50 min listen
Strange Fruit #92: Advocating for the Rights of Deaf Prisoners
FromStrange Fruit
ratings:
Length:
30 minutes
Released:
Nov 7, 2014
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
"We call it a prison within a prison." That's how advocates describe the lives of incarcerated Deaf and hard of hearing people. The vast majority of correctional facilities have no ASL interpreters, and it's not unusual for inmates who rely on hearing aids to be denied the devices—or denied batteries to make them work. Talila Lewis is the founder of HEARD (Helping Educate to Advance the Rights of the Deaf), and joins us this week to talk about the work they're doing to try to improve the lives and ensure the rights of incarcerated folks with disabilities. Lewis says the ableism in mainstream society is magnified in the prison setting. "If you don't respond to an auditory command, you get shot or beaten or put into solitary confinement," Lewis explains. "Everything around you is based on sound. So if you miss the bell at 4am to get up and go eat, you miss chow. That's it." Being Deaf or hard of hearing in prison essentially means being unable to communicate with anyone around you. "It's almost like being in solitary confinement," Lewis says. They're also more susceptible to physical and sexual assault, often asked to trade sexual access to their bodies for vital information from hearing inmates. Because there are no accommodations in place to allow these inmates to communicate, it's hard to find them, count them, and make sure they're okay. HEARD created and maintains the only national deaf and deaf-blind prisoner database, but without cooperation from departments of correction, accurate numbers are hard to come by. They estimate that Deaf, deaf-blind, and hard of hearing prisoners in the U.S. number in the tens of thousands. We talk with Lewis this week about what we can do, and our local, state, and federal government could do, to protect the rights of this vulnerable population. In our Juicy Fruit segment, Ebola fears continue to surface—this week, right here in Louisville. A Catholic Elementary school asked a teacher to self-quarantine after her mission trip to Kenya. Please note that if you are reading this from anywhere in the United States, you are currently closer to the Ebola patients in Dallas than Kenya is to the outbreak in West Africa. The Washington NFL team continues to be the worst, now suing Native American activists who fought to have the trademark canceled on their offensive team name. And if a server told you a bottle of wine cost "thirty-seven fifty," would you assume $37.50, like a diner in Atlantic City did last week? The bottle was actually $3,750, giving the customer quite a sticker shock, and leading us to wonder just how many dishes we'd have to wash if a bill like that was ever placed in front of #TeamStrangeFruit.
Released:
Nov 7, 2014
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Strange Fruit #42: Playwright Tarell Alvin McCraney: Playwright [Tarell Alvin McCraney](http://www.steppenwolf.org/ensemble/members/details.aspx?id=54) has been called the next August Wilson. Maybe that can be partially attributed to the fact that there are so few prominent African American playwrights, but there's still no doubt he is carrying an important mantle. At age 33, he's already had plays debut at the Royal Court London, New York's Vineyard Theatre, the Young Vic, and Steppenwolf Theatre, where he is an artist in residence. In March, he received the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize. We spoke to McCraney this week about his career, and how and why he writes about black gay life. He told us the real-life roots of some of his most famous works, and about working as August Wilson's assistant at Yale (including an unforgettable story about buying Wilson an iPod). In our Juicy Fruit segment this week, we had lots of news to cover: The #[solidarityisforwhitewomen](http://thehai by Strange Fruit