Beyond Prisons

The following talk was delivered by Dr. Kim Wilson at the DecARcerate Arkansas 2022 conference in Little Rock. The conference was an opportunity for abolitionist and other organizers to come together to listen as speakers from around the state and the country talked about their work. Kim interviewed organizers about their experience with boundary setting in movement spaces, and what they said illuminates a deeper problem that we seldom hear addressed, but that is nonetheless, important for liberation movements. As the mother of two sons currently sentenced to LWOP; as an organizer that provides education, direct support, and mobilizes resources for people in and out of prison; and as a Black disabled woman that is struggling with multiple health issues, she is emotionally, physically, and financially exhausted. The talk was a collaborative effort that included the voices of women and femmes in the movement who felt that these things need to be said, and Kim had the opportunity to use her platform to say them. We invite you to listen and to act upon what she shares, and to use this talk as an entry point to engage people in your community and movement spaces about what all of the women and femmes said. You can support Kim directly via Venmo (@Kim-Wilson-16) and CashApp ($BeyondPrisons) Transcript To borrow a phrase from the inimitable Fannie Lou Hamer, “I've been tired so long, now I am sick and tired of being sick and tired, and I want a change.” Y'all I'm tired. I'm tired of arguing, of fighting, of feeling like we're constantly having to remind people of our humanity. I'm tired of the suffering, of the trauma, and of watching people die. I'm tired of oppressive systems, of prisons, of poverty, homelessness, and hyper-individualism. I'm tired of watching my friends suffer. I'm tired of people treating incarcerated people as if they don't matter. I'm tired of ableism. I'm tired of living in a white supremacist capitalist patriarchal society. I'm tired!!!! I'm tired of crisis management. I'm tired of sacrificing my physical and emotional well-being. I'm tired of people's discomfort being the standard by which we decide on really important things. I'm tired of cynicism. I'm tired of the thinking that says that women, and particularly Black Women, femmes and other folks should be willing to do this work without question or limits. I'm tired of fighting for people that expect me to have their backs, when I know that they don't have mine. Not really, really! I'm tired of toxic masculinity. I'm tired of men acting like they're doing women a favor when they are asked to do the absolute least necessary for us to survive. I'm tired of having to fear violence, anger, and passive aggression from men in general, but especially from men in movement spaces. I'm tired of the unspoken expectations that are placed on women in movement spaces that shift the burden onto women and femmes to do most of the work of organizing. While we're ALL suffering under these oppressive systems, women, femmes, trans, non-binary, gender non-confirming folks, and disabled people are disproportionately affected by these systems and we are still showing up and doing all of the things. This is not sustainable! To be clear, this is NOT a call out or a call in. This is our reality. I'm not the only one that's tired. Many of us are exhausted, physically, emotionally, mentally, and financially. I am bringing this forward so that we can set about the task of collectively changing things. There is no healing in isolation. Part of the liberatory project is to heal our collective trauma, and HOW we work together is part of that work. This work has to happen alongside the tearing down and building up. It's not work that can be deferred until some magical date in the future when we have the time, OR conditions are perfect. When folks make that argument recognize that they are gaslighting and attempting to derail the conversation to escape accountability. Audre Lorde wrote, “There is no such thing as a single-issue struggle because we do not live single-issue lives.” The conditions in which we organize are not separate issue buckets, but the literal material conditions through which we have to survive and help others. Women, femmes, trans, non-binary, gender non conforming and disabled people are treated as disposable. We live in a society that doesn't care about us, but how are we demonstrating that we care for each other? We are still in the middle of a global pandemic that has killed 6.52 MILLION people worldwide, and 11,961 people in Arkansas alone, yet there are still people arguing that wearing a piece of cloth on their face infringes on their freedom. Imani Barbarin, a Black disabled woman, and one of the baddest communications strategists and disability rights advocates around, has rightly called Covid “a mass disabling event.” This refers to the fact that many able bodied folks will find themselves disabled as a result of catching Covid. These newly disabled folks are now finding that they have to fight for things that we shouldn't have to fight for. Now that They're affected they're outraged and want change. Here's my thing, You don't have to learn the things the hard way. You could just trust what people are saying about their experience. Full stop. We've been saying for a long time that ableism is NOT the flex that people think it is. Let's consider how these things intersect, Black disabled women experience higher rates of houselessness and incarceration. There hasn't been a federal minimum wage increase since 2009, and raising the federal minimum wage would have a positive impact on Women's lives. We live in a country with no real social safety net, where people that work full time in minimum wage jobs cannot afford a two bedroom apartment in any state in the country. An honest accounting of the houseless problem in this country has to include policies that criminalize houselessness. For example, we know that Black people are disproportionately impacted by homelessness and incarceration. A 2021 study by the Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness found that “Most people with a history of incarceration and homelessness were homeless before going to prison. Suggesting that the criminalization of homelessness is a driver of incarceration.” (Prison Policy.Org) But the problem doesn't end there, we also know that domestic violence is the leading cause of houselessness for women. We also know that trans people and gender non-conforming people experience houselessness at higher rates than their cis gender peers, and seventy percent of trans people using shelters report discrimination or violence by shelter staff. Prison abolition isn't just about working on prison issues. We need to consider what other institutions and systems are implicated. The many tentacles of the PIC means that our daily lives are lived being aware of its looming presence and power to destroy us. The PIC derives its power in part, from being simultaneously hyper-visible AND obscure because it is embedded into so many things. Many of us recognize the hyper-visible expressions of the carceral state in their physical form such as prison buildings, police, etc., and in their more abstracted forms such as policies and practices. But there's a cognitive dissonance that makes it difficult for some people to see that transphobia, ableism, sexism, toxic masculinity, and patriarchy are part and parcel of the same dehumanizing structure that includes prisons and policing. All of these things are rooted in white supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy, which is the logic that underpins the carceral state. To get rid of prisons, to get rid of ALL systems of oppression, the liberatory project has to address these problems. That is our work. But the work is NOT evenly distributed. The more women, femmes, trans, and other people that I talk with the more I hear that many of us are tired of doing this work. We do this work because if we don't we suffer. There are so many ways that we suffer that I won't even try to list them. Suffice it to say that we suffer when we take on too much, when we do or are expected to do more than any one person reasonably can or should. We suffer and shorten our lives because we're unable to rest without repercussions. Prentis Hemphill wrote, “Boundaries are the distance at which I can love you and me simultaneously.” “Boundaries give us the space to do the work of loving ourselves. They might be, actually, the first and fundamental expression of self-love.” I interviewed a handful of women organizers from around the country and here's what they said in response to being asked to reflect on setting boundaries as women in movement spaces. JULIE Boundaries are really important especially in organizing-and especially in a kind of organizing that problematically glorifies when women ‘give their all' to the movement, despite how they are affected or how it affects their relationships with their loved ones. We have a tendency in social justice movements to romanticize the ‘woman' organizer. This mythic creature is fearless, boundless in energy, absolute in her devotion to the movement. She educates, she nurtures, she resources, she leads from the shadows. She never suffers, not from indecision or fatigue or loneliness or oppression. Rosa Parks, Ella Baker, Safiya Bukhari, Kathy Boudin. Women we asked everything of, took all we could from, and what did we leave them with? What if instead of glorifying their sacrifices we shared the work? And not just the sexy parts of organizing, but the monotony too. MICHELLE I would just say two things: One is that I often find that women in organizing spaces are just quicker / more likely to take on the labor of figuring out logistics, even when doing so is burdensome or requires navigating complex systems, whereas men will give up or just not even try to figure something out if it isn't immediately clear. Often, I find that men need to be explicitly asked to do smaller logistical tasks, and are sometimes resistant to doing them, whereas women take on that work automatically. Often, when there are unsexy tasks like phone banking, it is women who show up much more so than men. ANGIE While men in the movement are often quick to make big statements and big decisions about how things SHOULD be done, it's women and trans people and nonbinary folks who are OVERWHELMINGLY doing the actual work of keeping people alive. And that's what the most fundamental work is in this movement: keeping people alive. It's the mutual aid work, the financial support (including commissary, phones, housing support for people getting out), the emotional support, the caregiving for kids who've been left behind... It's the person bringing over groceries when someone's confined to their home on electronic monitoring. It's the person coming to visit week after week so someone inside doesn't lose hope, doesn't lose their will to live. On a personal level — when my niece was incarcerated, I was so frustrated by the fact that her boyfriends, even her fiancé, would not do ANY of this work/support. Instead they complained that she wasn't out here to be there for THEM. What does this mean for boundary-setting? For me, it has often meant that setting boundaries is way harder than it should be because some people (i.e. most men) are not pulling any weight, when it comes to this low-profile, behind-the-scenes, hard every day work of supporting our loved ones' survival. So as we try (sometimes in vain) to help keep people alive, we end up letting our boundaries slip again and again... JOYA In every movement formation that I've been in, especially the abolitionist ones that have a spectrum of gender represented, it's 99 percent the femmes that start the google.doc, even that kind of infrastructural work is relegated to invisible care work. I don't want to call it soft violence, because I don't think it's soft. It's part of the quiet, but violent extraction that happens when people don't recognize people's labor and people's gendered labor. Regardless of what their gender is. In terms of boundaries, we tend to think about boundaries as I'm not going to work on a Saturday or I'm not going to meet after ten o'clock at night, but people don't think of a boundary as demanding that we all take turns doing the same amount of work. But I also feel like we are living in a time where there aren't a lot of other ways that people are allowed to take up space in movement work without violating those boundaries or without being affirmed for doing that work. By affirmed I don't mean respected–it's like thank you sis for doing this or like the snacks were provided by these people, how nice. That's not respected as much as the people who are chaining themselves to the prison. It's not lost on me either that the venn diagram of movement space is often run by a certain masculanized organizer model, and for as much as people pretend they're not for the Alinsky Model, they sure are. The venn diagram between certain organizing styles and the way that they devalue the google doc making, snacks bringing and setting up chairs work, and the type of abuser that emerges in movement spaces, and the kind of permission that's given to a lot of –especially masculine rock star organizers who are also systematically abusive. The venn diagram shows no respect for labor and boundaries and no respect for sharing work. Why is it that we think that so many of the letter writing spaces and the letter writing organizations and the relationship building organizations are run by femmes. Even when we're doing coalitional relational work in abolition, relationship building, the nurturing, the crisis intervention work, the people who are fielding calls from jail, the people who are making sure that the commissary goes through are often feminized people. And the people who get to hold the megaphone are not often those people. And the people who are there to be on the front line of receiving the frustration of incarcerated people are the same people who are there to write the letters, to receive the phone calls, and who are there to make sure the commissary goes through on time are often the same people who bear the brunt of somebody's frustration, who are there to pick up the pieces of the trauma that prison causes other people, the people who have to organize and mobilize and like themselves get traumatized by traumatized people because that emotional lash out is often reserved for the people on the front lines which are femmes and women, and those are the same people who show up with the snacks. ANNE Ok. So. Boundary setting. I think one of my biggest struggles in organizing spaces is the difference between people's expressed values of self-determination, consent, muddling through, and care for one another, ON THE ONE HAND, and the way that people's struggle practices do not align with these values, ON THE OTHER. The work of having to point this out and make space for the inevitable conflicts it brings is exhausting. And it is not seen as work—it is seen as complaining, being trouble, or not getting it. There is no boundary that can be set ahead of time that will prevent the need for people to work through conflict together. So we need many of us to skill up and grow our capacities for conflict. But the work is often put on those seen as the ones who are supposed to nurture and take care of the feelings. I'll leave you with a few suggestions for how to proceed. This is NOT an exhaustive list, but a place to start. AND please note that there is no one size fits all for how to address these problems, but we need to address them. One of the people that I interviewed suggested that, Men need to talk to their friends. That is, men have to get better at checking other men on their problematic behavior. Second, Political Education: engage in a political education process where you study and discuss materials that address these issues. Read the work of women, femmes, trans, disabled people, etc. Third, Do the work: actually begin doing the work. Abolition work is not constrained as a future project. It's how we move today. It's how we care for each other TODAY. It's how we act in the world, and the communities and power we build TODAY!!! It's a blueprint for today as much as it is a future society. Finally, focus on relationship building beyond performative and surface level solidarity. Ruth Wilson Gilmore said that abolition is presence. I agree!!! Engage in letter writing with incarcerated people. Visit people if you are able to gain access to prisons, go see folks inside on a regular basis. I'm in prison visiting rooms all the time and women are the majority of visitors. I don't have a pithy closing to offer you because I was too exhausted to write one. I'll just say this, We are all working with limited capacity and resources, and those of us that are showing up in all the ways and doing all the things even when our bodies are signaling that they need a break are giving more than there fair share. We don't want to be mythologized for our sacrifices; instead we not only want, but need change. How we work together matters just as much as the work itself. Thank you!

This is the first episode of our Creative Interventions series.  In this series, we will explore the Creative Interventions Toolkit, which provides tools, resources, and a model for community interventions in interpersonal violence. We'll go section-by-section and talk to some of the folks whose work served as the source material for this project. You can find digital versions of the Creative Interventions Toolkit or purchase a physical copy by visiting www.creative-interventions.org. According to their website, “Creative Interventions provides vision, tools and resources to help anyone and everyone create community-based, collective responses to domestic, family, and sexual violence. The community-based approach centers those closest to and most impacted by harm, honors their expertise, and builds collective knowledge and power as the solution to violence.” The CI Toolkit has been around for a while now but AK Press released it in print for the first time last December. So, while we've talked about it in previous episodes, we wanted to use this occasion to spend more time with it in the hopes of spreading some of the tools, frameworks, skills, strategies, and roles in ending interpersonal violence that come out of this movement.  We're starting this series off with a conversation with Mimi Kim and Rachel Herzing, setting the stage by talking about where the CI Toolkit came from, how it's structured, and how it proposes intervening in violence and, importantly, how its community-centered approach differs from others. Mimi Kim is the founder of Creative Interventions and a co-founder of INCITE! She has been a long-time activist, advocate and researcher challenging gender-based violence at its intersection with state violence and creating community accountability, transformative justice and other community-based alternatives to criminalization. As a second generation Korean American, she locates her political work in global solidarity with feminist anti-imperialist struggles, seeking not only the end of oppression but of the creation of liberation here and now. Mimi is also an Associate Professor of social work at California State University, Long Beach and Co-Editor-in Chief of Affilia. Her recent publications include “The Carceral Creep: Gender-Based Violence, Race, and the Expansion of the Punitive State, 1973-1983” (2020) and “From Carceral Feminism to Transformative Justice: Women of Color Feminism and Alternatives to Incarceration” (2018). She is currently working on a restorative justice pilot project addressing domestic and sexual violence in Contra Costa County, California. Rachel Herzing has been an organizer, activist, and advocate fighting the violence of surveillance, policing and imprisonment since the 1990s. Rachel was the director of research and training at Creative Interventions.  Rachel was also the executive director of Center for Political Education, a resource for political organizations on the left, progressive social movements, the working class and people of color, and a co-director of Critical Resistance, a national organization dedicated to abolishing the prison industrial complex. Episode Resources & Notes Creative Interventions Website Creative Interventions Toolkit (Free PDF) Creative Interventions Toolkit in Spanish (Free PDF) Creative Interventions Workbook (Google Doc) Follow CI on Facebook Follow CI on IG Follow CI on Twitter Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Edited by Ellis Maxwell Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam Theme music by Jared Ware Support Beyond Prisons Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook:@beyondprisonspodcast Instagram:@beyondprisons

This is the audio version of a panel discussion hosted on March 24 that explores the importance of physical mail in prison and how the prison industrial complex works to undermine imprisoned people's ability to meaningfully communicate with their loved ones. You can watch video of the panel here: https://www.beyond-prisons.com/home/video-why-physical-mail-matters Physical mail is a layered issue, and policies that eliminate physical mail are violent and cruel. They seek to destroy the loving and caring connections that people have. They “pile on” more separation than that which already exists and makes it even harder for people to remain in relationship and community with their support systems. They disproportionately affect poor people. They add another cost onto the already long list of things that prisoners and their loved ones pay for. They expand the surveillance mechanisms of the carceral state in ways that I'm not sure we have begun to grapple with. Letter writing has always been an important form of communication between prisoners and their loved ones. Eliminating physical mail reveals the inhumanity of this system and illustrates that incarceration has NOTHING to do with rehabilitation or preparing people to return to their communities, and EVERYTHING to do with using incarcerated people and their loved ones as revenue streams.   Letters exchanged between prisoners and loved ones offer a counter to the dehumanization that we experience. Letters, cards, drawings, and ephemera serve as proof of life in a system that seeks our erasure and death. These documents are how we build or rebuild relationships, how we share news (good, bad, and mundane), how we learn about the conditions inside, how prisoners are able to stay connected to the children and families that are outside, and how we prevent more harm.  Hosted by the Beyond Prisons Podcast, NYU Prison Education Program and Study and Struggle.  Introduction by Kim Wilson. Kim Wilson is an educator, self-taught artist, and cohost and producer of the Beyond Prisons podcast. Moderated by Charlotte Rosen. Charlotte Rosen is a PhD Candidate in History at Northwestern University and a member of Study and Struggle, which organizes against criminalization and incarceration in Mississippi through mutual aid, political education, and community building. Panelists: Monica Cosby. Monica describes herself as a “gramma trying to do liberatory stuff,” subscribing to an abolition feminist mode of thinking, being and moving in the world. Her life and work have been shaped and informed by  the communities to which she belongs, including the community of artists, scholars, moms with whom she was incarcerated, and whose survival was/is an act of resistance against a system that would dispose of them. As an advocate and activist, she has collaborated, organized, and worked with Westside Justice Center, Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration, Chicago Metropolitan Battered Women's Network, Unitarian Universalist Prison Ministry of Illinois, Women's Justice Institute, Uptown People's Law Center, and others. Monica is a scholar, thinker, and writer, having essays published or reprinted in TruthOut and In the Long Term (published by Haymarket Books). She also wrote Solitary Confinement is Used to Break People; On Leaving Prison: A Reflection on Entering and Exiting Communities; And, Restorative Revelations by Monica Cosby and Analise Buth–published in the St. Thomas Law Journal.   Lawrence Posey (He/Him). Lawrence is 44 years old and originally from Camden, New Jersey. He currently lives in the Bronx. He is a father of two children who are 18 and 15. He was previously incarcerated. Since his  release, he works as a manager at a company called Reserve Inc which is a covid-19 coalition. He is also a student at New York University studying at The Gallatin School of Individualized Study, majoring in Film and Business. He recently started his own publishing and production company called Legacy Works Enterprises. In addition to publishing, Legacy Works Enterprises focuses on youth educational programs and social justice. Lawrence is part of a social justice cohort At the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO Works) where he organizes with the Participant Advocacy Council (PAC for short). The PAC cohort has lobbied with Communities Not Cages (CCA) which has fought to eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing,  and advocated for Second Look Act, the Earn Good Time Act, and the Clean Slate Act. Finally, PAC also is in association with Treatment Not Jail (TNJ), lobbying for mental health programs instead of prison.  Mychal Pagan. Mychal Pagan (BA '24) is a student at NYU, and  is curious about the relationships between perception, memory, and narration. He is fascinated by the process of merging poetry with filmmaking, and the art of social photography with data-driven storytelling. His writing and photography have been featured in NYU publications including The Gallatin Review, Confluence, Fire in the Lake, and Missives. And his short documentary series Afternotes can be viewed at the NYU's Prison Education Program website. Sergio Hyland (He/Him). Sergio recently returned to society after serving nearly 21 years straight. He is an abolitionist, and Editor-in-Chief of THE MOVEMENT Magazine, the official magazine of the Human Rights Coalition in Pennsylvania. He also works for the Abolitionist Law Center. Andre Pierce. Andre is a Black man that spent the last 25 years caged in Connecticut State prisons. He earned a Bachelor's Degree with a concentration in Philosophy. He writes,  “my strenuous efforts took place alongside my fight to maintain my sanity in a soul-crushing carceral institution.” He asserts that his extraordinary growth and development cannot be understood as rehabilitation but instead as Black Liberation. Dre, uses his intimate experience of suffering in prison to fuel his passion for prison abolition. Ellis Maxwell. Ellis Maxwell is an educator and community member in Fort Worth, Texas. They believe in making organic political education available to people of all ages, and seek to work with anyone willing to look at their conditioning and try to move differently. Ellis is the editor of the Beyond Prisons podcast. Maya Schenwar (She/Her). Maya is the editor-in-chief of Truthout. She is the co-author (with Victoria Law) of Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms and author of Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn't Work and How We Can Do Better. She is also the co-editor (with Joe Macaré and Alana Yu-Lan Price) of Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States. Maya is a co-founder of the Chicago Community Bond Fund, and she organizes with the abolitionist collective Love & Protect.  Episode Resources & Notes Watch video of the panel: https://www.beyond-prisons.com/home/video-why-physical-mail-matters Learn more about this issue and campaign: https://www.beyond-prisons.com/home/say-no-to-eliminating-physical-mail-in-delaware-prisons Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Edited by Ellis Maxwell Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam Theme music by Jared Ware Support Beyond Prisons Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook:@beyondprisonspodcast Instagram:@beyondprisons

In this episode, Kim sits down with Monica Cosby to talk about the draconian policy in the Delaware Department of Corrections to end all physical mail sent to prisoners.  Join us to take action on Friday, March 18, 2022, and on Monday through Wednesday, March 21-23, 2022. Details at: https://www.beyond-prisons.com/home/say-no-to-eliminating-physical-mail-in-delaware-prisons Kim and Monica discuss the cruelty of this policy, which would prevent prisoners from receiving sympathy cards, birthday cards, and even hand-drawn items sent by their children or other loved ones. They also get into the painful isolation that this policy will lead to for many prisoners, whose main way of connecting with loved ones on the outside is through the mail, because of the cost of phone calls and the hassle of traveling long distances for in-person visits. Finally, they touch on the Delaware DOC's flimsy claim that this policy is designed to reduce contraband--and the much clearer profit motive behind digital mail.  Monica Cosby is a mother, grandmother, activist, organizer, restorative justice and peace circle keeper, poet, person of the theater, and a lover of books, music, cats, dogs, and the earth. Her life and work have been shaped and informed by the communities she has belonged to, including the community of artists, scholars and mothers with whom she was incarcerated for twenty years and whose survival was and is an act of resistance against a system that would dispose of them. She is the lead organizer of Moms United Against Violence and Incarceration and is a wonderful and valuable spirit in the Chicago movement community. Episode Resources & Notes Say NO To Eliminating Physical Mail In Delaware Prisons Coverage of DEDOC mail policy Petition in opposition to the mail policy Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Edited by Ellis Maxwell Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam Theme music by Jared Ware Support Beyond Prisons Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook:@beyondprisonspodcast Instagram:@beyondprisons

Christopher R. Rogers and YahNé Ndgo join us for a wide ranging conversation grounded in the book “How We Stay Free: Notes On A Black Uprising.” This anthology, which was published by Common Notions and edited by our guest Christopher as well as Fajr Muhammad, and the Paul Robeson House & Museum, brings together essays, timelines, poetry, photography, illustration, and other artwork to reflect on the George Floyd Uprisings of 2020 in Philadelphia.  Kim and Brian ask Chris and YahNé about the Paul Robeson House and the place of art and localized knowledge in Black liberation movements. We discuss how some of the testimonies featured in How We Stay Free explore the shifting terrain of “what's possible,” the complexity of formulating, aligning on, and ultimately making demands, and a whole lot more.  Christopher R. Rogers is an educator and cultural worker from Chester, PA. He serves as Public Programs Director for the Paul Robeson House & Museum, where he has volunteered since 2015. Additionally, he is currently a doctoral student within the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education where he studies neighborhood storytelling practices in West Philadelphia. He serves on the National Steering Committee for Black Lives Matter at School, supporting movements for racial justice in K-16 education. YahNé Ndgo is a member of Ubuntu⇔Freedom, which publicly launched on April 24, 2021 with the development and sharing of the Principles of Freedom. She is also a strategist with the #LoveNotPhear Campaign to bring Mumia home, a Steering Committee member of the Free Kamau Sadiki Now Campaign, and a member of the Black Alliance for Peace. A mother, singer and writer, she received her MFA in Writing and Literature from Bennington College in Vermont. She is the lead caretaker of the Revolutionary Care Space. Episode Resources & Notes Chris Rogers on Twitter: @justmaybechris  Paul Robeson House and Museum YahNé Ndgo's website How We Stay Free Project The Black Philadelphia Radical Collective/ Our 13 Demands The Philly Black Student Alliance 215 People's Alliance Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Edited by Ellis Maxwell Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam Theme music by Jared Ware Support Beyond Prisons Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook:@beyondprisonspodcast Instagram:@beyondprisons

This is a companion episode to our interview with Geo Maher. If you haven't listened to that yet, you may want to put this on hold and check that conversation out first. Kim Wilson and Geo Maher dive deep into Chapter 5 of his book, A World Without Police: How Strong Communities Make Cops Obsolete. The chapter is entitled, “Building Communities Without Police,” and this discussion was originally prepared for one of Kim's courses. Geo Maher is a Philadelphia-based writer and organizer, and currently Visiting Associate Professor of Global Political Thought at Vassar College. He is author of four books, including A World Without Police, and his next book Anticolonial Eruptions appears in March.  Episode Resources & Notes A World Without Police Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Edited by Ellis Maxwell Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam Theme music by Jared Ware Support Beyond Prisons Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook:@beyondprisonspodcast Instagram:@beyondprisons

Geo Maher joins us to discuss his new book, "A World Without Police: How Strong Communities Make Cops Obsolete."  We touch on a number of subjects, including the context in which the book was written, cops and labor unions, and how Geo's experiences in Venezuela influenced his work. We also touch on Alexandria Ocasio Cortez's comment likening abolition to a suburb and rhetorical strategies with the mainstream, as well as examples of bottom-up abolitionist organizing around the world. Geo explains what he means by “strong community," the project of abolishing police and the border as being one in the same, and a whole lot more. Geo Maher is a Philadelphia-based writer and organizer, and currently Visiting Associate Professor of Global Political Thought at Vassar College. He is author of four books, including A World Without Police, and his next book Anticolonial Eruptions appears in March.  Episode Resources & Notes A World Without Police Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Edited by Ellis Maxwell Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam Theme music by Jared Ware Support Beyond Prisons Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook:@beyondprisonspodcast Instagram:@beyondprisons

In this episode, adrienne maree brown discusses her recent book: Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation. We talk about the structure of the book, Black feminist wisdom, breathwork as a facilitation practice, the importance of setting boundaries, the need to remain open to new ideas, and moving with grief. adrienne maree brown is the author of Grievers (the first in her novella series with the Black Dawn imprint), Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Meditation, We Will Not Cancel Us and Other Dreams of Transformative Justice, Pleasure Activism: The Politics of Feeling Good, Emergent Strategy: Shaping Change, Changing Worlds and the co-editor of Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction from Social Justice Movements. She is the co-host of the How to Survive the End of the World and Octavia's Parables podcasts. adrienne is rooted in Durham. Episode Resources & Notes Holding Change: The Way of Emergent Strategy Facilitation and Mediation Grievers Adrienne maree brown on IG Credits adrienne maree brown photo by anjali pinto Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Edited by Ellis Maxwell Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam Theme music by Jared Ware Support Beyond Prisons Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook:@beyondprisonspodcast Instagram:@beyondprisons

Rory Elliott and Woods Ervin from Critical Resistance's newspaper, The Abolitionist, join the show for a wide-ranging conversation on abolitionist media. According to their website, The Abolitionist, sometimes lovingly referred to as The Abbey, “launched in the spring of 2005 as a bilingual publication dedicated to the strategy and practice of prison industrial complex (PIC) abolition. It is distributed absolutely free of charge to thousands of people in prisons, jails, and detention centers throughout the US, who in turn share the paper with many more of their fellow prisoners.“ “From analyses of racial capitalism and imperialism, to housing, education, land struggles, mental health, confronting gender violence, fights to build life-affirming infrastructure for community self-determination and more, each issue is packed with fresh analytical articles, reflections, poetry, visual art, and organizing resources and tools for resistance inside and outside of prisons.”   This wide ranging conversation touches not just on the history of this publication, but the role of history and historicizing in the journalism they produce. We talk about how the ethics of abolitionist journalism differ from that of traditional US journalistic norms. We also discuss some of the pieces that have been published in the Abbey recently and the intentions behind their editorial decisions.  Rory Elliott (she/her) has been a chapter member with Critical Resistance Portland since 2019. She is a core member of the mutual aid project The Imprisoned Firefighter Fundraiser that raised $61,000 for prisoners fighting wildfires across the state of Oregon, and worked closely with other organizers to get stimulus check information to everyone locked in the Oregon prison system. She is the Distribution Coordinator & an Editorial Collective member with The Abolitionist Newspaper. She's a t-girl against assimilation, for queer liberation and prison industrial complex abolition.   Woods Ervin (they/them) is a Black nonbinary trans person from the South who has been deeply immersed in movements for racial and gender justice for over a decade. Woods has been a member of Critical Resistance since 2010, and from 2014 to 2018 was part of rebuilding Transgender, Gender-variant, Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP). Through both organizations, Woods organized as part of multiple campaigns to halt jail construction and policing. Woods is the current Communications Director at Critical Resistance.  Episode Resources & Notes Subscribe to The Abolitionist Newspaper: https://donatenow.networkforgood.org/abolitionistnewspaper Subscribe a loved one inside to The Abolitionist Newspaper: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfmTjPTWrqBphW2FKOupc2w5ycr0AlvRi_rmn3_K9frV0fK7w/viewform Issue 34 Sneak Peek: Finding Our Way Forward – Past Neoliberalism, Austerity, Fascism, and the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) - by Woods Ervin https://abolitionistpaper.wordpress.com/2021/04/01/issue-34-sneak-peek-finding-our-way-forward/ Read past issues here: https://abolitionistpaper.wordpress.com/category/abolitionist/ Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Nam-Sonenstein Edited by Ellis Maxwell Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam Theme music by Jared Ware Support Beyond Prisons Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook:@beyondprisonspodcast Instagram:@beyondprisons

In the second episode of our series, Beyond Solitary, Kwame Shakur joins the show to talk about the need to develop inside-out revolutionary strategy, and the work already being done with that goal in mind by organizations like I.D.O.C. Watch, Prison Lives Matter, and the New Afrikan Liberation Collective. This is the second of two episodes with members of I.D.O.C. Watch, an organization of prisoners in Indiana and outside supporters dedicated to exposing abuses by authorities in the Department of Corrections. In our first episode, we spoke with longtime political prison Shaka Shakur about the history of the prison movement in Indiana. In this episode, Kwame shares his assessment of current struggles against police brutality, and the disconnect between the prison movement and the larger movement on the streets. Kwame also touches on the effects solitary has on prisoners' mental health, and how restrictions implemented in the time of COVID have only exacerbated these harms.  Kwame Shakur is a New Afrikan political prisoner, currently held captive in solitary confinement, in the SHU, at Wabash Valley Correctional Facility. He is the co-founder and chairman of the New Afrikan Liberation Collective, as well as the national director for the Prison Lives Matter movement. Kwame's essays have appeared in numerous publications, including San Francisco Bay View.  Episode Resources & Notes Prison Legal Support Network IDOC Watch Patreon New Afrikan Liberation Collective  Prison Lives Matter Revolution vs. Reactionary Reformism Kwame Shakur on COVID-19, Conditions & Repression in the SHU Lawsuit Won by Aaron Isby-Israel against Indiana D.O.C. Write to Shaka Shakur or Kwame Shakur:  Shaka Shakur:  Shaka Shakur #1996207Buckingham Correctional CenterP.O. Box 430Dillwyn, VA 23936 Kwame Shakur:  Michael Joyner (Kwame) #149677Wabash Valley Correctional FacilityP.O. Box 1111Carlisle, IN, 47838 Credits Created by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Hosted by anonymous, and edited by Ellis Maxwell Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam Theme music by Jared Ware Additional music by Alicia Lopez-Torres, Remy Erkel, and Ellis Maxwell Support Beyond Prisons Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook:@beyondprisonspodcast Instagram:@beyondprisons

Beyond Solitary series | Episode 1 In the first episode of our new series, "Beyond Solitary," Shaka Shakur talks about the history of the prison movement in Indiana, and how the movement has evolved and responded to consistent repression from the carceral state. This is the first of two episodes featuring members of I.D.O.C. Watch, an organization of prisoners in Indiana and outside supporters, dedicated to exposing abuses by authorities in the Department of Corrections. Shaka begins with a comprehensive account of the prison movement in Indiana in the 1980s and 1990s, including the organizing of a lengthy hunger strike in 1991. Shaka then details the ways the prison system seeks to undermine revolutionary organizing, using tactics such as long-term solitary confinement, “diesel therapy,” and domestic exile. We talk about the importance of political education and coordination inside and outside of prisons. And finally, Shaka describes I.D.O.C. Watch’s vision of and commitment to build dual power.  Shaka Shakur is a New Afrikan political prisoner, and longtime revolutionary organizer within the Indiana and Virginia prison systems. Shaka was first imprisoned in Indiana, but was transferred to Virginia in 2019, via the Interstate Corrections Compact, a tool often used by the state to attempt to weaken the support networks and movement building surrounding political and politicized prisoners. Shaka is a member of numerous political organizations, including I.D.O.C. Watch, the New Afrikan Liberation Collective, and Prison Lives Matter. Shaka has written numerous essays and reports on prison conditions, including an article published in February of 2020 on the struggle against organized white supremacists in the Indiana Department of Corrections.  Episode Resources & Notes Prison Legal Support Network IDOC Watch Patreon New Afrikan Liberation Collective  Prison Lives Matter Shaka Shakur on the Struggle Against Organized White Supremacists in the IDOC Down: Reflections on Prison Resistance in Indiana Credits "Beyond Solitary" series theme music by Alicia Lopez-Torres, Remy Erkel, and Ellis Maxwell Hosted and edited by Ellis Maxwell Beyond Prisons Podcast is created by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam Theme music by Jared Ware Support Beyond Prisons Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook:@beyondprisonspodcast Instagram:@beyondprisons

Beyond Prisons Editor Ellis Maxwells introduces a new series called "Beyond Solitary," exploring solitary confinement as a site of struggle and featuring interviews with currently and formerly incarcerated people and their loved ones. In recent years, due to tireless work from individuals and organizations around the world, we’ve seen a growing understanding of the horrors of isolation. Long-term solitary confinement—a practice widely used in U.S. prisons and hardly anywhere else in the world—is torturous, causing major physical and psychological harm to prisoners. In this series we dive deep into the importance of solitary as a site of struggle. Prison officials force people into solitary—which is often called “the prison within the prison,” or simply, “the box”—for many reasons: to silence influential voices, to deter movements towards consciousness and an abolitionist critique of the carceral state, to re-inscribe the rule of patriarchy and white supremacy, to suppress inside organizing, and to prevent uprisings. But the repressive elements of solitary breed resistance, from political education, inside prisons and in coordination with outside movements; to sustained collective legal battles; to strategic physical self-defense. This series includes conversations with currently and formerly incarcerated people, many of whom identify themselves as political or politicized prisoners, from across the country, with a rotating cast of hosts. The show notes for each episode will include information on how to learn more and get involved with campaigns led by organizations that our guests are affiliated with. Please bear with us as we navigate audio quality issues, and other challenges of recording through prison walls. We hope this series can be a fissure in the walls silencing the millions of incarcerated people in the United States. Credits Hosted and edited by Ellis Maxwell "Beyond Solitary" series music by Alicia Lopez-Torres, Remy Erkel, and Ellis Maxwell Beyond Prisons is a podcast created by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam Theme music by Jared Ware Support our work at patreon.com/beyondprisons Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com  

Andrea Ritchie joins the show to talk about her research with the group Interrupting Criminalization, specifically their new report looking back on the “Defund the Police” demand in 2020. Interrupting Criminalization describes itself as an initiative that aims to interrupt and end the growing criminalization and incarceration of women and LGBTQ people of color for criminalized acts related to public order, poverty, child welfare, drug use, survival, and self-defense, including criminalization and incarceration of survivors of violence. The discussion begins with a look at the work that Interrupting Criminalization does, and their findings on the various successes and failures activists have had with the “Defund” demand over the last year. Perhaps most importantly, we talk about how the state has tried to undermine abolitionist efforts. Toward the end, we speak about the need to fund experimental approaches to harm, including those that might fail. Andrea Ritchie is a Black lesbian immigrant whose research, litigation, organizing, and policy advocacy has focused on policing and criminalization of women and LGBT people of color. She is the author of “Invisible No More: Police Violence Against Black Women and Women of Color,” and co-author of “Challenging Criminalization: A Call for A Comprehensive Philanthropic Response; Centering Black Women, Girls, and Fem(me)s in Campaigns for Expanded Sanctuary”; “Say Her Name: Resisting Police Brutality Against Black Women”; “A Roadmap for Change: Federal Policy Recommendations for Addressing the Criminalization of LGBT People and People Living with HIV”; and “Queer (In)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States.” A nationally recognized expert on policing issues, Andrea supports and advises numerous groups across the country. She is also a frequent author of opinion pieces making critical interventions in current debates around police sexual violence, policing of young women, responses to mental health crises, and more. Andrea is a current Researcher-in-Residence at Barnard’s Center for Research on Women.  Visit our website beyond-prisons.com to find episode notes, resources, transcripts, and more. 

Four women with loved ones incarcerated at the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad, CA join the Beyond Prisons podcast to talk about how prison officials are failing to respond to the pandemic.  Their names are Mary, Dawn, Crystal, and Alice. Nearly a year into this crisis, these women described conditions at CTF that expose a yawning gap between the picture painted in CDCR press releases and the experiences of incarcerated families.  They explain how cold and unaccountable prison officials and politicians have been in response to basic demands for PPE, testing, and quarantining. They underscore how the suffering at CTF reaches far outside the walls and into their homes as they struggle to defend their loved ones while holding down jobs, raising children, showing up for others, and more. They also talk about the power and support they draw from one another as a group, and the importance of building this community during this crisis.  If you haven’t heard our previous episodes on Soledad, it might help for you to go back and listen to those first. We’ve linked to them below. Families are planning a protest for January 16 at 10 AM in Sacramento. For more information, contact Alice at Strongertogether1229@gmail.com. Episode Notes & Resources COVID-19 Dispatch: The Crisis At Soledad (January 2021) https://www.beyond-prisons.com/home/covid-19-dispatch-the-crisis-at-soledad COVID-19 Dispatch From California Prison (April 2020) https://www.beyond-prisons.com/home/covid-19-dispatch-from-california-prison Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Edited by Ellis Maxwell Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam Theme music by Jared Ware Support Beyond Prisons Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: @beyondprisonspodcast Instagram: @beyondprisons

Brian Sonenstein interviews a woman we’re calling “Alice” to protect her and her family from retaliation from California prison officials.  Alice was on Beyond Prisons in April 2020 to discuss the situation facing people enduring the pandemic while incarcerated at the Correctional Training Facility in Soledad, California. If you haven’t heard that episode yet, you may want to listen to it first for added context: https://www.beyond-prisons.com/home/covid-19-dispatch-from-california-prison In this conversation, Alice tells us about a recent protest held at Soledad and how women have been fighting for months for prison officials to improve health care measures inside the facility, which has one of the highest rates of COVID-19 infection in not just the state prison system, but in California.  She describes how corrections officers have refused to wear masks and retaliated against incarcerated people for getting CDCR to mandate them. She talks about how people are struggling to eat without access to the commissary and how unresponsive CDCR has been to family members throughout the pandemic. We also discuss how the public’s attention to COVID-19 in jails and prisons seems to be waning at a time when we’re seeing the highest case counts yet. Families are planning a protest for January 16 at 10 AM in Sacramento. For more information, contact Alice at Strongertogether1229@gmail.com. Episode Notes & Resources COVID-19 Dispatch From California Prison (April 2020) https://www.beyond-prisons.com/home/covid-19-dispatch-from-california-prison Shadowproof’s Marvel Cooke Journalism Fellowship https://shadowproof.com/2020/11/17/shadowproof-launches-marvel-cooke-journalism-fellowship/ Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Edited by Ellis Maxwell Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam Theme music by Jared Ware Support Beyond Prisons Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: @beyondprisonspodcast Instagram: @beyondprisons

Garrett Felber joins the Beyond Prisons podcast to discuss Study and Struggle, which he helped launch in 2020 as “a bilingual political education program on abolition and immigrant justice which supports and collaborates with grassroots organizations in Mississippi.” (NOTE: This episode was recorded a few weeks before Felber was wrongfully fired by the University of Mississippi for speaking out against its racist donors and role in perpetuating the carceral state; you can find out more about what happened here.) Felber is a former assistant professor of history at the University of Mississippi and the author of Those Who Know Don’t Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement and the Carceral State and co-author of The Portable Malcolm X Reader with the late Manning Marable.   He was the lead organizer of the Making and Unmaking Mass Incarceration conference and Project Director of the Parchman Oral History Project, a collaborative oral history, archival, and documentary storytelling project on incarceration in Mississippi. In 2016, Felber co-founded Liberation Literacy, an abolitionist collective inside and outside Oregon prisons.   Felber is currently a fellow at the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, where he will be working on his next book project: We Are All Political Prisoners: The Revolutionary Life of Martin Sostre.  Episode Notes & Resources Study And Struggle: https://www.studyandstruggle.com/ Those Who Know Don’t Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State: https://uncpress.org/book/9781469653822/those-who-know-dont-say/ Follow Garrett on Twitter: https://twitter.com/garrett_felber Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Edited by Ellis Maxwell Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam Theme music by Jared Ware Support Beyond Prisons Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: @beyondprisonspodcast Instagram: @beyondprisons

Vicky Osterweil joins the Beyond Prisons podcast to discuss her new book, “In Defense Of Looting: A Riotous History Of Uncivil Action.” Our wide-ranging conversation includes Vicky’s analysis of the claim that “real” and legitimate protests are nonviolent by nature, while rioting and looting constitute an act of hijacking by malevolent outside forces.  We talk about Black women and armed resistance, and their places within the historical legacy of these tactics, as well as the differences in how these tactics are used by groups that have different relations to power.  The conversation explores how these tactics threaten the perceived invincibility of property relations, we think about how prison riots fit within this framework, and a lot more. Vicky Osterweil is a writer, editor, and agitator based in Philadelphia. Her book, “In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Action”, was released in August by Bold Type Books. Follow her on Twitter @Vicky_ACAB Episode Notes & Resources Buy “In Defense Of Looting” from Bold Type Books “I wonder if you fully understand why they’ve kept you so well hidden [...] It’s not just because they want this idea of yours. But because you are an idea. A dangerous one. The idea of anarchism, made flesh. Walking amongst us.” — Ursula K Le Guin, The Dispossessed Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Edited by Ellis Maxwell Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam Theme music by Jared Ware Support Beyond Prisons Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: @beyondprisonspodcast Instagram: @beyondprisons

In this episode, Kim and Brian sit down with James Kilgore, a formerly incarcerated activist, researcher, and author based in Urbana, Illinois. Our conversation addressed a number of issues relating to e-carceration. We pushed back against the idea that electronic monitoring is better than prison and discussed the ways that e-carceration deprives people of liberty. We also talk about e-carceration and COVID-19, the ways that technology is being used by ICE and in pre-trial and post prison, and the ways that geofencing impacts communities.  James Kilgore is the director of the Challenging E-Carceration project of Media Justice’s #NoDigitalPrisons campaign. He is also the co-director of the First Followers Reentry Program and the author of five books, including Understanding Mass Incarceration: A People’s Guide to the Key Civil Rights Struggle of Our Time (The New Press, 2015). Find more of James’ work on his website ChallengingECarceration.org Follow him on Twitter @waazn1 Episode Resources & Notes “Electronic Monitoring Is Not The Answer: Critical Reflections on False Solutions” by James Kilgore “The End of the Ankle ‘Bracelet?’” by James Kilgore Chicago Community Bond Fund National Council for Incarcerated & Formerly Incarcerated Women and Girls Other Books by James: Sister Mercy's Revenge (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2016) Prudence Couldn't Swim (Switchblade) (PM Press, 2012) Freedom Never Rests (Jacana Media, 2012) We Are All Zimbabweans Now (Ohio University Press, 2011) Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Edited by Ellis Maxwell Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam Theme music by Jared Ware Support Beyond Prisons Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook:@beyondprisonspodcast Instagram:@beyondprisons

Beyond Prisons welcomes back Maya Schenwar and Victoria Law to discuss their new book, Prison By Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences Of Popular Reforms.  The book provides a comprehensive and thought-provoking critical analysis of popular reforms to policing and incarceration, such as electronic monitoring, diversion courts, so-called sex worker rescue programs, and a lot more. Importantly, it explores not only how these reforms fail to promote safety, but how they actually increase the size and scope of policing and incarceration. Our wide-ranging conversation touches on how electronic monitoring denies people the ability to do the basic things they need to do to live, and shifts the costs of incarceration away from the government and onto the individual and their family, harming those important relationships in a multitude of ways. We talk about the release of this book at a time of heightened skepticism around reform projects and a growing popular awareness of abolition.  We also discuss why community policing is anti-community, and why it’s important to remember that we don’t need a replacement response for everything for which people are policed and imprisoned; in some cases, it would be better to do nothing instead. This episode is dedicated to Maya’s sister, Keeley Schenwar, who passed away in February. Maya Schenwar is the editor-in-chief of Truthout. She is co-author of Prison by Any Other Name: The Harmful Consequences of Popular Reforms, as well as the author of Locked Down, Locked Out, and the co-editor of Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? She lives in Chicago with her partner and toddler. You can find Maya’s work at Truthout.org as well, MayaSchenwar.com.  Follow her on Twitter @mayaschenwar and Facebook. Victoria Law is a freelance journalist who focuses on the intersections of incarceration, gender, and resistance. She is the author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women and regularly covers prison issues for Truthout and other outlets. Her latest book, Prison By Any Other Name, co-written with Maya Schenwar, critically examines proposed “alternatives” to incarceration and explores creative and far-reaching solutions to truly end mass incarceration.  You can find more of Victoria’s work on her website, VictoriaLaw.net Follow her on Twitter @LVikkiml Visit our website Beyond-Prisons.com for episode notes, resources, and more.  Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Edited by Ellis Maxwell Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam Theme music by Jared Ware Support Beyond Prisons Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well.

Kim Wilson is joined by Dr. Venezia Michalsen for a conversation about her research on women’s experiences with the criminal punishment system on the Beyond Prisons podcast.  Their conversation, which was recorded in February, touches on how women are impacted differently by the system than men and how criminology has focused on studying men’s experiences. They also discuss the ways that women’s survival strategies are criminalized, white carceral feminism and punishment, and much more. Dr. Venezia Michalsen is an American intersectional feminist criminologist whose work focuses on gender and imprisonment and reentry from incarceration.  Venezia received her B.A. in 1998 from Barnard College and her Ph.D. in Criminal Justice (2007) from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). She was the Director of Analysis and Client Information Systems (ACIS) at the Women’s Prison Association until she began her career as an academic in the Justice Studies Department at Montclair State University (MSU) in 2008. She is currently an Associate Professor of Justice Studies at MSU. Venezia interrogates the use of incarceration as a response to women’s survival strategies in the face of childhood and adult abuse. She also focuses on women’s experiences of re-entry to the community from prison and jail, and in particular on the role of children in women’s desistance from criminal behavior after incarceration. Her first book, Mothering and Desistance in Re-Entry was published in 2019.  Always an advocate for women who come in contact with the criminal justice system, Venezia’s more recent work has involved fighting for abolitionist policies in her home state of Connecticut. Venezia is the mother of an eight-year-old autistic boy, and her advocacy work for him and other children in special education has led to the formation of Special Education PTA in her town and she is working to increase police training on interactions with disabled people. In her free time, she loves to ride her bicycle, hike at Sleeping Giant State Park, and lift heavy weights. Episode Resources & Notes Mothering and Desistance in Re-Entry, by Venezia Michalsen (Routledge, 2019) “Abolitionist Feminism as Prisons Close: Fighting the Racist and Misogynist Surveillance ‘Child Welfare’ System,” by Venezia Michalsen “The Newest Jim Crow,” by Michelle Alexander Downsizing Prisons: How to Reduce Crime and End Mass Incarceration, by Michael Jacobson (NYU Press, 2005) “Motherwork Under the State: The Maternal Labor of Formerly Incarcerated Black Women,” by Susila Gurusami Taylar Nuevelle and Beyond Prison’s conversation with Taylar Nuevelle on Knitting in Prison “Jail will separate 2.3 million mothers from their children this year,” by Prison Policy Worth Rises Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Edited by Ellis Maxwell Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam Theme music by Jared Ware Support Beyond Prisons Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook:@beyondprisonspodcast Instagram:@beyondprisons

This is the second part of our two-part conversation with Dr. Dylan Rodríguez. If you haven’t already, listen to part one.  In this episode, Dylan shares a few thoughts about high profile reformers like Van Jones and the dangers of the non-profit industrial complex (NPIC). We also talk about “The Problems with Community Control of the Police and Proposals for Alternatives,” a document that Dylan co-authored with Beth Richie, Mariame Kaba, Rachel Herzing, and others.  We discuss the problem with the notion of “police accountability” and why Dylan believes that it is more accurately described as casualty management. We spend some time talking about the ways that celebrities either help or hinder conversations about policing, and why we should not conflate celebrity with leadership. We close with a discussion about the politics of accessibility.  Episode Resources & Notes Follow Dylan on Twitter: @dylanrodriguez “The Problems with Community Control of the Police and Proposals for Alternatives” by Beth Richie, Dylan Rodríguez, Mariame Kaba, Melissa Burch, Rachel Herzing, and Shana Agid Black Awakening in Capitalist America by Robert L. Allen (Doubleday, 1969) Books by Dylan Rodríguez: Pre-order his next book, White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logic of Racial Genocide, and White Reconstruction II (Fordham University Press)  Critical Ethnic Studies: A Reader  (Duke University Press, 2016) Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime (University of Minnesota Press, 2006)  Suspended Apocalypse: White Supremacy, Genocide, and the Filipino Condition (University of Minnesota Press, 2009) Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Edited by Ellis Maxwell Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam Theme music by Jared Ware Support Beyond Prisons Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on Apple Podcast, Spotify, and Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast Instagram: instagram.com/beyondprisons

Professor, author, and abolitionist scholar Dr. Dylan Rodríguez joins Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein on an episode of the Beyond Prisons podcast.  This is the first part of a two part conversation. In Part 1, Dr. Rodríguez explains his belief that abolition is our obligation, touching on the development of anti-Black algorithms used to keep people in prison, what it means to be vulnerable in the context of doing this work and how vulnerability is the starting point for an abolitionist practice, and the profound impact that Robert Allen’s book Black Awakening in Capitalist America had on shaping Dylan’s own thinking.  We also talk about how academia declares institutional solidarity with white supremacy, and how some academics are the planners and architects of domestic war. Dr. Rodríguez reminds us that terror is not a thing that you can fix with training and he shares some of the conditions he places on conversations about prison reform.  Dylan Rodríguez is President of the American Studies Association (2020-2021). He served as the faculty-elected Chair of the UC Riverside Academic Senate (2016-2020) and a Professor at the University of California, Riverside. He spent the first sixteen years of his career in the Department of Ethnic Studies (serving as Chair from 2009-2016) and joined the Department of Media and Cultural Studies in 2017. Dylan’s thinking, writing, teaching, and scholarly activist labors address the complexity and normalized proliferation of historical regimes and logics of anti-Black and racial-colonial violence in everyday state, cultural, and social formations.  His work raises the question of how insurgent communities of people inhabit oppressive regimes and logics in ways that enable the collective genius of rebellion, survival, abolition, and radical futurity. What forms of shared creativity emerge from conditions of duress, and how do these insurgencies envision—and practice—transformations of power and community?   In addition to co-editing the field-shaping anthology Critical Ethnic Studies: A Reader (Duke University Press, 2016), Dylan is the author of two books: Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime (University of Minnesota Press, 2006) and Suspended Apocalypse: White Supremacy, Genocide, and the Filipino Condition (University of Minnesota Press, 2009). His next book, White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logic of Racial Genocide, is forthcoming from Fordham University Press in Fall 2020 and will be followed in 2021 by White Reconstruction II.  Follow Dylan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dylanrodriguez Support Beyond Prisons Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/

Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein are joined by historian and abolitionist David Stein for an episode of the Beyond Prisons podcast. David penned an excellent article in 2017 with Dan Berger and Mariame Kaba entitled, “What Abolitionists Do." He reflects on this article in this moment of greater awareness of abolition and shares his thoughts and experiences from spending time in abolitionist spaces. David Stein is a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of African American Studies at UCLA. His book manuscript, Fearing Inflation, Inflating Fears: The Civil Rights Struggle for Full Employment and the Rise of the Carceral State, 1929-1986, is forthcoming from University of North Carolina Press. It describes the political economy of unemployment and efforts to win a federal governmental job guarantee, and how this struggle impacted the ascent of mass incarceration. His research focuses on the interconnection between social movements, public policy, and political economy in post-1865 U.S. history. He has been a member of Critical Resistance since 2006, though his comments in this interview are not on behalf of the organization. Episode Resources "What Abolitionists Do" by Dan Berger, Mariame Kaba, and David Stein David Stein's website: https://davidpstein.wordpress.com/ Follow David on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DavidpStein Support Beyond Prisons Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/

Beyond Prisons host Kim Wilson has a conversation with Dr. Erin Corbett, founder and CEO of Second Chance Educational Alliance, Inc. It's a community-based prison education program in CT. SCEA aims to provide formerly incarcerated men and women with the tools necessary to become fully engaged and contributing citizens. Erin has spent almost two decades in education access in a number of roles. With experience in independent school admission, enrichment programs, and postsecondary financial aid, her commitment to expanding postsecondary opportunities for all populations has served as the foundation of her professional endeavors. Kim and Erin talk about the benefits of post-secondary education for people in prison and the challenges associated with developing a prison education program. They also explore the issue of teaching without access to technology in a world where technology plays such a vital role in our lives, why higher ed in prison attracts people that fetishize prisoners and are invested in the notions of saviorism, and how the teaching authors like James Baldwin are transformative for some students. They conclude the conversation with Erin’s thoughts on what higher ed prison policy needs to focus on, including what questions to ask. Episode Resources Feature in the Swarthmore College Alumni Magazine Blog Post on MSI Unplugged Dr. Corbett on Medium  Dr. Corbett on Twitter: @GrandmaCheesy77 Second Chance Educational Alliance on Twitter: @SCEA_Inc_CT Support Beyond Prisons Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/

Donna Murch and Kay Whitlock join Beyond Prisons to think through the question “how do we get through this?” Donna posed this question on social media in April as the COVID-19 pandemic peaked and motivated this conversation. We begin by thinking through who the “we” is in that question, and then we attempt to define what we mean by “getting through this." Donna points out that racial capitalism and the unraveling of already weak systems is making it clear who the “we” is. Kim shares how this moment has for me triggered an eerie feeling of calmness that is a trauma response to other experiences in my life. And Kay shares how this moment has allowed her to stop pretending and to think about how we can use our collective energy in this moment.  We talk about the importance of imagination at this moment and the need to share the testimony of people directly impacted by this crisis. Finally, we discuss the rise of authoritarianism and how media reports of COVID-19 are filtered through racial-ethnonational lens. We end our conversation with some thoughts on mutual aid and how this crisis has the potential for teaching us greater responsibility for each other.  (Note: this conversation was recorded in April). Kay Whitlock, a longtime activist and organizer in progressive social justice movements, lives in Missoula, Montana. She writes frequently on issues of structural violence in U.S. society. She is co-author of Queer (in)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States and Considering Hate: Violence, Goodness & Justice in American Culture and Politics.  She is currently working with sociologist Nancy Heitzeg on a forthcoming book: Prison Break: The Deceptive Terrain of Criminal Justice Reform.   Professor Donna Murch’s teaching and research specializations are historical studies of mass incarceration/war on drugs, Black Power and Civil Rights, California, social movements, and postwar U.S. cities. She is currently completing a new trade press book entitled Crack in Los Angeles: Policing the Crisis and the War on Drugs, which explores the militarization of law enforcement, the social history of drug consumption and sale, and the political economy of mass incarceration in late twentieth-century California. In October 2010, Murch published the award-winning monograph Living for the City: Migration, Education and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California with the University of North Carolina Press, which won the Phillis Wheatley prize in December 2011. She has published articles in the Journal of American History, Journal of Urban History, OAH Magazine of History, Black Scholar, Souls, Perspectives, New Politics, and Jacobin. Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Edited by Ellis Maxwell Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam Theme music by Jared Ware Support Beyond Prisons Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Contact us at beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Contact us at beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter I Facebook I Instagram

Kim and Brian sit down for an extended conversation on the current Black Lives Matter protests, policing and police reform, media literacy, and more. Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Edited by Ellis Maxwell Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam Theme music by Jared Ware Support Beyond Prisons Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/

Beyond Prisons hosts Brian Sonenstein and Kim Wilson sit down with Anthony Williams to talk about co-founding the hashtag "#MasculinitySoFragile," leveraging social capital online, how their political consciousness evolved over time, and overcoming isolation through reading. We recorded this episode in early March just as the pandemic was gaining steam. The subsequent weeks have forced us all to contend with a new reality that intensifies our vulnerability and underscores the need for organizing and collective liberation. Anthony talks about cultivating joy as we live with trauma, and tells us why we should all read "Pleasure Activism" by Adrianne Maree Brown.  Anthony James Williams is a Black queer non-binary writer, sociology PhD student, and facilitator. Online, they’re responsible for co-creating and popularizing the hashtags #MasculinitySoFragile and #BlackWomenDidThat. Offline, their prior Black student organizing led the University of California system to divest $25 million from private prisons in 2016. Find them on Twitter @anthoknees or antjwilliams.com.  Episode Resources The painful & personal process of Black Consciousness Sandra Bland: Beware the day they change their mind! The Year in Creating Black Joy social justice work is exhausting: ableism, racism, and joy Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Edited by Ellis Maxwell Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam Theme music by Jared Ware Support Beyond Prisons Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/

Author, educator, and activist Johanna Fernández joins the Beyond Prisons podcast to discuss a recent incident in which a Pennsylvania corrections officer perpetrated a hoax on supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal by claiming he had been hospitalized for COVID-19. The conversation extends beyond this incident to discuss American attitudes about violence and safety, the weaponization of health and concern against prisoners, and more. Johanna Fernández is the author of The Young Lords: A Radical History (UNC Press, February 2020), a history of the Puerto Rican counterpart of the Black Panther Party. She teaches 20th Century US history and the history of social movements in the Department of History at Baruch College (CUNY).  Dr. Fernández’s recent research and litigation has unearthed an arsenal of primary documents now available to scholars and members of the public. Her Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) lawsuit against the NYPD, led to the recovery of the "lost" Handschu files, the largest repository of police surveillance records in the country, namely over one million surveillance files of New Yorkers compiled by the NYPD between 1954-1972, including those of Malcolm X. She is the editor of Writing on the Wall: Selected Prison Writings of Mumia Abu-Jamal (City Lights, 2015). With Mumia Abu-Jamal she co-edited a special issue of the journal Socialism and Democracy, titled The Roots of Mass Incarceration in the US: Locking Up Black Dissidents and Punishing the Poor (Routledge, 2014).   Among others, her awards include the Fulbright Scholars grant to the Middle East and North Africa, which took her to Jordan, and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship of the Scholars-in-Residence program at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library.  Professor Fernández is the writer and producer of the film, Justice on Trial: the Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal (BigNoise Films, 2010).  She directed and co-curated, ¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York an exhibition in three NYC museums cited by the New York Times as one of the year’s Top 10, Best In Art.  Her mainstream writings have been published internationally, from Al Jazeera to the Huffington Post. She has appeared in a diverse range of print, radio, online and televised media including NPR, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Democracy Now!. Fernández is the recipient of a B.A. in Literature and American Civilization from Brown University and a Ph.D. in U.S. History from Columbia University. Episode Resources Teach In: US Empire v. Political Prisoners (April 24, 2020 from 6-9pm East) Buy Dr. Fernández's book, "The Young Lords: A Radical History" Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

Brian Sonenstein interviews a woman who we’re calling “Alice” to protect her and her husband from retaliation by California prison officials. Alice organizes with other family members as part of a group known as Unite Against CDCR. Her husband is incarcerated in Soledad, California at the Correctional Training Facility (CTF)—one of the prisons where Gladiator Fights have taken place over the last few years. She shared some of what she has heard and experienced herself regarding the prison’s response to the pandemic. We compare and contrast what California prison officials say they are doing in response to the crisis with what Alice has heard is happening at CTF. We also discuss how the prison is reacting to efforts by her husband and other prisoners to protect themselves. Episode Resources Unite Against CDCR Petition: Tell CDCR TO Allow All Inmates Access To Tablets & Email Reporting on Gladiator Fights Contact Unite Against CDCR at UNITEAGAINSTCDCRCORRUPTION@GMAIL.COM    Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

In this special Beyond Prisons dispatch, Haverford College student and activist Ellis Maxwell shares a conversation they had with their friend Charles Boyd, who is incarcerated at SCI-Phoenix in Pennsylvania. Maxwell is the co-head of Rethink Incarceration, a group that advocates for the immediate abolition of all prisons. They work toward abolition in Pennsylvania in solidarity with incarcerated people and other organizations. Maxwell and Boyd met through Rethink Incarceration. Boyd is incarcerated on a death-by-incarceration sentence and has been in prison for over thirty years. During that time, Boyd has worked on projects including the Alternatives to Violence Project, Right to Redemption, and Let’s Circle Up. Let’s Circle Up was founded by men incarcerated at Graterford - which is now Phoenix - in 2007, and “seeks to build relationships, community, and leaders through experiential, participatory, and collaborative restorative justice education.”  Maxwell and Boyd's conversation was recorded on March 31, 2020. Since then, the prison has been locked down following the first positive test inside. The administration did not inform prisoners until day fifteen of the quarantine. In early April, a prisoner died from symptoms of COVID-19, which was not announced on the news until Monday, April 13. The administration didn’t - and still to this point has not - announced this death to other prisoners. They only found out through outside news broadcasts. As of this recording, one unit at SCI-Phoenix is completely quarantined with no present access to phones. The majority of confirmed cases have come from this one unit, so the entire prison is locked down with less than an hour of time for prisoners to be outside of their cells. In the conversation, Boyd emphasizes the inconsistency and total lack of transparency from the Department of Corrections. He says that “in this crisis who you are, what you do, and how well you deny involvement or outright lie, determines who gets a pass and who doesn’t.” “What alarms me is that I feel more cut off from society today than I have since I’ve been incarcerated,” Boyd said. If you want to get in touch with Maxwell, you can email them at ellis.maxwell@gmail.com. For more information on Let’s Circle Up, visit letscircleup.org. Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

Writer, artist, and NYU student Jose Díaz shares his experience of being arrested and imprisoned on a technical violation during the COVID-19 crisis.  Jose describes the conditions and lack of medical care inside New York City jails where he was held. He talks about the organizing efforts that secured his release and how exceptionalism played a role in gaining people’s support.  Finally, Jose shares his thoughts on why demanding the immediate release of prisoners is important and why reform efforts so often fall short of addressing people’s problems. Jose Díaz is a Master’s student majoring in Social and Cultural Analysis with an emphasis on Latino Studies at NYU. As a student and advocate, he seeks to unravel ideological narratives that underlie our common notions of race, class, and gender, and how those ideas inform public space and human interaction. He is also a writer and public speaker, where he uses the power of storytelling to highlight his personal struggles with incarceration while challenging theoretical postulations about the carceral system. He advocates and educates on the importance of inclusivity within prison initiative programs and education as well as pushing back against the language, privilege, and ideas that perpetuate the reproduction of negative notions of people of color. As an artist and photographer, he is currently engaged in a project that looks at the urban landscape of New York City as a place to explore cultural memory, the city block, and overlapping diasporas. Jose’s website: https://www.jdiazmemory.com/bio NYU Prison Education Program: https://prisoneducation.nyu.edu Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

Beyond Prisons hosts Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein walk through our guide on how to support incarcerated people and their loved ones during the Coronavirus Crisis. You can check it out along with some demands we put together, mutual aid resources, and more on our new website at beyond-prisons.com/covid19. Many, many thanks to everyone who worked with us to pull this together and who have contacted us to volunteer. We’re sincerely grateful. Please share this guide with your friends, your family, on social media, wherever you can, if you find it helpful. We want to get it into the hands of as many people as it can help, and we will continue to update it in the coming days and weeks so please check back.  Additionally, if you have any regional or facility-specific suggestions for people supporting their loved ones on the inside, please submit them using our form. We’re trying to pool information that is helpful to everyone while having specific locally relevant suggestions as well. Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

Beyond Prisons podcast host Kim Wilson sits down with Amani Sawari of the Right2Vote campaign to talk about her work on a nationwide effort that grew out of the 2018 prison strike demand to extend voting rights for all justice-involved people. Amani and Kim talk about what it was like for her to teach poetry inside a youth prison and she shares a couple of poems written by her former students. Amani Sawari is a writer, founder of the site sawarimi.org, coordinator for the Right2Vote Campaign and a 2019 Civil Rights Fellow with the Roddenberry Foundation. She graduated from the University of Washington in 2016 with a Bachelor’s degree in Media Communication Studies and Law, and Economics & Public Policy. Her visionary publications aid in distributing messages and building community among participants in the prison resistance movement on both sides of the wall. In the aftermath of the Lee County Massacre that occurred in South Carolina’s Department of Corrections, Sawari was selected by Jailhouse Lawyers Speak to be their spokesperson for their 2018 National Prison Strike. Her coordination of over 400 endorsing businesses, groups and organizations led to the successful participation of incarcerated activists in 17 states and 3 regions abroad including, Palestinians held captive in Israeli Prisons, Leipzig Prison in Greece and at Burnside Prison in Nova Scotia, Canada.  In addition to coordinating Right2Vote, Amani is organizing the Statewide campaign to end Truth-in-Sentencing laws and bring back Good Time in Michigan. Today Sawari’s monthly Right2Vote Report is mailed to hundreds of prisoners in 27 states across the country.  Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware Amani read the following poems by her former students on the episode:   CHANGING WAYS No New Year’s resolution for me No crying decree No promises, just average changes Less time screwing around More time helping my parents in need Less time skipping school More time going to school Not so many fake friends A few more real friends Not so many regrets A few more successes Less running away from reality More facing reality Less dreaming More accomplishments Change after all…is good Change after all Is all I know   Dedicated to my mom   DAILY THINGS I go to bed every night I see a couple bright lights I hear a couple sounds And they sound like gun shots I smell hot Cheetos Eating them in my bed Sleeping in a king size bed Like rolling hills underneath me Touching my heart with fear Thinking that somebody’s gonna come for me Kick down my door Come in my house And hit me But I hit him back And had no fear.   LIFE OF A YOUNG MEXICAN Just a young child Living life wild Rarely had a father figure So I just started busting triggers I was a good boy Back in elementary Who woulda thought I’d get to see the penitentiary Squares at my school never really liked me I felt misplaced I just wanted to be happy I told my mother Let’s go back to Mexico She said “sorry mi’jo” You just got to let it go I said “Fuck it” And went to Denny middle school Everything was different I started acting like a fool Met some crazy vatos back in 7th grade That was when my life really freaking changed I started kicking it with all the fucking “criminales” We would be posted like a herd of “animales” I started sportin’ that blue I started reppin’ the “sur” I use to think it was about hanging and smoking dope Then I realized that this gang life ain’t no joke Got beat up a couple times Sniffed a couple lines Sold a couple dimes

Beyond Prisons Co-host Kim Wilson interviews Michelle Jones about her work as an artist, activist, and historian. Michelle shares the projects that she’s currently working on and she reflects on what it’s like to be a third-year graduate student working on her dissertation proposal. She speaks to Kim about reentry for women in Indiana, having a soft place to land after incarceration, and her fight for sentence modification so that she could attend grad school after having spent 20 years in prison. Michelle speaks candidly about what it means to her to have a spiritual practice, her art installation “Point of Triangulation” and the need for arts-based research. They round out the hour by addressing the problematic notion of exceptionalism with regards to prisoners and former prisoners, Michelle’s response to being "thingified" by the media, as well as what it was like to have academics attempt to co-opt the work that she and other women historians did inside. Michelle Jones is a third-year doctoral student in the American Studies program at New York University. She is interested in excavating the collateral consequences of criminal convictions for people and families directly impacted by mass incarceration, in addition to participating in a scholarly project challenging the narratives of the history of women’s prison with a group of incarcerated scholars. While incarcerated, Michelle published and presented her research findings to dispel notions about the reach and intellectual capacity of justice-involved women.   Michelle’s advocacy extends beyond the classroom through collaborations and opportunities to speak truth to power. While incarcerated, she presented legislative testimony on a reentry alternative she created for long-term incarcerated people that was approved by the Indiana State Interim Committee on the Criminal Code and SHE has joined the advisory boards of the Lumina Foundation and the Urban Institute.    She is a founding member and chair of the board of Constructing Our Future, a reentry alternative for women created by incarcerated women in Indiana. She is A 2017-18 Beyond the Bars fellow, a 2017-18 Research Fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University, and a 2018-19 Ford Foundation Bearing Witness Fellow with Art for Justice, a 2019 SOZE Right of Return Fellow, a 2019 Code for America Fellow, and A 2019-2020 Mural Arts Fellow. Michelle is currently under contract with The New Press to publish the history of Indiana’s carceral institutions for women with fellow incarcerated and formerly incarcerated scholars. As an artist, Michelle is interested in finding ways to funnel her research pursuits into theater, dance, and photography. Her original co-authored play, “The Duchess of Stringtown,” was produced in December 2017 in Indianapolis and New York City and her artist installation about stigma, “Point of Triangulation,” ran September 26, - October 1, 2019 in New York. Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

On this episode of the Beyond Prisons Podcast, hosts Brian Sonenstein and Kim Wilson catch up with  Certain Days Collective members Daniel McGowan, Josh Davidson, and Sara Falconer. The group publishes the Certain Days: Freedom For Political Prisoners calendar, now in its 19th year of publication and filled with radical historical dates, 12 thought-provoking articles and beautiful artwork for each month throughout the year. All proceeds support prisoners and grassroots organizations, and we urge you to visit certaindays.org to obtain copies of their beautiful 2020 edition, the theme of which is “Knitting Together The Struggles.” The five of us discuss the artwork and articles that make up the calendar, as well as the difficult-but-extensive and necessary collaboration with incarcerated people throughout the year to produce it. We also touch on subjects such as the importance of charting radical history, prisoners’ relationship to time, and the value of having such a beautiful and thought-provoking calendar available to people on the inside. Daniel McGowan is a former political prisoner and former member of the Earth Liberation Front (ELF). He has been involved with political prisoner support for most of his activist life and is currently a member of the Certain Days collective. Josh Davidson has been an activist for two decades now, focusing on prisoner support and the abolition of the carceral state. He is actively working to start a Books Through Bars program in Baltimore, MD, where he also works on community organizing and against police brutality. Sara Falconer has been working to raise the voices of prisoners for over 18 years, collaborating on projects such as 4strugglemag.org, a zine by and for prisoners, and the Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners Calendar. She is a member of the Barton Prisoner Solidarity Project in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. Buy the Certain Days calendar and learn more about the collective at certaindays.org Certain Days on Facebook @certaindays on Twitter @certaindayscalendar on Instagram Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

Abolitionist and journalist Jared Ware joins the Beyond Prisons podcast for a conversation on deteriorating abusive conditions within South Carolina prisons. Jared gives us an update on recent organizing efforts by prisoners in South Carolina and their comrades on the outside, who delivered a demand letter to UN offices in the United States, Carribean, and United Kingdom last month. They argue the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC) is violating international standards for confinement known as The Mandela Standards.  We discuss the last several years of prisoner-led organizing to call attention to horrendous abuses. This includes intense restrictions on prisoners in general population within higher-security prisons, such as metal plates placed on windows, meal slots on the doors, heavy limitations on movement, and little-to-no programming or recreation.  We also touch on the disgusting, absurd games and propaganda wars SCDC engages in, including collaborations with nonprofits that serve to whitewash the department of corrections conduct and the conditions in which they force people to live. Resources & Additional Reading South Carolina Prisoners Call For UN Intervention As Abusive Conditions Worsen by Jared Ware South Carolina Prisoner Demand Letter To The United Nations South Carolina Prisoners Appeal to the UN for Relief From Torturous Conditions by Kelly Hayes 'No Other Path to Redress': South Carolina Prisoners Appeal to UN After State and Federal Officials Ignore Pleas for Livable Conditions by Eoin Higgins Interview: South Carolina Prisoners Challenge Narrative Around Violence At Lee Correctional Institution by Jared Ware Check out Jared Ware's podcast with Josh Briond, Millennials Are Killing Capitalism Follow Jay and MAKC on Twitter Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

In a followup to the last episode, "Stop Hugging Cops," Beyond Prisons hosts Brian Sonenstein and Kim Wilson share some resources and discuss alternatives to calling the police. We talk about the chain reaction that is created by bringing the police to a community or into an individual’s life, and we suggest ways to scrutinize the impulse to call the police. Brian also calls on White people to consider what it means for them to call the police on Black and Brown people and offers some thoughts for how white people can do better in situations that generally don’t require intervention. Kim also shares some of what she has learned from transformative justice work and what communities can do to address harm without state intervention. This episode is chock full of insights, ideas, suggestions, and lessons, and it is by no means a comprehensive account of alternatives to calling the police, but it does provide a place to begin. Resources & Additional Reading "Chain Reaction: Alternatives To Calling Police" by Project NIA "Abolition Of Policing Workshop" by Critical Resistance "Alternatives To Police" by Rose City Cop Watch "12 Things To Do Instead Of Calling The Cops" by the May Day Collective and Washtenaw Solidarity & Defense "What To Do Instead Of Calling The Police" by Aaron Rose Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com for more information Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

In this episode of the Beyond Prisons podcast, hosts Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein discuss a video published by Critical Resistance that features Professor Dylan Rodriguez talking about policing and police practice. We encourage you to spend a few minutes watching the video before listening to this episode. We chose this video because Professor Rodriguez helps us to interrogate the way that we think about the police. He makes the case for why "policing" is a more accurate term than "police brutality" and urges us to think about why some people need to demonstrate their humanity by hugging cops. Brian and Kim use the points by Professor Rodriguez to further discuss what it means when abolitionists and other activists are willing to make exceptions for some people to go to prison, and what kinds of conversations we need to have to shift peoples' consciousness about punishment. We push back against the idea that prison and other legal punishments are forms of accountability and lay the groundwork for other upcoming episodes on this topic. Resources & Additional Reading [Video] Breaking Down The Prison Industrial Complex with Professor Dylan Rodriguez: "It's Not Police Brutality" Critical Resistance - Breaking Down The Prison Industrial Complex Video Series Reformist Reforms vs. Abolitionist Steps in Policing Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

Beyond Prisons is back from summer break with a special double episode with Brooke Terpstra, Oaklander forever, movement veteran, and worker who organized with the Incarcerated Workers Organizer Committee (IWOC). Brooke is an organizer with the Oakland chapter of IWOC and was a member of the IWOC national media committee for the 2018 prison strike. In the first hour of this episode, Brooke walks us through incidents of prison-orchestrated violence in California, known as "Gladiator Fights." He shares the history and backstory of why California prisons are organizing these fights, dismantles the corrections department's spin on these incidents, and details the experiences of prisoners and their loved ones who are fighting for survival and to end the practice. In the second hour, Kim and Brian debrief after their conversation with Brooke. They discuss their reactions and experiences reporting on these fights and the trauma of being in proximity to the multifaceted violence of incarceration. Follow IWOC on Twitter: @IWW_IWOC IWOC Website Resources & Additional Reading The Agreement To End Hostilities by the Pelican Bay State Prison-SHU Short Corridor Hunger Strike Representatives. NOTHING NEW: CDCr Fuels and Socially Engineers Violence between Prisoners By Mutope Duguma How CDCr Undermines Peace: An Essay on Gladiator Fights by IWOC Oakland Following Hunger Strike, Corcoran Prisoners Say Negotiations With Warden Have Fallen Apart by Brian Sonenstein Corcoran Prisoners Describe Life Under Lockdown by Brian Sonenstein California Prisoners Say Videos Show ‘Gladiator Fights’ At Soledad State Prison by Brian Sonenstein More Reports Of ‘Gladiator Fights’ As California Prison Officials Tear Up Cells To Find Recording Device by Brian Sonenstein Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

CONTENT WARNING: SEXUAL VIOLENCE, CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE Sarah K. Tyson joins Beyond Prisons for a conversation about her work as a philosopher, anti-violence advocate, and prison educator. We explore the contradiction between anti-violence work and its reliance on the criminal punishment system, what it's like to do philosophy in prison, the importance of building relationships with people inside, and so much more.  Sarah Tyson is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Affiliated Faculty of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Colorado, Denver. Her research focuses on questions of authority, history, and exclusion with a particular interest in voices that have been marginalized in the history of thinking. She has published essays in: Death and Other Penalties: Philosophy in a Time of Mass Incarceration; Deconstructing the Death Penalty: Derrida's Seminars and the New Abolitionism; Feminist Philosophy Quarterly; Hypatia; Metaphilosophy; and Radical Philosophy Review. She also edited with Joshua Hall, Philosophy Imprisoned: The Love of Wisdom in the Age of Mass Incarceration. She recently published Where Are the Women? Why Expanding the Archive Makes Philosophy Better, which focuses on women in the history of philosophy and argues for engagement with thinkers not typically considered philosophers, including Sojourner Truth.  Resources Feminism and the Carceral State: Gender-Responsive Justice, Community Accountability, and the Epistemology of Antiviolence. (Brady T. Heiner and Sarah K. Tyson, 2017) Experiments in Responsibility: Pocket Parks, Radical Anti-Violence Work, and the Social Ontology of Safety (Sarah K. Tyson, 2014) Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

Maya Schenwar returns to Beyond Prisons to discuss voting rights, the current political landscape, and her forthcoming book. Maya is the Editor-in-Chief of Truthout. She is also the author of "Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn't Work and How We Can Do Better" and the co-editor of the Truthout anthology "Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States." She has written about the prison-industrial complex for Truthout, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, Salon, Ms. Magazine, and others. Maya lives in Chicago and organizes with the abolitionist collective Love & Protect. She is the co-author of an upcoming book with Victoria Law, tentatively titled, "Your Home Is Your Prison," which they hope to release next spring. Follow Maya on Twitter @MayaSchenwar Additional Reading: Allowing People in Prison to Vote Shouldn’t Be Controversial by Maya Schenwar The Shameful Moralizing On Prisoner Voting Rights by Brian Sonenstein Thoughts On Hand-Wringing Over Prisoner Voting Rights by Kim Wilson Florida’s Amendment 4 Pushes Back On Tradition Of Social Death For People With Convictions by Kim Wilson Voting Rights Act of 1965 Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

Kim Wilson interviews Dr. Kimberly Robertson on her work on Native feminisms and practices, use of beadwork and zine making to generate knowledge, and the uncompensated emotional labor of Black and women of color in the academy and liberatory work. Kimberly Robertson is a citizen of the Mvskoke nation, an artivist, scholar, teacher, and mother who works diligently to employ Native feminist theories, practices, and methodologies in her hustle to fulfill the dreams of her ancestors and to build a world in which her daughters can thrive. She was born in Bakersfield, CA and currently lives on unceded Tongva lands. She is an Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. Robertson is also a founding member of the Green Corn Collective and a member of the Indigenous Goddess Gang. Her creative practices include screen printing, collage, beadwork, installation art, and zine-making and centers the ideas and practices of ceremony, storytelling, intersecting subjectivities, dislocation, decolonization, and Indigenous futurities. Read her paper, "The ‘law and order’ of violence against Native women: A Native feminist analysis of the Tribal Law and Order Act": https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/des/article/download/22551/19734/ Website: kimberlydawnrobertson.com IG: @kdrslaysthepatriarchy   Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

The following is a quick message delivered on behalf of our friends at Liberation Through Reading. They have an event coming up in Philadelphia, PA on Saturday, April 13th at the A-Space (4722 Baltimore Avenue) from 12PM-4PM, gifting Black children with free Black books. Details are below.  Contact Erica Caines at ericacaines@gmail.com -- In almost 2 years, #LiberationThroughReading has gifted well over 1000 BRAND NEW representative books to Black children of all reading levels. Each book gifted features Black characters and written by Black authors. After hosting several events in Anne Arundel County, Md and one with the The Concord Freedom School in Brooklyn, NY, in the summer of 2018, #LiberationThroughReading has been invited to come to West Philly to offer the Black children in that community a chance to be introduced to a wide variety of books featuring people who look like them, in hopes to encourage a love a literacy. #LiberationThroughReading gives both children AND parents the opportunity to engage books. The initiative encourages parents to nurture a love of reading in their child and representation in their homes. We’re bringing it to West Philly next month for the 8th event in order to have the same conversations with the community to push literacy by using representation as a tool that fosters both pride in heritage and love of reading!

Rachel Herzing joins Beyond Prisons for a conversation on political education, transformation, and more. Rachel is the co-director of Center for Political Education, a resource for political organizations on the left, progressive social movements, the working class and people of color. She has been an organizer, activist, and advocate fighting the violence of policing and imprisonment for over 20 years. She is a co-founder of Critical Resistance, a national grassroots organization dedicated to abolishing the prison industrial complex. She was also the director of research and training at Creative Interventions a community resource developing interventions to interpersonal harm that do not rely on policing, imprisonment, or traditional social services. Learn more about the Center for Political Education at http://politicaleducation.org/ Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Music: Jared Ware

Taylar Nuevelle joins the Beyond Prisons podcast to talk about her experiences knitting while incarcerated. In particular, we talk about her love of knitting, the space it created for her in prison, as well as how it was used to punish her. Ms. Nuevelle is a writer and advocate for justice-involved women. In 2017 she created a writing program at the Central Treatment Facility (CTF), the women’s jail in DC, “Sharing Our Stories to Reclaim Our Lives”. She is credited for creating the concept of the “Trauma-to-Prison Pipeline” for women and girls.  While incarcerated at the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA/CTF) D.C. and in the Federal Bureau of Prisons from 2010 to 2015, Ms. Nuevelle volunteered by providing legal advocacy for fellow incarcerated women. Ms. Nuevelle’s writings have appeared in The Washington Post, Talk Poverty, The Nation, the Vera Institute for Justice Blog and Ms. Magazine online. Ms. Nuevelle holds a B.A. in Literature.   You can learn more about her work via Facebook at whospeaksforme. If you’d like to read more of her writings consider becoming a supporter on patreon.com/taylar where she will begin to publish monthly newsletters for patrons only. Visit Taylar's blog at https://taylarnuevelle.wordpress.com/ Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Music by Jared Ware

Connie Grier joins Beyond Prisons to discuss a new policy in Pennsylvania prisons targeting materials brought in by educators, religious practitioners, recreational and therapeutic facilitators, and others. Connie is a mother of twin sons, a career educator, a mentor, and a social justice advocate. She is also the founder of The RESPECT Alliance, an organization which has, as one of its core tenets, the addressing of justice issues that impact marginalized populations both pre and post-incarceration. As an educator with 28 years of experience within the K-16 realm, Connie has an intimate relationship with the lack of advocacy and harsh discipline policies that lead to the school-to-prison pipeline and is determined to mitigate and ultimately, dismantle said pipeline, one student at a time. Connie is an Inside-Out trained instructor and has taught courses inside of correctional facilities in Philadelphia and Chester. She is actively engaged in several social justice and criminal justice initiatives focused specifically on women, youth, and families, and has been a Graterford Think Tank Member for the past four years. She specializes in supporting marginalized youth and adults most impacted by the system academically and utilizes interactive workshops, speaking engagements, and mentorship to support in the areas of family reunification and advocacy. View the new PA DOC memo [PDF]. Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/ Music by Jared Ware

In the first episode of 2019, hosts Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein begin a conversation on transformative justice by discussing the concept of “Pods” and the process of “Pod-mapping.” These exercises involve developing skills and identifying relationships that are key to intervening in harm and providing the kind of support that accountability can demand. Listeners can learn more and follow this conversation more closely via the following materials: Pods and Pod-Mapping Worksheet by Mia Mingus & Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective Creative Interventions Toolkit Think; Re-Think by Connie Burk (The Revolution Starts At Home) Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/

Nabil Hassein joins the Beyond Prisons podcast to give an update on the campaign to close Rikers Island and the fight to oppose new jail construction in New York City. Nabil is a technologist, organizer and educator based in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. He has worked professionally as a software developer and a teacher in both public schools and private settings. Nabil also works with grassroots police and prison abolitionist campaigns in NYC including Shut Down Rikers, Abolition Square and No New Jails NYC. Nabil talks about Mayor Bill de Blasio’s efforts to spend tens of billions of dollars on new jails at a time when money is desperately needed for housing, education, health care, food, and more. He talks about what the plan for new so-called “modern” jails will and won’t do about gentrification and broken windows policing. And Nabil gives an idea of what it’s like inside the various community meetings held by the city to promote the new jails and (allegedly) hear input from the public. Follow the No New Jails NYC campaign on Twitter: @nonewjails_nyc No New Jails NYC is holding its first public event on Sunday, December 2nd at the People's Forum in midtown Manhattan. Click here for more information. Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/

Kim and Brian share their thoughts and best practices for journalists looking to improve their reporting on incarceration and related issues. Even if you’re not a journalist, we think this is a conversation you should be in on because it may help you read between the lines and evaluate media sources that cover these issues on your own. Consider this a starting point for getting these thoughts and ideas out into the open, for developing a new paradigm for this particular kind of journalism, and for encouraging a more critical analysis of reporting on these issues. We’re in the process of developing a document that we are (for now) calling the Beyond Prisons Media Guide that we hope to share with you all soon. We welcome your feedback and questions for future installments on this topic. Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/

Kim Wilson speaks with formerly incarcerated activist Kempis “Ghani” Songster about the black liberation group MOVE in the second part of episode 29. (Listen to Part 1 here). MOVE's Philadelphia home was bombed by a police helicopter in 1985. The attack killed eleven people—including five children—and resulted in the destruction of 65 houses in the neighborhood. There were only two survivors. Ghani and Kim also talk about plans to rename a block of North 59th Street for Mayor Wilson Goode—Philadelphia’s first black mayor, who designated the organization as a terrorist group and who pushed for the police attack. Correction: We misstated the name of the street renamed for Mayor Wilson Goode. The renamed street was North 59th Street, not Osage Avenue. We regret the error. Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein @jaybeware Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/

Kim Wilson interviews formerly incarcerated activist Kempis "Ghani" Songster in part one of Beyond Prisons episode 29. In 1987, at the age of 15, Ghani was imprisoned for homicide.  Despite his age, he was certified as an adult, convicted of first degree murder, and given a mandatory life sentence without parole, or what is increasingly known today as death by incarceration. Thus, he became one of America’s many juvenile lifers/condemned children. While in prison, he developed and facilitated programs to help people behind the  walls with him, as well as programs to help people on the outside.  He also co-founded outside organizations such as The Redemption Project and Ubuntu Philadelphia, and is a founding member of Right To Redemption, which helped launch Philadelphia’s Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration (CADBI). After 30 years of incarceration, Ghani was released from prison at the age of 45.  Since his release, he has joined the staff at the Amistad Law Project, a grassroots abolitionist law collective working for the release of others, as they fight to end the sentencing of human beings to life without parole/death by incarceration and to abolish prison industrial complex.  He has also joined the membership of Ecosocialist Horizons.  Ghani continues to organize actively for healing justice and a more livable planet. Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein @jaybeware Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/