Prison Industrial Complex Communiversity

Speaking for Himself: Professor Loic Wacquant Corrects My Characterization of His Critique of the Concept of the Prison Industrial Complex

2010-09-19T08:23:00.000-07:00

Last June, I sent a memo to participants in a PIC Communiversity Course that my organization sponsored. In it, I made this argument regarding discussions about the term “prison industrial complex.”

We spent the first two sessions trying to understand the history of prisons and how the PIC operates. One area of debate that we did not broach is whether the term “Prison Industrial Complex” is a good construct to explain the expansion and encroachment of surveillance and incarceration over the past 30 years. There is a pitched battle of ideas in the academic community about whether the PIC is a useful way to describe mass incarceration. Sociologists like Loic Wacquant contend that the PIC is a misguided frame as an explanatory construct for mass incarceration. For information about Wacquant’s critique, you should read his book “Prisons of Poverty.” This is the shorter, more reader-friendly version of his book “Punishing the Poor.” Chris Parenti is another person who is a critic of the term “Prison Industrial Complex.” He contends that prison spending is much less than that of the “military-industrial-complex.” As such, he takes issue with the term. He has other criticisms that he has offered as well.
Finally, in the past couple of years, some have begun to use the term “Corrections-Industrial Complex” instead of PIC. These people contend that since the fastest growing segment of carceral supervision today in the U.S. is probation, it makes more sense to think of this phenomenon as the CIC instead. Former inmates are often still under some form of supervision once they leave the walls of prisons (GPS tracking, intensive parole, etc…). Others who come into contact with the criminal legal system are not incarcerated but are given probation and come under the surveillance of the state too.
We have not discussed these debates in this course because of the limited amount of time that was available to us. I did however want to bring this to your attention in case you are interested in reading more from some of the academics that I mentioned earlier.
Personally, I continue to find the term “Prison Industrial Complex” to be a good frame for discussing the issues that we have over the past five months. This is why I continue to use it. In particular, I rely on Critical Resistance’s definition:
“Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) is a term we use to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to what are, in actuality, economic, social, and political ‘problems’.”

I received an e-mail today from Professor Loic Wacquant. As a sociologist myself, I greatly value engaged dialogue about ideas. I reached out to Dr. Wacquant and asked if I could post his response here. He graciously agreed.

Read the full post at US Prison Culture

Panel on Mental Health and the PIC

2010-05-25T10:08:00.001-07:00

Adler's Institute on Public Safety and Social Justice invites you to a Symposium: What happens to people with mental illness when they encounter the criminal justice system? Innovations in Illinois. The event information is on the flier below. Please feel free to pass on to other interested parties! If you have any questions please let me know. You can RSVP to this FREE event at ipssj@adler.edu.

Resource on the PIC and Transgender and Gender Non-Conforming People

2010-05-24T11:36:00.000-07:00

Our friends at the Transformative Justice Law Project shared these amazing resources detailing how the PIC and access to resources creates pipelines for trans and gender non-conforming folks into prison. I'll have full audio of the presentation up shortly.

Readings for Final Session

2010-05-24T11:24:00.001-07:00

This reading from the Defending Justice Toolkit offers insight around issues of prison abolition and reform including some organizing advice.

http://www.defendingjustice.org/pdfs/chapters/organizing.pdf

Please also check out these following websites from local Chicago groups that are addressing PIC-related issues:

TAMMS Year 10 -- http://www.yearten.org/

Chicago Legal Advocacy for Incarcerated Mothers -- http://www.claim-il.org/

Illinois Campaign for Telephone Justice -- http://www.illinoistelephonejustice.com/

John Howard Association of Illinois -- http://www.thejha.org/

Midwest Books to Prisoners -- http://www.midwestbookstoprisoners.org/

Chicago Books to Women in Prison -- http://chicagobwp.org/

An Essay on the ICE Raid at Postville

2010-05-24T11:22:00.000-07:00

We haven't spent a lot of time focusing on the experience of immigrant groups with the PIC. This essay discusses the massive raid of a meatpacking plant in Postville, Iowa by Immigrations and Custom Enforcement in 2008.

Unfinished Business

2010-05-24T11:11:00.000-07:00

As we approach the final session of the 2010 Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) Communiversity course, I wanted to take a moment to underscore some of the areas that we haven’t really been able to cover in our time together. We are in our fifth session today and will end in June with a focus on specific organizing efforts aimed at dismantling the PIC.

This course was intended to provide a basic overview of some of the key issues around the prison industrial complex. It was not meant to be exhaustive. This topic is so broad and complex that it would take a lifetime to unpack all of its nuances.

In the meantime, here are a few areas that we did not consider in depth over the past five sessions but are critical to gaining a comprehensive view about the PIC and how it operates:

Immigration, Detention, and the PIC -- On any given day there are 30,000 immigrants in detention in the U.S. (women and children included).
The “war on terror” and the U.S.’s global prison network (Bagram/Guantanamo) – extending the reach of the PIC outside the U.S.
Mental illness and the PIC – two wonderful documentaries highlight how prisons have become warehouses for people with mental illness. Check out “The New Asylums” and “The Released” if you are interested in this topic. Both are hour-long documentaries produced by PBS’s Frontline.
Political Prisoners – We did not address the issue of the imprisonment of dissidents and critics of the state in any depth.
The role of the media in promoting and supporting the PIC – We did not discuss in any depth how the media works to criminalize marginalized groups through its coverage of “crime.”

We spent the first two sessions trying to understand the history of prisons and how the PIC operates. One area of debate that we did not broach is whether the term “Prison Industrial Complex” is a good construct to explain the expansion and encroachment of surveillance and incarceration over the past 30 years. There is a pitched battle of ideas in the academic community about whether the PIC is a useful way to describe mass incarceration. Sociologists like Loic Wacquant contend that the PIC is a misguided frame as an explanatory construct for mass incarceration. For information about Wacquant’s critique, you should read his book “Prisons of Poverty.” This is the shorter, more reader-friendly version of his book “Punishing the Poor.” Chris Parenti is another person who is a critic of the term “Prison Industrial Complex.” He contends that prison spending is much less than that of the “military-industrial-complex.” As such, he takes issue with the term. He has other criticisms that he has offered as well.

Finally, in the past couple of years, some have begun to use the term “Corrections-Industrial Complex” instead of PIC. These people contend that since the fastest growing segment of carceral supervision today in the U.S. is probation, it makes more sense to think of this phenomenon as the CIC instead. Former inmates are often still under some form of supervision once they leave the walls of prisons (GPS tracking, intensive parole, etc…). Others who come into contact with the criminal legal system are not incarcerated but are given probation and come under the surveillance of the state too.

We have not discussed these debates in this course because of the limited amount of time that was available to us. I did however want to bring this to your attention in case you are interested in reading more from some of the academics that I mentioned earlier.

Personally, I continue to find the term “Prison Industrial Complex” to be a good frame for discussing the issues that we have over the past five months. This is why I continue to use it. In particular, I rely on Critical Resistance’s definition:

“Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) is a term we use to describe the overlapping interests of government and industry that use surveillance, policing, and imprisonment as solutions to what are, in actuality, economic, social, and political ‘problems’.”

Hopefully after the past few months, everyone who has consistently attended these sessions can answer the following questions in his or her own way:

What are the historical, social, political, and economic forces that have contributed to the vast expansion of incarceration in the U.S.?
How do you define the PIC?
Who gets put in prison and who doesn’t?
What are the effects of the PIC on individuals, communities, and society?

There are many, many more issues that we could have covered as they relate to the PIC. I hope that some of you who are interested in continuing your learning around these issues will apply to join the PIC Teaching Collective (July 9^th is the deadline). For the others, I hope that you will independently continue to expand your understanding of the issues around the PIC in the future.

Written by Mariame Kaba

Resources for the next session

2010-04-30T10:09:00.000-07:00

The top six resources are the recommended ones for May 22nd.

1. Article from San Francisco Guardian about trans women in prison
2. Six minute video clip from the video "Cruel and Unusual" about incarceration of trans women
3. Executive summary of this big report on LGBT youth in the juvenile courts, 7 pages long
4. This is a copy of the Comic Book "Hard Life" which was distributed at our last session.
5. Fact Sheet: How the Criminal Justice System is Anti-Queer.
6. Fact Sheet: How the Criminal Justice System is Anti-Women.

Other resources if you are particularly interested in this topic:

Summary of the Amnesty International report "Stonewalled" about US police abuses of the LGBT community. Can be read or listened to on the website. It has short case information and recommendations and covers a broad range of issues.

This is a video about the issue of shackling pregnant women in prison.

This is a series of pieces written by formerly incarcerated women.

This is a recent piece about incarcerated mothers that is worth reading.

This is an article about the big increase of women in prison.

Corrupting Justice: A Primer for LGBT Communities on Racism, Violence, Human Degradation & the Prison Industrial Complex, [PDF] American Friends Service Committee. 2005.

This is a brand new report from ICJIA titled "Victimization and Help-Seeking Behaviors among Female Prisoners in Illinois."

Presentation on School-to-Jail pipeline

2010-04-29T10:39:00.000-07:00

From the Advancement Project, "Zero Tolerance, High-Stakes Testing, and the School-to-Prison Pipeline." Below, please find the link to the PowerPoint presentation used in the webinar. The recording of the webinar will soon be posted to the websites www.fairtest.org and www.stopschoolstojails.org.

http://www.advancementproject.org/sites/default/files/Webinar.pdf

Notes on how the PIC impacts youth

2010-04-29T10:36:00.000-07:00

Thanks Naomi!

How does the “War on Drugs” impact young people’s daily lives?

Young people are entered into cycle
Takes from them—mom, dad, hope
Street sweeps
Mandatory minimums
No financial aid for college with a drug conviction
“street culture” is more appealing than school (i.e. school to prison piplining system
racial profiling—police state—no hope, apathy
no real information about effects of drugs/harm reduction
way on drugs—the system’s legal ways to prison
border cartels killing whole families
what counts as (bad) drugs?
$$ spent on enforcing drug laws, lack of funding for education
labels young people as bad, dangerous
takes away opportunities and resources
find other ways to survive under the radar
zero tolerance policy

What are some examples of “Quality of life” policing and how does it impact young people?

Making parents responsible for $$ for what their children do
Accountability: parents
Media and how youth are portrayed—young black men are dangerous
Hyper surveillance by punitive structures
“child protection” = no lights
lower quality of life (low Socioeconomic status, racialized bodies, etc)= greater policing and restriction of rightsàtreated as second class citizens àculture of poverty pathology àinternalized hatred and diminished integrity
Curfews
Gang loitering laws
Quality of life when there is no quality

What is the street economy?

All of the different ways for youth who are shut out of “legitimate’ ways of making money to survive
Social capital—incarceration as credential/rite of passage
Age 15—64 arrests--what the F*%# is that? (related to a story about a young trans woman who had been arrested, booked, and then released by the police onto the same corner without connecting her to supports)
Selling cigarettes and other drugs
Helping each other stay alive
Necessity for some
Empowering/demoralizing
Not a secret to cops, authorities
Making money to take care of family
Getting money any way possible
Criminalized
Selling and making DVDs and CDs
A method for folks with limited access to resources to live and survive
Survival economy
Doing/getting what you need to survive

What is Zero Tolerance?

External control vs. internal
Bad idea
Military discipline
No second chances
Not looking at the whole person
Weapons=expulsion (this includes fake weapons)
False “public safety”
Parents may feel it is the only thing keeping their children safe
Population control of black/brown youth, who are the moral ills of the society, the “crack babies”
Applied to things like “disobeying authority”, cursing, etc. –vague definitions of what this means but youth are still punished
No chance for correction or development
A way not to deal with inequalities
No difference between the recipient of violence and the perpetrator
Divisive
The implication that people of color are criminals and should be dealt with to assure public safety

How is the school to prison pipeline playing out in Chicago Schools?

“special education” pathologication
zero tolerance still visible
criminalization of behavior
high stakes testing
no privacy (searches)
assumption that students need constant policing
removing students from school by suspensions, expulsions, arrests
suspensions are mostly handled by legal department of CPS not principal
funding surveillance rather than education
youth being labeled “bad” “lazy” and “unmotivated” and then that is internalized—youth starts calling other youth these labels
police stations inside schools
In Phila: at the start of 2009 school year…(sorry…I couldn’t read it--nm)
Requirements to call police for certain kinds of misbehavior
Metal detectors
No social promotion
Lack of resources for students with mental health and disabilities, replicated in prisons
The next step from school to prison or jail

Unfairly enforced, students of color, LGBTQ students targeted
Not considering child development or personal history when defining or trying to change behavior

How can young people organize to combat the PIC?

Communicate, dialogue with each other. First many youth may not feel included or aware of how to organize/mobilize
Blocks Together security guard organizing campaign
YWAT—Suspension Stories
Participatory Action Research
Youth from around the country come together
Youth help get their teachers involved and engaged in dialogue and action
Southwest Youth Collaborative—Audy Home Campaign
Young Women’s Empowerment Project—Bad Encounter Line
Political popular peer education
Empowerment pipeline
Early prevention workshops, clubs, programs,
Knowing their rights. Solidarity; union (students) presence in schools
Student Bill of Rights

What is Institutionalization?

Intertwined (inextricably) with knowledge (who holds it, who gets to say what is/is not legitimate)
Public funding of private corporations
Making people conform/fit in to systems, even if those systems are unjust
Defining based on assumptions
The normalization of behaviors, perspectives, language, etc (even if oppressive)
Inability to function without structure coming/being dictated from above
Changing culture
Systemically deriving agency (police officers, social workers, case workers, corrections officers, teachers, foster care, etc)
State intervention
Disguises responsibility/accountability
Being caught up in the fears of society

How does the PIC impact young people in their daily lives?

Fear
Hypermasculinity and hegemonic masculinity for MEN of color that perpetuates misogyny and (men’s) violence against women and other gender nonconforming bodies

Delusions of manhood!

Separates families—children from parents
Internalized self hatred
Limits beliefs about future and opportunities
Trauma
Hatred of other youth—talking each other down
Climate of violence in schools (verbal, physical, etc)—stressful on mind and body
Low self-esteem
Creates victims
Demonizes young people, their families and their communities and creates severe cycles of internalized oppression

What are some alternatives to calling the police or social service?

Project Nia—peace circles, community responsibility to our youth and solidarity, grandmothers group
Creative interventions—try something! Organize collectively, center survivor (if desired)
The first step should always be to call the youth to the side of you’re comfortable with that and outline how his behavior is disrespectful and impacting you
Ask those harmed what they need
Involve youth in more processes that directly effect/affect them (communicate) so as to hold all accountable and responsible
Get communities to hold people accountable/call people out
Call the families—create a school community

Interesting article

2010-04-29T10:05:00.001-07:00

Here is an article about the "toy jail" in the playground in NYC that was mentioned as part of Saturday's conversation.

Readings for April 24

2010-04-20T12:49:00.000-07:00

Here's the readings for the fourth meeting of our group.

http://archive.prisonactivist.org/youth/groups.pdf

http://socialjustice.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/index.php/Prison_Moratorium_Project

please pay particular attention to alternatives to incarceration on this page

http://www.incite-national.org/media/docs/3696_TOOLKIT-FINAL.pdf

please review the fact sheets on the war on drugs, policing sex work and cops in schools

Here is an article about how zero tolerance policies in school discipline are criminalizing young people across the country

A fact sheet from the Defending Justice Toolkit called "How the Criminal Justice System is Anti-Youth"

An "arresting" PSA about called Prison Playground.

This is for those of you who have a particular interest in the school to prison pipeline and have the inclination to read a longer report about the phenomenon which was put together by the Advancement Project.

And this one from Gary:

This is a link is to an issue brief by the American Constitution Society on life without parole sentences for juveniles:

http://www.acslaw.org/node/15507

Lots of information in a few pages.

Freed from prison, some juveniles have no place to go

2010-04-07T20:49:00.000-07:00

original here

By Steve Mills, Tribune reporter

7:13 PM CDT, March 31, 2010
Nearly 10 percent of the inmates in Illinois' juvenile prisons have essentially completed their sentences — in some cases more than a year ago — but are stuck behind bars because they have no place to go, state records show.

Many of the youths are being held longer in one of the state's eight juvenile prisons because officials cannot find an appropriate placement in a transitional living program or other kind of facility. Others are still in prison because officials found the homes of families or friends to be unacceptable, or because families simply refuse to take them back, according to records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

Notes in the records tell sad stories. "Youth has no family that will take him," reads the comment in the case of one downstate boy who was sent to prison for aggravated robbery and was still there two months beyond his scheduled release.

"Placement denied 5X w/relatives," reads the status report on another case. The names of the youths were redacted by state officials because of their age.

As of Tuesday, 104 of the 1,107 inmates in the state's juvenile prisons, or 9.4 percent, were still behind bars even though their expected parole dates had passed.

The percentage has remained relatively steady since the department began tracking the figures in September 2005, though at times it has crept higher than 10 percent.

The issue underscores a persistent problem that Department of Juvenile Justice director Kurt Friedenauer has made a priority to tackle: a lack of aftercare for some of the state's most troubled youths.

"Our goal is not to keep kids for the sake of keeping kids," Friedenauer said. "Our goal is to prepare them for re-entry back to the community and for them to be successful there. But you have to have a (placement) to do that. … We simply do not have the financial resources to purchase the appropriate services."

A youth's administrative review date, or ARD, is a guideline for when he or she is expected to be approved for parole by the state Prisoner Review Board. But without a plan in place for where the youth will go upon release, youths either are held back from appearing before the board or are approved for parole pending a placement, according to Friedenauer.

Many youths kept beyond their ARD remain in prison for months. In some of the more extreme cases, youths have been held for close to a year, with a handful held for more than a year after their ARD. Two youths were held for 1,000 additional days, or nearly three years, according to the most recent figures available, which date to January.

The Department of Juvenile Justice is responsible for finding placements for nearly all the youths. A small number of cases involve wards of the state, and as a result the Department of Children and Family Services is responsible for finding homes for those youths.

Some cases appear complicated by family and friends whose homes are deemed unsuitable because of their own legal problems or because they do not have the means to accommodate a youth. The documents suggest that officials, over time, make several efforts to find homes for the youths, often approaching various relatives and friends to try to find an appropriate placement.

Roundup of pieces and interviews on The New Jim Crow

2010-04-07T10:26:00.000-07:00

We've talked a lot about Michelle Alexander's new book, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the age of Colorblindness through the series, so I thought I'd put together a little collection of recent interviews and articles she's done recently. She's articulated a powerful analysis of the intersection of the history of white supremacy and mass incarceration, and is well worth paying attention to.

Strapped for Cash, America Rethinks Criminal Justice Reform
Her Blog archive on Huffington Post
Interview on Democracy Now!
Interview by the Black Agenda Report

Key terms from March 27th

2010-03-29T10:09:00.000-07:00

Jim Crow

The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws in the United States enacted between 1876 and 1965. They mandated de jure racial segregation in all public facilities, with a supposedly "separate but equal" status for black Americans. In reality, this led to treatment and accommodations that were usually inferior to those provided for white Americans, systematizing a number of economic, educational and social disadvantages.

Some examples of Jim Crow laws are the segregation of public schools, public places and public transportation, and the segregation of restrooms and restaurants for whites and blacks. The U.S. military was also segregated. These Jim Crow Laws were separate from the 1800-66 Black Codes, which had also restricted the civil rights and civil liberties of African Americans. State-sponsored school segregation was declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education. Generally, the remaining Jim Crow laws were overruled by the Civil Rights Act of 1964 [1] and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The phrase "Jim Crow Law" first appeared in 1904 according to the Dictionary of American English,[2] although there is some evidence of earlier usage.[3] The origin of the phrase "Jim Crow" has often been attributed to "Jump Jim Crow", a song-and-dance caricature of African Americans performed by white actor Thomas D. Rice in blackface, which first surfaced in 1832 and was used to satirize Andrew Jackson's populist policies. As a result of Rice's fame, "Jim Crow" had become a pejorative expression meaning "African American" by 1838, and from this the laws of racial segregation became known as Jim Crow laws.[3] (Source: Wikipedia).

Racial Caste System – A stigmatized racial group locked into an inferior position by law and custom (Source: Michelle Alexander – The New Jim Crow ).

Mass Incarceration

Mass incarceration, according to Michelle Alexander, is a system that locks people not only behind actual bars in actual prisons, but also behind virtual bars and virtual walls – walls that are invisible to the naked eye but function nearly as effectively as Jim Crow laws once did at locking people of color into a permanent second-class citizenship. The term mass incarceration refers not only to the criminal justice system but also to the larger web of laws, rules, policies, and customs that control those labeled criminals both in and out of prison. Once released, former prisoners enter a hidden underworld of legalized discrimination and permanent social exclusion. They are members of America’s new undercaste (p.12-13).

Mass incarceration refers to the extraordinary number of people being locked up in the US today. Of the more than 2.3 million Americans behind bars, the overwhelming majority have been taken from the poorest neighborhoods and counties in the country. In 2005, nearly $525,000,000 was spent imprisoning residents from Cook County alone, mostly from Chicago’s under-resourced Black and Latino neighborhoods. Among the many unknowns of contemporary incarceration policies are the political implications of removing residents of a community en masse. The use of state resources to support policies of mass incarceration can have dramatically negative impacts on a community’s capacity to create and maintain their own practices of peacemaking. Targeting predominately poor people of color over the last 35 years, the prison population in Illinois has risen over 500 percent. This rise has tremendous implications for the children of the incarcerated and the Department of Children and Family Services (Source: Area Chicago)

Second Class Citizenship

War on Drugs

Prison Towns

Death Penalty

Readings for third session

2010-03-04T13:51:00.000-08:00

The topic of the next session is "How Race and Class Intersect with the Prison Industrial Complex."

Everyone who attended this past Saturday's session should have gotten a copy of the comic called "Prisoners of the War on Drugs."

The introduction to Michelle Alexander's new book called the "New Jim Crow." Please make sure that you are able to read this chapter as it will provide a good foundation for our next session.

This is a powerful article about the death penalty that I think will be of interest to everyone and relates directly to what we will be discussing.

This is a fact sheet called "How is the Criminal Justice System Racist." It comes from a toolkit called "Defending Justice."

2010-03-04T13:44:00.000-08:00

Illinois Community Justice Project

We're developing a new resource that is going to make our work stronger. It’s an online site that will allow us to share our efforts, and to harness each other’s good work. This site will be transparent, participatory, and collective. And that’s why we’re writing for your help.

We’d like you to help us identify and archive key knowledge about the Illinois justice system. By collecting this knowledge in one online place, we hope to generate shared understandings, new initiatives, and more possibilities to connect our vital efforts.

Please take a moment to read through this call, and to think through the materials that have helped to inform your work. Think about materials that you would be willing to share with other folks working on justice issues.

Submissions will become a part of the wiki-site we are developing, and will be a significant resource for activists, community members, students, teachers, and movement workers across Illinois NOW and for years to come. No submissions are too old or too new. We welcome resources from other organizations and websites, from personal memories, and from institutional archives. Once it’s fully developed, this site will also have the capacity for posting "needs and wants" and for calls to immediate action.

We are asking for:

Reports that share key information on the workings of the Illinois justice system
Stories of how the system has changed across the decades (e.g. 1970¹s, 1980¹s)
Histories of Illinois prisons, detention centers, and other system agencies
Documentation of campaigns; Information on projects and initiatives to change the way different aspects of the system work
Personal testimonies
Web-based videos that illuminate a vital aspect of the Illinois system
Maps of key system locations and/or impacted neighborhoods
Relevant essays and articles that can be posted online, and that deal directly with Illinois
Links to resources for people working to transform the justice system in Illinois; Links to organizations working for justice
Curriculum that addresses prisons, detention, incarceration
Web-based audio files that tell important stories about the justice system in Illinois
Art projects and practices that help to raise awareness of the Illinois system and its impacts
Information, resources and/or campaigns linked to marginalized populations within the PIC (people with disabilities, LGBTQ populations, women, undocumented populations)
Other resources that you believe could an important contribution to this web-based project

We welcome submissions that deal with all aspects and angles of the Illinois system: juveniles or adults, prisons and their effects on neighborhoods, immigrant detention, the parole system, restorative justice, and oppositional political campaigns.

Please submit materials and questions to ilcommunityjustice@gmail.com by March 30, 2010.

Any One of Us: Words from Prison in Chicago

2010-03-04T12:14:00.000-08:00

"Any One of Us: Words from Prison"
A Play By Eve Ensler

To benefit the Lesbian Leadership Council's Lavender Fund
and POW-WOW's Juvenile Justice/Crisis Care programs

Click image above to view full-size flyer

Friday, March 12, 2010
Pre-reception 6-7 p.m.
Performance 7:15-9 p.m.
Jacob Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies
700 E. Oakwood Blvd. (Bronzeville)
Chicago
Note: All are welcome to attend this event.

Tickets: Buy online or call 773.530.8603 (Chicago Foundation for Women is not handling registration)
     Premium: $35 (includes wine and cheese pre-reception, goodie bag and priority seating)
     General: $20
     Sponsorships also available from $100 to $1,000. Click here for details.

About "Any One of Us"The Lesbian Leadership Council and POW-WOW, Inc. are proud to present a benefit performance of Eve Ensler's play "Any One of Us: Words from Prison," a groundbreaking collection of monologues written by over 50 incarcerated or formerly incarcerated women in the United States and commissioned by V-Day. The piece reveals the connection between women in prison and the violence that often brings them there with honesty and sincerity. The Lesbian Leadership Council will use proceeds from this benefit for their Lavender Fund, which awards grants to LBT-run organizations in the Chicago area. POW-WOW, Inc. will use proceeds to continue and expand their Juvenile Justice SheSpeaks and Crisis Care programs.

Accessibility
The Jacob Carruthers Center is wheelchair accessible, through the rear entrance. If you have accessibility questions or requests, please contact Marisol Ybarra at (312) 577-2836, TTY (312) 577-2803 or mybarra@cfw.org.

Photos and audio from second session

2010-03-02T20:13:00.000-08:00

This weekend's meeting was amazing! We covered the basic dimensions of how the prison-industrial complex works, what it needs to continue operating, what communities it impacts, and how it impacts those communities. Here's some photos from the workshop, along with audio of the entire event. We're working on getting folks to share their notes and thoughts from the event, and that should be up in the next few days. Take a listen, it's well worth it.

Second Session Readings

2010-02-26T13:22:00.003-08:00

Prison Town- The comic book that was handed out at the first session.

“Masked Racism: Reflections on the Prison Industrial Complex” by Angela Davis

“Crime, Captalism, and Croplands,” a chapter from The Golden Gulag by Ruth Wilson Gilmore

What's happening here

2010-02-26T13:22:00.001-08:00

About 40 folks got together at the Chicago Freedom School on January 30 to kick off a joint series of community workshops hosted by the Freedom School and Project NIA on the Prison Industrial Complex. In this six-month workshop series, youth and adults are exploring the history, impacts, and current state of mass incarceration in the United States. This website is going to archive some of the materials from these workshops, and hopes to provide folks who didn’t have the privilege to attend this series access to some of the discussions we engaged in. Let me know if you’ve got any info you think should be included, or other info sources that we should connect this to.