Kite Line

This week, we air part of a conversation with Brandon Ackerson, a 36-year-old survivor of an 18 year prison sentence in the Indiana prison system. Newly released, he talks about using the skills he learned and honed during life in the DOC, in which he became a successful writer while in the Indiana Prison Writers’ Workshop.

This week, we return to our conversation with Zolo Agona Azania, who was recently released after surviving decades on Indiana’s death row.  In the second part of the conversation, he talks about researching the death penalty and appealing his death penalty sentence. The efforts of Azania, his lawyers and supporters helped to successfully free him from death row and he was released in 2017. Azania also reflects how his analysis of race and politics changed over time through these experiences.

We recently sat down with Zolo Agona Azania, who was recently released after surviving decades on Indiana’s death row.  In this first section of the interview, he covers his early experiences in prison, the role of imprisoned Black Panthers in mentoring him, and the cycle of prisoners struggles that lasted in Indiana from the late 1970s to the early 1990s.  In the course of this important neglected history, he shares a wealth of vital lessons for organizing today.

This week, we finish our conversation between Toussaint Losier and Micol Seigel. This is part three of a series in which we hear Losier, author of Rethinking the American Prison Movement, speak to Seigel about his research while writing his book, in which he builds a cohesive picture of the long history of incarceration. In this final part of the conversation, Losier focuses on the more recent wave of prisoner organizing.

This week continues the conversation between Toussaint Losier and Micol Seigel.

This is part two of a series in which we hear Losier, author of Rethinking the American Prison Movement, speak to Seigel about his research while writing his book, in which he builds a cohesive picture of the long history of incarceration.  In this episode, Losier speaks about resistance to incarceration from WWII to the early 1970s.  For Losier, this period is where we find the rise of the “big house” ideal, with prisons seen as a primarily rehabilitative institution.  This period saw unprecedented gains in prisoner self-determination and labor organizing, and particularly intense struggle in “the prison rebellion years” of 1968-1972.