Tag Archives: racism

In this episode of 2018, Meryem speaks about her current dilemma; She’s experienced a lot of prejudice since moving to Bloomington, more than she did when she was an undergraduate student in New Hampshire in the early 2000’s. She fears for her safety and the safety and happiness of her young son. She has enjoyed living in America and loves …

In this week’s edition of The Bicentennial Journal, Gladys DeVane shares her experiences with racism as a person of color. As a Black woman, she was excluded from the private parties and social gatherings of coworkers. So, DeVane says the African-American community would hang out together to get away from ‘being Black in Bloomington.’ Support for The Bicentennial Journal and …

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 is focused on words from prisoners sent or smuggled from inside. From the jail in Evansville, Indiana, to letters from participants in Operation PUSH- the still-ongoing prison strike across the Florida department of corrections- to a collection of poems from our local jail, prisoners are finding ways to share their individual experiences and collective resolutions with those of …

Yesterday, the Monroe County Community School Corporation voted to end a contract with a text-book provider over racist and insensitive content. MCCSC Spokesman Andrew Clampitt says the issue came to the attention of the administration on February 10th, when a parent complained. Clampitt speaks with WFHB News Director Wes Martin about the administration’s decision to sever ties with the educational …

In this episode, we share a phone call and three short essays from Timothy Smith. Smith spoke to us from inside Cook County Jail, the most recent place he has been held over ten years in custody. Timothy has been at a several institutions around Illinois, and describes entering prison and specifically Menard Correctional Center. He describes solitary confinement and …

This week, we return to the history of black radicalism within the prison system. You can hear more from Dr. Micol Seigel and Dr. Garrett Felber about this in last week’s episode. Early in this episode, the prisoner reporting on Operation PUSH, the sit-down strike in Florida’s prisons, mentions being transferred to a different area in order to prematurely stifle …

This episode, we start out with a statement from Anastazia Schmid, a prisoner in the Indiana Women’s Prison. She walks us through a brief history of how prisons, and specifically the modern practice of prison slave labor, came about. She also talks through some basics of how prison serves to isolate those on the inside, and the importance of outside …

On Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the city of Bloomington invited the Rev. Harold Middlebrook, a peer and close friend of Dr. King’s to, make the keynote address in the Buskirk-Chumley theater. Here, in full, is Rev. Middlebrook’s address on where we’ve come, and how far we have to go, as a nation.