Tag: spoken word poetry

On Oct. 9, Chas was featured on the TVOne show Verses and Flow with his poem “Collect Call” about his mother. It’s an emotional editorial on having his family split by the U.S. concentration camp system aka the prison industrial complex’s war on the domestic Black community. This poem is especially timely coming on the heels of the monumental California Prison Hunger Strike of ‘13.

Just as Hurricane Katrina revealed racial inequalities, the recovery has also been shaped by systemic racism. According to a recent survey of New Orleanians by the Kaiser Foundation, 42 percent of African Americans – versus just 16 percent of whites – said they still have not recovered from Katrina. Thirty-one percent of African-American residents – versus 8 percent of white respondents – said they had trouble paying for food or housing in the last year.