

One might wonder what it really means to “care for oneself” while locked in a cell. If you are a prison abolitionist, as I am, you might even bristle at the idea of organizing a “self-care” day for incarcerated girls. It seems like a contradiction. Our goal as abolitionists should not be to make prisons more livable; it should not be to make prison a more bearable place. As abolitionists, we know that prisons cannot be reformed; they must be abolished.

So why have I spent countless hours organizing these two days of pampering and self-care for incarcerated girls, you might ask. It is because as my friend Erica often points out: “there are real people and real bodies behind bars.” Abolishing prisons is a long-term project. It is likely not to happen in my lifetime. In the meantime, though, millions of people pass through prisons and jails across the country every year. These people need to know that those of us on the outside care about their well-being. They need to know that they are not forgotten.

So the best that I can do, as the holiday season approaches, is to call on my friends and some volunteers to come in from the outside to offer their many talents & skills in the service of incarcerated girls. I am blessed to know people who are healers, bodywork therapists, yoga instructors, and just genuinely caring. We are planning to offer manicures, pedicures, yoga and stretching classes, reiki, chair massages for a few hours this Saturday and Sunday. Is this contributing to dismantling the prison industrial complex? No, not in a structural way. However, I believe that it helps to create relationships between those of us on the outside and those who are locked up. This connection helps to reduce isolation and makes it harder for our politicians to demagogue issues of crime. However this is not the real reason to organize such events. We should offer self-care days for incarcerated girls because they deserve them. They deserve to be reminded of their humanity when everything on the inside offers the opposite. They deserve to be touched in ways that are not about abuse but instead focus on healing and love. We all need these things. We all deserve them.

So as I head out to a local discount store to buy some mixing bowls that will hold ingredients to make homemade lip gloss, I look forward to the weekend and to connecting with the girls.

The quintessential anthem against police brutality is NWA’s “Fuck the Police.” The lyric that always hits me is when Easy E says: “My identity by itself causes violence.” My personal favorite song describing police abuse is “War on Drugs” by 2 Black 2 Strong MMGs which came out in the early 90s. The key lyric in that song for me is “the war on drugs is a war on just us.” The main complaint of the song is that people of color and poor people’s civil rights are being violated to justify the war on drugs while “Scarface is sitting up in the White House.”

Rappers have been describing the fragile and usually antagonistic relationship between people of color and law enforcement for decades. Usually, they rely on imagery about war and characterize the police as an occupying force. I have received several e-mails over the past few months since I started this blog asking for my favorite hip hop songs that address police violence. Below is a partial list:

Batterram by Toddy Tee
I was a teenager when this song came out in the 1980s. It was prescient in its discussion of the militarization of the police.

Mayor of the city, what you’re tryin to do?
They say they voted you in in ’82
(But on the next term) huh, without no doubt
They say they gon’ vote your jack ass out
Because you musta been crazy or half-way wack
(To legalize somethin that works like that)
And the Chief of Police says he just might
(Flatten out every house he sees on sight)
Because he say the rockman is takin him for a fool
And for some damn reason it just ain’t cool
And when he drives down the street, I tell you the truth
He gets no respect, they call his force F Troop
He can’t stand it, he can’t take no more
And now he’s gonna have you all fall into the floor
And Mister Rockman, you better stop some day
Hang it up homeboy, your house will pay

MC and the MADD Circle “Behind Closed Doors”

Kid Frost “I Got Pulled Over”

KRS-One “Sound Of Da Police”
“Yeah, officer from overseer / You need a little clarity? / Check the similarity!”

Dead Prez “Police State”
“FBI spyin on us through the radio antennas
And them hidden cameras in the streetlight watchin society
With no respect for the people’s right to privacy
I’ll take a slug for the cause like Huey P.”

Cypress Hill “Pigs”

Ice Cube “Endangered Species (Tales from the Darkside)”

KRS-One “Who Will Protect Me From You?”

J Dilla “Fuck the Police”

“Now tell me who protects me from you? / I got people that buy TECs and weed from you.”

Ice-T “Escape the Killing Fields”

2 Black 2 Strong “Iceman Cometh”

Jasiri X “Oscar Grant”

Metro P “Price Tag”

Fly Benzo “War on Terror”

B. Dolan et al. “Film the Police”

I heard Angela Davis give a presentation at a conference in October. She made many salient points in her critique of mass incarceration but one point stood out in particular. She mentioned that “we talk about prisoners as though they were only the recipients of our charity as opposed to agents in their own rights.” I could not agree more with her characterization.

The histories that have been written about prisoners often treat them merely as “casualties of the system.” It is worthwhile, I believe, to reclaim some of the histories of resistance by prisoners. We just commemorated the 40th anniversary of the Attica prison rebellion in September. I spent a chunk of my summer re-reading a lot of books about Attica and produced (with contributions from some friends) a primer and zine about the uprising. It was my small way of trying to re-insert the idea of prisoner agency and resistance within the stories that we tell about the carceral state. As part of my research about Attica, I came across many incidents of prisoner resistance. One of these took place over the course of three months in 1973 “when prisoners ran walpole.”

by Alexander Dwinell & Sanya Hyland

In March of 1973, guards decided to walk off the job at Walpole State Prison in Massachusetts. For three months, Walpole was run by prisoners who moved “freely throughout the prison, establishing programs, and democratically determining policy and the structure of their day-to-day lives (p.12).” The prisoners at Walpole were able to successfully self-govern for over three months because they already had the experience of organizing. In 1971, prisoners had established a chapter of the National Prisoner Reform Association (NPRA) at Walpole.

This historical moment is recounted by Jamie Bissonette and her co-authors in their book “When The Prisoners Ran Walpole.” The authors describe the mission and goals of the NPRA:

“The NPRA defined prisoners as workers. Using a labor-organizing model, the NPRA intended to form chapters in prisons throughout the country. The goal of the association was to organize prisoners into labor unions or collective-bargaining units. Prisoners’ unions could then act as a counterbalance to the notoriously powerful guards’ unions in negotiations with prison authorities about how the prisons were run. Prisoners throughout the country began to look at prisoners’ unions as a catalyst for prison reform. But only at MCI Walpole did the NPRA become a recognized bargaining unit, democratically elected by prisoners — the workers — to lead their struggle for reform within the prison.

The NPRA at Walpole remained the recognized representative of the prisoners for two years, and sought State Labor Relations Commission certification along the way. Even after its petition for recognition as a labor union was denied, the NPRA continued to exercise its power as the prisoners’ elected representative for an additional two years (p.11-12).”

For those who are loathe to read books, the history at Walpole is also dramatized in a good documentary titled: “Three Thousand Years and Life.” A couple of clips from the film are below and the whole documentary can be watched on YouTube:

At this historical moment when the Occupy Movement is nascent, it is worth remembering that prisoners are still a marginalized part of the 99%. We need to incorporate the concerns and the needs of prisoners in our calls for economic justice and transformation. The history of prisoner resistance at Walpole points the way.

I write a lot about the history of the convict leasing system on this blog. I don’t think we can properly consider U.S.labor, racial, or penal history without a thorough understanding of that pernicious system.

After chasing many immigrants off resulting in tons of agriculture jobs being unfilled, the state of Alabama has a bright new/old idea. The state is considering using prisoners to fill the void left by the flight of immigrant labor:

“Agriculture officials in Alabama are looking into using prisoners to fill a labor shortage that the agency blames on the state’s controversial new law targeting undocumented immigrants.

The Alabama Department of Agriculture and Industries is meeting with south Alabama farmers and businesses in Mobile on Tuesday. Deputy commissioner Brett Hall says the agenda includes a presentation on whether work-release inmates could help fill jobs once held by immigrants.

Hall says planting season is coming up, and some growers fear most of their workers are gone. The agriculture agency says the new law has caused a chronic labor shortage on Alabama farms.”

Anyone who knows anything about Alabama’s sordid history of convict leasing should not be surprised that the state would turn to prisoners to do the back-breaking work that others will not do.

Mary Ellen Curtin’s excellent study about black prisoners in late 19th century Alabama illuminates episodes in American history that are pretty much unknown to us. Curtin contends that Alabama Democrats in the late 1800s turned to the convict lease system to address the state’s financial troubles. Coal companies were happy to make use of this convict labor but they were not the primary force pushing the practice. Curtin suggests that the lease system in Alabama left a lasting legacy:

“In the words of Populist critic William H. Skaggs, the lease was ‘vile,’ ‘pernicious,’ ‘excrable,’ ‘venal,’ and ‘brutal.’ It perpetuated ‘despotism’ by binding Alabama’s mineral interests to its political elite. It held the legal system hostage to the crass self-interest of county sheriffs, who collected fees for every prisoner they arrested, and politicians, who refused to forgo revenue paid for in human suffering. It linked race and criminality in a new and powerful way. It generated peonage by forcing convicted individuals to escape prison by allowing a local white landowner to pay their fine and thus control their labor. The lease shaped Alabama’s political economy and contributed to the legalized repression of African Americans during the age of segregation. Government officials and corporations willingly and knowingly traded prisoner’s lives for profit and revenue (p.10).”

Now that the state of Alabama has run off the undocumented workers who were willing to take on back-breaking agricultural work, they are planning to return to their tried and true ways of exploiting prisoners. We should remember Alabama’s history and legacy of convict leasing and we should strongly oppose a reinvented version of that system. We should reject trading the lives of undocumented immigrants for the lives of prisoners.

This is one of my all-time favorites from the incomparable Nanci Griffith.

Last week, I wrote about the efforts of a group of youth who are organizing to close the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center.

For the first time in memory, we have a real chance in Cook County, under the leadership of Board President Toni Preckwinkle, to potentially end juvenile detention as we know it. Ms. Preckwinkle is committed to halving the number of youth at JTDC within two years and hopes to eventually move to a system of secure community-based alternatives to detention. This is an incredibly positive development. However, it is important that the requisite amount of resources be redirected into communities in order to address the needs of youth in conflict with the law.

Ms. Preckwinkle recently toured the JTDC and a report about this appeared on WGN-News (VIDEO). I highly recommend the story.

Preckwinkle is quoted in a Chicago Tribune article published on Friday as saying after touring JTDC on Thursday: “I think we need to do everything we can to empty this building out.” The article goes on to expand on the solutions that she offers:

That means putting children in group homes, monitored home confinement and other community-based programs where advocates say youths have better opportunities for counseling, job training and other life-skill instruction.

“What we need to do is have a number of smaller, secure safe homes for kids scattered around the county rather than having one huge juvenile prison,” Preckwinkle told the Tribune. “It’s a prison for kids. It’s an inappropriate setting for almost everybody who’s here.”

I agree with Ms. Preckwinkle, prison is “no place for kids.”

Click HERE to see a larger version of this infographic.

Click HERE for a fact sheet that I created about the JTDC relying on 2010 data.

by Eric Drooker

Yesterday came the news that the prosecution has decided to drop the death penalty against Mumia Abu Jamal. For many who have been working on his case for decades, I know that there is a mixture of relief mingled with sadness. After all, he will now have to spend life in prison without the possibility of parole. In my opinion, this is still a capital sentence and the state has once again prevailed in sanctioning death.

I am not an expert in Mumia Abu Jamal’s case. From the limited amount that I do know, there seems to be reasonable doubt about his guilt. My purpose here is not to litigate the facts of his case. Instead, I want to suggest that the sentence of life without the possibility of parole is more insidious than and as detrimental as capital punishment. This may strike some readers as an absurd assertion but bear with me as I explain my rationale.

The following is a paragraph from a Washington Post article about the prosecution’s decision in the Abu Jamal case:

While the decision follows decades of protests and public appeals, Wednesday’s decision appears not to be a result of activist or lawyer action. Instead, the widow of slain officer Daniel Faulkner has reportedly persuaded prosecutors to stop pushing for the death penalty, saying she was tired of the constant reminders of her husband’s death.

So in order to move on with her life, Ms. Faulkner convinced prosecutors to drop the death penalty against Mumia Abu Jamal. The Post article provides more context for her decision:

Maureen Faulkner waited nearly 30 years for her husband’s murderer to be executed. But following a seemingly endless cycle of legal appeals, she said she realized it would never happen.

On Wednesday, Faulkner gave her blessing to the decision by Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams to stop pursuing the death penalty for Mumia Abu-Jamal, whose claim that he was the victim of a racist legal system made him an international cause celebre.

“My family and I have endured a three-decade ordeal at the hands of Mumia Abu-Jamal, his attorneys and his supporters, who in many cases never even took the time to educate themselves about the case before lending their names, giving their support and advocating for his freedom,” Maureen Faulkner said. “All of this has taken an unimaginable physical, emotional and financial toll on each of us.”

Essentially after 30 years of legal challenges, Ms. Faulkner became convinced that Abu Jamal would never be executed so she has seemingly reconciled herself to the fact that he would instead spend the rest of his life in prison. I have the deepest sympathy for this woman who lost her husband to an unspeakable act of violence. It is awful. Full stop.

I often hear friends of mine who oppose the death penalty argue that prisoners “would suffer more” if they had to spend the rest of their days locked in cells. This argument is used as a way to entice people to support the abolishment of the death penalty which is described as barbaric, capricious, and unjust. The truth is that for me, it is more barbaric to cage people until they die in prison. This is usually an excruciatingly slow and soul-killing way to die. Life without parole is, in my opinion, a de facto death sentence. What is the practical difference between being executed in prison and being condemned to spending the rest of your days in a cage? It appears that Mrs. Faulkner has come to the ultimate decision (after all of these years) that life in prison is basically as good as a death sentence. It has the added benefit of keeping the case out of the headlines for the foreseable future.

In countless cases (less publicized than Abu Jamal’s), prisoners who are sentenced to life without parole do not have international campaigns launched on their behalf. I venture to say that if Mumia Abu Jamal had been sentenced to life without parole in the first place as opposed to death, he might not have gained the international notoriety that he has. Being spared from state-sanctioned murder has a way of diminishing the fervor of crusaders and activists. Usually those sentenced to life without parole (even unjustly) will be forgotten as they are relegated to the unseen caverns of our prisons. Therein lies the horror.

Earlier this year, our former Governor Rod Blagojevich was convicted on 18 different counts. Yesterday, he was sentenced to serve 14 years in prison. Federal rules stipulate that he must serve 12 out of the 14 year sentence.

I had decided that I wasn’t going to comment on Blagojevich or his case on this blog. I won’t bore you with all of my reasons for this. But, I’ve been pushed off my original decision for two reasons. The first is this headline in the Onion: “Least Corrupt Politician in Illinois History Sentenced to 14 Years in Prison” which was accompanied by this photo of the former Governor.

The headline basically captures my sentiment about this case. Is Blagojevich corrupt? Yes. Is he guilty of committing politics in Illinois? Again, yes he is. Does he deserve to be locked up for 14 years? Absolutely NOT.

It is no secret that I don’t believe in prisons. I don’t understand how locking this man up for 14 years accomplishes anything positive. Why are we, as a society, unable to come up with ways to ensure accountability for harm caused without relying on locking people in cages? What the hell is wrong with us?

One of the arguments Blagojevich made in his appeal for leniency from the judge was that his incarceration would adversely impact his family. The judge had these words in response:

Referring to comments from Blagojevich’s lawyers in asking for a sentence of no more than 3½ years, Zagel said: “I don’t doubt his devotion to children, but this is not … exceptional, in my own experience. I see case after case where good fathers are bad citizens. There is no question that the innocent children of felons suffer. This is tragic, but, as he admits, the fault of this lies with the defendant alone. Now, it is too late.

“If it is any consolation to his children, he does not stand convicted of being a bad father.”

But Zagel noted the damage caused by Blagojevich “is not measured in the value of money and property. The harm is the erosion of the public trust in government; [people’s] confidence in and trust in government.”

I am sorry but this is preposterous. By the logic of this judge, most of the corporate interests in our society could be sentenced to years in prison based on their roles in eroding the public trust in government. Those interests game the system and use money to curry favor with politicians. It is a legal form of bribery.

My second reason for writing about Blagojevich involves an article titled “Blagojevich Likely to Face Menial Work in Prison.” It begins with these words:

An eight-digit number affixed to his prison clothes. A job scrubbing toilets or mopping floors at 12 cents an hour. [emphasis mine] His incessant jogging confined to a prison yard. Most painful of all, restricted visits from his wife and two daughters.

After sentencing for his conviction on federal corruption charges, that is likely to be the new life for impeached Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich, who is more accustomed to fancy suits, a doting staff and a comfortable home in a leafy Chicago neighborhood.

The rest of the article basically continues along these same lines. The reporter contrasts Blagojevich’s current life circumstances with the experience of being a prisoner. He outlines the limits that the former Governor will have on his freedom. For example, he won’t be able to jog when he wants, he will be limited in his phone calls, he will face isolation, he will miss important family milestones, he may have conflicts with guards and other prisoners…

Yet what truly stuck out to me in the article was the reference to the fact that Blagojevich is likely to earn just “12 cents an hour” for the work that he does in prison. Think of that for a minute. 12 cents an hour as payment for labor. It’s exploitation, pure and simple.

Blagojevich has made himself into something of a national punchline by his various TV and radio appearances. As such, not many people outside of his family will be shedding any tears for him. I, however, would like to point out that this man is going to be locked up in a federal prison outside of the state. Family visits will be severely limited, he will be doing menial labor for basically no pay, his family will be left to fend for itself, and he will spend at least 12 years locked in a cell. This simply makes no sense. It is wrong. I will be in the minority of people who believe this. I don’t care.

Without a doubt, the highlight of my trip to DC this week was hearing David Simon (creator of the Wire and Treme) speak at the 6th annual Models for Change conference. I don’t think that the conference organizers were prepared for what he had to say, judging from the looks on some of their faces.

by DT Kindler (12/5/11)

Simon opened his speech by warning us that it would be “depressing.” He began by excoriating those who have elevated profit at the expense of morality. He slammed his “liberal friends” who suggest that being environmentally conscious or “green” will “save us money.” No it won’t, he said. It will cost us money but that is OK in the service of a greater good.

He proclaimed himself “not a marxist” and said that we need to acknowledge that there will be costs rather than profit in re-integrating the poor and the marginalized into society. We should be willing to bear these costs because it is the right thing to do, he contended.

In his opinion, the system needs to “choke on itself” if we are to have any hope for justice and real transformation in the future. The game, he said, is “rigged.” He declared that he had decided to “refuse to play” by the current rules of the destructive drug war. He called the drug war “a triumph of brutality” and a “war on the underclass.”

He advocated jury nullification. He told the audience that once the state could no longer empanel 12 jurors to hear a non-violent drug case, those prosecutions would end.

He suggested that young men of color are making a rational choice to go to the “corner” because that’s the last “factory” operating in communities like Baltimore.

The assembled group watched transfixed, some with wide eyes, others with slack jaws, others with unabashed glee. I fell into the latter category. There is nothing more hilarious than watching a rich white man castigate a mostly white crowd of liberals. It was genius and many of the folks in the audience were incensed. How dare this man who has enriched himself by telling the stories of young black and brown people suggest that the only hope for any of them is for the system to “choke on itself?” Simon was at times rude, at times patronizing, but always filled with righteous indignation bordering on rage. And you know what? I LOVED IT! I live with this righteous rage on a daily basis. If I had delivered Simon’s speech, it would have been dismissed as a rant by an angry black woman. I think that the audience was forced to listen to Simon and to hear him differently.

For my part, I am tired of polite conversation at polite conferences about juvenile justice. As Simon said, “these kids are dying.” I was waiting for him to end his speech with a primal scream saying: “WAKE UP! SHIT IS F-ED UP!” He didn’t do this of course but a girl can still dream…

P.S. If the conference organizers post video of the speech, I will share the link here. However, I feel pretty certain that the video might be mysteriously “misplaced.” [Just kidding!] In the meantime, you can get a taste of Simon in this interview on Bill Moyers' show.

A couple of weeks ago, I facilitated a workshop at the Teachers for Social Justice curriculum fair with my friend and colleague Erica Meiners. The goal of our session was to share resources about how educators and organizers can talk with young people about the prison industrial complex.

I received an e-mail last week from one of the participants of the workshop. She teaches high school here in Chicago and with her permission I wanted to share a question that she asked: “How do I convince my black male students that prison is not a rite of passage for them?” I had to take a deep breath after I read this.

Over 40 years ago, George Jackson wrote:

“Black men born in the U.S. and fortunate to live past the age of eighteen are conditioned to accept the inevitability of prison. For most of us, it looms as the next phase in a sequence of humiliations.” – (Blood in My Eye, 1972).

Jackson’s words are frankly more relevant today when there are over 850,000 black men in prison and jail than they were in the late 60s. This weekend, I heard a panel discuss youth activism in the era of Black power. The panel was organized in conjunction with a screening of the film Black Power Mix Tape 1967-1975. One salient point made during the discussion was that in spite of the hardships that Black people faced in the 1960s, there was a sense of hopefulness that permeated the culture. The Black Freedom Movement helped to engender that hope; this has dissipated in our current historical moment. Hope has been trumped by intractable unemployment and poverty. Hope has been displaced by a sense of despair that is easily transformed into nihilism.

Yet there is resistance to this sense of despair. You have to look to find it but it is there. You can hear it in the righteous anger (and unfortunate misogyny) of Tef Poe’s anthem “Everybody’s Strapped” as he raps about the Oscar Grant case, police brutality, the prison industrial complex, the fecklessness of politics, and the abandonment of poor people by the state. “Recession in the air. Economical terror. Black President but shit is feeling like the Reagan Era…”

Needless to say that I certainly do not have THE answer to the teacher’s question except to say that we have to try everything to reach the young people in our charge. We have to provide individual support that convinces them that they are valuable.

Sometimes as a way to spark conversation with young people about the value of being Black, I like to use the following clip of Martin Luther King:

We also need to mobilize to transform society by uprooting structural oppression. This is obviously a heavy lift and will take time. However, I am a big believer in the importance of supporting young people to develop their leadership through studying social movement history and learning concrete organizing skills. I think that this is another way that we can reverse nihilism and offer hope.

Finally, I think that drawing on the portrayals of the justice system in hip hop and rap music to engage young people in discussions about their lived realities is incredibly valuable. On Friday, I organized a workshop featuring Jasiri X about how to engage young people through hip hop. In my opinion, he is an artist and educator who is doing this exceptionally well. Some of his videos about the Oscar Grant Case and the Jordan Miles Case can serve as excellent conversation starters about police brutality and about criminal injustice.

Taken together, I hope that these suggestions offer a starting point for the teacher and her students.