Today I saw this item about Rod Blagojevich being assigned his prisoner number:

Blagojevich be known as 4-0-8-9-2-4-2-4 when he reports to a federal prison near Denver next Thursday.

I wondered about the significance of reporting on this matter. Why is this news? Why would anyone care about this? I decided to do a Google search to see if other such articles were published when other well-known people entered prison. I found this item about Martha Stewart:

The Bureau of Prisons has assigned Martha Stewart an inmate register number, 55170-054, and its inmate locator Web site says Stewart is “in transit.”

This got me thinking about the role that assigning serial numbers plays in dehumanizing prisoners. These numbers are presumably assigned to help track prisoners in the system since using names might become confusing if you have 1,000 incarcerated individuals named John Smith. Yet the numbers also must represent the routinization and rationalization of the large bureaucracy that is our prison system. The numbers have plenty of other meanings too. I found this wonderful photograph created by a young person which I think illuminates this discussion.

(H/T Prison Photography)

Siever’s offered the following statement of his work:

‘My ideas were based on conformity, and the suppression of cultures and personal individuality by being a number, wearing a uniform, being trapped in the cages of the social machine. I created my own police height chart and got my classmates to stand in front of it. I also made digital barcodes to symbolise the gathering of information which can be accessed so easily today.’

What a brilliant way to underscore the depersonalization of our modern culture. So powerful. I also think of that barcode as representing the commodification of human beings across our society (and in particular in prison).

Finally, I found a searing and upsetting description of the system of identifying prisoners at Auschwitz. I highly recommend reading this because it offers yet another perspective about how serial numbers are used as a way to dehumanize.

During the Holocaust, concentration camp prisoners received tattoos only at one location, the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, which consisted of Auschwitz I (Main Camp), Auschwitz II (Auschwitz-Birkenau), and Auschwitz III (Monowitz and the subcamps). Incoming prisoners were assigned a camp serial number which was sewn to their prison uniforms. Only those prisoners selected for work were issued serial numbers; those prisoners sent directly to the gas chambers were not registered and received no tattoos.

Initially, the SS authorities marked prisoners who were in the infirmary or who were to be executed with their camp serial number across the chest with indelible ink. As prisoners were executed or died in other ways, their clothing bearing the camp serial number was removed. Given the mortality rate at the camp and practice of removing clothing, there was no way to identify the bodies after the clothing was removed. Hence, the SS authorities introduced the practice of tattooing in order to identify the bodies of registered prisoners who had died.

This post is not a particularly cogent one, my apologies. I was struck by the Blagojevich press item and this got my mind rambling…

On Giving A Poetry Reading at Arthur Kill Correctional Facility
by Phillip Mahony (NYPD)

It is not my desire
to forgive,
or theirs
to be forgiven by me.
To understand each other
is more important
and much less pleasant.
It takes courage even to try,
because from up close,
from this close,
one sees that
the walls between us
are not made of stone,
but of circumstance.
We are not as far apart
as we’d like,
How should I begin?
Look the murderer
square in the eyes
and realize:
that too could have been me.

“It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.”
― Albert Camus

People always ask me how/when I came to be so passionate about ending incarceration. I usually respond that my process of conscientization was a gradual one. It was through a million small and large experiences that I came to prison abolition.

Michelle Alexander, author of the New Jim Crow, often tells a ‘light-bulb’ moment story when she gives talks. She interviewed a young black man who was sharing a story of being harassed and framed by the police. He seemed to be a perfect candidate to join her ACLU class action lawsuit until he shared that he had been arrested in his past. At that point, Alexander tells her audience that she had to send him away because they could not take the chance that his credibility might be impugned as a witness because of his previous criminal record. She usually ends by saying that she has since learned that the majority of young black men in the community that she was working in find themselves caught in the net of the criminal legal system. I haven’t done her anecdote justice so you should listen to her tell it instead (it starts at 10:00).

As I said earlier, I have no eureka moment to share about when I first became aware of the ravages of mass incarceration and the futility of prisons. I was young when I first had to decide whether I would rely on the criminal legal system as the vehicle for seeking accountability for the harm that I had experienced. Instinctively, I recoiled. I had experienced the trial of a good friend’s killer and I wanted no part of that for myself. Since I wasn’t going to pursue criminal legal sanctions, I was left with no other alternatives. All I had at the time were my anger, fear, and self-destructive tendencies.

It was perhaps during that period that I began to yearn for another way — for some alternative to punishment and retribution. I’ve written before about my earliest encounter with the concept of restorative justice through experiencing the reaction of a mother towards the person who had killed her son (my friend). I didn’t become a proponent or practitioner of restorative/transformative justice then but it must have left an imprint.

While I have never been incarcerated, I have spent hours visiting, writing, and connecting with people on the inside. In a strange way, I was lucky to be exposed to the humanity of prisoners through one of my favorite students who did a bad thing that landed him behind bars for several years. I say that I was “lucky” because I already knew who he was before he was locked up. I knew him to be funny, kind, insecure, quick to anger, infuriating, you know… I knew him to be human. He was my initial link to prison and perhaps that allowed me to be able to see all of the others who were imprisoned with him as human beings too. This quote by James Baldwin (one of my favorite writers and thinkers) expresses my own philosophy: “People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned.” Our unwillingness to see prisoners as human beings harms us as much as it does them. The understanding that we are all connected makes it so much easier to demonstrate compassion for others and ourselves. That’s been my greatest lesson so far and I could not have learned it without the gift of having met and knowing people who have been deprived of their freedom. And so the realization for me that prisons must be dismantled has come slowly and has washed over me almost without my knowing it. But here I am today – a prison abolitionist. And I have to wonder: what took so long?

A few weeks ago, I posted some youth created poetry from participants in the Free Write Jail Arts & Literacy Program here in Chicago. Below are a couple of other poems from the incarcerated youth at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center who participate in Free Write programming:

Hope
by Kendall H

It’s dark where I am
and I cannot find the light
There are shadows all around me
and my heart is full of fright
everyone is cheerful
they never even see
that storm clouds are forming
upon the peaceful sea

I cannot see the future
and I cannot change the past
but the present is so heavy
I don’t think I’m going to last

Doing Hard Time
by Demetria R

Being in here
is what you call hell
locked in these cold dark cells
A moment of freedom
we do not see
five minutes of air
is what we breathe
Didn’t blame it on the victim
or the suspect
is what he supposed to be
just blamed it on me
Ok I did it
I confess
but it wasn’t that bad
to go through this stress
Doing hard time is what it be
Cold food and raw meat is what we eat
Getting told when to sleep
and how long to shower
The minutes go past like hours
Living with all these girls
taking they s***
This is not me
I can’t do this
Doing hard time
all alone
Not knowing when I’ll go home
It’s hard in here
locked in a room
between a thousand bricks
I need my freedom
I am ready to go
I can’t take it no mo’
Living by they laws
obeying by they rules
Can’t take a piss when I choose
I will never be in CCJTDC again
We are their property
They get all revenge
Jail is hard
Jail is rough
You’ll be in here after one big f*** up
A old body is what they call me
but I consider myself different
You should never wanna
be in my position
These girls is not yo friends
nor is these n*****
They sit back and clow you
to they friends.
doing hard time like in the pen
Yeah, that’s it
I never wanna do hard time again.

Another Shame of the Nation ~ Juvenile Life Without Parole
by nancy a heitzeg

On March 20, 2012, The Supreme Court of the United States will hear Oral Arguments in the cases of Miller v. Alabama and Jackson v. Hobbs. Both cases, argued on Eighth Amendment grounds by Equal Justice Initiative, involve 14 year old boys – sentenced to die in prison for their involvement in homicides. Miller had a documented history of abuse, and Jackson, an accessory but not the gunman, was charged in a felony murder case, an Arkansas store robbery gone wrong.

But, as always, much more than the fate of these two rests on this case. At stake is the fate of more than 2500 persons serving Life without Parole for crimes committed while under the age of 18, some, all future redemption denied, when they were as young as 11 years old. 73 of these 2500 were under the age of 14 at the time of the commitment offense.

One might also argue that our status as a “civilized” nation rests, at least in part, on the Court’s judgment here. The U.S. is the only country in the world that practices JLWOP, and remains, with Somalia, one of two nations in the world which has refused to ratify the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, a document which expressly forbids this very practice.

And, as in the 5-4 Roper v. Simmons (2005) and Sullivan v. Florida/Graham v. Florida (2010) which finally finally finally abolished the death penalty and Juvenile Life Without Parole (JLWOP) for non-homicide offenses respectively, the fate of these youth and the moral compass of the nation will rest on the whims of one Justice Anthony Kennedy.
Too much responsibility for Just One Man….

Read more »

Earlier this week, the 1965 Watts Rebellion came up in the context of a sociology class that I teach at a local university. Unsurprisingly many of my students knew little to nothing about the history of this police riot. For those who had heard of Watts, they only had very basic information about the incident. Almost no one knew of the central role that a militarized police force played in both inciting and then ultimately brutally repressing the rebellion.

Because of racist covenants, Blacks in Los Angeles were restricted to two main community areas: Watts was one of these. Poverty and unemployment were endemic in the community. Most of the businesses were run by outsiders and the majority did not employ community residents. These businesses were very much resented by locals. This fact would become important to understanding why so many local businesses were targeted during the uprising.

On the evening of August 11, 1965, 21 year old Marquette Frye was stopped by a white highway patrolman, named Lee Minikus, near Watts for driving erratically. The officer smelled liquor on his breath and told him to walk a straight line. According to the officer, Frye failed the test and was charged with driving under the influence. Officer Minikus began to write a ticket and Marquette started to argue that he should be let off without one. During this time, his stepbrother Ronald was a passenger in the car but when he saw that a tow truck was approaching to impound it, he stepped out and asked if he could drive the car to his mother’s house just a couple of blocks away. In the meantime, their mother, Mrs. Frye had heard about the incident from neighbors and arrived on the scene with her license and registration (the car was hers) asking the police not to impound the car. Officer Minikus agreed to let her take the car and then she began to admonish her son Marquette for being intoxicated. According to an account by historian Robert Conot, this is when things took a turn for the worse:

“Momma, I’m not going to jail. I’m not drunk and I’m not going to jail.”…As he spoke to his mother, his voice broke. He was almost crying. Spotting the officers [who were approaching], he started backing away, his feet shuffling, his arms waving…All his old anger, the old frustration, welled up within Marquette… What right did they have to treat him like this? [He screamed at the cops,] whipping his body about as if he were half boxer, half dancer…”

According to official accounts, the police made calls for reinforcements. One police officer used his nightstick and according to him accidentally hit Marquette Frye in the forehead causing his head to bleed. Ronald tried to protect his brother and was hit in the stomach. Minikus grabbed Marquette and threw him into a squad car. Mrs. Frye rushed to the aid of her sons and jumped onto Minikus’s back. She was restrained by other officers and also put into a police car. In the end, all three Fryes were under arrest.

It was a hot summer evening so many residents were outside their homes and witnessed the traffic stop and subsequent arrests. Within 10 minutes a crowd of 25 had grown to nearly 300. Within 20 minutes the crowd swelled to over 1000 people. One of the onlookers was a young student at Compton Junior College named Joyce Ann Gaines. She had run out of a nearby beauty salon so she still had on her smock. A police officer felt something on the back of his neck and decided that it was spit. He identified Gaines (who was innocent) as the culprit. She struggled against being removed from the crowd and arrested. One of her friends tried to intervene to help her and he was promptly put in a squad car too.

Tensions in the community were high to say the least. As the police finally retreated, they left behind an angry crowd. Rumors flew that the young woman, Joyce Gaines, who had been arrested was pregnant. People also said that the Fryes had been mistreated and abused during the incident This incident took place within the context of a community that was sick of constant police harassment. This was also a community fed up with living in dilapidated housing and angry about the ongoing racism that they were experiencing. The Frye incident was the spark but the anger and tension had been simmering for decades. The Watts Rebellion of 1965 lasted for seven days and it took a contingent of nearly 14,000 national guardsmen along with thousands of police officers to eventually quell the uprising. The rebellion resulted in 34 deaths, over a thousand injured and property damage in excess of $40 million dollars.

For an excellent account of the Watts uprising, I highly recommend Robert Conant’s book “Rivers of Blood, Years of Darkness.” To view a collection of photographs about Watts, click here.

Why does Watts matter in 2012? Well because as Malcolm X said: “Armed with the knowledge of our past, we can charter a course for our future.” Last year, I wrote that discussions about law enforcement’s brutality toward Occupy Movement participants were divorced from historical context. This is of great concern because I believe that it limits the effectiveness of social justice movements when we act as though everything old is new again. We should be learning from past experience to improve for the future. The lessons of the past should be informing our current strategies for social transformation. As thousands of people prepare to descend upon my city for Chicago Spring (G8/NATO Summits), I think that we have an opportunity to avoid the past mistakes in terms of our interactions with the police.

I have been and am currently working on a few projects that I hope will help to inform and educate the broader public about the longstanding tradition of oppressive policing toward marginalized populations (including some activists and organizers). One of the projects that I am most excited about is a series of pamphlets about historical moments of police violence. I reached out to some friends inviting them to contribute to the project. I am thrilled to say that several people have taken on the challenge of researching and writing one or two pamphlets (which will be no more than 30 pages each). Topics include: Oscar Grant, the 1937 Memorial Day Riots, Timothy Thomas, The Dixmoor Five, Mississippi Summer, The Danzinger Bridge Incident, the Young Lords, 1968 Democratic Convention, Black Protests on College Campuses, among others…

This idea is inspired by the many pamphlets (precursors to today’s zines) that circulated in the U.S. & in the developing world during the 1950s and 60s in particular. W.E.B. DuBois, CLR James and many other luminaries published short 10 to 30 page pamphlets about different political ideas and historical figures that would sell for as little as 15 or 25 cents. Many were also distributed free of charge. These were produced by companies like International Publishers out of New York or associations like the Afro-American Heritage Association here in Chicago. The goal is to revive this idea for the 21st century recognizing that it is important not to confine learning to classrooms and facilitated spaces. The pamphlets will be made available free of charge online and we hope to print a limited number of copies that can be mailed to currently incarcerated youth and adults.

The first couple of pamphlets will hopefully be published in May. We will continue to publish other pamphlets throughout the course of the year.