Buzz Alexander, an English Professor at the U of M, and his efforts devoted to the Prison Creative Arts Project (PCAP) were described in a previous Examiner article. The piece offered insight about the positive impact his creative arts program instills in both the prisoners and the students involved.
Today’s editorial piece is written to communicate the need for the community to discuss and encourage efforts like his.
Many law-abiding citizens choose to ignore the prison population possibly denying their existence altogether. This is for many reasons, possibly anger and fear for financial and safety implications and so on. It is easy to forget about these individuals but how compassionate is the act of forgetting?
Buzz Alexander’s program includes community outreach, The Speaker’s Bureau.
He described, “The presentation depends on our audience. It might be students, a church group or a community organization. We’d probably start with figures on mass incarceration, then talk about what we do and share some testimonials. We try to make it personal and to give a sense of who we are and why we are going into the prisons and youth facilities. Using power point, we show images from the Annual Exhibition of Art by Michigan Prisoners. Or we’ll show Acts of Arts, a PBS documentary made about the art show, or another video with images and a sound track by Josh White, Jr. where Janie Paul talks about being a curator. We may show scenes from some of the plays or a video from our very first youth art show, where incarcerated youth anonymously talk about their experiences working with us. We might show one of those things and then interface with the audience. We expect hard questions during open discussion. We train ourselves so that our answers support the questioner, and so that we’re able to share in their anger while also telling them what we know and about our experience. A question might be, why are you supporting someone who raped my sister?”
According to the Michigan MDOC annual report, prison felons totaled 44,708 in 2010. This number is difficult to accept, but it reflects today’s society. We need more humanitarian efforts like those of PCAP, to bring possibilities into the hard places where prisoners live.
Buzz’s closing words, “We bring to the prisoners our energy and high spirits, our laughter, and our recognition that they share a common humanity with us. We are never patronizing or judgmental. We are highly supported by them. Our workshops enable them to be resilient and to grow, and they teach us how to be resilient and grow ourselves.”
Comments