It’s finally here…
Welcome! With Twitter collapsing, I’m finally going forward with my promised gradual move to a newsletter. Each month, I plan to share something I’m thinking about or working on in each of five categories. In the Prisons/Policing section, I’ll share my thoughts about PIC-related news or historical events. In Publishing, I’ll talk about books and zines I’m working on as well as the work of Sojourners for Justice Press (SJP), the micro press I launched last year with Neta Bomani, which focuses on zines, pamphlets, and other experimental print-based media. In the Podcasts/Poems/Prose sections, I’ll share interesting things I’m listening to, reading, and reflecting on. And in Potpourri, I’ll share organizing-related calls to action and any other miscellaneous offerings.
Here’s what is inspiring me this month:
1. Prisons and Policing
I’m thinking a lot about Jen Angel’s life and her political commitments. Angel was fatally injured during a robbery in Oakland a few weeks ago. She had a major impact on many people’s lives. While I didn’t know her personally, I had heard of her and known of her organizing work for many years. Our organizing circles have overlapped. I was deeply saddened to hear of her passing. I was furious that someone would kill her. I am moved beyond words at how her community has rallied to support her family and to uphold Jen’s political vision despite the tragedy of her loss. I tweeted that I hoped my community would know to do the same for me and I do. I consider prisons and policing to be the most concentrated forms of violence on earth. I know that we might interrupt some forms of violence by using violence but I know for sure that we can’t end violence with violence. I want an end to all forms of violence. It’s why I am rooted in transformative justice (TJ). Not all PIC abolitionists subscribe to transformative justice even if all TJ practitioners must be abolitionists. There are different kinds of abolitionists and I am in the tradition of Jen Angel. Jen Angel, Presente! Read more here.
2. Publishing
I’ve been busy.
In January, I released Fish-ins & Black/Native Solidarity in the 1960’s, a zine written by me and designed by Half Letter Press, with illustrations by Jon Bailiff.
In February, SJP released LaShawn Harris’s wonderful zine Madame St. Clair. It tells the story of the successful and glamorous businesswoman Stephanie St. Clair, a prominent figure in the 1920s and 30s New York gambling scene.
In March, SJP released posters of four Black women for Women’s History Month; they depict Celia, an enslaved woman who killed her rapist and owner; Margaret Garner, who killed her young child rather than allowing her to be recaptured into slavery; Ella Mae Ellison, who was wrongfully convicted and incarcerated by a corrupt criminal punishment system; and Recy Taylor, whose fight for justice after being raped by six white men helped galvanize the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama.
In May, my book with Kelly Hayes, Let This Radicalize You, will be released. This is the book that Kelly and I wish we had when we first became activists and organizers. It’s a book that shares some lessons and wisdom from veteran activists. I think of the book as a companion for new activists: one that they can read whenever they might need some encouragement and perhaps even some reminders of how hard but also fulfilling activism & organizing can be. Preorders make a big difference to authors, and you can preorder a copy here or contact your local library asking them to preorder a copy. Also, if you know new activists and organizers, I think that this book will make a great gift.
3. Podcasts
I recently listened to Making Amends and found it moving and interesting. In the context of a course taught by the podcast’s host, Steve Herbert, at the Oregon State Penitentiary, a group of men at different points in their long incarceration terms discuss how they think about and work towards atonement for the harms they have caused. With great sensitivity and rigor, the men explore the huge impediments to atonement that the carceral system erects, and imagine what true healing could look like for perpetrators of harm and their victims. As one of the incarcerated men, Moustafa, points out, “Any source of transformation, of paradigm shift or change in mentality, should not by any stretch of imagination be attributed to how the system is designed. Any person who thrives, accomplishes something, becomes something, helps someone, is doing that in spite of the structure of the incarceration system.”
4. Poems & Prose
This month, I’m sharing ”Protest” by Ella Wheeler Wilcox. It was written in 1914 but applies with uncanny clarity to 2023. “To sin by silence, when we should protest,/ Makes cowards out of men.” In the link above, it’s read by Amanda Palmer; here’s the text.
5. Potpourri
In March, we launched For the People: A Leftist Library Project. FTP is a new grassroots effort to protect public libraries against right-wing efforts to privatize and neutralize them. We have an event scheduled on April 15. Visit our website for more information and to learn how to help.
Plus, a recommendation for this beautiful picture book that will be released in three days. Junauda Petrus wrote Can We Please Give the Police Department to the Grandmothers? based on her viral poem of the same name, written in the wake of Michael Brown’s murder. With vibrant, evocative illustrations by Kristen Uroda, the book imagines what real community safety could look like. “If you up to mischief, they will pick you up swiftly in their sweet rides and look at you until you catch shame. She will ask you if you are hungry and you say yes and of course you are.”
In peace and solidarity,
MK