As the Zimmerman trial churns, the idea of self-defense figures prominently in the legal proceeding. Did George Zimmerman shoot Trayvon Martin because he was ‘standing his ground’ when attacked by him? Was Trayvon the one who was protecting himself against a strange man following him with a gun?

Last week, Zimmerman’s defense team contended that “Trayvon Martin did, in fact, cause his own death.” In a society where black skin is an inherent marker of suspicion and criminality, Trayvon’s (disposable) body becomes a lethal weapon. This gives anyone a license to kill him. His dangerous ‘weaponized’ black skin means that he can only be an aggressor and never a victim.

As something less than human, Trayvon is disembodied and therefore has no ‘self’ to defend. Aware of this, prosecutors have resorted to painting a portrait of a young man who didn’t try to fight back against being stalked by a stranger. This ‘turn-the-other cheek’ Trayvon Martin is as unrealistic to me as the defense’s version of a menacing Ninja criminalblackman. Despite history’s precedent, I sure as heck hope that Trayvon believed that he had a ‘self’ worth defending and that he did indeed fight back.

Over the past few months, I’ve referenced several incidents (such as lynchings and other forms of violence against black people) documented by Rev. Elijah Clarence Branch in his book titled “Judge Lynch’s Court in America (1913?).” Citing a Houston Chronicle article published on February 12, 1913, Rev. Branch shares a woman named Mary Wilson’s misfortune:

“San Antonio, Texas, February 12 – A charge of murder has been preferred against Mary Wilson, a Negro woman, arrested in connection with the killing of Olaf Olson, a trooper of Fort Sam Houston, last Monday.

“According to Sheriff Tobin the woman signed a written confession and a copy of this has been presented to the grand jury. She waived preliminary examination before Justice Campbell and was bound over without bail.

“The woman stated that the soldier was at her house Sunday night and threatened her. When she started to go to a friend’s home, she said, he followed her and caught hold of her. Believing he intended to do her bodily injury, she says, she drew a revolver and shot him.”

Rev. Branch offered his thoughts about this incident:

“A white man was killed and a Negro woman arrested. What was it? It was only a case of social equality. What right did he have in her room? The white people are burning Negro men about white women, unidentified. Why not let the Negro women protect themselves? Do any honest set of men regardless of color say he had any right in this woman’s room? The white people will harp on the separation of the races until a white man is killed about a Negro woman. She had a legal right to protect herself and home.

I’ve written before about how women of color are often precluded from invoking self-defense. Mary Wilson’s story is unfortunately all too common. She was criminalized for protecting herself and so are countless people of color still today.

This history impacts how black people consider the concept of self-defense. Over the weekend, I read an excellent essay by Vargas & James (2012) recommended to me by Dr. Christina Sharpe. The authors make the provocative point that black people have an ambivalent relationship to self-defense:

“Blacks do not easily, publicly embrace the concept of self-defense. Perhaps this embrace makes them feel more vulnerable to violence and censorship. Perhaps it challenges the constitution of the all-loving cyborg who demonstrates “superiority” by their capacity to love haters? (p.200).”

It seems important for us, as black people, in this historical moment to publicly re-assert that we have ‘selves’ worth defending; that Trayvon had a self worth defending. I woke up this morning to the news that Yasin Bey (formerly Mos Def) underwent the force-feeding torture to which Guantanamo prisoners are subjected. My first and continuing thought is that he’s the wrong body to undertake this stunt if his goal is to illicit outrage or any emotion really. His black skin is a repellent to empathy. Who will empathize with him as he cries? The logical extension of black people having no ‘selves’ to defend is that we also have little empathy that we can generate in others (even if they look like us). I think that we’ll see this play out in a few days when the verdict in the Martin trial is announced…

Last week, I stumbled upon this comic about the Stonewall Uprising by Mike Funk. The comic was based on a speech given by Sylvia Rivera in 2001.

Read the rest of the comic here.

A CONVICT QUENCHES HIS THIRST
March 8 — Labor in a Biss County chain gang is apt to create a mighty thirst, and this convict here is shown quenching his after hours of toil on a road (Associated Press, 3/8/37)

Canary
By Rita Dove
for Michael S. Harper

Billie Holiday’s burned voice
had as many shadows as lights,
a mournful candelabra against a sleek piano,
the gardenia her signature under that ruined face.

(Now you’re cooking, drummer to bass,
magic spoon, magic needle.
Take all day if you have to
with your mirror and your bracelet of song.)

Fact is, the invention of women under siege
has been to sharpen love in the service of myth.

If you can’t be free, be a mystery.

Source: Rita Dove, “Canary” from Grace Notes. Copyright © 1989 by Rita Dove.

I’m working on a project that will be happening this fall. I’ll share more about it later. In the meantime, I am reading A LOT of the writing by black political prisoners from the 1920s through 1970s.

Anyway, John Clutchette who was one of the Soledad Brothers, wrote a letter that was excerpted in the book “If They Come In the Morning.” I wanted to highlight his thoughts about the need to abolish prisons because it illustrates the theorizing and analysis that prisoners offered in the late 60’s-early 70’s in particular.

Today’s prison system should be abolished because it is a system predesigned and constructed to warehouse the people of undeveloped and lower economical communities. Under the existing social order men and women are sent to prison for labor (free labor) and further economical gain (money) by the state. Where else can you get a full day’s work for two to sixteen cents an hour, and these hours become an indeterminate period of years. This is slave labor in 20th-century America. Repeat! Men and women are sent to prison for free labor, not for what contributions they might make to their communities, under the guise of rehabilitation. Ninety-eight per cent of (all) people held in U.S. concentration camps are people of oppression, we are the people who come from the under class of the system, we are the people castigated and barred from the productive arenas of social employment, decent housing, correct education, correct medical care, etc., etc., a war of survival… Bear with me, I don’t intend to sound bitter, but only to relate the truth; we must come to know the truth, we are the people left to the crumbs of the system… we are the people who lay prey to the criminal elements of the system. The choice — survive or perish! The first always being to survive. It is a fact that man is a product of his environment; that the character and state of mind of a people, a race, a nation, the world, depends essentially and decisively on being able to control their economic environment in relation to controlling the fruits of their labor (production) in essence this is the determining factor of one’s social, political and economical power. Again ninety-eight per cent of all the people in concentration camps are members of the oppressed class. You won’t find members of the ruling-clique in places like this, but you will find their victims.

[…]

Building more and better prisons is not the solution — build a thousand prisons, arrest and lock up tens of thousands of people; all will be to no avail. This will not arrest poverty, oppression and the other ills of this unjust social order. But the people, working in united effort, can eliminate these conditions by removing the source that produces them. We need people who will stand up and speak out when it is a matter of right or wrong, of justice or injustice, of struggling or not struggling to help correct and remove conditions affecting the people, all I ask is that the people support us, I will break my back in helping to bring peace and justice upon the face of the earth.

It hardly seems possible that I started blogging three years ago. It feels both much longer and shorter than that. I started Prison Culture three years ago when I knew less than nothing about wordpress, blogging, etc… I am actually a technophobe who still has a cell phone circa 2000 and doesn’t text. So it is hugely funny to my friends and family that I would have launched my own blog.

Over the past three years, I have taught myself to become more proficient on social media and have greatly enjoyed the new connections that I have been able to forge through tools like Twitter, for example.

I didn’t know if I would be able to sustain a regular blogging schedule. It’s turned out that I have (with a few strategic breaks). I plan to continue to post as regularly as I can over the next year.

If you even read this blog semi-regularly, then you know that I am incredibly curious. It’s my main claim to fame. I love to learn new things. I love history, black history in particular. I love to share what I learn with others. This blog indulges these passions of mine. I am grateful for the space and that other people care even a little about what I care about.

So here’s to three years of Prison Culture and thank you for reading.

Runner up for the ADPSR prison campaign poster contest:

…One of the ways for me as a designer is to promote or help other organizations that already do that. I didn’t know anything about the prison problem before reading about it on your web site and other sources that cover the topic. I knew right away I wanted to be part of ADPSR’s campaign. By employing standard emotionless symbols often used in design and architecture combined with a very tight poster layout and limited color palette I tried to communicate some basic human emotions such a anxiety, fear, loneliness and sadness.

In doing some research recently, I re-read the April-May 1971 issue of the Black Scholar which was focused on the theme of the “Black Prisoner.” I can’t think of a current publication that might devote an entire issue to the topic. It would be important to have at least a few “mainstream: publications that regularly focus on the plight and privilege the voices of prisoners.

Anyway, in the 1971 Black Scholar issue, Fleeta Drumgo (one of the Soledad Brothers, pens a letter that I wanted to reprint here. It provides a window into the times and offers some critiques that are still relevant today.

Dear Brothers and Sisters

The Department of Corrections doesn’t exist! All institutions under such titles are barbaric, oppressive, racist and murderous institutions. This system of government is designed to oppress, exploit and intimidate, all that are not classified as white Anglo-Saxon bourgeois ruling clique. The hatred, violence and destruction imbedded in the system is the same fascist repression that is destroying the people in general, black people in particular. In realizing this it is difficult to understand that America is prison. As Brother Huey P. Newton stated, the only difference is one is maximum and the other one minimum security.

It seems at times that the oppression and violence inflicted upon us here in the maximum security is more intense than that inflicted upon us in the minimum security, but really it’s utterly impossible for me or any of us here to distinguish the oppression and violence we are all victimized by. I am constantly thinking about unemployment, under-employment, poverty and malnutrition that are the basic facts of our existence; it’s this which sends persons to these concentration camps; it’s this which causes so-called crime in general.

I like to express that there’s a growing awareness behind the walls; we’re seeing through the madness of capitalism, class interest, surplus value and imperialism, which this gestapo system perpetuates. It’s this which we have to look at and understand in order to recognize the inhumanity inflicted upon the masses of people here in Amerika and abroad. As brother Malcolm X once said, “We as people, as human beings have the basic human right to eliminate the conditions that have and are continuously destroying us.”

The decadence and corruption in the present day society and in these concentration camps much be dealt with by the people, and the only way we can deal with it us uniting, becoming as one! Because people who are oppressed, exploited and deprived are one. What I am trying to relay is the fact we are all prisoners, and under the yoke of fascist enslavement. Anyone who can deny this fact isn’t really concerned about liberation; he considers himself free and that attitude relates directly to the petty-bourgeois class of society.

In conclusion let me say on behalf of all of us in the maximum, please don’t reject or forget us, because this allows the monster to brutalize, murder and treat us inhumanly. We are of you, we love you and struggle with you.

Power to the people — Liberation in our time!

Fleeta Drumgo