Concrete Mama is a raw, provocative, and one-of-a-kind new podcast recorded from inside Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla. Hosts Demar, Anthony, Red, and Cambo tackle prison stereotypes head-on, sharing real-life experiences that challenge and recontextualize what you think you know about life within the prison industrial complex.
They delve into the prison’s notorious past, recounting stories from the “Concrete Mama” era – a time when a failed experiment turned the facility into one of America’s most feared prisons – and document in real-time Anthony’s transition home on clemency while the rest of the team remains inside.
Since the coining of the “Concrete Mama” moniker by a group of inmates in the 1970s, the Washington State Penitentiary has undergone significant development and renovation — expanding the surface of its grounds by over 500%.
The history of the name is explored in detail in John McCoy and Ethan Hoffman’s book of the same name, chronicling a radical, first-of-its-kind social experiment which placed authoritative power in the prison in the hands of the inmates.
Hoffman, auteur of the photojournalism portion of “Concrete Mama,” paints an intimate portrait of life within WSP in the mid-to-late 1970s. Our podcast serves as a present-day expansion of Hoffman and McCoy’s noble project — a portrait of the prison, by and for those housed within.
