PRISON NATION -Gallery Guide

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Prison Nation—Posters on the prison Industrial Complex BARS & STRIPES The posters introducing Prison Nation make powerful statements about the contradictions that claim that U.S. leads the world in democracy and freedom, while it actually leads the world in mass incarceration. Each of the artists uses the U.S. flag to focus their protest often transforming the stripes into prison bars. 1. America Cedomir Kostovic Offset, 2004 Springfield, MO 2. Detrás Rejas Leslie Dwyer Digital Print, 2012 Los Angeles, CA Translation: Behind Bars We’re Number One, World Leader in Locking Up People 4. Attica Ernest Pignon Ernest Offset, 1974 Paris, France On September 9, 1971, inmates rioted at the Attica Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in upstate New York. The underlying causes were overcrowding, poor food, inadequate medical care, rigid censorship and minimal visiting rights. Four days after inmates seized control of an exercise yard and took guards as hostages, New York’s Republican governor, Nelson Rockefeller, ordered state troopers to attack. Forty-three people died at Attica during a six minute assault. Nearly all were killed—inmates and hostages alike—when state troopers stormed the prison and fired indiscriminately through a thick haze of tear gas. Subsequently, the troopers and Attica guards lied about what had happened and resorted to brutal reprisals, beating and torturing inmates. In January, 2000, a federal judge in Rochester, NY awarded $8 million to inmates who were beaten and tortured, as well as $4 million for lawyers’ fees. 5. Made by Prisoners Sheila Pinkel Digital Print, 2000 Los Angeles, CA 6. XIIIth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution Rodolfo "Rudy" Cuellar, Louie "the Foot" Gonzalez Royal Chicano Air Force; Committee to Abolish Prison Slavery Silkscreen, 1977 Sacramento, CA 7. Prisons: Slave Ships on Dry Land Andalusia Knoll Silkscreen, 2004 Pittsburgh, PA Knoll superimposes an 18th century diagram of a slave ship onto a contemporary prison floor plan. The diagram, from a 1789 British abolitionist pamphlet, “Description of a Slave Ship,” illustrates how African slaves were transported in overcrowded and inhumane conditions during the trip across the Atlantic Ocean also known as the Middle Passage. The infamous Middle Passage was the second stage in the slave trade triangle. The triangle began with slave traders in Europe who went to Africa to collect slaves who were then exchanged for goods in the Americas. From the Americas, the traders returned to Europe with their profits and the slave triangle continued. 9. No More Cotton-Pickin Prisons Artist Unknown Offset, circa 1970s Austin, TX 1967/68 Photo by Danny Lyon One of the most prominent and influential photojournalists of the late twentieth century, Danny Lyon began documenting the civil rights movement in 1964 as a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). In 1967/68, a time when photographers were rarely allowed in prisons, Lyon photographed seven prisons in Texas and published them in "Conversations With the Dead" (1971), including the photograph used here. The photo was used in this poster without Lyon’s knowledge and his name was misspelled. Six years after "Conversations with the Dead" was published, it was used by the U.S. Department of Justice in a massive lawsuit against the Texas prison system. Lyon testified and the pictures were introduced as evidence. The prisoners won the suit and the prison system was temporarily improved. Thirty years later, in a 1995 interview by Nan Goldin, (Artforum, 9/95), Lyon said, "Actually it's supposed to be worse now. Since then, the demographics of prisons have just gone the other way; the prison population has quadrupled since I photographed in Texas a generation ago. Still, my photographs were used by people who meant well to try to change prison conditions and for a while prison conditions were forced to change.” CRIMINALIZATION OF RACE, CLASS & GENDER LEGALIZED SLAVERY 3. USA - Hüter der Menschenrechte? Amnesty International Offset, circa 1998 Germany Translation: USA–Guardian of Human Rights? Police Brutality, Death Penalty, Abusing Prisoners, Racism The first significant expansion to the U.S. prison system and the hiring out of prison labor to private business happened after the abolition of slavery in order to re-enslave thousands of African-Americans. In fact, the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution stated, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Today, prisoners are regularly paid as little as 30 cents per hour, and work for hundreds of U.S. corporations including interests as diverse as telephone companies, airlines and clothing manufacturer 8. Slavery Still Exists Willie Worley Jr. Photocopy, 2012 Polkton, NC Willey Worley Jr. is a political cartoonist who is currently incarcerated in Brown Creek Correctional Institute in North Carolina. Worley’s work has been featured on The Real Cost of Prisons Project website, www.realcostofprisons.org. Willie Worley Jr. #0453523 B.C.C.I #3510 PO Box 310 Polkton, NC 28135 10. Missing: 2.3 Million Americans Nicolas Lampert Justseeds Silkscreen, 2008 Milwaukee, WI 4. 11. We Don't Lynch Them Anymore Scott Boylston Digital Print, 2006 Savannah, GA
Prison Nation—Posters on the prison Industrial Complex 12. I Don't See an American Dream Scott Braley Fireworks Graphics Silkscreen, 1992 Berkeley, CA On March 3, 1991, Glen “Rodney” King, an unarmed African-American motorist, was stopped for speeding. He was repeatedly beaten by Los Angeles police officers as he lay defenseless on the ground. Unbeknownst to the police, George Holliday videotaped the beating and it was broadcast throughout the world. The incident raised an outcry as people outside and within African- American communities believed the beating was racially motivated, excessive and an example of routine police brutality. Although 27 officers were witnesses and/or participants, only 4 were put on trial in state courts. The trial was moved from Los Angeles to the Simi Valley community because the defense argued that a fair trial in Los Angeles was impossible. Simi Valley was chosen because it has a much smaller African-American population and a large number of law enforcement personnel live there. In April, 1992, the four officers on trial were acquitted. This triggered a massive uprising in Los Angeles, resulting in 53 deaths, over 2,000 injured and hundreds of buildings severely damaged or destroyed by fire. Looting and destruction were widespread, including in Latin American immigrant communities. Rodney King pleaded for peace before TV cameras, saying, “Can we all just get along? Can we get along?” In response to the public outrage set off by the acquittals in state courts, a federal grand jury indicted the four officers for violating Rodney King’s civil rights. Two officers were convicted and two were acquitted. On August 4, 1993, a federal judge sentenced LAPD officers Stacey Koon and Laurence Powell to 30 months in prison. ended when NYPD officers pushed and corraled protesters for not complying with an order to disperse. advances, with statements like “I’ll f**k you straight sweetheart.” He then spat on one woman’s face and flung a lit cigarette at them. After Buckle began choking one of the women, Patreese Johnson took a small kitchen knife and stabbed his arm to get him off her friend. The four women were arrested and received sentences ranging from three and a half to eleven years in prison. As of January 2013, Patreese Johnson remains in prison. Buckle was not arrested or charged. As a result of the probe into falsified evidence and police perjury, 106 prior criminal convictions were overturned. The Rampart Scandal resulted in more than 140 civil lawsuits against the City of Los Angeles, costing taxpayers an estimated $125 million in settlements. NO HUMAN BEING IS ILLEGAL 14. Jail is Just a Kind of Warehouse for Poor People Peg Averill War Resisters League Offset, mid 1970s New York, NY 15. To Protect and Serve the Rich Mark Vallen Silkscreen, 1987 Los Angeles, CA Throughout the U.S., laws that prohibit sleeping, eating, sitting and panhandling in public spaces are used to arrest and funnel homeless people into the criminal justice system, thus criminalizing poverty. Some community members have mobilized to defeat these laws. In 2012, voters in Berkeley, California defeated Measure S, which would have prohibited sitting and lying down in public areas. 16. Stop Police Brutality Cristy C. Road INCITE! Digital Print, 2008 Brooklyn, NY INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence is a national grassroots organization working to end all violence against women of color, including state sanctioned violence. INCITE! uses direct actions, critical dialogue and grassroots organizing tactics. 18. Sam & Alec Sabrina Jones Real Cost of Prisons Project, Center for the Study of Political Graphics Digital Print, 2006 Los Angeles, CA 19. Crack the CIA Crack the CIA Coalition Offset, 1997 Los Angeles, CA Ironically, poor communities long reported, and Congressional records prove, that the CIA worked with the military and local law enforcement –under the direction of the Reagan Administration and subsequent administrations–to flood neighborhoods with drugs and weapons in an effort to destabilize the energy and infrastructure of the civil rights movements. The resulting increase in drug use and violence destroyed families, bankrupted communities and fueled even greater expansion of police, courts, detention and incarceration. 21. Who's the Illegal Alien, Pilgrim? Yolanda M. Lopez Offset, 1981 San Francisco, CA 22. ICE Ricardo Levins Morales Digital Print, 2012 Minneapolis, MN The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) was established in 2003 and is the principle branch of the Department of Homeland Security. When the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) was dismantled the same year, ICE took on part of its responsibilities and now handles the deportation and removal of immigrants. Secure Communities is a program formed through a partnership between ICE and the criminal justice system. Any immigrant arrested now is held under ICE detention regardless of whether or not they have committed a crime. ICE detentions can last from 48 hours to over a year. Many immigrant detention centers are privately owned and the longer they hold people in detention the more profits they make. One of the more prominent investors in private prisons is Wells Fargo Bank which owns 4 million shares in GEO Group and 50,000 shares in the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA). 13. End Stop and Frisk United Healthcare Workers East Offset, 2012 New York, NY “Stop and frisk” is a policing method carried out by the New York Police Department (NYPD) based on what is called “reasonable suspicion” of criminal activity—others call it racial profiling. In 2011, 84 % of those stopped by the NYPD were black or Latino yet they only make up 23% and 29% of the general population respectively. Multiple class action suits have been filed in response to this obvious racial profiling. A January, 2013 court ruling deemed elements of “stop and frisk” to be a violation of the Fourth Amendment. This poster was created for the Silent March, held in June, 2012, when thousands marched to demand an end to the criminalization of their communities. This silent and peaceful procession 17. Support Self Defense Free the New Jersey 4 Ryan Conrad Naughty North Collective Digital Print, 2008 Portland, ME On August 18, 2006, four young African-American lesbians from Newark, New Jersey—Venice Brown (19), Terrain Dandridge (20), Patreese Johnson (20), and Renata Hill (24)— traveled to New York’s Greenwich Village where they were subjected to a homophobic verbal and physical assault by Dwayne Buckle (29), also African- American. Buckle verbally attacked the women, who rejected his sexual 5. 20. Dis Belief Robbie Conal Offset, 2000 Los Angeles, CA This poster was produced in response to widespread corruption in the antigang unit of the Los Angeles Police Department, Rampart Division in the late 1990s. Commonly referred to as the Rampart Scandal, more than 70 police officers were implicated in some form of misconduct, making it one of the most widespread cases of documented police misconduct in U.S. history. The convicted offenses included unprovoked shootings, unprovoked beatings, planting of false evidence, framing of suspects, stealing and dealing narcotics, bank robbery, perjury and the covering up of evidence of these activities.
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Page 7 and 8: Dump the Prison Stock!, Melanie Cer
Page 9 and 10: While There Is a Lower Class I Am i
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Page 13 and 14: ORGANIZATIONS, SERVICES & RESOURCES
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PRISON NATION -Gallery Guide

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