Prisons, Prose & Protest - #2
Rants, Musings and More
Welcome to my personal newsletter! This is the second issue and today I’m sharing some of reflections, invitations and new resources. I’m still experimenting with this format and hope to figure out what works best over time. I hope that you find something of interest here. Thank you so much to those who have pledged a paid subscription. I appreciate your vote of confidence and support. For the time being, I’m sticking to a free newsletter. In the future, I may add special features for paid subscribers. We’ll see.
In solidarity,
Mariame
Prisons/Policing
Earlier this month, I (and my friend/co-author Andrea J. Ritchie) had a chance to speak with some #PoliceFreeSchools organizers. They were engaged and wonderful interlocutors. These organizers have also had a number of wins over the past few years and successfully removed police officers from some schools across the country. These wins are tenuous and there is always backlash but they continue to fight.
Andrea and I spoke about schools as sites of prefiguration and about the necessity of liberatory education. We underscored some of what we shared in our book No More Police, including the prevalence of soft policing in schools. Soft policing focuses on politeness, hygiene, and order. As such, it means you can be “policed” by all sorts of officials and for all sorts of things unrelated to “crime” per se.
Education continues to be a strategic site for sustained intervention in the short and medium term. Schools are already more socially embedded into communities than other parts of the state apparatus and we could do more to make that even more true. Getting cops out of schools and putting in place other ways to resolve conflict and harm is an important abolitionist fight.
We began our conversation with organizers by sharing a short video to encourage us to start from a place of imagination. Often, when we meet as organizers, we begin by talking about problems and challenges. I think that we have it backwards. We should always begin with opportunities and imagination.
We didn’t have time for this, but I also would have liked to ground our conversation in history. The Campaign for #PoliceFreeSchools has already created an informative interactive timeline. If I were able to add a story to the timeline, I would share about the Adams Junior High School case, which is described in the 1951 publication Civil Rights Congress Tells the Story. The story speaks to how long USian police have been criminalizing Black students, and it shows how one community fought back more than 70 years ago.
I commissioned my friend Flynn Nicholls, who is a wonderful illustrator, to make this story into a two-page comic. I’m sharing the comic publicly for the first time in this newsletter; please feel free to use it in your political education sessions and in your organizing. Also you should hire Flynn for your illustration/art needs. He’s talented, professional, and a joy to collaborate with.
Publishing
We’re just a couple of weeks away from the release of “Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care” by Kelly Hayes and me. Sincere thanks to those who have already preordered the book. Preorders mean everything to authors. If you are planning to support the book, please consider ordering from local independent bookstores like Pilsen Community Books in Chicago.
Join us on May 16 at 6:30 pm ET for our virtual book launch! We’ll have special guests, raffle prizes, and a great conversation. Come celebrate with us. Register here.
In the meantime, you can listen to Kelly and me talking about the book on her podcast Movement Memos here.
New Publication: The Philadelphia Story: Another Experiment on Women
Also, I have a new zine titled “The Philadelphia Story: Another Experiment on Women” that is available for free downloading. It is a publication about abortion, medical violence, and the imperative for reproductive justice. Thanks to Noah Berlatsky for research support and Max Canner for designing the publication.
The zine is the first in a series that I am calling “Archival Activations.” Using my personal collections, I will feature specific documents and records and provide historical context. I hope that readers who engage the zines in the series will find some contemporary relevance in what is featured. My archival orientation is pulling from the past to make a better future. This publication is an instantiation of that orientation.
The zine tells the story of a 1972 (so pre–Roe v. Wade) document published by “The Philadelphia Women’s Health Collective and Friends.” In the document, the Collective critiques the use earlier in the year of an experimental second-trimester abortion procedure on a group of low-income Black abortion-seekers who had been bussed from Chicago to Philadelphia, an event that the Collective had participated in alongside Chicago’s Jane abortion collective. The document goes on to raise questions about the experimental use of the same procedure on rape victims in Bangladesh and to call for greater education, collectively agreed medical standards, and true solidarity around abortion and birth control.
I gathered context about the major actors involved and the historical currents at play when the document was published. Crucially, I gathered some information about the women whose abortions were at the center of the story, some of whom objected to the way the Collective characterized their experience. I hope the zine will spur reflection and imagination about the pursuit of reproductive justice under conditions of criminalization, oppression and repression. I believe these are timely concerns.
If you want to use this zine as a political education tool, you are welcome to make copies of it and distribute it freely in your communities. Here’s a link for a print version of the zine. If you do make copies to distribute, I always love to hear about this. Please email jjinjustice1@gmail.com to let me know.
Podcasts
I loved listening to Black Freedom Beyond Borders: Memories of Abolition Day, a set of short works of speculative fiction by ten Black authors invited to “imagine a world 100 years liberated from mass incarceration.” The stories, which were published as a digital anthology before being beautifully performed for a podcast format, offer rich and varied meditations on how the past, present, and future inform each other and how those connections affect the ways we dream of freedom.
Poem
This month, I want to share the poem Kindness; in it, Naomi Shihab Nye explores the deep interrelationships between loss, sorrow, kindness, human connection, and community. In the link above, it’s read by the poet and paired with animation by Ana Pérez López. Here’s the text.
Prose
I recommend this great interview with incarcerated journalist Christopher Blackwell for Famous Writing Routines. Chris and other incarcerated writers do critical work, and it was a joy to read about his background and current projects, including the work he does to mentor and support other incarcerated writers. I was also honored that Chris uplifted my work and its influence on him in this interview.
Something else I read recently that has stayed with me is Astra Taylor’s profile of Benjamin Lay, a radical settler who agitated tirelessly for abolition in colonial Pennsylvania. Lay vehemently denounced his fellow Quakers who enslaved people, calling attention to their hypocrisy with theatrical one-man demonstrations. Taylor’s profile of him highlights the moral clarity of Lay’s lifestyle and philosophy, which she sees echoed in the modern abolitionist movement.
We read about Benjamin Lay in the January session of the Life Stories of Anti- Slavery Abolitionists intergenerational book club that I cofacilitate with Geoff Johnson. The next book that we are reading is about Harriet Tubman. We will meet virtually on May 28 to discuss it. Anyone who reads the book is welcome to join the discussion. Register here.
Potpourri
Ric Wilson has a new album and it is FANTASTIC! You must listen to it. I have known Ric since he was 15 years old. We met through the Chicago Freedom School (CFS), which I cofounded and where Ric was a youth leader. A few years ago, Ric talked about his experience at CFS. I am so proud of how he has cultivated his artistic passion, stayed focused on improving, and remained a generous and decent person. He also continues to advance social justice through his art and his voice. I was honored when he asked if he could include a snippet of a talk I gave many years ago on the album. I figured that it might win me some cool points with the young people in my life, LOL. Listen to this album; my favorite song is “Everyone Moves to L.A.” and it’s been on repeat this month.
I’m fundraising for abortion access. Bid on some art to support the National Network of Abortion Funds.
NYC Field Trip—Fred Wilson’s Mind Forged Manacles/Mancacle Forged Minds, a large sculptural installation in Downtown Brooklyn’s Columbus Park, will be returning from its Winter hiatus in mid-April. With statues of African figures enclosed in elaborate ironwork cages, the installation engages viewers with open-ended questions about slavery, security, incarceration, separation, gaze, and freedom. The title plays on the “mind-forg’d manacles,” psychological impediments to progress in an unjust world, from William Blake’s poem “London.” If you’re in the city, go visit—the installation will close in June.
I’m participating in this year’s Jane’s Walk NYC. Jane’s Walk NYC is an annual festival of volunteer-led, neighborhood walks that generate conversation about the city to celebrate its vibrant past, present, and future. The 2023 festival will occur Friday, May 5th through Sunday, May 7th. You can register for my abridged Slavery and Resistance in NYC walking tour happening on May 6th here.
Last month, I was privileged to celebrate Martin Sostre’s 100th Birthday with a conversation with my brilliant comrade Stevie Wilson at the Schomburg Center. You can watch our conversation here.
Joy Harjo and Michaela Goade released a gorgeous new children’s book in March. Harjo’s poem “Remember” invites us to situate our lives in relation to the natural world and the generations surrounding us. In this book, it is illuminated by Goade’s joyous artwork, inspired by her Tlingit culture.
