Dancing for Freedom

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If you haven’t heard of Amie Dowling, once you see her short film, Well Contested Sites, you won’t forget her.  Why?  She creates dance pieces with formerly imprisoned men and women that touch on all their pain, hopes and dreams, and in addition, raises awareness about issues of incarceration.  I have posted the link for her piece here. 

Amie’s dance background is thoroughly embedded with social justice. She’s worked in Thailand with NGO’s, assisting women leaving the sex trade industry and developed and toured theatre/dance pieces that addressed what she felt were the underlying issues of prostitution:  “class, race, gender inequity, and geographic isolation.”

It was her nephew’s involvement with gang activity and his subsequent incarceration that drew Amie to found the Performance Project, and from 2001-2008 she created amazing theatre/dance pieces on the East coast with prisoners, presented behind bars to an audience including prisoners and their families. 

Now she’s in California.  Here’s Amie working with Reggie from her current piece which follows a group of male prisoners as they make their way through the transition from incarceration to life on the outside.  This 13 minute film was actually created at Alcatraz and several of the cast members were formerly behind bars.  Amie says about the piece’s title that it  “stems from the idea that a prisoner’s body is a contested site, its presence or absence, its power and its vulnerability are all intensely realized in jails and prisons – institutions that emphasize control, segregation, solitude and physical containment.”

I first heard of Amie’s work through Jonathan Shailor’s book about theatre and dance practitioners in prison, Performing New Lives and in the video Jonathan made to give people a flavor of the book, there is the most stunning picture of male dancers.  I might have thought Balanchine.  I might have thought a New York stage.  The bodies are arched and angled and look trained and dynamic.  The feeling is of reaching for freedom and it’s apparent in every sinewy muscle.  Amie’s website is www.amiedowling.com.  And her facebook page about the project is here.

In Shakespeare Behind Bars, I wrote that art has the power to show us and those who dwell inside that prisoners are not “damaged goods.” Through their transcendence into a world without words, where images speak above all else, they bypass –for if only a shining moment–those they’ve hurt, the bars that keep them confined and through art, they recognize that they can soar again.

Voice Inside the Walls

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Two amazing young women, Samantha Stewart and Kayla Kahn, who hail from San Diego, have a mission.  It involves an 135 mile walk for a cause they are passionate about. They want to raise awareness about sex trafficking and forced child prostitution. 

Samantha and Kayla contacted me on LinkedIn and then we talked on Skype, and once I got over the shock of how young these two gutsy Californians are, I was sold:  they are using their own lives, experience and skills to bring awareness to a subject that often sits in the dark recesses of our minds or that we reserve for sweat shops and foreign countries.  Kayla and Samantha are not interested in an academic discourse.  They want to rescue these victims.

 

They have already begun to create a documentary and you can see clips here  They’ve been at this for four years and have been the subject of over 50 articles in the U.S. and abroad.  They are determined to have safe houses in every state.

Their next step is to set out on a 135 mile walk from Belmont Park in San Diego to the Santa Monica Pier in Los Angeles, filming their 22+ miles a day, six day journey. They plan to leave on November 27th, trailing banners and posters along the way, attracting news reporters, and more importantly,  “Each step” will “send out a positive vibration for change,” as they let people know that these children need to be rescued; that they exist in all parts of the country; are in need of housing, medical treatment and therapy.  A clip from their website is below:

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Samantha and Kayla sent me a sample of what they found in 30 minutes of researching.  One escort site shows pictures of Nicole, age 21 with a cell phone number, and on other sites, they found the same girl, now called “Bianca” with new phone numbers.  This is apparently a very common way to disguise a girl’s identity and hide the fact that she’s been drawn into the sex trade against her will.  This is the kind of clue that would get Samantha and Kayla to dive into undercover work, partnering with local police to rescue victims.

For more info, go to WGBH’s facebook page and read about the sex trafficking crisis.  This time folks, it’s not in Thailand, but in Boston.  It’s in major cities across the country and we need to open our eyes.  And support these terrific young women on their 135 mile walk by donating here.

Mural Mural on the Wall

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A couple of years ago I was asked to go outside to a town outside Philly in Pennsylvania, to introduce an amazing film that was premiering, called Concrete, Steel and Paint.  The film took us into the story of the most unusual mural making I had ever heard about– a collaboration in prison between victims of crime and criminals.  Imagine murderers and those who’d lost a child or husband to murder making murals together?  No, I couldn’t either.  I knew a lot about restorative justice — the idea of in some way making amends to those you’ve hurt, be it with group talk, facilitated conversation, service or money.  But I wouldn’t have imagined someone who killed a child and someone who lost her son painting together.  That was this story.  And Jane Golden began this marvelous mural program that has expanded and multiplied.  Read more about it and how it fulfills the idea of restorative justice at the website, here. 

The film was, of course, about healing and I was transfixed watching it, questioning the amazing collision of punishment, remorse and forgiveness. As the filmmakers, Cindy Burstein and Tony Huriza, write on their website about the process where prisoners come together, talk and work with those who have experienced crime,”Finding consensus is not easy – but as the participants move through the creative process, mistrust gives way to surprising moments of human contact and common purpose.”

Because of working behind bars directing plays in prison, I have long known the healing power of art but to see the healing power of ART is incredibly exciting.  Here’s a mural created by prisoners:

  And here’s one created by victims of crime: 

Can you imagine these on nearby buildings?  If you want to see a glorious version, you’ll have to go to Philly but I am happy with this take: http://explorer.muralarts.org/#/mural/healing_walls.

Taking Photos Behind Bars

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So I was visiting a young man behind bars a few weeks ago and saw that there was –let’s call him “the prison photographer” — another prisoner — snapping photos of a mother and her kids.  They stood near the children’s area where there was a TV with a penguin cartoon and a few books and benches.  And behind the “set,” because that’s what it looked like to me, a stage setting, was a mural.  Murals in visiting rooms are actually pretty remarkable.  In this prison there were several murals on the walls, not disimilar to this visiting room at Graterford Prison in Pennsylvania –although not nearly as clean and without tables.

  But the images are their own kind of art.  And prison murals– well that’s a subject for another day — but they are amazing. 

So I asked if we could get our picture taken, and OK I wasn’t technically a family member but a few nods here and a few nods there and we were standing in front of the Project Youth Mural which was yellows and browns with a big banner across muted people representing the men who speak to schools about their lives — Project Youth.  We posed, we smiled, we looked at one shot and then another and we did what everyone does when they get pictures taken — want to make sure it’s a good shot.

And then came the kicker.  There was gonna be a charge to the prisoner I was visiting.  The state was charging the prisoner and oh boy, how much did the photo on that digital camera cost?  I am anxious to see the bill to the young man I visit who makes nickels and dimes behind bars and has to buy all his toiletries at the canteen.  So, photo or bath soap?  And it wasn’t exactly like I had five bucks in my pocket in the prison visiting room so I could slip the photographer some money.  Plus, he wasn’t the one who would be getting the money.  I’ll have to wait to find out but I’m betting $5.00.

But, overall, I gotta give props to these photo programs, called “Click Clicks” in New York.  At least if you’re locked up, you can appear happy and transported to a desert isle and freeze yourself in time somewhere in space — with your loved ones. 


Phoning Home or Feeding Your Kids?

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It struck me this past summer when I went to a hearing at the Department of Telecommunications and Cable (DTC) that communication is not a high priority for prison phone companies.  Nope, you can’t expect a telephone company to care about the quality of contact when they’re raking in money.

Bet you didn’t know for some prisoners — after connection fees, after dropped calls, in other words, after incredible frustration — it costs an average of $30 for a 20 minute call from a Massachusetts prison to a loved one.  Bet you wouldn’t guess that there’s an extra charge to reconnect when a call is dropped. And this is not confined to Massachusetts.

Most of us wouldn’t blink an eye about the number of people behind bars who are unemployed and can’t talk to their kids or husbands or sisters or dads because they can’t afford it.  It wasn’t high in my consciousness and I worked in a prison.  Nope, not in this age of calling everywhere for a fixed fee; not in the age of skype.  But surprise, surprise, as if punishment wasn’t enough, we now have keep-your-loved-ones-away by creating telephone policies that create more pain.  Prisoners want phone calls so much that a standard punishment behind bars has become taking away phone privileges for a week or so.

Prisoners’ Legal Services was asking the DTC to investigate the phone service, both cost and quality.  And after listening to some of the testimony, I was up in arms. My cell phone dropped calls drive me crazy.  My Comcast poor TV reception drives me crazier.  Imagine being in prison and having those problems magnified by gazillions?

One woman testified that she has three sons incarcerated.  She has to get funds from family members and friends to make phone calls.  Another said she has an overdrawn bank account from supporting her friend behind bars.  An attorney testified that a 16 year-old mentally ill client of hers who had never been away from his family is in prison for life; the family cannot afford to call him every day; and he needs that contact to stay sane.

TO STAY SANE PEOPLE.  We are talking about helping incarcerated men and women become better citizens aren’t we?  Or are we back to that same old conversation that punishment rather than rehabilitation is the only point of prison. 

►Here’s a site to find out more about phone justice for prisoners.  And let’s remember, we can only tacklie our criminal justice system, brick by brick.