Tag Archives: racism

As the 2018 National Prison Strike quickly approaches, we have news of hunger and work strikes already underway. We have updates on the successful, 108 day hunger strike of Mapuche Shaman Celestino Cordova, who had been denied access to his ceremonial altar while in Chilean prison. We also get updates from Siddique Abdullah Hasan and Greg Curry on the hunger …

In last week’s episode, we introduced Johdy Polk, who spoke to us about her time behind the prison walls, and urged audiences to see the other ways that people are confined by society.  Now, we continue to hear more of Johdy’s story- about the relationships she built while on the inside, her transition to daily life after her release, and …

We open with the jazz tune, “Epistrophy,” from Eric Dolphy’s Last Date recorded in Holland in 1964. Epistrophe, from the Greek, means “a turning about” – and applied to The Young One, a constant shift of moral perspective with no settled view. As with our recent show on the 1954 Salt of the Earth, here is another “forgotten film” that …

This week, Johdy Polk, from Gainesville, Florida, describes her time inside a women’s prison, while sharing cutting observations on growing up as a black woman in a white supremacist society. She also makes an urgent call to tear down our inner prisons, a call that we think resonates with the torrent of news we are sharing this week. Prisoners across …

Last week, Aren Aizura guided us through the history of colonialism in Australia, including racist measures to control non-white immigration, and later, in the 1980s, the implementation of mandatory detention for refugees. He focused on his experiences in an occupation outside the remote Woomera Detention Center, and the way that supporters on the outside grew in numbers, intensifying pressure on …

In light of the ongoing struggles across the country against deportations, family separations, and ICE detention centers, we are sharing an interview we did last year about struggles in Australia against refugee prison camps. In 2002, imprisoned refugees inside Australia’s remote Woomera immigration prison coordinated protests with 2500 supporters who had pitched a No Borders camp outside the facility. This …

Welcome to the Citizenship/Identity Episode of Hearabouts: Asian American Midwest Radio! Hearabouts is produced by WFHB and Indiana University’s Asian Culture Center. We ask critical questions about identity, culture, community and shared assumptions. On today’s episode, Eric Langowski discusses the internment of Japanese-Americans in World War II, his grandmother’s internment, and IU’s racist enrollment policy during the period. We then …

For this episode, we are returning to the conditions in immigrant detention centers. Alejandra spoke at the Fight Toxic Prisons conference in Pittsburgh, which was held earlier this month. Growing up in California, she was the only child in her family to be undocumented. As an adult in Arizona, she had a minor arrest that led to her incarceration in …

We open with music composed by Sol Kaplan for the film Salt of the Earth. Kaplan was blacklisted in the 1950s for being “uncooperative” to HUAC, the House Un-American Activities Committee. The rest of our music will feature the work of other blacklisted artists and performers; Hazel Scott, Yip Harburg, Marc Blitzstein, and Lena Horne. Salt of the Earth is …

This week, we will focus on a specific story about an immigrant detention case in Pittsburgh- and hear firsthand from family impacted by these harsh repercussions for undocumented immigrants. Martin Esquivel-Hernandez was detained after a traffic stop, held by ICE, and eventually deported, leaving his family behind in Pennsylvania. Today, we will hear his story through the eyes of his …