"Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal"

I am re-posting here an interview Angola 3 News did with filmmakers Noelle Hanrahan and Steve Vittorio about their new documentary on Mumia Abu-Jamal. It stands on its own, I think, so plunge right in:

On October 6, the new documentary film entitled Long Distance Revolutionary: A Journey with Mumia Abu-Jamal, will be making its world premiere at the Mill Valley Film Festival, just north of San Francisco.

Mumia Abu-Jamal is a veteran journalist, author of seven books, and a former Black Panther who was convicted of first-degree murder in the shooting death of white Philadelphia Police Officer Daniel Faulkner in a 1982 trial deemed unfair by Amnesty International and many others. Abu-Jamal, who has always maintained his innocence, spent almost 30 years in solitary confinement on death row in Pennsylvania. The death sentence has now been officially overturned and since early in 2012, Abu-Jamal is out of solitary and in general population at SCI-Mahony, with such new ‘privileges’ as contact visits with family and friends (view photos).

Conference: "The Business of Incarceration in Louisiana: Do Prisoners Have Human Rights?"

With one out of every 86 adults behind bars, the State of Louisiana has more people incarcerated per capita than any other societal group in the history of the human race. Additionally, the practice of incarcerating individuals for natural life without the expectation of parole – for a wide range of offenses – has been elevated to an unprecedented level here, with Louisiana currently utilizing the option at nearly 4 times the national average. In real numbers, this means that more than half of the 5,100 prisoners at Angola State Prison will die in that institution, despite the fact that an ailing elderly prisoner costs the state $80,000 per year.

With cost-cutting issues frequently touted as of crucial importance in every area of our government, financial considerations alone, then, would seem to call for a more rigorous examination of prisoners’ rights in the interest of lowering the sheer numbers of those warehoused by the state. Nevertheless, Louisiana doubled its prison population in the past 20 years. And it is meaningful that 70% of the state’s prisoners are African-American. According to a New Orleans Times-Picayune expose’ published in May, 2012, more than half of the inmates in the state are housed in local prisons run by local law enforcement agencies that sorely need the funds generated in this way. So, arrest and incarceration are now very much driven by financial incentives.

On Friday, September 14, 2012, from 8:00 a.m. until 5:00 p.m., the Southeastern Sociological Association at Southeastern Louisiana University in Hammond (halfway between Baton Rouge and New Orleans) will host a conference for academics, lawyers, students, advocates, activists and former prisoners to examine prisoners’ rights in Louisiana today. The intent is that those who attend will be able to share information and create a plan for networking in the future to maximize their effectiveness in the work that they do.

Topics will include, but not be restricted to: schools as a pipeline to prison, prison conditions, community re-entry issues, minority over-representation, women in prison, long-term solitary confinement, natural life sentencing, capital punishment, and the burdens of prisoners’ families. Speakers, breakout sessions, planning workgroups, and time to network will be provided, and the keynote address will be delivered by activist/lawyer Bill Quigley, professor and Director of the Law Clinic and the Gillis Long Poverty Law Center at Loyola University in New Orleans and Associate Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights in New York City.

The conference is open to the public and the registration fee (which includes breakfast and lunch) is only $25 for professionals, $12 for students and low income individuals, and free for ex-prisoners. For more information, call 985-549-5731.

Skin Deep

A Letter to White Southern Women from Anne Braden

As I mention from time to time, I've been studying the socially-constructed, political notion of "race" for fifty years now. That's a while. But I just keep learning. Which amazes me.

A year or so ago, one of my students mentioned Anne Braden because the Flobots had sampled one of her speeches to include in a spoken word/rap cut on one of their albums. The student thought she sounded like me -- and she did. But she sounded like me now back in the 1960's, so I was impressed.

Then, last month, Appalshop (an arts and social justice collective in the mountains of Kentucky in a little tiny town named for one of my notorious and very likely super racist ancestors) came out with a documentary entitled "Anne Braden ~ Southern Patriot." And now we can see her in action for ourselves.

Braden was the genuine article, the no-holds-barred, go-for-broke, take-no-prisoners real deal. And the film is beyond inspiring and all the way into challenging. At the risk of sounding like all the other commercial hawkers out there, I'm going to say this film is a must-see if you're a regular reader of this blog. You can buy the film directly from Appalshop or from California Newsreel. Or you can ask your local public or school library to buy it (they have money for this sort of thing and are just waiting for people to make good suggestions).

To whet your appetite, there's a letter floating around from Anne Braden to White Southern women. I've edited it slightly to leave out a few lines that are now untimely. But this will give you a sense of who she was and how far short many of the rest of us fall when it comes to the fight for social justice.

A Letter to White Southern Women from Anne Braden

White Denial (cont'd)

White Denial and a Culture of Stereotypes

One topic I have to keep coming back to over and over, it seems, is the topic of White denial. What I mean by this is that many White people instantly deny that the experience of people of color in the United States is different from the experience of White people. The particular White people in question (like some of those in my course on race that just started a couple of weeks ago) will suggest that anyone can be racist (most especially Black people who are still angry at White people for holding them in slavery); that White Supremacy is only evident in folks that wear hoods made of sheets; and that oppression is something that happens only to people who live under extremist Islamic regimes.

The fact is that White denial is the Number One form of "playing the Race Card." In fact, White denial is probably the hands-down biggest Race Card of all time. And it's been discussed ad nauseum to no avail. White people ain't listening. But maybe (I keep thinking), if we try it one more time, somebody will say it differently and somebody new will catch the drift.

In hopes of this, I'm re-posting an excellent piece by Dr. David J. Leonard. It's somewhat more scholarly than the language usually is on this blog, but it appeared last week on the Huffington Post (not exactly the Journal of the American Sociological Association), so I'm going to give you an opportunity to check it out and see if it helps make sense of a few things better than I already have. If the post by Lesley didn't do it for you last week, maybe Dr. Leonard can bring it home today.

White Denial and a Culture of Stereotypes
by Dr. David J. Leonard

Power to the Online People

As many of you know, I live 45 miles north of New Orleans, so this has been a tough week. No lights. No air-conditioning. No internet. So having the folks at OpenSite send me this graphic really struck home. The only reason I'm able to blog right now is that I've crawled out to an empty office building that has power. Mother Nature is nothing to fool with. But our Auntie Internet's pretty damn powerful herself.

Thank Goddess.

Discipline and Race: The Newest Jim Crow

I read this in March, but it's beyond crucial information on the racialization of school discipline and was covered by Glen Ford at Black Agenda Report. This is why the prisoners' rights conference I'm organizing right now is going to have a breakout session on Schools as a Pipeline to Prison. For certain kids. That would be, of course, kids of color. Sigh.

New Data Show Black Students Have Been New Jim Crowed
by Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Glen Ford

"Real" vs. "Casual Racism"

I don't watch The Today Show or anything else early in the morning. I have other things to do. More than I can get done, as a rule. But I'm not whining. Most of the time, I wouldn't watch commercial television if I was poverty-stricken and they were paying viewers by the minute.

But that doesn't mean I don't hear about the craziness that shows up there from time to time. Like Monday, August 6th (apparently) when, Matt Lauer proved once more that many people from the U.S. just love to embarrass themselves in public. Particularly as pertains to race.

Still, I'm not re-posting this piece from xojane.com because I give a care about Matt Lauer or The Today Show or mainstream U.S. culture. I'm re-posting it because of what Lesley has to say about what she calls "casual racism." Good stuff.

Casual Racism Is Not My Spirit Animal
by Lesley

The Danger of the Single Story

A couple of months ago, I posted a YouTube video about life in the 'hood. It was produced by talented young Black actors, writers, directors, and musicians and has gotten a lot of play on the internet. But I asked when I posted it, "What's wrong with this picture?"

The video I'm posting today answers that question.

Standing Up To Bullies In Church

It's always fun to see what new application of the same old story manages to hit the radar here in this part of the woods. Recently, it was a White minister that buckled to a few of his parishioners when they decided a Black couple needed to marry elsewhere. This in the Bible belt, of course. Where Christianity is bigger than the flag, mother and apple pie all put together. My friend Dayne Sherman had a little something to say about this story and I thought you might enjoy reading it as much as I did.


Standing Up To Bullies In Church
by Dayne Sherman

To Rage Or Not To Rage...?

I've been thinking a lot lately about the level of my passion. When I teach. When I speak. When I blog. When I'm on Facebook. When I'm chatting casually over coffee at Starbuck's. When I'm sprawled on my couch talking to my significant other as if, being Black, he isn't already one step of ahead of whatever I'm going to say.

One of my student evaluations for last semester said, "Don't be so honest."

As compared to what? Lying? Putting it out there in bite-sized chunks? Whitewashing the truth (literally)?

Pretty Is As Pretty Does

If I just can't get here the way I need to on top of what I am being "forced" to write at In-Your-Face Women these days, then at the very least, I should be tipping you to what I'm reading myself here and there.  For example, S.E. Smith posted the piece I'm re-posting here the other day at GlobalComment.com. I'm so disgusted that any journalist would snipe Gabby Douglas for having a hair out of place after winning a gold medal, it brought me out of retirement (as it were). I know I didn't write this, but I wish I did.

Racism in Olympic Coverage
by S.E. Smith 

Beauty and the Beat

After seeing this on Facebook and watching it twice, I showed it to Boxer, who said, "Show it again" and then, "You gotta post this on your blog."

Okay. Here it is.

White Girl sings, "There's must be more than this to a hood rat's life!"

Is there? What do you say?

Have You Heard About The Slaughter?

What if the U.S. military shot to death and disappeared the bodies of more than one thousand Black soldiers at an Army camp in southwest Mississippi in the middle of World World II? I know, I know. But what if it really happened? Would you want to know about it? Would you just shrug and say "let sleeping dogs lie," "don't stir up stuff you can't do anything about," "that was then and this is now"? Or would you hover around the fire to hear the tale told?

I'll be listening to Blog Talk Radio on Sunday, July 1st, at 8:00 p.m. (CST) to hear Antoinette Harrell and her guest, author Carroll Case, talk about The Slaughter ~ An American Atrocity. What about you?

Born to Fight

 The daily demand of In-Your-Face Women is continuing to kick my ass. I'm not complaining, you understand. At least, not most of the time. I'll be half way through the project tomorrow and so far, it's a success. It's now read in nearly one hundred countries (though Why Am I Not Surprised? is read in nearly two hundred, to give you a sense of perspective). And the campus radio station wants to submit recorded segments from IYF Women to the Public Radio Exchange (which will take it global in a whole 'nother medium). Satisfying, indeed.

Nevertheless, if In-Your-Face Women is my mistress, Why Am I Not Surprised? is -- still -- my wife. And for the time being, I will go forward as things are, hoping my "wife" doesn't pack up her shit and drop my cell phone in the garbage disposal on her way out the door.

By way of apology, I'm posting Tracy Chapman this morning, singing in South Africa in 1990, and I'm dedicating it to Albert Woodfox, who I just visited last weekend in prison up in BumFreak, Louisiana. We talked about boxing, our respective relationships, and the campaign to free him and Herman Wallace after forty years in solitary confinement. And we argued about gender relations in the abstract. The usual.

But as I watched this video today, I thought of him, languishing away in a tiny cell year after year. Born to fight. And I hope he knows how many fight beside him.

A New Perspective on the Motor City

I write a lot about the negative effects of five hundred years of aggressive White oppression against people of color.  Here's a stunning example of one of the positive effects: tried-in-the-fire, full-tilt-boogie, way-way-over-the-top wonderfulness!  The phoenix, indeed, rises out of the ashes in full glory.  Lead us, children, to the light.

Momentum for Racial Healing

A couple of months ago, I took one of my fairly frequent trips down to New Orleans to meet with Southern University Law School Professor Angela Allen-Bell and Keith Weldon Medley, author of We As Free Men ~ Plessy v. Ferguson about the fight against legal segregation. We met on the second floor of a bank building at what must surely be one of the best kept secrets in downtown New Orleans, over a delightful lunch of fried catfish, collard greens rich with flavor and buttered corn bread. And before we parted ways, I had bought Medley's book to add to my collection of autographed volumes.

Since then, I've been rushing -- as always -- through my life, barely hanging on by my fingertips, and I only just realized that a rash of emails I recently started getting, but to which I had not paid any attention, has been trying to make me aware of the work of the folks presented in this YouTube video.

I'm paying attention now, Keith. ;^)

The Phoenix Will Rise

“If you cannot remember or imagine what it is to lie down finally and wait for an end – that or deliverance; if you cannot consciously feel the pull of your wretched past or the pitiful attempts at a carefully planned life for yourself, there can be no windows or answering tools with which to say ‘this is so’ or ‘this is why.’ And there is no joy, no secret part of your thoughts that can exalt at simple pleasures, simple achievements. You must be fired in adversity, greatly torn, to take any satisfaction in having lived. Pity the poor who’ve never fallen, never lost; the sum of their losing now can be pitifully small and a great price for them alone.”  ~  Charles Ricehill (False Spring, 1974)

Release the Angola 3 Now!!

I will be in class today. I will be talking about religion as a social institution and the sociology of gender. I will be holding office hours and speaking with students on the campus about their grades or their extra credit or their problems. But my heart will be in Baton Rouge, standing on the State House steps with the other Angola 3 campaign supporters, with representatives of Amnesty International, the Congressional Black Caucus, the National Action Network, and others, to present a petition with tens of thousands of names from all over the world calling for the immediate release of Albert Woodfox and Herman Wallace, the remaining members of the Angola 3 still incarcerated after forty years in solitary confinement.

Forty years. Forty years. Forty years. My heart cries. Because ten days ago, I stood in the visiting room, hugging Albert's neck and leaving him behind...again. Because solitary confinement is torture (see the film above). And because the administration at my place of employment demands that my presence in the classroom take precedence over my taking a stand personally on the State House steps today.

We are kept in position by our slavery to wages, but my soul will stand tall beside Albert's and Herman's on the State House steps this afternoon. If you look very hard at the faces in the crowd, you will see us there. As we always and forever will be wherever truth speaks to power.