Involuntary Servitude: Life As Civilly Dead
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Volume 2, Issue 3 | June 2020 ALL OF US OR NonE All of Us or None is an organizing movement started by people who have been in prison in order to challenge the pervasive discrimination that formerly incarcerated people, people in prison, and our family members face. Our goal is to strengthen the voices of people most affected by mass incarceration and the growth of the prison industrial complex. Through our grassroots organizing, we will build a powerful political movement to win full restoration of our human and civil rights. Involuntary Servitude: Life as Civilly Dead It reveals itself in prison fire brigades, the replacement of a name with a number, and the plantation fields of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, a.k.a. Angola. It is slavery by other names -- “mass incarceration” or “prison labor” -- and it is an intentional continuation of America’s shameful past. Page 10 2|AOUON June 2020 All of Us Or None About the Artist: Cover image Self-Determination Pledge “Doing Time” is an As members of All • To help build the acrylic painting by of Us or None, we Gerald Morgan, an pledge: economic stability of formerly-incar- artist incarcerated • To demand the at San Quentin State right to speak in cerated people our own voices • To claim and take Prison in California. • To treat each care of our own Morgan is 67 years other with respect children and our old and has spent and not allow dif- families the last two decades ferences to divide us • To support com- incarcerated. This • To accept re- munity struggles to work, along with sponsibility for any stop using prisons as other pieces from acts that may have the answer to social the San Quentin caused harm to our problems prison art program, families, our commu- • To play an active is on display in the nities or ourselves. role in making our offices of the Ninth • To fight all forms communities safe for Circuit Court of of discrimination everyone. Appeals. Inside The Issue Feature Story Spotlight Involuntary servitude and slavery as a form of Eric Abercrombie was traumatized by violence he punishment aren’t just legal preservations of a experienced as a child. While he was incrcerated, he shameful past. In practice, it’s an immoral black eye learned he could process that channel through his on present day. Page 10 music. Page 4 Coming Home The INjustice System London Croudy promised herself her time behind bars This year, we proved the voices of directly impacted would not be in vain. Upon release, she learned how individuals will have their say in politics, even if the her experience could help fight back against the unjust means are somewhat different. Our report on the first- criminal legal system. Page 18 ever Digital Quest for Democracy. Page 6 Mail Bag Chapter Highlights COVID inside from another angle. Reggie Thorpe, who N. New Jersey launched a campaign demanding the is currently incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison, release of incarcerated individuals as COVID begins to writes about why CDCR can’t afford to let the prison spread across the prison system. Plus, bills we’re watching population die. Page 8 and updates from our national chapters. Page 14 June 2020 AOUON|3 A Note From AOUON Founding Member Dorsey Nunn ong before it was a question profiting from privately investing in chattel slavery, human beings could of forced labor it was the issue corporations and stocks. be beat in the middle of a town square of caging me as a juvenile for Ultimately, I found myself asking without objection. How was such Lbeing incorrigible. No real crime if there is any difference between brutality ever considered normal? but a demand that I do the dance being owned by an individual, a I know now it was due to a potent of a slave that usually accompanied corporation or the government? I narrative that operated under the most arrests; the dance that starts remember people warning me on the color of law. with being forced to get naked, yard at Deuel Vocational Institution The ugly truth is that we would to stick out my tongue, to lift my that prisoners caught tattooing would never have been able to maintain the genitals, bend over and spread my receive disciplinary charges for prison industrial complex or engage butt cheeks and to cough. It was a destruction of state property. People in mass incarceration without forcing dance that I was forced to initially told me if I died while in custody and hundreds of thousands prisoners to do at Hillcrest Juvenile Hall and my family was too poor to pay for the labor without pay, or paying them so forced repeat throughout my decade funeral, the state would sell my ashes little that they are unable to make a of incarceration. I have always to my families. No matter how much meaningful contributions to their imagined this dance as similar to I wanted to happily exist in denial, my family or their communities. that of a slave prior to being sold consciousness would not allow it. As I write this opinion piece our on the auction block. When I asked The 13th Amendment made the country is being visited by riots authorities why I was being subjected exception that read “Neither slavery from coast to coast because of to such treatment they would allege nor involuntary servitude, except as systemic racism and murder. We that it was to search for contraband. a punishment for crime whereof the have yet to do the easy stuff like However, I always assumed it was party shall have been duly convicted.” divorce ourselves from vestiges of conducted to strip me of my dignity Thirty-two dollars-a-month was slavery. It is indefensible that in my by force and to leave no doubt who the most I ever made on any prison own state, California, involuntary was in charge. job that I worked. It wasn’t much, servitude is still protected by the It took me a long time to come to but it was enough to allow me to state constitution. It needs to be grips with the notion that I’d been deny that I was not a slave and removed. When will we have the enslaved. I so much wanted to see that somehow I had a choice. This nerve to face the reality that such a myself as something else, someone belief was as false as assuming that clause in our Constitution is morally other than the person who had been robbery victims have a choice, that reprehensible? enslaved for over 10 years. Maybe they happily hand over their money my status would have been more at gun point. The manifestation of apparent if I had been beaten by a my enslavement was the labor that If you would like to send feedback whip instead of a club, choked by a was being extracted by force or fear or contribute to the All of Us or rope instead of a knee or if I had toiled of institutional punishment or the None newspaper, please contact in the hot sun picking cotton. Did reality of never being released. the Editor. due process afford me an opportunity However difficult it was for me in court make something of myself to accept my status as a slave, it is Paula Lehman-Ewing other than an enslaved human more important for the public to All of Us or None being? After all, my body became a come to grips with the fact that we 4400 Market St., Oakland, CA 94608 commodity that produced wages for are collectively holding slaves. I used Phone: (415) 625-7036 x328 others who held me and for people to wonder why, during the period of [email protected] 4|AOUON June 2020 SPOTLIGHT For Eric “Maserati-E” Abercrombie, music was life but life was something much darker. It wasn’t until he was incarcerated that he started processing his trauma Eric through his art. Now, when life happens, Maserati-E knows he can always find peace in his craft. Photo credit: Sarah Arnold Photography t was one of those moments that 3-2-1 you’re done convinced that his odds of getting stays with you. It can happen so fast your face will out of Oakland alive were slim to Eric Abercrombie is singing still be stunned none. He routinely saw beat-downs Ion the yard at Old Folsom prison, I’m tryin’ to cool it down, ‘cause I and killings and eventually became freestyling with his guitar. He closes was as hot as they come violent himself. his eyes to envision a space where his By the time the last string is strum, “When you feel defensive or like voice isn’t trapped inside concrete the yard is full. you do not matter, it shows up in walls. Prior to incarceration, Eric your actions,” he said. “I just went Thoughts racin’ through my mind lived a double life: one with music through every day not caring enough like Nascars and one with violence. He is a whether I lived or died, and I didn’t Never understood the purpose of third-generation musician. His think about how that belief system perpin’ the ones who act hard grandparents were musicians, his affected me or those around me.” He lifts his head for a moment and mother was a rapper and his father When he was 17, Eric was sees a crowd beginning to gather. was a signed artist with Sony. sentenced 10 years after picking up He breathes deeply and goes back Eric wrote his first song when he a second strike-offense.