Two prisoners speak for themselves, one on the lack of respect for Black lives on the streets and in prison; the other on how prisoners at Georgia’s Forest Hays Jr. State Prison are deprived of justice.
Voices from the inside out
Voices from the Inside Out: What is criminal justice reform?
September 25, 2022A critical view from a prisoner against the criminal justice system: “If the criminals running the justice system aren’t held accountable, the criminal justice system will always be corrupt.”
Voices from the Inside Out: End life without parole
July 20, 2022Prisoner Sam Lint writes about working to change South Dakota’s lifer law as South Dakota is one of only two states that have no option for parole if you have a life sentence; and one of the only two states that will give a life sentence for manslaughter. “Life” is natural life here, and they don’t mind giving it out.
Voices from the Inside Out: Agents of lawlessness
July 19, 2022Prisoner’s critique of police brutality and how it impacts Black communities and is “a tangible reminder of the incompleteness of formal equality.”
Voices from the Inside Out: When ‘rehabilitation’ equals slavery
May 20, 2022A Colorado bill redefined prison as “rehabilitation.” But the prison still controls how much of the minimum wage goes to the prisoner who works for capitalists.
Voices from the Inside Out: Quality care needed
May 14, 2022Pennsylvania prisoners are not afforded any quality healthcare or meaningful relief, even from debilitating conditions; not even from disability.
Voices From the Inside Out: Penn. prison abuses the mentally ill
March 19, 2022The voice of a prisoner in Pennsylvania tells us about the harsh experience of being in solitary confinement for the mentally ill.
Voices from the Inside Out: No aid on the way out
January 27, 2022Just before his release, Robert Taliaferro writes about the lack of resources for prisoners who leave prison. “They are left to their own devices to find housing, transportation, and jobs, even after decades of confinement. When they fail, the logistics of incarceration fire up again in lockstep to gladly welcome them back to the fold.”
Voices from the Inside Out: Criminal priorities
November 19, 2021Robert Taliaferro denounces the exacerbated inequalities of capitalism in the U.S.: while, in a Midwestern prison, hundreds of pounds of organically grown vegetables and fruits were allowed to rot, one out of five Black families face food insecurity.
Voices From the Inside Out: Monopolies hurt prisoners
September 21, 2021Not a month goes by when we don’t hear of some city, state or country challenging corporate monopolies, acting as the guardians of citizens’ rights to avoid corporate abuses. But companies are awarded monopoly status to sell inferior products for inflated prices to the prisoner market, exploiting prisoners and their loved ones.
Voices from the Inside Out: Targeting anti-racism
June 29, 2021Black prisoner Robert Taliaferro critiques the attack on critical race theory, which he sees as helping “a nation to understand how far it has come, and how far it needs to grow, when it comes to issues of racial equality.”
Voices From the Inside Out: U.S. social lynching
May 8, 2021Now that the jury has delivered Derek Chauvin’s verdict, we are faced with the question of how we got here in the first place. Why is it that 156 years after the end of slavery and 245 years into our national existence we are still discussing and witnessing the institutional and social lynching of Black folks?
Voices From the Inside Out: Debating Trumpism
February 2, 2021Prisoner Robert Taliaferro explores what it is like to argue with white racists immersed in Trumpist propaganda.
Voices from the Inside Out: Damage left by Trump
November 28, 2020Prisoner Robert Taliaferro gives his view of the Trump Administrations legacy and hopes for the Joseph Biden Kamala Harris Presidency.
Voices from the inside out: George Floyd and 13th Amendment
July 1, 2020Prisoner columnist Robert Taliaferro explores how George Floyd’s death sparked a delayed discussion of race. Will such discussions be sustained once the cameras are turned off and the reporters leave, or will they once again fall short of needed reforms and honest solutions?
Voices from the inside out: COVID-19 in prison
May 3, 2020Depending on the state and their prison system, healthcare inside is marginal during the best of times. Some prisons in Wisconsin are better than in most states, but that care is not consistent throughout Wisconsin’s facilities.
Voices from the inside out: On becoming human
March 11, 2020Faruq reflects on the question of social interaction in the modern capitalist world, seen from the point of view of someone who has spent several years in prison.
Voices from the inside out: Impeachment reveals flaws of democracy
January 22, 2020Prisoner Robert Taliaferro reflects critically on the myth of democracy in the U.S., revealed by Trump’s impeachment.
Voices from the inside out: A ‘free world’ view
January 21, 2020Former prisoner Faruq writes of how in prison he “figured out how to become truly myself” and how that is manifested while on parole.
Voices from the inside out: Generations in jail
November 17, 2019Robert Taliaferro takes up the high rate of incarceration in the U.S., focused on its effects on children whose parents are in prison.
Voices from the inside out: Promises broken
August 31, 2019A prisoner’s critique of Wisconsin’s Governor Tony Evers’s broken promise of reducing prison population in the state to half.
Voices from the Inside Out: What is freedom?
June 27, 2019What does it mean to be paroled from prison? Before release, all I had was time. It was all torture. Now, I don’t have time. The effort to sustain myself takes most of my time and energy. Freedom, for me, means having time to work out who I am, how I want to relate to others.
Voices From the Inside Out: Prisoners debate socialism and capitalism
June 26, 2019Over the past several years there has been a heated debate in the U.S. regarding socialism. These same issues are discussed nationwide within its prisons, with an interesting level of diversity which rivals opinions beyond the prison walls.
Voices From the Inside Out: Served the time but kept in prison
April 23, 2019Robert Taliaferro writes of the harm done to prisoners by then Wisconsin Governor Tommy Thompson’s actions in the 1990s to keep prisoners behind bars despite the laws for mandatory release.
Voices from the Inside Out: Importance of community support
March 9, 2019In Madison, Wisc., during the 1980s, a solitary Black woman roamed the hallways of the Dane County Courthouse for the purpose of attending trials of Black defendants. Her goal was to ensure that every Black woman, man, and child would see at least one Black face in the courtroom other than their own.
Pondering the idea of freedom
January 31, 2019Prisoner Faruq ponders the idea of freedom as an idea that has its own development and, if grasped, will help transcend capitalist relations.
Review: ‘Always Color Outside the Lines’
Review of Robert Taliaferro’s wonderfully illustrated book, “Always Color Outside the Lines: Freedom for the Artist Within”–a book that shows his philosophy of art and his expertise with different media and techniques.
Voices From the Inside Out: Wisconsin’s prison system on trial
January 24, 2019Prisoner Robert Taliaferro looks forward to what a new governor in Wisconsin may mean for prisoners, especially prisoners of color, who have suffered under Governors Tommy Thompson and Scott Walker.
Voices From the Inside Out: Learning the meaning of parole
December 3, 2018Prisoner Faruq writes of his pending parole and the obligation to fight the designation that prisoners are the “worst of the worst,” to fight the dehumanization of prisoners; he forwards the importance of prisoner activism in changing draconian conditions.
Voices from the inside out: The need for unity
September 17, 2018Prisoner Faruq writes about new beginnings after the California prisoners’ hunger strike and the need for unity for any new movement forward.
Voices From the Inside Out: Prisoner reviews Specters of Revolt
July 22, 2018Prisoner-columnist Faruq reviews the book “Specters of Revolt: On the Intellect of Insurrection and Philosophy from Below” by Richard Gilman-Opalsky.
Voices From the Inside Out: ACCESS/KEEFE robs prisoners’ families
May 9, 2018Prisoner Robert Taliaferro writes of how the predatory company ACCESS/KEEFE is now the most expensive, convoluted and ONLY way Wisconsin prisoners can receive funds from external sources.
Voices From the Inside Out: What is the objective of prisoner unity?
March 8, 2018Prisoner Faruq writes of “those of us confined behind prison walls [who] recognize the pressing need to unify the prison population in the different prisons.”
Voices from the inside out: Prisoners discuss impact of 13th Amendment
January 29, 2018Prisoners Faruq and Robert Taliaferro write about the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that allowed for prisoners to be enslaved, taking up different aspects of slavery as it appears in prison, in the U.S. and the world.
Voices from the inside out: Ferguson, Mo., at three
November 14, 2017Black prisoners ponder if Black Lives Matter, as a functional organized entity, can develop philosophically, and thereby become capable of generating something beyond a national discussion of U.S. racism?
Readers’ Views: September-October 2017, Part 2
September 5, 2017Readers’ Views: Marx’s concept of theory; we are not a game; voices from behind bars.
Appeal: Your help is needed to change the world
An appeal for funds to keep Marxist-Humanism alive and to help News and Letters Committees continue to grow. .
Voices from the inside out: ‘Agreement to End Hostilities’ 5th anniversary
Prisoner Faruq writes about the meaning of the fifth anniversary of the historic “Agreement to End Hostilities” that continues to challenge the racism imposed on prisoners in the California prison system and elsewhere. .
Voices from the inside out: “I Am Not Your Negro”
July 6, 2017Review by a prisoner of the companion book to the documentary film “I Am Not Your Negro” on James Baldwin, whose title speaks to the liberation of New Afrikan people in Amerika. .
Voices From the Inside Out: Castro absolved?
January 26, 2017Black prisoner Faruq looks critically at Fidel Castro’s legacy, especially his turn to a one party state and the importance of freely associated labor for a true revolutionary process.
Voices From The Inside Out: Wisconsin prison destroys books
November 26, 2016Prisoner Robert Taliaferro tells of how a Wisconsin prison destroyed all library books that had been damaged in any way, thus depriving prisoners of their rights and adding “fuel to the fires of revolution.”
Voices from the inside out: Wisconsin prisoner hunger strike
September 17, 2016Prisoner Robert Taliaferro writes of the Wisconsin maximum security facility prisoners’ hunger strike to end the inhumane practice of long-term solitary confinement and for improved medical care for prisoners with mental illness in segregation.
Voices From the Inside Out: Prisoner’s ‘worth’
July 5, 2016Prisoner Robert Taliaferro discusses the profit made from prisoners by the prison industrial complex and the shame of supposed rehabilitative programs that in reality are required, not for rehabilitation but for continued punishment of prisoners and profit for the prisons.
Voices From The Inside Out: Criminal Prisons
April 27, 2016Article by prisoner comparing the U.S. prison system–which commits extortion, assault, theft, substandard medical care, racism and a host of other crimes–to an erupting volcano whose magma destroys all it touches.