But even that list doesn't convey the diversity and range of the participants. One workshop had open phone lines to two prisons, so that even currently incarcerated people were able to take part In another, poet Asha Bandela, whose husband is in prison now, read a poem about how prison administrations make not only prisoners but their families feel like non-persons. When the poem ended with a cry of defiance, the audience cheered wildly. In the plenary sessions, too, the excitement was palpable. Barry named the next moves forward, including Through the Wall Week this coming April 11-17, called as a national week of contact between prisoners and those on the outside.
Conferences happen all the time.
That remains to be seen. It is clear that the thousands of people who came together in Berkeley in September were reinvigorated, inspired and linked with people nationwide committed to making fundamental change in the system. There is hope in that, as there is in the planned regional meetings to be held in 1999 and the follow-up conference being discussed by some activists on the East Coast for late 1999 or early in the year 2000. Judith Mahoney Pasternak. Robert Cooney, Kate Donnelly, Larry Gara, Carol Jahnkow, Andy Mager, Matt Meyer, Craig Simpson.