Kite Line

This week, we interview a participant in Perilous, a new prison history project. Perilous launched its website earlier this year, with a goal of compiling all the grassroots, collective mobilizations that have happened in US prisons since the prisoners’ movement seriously kicked off again in 2010. With this interview, we got a sense of their process and approach, as well as an overview of the trajectory of the movement so far. We are also sharing a moving statement from Evelyn, the mother of Melvin Perez, a prisoner in Florida seeking clemency after two decades inside on a shaky conviction.

In the past months, the California prison system, or CDRC, has been convulsed by hunger strikes and a series of so-called “gladiator” or “dog fights,” in which guards pit prisoners against each other.  Brook, an organizer with the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee in Oakland, spoke with us to provide vital context for understanding this volatile situation- as well as recent updates on the movement inside Corcoran, one of the more infamous of these maximum security prisons.

Brook explains in detail the history of these fights, and also how gang culture thrives inside prisons- often as a way to give prisoners an identity and protection in facilities where the purpose is to remove these from its prisoners. As Brook puts it, having your crew allows you to have such things as communication, identity, protection, sunlight- all things that the state explicitly tries to take from you.

First, we have updates on the Vaughn 17 and hunger strikes and noise demonstrations from immigrant detention centers around the country. After the news, we share a conversation with Phillip Roberts and Debra Des Vignes.  Des Vignes is the founder of the Indiana Prison Writers Workshop, and Roberts participated in the project for almost a year.

Roberts reads some of the poems he has written while on the inside, as well as some he’s penned since being released. He explains the ways that the writer’s workshop impacted his time in prison. Roberts tells us the story of his release, and what it was like for him to be reunited to his young daughter- and how writing helped him prepare for that experience.

This week is an interview with Samantha Johnson, from No New Jails in Brooklyn, New York. As we reported recently, the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn recently was the target of large scale demonstrations, after prisoners expressed to their loved ones on the outside that they were being denied basic human needs such as heat, fresh food, and running water.

In the interview, Johnson describes being on the front lines of this protest and next steps. She also stresses the importance of working with families affected by incarceration, and how organizers have been able to join with these families to push an end to the inhumane treatment at MDC and other facilities around the United States.

This week, we share two different reflections on time inside, focusing on how prison interrupts life, education, and development. The first is the conclusion of Chantal’s account of her weeks inside a French immigrant retention center after her arrest during Yellow Vest clashes in Paris. She describes her and other prisoners’ efforts to pass the time and take care of each other amid both neglect and institutional chaos. She then speaks to the emotional aftermath of her time inside.

The second reflection is from Chris, a former prisoner who recently spent nearly a year in a Gainesville, Florida work camp. He describes the senselessness of prison slavery and its distance from rehabilitation. This account was shared with the county commission in Gainesville just a few weeks ago- and contributed to Alachua County dropping its labor contracts with the Florida Department of Corrections. This is the first county in Florida to drop its prison labor contracts.