Stephen John Hartnett - Challenging the Prison-Industrial Complex

Edited by

Stephen John Hartnett

University of Illinois Press

Urbana, Chicago, and Springfield

2011 by the Board of Trustees
of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America

1 2 3 4 5 C P 5 4 3 2 1
This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Challenging the prison-industrial complex : activism, arts,
and educational alternatives / edited by Stephen John Hartnett.

p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 9780252035821 (cloth : alk. paper)
ISBN 9780252077708 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Prison-industrial complexUnited States.
2. ImprisonmentUnited States.
3. PrisonsUnited States.
I. Hartnett, Stephen J.
HV9471.C46 2011
365'.973dc22 2010024101

Stephen John Hartnett

Erica R. Meiners

Dennis Mansker

Julilly Kohler-Hausmann

Marvin Mays

Daniel Mark Larson

Erika Baro

Travis L. Dixon

William T. Smith

Rose Braz and Myesha Williams

Buzz Alexander

George Hall

Robin Sohnen

Robert Chicago McCollum

Garrett Albert Duncan

Nicole Monahan

Jonathan Shailor

Kenneth Sean Kelly

Lori Pompa

Janie Paul

This book began in the autumn of 2002 as a conversation in the political posterfilled office of Dr. David Roediger, the Kendrick C. Babcock Professor of History, tireless activist, all-around good guy, and first director of the University of Illinois Center on Democracy in a Multiracial Society (CDMS). Davids groundbreaking work on our nations history of race-making and racism intersected with my commitments to studying and dismantling the prison-industrial complex, and so we hatched the idea of hosting a conference, which unfolded in January 2004 as Education or Incarceration? Schools and Prisons in a Punishing Democracy. A rousing success, the conference drew scholars, activists, and artists from around the nation; the presentations were expert and the dialogue was spirited. I will never forget our closing party, at which the creaky old prairie-colonial that houses the CDMS was filled to bursting with students, faculty, staff, local activists, and our guests, all eating piles of pizza while enjoying the performances of Michael Keck (who sang and danced) and Tori Samartino (who read poems). Michael and Tori were two of the many talented artists and activists who came to the conference to help shape our critique of the prison-industrial complex into searing aesthetic forms that can both speak to our heads and inspire our hearts. The conference also produced a wave of organizing in Champaign-Urbana, meaning the academic gathering melted slowly but surely into political work carried out on the local level. I therefore want to acknowledge David Roediger, everyone in the University of Illinoiss Office of the Chancellor, the CDMSs remarkable staff (Aprel Thomas was a magician with the details), our conference participants, and the local activists who helped make both the conference and its follow-up activities such a success.

I will also confess, however, that by the time we had cleaned up from the long weekends events, even while being spiritually fulfilled and politically motivated, I was also exhaustedthere will be no book from this conference, I swore. And for a while I kept that promise, but then, in the spring of 2006, the CDMS hired a new director, Dr. Jorge Chapa, professor of sociology and Latina/Latino studies, voting-rights scholar, and leading advocate for diversity in higher education. Jorge believed that the CDMS was producing world-class work and that we should do a better job of spreading the evidence of our efforts, and so he partnered with the University of Illinois Press to launch a new book series tackling the dilemmas of how to move our nation away from its long addiction to racism and toward justice and liberty for all. Working at Jorges urging, I invited some of the participants from our 2004 conference to submit essays and also commissioned new works for this occasion. Throughout the early stages of assembling this book, Jorge and the CDMS generously supported my efforts by enabling me to receive a semester release from teaching in order to focus on the project. And so I owe a giant thank-you to Jorge for his vision, to my CDMS colleagues for their ongoing efforts to end racism, and to Ruth Mathew, who has kept the CDMS and this book organized. At the University of Illinois Press, I would like to thank Laurie Matheson for her deft handling of this manuscript, Cope Cumpston for her aesthetic vision, Jennifer S. Clark for her help shepherding the book toward publication, Geof Garvey for his expert copyediting, and the anonymous reviewers, whose insightful commentary on an early draft of the manuscript helped me to help the authors shape their essays into more powerful statements. As ever, cultural production entails collaboration across fields and specialties, races and classes, and ages and genderswe fly together or sink alone.

Because I worry about the ways even the best-intentioned scholarship can sometimes address social justice issues while marginalizing the voices of the people we work with and for, I wanted to make sure that prisoners are represented in this volume. Each chapter of the book is accordingly followed by a poem written by an incarcerated artist, thus making sure that as we read about the crisis of the prison-industrial complex, and as we consider pragmatic ways to move forward, we also encounter the heartbreaks and hopes of the men and women trapped within Americas gulags. Special thanks, then, to our poets: Dennis Mansker, Marvin Mays, Erika Baro, William T. Smith, George Hall, Robert Chicago McCollum, Nicole Monahan, and K. Sean Kelly. Because we know of these writers only through the efforts of writing workshop facilitators who have brought their imprisoned students and collaborators work to our attention, I want to thank Buzz Alexander for convening the Poets Corner in Jackson, Michigan; Kal Wagenheim for hosting his workshop in Trenton, New Jersey; University of ColoradoDenver students Linda Guthrie, Vlad Bogomolov, and Gordana Lzc for their support of the writing workshop in Denver, Colorado; and all the University of Illinois students who joined the writing workshop in Urbana, Illinois, including Sarah Franseen, Katie Healey, Justin Lensing, Jennifer Mussman, Sejal Patel, and Ashley Reibel. As these workshop facilitators and tutors will tell you, and as the poems printed here attest, our imprisoned neighbors are capable of producing poems full of unspeakable pain yet also inspiring beauty.

To accompany these poetic contributions, I also thought readers would benefit from having the opportunity to see what the men and women snared within the prison-industrial complex experience each day. And so I contacted Janie Paul, one of the founders and curators of the annual Exhibition of Art by Michigan Prisoners, and asked her to select what she thought were ten representative images made my imprisoned artists. I am therefore proud to include here artwork made by Frankie Davis, Gary English, Dara Ket, Nancy Jean King, Fred Mumford, Bryan Picken, Wynn Satterlee, Kinnari Jivani, Martin Vargas, and Virgil Williams III. We know of these imprisoned artists because Janie and her colleagues at the Prison Creative Arts Projects, in Ann Arbor, Michigan, spend each winter and spring driving thousands of miles, crisscrossing Michigan, visiting dozens of prisons, so that they can collect and then display hundreds of pieces of art on the lovely University of Michigan campus each April. Many thanks, then, to Janie, her PCAP associates, and to all the imprisoned artists, teachers, and friends who make it possible to produce art under even the most dire circumstances. The images show us that the men and women in our prisons are fellow human beings with dreams, visions, and remarkable talent. Printing the images as full-page color-plates was an expensive endeavor, and is made possible by the generous support of the University of ColoradoDenvers Office of the Associate Vice Chancellor for Research and the UCD College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Dissemination Grant Program.