Who doesn’t love Tupac…

[Lynching, Russellville, Kentucky] by Minor B. Wade (1908)

“This photograph is brutal testament to racial terrorism in America. The facts of the case are drawn from a small article that appeared in the “New York Times” on August 2, 1908, the same day the photograph was made by a local journalist. On the previous night, one hundred white men had entered the Russellville, Kentucky, jail and demanded that four black sharecroppers who had been detained for “disturbing the peace” be turned over to them. The men were accused by the mob of expressing sympathy for a fellow sharecropper who, in self-defense, had killed the white farmer for whom he worked. The jailer complied, and Virgil, Robert, and Thomas Jones and Joseph Riley were taken to a cedar tree and summarily lynched. The text of the note pinned to one of the bodies was also inscribed on the verso of the photograph: “Let this be a warning to you niggers to let white people alone or you will go the same way.” (Source: Metropolitan Museum of Art online collection)

So many wonderful images from Monday’s Locked Up and Locked Out action and march keep coming in and I also couldn’t include all of the photographs in yesterday’s post…

by Tommy Callahan (5/19/14)

by Bob Simpson (5/19/14)

by Bob Simpson (5/19/14)

by Holly Krig (5/19/14)

by Sehar Sufi (5/19/14)

Read more »

by Richard Ross (JTDC Cell with high window)

They are banging on the windows…

At first, I can’t place the sound. Then I look up and I see arms waving from behind darkened windows. They must be standing on their beds straining to see us. I’m not sure why it didn’t occur to me that they might see or hear us outside. This is after all mainly why we are here.

by Sarah Jane Rhee (5/19/14)

Over 200 of us (or more) are standing outside of the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (JTDC). We’ve walked over 2.5 miles from Paderewski Elementary, one of fifty schools that Rahm Emanuel closed last year. As we march, there are energetic chants, waving signs, a colorful banner, cars honking, neighbors looking out of their windows and others rushing over to ask what we are all about. It doesn’t feel somber though we’re here to resist the criminalization of young people. We are joining together to kick off the National Week of Action Against Incarcerating Youth.

by Sarah Jane Rhee (5/19/14)

Our group is an intergenerational one – from babies and toddlers to teenagers and college-age young people to those of us in middle-age and grandparents. We are black, white, latin@, asian and a mix of all of these. We are cis-gendered and trans*. We are able-bodied and differently-abled. It’s an incredibly diverse group and this matters if we are to build a mass movement to end prisons.

by Sarah Jane Rhee (5/19/14)

by Bob Simpson (5/19/14)

by Bob Simpson (5/19/14)

by Monica Trinidad (5/19/14)

Read more »

It’s Malcolm’s birthday. I love him. It’s that simple. I love him and he has inspired my life. I trace my politicization as a very young person to two books. One is the Autobiography of Malcolm X. Even after I learned that the narrative wasn’t 100% “true,” I was always grateful for its formative impact on me.

Today in honor of his birthday, I want to share an excerpt of a conversation between Ossie Davis and Manning Marable about Malcolm.

“I very rarely like to speak publicly about Malcolm, to talk about Malcolm and to explain about Malcolm. However, I feel I can do it in a situation like this, where I’m among friends, and we’re talking about somebody we love. If you talk too much about somebody, you will ultimately destroy their meaning. So I try not to talk about Malcolm too much. Having said that, Malcolm’s central position in the class struggle was in his capacity for connecting with people out in the street, drug addicts, criminals, and hustlers — these were folks outside the middle class, people that Dr. King certainly couldn’t relate to. His capacity to look in their eyes and into their souls, his ability to speak directly to them and to help turn their lives around — this is perhaps his most valuable contribution.

[…]

Malcolm had invited us to the Audubon that day, but we had a previous commitment downtown and had left the three children in Harlem with Mother. When we returned to pick them up, the kids told us that something had happened to Malcolm. We turned on the television as a bulletin interrupted the ballet. Malcolm X was dead – shot down in front of Betty and the children. We were stunned and deeply, deeply saddened. That night, we drove back into Harlem and walked the streets, mingling and talking with the crowds about Malcolm’s death and what it meant to black people.

Fear and sorrow were mixed with a desire to give Malcolm a decent funeral. Percy Sutton, Malcolm’s friend and lawyer, went from church to church trying to secure a place for Malcolm’s funeral, but most of them said no — it was too dangerous. There was a lot of politics involved and the big challenge was figuring out a way to bury Malcolm in the spirit that the community called for and the spirit he warranted. Finally Bishop Church offered his small church on Amsterdam Avenue. Sylvester Leaks, speaking for Percy Sutton and Malcolm’s family, asked me to give the eulogy and I asked him, “Why me?” The answer was that Ruby and I were widely known to have been among his earliest friends and supporters. Also, I was a man with whom nobody in this shooting argument could quarrel. Ruby and I were honored to accept.

Well, that Saturday, we went to the little Faith Memorial Chapel on Amsterdam Avenue. It wasn’t much of a day and I remember there was no sunshine at all. The funeral was at ten o’clock. Ruby and I sat in the pulpit and our job was to read the messages that were pouring in. At the proper time, I arose to give the eulogy, trying to be simple, plain, honest, and sincere, saying by way of farewell what, in my heart, I believed Harlem wanted me to say. Afterward, we followed him to the cemetery where the professional grave diggers were waiting. We said no and took their shovels from them. Malcolm was ours, and if he had to be buried, we would do it. He loved us and we loved him.

(Source: “A Conversation with Ossie Davis,” Souls 2, 3 (Summer 2000): pp.14-16)

“He loved us and we loved him.” – This says it all… Here’s an excerpt Ossie Davis’s eulogy for Malcolm. Happy Birthday Malcolm, we carry on in your name.

by Billy Dee

If you’ve read this blog even once, you know that I am against prisons. I am particularly against incarcerating children. Today kicks off the National Week of Action Against Incarcerating Youth.

I write a lot about the prison industrial complex (including the juvenile punishment system) and last year I published a paper with my friend Dr. Michelle VanNatta about alternatives to youth incarceration in Chicago. In the paper, we provided a brief literature review about juvenile detention and incarceration. I am republishing that part here to buttress the case against incarcerating young people.

Read more »

This is a video worth watching. It underscores how destructive the so-called “war on drugs” has been…

Next, TAKE ACTION.

Marie Smith doesn’t want her eight-year old son, Scott, to miss a particular exhibit that has dropped into the Colonial Park Plaza shopping center. She lets him gaze at it a moment, then delivers her message. “See,” she whispers, “it doesn’t pay to be bad.” (Source: Machalaba, Daniel, Wall Street Journal, 11/27/78)

Marie and her son Scott had just seen an electric chair that was part of a traveling exhibit called “Jail on Wheels.” In the late 1930s, a local sheriff named J. Edward Slavin came up with an idea. He wanted to create a mobile exhibit that would prevent juvenile delinquency. Thus “Jail on Wheels” was born in 1947. The specially-designed bus included ‘crime prevention’ equipment such as handcuffs, fingerprinting kits, weapons, tear gas, grenades, bulletproof vests, a resuscitator, and a “drunkometer.” The “Jail on Wheels” also featured a jail cell and a replica of an electric chair and gas chamber. Sponsored by the J. Edward Slavin Foundation, “Jail on Wheels” was popular through the 1970s. Millions of people toured the mobile exhibits over the years across the United States.

1940s Jail on Wheels Bus

“Jail on Wheels” was the precursor to the modern “Scared Straight” prison programs. Over the past couple of weeks, I seen some articles about the enduring popularity of Scared Straight programs despite empirical evidence that they are in fact harmful.

Critics have long pointed out that these programs are detrimental likening them to “horror shows.” Yet parents across the country have been undeterred. I guess it just “feels” like it should “work.” Aaron MacGruder famously satirized Scared Straight in his animated series ‘The Boondocks’.

I’ve previously written about my aversion to taking black & brown children on prison field trips. I’ve also underscored the cruelty of subjecting black and brown children to gruesome emergency room field trips too. These strategies DO NOT WORK. They only serve to traumatize children while dehumanizing prisoners.

The programs need to die.