These days it is rough to look at the news, the headlines broadcasting disappearing neighbors and destruction of human rights. It is a privilege to ignore what is happening, and it is a privilege to be uninformed. One way to become informed is by reading, and I have a heavyweight recommendation for today. Rebel Speak: A Justice Movement Mixtape by Byronn Rolly Bain is all about incarceration and those who have been touched by this unjust system. Bain, himself, was wrongly imprisoned in his second year of law school, but even before then he had set his sights on civil rights. Then later, as a faculty member of UCLA he created college level courses for students incarcerated in California’s prisons. These experiences are the backbone of Rebel Speak assembled with a variety of voices in true mixtape fashion.
Mixtapes were created from the birth of hip-hop, by way of quick recordings of club performances by early DJs. Spoken word, collections of music samples, and the accessibility of the cassette tape allowed for personalized samples and small scale distribution. Mixtapes are the zines of the audio world. Bain sets up his mixtape as a series of dialogs with activists and community members whose lives have been impacted by incarceration. While there are no songs or music samples directly in the text, there are the voices of musical artists included in the dialogs. Cultural icons Chuck D and Harry Belafonte are among those represented mixed in with Dolores Huerta, and a few formerly incarcerated community members. Instead of chapters, the sections are labelled as “Tracks” and come with an introduction (ala liner notes) to introduce those who are participating in the dialogs.
Rebel Speak has a strong lineage of activism, and its keystone is the introduction by Angela Davis. Davis, Huerta, and Belafonte are the elders that are sharing the torch with the other voices that Bain brings forward. Mass incarceration, and its harm to the community are not new, but it takes new ideas and new leaders to face this injustice. Each track immerses me in a panel in a fictitious conference. Bain covers topics from ‘the school to prison pipeline’, solitary confinement, to the transition from prison to the general population. For every step in the system, he also highlights the activists and community leaders. Bain uses his academic and outreach connections to bring essential voices to the fold. He has worked with each person directly and the rapport is tangible. He is able to guide the discussions to the key arguments. He highlights their activism, their struggles, and the next steps. There are people doing the work, there are people creating the theories, the infrastructure exists for change.
So where does that put me, the reader? I am the missing puzzle piece, and so are you. We have to educate ourselves on the work that is being done and support it. Support means phone calls, volunteering, and donations. It means seeing the incarcerated as human beings, and just as diverse as every other person. It also means that Rebel Speak is a step to becoming informed, but it does not end with this book. Luckily Bain includes a great collection of further reading in his footnotes at the end of every chapter. If we want to protect our neighbors, then we need to also protect those who have found themselves imprisoned. Pass that mixtape along to the next person who needs it, inspire them to grow their community.