MOSES Goes to the Library and the Theater
The following books and theater events were reviewed in the five 2024 MOSES newsletters. They provide helpful background on mass incarceration in the U.S. and its effects. The books themselves can generally be found in the Madison Public Library system and often in one of our lending libraries.
Becoming Ms. Burton: From Prison to Recovery to Leading the Fight for Incarcerated Women. By Susan Burton and Cari Lynn, with a foreword by Michelle Alexander, 2017
Susan Burton, who spoke at Madison’s sold-out EXPO Gala on Oct. 5, 2024, has also been mentoring the establishment of a safe house for formerly incarcerated women in Fitchburg. Burton is a pioneer in this area. After a long, lonely, seesaw struggle with addiction, imprisonment, release, relapse, and re-incarceration, she finally ended up in a safe house in South Los Angeles and was able to begin healing from the many tragedies of her life. In the five safe houses she eventually established in that city, she has provided the same opportunities for healing, reuniting with children, and rejoining the community to over 1,000 previously incarcerated women. Her organization, A New Way of Life, is a “model for a less punitive, more effective approach to rehabilitation and reentry.” (book jacket)
The Kernel of Truth, a play by local community leader Corey Marionneaux, premiered in the Overture Center’s Capital Theater on Father’s Day weekend, 2024. The play highlights incarcerated men trying to carry out their responsibilities to their kids from behind bars. It presents the stories of the men, who are imprisoned in a county jail, and shows how they come to understand the complexities of the criminal legal system and eventually realize their own power to build new lives and transform their communities. In the play, each man steps forward to speak directly to the audience, while relevant statistics about racism and other social issues flash on large screens. The audience learns the human costs of the current system, both for those locked up and for their families and communities.
Correction: Parole, Prison, and the Possibility of Change. By Ben Austen, 2023
This book starts with a history of how we got to where we are now — mass incarceration and mass supervision, with severe racial disparities throughout. 1973 was when the U.S. prison population started going up every year, fueled by “law and order” and “tough on crime” policies and politicians. Austen then follows the stories of two Black men who went to prison in Illinois as teenagers in the early ‘70s, as they try over and over to gain parole: struggles fraught with unpredictability and susceptible to racial bias and other extraneous factors. Lastly, Austen tells of campaigns in Illinois and other states to greatly expand the possibility of second chances. Our society can’t afford to continue “our devastating over-reliance on imprisonment,” he says; we must keep trying to change what we’ve wrought.
The 50 is a documentary about giving incarcerated people a second chance by training them as addiction counselors. EXPO sponsored the film showing and a panel afterward at the Urban League’s Black Business Hub in March 2024. The story: In 2006, the federal government ordered California to reduce its prison population by 50,000 to relieve overcrowding. Over 85% of those in prison were involved in drug use. For the first time, the state legislature had budgeted money for rehabilitation, and some determined people introduced an offender/mentor certification program for 50 Solano state prison residents. Success spread the program to other prisons in the state, a success that was due to the counselors’ having to deal with their own traumatized selves first. View the film at the50film.com.
Taking Action for Social Justice Through the FAST Program: A Memoir by a Social Worker. By Dr. Lynn McDonald, 2023
Dr. Lynn McDonald is a Madison resident and social worker who in 1998 established FAST (Families and Schools Together), a program whose purpose is to establish and strengthen bonds between schools and families, between parents and their children, and among parents in the program. McDonald took FAST to 23 countries. She allowed for and encouraged cultural modifications but insisted that the basic outline be followed. It was especially critical that everyone in the participating families felt respected, and that they had a voice. It is amazing what this eight-week program could and did accomplish in very different parts of the world; it significantly improved the school success of the children involved. Madison schools used to participate, but funding has run out; $1 million is needed to reinstate it.
The Worst Thing We’ve Ever Done: One Juror’s Reckoning with Racial Injustice. By Carol Menaker, 2023
In 1976, Carol Menaker, a young white middle-class woman living in Philadelphia, was summoned for jury duty in a high-profile in-prison murder case. The jury was sequestered; she was separated from her husband and her life for the 21 days it took from jury selection to jury decision on the fate of a young Black man already in prison for murder. The jury was told that if he’d been present at the murders, he was guilty. Menaker accepted this information, voted with the rest of the jury to convict, and went back to her own life. But as years went by, she began researching the man she’d convicted and now does what she can to reverse both convictions, as all evidence points to them both being tragically wrong, fueled by racism and politics. She tries to be fair to all involved, but the convicted man is still in prison.