Kite Line

This week, we share an update from the U.S./Mexico border, as well as two more illuminating conversations from inside the Brazilian prison system. First, we hear from Luce, who has just returned to the U.S. after doing legal aid for unaccompanied minors at the Barretal migrant shelter in Tijuana.

As we mentioned in last week’s episode, Kite Line contributor Micol Seigel spent time this fall with students in São Paulo, teaching a course on American prison history at the state university.  Seigel’s academic host introduced her to an activist civil servant at the Secretariat of Penal Administration, who connected her to the members of a work release program. We have two more conversations between Seigel’s students and members of this work release program. They were conducted in Portuguese, translated to English by the students in the class, and the translations were recorded here in our Bloomington studio.

In one of these conversations, a prisoner points out that in Brazil, one set of laws and sentences apply to the rich, while a different set applies to the poor.  The same could be said of the U.S.- particularly after a week in which an 8-year-old Guatemalan child died in U.S. custody, who was guilty only of fleeing with his family from violence and starvation in Guatemala.  His name was Felipe Alonzo-Gomez and he was bounced between half a dozen different facilities before he died. We’ll have more updates from the border detention facilities, along with more interviews from Brazil, in upcoming Kite Line episodes.

This week, we have the first of several interviews that were conducted this fall in São Paulo, Brazil. Kite Line contributor Micol Seigel was there to teach a course on American prison history at the state university.  Seigel’s academic host introduced her to an activist civil servant at the Secretariat of Penal Administration, who connected her to the members of a work release program.  In this program, people came from prisons all over the São Paulo metropolitan region to work in the Secretariat, doing everything in the building from accounting to crafts to janitorial services.  Seigel ended up bringing her students off campus to the Secretariat to hold conversations together with the folks on work release.  Together, the two groups of students crafted research and interview projects, ending with the interviews you will hear this evening.  The interviews were conducted in Portuguese, translated by the University of São Paulo students, and read by people here in our Bloomington studio.

CORRECTION: Bomani Shakur’s execution date is scheduled for 11-16-2023, not 11-26-2023 as reported in the episode.

This week, we speak more with Leon Benson, who calls us from inside the Pendleton Correctional Facility here in Indiana. Benson shared his story with us in the past several Kite Line episodes, and now he talks to us about the conditions inside the prison.

 Benson demonstrates the importance of prisoners being ableto form bonds with people on the outside, and how it supports their mental health, their transition to the outside when released- and also protects them from violence and abuse by prison staff. He explains how guards are less likely to inflict violence on prisoners who regularly receive mail and communication from the outside.

 He also talks to us about the high turnover rates for correctional officers, the rampant drug use that is affecting prisoners, and the benefits of education while on the inside. Leon’s decades inside give him the insights he shares with us regarding the changes he has seen in the conditions within prisons. He starts out with an example of a prisoner being abused by guards at Pendleton Correctional Facility.

A new movement of refugees fleeing violence and starvation in Central America began to reach Tijuana last month, in the hopes of applying for asylum in the United States.  Comprised of multiple, self-organized caravans, the refugees passed through incredible hardship and risk before thousands were temporarily settled in the Benito Juarez shelter – a sports complex on the southern side of the border wall where many were left to sleep outside, with minimal provisions.  In addition to the wall, the refugees have faced a whole series of surveillance and control mechanisms that tend to turn the shelters into open-air prisons:  restrictions on movement, attacks by U.S. border guards with tear gas and Mexican nationalists with rocks and baseball bats, control over food, and the constant risk of arrest and deportation by Mexican police.  Despite this repression, autonomous groups on both sides of the border have organized with the refugees to address material needs, offer legal support, and to politically organize to allow them into the United States. 

This week we speak with Stephen, a solidarity organizer from San Diego, who describes the recent movement based on first-hand experience, as well as putting it into a broader context of US militarism, border violence, and incarceration.  He works with Otay Mesa Detention Resistance, who simultaneously support the refugees in Tijuana while struggle alongside detainees in the US to shut down the Otay Mesa Detention Center.

This week, we are continuing our talk with Leon Benson, who speaks to us from inside Pendleton Correctional Facility here in Indiana. He’s been inside since 1998, for a murder conviction and he has been trying to clear his name and win his freedom ever since. Benson was incarcerated at 23 years old, and talks about becoming conscious while on the inside, and shares with us details about the night of the murder, and his ongoing struggles to get Post Conviction Relief.

In addition to talking about being stonewalled by the Indiana court system, Benson talks about the prison industrial complex and its relationship to corporations such as Aramark, Global Tel Link, and more. He also talks about the new Jim Crow, and how race influences mass incarceration. Benson maintains his innocence and continues to fight the system.

You can find out more about Leon’s case at freeleonbenson.org, or write to him at Pendleton Correctional Facility, # 995256.