Belly of the Beast: Afrikan American Souls in Kaptivity

BELLY OF THE BEAST

AFRIKAN AMERICAN SOULS IN KAPTIVITY

19 69 ABOUT THIS ISSUE

Thank you for reading this very special issue of Nommo Newsmagazine. This issue was inspired by the Nommo staffs of 1992-1994 who connected with prisoners across the country to share their stories, poetry, and testimonies of their world inside the “Belly of the Beast.” The column, “Belly of the Beast” served a large purpose in the incarcerated community – we became a voice for the silenced. Through articles providing information about incarceration injustice, art and poetry submissions from prisoners, and resources for incarcerated folks, Nommo formed a community partnership with Black and Brown prisoners who wanted to learn more, and needed to be heard. This issue pays homage to the work of those staffers and honors the lives lost to the carceral system in the United States by reimagining the column as a special issue zine, entitled, “Belly of the Beast: Afrikan American Souls in Kaptivity.” This issue covers a range of topics from political education, history of slavery and incarceration, human rights issues within prisons, and the impact of prisons on Black women and families. It is also invigorated and brought to life by the poetry and words of individuals who were incarcerated between 1992 and 1994, and were featured in various issues of Nommo during that time.

I hope that this issue inspires a future generation of abolitionists to think and act – and I pray for an evolution of criminal justice

and punishment in our lifetime. I hope this issue contributes to the existing literature on incarceration in its brief form, and also brings a humanity to the conversation of imprisonment through the lively works of our featured poets. These works are republished in their complete form, without edits, to retain the integrity of the conversation. Thank you for reading. Thank you for doing your part.

“Prisons don’t disappear problems. They disappear people.”

Angela Davis

AUTHOR POSITIONALITY STATEMENT

The conversation around incarceration is a conversation about human rights, enveloped in the impacts of global capitalism, violent domestic racism, and systemic oppression of marginalized groups. This conversation, while sensitive, should not be ignored for its lack of romantic solution. While I have never experienced incarceration, I am not afraid to address it. I understand that the integrity of my conversation will be limited by my lack of experience, age, and privilege as a student at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, but my proximity to the problem of mass incarceration of Black Americans is not distant. I have two immediate family members that were incarcerated, one for over half of their life. I have seen the impacts within my own home, within my community, and I see the grief that our people feel as we continue to lose brothers and sisters to prison. For this reason, and my deep connection and service to Nommo Newsmagazine, I felt compelled to write on the violence and injustice of imprisonment in plain text. I compiled research and archival materials from Fall 2022 to Spring 2023, and included a combination of radical literature, research, and personal sentiment to form the articles you read. I hand selected the poetry that is included in the zine, and I hope that the message rings clear in conjunction with my words.

I am fulfilling this project in fulfilment of my Capstone for my Bachelor’s of Public Affars at UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs.

LETTER FROM THE EdITOR

Hello readers,

My name is LEILANI FU'QUA and I have been the Editor-in-Chief of Nommo Newsmagzine from 2021-2023. In the pursuance of my degrees in English and Public Affairs, I became involved in Nommo during my first year on campus so I could brush up on my journalistic writing, and write about my community. Four years later, I feel that Nommo played an active role in my academic and social life at UCLA, which has translated into an internship at Nommo to fulfill the requirements of the Public Affairs Capstone. This issue is the final product, and I am so happy to share it with you all! The creation of this zine went through many iterations, brought upon many emotions and allowed me to connect with a deeper aspect of my cultural identity. It has affirmed my love for three things: the African American people, poetry, and research. I am proud to be a Black Bruin graduating from this school, and I am blessed that I had the opportunity to bring these poems back to the eyes of the community, as poetry is the window to our souls. And I thank research for providing the empirical evidence to speak on the injustices that we have been silenced from speaking about, for centuries. Thank you for being a part of our journey. Thank you for hearing our stories.

I want to thank Bethany Murray, who has extended nothing but grace and patience to my in completion of this Capstone project – my appreciation for you is memorialized here as a testimony to your revolutionary pedagogy and kind heart. I want to also thank Doria Deen of UCLA Student Media for being my advisor during this project, Dr. Rebecca Crane and the Luskin School of Public Affairs for the stimulating, interdisciplinary education which I am so grateful for. I want to thank Tracy Carter, Amir Rahim Rahman Mohammed, LaJuan Clemons, Kahlil Tefari, James Freeman, Kenneth Bell, and Comrade P Lumumba for writing to Nommo thirty years ago for having the bravery to tell their stories and being voices for their brothers and sisters. Lastly, I would like to say thank you myself for completing this zine, completely inspired by the labor of love and passion for justice which resides in my soul. Veceneremos!

Leilani Fu’Qua

Nommo Editor-in-Chief 2022 - 2023

Revolutionary Political Education

A Legacy in Stone (History of Jim Crow & Slavery in Modern Carceral Systems)

What is the Prison Industrial Complex?

Disability Justice in Prisons

The Collapse of the Black Nuclear Family

Gang Violence and Racialized Policing

Jane Crow & Women’s Issues within Prisons

To My People, You Have The Power by Tracy

Carter

Prisoner’s Poetry by Amir

Rahim Rahman Mohammad

Incarceration Nation by Leilani

Fu’Qua

The Sleeper by LaJuan Clemons

Young, Gifted & Black by Kahlil Tefari

Prison is a Place by James Freeman

Belly of the Beast by Kenneth Bell

A Reflection in the Soul Mirror by Kenneth Bell

TABLE OF c ONTENTS TABLE OF c ON TENTS ARTIcLES POETRY

TO MY PEOPLE, YOU HAVE THE POWER

Power belongs to those who know knowledge is power. Knowledge and power are the keys to self-improvement. The pale man is a man because the Black man is not a man. The system has power because the Black man fails to recognize his power. Once the Nubian people rise and stand as men and women, the system will systematically change. Once we recognize our inner power, then we can use it to better our character, position, and plight.

It is a disgrace that our people live in slums, projects, poverty, crime etc. In the community in which we live, we must create change. We are the people who want better living conditions, quality education, safe streets, respectful citizens, etc. If we want it we must use intelligent power and go get what we desire. To study and observe our condition on a wide scale would and should force us to push and strive with unified power.

The penal system is ravenously devouring away our Black and Brown brothers. The government is falsely advocating our manless women. This system is a trick to take and handicap our power. They teach that power is in the man’s ability to make babies, get drunk, buy fancy sports cars, do the freak, dress to impress, play sports, etc. That’s all apart of manhood, but the ultimate reality is the power to recognize the power in man. Man is mind, and mind is raw intelligence that produces power. Our sisters are taught that to be big women you need a big butt, long legs, red lips, a $200.00 hairdo, expensive clothes and blue contacts. Sisters, brothers, look at yourselves, study self and do for self. You have the power, you are the power, let’s use the power. Peace be unto you.

NOMMO Issue, December 1992 - “In The Belly of the Beast”

Tracy Carter, Polk City, Fla 33866

Submission by Tracy Carter, bottom left corner.

RE vOLUTIONARY POLITIcAL EdUcATION

Igrew up in Southern California. The community that I lived in was racially diverse, but there was a very small concentration of Black people. In my neighborhood, there were four Black families that lived on our block, we all knew each other. In our schools, there were very few Black educators, so much so that during my matriculation from Kindergarten to senior year of high school, I didn’t meet a Black educator until seventh grade. I never had a Black teacher before starting college at UCLA at age 18. However, the importance of a holistic education was not lost on my father, who was at one point a lawyer and became a college professor – as a child, he was my source of political education and the voice of liberation. Still, because of his proximity to me, and my innate stubbornness to his directions, some of the history and movementmaking fell on deaf ears and I continued in without the guidance of any other Black educators. In suburban communities, the loss of political education occurs as communities are dispersed and individualistic, schools do not reflect the diversity of

their constituents, and cultural education becomes inferior to common-core curriculum. In large cities and predominantlyBlack communities, the driving factor for political education is the proximity to the issue, as well as proximity to others facing the same issues. Regardless of location, Black students deserve access to their history, culture and the knowledge to be passed onto them. For Black students, acquiring an education, both traditional and political, is a greater struggle than their nonBlack counterparts. A political education is defined as “teaching students to take risks, challenge those with power, honor critical traditions, and be reflexive about how authority is used in the classroom.”

(1) For Black Americans, the importance of political education coincides with breaking early cycles in traditional education systems that cause Black students to feel inferior or provide disrupting narratives through “Western” pedagogy. Changing those cycles through political education looks like questioning the political agenda and/or assertions made about their race through selected educational texts, challenging feelings of imposter syndrome, altering the axis of power from

hierarchy between teachers and students to mutuality, or honoring their culture and beliefs in peaceful acts of self-expression. One major was we are combatting the issue of political education is by having more Black educators in our classrooms, which has proven to not only benefit Black students but all students in the class. (2) The challenge presented from a lack of Black educators and lack of athome political education is equity. We see the issue of equity in our California school systems

as Black students are gravely underperforming compared to their counterparts, especially since the covid-19 pandemic exacerbated the population’s exposure to health crisis, financial burden, and food insecurity. There are just over 300,000 Black students in Calfornia schools, and the statistical underperformance is a calling card for transformation in our school systems. According to “Black in School,” a panel of Black educators and policymakers dedicated to the

improvement of Black student achievement, Black Californians:

(2)

67% of California Black children do not read or write at grade level.

86% of Black students are not at

grade level in science.

31% of Black students have completed their A-G requirements, (necessary for admission to a California State college or university) as opposed to 49% of White students and

70% of Asian students. 77% of Black students graduate high school, in contrast to 88% of White students and 93% of Asian students. The underperformance of our children is directly connected to the inequitable distribution of resources and funding in schools, and continues to impact students after their secondary education ends. We know that education directly affects the likelihood of being incarcerated in a lifetime, and if Black and Latino students are systemically and historically underserved, we will remain the largest populations in prison. Of the 58 counties in California, only six counties arrest their white residents at a higher rate than its Black residents. (3) That means 90% of California’s counties are overpolicing Black Americans, who consist of six percent of the state’s population. This cycle of disenfranchisement is why high school dropouts are arrested at 3.5 the rate of graduates and only 20% of California inmates are considered “literate.” (4) Latinos constitute 44% of California inmates, and Black inmates are 28% as the two largest demographics in the prison system.

So what makes our political education revolutionary?

An early education on Black Americans legal rights and how to use them. While learning from Black educators and incorporating culturally competent curriculum is uber important in the struggle, the focus on legal education for Black Americans could alleviate a small threshold of the burden that the fear of incarceration bears on us. Black communities, parents, women’s groups and movement spaces have all advocated for legal education as a preventative measure, and in some cases impart it themselves upon their community; here, the fear of incarceration or death by police becomes an emotional labor expended by Black people – even when the threat of violence is not imminent, many of us have routinized and naturalized ways to protect ourselve into our daily modes of being. To take this further, we must mobilize on the praxis that this is not a labor of love, but fear, and to transform the small ways we protect ourselves into a knowledge base with access to resources and people who will fight with you. If we can make change with one less plea deal or one less invasive traffic stop, then we have made change. I am not saying that

knowing our rights will end the violent persecution of Black people by police and the justice system, as we know that system was built to work against us and is doing so effectively. We mourn the loss of those lives daily. We know the systems of knowledge and power in this country are not constructed with Black faces in mind, yet use Black bodies to actualize their visions. What I argue is that we have been doing the work. The unintentional labor of care and passion for community is apart of the work. The ability to gain knowledge and pass it on, is apart of the work. Becoming the Black teacher you never had or the Black lawyer someone may have needed is apart of the work. A political and legal education (composed of legal rights and how to use them effectively) is one piece of the puzzle that has the ability to impact Black Americans, Indigenous peoples and Latinos on the scale of the individual. When one teaches, two learn.

PRISONER ’S POETRY

by Asim Rahim Rahman Mohammed

Again we are at a Road block where a change must come to face Roped like animals we are in a corner constantly beaten and then forced to race.

Given but little to eat and still we stretch it to survive.

INCARCERATION NATION

By Leilani Fu’Qua

There’s wonder out in the field How many million of us will die

Its cold out here at Night among us Bugs, Pigs and the stink of Mildew Grass. I sho’ wish I could move that Road Block, I wonder how long its gonna take us to pass?

I’ve always heard stories and even read a few about How my forefathers were slaves. But I was a child and never thought that slavery would exist up until today. I know nothing has changed, just time has passed by.

But still we must struggle and try. We must watch for the one’s who claim to be friends, and when we’re sleep they cut at our eyes. The one’s who say, when it Time to fight I wonder how many millions of us will die!

Nommo May 1993

If I told you the first time they held us in chains was not the founding of the first prisons in Massachusetts, 1785, If I told you they started as slave capturers hunting us down like animals just to lock us in cages again our bodies will bear it but our minds may not

If I told you the history of confinement is not one of convenience they did not ask where should we hold our lawbreakers? they remembered the hot boxes festering in the Southern heat used to punish slaves

If I told you the only way we could buy our way out is if we were bought

If I told you that we make up fourteen percent of this country but forty percent of your prisons

If I told you America is a Nation of Incarceration

Would you believe me?

October 1992

THE SLEEPER

By LaJuan Clemons, May 1993

The sleeper has awakened from the dreams of mortal man The conscious has been lifted, separated from grains of sand. Heightened are the senses, sharp as a razors teeth, A body, in tuned by perfections, awaits the world to meet.

An ebony warrior walks the earth as one with Mother Nature, Skin, the color of coal, hair that matches a panther’s. Teeth are pearly white, like a new fallen snow, His eye’s can pierce the dark, or look into one’s soul.

Born a king so long ago in a land so far away, Kidnappedm shackled, branded, welcome to the U.S.A. Brainwashed, belittled, tortured and murdered too, Treated as the beast of burden to be used and used and used.

Now 400 years later, their sorry, so they say, But words won’t heal the scars that run deeper every day. There’s a new form of slavery, it shackles one’s mind, Its something in Amerikkka intended to occupy our time.

But time is running out, Amerikkka is at it’s end, For the sleepers are awakening, and they’re all ebony men.

This poem is but a message for a race of would be kings, WAKE UP! for nothing comes to a sleeper but a DREAM!

A LEgAcY IN STONE

Thehistory of Jim Crow Laws in America is like an etching in stone of the violent legacy of slavery. The effects of Jim Crow laws were detrimental to Black populations in America, exacerbating violence and upholding a divisive racial hierarchy as the conditions for Black American’s freedom. Legalized segregation by race did not only separate Black from white but marginalized and disenfranchised Black people. This not only mirrored the terror of American chattel slavery, but left its own legacy within the prison walls of America.

Jim Crow Laws legalized segregation in America from 1868 to 1968, limiting Black people’s access to work, healthcare, education, housing, and in its early forms, legalized indentured servitude for Black Americans by seizing their newfound rights if the laws were broken. These crimes

often held harsh punishments for Black people, including forced labor and imprisonment. Many would work until they died. As carceral punishment became more popular, the populations of prisons quickly shifted after 1860. Prior to 1860, prisons were two-thirds white, as most Black inmates were not held long and rather bought by slaveowners. (5) After the abolition of slavery, prison populations became two-thirds Black. The uptick in Black, long-term inmates was directly correlated to the imposition of Jim Crow Laws and the presence of the Klu Klux Klan (KKK). While the KKK is often positioned as an outsider white supremacist group that arose to spread terror against Black Americans in the South, the US Justice System is more deeply connected than we think. After slavery was made illegal, the learned men became lawyers, policemen, judges. These men, who viewed Black people as non-human and a natural inferior, now became our Justices of Peace. Jim Crow laws were proof that one drop of poison infects the whole of the wine. The belief and order of the KKK was to suppress Black people’s freedoms and intimidate/remove them with violence. Their tactics included torture, lynching, arson, murder, intimidation, and relied on the foundation of white supremacy to inspire its members. The summer of 1919 was named the “Red Summer,” as twenty-five lynchings in the South inspired race riots and planted the seeds for The Great Migration of Black Americans from the South to the North and West to escape persecution and seek opportunity and safety.

Years later, we are still experiencing the aftermath of the Jim Crow Era. Still, a racially biased prison system incarcerates Black men at ten times the rate of white men. Currently, 1 in 15 incarcerated people are Black, and the US is in another decade of racial tension following the senseless lynchings of Black people by police, made accessible to the public through social media.

When does it end?

A projection of George Floyd on the Robert E. Lee statue in Richmond on June 10. (John McDonnell/The Washington Post)

YOUNg, gIFTEd & b LACK

by Kahlil Tefari, December 1992

Prepare yourself for the world

And tighten up your act. Keep your “head to the sky,” You’re Young, Gifted & Black

Stay on the road to success

Don’t venture left or right

To be considered a “square” by some Can really be “alright.”

Study hard and stay in school

It can be lots of fun, Especially, when you reach your goals, And realize what you’ve done.

Develop good habits and keep good friends

Our environement has its effect. Be proper in all you do Maintain your self respect.

When you’ve succeeded in this world Remember to give something back To the children of your neighborhood

Who are Young, Gifted & Black

PRISON IS A PLACE

James Freeman , December 1992

What is prison like? Its not the same for everyone. The prison I know is different than the prison you know.

PRISON IS A PLACE where the first prisoner you see looks like an All-American college boy and you’re surprised. Later you’re disgusted because people on the outside still have the same prejudices about prison you used to have.

PRISON IS A PLACE where you write letters and can’t think of anything to say. Where you gradually write fewer and fewer letters and finally stop writing letters altogether.

PRISON IS A PLACE where hope springs eternal, where each Parole Board appearance means a chance to get out, even if the odds are hopelessly against you.

PRISON IS A PLACE where the flame in every man burns low. For some it goes out but for most it flickers weakly, sometimes flashes brightly, but never seems to burn as bright as it once did.

PRISON IS A PLACE where you find grey hairs in your head, or where you find your hair starting to disappear. Its a place where you get false teeth, stronger glasses and aches and pains you never felt before. Its a place where you grow old and worry about it.

PRISON IS A PLACE where you hate through clenched teeth, where you want to beat, kick and scratch and you wonder if the psychologist know what they’re talking about when they say you actually hate yourself.

PRISON IS A PLACE where you learn nobody needs you, that the outside world goes on without you.

PRISON IS A PLACE where you can go for years without feeling the touch of a human hand, where you can go for months without hearing a kind word. It is a place where your friendships are shallow and you know it.

PRISON IS A PLACE where you feel sorry for yourself. Then you get disgusted with yourself for feeling sorry for yourself; then you get mad for feeling disgusted and then you try to mentally change the subject.

PRISON IS A PLACE where you’re smarter than the parole board because you know which guys will go straight and which ones don’t. You’re wrong just as often as the board members are, but you never admit it and neither do they.

PRISON IS A PLACE where you wait for a promised visit. When it doesn’t come, you worry about a car accident. Then you find out the reason why your visitors didn’t come, you’re glad because it wasn’t serious and disappointed because such a little thing could keep them from coming to see you.

PRISON IS A PLACE where you forget the sound of a baby’s cry. You forget the sound of a dog’s bark or even the sound of the dial tone on the telephone.

PRISON IS A PLACE where you hear about a friend’s divorce, and you didn’t even know he was married. It is a place where you hear about your neighbor’s kids graduating from school and you thought they hadn’t started yet.

PRISON IS A PLACE where a letter from home or from a lawyer can be like a telegram from the War Department. When you see it lying on your bed, you’re afraid to open it. But you do it anyway and you usually end up disappointed or angry.

PRISON IS A PLACE where you see men you don’t admire and you wonder if you are like them. It is a place where you strive to remain civilized but where you lose ground and know it.

PRISON IS A PLACE where, if you’re married, you watch your marriage die. It is a place where you learn that absence does not make the heart grow fonder, and where you stop blaming your wife for wanting a real live man instead of a fading memory of one.

PRISON IS A PLACE where you go to bed before you’re tired, where you pull their blanket over your head when you’re not cold. It’s a place where you escape by reading, by playing cards, by dreaming, or by going mad.

Sometimes you do, but more often you don’t.

PRISON IS A PLACE where you fool yourself, where you promise yourself you’ll live a better life when you leave.

PRISON IS A PLACE where you get out some day. When you do you wonder how everyone else can be so calm when you’re so excited. When the bus driver goes over twenty-five miles an hour, you want to tell him to slow down, but you don’t because you know it’s foolish.

PRISON IS A PLACE

dISABILITY JUSTIcE IN PRISONS

mother deemed it unfit for a ‘deceased animal’. Yet her son was being held there for over three months, and he was found deceased, covered in insects when guards found him. In the US, over 66 percent of inmates are disabled, 40% of those with a psychiatric disability. If the conditions of disabled prisoners are inhumane living conditions, improper medical treatment, lack of access to medication, and coerced participation in medical treatments, then their punishment for being disabled is death – That is what lack of care means in prisons.

reproductive rights, and eugenics for marginalized women.

TheUnited States has a long and violent history of systemic medical neglect against Black Americans. Black American’s bodies have been used and abused through forced labor, physical punishment, science and medicine experiments and subject to the effects of food insecurity and environmental racism. When inside of prisons, the treatment of Black Americans seeking medical care shows signs of systemic neglect, and the overwhelming disabled populations in prisons are victims of insufficient care and ableism. One case of medical neglect and inhumane living conditions resulted in the death of Lashawn Thompson in Fulton County Jail, Georgia.

Lashawn Thompson’s case is an example of the intersectional avenues of neglect within prisons. Thompson was commited to jail for a misdeamor and was held a Fulton County for three months, and transferred to the psychiatric ward for exhibiting mental distress. The cell Thompson was placed in was infested with insects and covered in filth– Thompson’s

Issues of medical abuse are even more prominent in women’s facilities, where almost 80% of incarcerated women are disabled. With percentages of 60% in men’s facilities and 80% in women’s facilities of inmates with disabilities, then disability may be characteristic to incarceration. Women in prisons face medical neglect on the additional axis of reproductive rights, as coerced sterilization, untreated reproductive conditions, involuntary removal of reproductive organs during unrelated surgeries that occurred within prison hospitals are reported by 40% percent of incarcerated women. Medical neglect now becomes gendered violence against women, violation of human and

The issue of disability justice will continue to persist as prisons do, as medical neglect and abuse is a systemic facet of mass incarceration. The medical facilities within prisons also operate in the Prison Industrial Complex and are foundational in understanding the violence of the prison system. Within custody, prisoners are not protected and their lives are not valued, especially if they are incapable of profiting the prisons through unpaid labor. Disabled prisoners deserve the chance to live. We must unlearn and relearn that disabled lives are worthy lives. All of us.

ELLY OF THE b EAST

bY KENNETH bELL, FEbRUARY 1992

I’ll swallow up poppa if he hustles on the side, When the bills get too steep, but he don’t opt for suicide. I’ll isolate mamma away from her child, I’m belly of the beast so come and sit for a while. I’ll digest lil’ sis when she short of cash, or some new drug causes her to sell that ass. I’ll devour little Johnny cause Johnny boy tried to pimp, Got caught in a game with peg leg gangsta’ limp. From the court house to the precinct, to the newest superstition, I’m the man of a thousand faces and the bile of a Kluxist nation. I’m the best of Revelations with the power of resurrection. I’ll give you LIFE without parole or DEATH by lethal injection. Graveyard for the living - of barbed wire, steel and mesh. Of desparate souls and lonely hearts and slowly rotting flesh. Warehouse for the storage of the soldiers of the people, Who rose up in struggle in an attempt to be

THE cOLLAPSE OF THE BLAck NUcLEAR FAMILY

In a class of ten of your Black American peers, we pose a question. How many have an immediate family member that has been incarcerated? Six students raise their hands. How many have an extended family member that has been incarcerated? Five students raise their hands. From these

equal. Industry-manufacturer of killer, crook and thief, To keep the money/blood flowing through the capitalistic beast…Amerika, Amerika you’re raised your ugly head, To ease economic hunger pains that could not be eased with bread. From Soledad to Joliet on up to Reitchers Isle, Is the stench of a monstrous beast with mankind in his bowels. Surburbia is my home - the ghetto is where I feast, I’m one bad motherfucka’ - I’m belly of the beast.

Kenneth Bell Potosi Correctional Center Mineral Point, Missouri

“The scars on our skin will hear your calls for forgiveness but the scars on our hearts will say never-never.”

- Comrade P Lamumbo (ManMan), December 1992

two questions alone, we learn that Black Americans are overrepresented in our carceral systems, and the long term impacts of high incarceration rates for Black Americans start to seep into the family structure and support system. Those five or six students who raised their hands are predisposed to food and housing insecurity, mental and physical health struggles, behavioral issues, and antisocial behavior simply because they have an immediate family member in prison. The Jim Crow Laws exacerbated the dissemination of the Black nuclear family through rising incarceration rates, housing instability, and insecure employment. After the 1960s, Black communities saw increased in drug and gang related crimes, including possession or distribution of drugs, gang paraphenalia or involvement, gang-violence and increased reports of gendered violence. The increased frequency of incarceration in Black communities was different by state and community, and various laws were passed that carried longer sentences for repeated offenders.

The conglomeration of the war on drugs, increased corporate participation in the Prison Industrial Complex, and government policy are directly related to the instability of Black families and their ability to earn and maintain generational wealth.

The long-term disenfranchisement of Black Americans is a quiet violence

that seeps into our homes and disrupts the ability to build community, support, or mobilize. It seeps into our educational systems as Black children underperform at terrifyingly low rates, that are made worse if you have parents in the carceral system. It seeps into our media, where we see the repetition of stereotypes: fatherless Black children, struggling single mothers, and a lack of empathy for the condition of Black families as they are torn apart by institutional violence.

gANg vIOLENcE & R AcIALIz Ed POLIcINg

Gangs are defined as an organized group of criminals with leadership and territory who exert control over the community collectively and individually. While our traditional concept of gangs originates from the white-ethnic minorities of the early 20th century, modern gangs based on ethnic minorities are much more popular stereotypes in media. Black and Latino gangs have become the new targets of the LAPD, as fears of intimidation, drug distribution, webs of murder, and violence become detrimental to the communities they reside in. But how did we get here? Weren’t gangs for white people? According to The National Gang Center, characteristics that exacerbate gang involvement include: concentrated and isolated poverty, underresourced schools, few employment opportunities, high rates of policing and crime, as well as the incarceration of young men in the community. Communities respond to the resources they are limited to, and gangs in Black communities formed as resources for other young Black men to seek guidance, earn money to support their families, and protect their communities. Unfortunately, some gangs have devolved into mass webs of organized crime that continue to release drugs into their communities and operate on fear and intimidation. Still we learn that the communities with characteristics that would exacerbate gang involvement are Black and Brown communities that are historically underserved and violently misrepresented in media. These communities are predisposed to these conditions because they are affected by the prevalence of white supremacy in the United States. These communities are overpoliced because of the preconceived notions that Black people are in need of policing, incapable of operating functionally without surveillance of white eyes. These communities are undereducated because of the preconceived notions that Black people are ineducable (McAdoo) and our resources would be better pooled elsewhere. These communities are impoverished because lack of education and employment resources, combined with society’s overt and covert racism, making their access to taxable income insufficient and high wage jobs unattainable. While gangs are obviously not the preferred answer to all of Black Americans struggles, they are results of the conditions were subject to after acquiring our freedom.

JANE cROW & WOMEN’S ISSUES WITHIN PRISONS

Theepidemic of incarceration has become a growth industry, and the increase in incarcerated women has brought forth a plethora of related issues and avenues of oppression that occur while women are incarcerated. An era of laws intended to suppress women’s reproductive and civil rights mirrors that of Jim Crow, leading to incarceration rates for Black women, immigrant women and transgender women at higher rates than white women. Jane Crow describes the intersectional experience of gender and race based discrimination which is magnified within prisons. The experience of incarceration for Black, Trans, and other marginalized women is one of intersectional struggle – within these government facilities, they face medial neglect and racism, violations of their reproductive rights, poor living conditions, unpaid labor, and institutional violence. For certain groups, the injustice and violence begins before their sentence. Black women are currently 13% of the general population

but constitute almost a third of the prison population. The increase in the incarceration of Black women has almost double the rates of Black men, and they receive harsher sentences than their white or male counterparts. Black women make up a third of women serving life sentences and a fourth of women on Death Row. This means Black women are not only incarcerated at higher rates but remain incarcerated longer, exposing them to the harshest violences of carceral punishment. Black women’s reproductive systems have been under state control since the breeding plantations of American chattel slavery, to the scientific experiments on Henrietta Lacks and other Black women’s bodies, and now, to the forced sterilization of Black and Latina women in prisons (9). This state-sanctioned birth control is inherently violent and continues to perpetuate a legacy of white male surpemacy and eugenics. Additionally, women within prisons are under the purview of their guards, which is traditionally majority male – these guards are rarely held accountable for abuses of power. For Black and transgender women, this experience can be terrifying, as defined in the case of Robin Lucas, a transgender woman inmate held in a male prison where she was repeatedly raped, sodomized, and made a sex-slave by guards in 1996. (8) Women of color come forward daily with stories of forced sterilization, neglect of critical medical treatment and medication, sexual assault, and race-based mistreatment within prisons. Unfortunately, social issues within prisons often mirror the social conditions of greater society, where Black and Transgender women are the most vulnerable populations to race and gendered violence. The women within prisons share some demographic characteristics with incarcerated men, including poor living conditions, lack of education, sexism, and racism. Within prisons, these conditions translate to high suceptibility for sexual abuse and abuse within the prison workplace, including forced labor and labor as punishment. Identifying the issues within prisons brings us steps closer to destablizing and abolishing the Prison Industrial Complex, which makes profit from the suffering of human beings. I wrote this piece to remind us that the women inside are just as impacted, if not more, by the violence and inhumanity of the criminal justice system. These are our friends, sisters, wives, mothers, community, family. They should not be disregarded or forgotten in the fight for justice.

“Abolition is about presence, not absence. It’s about building life-affirming institutions.”

Ruth Wilson Gilmore

The Getty

A REFLECTION IN THE SOUL MIRROR

Isaw a brown woman and a brown man, and a pale man who held a chain. The pale man took it off their feet and placed it on their brains. Now the brown man - he complained - he said, “They sold us here and there,” and if you looked into his eyes you saw five centuries of despair. He said, “A hundred million lives, A hundred million lives, they sold my kids and raped my wife, jsut look into my eyes!” He walked about in shabby clothes and lived in a ragged shack, with the pattens of a distant whip etching memories in his back. He said, “All of this for money. What beast could be so cruel? What man could sell a human soul? What god-forsaken fool?” Now the pale man had a house, immaculate and grand, a seven diamond rings did shine upon his hands. With seven shiny Cadillacs and seven silky suits, the brown man set and contemplated, brooded and deliberated, scheming on a dollar bill. Don’t tell me I’ exaggerating. He thought for a while, then up popped an idea, “I’m gone sell me a woman - This brown one right here!” They don’t call him massa. He walks with a limp, he’ll beat her and sell her, He’s Johnny the Pimp. he don’t call her “nigger” or “stupid ass bitch.” They don’t call it slavery. They call it “the game,” But if you look close its all just the same. We should see in every woman’s oppression and every whore, a reflection of the chains which we thought were no more. Look into the mirror, open up your mind, look into her eyes, just look into her eyes.

Power!

Kenneth Bell

April 1994