Kite Line

This week, we are airing selections from a panel discussion that took place earlier this month here in Bloomington. Andrea Ritchie and Victoria Law, both of whom were featured on Kite Line earlier this month, sit alongside Andrea Sterling at a panel called “Building Community Resilience”. In it, these women discuss the myriad ways that female bodies are controlled, policed, and punished. As Ritchie notes, rates of incarceration amongst black women have been growing rapidly, and the panelists discuss the systemic reasons for this startling growth. They also discuss some ways in which affected communities respond, and how the blind spots in carceral feminism produce terrifying outcomes.

We will have the full panel available on our website.

This week, we speak with Victoria Law- a freelance journalist, mother of a New York City high school student, author of the book Resistance Behind Bars, the co-author of the forthcoming book Your Home Is Your Prison, as well as the editor of Tenacious, a journal of art and writing by incarcerated women.

She starts by telling us why she has devoted so much research to the subject of prison, and specifically women in prison. She then walks us through different important yet commonly overlooked topics, such as women rioting and resisting while on the inside, the shackling of women during pregnancy and labor, and some of the challenges specific to incarcerated women, and how it affects their ability to resist and organize behind the prison walls.

This week, we share a conversation we had with Andrea Ritchie, an attorney and activist whose work focuses on police violence against the queer community and women of color. She speaks about current political conditions, and the concepts in her most recent book, Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color.

Ritchie walks us through some of the different ways that women of color are disproportionately attacked and criminalized by police. She speaks of police violence against mothers and pregnant women, and shares the stories of some specific women who have been harmed by the police. Finally, Ritchie talks to us about some of the positive organizing she is seeing in respect to issues of police violence against black women and women of color.

This week is focused on words from prisoners sent or smuggled from inside. From the jail in Evansville, Indiana, to letters from participants in Operation PUSH- the still-ongoing prison strike across the Florida department of corrections- to a collection of poems from our local jail, prisoners are finding ways to share their individual experiences and collective resolutions with those of us on the outside. We finish the episode with a powerful statement written collectively by prisoners in five wings of Koridallos prison in Athens, Greece, in response to the kidnapping of a fellow inmate by an extraction team and ongoing maneuvers in their struggle against the prison system.

In this episode, we share a phone call and three short essays from Timothy Smith. Smith spoke to us from inside Cook County Jail, the most recent place he has been held over ten years in custody. Timothy has been at a several institutions around Illinois, and describes entering prison and specifically Menard Correctional Center. He describes solitary confinement and repercussions for acting out in prison- specifically in response to racist behavior from other inmates and guards. For instance, you’ll hear him describe a moment where a correctional officer made monkey sounds over the intercom, or a neighboring prisoner giving him a copy of  Mein Kampf– both prompting a reaction from Smith.

As we heard in the past two episodes, which covered the rise of the Nation of Islam in prisons during and after the Civil Rights Movement, prison is often a space for politicization. Smith describes his own political evolution, including telling us about time he first came across a zine, which was written by a prisoner in a different facility, and how that affected him.

We end with three short essays that Smith wrote and sent to us. As someone who is clearly affected by the power of others’ words, it feels appropriate to close the episode with things Smith himself has written while on the inside. We’ll hear more from Smith in future episodes, as he describes conditions in Cook County Jail and other issues he has faced during his time on the inside.

This week, we return to the history of black radicalism within the prison system. You can hear more from Dr. Micol Seigel and Dr. Garrett Felber about this in last week’s episode.

Early in this episode, the prisoner reporting on Operation PUSH, the sit-down strike in Florida’s prisons, mentions being transferred to a different area in order to prematurely stifle the strike’s effectiveness. Felber helps situate this repression today by speaking about punitive transfers as a means of punishment in the 50s and 60s. These were made in order to separate prisoner activists from one another, but actually led to the spreading of the Nation of Islam within the prison system.

They further explore the way repression and activism function in tandem, and more about the evolution of black radicalism inside prisons and its relationship to the Civil Rights Movement, ending with how the Nation of Islam’s struggles impact us today.