Love Letter to Cooper Ravenstahl

This letter is written to Cooper Ravenstahl after Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl responded to local media that members of Pittsburgh for Trayvon had frightened his son when delivering posters of demands for justice to his house on the morning of July 18, 2013.  He said that they did not have the right to frighten his young child.  I have been comparing this right with George Zimmerman's legal murder of Trayvon Martin in my brain and wrote Cooper Ravenstahl a letter.  

Dear Cooper,

This is a love letter.  Love is something given or shared between people that helps them learn and grow. I might not ever meet you, but I want you and all other children to be loved.  I want you to be well.  I want you and all other children to be healthy, fed, safe, and strong.  I want you to be safe where you live and at school and when you are outside.  Many children are not safe right now because of white supremacy. White supremacy is very big and complicated.  It is something we have to think about and work on.  It's all the ways in which people, neighborhoods, governments, and history overlap to make it better and easier for white people to be successful and safe.  As you grow up, you be allowed to make many choices. You will be able to choose if you want to uphold white supremacy or work for justice.  You will be able to choose if you want to create and spread fear or create and spread love.  

My friends came to your house last week asking your dad to help make Pittsburgh safe for all people and children.  They are spreading love and working for justice.  Your dad said in the paper that you were afraid of them.  I am sorry that you were made afraid.  You are not alone. Here are some things that I am afraid of:

I am afraid that your dad will never tell you why my friends came to your house that morning and that he will never tell you why he didn't talk to us at his office.  That your dad will not understand or try because he doesn't have the language to talk about racism.   I'm afraid that you will not hear the word racism until you are 20 years old. That you will grow up and think it is okay for a young black person like Trayvon Martin to be killed.  That you will be like so many others, and think that Trayvon Martin's life is less than precious because he is black. I am afraid that you will be on a jury, with people who do not look like Trayvon Martin, who have never loved anyone who looks like him, and you will decide that Trayvon Martin's life is not precious.  That you will be a judge and you will believe that what is the law is correct, and that you are a steward of justice.  That you will be George Zimmerman, and that you will kill Trayvon Martin because you do not know that his life is precious.  I am afraid that you will be full of fear and that you will let it rule your life.  That you will be afraid of everyone who is not the same as you.  That you will grow up and not know who Trayvon Martin was.  

My fear is that you will perpetuate white supremacy by being a white person living in a multiracial world with our history.  I am afraid that you will not acknowledge racism.  That your job will employ you to kill black and brown people.  That your job will pay you to treat people unfairly. That your job will separate you from anyone who does not think like you.  That you will think that people who do not have a job are less then you.  Not working as hard as you.  That they aren't as precious as you. That they don't deserve all of the things that you have.  I am afraid that you will think that you do deserve all of the things that you have.  That you won't know who was here before you. That you will think that you are free and that is enough. That you won't work for justice.      

The people who came to your house are educators.  They are dancers, teachers, poets, farmers, parents and children.  They are spreading love and working for justice.  They make me believe that the future will be good for us.  That we can work together to make something happen.  Something better than this.  Something better than being afraid of each other.   

I want you to believe too.  It will be hard for you because their aren't a lot of hand holders for this journey.  It will be hard for you because many people will try to hold you back.  It will be hard for you because once you start, you have to commit for your whole life.  But I will root for you Cooper. I do not want us to be afraid.  I want us to be full of love and for that love to rule our lives.

Standing By,

Amanda

Prison Abolitionist Discussion Night

The Human Rights Coalition FedUp! hosted a prison abolition discussion night the first Wednesday of the month to talk about the history, context, and intersectionalities of working for prison abolition.

"Intersectionality is a concept often used in critical theories to describe the ways in which oppressive institutions (racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, ableism, xenophobia, classism, etc.) are interconnected and cannot be examined separately from one another."

This month we read a chapter from the book The Slave Ship A Human History by Marcus Rediker.  The chapter was chapter 10, "The Long Voyage of the Slave Ship Brooks."  It focuses on the role of imagery and working class, sailor narratives in the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.  A poster depicting horrific conditions of enslaved people was displayed before British Parliament and spread throughout newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic.

Much like prisons today, slave ships were advertised by merchants and profiteers as safe, hygienic, and technologically forward enterprises.  Under similar guises, local architecture firm, Astorino, has been spotlighted by Decarcerate PA Pittsburgh for their work in expanding maximum security housing and solitary confinement cells across state prisons. (See criminal justice portfolio and language) The idea that prisons can be made better and safer and that reform movements are enough, and that figuring out ways to make prisons more cost and energy efficient is challenged by the work of prison abolitionists.

poster by Andalusia Knoll 2004

Here is a preview of the chapter contents, within the questions we used to have a conversation:

1. "Every man condemns the trade, but it requires the exhibition of particular instances of the enormity, to induce those to be active in the matter"
The image of the slave ship Brooks is a visual tool used to show horrible conditions and move people to respond. What images have moved you in this way? What images have worked for the prison abolitionist movement? Feel free to bring images you have seen to share. What images can we use and how?

2. "Knowledge must be concrete, material and human. Not an exaggeration, but a narration of miseries which cannot be exaggerated which extends to millions."
Do you think working for prison abolition is the telling of a narration of miseries? What sources do you tune into to find out about or spread this narration of miseries? If our group is participating in the creation of the narration of miseries, how are we doing it and is there room to change or improve?

3. Clarkson emphasized sailors' experience (as members of preferred white race and preferred european nationality) to appeal to British government and public to look at slavery. He wasn't looking at the conditions of the enslaved people, but the conditions of the sailors charged with keeping them enslaved. The sailors were organized by a merchant class.
How does this translate to the Prison industrial complex? How do corrections officers fit into the struggle for prison abolition? How has our group related to the correctional officer class in the past and how should we moving forward?

4. Compare and contrast: Similarities and differences from the strategies of abolition of the transatlantic slave trade and the abolition of the U.S. prison industrial complex.
e.g. Both abolitionists highlighted individual and collective acts of rebellion by slaves against conditions
e.g. like prisons, slaveships were presented to government officials as safe, modern, hygenic advances in science and technology

5. Reformers: The book indicates that one way that Britain came to outlaw the transatlantic slave trade was by reforming regulations for how many enslaved people could be housed on one boat, making it unprofitable for merchant class to continue human business when regulations were high. How has/ will reform efforts help work towards prison abolition?

Assessments

When I was in West Virginia last month, I was awed by my friends' quick assessment-to-action capabilities.  Like, in one moment, O indicated that a cat was moving in on the chicken coup.  I was mostly sleeping on the couch, but I understood that in the next moment, R was running with the squirt bottle to ward him off.  In another moment, the cat bumbled into the living room holding a bird.  In the next moment, the baby was secured, O had scruffed the cat, R had grabbed a towel while saying, "you get the cat, I'll get the towel," and the bird was scooped up and gone.  I'm thinking of the ability to understand something is awry, determine what that is, and then take an action towards it, all very fast.

This morning I had my own experience with measuring my assessment to action capability.  I was riding my bike to work past the fancy waterfront condos.  All of the sudden, a skinny red squiggly thing was squiggling next to me on the sidewalk.  I have good eyesight, and within a moment I could discern the thing was a rubber snake attached to a fishing line.  I slowed my bike a few windows down, and said, "That is a fake snake!"  There were two people approaching with a dog, and I said to them, "there is a fake snake on a string right there."

The snake got hoisted back through the first floor window.  I rode back to see if I could discern the culprit.  A small child? A cooky grandparent?  A true creep? I saw a metal piece of art near the windowsill and a closet full of long sleeve button down shirts and a flat screen television.  I waited a minute or two, but no one appeared to dispel the mystery.

Futures

for JM

Hold fast friends!
There are desires among us.
That will ring restless until they can breathe,
that will pry and be searched until they are found.

We have already begun to stomach the changes:
 a cleaner house
a necessary hug
another birthday
a poem

We danced together and I am not afraid.
Because we have spent our entire lives learning to become ourselves
and will spend our entire lives yet.
and I sometimes feel undernourished for how long that may be
but still, there is comfort there.

Go On

I live and breathe the band.
When your dream comes along you take it.

Probably can't come
sorry pal
gotta sleep
I'm gonna try
sorry can't make it
maybe I'll get there late.

studio
practice
sleep.

practice
studio
sleep?

a gas station snack
and
one coffee, one beer.

Two coffees, two beers.

Gotta drive, harmonica blarin',
open eyes
slow
energy movin'
not letting on that I am

living the dream.

Like a young commentator
running bases alone after the lights go out.

Post Office Advocacy Piece?

Disability Rights Network Challenges DOC Mental Health Practices

A lawsuit filed by the Disability Rights Network (DRN) on March 11, 2013 challenges current practices of solitary confinement in PA prisons for people with serious mental illness and argues that the PA Department of Corrections has caused undue suffering by upholding policies and procedures that are deliberately indifferent to prisoners’ constitutional rights. The lawsuit outlines current conditions of confinement, highlighting 23 to 24 hour lock down in cells with constant lights on, denial of adequate mental health care, lack of rehabilitative or therapeutic programming and lack of constructive pathways to parole. It summarizes DOC violations as the following: enforcement of a disciplinary system that does not factor mental illness; a known failure to provide even minimal mental health treatment or make treatment available; confinement conditions that exacerbate mental health problems; a refusal to take steps to correct known systemic violations.

Hundreds of prisoners and many ranking staff members were interviewed and visited by the DRN to understand mental health practices in the prison system. 800 prisoners, who are currently held in solitary, have been classified as having a “serious” mental illness on the DOC mental health scale and are obliged at least 1 “drive-by” visit by a mental health person at their cell slot every 90 days. Robert Meek of the DRN argues that prisoners with mental health needs are in a “Dickensian” punishment nightmare, where they cannot receive treatment, but do receive disciplinary infractions for behaviors related to their mental health issues. Once a person receives an infraction, they are put in solitary confinement in conditions that further deteriorate mental health. While in solitary, prisoners may display symptoms of their mental illness or behaviors resulting from their isolated conditions, such as using obscene language, acting paranoid, inflicting self harm, throwing bodily waste, hearing voices, refusing to eat, etc. These behaviors are then punished with more and more time in isolation.

The DRN found that in cases where mental illness was identified and where housing a person in solitary was not recommended, the DOC failed to follow its own recommendations, or those of judges or the court system to keep a person out of isolation or get a person into therapy. 2/3 of the 800 people classified as having a mental illness in solitary also reported being double celled in their housing units, often as a staff orchestrated suicide watch system.  The DRN found double celling prisoners with mental illness in solitary conditions led to violence and decreased stability.

Twelve specific case studies were outlined in the complaint, demonstrating experiences of people with mental health needs who are cycling in and out of solitary confinement or failing the DOC step down programs they cannot conform to. One person was assessed as having borderline personality disorder, found incompetent to stand trial, and in need of structured and supervised psychiatric care. Instead he was placed in solitary (RHU). He received rule infractions for acting out, smearing feces, masturbating for a female staff person, refusing to provide a urine sample, and self mutilation. He reported that auditory hallucinations caused him to do things. He requested mental health assistance at hearings and filed grievances to no change. He has acquired RHU disciplinary custody time for 10 years past his maximum prison sentencedate.

Another prisoner, a woman who has a long history of mental illness, has been cycling in and out of solitary for 11 years and has accumulated 115 misconduct reports for symptoms of her mental illness, including self harm and flooding her cell. The DOC has her listed as being in a mental health unit, though no unit exists at the women’s prison. She cannot get paroled because of misconducts stemming from her mental illness.

For all twelve case studies, an outside psychiatrist concluded that the prisoner should get psychosocial rehabilitation and individual counseling, which is not available to most prisoners.