Tightwire
Periodical profile published 1983
http://www.connexions.org/CxArchive/Tightwire/Tightwire-Index.htm
Year Published: 1983
Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
Cx Number: CX2876
A newsletter published by inmates of the Prison for Women.
Abstract:
TIGHTWIRE is published every second month by the inmates of the Prison for Women. The contents are complied from a variety of sources: their own writings, those of inmates from other institutions, newspaper and magazine articles, the submissions from outside contributors. Much of the content consists of poetry and short stories. Recent articles have dealt with the Quaker conference on prison abolition; a Canadian woman in a Peruvian prison; the trial of the Vancouver Five; wife battering, herbal medicine; and woman guards. The newsletter attempts to keep readers current on prison-related news by reproducing clippings from the commerical media. TIGHTWIRE is illustrated with drawings and cartoons by contributors.
The July/Augsut 1983 issue of TIGHTWIRE ends with the following message to readers: "There are two ways of viewing situations - with hope or despair. No matter which of these emotions dominates your thoughts and dreams, it is more important that it be expressed. This is for most of us the only 'release' that we will be legally able to experience for the time being. Crime is viewed by many as a protest against abnormal social conditions and nothing more. Eugene Victor Debs (1855-1926) states 'While there is a lower class I am in it, while there is a criminal element I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.' Henry David Toreau (1817-1862) writes, 'Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true palce for a just man is also a prison....the only house in a slave State in which a free man can abide with honour.' Prisons have housed and even borned some of the most widely read authors and artists of our time. So, unlock those barriers the maind has constructed, massage that writer's cramp, realize those freedoms of thought, belief and opinon and express thyself."
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