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first person

9 posts in ‘first person’

first person

Hell Is Real and It Is Beige

Some of the greatest violence of prisons is hidden, in plain view, within their banality.

Vic Liu

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first person

The Banality of Mandatory Surcharges

In New York and elsewhere, exploitative court-ordered fees shouldn't saddle a person who is already poor and criminalized.

Eric Paris Whitfield

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first person

Closed Doors

Prison is no place for grief and closure. Yet even as I mourned, glimmers of love and life surrounded me.

Alexander Bolling

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first person

Learning to Live

For incarcerated people, prison education programs can offer not only knowledge but also hope that a different future is possible.

Alexander X

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advocacy

Hope Against Hope

A candid portrait of the experience of fighting for clemency in Louisiana—a route to freedom now severely threatened by the state’s new carceral governor.

Daryl Waters

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first person

Censoring Women’s Health

In prison, even learning about your own reproductive health is met with repression.

Kwaneta Harris

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first person

Misadventures in Mail Censorship

An incarcerated writer’s grievances against a sad new normal of censorship and mail obstruction in a Pennsylvania prison.

K. Robert Schaeffer

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first person

Envisioning Futures

The art of knowing what we’re confronting and revealing who is being made invisible by the carceral state.

Maria Gaspar & Gina Dent

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first person

No Leaving Rikers

For the scores of people who have suffered on Rikers Island, their experiences, and scars, of living through it remain long after release.

Graham Rayman & Reuven Blau

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