Save the date for a series of events surrounding Let’s Get Free 7th art show and fundraiser. We’re planning art demos, gallery tours, and a panel discussion with international political prisoners.
The show will be on display at the Irma Freeman Center for Imagination, in the Garfield neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
Let’s Get Free’s Creative Resistance committee has been busy, and we’ve got TWO big updates about art shows!
Our permanent art collection will be on view at the Kelly Strayhorn Theater lobby gallery in Pittsburgh, Thursday, February 29 – Saturday, June 8. There will be an opening reception.
We’ve announced the theme for our 7th annual art show and fundraiser: This Is Me. The submission deadline is August 1, 2024.
Visit creative-resistance.org for all the details, including:
Alongside our art show, this is our second year including poetry. 70 poets from the inside have submitted poems! A booklet of poems will be available for free at the show, and you can read them online here.
Art as a tool for liberation has been a central element of Let’s Get Free’s work since its inception. The art shows have steadily built advocacy for the release of deserving individuals from Pennsylvania state prisons and have created conversations and collaborations that invite meaningful reciprocity between the prison walls.
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Contact: etta cetera: 443-603-6964
Press Release
Email: letsgetfreepa@letsgetfreepa
Website: creative-resistance.org and letsgetfree.info
Let’s Get Free teams up with Concept Art Gallery in Regent Square, for a new exhibit called Picture A Free World. Art will help us imagine, strategize, and continue our movements for freedom.
Over 60 artists from prison and 30 artists in solidarity have created work across various mediums, including cross stitching, paintings, sculpture, and photography that all considers the question: What is a free world for you, and for others?
There are over 100 pieces of art up for auction benefiting the work of this local prison advocacy group. The auction starts on July 7th and will last three weeks until Monday July 24th at 8pm. People can bid in person at the gallery or online from home. All money raised supports the work of Let’s Get Free.
First time participant from Colorado, Cedar Mortenson submits an illustration with colored pencils that connects issues of forgiveness, environmental justice, and ending gun violence.
She writes, “I recognize the inherent right to life for all living creation. We exist in tandem with each other and every other living thing. I used gold leaf paper befitting a golden, free world, and my color choice is a tribute to all beautiful tones of brown behind bars from cream, to mahogany. I used multiple languages because the message is universal/ Education is liberation. Everyday I become more and more free.”
Zhi Kai Vanderford is incarcerated in a women’s prison in Minnesota and has served close to four decades behind the walls. This is his second year participating in our show. Zhi Kai considers his art “protest art” and is consistently thought provoking.
“I had a hard time encompassing all that freedom would mean to me. For example, this is a no touch facility, so I haven’t had a hug in 5 years. I will be having a visit soon and remedy that. But the concept is not easily quantifiable, to be able to go to a door and open it, a fridge, a night time sky, petting animals, etc. So I sent you my first piece called ‘self-inflicted injury’ as incarceration is my fault. In my work, I have sewn my eyes and mouth shut but in my mind’s eye I see my potential life.”
🌟July 7th Friday 4 – 9 pm Opening & Auction Kick Off
Auction closes Monday July 24th 8pm. Online and in person auction. Food, Drink, Cheap Art Sale, Quilt Raffle & more.
🌟July 8th Saturday 2pm Amachi Pittsburgh
Performance by the Amachi Pittsburgh Ambassadors
🌟July 21st Friday 5-7:30 Dorothy Burge
Quiltivism Presentation starts at 6:30
🌟July 22nd Saturday 2 – 3:30pm – Art, Imagination and Liberation Panel Discussion @ Carnegie Museum of Art
🌟July 23 Sunday 2 – 5pm – Artmaking w/ Dorothy
Quilt inspired Message Making with Dorothy Burge
In partnership with the Carnegie Museum of Art, the weekend of July 21 will be action packed! Friday night starts off with an artist talk by Chicago based quiltivist, Dorothy Burge. Dorothy is a fabric and multimedia artist and community activist who uses her quilt portraits in tandem with movements to end police brutality and criminal injustice.
Saturday’s panel – Art, Imagination and Liberation will feature Mariame Kaba, Nicole Fleetwood and Dorothy Burge in conversation. This event will take place in person at the Carnegie Museum of Art with online options.
Full list of Events, Auction/Contest Info and Online Gallery is available HERE
Alongside our virtual art show, this is our second year including poetry. 70 poets from the inside have submitted poems! A booklet of poems will be available for free at the show.
Art as a tool for liberation has been a central element of Let’s Get Free’s work since its inception. The art shows have steadily built advocacy for the release of deserving individuals from Pennsylvania state prisons and have created conversations and collaborations that invite meaningful reciprocity between the prison walls.
###
Contact: etta cetera: 443-603-6964
Press Release
Email: letsgetfreepa@letsgetfreepa
Website: creative-resistance.org and letsgetfree.info
Join us for a screening of Across the Walls followed by discussion: 2nd Chances Keep Us Safer
February 18, 2pm -4pm, Saturday
Carnegie Museum of Art Theater
4400 Forbes Avenue | Pittsburgh, PA
Access Notes: Wheelchair accessible. Captions on film. Wear a mask. This event is Free.
2nd Chances Keep Us Safer – Film and Panel Discussion
Long prison sentences are not keeping us safe! Join us for a big screen viewing of Across the Walls A film featuring Avis Lee and Paulette Carrington were released from life sentences after each serving over 40 years. This panel following the film will invite you to consider how second chances can actually make our communities safer, more loving and collectively thriving. Hear the stories of people who are doing just that, returning citizens who are building pathways home for the people they left behind and what impact they’re making for us all.
Speakers:
Ricky Olds, Executive Director of the House of Life
Richard Garland, Executive Director of ReImagine Reentry
Terri Minor Spencer founder of Colorful Backgrounds EXPO
Across the Walls: 20 minutes
Filmed and Edited by Njaimeh Njie
Film Screening 2 – 2:20pm
Panel Discussion 2:30- 3:30pm
Reception with Light Refreshments – 3:30- 4pm
Across the Walls is a documentary film that offers an intimate glimpse into the experiences of women sentenced to life in prison without parole in the state of Pennsylvania. After decades of activism and community building, recently Avis Lee and Paulette Carrington were released from life sentences after each serving over 40 years. As they adjust to life outside, they’ve kept their focus on organizing to end life without parole, and helping the women they left inside be released.
The film stages a conversation between Avis and Paulette on the outside, and five women who are still on the inside. Using interviews, found footage, and landscape cinematography, the film assembles a story about the women’s interior lives, against the backdrop of spaces they’ve inhabited and spaces they’ve been taken away from. Never straying from the women’s points of view, Across the Walls is a meditation on memory, and manifestations for a free future.
Call for Visual Art and Poems from artists on both sides of the prison walls
This year’s theme: Picture a Free World
Pierre Pinson, member of Let’s Get Free’s Prison Advisory Board, offered this theme. The theme is expansive. It can be interpreted many different ways and can connect to work you have already made or inspire new work. Picturing a Free World is an act of imagination in itself, and it will take creativity for us to get there. Art will help us imagine, to strategize and to continue our movements for freedom. What is a free world for you, for others? Perhaps it is literally being released from prison, maybe you consider system wide changes that would promote mass liberation, maybe you depict a small detail of what it looks like to feel or be free. What is your definition of Freedom? From what are you trying to free yourself? How are you trying to get free?
The show will open in July of 2023 at Concept Gallery in Regent Square Neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
Guaranteed Basic Income Teach-In & Fundraiser
Tuesday September 27
6:30-7:30pm
Virtual Zoom Teach In
Access Update: ASL/English Interpreters and auto generated captions
Register Here
Join Let’s Get Free in learning about Guaranteed Basic Income (GBI) with some organizations that are already trying it out! This one hour virtual teach-in is a fundraiser for A Softer Landing Fund, a new initiative to support people who have served long sentences coming home from prison. Panelists Brittany Pope (Bread for the City – DC) and Richard Wallace (EAT -Chicago) have both implemented GBI programs for formerly incarcerated people. Participants will hear an overview of their projects including success and challenges and have the opportunity to ask questions. Evan Casper-Futterman (Economic Democracy Learning Center – Bronx) will help us discern the nuances between mutual aid, guaranteed basic income and situate projects like these in a broader economic context.
Collectively we have raised $13,000 (!OMG! THANKS EVERYONE) so far but are still a long way from reaching our goal of $50,000. Sit with us for an hour, think about economic solidarity and kick down for the cause. Any amount is a great amount.
This event is organized by Dustin Gibson, kai koehler and etta cetera, the working group for A Softer Landing Fund.
Ways to Donate:
Venmo: @Lets-GetFree
Cashapp: $letsgetgreepgh
Check: Let’s Get Free 460 Melwood Ave #300 Pittsburgh, PA 15213
A Softer Landing Fund is a guaranteed income initiative that will distribute recurring, cash payments with no strings attached to a number of formerly incarcerated people who are connected with Let’s Get Free. This pilot initiative will last one year and prioritize women returning from long sentences.We named our project A Softer Landing because even if you have a lot of support coming home from prison it is still very hard. There is the idea that often when you leave prison you enter into “financial incarceration”. You have to pay to be on parole, pay for unnecessary urine tests, face employment and housing barriers from felony status, are ordered to pay court and restitution fees, exclusion from social welfare programs, and more.
Brittany Pope serves as Economic Security Supervisor at Bread for the City, a non-profit organization in Washington, DC, which provides comprehensive services to DC residents living with low incomes, while also striving to help them develop power to determine the future of their own communities. She leads the Economic Security team, which focuses on coordinating, supporting, and advocating for guaranteed income projects and policy change. Brittany holds a master’s degree in Social Work from Catholic University, with a concentration in Social Justice and Change. Born and raised in Washington, DC, Brittany believes in uplifting its community and striving for a just society for all.
Richard Wallace is a diversely talented artist & director with extensive experience developing effective campaigns to engage and empower working-class Chicagoans. Knack for effective coalition building and fundraising lends to a unique ability to align organizational goals with mission, practice, and desire to make a difference. Driven by a passion for racial equity; empowering working-class Chicagoans in the fight against anti-black racism in the US and abroad; and building strategic coalitions and networks that reinforce a social mission through the betterment of the community. Wallace currently serves as the Founding Executive Director of Equity and Transformation (EAT)
Evan Casper-Futterman, PhD is a 3rd generation New Yorker. He is the Program Director of the Economic Democracy Learning Center for the Bronx Cooperative Development Initiative. He earned a master’s degree in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of New Orleans in 2011He received his PhD at the Bloustein School of Urban Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University, studying economic democracy and development. He has taught undergraduate courses at the Macaulay Honors College at City College (CUNY) and in the Geography department at Vassar College, as well as graduate courses at Hunter College and the CUNY School of Labor and Urban Studies. He is a co-founder and former board treasurer of the Cooperative Economics Alliance of NYC and is the Secretary of the board for the Bronx Community Land Trust.
Donations to benefit Let’s Get Free
Campaign Launch 6-9pm
Learn about the Let Grandma Go Campaign, Sign postcards to lawmakers, Reserve limited edition museum quality print featuring a new original portrait of Cyd Berger created by Mary Dewitt, Film screening of Wide Open 7 minute short, Refreshments, Buy LGF shirts, etc.
After party is 9-11pm
Dancing and Adult Beverages
DJ- Mary Mack
Bands- Grow Light, Close Prisons
Access Notes: Masks Up! There is an outside courtyard. We are checking about wheel chair access. The bathroom is for sure down stairs. Access questions: letsgetfreepa@gmail.com
Let Grandma Go is a public awareness campaign to make visible aging women in prison, pass laws that would liberate the elderly in prison and bring our friends home.
As time wears on, people who were sentenced to Death By Incarceration and other long sentences in the 70s, 80s, and 90s are getting older inside prisons. Their bodies are wearing out. They’ve become fundamentally different people than they were at the time of their arrest. Often, they use their skills as talented mentors, teachers, and peer educators to make a difference in the lives of younger incarcerated people and improve the world around them. We know that the punishment-driven system that keeps them incarcerated is oppressive, inhumane, and unjust. And equally, we know our communities will be stronger with these elders and mentors home.
As part of the fight to free our elders, Let’s Get Free and CADBI (Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration) are sending monthly postcards to PA state legislators and DAs. The postcards highlight the stories of incarcerated women elders and urge politicians to support bills in the PA General Assembly.
April 22nd was Jennifer Rhodes’ birthday! Jennifer has spent the last 31 years in prison during which she has earned an Associates degree in Business, certification as an Optician, and soon will hold certification as a Braille Transcriber. She is also a role model and counselor to other incarcerated women. She has a daughter, who was just six years old when she was sentenced to Life Without Parole. At 64, she currently suffers from myeloid leukemia, Graves’ disease, degenerative joint disease, and type 2 diabetes.
SB 835 and HB 2347 are identical companion bills. If passed, they would create a mechanism for certain ill and/or aging incarcerated people in Pa. state correctional institutions (SCIs) to petition the Pa. Parole Board for release. The bills also require Pa. Dept. of Corrections staff to help incarcerated people with petitions for release, provide relevant records, notify families of their incarcerated loved one’s terminal medical diagnosis, facilitate quick visitation after a terminal diagnosis, and track statistics about medical and geriatric parole and other items for the legislature to review yearly
Read the FAMM’s Full Bill Summary
Report by Debbie Davis
On March 23, 2022, New Jersey’s Rowan University hosted by Professor Sandra Joy invited four formerly Incarcerated women, in honor of International Women’s Day, to speak on a panel sharing their stories of “Family and incarceration.” Cynthia Alvarado, Gladys Scott ( the Scott sisters of Mississippi) Paulette Carrington (juvenile Lifer) and Debbie, one of the MOVE 9. These women each told their story of the complexities, fear and rippling effects that incarceration has on families and the long lasting scars it carries. They each also expressed their personal interest in reaching back and doing whatever they can do within their means to help their extended “families”that are still incarcerated. Although scarred themselves they still managed to fill the room with laughter and hope.
Editors Note: Having not heard of the Scott Sisters before just looked them up on Wikipedia and this is what we found:
Jamie and Gladys Scott, often referred to as the Scott sisters, are two African-American sisters who were convicted of orchestrating a 1993 armed robbery in Forest, Mississippi, after accomplices made a plea deal. Each sister received double life sentences, This sentence has been criticized as too severe by a number of civil rights activists and prominent commentators on the grounds that the sisters had no previous criminal record and the robbery netted no more than eleven dollars.Their convictions were upheld by the Mississippi Court of Appeals in 1996. The U.S. Supreme Court denied both their petition for appeal in 1997 and an appeal to vacate the conviction in 1998. Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour denied a petition for clemency in 2006. On December 29, 2010, Governor Barbour suspended their sentence on the condition that Gladys donate a kidney to her ailing sister, who was suffering kidney failure and required dialysis. The two women were released from prison on January 7, 2011. They moved to Pensacola, Florida. It is anticipated that they will remain on parole and pay a supervision fee to the state of Florida for the rest of their lives.
Look for this book they wrote called:
The Scott Sisters: Revealing The Truth, Exposing Injustice, and Trusting God (2016)
We are enthusiastic to announce Let’s Get Free’s 5th annual art show featuring artists and poets in and outside of prison. This year’s show is themed EMPATHY is the seed, TRUTH is the water, SOLIDARITY is the bloomage, and will be presented in person at the Brew House Gallery as well as on-line. The show will open Friday November 19 from 6:00-9:00 pm, and will run through December 19.
This year’s show features 34 artists in prison and 29 artists in solidarity expressing a range of media, from watercolor to cross stitch to sculpture. First-time participant Marilyn Dobrolenski submitted a beautiful piece entitled “Harmony,” which features a lush and verdant wetland scene with water lilies, done in acrylic paint. Marilyn turned 69 this year and is one of over 70 women serving a life sentence over the age of 65. #LetGrandmaGo
Elena House-Hay submitted a thought provoking piece of a mechanized device that is exploring ideas about “truth.” Elena shares: “Being an artist in prison functions to make art my hard earned salvation. It is restorative, unshakable hope. If my art can be free – of prison, depression, and fear – so can I. And that is the promise, the lure, and the most ambitious expression I can seek.”
Kal-El, one of 5 transgender artists participating from prison, shares a vibrant painting that celebrates the existence of many genders. The experience of trans people in prison is often left out of conversations about mass incarceration. In our efforts to create less distance between the prison walls, Empathy is the Seed uplifts marginalized voices who can teach a lot about what is needed to build a more just world. Kal-El, currently serving a life sentence, discusses his experience of being an artist: “I see color when I listen to music or feel emotions. I thought everyone had this ability. I never knew that I could put those colors on to a canvas and people could see what I was feeling that day. Sharing these feelings verbally is difficult. A painting, to me, is like telling someone when I’m sad, mad, etc..”
Alongside our virtual art show, this is our first year including poetry. Over 40 poets from the inside have sent in poems! Look forward to at least one poetry reading during the show. Other events include:
Full list of Events, Auction/Contest Info and Online Gallery will be available at creative-resistance.org
The Art Auction begins on opening night and runs through December 10th. People can bid in person at the gallery or online. Winners will be able to pick up their art on December 19th or schedule pick up at a later time. All money raised supports the work of Let’s Get Free. Money will be used in printing and shipping for our newsletter and Daughter’s magazine, copious postage needs, direct support for people coming home, like driving lessons and art supply scholarships for people on the inside. There will be a series of limited edition prints available to people who sign up to become monthly sustainers.
Art as a tool for liberation has been a central element of Let’s Get Free’s work since its inception, and its annual art shows have steadily built advocacy for the release of deserving individuals from Pennsylvania state prisons and have created conversations and collaborations that invite meaningful reciprocity between the prison walls.
###
Contact: etta cetera: letstgetfreepa(at)gmail.com
Website: creative-resistance.org and letsgetfree.info