Kite Line

From March 4-11th, thousands of people will be converging in Atlanta’s  Weelaunee Forest, as part of the abolitionist and environmentalist struggle to stop “Cop City,” a police training facility set to be built over a vast urban forest. Reflecting this unprecedented mobilization, we are focusing on the history and current stakes of the struggle.

For context, we start off with a message from Mekko Chebon Kernell, a  Muskogee elder, who recorded this message last summer. Afterwards, we hear more insights from Sarah Alvarez of the Civil Liberties Defense Center. Then, the CLDC’s Lauren Regan walks us through some things to be mindful of- whether in the streets or in the woods.

Following that, we hear Kali Akuno at a teach-in about Cop City, where he explains why this is not a project that is only local in scope- it’s one of national and international consequence. We end this episode with a brief history of The Old Atlanta Prison Farm.

You can find out more about the fight against the replacement of the largest urban tree canopy in the country by the largest police training compound in the country here:

https://defendtheatlantaforest.org/

The Civil Liberties Defense Center has many resources for people who might participate in direct action struggles or who are facing legal repression:

https://cldc.org/resources/

Earlier this week, Keith LaMar went on hunger strike at the Ohio State Penitentiary.  He has faced escalating harassment from administrators and guards as his execution this fall looms and as solidarity momentum builds on the outside.  This harassment extends to new arbitrary rules preventing him from wearing spiritually-significant jewelry and systematic interruptions during visits.  Keith is on death row due to allegations that he acted as an interracial peacemaker in the leadup to the seminal 1993 Lucasville Prison Uprising.  He was seized by guards during the first day of the uprising and was not present during any of the deaths which later occurred.  His support crew asks that people call Regional Administrator Eric Lyle at 614-752-1736 and demand that Keith’s demands for respect and safety are met.  More information can be found at keithlamar.org.

Also this week, Emily Murphy’s struggle for adequate food in the Atlanta City Detention Center focused attention on the 19 people facing charges for domestic terrorism for their participation in the mass movement to stop the construction of a cop city in the Atlanta forest. Emily is one of those forest defenders who is still being held and has been denied access to vegan food for almost a month. They have not only protested on their own behalf, but have drawn attention to the systemic neglect and abuse all prisoners face in this jail.

As of February 24th, it seems as though protest and a flood of calls from outside have forced the jail to begin providing adequate vegan meals, shifting the struggle to Emily’s release and defeating the state of Georgia’s wider campaign of repression and intimidation. On this episode we hear from Emily and one of Emily’s dear friends. After that, we share an interview we conducted with Sarah Alvarez, a lawyer with the Civil Liberties Defense Center, who powerfully analyzes the fraught charging strategies Georgia prosecutors are using.

This we continue our conversation between Micol Seigel and Anne Gray Fischer about her recent book, The Streets Belong to Us: Sex, Race, and Police Power from Segregation to Gentrification, an account of gender and sexuality’s crucial role in the history and exercise of police power.

We start this week’s episode with our monthly round up of prison protests and disturbances, compiled by Perilous Chronicle. After that, we share an Interview with Maru Moro Villalpando of La Resistencia, a project that organizes against the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, Washington. Once again, prisoners within the detention center have gone on hunger strike, and Maru returns to the show to continue to shed light on their struggles.

Our previous episode with Maru Moro Villalpando is here:

308 | A Great Moment to Push Further

Today’s episode highlights the campaign to close Rikers jail in New York and continues our conversation with Anne Gray Fischer about the intertwined stories of policing, the surveillance of women’s bodies, and the creation of the racialized American ghetto.  Both Sy, an organizer against Rikers, and Gray Fischer, extend the histories of control and racial domination back to the middle of the 20th century.  Sy connects their work in solidarity with Rikers prisoners to a family history surviving the Holocaust and resisting the Nazis, and Gray Fischer charts how police in the 1940s systematically punished women for transgressing the color line in their sexual relationships.

Here are some of our previous episodes about Rikers Island:

309 | Captives with Jarrod Shanahan, Part One

310 | No Reforming Them- Jarrod Shanahan on Rikers Island

258 | Stick-up on Rikers Island

275 | Close Rosie’s

Here are our previous episodes on Anne Gray Fischer’s recent book, The Streets Belong to Us: Sex, Race, and Police Power from Segregation to Gentrification:

337 | Policing Womens’ Bodies

338 | Sex Work at the Birth of the Ghetto

This week, we reflect on the complex lethality of the white supremacist system in the United States, as it has dealt out death to Black people and others whose lives are devalued within this system.

We are responding to the release of the footage earlier this week of Tyre Nichols’ murder by Memphis police, which has led to a profusion of shallow statements by politicians and police chiefs, who seem palpably afraid that this brutal killing might trigger another movement like the 2020 George Floyd Uprising.

But we are also still digesting and mourning the murder by Atlanta police of forest defender, Tortuguita, and the death of IDOC Watch co-founder and Kite Line contributor, Angaza Iman Bahar, in Indianapolis two weeks ago.  The movement to defend the Atlanta forest has demonstrated the possibility of militantly responding to police murder while simultaneously challenging police media spin.

It has been harder to immediately challenge Angaza’s death, which is the tragic result of being sucked into street violence, but later in this episode, we share a moving tribute and political analysis made by Angaza’s longterm comrade inside Indiana’s prisons, Shaka Shakur.

Below are links to some of our episodes with Angaza, Shaka, and Max:

54 | Prisoner Perspectives on Collateral Damage

92 | Are Prisons Obsolete? Part Two

137 | Policing Los Angeles, Part One

139 | Policing Los Angeles, Part Two

206 | From Watts to Minneapolis, The Arc of Anti-Police Protest

29 | Families and Prison, Part Three

30 | Support Communities

173 | More Kites from the Inside

68 | Two Weeks Into the Hunger Strike at Wabash Valley

Today, we share the tragic news that police killed Tortuguita, a forest defender in the South River Forest in Atlanta on the morning of Wednesday, January 19th.

We have previously covered the movement to protect the Atlanta forest in light of its history as a plantation and prison farm and the future plans to build a vast police training center.  Our correspondent spoke with Sarah from the Atlanta Anti-Repression Committee, who filled us in on the state of the movement, this week’s violent police raid on the forest camps, Tortuguita’s death, and next steps.

As she says, the movement’s slogan, that “cop city will never be built” seems more true today than ever before, as an outpouring of grief and anger sweeps the country in the wake of this murder.

We also include a roundup of monthly prison disturbances as compiled by Perilous Chronicle.

We are pleased to continue sharing a conversation between Micol Seigel and Anne Gray Fischer. Fischer’s powerful book, The Streets Belong to Us: Sex, Race, and Police Power from Segregation to Gentrification, was published in 2022, and is an account of gender and sexuality’s crucial role in the history and exercise of police power.  In this conversation, Fischer and Seigel discuss the archive and research at the foundation of the book and its relationship to wider abolitionist organizing.  They work through the relationship between sex work and vice policing, aimed primarily at womens’ bodies, along with race, which allowed wide swathes of Black neighborhoods to be treated as red light districts, subject to intensified police surveillance and violence.  Fischer shows that vice policing was key to developing the American ghetto, as well as its devastating effects on Black people.

We are pleased to share the first part of an interview between Anne Gray Fischer and Micol Siegel.  Fischer’s powerful first book, The Streets Belong to Us: Sex, Race, and Police Power from Segregation to Gentrification, was published earlier in 2022, and is an account of gender and sexuality’s crucial role in the history and exercise of police power.  In this conversation, the first of two we will present on Kite Line, Fischer and Siegel discuss the context of the book and its relationship to wider abolitionist research.  They also work through the relationship between vice policing, aimed primarily at womens’ bodies, and race, which allowed wide swathes of Black neighborhoods to be treated as red light districts and subject to intensified police surveillance and violence.

December 17th marked two years since the passing of Russell Maroon Shoatz.

He was a founding member of the Black Unity Council, a former member of the Black Panther Party and a soldier in the Black Liberation Army. After twice escaping from prison, and twice being recaptured, Shoatz was held in solitary confinement for more than 22 years. This solitary confinement was controversial — while Shoatz had successfully escaped twice, he actually had an excellent record of behavior within the prison itself. Advocates and Shoatz himself argued that his extended solitary confinement reflected the personal offense taken by prison officials, who were embarrassed both by his ease in escaping, and his sharp critiques of the American prison system.

Shoatz is remembered today as, among other things, a well-respected author. One famous essay, The Dragon and The Hydra, is widely available online. Listeners interested in honoring the anniversary of Shoatz’ passing but unfamiliar with his work may find this essay insightful, short, and accessible, as a history of one important aspect of revolutionary organizing.

This episode we’ll share a previously aired interview with Shoatz, recorded on August 15th 1996, at State Correctional Institution-Greene in Pennsylvania. The interview was originally aired on the Peoples Video Network, and was conducted by Dhoruba Bin Wahad.