Kite Line

This week, we share the final story from the Voices of the Formerly Incarcerated panel that took place during the Fight Toxic Prisons conference in Pittsburgh. After we hear updates on Kevin Rashid Johnson and Keith Malik Washington, we close with anecdotes from Wendell Caldwell. Caldwell speaks on his time inside, its impact on his family, his writing, and what life is like for him now that he is out.

This week, we hear from Curtis Ray Davis II, who talks about the racist history of Angola Prison- the Louisiana State Penitentiary. After we read a statement from hunger striking prisoners in Orange County, we then hear a moving account from Davis. He talks about Louisiana’s non-unanimous verdict, which essentially nullifies the votes of non-white jury members. Davis spent decades in Angola, a former slave plantation turned prison. Speaking on a panel with other formerly incarcerated men at the Fight Toxic Prisons Conference in Pittsburgh, Davis’s experiences lead him to the group Decarcerate Louisiana. He stresses the racist history of prisons, and how racism plays out in contemporary prison facilities.

This week, we hear the stories of three men who share their experiences from years being on the inside. Khalid Raheem discusses his experiences with the Black Panther Party, solitary confinement, and educational options in prison. Carrington Keys talks with us about the Dallas Six case, and how racist prison guards not only failed to care for mentally ill inmates, but encouraged them to kill themselves. He speaks about Matthew Bullock, whose suicide sparked Carrington and other prisoners to fight back against institutionalized cruelty- making themselves targets. Finally, we hear from Isaac Sanchez, who was also part of the Dallas Six, and describes the brutal retaliation he faced from correctional officers, who kept him in a restraint chair for 20 hours during this period. We will hear more from this panel, which took place at the Fight Toxic Prisons conference in Pittsburgh, in next week’s episode.

This week’s episode covers the situation in the Midwest. We hear from Ben and Aaron, who work on supporting prisoners in Ohio and Indiana, respectively. Ben informs about Ohio prisoners who are still facing repercussions from the 1993 Lucasville uprising. We’ve introduced Lucasville in previous episodes of Kite Line, including an early episode focusing on the case of Bomani Shakur (aka Keith LaMar), and ongoing updates on Siddique Hasan. Ben walks us through some of the details of others involved in the uprising, and makes the case for amnesty for these prisoners, who are still facing retaliation for alleged involvement in the uprising 24 years ago. Aaron then gives us an overview of the increasing restrictions on communication that prisoners in Indiana are facing. As is evident in their talk, fighting against the prison system is a difficult battle on a legal level, and so in order to win it, the victory must be political.

You can get current updates on the prisoners mentioned in this episode here at http://www.lucasvilleamnesty.org and idocwatch.org.

Across the country, thousands of prisoners are facing consequences for their participation in the national prison strike.  Some are being denied contact with the outside world, others have lost access to hot food.  Others have faced violence.  For many, outside solidarity has meant the difference, like the prisoners at an Indiana prison facility who were illegally charged simply for participating in a hunger strike – a right acknowledged by the Indiana Department of Corrections.  But a flood of hundreds of phone calls from around the world convinced the prison administrators to tear up the charges.  Phone campaigns like this are being regularly called around the US as a necessary follow-up to the strike.

So, for this week, we are sharing a range of stories about repression.  We have a call with Kwame Shakur from inside Indiana’s Pendleton Correctional Facility about the hunger strike they underwent, and the story of a group of students in Puerto Rico facing years in prison for their participation in education protests.  They are at a different step in the process, but the repressive apparatus is the same.  As the recent phone zap in the Indiana prison system demonstrates, though, what these students face is not an inevitability, because the repressive apparatus is vulnerable to our most powerful weapon, solidarity.