Retiring Arizona Prison Watch...


This site was originally started in July 2009 as an independent endeavor to monitor conditions in Arizona's criminal justice system, as well as offer some critical analysis of the prison industrial complex from a prison abolitionist/anarchist's perspective. It was begun in the aftermath of the death of Marcia Powell, a 48 year old AZ state prisoner who was left in an outdoor cage in the desert sun for over four hours while on a 10-minute suicide watch. That was at ASPC-Perryville, in Goodyear, AZ, in May 2009.

Marcia, a seriously mentally ill woman with a meth habit sentenced to the minimum mandatory 27 months in prison for prostitution was already deemed by society as disposable. She was therefore easily ignored by numerous prison officers as she pleaded for water and relief from the sun for four hours. She was ultimately found collapsed in her own feces, with second degree burns on her body, her organs failing, and her body exceeding the 108 degrees the thermometer would record. 16 officers and staff were disciplined for her death, but no one was ever prosecuted for her homicide. Her story is here.

Marcia's death and this blog compelled me to work for the next 5 1/2 years to document and challenge the prison industrial complex in AZ, most specifically as manifested in the Arizona Department of Corrections. I corresponded with over 1,000 prisoners in that time, as well as many of their loved ones, offering all what resources I could find for fighting the AZ DOC themselves - most regarding their health or matters of personal safety.

I also began to work with the survivors of prison violence, as I often heard from the loved ones of the dead, and learned their stories. During that time I memorialized the Ghosts of Jan Brewer - state prisoners under her regime who were lost to neglect, suicide or violence - across the city's sidewalks in large chalk murals. Some of that art is here.

In November 2014 I left Phoenix abruptly to care for my family. By early 2015 I was no longer keeping up this blog site, save occasional posts about a young prisoner in solitary confinement in Arpaio's jail, Jessie B.

I'm deeply grateful to the prisoners who educated, confided in, and encouraged me throughout the years I did this work. My life has been made all the more rich and meaningful by their engagement.

I've linked to some posts about advocating for state prisoner health and safety to the right, as well as other resources for families and friends. If you are in need of additional assistance fighting the prison industrial complex in Arizona - or if you care to offer some aid to the cause - please contact the Phoenix Anarchist Black Cross at PO Box 7241 / Tempe, AZ 85281. collective@phoenixabc.org

until all are free -

MARGARET J PLEWS (June 1, 2015)
arizonaprisonwatch@gmail.com



INDIGENOUS ACTION MEDIA

INDIGENOUS ACTION MEDIA
ANTICOLONIAL zines, stickers, actions, power

Taala Hooghan Infoshop

Kinlani/Flagstaff Mutual AID

MASS LIBERATION AZ

MASS LIBERATION AZ
The group for direct action against the prison state!

Black Lives Matter PHOENIX METRO

Black Lives Matter PHOENIX METRO
(accept no substitutions)

BLACK PHX ORGANIZING COLLECTIVE

BLACK PEOPLE's JUSTICE FUND

PHOENIX: Trans Queer Pueblo

COVID Mutual AID PHOENIX

AZ Prison Watch BLOG POSTS:


Friday, February 26, 2010

Mountains That Take Wing...

AZ Premiere of the film Mountains That Take Wing: 
Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama -
A Conversation on Life, Struggles, & Liberation.

TONIGHT - Friday, February 26th from 5:30-9PM (refreshments at 5:30 & video at 6. Q&A follows)

ASU Tempe Campus – Neeb Hall (http://www.asu.edu/tour/tempe/neeb.html)

Sponsored by Local to Global Justice (www.localtoglobal.org) and The School of Social Transformation (at ASU)

We will be collecting donations at the event for survivors of the Haiti Earthquake.
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ABOUT THE MOVIE:

Features conversations that span 13 years between two formidable women whose lives and political work remain at the epicenter of the most important civil rights struggles in the US. Through the intimacy and depth of conversations, we learn about Davis, an internationally renowned scholar-activist and 88-year-old Kochiyama, a revered grassroots community activist and 2005 Nobel Peace Prize nominee's shared experiences as political prisoners and their profound passion for justice. On subjects ranging from the vital but largely erased role of women in social movements of the 20th century, community empowerment, to the prison industrial complex, war and the cultural arts, Davis' and Kochiyama's comments offer critical lessons for understanding our nation's most important social movements and tremendous hope for its youth and the future.
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ABOUT THE FILM MAKERS:

H. L. T. Quan (Ph.D. University of California-Santa Barbara) is an Assistant Professor and an Affiliate Faculty in African/African American Studies, Asian Pacific American Studies and Women's and Gender Studies a ASU
. Her research centers on race, gender and economic and political thought. She is currently writing a book about savage developmentalism and its tendentious propensity to secure order and capitalist expansion. This study investigates foreign policy conducts by Japan in military Brazil, the United States in occupied Iraq, and China in Sudan amidst humanitarian disasters. She is also working on a collaborative project on the historical and political development of Black capitalism in the United States, a 17-city comparison.

Professor Quan is also a co-founder and member of QUAD Productions, a not for profit production company that produces media for progressive community organizations and activists. She and C. A. Griffith (Associate Professor, School of Theatre & Film) are co-directors and co-producers of the "Mountains That Take Wing: Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama - A Conversation on Life, Struggles & Liberation" and "América's Home" (working title).
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C.A. (Crystal) Griffith
Associate Professor, School of Theater and Film, ASU.

Professor Griffith was raised in Washington, D.C., and graduated from Stanford University (B.A.) and University of California, Santa Barbara (M.F.A). Ms. Griffith's credits include Juice (1992), award-winning PBS and BBC documentaries such as A Litany For Survival: The Life & Work of Audre Lorde (cinematographer), Branford Marsalis: The Music Tells You (camera operator), Depeche Mode 101, Eyes on the Prize I & II , and music videos including Tracy Chapman, Public Enemy, and The Rolling Stones. She was awarded a 2004 Illinois Arts Council Fellowship in Media Arts, the Panavision/Kodak University Outreach Program Grant and the Vision in Color Award of the New England Film/Video Festival.

Ms. Griffith also received a grant from Digital Media's Avid Feature Film Camp for her film, Del Otro Lado (The Other Side). Shot on location in Mexico City and screened extensively at U.S. and international film festivals, Griffith directed, co-edited and co-produced this Spanish language, independent feature in 1999.

With H.L.T. Quan, she is co-directing "Mountains That Take Wing: Angela Davis & Yuri Kochiyama - A Conversation on Life, Struggles & Liberation", a documentary on women of color cultural workers. C.A. Griffith's publications appear in Filming Difference (forthcoming), Black Feminist Cultural Criticism: Classic Readings, Black Women Film and Video Artists , Herotica 4, The Wild Good, the journals Meridians, Signs and Calyx. Ms. Griffith joins Arizona State University 's new Film Program from Columbia College Chicago (2000-06), Smith College and the University of Massachusetts Amherst (1997-00).


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 Department of Justice: Investigate Mumia's conviction.

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