Our lyrics will not be on lockdown: an arts collective's response to an incarceration nation

Abstract

Abstract Recognizing the unprecedented proliferation of prisons in the United States, Blackout Arts Collective (BAC), a grassroots organization working to empower communities of color through the arts, education, and activism, launched a national tour – Lyrics on Lockdown (LOL): Slamming the Prison Industrial Complex. As a BAC member, I participated in the production and implementation of LOL and other BAC programs aimed at mobilizing communities to halt the mass incarceration of people of color. This article reflects BAC's effort to fuse art, education, and activism as a means to build public awareness and catalyze action toward ending the prison crisis in the United States. Highlights from BAC's journey to over 25 cities across the United States in five years are described in this piece, including reflections on the performances and interactive workshops in prisons, halfway houses, youth detention centers, and drug‐treatment facilities with detainees and youth. This article examines an innovative arts‐and‐activist inspired program designed to address the root causes of crime, reduce recidivism, and support the educational growth and development of incarcerated youth and adults. Keywords: youthschool‐to‐prison pipelinearts and activismliteracy educationcritical pedagogyprison industrial complex Acknowledgements I would like to thank the Blackout Arts Collective for informing the content of this article and Dr Maisha T. Winn for providing an opportunity to share the work of the collective. For more information about the Lyrics on Lockdown tour visit: www.blackoutartscollective.com and http://socialjustice.ccnmtl.columbia.edu/index.php/BlackOut_Arts_Collective. Notes 1. Advancement Project's report ‘Education on Lockdown: The Schoolhouse to Jailhouse Track’. 2. New York City was the site for the Blackout Arts Collective national headquarters and a separate BAC chapter. Albeit short lived, Blackout also had a chapter in Los Angeles, California inspired by a 2002 LOL tour stop. 3. One in 100: Behind bars in America 2008 by the Pew Charitable Trust Public Safety Performance Project. 4. The Ella Baker Center for Human Rights is a strategy and action center working for justice, opportunity and peace in urban America. 5. Critical Resistance is a national organization in the United States dedicated to opposing the expansion of the prison industrial complex. 6. American Friends Service Committee is a Quaker organization that includes people of various faiths who are committed to peace and social justice. 7. The Youth Justice Funding Collaborative is a national partnership of funders in the United States founded in 2000 with the mission of funding the communications strategies of organizations that advance public discussion, add new information and ideas, and sow the seeds for real change within the juvenile justice system nationwide. 8. George Soros is founder and chairman of the Open Society Institute which funds and implements a range of initiatives in the areas of freedom and democracy, human rights, education, public health, and transparency. 9. Johonna McCants was the 2005 LOL tour evaluator. That year the tour was organized in two legs focusing on tow regions where we had chapters. An artist and BAC member from each region was retained to both evaluate and document the leg of the tour in the other region. 10. ‘Revolutionary Pedagogy’ is the title of a chapter in One Mic: A Lyrics on Lockdown Anthology. 11. Baub substitutes ‘I’ for ‘eye’. 12. UHURU is Swahili for freedom. 13. At the time of publication, the author will be teaching an LOL spin‐off course at Emory University in the Division of Educational Studies with the support of Emory University's Office for University Community Partnerships. She is co‐teaching with fellow REE journal contributor, Sarah Farmer (née Poole). Piper Anderson, former BAC national program director, and Marcella Runell Hall, associate director of the Center for Multicultural Education and Programs at New York University, are teaching the fall 2010 course at New York University. 14. At time of press, Blackout cofounder, Bryonn Bain launched a one‐man production called Lyrics from Lockdown, a multimedia solo performance through spoken word poetry, hip hop theater and rhythm & blues that is an unforgettable true story about Bain's wrongful imprisonment in NYC jails – while studying law at Harvard.