On Friday night, October 14th, Margaret Saadi Kramer (JGD-USA) and artist/activist Jill Sobule and I went downtown to join the OccupyLA folks. There was a contingent participating in an event representing the prison hunger strikers (California and elsewhere) and I had been invited to come and speak on the subject.



It was near sundown when we arrived and the encampment was settling into a calm evening. The atmosphere was friendly and supportive. We wandered around and checked people out, read the signs expressing various concerns of the day and generally got the lay of the land. One group was participating in a meeting about the details of OccupyLA’s program of daily activities. (Somebody’s got to keep the organizers organized.) It was cool to see an ad hoc group of all ages and colors sorting out how to organize and doing it in real time as the movement takes shape right in front of our eyes. We found the hunger strike advocates, a small but intense group, on the foot of the stairs on the Temple side of City Hall. I spoke for a few minutes, describing what JGD-USA is, what we do, how we do it and then expressed our support for the courageous efforts of California’s prison hunger strikers. Jill sang a powerful song about American identity that climaxed with an impromptu sing along, then we stayed on to listen to other speakers, some of whom were ex-offenders, as well as family members of prisoners who talked about the heartbreak of having their loved ones in isolation sometimes for unknown reasons — no visits, no contact with them.



Word emerged a few hours earlier on Friday that the Pelican Bay inmate/activists had ended their hunger strike. They had done so after a promise from the CDCR to review the prison’s gang status classification system. The CDCR uses gang status as a means of intimidating the inmates in their care. They play one group of prisoners off of and against another group in the age-old technique of divide and conquer. It’s a particularly onerous policy as it actively encourages violence, racism and bitterness between prisoners. Prison officials can arbitrarily assign or withdraw gang status whether true and accurate or not. Such status attached to an inmate can change the perception of who an inmate is in the prison culture. Simply put, either you could be a good guy or a bad guy depending on what goal prison officials want to achieve. They can brand you an informer when you’re not really an informer, and they can use extraordinarily severe SHU (Security Housing Unit) confinement for control and manipulation. SHU confinement is a building separate from the rest of the prison population and is what used to be commonly referred to as “in the hole”. It’s solitary confinement 23 hours a day. No daylight. No reading material. No fresh air. No visits from those on the outside or human contact whatsoever on the inside. These confinements have gone on with some prisoners for decades, so to say that it’s inhumane would be an understatement. Well worth fighting against.

The event downtown and the show of support for the prison hunger strikers is only one slice of the Occupy movement that is emerging nationwide and even internationally now, as I write. JGD-USA’s co-founder Billy Bragg is a leader in the charge in the United Kingdom these last 48 hours. Billy’s latest report is here.



We will see in the coming weeks and months if these spontaneous demonstrations coalesce into real political power. If you track the progress of the Tea Party movement, you can see that the Occupy activists used some of the same strategies. The Tea Party clearly brought political pressure on the Republicans and were very effective in doing so. As a result, factions of the Republican Party swung further right as a result. What needs to happen on the progressive side is that the spontaneous Occupy movement must continue surging forward, bringing political pressure on the Democrats, forcing them to pivot to a more progressive stance. Sometimes the trouble with liberals is that they are just too damn nice. This is about power, political power. There must be a political goal at the end of the day that the Occupiers are fighting for. Look at what the brothers and sisters in Act Up! have accomplished.

In the same sense, prison reform and justice reform will also only come as a result of political change, which is one reason why I continue to support Senator Webb’s National Justice Commission Reform Act. So far, the issue of prison reform and justice reform has remained under the radar in our national discourse. Our job for the next few years is going to be to raise this issue up to a place where it is automatically included in the conversation of challenges we face alongside the subjects of jobs, health care, economic inequity and education.

If part of doing that means I need to stand on the steps of every city hall in every city in America that has a prison that is participating in torture, then so be it. I will see you at city hall.

Wayne

This morning, I spoke in support of the prisoners participating in the California Prison Hunger Strike. The inmate strikers have re-instituted the hunger strike after prison officials appeared to have reneged on the small gains the original strike afforded them.


We have reproduced my text from today along with accompanying video.

The press conference at West Hollywood (CA) City Hall also included Peter Eliasberg, Legal Director of ACLU of Southern California; Representatives from National Religious Campaign Against Torture (NRCAT); Peter Laarman, Executive Director of Progressive Christians Uniting; a statement from Edward Asner; and moderated by KPFK radio host and writer, Michael Slate.


Not that the State gave up much on the first go-round: wool watch caps to guard against the cold and more food. This time, the movement has international support. Reuters (via the Jerusalem Post) is reporting that Palestinian prisoners housed in Israeli prisons have joined the hunger strike in solidarity, as have Students Against Mass Incarceration at Howard University in Washington, DC.





And here are some web addresses to join in the struggle.
Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity
Prisons.org

Good morning. My name is Wayne Kramer and I am here this morning to talk about the hunger strike in California’s prisons. I am co-founder of Jail Guitar Doors USA. We are a 501c3 non-profit group based here in Los Angeles. We are the United States arm of an international independent initiative with our co-founder, Billy Bragg, in the United Kingdom. We are musician-founded and musician-operated.


What we do is simple. We find people who work in prisons who are willing to use music as rehabilitation and we provide them with guitars. We also work for justice reform and prison reform. And that is why I am here today.


I am known mainly as a guitarist, but for a couple of years, I was known as 00180-190. I am also an ex-prisoner. I can speak for all of the musicians, actors, artists and activists we know, when I say that we stand behind this historic hunger strike and we support the prisoners’ courageous efforts.


When Grover Norquist and Newt Gingrich and their colleagues on the far Right line up with prisoners, progressives and hard-core Lefties, you know something is out of kilter in America. There is a disconnect between who we say we are, and how the reality of our policies play out.


But leave it to the lowest of the low, the prisoners of America, to step up and show us the contradiction.


Change always starts from the bottom up and there are no people that our society casts lower than those sentenced to live and die in our prisons. They are disproportionately people of color and of limited economic means. And they are showing us who we are. To paraphrase Senator Jim Webb, “We are either the most evil people on the face of the earth, or we’re doing something wrong about locking people up.”


Here in the Golden State we have incarcerated our fellow citizens in a frenzy for the last 30 years because it was politically expedient. Mass incarceration served the career goals of politicians and the powerful prison guards union. But now something has to give.


The drug war, the death penalty, the extraordinarily severe sentences have combined to create a perfect storm of misery and defeat for over 2.5 million of our fellow citizens now in prison. These aren’t the eyeball-tattooed freaks on TV’s “Locked-Up”. These are our brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, husbands, sons, daughters, cousins and friends. They are us. We are them.


There is an emerging lower caste of felons that will have more difficulty fitting into the mainstream of American society that has ever happened in our history. We have locked people up for decades in institutions that inculcate them into a world of fear, violence, racism and defeat. For decades now, the entire focus of America’s prisons has been on punitive incapacitation.


But 95% of the people we lock up are one day released back into our communities and they will live next door to you and me. And what good did their time in state custody do them, or us? They are now worse, not better, for the experience. We have supported these policies at our own peril.


In the final analysis, the Left and Right agree, we cannot afford it, neither fiscally nor ethically.


We spend 200 billion yearly on locking people up. The federal government is broke. California is broke. Some states have already begun reforming incarceration policies. But we can’t afford it on a deeper, more important level.


The hunger strikers are not starving themselves to protest their convictions, or the drug laws, or the sentences the courts have given them. They are reaching out for civil rights and most importantly, human rights. The right to human dignity. To not be denied health care. To not be tortured, isolated, intimidated, starved and cut off from contact with their families and friends inside and outside of the fence.


One is sentenced to prison as punishment, not for punishment.


The least powerful among us are giving us — and we hope giving to the most powerful among us — a lesson in what it means to be civilized. For that, we should thank them and we should carry the message that human rights must come to California’s prisons along with justice for all Americans.

Thank you. Wayne

If you’re interested in how the current state of mass imprisoment came to be, I can recommend some reading. This is not light reading. These are serious books dealing with what I believe to be the greatest failure of social policy in our nation’s domestic history.


Michelle Alexander’s book, “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” is a must read for anyone concerned with the injustice of mass incarceration in America today. Well researched and scholarly without being at all dry or boring, it’s an eye-opening look behind the crises in America’s prisons. The New York Times recently ran this editorial about one aspect of her analysis.


The recent state-sponsored death of Troy Davis is another example of race-based policies that have targeted minority communities since the end of the Civil War.


If you live in California, I urge you to read “The Toughest Beat, Politics, Punishment, and the Prison Officers Union in California” by Joshua Page and “Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California” by Ruth Wilson Gilmore. These books outline in factual detail how the Golden State went wrong on such a massive scale that the United States Supreme Court has had to take control of the prison system. “The Toughest Beat” is well researched history of how the prison guards union grew from a minor municipal association into the second most powerful political lobby in California. It’s a fascinating journey into power politics.


The one other book that really exposes the history of convict leasing is “Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire” by Robert Perkinson. Along with Alexander’s book, Perkinson’s compelling study details the history of American racism that is at the core of today’s prison industrial complex.

On Saturday June 25, Jail Guitar Doors USA co-founder Margaret Saadi Kramer and I ventured out to Nevada for a Jail Guitar Doors event at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center. This is a facility just up the road from Nevada State Prison, near the town of Carson City, Nevada. Our host was Mary Harrison, who is a long-time corrections worker and director of the True Grit program there and a stellar human being. Mary’s work (with the support of Chesley Spring) with offenders and those returning to life outside the walls has been a major addition to the state of the art of corrections in this part of the country. Her efforts to move prison policy into the 21st century are a model for the rest of the nation. We like Mary — and our old friend and tireless liaison to her, Harry Duncan — A LOT.


We heard that the event might be canceled because of a of violent incident earlier that morning but fortunately prison officials decided against a lock-down and we were granted admission to the facility. It was a bright summer morning here in the high country. I think the sunshine’s a little brighter up at this altitude. We were nearly 5000 feet above sea level.


The institution looked like many of the modern post 1990 era construction. Prison architecture is fascinating to me. I am constantly astounded how human beings can design and build structures that are, by design, totally devoid of any human consideration whatsoever. The trend today is stark, austere, technologically sophisticated facilities that deprive inmates of sensory stimulation. These modern penal complexes are designed to enforce the understanding that you (as an offender living there) are completely without standing or value in this environment. That everything about this place is designed to control your every waking (and sleeping) hour. These futuristic concrete, steel and razor wire fortresses inform you that you are at the complete mercy of the state and that the state considers you less than human. I am amazed that the mind of man can create things of such amazing beauty and benefit, and can also produce something so utterly devoid of civilization and humanity. I would like to meet a prison architect and learn where he’s coming from.


After walking through the yard and over to one of the housing units, we met Warden Adam Watson. I liked him. We talked about the music program at NNCC and he admitted it was successful and of great benefit to both the men as well as the staff. Warden Watson also told me that they’re running safely under capacity. No overcrowding, yet. I was happy to hear this considering that my home state of California is 200% over capacity and is right now under Supreme Court Order to reduce the population to bring health care up to the minimum constitutional standards for human beings. In short, we treat our pets better.


Then, we all walked over to the gym where we were set to make our presentation of guitars, basses & amps. Usually, when JGD visits prisons, we meet a small group of inmates who are already involved in positive programming including drug and alcohol treatment, education, job training, etc. We were shocked when we entered the gym to see over 350 men sitting in bleachers waiting for the show to start. I was blown away. It seems that, at the last minute, the Warden thought this was something that might benefit the general population, so he let everyone in who wanted to attend and it was a full house.


As we figured out what to do first, and how to do it, I slowly realized what was happening here. There were at least seven complete bands on the yard and the prisoners were actively involved with all of them. The whole prison seemed to revolve around the different bands and all the different kinds of music they played. The event started with one of the two choirs singing, “I Have a Dream.” It was stunning. As they left the stage, it was moving to see a couple of prisoners helping one very old and infirm choir member back into his wheelchair. It revealed a degree of tenderness and kindness I don’t often see out here even in the free world.


Then the country group took the stage. They were led by a military veteran prisoner; also in a wheelchair. They had a great Texas swing in their sound and played versions of “America the Beautiful” and “This Ain’t My First Rodeo”. One of the fellows sang a terrific original song, “Bottles and Cans.” The musicianship was first rate and the lead guitarist was clearly a seasoned professional outside the walls. Next, I talked for a few minutes and presented the guitars with our challenge to use them as tools to learn new ways to process problems through songwriting. Then I had an honest Q &A with the guys. The questions are always straight from the heart and demanded serious consideration. There is no bullshitting a prison audience and I appreciate the opportunity to talk candidly. My memories of being in prison are still vivid and I often feel like these guys are some of the only people in the world who understand what I’m talking about.


I strapped on one of our donated JGD Stratocasters and got ready for an afternoon of serious jamming. I sat in with every band in the prison that day and for this player, it was great. I played with the hard charging punk rock band. Then with the rhythm & blues vocal group, who were so soulful I felt transported to a funky soul club gig back in Detroit.


Then, after a quick change of musicians, the NNCC blues band took the stage and played some down and dirty electric blues. Then, to my amazement, the Christian heavy metal band came on. The guys asked me if I could play in drop D tuning, which is one way metal music gets its heavy sound. The guys looked like they could have been in any heavy metal group touring right now and I loved rocking hard with them. Then the Tejano group came on and we played real Tex-Mex tunes with the lead singer singing in Spanish. Then the gospel vocal group had their turn.


The final turn was mine when I asked all the musicians to join me in a version of “I Shall Be Released.” I was really impressed by the level of competency displayed by all the players. Good musicians, not so good and very good were all represented and everyone worked together to make the best music they could. The audience loved every minute and cheered for everyone performing.


We wrapped up with handshakes and hugs from all the prison musicians and went back to the unit where we talked with some of the men there. Many of the men expressed deep gratitude for the visit and the instruments. These visits and guitars represent a message to men and women in prison that you are not forgotten and that there are people outside prison walls who care what happens to you and who want to help you rehabilitate.


The heart of the rehabilitation programs at NNCC is the True Grit program. This is an idea that Mary and her co-workers developed to aid the aging prisoner population at NNCC. They have started exercise classes for the older men along with other activities that suited them, like knitting.


I know that might sound odd, prisoners knitting, but it is a real challenge and accomplishment to knit something well and the men of True Grit actually knitted a giant afghan with the American eagle on it and the words “The Eagle Weeps.” Many of the men are military veterans and it was their way of saluting their fellows in the military. Being in prison doesn’t mean you aren’t still an American. Their afghan was entered in the Nevada State Fair knitting competition and won first prize! Then the shit hit the fan when it was discovered that prisoners created it. This is an example of the less-than-subtle ways prisoners are excluded from contributing something positive to society.


True Grit even has their own shop where they refurbish wheelchairs. They rebuild the prison’s wheelchairs, saving the state thousands of dollars in replacement costs. All of the True Grit programs are done with volunteer workers and donated materials. None of the yarn for the knitters or the instruments for the musicians costs the state a dime, but the benefits to the state and to the communities to which these men will return are immeasurable. By helping incarcerated people find activities that actually benefit them – as every Arts in Corrections program does — inmates learn to handle their problems in a new non-confrontational way. It is the beginning phase of the important work of rehabilitation.


The Warden told us that approximately half of the men in NNCC will go home one day and the other half will die there. This is a sobering reality and it begs the question: Why do we keep 70 or 80 year olds in custody? They are way beyond the time in their lives that they would or could hurt anyone. Their criminal careers are long gone by the time they reach 70. Studies show that even violent offenders “age-out” around 50 years old. They have usually spent most of their lives in custody and, by any reasonable measure, have paid their debt to society. The expense of their care in a correctional facility is many times the cost in a senior care facility in the free world. What is it in the American character that demands such revenge and retribution? There is no other modern developed country on earth that seems to pride itself on this level of severity. We are truly unique in our medieval approach to accountability.


The geriatric population is a problem that will have to be addressed within the larger disastrous social policy that prison has become in America. As we have locked up more and more people for longer and longer sentences, these folks are naturally aging. We are quickly moving towards a time when entire prisons will be filled with very, very old men and women who have long ago ceased being any danger to society and need increasingly intensive medical care. They will be men and women with little time left to live and who have been punished by a lifetime spent under lock and key. To quote my friend Ken Hartman, himself a man who has served over thirty consecutive years in California’s prisons, “Prison is a young mans game.” The issue of geriatric prisoners will not go away, just as the problem of two and a half million people locked up in America’s prisons will not just go away. I know it is not a pleasant conversation, but it’s one were going to have to encourage if things are ever going to turn around in this country.


Our experience at NNCC confirmed our belief that, given the tools and programs to change, most prisoners will gladly rehabilitate and work towards the day when they can rejoin their friends and families outside the walls, not to return to prison again. We saw an entire prison yard where music — not gang affiliation, not racism, not violence, but instead bands and music — was the primary activity and interest of a large percentage of the population. This was good for them and good for those of us who live outside prison walls to where most of these fellows will return one day as our neighbors and co-workers. We saw people of every age and race and culture working in harmony and the unifying force was music. It brought everyone together and it was beautiful.


Wayne Kramer, 7.10.2011

Just before we left for the Jail Guitar Doors benefit “Howling at the Moon” at the Mohawk Club in Austin, Texas we were contacted by a good man from Houston named J.D. Herman. He told us about his older brother Brad, who had died and was an ex-offender and musician. Brad had a music store and the family had decided to donate the remaining inventory to Jail Guitar Doors. We were knocked out by their generosity and made arrangements to pick up the gear while we were in Austin.


The JGD event at the Mohawk was a terrific success. It was the result of a lot of hard work by Devin Fry. Devin is the front man for a truly original band, Salesman. He pulled the entire event together, replete with sponsors and donated ad space, and found us a terrific headliner, Lions. Our friends English Teeth opened the show and I was lucky enough to play with all three bands. I felt like the commando guitarist, jumping from one rehearsal to the next all afternoon the day before. English Teeth leader Kevin Hoetger invited me to sit in with the band at a warm up gig they booked at Lambert’s the night before. It was a small but fierce crowd and they were fun to play for.


On show day, Salesman and English Teeth, along with your reporter recorded some music at the magnificent Daytrotter studios. That music should be up on their website soon. http://www.daytrotter.com/ They do a cool thing at Daytrotter. It’s one of the places I can go to find new music.


The gig itself rocked all night long. It had been over 100 degrees everyday so there was a lot of sweating going on. The club was wise enough to keep an industrial size water jug at the side of the stage to keep people from getting dehydrated. English Teeth have a talented team in Kevin Hoetger and Kyle Crusham. The tunes are snappy and intelligent with a little sarcasm thrown in for good measure. We played our theme song “Jail Guitar Doors” to finish their set.


Salesman were next and they weave a mysterious spell with their innovative and idiosyncratic songs. More than anything else, I value originality and these musicians are working on their own thing. They’re the most original band I’ve heard since Dirty Projectors. I loved playing with them. I especially love “Four Legs,” a song they wrote and we recorded together in the weeks before the gig. Bassist and artist, John Houston Farmer, produced a limited run of 50 copies of hand-cut plexi-singles with original art labels. He has an old-fashioned record cutting lathe and cut each one in real time. The record is on a 5” x 5” square of ¼” plexiglass. Incredible and an instant collector’s item.


Photos from the night:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.2078337049443.2116649.1575529512


Lions finished out the night with balls-to-the-wall hard rock. I love this band and we played MC5 songs “Rambling Rose” and “Over and Over” with guest vocalist Chris Hodge from Young Heart Attack. We finished the night with musicians from all of the bands who performed, along with audience members, club staff and a few go-go girls for good measure all on stage together for a rousing version of “Kick Out The Jams”.


During the gig, some our friends in the Sheriff’s Department stopped by to say hello and I was able to introduce them to the local musicians — Devin, Kyle and Kevin — so between them they can begin the process of setting up a regular music program at the Travis County Correctional Complex. This is what it’s all about for me. Getting guitars into the hands of prisoners to use as tools for rehabilitation.



The following morning, well noon actually, we picked up the U-Haul truck and met J.D. Herman and his crew for the gear transfer. Kevin & Kyle from English Teeth and Matt from Lions came over to help. Matt donated his first childhood guitar to JGD-USA. It’s a classic Epiphone 335 style that he customized by removing the neck pick up. This is a rock guitar. We loaded the truck, had a coffee with the guys, and then Margaret and I hit the road.


The first day’s drive was through West Texas hill country. I had never made this drive before so I enjoyed the rolling countryside while Margaret started sorting out the internet fund raising campaign. We had never done anything like this so it was DIY all the way. She got some text together and our new webmaster Kellen Oberts at Branded Legion to get our site set up with the “Brad Herman Memorial Gear Run” graphic and the PayPal link. We really didn’t know what we were doing, but it was fun trying to figure it all out as we drove. We made it as far as Van Horn, Texas before we were too tired to go on.


Once we were ensconced in the beautiful, sumptuous, Hampton Inn that night I started trying to assemble a list of friends to reach out to. This proved more difficult than I thought. I kept getting tangled up in how to send a bunch of emails correctly. I knew well enough to BCC everyone so we would cut down on the chances of anyone getting hijacked by spammers (and because I believe BCC just good internet manners). Trouble was, I couldn’t stay awake long enough to finish the job. We worked on it more in the morning before we hit the highway again. The night receptionist at the Hampton raved about the “delicious” breakfast that was included in the deal for the room. We went down to eat only to discover to our chagrin that everything available was freeze-dried, pre-packaged, processed, microwaved robo-food. They served something that was labeled eggs but, at best, it was some kind of egg-like product. It was yellow and looked sorta like scrambled eggs but I’m just not too sure what it actually was. Ditto with the oatmeal: Pre-packaged and loaded with sugar and additives of a mysterious chemical nature. Even the “bacon” was suspect. Add undrinkable coffee to the equation and we were out the door with the two actual bananas they offered in hand.



Back on the road, we got the first round of emails out and before too long our minds started getting blown. Donations were coming in! We had our cell phones and a new iPad and we could stay connected pretty well until we really got out in the boondocks. I had checked the cell phone coverage maps before we left and I knew we would get out of range for a while. It didn’t help that the iPad was new and we didn’t know how to use it correctly yet. Learn as you go, eh? The county got real flat and real hot. The rental truck had a limiter on the throttle so we couldn’t go any faster than 75 mph so we settled in for another day’s cruise across the west.



That’s when the sillies started to set in. Maybe it was a form of highway mental deterioration. I started trying on stupid hats at truck stops and Margaret started taking pictures of them with her blackberry and posting them on Facebook. They were just witless enough to make people get into the spirit and chime in online. This was getting to be fun. As donations came in, the hours flew past and it was exciting to see so many friends step up with whatever they could afford. We really didn’t know how it all might turn out. We figured if the trip cost JGD money, we would just try to make it up somewhere else in the future but it was looking pretty good by the end of the second day.


That night we got the email problems under control and our friends at Juice Magazine added our post to their site. Some of our other friends re-posted and re-tweeted it as well and the word was getting out. By the next morning, just west of Phoenix, AZ, the donations were coming in strong. Some were big, and some were small, and every one of them was appreciated. I wasn’t surprised to see so many musicians kicked in. We are musician founded and musician run and to a large extent musician funded. Musicians know the transformative power of music. And they know what it’s like trying to get across country, humping gear, on limited funds.


I had recently watched an on line video of one of my intellectual heroes, author/neuroscientist Sam Harris, where he opened up a line to anyone who wanted to ask him a question about anything for one hour. I really enjoyed it and we thought we could try it from the gear run. After stopping for lunch in another god-awful highway diner (how can you make a simple salad so bad?) we opened up on Facebook to questions about anything. It was a ball. Some of the questions were thoughtful and challenging. Some not so much. But, all in all, a delightful exchange with everybody. It sure made the time go quickly. Thanks to all who participated. We stopped at the outlet mall near Palm Springs for some deep discount shopping. Margaret is a serious bargain Betty. (“Never pay retail.”) The sun had gone down and we saddled up for the push into the city of angles.


I knew we were close because the traffic flow quickly turned aggressive. LA drivers are among the hardest charging bunch of fools in the world on the roads and I’m one of them. Just check out my recent third ticket for speeding. I am so immature behind the wheel, it’s ridiculous. I even had to attend traffic school in person for 12 hours.



Finally, after three days of bad food, we rolled into Los Angeles around 10pm Monday night. Tired but elated at the outpouring of support. We far exceeded our expenses, allowing for extra resources for the next load of guitars being delivered into the next correctional facility.


Immense gratitude is due to all of you who helped with your donations and your mere encouragement. That you are understanding of our mission is half the battle.


More news as it happens.

Hello to all our friends.



It’s Wayne writing with incredible news. A few days ago, as we prepared for the Jail Guitar Doors Benefit tonight in Austin Texas with English Teeth, Salesman and Lions, a good man named JD Herman contacted us. JD’s brother Brad had died. Brad was an ex-offender and a musician who happened to own a music store in Houston. JD told us that, in his brother’s memory, his family had decided to donate the remaining inventory of amps, guitars and drums to Jail Guitar Doors! We are, of course, knocked out by their generosity and we have accepted the donation. You can read more about Brad Herman in a letter that his brother JD wrote to us.



Now this is where you come in. We have to get this gear back to JGD-USA Headquarters in Los Angeles, CA. We are so determined to make good use of this donation that Margaret and I have decided to rent a truck and drive the gear ourselves across country.



But we need your help! Please sponsor us to get us home from Austin to Los Angeles. It’s 1,386 miles and that’s a lotta gas! No donation is too small and no donation is too big, even if it’s just $5 for 5 miles to help offset these bare bones expenses related to what we’ve now officially coined the BRAD HERMAN MEMORIAL GEAR RUN.



Here’s our budget:
U-Haul truck = $450
Gas = $350.
Hotels = $200
Total = $1000







This gear will go to inmates around the nation and will help them to rehabilitate. There are 2.5 million people in prison in America today. Almost all of them will rejoin us in our communities. Help them figure out how to do it by learning to channel their feelings creatively. They will be our neighbors, our friends and family members.



We’ll post our progress, and your donations, as we drive across country starting tomorrow, Saturday, July 16, 2011.



We need your help to get this gear across country! Join us in the Jail Guitar Doors USA Brad Herman Memorial Gear Run by donating now. Please tell everyone you know and be sure to include these links in your email:



Jail Guitar Doors USA Brad Herman Memorial Gear Run:
http://jailguitardoors.org/blog/?p=652



Donation Link:
http://jailguitardoors.org/donate.html



Thanks, Wayne & Margaret