Recent Reads

The summer has been one of discussion and debate around ideas of justice and reform. We also lost one of our co-founders Brett Bloom, to an overseas job. Brett will be sorely missed!

Recent reads include a range of books that have taken us all over the map. We started the summer with Night by Elie Weisel, then read the Boggs Center 2009 Movement Reader, and Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault. Now we are reading "Window to My Soul" by Yousef Shakur.

Our larger discussion have been focused on thinking about the idea of a "just justice system". We have tried to think, and write about, what that might look like, how to hold ourselves accountable but also create new ways of thinking-- and acting. There have been some really brilliant responses to the question of "just justice". We hope to connect with a reading group at Mess Hall in Chicago this winter in an effort to read with others about social movements. We hope these texts will help us think more expansively about long term change.

New books for a new year

This year the reading group is excited about doing some writing in relationship to the books we've been reading. Even in prison, the reading group participants are effected by the economic recession, the stalemate in congress and the state of the health care bill. All these topics come up in discussion, even though they are not always in the readings.
One of the reading group participants, Isreal, wrote this, of our recent reading Harvest of Empire by Juan Gonzales:

"When I think of Latinos or Hispanics, I think of all the people of Latin America. Though I am Mexican, born in Mexico, I consider them all my people. This book in its description and accounts of the different Latin American nations, helped me identify more with "my people". Further, I felt angry at the treatment and discrimination my people have experienced, yet proud at how we have endured. Anyone who wishes to get a better understanding of the history of the struggle of Latinos in this country, understand where we stand today, and is interested in the exciting potential of our people, needs to read this book."


Every few months we screen a video instead of doing a reading. The next video we'll see is :













and our next readings are :













If you have these books, are done with them and can donate, we would be grateful!
Thank you to Suzanne Linder and Jay Schubert for their recent donation!

Requesting BOOKS

Hello!
It's been awhile since we last posted-- or met-- as Prison Impact in the free world. That's because we decided to take the reading group in the prison. We now meet in the 'local' prison in our area, located in Danville. The focus of the group is directed by all the participants. We have about 10-13 men that come to the group so far. We meet one time a month for 3 hours. To get started, we chose the first book-- The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, which was a huge hit. Several of the men in the group were excited to read about their home neighborhood. We thought that this book was a nice start as it laid out the intersections of immigration, labor, class, race and other tenuous issues that produce crisis.

From there, the group chose our next books:
A People's History of the U.S. by Howard Zinn
What's Class Got to Do With It edited by Micheal Zweig
Race Matters by Cornell West.
Wild Seed by Octavia Butler
Tortilla Curtain by T.C. Boyle.

The conversations about history, class and race have been dense, complicated and rewarding.
The next book we will read is The Promised Land: The Great Black Migration and How it Changed America by Nicolas Leman. After that, we hope to acquire these books:
Off the Books: The Underground Economy of the Urban Poor by Sudhir Alladi Venkatesh
Harvest of Empire: A History of Latinos in America by Juan Gonzalez
and
Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paolo Friere
Discipline and Punishment by Michel Foucault

We will use this site as a place to post the books we are reading and REQUEST donations for books or fund: If you own any of the books we will read in the future and would like to donate your copy, please contact us. If you are able to make a donation of any amount, we will use it to purchase books. $60-90 will purchase books for one the whole group for one month. Thank you!

Meetings for 2009

NEXT MEETINGS for 2009

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Jan 29 > 7pm > Paradiso Cafe > 801 S. Lincoln, Urbana

When The Prisoners Ran Walpole by Jamie Bissonette

In 1971, Attica's prison yard massacre shocked the public, prisoners, and political leaders across the United States. Massachusetts residents pledged to prevent such slaughter from ever happening there, and the governor agreed. Thus began a move for reform that eventually led to the prisoners at Walpole's Massachusetts Correctional Institute winning control of its day-to-day operations.

When the Prisoners Ran Walpole brings this vital history to life, revealing what can happen when there is public will for change and trust that the incarcerated can achieve it. In the months before they took over running the maximum-security facility in 1973, prisoners and outside advocates created programs that sent more prisoners home for good, slowing the turn of the famous revolving door by 23 percent and decreasing Walpole's population by 15 percent.

When guards protested the changes they saw as choking their livelihoods, finally refusing to run the prison, the prisoners stepped ably into the void-and all-out peace ensued. They shrank the murder rate from the highest in the country to zero. Even more significantly, they worked hard to bury racial antagonism and longstanding feuds so even "lifers" with no hope of going home could find ways to live together, learn, and grow-to regain, finally, the humanity that the system intended to squash.

Critical to the work of prison abolitionists and transitional reformists alike, this groundbreaking history offers a real-life example of a prison solution many see only as theoretical. It not only reminds us why people seek to make prisons obsolete, but also recalls a time when we were much closer to these abolitionist goals.

Fall 2008 Meetings

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August 26 > 7pm > Independent Media Center> 202 Broadway, Urbana (in the Family Room, on the ground floor, around the corner from Books to Prisoners)
September 23 > 7pm > Paradiso Cafe > 801 S. Lincoln, Urbana
October 21 > 7pm > Independent Media Center> 202 Broadway, Urbana (in the Family Room, on the ground floor, around the corner from Books to Prisoners)
SCHEDULE CHANGE to Dec 2 > 7pm > Paradiso Cafe > 801 S. Lincoln, Urbana

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Juvies directed by Leslie Neale

Four years ago, high school student Duc was arrested for driving a car from which a gun was shot. Although no one was injured, Duc was not a member of a gang, had no priors and was 16 years old, he received a sentence of 35 years to life.
Fourteen-year-old Anait, an Armenian immigrant, had been given a car by her parents. She drove two boys to a high school and dropped them off. The boys got into a fight with another boy and subsequently killed a third boy who attempted to break up the fight. Because she was the driver of the “getaway” car, Anait was charged as an accessory to first-degree murder. Originally facing 200 years, she has since accepted a deal for 7 years.
Being tough on crime is one thing. But trying children as adults, and dispensing brutal sentences that are shockingly out of proportion to the offense, is quite another. Most Americans would say this can’t happen here, yet for thousands of young people, this is the reality of the present day juvenile justice system, which has turned its back on its initial mission to protect young people and now sends over 200,000 kids through the adult system each year.
From award-winning documentary filmmaker Leslie Neale (Road to Return) comes this riveting look at a world most of us will never see: the world of juvenile offenders who are serving incredible prison sentences for crimes they either did not commit or were only marginally involved in. For two years, Neale taught a video production class at Los Angeles Central Juvenile Hall to 12 juveniles who were all being tried as adults. Juvies is the product of that class, which was a learning experience for both students and teacher—and becomes a learning experience for all of us, as we witness the heartbreaking stories of children abandoned by families and a system that has disintegrated into a kind of vending machine justice

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I Am a Fugitive from a Georgia Chain Gang by Robert Elliott Burns, published in 1932 by Grosset & Dunlap.

The book tells the story of Burns' imprisonment on a chain gang in Georgia in the 10s, his subsequent escape and the furor that developed. It was made into a motion picture I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang, starring Paul Muni.The book and movie were both credited with helping to reform deplorable conditions on Deep South chain gangs. A sequel, Out of These Chains, was written by Burns' brother, Rev. Vincent Burns, in 1942.

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Shakespeare Behind Bars, written and directed by Hank Rogerson and produced by Jilann Spitzmiller.

Take Shakespeare's final playThe Tempest with its violent seas, windswept island, crucial connection to nature, and underlying theme of forgiveness, and bring it into a prison, the ultimate venue of confinement. The result is an extraordinary story about the creative process and the power of art to heal and redeem--in a place where the very act of participation in theatre is a human triumph and a means of personal liberation.In Hank Rogerson's revelatory trip into and around this prison production, we embark on a year-long journey with the Shakespeare Behind Bars theatre troupe. Led by Shakespearean volunteer director Curt Tofteland, whose work with Luther Luckett inmates began in the mid-1990s, the prisoners cast themselves in roles reflecting their personal history and fate. Their individual stories, including information about their crimes, are interwoven with the plot of The Tempest as the inmates delve deeply into the characters they portray while confronting their personal demons. SHAKESPEARE BEHIND BARS is a tremendously moving film, where the protagonists are not merely defined by their crimes but are afforded dignity and a fresh chance to look truth in the eye, and embrace it.

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The Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis and Opposition in Globalizing California by Ruth Wilson Gilmore.

Since 1980, the number of people in U.S. prisons has increased more than 450%. Despite a crime rate that has been falling steadily for decades, California has led the way in this explosion, with what a state analyst called "the biggest prison building project in the history of the world." Golden Gulag provides the first detailed explanation for that buildup by looking at how political and economic forces, ranging from global to local, conjoined to produce the prison boom.

In an informed and impassioned account, Ruth Wilson Gilmore examines this issue through statewide, rural, and urban perspectives to explain how the expansion developed from surpluses of finance capital, labor, land, and state capacity. Detailing crises that hit California's economy with particular ferocity, she argues that defeats of radical struggles, weakening of labor, and shifting patterns of capital investment have been key conditions for prison growth. The results—a vast and expensive prison system, a huge number off incarcerated young people of color, and the increase in punitive justice such as the "three strikes" law—pose profound and troubling questions for the future of California, the United States, and the world. Golden Gulag provides a rich context for this complex dilemma, and at the same time challenges many cherished assumptions about who benefits and who suffers from the state's commitment to prison expansion.