Barbara Deming (1917–1984)

This book was highly-recommended to me, but I found it rather tedious and obvious throughout much of its discourse, in which the author attempts to categorize protagonistic activity in films of the 1940s. Some of her ideas are of interest, particularly one involving what George Bailey's REAL discovery was at the climax of It's A Wonderful Life. But much of the prose is near-turgid, detailed synopses of movie plots go on for pages, her quotations of dialog are apparently often from (faulty) memory or from early script drafts, as many of her quotes simply aren't in the movies themselves, and she varies without rhyme or reason between using character names and the names of the actors when describing a film. ("Bogart takes Ilsa in his arms," etc.) As stated, some of it is of interest, but with the exception of a section on the Chandler and Hammett films, I was impatient for the book to end.… (meer)

Given all the hoopla that occurs in the activist world every time an #OWS arrest happens (and all the outrage over jail conditions that the protesters (but not all the rest of the people in the jail) have to endure), I thought I'd finally dust this off my to-be-read pile. Deming and the women in jail with her in 1964 came out with a very different view of prisons than what I'm seeing from the #OWS arrestees today. In 1964, one of Deming's cellmates wrote, "...the court, as now constituted, would be meaningless without the jail which gives it its power. But if there is anything I have learned by being in jail, it is that prisons are wrong, simply and unqualifiedly wrong..."… (meer)

"Prisons That Could Not Hold" contains writings from two experiences separated by 20 years of experiences, but brought together through Barbara Deming's life as an nonviolent activist for human rights. The first part of the book contains the contemplative writings of Deming while fasting in a jail cell for 27 days in Albany, Georgia with several other like minded people for participating in the Canada-to-Cuba Peace Walk of 1964. Deming's experience in jail, while filled with dirty mattresses, drunken, angry and distressed inmates, and oppressive authority figures, is one of unity, freedom, and love. And not just love for her fellow marchers, but a love for all of humanity, including her immediate oppressors on the other side of her cell's bars. Her noncooperation was not driven by spite, but rather by love and compassion that would not allow her to complacently accept violence, whether through racism, discrimination, or war. The second part of the book describes her experiences during a march of women, from the Seneca Women's Peace Encampment to a missile base in New York, in the form of a letter to a friend. Here we see a bond of women, not to alienate the male gender, but to celebrate a bond that is often neglected in our patriarchal society. What becomes clear in her account is that through nonviolence and loving, cooperative community building, these women were not symbolically marching for peace, they were demonstrating their love and compassion for humanity and the knowledge that violence aided by war and massive death dealing weapons hold the key to humanity's demise.… (meer)