Prisons, Prose & Protest - #24

Rants, Musings and More

It’s Black History Month and while I know that some people don’t appreciate it, I really love it. I enjoy the fact that I always learn something new during the month. Black history is expansive and boundless.

A few years ago, I purchased a copy of a picture booklet titled Would You Smile? published by the Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC) in July 1946. The SNYC created the booklet with the intention of building solidarity among the white working class. I’ve been thinking a lot about solidarity over the past few years.

The Southern Conference Educational Fund, established by the Southern Conference for Human Welfare (SCHW) in January 1946, underwrote the cost of printing the booklet. Fifty thousand copies of Would You Smile were distributed across the country.

In the October 1946 edition of the Southern Patriot, SCHW’s newsletter, readers could order copies of Would You Smile? along with other publications. SCHW advertised it as follows:

“This 16-page picture booklet describes the health, housing and educational facilities for Negroes in the South, and asks, ‘If you were a Negro would you smile?’ 5 c each, $4 per hundred and $25 per thousand.”

The booklet can be found in a couple of archives. I wanted to share it more broadly so I’ve published a zine designed by Kruttika Susarla that provides some historical background about SNYC and also includes a copy of Would You Smile?.

The zine will make its debut at our Black Zine Fair on May 3. If you’re in NYC, stop by to get a copy. Also the application for Black Zine Fair exhibitors, workshop facilitators, and volunteers is open until February 8, 2025.

Last month I invited people who were interested in a set of our abolitionist imagination cards to sign up and said that I would send a set to the first 20 people. Within three hours, 100 people signed up before I could close the form. I wish I had sets for everyone but I didn’t. I ended up mailing postcards to 30 people. Sorry to those who missed out this time.

GIVING CIRCLE UPDATE:

In January, some of you donated $1506 [after fees] to the Giving Circle. I donated $1516.38 to six groups. Documentation of the groups that received funds is here. Thanks to everyone who has donated in lieu of a paid subscription for this newsletter. So far, recurring donations total $948.

In this month’s edition of Prisons, Prose & Protest, I share some thoughts about the Prisoner Relief Committee. I recommend a podcast, several good recent articles, and much more…

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Prisons and Policing

I’m interested in historical examples of prisoner support and have been collecting related ephemera and documents for years. Last year, I purchased a December 1951 copy of the Prisoner Relief Committee’s newsletter.

The Prisoner Relief Committee (renamed the Political Prisoners’ Relief Committee in 1953) was an organization that aided Black prisoners and other radical prisoners by organizing legal defense, raising bail, and providing other aid and support.

The PRC was founded in the early 1920s, but its prominence increased when it affiliated with the New York branch of the Civil Rights Congress (CRC). The CRC was a civil rights organization founded in 1946 by Black attorney and Communist Party leader/organizer William Patterson.

The Prisoner Relief Committee was involved in many of the CRC’s high-profile cases. That included the defense of Willie McGee, a Black truck driver accused of raping a white woman and executed in 1951 in Mississippi after multiple trials and protests.

Rosalee McGee, Willie’s common-law wife, poured her heart and soul into supporting him and his cause, and the PRC recognized her dedication by providing financial help. Lottie Gordon, the secretary of the Prisoner Relief Committee, wrote to Willie and told him that, with the help of Rosalee, “we can arouse the kind of sympathy and help that you deserve.”

In its monthly newsletter, the PRC printed letters from prisoners and reported on important CRC cases, including the ongoing persecution and litigation involving CRC founder William Patterson as well as cases of radicals prosecuted under the Smith Act.

The newsletter also focused on the case of Rosa Lee Ingram, a Georgia sharecropper convicted of murdering a neighboring white farmer in 1947 after a dispute and attempted sexual assault. The CRC launched one of its first national publicity campaigns to support Ingram and her two sons, who were also arrested.

A court convicted the Ingrams in 1948. Even six years later, in 1954, the PRC was continuing to demand her release, writing in their Mother’s Day newsletter that the white farmer had attacked Ingram “filled with race superiority and lust.” The newsletter highlighted the plight of children whose mothers, like Ingram, were in prison: “Pro-fascist forces have broken these homes, wrenched away the mothers, hurled the children into the arms of strangers.”

In its May 1953 newsletter, the PRC explained its work and its purpose. The newsletter writers emphasized that the PRC was not just a charitable organization. “We don’t mean to deny that we do good,” they said. They proudly noted that they aimed “to provide material aid to political prisoners and their families,” such as shoes, food for those in prison, food for families on the outside, and funeral expenses if necessary. But, the newsletter continues, charity is not enough. “We work to destroy, in the community, the country, existing conditions which crowd the jails, the state and federal prisons with ‘politicals.’”

The CRC came under increasing federal scrutiny and attack in the 50s as anti-Communist Red Scares became more and more intense. In 1954, William Patterson was jailed after he refused to give Congress a list of donors to the CRC. In 1956, the federal Subversive Activities Control Board labeled the CRC a Communist front group. Rather than endanger its members and its mission, the organization dissolved.

While there are few records showing the fate of the PRC, it was at the least hard-hit by the CRC’s collapse, and it was no longer a force in civil rights organizing after the mid-50s.

Contemporary prison support and defense committees may be unaware of the PRC, but we owe a lot of our current strategies to its agitation and work. In the current fascist era that we inhabit, anti–prison industrial complex (PIC) organizers should also be prepared for increased criminalization and pushback from the government. The work continues…

Prose

Tariq Kenney-Shawa writes in the Baffler about what the Gaza ceasefire means, and how we must begin to reckon with Israel’s genocide.

Chicago organizers are once again at the forefront of effectively fighting fascism, this time in the form of ICE raids.

Spencer Ackerman writes about the new administration’s intention to fill the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay with migrants. We are, as Ackerman articulates, reaping the wages of failing to close the camp.

I appreciated this reflection on the LA wildfires and what Mike Davis might say about them if he were alive, from a writer who knew him.

The fires offer yet another example of mutual aid efforts coming through when other types of help were harder to come by. As Sean Beckner-Carmitchel and Mel Buer write, “Community members—some who are dealing with the sudden loss of their own homes—are the ones who will be here long after the state and federal aid has been dispersed and the pop-up shelters have closed.

This is a good article that centers the voices of the incarcerated firefighters who worked so hard in southern California this January.

This Teen Vogue series from the summer of 2024 does a remarkable job of pulling together the threads of various types of dissent criminalization in the US. If we’re going to fight US authoritarianism effectively, we have to understand that it didn’t begin this January.

This essay in Prism captures the chasm between New York Governor Kathy Hochul’s claim to stand with survivors of gendered violence and her record of abandoning criminalized survivors to a notoriously abusive carceral system.

In N+1, Amna K. Akbar does a close reading of recent discourse about political violence.

This is a wonderful piece by artist Chloë Bass explaining why she refuses to make art for prisons and detention centers, and exploring how the public money offered to her to do so could be more ethically allocated.

Last September, Nabala Cafe was vandalized. The owners chose not to turn to the police, and community members showed up to support them. I have continued to think of this in the months since. There are traces of grace all around us.

Poems

I love the snapshot of loneliness and unexpected fellowship in Elizabeth Acevedo’s “You Mean You Don’t Weep at the Nail Salon?”

Podcast

In The Parole Room, journalist Ben Austen explores the parole process—and what it can tell us about the larger criminal punishment system—through the story of one man’s long effort to be granted parole after five decades of incarceration.

Potpourri

Our children’s book Prisons Must Fall is available for preordering. It’ll be published in April.

Are you seeking a space where you can reflect individually and with others on your ongoing activism and organizing? If yes, join me on the last Sunday of every month through December on Zoom from 4 to 6 pm ET. The first drop-in session is on Sunday, February 23. This is for people already engaged in some form of activism and organizing. Space is limited. Please only sign up if you are sure you can to drop in.

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Some comrades have a new introductory workshop for leaders, organizers, and organizational teams that is right on time. Conflict Transformation 101 - Designing Purposeful, Strategic, and Resilient Groups - Friday February 21, 9:30-12:30 Pacific/ 12:30-3:30 Eastern REGISTER HERE

Recent changes to a Minnesota Department of Corrections policy has made it even harder to send books to incarcerated people in the state. There's a petition. Please sign if you live in MN and please share with others.

Join in transcribing the powerful and often overlooked voices of incarcerated writers. Illuminate their stories and reveal the complexities of their experiences within the criminal legal system.

This downloadable collection of short essays explores the intersections of two issues very close to my heart: archives and abolition.

This is such a needed resource.

I am excited to read this Encyclopedia of Radical Helping. I purchased a copy.

One of the forest defenders arrested during the 2023 Stop Cop City Week of Action has written a zine called How to Survive Jail; buy a copy to support her legal defense fund.

Read this new and necessary report: Prediction and Punishment: A Critical Report on Carceral AI

In November, Muslims for Just Futures released a fantastic Community Guide for Grassroots Groups. It was developed by Darakshan Raja and Nabihah Maqbool and covers “fiscal sponsorship, bail funds, and mutual aid basics.”

Watch this new documentary, STRUCK, which powerfully tells the story of Jacqueree Simmons, a 23-year-old who died in 2021 after a brutal attack by multiple Houston county jail guards who accused Simmons of throwing a meal tray.

Nina Simone’s genius is everlasting.

Cool Library Thing

The Children’s Library of Things at the Wayland (MA) Free Public Library circulates learning toys, ukuleles, robotics kits, and craft supplies to young patrons.