OffBeat Magazine
The Contemporary Arts Center has announced that tickets are now on sale for The Prison Music Project hosted by Zoe Boekbinder. This will be a streamed concert of music from Boekbinder’s album
Long Time Gone, which will be available for streaming on March 26, 27, and 28, 2021 on the Eventive platform, featuring Ani DiFranco, Princess Shaw, BL Shirelle, and more. The album released in 2020 on Righteous Babe and was produced in collaboration with Ani Di Franco. It features work by nine incarcerated and formerly-incarcerated writers.
In May 2010, Zoe Boekbinder paid their first visit to New Folsom Prison, a maximum-security penitentiary outside Sacramento, California. What they thought would be one interesting day turned into a decade-long collaborative project. Boekbinder visited the prison often over the next five years; performing and teaching music workshops quickly turned into the beginnings of collaborations with writers and musicians who were incarcerated wi
ByClifford L. Williams
San Francisco’s Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) will host a celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. National Day of Service on Monday, January 18, 2021 from 12:00 Noon to 5:00 PM via its YouTube and Facebook channels.
MoAD’s Director of Public Programs, Elizabeth Gessel, said the online, live celebration will include storytelling, poetry readings and discussions on social justice. “Traditionally, the MLK Day of Service is our biggest day of the year at the museum,” said Gessel. “On this day, we’re open for free and have a full, family-friendly day of events. Approximately 2,500 people would come to the museum on MLK Day, which means the museum is filled to capacity with lines going out the door.”
Rahsaan Thomas, photographed by Antwan Williams. Courtesy of Ear Hustle.
For Rahsaan “New York” Thomas, success came later in life and at a cost. After being incarcerated at San Quentin State Prison in California, Thomas began to work with organizations and initiatives using creative forces to combat mass incarceration and shift attitudes about prisoners from the inside.
He is now the co-host of the Pulitzer Prize-nominated podcast “Ear Hustle,” co-founder of Prison Renaissance (which connects prisoners to people outside), contributor to multiple national news outlets, and staff writer at the
San Quentin News. He has written about the devastating impact of the coronavirus on prisoners and the prison system for Insider, the Prison Journalism Project, Current, and more.