Why I Joined Jeremy

art and words by Maggs Dao Hanson

The first time I finally spoke on the phone with Jeremy Busby, he told me about his plans to expand his personal “Join Jeremy for Justice” campaign into an organization supporting all incarcerated journalists (and, ultimately, all people affected by the criminal legal system). He shared with me his philosophy, “None of us is better than all of us.”

Jeremy’s words resounded pressing truths: all struggles for liberation are interconnected, and such struggles can only be won through collective action.

In these times of accelerating polycrisis, incarcerated journalists are among the metaphorical “canaries in the coal mine.” That is, the realities they alert us to, from sites of extreme state-sanctioned violence, are realities which impact all of society.

Over the past decade, Jeremy Busby has published numerous articles concerning worsening crises from within the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ): heat-related illnesses and deaths, deplorable lack of sanitation, inadequate COVID-19 (and other viral illness) protections, inadequate mental and physical health care, unsafe drug supply, increasing suicides, pervasive racism, and retaliation, abuse of power and violence at the hands of prison officials.

Jeremy has suffered relentless retaliation, censorship, harm to his health and safety, and unjust placement in solitary confinement in response to his journalism, particularly over the past five years. Jeremy has nonetheless refused to be silenced.

As I write this, we are two months into witnessing the Trump Administration’s hastening of the expansion of the already gargantuan prison-industrial complex. As the administration moves to achieve its promises of mass deportations and harsher criminal sentencing, private prison companies are celebrating heightened profitable demand.

Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, who is currently detained and threatened with retaliatory deportation, is just one alarming case of how state power attempts to pick off and silence free speech. As JoinJeremy Board Director Seth Stern recently wrote, “authoritarianism is a slippery slope,” and what threatens Khalil is a threat to journalists everywhere.

Jeremy Busby is just one brave individual who has been targeted and threatened for his free speech and activism. His refusal to back down in silence, and his determination to build collective power with others, is a vital strategy for us all.

The American prison-industrial complex as a whole thrives on secrecy and isolation. This is further bolstered by culturally pervasive myths, propaganda, disinformation, dehumanization and targeting of vulnerable populations. Its technologies and mechanisms are ultimately entwined with the same forces that are driving imperialist warfare abroad, and the destruction of Earth’s climate. Whatever small actions we can take together, add up to greater change in a much wider web, for the sake of future generations.

I joined Jeremy as an artist and organizer because of the powerful potential and strength of different people working together—especially in spite of systemic separation and hierarchies. Incarcerated journalists, and prisoners in general, are organizing themselves from within highly repressive circumstances. When those of us on the outside lend our material support, resources, skills, time, energy, and attention to their work, we increase our chances for positive change.

I first connected with Join Jeremy in 2020, when I began creating artwork and graphic designs to support unjustly incarcerated individuals. Before then, I primarily understood the harms of the American carceral system through supporting data and statistics. Therefore, I can attest that knowledge of statistics alone was not enough to raise my consciousness towards tangible action. The element of human connection was essential.

Incarcerated journalists and writers are doing the essential work of humanizing themselves and others in their positions, while also documenting and expose their lived realities. Together, we can protect, uplift, and amplify their voices in order to fight for a better world.