son
By Jessica Muniz J
From recent issue of Captured Words

When I think of you,
I think of your eyes,
How they are sparkling pools of blue,
That always calm me when I see you.
When I think of you,
I think to myself how much strength you give me,
You are my pot of gold at the end of the rainbow,
Just knowing that you are waiting for me
To be home,
Helps me to carry on.
Ever since that day you left,
Loneliness had taken its toll.
You are a very special part of my life,
A life that has had its twists and turns,
I know I have missed out on a lot,
But somehow I know that I will be given another chance,
To prove that I really am a wonderful mom.
When I think of you, Son,
You lift up my spirits.
So many of my smiles depend on you.
You bring me so much happiness,
I hope you will never forget,
Not even for a single day,
How wonderful you are to me.
When I think of you, Julian,
I am sorry that I hurt you,
It’s something I must live with every day.
I never meant to do those things to you.
I want to show you a side of me you do not know.
Julian, my Son, you are my reason for all that I do.

I’ve previously shared information about an upcoming exhibition that I am co-curating with my friends at Free Write Jail Arts & Literacy Program. I even shared the collaborative submission that I created with my friend Sarah & her daughter Cadence.

Well, the exhibition officially opens today at HumanThread Center/Gallery. However, the opening reception is on November 15th and you can RSVP here.

Today, I want to share some of the art that will be featured in Picturing A World Without Prisons specifically the photographs. The show marries photographs submitted by people on the outside with art created by jailed youth. This is why we call it an inside/outside exhibition. We’ve temporarily uploaded the photo submissions that we received along with the artist statements on a Tumblr. Eventually, we plan to create an online exhibit that will bring together the art created on the outside with that which was created by the incarcerated youth. This is in addition to the physical exhibition that will run from November 11 to December 6 at HumanThread.

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I’ve always loved this speech by Dr. Abernathy about Angela Davis and haven’t seen it available on the internet so (since I’m an insomniac) I decided to re-type it and share it here. It is still very relevant today.

“I Bring an Indictment Against the American System”
by the Reverend Ralph Abernathy
February 2, 1971

We meet in defense of Miss Angela Davis; therefore, let us ponder the question first, who is Angela Davis? Let us first recall this young Black woman who was born twenty-seven years ago today in Birmingham, Alabama, where the blood of her people flowed under a reign of official racism and terror.

She lived in a Black community which came to be known as “Dynamite Hill.” As she grew up she learned of fifty bombings against Black people in her native Birmingham, all of them unsolved.

She knew four little Black girls, who were her friends, who were murdered in the bombing of the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham in Nineteen Sixty Three, but none of us knows the exact identity of the bombers today, because there were no arrests and the FBI did not possess the ability and the skills to find those bombers.

In the face of death every day of her life, Angela Davis began to learn the life of struggle — struggle for survival, struggle for her people, struggle for justice.

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19 year old Renisha McBride had a car accident. Her cell phone died. She knocked on strangers’ doors. She needed help. She was shot in the back of the head.

She’s dead.

And I don’t understand why I’m not running around in circles screaming with grief. I heard about Renisha’s killing two days ago. I tweeted a couple of sentences describing the tragedy. I wanted to add that black lives matter but didn’t because it felt hollow.

Another irreplaceable young black life was violently interrupted. And I couldn’t bring myself to feel… anything. I joined the others on social media who shrugged away our shock.

As word about Renisha’s death traveled across the internet yesterday, the whispers got a bit louder but the outrage was still muted; tempered by the fact that she’s a black girl and therefore the most disposable body on the planet.

I’m worried today because I know that some of the young women in my life (goddaughters, nieces, mentees, clients) are going to ask me about Renisha and I won’t have the words to describe what this type of killing is about. I don’t have the language to describe any of this so I’ll rely on Pearl Cleage’s words until I can find my own again:

“It is a dangerous time to be a black woman in America. It’s a time when we are not safe in the streets or at home or at school or at work and nobody seems to be able to do anything about it. Nobody. Not us. Not our mommas. Not the police. Not the people we elected to look out for our interests. Nobody. We’re just out here. (p.53)”

We’re just out here… That phrase resonates profoundly. We’re just out here unprotected, reviled, and mostly on our own. We’re just out here locked in prisons. We’re just out here getting killed.

I confess to being exhausted. Perhaps I’m not running around in circles screaming with grief because I know that it isn’t nearly enough. Fear of opening up Pandora’s box can be mistaken for apathy or callousness. Letting the emotions penetrate means that I’ll have to engage in some appeal for action. And I just can’t do it. Because I’m tired and as June Jordan has written engaging would mean that:

“As a Black woman/feminist, I must look about me, with trembling, and with shocked anger, at the endless waste, the endless suffocation of my sisters: the bitter sufferings of hundreds of thousands of women who are the sole parents, the mothers of hundreds of thousands of children, the desolation and the futility of women trapped by demeaning, lowest-paying occupations, the unemployed, the bullied, the beaten, the battered, the ridiculed, the slandered, the trivialized, the raped, and the sterilized, the lost millions and multimillions of beautiful, creative, and momentous lives turned to ashes on the pyre of gender identity. I must look about me and, as a Black feminist, I must ask myself: Where is the love? How is my own lifework serving to end these tyrannies, these corrosions of sacred possibility (p.145).”

We know that we should be driving to Detroit to stand with Renisha’s family. We should be there and yet so many of us are hanging by our fingernails right now trying to keep our worlds from splitting open. We shrug away our shock because we are afraid that speaking the truth about the disposability of black girls’ and women’s bodies exacerbates our pain and perhaps ultimately will swallow us whole. Self-preservation and survival dictate then that we shrug away our shock and hold our breaths knowing that the next Renisha is around the corner. And that she may be us.

Update:

Dream Hampton put together a short video about the tragedy:

Update: Great news!!! The House adjourned today without passing the bill. Details are HERE.

“Black members in the Illinois House have used a procedural measure to stop an anti-crime bill aimed at guns on city streets. [Rep. Ken Dunkin] requested he be provided information on the bill’s effect, including its cost and impact on the prison system. The Department of Corrections did not file that information. Zalewski could have asked the House to rule the information inapplicable — but it likely wouldn’t have worked.”

Special thanks to Rep. Duncan and the members of the Black Caucus who have stood firm against this bill!!!

We have not won yet. The bill will be brought back up in December. We need everyone to take the next couple of weeks to KEEP CONTACTING YOUR REPRESENTATIVES in person, by phone, by email, by fax, by any means necessary. Tell them to vote NO on #SB1342.

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Chained and Bound
by Marvin X
A song based on how prisoners are brought to federal court “chained and bound”

You got me chained and bound
But you can’t keep me down
I was born to be free
To have my liberty
By any means necessary

Our time has come
Our day os here
Black man stand
Have no fear
Dare to struggle
Dare to win
Then the world
Will be ours again
You got me chained and bound
But you can’t keep me down.

The devil is a paper tiger
He rules with the gun
But there will be no law and order
Until black justice is done
You got me chained and bound
But you can’t keep me down.

Come, My Brothers, seize the time
No more dope, no more wine
No no no/no no no — No!
You got me chained and bound
But you can’t keep me down
Come, My Brothers, break the chains
There can be no peace til freedom reigns

You got me chained and bound
But you can’t keep me down
No, no no/no no no — No!

Update: The bill passed out of committee 11-4. It is headed to the floor where we will have to fight it representative by representative. Reach out to yours HERE.

TOMORROW, NOVEMBER 5, 2013 AT 2:00, the Illinois House Judiciary Committee is scheduled to vote on an amendment to increase the mandatory minimum sentence for gun possession charges (SB 1342). Decades of empirical research demonstrate that mandatory sentences will not reduce gun violence. SB 1342 will not increase public safety, but will dramatically increase costs to the state and to individual counties and communities (disproportionately communities of color).

Please raise your voice for smart, strategic, evidence-based solutions to gun violence and OPPOSE this amendment.

To voice your opposition to SB 1342, please submit a slip by taking the followings steps:

1. Go to the House Judiciary Hearing website HERE
2. Click on the right icon under the “Witness Slips” column for SB 1342 to create a witness slip.
3. Under Section I, fill in your identification information.
4. Leave Section II blank.
5. In Section III, select the “Opponent” button.
6. In Section IV, select “Record of Appearance Only.”
7. Agree to the ILGA Terms of Agreement
8. Select the “Create Slip” button.

Slips can be submitted until tomorrow, November 5 at 1:45 pm

The new amendment:

· Strips judges of the discretion to use alternatives to incarceration such as boot camp when circumstances warrant, further limiting sentencing options.

· Retains the most expensive parts of previous proposals – eliminates the ability of nonviolent offenders to earn reduced time for good behavior (while more serious offenders can still earn it), flooding overcrowded prisons with thousands of lower-level people unable to earn parole.

· Lengthens mandatory minimum sentences despite research that they are not effective and run counter to national trends.

· Applies to people upon a first gun possession offense: each weapon (and sometimes each bullet) is charged separately. Moreover, increased sentence length has not been proven any more effective with “repeat” offenders than with “first-time” offenders.

Saturday was Assata Liberation Day and I didn’t have time to post anything about her. I love Alixa Garcia’s Arise for Assata Project and the image below is wonderful.

“I have been locked by the lawless.
Handcuffed by the haters.
Gagged by the greedy.
And, if I know any thing at all,
it’s that a wall is just a wall
and nothing more at all.
It can be broken down.”

From Affirmation by Assata Shakur