GOD AND THE INNER CITY Workshops

Community screenings and discussion forums for GOD AND THE INNER CITY, the first documentary in the Reentry National Media Outreach Campaign, have been held in five Making Connections Network sites in August, September and October 2003. Outreach Extensions kicked off the first workshop in Baltimore on August 21st.

In Atlanta on September 18th, the meeting was held at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Metro Atlanta in their Robert C. Goizueta Mentoring Institute, which is named after a former head of the Coca-Cola Company. The Mentoring Institute provides access to comprehensive literature, training aids and instruction. The resources are intended to serve as a clearinghouse for information about mentoring and developing youth. The Mentoring Institute shares its resources and knowledge with corporations, civic organizations, schools and individuals seeking to become partners in the goal of delivering quality adult mentoring to every child who needs it. Its objective is to design and implement comprehensive, community-wide, mentoring education and training for organizations, service providers and volunteers, based on the strategic plan of BBBS. It was a perfect setting for talking about the goals of Amachi, the faith-based program to provide mentors for children of incarcerated programs.

The meeting was attended by about 28 faith and community leaders, including representatives from Fulton and Dekalb County juvenile justice departments, two juvenile court judges from Fulton and Dekalb County, a reporter from a local Christian newspaper, and Sandra Barnhill, executive director of Aid to Incarcerated Mothers, which is profiled in our Reentry Resource Guide.

Following the screening of GOD AND THE INNER CITY, comments about the film were complimentary. Several respondents indicated that the documentary reinforced the importance of the work that they’re doing in their local efforts. Rev. Goode then gave a more in-depth description of the Amachi Mentoring Program and its goals for expansion to 60 sites in the next 12 months. The goal for Amachi in Atlanta is to serve 350 children with adult matches. Amanda Flipper AME Temple is the first church in the Atlanta area that has begun their Amachi program. Twenty-two adult volunteers have completed the BBBS application, and have been trained to be “bigs” for children of incarcerated parents. Rev. Goode was able to secure commitments from three additional churches present to recruit adult volunteers for Amachi in Atlanta.

Outreach Extensions staff closed the event with a presentation on the Reentry National Media Outreach Campaign. Workshop participants were directed to specific tools, resources, and documentaries, along with the Passport2Opportunity CD-ROM, that would aid them in their work with communities.

In Washington, DC’s Anacostia community on September 30th, the GOD AND THE INNER CITY workshop was held at Matthews Memorial Baptist Church. A major focus of the meeting was the 4200 formerly incarcerated men and women returning to DC each year, and the impact that this has on families and communities.

Rev. Dr. Lloyd McGriff, pastor of Galilee Baptist Church spoke next about his church’s anticipated participation in the Amachi program and why this faith/ secular partnership makes so much sense, utilizing the existing expertise of BBBS and faith groups. His church has already recruited 43 volunteers for Amachi.

More than 70 clergy and lay leaders attended the October 10, 2003, GOD AND THE INNER CITY workshop in Miami. Event organizer Samaki Variety, Community Liaison in the Office of Mayor Manny Diaz, incorporated the event as one of the City of Miami’s monthly pastoral roundtables, begun in 2002 as a way to engage faith leaders as active community stakeholders. Since the primary focus of the day was on serving youth, several pastors brought young adults serving as Sunday School teachers and youth ministers in their congregations. Samaki also engaged 15 high school students from Miami Jackson High School to serve as meal servers and ambassadors at the event. These students received required community service credits for their participation.

Prior meetings revealed a particular emphasis on serving at-risk youth in Miami-Dade County. Samaki structured the GAIC event to provide, in addition to Reentry resources described by Outreach Extensions, locally-based information for faith-based organizations wishing to start of expand ministries for young people. Particular emphasis was placed on the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Miami. The city has two ZIP codes with the highest incidences of AIDS in the nation. Many of those affected are youth who were born with the disease.

Event participants were asked to complete a proposed action plan indicating areas in which they’d like to focus to improve communities in Miami-Dade County and other neighborhoods in South Florida. Many of the issues raised, including family strengthening, education, gang violence prevention, substance abuse intervention, are mirrored in the REENTRY National Media Outreach Campaign.

WHAT I WANT MY WORDS TO DO TO YOU

Several Making Connections local public television stations are creating exciting outreach plans for the next documentary in the REENTRY National Media Outreach Campaign pipeline. What I Want My Words to Do to You offers an unprecedented look into the minds and hearts of the women inmates of New York's Bedford Hills Correctional Facility.

The film goes inside a writing workshop led by playwright Eve Ensler, consisting of fifteen women, most of whom were convicted of murder. Through a series of exercises and discussions, the women, including former Weather Underground Members Kathy Boudin and Judith Clark, delve into and expose the most terrifying places in themselves, as they grapple with the nature of their crimes and their own culpability.

The film culminates in an emotionally charged prison performance of the women's writing by acclaimed actresses Glenn Close, Marisa Tomei, Rosie Perez, Hazelle Goodman, and Mary Alice.

Detroit Public Television plans to conduct a screening and panel discussion of What I Want My Words To Do To You to be held prior to the program broadcast date of December 16, 2003. In the interest of serving those who might benefit the most from this program, DPTV proposes to target the event to Criminal Justice students at two nearby universities, Wayne State University and UM-Dearborn. A special invitation will also be extended to interested staff at Big Brothers Big Sisters.

Panel members will include faculty from Wayne State and UM-Dearborn as well as representatives from reentry programs such as Women ARISE and Prison Fellowship.
DPTV will use the opportunity to strengthen existing ties with both universities and to become better acquainted with community groups involved in reentry services.

Detroit Public Television will distribute resource guides to all invitees and video tapes on request. We will also promote the broadcast at the screening, on-air and on the website. We will solicit evaluations of both the broadcast program and the outreach event before concluding the screening.

On the evening of December 9th, WHYY in Philadelphia will hold a screening/discussion of WHAT I WANT MY WORDS TO DO TO YOU for a targeted audience of writers, teachers of writing and students. They will also invite people from organizations that have a prison orientation such as Books Behind Bars. WHYY’s outreach event partner is a non-profit organization called BLUE SKY, which works with writers on the development of memoir and documentary art forms, and promotes the works as a means of bridging cultural ethnic divides.

The screening will take place at the Prince Music Theater, a regional theater specializing in the development of the American musical; it also has film and education programs.

Guide for WHAT I WANT MY WORDS TO DO TO YOU Supports Youth Discussion and Action

WHAT I WANT MY WORDS TO DO TO YOU, a P.O.V. documentary about an extraordinary writing workshop at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility, will premiere December 16, 2003 on PBS stations nationwide. To complement this powerful documentary, a discussion guide for youth audiences has been developed and written by Faith Rogow, Ph.D. Arlene F. Lee, director of the Federal Resource Center for Children of Prisoners, reviewed the guide. Outreach Extensions, which collaborated on the discussion guide, will implement a community outreach campaign to support its use.

Directed by Judith Katz, Madeleine Gavin, and Gary Sunshine, the documentary focuses on a writing group of female prison inmates led by acclaimed playwright Eve Ensler (The Vagina Monologues). Ensler creates a writing community in which the women -- most of whom were convicted of murder -- help each other tell their stories. As the film progresses, the process of writing itself becomes a process of discovery and self-reflection. The inmates face painful truths about the choices that irrevocably changed the course of their lives and struggle with their own guilt and responsibility. The film culminates with an in-prison performance of the women's stories by a group of actors, including Glenn Close, Rosie Perez, and Marisa Tomei.

The discussion guide is designed to help public television stations and community organizations use WHAT I WANT MY WORDS TO DO TO YOU to engage young people who are facing challenges related to incarceration. Together, the discussion guide and film can be used to help youth reflect on their own lives, just as the inmates did in the film, or to gain greater understanding about a family member who is incarcerated. 

Following the screening of the documentary or scenes from it, facilitators may choose various activities to involve youth. Several options are provided within each of four categories: discussion, writing, role play, or action. The guide also provides tips for workshop facilitation and for developing goals and ground rules for discussion. 

A tool for helping youth think more deeply about the issues raised in the documentary, the guide can be used to spark discussion and action about a variety of relevant topics. Examples include conflict resolution and violence prevention; the death penalty; depression and suicide; domestic violence; feminism, gender issues, and women's rights; health, including mental health; human rights; stereotyping; sentencing guidelines/mandatory minimum sentences and Rockefeller drug laws; and substance abuse treatment and prevention. 

The Federal Resource Center for Children of Prisoners (Resource Center), which reviewed the discussion guide, works to create better outcomes for children with incarcerated parents through research, information, resource development, and training. According to the Resource Center, more than two million children nationwide have a parent who is incarcerated in state or federal prisons and local jails. Since 1991, the number of children with parents in prison has increased by more than 50 percent. While most of these children have an incarcerated father, a growing number have a mother who is incarcerated.

The Resource Center will extend its involvement with the outreach campaign for WHAT I WANT MY WORDS TO DO TO YOU by distributing the documentary and discussion guide to its ten demonstration sites throughout the United States. Sites are located in Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Maryland, Missouri, New Jersey, New Mexico, and Tennessee. 

Two sites, the Families in Crisis Center in Hartford and the Community Works - Roots Program in San Francisco, will conduct outreach demonstration projects. Both agencies offer families of prisoners an array of services such as parenting programs for parents who are incarcerated, social service programs for caregivers and families, and case management and after-school programs for children. In addition, they have extensive experience in interactive therapy with children in group settings. Each organization serves approximately 50 children between the ages of 7 and 12, all of whom are children of prisoners. 

Both sites will use the WHAT I WANT MY WORDS TO DO TO YOU discussion guide to help youth better understand how the women in the documentary used writing for self-exploration. Site administrators will select various age-appropriate activities from the guide. "Ultimately we hope the young people will gain insights into their own lives and feelings by seeing these women go through a transformative process," said Lee. 

The Child Welfare League of America operates the Resource Center in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Corrections and with CWLA's partners: the American Correctional Association and the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. More information about the Resource Center can be found at www.childrenofprisoners.org. 

Prison Lullabies Receives Critical National Acclaim: An Interview With Filmmakers Matta and Isralson

By Leah R. Singer

Five years ago, filmmakers Lina Matta and Odile Isralson teamed up to investigate the lack of nurseries that exist in the United States prison system. In fact, Matta and Isralson realized that, at the time, only three prisons in the country had nursery programs for women who gave birth while incarcerated. This led the filmmakers to produce Prison Lullabies, a touching documentary that examines the lives of four women and their struggles with incarceration and motherhood.

Prison Lullabies follows Amy, Monique, Joann, and Anne Marie, four individuals who share the common bond of being arrested pregnant. These women all lived in Taconic Correctional Facility in New York. Taconic allows women to keep their babies for 12 months or, upon exception, 18 months of the child's life. Each woman is released in the course of the documentary, which followed these women's lives for more than two years. The women are shown struggling with finding and keeping a job, trying to rear their children, breaking the cycle of relapse and re-arrest, or returning to life on the streets.

Producers Matta and Isralson are working hard to raise awareness about Prison Lullabies and the issues the film raises. Thus far, Prison Lullabies has been accepted in 11 film festivals throughout the country, in states such as New York, Ohio, Kansas, California, Maryland, Missouri, Wisconsin, Rhode Island, Washington, DC, and even Canada. Matta and Isralson have not stopped with these festivals. They have entered Prison Lullabies in at least 30 more international and national film festivals.

The documentary was also shown at community screenings at New York University, a local filmmaker's night in Washington, DC, and at the Pioneer Theater in New York. Each screening was followed by a panel discussion with Matta and Isralson answering questions about the film. Matta is especially proud of the discussions that took place after the screenings.

"Usually at screening discussions, the questions are about the actual production of the film," said Matta. "These discussions are about the women in the film and the topics raised in the film, not about the production."

Matta is also proud of the stories she hears from people after they have viewed Prison Lullabies. "I like hearing that the film got under a person's skin and that they're still thinking about it a week later," she said.

Prison Lullabies has been receiving critical acclaim across the United States. The film won four national film awards, including a Gold Award from the Aurora Awards; Jury Award from the Athens (Ohio) International Film and Video Festival; Audience Award for Best Documentary from the Halfway to Hollywood Film Festival; and the Jury Award for Best Documentary from the Annapolis Film Festival.

Matta said Prison Lullabies attracts large audiences of students, filmmakers, and community members at nearly every film festival or screening at which the documentary is shown. Matta and Isralson actively market their screenings to local communities.

"We always e-mail local organizations that focus on prison reform and prisoner's rights and advocacy organizations one month and two weeks prior to the film's screening in every community we visit," said Matta.

The producers are currently looking at other creative ways to publicize Prison Lullabies. They have convened a few "book clubs" for this film in the Washington, DC area in which groups of people watch the film and have a question-and-answer discussion afterwards, similar to the way traditional book clubs operate. Matta and Isralson hope to emulate this model in other cities.

Matta hopes that Prison Lullabies will help reform the prison system so that nursery programs can spread beyond the five that currently exist. She would like to convene a screening for legislatures so they can see the benefits of housing such programs.

Both filmmakers are extremely proud of Prison Lullabies. "The film helps you see the women as three-dimensional people," said Matta. "These women have really influenced people and [the film] raises questions for those who watch it. I am so proud of the women and the stories they tell."