|
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
Book reviewsLight Among Shadows
The book Light Among Shadows; a celebration of Orlando Letelier, Ronni Moffitt and heroes of the human rights movement, is available from The Institute for Policy Studies at www.ips-dc.org or write IPS, 733 15th Street NW, Suite 1020, Washington, DC, 20005-2112. Ph: 202-234-2382, Email: publications@ips-dc.org Cover price $25.00
Busted: Stone Cowboys, Narco-Lords and Washington's War on DrugsEdited by Mike Gray (Author of Drug Crazy)
Rolling Stone's P. J. O'Rourke writes, "Marijuana never
kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never
locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research,
does not peek in bedroom windows.... Prohibition has done far
more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could." Invisible Punishment: The Collateral Consequences of Mass Imprisonment
For more information about The Sentencing Project, contact (202) 628-0871 or staff@sentencingproject.org November Coalition Member AccomplishmentsMark Ingraham's niece publishes award-winning novelBy Nora Callahan, Executive Director, The November Coalition
November Coalition was a small website with crude graphics, an emerging concept when Martha and I met for the first time. After our first visit, Martha's son, Ian Christman, an accomplished graphic designer created our logo and graphics. Martha began developing displays to use in public education, and didn't miss an opportunity to take the booth she made to public gatherings in the northwest. I had someone local who understood my passion and agreed to help begin a national organization. The role of drug war activist crowded her schedule. A spring visit with Mark would wait for summer. Mid-summer came, and Martha and her daughter Jill left to visit Mark. I was unpacking, having just visited my brother Gary. Martha, Jill and Mark were not able to have their visit, nor any since. While they traveled to see him, he died. We shared our grief in the pages of this paper, now years ago. To honor Mark Ingraham's life, and his sister Martha's commitment to launching this organization, and her family's sacrifices, we share the joy of announcing her daughter Jill's first published work - Winner of the Associated Writing Programs Award for Creative Nonfiction. To honor this book, readers should know that it was the most fascinating story I ever read. If you are eager to read a compelling true story this winter, Darkroom is recommended reading. Darkroom: A Family Exposure is Jill Christman's gripping, funny, and wise account of her first thirty years. Although her story runs the gamut of dramatic life events, including childhood sexual abuse, accidental death, and psychological trauma, Christman's poignant memoir is much more than a litany of horrors; instead, it is an open-eyed, wide-hearted, and good-humored look at a life worth surviving. Through a shifting narrative of text and photographs, Christman explores the intersection of image and memory and considers the ways photographs force us to rework our original memories. Darkroom is a page-turning and disturbing journey that begins with an older brother's near fatal burning and progresses through a counterculture childhood; it slams into a young adulthood of love, literature, drugs, death, and therapists, and ends soon after a beloved uncle bleeds to death in a federal prison while serving a ten-year sentence for growing marijuana. Never sentimental, Jill Christman is brutally honest and surprisingly funny. She deftly blends narrative, quoted materials, her uncle's letters, and her father's photography to create a family saga that is both heartbreaking and exhilarating. Darkroom: A Family Exposure by Jill Christman
|
|
|
|
In
October 2000, The November Coalition received the Letelier-Moffitt
award in Washington, DC from the Institute for Policy Studies.
The award honors Orlando Letelier and Ronni Moffitt, two IPS
colleagues who were killed by agents of Chilean dictator Augusto
Pinochet in 1976.
Thirty
years ago Richard Nixon called drugs "the modern curse of
youth" and launched the modern "War on Drugs"
as we know it. Thirty years later, even the conservative National
Review has said, "The War on Drugs has failed." Spanning
three decades, Busted tells readers why; charting the violence,
chaos, and corruption that the War on Drugs has spawned. It includes
frontline reporting from all over the world, literary journalism,
public records, and provocative commentary from the left and
right.
Mark
Ingraham was in his third year of imprisonment when his sister,
Martha Christman, moved from Eugene, Oregon to her mountain home
not far from Colville. Martha called me after settling in. She
wanted 'safety valve' retroactivity, reform that might set her
brother free. It was excluded from the crime bill last millennium,
due to Moses (aka Charlton Heston) taking to the television to
warn that 16,000 drug dealers would be loose on the streets if
it passed - sentencing relief for first time offenders would
benefit future offenders, not our brothers.