Joy and Pain: A Story of Black Life and Liberation in Five Albums

Joy and Pain

Joy and Pain

A Story of Black Life and Liberation in Five Albums

Damien M. Sojoyner

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

The publisher and the University of California Press Foundation gratefully acknowledge the generous support of the George Gund Foundation Imprint in African American Studies.

University of California Press

Oakland, California

© 2022 by Damien M. Sojoyner

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Sojoyner, Damien M., author.

Title: Joy and pain : a story of black life and liberation / Damien M. Sojoyner.

Description: Oakland, California : University of California Press, [2022] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022005548 (print) | LCCN 2022005549 (ebook) | ISBN 9780520390416 (cloth) | ISBN 9780520390423 (paperback) | ISBN 9780520390430 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: African Americans—California—Los Angeles—Social conditions. | Discrimination in criminal justice administration—California—Los Angeles.

Classification: LCC E185.86 .S6555 2022 (print) | LCC E185.86 (ebook) | DDC 305.896/073079494—dc23/eng/20220323

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005548

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022005549

Manufactured in the United States of America

31  30  29  28  27  26  25  24  23  22

10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

To Elaine and Godfrey, whose love has always been unconditional.

To Shana, whose love has enabled me to reach levels I never thought possible.

To Naima and Nesanet, whose love gives my life true meaning.

CONTENTS

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Look at California

ALBUM 1: HIDDEN IN PLAIN SIGHT

A Side: A Place Called Home

B Side: Manufacturing a Problem

ALBUM 2: THE HEART OF REBELLION

A Side: A True Education

B Side: Watts to the Future

ALBUM 3: ALL THAT GLITTERS

A Side: Nonprofit Management

B Side: All Power to the People

ALBUM 4: CRUEL AND BEAUTIFUL

A Side: Shelter from Paradise

B Side: Socialist Visions

ALBUM 5: LIBERATORY VIBES

A Side: Freedom Ain’t Free

B Side: The Price of Freedom

Closing Note: Freedom on the Mind

Notes

Grounding Materials

Works Cited

Illustration Credits

Index

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writing a book is never an individual endeavor, and to that end there are many, many people who have contributed to the crafting of this project. I am forever grateful to the stewards of the Southern California Library—Michele Welsing, Yusef Omowale, and Raquel Chavez. They have been constant sources of intellectual, communal, and political support and inspiration throughout the course of this project. There are also so many people with whom I had the opportunity to engage at SCL whose insight has been beyond valuable. While I run the risk of leaving some people out of the list, this book could have not been completed without the wisdom of Linda, Shanae, and the late Annette McKinley.

My colleagues in the Anthropology Department at the University of California, Irvine have been tremendous in their unwavering support throughout the duration of the project. I would like to extend a huge note of thanks to Kristen Peterson and Valerie Olson, who read over chapter drafts and were tremendous in their thoughtful, critical feedback. Many thanks to Bill Mauer and Doug Haynes, who, via their administrative capacity, provided invaluable resources to ensure the completion of the book. I am thankful for the many brilliant people whom I have been able to work with at UCI including Stephanie Jones, Janelle Levy, Guilberly Louissaint, Diana Gamez, Ian Baran, Isabel Gonzales, Miguel Abad, LaShonda Carter, Sofia Pedroza, Chaz Briscoe, Camille Samuels, Monique Azzara, Rojelio Munoz, Isabel Soifer, Darren Turner, and Josh Johnson.

This project could not have been completed without the support of the UC Consortium for Black Studies in California facilitated by Robin D. G. Kelley, Aisha Finch, Stephanie Batiste, Nahum Chandley, Dayo Gore, Imani Kai Johnson, Cheryl Harris, Frances Saunders, and Van Do-Nguyen. Many thanks to Dayo Gore for hosting a fantastic symposium at the University of California, San Diego, that was instrumental in the development of key tenets and ideas that informed the basis of the book.

I am especially indebted to the editorial staff at the University of California Press. Kate Marshall has been a staunch advocate of the book and provided so much encouragement and thoughtful feedback. Thank you so much to Enrique Ochoa-Kaup, who has been extremely patient with me as I pushed the concept of a deadline to its most extreme definition. My most sincere thanks to the readers who took extreme care with the manuscript and opened up numerous possibilities for the book to develop and become a much more thoughtful, nuanced project.

I have had the opportunity to present various facets of Joy and Pain to a range of audiences and I am grateful for the feedback and support that I have received. Many thanks to Ezekiel Joubert, Miguel Zavala, Jose Paolo Magcalas and the Ethnic Studies Collective at California State University, Los Angeles; Jonathan Rosa and the Department of Education at Stanford University; Sabina Vaught and the Carceral Studies Consortium at the University of Oklahoma; Jheanelle Brown and the Broad Art Museum; Coco Massengale, Danielle Greene, and the Critical Studies of Blackness in Education community at Stanford University; Dylan Rodriguez and the Department of Media and Cultural Studies at the University of California, Riverside; Raja Swamy and the Department of Anthropology at the University of Tennessee.

Over the years there have been so many friends and colleagues who have read over chapter drafts, patiently discussed the frameworks and ideas, and pointed me in needed directions. I am especially thankful to Orisanmi Burton, Ryan Jobson, Savannah Shange, Fred Moten, Juli Grigsby, Sarah Haley, Connie Wun, Anthony Johnson, Tiffany Willoughby Herard, Craig Gilmore, Sabina Vaught, Emily Thuma, Erica Meiners, Bianca Williams, Ashanté Reese, Ashon Crawley, Shana Redmond, Robin D. G. Kelley, Sandra Harvey, Rachel Herzing, Dylan Rodriguez, João Costa Vargas, Stefano Harney, SA Smythe, Melissa Burch, Avery Gordon, Gaye Theresa Johnson, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, Pem Buck, Karen Williams, Andrea Del Carmen Vasquez, Chrissy Hernandez, Sónia Vaz Borges, Priscilla Ocen, Keisha-Khan Perry, Ujju Aggarwal, Andrea Morrell, James Doucet-Battle, Setsu Shigematsu, and Anthony Jerry. I thank you so much for your brilliance and kindness.

Throughout this process I have been supported by a tremendous collective of friends who have been bedrocks throughout the process. Milton and Erica Little, Maggie and Steve Pulley, John Norwood and Tula Orum, Mark and Tish Arana, Senta and Felton Newell, Amy and Damon Ross, Ke’Yuanda and Jonté Robertson, Adrian Guillemet and Kim Baker Guillemet, Pernell and Keila Cox, John and Nadia Ward, Reggie Fears, Brian and Amika Rikuda, Jerrin West, Chane Morrow, Jamila Webb, Asmahan Thompson, Alex and Melinda Nickelberry, Chris Harris, Rocio Silverio, Nesanet Abegaze, Alix Chapman, George and Lauren Turner, Anneeth Kuar Hundle, Byron Davis, LaKisha Moore, Banch Abegaze and family, Jerome McAlpin and family, Angel Martin and Ron Thompson, Jodi Skipper, Sylvia Nam, Mohan Ambikaipaker, Steven Osuna, Courtney Morris, Angelica Camacho, Samar Al-Bulushi, Erica Williams, Hyman Scott, Brittany Matt, Reggie and Paula Gautt, Che Rodriguez, Yousef Al-Bulushi, Jonathan Gomez, Sandra Hearst and family, Steve and Deyna Hearn, Aaron Gautt, Kris McCain, Raja Swamy, Claudia Peña, Ernest, Andreas Beasley, Troy, Anthony Johnson and Johanna Almiron, and the Sage Garden Community and family network.

Thank you so much to Leslie Poston, who in addition to possessing many talents and skills is one of the most thoughtful and patient thinkers and editors whom I have had the chance to work with. Leslie took so much time to meticulously go through every single word of this book, and I am thankful for her time and expertise.

A special note of thanks to Elizabeth Robinson and her late husband and longtime partner, Cedric Robinson. The inspiration for this book came many years ago during a meeting that I had with Cedric in his office at the University of California, Santa Barbara. During the interim, I had many conversations with Cedric and Elizabeth about the direction and flow of the project. Over the years, Elizabeth has graciously invited me to speak about various aspects on the radio program No Alibis, hosted on KCSB. Our discussions both on and off the air were foundational to the production of the book, and I am forever grateful for our continued friendship.

The perseverance of a strong family network including Alicia, Laura, Esther, Earl, Lela, Cheryl, Ann, Tony, Jasmine, Carolyn, Sheldon, Austen, Curtis, Diana, Carter, Christian, Aunt Imani, Jamila, Kamila, Mekyle, Aunt Jesse, Denise, David, Hope, Rashida, Ron, Uncle Ron, Kelsey, Jodia, Richard, Callee, Kim, Sam, Sheila, Alison, Derezet and Jimmy Moore, Selina Morris, Richard James and Janie, Brenda, Constance Lynn, Lolita, Anthony, Tracy, Ron Prince, Mr. and Mrs. Addison, Jo-Carolyn, Tina, Jacqui, Cheryl Merchant, Nick, Gina, and Dana have inspired me to continue to want to do better and place the needs of the Black community in all of my actions. Shelia and Wilson Crawford and their children Nikia and Wilson provided me with constant support and laughter. Michael Johnson’s funny wit and understanding demeanor provided me with relief during the most stressful of times. Herbertean and Keith Morris and their wonderful family, Keiana, Rodney, Whitneigh, and Taran, have always been warm and inviting. Friends and family are very important to me and luckily, I have a very large family. For anyone who I forgot to mention, please charge it to my head and not my heart.

My sister, Leslie Schnyder, has been a wonderful, supportive sibling whose passion for life is only matched by her energy. Godfrey and Elaine Schnyder have been kind, caring, and most of all, loving parents who have had the patience to support me through all of my good and bad decisions. Their ability to make life fun and enjoyable enabled me to get through some of the most difficult times of completing the book.

Finally, this book could not have been written without the love and commitment from Shana, Naima, and Nesanet Sojoyner. Shana has been tremendous in her support through the highs and lows that have occurred throughout the process. I am forever in her debt and thank her a million times over for her kindness and generosity. Naima and Nesanet have been blessings manifested over and over again. They have brought nothing but joy, laughter, and love to my life. Everything I do is for them and my love for them is unwavering.

INTRODUCTION

Look at California

WELCOME TO LOS ANGELES

Los Angeles is the type of place where you can ride by buildings every day for years and have no idea what happens within those walls. It is the kind of city where something is not missed until it is torn down and replaced. This is not for a lack of curiosity, rather it is simply that in a place so vast, it is difficult to ever know the inner beauty of all the nooks and crannies. Having grown up in the region, I must have driven past the Southern California Library more than five hundred times without ever knowing its name, not knowing that one day, it would come to have one of the most profound impacts on how I think about and engage with the world.

Despite living in close proximity to the SCL as a child and adolescent, my first introduction to its work happened when I was far away from Los Angeles, living in Austin, Texas, and read a collection of essays titled Without Fear . . . Claiming Safe Communities without Sacrificing Ourselves: A Reader. Published by SCL, the volume addressed the development and fight against the carceral state and its relationship to issues including education, housing, and the political economy. The framing of the carceral state as less a material site (such as prison) of physical violence or brutal extraction and more as a set of constant micro and macro engagements against Black people and with state structures that animate the carceral state helped to reorient my understanding of carcerality and, specifically, the struggle against the carceral state. The archival records and contemporary strategies of anticarceral organizers reveal that the long struggle against the carceral state situates the vast nexus of prisons, courts, police officers, universities, prosecutors, social workers, financers, probation officers, jails, public defenders, academics, detention centers, legislators, real estate developers, and the litany of other bureaucratic administrators and officials into a set of fraught relationships that are neither static nor omniscient. Similarly, the details of these relational engagements with Black communities are the lifeblood of the multifaceted violence that permeates throughout the carceral state. The liberation struggle against the carceral state has been situated in this relational manner in part because this is how Black people experience the carceral state—but also, it is an organizing strategy that has been tried and tested as effective against something that is seemingly everywhere and nowhere at the same time. Rather than set up an impossible task of shutting down every single prison tomorrow, organizing strategies have developed to locate critical nodes within the relational structure and expose the absurdity and fragility of these connections. Similar to Without Fear, this book frames the carceral state and liberation efforts against the carceral state as based upon a set of relationships that extend beyond the physical walls of a prison and into the daily lived experiences that affect nearly every aspect of Black life.

Little did I know that two years after I read Without Fear I would connect with key members of SCL and begin a project that would help me reconceptualize carcerality and forever change how I engage with just about everything in the world.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA LIBRARY AND MARLEY

The Southern California Library is not a library in the typical sense. It is an archive that houses the collections of radical-left organizations from the International Oil Workers Union to the Los Angeles chapter of the Black Panther Party. It is also a community hub. Founded in 1963 by Emil Freed, a labor organizer and communist agitator, SCL moved to its current location in South Central Los Angeles in the early 1970’s. Under the care of Yusef Omowale and Michele Welsing, SCL continued to serve as a key meeting site for community organizations and developed a very specific and intentional relationship with the surrounding neighborhood. It is through this relationship that I came to understand SCL as a central part of the intellectual infrastructure throughout the many neighborhoods of Black Los Angeles. Attuned to the discrepancy between what is thought to be and what is, SCL documents the lived experience of Black Los Angeles and the wide-ranging impact of the expansion of the carceral state for Black communities in the region. As the host of workshops, classes, seminars, and organizing sessions, SCL emerged as an intimate part of the regional communal struggle against the carceral state. Most importantly, SCL has developed into a space that has allowed people to just be. In a neighborhood where residents are constantly asked to fill out surveys and give the most detailed and highly confidential information for the most basic of services and/or as part of surveillance schemes, SCL has intentionally crafted a culture where people are allowed to be, even if it is for a fleeting moment, free. The creation of such an environment has engendered accountability for the space and the investment in a particular set of expectations that are based in mutual respect and honesty.

It was through this struggle, and at the library, that I met Marley, who along with SCL is the primary driver of the book. I had heard a great deal about Marley and his comrades from Yusef and Michele in the weeks leading up to our meeting. Marley, who was born in 1992 and was 16 years old when we first met, had come into SCL looking to learn, but importantly, he was looking to organize within his community. Nineteen ninety-two is a critical year in Black Los Angeles as it marks the Los Angeles Rebellion and the coalescence of a unified radical politics that made strident structural demands upon the city through mass mobilization. Raised within such a political awakening, Marley and his peers were well attuned to the viciousness of the carceral apparatus as well as the power of organizing and political education. Yusef and Michele instantly realized the charismatic leadership style that effortlessly poured out of Marley. On a consistent basis he was bringing more and more of his peers into conversations with Yusef, Michele, and Raquel. We first met at a political education course that I facilitated at SCL. The course was structured on the explosion of prisons that happened in California during the 1970s and through the late 1990s. Marley was a participant in the course, and it is fair to say that we did not get off to the best start. While Marley is naturally gregarious and has boundless amounts of energy, that was not the case during our first set of engagements. Marley often recalls his first impression of me as a mix of disdain and dismissiveness. As he has stated to me on several occasions, his first thought was, Who is this tall, light-skin dude, walking in here, going to tell me about my neighborhood? The course was six weeks long. During that time we engaged in difficult conversations, and I quickly realized that if I did not have Marley’s respect, then I was going to lose the class. What I also learned was that Marley and his peers valued radical honesty and mutual accountability. They would push the conversation in a manner that would cut through the niceties and conventions of polite conversation. Having grown up in a context where every aspect of the state (such as school, health care, social work, housing) had overpromised and underdelivered, they knew honesty to be in short supply. Thus, they demanded radical honesty of each other, and likewise, it was demanded of me. It was after this threshold was passed that my relationship with Marley began to change. Marley and his comrades utilized SCL as an intellectual and social space that coalesced into a symbiotic bond that was built upon respect, love, and care.

Born and raised in the neighborhood surrounding SCL, Marley embodies both the spirit of Black freedom and the angst of Black vulnerability within the carceral state. A young organizer of extreme talent, he represents the tensions, contradictions, and desires of Black men who are raised within a regime defined by particular forms of gendered, racialized, and sexualized violence. Yet, what Marley and many of his peers possessed was a boundless capacity to care and nurture each other, regardless of the complete absence of any state support aside from that which defined their lives as illegible and criminal and at odds with the social mores of a proper, respectable citizen and thus in need of constant surveillance and reform. There was an unwavering capacity to love in the midst of a truly repugnant carceral apparatus that was built and maintained upon repression, violence, and general containment. This means Marley and his peers had a capacity to love despite being subjected to forms of state violence where children were forcibly removed from their families under the guise of parental negligence, where families undertook herculean efforts to secure modest forms of housing, where going hungry was commonplace within much of the neighborhood. For Marley and his peers, the policies and edicts of the carceral regime made the struggle to obtain the basics of life not an exceptional reality, but the norm.

It was within this particular social milieu that Marley and his friends and family organized, laughed, and supported each other. It was also here that they mourned, fought, and dealt with the seemingly impossible odds of being Black. Being Black in a place that was predicated upon an intense disdain and hatred for expressions of Blackness that expanded beyond particular forms of servility and docility that were prescribed by the carceral state. Such a limited framework of Blackness did not square with the traditions that Marley and his comrades adhered to. Rather than accept this framework, they resisted and articulated ways of being that flew in the face of a set of pitiful options.

It is within this space that I present just a portion of what is the life of Marley. Situated as various snapshots of Marley, to explore Marley’s life is to explore the life of Blackness in Southern California. The focus on Marley in this manner provides an opportunity to understand the multifaceted nature of Black life in Southern California through a specific instance. My hope is that the nuanced and complicated facets of his life and the importance of the Southern California Library to Black people in South Central Los Angeles register to a community living in the midst of an ongoing struggle.

FRAMING AND STRUCTURE OF THE BOOK

At the risk of sounding old, the structure of the book forms a record collection. Each chapter is an album, and each album details one aspect of the carceral state apparatus across an A side and B side. Located within a genealogical practice where Black music is the embodiment of political struggle, joy, love, hurt, and creativity, music is the thematic undercurrent that animates the multifaceted nuance of the Black lived experience across time and space. As articulated by Shana Redmond and Clyde Woods, Black music is a key interlocuter that informs intellectual traditions across generations and is central to processes of memory and cultural assertions that affirm Black political thought (Redmond 2013; Woods 2017). Within such a framework, Black music serves as the cultural analog that gives breadth to the dynamisms that are at the vortex between the daily lived experiences and historical knowledge production of Black life. Mapped along such terrain, the book utilizes music as a conduit to frame and situate the complexity of Black intellectual thought.

The template of an album provides an archetype that positions the ethnographic narrative in conversation and dialogue with the historical renderings derived from the archival collections housed at the Southern California Library. The beauty of an album is the interplay between the A side and the B side. The A side is very often constructed with songs that speak to emotive sentiments that tap into visceral capacities such as love, hurt, and exhilaration. B sides are very often constructed with a more mediative sensibility and are intended to be sat with as a means to digest the complexity of arrangements and the risks that artists take on a project. With this template in mind, the album format functions as the ideal model to situate the articulation of Black thought and cultural making.

Following this structure, each album focuses on an institutional site that maps the jagged terrain of the fight against the carceral state and details how carcerality has become imbricated within several key structures of state governance. Marley’s lived experiences on the A side of the album animate the connections between carcerality and housing, nonprofits, health care, and education, while on the B side, a multifaceted engagement with the Southern California Library documents the many layers of the carceral state and the long fight against carcerality in the state of California. The A side of each album is ethnographic in that it details a particular set of lived experiences that coalesce around the struggle within and against the carceral state. The core of the ethnography is informed by a series of recorded conversations, field notes, interviewer-written narratives, and multiplatform social media engagement. The B sides of the albums offer a deeper dive into the history and context that informs the lived experience of Marley and also animates the intellectual life and organizing work taking place at the Southern California Library. Importantly, the archival documents utilized in the B sides were curated through the steadfast work of the Southern California Library as critical texts in the formal and informal political education process that was central to organizing efforts against the carceral state.

Music is the background to this story, a constant presence during my engagement with Marley and the Southern California Library. During our many journeys throughout Southern California, Marley and I were always listening to or talking about music. As an informal policy, SCL always had music playing and holds a fairly extensive music archival collection. The throwback to the days of records is an intentional effort to build a