Tuskegee Experiment

For forty years between 1932 and 1972, the U.S. Public Health Service (PHS) conducted an experiment on 600 black men—399 in the late stages of syphilis and 201 in a control group. These men, for the most part illiterate sharecroppers from Macon, one of the poorest counties in Alabama, were never told what disease they were suffering from or of its seriousness. Informed that they were being treated for “bad blood,” (1) their doctors had no intention of curing them of syphilis. The data for the experiment was to be collected from autopsies of the men, and they were thus deliberately left to degenerate under the ravages of tertiary syphilis, which can include tumors, heart disease, paralysis, blindness, insanity, and death. “As I see it,” one of the doctors involved explained, “we have no further interest in these patients until they die.”

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Prison System

I’m a supporter of:

The Innocence Project

A national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.
http://www.innocenceproject.org/

Prison Policy Initiative

The non-profit, non-partisan Prison Policy Initiative documents the impact of mass incarceration on individuals, communities, and the national welfare
http://www.prisonpolicy.org/

Prisoners of the Census:

Maps tracking the proliferation of prisons.
http://www.prisonersofthecensus.org/prisonproliferation.html

Blue Mountain Center

During a “Prison Issues” residency at Blue Mountain Center I performed with a wonderful poet, Jorge Antonio Renaud.

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