“Asymmetrical Partners” is a collaborative piece written by Paula Lehman-Ewing, Ivan Kilgore, and Glenn Martin. The article, published in Harvard’s Inquest forum, explores the asymmetries between incarcerated activists and non-incarcerated activists. The following excerpt was written by Lehman-Ewing to highlight the experience of working with incarcerated activists from a journalist’s perspective.
The goal of writing this article was to inform inside–outside collaborators of some of the challenges to expect. As it happens, in the process of bringing this piece of writing to Inquest, we faced many of the trials and tribulations that Ivan has discussed above—and yet others I will elaborate below. So the essay’s production itself was a process of active, ongoing learning for our team, as well. In what follows, I focus in particular on the limitations placed on prison telecommunications and how those impact the coworking of inside and outside organizers.
The idea for the piece began when Ivan and I attended a conference at Stony Brook University—me on Zoom on my computer, and then Ivan daisy-chained in via my phone. The conference was meant to showcase a grant-backed project that aggregated essays, poems, and manuscripts from incarcerated writers. Ivan, who had served as the conduit between the writers and the university, was invited to speak about his work. We agreed that this invitation was a step in the right direction, allowing an incarcerated voice to be heard at an academic conference rather than spoken for. But introductions went long and the time slot for Ivan to speak kept getting pushed back. It was apparent that the moderators were not in tune with the fact that phone calls from California prisons have a fifteen-minute limit. This meant that every fifteen minutes, Ivan kept having to call me back and be patched in again. It was a precarious setup to begin with: Global Tel Link (GTL), which operates all communications in California state prisons, does not like three-way calls and usually disconnects if it detects that one is being attempted. So Ivan was calling back every fifteen minutes for an hour and a half, awaiting his time to speak, and each time he called back increased the likelihood that, sooner or later, GTL would terminate the call. In the midst of all of this, it dawned on me that even those non-incarcerated people who are most involved in prison abolition or prison reform work often lack basic information about how to engage with those they’re trying to help.
When we then sat down to produce this set of reflections, Ivan drafted his section above on the typewriter he purchased from the commissary many years ago. He then laboriously retyped the essay into the messaging app on his prison-issued tablet—also provided by GTL—to send the work to me.
The advent of prison tablets and messaging apps is new and it’s worth pausing to examine it a bit deeper before I continue. All people incarcerated in California are supposed to be equipped with a GTL tablet that allows them to communicate with friends and family. These tablets are also present in a number of state prisons outside California. Messages sent via GettingOut, an app you can install on any smartphone, are monitored, but it has offered streamlined communication between myself and a number of incarcerated people with whom I interact. Prior to this, the only way to initiate contact from the outside was via snail mail, and the DOC is not required to inform you why it denies any particular correspondence. For certain incarcerated people, mail tends to “go missing,” and if either party doesn’t know an attempt to connect has been made, correspondence simply ceases.
Before GettingOut, if I missed a call from someone inside, I would have to wait until they tried again, later that day if they could or else perhaps the next day. Prison lockdowns would also frequently delay communication. GettingOut offers a way around these impediments: I can send Ivan a note with the best time to call me back. I can communicate with him even if he is locked down because his tablet is in his cell.
There are drawbacks, of course, to prison tablets. They are notoriously finicky, anecdotally working about 75 percent of the time. The Internet capability is limited, so video visits—though available through another app called GO Visit—often freeze or disconnect. Additionally, the monitoring process delays messages by unpredictable quantities of time, so Ivan and I have gotten into the habit of timestamping our correspondences.
In the first week of October, a notification popped up from GettingOut on my phone. Because the app is so janky, it usually shows a red notification dot indicating some ridiculous number of new messages—forty-three, say—when there is really just one new message. On this particular October day, there were two new messages, which Ivan had labeled “Part 2” and “Part 3.” Notably no “Part 1,” which was my first clue that something had gone awry. It was clear that Ivan was sending me his draft—but it was equally clear that a big chunk had been deleted. My phone rang the next day.
“That’s my First Amendment right for ya,” Ivan said when we were finally connected following the long-winded automated introduction that commences every call, reminding us that we were under surveillance.
As you have already read, Ivan’s portion of this article contains uncomfortable truths about the lengths corrections officers will go to silence incarcerated people. Little surprise, then, that the initial attempt to send it to me had been denied. We had a plan B, which would have been to undertake the tedious process of Ivan reading to me his original typed draft over the phone—in fifteen-minute increments, of course—which I would’ve then transcribed. Fortunately, though, it didn’t come to that. No doubt some higher prison authority decided this particular battle was not worth it, and Ivan’s complete draft was released without explanation for its initial censorship.
Whenever the “this call is being monitored” recording interrupts my conversations with people in prison or jail, I always mumble, “God, I hate that woman.” I could be in the middle of a deep conversation about life and death and she’ll just come on, break up the train of thought, and ruin everything. That being said, constant monitoring is something you do, unfortunately, need to be reminded of in your communications with people inside. At the onset of any collaboration, I always have a frank discussion with the incarcerated individual about how we’re going to go about communicating and how they will be represented in the final product. I always defer to the person inside, who can navigate prison communications far better than someone who is not constantly living in that reality. Beyond telephone calls, correctional officers monitor mail, text messages, and, in Ivan’s case, media regarding certain prisoners. If you are using incarcerated individuals as sources, treat them with the same dignity you would an anonymous source. Journalists have gone to jail for not revealing sources, so take every necessary step to ensure the safety of a source already behind bars.
Strategies for communications have varied, in my experience, contingent on how long someone has been incarcerated, where they are incarcerated, and how often they participate in collaborations with people on the outside. I have one artist who will only communicate via snail mail or GTL text messages, so anything remotely sensitive has to be communicated in code, in person, or through a mutual acquaintance who schedules a visit. I’ve worked with incarcerated writers who write passionately against prison politics and policies and who prefer to be published or quoted using a pseudonym.
These methods may seem tedious, but they are well worth the effort. These partnerships embody the fight to preserve freedom of speech. As a journalist, no obstacle should prevent you, therefore, from preserving and maintaining these relationships. Yes, your communications will be monitored, disrupted, and, at times, denied—but this is a reality the person on the other side of that call deals with on a daily basis. Get to know them, get to know the system they navigate, and surmount the obstacles put in your path like your freedom depends on it—because it does.
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