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Honor In Ancestry
This piece is called “Honor in Ancestry.” We are all told to respect our elders, and if led down the path completely, we learned to hold our elders and ancestors to the highest degree in… Full Transcript
Mumia Reporting In
Mumia: You heard that I was hospitalized. It is not true. In fact, I haven’t been up medical for about a month… Other speaker: Oh wow! Mumia: …which is rare for me because I usually… Full Transcript
Stricken
“Stricken” by Spoon Jackson. I remember that Sunday morning tune, you snapping snap beans for dinner while rock doves cooed in the Oak trees. I thought you were the strongest person ever. I thought you… Full Transcript
Prisoner’s Families Give Krasner the Win
No city poll, political commentator, or newspaper editor will tell the public that candidate Larry Krasner won the primary elections for District Attorney, not because of billionaire George Soros’ $1.5 million check, and not because… Full Transcript
SCI RockView Restricts Phone Access
Kerry Shakaboona Marshall: Two weeks ago, prison administrators put restrictions on prisoners’ phone calls to their families because of a small altercation among two or three prisoners. After that, prisoners responded by holding the phones… Full Transcript
Peace, Love and Joy
Lisa Strawn, CMS Vacaville, “Peace, Love, and Joy.” At Christmas time, when everyone talks about peace and joy and the love of family, I’m reminded daily how the struggles people face over addiction, violence, and… Full Transcript
Family Day Program Fails to Deliver
The long-awaited Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PDOC) Juvenile Lifer Program’s “Friends Family Day For Child Lifers” was held in late October at SCI-Rockview for the 31 Child Lifers at that institution. Attended by officials from… Full Transcript
The Art of Political Activism
Juvenile Lifer Project: Symbol without Substance
Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s rulings in Miller v. Alabama and Montgomery v. Louisiana, the PDOC Secretary John Wetzel has implemented the Juvenile Lifer Project (JLP) for the child lifers in the State prison system,… Full Transcript
A Little Help
August 8th, 1978
August has barely broken its first week, when police gunfire shattered the tense early morning air. It was West Philadelphia, 1978, just blocks from Drexel University. For over a year, Philadelphia police occupied the neighborhood… Full Transcript
“The Clinton Show”
As the Democratic National Convention rolls out its latest episode of the long-running “The Clinton Show”. It is threatened, as are all old programs, by an audience that has grown beyond the show’s characters. Starring… Full Transcript
The Awakening
This is Jazz the Poet with “The Awakening”. Our society is infested with vicious killers,Stick-up men, hustlers and drug dealers, Elevating crime to all-time highs. Every 30 seconds someone dies. Teenagers tow Uzis, semi automatics,… Full Transcript
Kerry Shakaboona Marshall Reacts to Supreme Court Decision
Kerry Shakaboona Marshall: All the juvenile or child lifers within the state of Pennsylvania, over 500 of them and thousands more across the country, is going to be elated to know that they may get… Full Transcript
The Genius of Huey P. Newton
To those of us who were alive – and sentient, the name Huey P. Newton evokes an era of mass resistance, of Black popular protest and of the rise of revolutionary organizations across the land.… Full Transcript
Interview With Reverend Pinkney About His Transfer
Noelle Hanrahan: So, Reverend Pinkney, tell me, why were you transferred? Reverend Pinkney: I believe that the Department of Corrections got a call from Berrien County Prosecutor Mike Sepic, or even the judge, to transfer… Full Transcript
Epiphanies
Dortell Williams, prison in Los Angeles County. The epiphanies. In the 80’s, American demagogues birth an epiphany. Their tough on crime ideals that led the way to a shameful historic leveling over of our nation’s… Full Transcript
Family (Man is Bastard 5)
It has been over three decades since I last looked into his face, but I find him now, sometimes hidden in the glimpse of a mirror. He was short of stature, shorter than I at… Full Transcript
16. Mother Loss
Relatively tall, mountainous cheek bones, dimples like donuts and skin the color of Indian corn. She left life in the South for what was then the promised land up North. Although she lived, loved, raised… Full Transcript

My name is Heather Jarvis, and I’m calling from the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville, Ohio. I sat down with Heather Koon on a brisk morning by the bars crossed on the window. Inevitably,… Full Transcript