Volume: 26
Number: 4
Same Page Is it possible that together, the commentary by Mr. McReynolds (WIN spring 2009) coupled with Leslie Winston’s interpretation of that commentary, “Missed Connection” (summer 2009 letters), are evidence of how easy it is for any of us to (initially) not quite understand one another, myself included? As I understand it, Mr. McReynolds was…
Why They Refuse Netta Mishly (left) and Maya Wind. Photo by Ellen Davidson. What drove ten young Israeli Jews to defy the law, their society—even their families—by publicly refusing to obey Israel’s mandatory conscription because “we cannot be moral and serve the occupation”? For 19-year-old Maya Wind and Netta Mishly, reasons included a bus explosion,…
Warming Up to Possibilities: WRL National Committee The WRL National Committee (NC) met this summer against a backdrop of turmoil being felt around the world almost a year since the financial meltdown brought about by the bursting of the sub-prime mortgage bubble. Although we didn’t do any budgeting (this is the task of the February…
Power from Below Mexico Unconquered: Chronicles of Power and Revolt By John Gibler City Lights Books, 2009 356 pages, $16.95 Wobblies and Zapatistas: Conversations on Anarchism, Marxism, and Radical History By Staughton Lynd and Andrej Grubacic PM Press, 2008, 300 pages, $20.00 It is welcome to see two new entries…
Tearing Down the Walls Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women By Victoria Law PM Press, 2009 258 pages, $20.00 In the summer of 1974, women incarcerated at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York held seven guards hostage in protest of the brutal treatment of activist prisoner Carol Crooks, who had successfully sued…
Organizing with a Graphic Edge The Real Cost of Prisons Comix Edited by Lois Ahrens PM Press, 2008, 104 pages, $12.95 Last year marked the tenth anniversary of both the founding of the prison abolitionist Critical Resistance group and the National Jericho Movement’s march in Washington, D.C., demanding the release of all U.S. political prisoners…
A Hard-Won Freedom From the Bottom of the Heap: The Autobiography of Black Panther Robert Hillary King PM Press, 2009 217 pages, $24.95 I had the honor of spending some time with the only freed member of the Angola 3 in April 2009 when he swung through Vermont on his book tour. Starting softly, in…
Making Change: Activism Under Obama Our series of columns devoted to nonviolent activism under the Obama administration continues. Has change come to the White House, or is there merely a new face on the same old policies? For anti-death penalty activists, the election of Barack Obama represented an unprecedented opportunity. It was a candidacy built…
The Not-So-Hidden Connection “We must work together to set free those who are bound, to turn our swords and spears into plowshares.” When Argentine Nobel Peace prize winner Adolfo Pérez Esquivel lent his words to the foreword of my recently published Let Freedom Ring: Documents from the Movements to Free U.S. Political Prisoners, he did…
Tucked in San Francisco’s Mission District lies a treasure trove of social movement history and culture. The Freedom Archives is home to more than 8,000 hours of audio and video, as well as countless papers and publications from the last 50 years of people’s struggles. The materials housed at the Freedom Archives cover topics ranging…
Linda Thurston is a founding member of International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal, coordinated the New England and National Criminal Justice Programs of the American Friends Service Committee, and has worked with Boston and New York Jericho and with Critical Resistance. Linda is the office coordinator at the War Resisters League national office….
In the mid-1980s, the American Friends Service Committee’s (AFSC) Prison Watch Project received a letter from Ojore Lutalo at Trenton State Prison. He wrote that he had been placed in a management control unit, which he described as a “prison within a prison.” Although he had been in and out of prison for years,…
In August, while many families were planning vacations to Florida or the Caribbean, the Carey family was headed south to Ashland, Ky. They saw relatives and caught up on old times, took pictures, and exchanged new contact information. The family’s yearly vacation was spent visiting Willie Wright, an inmate at Ashland Federal Prison. Wright is…
A new, unjust, and gruesome “mental health institution” has been slowly and quietly growing across the nation: our jails and prisons. Over the past several decades, the number of incarcerated individuals with a diagnosed mental illness has continually risen. In fact, Rikers Island and the Los Angeles County Jail are the two largest providers of…
Teaching Nonviolence in Prisons High incarceration rates were supposed to make the United States safer for its law-abiding citizens. The best evidence indicates, however, that our increased rate of incarceration has not made society any safer. Nonviolent offenders are packed together with violent offenders into dangerous, crowded prisons, where violence is the rule. Upon release,…
The Military & Prison Industrial Complexes Go ‘Boom’ Looking back to the halcyon days of the movement against the Vietnam War, one sees the birth of what seemed to be a new world. Every day, one could almost see and touch giant boulders crumbling off the edifice of repression: students protesting from coast to coast—even…
Suggestions from women incarcerated throughout the country: Make contact with women in prison. “Visits, phone calls, and letter writing are essential. Only with a firm foundation, a strong foundation, can we together be able to build a greater movement,” says a woman incarcerated in Florida. Speak out about these issues, especially when they intersect…
Illustrations by Rachel Galindo Women have resisted and protested their conditions of confinement since the start of separate female prisons in the 1800s. However, despite the growing body of literature examining female incarceration, little attention has been paid to what women do to change or protest their conditions, thus reinforcing prevailing stereotypes of women as…
Resisting Fear, Resisting State Violence On October 5, members of the War Resisters League and other organizations and communities participated in a direct action at the White House to oppose the war in Afghanistan. Sixty-one protesters were arrested, and one group attempted to deliver a letter to President Barack Obama demanding an end to…
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