Tag Archives: public affairs

This week we share the first of two episodes on Jay Smith’s story, also known as Abu Faheem Shabaz, who was recently released from the Indiana Department of Corrections after spending years inside. As he states, Shabaz was part of the carceral system since childhood, and he describes coming of age within the walls of detention facilities. He shares with …

This week, we are airing selections from a panel discussion that took place earlier this month here in Bloomington. Andrea Ritchie and Victoria Law, both of whom were featured on Kite Line earlier this month, sit alongside Andrea Sterling at a panel called “Building Community Resilience”. In it, these women discuss the myriad ways that female bodies are controlled, policed, …

This week, we share a conversation we had with Andrea Ritchie, an attorney and activist whose work focuses on police violence against the queer community and women of color. She speaks about current political conditions, and the concepts in her most recent book, Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color. Ritchie walks us through some …

This week features our second segment on PREA- the Prison Rape Elimination Act. Last week, we heard from Irene, who is being held in the Indiana Women’s Prison. She described her run-ins with PREA, leading to a broader analysis of the failure of prison bureaucracies to meaningfully respond to real abuse. At the same time, she shows how these bureaucracies …

This episode is the start of our conversation about PREA, the Prison Rape Elimination Act. PREA was passed in 2003 with unanimous support from both parties in Congress. The purpose of the act was to “provide for the analysis of the incidence and effects of prison rape in Federal, State, and local institutions and to provide information, resources, recommendations and …

In Wabash Valley, Shaka Shakur is maintaining his hunger strike, demanding an end to guard abuses and the isolation of active prisoners in camera cells. We spoke with his wife, Akili Shakur, who provided context for the struggle undertaken by Shaka and other prisoners, along with background on his imprisonment and the role of guards in targeting prisoners and stoking …

This week, we speak with Lill, a resident of Whitesburg, Kentucky. Whitesburg is located in Letcher County the proposed home to a new federal prison to be built on a mountaintop removal site. We have previously covered the strong local organizing in Letcher County that had helped put a stop to this toxic proposal. In light of recent efforts by …

Last April, the Indiana Department of Corrections banned all correspondence to it’s 25,000 prisoners, except that which is handwritten on lined white paper. The official explanation is that this is an attempt to block trafficking of synthetic marijuana which can be applied to paper. But many prisoners and advocates have pointed to a long series of earlier measures targeting correspondence …

Our news this week focuses on the prisoners who are fighting California’s wildfires for as little as a dollar an hour while actually fighting fires. In total, about thirty-eight hundred male and female inmates are fighting fires in California. They constitute around thirteen percent of the state’s firefighters. Their low salaries save taxpayers a hundred twenty-four million dollars a year. …

This week, we have two contributions –one closer to home and one many more miles away- but both aim to describe an unfair relationship of power each contributor’s community faces. We first hear an essay from a prisoner in Southern Illinois, followed by a statement sent to us from a member of the community of the Mapuche people in Chile. …