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  • Coming to this SUPER late, but wanted to say thank you for this interview. I read Nancy Kurshan’s “Women & Imprisonment in the U.S.” back when I was first beginning to look for instances of resistance & organizing in women’s prisons. I took to heart her challenge: “This short exposition of the rebellions in women’s prisons is clearly inadequate. Feminist criminologists and others should look towards the need for a detailed herstory of this thread of the women’s experience in America.”

    • @Vikki great to see you any time vikki!
       
      Yes this was a particularly powerful piece — a much needed historical backdrop to the brutal expansion of solitary

  • KayWhitlock

    Deep gratitude to Nancy Kurshan and Angola 3 News for this enlightening and illuminating conversation and analysis.  It shines a terrible but necessary light onto a little-known piece of prison industrial complex history:  the normalizing of torture on a massive scale.
     
    And thank you, Nancy Heitzeg, for making CI happen week after week.

  • Bob Phillips

    Having often visited ‘control units’ during my sojourn at ISP there’s no way A3N’s words, powerful as they are, can convey the special horror that they are. The’air’ on one of those units is so thick with the tension of imminent explosion you could cut it with a knife.
    About eighteen months was the longest I ever saw even the hardiest convicts endure that hell on earth before they began psychologically decompensating, what we called ‘going around the bend.’

    • @Bob Phillips It is no under-statement to call it Torture..

  • Domino14

    Thankyou again Nancy, and to Angola3News, and Nancy Kurshan
    always an eye-opening education

  • ScottieThomaston

    I’m late here… but this is great! Thanks for this.

    • @ScottieThomaston great to see you scottie!
       
      and yes– this interview reveals so much
       
      how have you been???

  • THIS: 
    “The lines between domestic and foreign are becoming increasingly blurred. The U.S. is now willing to assassinate American citizens in its war on terror. The planned new prison in Illinois which will house a control unit that was blocked for a while by a Republican who feared foreign ‘terrorists’ would be housed there.
     
    The so-called “criminal justice system” is really another manifestation of militarism. It’s frightening to think of how many jobs in our society are tied to either the military or to prisons, and how that shapes peoples’ mentality.”
     
    Chilling and vital piece.  Thank you Nancy and Angola 3.

    • @Seeta exactly Seeta..
       
      It’s frightening to think of how many jobs in our society are tied to either the military or to prisons, and how that shapes peoples’ mentality.” —
       
      someday i will do the math.. it will be overwhelming
       
      this is why any discussion of abolition requires an economic component and a new vision for jobs

    • @Seeta hey from Kay btw who is off seeing The Central Park Five.. wish we all were ;(  Soon…………

      • @nancy a heitzeg oh wow — I need to see it too

        • KayWhitlock

          @Seeta  @nancy a heitzeg The great news is that this was the ONLY showing of “The Central Park Five” in Missoula – and the 1,000 seat theatre was packed.  People even yelled at the screen when then- Mayor Koch appeared.  I was stunned.  This attendance in a smaller town – imagine that our nearest “big” town is Spokane, 3 1/2 hours away – was fantastic.  Cheers to the MT Innocence Project which sponsored the showing.  You must see this film.

  • Thanks as always to Angola 3 News for sharing this with us..
     
    This piece gives an especially important look at the genesis of wide-spread solitary use in the aftermath of USP Marion — crucial history.. Thank you