Kite Line

This week, Kite Line shares hard-earned lessons based on experiences of struggle on both sides of the prison walls.  Perilous Chronicle’s Ryan Fatica returns with Lauren Regan from the Civil Liberties Defense Center, who has guidelines for protestors.  IDOC Watch discuss their campaign for mass clemency in Indiana. Malik Washington talks about getting off paper and self-care post-prison.

You can get updates on the CLDC here.

Find out about IDOC Watch’s Freedom Now campaign here.

You can find out about more about Perilous Chronicle here.

Follow the San Francisco Bay View’s new BayViewTV here.

Our show this week returns to June 11th, the international day of solidarity with long-term anarchist prisoners. The focus of June 11th is overcoming the isolation that these long-term prisoners face, as the movements they participated in years ago give way to new struggles and new generations of radicals.  The day of solidarity works to connect these prisoners with struggles currently underway, especially those struggles with the potential to abolish the prison system, freeing them and all prisoners.

We begin with Letha, who gives us an update on Marius Mason, who alongside most prisoners, has faced an excruciating year of COVID isolation and vulnerability within the Danbury federal prison in Connecticut.  Marius organized in Bloomington and across the Midwest for decades, before being arrested for his participation in Earth Liberation Front actions.  He came out as transgender while inside, and has contributed solidarity statements both to the annual June 11th events around the world and to the January 22nd day of solidarity with trans prisoners.  Letha shares important notes on how to keep Marius and other prisoners connected to the outside world.

For our final segment, we return to our conversation with Lauren Regan from the Civil Liberties Defense Center. Last week, Lauren told us about the ongoing physical and mental harassment facing longterm anarchist antiracist prisoner Eric King, and his lawsuit against the U.S. Government.

You can get updates on Eric’s case via the CLDC website: https://cldc.org/ and at supportericking.org.

You can learn about supporting Marius, including how to write him here.

We start off this week’s show with a roundup of prison disturbances compiled by Perilous Chronicle.  Afterwards, we speak with Lauren Regan, the Executive Director of the Civil Liberties Defense Center. Regan has been on the show before to discuss state repression and her efforts to support people facing political charges.  She returns today to talk about the CLDC and specifically Eric King, an anarchist prisoner housed at FCI Englewood in Colorado.

King was arrested in 2014 after he carried out an attack against a politician’s office in solidarity with the Ferguson uprising.  As an anti-racist prisoner, he has been subjected to repeated assaults by white supremacists. Regan describes his case, the struggle over his conditions and safety inside, and his upcoming release.  We will finish the interview next week on our June 11th episode.  June 11th is a day of solidarity with longterm anarchist prisoners, including Eric King, Marius Mason, and others.

You can find out more about the Civil Liberties Defense Center at cldc.org

You can find out more information about Eric, including a book wish list and how to write to him at supportericking.org.

You can see more of Perilous Chronicle’s coverage at https://perilouschronicle.com/

This week, we hear from Koby Bluitt, daughter of Leon Benson, a long time Indiana prisoner and organizer. She tells us about Leon, their relationship, and her current efforts to help him get free. We’ve covered Leon’s case on Kite Line before: a case of poor eyewitness testimony that helped convict the man of a crime he adamantly maintains he did not commit. Koby tells us about how Leon has been spending his 23 years inside, and what it was like having a parent in prison. She closes with advice for those who have a loved one inside.

You can hear our previous episodes with and about Leon Benson here, here  here and here.

Art & Music:

https://leonbenson.wixsite.com/free

Website:

https://www.freeleonbenson.org/

https://m.facebook.com/freeleonbenson/

This week, we share two stories from people reflecting on their time inside and on re-entry. Both have wise words about surviving incarceration, and the overall political context of prisons. First is David Campbell, a former political prisoner at Rikers Island in New York. We will hear more from David later, but in this episode, he discusses his case and sentencing, the rigors of cell searches, and how he organized his time inside. Next, we hear from Spirit Mike, who endured a decade in the Florida prison system. In particular, Mike thinks about the broader systems prison is embedded in, and how he is fighting back against disempowerment and exclusion through urban farming.

Last week, we heard from Kim, Shari, Lauren, Pablo and Brian about Parole Illinois, a group fighting to reinstate, as they put it, “earned discretionary reentry”. This is the last of a two-part conversation with them. In 1978, Illinois abolished discretionary parole system. Today, it remains one of just sixteen states (plus the District of Columbia) without any means for incarcerated people to earn parole.

In the previous episode, they introduced themselves and their own connections to incarceration- a couple of them have loved ones locked inside, or have been inside themselves, and spoke to how these inside-outside relationships have impacted their lives.

In this week’s show, they speak about why parole was abolished in Illinois in 1978, and also how prison is further traumatizing people who are inside, and those who have loved ones in prison or jail. They talk about the future of Parole Illinois, and how they would like to change the “tough on crime” narrative to ensure a meaningful reform of the parole system.

Thank you to everyone for their help on the show. You can find out more about their work at their website, including those past and future events they mentioned, and about the SB2333 bill they spoke about last week.

We will have a link to our previous episode with them on our new website, kitelineradio.org

We start this episode with our monthly list of prison disturbances compiled by Perilous Chronicle, an journalistic collective that tracks prisoner protests across the US and Canada.

Afterwards, we share the first part of a conversation with people working with Parole Illinois, a group campaigning for a fair and inclusive parole system. In 1978, Illinois abolished discretionary parole system. Today, it remains one of just sixteen states (plus the District of Columbia) without any means for incarcerated people to earn parole. In this episode, we will hear first hand about the impacts of this lack of parole on people inside- and those who have a loved one inside.

You can find out more about Parole Illinois here.

You can get Perilous Chronicle’s in-depth analysis on current prison struggles here.

On today’s episode, we share two perspectives on the role of study, as practiced in the face of repression and directly against repression.  First, we complete our interview with Garrett Felber, with a focus on his termination by the University of Mississippi in retaliation for his outspoken criticism of its white supremacist structure and how he and others have worked to ensure that the  anti-prison work of Study and Struggle can continue despite his firing.  Just as Garrett must also study and navigate these academic power structures, our next guest, Mwalimu describes carefully tracking the changing dynamics at the California prison where he is caged.  Mwalimu discusses the careful measures he and his New Afrikan comrades take to compose a movement together with other groups of prisoners.   Lastly, he goes into the importance of their inside study groups as well as the intellectual work he invests in thinking with people on the outside, sending essays out to publications and blogs.

Beginning this fall, Garrett will be a visiting faculty fellow in American Studies at Yale University, where he’ll be writing a biography of Black Puerto Rican anarchist and former political prisoner Martin Sostre and continuing to organize with Study and Struggle in Mississippi.

You can hear the all our previous episodes with Garrett Felber here.

You can hear all our previous episodes with Mwalimu here.

This week, we share the second part of a conversation between Garrett Felber and Micol Seigel. Felber has been on the show before, discussing the Nation of Islam and its relationship to the origins of the modern prisoners’ movement. His new book, Those Who Know Don’t Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State, is an important contribution to this history. In this episode, Micol and Garrett introduces the role of the “scholar-activist” and its tenuous relationship with the university. Garrett organizes with the Study and Struggle program to fight against criminalization and incarceration in Mississippi, understanding that study is a moment of political struggle.

You can listen to the first part of their conversation here.

You can listen to our 2018 episodes with Garrett Felber here and here.

This week, we share the first part of a conversation between Garrett Felber and Micol Seigel. Felber has been on the show before, discussing the Nation of Islam and its relationship to the origins of the modern prisoners’ movement. His recently released book, Those Who Know Don’t Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State, is an important contribution to this history. In this episode, Micol and Garrett talk about the dialectics of discipline- a term Garrett coined to describe the relationship between disciplined, collective Black protest and escalating punitive state discipline.

You can listen to previous episodes with Garrett Felber here and here.