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This past week I started listening to Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States”, via audible.com. I’ve always considered the American Revolution a bit mysterious, given what we were taught at school. I can’t even imagine picking up a gun, because I was outraged about a tax on tea…..
Well, besides the historical forces leading up to the American Revolution, Zinn’s book has been disussing slavery. That set in motion thinking about a modern manifestation of slavery – viz., unjust incarceration for non-violent drug offences, which has hit blacks particularly hard. In spite of having a black President, this topic seems absent from the public discourse. Even now that Obama’s been re-elected, I’m extremely doubtful that he’ll do anything to end this modern form of slavery.
What to do?
Many moons ago, when ole metamars was young metamars, I went to a gospel music concert, at my college. Recruiting must not have been a problem – my college was for “non-traditional” students, and about 1/3 were black. The group was on the large size, and very talented.
I didn’t last long. Tears started welling up in my eyes, I got very emotional, and wanted to avoid the embarassment of breaking down and crying in public. So, I got up and left.
35 years ago, Negro spirituals were still communicating pain and hope. 100 years after the civil war. 10 years after the Civil Rights Act. And probably for all time.
As luck or karma would have it, this morning I was in Penn Station, in Newark, NJ, and saw a small line of people waiting to transact business with a single guy, seated at a small card table. A hand written sign said “Joint Connection”. I had no idea what this was about, and was curious enough to ask the lady at the end of the line. She said it was for bus rides to prison. I asked if that was free. “Thirty Five Dollars!”, she answered, a little painfully.
I asked her if she knew if there were singing groups in prison. She said some religious people would come by to sing, but as far as she knew, there were no prisoner singing groups. “They don’t want people to be too happy (in prison)”.
Yeah, well, bully on them. /s Slave owners generally didn’t want their slaves to be happy, either, but I’m not aware of any of them successfully stopping their slaves from singing. If enough prisoners wanted to sing songs of hope and pain, I don’t think prison wardens would be able to stop them. What are they going to do to them if they sing? Whip them? That’s very 19th century, and won’t fly, today.
Besides giving hope – and hope for a better life in the Hereafter is about all a lifer can reasonably expect – the power of emotive song might sooth violent frictions between gang members, or even individuals, who are nursing some personal grievance or irrational hatred.
But it’s the possibility of Negro spirituals flying freely beyond prison walls that the singers, themselves, can’t pass through, that intrigues me. Sympathetic guards could capture prisoners singing their hearts out on iPhones, and release it to the world on youtube. Ex-cons can form choirs, and go around from church to church, meeting hall to meeting hall, and give free concerts, explaining to jaded outsiders that non-violent prisoners can’t very well free themselves.
The greatest sin is indifference. It is indifference and jadedness that is keeping people unjustly imprisoned – not multi-millions of Americans waking up every morning, thinking about how they can grow America’s prison population, nor how much they hate black people, nor how much we need fear ‘if’the “War on Drugs” fails. Sure, the architects of this national disgrace had nefarious and/or selfish agendas, but without the acquiescense of millions of basically nice, but civically useless and effectively indifferent Americans, this nightmare of wasted lives would not have taken root.
Let the singing begin. There are worse fates than crying in public, or even crying alone in your room, while still being free to live like a man, instead of caged up like an animal. If a lot more crying, either public or private, helps ends this national disgrace, then I’m all for it.
Oh, yeah. I asked the man at “Joint Connections” how long his organization was running buses to prisons. He said “many years”. I’ve been living in Newark for many years, I’m in Penn Station all the time, but never took notice of “Joint Connections”. You might say that “I was blind, but now, I see”.
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Trouble of the World – Mahalia Jackson (emphasis on the pain)
He / I Believe – Gospel – WHITNEY & CISSY HOUSTON Duet Live (emphasis on the hope; not sure if this gospel song counts as a Negro spiritual, but honestly, who cares, Whitney singing like an angel, her Mom’s not too bad, either….)
7 Comments
Any fucking thing they want, in a US prison. Disciplinary segregation. Job loss. Write-ups that make their way to the parole board. Insults and mockery. Disappearing mail. Loss of library privileges. Phones cut off. TV cut off. Room restrictions. You name it. All they have to do is say that a group of inmates poses a threat because they had the temerity to gather in a group and that looked too much to the staff like gang activity. Why? Because they can.
The United States PIC is not interested in success and rehabilitation, because failure and recidivism and hopelessness and destruction are just too profitable.
The other thing that is critical to this discussion is that the vast majority of nonviolent petty drug offenders in this country never make it to a prison in the first place. They are warehoused in the cement tombs of county jails that now serve as prisons. Entombment warehousing that is cruel and unusual, and that almost always makes mental illness worse or creates it. Again- why? Because a mentally ill inmate on cement has no money, no voice, no political clout. Rather, they are the perfect widget.
Your idea is fantastic.
These guys have done something along those lines.
They are not in this country though.
Until the United States PIC pulls its head out of its ass, the inmates are extremely limited in what they can possibly do.
Sorry, I can’t edit and add, but another thing they do is the old sudden and unexplained shipment to another facility trick. I got transferred. Because I wrote the governor (and about 30 others) about a pregnancy disaster in a jail and the State showed up to investigate that and other conditions. Yeah. I got sent to a different hellhole so that my husband had to travel 2 hours each week for one 15-minute visit behind bullet-proof glass. Long and short: They can scatter a gospel choir to the winds.
Here’s a prison action you can do tomorrow (Human Rights Day)
Turn Up the Heat at Cook County Jail–Call In Campaign
Brent, Jacob, and Jay, three of the NATO 5 were arrested when I was. They have not yet been released because Rahm wants to justify his pre-protest stunt as being actual law enforcement. One of the NATO 5 has plea bargained; 4 months community service and 1 year probation. For 14 counts of bogus terrorism charges.
But all of Chicago’s prisoners need heat.
What seems to be going on at the facility that that Brent, Jacob, and Jay are at is a tactic of keeping conditions so miserable that even innocent people will plea bargain to get out. And that 1 or whatever year of probation effectively silences folks’ activism for a year unless they are willing to be hauled up on more serious charges to have to plea bargain down.
My vision of transforming American jails into an unending musical experience (that would eventually be heard outside of prisons as a cry for help, not just inside prisons as solace for hard circumstances) was not a vision of just a handful of people participating.* It’s not surprising that prisons would have numerous tools for social control – Howard Zinn describes what social controls developed, especially in the slave states, to manage their huge black populations. Quotas for white overseers to black slaves (1:6), e.g.
You surprised me by writing “Your idea is fantastic.” I thought you were making a frankly powerful case as to why most inmates would be too intimidated to try something that seems to me (I’m basically ignorant about prisons) as relatively innocuous (to prison authorities) as I had imagined. I did anticipate some pushback, but assumed/hoped it would be limited and likely fail, due to corporal punishment being illegal. (Formally illegal; we know some cops abuse citizens on a regular basis.)
I generally look for win-win type solutions, so the initial decision tree I’d pursue, if I was a prison or drug reform activist, is to first try and find sympathetic prison wardens, who at least are willing to take a chance on something that can reduce gang tensions in a jail. Since some religious folks already have musical access to sympathetic prison management, I suppose the logical first step is to network with those folks, even before evaluating wardens. Since Negro spirituals are typically Christian, and most of the “religious” folks are probably Christian, I don’t think this would be too hard a sell.
Re “gathering” – I wasn’t thinking primarily of gathering, like a church choir, with an audience giving their undivided attention. I was thinking more along the lines of singing while you worked, as some slaves surely did on plantations. Also, singing while you exercized, and singing (via rotations, so you can finish your meal) during meal times. Also, singing a half hour before bedtime (I assume locking up occurs with some buffer time before bedtime.)
I didn’t know this. Should implementing my musical idea be harder or easier in a county jail?
* I didn’t write about this, but a positive development would be for white and Latino prisoners to form their own musical repetoire, and the various groups cooperate so as to not be singing over each other.
The reason I say that your idea is fantastic is that I really believe it is. It is not the inmates that are the issue. It is the entire system.
At this point, or at least from what I observed until 2009 the state where I am (KY), there are overwhelming problems with the system. I’ll try to explain. In one jail in particular, women were not allowed to work. Exercise? We rarely left the cell for recreation. We were in cement 24/7 for weeks on end. Educational books of any sort other than specific types of fundamental Christian materials were banned. There was no mental health care. Medical care? Pffffft.
People are locked up like this for years, not just months, at a time. The only thing left on release is the 1000-yard stare.
Where is it? California, I think. The PIC is something like the second largest growing industry. I really commend you for having heart and vision, it is a breath of fresh air, but in my mind this war on drugs thing really needs to stop. Cement entombment for weed while violent offenders walk the streets is sheer insanity.
Have a look at this article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/11/jail-abuse-nick-christie-pepper-spray-florida_n_1192412.html
and then for in-depth descriptive summary, this one:
http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2012/01/30/120130crat_atlarge_gopnik
Again, I really commend you. It’s just that, I don’t know. It’s easy to say the words “social control.” It is entirely different to be disoriented and not right in the head after days/weeks/months/years in cement. Rec’d BTW.
Thanks for your kind words. Will have to wait until tomorrow to check these out.
The New Yorker article was fascinating. On the one hand, I was amazed to see anybody speak well of stop and frisk, which I think is humiliating, and I can’t understand why it’s not illegal, from a civil rights point of view.
On the other hand, the author makes clear that stop and frisk should never have been used to bust kids for marijuana.