Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I went to visit Alcatraz years ago when I was on tour with the Pistols, and I really liked the atmosphere of the place. I genuinely, really, thoroughly enjoyed the whole morning there. I just liked the quietness and stillness of what is basically a cruel prison complex. I still found some kind of joy in that. That's how I am.
If there is any hope that we in America might one day overcome our own history of genocide, slavery, discrimination, and oppression and create a justice system that is truly a source of international pride rather than shame, I suspect Rwanda may have as much to teach us about what is required as any tour of a Norwegian prison.
I mean, I was just one of the ones who got exposed, and because of the position I was in, where I was in my life, it went mainstream. A lot of people got out of it after my situation, not because I went to prison but because it was sad for them to see me go through something that was so pointless, that could have been avoided.
I wanted to represent the brothas I have seen when I go to the rhythm section of Oakland, hearing brothas speak and tell me about their journeys. Men who have been to prison and found themselves, brothas who have made mistakes but are loving their wives and children, trying to protect them and educate them. These men do exist.
The fact is that, in prison, you can't just go and be locked up and serve your time. That's not an option. You get locked up, and then you're going to go through hell and, if you're lucky, you'll come out somewhat of a human being, but you're probably going to be beyond traumatized, for the rest of your life. That's ridiculous!
The real power of the Buddha was that he had so much love. He saw people trapped in their notions of small separate self, feeling guilty or proud of that self, and he offered revolutionary teachings that resounded like a lion's roar, like a great rising tide, helping people to wake up and break free from the prison of ignorance.
I have spent years representing victims of racial profiling and police brutality and investigating patterns of drug law enforcement in poor communities of color - and attempting to help people who have been released from prison attempting to 're-enter' into a society that never seemed to have much use to them in the first place.
I knew hundreds and hundreds of women like me, who had traveled in and out of prison in a revolving door. They needed support and help just like I had received. And it could make a difference, just like it had made a difference in my life. I wanted to see them come back to the community and have a chance at a different life, too.
Comeback records always worry me, especially when they're made by one of my heroes, and I'd heard stories about Gil Scott-Heron recently, about drug arrests and prison terms and other troubles. I wasn't prepared for the ravaged shakiness of his voice on this record or the raw spoken word pieces or the dark electronic backgrounds.
Brazilian music has always been a part of us, but it's even more valuable now because of the sentiment or the theme of the actual song. So I feel like 'Street Livin'' is paying homage to what we started and it's touching on a lot of serious themes to DACA, immigration reform, prison control... all the things we address in the video.
I attended college in prison. I was in jail, so there ain't no going to no classes. They have programs in certain facilities where you can earn good time, and then you get time taken off your sentence. But as far as going to classes, it's not like that. You study, and then an administrator gives you a test. I got a Master's in psychology.
The reason Vladimir Putin released Pussy Riot, the Greenpeace activists who were kidnapped in international waters and kept in prison for two months, and Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia's best-known and longest-serving political prisoner, was because he finally started panicking and realized that he may not have anyone to take pictures with.
Instead of inventing imaginary friends, I invented whole imaginary worlds. They were elaborate scenarios about spies and adventurers and top secret missions. I crawled along my swing set, searching for escape routes from my maximum-security prison; I biked through the neighborhood, the wind in my hair and a fleet of evildoers on my heels.
Place me behind prison walls - walls of stone ever so high, ever so thick, reaching ever so far into the ground. There is a possibility that in some way or another I may be able to escape. But stand me on that floor and draw a chalk line around me and have me give my word of honor never to cross it. Can I get out of that circle? No. Never.
Well, the terrible thing right now, and I don't know the statistics, but there's a growing concern in some communities about how rapidly people are sent from school to jail, how quickly they're put into the criminal justice system. And of course the rapidly growing number of brown people, both men and women, in prison. And this is terrible.
If a British government experienced such a long and persistent resistance to domestic policy in England, then that policy would almost certainly be changed... We have asserted that we are political prisoners, and everything about out country - our arrests, interrogations, trials, and prison conditions - show that we are politically motivated.
Will you lose everything you've got if you open your own restaurant? Who knows. Will unleashing your secret desire to teach tap dancing ruin your reputation as a professional wrestler? Who knows. And who cares? Unless your unknown puts you at risk of death, prison, or bodily harm, you have nothing to lose except living a dull, uninspired life.
A New Way of Life is a safe house that women can come to after they're released from prison in South Los Angeles. It's a place for women to detox the trauma, the torture of incarceration, be welcomed and embraced and live and begin their new path to - if it's recovery or receiving mental health services, go back to school, get their children back.
For example, if you are a blogger who wrote something about a local official and you're going to prison for that, you're a political prisoner. If you're a businessman who has refused to cede his business to the local official and you're going to prison for that, you're not a political prisoner. In that second category there are hundreds of thousands of people in Russia.
During the Boom Years, it was so easy to lose sight of basic values. For example, there was lots of nonsense said and written about the so-called "New Economy." Some people said all economic laws have been overturned! Then all the problems developed. Corporations were heavily fined for illegalities. Many of their senior-level executives were indicted, convicted, and sent to prison.
In my memoir, I wanted to introduce American women to Iranian women and our lives. I'm not from the highest echelons of society, nor the lowest. I'm a woman who is a lawyer, who is a professor at a university, who won the Nobel Peace Prize. At the same time, I cook. And even when I'm about to go to prison, one of the first things I do is to make enough food and put it in the fridge for my family.
We've so, so fallen for the premise that only government can do certain things. But then when we get around to privatizing, people always applaud it. Well, I mean, the left never does. Privatize this; privatize that. Prisons, you name it. When you are endeavoring to create wealth by virtue of creating profit, you're gonna have a much more efficient operation a bunch of bureaucrats - who have no idea what they're doing, by the way.
