wellit is my great pleasure to

be part of this panel. although role is mostly just as so that we can talk about this pathbreaking and fantastic looking book. i must say books through bars, stories from the prison books an effort to bring books to incarcerated readers and to build communities is both within our vastly overssiracialised pro ities within and without. my name robi associate professn ■the department in the departmet

of history. obviously and also africana studies at stony brook university book on the prisoners rights movement in texas cas, and that is how i encountered mac markie, who put together this incredible book. and.let me take a moment this is a r to bring together not just education scholars a ao have experienced the degradations of incarceration. itself. and then risen above it. through theireir writings. so i want to begin by introducing lorenzo cumbo ervin. rights activist and an author.

he was a member of the nonviolent coordinating committee, the black panther party and concerned citizen for justice. and in response to many credible $vthreats to his life stemming from his politicalled to cuba an he was later extradited to the united states, time in the federal prison system. but this did not deter ervin. he remained politically active while inside as many incarcerated do. for we know, we not just create but we also, within our prisons, (ñ themselves. through public challenges as prs often themselves as, writers or

what we call jailhouse attorneys, urban lorenzo secured his own release after 15 years. and ■lco, active. and i'm very excited toat he wre this book and his introduce youo lauren associate professor at cedar crest college. lauren has taught us and women's hiy incarcerate rated people for over eight years. a really monu mental important task. one thing we know aboutn is thas the states reduce it,number onee issue that reduces recidivism and people to prison. she was a fulbright scholar at the university of rome, and she is the author of partners in

gatekeeping how italy shaped the u.s. immigration policy over ten pivotalq/ years. 1891 to 1901. she is also the editor and contributor to managing migration in italy and the united appeared in labor studies andss history perspectives on history, world history connected and most recently, the journal of american ethnic history. and let me also say this panel is sponsored by lotsa an we want to acknowledge the lab and working class origins of this book. and last but certainly■ is david, although we all know hias markie, who is the coeditor of books through bars story, he's from the prison books movement. is a lifelong activist as well as an academic.jk

■khe worked with concerned family and f abu-jamal. earth first, thesh in memorabler organizations, small and large. he has volunteered at several prison p which this book has arisen, and he helped estab the ashville prison books as well as he mac has served as the book was a board member of the southern labor studies. the executive assistant for the labor and working class history association, and he is currently a postdoctoral■: fellow at the university of south carolina now where he is wog a graphic history of the brotherhood of timberuction with the historic new orleans

■ ask a series of questions and then invite all of you to be in conversation with us about whatugh the univey press of georgia 2024. can tell us about the effort to bring prison education and ■vprison literacy to incarcerate p i. i would start with three quotes that have always sort of inspired me and i think might be philosophy of behind this project. the first is by george jackson who said abo reading in prison that quote, he met marx lenin, trotsky engels and mao when he entepr and they redeemed him. the idea of reading and education as redemption. and of malcolm x said something

i've often reflected upon the new vistas that reading has opened to me. i right there in prison that reading had changed forever. the course of my lif as see it today the ability to read a walá inside made me some long dormant alive. and then finally, mumia abu-jamal, who said that just because your bod in prison, doesn't mean that your mind is÷r free. and even though this thought might be trite, ere is some truth in it because we are our minds in the deepest sense. we are spirits. when you think a person or of your own body is not this a prison in sense? are we not in a prison ofime? we age, we lose our facility ease. but that doesn't cannot

overcome and do that mind and s. we r beyond. and it strikes me that this exactly what this book does, it reaches beyond. so let me start this conversation by asking each you to reflect on how you came to this project, the philosophy behind work in this project. and to talk a little bit about the scope of the book itself. can i can start here and i think th a moment where we talk about what bos, pro kind of get to the heart of the text and i do want to take a second and thank the uah, thank the labor working class history association, uga press and nathaniel holley for making this happen. i also want to that this book would not have been possible without my coeditor moira and

all of the people who contributed chapters, including my fellow panelists. right, lornd lauren and also to the people who volunteeredprograms over the ye. and, of course, to all of the incarcerated people, including incarcerated people themselves. and when you crack open this book, he struck by the art and stories. it's an attempto have been invos movement or are affectedment and why they think it matters. i do wt clear that the people whose who are served by this movdisproportiond working class people. and i also want to strs that the overwhelming majority of the people who volunteer for these also poor and working class. in short, this is who we d do 'e not working for hire right? many of have other interests. and in order to understand poor and working class people more

fully, you have to be able to acknowledge and look beyondd ou, as it on to what are prison books, programs like give that general framing and then i'll kind of hand it off to lorenzo and lauren. so this is a book about a social that in many ways has flown under th radar for 50 years. the prison movement is comprised of a diste group of people who send free books to incarcerated. and over the lasthis movement ht hundreds of thousands of free inside hundreds of thousands of letters thousands letters from people inside, askings collectively. these programs are the largest secular, not for ■ ■gons that endeavor to get reading material into the hands of incarceratedest of our knowledge, there's been no work that hasse attempted to document

this movement and to introduce this movement as a whole, to the public. so of thre this movement has probably fallen under the radar is because of the puerve right. this population is designed to remain invisible to be forgotten by the public. and of course, i'm talking ab p. but the people in this movement to not forget our fellow important because the united states has the largest incarceration rate per capita in the world. in other words, we imprison our citizens at a higher rate than any other country. and i just think, even though i'm sure many you are aware of this, it bears repeating, institute, there's currently 1.9 million people incarcerate unit. and black and brown people disproportionately incarcerated. and some states like new jersey, have discrepancy res high

as 12 to 1, meaning black. brown citizens are 12 times as likely to incarcerated in those states as white citizens. well, let's shift backo ebook. the first part of the book. ourf the needs for prison books, programs clarifying that these programs ares of the people on e ently being met by the state or through private enterprise. in other parts of the book, we discussed censorship and some obstacles to tchinning. inside their sections. written by vickie law, givi a [@e delong and rebecca ginsburg and others on experience of teaching inside as well as tinc. speaking about the obstacles to and the relationship between the student and the teacher while origins stories of some of these programs, including asheville prison books and appalachian i was one of the co-founders of

the asheville prison books prison program, prison books program in the entire south. entire southeast and were operated on a shoestring budget and we didn't give up. actual prison books is still books to incarcerated people. in fact, there are now multiple programs operating in the south and several of■8 those can connt their origin story directly back to asheville prison, which we can talk about, if you like. we talk about some of the efforts of the movement as a whole that we've made to cooperate one another and work with one another, learnher. and, of course, we have interviews with some formerly incarcerated people expressing the need for the importance books on the inside. we give various insights into the ways in which people can start their own prison books program,ng a wonderful comic that gives step by step instructions right

we want to make this clear that that happen. you can do this and there's a ■i movements. so that' books programs. i can get into the logistics o't to take away time from my fellow panelists at the moment. we do ndmaterials in addition t. we send maal about. we be the national prisoners reur allows incarcerated people to get contact names and ad may for tht we can't help them with, them w. and this really runs the gamut. th■$ey might get access to readg college classes while incarcerated, art programs, health programs such as ai supp. pen pal organizations like organizations anso on. these are important. there's also wey guides.

many people are not what to do upon release andrate. and this also leads directly to the ivism rates in the united states. so we do our best to fl that gap, right? we do what we where we can, but also, i want ty in this book, i think you'll notice that we incorporate and we try to tell the story and we make this something that's easily rgñadigestible. and to show that this is a part of life. and yes, you know,s is that we do because we love it and we don't have to be you know, when this work in these social justice movements, you don't have to engage in the martyrdom complex. right? you can actually try to make these things enjoyable. and that joy actually brings in more volunteers and the incarcerated that you are connecting with. they will recognize that. an incorporate art and artists throughout the book. we do not separate it into a

different section. right. it's much like life. we allow that interaction to book. so without to, i will turn it ov panelists. all right. so i came a professor of history at ryerson valley community college in jersey and we were the we were definitely the only college in new jersey. and i and i think, you know, rare within the nation to deliver a liberal arts degree program entirely, students who are incarcerated. so that meant that earn the degree completely inside. there was there no course requirements or anything that you had to fulfill in order to earn that■ itself was also a lil arts degree, which was meant that students were taking ■5courses in history, which is w

i encountered them. but but in a broad swath of of the liberal arts including things like studio art other topics that were not typically ught inside made for a variety of of institutional, i think it paternalistic reasons. the biggest thing for mee you was that i'll use a phrase so my students referred to it as real college was their phrase, you know, that they were, they were ing to a real college class and they were very proud of that. and it was a it was day that wae totally just for them and just between me as their professor and and them it was it was really, i think in some ways and, you know, maybe my sense was that it was like thenly of their day that wasn't heavily

controlled and dictated in which they could make choices of their own within the setting right of so i ended up teaching, i taught the u.s. history survey, which was a core requirement. i ended kind of making it a women's history course. i was primarily teaching at a man correctional facility for women which, if you are incarcerated, the state of new jersey and you're a woman and. so it can be from shoplifting to sent to ed and a man and and every person who is sent there initially begins their sentence in the maximum security section of the prison. so that was where i taught. i started in what they call max and in my experience;q max initially was really one of incredible privilege of ngnot bd having not known i directly in p

or, at least not being aware that might been formerly incarcerate■hd, perhaps when i encountered them on the outside. so i walked in with a lot of stereotypes. anzd i also, you know, i remembr early on, you know, when i went to my first training, which took place in max, was at a roundtable where we student leaders the program and en we had, you know, other professors who are going to be teaching in the the classroom where i would later teach, which we called the fishbowl because it had glass on sides. and sitting within theishbow you know, was really the first time i realized, like, there's nothing to be afraid o here. you know, it's emotional because it's a place for a tool to be afraid o the people we're supposed to be afraid of that. even though i would each time i entered max, you know, i would come in, i had to have a clear

plastic bag for my i couldn't have a click pen. this wasn't allowed. i couldn cell phone. i couldn't have a computer. i couldn't have photocopies with, you know, certain like staples that i had. i couldn't wear a bra with underwire. and so if you're, you like know i had i had to routine. but when would go inside i would go tghrd booth and i would sign in and i'd go through the metal detector and then i would wait for■chem to unl■!ock the first locked door. and then i would go through the and then i would walk down the path and then the second door officers in the kind ofed and then i would go into my classroom that at first i realized was like that all those layers, u of securityl the barbed wire and all and all of those stops really were just a tool of power and control.

and they. they were no, you know, they were not making me. and he said i was safer. honestly, in that room with those was interacting, you know, in any other way. humanized, i would say deeply, the people and then the studeencountered espect first semester, they hungry, so hungry for real. and they were the best students i've ever had. this is like chris going to be recorded broadcasts and you usee with me that i always needed 're watching out there, i hope some of them are i know they they recognize me. i remember forhey usually can keep control of it a little bit better days. but i'll say, you know, that the emotional connection was one that just really took me by surprise.

um,teaching these courses a while, but the he students and inside the way they encounter it, particularly the states, w so profound that it changed the way i taught on the outse and, you know, the dynamics when we talk about, you know, the tools of mastery. that people in the antebellum south attempted to ■ruse. this was not a lesson had to this was the lived reality of the classroom. and i will say also that one thing you know is that i never wanted to know, like, why somebody was inside. i would a sense they had been there for a while,■óot necessarily because of their age. everybody honestly, probably a bit older re t they might be on paper inside because it's it's takes a lot out ofre i wour

badges that they had to wear and be a of a younger peon o would be old like, you know, you could tell they had worn that badge every day rmanye cases decades. so i never to know why anybody was inside. like if you were in my classroom on cams, wasn't like, what's your backstory? why are you here? you know? owed me to have really, really deep relationships the inside and to really see the fact that there again, there, the way they encountered the history of the united states and women's history in particular was so transformative to me as a practitioner andi guess i'll leave it there. you know, i do want to talk a little bit and why it was different. program, and that was really profound because so much of vocl

or is, y collections of courses like take this, take that,ce, have that experience. but this, this was really powerful. and worked. and iv'll come back to some of these. i want to go2h to lonz one quesr you, which is in all my work, whether or it's doing oral histories or working with incarcerated people to publish their writing, i i'm always g what they teach. and so one, e about prison educu could tell the audience quickly, but maybe, you know, connecting it was that they've taught you? if there one singular thing.

maybe expert you know like like that tit's. looking for what you don't think you're going to see be open to the i don't know i think you know that sort of and that's suy because again4h like, you know, the breaking open happened in the place that was the most physically restricted that i have experienced on a regular basis. and every time i left, you know, i■u out and i would be distinctly aware that i was able to leave. so i in one of the quotes that you read, you know, abuamal's quote, thinking about the freedom that we are capablemost. ded, the most oppressive be the lesson.

thank you and thank you for reminding us of the humanity that goes into both teaching and this book, because i think it is what it is and poor lorenzo, this question was on sort of the philosophy behind and the prison books program, but important for you, i think maybe thinking, telling us a little bit about yourself and what motivates you to do this work and to be of this project, how you came the project right. well, that's an interesting perspective in. 1969 as a 19 year old. a lot of black civil rights organizer. and i eventually i had run amok if you the fbi, tell a story had been■s to had hijacked a plane o cuba and then after time in

cuba, they threw me out. managed to find my way to and i was on my way to africa. was captured by the the fbi was not the fbi. the state department's agents, the state departmenback to unitd states i to. new york. they put me in a federal house, a detention met martin sastry, who ino about. martin sastry i'd never about him, but he was one of the foremost prison organizers for prisoners rights in the united states. and heas york city because he was suing the state officials atsystem, where he wae literature radical and

controversial literature receive to actually unorthodox relations to have a social and cultural society inside the prisons and so forth, all of which seemed to the prison offia as outlandish as just impossibleo in. but that impossible would certainly become inside the prison system. so i'm talking about is t fight the fight to establish prison literature and it was a fight that had to be done, first of all, a legal fight and a you know, strategic fight in terms of strikes, whatever else, protests that had to be■- done. but out of that process and that of me coming into the prison 't know anything about prison. i've been in prison my life. i was like, lauren, in some respects, i'd never been in prison, didn't have a tough upbringing, but having come

prison and havco at a historical moment,he rights movement, black power, the the left and all of these movements that were around in and early 1970s and seeing being in the presence of and to build a national prison is organization of prisons, mont prisons, rights movement and that movement and the rights won was initiated. against censorship. because when i came to could hae bible they'd give you. they'd2a+ppto furnish you a bible and send you to church. no, thank you. i' take my my anarchist material and instead that you're keeping in seclusion. so we had to fight, file a lawsuit based on martin

sophocles case in new york, which he rights to the new york state prisoners sastry the lawsuitet l system and became a jailhouse with other prisoners. we filed a class lawsuit in a number of5 federal prisons and eventually, though, they took me out, the atlanta federal d they sent me to a place where you're supposed to getd it the ku klux klan jail is the and terre haute, indiana. and even in that prison, the right to receive literature changed fundamentally thnatuof n it. everne in it. when i went to that■h prison, te klan had murdered people there,

both the guards and, the prisoners. and it had been covered up for years. and in. there an anti klan rebellion. and interesting thing about all of this preceding all of this was the fact thathamanagedn officials to give us trevolutior literature that people had ordered for years d ' kept, youn the in the warden's ofce they we forced them the court forced them to give to us, forced them to allow us to create a cultural studies program. as a resulof t bk, the book is a is a weapon. a weapon, not just a tool of educatio weapon to change the world because people who have not hadasic education, people

who have been forced to live in ghettos. people suffered from ofracial o. through the"7 book, through political education, was themse. live the sorry, thug■/h living a circumre your life is in danger just for reading a book, you can go to solitary confinement years. you could be beaten to death by guards. you could be stabbed and killed by racist prisoners. and you had to beit for the boo. the right to receive the book. the right to read the right to

talk about what you you have read. this was the result of martin scorsese's case and all the lawsuits that found after that. and there were changed, the even change the federal judiciary. so when we talk about the progrm well, first of all, you had to receive books. and we understood this going in a life threateninsituation sita but it's the book that you want to read, not that they want you to read. prison officials wanted to break inside by the ofogical

stimulation that's what i use solitary confinement toyou had u going. youhe saw if they could break yu and they could force you to accept the■ regime. yeah, i'm not talking about. nazi 'm not talking about the st union or, younoi'm talking aboud states. they created pros camps, behavior modification. they called it well, they tual■0 had doctors and prison officials, many times asf+ne woy innfto accept whatever they were doing. and they didn't always didn't y. so when you look at it i a fight to these

however and we were able to fight lead a nationwide legal ao give us as ihave free dissslturd educational programs th programe they only gave you what they felt like givingsed to what you needed. you needed to know who know thae a human being. you needed to know that can get out of prison and lead a prosperous life, could get out of prison and and raise a family. you needed tocause they were tro program you as a trump run program program i'm away from deter them know what they're trying to

do is to make you come b make ye institutionalized. so the whole purpose of having prison literature that was so controversial, that was where it was even subversive, as they say, the whole purpose of was that so that you would■oave a different way of viewing the world so that you, as george jackson used to say, would mentality before the revolutionary and cultural mentality. and from that standpoint, you know, it wasknow, that these prn books they were't just books, they were instruments. that's the were able to sacrifice necessary.

and times came that was it was almost on the verge of death some people did prisons just for the right for books bee books broke down the regime. they brokeow censorship. it almost broke down thealbecaue able toof the attica rebellion with so much death. and sometimes i have to say. but death is it's like a war. a war is necessar't believe in . i'm you know, in that sense. but i under that you have to authority and you can't oppose unj you don't believe or you're led to believe that you're most

despicable piece of humanity and you have no right to resist. so from this standpoint, we can say, you know, that, that, yes, the entire program where we books, forcing ther0 officials, first f all to give it to us, to give us a prison library p9ce of the prison library. these all of our books, but we we had more books than they did in the prison library and we forced them to put our books on the shelves and allow prisoners to check out ourthem forced. you understand what i'm saying to take the prison books to go to solitary confinement and give those to prisoners who wanted them and many of those prisoners started

reading books were the firstand reading these books. anged them. those that were. helped us destroy ku klux klan in tyrone. to my sentence.additional to the klan rebellion into your. not ashamed. hey, i'm thankful

that i could play thathad not fe getting out of prison this year. i to spend the remainder of my life two plus 45 years for my of resistance so i learned rl within the prison structure that the boocen sustaining and■m maintaining prisons as an institution as an institution■e institution. and i would do it again if i had the opportunity. i think that evenreinstated pri.

and the state of a book i wrote in anarchism and thela revolution has been banned, but it bugac me what we have done and made me understand after so many years, how we had defeated government and fe prist racist guards, and all of these things started to happen as a result of us getting■zhe book and the book changed the world for us and and for this country and then it respects at that time movement was based on the civil rights movement. they had seen it for years. it seen they seen the protests. so on. they understood thatthe power te =norm their own lives. some of them would never get out of prison. i could have been one of them. be quite honest.

me of we knew we we may never get out of prison, but we wanted to know the truth because we understood e tr free. apyou life. i'm■7cx sorry. that you didn't ever do this sort of, but you can go a lot of years in your and you never discover what■n y. ■ere meant to■é . what happened to me in prison? the struggling made me a revolution period for the rest of my life and activists. i came out of prison and started

organizing police brutality, started organizing against racism. we filed a lawsuit, which i led, which i did the research for. we sued the government of th■ójz because years, black people ned rights. in. that city. i used in the streetsjustice ton chattanooga, tennessee i'm just. i'm not a evil. i'm just an example of what can happen if you allow people ion and if you allow people to be human beings, if you allow people to have a

voice. we've got to transform thispris. we take the resources that for the prison system and use for tm the communities that those based on poverty■■jái poverty. we need to educate prisoners inside, yes, but we need to fight, get them outside so that they have the chance to have a life. i'm more worried. the officials in government being killers than i am about these people in the prisons that i was in prison withh. those people have no choice in many respects they are led down the path to do criminal activity. but thgovernor, government officials arrange forstematicald it. they arrange for police

brutality to have that kind of army. and so when they go to prison, it's what they expect. they're told that this all thd for. we have to say that we will take censorship even in this period, we will not accept it we will book and we are taking the book and we are reaching people andg to change their lives. and we are to fight the officials every step of thes tht every step of the wayso if we 's the first of its kind. it's exceptionally well■■ writt. it has a story that would your perspective on the prison system, on the police and even on the allows these things to take place this is supposedly a democratic e live under. then how can you explain tosolis

on end when? the united nations is this it's in violation of international ■1áo can you explain to me why people are being beaten in key or hung neck neck and the prison guaru are let go? is it happens is a normal've gos country with the prisonyou woulo the liberation would be a book i didn't believe in at first i couldn't understand it how is cpossibly r somebo t me that the pen is mightier than■' i thought that was i thought it was until the struggle the prison books movement started inside the prisons. then i understood it.

then i understood it. sometimes this is what's necessary. so it isn't just astion of prison education alone. and although i'm going to tell you, the prison officials in the states are not willing to spend thepediency and for other give n to people. and so this is why we have to help these books to pass, becaus we to give the education, the legitimate educatio to that they don't get from the state or■b from federal or really, really important ng this. we're doing this people. we're trying to changeeople. we're trying to give communities and people arying

to challenge the authorities communities. police terrorism is just seeing. but it's always been. and you think the book how can the book all of this a book of ideas, howe can it change the world? people read this book. they will be changed. they'll go and tell others. others will read the book and they'll be discussions. just like in the prisons. outside the prisons, there were discussions about what all of this meant. we've learned about what the prison officials have to people we've learned about what are like. and now we are in a position to change to change it because we care. it matter.

care?oesn't care and this is societies, how you build movements and i■ws the fundamenl order of things where you think nothing can changin an environment where it seems like it's just slavery. we proved from our strugglin the 1970s, we proved it. we defeated, the priso regime, we destroyed censorship, we cial and culture programs. can i get some wipes or something? tissues, tissue? ■yeah. she's got some because she's been doing all that■m you you. know, lorenzo, what i really love about what you're bringing everyone here is, the idea oftrs transforma atransformation and y

en and finally transforming book eh and every one of those that this program and mac and others have sent into prison and in your education, theabolitionist act. but they began with seed. righ mind, as mumia said to reach beyond so it's very profound. i want to turn to mac in a moment. lorenzo,'m curious. you tell us when you were first encote books during your incarcerion,haname a couple of e really transformive r you something deeply influenal, course, the prison the prison letters of george jackson, but also some of james baldwin's book, books by by even eldridge

cleaver, who was a tremendou itht have been a lunatic, but he's a tremendous writer. and and i don't know there were others. there■per really affected me were books i received fromin and other bookst that i didn't even know anything about it ever existed the the russian ñywar, anarchists role e russian civil war the the the 19th 86 spanish civil war a had lot of blacks going to spain volunteering on behalf of the the the spanish people who were g confronted with terrorism by the fascists. you know, franco and the fascists, all these things. i didn't know anything about it. i didn'. and of course, a variety of black literature, which is iabud because of the black power was

was put out as well, you know, that prisoners were not given access to, as they claim, this subversive, you know, you ba■3ne literature a threat to states to )5say institutional security and when. i got access to the books what we usedo d get books somebody else would get books, we'dha them around. and prison officials didn'tthe't necessarily stop it is they didn't know it was just too■u 'e following around. so we'd get and just passrt talg about it and having secret discussions, you everything at e point the others saying is not designed to for mitch, you're thinking, it's designed to break your mind at one point, the

prison tried to go back to the silent treatment, which meant to even speak to anybody and weto defeated that by, just ignoring. and, you know, they threatened to take you in solitary confinement as a form. but if they take anybody. at's the thing. it's like the whole thing of when somebody is being arresd ould go and grab them and arrest them, pulth away from the racist police and the sheriff and so forth. an they them back into the ranks of the people and this was a similar kind of thing just by not going along with an unjust you threw the officials into frenzy you threw them into situations they didn't ow wha toank you, lorenzo. i mean, that all goes into creah

within and without. i'm thinking about a book, not as a product, a process. mac,6h i wanted to ask you and lauren, you as well. i thin■king back to the orange ends of this plittle bit about t made you what made you attraed d bringing readers? what does it mean to you do this and teaching as well and then the third part of that is that what is it? what does it mean to tcommunitye of p' mean to the reader within those prison cells? what kind of community does that create? what brought you to this project and how did it so great questions and i do want to make a quick point that the most

requested book from that, there's dozens of prison books, programs throughout the united states and hands down the most commonly requested book is a dictionary hands down. it's not even right. and many people are quite surprised by that. and says something about inple's lack of understandinge6 who are incarcerated are workitd of make a change in their lives. right. and this access to a dictionary isif critical to that. and the fact that we get many requests for dictionaries nationwide shows the and. and, you know, in the lack of funding in the educational system, i kind of lead people down this path to incarcerate nation right now. i think e test statistics are approximately 60% of incarcerated people are

functionally illiterate. right. so but back to your back, your question. what drew me personally to the hat i started out, uh, lookingm9or political d then after a short period of time i kind of began to realize that in a really incarcerated people are prisoners of a political system. right. and soe me kind of look and move to a more general ing incarcerated people, helping them get the things that theyhey're articulat they want and they need. and in terms of community there is a lot of community that prison books, programs foster and and there's multiple ways to look at this and can look at it in terms of thee programs fostee inside which lorenzo has kind of talked about a littl think, you,

getting access to the books on the insideop share, books on the inside, when and where possible. thlso ideas they receive in the books and there's chapters on that in the book where other formerly incarcerated people rock, tornado talking that experience. quinn had a harris as wel ther'a fosterg a commun right. and that's important. but it's also letting people on ■■uonhe forgotten. right. and that's an i some people. this may be that letter that they get in conjunction with receiving a book or the book that they gett they've had in years. years. right. and letting them know they are not forgotten that a set that is community building at its core. right. and then in terms of the community on the outside,

there's multiple ways and that works right. and one of the one of the ways to look at that is this is fighting a system that seems so overbearing and so over powerful, so, soowerful that coming together to do something right and on able to take action in this way really does foster sense in thae functioning to work through this system and you know, foranpeopls movement, it isn't the be it i't evything tt d they may be d in other social movements. this is just one thing that they do. right. but in this in this one thing, they can come■á ther. and there is a sense of community through the book packing parties that you might have ohe meeting days where looking for where you'e'to package up these. when you're reading the letters, thee artwork that you receive from incarcerated peop know, and then the other side of it, where you're trying to have community

that may be fundraisers. right. we talk a little bit about about that as well. , and you're trying to kind of incorporate people into this project or maybe some of these they're busy theyartist in a di. and what they can do is they can they can contribute flright? that's how they can contribute and be a part of that process thated to do that. and you're involving people in the community they can interact. and then also in terms of the families of incarcerated7 peopl. families of incarcerated, they cannot send books to incarcerate loved onesnally. they need an intermediary. it has come from a bookstore and approved source. and if they don't have the resources to don't want to purchase through one of the big ñrconglomerates, what have you, prison books, programs, offers the ability to do that. and then but it also fosters the

sense of community where they're able to come to a place where th understood and thus isolated from the other people, them because we're to consider that shamef someone w's incarcerated, right. and so this is a waybr that bar. so there's many ways in which we we foster community through these um, thank you. yeah so i was actually kind of trying think and remember like, how did i get to start to do this and my entry and my you know relationship to■ books bars really a bit the you know of the contributors to t was i wast my textbooks insid'm sure we caf you know, those of us that are in classrooms now or can remember from our own, you know, we sometimes thest like is like the last thing you

might to read. but found so i use the eric foner is give me liberty■h and u know i got to give a shout out to w.w. norton. need for teaching these courses and they got us the donations that we needed. and then i started teaching when i actuly class, in part inspired by my sort of subversive attempts to make women's history for inside. and i thought, this is a, this needs to be its own separate course. the curriculum as a required then i had the textbook there. but one of the issues that we tuallys tracking and sure that then the people in the courses have the books that they needed, which is another layer kind oto the story you know, and we've been talking a lot, i think about the way in which the bureaucracy of prison is meant is intended to break humanity of the people inside and to reinforce their they're lesser

than their youof power. so one of the issues that we had ks kept getting lost and, misplaced. and some of that was is i think, another way to either directly or indirectly right through the kind of chaos machine is of deny that accs. i a semester where it women's history where half of my students had a book that ended halfway through the semester right they had like the volume one and when we were teaching e e. and so i had to figure out how to deal with that. and i, i felt awful, you know, for these, these studes that like, they literally like to stop at eight. and we were going to chapter 15 or whatever and but we, you know, we figured it out. i mean, there's one point where the books were like in somebody's car, in thei was alwi was always tracking where are they? were they where are ? were.

and then i was always to get more because the you know, my students used to tell me particular that the library, they were like the library isn't anything good in it for us. and but the what you know what the textbooks brought right again was like, i'll say that real you know, that realnectiono an intellectual world which they were a part and, i think, you know, thher thg to i was just kind of thinking about wha. i didn't hear, you know, again, like i actll gave they picked me one year to give the address. we graduated people so weould these graduation ceremonies inside and again speaking to the academics in theuation is in some ways, right? i mean, for the people gradng each and there's it's a bit of a can b that all the words that u say at a graduation about all e thgs of its meaning that

inside a graduation inside was it was all true you know it was all true. d our valedictorian that year want to shout out because so if she's out there somewhere brenda because she was one of thet had, she hf sued the state jersey to overturn law because she was sentenced as a 16 year old to life anderturn that sentencing. right. sentenced to life in prison. and iat she has been released as of, i think, two months ago. and that's where she is. i hope maybe if she's out there, can come and find me. i would really love to to reconnect with her, but i want to say, you know, that some of the things that were meaningful, you know, thinking about really were, you know, someone like

brenda comes to mind is because is one of the things that i, i ended up doing and changing my actism is like. so i went and testified in front of legislature of the city of new jersey when a because. their constitutional right to vote after their release that was still you know on the books as of i'm not sure how many maybe i think it was around 2019 that a bill up to restore voting rights formerly incarcerated people in new and i testified ithat ithose legislature which was very intimidating someone who doesn't normally feel intimi and there i reunited with a former student that was that was pretty special. and iknow, in part like that ws

■rtransferred me into i think wt nd talking about as a person who takes action a does it know in ways that are i hope you know made a difference■ but you know the other way that this you know changed me and changed maybe my community and the outside rate was in of, i'll say some leadership within the program i that anybody who taught excuse me history inside did it that ty no difference between inside outside courses and in particular that the skills and of the historian were essential and that they were practiced in the course anaten seriously as historians in the course. and then it wasn't dumbed downwe

right, is really an unfortunate hallmark. a lot of inside education athati did a lot of gatekeinwas teachia lot of conversations with tho instruct■eors a lot of observations. i went inside and observed. i observed math class once already, you know, but i did take these as opportunities as think the mentoring and the conversations around, what it means■g to teach and what it, yu know, also to teach within a setting where. that again, the dynamics of power are so different and let o kind of, you know, control that as as instructors. so i'll say that. and then, you in leadership of the program actively teaching inside

anymore, you know, when i started my career to college and i think i know, within. one of my big missions a long time, i'm no longer there, but one of my big missions really was bring the community, you know, the experience of 3000 students right to elevate that existed which in some ways ■t they're not totally dissimilar. maybe there's a bit of a venn diagram ovef the prejudices around who attends or the prejudices whwho incarcerats and then, you know, in the in those ideas eric. so some of that direct activism which has resulted in policy changes and it's in the labor and working class history association as one, one place, you know, where we're really to ■ébuild access and inclusion for

scholars, stude. be, you know, who might access ti■ze fi i'll you know, i'll say that is one thing that i'm pretty inspired in part by this work and and so that's what i want to leave time i know fha do also we time for the audience and. i'm mindful tso here's what i'g to do. i'm just to package together the final or so questions i had. then i want to really turn it over to the audience and maybe, maybe don't immediately respond to my questions unless it's a good intersection. one, because this is lockjaw. i want to talk about the relationship between the book and this book's through bars program and the labor movement and the working class struggle that is embodied within our prisons and our in our■e jobs.

and of course, the prisoner rights movement is also a labor nationwide prison in 2018. so if if someone wtsabout relatd working class life a second i just wan t artists creativity. this book just littered with we were talking earlier it reads a zine and i■ think mack had pointed out in his introduction and i this book initially that it had a kind of punk behind it. so if we could talk a little bit about what artistic creation by the incarcerated means both within the book and to those creating that art. and then i also want to try and touch because the book as a chapter, lgbtq communities within, the prison

of which there are many, in fact, that's a■áas our public sd then last question is what chleking particularly about the role of of censorship. so any of those four questions are my final four but why don't we turn itience and maybe they'll be some conjunction or if you■2hose fors good to me and iwe have a theren so i'll be asking you to speak into thisicrophone directly so let me open it up to so while while people e ru questions, i'll go ahead and some of the last question that you asked. we dooes contain an interview instance with zoe

urrently incarcerated person, and it talks about zoe's struggle to br choosing and. also, the to information and material that the struggle that zoeaccess to that material and this is a problem within the right you think about howoutside in the outside worldd think about how that then becomes more concentrated and more dcu on inside. i don't i don't think i really need to explain that much makes a lot of sense. and so this a common fight that h many prison books programs are currently involved with k in terms of, you know, ad there's there's a long history here. i know that asheville prs when't remember the exact year is sometime around 23 perhaps when

transmison books grew out of the program. and their their mission is insih the material of# their right. and they specialize in that material. so specialize in that? and almost every prison books program to make sure that queer folks on the get as to the information that they need. and indeed, there is a growing censorship. and ceship iother aspect of this project that prison books,censorship a regular basi. i'll be, in fact, ■f"speaki%yngn conjunction with avid books in 9■:georgia in about a week or s. and avid books currently has a lawsuit fighting the censorship material that they have been s is a growing, growing problem we.

back i'll touch on your ■x■8ceorship point for just a second and it goes back to something that mr. lorenzo said about, how his book was banned inside and and it probably wasn't banned everywhere. inside, right. it was probably banned maybe in one or two places, maybe 20. but my point that what is is not uniform within the system, right? what's banned depends largely on 're at and the leadership and sometimes what's banned getsership comes in. and it can be incredibly frustrating to sort of navigate who lets what and when. so how do you advise programs who are trying to get books how to navigate all the little nuances that come with everyual facility? yeah, that that's a great question. i'm going to say somhi

short because i'm sure mark has a lot more to say. so you know, i had a different role, right? we for, but we were often trying to get documentary ese. i was a tough one eag having regular access to the right textbook and current te■xtbos yoknow, that weren't yanzhou out of date. so we had, you know, an education office and dossier and new jersey department of corrections or has education division. and so sometimes would experience that where like n that seat there was, there was a lot of resistancesmoother. so i found a lot strategies of finding, you know, of just trying to find whe right? how who i could go to and how i could. against my nature of being sweet and cy and knowe nice, little sweet things that i'm usually not in, in trying to to get those books where they

needed to go and find out again, where were the cracks that i could get through? and i was able and, you know, it took long time but the pressure of and that and that kind of like legwork was did yield some good results although not always. and when i do write about a doing something helpful to have a student screen a fi and endedg problem for student because of thponside. so that also stepping back sometimes and realize that i couldn't make things happen. respect people'sn the outside roles and and the fact that they wedfre i and they had to live within that rime. so the carceral is currently i e latest estimates are different ,

and there's multiple levels. right. and so you have the system within there's multiple tiers in the federal system, state has their own carceral system andn countyh online and then states, i mean'g cells in jails. and and this isn't even including when i'm talking about ice, so on. so there'lo systems incarceration in the united states and the system may have certain guidelines then that depends upon is it a institution, is it a medicalins. but then what really ultimately on you able to navigate all of that, okay, if you were successful navigating all that it does ultimately, oftentimes come down to the person in the mailroom how they are in terms fitting those guidelines and. sometimes i've had successe oldt

calling the figuring out and it is in infuriglactually someone e telephone but i've hadt wo i'veo actually get on the phone and cular package, why a particular book was was being kept. one time our program had blacklisted by an institution and they said, well, you know, it' not real. you're not a real bookstore. and i said, well, go ahead and eck. you know, this is this is who are and and they were like okay. well, i'm looking at google maps now. at it is a brick and mortar store. you know, and so and those the good stories, right, where you're at always the case. sometimes you just get a package back and it justnformation about it was rejected and you have to pay to get that package back and then you pay to send that package ba in. these are prograo

not have a lot of money trouble in fundraising. so same package three times and you're not even certain going to get right. and so have to try and fi■tgure out and ascertain why something was banned. and sometimes we things we don't even know that things get rejected. right. just when we happen. know we do our best. sometimes we're able to check things and we know that people are getting some packages because we get people writing letters saying, hey,■"■0 listent was so great. i, i understand you didn't have the books that i requested and i was a little bummedoks i reques. but it turns out you made some great choices and really loved what i read, so thank you for sending. so we know that, you know, these thingspe through and that they do make a difference. but it is very difficult to navigate thatlj system. some states have banned books lists. some states do or at least do not have ones that they're willing to admit to. sometimes you're able to work

things out wita warden. other times you can, you know, try for years and it's never going happen. it is infuriating. that's the pe lawsuit as lorenzo has talked abt.and you know, which is alsot avid books is engaging with now. engaging in lawsuits. we have a piece in the book about he laughs, challenging the right to send books on the inside and sometimes that's what it it's not the actual lawsuit itself. it's the threat of the lawsuit. it's finding a or a legal entative who's willing to stand, who's suing and say, okay, we'll write ts ake sure tt they, you know, force them to articulate their rationale for banning th. sudden, you get a letter, oops, we made a mistake. right. je /s all extra work. that's all extra■98ñ work. and that's actual work for people who are doing this in

their free time. oftentimes getting paid. right. and they're already maxed out. and all the other things that they do and they've already tried to send this package in, it's just extra work. andhe best we can and we try to challenge these things as we can. and we have the assistance her organizations who we're able to rely onor legal help and advice, and then we communicate through with one another, which we talktext. right? we have a listserv. we're able to say, okay, you know currently is everybody, you know, having trouble with this able to navigate that? you know, what's helpfu wt'not? and so once one person figures it out, now everybody how to navigate that. but it's maddening in short to we do we have maybe question at time but i'd like to get another question. the audience.

they're free to i'll start well lorenzo maybe you should help us with the last word i did that question about the connection of this book and of this larger project movement, to working class movements, str. you've got a long history of that, maybe. do you want to leave us with some closing thoughts about. what books through bars again really just amazing mac you're and the press you're to complimented on this it's important work as i think lorenzo has attested but maybe if you couldve with some thoughts about what project means for the our struggles in this election and moving forward beyond this election and struggles in our prisons and without well easy question know, you know the

moment that i was talking about in this are similar but diff now repression learned from our struggles and they apply censshnt for in my bo.well the book they stopped it ey they made the argument that it superiority of people being superior to no there's no way that's true but g used in the streets asat is we're at a i tried to do some:óe ago in creating a movement in a way that opposed book banninghelp pe

fight against banning books is the fight againstuse the, as yon this wing is using book banning to try to control what people think on the outside. they talked about what they what ■ode. well, now they're doing it on the outside to trypápeople's vio y politicallystion or whatever the word is. i'm looking for. but to stop you. they stop you to make you thke e government of the power of of of the authorities that there should be no black literature. there should beknow what they cs

period, the black thought a black well, what is this program they've g. they want they don't you to look at black livesatter but they don't want you to look at black lives matter as an important 't want you to think that black people had a history. they don't want you to think that there was aeven. they want to make youhinkha oute in and they want to get in power to be able to do it. we're facing now a prospect of this election producing a person who is a megalomaniac, but more impo with with a program that the wing has project 2025, that hat when their man is elected or woman, which, which advocates may be over the course of time, they'll come into power

with an agenda that will the fundamental institutions of government. it'll change all the institutions, the government that exist now and and, of course, censorship just be one of those things that they'll that will have used to power base. and that's what's happening ele. i'm not telling you to vote for this group for that. i don't believe in that. i'm an first of all, i don't i believe, you know, i have a whole different belief system. but po facing fascism, whatever we believe people be fighting in the street, protestingxq■kite honest. but the majority people don't know what's at simple fact of lg lives, lose people's whole to survive in this country will be confronted with that

kind ofepression that goes on in a prison. they'll turn this country iords. and from that standpoint, it's s that i'm talking about books and do bars is not materll is. the idea the idea is what thepress. and so they keep, you know, theo change fundamentally all the institutions of the country, including widespread voter discrimination and voter suppression. so we're looking at the very thing that we're fighting against, that we've talking ab now have to understand that as a real living to us, tor livelihood and everything, so that we are. thank you, lorenzo. that's very powerful. mac, this is your credleproduct. and as a book, do you have a fin'll close. just to reiterate that it

have been done without you. gay press nate holly my coeditoo all the people who contributed e people who have fought for the rights of incarcerated people andvolund for prison books program. this is an introduction. we hope and we hope that this book will spur people to help us uncover the rest of histories of these programs and show important this indeed the first attempt oc social that's been in existence for over 50 years. we■ñ$$ i want to thank all of you. i want to thank for taking the time to cover this book. i think it's so■= message beyons e■j