Tag Archives: Prisoners

This 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, fresh food, and running water. …

This 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 needless suffering it causes, are …

This 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 retention centers around France to …

Since the Ferguson uprising in 2014, the Black Lives Matter movement has shone a light on a range of American institutions, revealing their white supremacist origins and functions.  In addition to police and the discriminatory mortgage market, cash bail is one of the most important of these institutions to be revealed and resisted.  Community bail funds and others have begun …

We are completing our series on Brazilian prisons by airing an interview between Beny and Rosângela, who wanted to discuss her experiences with health care there.  Her account of  deprivation of care, along with the over application of psychiatric drugs, will be familiar to anyone who has spent time inside an American prison.  She likewise discusses the cuts made to …

This week, we share an update from the U.S./Mexico border, as well as two more illuminating conversations from inside the Brazilian prison system. First, we hear from Luce, who has just returned to the U.S. after doing legal aid for unaccompanied minors at the Barretal migrant shelter in Tijuana. As we mentioned in last week’s episode, Kite Line contributor Micol …

This week, we have the first of several interviews that were conducted this fall in São Paulo, Brazil. Kite Line contributor Micol Seigel was there to teach a course on American prison history at the state university.  Seigel’s academic host introduced her to an activist civil servant at the Secretariat of Penal Administration, who connected her to the members of …

A new movement of refugees fleeing violence and starvation in Central America began to reach Tijuana last month, in the hopes of applying for asylum in the United States.  Comprised of multiple, self-organized caravans, the refugees passed through incredible hardship and risk before thousands were temporarily settled in the Benito Juarez shelter – a sports complex on the southern side …

This week, we are continuing our talk with Leon Benson, who speaks to us from inside Pendleton Correctional Facility here in Indiana. He’s been inside since 1998, for a murder conviction and he has been trying to clear his name and win his freedom ever since. Benson was incarcerated at 23 years old, and talks about becoming conscious while on …

This week, we hear from Leon Benson, who calls us from inside an Indiana prison. You might remember some of Leon’s story from a Kite Line episode we aired in December of last year, called “You Can’t Force the State to Abide by the Law” in which his sister, Valerie, introduced Leon’s story. Leon’s been incarcerated for decades for a …