The MEEC/Adobe ETLA agreement is approved!

Please join MEEC, Computer Intelligence  (CIA), the reseller of Adobe products under the MEEC/Adobe agreement and Adobe for several information sessions.

MEEC/Adobe ETLA for Higher Education – 6/11/19
9:30 – 10:30

MEEC/Adobe ETLA for K-12 – June 11, 2019
10:45 – 11:45

MEEC/Adobe ETLA General Session – June 18, 2019
9:30 – 10:30

We all experience levels of humor in our lives. We may giggle at memes on social media, snarf quietly to ourselves when we spy someone make a goof at work, or fall on the floor laughing at the silly things our children say and do. We have “dad jokes” and “potty humor” readily available to us in books and top 10 lists. We know, innately, what works and what doesn’t, and we react accordingly.

Taking it all up a notch, however, by creating the humor yourself, is another level entirely. And getting up in front of an audience, be it a few friends or a giant concert hall of strangers, to deliver it—well, that takes a certain type of guts this author admittedly does not have. Thankfully, we have Christine Ferrera, M.F.A. ’10, intermedia and digital arts, to help us out. For the last five years, Ferrera—who in addition to working as a video producer at UMBC’s New Media Studio is the author of the Starbux Diary, a collection of witty feedback letters she wrote to corporate coffee—has been hitting open mics and comedy festivals non-stop, learning how to hone her craft one punchline at a time.

Tools of the Trade:  
    + A notebook, always at the ready 
    + A tape recorder for the most honest feedback 
    + Free evenings for hitting the open mics 
    + A healthy attitude toward rejection 
    + The right comedy community for you

STEP 1: Write things down, and don’t censor yourself.

You never know when an idea will pop into your head, so, you’ve got to be ready when one comes your way. The best way is to always have a notebook on hand. For Ferrera, it’s a small notebook she acquired at the Red Clay Comedy Festival in Atlanta. Inside are tidbits, observations, and scribbles.

“Some of them are bad or embarrassing, but at this point it doesn’t matter. You never know what will be useful later,” says Ferrera, who keeps the book on her nightstand for midnight musings, and even sometimes asks friends to write ideas down for her in it when she’s driving.

“This isn’t where you’re going to write full jokes. It could be you just thought about something funny, like a phrase or an image or something like that,” she says. “And don’t censor yourself. Later is when you’re going to go in and make something out of it.”

STEP 2: Schedule writing sessions with goals in mind.

Once you have some solid—or vaguely solid—ideas, it’s time to work on writing actual jokes. There are many flavors of comedy out there, and the only way you’ll find yours is to start putting pen to paper.

“I’ll take a notebook and go to a coffee shop and I’ll do a writing session where I’ll set a goal for myself,” says Ferrera. “I’ll say, maybe today I’m going to write three jokes, or five jokes. And then I sit there and pretty much make something out of all those tidbits I’ve been writing down.”

Ferrera also draws inspiration—and discipline—from comedians she admires, like Gary Gulman, who offers a comedy writing tip each day on social media, and recommends setting time aside each day to write.

“I know how valuable that is,” she says. “When I did Starbux, that was 10 years of writing a small amount every day….the writing sessions are kinda torture, but it’s exciting and fun when you really get rolling, just like any creative art form.”

STEP 3: Get yourself up on that stage.

By now you’re probably watching other comics perform fairly often (if not, it’s time to start!), and you’re beginning to make choices about what you might like to do yourself. Just don’t wait too long to jump into performing yourself, says Ferrera, who hits as many open mics as she can.

“So because it’s pretty much universally daunting to most people to, like, get up and try to tell jokes, just get it over with,” says Ferrera. “Don’t write and write and write until you have the perfect set. Throw some stuff together and get up there with a few minutes of something.”

Over time, as you listen to feedback from the audience, polish your jokes and your delivery.  Ferrera records herself so she can critique herself later and make changes to her repertoire over time. The ultimate first goal: to have a “tight five,” or five solid no-fail minutes of material in your pocket for anytime you need it. You will probably bomb along the way, she says, but that’s part of learning, too.

“It can be excruciating, but you have to do it. You will sound terrible, and you’ll hear yourself going ‘um, uh,’…but then you’ll quit doing those things,” she says. “The more you perform, you’ll find you do it a little differently, and after a lot of times, you’ll say…‘oh, that really worked!’”

STEP 4: Find your voice.

As you feel more comfortable with the rhythm of your words and performance, the next step is to try to make the comedy your own. We’ve all seen the same jokes rehashed by multiple comics, and we’ve all seen performers who draw from common topics—politics, relationships, etc. So, how do you produce something nobody’s ever seen before?

“What I consider a mistake is when people say, ‘I wanna do comedy,’ and so they’re like ‘Comedy sounds like this. Comedy is talking about dating. Or comedy is making fun of that thing,’” she says. “And that’s so covered already.”

Ferrera likes to draw from her performing arts background, and reminds herself often that her comedy isn’t for everybody. And it doesn’t have to be. Like one of her favorite performers, Maria Bamford, Ferrera wants to stay true to who she is and grow from there.

“Maria Bamford has been out there 30 years sticking to her gut instincts. It’s literally so specific to her, and the way she thinks. That’s what I aspire to,” says Ferrera.

“I would rather bomb or whatever, but be doing stuff that I actually care about saying and doing. Because then, when it’s good, it’s SO good. You can’t beat it.”

*****

All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11, unless otherwise noted. 

By Stian Rice, visiting assistant research professor, Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education, UMBC

Prison inmates are picking fruits and vegetables at a rate not seen since Jim Crow.

Convict leasing for agriculture—a system that allows states to sell prison labor to private farms—became infamous in the late 1800s for the brutal conditions it imposed on captive, mostly black workers.

Federal and state laws prohibited convict leasing for most of the 20th century, but the once-notorious practice is making a comeback.

Under lucrative arrangements, states are increasingly leasing prisoners to private corporations to harvest food for American consumers.

Why now?

The U.S. food system relies on cheap labor. Today, median income for farm workers is US$10.66 an hour, with 33% of farm-worker households living below the poverty line.

Historically, agriculture has suppressed wages—and eschewed worker protections—by hiring from vulnerable groups, notably, undocumented migrants. By some estimates, 70% of agriculture’s 1.2 million workers are undocumented.

As current anti-immigrant policies diminish the supply of migrant workers (both documented and undocumented), farmers are not able to find the labor they need. So, in states such as Arizona, Idaho and Washington that grow labor-intensive crops like onions, apples and tomatoes, prison systems have responded by leasing convicts to growers desperate for workers.

The racist roots of convict leasing

Since Reconstruction, states have used prisoners to solve labor supply problems in industries such as road and rail construction, mining and agriculture. But convict leasing has also been a powerful weapon of white supremacy, and now, anti-immigrant sentiment.

After Emancipation, southern economies faced a crisis: how to maintain a racial caste system and a supply of surplus labor now that blacks were free.

Southern states passed vagrancy laws, Black Codes, and other legislation to selectively incarcerate freed slaves. For example, under Mississippi’s vagrancy law, all black men had to provide written proof of a job or face a $50 fine. Those who could not pay were forced to work for any white man willing to pay the fine—an amount that was deducted from the black man’s wage.

During the late 1800s, mass incarceration created an army of cheap labor that could be leased to private businesses for substantial profit. In 1886, state revenues from leasing exceeded the cost of running prisons by nearly 400%. Between 1870 and 1910, 88% of convicts leased in Georgia were black.

Populist response

But cheap convict labor also suppressed wages for free whites, and by 1900, poor whites began pushing back.

In 1904, James Vardaman was elected governor of Mississippi on a platform of returning whites to work and blacks to confinement. These populist white supremacist sentiments dovetailed with national economic concerns during the Great Depression, when agricultural failures led to widespread unemployment.

In the 1930s, the Ashurst-Sumners Act and accompanying state laws prohibited convict leasing and the sale of prisoner-made goods on the open market. Inmates still worked in agriculture, but the food they produced had to be consumed by other prisoners or state workers.

By the late 1970s, with growing competition from foreign manufacturing, U.S. companies sought out domestic sources of cheap labor.

Under pressure from corporate lobbies like the American Legislative Exchange Council, Congress relaxed restrictions on convict leasing with the Justice System Improvement Act. As the manufacturing and service sectors began hiring prisoners, agriculture expanded its use of migrant workers.

Profit and exploitation

Today, convict leasing offers significant revenues for prisons.

Most wages paid to inmates are garnished by prisons to cover incarceration costs and pay victim restitution programs. In some cases, prisoners see no monetary compensation whatsoever. In 2015 and 2016, the California Prison Industry Authority made over $2 million from its food and agriculture sector.

Growers can reap significant revenues, too. Inmates are excluded from federal minimum wage protections, allowing prison systems to lease convicts at a rate below the going labor rate. In Arizona, inmates leased through Arizona Correctional Industries (ACI) receive a wage of $3-$4 per hour before deductions. Meanwhile, the state’s minimum wage for most non-incarcerated farm workers is $11.00/hr.

Beyond the unfairness of low wages, inadequate state and federal regulations ensure that agricultural work continues to be onerous. Laborers endure long hours, repetitive motion injuries, temperature and humidity extremes and exposure to caustic and carcinogenic chemicals.

For inmates, these circumstances are unlikely to change. U.S. courts have ruled that prisoners are prohibited from organizing for higher wages and working conditions—though strikes have occurred in recent years.

Furthermore, inmates are not legally considered employees, which means they are excluded from protection under parts of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Equal Pay Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the National Labor Relations Act and the Federal Tort Claims Act.

Whose labor is being sold?

The total number—and racial makeup—of leased inmates is difficult to calculate. Not all prison systems report on farming operations or leased labor arrangements. According to one advocacy group, at least 30,000 inmates work within the food system. But to the extent that convict leasing reflects overall inmate demographics, prison agriculture is distinctly racial.

Blacks make up 39% of inmates, but only 12% of the general population, making blacks six times more likely than whites to be incarcerated. Over the last 50 years—the same period that saw the return of convict leasing—the black incarceration rate quadrupled.

Proponents of “prison industries” argue that leasing provides rehabilitative benefits like on-the-job training for reentry. But research shows that within the prison system, whites receive better jobs than blacks, with better pay and more beneficial skills.

Whereas migrant workers often benefit home communities by returning a portion of their wages as remittances, the garnishing or nonpayment of convict wages prevents inmates from contributing to their families and home economies.

Since Emancipation, agriculture has moved its focus from one labor source to another in response to shifting currents of populism, nativism and racism. All three benefit from the exploitation of minority populations, and all three justify policies of exploitation in economic terms.

Convict leasing is the first—and now the latest—strategy.

******

Stian Rice, food systems geographer, Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Header image by Rasmus Landgreen on Unsplash

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.