A platform for artistic expression
A portal for anti-racist* education and action
OCTOBER 2020 COVER PAGE
“Shivs, Shanks, and Bone Crushers: Homage to Maurice Caldwell”
Artwork by Tania Love Abramson.
A young black man growing up in the Alemany projects of San Francisco, Maurice Caldwell was wrongly convicted of murder in 1991. That conviction came with a 27-years-to-life prison sentence. His entire incarceration, lasting over 20 years, was spent in Northern California Maximum Security prisons. On December 19, 1993, approximately 2 and a half years after he began his prison sentence, Maurice was brutally stabbed in the head, shoulder, and chest by another inmate. The weapon (nick-named a Bone Crusher) was a lethal one, an approximately 6-inch-long improvised knife made from a metal rod filed to a razor-sharp point. This stabbing occurred in the dining room of California State Prison, Sacramento.
The centerpiece of this artwork is the actual prison document that recorded this potentially fatal assault. The redacted portions obscure the assailant’s name. The background image is a collection of weapons made by prisoners, with names like Shivs, Shanks, and Bone Crushers. These weapons, confiscated in a prison search, signify the violence and danger of life in incarceration.
By displaying this story, together with makeshift weapons designed to cause great bodily harm or perhaps even death, within an ornate gilt frame, my intent is to honor Maurice Caldwell, particularly since learning that this life-or-death experience had a devastating psychological impact on him that understandably colored all his remaining years in prison—and for that matter, his entire life thereafter. Through the work of the Northern California Innocence Project, Maurice Caldwell was eventually exonerated and released on March 28, 2011.
See Maurice’s poem titled You Feel Me? in this issue.
VIEW OCTOBER ISSUE BY CLICKING RED BUTTON AT BOTTOM OF PAGE
October Issue Content
POEMS
Maurice Caldwell - You Feel Me?
Yash Seyedbagheri - Make Something Great Again
Abiola Regan- But Where Are You From?
Keith Holyoak - Sunfall
Halford H. Fairchild, Ph.D - The Problem of the 21st Century
Rick Swann- Prescient
Cheryl L. Caesar, Ph. D. - Usquequo?
Gerard Sarnat - On the Beach Nuclear Summer Preview
George Floyd Waves
COVID, George Floyd, Trump Aside
ESSAY
Paul R. Abramson - Why I Didn’t Go To War
VISUAL ART
Tania Love Abramson - “Shivs, Shanks, and Bone Crushers: Homage to Maurice Caldwell
Yaron Dotan - Midas in Love
EDITORS
Leopoldo Seguel
Chief Provocateur
Keith Holyoak
Associate Editor
Paul Abramson
Iconoclast at Large
Tania Love Abramson
Art Director (Champion of the Artistic Visions That Emerge in the Aftermath of Trauma)
SAY HIS NAME - MANUEL ELLIS
SEATTLE — A black man who called out “I can’t breathe” before dying in police custody in Tacoma, Wash., was killed as a result of oxygen deprivation and the physical restraint that was used on him, according to details of a medical examiner’s report released on Wednesday, June 3rd. The Pierce County Medical Examiner’s Office concluded that the death of the man, Manuel Ellis, 33, was a homicide.
"I wish I could say that racism and prejudice were only distant memories. We must dissent from the indifference. We must dissent from the apathy. We must dissent from the fear, the hatred and the mistrust…We must dissent because America can do better, because America has no choice but to do better." (Editors’ emphasis)
Thurgood Marshall, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States
EDITORS STATEMENT
BREATHE makes a difference by rallying dissent against racially discriminatory policies through the publication of artworks, poetry, and essays to counter the protracted disavowals and lethargy that allow racial coercion to persist.
BREATHE IS A MISSION
Our mission is to interrupt and dismantle racist and oppressive attitudes, behaviors and systems, especially its harmful impact on the lives of Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) in the United States (see THE BIPOC PROJECT). We acknowledge the connections between racism and other forms of oppression, including the disproportionate impact of climate change, COVID-19 and environmental damage. Our greatest collective evil is compliance. Intentional or even inadvertent tolerance of racism and oppression serves to sustain it.
BREATHE IS A PLATFORM
We invite artists, regardless of your medium, to submit works that illustrate the connections between racism and other forms of oppression, as explicitly or implicitly as your artistic form of expression enables you to do.
BREATHE IS A PORTAL
We intend to stimulate and provoke thinking that can lead to concrete actions to interrupt and dismantle racist attitudes, behaviors and systems. We believe all Americans, and especially white Americans, have a great stake in dismantling racism. What they think they’re doing to black people, James Baldwin said in a 1984 interview, is what they’re really doing to themselves.
*We have adopted the following definition: "Anti-racism is the active process of identifying and eliminating racism by changing systems, organizational structures, policies and practices and attitudes, so that power is redistributed and shared equitably." - NAC International Perspectives: Women and Global Solidarity. For more on defining anti-racism visit The Alberta Civil Liberties Research Centre at the University of Calgary.
"Just as buildings in California have a greater need to be earthquake proofed, places, where there is greater racial polarization in voting, have a greater need for prophylactic measures to prevent purposeful race discrimination."
From Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Supreme Court Justice’s 2013 dissent on Supreme Court decision to strike down key parts of the Voting Rights Act (Editors’ emphasis)
BLACK LIVES MATTER
WHO GOVERNS MATTERS
ART MATTERS
"To be an artist, means
never to avert one's eyes."
Akira Kurosawa
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WELCOME PAUL AND TANIA!
BREATHE welcomes two new editors, Paul Abramson and Tania Love Abramson, who have contributed greatly to this ezine since its inception. They have spread the word about our project to a wide audience, which has resulted in additional submissions, some of whom are included in this issue. We welcome their energy and keen editorial discernment.