Solange No Shows, But Chelsea Manning Opens Up on Prison Life: Inside Day for Night’s Surreal First Day — This is No Ordinary Music Festival

It may have been a summit, but it wasn’t the peak in entertainment that fans had hoped. The speaking series was lively, but there wasn’t that much music to the ears.

Friday’s Day For Night Summit carried on sans Solange, one of the most hotly anticipated acts of the entire weekend.

The singer-songwriter is still scheduled to take the stage this Sunday. But tonight’s “Soul Cleansing” was wiped clean off the music/arts festival’s schedule after Beyonce’s sister dropped out due to unknown reasons.

The Houston artist had composed, arranged, and choreographed the performance piece in collaboration with Saint Heron and German electronic artist Wolfgang Voigt, stage name GAS.

Voigt was among Friday’s missing musical acts. He posted the news and his disappointment to Facebook, citing issues with their visas and passports.

Add electronic artist Andy Scott and pop songstress Sky Ferreira to the list of AWOL artists. They cancelled due to a physician’s warning and unforeseen circumstances, respectively. Limb, Boots, Jenny Hval, Earl Sweatshirt, and Kaytranada went on as planned after the speaker series.

The speakers came out in full force at Post HTX (the former Barbara Jordan Post Office Building) in downtown Houston. They each spoke, alternatively on their own and in tandem, on the blue stage.

Former U.S. soldier and now government transparency and LGBTQ activist Chelsea Manning, political activist and musical artist Nadya Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot, artist Lauren McCarthy, and visual artist and musician Laurie Anderson opened up about art and activism in today’s climate. Poet and performer Saul Williams shared his poetry in between the talks.

Manning used her considerable platform to talk about prison culture and reform. The former intelligence analyst was released from prison this past May. She had served seven years for disclosing hundreds of thousands of classified and sensitive military and diplomatic documents to Wikileaks.

Prisoners are desperate for support. “Prisoners are forgotten” once they go behind bars, even by the people closest to them, Manning said. Failing to find it outside the walls, they grow support systems within them. Manning bonded with her inmates. “I miss them,” she said.

“We need solidarity,” Tolokonnikova agreed. The feminist punk rock protest group singer spent a little over a year in prison in her native Russia for political activism, dubbed “hooliganism motivated by religious hatred” by Vladimir Putin’s government.

In prison, if you don’t show solidarity, “you could lose your life,” Tolokonnikova said.

But friendships were not formed easily. Disagreements had to be dealt with. “You couldn’t hold grudges,” Manning said. People that fought and disagreed for years would end up as friends, she added.

In dealing with other inmates, Manning focused on the future. There was no place for past transgressions. “I don’t care who you are, where you came from, or how you got here. I just care how you treat me now,” Manning said.

“Prison is a terrible place. It’s not good in any way. But you learn about humanity in a way you don’t anywhere else.”

Chelsea Manning, Pussy Riot Star Tackle Prison Censorship

Learning about the outside world, though, is almost impossible. The prison system takes censorship extremely seriously. Words in book titles could render the works forbidden. Other books were cast out by reputation. The Autobiography of Malcolm X was never permitted, Manning said. The argument was that it was part of a “gangster” lifestyle, and that restricting it was a matter of security. Manning disagreed wholeheartedly.

The censors in the prison where Manning was held marked out offensive words by hand, giving them the extra incentive to toss out whole books as quickly as possible. “When you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail,” Manning said.

Tolokonnikova remembers smuggling in magazines however — and wherever — she could. Magazines were incredibly important to her in prison, and to other inmates. “Sometimes you can change lives” with information, she said.

The real change needs to come from outside, through reform. Manning sees efforts in the U.S. trending toward inclusivity, like encouraging more female law enforcement officers. This tactic may not be the most effective. “A lot of people working on reform are boxing themselves in,” she said.

To Manning the truth is unfortunate. “I don’t think you can reform prisons.”

She wishes things were different, that there was some form of compromise. “Just because you disagree with someone doesn’t mean you should throw them away for life,” Manning said.

For a time, she believed that was her fate. “I accepted that I would spend the rest of my life there, or at least my youth,” Manning said.

Now that her fortunes have changed, she’s making the most of her voice. “I never thought I would be here. I never knew I’d be on this stage.”