Monday, January 28, 2008

The Fancy Broccoli Show

Today I was looking over last year’s schedule for the Green Haven reunion here at Vassar and saw that the founder of The Fancy Broccoli show on WVKR, Julie Greenwood, came to the event to speak to us. The Fancy Broccoli show is “three hours of discussion of prison reform issues and social justice and (loosely defined) jazz from all periods”. They have interviews with people working in the criminal justice system and read letters to and from people involved in the system (from incarcerated people in the region to people who have been a victim of crimes). I first heard about the show during the reunion and I remember not giving much thought to it. At the time I was going to Green Haven and I remember how, when we met up on our usual Friday meetings, the men talked about the show and how they had heard about the reunion on The Fancy Broccoli. I thought this was an amazing way of sharing experiences with the men, but it wasn’t until today that I decided to go online and learn more about the show. The Fancy Broccoli has a really nice site (http://www.fancybroccoli.org/) and you can listen to the shows online (at http://www.wvkr.org/). It airs every other Sunday from 3pm to 6pm. I listened to some of the letters people sent in and there is a little of everything: from poetry to happy birthday wishes from family members to incarcerated people. I feel a little guilty that I work at the local jail and never took the time to learn more about this program. I guess it is never too late to start…

Juliana

1 comment:

DeeDee Halleck said...

I went to the fancy broccolli site. you're right it's awesome. I love the look of it. And the project sounds very cool. In Manchester, UK I worked with some people to make a pirate radio to send programs to the prison there. The prison has a very interesting name: it's called Strange Ways Prison.
I don't know how it got that name.
DeeDee