A couple of months ago, I wrote that I was going to be co-curating (with some friends) an exhibition about a history of black incarceration in the U.S. titled Black/Inside.

I haven’t had much time to think about planning the exhibition because I have been consumed with work and other projects. As I come to the end of a major project about policing and violence, I can now turn more of my attention back to Black/Inside.

Some updates on where things stand…

First, I am happy to announce that the exhibition will premiere at the African American Cultural Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago in October 2012. We are designing the exhibition so that it can travel and we hope that other cultural spaces in the city will want to host the exhibition past November.

Next, I am happy to say that my friend Teresa is serving as the co-curator on this project. She was formerly a curatorial assistant at the Jane Addams Hull House museum and is just an all-round terrific human being. It’s a pleasure to be collaborating with her again. Also, I am thrilled to be working with my friend Billy who will be offering design and artistic support for the exhibition. Billy will be designing one of the interactive features of the exhibit and helping with other things too. It’s always fun working with Billy. Over the weekend, I met a new friend, Maria, who is an artist, a friend of Teresa and is also supporting this exhibition.

All of us are volunteering our time to organize Black/Inside because we strongly believe that mass incarceration is a huge waste of resources and also more importantly for us an “immoral destruction of human lives.” We also believe that there is a desperate need to engage more people in the movement to dismantle the prison industrial complex. We need to find multiple ways to capture the public’s attention and to marshal a base of people who will feel empowered to challenge this pernicious epidemic. We need to educate more people about mass incarceration in this moment but we must ground our discussions in a historical context.

Our exhibition is framed by a set of questions that were posed by Michelle Alexander when she was interviewed for a recent article in Rethinking Schools:

1. How did we get here?
2. Why is this happening?
3. How are things different in other communities?
4. How is this linked to what has gone on in prior periods of our nation’s history?
5. And what, then, can we do about it?

There are other related questions that we want to explore too; they are inspired by the late great Manning Marable:

1. Why do black people continue to be marginalized in the U.S.?
2. Who benefits from this marginalization?
3. Who is responsible for maintaining the structure of power and privilege that makes this marginalization an enduring fact of American life?

Over the next few weeks, I will periodically use this space on Prison Culture to muse out loud about various aspects of Black/Inside. For those who may want to more regularly follow the ideas that will eventually form the basis of the exhibition, I have started a Tumblr that will serve as the “container” for my musings. I have no doubt that a lot of what appears on the Tumblr won’t necessarily make it into the final exhibition. I am using the space as a kind of journal since I don’t usually know what I think about anything until I see it written down.

The bulk of the artifacts that will make up this exhibition are from my personal collection. I have not scanned the vast majority of the items that I have collected over the years. Regardless, I have started a Pinterest board that features some of the artifacts from my collection. The board will expand as I have an opportunity to scan and include more artifacts over time.

It should be an interesting next few months and I look forward to sharing some of the journey with you.

I have refrained from writing this post for almost two years but I cannot hold back any longer. Bill Clinton is without a doubt my least favorite President of the last 40 years. You read that correctly. But, but, but, what about Ronald Reagan you might ask? What about George W. Bush you might protest? Well for me, the truth is that I expect Republicans to be detrimental to people of color’s prospects. They do not pretend to be interested in our survival.

Bill Clinton, on the other hand, has actively tried to ingratiate himself to black people by appropriating black culture. Think back to his appearance on Arsenio Hall, playing the Sax. Think back to his post-Presidency move to Harlem to locate his Clinton Foundation office there. Think back to the fact that we are incessantly told that Bill Clinton was the “first black” President. What a massive insult! People who speak this nonsense, say it without irony.

There are so many ways that the Clinton Presidency was toxic to black people in particular and people of color in general. I will periodically highlight some of his greatest hits against black people in the coming weeks. Today I want to focus on one piece of legislation that the U.S. Congress passed in 1994 which is still reverberating in 2012. The 1994 Omnibus Crime Bill (spearheaded by Joe Biden and Bill Clinton) cost $30 billion dollars and helped to accelerate the growth of the prison industrial complex in ways that we are only just beginning to understand. The bill’s provisions included:

1. $10.8 billion in federal matching funds to local governments to hire 100,000 new police officers over 5 years.
2. $10 billion for the construction of new federal prisons.
3. An expansion of the number of federal crimes to which the death penalty applied from two to fifty-eight (the bill also eliminated an existing statute that prohibited the execution of mentally incapacitated defendants).
4. A three strikes proposal that mandated life sentences for anyone convicted of three “violent” felonies.
5. A section that allowed children as young as thirteen to be tried as adults.
6. The creation of special courts able to deport noncitizens alleged to be “engaged in terrorist activity” on the basis of secret evidence.
7. Established guidelines for states to track sex offenders. Required states to track sex offenders by confirming their place of residence annually for ten years after their release into the community or quarterly for the rest of their lives if the sex offender was convicted of a violent sex crime. [This sex offender registry law has caused havoc in the legal system]

These are just a few of the greatest hits from the 1994 Crime Bill.

Progressives who are loudly complaining about President Obama’s record on civil liberties (which is abysmal) were overwhelmingly SILENT about Clinton’s dramatic expansion of the prison industrial complex. I remember that period of time clearly. I invite you to send me your own examples of the many ways that Bill Clinton’s presidency was destructive to people of color and I will happily post them here. I think that this is a period of history that many people either don’t know about or are willfully choosing to forget. It should NOT be forgotten since we are living with the consequences of that era today.

Stop the Criminal-Black-Man Narrative 2012
by nancy a heitzeg

“Trayvon Martin was killed by a very old idea..”
~ Brent Staples, New York Times, 4/14/2102

The Black Man as Dangerous is a lethal idea, ironically, not to those who perpetrate and fear, but especially to those to whom it is attached. It is indeed also a very old idea, one that has evolved over centuries. The Savage, The Brute, the Defiler of White Women — honed and solidified in the Post Civil Rights Era into an archetype that scholars and activists now refer to in aggregate short-hand:

The Criminal-Black-Man.

This image is ubiquitous — it is the text and subtext of all crime-reporting and “reality” cop/prison programing. It shapes the contours of everyday racism, the school to prison pipeline, police patrols and profiles; it offers the framework for both creating and then perversely justifying the demographics of both the prison industrial complex and the face of death row.

At times, as in the Trayvon Martin case, the archetype and its’ consequences are, at least briefly, openly examined and discussed. More often, as with the noxious Kony 2012 campaign, it looms just below the surface with an eerily subconscious pull.

The Criminal-Black-Man is the visible yet untouchable specter that lies at the center of fear and violence. It is personal and yes it is political.

Read more »

My friend, the talented Rachael Hudak, has written a poignant poem based on the theme of what we all “miss” (in our neighborhoods, in our communities, and in our lives) as a result of the epidemic of mass incarceration. Rachael works at the Neighborhood Writing Alliance and facilitated a workshop this week based on a project that we are both involved in called “The Missing.”

what’s missing
by Rachael Hudak

in the last letter he wrote to me, Martin told me to
slow down
everything in the prison was starting to burst
into anger and he needed his friends on the outside to
keep peace

I’ve been thinking about how to keep peace
when there are so many pieces
missing from the whole
so many lives thrown into holes
wells dug so deep
that I can’t even dream of the day they all dry up

what is missing is
the ability to pick up the phone and call my friends
on their birthday
when they are dying
when I miss them
the ability to make them a handmade card
(the glue on the page questioned as a vehicle for drugs)
bring them soup when they are sick
hug them for longer than three breaths

what is missing is
Shaneka’s bond with her baby, taken from her three days after birth
what is missing is
Martin’s honeymoon with his wife after thirty years of love
what is missing is
the freedom to use a roll of scotch tape to patch things back together
(one piece at a time from a guard
more than one could be melted and shaped into a shank)
what is missing is
open spaces where I can talk about how much I miss Kinnari
who was deported back to India after serving 11 years
for defending her body against sexual assault
what is missing is
open spaces where we can talk about
how bad it hurts to have friends and family
in prison
who we can’t visit
who we can’t call
who we love and
miss

fathers and mothers
and so many black and brown fathers
so many women
and so many babies who have grown up to be women
and so many babies who have grown up to be men
without their black and brown mothers
without their black and brown fathers
and white men and women
and poor men and women,
so many without money
locked away without enough to their name
to make a phone call
(in Chicago it costs $7 to make a 15 minute call)
I miss them in this city
I write poems every day
about how to keep peace in my heart
while this war eats my people

Martin, I miss you
Kinnari, I miss you
Jamal, I miss you
Phil, I miss you
Lala, I miss you
Shawn, I miss you
and for so many friends I have not named
those who wake and breathe dreaming of streets
that welcome them home
and a place at the table with food that steams the words
eat, you deserve to be nourished
I love you
I miss you

The past week has just been beyond busy for me. I’ve wanted to participate in several actions that have been taking place across my state of Illinois addressing mass incarceration but have not been able to. However thanks to my friends and to the internet, I have been able to keep up with some of the happenings. It’s not the same as being there by any measure but it allows me to feel connected in some way.

Yesterday, my friends at TAMMS Year Ten organized a powerful and from what I hear poignant direct action to amplify the voices of mothers and family members of men who are currently locked up at TAMMS Supermax prison. This is just part of the many actions that the group has been engaged in for over 10 years now.

The Chicago Tribune covered the Mother’s March:

The group of mothers stood beneath the sun in downtown Chicago on Wednesday, taking turns at a microphone to tell how the state’s controversial super-max prison has changed their sons.

One described her son’s precipitous weight loss since being incarcerated in the facility in Tamms in southern Illinois 21/2 years ago. Another spoke of her son’s slide into depression and hopelessness because of his extreme isolation. And a third detailed a maddening daily routine: In order to stay active, she said her son now spends hours walking in small circles in his windowless concrete cell.

“You did a crime, you need to pay for it,” said Geneva Mullins, whose son was convicted of attempted murder and conspiracy in a murder and is now at the Tamms super-max. “But you wouldn’t treat an animal like this. It is inhumane.”

Read the whole article here. Please also take a moment to visit the TAMMS Year Ten website to find out how you can support efforts to close this torture chamber. We have never been closer to seeing this prison closed. Governor Quinn has recommended its closure. Now it is up to the legislature to make sure that it happens.

My friend Sam took some beautiful photographs at the action and I want to share them with you.

Guarded
(Dropping Daddy Off At Jail)
by Danna Botwick

Good-bye at the gate
We hugged & kissed like families do
He held his youngest daughter,

She wanted to see where he would sleep.

The guard, a black woman
with sunglasses & white uniform,
scooped up his belongings with
long red nails.
It’s just a camp,
no bars, she made light
of our darkness and I hated her
long red nails.

Lucy did not cry
for almost two hours.

When it folded over her,
she was trying to spell
and decided she could not do her work
without him
so she beat the couch
with small angry fists
“I want my daddy, NOW!”
Until she could not breathe,
eyes puffy,
face flushed she raged,

“I wish daddy didn’t do that bad
thing in the first place!”

I paused inside my hurt
and suggested,
“He didn’t know…”

Too smart for me
she smashed her face into a pillow,
“I’ll bet all mothers say that to their children.”

After Trayvon Martin
by Kay Whitlock with Nancy A. Heitzeg

Tonight, Criminal Injustice (CI) is remembering Trayvon Martin in historical context, calling the names of at least a few of those who, over the centuries as well as today, perished alongside of him. We can’t list all of the names – they go into the millions. But we can invoke both the humanity of those whose deaths result from structural racism and inhumanity of those who do and permit the killing with a few images.

Ponder the images. Read the links – not all at once, but over time. Reflect on what you encounter.
Emmett Till
Medgar Evers

Fred Hampton and Mark Clark

Oscar Grant, Troy Davis, Amadou Diallou

Duanna Johnson, James Byrd Jr

Susan Bartholomew, Jose Holmes, James Barset, Ronald Madison

Donnell Herrington, Marcel Alexander, Chris Collins, Willie Lawrence, Henry Glover

Anthony Scott

Read more »

This past week Fareed Zakaria published an article about the U.S.’s failed “War on Drugs.” In it, he writes:

Over the past four decades, the U.S. has spent more than $1 trillion fighting the war on drugs. The results? In 2011 a global commission on drug policy issued a report signed by George Shultz, Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan; the ­archconservative Peruvian writer-politician Mario Vargas Llosa; former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker; and former Presidents of Brazil and Mexico Fernando Henrique Cardoso and Ernesto Zedillo. It begins, “The global war on drugs has failed … Vast expenditures on criminalization and repressive measures directed at producers, traffickers and consumers of illegal drugs have clearly failed to effectively curtail supply or consumption.” Its main recommendation is to “encourage experimentation by governments with models of legal regulation of drugs to undermine the power of organized crime and safeguard the health and security of their citizens.”

It’s no secret that I am slightly obsessed with Lil’ Wayne and not in a good way. Anyway, a young man who I am working with has picked up on this and it has become his mission in life (it seems) to convince me that Wayne has some socially redeeming qualities. He sent me some lyrics of Wayne’s song titled Misunderstood. Because I have such love and respect for the young man who sent these to me, I thought that I would take the time to highlight some lines from the song that discusses the toll that the war on drugs takes on young men of color. Honestly, these lyrics are undone for me by several others that seem to devolve into a rant about sex offenders. But I guess beggars can’t be choosers.

I Was Watching T.V. The Other Day Right
Got This White Guy Up There Talking About Black Guys
Talking About How Young Black Guys Are Targeted
Targeted By Who? America
You See One In Every 100 Americans Are Locked Up
One In Every 9 Black Americans Are Locked Up
And See What The White Guy Was Trying To Stress Was That
The Money We Spend On Sending A Mothaf**ka To Jail
A Young Mothaf**ka To Jail
Would Be Less To Send His Or Her Young Ass To College
See, And Another Thing The White Guy Was Stressing Was That
Our Jails Are Populated With Drug Dealers, You Know Crack/cocaine Stuff Like That
Meaning Due To The Laws We Have On Crack/cocaine And Regular Cocaine
Police Are Only, I Don’t Want To Say Only Right, But Shit
Only Logic By Riding Around In The Hood All Day
And Not In The Suburbs
Because Crack Cocaine Is Mostly Found In The Hood
And You Know The Other Thing Is Mostly Found In You Know Where I’m Going
But Why Bring A Mothaf**ka To Jail If It’s Not Gon Stand Up In Court
Cuz This Drug Aint That Drug, You Know Level 3, Level 4 Drug, Shit Like That
I Guess It’s All A Misunderstanding
I Sit Back And Think, You Know Us Young Mothaf**kas You Know That 1 In 9
We Probably Only Selling The Crack Cocaine Because We In The Hood
And It’s Not Like In The Suburbs, We Don’t Have What You Have
Why? I Really Don’t Wanna Know The Answer
I Guess We Just Misunderstood Hunh
You Know We Don’t Have Room In The Jail Now For The Real Mothaf**kas, The Real Criminals
Sex Offenders, Rapists Serial Killers, S**t Like That
Don’t Get Scared, Don’t Get Scared

If Lil Wayne sees these issues clearly, then one knows for sure that policymakers also do. Time to end the so-called “War on Drugs” which is really a war on communities of color and other marginalized groups.

I’ve mentioned several times that I am immersed in working on several projects relating to the histories and the current manifestations of policing and violence. I am excited to say that my organization will be releasing a new zine created by my friend, the talented and incredible Rachel Williams in May. I am sharing just a few pages of the publication today. I think that you will agree that the zine is incredibly relevant to the conversations that have been swirling over the past few months with respect to police treatment of protesters, potential police misconduct in the Trayvon Martin case, police shootings of unarmed civilians, and police practices like the NYPD’s “Stop and Frisk.” Stay tuned for the whole thing in May!