Prisons, Prose & Protest - #36

Rants, Musings and More

I went to Saturday’s emergency NYC protest against the U.S. and Israeli war on Iran. I was glad to see that a lot of people came out on short notice. I’m fucking sick of the U.S. and Israel. I don’t know what else to say besides “NO WAR ON IRAN.”

March is Women’s History Month and it’s always a great opportunity to learn about women we may not know. I’ve been making some new zines and publications over the past few months. One zine focuses on the work of Florence Rogers Murray. She was the editor of The Negro Handbook, an almanac compiling information on Black people in the US during and just after World War II. Murray was a newspaper editor, journalist, and civil rights advocate. The Negro Handbook became an important source of information for scholars and activists. While Murray hailed from a well-known Black family (her father was Freeman H. M. Murray), Florence herself chose to disappear from public view. There were no prominent obituaries upon her death and she doesn’t have a Wikipedia page. However, her massive work of compilation, editing, and analysis survives her. I look forward to more people learning about her life and contributions through my forthcoming zine. You can pick up a copy at the Black Zine Fair in Brooklyn on May 9.

I am excited to share that I’ve been collaborating with artist and writer Vic Liu on an exhibition that opens next month. The Warehouse is a collaboration between Vic, the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL), and me. With a full-branch exhibition takeover, the project transforms the BPL’s Bedford Library into a space for public imagination and learning, inviting patrons of all ages to explore what a world beyond incarceration could look like. At the heart of The Warehouse is a site-specific installation expanding upon Liu’s book The Warehouse: A Visual Primer on Incarceration, co-written with James Kilgore. The exhibition opens on April 4 and runs through June 28. There will be wonderful programming to accompany it. You will not want to miss this so please make a plan to visit and to take part in various programs. It’s always urgent to end incarceration; join us in the struggle.

Times are hard and I think that we should send each other gifts without any expectations. I am raffling five (5) letter press prints (8 by 10) by Nicole Manganelli of Radical Emprints (commissioned by me). Anyone who lives in the United States is eligible (international shipping costs are too high unfortunately). The raffle closes on 3/4 at 11:59 pm and the winners will be notified by 3/8. Enter here.

In January 2026, some of you donated $4470.71 [after fees] to the Giving Circle. I donated $4650 in January to 18 groups/orgs. $2650 went to Minnesota mutual aid projects. Documentation of the groups that received funds is here.

In this edition of Prisons, Prose & Protest, I share an overview of a 1964 pamphlet by Anne Braden that remains relevant today. I recommend a podcast about a project documenting Black girlhood in photography and prose, several good recent articles and essays, and more…

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FEATURE: Anne Braden’s HUAC: Bulwark of Segregation

I recently purchased a copy of the 1964 pamphlet HUAC: Bulwark of Segregation, written by Anne Braden. I had seen it referenced but never read it before.

As a passionate white advocate for racial equality in the South, Anne Braden knew from personal experience that communist smears could devastate civil rights workers and organizations (even though there was nothing wrong with being a Communist). Her 1964 pamphlet HUAC: Bulwark of Segregation analyzes how white supremacists wielded anticommunism to silence dissent, nullify the First Amendment, and kneecap interracial solidarity and progress.

Anne Braden, Target of Anticommunism

Anne McCarty Braden (1924–2006) was born in Louisville, Kentucky, into a conventional white segregationist family. Her views changed slowly at college and in her early years as a journalist in the South. By her 20s, she had become a passionate advocate of integration and civil rights. In 1948, she married fellow left-wing journalist Carl Braden in Louisville, and the two worked together on many desegregation campaigns.

In 1954, the Bradens agreed to buy a house in Louisville in a segregated neighborhood for a Black couple, the Wades. The white community of Louisville reacted violently, dynamiting the house. Unsatisfied with vigilante violence, the state claimed that the purchase of the house was part of a plan to overthrow Kentucky and the United States, and the Bradens were charged with sedition.

Conviction carried a maximum sentence of 21 years in prison and a $10,000 fine. Authorities raided the Bradens’ house, seizing books by and about communism and socialism. Two members of the congressional House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) helped with the prosecution, as did professional anticommunist witnesses who made a living testifying in cases like the Bradens’.

Carl Braden stated he was not a Communist when questioned, an admission he later regretted; Anne explained in retrospect that the question was a smear and a distraction and “if you had any principles at all you just did not answer.” The court convicted Carl and Anne’s trial was postponed. He was released on appeal, and the charges against both were dropped 14 months later when the Supreme Court declared state sedition laws illegal. The experience still prevented them from getting work, a serious difficulty since their two children were six and three.

The Bradens believed, based on their experiences and those of others, that anticommunism was being used to destroy the Civil Rights Movement. They worked with a committee to try to abolish HUAC; they also joined the Southern Conference Educational Fund (SCEF), an interracial, integrationist organization that was repeatedly (and falsely) smeared as communist.

It was in this context that Anne wrote the pamphlet HUAC: Bulwark of Segregation to alert people to the dangers of anticommunist smears and teach them how to fight them. SCEF printed thousands of copies to be spread throughout the South.

Braden, an Analyst of Anticommunism

Anticommunist segregationists inevitably targeted Braden’s pamphlet. The FBI obtained a copy before the pamphlet’s official publication. In the summer of 1964, authorities seized a box of the pamphlets when the Bradens attempted to give a civil liberties training session at the National Council of Churches, which decided at the last minute the Bradens were dangerous radicals.

Braden did not know that the FBI was working hand in hand with HUAC. But little else would have surprised her about the ongoing persecution and innuendo directed at herself, her organization, and her writing. As she explained in HUAC: Bulwark of Segregation, communist smears were a core tactic of white supremacists because people who might otherwise support integration—and especially white people who might support integration—were terrified of being accused of treason.

“It is pretty hard to convince Negroes that the freedom movement is a subversive plot,” Braden wrote. “So the net result [of communist smears] has been to keep whites out of action, leave Negroes alone on the front lines, and sometimes to encourage them to suspect the motives of the few whites who are active. Thus,” she concluded, “the gap has been widened between black and white.”

Braden noted that many civil rights organizations and individuals tried to combat the charge of communism by distancing themselves from left organizations, or by breaking ties with people who were accused. She argued that this could not work; since the accusations were not in good faith, there was no way to immunize oneself against them. Moreover, jettisoning allies destroyed solidarity. She pointed out that the 1963 March on Washington was a success in part because organizers refused to abandon chief organizer Bayard Rustin after he was accused of communist ties.

Rather than turning on one another, Braden argued that civil rights organizations should fight back by pushing to abolish HUAC and of similar committees that operated at the state level. Braden noted that the leaders of these commissions were almost always Southern segregationists who owed their seats to the mass disenfranchisement of Black voters.

Braden was careful to acknowledge that the red scare was not solely a top-down phenomenon; vigilantes, neo-Nazis, the KKK, and local freelancing white supremacists all pushed accusations. But the government committees were in a unique position to ratify innuendo and to give lies and innuendo the appearance of official truth. Government actors also could not be sued for libel; that meant HUAC and state committees modeled on it could make outrageous, evidenceless statements without fear of reprisal. Those who quoted those statements were also immunized.

This government power to smear, Braden said, is a direct threat to free speech. “If an American has to fear that speaking his mind, joining an organization, or going to a meeting is going to lead to a summons or a committee listing that can ruin his life, obviously he is not free to speak, join, assemble, or petition.” The back of the pamphlet called on readers to urge political candidates to pledge to abolish HUAC, to contact their congresspeople, and to donate to the National Committee to Abolish HUAC.

Braden’s Pamphlet Today

The government abolished HUAC in 1975. But the network of white supremacists, anticommunists, government officeholders, wealthy donors, and vigilantes that Braden identified as a threat to free speech and civil rights remains.

Braden’s reminder that the US has never lived up to its promise also still feels relevant today. “One reason we find so many violations of these rights today is that all of the freedoms guaranteed by our Constitution have often been more dream than reality,” Braden writes. “White people readily forget that, but Negroes can never forget it, because they know that the dream was corrupted from the beginning by their enslavement.”

Braden doesn’t believe that that is a reason to despair. But she says it means that justice is not guaranteed. Whether the US becomes more or less free, she concludes, “depends on each of us and the stand we take…for or against HUAC, for or against freedom, for or against democracy, for or against America.”

Publishing

Tash Nikol and I have partnered again on a publication called Black Children At Play. This is our fourth collaboration and I am again thrilled at how this one has turned out. Here’s a sneak peek.

You can pick up a copy in person at the Black Zine Fair on May 9.

Prose

Mary Turfah writes devastatingly in The Baffler about how Israel desecrates and plunders the bodies of Palestinians it kills in service of its genocidal ambitions.

This is an essential essay by my friend and collaborator Andrea J. Ritchie, grounding us in the need for the abolition of ICE and all other kinds of police in this moment. You can listen to the audio version of the story even without a subscription to The Nation.

Marie Gottschalk reviews four recent books that offer insight into the US’s bipartisan deportation machine and its interconnectedness with other forms of mass criminalization and incarceration.

Myrl Beam maps out a queer abolitionist geography of South Minneapolis, drawing on his collaborative public history project that radiates out temporally and geographically from the burning of the Third Precinct after the murder of George Floyd.

I love this reflection on the centrality of care in antifascist organizing.

In Truthout, Susan Raffo writes a Valentine to the ordinary, unexceptional love that has been on display in her city.

“We must use this opportunity to make clear that there is no such thing as a ‘just’ or ‘fair’ form of immigration policing. ‘Abolish ICE’ is the floor, not the ceiling.”

My good friend Kelly Hayes talked to Minneapolis rapid response organizers about the lessons they have drawn from three months of intense activation, and shares out their thoughts in her newsletter.

This is a great interview with Harsha Walia and Alberto Toscano about how to understand and contextualize fascism in its current iteration.

Stuart Schrader looks at the benefits some local police officers and unions are expecting to see from the surge in federal immigration policing in cities around the country.

I love what Robin D.G. Kelly has to say about Ashley D. Farmer’s new biography of the late Black radical organizer Audley “Queen Mother” Moore. I recommend buying Farmer’s book or requesting it from your local public library.

Podcast

Listen to my comrades Salamishah and Scheherazade Tillet talk on The Documentary Podcast about their collaborative project documenting Black girls at play through photography and words.

Poem

I am reflecting on this Mary Oliver poem as spring approaches for many of us in the northern hemisphere.

Potpourri

March 21 will be the New York City Public Library Action Network (NYC PLAN) Queens People’s Assembly and you should come.

On June 13, New York City Public Library Action Network (NYC PLAN) is hosting a Library Propaganda Fair! Our call for art submissions is now available and open until March 31st. Anyone can submit. Please share with your networks.

My friend Cameron has co-created and is co-facilitating Shifts, a virtual healing and accountability group for men that starts on March 5. “This group is for people who identify as men who have committed physical harm or violence against another person. It is a supportive space to sit with others who share similar experiences to process what led to their behavior, the ways it has impacted others and themselves, and to work towards being accountable for the harm they caused. This is a group for men above the age of 18 who are not currently involved in the criminal legal system. This group draws on transformative and restorative justice approaches and does not engage with the criminal legal system.”

March 26–29: The annual, student-driven Beyond the Bars Conference will be held at Columbia University. It looks like an incredible program this year on the theme of “Rooted In…”

A new edition of the 1 Million Experiments newsletter is here! It’s terrific as usual and includes a new zine, which is a treasure. To jump-start neighborly relations, try one of the 50 (mostly untried) ways to meet your neighbors.

Jane’s Walk 2026 will take place May 1–3. I love this free festival of NYC walking tours. You should apply to lead a walk. Applications close on 3/31.

I have been watching the Singing Resistance project emerging out of Minneapolis with interest, and they’ve put out a great toolkit for other groups interested in their tactics and approach.

A new unmissable Prison Policy Institute report: Following the Money of Mass Incarceration 2026.

This is so great: DIY Guide to Making a Jail Support Plan: A Zine.

This is a great conversation about the importance of place and belonging.

Keep Dancing!

Listening.

Cool Library Thing of the Month

Read about Cumberland County, North Carolina, Public Library’s wonderful artist-in-residence program, Creative Collaborations. It combines the desire for more cultural programming at the library with artist needs for work space and other forms of support. “Any equipment, reference materials, or supplies purchased for Creative Collaborations will remain with the library and be incorporated into our in-house or circulating collections. Coupled with their public programming, it’s a way to embed the artist, their work, and their knowledge directly into our collection for others to use.”