[col. writ. 10/18/13] © ’13 Mumia Abu-Jamal
For most in prison, media doesn’t mean what it means to millions of media consumers.
They read the newspapers, yes; and some watch TV; but what they read and see is something far different than others, for their voices, their perspectives are often missing from the tales told therein.
Except for small newsletters, such as Graterfriends or the Leon Williams Journal, there are few pieces open to publishing either the prose or poetry of prisoners.
Graterfriends is a publication of the PA Prison Society, and the Leon Williams Journal is a monthly publication put out by a Philadelphia attorney; Leon Williams.
There are thus few challenges to the reigning ideology which supports and defends the notion of the burgeoning industry of mass incarcercation. Unread by all but the few who know of such publications, prisoner’s voices are silenced and their perspectives are easily ignored.
This matrix of invisibility serves to strengthen the state’s repressive apparatus, and such silence supports the out-of-sight, out-of-mind nature of American prisons.
One wonders: How can several million people, spending an eternity in chains and under the uncontrolled impunity of the State be invisible?
Simple: look at your TV; scan your newspapers. When and where do you see prisoners? You see them going to courts, chained like little Hannibal Lectors. You see them wearing ridiculous neon-orange jumpsuits.
You may see them in dramas, but rarely do you see them simply as human beings, speaking, thinking, being human.
That’s invisibility. That – in the nation which is the largest incarcerator on Earth.
Isn’t that incredible? Isn’t that stunning?
‘Land of the Free’.
Indeed.
–© ‘13maj