This week, Kite Line welcomes the contributions of Mark Cook for a second time. Mark is a former prison rebel, dating back to ambitious organizing on the inside in the 1960s. Following his release from prison, he co-founded the Seattle chapter of the Black Panther Party and later went underground with the George Jackson Brigade. …
Read MoreLast week, we heard the first part of a lecture by Max Felker-Kantor on policing in Los Angeles, from the Watts Rebellion in the 60s to the brutal police beating of Rodney King in the 90s. This week, he continues to talk about the police murder of Eula Love, and how her death affected the…
Read MoreThis week, we interview a participant in Perilous, a new prison history project. Perilous launched its website earlier this year, with a goal of compiling all the grassroots, collective mobilizations that have happened in US prisons since the prisoners’ movement seriously kicked off again in 2010. With this interview, we got a sense of their…
Read MoreThis week, we air the first of two episodes tracking the rise of police racism and militarization in Los Angeles, from the Watts Uprising of 1965 to the 1992 L.A. Riots after Rodney King’s beating. Max Felker-Kantor, author of the book, Policing Los Angeles, walks us through the changes in policing, as well as the…
Read MoreIn the past months, the California prison system, or CDRC, has been convulsed by hunger strikes and a series of so-called “gladiator” or “dog fights,” in which guards pit prisoners against each other. Brook, an organizer with the Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee in Oakland, spoke with us to provide vital context for understanding this volatile…
Read MoreFirst, we have updates on the Vaughn 17 and hunger strikes and noise demonstrations from immigrant detention centers around the country. After the news, we share a conversation with Phillip Roberts and Debra Des Vignes. Des Vignes is the founder of the Indiana Prison Writers Workshop, and Roberts participated in the project for almost a…
Read MoreThis week is an interview with Samantha Johnson, from No New Jails in Brooklyn, New York. As we reported recently, the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn recently was the target of large scale demonstrations, after prisoners expressed to their loved ones on the outside that they were being denied basic human needs such as heat,…
Read MoreThis week, we share two different reflections on time inside, focusing on how prison interrupts life, education, and development. The first is the conclusion of Chantal’s account of her weeks inside a French immigrant retention center after her arrest during Yellow Vest clashes in Paris. She describes her and other prisoners’ efforts to pass the…
Read MoreThis week, we hear more from Chantal, who tells us about her time detained in France in December. We also cover breaking news on hunger strikes in immigrant detention centers across the US, as well as the victory of hundreds of hunger strikers in Corcoran prison in California. Medical malfeasance by prison officials, and the…
Read MoreThis week,we hear a statement regarding a hunger strike that took place in France this month. On January 8th, detainees at the same immigration retention center that Chantal, the subject of this week’s Kite Line, was held in released a statement announcing that they had begun a hunger strike, and calling on detainees in other…
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