Images from today in ATL

OCTOBER 22nd -- A Day to call attention to police brutality and the incarceration of a generation.

Today was beautiful. Very positive energy and wonderful people out in the street to support an end to the policing of our communities and the incarceration of our friends and families. People shared stories of being abused by the criminal justice system. We remembered those that we have lost at the hands of the system. We marched from Woodruff in downtown Atlanta to the the Atlanta Detention Center. People joined us along the way.

My sign said, "DEAR MAYORAL CANDIDATES, WE DON'T NEED MORE POLICE! WE NEED RE-ENTRY PROGRAMS! WE NEED JOBS!"

We stood outside of the jail and yelled "no justice! no peace! no racist po-lice!" and heard responses from the people inside the Jail yelling back to us. They heard us. We heard them.

"prisoners could safely determine their own reality"

one of the most eye-opening and faith-in-a-world-without-prisons-increasing books i have read recently is the newly published, When the Prisoners Ran Walpole, by Jamie Bissonette, with Ralph Hamm, Robert Dellelo, and Edward Rodman.

below are just a few excerpts, which by no means do the text justice. read for yourself, and please share your thoughts.

-----
For many of the volunteers, the experiences from March to May of 1973 revealed two surprising things: prisoners could safely determine their own reality, and a prison with no guards that was run democratically by prisoners functioned smoothly and was profoundly productive. (212)

The NPRA (National Prisoners Reform Association) was first and foremost a prison-based project. Even though the prisoners recognized that prisons themselves were a primary cause of crime, and the NPRA was an abolitionist organization, the leadership knew from experience that prisons were maintained by complex interests. The path away from punishment and toward problem solving could not be left to prison administrators or advocates or community support groups--no matter how dedicated. (213)

The NPRA was a full employment project. One of the most crucial tasks a prisoner undertakes upon release from prison is that of finding employment. The NPRA recommended that prisoners work with federal and state governments, along with private industry, to develop job-training programs within prisons. A job-placement network would complement the job-training programs. The NPRA was clear: the jobs needed to be decent and pay fair wages, or prisoners would return to crime. This brief recommendation for decent, well-paying jobs for prisoners was written when the whole country was experiencing the high unemployment and skyrocketing prices that became known as "stagflation." Yet, the NPRA was not about to buy into the idea that there were "not enough" jobs for everyone. The fact that society was willing to waste substantial amounts of money keeping them in prison led them to draw their own conclusions. They knew there were enough resources; they simply needed to be apportioned more pragmatically, and for the good of all people. (214)

re: public safety

i think it's important to reiterate some points very clearly, and repeat them as much as possible:

mass incarceration does NOT increase public safety.

in the words of angela davis,

"Mass incarceration is not a solution to unemployment, nor is it a solution to the vast array of social problems that are hidden away in a rapidly growing network of prisons and jails. However, the great majority of people have been tricked into believing in the efficacy of imprisonment, even though the historical record clearly demonstrates that prisons do not work. Racism has undermined our ability to create a popular critical discourse to contest the ideological trickery that posits imprisonment as key to public safety" from ColorLines, Fall '98

Julia Sudbury notes on the CR10 blog,
'We believe that the violence of crime cannot be solved through the additional violence of policing, surveillance and separation from loved ones. Instead, we advocate focusing attention and resources on building empowered communities, with decent housing, secure jobs, food security, healthy environments and high-quality education, as the ultimate alternative to incarceration.
The challenge facing us is immense. In the US alone, over 2.3 million people are warehoused in prisons and jails. A recent report from the Pew Center found that, for the first time, in the US we now imprison one in every 100 adults; the figure is one in nine for black men aged between 20 and 34. The Pew report also found that this massive incarceration is impacting state budgets without delivering a clear return on public safety."

Federal Prison Bureau Nonviolent Offender Relief Act of 2009

i've been thinking lately about the reform v. revolution debate, which in relation to prisons and the prison industrial complex becomes reform v. abolition. where is the line separating prison reform which ultimately lends further legitimacy to prisons as an institution by making the system somewhat less inhumane or somewhat more comprehensive (more education programs available, better quality programs, etc) from prison reform which moves us and society in the direction of a world without prisons? this bill has the potential to release large amounts of people from prison--
...but it also reinscribes the idea that "violent offenders" should be locked up for longer, and should not have the chance to successfully re-enter society, the idea that violent crime is about individual responsibility and never our collective social responsibility, the idea that our prison system is legitimate instead of its fundamentally being a racist-- and therefore illegitimate--institution.

also, what is the rhetoric of the 45-or-older clause?

Federal Prison Bureau Nonviolent Offender Relief Act of 2009, introduced on January 6th:

LEGISLATIVE CHAMBER: U.S. House of Representatives

SPONSOR: Representative Sheila Jackson-Lee, D-TX

Digest of H.R. 61:

Amends the federal criminal code to direct the Bureau of Prisons, pursuant to a good time policy, to release a prisoner who has served one half or more of his or her term of imprisonment if that prisoner:

(1) has attained age 45;

(2) has never been convicted of a crime of violence;

(3) has not engaged in any violation, involving violent conduct, of institutional disciplinary regulations.

In July 2007, Sheila Jackson-Lee said about the bill:

Many may hear this debate and suggest that incarcerated persons should be treated in a certain way. This is a very simple amendment. It asks for a study to look at the possibilities of early release for nonviolent prisoners who are over the age of 45.

How does that help our community? One, it sends individuals back home to their families to provide resources. We know that we are watching a second chance bill make its way through this Congress. We hope that it will move quickly. Many of these offenders are middle age. Many of them are sick. This costs a great deal for the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

It is noted that 1.1 million nonviolent offenders are currently locked up. Many of them are African Americans, and in the 1930s, 75 percent of the people entering State and Federal prison were of the majority population. That is not the case now.

So it's a simple premise. It has been adopted in the authorization bill. It asks the hard question, why are we incarcerating for decades and decades nonviolent individuals who pay their debt to society, when they could come out and provide the comfort and nurturing and financial support to their own families and also address the question of Federal prison overcrowding?


to track this bill, go to Open Congress or GovTrack

sounds from the soul

poetry written by Ericka Huggins in prison in 1970.
[ If They Come in the Morning, 1971 Angela Davis, p 98]

On Sunday, the 13th of December, the New Haven Women's Liberation Rock Band played a concert at Niantic State Prison.

reflections on Sunday:

sounds that come from the soul are always
the same
free
open sounds
giving
the kind that reach out and touch--

that's what our sisters did/ minimum
touching maximum/ showing oppression
and the wish for its
removal...
feeling those sounds
seeing them felt on others
watching faces smile
really smile for the first time in months--
getting high--on the natural power of the
people to resist/to smile/ to laugh/ to sing/
shout/love/give
ever here!!!
wild hair, funky guitar
long hair funky voice ( someone said
bessie smith came to mind)
hair--all lengths, legs arms, smiles, music--
SISTERS--and us...
raggedy peacoats, cotton dressed, rocking,
swaying,
screaming

enjoying it--
crying too--even if not too many
let the tears fall free
...us--black/brown/white/poor--SISTERS
and it was all a total exchange
of energy
communciation
even if we did not share words
we all knew their soul-sounds were
saying
we understand
we know
we can see what amerika is doing
to you--mother/daughter/child/woman
of oppression--

we can se, they sung
and our voices answered their guitars,
horns flute-voice-cowbell-tambourinene de-
mand for freedom with an unspoken right on
...a feelingt here that one day--soon--
all people will be free... and
we left
stronger
able to smile (for a moment)...
till we returned to
rules that degrade
schedules that destroy sanity
racism that they cannot see
sexism that rapes us of our womanhood...

and the locks, keys, windows, walls, doors,
threats
warnings
bribes that harden oru hearts and
chain our souls...
the time
must be
seized
venceremos!

the oldness of new things
fascinate me like a new
feeling about love about people
snow, highways that
sparkle at night, talk,
laughter...
that old longing for freedom
that this place cosntantly
renews--it all makes
me know that humankind
has longed to be free ever forever
since its break from the
whole
maybe longing for
freedom will soon make
others homesick for our
natural state in / with
earth, air, fire, water
not dead
but living
not asking for freedom--
but free--






--

let's go fly a kite//CALLS FROM HOME

just got an email from a listserv called {disarmed}, which i'm sure i signed up for at the CR conference, about thousand kite's grassroots holiday radio-for-prisoners project.

thousand kites is a NATIONAL DIALOGUE PROJECT ADDRESSING THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM.

they are asking people to participate in their 9th annual holiday radio show for prisoners, calls from home.

going into the bathroom i see...

Hunger Strike in Greek Prisons

I am under the impression that this is now an international hunger strike. This is specifically about the treatment of people in the prisons. There are so many ways to protest the treatment in prisons and so much those of us on the outside can do.

If you read Greek go here.

If you read English go here.

Here's a bit from Teacher Dude at Now Public.

Amidst the glam and glitter that go with the opening of any international event, the start of the Thessaloniki film festival was also marked by a march of between 500 and 1000 anarchist protesting conditions in Greece’s prison system. The demonstrations, which took place yesterday evening in most of the country’s major cities were aimed at bring public attention to the hunger strike taking place throughout country’s jails.

I was told last summer by a friend that prison abolition was not a good cause to take on because somethings are just the way they are and should be left that way. I couldn't disagree more.

Opening

The opening plenary for the conference was an all-star line up of anti-PIC folks.


Opening plenary
CR10

Line Up Included


All Nations Drum who held a FREE LENARD PELTIER sign and chanted and drummed to start of the night.

Lisa Ortega from Rights for People with Psychiatric Disabilities talked about the oppression and criminalization of people with Psychiatric Disabilities and the need for inclusion in the anti-PIC movement for these voices.

The Welfare Poets sang and spit from their album about anti-death penalty activism and had the plenary not gone on to long we might have made it to their full show in San. fran that night.




Hank Jones talked about his experience as a political prisoner and one of the SF8


Miss Major spoke as an elder about the realities that trans people are often incarcerated for being trans. She said over and over that This shit has been going on for far to long and we aren't going to put up with it any longer!


.

.
Most of the people around me went wild when Suheir Hammad read her poetry specifically
“letter to anthony (critical resistance)”

I.
this is not a pre paid
call this is not a poem
this is not a letter written from a woman
on the inside this is a

dear nazik aka nymflow-9 aka
bronx bomber aka anthony aka
42851-054 5812
hey brother i hope
this finds you well and safe

i have carried these words for
months through ports and air
and i still have a hard time
five years later writing
you when i travel

but your letters i take
with me the graffiti you throw
at the end of a dozen
handwritten double sided single
spaced muslim oil scented legal
sheets offer me a home
in polyester hotel rooms

you have never been on an airplane

i think of tht often when i try
to help women place words together
into rhymes or lines these women
try to make sense of their lives

what makes me different i mean
people actually pay you they say to
read some poems and talk? shit i got a lot
say let someone pay me to talk. fuck that
just get me out of here and i’ll talk sing dance
shut up if they want

i don’t tell them i get
paid just enough for rent
rent means a home even
if you broke it’s home

we workshop poems and their stories
are not original or fictional
a woman will tell you
every home she has ever inhabited
has been broken into
starting with her body

i never leave a prison
without my head splitting
down my spine an iron
hand on my lungs

when you call anthony
and that woman’s voice says
this is a pre paid call press 5
to accept this call i press 5 count
to 3 take a deep breath and pray
we talk and when the voice
interrupts any intimacy
we’ve embroidered via phone wires
with this call is from a federal prison
we pick up the shards
of our conversation desperate
to finish before the next

II

i have always loved criminals
i tell people who try to shame
me into silence

with words like television conjugal
college libraries they say
can you imagine a library in a nigerian a chinese a
colombian prison do you know what happens in the world americans are spoiled no idea
how lucky we are here

even you often write how
your time has offered reflection
meditation deepened your faith
but you 27 and have 10
years to go nowhere how much deeper
you going to get until a system based
on money deems you rehabilitated

i have always loved criminals
and the way you bomb my tag
butterphoenix all across your letters
reminds me our affirmation is
considered vandalism

i have always loved
criminals and not only the thugged
out bravado of rap videos and champagne
popping hustlers but my father
born an arab baby boy
on the forced way out
of his homeland his mother exiled
and pregnant gave birth in a camp

the world pointed and said
palestinians do not exist palestinians
are roaches palestinians are two legged dogs
and israel built jails and weapons and
a history based on the absence of a people
israel made itself holy and chosen
and my existence a crime

so i have always loved criminals
it is a love of self
and i will not cut off any part of
me and place it behind fences and bars
and the fake ass belief
that there is a difference between
the inside and the outside

there is no outside anywhere
anymore just where we are and
what we do while we are here

and there
are people anthony who make a connection
between you puerto rican rhyme slayer beautiful man and
young girls twisted into sex work and these
people nazim they are working to stop prisons
from being economically beneficial to depressed
communities and these people
bronx bomber they imagine a world
where money can’t be made off the hurt
of the young the poor the colored the
sexualized the different and these people
nymflow they never heard you
spit lyrics and they won’t
see the brillians from these mere words
but these people
42851-054 5812
they believe human
beings can never be reduced
to numbers not in concentration
camps or reservations not in
refugee camps not in schools
and not in jails

these people
brother they resist

i will share these words
with them and i will
in your name and in the names
of all who imagine

stay well
and safe
resist
and love
suheir







Andy Smith blew everyone away with her humor, candor and passion for what it means to be part of a movement. I have a number of pictures of all of these people but tears and intent and laughing made a lot of them blurry.