137. “Prisoners’ Demands,” Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity Coalition, https://
prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com/education/the-prisoners-demands-2.
Acknowledgments
Our warmest thanks to everyone who shared their stories with us. We’re grateful to you for opening your lives, your hearts, your families, and your homes over the years it took to build this book.
Endless gratitude to our managing editors for their navigation and patience. We couldn’t have done this without Dao X. Tran wrangling our calendars, offering advice, and tolerating endless bad jokes during weekly calls. Special fist bump to Luke Gerwe for believing in—and helping launch—this project. We’re grateful to the other members of the Voice of Witness team: Mimi Lok, Cliff Mayotte, Erin Vong, Claire Kiefer, Alexa Gelbard, and Dave Eggers for their dedication to human rights and education.
Thank you to Amy Fettig, Jessica Sandoval, David Fathi, Bill Cobb, Udi Ofer, Adina Ellis, Alexandra Ringe, and everyone at the ACLU who supported this book.
Thanks to Hope Metcalf, Sameer Jaywant, Steven Lance, Nell Gaither, Pete Martel, Susan Katz, Holly Cooper, Lois Henry, Sara Norman, Raha Jorjani, Susan Goodwillie, and Jennifer Parish. Your guidance, expertise, and perseverance helped us bring together a broad range of stories from across the country.
We’re honored to work with Haymarket Books. Special thanks to Brian Baughan for his editorial eye and Dana Blanchard and the rest of the Haymarket Books team for helping bring the book out to the world.
Thanks to the Voice of Witness volunteers who helped make this book possible: Victoria Alexander, Pablo Baeza, Corey Barr, Emma Cogan, Brittany Collins, Charlotte Edelstein, Katie Fiegenbaum, Justine Hall, Miriam Hwang-Carlos, Mary Beth Melso, Ariela Rosa, Barbara Sheffels, Lucy Wallitsch, Berman Zhigalko, and Kaye Herranen.
Thanks to Cate Malek for her friendship through yet another project, to Sean Havey for traveling to film stories with our narrators, to Adam Hochschild, Heather Ann Thompson, and Eli Feldman for your support and kind words. To Brad Andalman, Michael Hoke, Trevor Gardner, Lisa Guenther, Gus Johnson, Vivian Pendergrass, Paul Skenazy, Joe Stephens, and Leyla Vural for your insightful comments and keen eyes.
Special thanks to Erica Pollack, Elliot and Asher Pendergrass, Nikol Elaine, the Hoke and Pendergrass families, and the McKennas. Your support means more than you know.
About the Editors
Taylor Pendergrass has been gathering stories about the US criminal justice system for more than a decade. As a civil rights lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, Taylor has been counsel in major cases challenging “stop and frisk” policies, deceptive police interrogations, broken indigent defense systems, and degrading jail and prison conditions. His work includes advocating for reforms to solitary confinement and other practices in the New York City jails on Rikers Island. He currently works as strategist for the ACLU’s Campaign for Smart Justice, which is dedicated to reducing the US prison population by 50 percent and eradicating racial disparities in the criminal justice system. He lives in Denver.
Mateo Hoke is a writer, oral historian, and mixed-media journalist. He previously spent four years interviewing and researching throughout the West Bank and Gaza for the Voice of Witness book Palestine Speaks: Narratives of Life under Occupation, which he coedited with Cate Malek. His work often explores human rights and poverty, though he also enjoys writing about plants, books, and consciousness. His work has appeared in The Best American Nonrequired Reading, Rolling Stone, Pacific Standard, Lucky Peach, McSweeney’s, and Guernica, among other outlets. He lives in Oakland.
About VOICE OF WITNESS
Voice of Witness is a nonprofit that advances human rights by amplifying the voices of people impacted by injustice. We foster empathy-based dialogue and actions that advance human rights through our two core programs: our oral history book series, which illuminates firsthand accounts of injustice, and our education program, which brings these stories, as well as ethics-driven storytelling, to classrooms and communities across the United States and abroad. Visit voiceofwitness.org for more information.
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR & EXECUTIVE EDITOR: Mimi Lok
MANAGING EDITOR: Dao X. Tran
EDUCATION PROGRAM DIRECTOR: Cliff Mayotte
EDUCATION PROGRAM ASSOCIATE: Erin Vong
CURRICULUM SPECIALIST: Claire Kiefer
COMMUNICATIONS & OUTREACH MANAGER: Alexa Gelbard
Donor Relationship MANAGER: Elisa Perez-Selsky
COFOUNDERS
DAVE EGGERS
Founding Editor, Voice of Witness; cofounder of 826 National; founder of McSweeney’s Publishing
MIMI LOK
Cofounder, Executive Director & Executive Editor, Voice of Witness
LOLA VOLLEN
Founding Editor, Voice of Witness; Founder & Executive Director, The Life After Exoneration Program
VOICE OF WITNESS BOARD OF DIRECTORS
IPEK S. BURNETT
Author; depth psychologist
SARA FELDMAN
Ready California Project Director, Immigrant Legal Resource Center
NICOLE JANISIEWICZ
Attorney, United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
KRISTINE LEJA
Executive Director, Summer Search
MIMI LOK
Cofounder, Executive Director & Executive Editor, Voice of Witness
LUPE POBLANO
Co-Executive Director, CompassPoint
JILL STAUFFER
Associate Professor of Philosophy; Director of Peace, Justice, and Human Rights Concentration, Haverford College
TREVOR STORDAHL
Senior Counsel, VIZ Media; intellectual property attorney
The VOICE OF WITNESS SERIES
The Voice of Witness nonprofit book series amplifies the seldom-heard voices of people affected by contemporary injustice. We also work with impacted communities to create curricular and training support for educators. Using oral history as a foundation, the series depicts human rights issues in the United States and around the world. Say It Forward: A Guide to Social Justice Storytelling is forthcoming in 2019. Six by Ten: Stories from Solitary is the sixteenth book in the series. Other titles include:
SURVIVING JUSTICE
America’s Wrongfully Convicted and Exonerated
Compiled and edited by Lola Vollen and Dave Eggers
Foreword by Scott Turow
“Real, raw, terrifying tales of ‘justice.’” —Star Tribune
VOICES FROM THE STORM
The People of New Orleans on Hurricane Katrina and Its Aftermath
Compiled and edited by Chris Ying and Lola Vollen
“Voices from the Storm uses oral history to let those who survived the hurricane tell their (sometimes surprising) stories.” —Independent UK
UNDERGROUND AMERICA
Narratives of Undocumented Lives
Compiled and edited by Peter Orner
Foreword by Luis Alberto Urrea
“No less than revelatory.” —Publishers Weekly
OUT OF EXILE
Narratives from the Abducted and Displaced People of Sudan
Compiled and edited by Craig Walzer
Additional interviews and an introduction by Dave Eggers
“Riveting.” —School Library Journal
HOPE DEFERRED
Narratives of Zimbabwean Lives
Compiled and edited by Peter Orner and Annie Holmes
Foreword by Brian Chikwava
“Hope Deferred might be the most important publication to have come out of Zimbabwe in the last thirty years.” —Harper’s Magazine
NOWHERE TO BE HOME
Narratives from Survivors of Burma’s Military Regime
&nbs
p; Compiled and edited by Maggie Lemere and Zoë West
Foreword by Mary Robinson
“Extraordinary.” —Asia Society
PATRIOT ACTS
Narratives of Post-9/11 Injustice
Compiled and edited by Alia Malek
Foreword by Karen Korematsu
“Important and timely.” —Reza Aslan
INSIDE THIS PLACE, NOT OF IT
Narratives from Women’s Prisons
Compiled and edited by Ayelet Waldman and Robin Levi
Foreword by Michelle Alexander
“Essential reading.” —Piper Kerman
THROWING STONES AT THE MOON
Narratives from Colombians Displaced by Violence
Compiled and edited by Sibylla Brodzinsky and Max Schoening
Foreword by Íngrid Betancourt
“Both sad and inspiring.” —Publishers Weekly
REFUGEE HOTEL
Photographed by Gabriele Stabile and edited by Juliet Linderman
“There is no other book like Refugee Hotel on your shelf.” —SF Weekly
HIGH RISE STORIES
Voices from Chicago Public Housing
Compiled and edited by Audrey Petty
“Joyful, novelistic, and deeply moving.” —George Saunders
INVISIBLE HANDS
Voices from the Global Economy
Compiled and edited by Corinne Goria
Foreword by Kalpona Akter
“Powerful and revealing testimony.” —Kirkus
PALESTINE SPEAKS
Narratives of Life under Occupation
Compiled and edited by Cate Malek and Mateo Hoke
“Heartrending stories.” —New York Review of Books
THE VOICE OF WITNESS READER
Ten Years of Amplifying Unheard Voices
Edited and with an introduction by Dave Eggers
THE POWER OF THE STORY
The Voice of Witness Teacher’s Guide to Oral History
Compiled and edited by Cliff Mayotte
Foreword by William Ayers and Richard Ayers
“A rich source of provocations to engage with human dramas throughout the world.” —Rethinking Schools Magazine
LAVIL
Life, Love, and Death in Port-Au-Prince
Edited by Peter Orner and Evan Lyon
Foreword by Edwidge Danticat
“Lavil is a powerful collection of testimonies, which include tales of violence, poverty, and instability but also joy, hustle, and the indomitable will to survive.” —Vice
CHASING THE HARVEST
Migrant Workers in California Agriculture
Edited by Gabriel Thompson
“The voices are defiant and nuanced, aware of the human complexities that spill across bureaucratic categories and arbitrary borders.” —The Baffler