Podcasts about pelican bay prison

Lucas Guilkey & JoeBill Muñoz | EP 370 In this powerful episode of Reza Rifts, host Keith Reza sits down with filmmakers Lucas Guilkey and JoeBill Muñoz to discuss their gripping documentary ‘The Strike' which sheds light on the harrowing hunger strikes at Pelican Bay Prison.   This conversation is a must-watch/listen for anyone passionate about documentary filmmaking, criminal justice reform, and human rights.     Website: https://www.thestrikefilm.com/   Support the show on https://patreon.com/rezarifts61  Follow Keith on all social media platforms: FB: https://www.facebook.com/realkeithreza IG:https://www.instagram.com/keithreza  X:https://www.twitter.com/keithreza  TT:https://www.tiktok.com/keithreza  Book Keith on cameo at www.cameo.com/keithreza Check out my website for dates at https://www.keithreza.com/ 

Send us a Text Message.The prospect of long-term solitary confinement, being housed alone in custody for months and sometimes even years, is daunting for criminal defendants and their counsel. In May 2023, two public interest organizations, The Italian Association Antigone and the Israeli organization, Physicians for Human Rights Israel, proposed the International Guiding Statement on Alternatives to Solitary Confinement. We are pleased to have with us two guests: Professor Keramet Reiter & Oneg Ben Dror. Professor Reiter is a member of the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at the University of California Irvine Law School. Professor Reiter is the author of 23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement, published by Yale University Press. Ms. Ben Dror is a project coordinator for the Physicians for Human Rights Israel, and was involved in the drafting of the International Guiding Statement on Alternatives to Solitary Confinement. Our guests are the co-authors, along with Dana Moss, of a recent article: Overview of the International Guiding Statement on Alternatives to Solitary Confinement in the Criminal Justice Magazine. 

This week on the show, you'll hear our conversation with Mwalimu Shakur, a politicized, New Afrikan revolutionary prison organizer incarcerated at Corcoran prison in California. Mwalimu has been involved in organizing, including the cessations of hostilities among gangs and participation in the California and then wider hunger strikes against unending solitary confinement when he was at Pelican Bay Prison in 2013, helping to found the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee, or IWOC, Liberation Schools of self-education and continues mentoring younger prisoners. He was in solitary confinement, including in the SHU, for 13 of the last 16 years of his incarceration. For the hour, Mwalimu talks a bit about his politicization and organizing behind bars, his philosophy, Black August, the hunger strikes of 2013, the importance of organizing in our neighborhoods through the prison bars. You can contact Mwalimu via JayPay by searching for his state name, Terrence White and the ID number AG8738, or write him letters, addressing the inside to Mwalimu Shakur and the envelope to: Terrence White #AG8738 CSP Corcoran PO Box 3461 Corcoran, CA 93212 Mwalimu's sites: https://wireofhope.com/prison-penpal-terrance-white/ https://ajamuwatu.wixsite.com/ajamuwatu To hear an interview from way back in 2013 that William did former political prisoner and editor of CA Prison Focus, Ed Mead (before & after the strikes). Other Groups Mwalimu Suggests: Initiate Justice: https://www.initiatejustice.org/ Critical Resistance: http://criticalresistance.org/ California Prison Focus: http://newest.prisons.org/ Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee (IWOC): https://incarceratedworkers.org/ Malcolm X Grassroots Movement: https://freethelandmxgm.org/ Revolutionary Intercommunal Black Panther Party: https://www.facebook.com/RIBPP Jailhouse Lawyers Speak: https://jailhouselawyerspeak.wordpress.com/ San Francisco Bay View National Black Newspaper: https://sfbayview.com/ True Leap Press: https://trueleappress.com/ Announcements Shut ‘Em Down 2021 This year marks the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Jonathan Jackson at the Marin County Courthouse, the assassination of his brother George at San Quentin in California and the subsequent uprising and State massacre at Attica State Prison in New York. Black August has been celebrated at least since 1979 to mark these dates with study, exercise, community building, sharing and reflection by revolutionaries on both sides of the bars. In the last decade across Turtle Island, you've seen strikes and protests and educational events take place around this time of the year as we flex our muscles. This year, as you've heard us mention, Jailhouse Lawyers Speak is calling for weeks of action for Abolitionism under the name “Shut ‘Em Down 2021”. You can find out more at JailhouseLawyersSpeak.Wordpress.Com and follow them on twitter and instagram, linked in our show notes, alongside links relating to this weeks chat. You can hear our interview with a member of JLS from earlier this year about the “Shut ‘Em Down” initiative, or read the interview, at our site and in these show notes. Also, check out our interview with the remaining member of the Marin Courthouse Uprising, possibly the oldest living political prisoner in the US, Ruchell Cinque Magee. Shaka Shakur Hunger Strike New Afrikan prison rebel, co-founder of the New Afrikan Liberation Collective and IDOCWatch organizer, Shaka Shakur has been interstate transferred hundreds of miles away from his support network to Buckingham Correctional Center in Virginia (recognize that name?). There was a call-in campaign this week focused on VA Governor Northam, director of VADOC Harold Clark, VADOC central regional director Henry Ponton and Warden Woodson at BKCC. This was in support of Shakur's hunger strike in protest of the transfer, his time in solitary prior in Indiana for having his prescription medication, being moved into solitary at BKCC with minimal hygiene and no personal materials. As noted in the transcript about his hunger strike at IDOCWatch's website, the transfer interrupts civil and criminal litigation Shaka Shakur had pending in Indiana and has caused him to be halfway across the country after his own surgeries, the loss of his family matriarch and another aunt, the hospitalization of mother and other health hardships. You can find ways to support via VA Prison Abolition twitter and fakebook IDOCWatch twitter and instagram New Afrikan Liberation Collective twitter and fakebook . ... . .. Featured Tracks: Blues For Brother George Jackson by Archie Shepp from Attica Blues George Jackson by Dicks from These People

What do a mid-century photographer, a fresh new work, politics and poop jokes, solitary confinement and a music video all have in common? Why it must be time for a rhetoric journal roundup! This week we are going to take a little journey through the quarter’s last issue of Rhetoric Society Quarterly, otherwise known as the RSQ. The RSQ is the official publication of the Rhetorical Society of America, otherwise know as the RSA. So the RSA published the RSQ and now it’s time for the intro for you-know-who!   [intro]   Welcome to Mere Rhetoric, the podcast for beginners and insiders about the ideas, people and movements who shaped rhetorical history and I’m Mary Hedengren and I’ve finally finished the spring issue of the RSQ.   Before I give you a summary of this quarter’s issue, let me just give you a little context on the RSQ. The RSQ has been rolling out for decades and is probably one of the most prestigious and longest-running journals for rhetorical studies. If you become a dues-paying member of the RSA--and it’s pretty cheap for students--, you can receive your own subscription to the RSQ, and you’ll find that it has some of the same focus as the RSA conferences held every other year--it’s focused on the rhetoric side of comp/rhet, usually with a big dose of theory. You won’t find a lot of articles in the RSQ about first-year composition, but you will find archival research, cultural artifacts, history and more.    So let’s take a walk through the Spring 2020 issue of RSQ.   First off, we have an article from PhD candidate Emliy N. Smith because, yes, grad students can get published in RSQ. Smith has looked into the photograph of Charles “Teenie” Harris, an African American photographer for the Pittsburgh Courier. Smith argues that Harris’ photography counters other mid-century depictions of Black people in two important ways: first, the iconic form of photography--iconic photography, as Smith points out, are high performance. Think, as Smith says, of the photograph of raising the flag on Iwo Jima. It’s dramatic, semi-staged and capital M Meaningful. Harris had some pictures like that, but Smith is more interested in the other type of photography he did, the so called idiomatic image, colloquial and conversational. She describes photographs of Harris’ that show Black people creating their own lives as they are “simply moving about in a world suffused with structural racism” (85) like one picture showing kids at a Halloween party, part of their own community, and that community building its own future through its children. The “idiomatic, everyday work of building and sustaining ...Black community,” Smith argues, is itself a powerful mode of visual rhetoric, not less than the iconic mode.   Romeo Garcia and Jose M. Cortez wrote  the next article “The Trace of a Mark That Scatters: The Anthropoi and the Rhetoric of Decoloniality.” If you wondered what a third of those words mean, you are not alone. I had to read the abstract three times before I understood what the article was about, but then I began to see that those words I didn’t understand were exactly what the article was about. In rhetoric we talk a lot about postcolonialism, but these authors are seeking new theories andnew terms--one term is decoloniality. Instead of positioning, for example, the Latin American experience in terms of its difference from Europe, how about just “actually theorizing  rhetoric from the locus of non-Western … space” (94)? The authors give an example of the kind of contrastive rhetoric that really gets their goat. Don P Abbott wrote an article about rhetoric in Aztec culture where he  says, “It is possible that Aztec discourse, both practical and conceptually, would have continued to evolve as the culture itself developed” (qtd 99) and Garcia and Crotez are like…”wait what…? So you think Aztec culture was ‘undeveloped’? Do you think that logocentrism is the only way to figure rhetoric? Uh, no..!” This brings us to the other term in the title that might not be familiar--anthropoi. As you might guess, this word has a connection to anthropology, with the idea that the anthropoi are people you study, “that which cannot escape the status of being external to the subject and being gramed as object/nature” (97).  But wait! de-Colonialism has its own flaws. How can modern rhetoricians ever hope to reconstruct the rhetorics of people in radically different cultures living thousands of years ago? “Decoloniality,” the authors say, “cannot carry out its promis of decolonization while adopting the language and conceptual apparatus of propriety” (103)  If post-colonial thinks about the other and decoloniality gets caught in a loop of using western logocentrism to approach non-Western rhetorics, what’s the solution? Well….they propose an alterity symbolized in the letter X, both as the end of Latinx, and also as in the symbol you use to signify your name if you aren’t literate. They “move past decoloniality without completely giving up on its ground of intervention” seeking “ (104). Whew. That is some heavy stuff!   Don’t worry, the next article includes potty humor! Richard Benjamin Crosby at Brigham Young University (Go Cougs!), digs into the Rhetorical Grotesque, especially in the 21st century policial arena. He argues that leaders like Trump and Bolsonaro and Hugo Chavez and Silvio Berlusconi all “enact in rhetoric the kinds of incongruous combinations, comis distortions and corporeal excesses that scholars in art and literature have long associated with grotesquerie” (109, original emphasis). The grotesque, if you remember your Baktin, focuses a lot on the body, and bodily excess--eating, pooping, reproducing. As Crosby says. “The groteque’s only true allegiance is to transgression of the presumed order of things” (112) and it is in this way that politicians like Trump exemplify the grotesque-- positioning themselves as transgressive, shaking up the old foundation, and being grotesque is part of that. “A political cutlass” (112) as “a mode of communication, the essence of which is transgression of or deviation from and degradation of that which is presumed to be normal” through being 1- incongruous, 2- mocking, and 3- corporal. Crosby gives examples of political discourse of the grotesque from several different countries and political positions, but Trump is the clearest example for us, especially during the Primary campaign. Trump’s grotesque rhetoric argued that “Trump is real, because he is uncontained” (115) as Trump mocks  accusations that he calls women he doesn’t like “fat pigs, dogs, slobs and disgusting animals” and says “the big problem this country has is being politically correct” (116). Distrust in political institutions have led, says Crosby, to a “grotesque kairos” (119) of wanting to mock and dismantle social norms. And although we rebel-rousing rhetoricians often get excited about breaking social norms, Crosby points out that demagogues like Trump demonstrate that the grotesque is “a neutral tool that can be wielded by anyone skilled enough to use it” (120) and sometimes it can be disasterous.   From Trump’s consolidation of power we then move to the powerless--prisoners on hunger strikes in California’s Pelican Bay Prison. Chris S Earle writes an article called “‘More Resilient than Concrete and Steel”: Consciousness-Raising, Self-Discipline and Bodily Resistance in Solitary Confinement” where he argues that the “widespread, multiracial coalition emerged through years of organizing between prison cells, a process rendered nearly impossible by solitary confinement” (124). “Against the odds,” he relates, these prisoners “created a discursive space” in prison across racial boundaries in three collective hunger strikes opposition prisoner conditions (125). These hunger strikes took place in a Supermax prison and solitary confinement, among the prisoners termed “worst of the worst,” yet they exemplified “strict regimes of self-discipline” (132) as the prisoners “turned their bodies into weapons of resistance” and made “a moral critiques of solitary confinement” (133). Earle concludes his article by saying that making distinctions between nonviolent and violent offenders undermines prison reform efforts and justifies “even more inhumane conditions for many people in prison” (134).   In the next article, Jennifer Lin Lemesurier (li-mis-i-ur) walks us through the “racist kinesiologies” in Childish Gambino’s “this is America.” If you haven’t seen the music video of “This is America,” pause this podcast, fire up the YouTube and watch it now. You’ll thank me. [....] Aaaaaand we’re back. Lemesurier describes what Childish Gambino’s body is doing in this video as embodying two racist assumptions about black male bodies--that they are hyper talented and hyper violent. She takes us deep into the history of Black dance as seen through the filter of white eyes, as slavers demanded slaves dance on demand across the middle passage (141) and slave owners exhibit the “savage wildness” of Black dance (142), but it’s one figure of the Black male body that Childish Gambino especially channels--the 1889 figure of The Original Jim Crow, a minstrel figure who danced with a knee bend, elbow bend and naive amusement. Lemesurier, a dancer herself, describes how uneven the position is in body weight and posture, how it “does not valorize linear pattern or gentle arcs” (144)--it is a stark and mocking other. As all of my listeners have now seen the video--RIGHT?!-- you know that in the video Childish Gambino transitions seamlessly between depictions of performance and violent. “The emphasis on dance,” Lemesuir writes, “is key to the critique of how Black embodiment serves white audiences” (145). “Gambino’s chorerographed performance of violence is a metaperformative moment that asks viewers to question the naturaizationof Black bodies as always dancing or shooting and the impact of such portrayals on  broader relations that are possible between racialized bodies” (146). Lemesuir ends by recommending that we in rhetoric continue studying moving bodies, “Rhetoric needs more clarity on how bodily hierarchies are always present, not only in visuals or discourses, but in the very steps we take through the world, toward or away from one another,” (149).   And there you have it! Those are the main articles from RSQ this quarter. I’m skipping over the book reviews, even though it includes a review by my Casey Boyle, one of my faves from the University of Texas at Austin (go Longhorns!), Dana Cloud and Steve Mailloux’s new book. But you, as they say, don’t have to take my word for it!    

In 1890, the Supreme Court called solitary confinement “barbaric,” speculating that it would be abandoned altogether as a correctional practice. But now, nearly 130 years later, it’s clear that their prediction couldn’t have been more wrong. Professor Keramet Reiter tells the story of how solitary confinement became so widespread in the US, what this practice means for prisoners, and what can be done to change the system. For more on this topic: Check out Reiter’s book, 23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement Read her SSN brief, The Root of America's Over-Use of Solitary Confinements in Prison — and How Reform Can Happen Listen to her interview on NPR’s Hidden Brain podcast

America is a nation that locks up more people per capita than any other country in the world.  The Sentencing Project reports 2.2 million people are incarcerated in America's prisons. That's a 500% increase over the past 40 years. The Institute for Criminal Policy Research in London reports America locks up 670 people per 100,000. Russia locks up 439 per 100,000. Rwanda 434 per 100,000. China 118 per 100,000. How in the world did this happen? Are Americans criminally prone? Or has America's desire for security and tough sentencing policies lost its way? This week on Life of the Law we ask scholars who have studied the history and changing conditions of prisons, and a man who was incarcerated for more than 20 years, to join us in the studios of KQED in San Francisco -- to talk about the social, financial and cultural impact of mass incarceration and what change would look like. Osagie Obasogieis Professor, School of Public Health, UC Berkeley, author of Blinded by Sight: Seeing Race through the Eyes of the Blind and is a member of Life of the Law's Advisory Board  Ashley Rubinis Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto and is author of the soon to be published book, The Deviant Prison: Eastern State Penitentiary and the Advantage of Difference, 1829-913.  Keramet Reiter is Assistant Professor of Criminology, Law and Society and Law at UC Irvine and is author of 23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement. Keramet Reiter has a forthcoming book with Oxford Press, Keynotes in Criminology and Criminal Justice: Mass Incarceration (2017).  She is currently conducting research in Danish prisons, about prison culture and solitary confinement practices, and in Washington State, about solitary confinement reforms.http://cls.soceco.uci.edu/ Troy Williamsis a journalist and the new editor of SF Bay View and while incarcerated founded the San Quentin Prison Report. Rebecca McClennanis Associate Professor of History at UC Berkeley and is author of Becoming America: A History for the 21st Century and The Crisis of Imprisonment: Protest, Politics and the Making of the American Penal State, 1776-1941. Heather Ann Thompsonis Professor of History at the University of Michigan and won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize in History for her book Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and its Legacy. Please visit our website: www.lifeofthelaw.org for suggested supplemental reading © Copyright 2017 Life of the Law. All rights reserved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In the 1960s and 1970s, a series of deadly prison riots convinced corrections officials that long-term solitary confinement was the only solution to control the “worst of the worst.” Supermax prisons, such as the Pelican Bay State Prison in California, were constructed to fulfill this perceived need. But with the abundance of evidence showing how psychologically harmful solitary confinement is, can its use be justified? And with the lack of transparency surrounding the number and type of prisoners being held in long-term solitary confinement, how can we really judge its necessity or effectiveness? In this episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles speaks with Keramet Reiter, a University of California Irvine professor and the author of the new book 23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement. Reiter discusses the years of research she conducted into Pelican Bay Prison, including interviews with the prison’s main designer; the judge who condemned horrific abuses which occurred in the prison’s early years; and former prisoners who have emerged from long-term solitary confinement and dealt with its after-effects. She also shares what kind of reforms she thinks would be necessary for the judicial system and legislators to be able to assess the need for long-term solitary confinement.

In the 1960s and 1970s, a series of deadly prison riots convinced corrections officials that long-term solitary confinement was the only solution to control the “worst of the worst.” Supermax prisons, such as the Pelican Bay State Prison in California, were constructed to fulfill this perceived need. But with the abundance of evidence showing how psychologically harmful solitary confinement is, can its use be justified? And with the lack of transparency surrounding the number and type of prisoners being held in long-term solitary confinement, how can we really judge its necessity or effectiveness? In this episode of the Modern Law Library, the ABA Journal’s Lee Rawles speaks with Keramet Reiter, a University of California Irvine professor and the author of the new book 23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement. Reiter discusses the years of research she conducted into Pelican Bay Prison, including interviews with the prison’s main designer; the judge who condemned horrific abuses which occurred in the prison’s early years; and former prisoners who have emerged from long-term solitary confinement and dealt with its after-effects. She also shares what kind of reforms she thinks would be necessary for the judicial system and legislators to be able to assess the need for long-term solitary confinement.

Keramet Reiter talks about what happens to prisoners who spend decades in solitary confinement; Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilia-Whitaker offer some historical perspective on the crisis at Standing Rock; and Sandra Gilbert reflects on the importance of Adrienne Rich and reads her favorite poem. Mentioned in this episode: • Read an excerpt from Keramet Reiter’s new book, 23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement • Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker’s new book, “All the Real Indians Died Off”: And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans • Sandra Gilbert reviews Adrienne Rich’s Collected Poems, plus:

Keramet Reiter talks about what happens to prisoners who spend decades in solitary confinement; Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilia-Whitaker offer some historical perspective on the crisis at Standing Rock; and Sandra Gilbert reflects on the importance of Adrienne Rich and reads her favorite poem. Mentioned in this episode: • Read an excerpt from Keramet Reiter’s new book, 23/7: Pelican Bay Prison and the Rise of Long-Term Solitary Confinement • Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz and Dina Gilio-Whitaker’s new book, “All the Real Indians Died Off”: And 20 Other Myths About Native Americans • Sandra Gilbert reviews Adrienne Rich’s Collected Poems, plus: