Kite Line

This week, we hear more from Chantal, who tells us about her time detained in France in December. We also cover breaking news on hunger strikes in immigrant detention centers across the US, as well as the victory of hundreds of hunger strikers in Corcoran prison in California.  Medical malfeasance by prison officials, and the needless suffering it causes, are important themes across the whole episode, from hunger strikers tortured by violent force feeding to the death of Lamekia Dockery here in Indiana, to the neglect detainees suffer in French facilities.

Arrested in Paris during Yellow Vests clashes, Chantal describes the immigration retention facility she was held in. She tells us of the camaraderie people found together while inside, and the absurdity of the situation many of them were in. She used her skills in translation to fight for medical care for a fellow detainee who was unable to speak French.  Chantal also paints a picture of the daily life of the immigration retention center, aptly describing the small pleasures and acts of resistance that prisoners figure out during their time inside. You can hear the first and second parts of Chantal’s story HERE and HERE.

This week,we hear a statement regarding a hunger strike that took place in France this month. On January 8th, detainees at the same immigration retention center that Chantal, the subject of this week’s Kite Line, was held in released a statement announcing that they had begun a hunger strike, and calling on detainees in other retention centers around France to join them.

Following the statement from the French retention center, we continue hearing from Chantal, who tells us of her time detained in France last month. Arrested in Paris during the Yellow Vests protests, Chantal gives her perspective on her case, and continues to describe for us the immigration retention facility she was held in. You can hear the beginning of her story in last week’s Kite Line- here.

We will continue to hear more about Chantal’s time inside the immigration retention center next week.

In this episode, we read a statement by Keith Lamar, also known as Bomani Shakur, who just had his execution date set.  In his statement, Keith wrangles with the violent death the state of Ohio is seeking to inflict on him, but also with the vast challenges and ruptures that we as a whole face in the 21st century.

While the US government remains shutdown after four weeks, leading to widespread neglect of federal prisoners, France is approaching three months of an open insurgency.  Hundreds of thousands of people have donned Yellow Vests and are blockading highways and roundabouts, as well as rioting in towns and cities across the country each Saturday, in order to resist the collapse of living standards and the shifting of costs onto the poor.

In order to get a first-hand perspective on the movement, we interviewed Chantal, an American arrested during a demonstration in Paris last month.  In addition to touching on aspects of the Yellow Vest movement, she tells the story of her time in an immigrant detention center there, echoing stories of abuse at US detention centers, which are themselves being shaken by overcrowding and collective struggles.

Since the Ferguson uprising in 2014, the Black Lives Matter movement has shone a light on a range of American institutions, revealing their white supremacist origins and functions.  In addition to police and the discriminatory mortgage market, cash bail is one of the most important of these institutions to be revealed and resisted.  Community bail funds and others have begun organizing against a cash bail system that specifically targets the poor and exacts an especially high cost on communities of color.

Jails and legal systems across the country have begun conceding defeat on this issue in the face of fierce protest, large-scale bail fundraising and considerable moral outrage, leading to the end of cash bail in many jurisdictions.  Indiana, for example, will end cash bail by 2020.  The danger now, though, is that cash bail will be replaced with measures just as bad.  The “risk-assessment” algorithms used to determine who may be released pre-trial and who must wait in jail, threaten to reproduce all the racism and class bias of money bail.  Equally worrisome is electronic monitoring, in which people will be released from jails but subjected to a new, more intimate kind of surveillance via ankle shackles that they must wear everywhere.  These devices can be painful, stigmatizing, and restrictive; are difficult to maintain; and still require intense human oversight.  Despite the fact that there is no evidence they make a person more likely to show up to trial, their use is expanding enormously.

First, we hear from Emmet Sanders about his experience. Then, James Kilgore speaks with J. Johndi Harrell, an organizer against electronic monitoring in Philadelphia, explains this danger and the risk that electronic monitoring will expand the incarceration of millions.