Puerto Rico, Protest, Prison: Johanna Fernández and Jose Saldaña Talk About The Young Lords
Johanna Fernández, Jose Saldańa, susie day, CounterPumch — Commemorating Johanna Fernández • her interview with RAPP’s Jose Saldaña, conducted in 2020
“Things That Are Survival for Us” • Carol Crooks and the August Rebellion
susieday Spectre — Carol Jean Crooks was a Black dyke. Born October 12, 1946, she grew up on the streets of Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, and died alone in early 2022. She worked and fought all her life in relative obscurity. Though most of her work wasn’t legal, her fights created a better and fairer world. If you knew her at all, you probably knew her as Crooksie...
Lisette’s Brother Is in Prison • Big Secret, Don’t Tell Nobody…
susie day / CounterPunch+ — Recently in New York State, prison guards, largely to counter media exposés of their brutalities—like the beating death of Robert Brooks at Marcy Correctional Facility last December—staged a wildcat strike. The strike left thousands of prisoners locked for weeks inside cold cells, cut off from food, showers, medicine, visits. The strike is over now; the guards have basically won. But, during the strike, at least nine incarcerated people died of beatings or medical neglect. Phillip Nieves was one of those incarcerated who lived through it. Phillip's sister, Lisette Nieves, lived through it as well.
H. Rap Brown, Jamil Al-Amin, and the Perils of Forgetting • An Interview with Arun Kundnani
susie day / Spectre — In the late 1960s, H. Rap Brown’s incendiary speeches lit up the US civil rights movement—which, though instrumental in passing such groundbreaking legislation as the Voting and Civil Rights Acts, had only begun to confront the racism embedded in the US government, as well as in US society...
Sing Sing the Movie Gets Raves; Sing Sing the Prison Gets Off Easy
susie day / CounterPunch+ — Art can open you up to see and understand whole new freeing dimensions of life. But most of us are purposely kept away from the reality of life inside prisons. Definitely, see the movie — but as you’re watching, keep in mind that it isn’t about prison so much as the wonder of the “rehabilitation” program....
Those Most in Need Of Mercy: Why Melissa Tanis Works to Get Elders Out of Prison
By: susie day, CounterPunch - "My dad went to prison when I was five. I think we visited him a couple times while he was in jail, before he was sentenced. After that, I didn’t have contact with him since I was six or seven years old..."