When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace.
–Jimi Hendrix, musician, singer, and songwriter (1942-1970)
June 10, 2018
November 20, 2017
Society Like a Stew
Society is like a stew. If you don’t keep it stirred up you get a lot of scum on the top. –
–Edward Abbey, naturalist and author (1927-1989)
October 17, 2017
Prisons Elsewhere
Baz Dreisinger works at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, Where she is the Academic Director of the Prison-to-College Pipeline program, offering college courses and reentry planning to incarcerated men throughout New York State.
You don’t have to read very far into the book to realize what a gutsy woman she is and how brave she is to reach out to learn and grow.
Dr. Dreisinger has alot to say about the bizarre way people are treated in our prison system, after visiting prisons in different places around world and learning how differently people are treated and how they are released back into the community.
This book will open your eyes to other options and bring new light to the word “isolation.” I loved reading about the prison in Africa that powers 70% of their prison using human waste, and the system where prisoners are taught a trade and given jobs so their chances of success upon release are more assured.
Our way is certainly not the only way and this book helps us to learn from the successes in other countries how better to look at criminal justice with new eyes.
October 5, 2017
Life After Incarceration
It is not often you will get a chance to hear the voices of those who have been incarcerated like those on Christopher Lydon’s Open Source program called Life After Incarceration.
Here you will hear Azan Reid, Unique Ismail, Douglas Benton, and Marselle Felton — in a church basement in Dorchester, MA. They are asked: what did prison do, or undo, in you? What do you see now that you didn’t see then? And what don’t we know about you?
Mass incarceration is a bill we are all paying and there has to be reform, if we expect people living inside, without technology, to adapt to culture beyond the four walls of prison.
September 20, 2017
Saving our Environment: One Step at a Time
It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment. –Ansel Adams, photographer (1902-1984)
September 6, 2017
Good Listen: Women After Prison
The statistics about women and prison are staggering, more than a million women are in the system currently. The female prison population has risen precipitously in the last ten year due to the nature of the plea bargain and the number of mandatory drug sentences.
Christopher Lydon, on his program Open Source takes a look at Women After Prison and reminds us all that these women are someone’s daughter, likely someone’s sister, and/or mother. 89% of whom will be released and be living in the wider community upon release.
August 10, 2017
Wisdom of the Ages: Susan B. Anthony
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because
I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
–Susan B Anthony, reformer and suffragist (1820-1906)
July 17, 2017
June 27, 2017
Eisenhower on the Military Industrial Complex
“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”
President Dwight D. Eisenhower
April 16, 1953
May 26, 2017
Film to Watch: Trapped
Sometimes Radio West with Doug Fabrizio surprises me with an unexpected topic on the NPR station, in Salt Lake City, KUER 90.1.
This program on the movie Trapped is eye-opening and compelled me to find and watch the film Trapped. It premiered at Sundance and won the U.S. Documentary Special Jury Award for Social Impact Filmmaking. The film tells the stories of courageous aging doctors, clinic workers, and lawyers fighting the restrictions that are designed to regulate abortion out of existence.
On the Independent Lens website you can see trailers and read an interview with the director Dawn Porter. Hopefully you can find it streaming and available to view with family and friends.
The Curious Autodidact 
You must be logged in to post a comment.