The Chicago Prison-Industrial Complex Teaching Collective and Maine's Beehive Design Collective held an interactive workshop March 27 at the Chicago Freedom School. The collectives gathered to discuss how the prison-industrial complex targets women and LGBT people in specific ways and how that affects society.
An icebreaker designed to help participants understand each other started off the workshop, led by Lewis Wallace of the Prison-Industrial Complex Teaching Collective. Music was played while everyone walked around the center of the room weaving in and out of the crowd. When it stopped people had to pair up and share three facts about themselves. This was repeated three times with different questions and pairs of people.
The collective's Carrie Kaufman read the mission statement before everyone introduced themselves by stating their name, what pronoun they preferred to be addressed by and what they do to relax. Then the three representatives from Maine's Beehive Design Collective were introduced: Christine B., Kyle and Tyler.
To get everyone thinking about the institutions and people who support the Prison-Industrial Complex participants created a "mind map." Subjects such as private business, poverty, public school systems, politicians, family and friends, urban destabilization, court systems and white supremacy were added to the mind map, with many of the 20 participants contributing.
The question posed after the mind map was created was: Looking at the mind map where does gender come into play? Participants agreed that all of them do.
Wallace defined the prison-industrial complex as "the overlapping interests of government and industry that uses surveillance, policing and imprisonment as solutions to economic, social and political problems." Wallace noted that five times the number of people have been put in prison's since the 1970s, with 7 million people currently under various forms of police control, and the majority of them being people of color.
Participants were then split into six groups to look at pictures or illustrations related to prisons—such as a pregnant woman giving birth with her hands in shackles and her abdomen strapped down. Each group got a different picture or illustration and the members had to share what they thought about what they saw.
Attendees were made aware that all the Beehive artwork depicts people as the animals who are native to the region the artwork represents. The Beehive representatives then showcased their recently finished Plan Columbia banner, which shows the effects of colonialism in South America. Among other things, the audience figured out what particular sections of the banner meant to them.
It turned out that the common thread from all four groups was that the poor farmers of Columbia are being used to grow coca, which is turned into cocaine and then sold to the people in the United States. According to the presenters, the drug war in Columbia and the United States is a smokescreen and justification for population control, warfare and modern-day colonization. They added that prisons are a way to have a workforce without any rights and targeting drug addicts gives the prison-industrial complex the resource they need to thrive.
To find out more about the Chicago Prison-Industrial Complex Teaching Collective, visit chicagopiccollective.com; to see what Maine's Beehive Design Collective is doing ,visit www.beehivecollective.org/english/front.htm.
