PJI Holds Initial Screenings for End Plantation Prisons series
In January, we hosted three End Plantation Prisons (EPP) video screenings at the John Thompson Legacy Center in New Orleans which garnered total attendance of well over 100 community members. The videos shown at each screening were selected from among 22 first-person testimonials produced by PJI as part of the EPP project which launched on January 5, 2023. Read about the launch.
Each screening included several videos from the collection followed by panel discussions featuring the voices of those directly impacted by hard labor. Their testimonies, on- and off-screen, captured audiences’ attention and shed light on the human toll and societal impacts of these harmful and punitive practices. Each panel discussion prompted robust engagement by those in attendance.
Each of the three events centered on a different topic at the intersection of criminal justice and the prison labor system. Our first screening, for instance, focused on the personal impact forcing people to work has on those convicted to hard labor sentences. In response to a question from the audience wanting to know if any job in prison had been personally meaningful, Terrance Winn spoke about his experience as a nurse’s aid, “… To care for another human being that can no longer care for himself, that’s the biggest form of compassion that god gave us, so that job touched me more than any job will ever touch me in my life. Because right before I came home, like merely days, I saw 13 of those dudes die due to Covid, thirteen.”
One of the questions asked in all three of the screenings dealt with alternative forms of Justice that may not look like the way our system works now. At our second screening, Rachel Nicholson was quick to respond “Rehabilitation, classes, seeking people out, anything that you can do to help everybody. Everybody needs to get out and do more, it doesn’t just need to be us formerly incarcerated, it needs to be everybody who has any form of compassion, empathy, sympathy for anybody.”
“Mental health” added Engrid Hamilton.
During the third screening, Loyola University New Orleans’s Professor Andrea Armstrong closed the panel by saying “I believe as a matter of faith or life… I believe in the inherent human dignity of every single person, whatever they’ve done, whatever they haven’t done, they are human and they are deserving of dignity which includes the dignity of being able to decide how your labor is being used and is one of the few things that we possess that is all our own…”
We are grateful to those who participated in each screening and lent their voices and experiences to the discussion. Together, the video testimonials and these screenings provide an opportunity for the voices of those impacted by the prison labor system to be heard and to actively educate the public on the harsh realities of our criminal legal system.
Looking ahead, PJI is planning additional screenings and panel discussions in New Orleans and other cities in the state. To receive updates on future events and to take action, visit the End Plantation Prisons website.