Radio
TUNE IN HERE
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Read Ani's letter about the launch of Righteous Babe Radio
PRISON PRISM
REFRACTING OUTWARD FROM THE PRISON MUSIC PROJECT
JUNE 1-5
What is it? A week-long festival on Righteous Babe Radio leading up to the release of Long Time Gone by the Prison Music Project, an album ten years in the making.
From June 1 – 5 all regularly scheduled programs on Righteous Babe Radio will be replaced with conversations and forums between artists and activists, both incarcerated and free. We will feature nightly shows which explore the reality of our present criminal justice system and present visions for alternatives. We will be hear from incarcerated poets and lyricists offering their songs and stories and we will hear from some of the singers who helped bring those stories to life on record. We will be highlighting an alternative methodology to our current system, known as Restorative Justice, by hearing from survivors, perpetrators, and public figures such as Angela Davis and Howard Zehr about their experiences with it. We will hear a town hall forum on prisons in the age of COVID 19, led by Bernie Sanders. We will delve into the history of incarceration in America through the cultural lens of Woody Guthrie and Allan Lomax, and we will hear from organizations that sponsor arts and education programs in prisons today, the very kind of organization that made this record, this radio festival, and this virtual concert possible.
A schedule for the week of radio programming is available on the Righteous Babe Radio website and this week’s exclusive programming will culminate in a virtual album release concert, The PRISON MUSIC PROJECT SESSIONS: Long Time Gone Album Release Concert, which will stream on LiveXLive at 8 PM Central on Friday, June 5th. The performance was filmed at Esplanade Studios in New Orleans and will feature call-in readings by incarcerated poets, break away videos of some of the other contributing incarcerated writers, and a musical performance by Ani Difranco, Zoe Boekbinder, Terence Higgins, free feral, and Launa Reed.
Long Time Gone is a not-for-profit record and all proceeds go to the Southern Center for Human Rights. Proceeds from the ticket sales of The PRISON MUSIC PROJECT SESSIONS concert will benefit Sister Hearts Re-entry Program in New Orleans and the Center for Life Without Parole Studies.
Won’t you join us for an informative and inspiring journey on Righteous Babe Radio to celebrate the release of Long Time Gone, as well as to celebrate the power of empathy, compassion, and positive transformation.
TUNE IN TO PRISON PRISM HERE
BUY TICKETS TO PRISON MUSIC PROJECT SESSIONS: LONG TIME GONE ALBUM RELEASE CONCERT HERE
Daily Schedule (all times in CDT)
MONDAY, JUNE 1
6 am – in conversation : ani and zoe boekbinder
6:30 am – in conversation : ani and princess shaw
12 pm – in conversation : ani and spoon jackson
12:30 pm – Long Time Gone album in full
2 pm – At Night I Fly: Episode 1 : Fat King
2:30 pm - At Night I Fly: Episode 2 : Paws For Life
5 pm - in conversation : ani and spoon jackson
5:30 pm - in conversation : ani and zoe boekbinder
6:30 pm - At Night I Fly: Episode 1: Fat King
7 pm - At Night I Fly: Episode 2: Paws For Life
8:30 pm – Incarcerated In A Crisis – Bernie Sanders
11 pm – Long Time Gone album in full
TUESDAY, JUNE 2
4 am - Restorative Justice Episode 1
6 am - Incarcerated In A Crisis – Bernie Sanders
12 pm - Woody’s Voice Episode 4: Justice
2 pm – At Night I Fly: Episode 3: Real
2:30 pm – At Night I Fly: Episode 4: Star Trek
4 pm – Restorative Justice: Episode 1
4:30 pm – Restorative Justice: Episode 2
6 pm – Brice Nice – Block Party
8:30 pm - Been All Around This World: Episode 11 “Making It In Hell,” Parchman Farm, 1933-1969
11 pm – Woody’s Voice Episode 4: Justice
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3
4 am – Long Time Gone album in full
6 am - Restorative Justice: Episode 1
6:30 am - Restorative Justice: Episode 2
12 pm - in conversation : ani and spoon jackson
12:30 pm – Long Time Gone album in full
2 pm – At Night I Fly: Episode 5: Birds
2:30 pm – At Night I fly: Episode 6: Forgive
4 pm – Sister Hearts
5 pm - in conversation : ani and spoon jackson
5:30 pm - in conversation : ani and princess shaw
6:30 pm – At Night I Fly: Episode 5: Brids
7 pm – At Night I Fly: Episode 6: Forgive
8:30 pm - in conversation : ani and princess shaw
9 pm – Long Time Gone album in full
11 pm - Been All Around This World: Episode 11 “Making It In Hell,” Parchman Farm, 1933-1969
THURSDAY, JUNE 4
4 am – Restorative Justice: Episode 1
6 am - in conversation : ani and spoon jackson
6:30 am - Been All Around This World: Episode 11 “Making It In Hell,” Parchman Farm, 1933-1969
12 pm – Woody’s Voice: Episode 4: Justice
2 pm – At Night I Fly: Episode 7: Ode To The Fly
2:30 pm – At Night I Fly: Episode 8: Alien
4 pm – Sister Hearts
5 pm - Incarcerated In A Crisis – Bernie Sanders
6:30 pm - At Night I Fly: Episode 7: Ode To The Fly
7 pm - At Night I Fly: Episode 8: Alien
8:30 pm – in conversation: ani and princess shaw
9 pm – Restorative Justice: Episode 1
9:30 pm - Restorative Justice: Episode 2
11 pm – Long Time Gone album in full
12 am – Brice Nice – Block Party
FRIDAY JUNE 5
4 am – Long Time Gone album in full
6 am – Restorative Justice: Episode 1
6:30 am – Restorative Justice: Episode 2
12 pm - in conversation : ani and spoon jackson
12:30 pm – Long Time Gone album in full
2 pm – At Night I Fly: The Complete Series, Episodes 1-8
5 pm - in conversation : ani and spoon jackson
6:30 pm - Been All Around This World: Episode 11 “Making It In Hell,” Parchman Farm, 1933-1969
7:30 pm – Restorative Justice: Episode 1
8 pm – Restorative Justice: Episode 2
9:30 - in conversation : ani and spoon jackson
10 pm – Long Time Gone album in full
11 pm – At Night I Fly: The Complete Series, Episodes 1-8
FEATURED POEMS
Donate to Color of Change
Dr. Ryan J. Petteway is a social epidemiologist and assistant professor in the OHSU-PSU School of Public Health, where he teaches on Gender, Race, & Class, Community Organizing, and Public Health Law, Policy & Ethics. His scholarship integrates critical theory, participatory research, and decolonizing methods to engage notions of epistemic, procedural, and distributive justice within public health knowledge production processes, particularly as related to “place” and health. You can find more of his poetry at POETRY//Bars, including the National Poetry Month prize-winning piece TOGETHER//Untethered. His recent public health article here: On Minority Health Month, Public Health Critical Race Praxis, and a Critical Need for Imagination
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MASKS//Exposed
Can covering coughs
cover the costs of our American production?
Crises manufactured in the mouths of demagogues,
Idiosyncratic idiocies adorned in red ties
Defending insipid claims of intelligence,
Suppressing science,
Ignoring centuries of proof
Embodied in the bones and lungs of our lost:
America has never been asymptomatic.
Testing for pathogens,
Finding ourselves
In the streaks of Western blots,
Unapologetically contaminated.
Wiping door knobs we wouldn't turn
For a neighbor who doesn't speak our language;
Searching for solvents to absolve our apologies
As the world becomes a 5G autoclave;
Covered in breaking coverage of tolls
Counting the uncovered,
The unhoused, the unfree, the uninsured, the undocumented;
Uncovering the umbilical cord of infection:
How do you quarantine racism?
How do you "flatten the curve" of capitalism?
Patience? Hope?
Hope is an accelerant in an arson of indifference.
And we, are not the resistance—
We are the Remakers.
We must burn their corneas,
Corner their consciousness
As wolves conditioned on the flesh of lies,
Tear their tongues for origami appetizers
On a glass tabletop of truth—
Organized to shatter, to cut;
To dislodge patience from the bends of our bones
And prayer from our cracking fingers,
Because god, is a lobbyist.
The fire is here
And, no, our ride is not arriving.
It has been consumed by the flames of an arc
Fashioned from our sweat,
Funded by the tithes and taxes
Of a hopeful populace that depletes toilet paper
And leaves matches fully stocked;
Washing virally exploited hands with antibacterial soap,
Massaging monetized fear into palms
Dying to be raised as fists—unpaid.
Sick: Now leave.
A drunken reality exposed by social distance,
Rubbing sanitizer on distilled inequality:
Let's put a mask on it, call it covid.
Or call it "Chinese,"
Or call it whatever the fuck we want
As long as we don't dare dream to call it enough.
At what point, exactly, does "it" become what it is?
When an actual pandemic poses no threat
To dreams of going viral?
When a president lays bare our true pathology in an ode
To Ivan Drago—because what's a death to a dollar,
A “problem” to a patent, when there's a promise of a check?
As my brothers build and operate the warehouses,
My father trucks the products,
My mother stocks the shelves,
My partner treats the sick;
As our loved ones' skins scorch to dust
In sterilized boxes,
Should we wade through the world we made,
jealous of the material
Melting away inside?
Or purchase stock in natural gas?
I'll wait.
#TheRonaNextTime
#IThinkillCallitCovid
#Covid19Goddamn
WOODY'S VOICE
Join the Woody Guthrie Center on Sunday at 12pm and again at 4pm CDT for "Woody's Voice" on Righteous Babe Radio. "Woody's Voice" will explore struggle and overcoming issues together, and you'll be hearing from Woody, artists who collaborated with his words, and some new music that continues Woody's message. The show is curated by the Center, with Ani hosting and sharing our message. We will rebroadcast Woody's Voice at 12 pm CDT on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
Historians are fond of saying that the past doesn’t repeat itself; it rhymes. To understand the present, we have to understand how we got here. That’s where this newsletter comes in. Heather Cox Richardson is a professor of American history. She believes that you can’t get a grip on today’s politics without an outline of America’s Constitution, and laws, and the economy, and social customs, her newsletter explores what it means, and what it has meant, to be an American. These were the same questions a famous observer asked in a book of letters he published in 1782, the year before the Treaty of Paris ended the Revolutionary War. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur called his book “Letters from an American Farmer.” History doesn’t repeat itself, but it sure rhymes. We will broadcast a recording of Ani reading the daily letters at 6pm, 11pm and 8am the following day CDT.
You can find the Letters and more about our Resident Professor here: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com
Hear one of Ani's Letters from an American broadcasts below.
We are looking at RBR Radio as an open source opportunity. We hope to integrate podcasts from like-minded souls around the world into the fabric of RBR Radio. We would love to hear your thoughts and ideas as to what it is you would really like to have discussed and represented musically on this your radio station. Please send submissions and ideas to radio@righteousbabe.com. The RBR content management staff will review all submissions and ideas presented.
