Black August

Black August is a month of remembrance and restoration for those who honor the memory of George Jackson, his brother and many other political prisoners of the United States incarceration system (and beyond). On the 45th anniversary of its creation, this will be my second time observing the practice. I chose to practice it last year as a way to also grow closer to myself and taking more focus on the lives of folks kept behind bars. The core ideals for one to embody this month are studying, fasting, training and fighting.

Studying

My preferred form of studying is through literature. I have a set of books that I aim to read and hopefully finish (some of them) this month, putting aside my active TBR for it.

The books I'm aiming to read (in no particular order) are:

• The Struggle Within by Dan Berger
• "Prisons Make Us Safer" and 20 Other Myths About Mass Incarceration by Victoria Law
• Black Abolitionists by Benjamin Quarles
• Prison by Any Other Name by Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law
• Surviving the Future: Abolitionist Queer Studies by Shuli Branson, Raven Hudson, and Bry Reed
• We Do This 'Til We Free Us by Mariame Kaba

I'll be making these books the topics of review in my weeknotes around reading. I'm also going to pay even more attention to outlets like the Prison Journalism Project and include some pieces to highlight here on my site, as well as work from Truthout on the same topic.

Fasting

This is the easiest part of Black August for me. My approach to food is a bit ... haphazard so fasting isn't terribly difficult^[1]. I could put pictures of what I end up eating but that feels a bit weird. I might do some highlights of what meals I end up engaging with. The other side of fasting is also around what one mentally consumes. This means I'll be avoiding social media^[2] until September. Everything I plan to push out will be around these points of abolition across the spectrum. I'll be refraining from drug use (which has been pretty easy given the tightness of funds).

Training

I sometimes conflate this with studying because I deeply consider the mind to be a muscle that's sorely underdeveloped. But I'm fortunate to have a gym nearby that I can routinely join. Perhaps I'll mention what I feel in terms of strength and dexterity. I think what I'll also aim to include is expanding my ability to do the things that help enhance my studying; like reviewing material on how to write, self-study around mathematics and philosophy. These things help push the means of work that I can then fold back into my activism.

Fighting

It being an election year makes fighting ... complicated. I've mentioned my disdain in engaging in such conversation so I'll focus on other forms of fighting. The word has a very strong association with violence, especially in the American Anthropocene. The kind of fighting I'm focusing on is helping break the isolation that prisoners can feel by writing to folks in local prisons. I'd also be ramping up my own personal letter writing to friends, something I've been meaning to get to as having something written truly trumps an e-mail; especially in this growing artificial world.

What will you do?

Black August isn't solely meant to be practiced by Black people nor is it solely focused on Black inmates. In fact, many folks are taking this time to uplift the frustration with the system in refusing parole to Leonard Peltier, someone who's been held against his will for decades for an alleged murder of an police officer^[3]. How do you see yourself showing up for such a moment? What does it look like for you to engage in the such in your respective land?

I don't want y'all to necessarily mimic what I'm doing here. I have some longer term goals with the aforementioned reads on top of this month that I'm eager to flesh out over time. For those curious about what other organizations are doing, I'd recommend checking out the following spots:

• The Center for Constitutional Justice has a dedicated page
• Black Agenda Report wrote a bit about it twelve years ago
• Black Power Media has a calendar you can follow
• Liberation School has a longer piece on the history of the month as a whole

I'm open to more suggestions to this list and will update accordingly.