Love Is in the Airwaves: Contesting Mass Incarceration with Prisoners' Radio

Tapestries: Interwoven voices of local and global identities

Volume 7 Issue 1 Breaking the Shackles of Silence: Knowledge Production as Activism and Article 7 Resistance

2018

Love is in the Airwaves: Contesting Mass Incarceration with Prisoners' Radio

Eleanor R. Benson Macalester College, [email protected]

Keywords: prisoners' radio, community media, mass incarceration, criminal justice reform, radical love, community building, bell hooks

Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/tapestries

Recommended Citation Benson, Eleanor R. (2018) "Love is in the Airwaves: Contesting Mass Incarceration with Prisoners' Radio," Tapestries: Interwoven voices of local and global identities: Vol. 7 : Iss. 1 , Article 7. Available at: https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/tapestries/vol7/iss1/7

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the American Studies Department at DigitalCommons@Macalester College. It has been accepted for inclusion in Tapestries: Interwoven voices of local and global identities by an authorized editor of DigitalCommons@Macalester College. For more information, please contact [email protected].

Love is in the Airwaves: Contesting Mass Incarceration with Prisoners’ Radio

Eleanor R. Benson

Everyone has their favorite nighttime ritual. broadcast every Friday night during The Mine usually involves a cup of tea with a Prison Show, a Houston-based community podcast or a Spotify playlist, but tonight I radio program made specifically for prisoners listen to something completely different. As I and their loved ones. As of 2012, the program plug in my earbuds and tune out the world reached one-sixth of the total incarcerated around me for a few hours, thousands of folks population in Texas, amounting to tens of a thousand miles south do the same. We all thousands of people behind bars.2 hear the same woman’s soft southern drawl: Several states away, another community radio station devotes their This message is going out for Jeremy. I’m just calling to check in with you. I’m Monday nights to prisoners across the doing good, I had a good week at work. I coalfields. Broadcasting from Whitesburg, Kentucky, WMMT-FM 88.7’s Calls From Home got a letter from you yesterday asking about those shoes that come out on transmits loving messages to incarcerated Sunday…I’ll tell you what they look like. people in over a dozen prisons, jails, and They’re white with a top piece and the detention centers across Kentucky, Virginia, shoelaces [are] black. I don’t like them, and West Virginia.3 Calls From Home and but I’m sure you will. I’ll go ahead and get them for you…I love you and I miss WMMT-FM’s broader media initiative, Restorative Radio, revolutionize how loved you and I’m counting down the days for you to come home…Know that you’re ones interact in the destructive age of mass 1 always in my heart and on my mind. incarceration through video, radio, and media

In many ways, this message feels mundane training tools.4 One particularly innovative project is Restorative Radio: Audio Postcards, and perhaps even familiar: an attentive mother looking out for her kid, anxiously which airs long-form radio pieces created by awaiting the day that he will be home for a prisoners’ families using professional audio visit. She just wants to make her son happy— equipment. These 10 to 45 minute pieces aim to “capture sounds, voices and music from even if she does not approve of his fashion sense. From the warmness in her voice and 2 the earnestness in her closing words, there is Carrie Feibel, “'The Prison Show' Helps Texas Inmates Find Escape,” NPR, 16 Jan. 2012, no questioning the love she feels for her child. https://www.npr.org/2012/01/16/144970513/the-prison-sh ow-helps-texas-inmates-find-escape. But beyond the surface, this is no 3 Rose Hackman, “Calls From Home: The Radio Show That Connects Inmates and Their Loved Ones,” The Guardian, 23 typical mother-son relationship. Jeremy’s March 2016, message is one of dozens of shout-outs that https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2016/mar/23 /calls-from-home-wmmt-kentucky-prison-inmates-family-f riends. 1 “The Prison Show,” 90.1 KPFT, accessed April 2018, 4 “About Restorative Radio,” Restorative Radio, accessed April http://kpft.org/programming/newstalk/prison-show/. 2018, http://www.restorativeradio.org/about/.

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• LOVE IS IN THE AIRWAVES ELEANOR R. BENSON home” to invite incarcerated people back into expressions allows prisoners and their 5 the lives of their loved ones. These one-sided advocates on the outside to actively challenge interactions are purely metaphysical and the dehumanization of prisoners. By bridging marked by the absence of the incarcerated a diverse and distant listening base— person, but they nonetheless strengthen prisoners and their loved ones, individuals loving relationships which are too often who stumble across the shows while scrolling devastated by prison. through the stations, and people from across From Southeast Texas to the heart of the country who tune in through the Appalachia, the preferred bedtime ritual for online live streams—prisoner-oriented radio thousands of incarcerated men and women programs rooted in an ethic of love play an involves tuning into The Prison Show and Calls essential role in building community that From Home using a Sony SRF-39FP, a personal traverses prison walls. analog radio ubiquitous in American prisons. In this article, I explore the The radio’s transparent body, meant to intersections of prison, radio, community, and discourage prisoners from smuggling love through an analysis of The Prison Show contraband, displays a single AA battery which and Restorative Radio. I argue that prisoners boasts an impressive 40 listening hours. Even and their loved ones appropriate the radio to though newer digital models and MP3 players perform public and revolutionary acts of love, exist in some prison commissaries, the countering the oppressive forces of mass SRF-39FP costs significantly less than other incarceration in the United States. By audio devices (at under $30) and runs the unapologetically positioning their love for longest—awarding it the name “the iPod of incarcerated people front and center, prison.”6 ordinary Americans—mothers, fathers, Radio projects like The Prison Show and siblings, kids, spouses, and neighbors—subvert Restorative Radio have significant impacts that racist and classist structures in our society resonate well beyond the family networks of which mark prisoners as incapable and the incarcerated. For members of the broader unworthy of love. By bearing witness to these community—particularly those of us without public pronouncements of love, those of us personal connections to the prison system— whose lives remain otherwise untouched by these shows grant the unique privilege mass incarceration have no choice but to of hearing public displays of fiercely accept the humanity of people behind bars. unapologetic love for incarcerated people. From a sense of shared humanity stems Love is an intrinsic marker of humanity, so the solidarity and positive change. deliberately public nature of these heartfelt Moving forward, I first address my own positionality7 and personal interest in 5 “Audio Postcards,” Restorative Radio, accessed April 2018, http://www.restorativeradio.org/audio-postcards-2/. 7 As Maher and Tetreault describe in “Frames of Positionality: 6 Feibel, “'The Prison Show'”; Joshua Hunt, “The iPod of Constructing Meaningful Dialogue about Gender and Race,” Prison,” The New Yorker, 19 June, 2017, “positionality” refers to how “gender, race, class and other https://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/the-ipod-of- aspects of our identities are markers of relational positions prison. rather than essential qualities. Knowledge is valid when it

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• LOVE IS IN THE AIRWAVES ELEANOR R. BENSON prisoners’ radio. Next, I unpack bell hooks’ our entire bodies—our bones, our conceptualization of love as a mode of innards vibrate, too, to sounds, and political resistance along with the ways that certainly to music—means that we are actually feeling similar sensations in our mass incarceration and mass media bodies at exactly the same time when undermine her vision of love. I then discuss we listen as a group. In part because of the potential of prisoners’ radio in bringing this physical response, listening often this vision to life. Finally, I delve into the inner imparts a sense of emotion stronger workings of The Prison Show and Restorative than that imparted by looking.8 Radio to explore how these programs foster This visceral reaction to radio listening almost love. seems to transcend time and space. Hearing a

Radio Love: A Personal Account familiar voice or song on the radio never fails to transport me to happy moments in my Growing up in a house where sound childhood, surrounded by love. was constantly emanating from my parents’ During a semester abroad in Peru, I had giant stereo in the living room, radio has the opportunity to investigate this connective always been an important part of my life. I was power of radio in an international context. familiar with A Prairie Home Companion Through a community radio project called before I learned how to read or ride a bike. I Sisichakunaq Pukllaynin, I explored how could always count on waking up to Morning students at a predominantly indigenous Edition and coming home to All Things elementary school appropriate the radio to Considered after school. And between the talk affirm their personal, collective, and cultural shows, there was always music: classical, jazz, identities. Many of these children, some as folk, classic rock. In my family, radio listening young as five or six, immigrated to the city to was often a communal activity, something receive an education hours away from their shared at the dining table or in front of the families and home communities. Sisichakunaq fire during the winter. Across hundreds of Pukllaynin allows students to produce their these seemingly unremarkable moments, own radio programs in Quechua, the most radio brought us closer together. Cultural widely spoken indigenous language in Peru, critic Susan J. Douglas offers an explanation of on topics of their choosing. why radio fosters such a powerful sense of These kids gain so much from connectivity between listeners: participating in radio production, but one of People listening to a common voice, or the most striking aspects of the project was its to the same music, act and react at the ability to strengthen relationships between same time...They are unified around students, teachers, and families from afar. By that common experience…The fact that broadcasting stories about creation myths, we hear not only with our ears but with important traditions, and the ordinary includes an acknowledgment of the knower’s specific position in any context, because changing contextual and relational 8 Susan J. Douglas, Listening In: Radio and the American factors are crucial for defining identities and our knowledge Imagination (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, in any given situation” (118). 2004), 30.

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• LOVE IS IN THE AIRWAVES ELEANOR R. BENSON moments of rural life, these youth pay loving radio from an outsider’s perspective. One homage to their cultural roots and the could argue that listening to a message meant communities they came from. Despite the for someone else is an invasion of privacy and numerous obstacles that they face, these inherently voyeuristic. Although participants young migrants refuse to sever ties with the in The Prison Show and Restorative Radio people they care about. make the conscious decision to share When I returned to the United States, I their messages publicly over the airwaves, wanted to better understand how radio’s incarceration forces their hand to a certain connective and transcendent qualities impact extent: too many families torn apart by prison Americans who also struggle to stay in contact have to choose between expressing love with their home communities: prisoners. As publicly and severing ties altogether. Keeping someone with no personal connection to the this in mind, I ultimately decided to move criminal justice system, The Prison Show, forward because I see this research as a Restorative Radio, and radio in general direct threat to the inhumanity of mass undoubtedly mean something different to me incarceration. These radio messages and than they do for people whose lives are the people who choose to share them intrinsically tied to prisons. I cannot pretend are extraordinarily powerful—we all have to know how it feels to hear the voice of a something to learn from them about love, partner, parent, or child through my justice, agency, and resiliency. headphones after spending the majority of my The Deepest Revolution: day locked in a cell. I cannot fully comprehend Love Lessons from bell hooks what it means to those on the outside to transmit messages powerful enough to Making the choice to love can heal our wounded spirits and our body politic. It transcend impenetrable prison walls. is the deepest revolution, the turning As a White woman, I will never be away from the world as we know it, capable of speaking to the experiences of toward the world we must make to be people of color inside or outside of prison. My one with the planet—one healing heart intention is never to speak for anyone whose giving and sustaining life. Love is our hope and our salvation.9 experiences are not my own; instead, I aim to call attention to a grassroots movement which In her visionary book All About Love, media scholars in the United States have Black feminist scholar bell hooks calls for a largely overlooked. I hope to demonstrate return to love—an end to the pervasive that the subversive work accomplished lovelessness that saturates American society. by prisoners, their loved ones, and their In her quest to understand a concept that communities deserves public recognition and seems to defy definition, hooks draws insight scholarly attention. from renowned twentieth century scholars— Before moving forward, it is worth predominantly White men, she points out— noting that there is a broader discussion to be 9 bell hooks, Salvation: Black People and Love (New York: had about the ethics of studying prisoners’ William Morrow, 2001), 225.

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• LOVE IS IN THE AIRWAVES ELEANOR R. BENSON who grappled before her with the task of Peck. Instead, she positions love as a radical articulating love. action, whose “transformative power” can Psychological and critical theorist Erich undermine White supremacist and patriarchal Fromm was one of the first to view love structures of oppression.14 through an academic lens. In his seminal work In an essay titled “Loving Blackness as The Art of Loving, Fromm argues that love is Political Resistance,” hooks argues that ending an action that requires four key elements: White supremacy will require humanity to care, responsibility, respect, and knowledge. create the conditions not only for Black He believes that genuine love is elusive and people to love Blackness but for everyone else involves hard work but that this effort has to love Blackness.15 While hooks’ assertion that great rewards for love’s true practitioners.10 love can overcome domination might seem Psychiatrist M. Scott Peck adds that love is idealistic, it places the responsibility of not only an action but also a conscious challenging oppression on all of us who strive decision: “Love is as love does. Love is an act to love and be loved, not just those who of will—namely, both an intention and an experience injustice. hooks’ conceptualization action. Will also implies choice. We do not of love also makes resistance more accessible have to love. We choose to love.”11 By situating to the general public, even to those without love as a choice, Peck challenges the widely considerable political power. No matter how held assumption that humans love intuitively. elusive genuine love may be, love is something Building on this foundation, hooks that most humans desire and can relate to. further articulates love as a combination of And like radio, love has a strong connective “care, affection, recognition, respect, power: by embracing a love ethic, we accept commitment, and trust, as well as honest and “a global vision wherein we see our lives and open communication.”12 While she agrees that our fate as intimately connected to those of it is useful to envision love as a verb rather everyone else on the planet.”16 Only when this than a noun, hooks takes issue with the lack of occurs will our society move towards intersectionality13 in the work of Fromm and eradicating injustice in all of its many forms. For prisoners and their families who wish to practice love for one another, 10 Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving (New York: Harper & Row, hooks’ final element of love—honest and 1956). 11 M. Scott Peck, The Road Less Traveled: A New Psychology of open communication—is especially difficult. Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1985), quoted in bell hooks, All About Numerous studies demonstrate that Love: New Visions (New York: Perennial, 2001), 4-5. maintaining family connections during and 12 hooks, All About Love, 5. 13 “Intersectionality” refers to the interwoven nature of one’s social identities, including race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, class, age, and disability. After facing exclusion Hill Collins—contributed to the development of this from both White feminist and Black anti-racist circles, Black movement. women in particular strove to illuminate the interlocking 14 hooks, All About Love, xxix. power dynamics at play within both feminism and 15 bell hooks, “Loving Blackness as Political Resistance,” in anti-racism. Although legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw was Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End the first to coin the phrase in 1989, multiple Black feminist Press, 1992). intellectuals—including Angela Davis, bell hooks, and Patricia 16 hooks, All About Love, 88.

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• LOVE IS IN THE AIRWAVES ELEANOR R. BENSON after incarceration reduces recidivism and families, obstructing their ability to actively helps with societal reintegration.17 However, love each other. protecting vulnerable families does not seem Incarceration and the dominant media to be a priority in the age of mass threaten hooks’ vision of love in other incarceration. While prisons support outside significant ways. In her book Salvation: Black communication in theory, they all too often People and Love, hooks argues that the mass implement policies and practices which media too often undermine love’s progress in obstruct the maintenance of family ties.18 combating White supremacy and other Honest and open talk is often compromised systems of oppression. By bombarding

by the “high cost of receiving collect calls Americans with “degrading and dehumanizing” from prison, long travel times to the representations of Blackness, mainstream correctional facility, inconvenient visiting media perpetuate a “pedagogy of racial hours, and uncomfortable or humiliating hatred:”21 security procedures at the prison.”19 Many These images not only teach black folks prisoners are incarcerated hundreds or even and everyone else...that black folks are thousands of miles away from their loved hateful and unworthy of love, they ones, usually in remote rural areas far from teach white folks to fear black public transit. Visiting these facilities may be aggression. This fear allows white folks impossible if family members do not have to feel justified when they treat black access to a car. people in dehumanizing ways in daily life. A white woman who clutches her Even when contact is possible, strict purse as she walks toward a young regulation and censorship behind bars black male or female on the street severely restrict honest and open talk sends the message not only that she between loved ones. From opening prisoners’ fears for her safety but that she sees all 22 mail and recording phone calls to closely black people as potential criminals. monitoring in-person visitation, prisons This racialized fear-mongering by the mass constantly invade the privacy of incarcerated media has dire repercussions, particularly folks, intruding upon intimate expressions of for incarcerated people. Since prisons are love that were never meant to be shared designed to be “total institutions”23—to keep publicly—all in the name of “security.”20 These prisoners in and the wider community out— harsh measures often result in a gaping the general public knows very little about who disconnect between prisoners and their prisoners are or the trauma they face behind

17 Jeremy Travis and Michelle Waul, Prisoners Once Removed: 21 hooks, Salvation, 64. The Impact of Incarceration and Reentry on Children, Families, 22 Ibid., 65. and Communities (Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute Press, 23 Erving Goffman, Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of 2003). Mental Patients and Other Inmates (Garden City, N.Y: Anchor 18 Ibid., 274. Books, 1961), quoted in Tiziano Bonini and Marta Perrotta, "On 19 Travis and Waul, Prisoners Once Removed, 11. and Off the Air: Radio-Listening Experiences in the San 20 Ibid., 20. Vittore Prison," Media, Culture & Society 29, no. 2 (2007): 191.

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• LOVE IS IN THE AIRWAVES ELEANOR R. BENSON bars.24 Consequently, the public learns as technology continues to develop, about prison through sensationalized media “community” can even move beyond physical representations of incarcerated folks, space to include geographically distant brimming with racist stereotypes and individuals who share a common goal or misconceptions. identity (via online live streams, for example). While media scholar Catharine Lumby Instead of prioritizing profit like claims that all media coverage of incarcerated commercial media, community media exists folks has value because prisoners’ visibility in to serve the interests and amplify the voices the public eye is more important than their of marginalized groups. Radio in particular is accurate or positive representation,25 I one of the most popular types of community disagree. I challenge the belief that the media, serving its empowering purpose well ubiquitous trope of prisoner as violent, as among the most egalitarian, accessible, and insolent, and hateful criminal can be inexpensive media forms.27 Unlike the costs beneficial in any way. Instead, these associated with print and audiovisual media, portrayals exist to degrade and dehumanize, you do not need to be literate or affluent to to uphold the cruel punitivity of mass listen to radio, own a radio, or even incarceration. By uncritically absorbing these participate in radio production. From images, America moves farther away from indigenous peoples seeking to preserve native answering hooks’ call for a return to love. languages to low-income women striving for reproductive justice and everything in Radical Love Stories: The Power of Prisoners’ Radio between, ordinary people across the globe can and do appropriate the radio to share Community media, and prisoners’ radio their stories and speak their truth—in ways in particular, has the potential to address both both humanizing and unifying. dominant media misrepresentations and the Prisoners’ radio is not necessarily a communication barriers that incarcerated form of community broadcasting, but it folks face. Community media is community- operates almost exclusively within the driven—that is, it is a form of locally-funded community sector.28 Australian media scholar media created in, by, and for the community. Heather Anderson, one of the few academics “Community” in this context is often a to study prisoners’ radio,29 classifies this bounded geographical space, usually a concept as “any type of radio broadcast by or neighborhood or a village, and sometimes for a ‘prisoner community of interest’ that can encompassing an entire region.26 But Alternative and Community Media (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), 6. 24 Heather Anderson, Raising the Civil Dead: Prisoners and 27 Anderson, Raising the Civil Dead. Community Radio (Peter Lang Publishing Group, 2012), 63. 28 Ibid., 15. 25 Catharine Lumby, “Televising the Invisible: Prisoners, 29 It should be noted that there is minimal research by Prison Reform and the Media,” in Prisoners as Citizens: American scholars on prisoners’ radio in general, and little Human Rights in Australian Prisons (Sydney: Federation scholarship exists about American prisoners’ radio. The Press, 2002). research that does exist tends to focus on Australia and the 26 Chris Atton, “Problems and Positions in Alternative and UK. However, Anderson deliberately frames her research Community Media,” in The Routledge Companion to broadly to apply within an international context.

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• LOVE IS IN THE AIRWAVES ELEANOR R. BENSON be heard by the general public.”30 Anderson [and] comprehensive news” throughout the goes on to identify two main types of communities it serves in Southeast Texas.32 prisoners’ radio programs: (1) shows that The Prison Show was founded in 1980 by broadcast messages from family members on previously incarcerated activist Ray Hill, an the outside to incarcerated loved ones, and (2) outspoken advocate for LGBTQ issues and shows that address issues relevant to prisoners’ rights. Prisoners in Texas were not prisoners like reentry obstacles, state- allowed to make phone calls in 1980, so The sanctioned violence within prisons, and the Prison Show gave incarcerated people the death penalty.31 Restorative Radio falls into the opportunity to hear their loved ones’ voices, first category while The Prison Show sometimes for the first time in years or even accomplishes both objectives. decades.33 Sometimes prisoners’ radio showcases As someone who experienced first- the actual words of incarcerated people who hand the trauma of incarceration, Hill created submit audio recordings or letters to The Prison Show to address a tremendous community radio stations. In other cases, need in prison and in the community: to community members—whether they were maintain ties with the outside world. Hill previously incarcerated themselves or simply produced and hosted The Prison Show for 30 sympathetic to the plight of prisoners— years and remains involved as an advisor to produce shows for audiences within prisons. this day. The staff and volunteers who run the Either way, incarcerated people and their program include previously incarcerated loved ones are active participants in prisoners’ people along with “teachers, professors, radio, either as producers, contributors, or lawyers, chaplains, activists, [and] ex- listeners. And as active participants who politicos…who see the error in the current choose to practice love for one another over prison system and the worth of the American the airwaves on The Prison Show and people lost but still not forgotten inside.”34 Restorative Radio, prisoners and their families During the first hour of the program, exercise considerable political power. I delve the hosts invite criminal justice reform into both programs in greater depth below. activists to discuss issues that matter to prisoners. Topics include racial disparities in The Prison Show the criminal justice system, indigent criminal The Prison Show is a live radio program defense, the death penalty, prison healthcare, which broadcasts every Friday from 9 to 11 PM voting rights, and reentry obstacles. The show Central Time from Houston’s Pacifica also advertises community events across Network radio station, KPFT FM 90.1. As an Texas that previously incarcerated people and independent community radio station, KPFT prisoners’ advocates may want to participate strives to disseminate “accurate, objective, 32 “About KPFT,” 90.1 KPFT, accessed April 2018, http://kpft.org/about/#1429296836-1-11. 30 Heather Anderson, “Prisoners’ Radio: Connecting 33 Feibel, “'The Prison Show.'” Communities Through Alternative Discourse,” 426. 34 “The Prison Show - Our Mission,” 90.1 KPFT, accessed April 31 Anderson, Raising the Civil Dead, 15. 2018, http://theprisonshow.net/about.html.

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• LOVE IS IN THE AIRWAVES ELEANOR R. BENSON in. The second hour of the show is the on-air ceremony filmed by National shout-out segment, transmitted from family Geographic,38 Texas Judge Dale Gorczynski and friends on the outside to prisoners on the weds Rachel, a young woman wearing green inside. The Prison Show’s staff and volunteers eyeshadow and a long white dress, and also participate in grassroots efforts outside Johnny, a man incarcerated a hundred miles of the recording studio. In 2007, The Prison away. Hill, speaking for Johnny, reads aloud Show played a role in successfully lobbying the vows that Johnny wrote behind bars: the Texas Legislature to install payphones in Rachel, you have made me the happiest prisons across the state. Staff and volunteers man alive. You totally captured this old also marched on Washington alongside other outlaw’s heart. I surrender my guns and prison reform advocates in 2015 in support of wild lifestyle for you. When I met you, Ban the Box and the adoption of fair hiring even under such stressful policies.35 circumstances, I found peace, love, and One of the most unique aspects of The a happiness unequal to any I had ever known. With all of my heart and soul, I Prison Show is its enduring commitment to love you. fostering love between incarcerated and non-incarcerated folks, most notably through Next, it is Rachel’s turn. She turns to the proxy weddings. Starting with Ann Staggs’ microphone and starts speaking confidently, wedding in 1997, a woman who later became but her voice breaks near the end: the proxy-wedding coordinator at KPFT, The Johnny, from the first day you entered Prison Show conducted and broadcasted my life, I knew you were something dozens of weddings in the years to follow.36 else. I am eternally grateful that I have Performed live on-air with the help of a proxy been and continue to be part of your to stand in for the incarcerated partner, these life. Pure honesty and faithfulness is what you can expect of me, along with a weddings were legally recognized unions in kiss whenever you desire, a hug when the eyes of the state for decades. Marriage you need it, and a friend to listen ceremonies were not allowed inside Texas open-heartedly. I am totally and penitentiaries for security reasons, but The completely yours. Thank you, my honey Prison Show creatively bypassed this obstacle love, for giving me a reason to believe again. in a way that allowed the incarcerated partner to participate, even if they could not be Rachel then pulls out two wedding bands. physically present.37 She exchanges rings with Hill in a symbolic Ray Hill often acted as a proxy husband gesture of love as Judge Gorczynski during his tenure at The Prison Show. In an pronounces the couple husband and wife.

35 Ibid. 36 Elizabeth Koh and KK Rebecca Lai, “Proxy Marriage Limits 38 End Inmate Weddings,” The Texas Tribune, 6 Aug. 2013, “Prison Proxy Wedding,” National Geographic, accessed https://www.texastribune.org/2013/08/06/proxy-marriag April 2018, e-restrictions-imperil-inmate-matrimo/. http://www.nationalgeographic.com.au/videos/society/pri 37 Ibid. son-proxy-wedding-1557.aspx.

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• LOVE IS IN THE AIRWAVES ELEANOR R. BENSON

The camera then cuts to Johnny, other over the airwaves, these newlyweds grinning broadly from behind the glass wall of reclaim Johnny’s humanity. his cell. The audio picks up the deafening Rachel and Johnny were among the last cheers that erupt around him from his wing- incarcerated couples in Texas to enjoy sweet mates who have tuned in to The Prison Show moments like this over the airwaves, together to share in this happy occasion. Johnny is yet apart simultaneously. The proxy wedding clearly moved by the outpouring of support: tradition on The Prison Show ended abruptly “It got loud. Everybody kicking the doors, I on September 1, 2013 when Texas passed was kicking the doors, crying. Everybody’s House Bill 869.40 Adopted in an effort to end yelling congratulations. It was pretty cool.”39 benefits and insurance fraud against His voice catches in the back of his throat, unknowing victims, House Bill 869 limited radiating with pride and love for his new wife. proxy marriage in Texas to those serving It is impossible to listen to Johnny in this overseas in the military, excluding prisoners moment and imagine a hardened, hateful, and from tying the knot. House Bill 869 violated inhuman criminal. Love is what makes him, the constitutional right for everyone—even like all of us, definitively human. prisoners—to marry, a right recognized in As special as this ceremony must have 1987 by the U.S. Supreme Court decision been for Rachel, Johnny, and everyone else Turner v. Safley.41 listening in, it is so markedly defined by Prisoners, their loved ones, and their absence. When Rachel describes in her vows advocates at KPFT did not sit quietly after this her desire to hug, kiss, and listen open- law passed. Public outcry led Texas to draft heartedly to Johnny, it becomes clear just how new legislation in 2014 allowing incarcerated much incarceration hinders her ability to and non-incarcerated couples to get married actively love her husband in these seemingly inside prisons across the state.42 Even though simple ways. Even though she has dressed for The Prison Show can no longer conduct the occasion, Johnny cannot see her—he can weddings on-air, tireless prison reform only hear her voice. Johnny cannot embrace activism created an even better alternative for her or anyone around him in the prison—all couples separated by incarceration. Today, they can do is kick the doors to express their The Prison Show continues the essential work euphoria. On one of the most important days it started almost forty years ago—airing loving of their lives, Rachel and Johnny’s physical messages to prisoners every Friday night. disconnection is undeniable. But despite these obstacles, Rachel and Johnny’s union is a radical and public act of defiance against the 40 Koh and Lai, “Proxy Marriage Limits End Inmate Weddings.” totalizing forces of mass incarceration. In 41 Ibid. accepting bell hooks’ call for a return to love 42 “Texas Prisons to Allow In-person Wedding Ceremonies after Prohibition on Proxy Marriages,” Prison Legal News, Feb. and broadcasting their decision to love each 2, 2016, https://www.prisonlegalnews.org/news/2016/feb/2/texas -prisons-allow-person-wedding-ceremonies-after-prohibitio 39 “Prison Proxy Wedding.” n-proxy-marriages/.

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• LOVE IS IN THE AIRWAVES ELEANOR R. BENSON

Restorative Radio brother was incarcerated at Red Onion [State

Calls From Home, the community radio Prison]. She just asked, would it be possible program at the heart of radio project for [me] to go on the air and send a message 46 Restorative Radio, broadcasts every Monday out to him directly?” The woman was calling night from Kentucky’s WMMT-FM 88.7. from Washington D.C., 500 miles away. Her WMMT’s mission is to be a “24 hour voice of brother had introduced her to the show after mountain people’s music, culture, and social tuning in every week himself. After that first issues, to provide broadcast space for creative shout-out, prisoners began to share the expression and community involvement in station’s toll-free phone number with making radio, and to be an active participant relatives and friends in hopes of receiving in discussion of public policy that will benefit their own on-air messages. This led to more coalfield communities and the Appalachian and more calls pouring into WMMT every region as a whole.”43 WMMT staff record Monday night from places as far as Florida, shout-outs from prisoners’ loved ones Connecticut, and Hawaii. Today, the phone between 7 and 9 PM during a hip hop program lines ring off the hook from the second they 47 called Hip Hop from the Hilltop, and they air open at 7 PM sharp. The organic evolution of Calls From the messages during Calls From Home from 9 Home, initiated by a woman whose loved one to 10 PM. Every single message is aired as long as it complies with FCC regulation.44 WMMT’s sits behind bars, shows that prisoners and far-reaching signal stretches to six federal their families desperately want and need programs like this. Calls From Home would not and state penitentiaries along with many regional jails and detention centers across the exist if she hadn’t reached out to WMMT, and Appalachian region.45 if incarcerated folks hadn’t spread the word to Calls From Home came into existence their own loved ones. In this way, prisoners and their families created Calls From Home, after long-time DJ Amelia Kirby took over the Monday night hip hop program. Kirby appropriating the medium to serve their own frequently accepted song requests, and too-often-overlooked interests. The staff and eventually listeners started calling in to volunteers at WMMT have done everything in dedicate songs to loved ones behind bars. In a their power to facilitate these needs. In fact, promotional video for the show, Kirby Sylvia Ryerson, then-Director of Public Affairs at WMMT, had the idea to push the Calls From describes how prisoners and their families brought Calls From Home into existence: “One Home format even further by producing night we got a call from a woman whose long-form, professional quality audio pieces capturing the soundscapes of home. Thus, Restorative Radio: Audio Postcards was born.48 43 “About Us,” 88.7 WMMT, accessed April 2018, https://www.wmmt.org/about/. 44 Sylvia Ryerson, “Restorative Radio,” Transom, 27 Sept. 2016, https://transom.org/2016/restorative-radio/. 45 “Hot 88.7 – Hip Hop from the Hilltop / Calls From Home,” 46 Ibid. 88.7 WMMT, accessed April 2018, 47 Ryerson, “Restorative Radio.” https://www.wmmt.org/callsfromhome/#abouthot887. 48 Ibid.

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• LOVE IS IN THE AIRWAVES ELEANOR R. BENSON

Ryerson sees Audio Postcards as a way with the sounds that they have come to to bring some form of peace to loved ones love. Connecting the sounds of life and living on the outside: love to provide vision for the incarcerated—that’s what Audio Post- I hoped this could be a therapeutic cards will do!51 process for family members—to actively create something beautiful for the Bringing life to a desolate place like prison person they love inside, to share their should not be undervalued. In allowing own world in their own terms. We prisoners to become more active participants didn’t need any approval from the in the lives of their loved ones, sharing in both prisons to do this. We just needed important life events and the mundane 49 access to [the] airwaves. moments of everyday life, Audio Postcards This element of control, of speaking on one’s challenges the isolating aspects which too own terms, is extremely important. When often define total institutions like prison. most modes of communication are so heavily Charlene Yarbrough and her son JJ moderated within prisons, radio is one of the understand first-hand how powerful Audio few types of media capable of evading this Postcards can be. At age 22, JJ was convicted censorship. Ryerson also reached out to of murder and is currently serving a single life regular Calls From Home callers to see if sentence in Virginia’s Wallens Ridge State anyone had suggestions or would like to Prison.52 At the time she recorded this piece, collaborate on the new project.50 Michelle Charlene lived in Newport News, Virginia, Hudson, whose husband is serving life in eight hours from JJ. She suffers from health prison seven hours from home under issues and cannot drive, so twenty years had Virginia’s three strikes law, expressed her full passed since she last saw her son. For her support: audio postcard, Charlene decides to throw a party so all of JJ’s family members can record Calls From Home has become his ‘eyes’ for seeing into our lives on the outside. messages for him. After the last relatives Sound has become his sight and escape leave, Charlene spends some time speaking to from daily prison life…I believe Audio her son alone. She turns on one of JJ’s favorite Postcards will bring life to those who are songs, “Caribbean Queen” by Billy Ocean. She incarcerated. Can you imagine hearing sits quietly for a while, enjoying the music in the sounds of your family celebrating a silence. Finally, she speaks with a deep grandparent’s birthday, or the first cry of a newborn? Audio postcards will not tenderness in her voice:

only give them the opportunity to stay I remember you dancing to this song, closely connected to their loved ones, you used to love to dance. Your little but it will challenge them to make goofy dances, you remember? Your dad positive changes so they can return used to like this song too… home and become actively involved 51 Ibid. 52 “Charlene Yarbrough,” Restorative Radio, accessed April 49 Ibid. 2018, 50 Ibid. http://www.restorativeradio.org/charlene-yarbrough/.

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• LOVE IS IN THE AIRWAVES ELEANOR R. BENSON

unspoken in the lingering sighs that What’s that [other] singer’s name? MC Hammer! You remember I made y’all punctuate Charlene’s storytelling. There are those pants like he wore, and y’all wore thousands of moments from the past twenty them to school and everyone wanted to years that Charlene and JJ can never get back, know, where y’all get these pants from? and they may never again have the chance to And you said, my mom made these!… build new memories together on the outside.

Charlene shares story after story, laughing In many ways, the fact that Charlene hard when she remembers how JJ looked after chose to share this audio piece publicly is a he shaved off his entire eyebrow as a kid. Even revolutionary act. She loves her son deeply though I have no way of seeing her, I imagine and by her own volition has granted the her sitting alone at the kitchen table with the general public the privilege of sharing in her audio recorder, her eyes twinkling, lost within joy and her love. Her words directly challenge the labyrinth of her memory: how dominant American culture has conditioned us to perceive prisoners, You know, when I close my eyes, I can restoring JJ’s humanity with only her voice. see you, JJ. See you dancing, enjoying your young life. I can just close my eyes But if JJ were a free man, Charlene would not and see you, that goofy smile. I love you have to choose between loving her son so much, darlin’. And I want you to publicly and not loving him at all. This is know I’m proud of you, I really am. another element of humanity that Regardless of what has happened, incarceration strips away: the ability to you’re still my child and I’m proud of maintain one’s private self, to act privately, you and I love you. And your people love you.53 and to love privately. Nonetheless, in broadcasting this audio postcard, Charlene Listening to Charlene reminisce about JJ’s proves her unwillingness to let go of her son childhood is utterly heartbreaking. Her voice despite the unyielding forces driving them never shakes and she never loses control, but apart. She continues to resist, even in the face the palpable emotion in her words has of seemingly insurmountable adversity. devastating impact. This is a woman who hasn’t seen her son’s face in two decades. She “It’s All About Love”: Building Community Beyond the Bars only sees him frozen in time in her memory, dancing and laughing as a carefree kid, Whenever we heal family wounds, we oblivious to what his future holds. strengthen community. Doing this we Charlene’s manner of speaking forces engage in loving practice. That love lays the foundation for the constructive the listener to acknowledge the one-sided, building of community with strangers. non-reciprocal nature of this conversation. The love we make in community stays Throughout the piece, she frames so many of with us wherever we go.54 her sentences as questions, questions that JJ is not there to answer. So much remains

53 Ibid. 54 hooks, All About Love, 144.

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• LOVE IS IN THE AIRWAVES ELEANOR R. BENSON

In this article, I have illustrated how criminal justice system seems to agree: “You ordinary Americans appropriate the radio to tend to think that convicts in a prison really strengthen the loving connections that are don't have much of a love life and yet when constantly under seige in this age of mass the family members talk, it's all about love.”56 incarceration. The decision to practice love By positioning love at the forefront of this publicly over the airwaves has radical and movement, The Prison Show and Restorative resounding impacts in the lives of prisoners, Radio succeed in laying the foundation for their loved ones on the outside, and American community building with strangers. In helping society at large. us to accept that our liberation is bound up For prisoners, hearing the voices of together, prisoners’ radio and the communal family members on The Prison Show or Calls love it fosters pose a direct threat to the From Home might provide the necessary oppressive forces of mass incarceration. incentive to make positive changes in their Because love, as bell hooks proclaims, is lives, to work towards release and become our hope and our salvation. productive citizens on the outside. These messages might break up the monotony of prison life, making time move a little faster. And they might bring a small dose of joy and hope to a place where positive emotions are likely in short supply. For families on the outside mourning the loss of a loved one to incarceration, prisoners’ radio provides an outlet to share their lives on their own terms, to say exactly what needs to be said with minimal obstruction or censorship. Radio offers a means to begin bridging the chasmal divide that incarceration tears into so many relationships across the United States. And for broader American society, prisoners’ radio forces listeners to acknowledge the humanity of incarcerated people. WMMT’s Amelia Kirby sums it up well: “It’s difficult to hate someone when you hear their grandchild tell them they love them on the radio.”55 Over in Houston, a regular Prison Show listener with no other connection to the

55 Hackman, “Calls From Home.” 56 Feibel, “'The Prison Show'.”

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• LOVE IS IN THE AIRWAVES ELEANOR R. BENSON

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• LOVE IS IN THE AIRWAVES ELEANOR R. BENSON

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