A Continuous Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Martin Sostre feat. Garrett Felber (01:00:38)
For this episode I sat down with Garrett Felber to talk about their new book, A Continuous Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Martin Sostre. The book is described by Dr. Orisanmi Burton, author of Tip of the Spear, as "A rigorous examination of Sostre's revolutionary life that offers vital lessons for those seeking to carry on the struggle." I began our conversation by asking Garret about what motivated them to write the book in the first place. We then focus our discussion on what they learned about Sostre throughout the process. Garrett's clear writing and insightful analysis offers us a layered and complex understanding of Sostre's life and work. Our conversation highlights Sostre's evolving political vision and practice, the relevance of his organizing for our current political moment, and how his skillful use of the courts in the fight for prisoner's rights is foundational for understanding the broader abolitionist struggle. Garrett Felber is an educator, writer, and organizer. They are the author of Those Who Know Don't Say: The Nation of Islam, the Black Freedom Movement, and the Carceral State, and coauthor of The Portable Malcolm X Reader, with Manning Marable. Felber is a cofounder of the abolitionist collective Study and Struggle and is currently building a radical mobile library, the Free Society People's Library, in Portland, Oregon. AVAILABLE NOW! A Continuous Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Martin Sostre, by Garrett Felber Virtual Book Launch hosted by Haymarket and AK Press feat. a conversation between Garrett Felber and Ruth Wilson Gilmore. A Continuous Struggle is a political biography of one of the most important revolutionary figures of the twentieth century in the United States. Martin Sostre (1923–2015) was a Black Puerto Rican from East Harlem who became a politicized prisoner and jailhouse lawyer, winning cases in the early 1960s that helped secure the constitutional rights of incarcerated people. He opened one of the country's first radical Black bookstores and was scapegoated and framed by police and the FBI following the Buffalo rebellion of 1967. He was sentenced by an all-white jury to thirty-one to forty-one years. Throughout his nine-year imprisonment, Sostre transformed himself and the revolutionary movements he was a part of, eventually identifying as a revolutionary anarchist and laying the foundation for contemporary Black anarchism. During that time, he engaged in principled resistance to strip frisks for which he was beaten eleven times, raising awareness about the routinized sexual assault of imprisoned people. The decade-long Free Martin Sostre movement was one of the greatest and most improbable defense campaign victories of the Black Power era, alongside those to liberate Angela Davis and Huey Newton. Although Sostre receded from public view after his release in 1976, he lived another four decades of committed struggle as a tenant organizer and youth mentor in New York and New Jersey. Throughout his long life, Martin Sostre was a jailhouse lawyer, revolutionary bookseller, yogi, mentor and teacher, anti-rape organizer, housing justice activist, and original political thinker. The variety of strategies he used and terrains on which he struggled emphasize the necessity and possibility of multi-faceted and continuous struggle against all forms of oppression in pursuit of an egalitarian society founded on the principles of "maximum human freedom, spirituality, and love." LINKS Study and Struggle is a collective concentrated in Mississippi that organizes towards abolition through political education, mutual aid, and community building across prison walls. We believe that study and struggle are necessary, complementary parts of any revolutionary movement, and that dismantling the prison industrial complex (PIC) requires centering criminalized people. Justice for Geraldine and Martin – Martin Sostre and Geraldine (Robinson) Pointer's names should have been cleared after they were framed. Sign the petition to support our effort to make what's been delayed for far too long a reality for these two transformational former political prisoners. Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Nam-Sonenstein Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam Support Beyond Prisons Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com. Support our show by making a tax deductible donation here. 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
Lessons from the Garden: Circle Keeping and Restorative Justice feat. Jennifer Viets (00:40:05)
In this episode I sat down with the amazing Jennifer Viets for a conversation about her work as a restorative justice practitioner in Chicago. We begin by talking about Jennifer's experience with being a grandmother including pushing back against societal expectations, how her work shifted from being individually focused to more community oriented, and we explore some of the lessons she's learned from being a circle keeper about being in right-relationship with others. Jennifer Viets(she/her/hers) has worked as a Restorative Justice Practitioner for the past 15 years. She is currently the Alternative Resolution Pathways Specialist in the Office of Student Protections for Chicago Public Schools and for the previous four years worked as a Restorative Practices Coach in the Office of Social Emotional Learning. Her work in the community involves training community Circle Keepers and supporting restorative processes. She has also worked as a multi-disciplinary teaching artist and arts administrator with children and families for the past 30 years using the arts to reach, teach and heal. This work has included designing programming for children and adults in hospitals as well as other institutional settings. She is also a proud mother and grandmother.
For a Livable Future: Building Movements to Stop War & Save the Planet (01:34:17)
Welcome to episode three of "Over the Wall: The Abolitionist Hour with Critical Resistance." For listeners new to Beyond Prisons or our collaboration with Critical Resistance, this is a new, regular series that premiered in September of 2023. Hosted by members of Critical Resistance's The Abolitionist Editorial Collective, "Over the Wall" discusses articles and key interventions made by Critical Resistance's cross-wall, bilingual newspaper, The Abolitionist. This special episode focuses on both issues of the newspaper that Critical Resistance (CR) published in 2024: Issue 41 on ecological justice that printed in June and Issue 42 on anti-war organizing that printed in December. Episode 3 is titled, "For a Livable Future: Building Movements to Stop War and Save the Planet," and Dylan and Molly are back, analyzing the shifting political terrain ahead and what this means for organizing against the prison industrial complex (PIC), against war, warmaking, and militarism, for ecological justice and collective liberation. Together, they discuss key articles within both Issues 41 and 42, which foreground organized resistance to climate change, ecological collapse and crisis, war, genocide and imperialism, alongside policing and imprisonment. This episode includes a few contributing authors of both issues, including Rehana Lerandeau, Eva Dickerson, Judah Schept, Masai Ehehosi (who Issue 42 is dedicated to), Misty Pegram, and Tia Marie. Issue 41 is available for free download on CR's website, along with some early release articles from Issue 42 while the latest issue is still in print circulation. Check out the newspaper, Issue 41 in full and the Issue 42 sneak peeks, as well as all past issues at: criticalresistance.org/abolitionist. The time is always right to support radical political education! Subscribe today to receive your own copy of each issue and support circulation of the paper to imprisoned people. Every single paid subscription on the outside allows CR to send the paper to thousands of people locked up inside prisons, jails, and detention centers to receive this valuable political education resource FOR FREE! Go to: criticalresistance.org/subscribe-to-the-abolitionist to sign up for a sliding scale subscription to the paper, or to sign up an imprisoned loved one to receive a copy of our next issue. Announcements: Support one of CR's closest movement partner organizations–The Freedom Archives by giving a donation this year-end or new-year season. The Freedom Archives is an essential movement history resource based in the Bay Area that is celebrating 25 years since its founding. The Freedom Archives contains over 12,000 hours of audio and video recordings as well as print materials dating primarily from the late-1960s to the mid-90s. These collections chronicle the progressive history of the Bay Area, the United States, and international movements for liberation and social justice more broadly. The Freedom Archives have been an ongoing resource for CR's editorial collective, helping us with research and archiving each of our issues of The Abolitionist. Check out the archives online and donate today: freedomarchives.org. Host Bios: Dylan Brown is a 24-year-old Black organizer and educator based in New York City, and has been a member of Critical Resistance since 2020. As a member of the New York City chapter of Critical Resistance, Dylan is organizing within the Abolish ICE New York/New Jersey Coalition on their current NY Dignity Not Detention campaign, which seeks to build power to end immigrant detention throughout NY State. For the past three years, Dylan has been an editor for The Abolitionist Newspaper. Molly Porzig is a Bay Area based organizer and educator in California with nearly 20 years of organizing experience with Critical Resistance (CR). Molly is currently CR's National Media & Communications Manager, as well as the organization's project manager of The Abolitionist. Contributor Bios / Guest Interviews: Eva Dickerson: Starseed eva (they/themme/baby girl) believes in a freer, greener future and is on a journey alongside their world-expanding friends to get there. The apple of their eye is the city of Atlanta, where they live, work, play, and experiment with the people in the city about how we might practice a more compassionate way of being together. Much of their organizing in the city is concentrated within the Ashview Heights, Vine City, West End, Bush Mountain, and now Gresham Park neighborhoods where their abolitionist ideology comes to life by way of childcare collectives, neighborhood farmers markets, community gardens, popular education campaigns, and earth-based projects. Rehana Lerandeau: Rehana is the National Membership Organizer for Critical Resistance (CR). Based in Atlanta, Georgia, Rehana's roots flow from her hometown of Oakland. A previous member of CR's Oakland chapter, Rehana supports CR members develop abolitionist projects and campaigns across our chapter regions of Oakland, Los Angeles, Portland, New York, and (newly) Kentucky. In Atlanta, Rehana is supporting the campaign to stop Cop City and the campaign to end the Georgia International Law Enforcement Exchange (GILEE). Judah Schept is a Professor in the School of Justice Studies at Eastern Kentucky University. He is the author of Coal, Cages, Crisis: The Rise of the Prison Economy in Central Appalachia (New York University Press, 2022) and Progressive Punishment: Job Loss, Jail Growth, and the Neoliberal Logic of Carceral Expansion (NYU Press, 2015). He is co-editor of The Jail is Everywhere: Fighting the New Geography of Mass Incarceration (Verso Books, 2024). Judah has been active for more than two decades with organizations and campaigns fighting for decarceration and abolition. Masai Ehehosi was a co-founder of Critical Resistance and the organization's longest standing member who passed away April 1, 2024. A Muslim, and Co-Minister of Information for the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika, Masai had over over 50 years of experience organizing for Black liberation in the New Afrikan independence movement. Learn more about Masai's extensive movement contributions in Issue 42 in the Feature Reflection piece, or on CR's website: criticalresistance.org/updates/long-live-masai-ehehosi Misty Pegram: A Filipina organizer with the Education Committee of the International Cancel RIMPAC Campaign and a member of Anakbayan Hawai'i, Misty is currently living in the illegally occupied kingdom of Hawai'i, on the island of O'ahu in Waikiki. Tia Marie: Tia is a Hawaiian youth organizer with Hawai'i Peace & Justice also based on O'ahu, born and raised in the Punahou neighborhood north of Honolulu, near Manoa Falls. Music Credits: Show theme song: "Taste of Freedom" by Steven Beddall Transition sound effects: "I Wish - drum loop" by Artlist Original and "Organic Drum Loops - Chill Calipso Groove" by AMUSIA Follow Critical Resistance on X/Twitter at @C_Resistance or on Instagram @criticalresistance
Lessons from the Garden: We Don't Have to Learn Through Suffering feat. Anya Tanyavutti (01:15:08)
For this episode Kim sat down with long-time educator and organizer, Anya Tanyavutti for a conversation about her contribution titled "Shelter and Shower Toward Abolition: A Reflection on Collective Care, Reproductive Justice, and Educational Justice." Anya Tanyavutti has 25 years of experience working in the fields of education and nonprofit leadership. She earned her Bachelor's in Elementary Education and Masters in Socio-Cultural Studies and Educational Thought, from Western Michigan University. Anya is a trained birthworker and a 3 time alum of the Jade T. Perry Cecilia Weston Spiritual Academy. Her work history has included executive leadership of a birth justice organization, a Community Schools department, and youth development program administration, teaching, and DEIB consultation. Ms. Tanyavutti is currently the Executive Director of Changing Worlds, an Arts nonprofit serving CPS. Lastly, Ms.Tanyavutti is the survivor of a tragic postpartum stroke, predicted only by her race. She is the proud mother of three amazing children who are the realization of their ancestor's dreams and work everyday to build a more decolonized world in big and small ways for and with the collective. This is the fourth installment of our new series, Lessons From The Garden, where Kim will be interviewing contributors to the anthology that she co-edited with Maya Schenwar titled We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition. You can order this volume now from Haymarket or wherever you buy books. Episode Resources & Notes Order We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition, Edited by Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson IN STORES NOV. 19, 2024! Abolition has never been a proposal to simply tear things down. As Alexis Pauline Gumbs asks, "What if abolition is something that grows?" As we struggle to build a liberatory, caring, loving, abundant future, we have much to learn from the work of birthing, raising, caring for, and loving future generations. In We Grow the World Together, abolitionists and organizers Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson bring together a remarkable collection of voices revealing the complex tapestry of ways people are living abolition in their daily lives through parenting and caregiving. Ranging from personal narratives to policy-focused analysis to activist chronicles, these writers highlight how abolition is essential to any kind of parenting justice. HELP SEND THIS BOOK INSIDE: Contribute toward sending copies of We Grow the World Together to folks in prisons and jails by donating at https://haymarketbooks.app.neoncrm.com/forms/we-grow-the-world-together Links You can reach out to Anya through her website: Tandem Works Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Nam-Sonenstein Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam 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
The Kansas City Defender feat. Ryan Sorrell (01:01:32)
Kim sits down with Ryan Sorrell, founder of the Kansas City Defender, for a conversation about what motivated him to start a media organization, his early days as a content creator covering community and cultural events with his childhood friend and collaborator, and the influences of the radical Black press had on shaping his thinking and approach to journalism as a tool for liberation. Ryan is an organizer, media worker and artist. In 2021, he founded The Kansas City Defender, a Black-led abolitionist news platform and power-building organization rooted in the tradition of the radical Black press. Within its first two years, The Defender broke over 20 national stories, reached over 50 million people globally, and garnered attention from major national and international outlets. In addition to information services, The Defender builds power through Mutual Aid, political education, and cultural events like basketball tournaments and open mic nights. Ryan has engaged in public commentary across platforms like DemocracyNow, NPR, and University of the Arts London. Most recently, Ryan co-Founded the Mapping Genocide Project, a subversive digital tool launched less than a month ago that exposes the locations of every major facility tied to the top 5 weapons manufacturers arming the israeli colonial project, aiming to challenge imperialism at its core. The Kansas City Defender Episode Resources & Notes Pre-order We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition, Edited by Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson IN STORES NOV. 19, 2024! Abolition has never been a proposal to simply tear things down. As Alexis Pauline Gumbs asks, "What if abolition is something that grows?" As we struggle to build a liberatory, caring, loving, abundant future, we have much to learn from the work of birthing, raising, caring for, and loving future generations. In We Grow the World Together, abolitionists and organizers Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson bring together a remarkable collection of voices revealing the complex tapestry of ways people are living abolition in their daily lives through parenting and caregiving. Ranging from personal narratives to policy-focused analysis to activist chronicles, these writers highlight how abolition is essential to any kind of parenting justice. Upcoming Events Chicago Book Launch - Monday, November 18, 2024 @ 5:30 p.m. CT Register for the Chicago Book Launch for 'We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition' feat. Maya Schenwar, Nadine Naber, Beth Richie, Jennifer Viets, and Anya Tanyavutti. Virtual Book Launch - Wednesday, November 20, 2024 @ 7:30 p.m. EST Register for the Virtual Book Launch for 'We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition' feat. Maya Schenwar, Kim Wilson, Dorothy Roberts, and Harsha Walia Los Angeles Book Launch - Saturday, November 23, 2024 @ 7:00 p.m. Pacific Register for the LA Book Launch for 'We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition' feat. Kim Wilson, Susana Victoria Parras, Alejandro Villalpando, and Dylan Rodriguez Fundraiser – Haymarket: Books Not Bars: Sending copies of 'We Grow the World Together' into prisons. We feel strongly that this book should be made available for free to people who are incarcerated, so that they can read it, start book groups, and engage in political education around parenting justice. Can you contribute toward sending copies of We Grow the World Together to folks in prisons and jails? Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam 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
Lessons from the Garden: Some Dad Shit feat. Dylan Rodriguez (01:22:29)
Dylan Rodriguez joins Kim for a conversation about respecting his children's autonomous voice, why he named his Fantasy Football team "Uncle Dylan Never Lies," and what that has to do with abolitionist parenting. Dylan shares why he believes that caregivers and parents must take children's questions of 'why?' seriously, and how it is possible to treat why as a radical question that is fundamental to any aspirational abolitionist parenting praxis. They close by talking about the ways that the state deploys technologies of warfare against incarcerated people and their families, and the heightened state of emergency that people in prison experience and how this gets translated into the ways that we engage with and are in relationship with incarcerated people. This is the third installment of our new series, Lessons From The Garden, where Kim will be interviewing contributors to the forthcoming anthology that she co-edited with Maya Schenwar titled We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition. You can pre-order this volume now from Haymarket or wherever you buy books. The name of the series, Lessons From The Garden, is an apt phrase that reflects the metaphor in the book's title, and allows us to consider many issues related to caregiving, parenting, and abolition. As Lydia Pelot-Hobbs once said "our citation politics matter," and in that spirit we want to credit Susie Parras for the series title. Lessons From The Garden is an opportunity to engage in further conversation with the many brilliant organizers, writers, and thinkers about their work, and how they practice abolitionist parenting and caregiving in their daily lives. Additionally, we will draw on some of the themes that they wrote about in the book in order to help us deepen our understanding of caregiving - broadly configured - and what it means to live collectively in a world that is designed to keep us isolated from each other. Dylan Rodríguez is a parent, teacher, scholar, organizer and collaborator who holds a job as a Distinguished Professor at the University of California-Riverside, where he has worked since 2001. He is a faculty member in the recently created Department of Black Study as well as the Department of Media and Cultural Studies. Since the late-1990s, Dylan has participated as a founding member of organizations like Critical Resistance, Abolition Collective, Critical Ethnic Studies Association, Cops Off Campus, Scholars for Social Justice, and the UCR Department of Black Study, among others. He is the author of three books, most recently White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logic of Racial Genocide (Fordham University Press, 2021), which won the 2022 Frantz Fanon Book Award from the Caribbean Philosophical Association. Dylan believes in the right—in fact, the obligation—of occupied, colonized, and incarcerated peoples to fight for their liberation against external oppressors as well as internal reactionaries, and the parallel responsibility of those who profess solidarity to take all necessary measures to protect, defend, and advance liberation struggle. Episode Resources & Notes Pre-order We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition, Edited by Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson IN STORES NOV. 19, 2024! Abolition has never been a proposal to simply tear things down. As Alexis Pauline Gumbs asks, "What if abolition is something that grows?" As we struggle to build a liberatory, caring, loving, abundant future, we have much to learn from the work of birthing, raising, caring for, and loving future generations. In We Grow the World Together, abolitionists and organizers Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson bring together a remarkable collection of voices revealing the complex tapestry of ways people are living abolition in their daily lives through parenting and caregiving. Ranging from personal narratives to policy-focused analysis to activist chronicles, these writers highlight how abolition is essential to any kind of parenting justice. HELP SEND THIS BOOK INSIDE: Contribute toward sending copies of We Grow the World Together to folks in prisons and jails by donating at https://haymarketbooks.app.neoncrm.com/forms/we-grow-the-world-together Books by Dylan Rodriguez White Reconstruction and the Logics of Genocide Suspended Apocalypse: White Supremacy, Genocide, and the Filipino Condition Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime Recommended playlist Revolution - Nina Simone Poem to Take Back the Night - June Jordan Fuck these Fuckin Fascists - The Muslims We Shall Not be Moved - Mavis Staples A Day Will Come - Desiree Dawson, Mona Haydar None of Us Are Free - Solomon Burke Prison Poem - Nikki Giovanni Seize the Time - Elaine Brown Oh Freedom - Courtney Bryan Love, The Time is Now - Bobby Womack Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Nam-Sonenstein Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam 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
Free the Mississippi Five feat. Garrett Felber (00:33:22)
Garrett Felber joins Kim for a conversation about the campaign to Free the Mississippi Five. The #MS5 are five women in Mississippi sentenced to life with the possibility of parole in the 1980s and 1990s. They have been incarcerated over 175 years and denied parole 47 times. Lisa Crevitt, Anita Krecic, Loretta Pierre, Linda Ross, and Evelyn Smith, collectively known as the Mississippi Five, are now between 59 and 82 years old. Despite their achievements, personal growth, the loss of loved ones outside, and even recantations of key witnesses, they continue to be denied parole irrespective of their actions. It is time to #FreetheFive! Garrett Felber (he/they) is an educator, organizer, and writer. They organize with Study and Struggle and the committee to Free the Mississippi Five, are the author of the forthcoming biography, A Continuous Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Martin Sostre (AK Press, 2025), and recently founded the Free Society People's Library, a radical mobile library in Portland, Oregon. Episode Resources & Notes Study and Struggle MS5 Why the "Mississippi Five" Deserve Parole After 40 Years in Prison Prisons Grow in Mississippi as State Officials Cut Parole Resources for Criminalized Survivors Survived and Punished Love and Protect Relevant Episodes Taylar Nuevelle on Knitting in Prison Pen Pals Mothering Under Surveillance feat. Maya Schenwar You can learn more about Lisa, Anita, Loretta, Linda, and Evelyn on the Study and Struggle website: https://www.studyandstruggle.com/ms5 There are easy ways to support the Mississippi Five! 1) Sign the petition. Add your name to the call to demand the immediate release of the Mississippi Five through clemency. The Committee to Free the Mississippi Five is pursuing all avenues to bring them home, including gubernatorial clemency. Your signature can bring them one step closer to home. 2) Contribute to the solidarity fund to help fight for the Mississippi Five's release and support broader efforts to build grassroots power in Mississippi. The Committee is raising funds to cover commissary, potential legal fees, and transition support when the Five come home. Your donation makes their work possible. 3) Writing letters to incarcerated people is one of the best ways to let them know you care. Write the Five using the addresses linked to in the show notes. 4) Spread the word: Share their story and this toolkit on social media. The more people know, the stronger the movement to free them becomes. Credits Hosted by Kim Wilson Edited by Brian Nam-Sonenstein Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam-Sonenstein 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
Lessons From The Garden: Happiness Is Not A Good Goal feat. Sarah Tyson (01:10:02)
Sarah Tyson joins Kim for a spirited conversation about her suspicions about happiness and the intellectual underpinnings that inform why happiness is not a worthy goal in general, but specifically for her children. Sarah and Kim talk about how the work of Sarah Ahmed helps us to understand why the archetype of the killjoy is an important abolitionist parenting framework, and why we can't separate the material conditions under which we are forced to exist from our parenting practice. This is the second installment of our new series, Lessons From The Garden, where Kim will be interviewing contributors to the forthcoming anthology that she co-edited with Maya Schenwar titled We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition. You can pre-order this volume now from Haymarket or wherever you buy books. The name of the series, Lessons From The Garden, is an apt phrase that reflects the metaphor in the book's title, and allows us to consider many issues related to caregiving, parenting, and abolition. As Lydia Pelot-Hobbs once said "our citation politics matter," and in that spirit we want to credit Susie Parras for the series title. Lessons From The Garden is an opportunity to engage in further conversation with the many brilliant organizers, writers, and thinkers about their work, and how they practice abolitionist parenting and caregiving in their daily lives. Additionally, we will draw on some of the themes that they wrote about in the book in order to help us deepen our understanding of caregiving - broadly configured - and what it means to live collectively in a world that is designed to keep us isolated from each other. Sarah Tyson is Associate Professor of Philosophy, Affiliated Faculty in Ethnic Studies, Associated Faculty of Women and Gender Studies, and chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of Colorado Denver, which is on Ute, Arapaho, and Cheyenne land. 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 edited with Joshua Hall Philosophy Imprisoned: The Love of Wisdom in the Age of Mass Incarceration (Lexington, 2014) and wrote Where Are the Women? Why Expanding the Archive Makes Philosophy Better (Columbia University Press, 2018). She is cohost (with Robert Talisse, Carrie Figdor, and Malcolm Keating) of New Books in Philosophy, a podcast channel with the New Books Network. She has organized against human caging in Denver and Nashville, including as a member of the REACH Coalition. Episode Resources & Notes Pre-order We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition, Edited by Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson IN STORES NOV. 19, 2024! Abolition has never been a proposal to simply tear things down. As Alexis Pauline Gumbs asks, "What if abolition is something that grows?" As we struggle to build a liberatory, caring, loving, abundant future, we have much to learn from the work of birthing, raising, caring for, and loving future generations. In We Grow the World Together, abolitionists and organizers Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson bring together a remarkable collection of voices revealing the complex tapestry of ways people are living abolition in their daily lives through parenting and caregiving. Ranging from personal narratives to policy-focused analysis to activist chronicles, these writers highlight how abolition is essential to any kind of parenting justice. HELP SEND THIS BOOK INSIDE: Contribute toward sending copies of We Grow the World Together to folks in prisons and jails by donating at https://haymarketbooks.app.neoncrm.com/forms/we-grow-the-world-together Recommended reading Feminist Killjoy by Sarah Ahmed Happy Objects by Sarah Amed The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism in Sister Outsider by Audre Lorde Teaching to Transgress: Teaching as a Practice of Freedom by bell hooks The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir Recommended playlist Life Doesn't Frighten Me - Maya Angelou Save The Children - Gil Scott Heron Grandma's Hands - Bill Withers Freedom in the Air - Bernice Johnson Reagon Black Butterfly - The Sounds of Blackness A Change is Gonna Come - Otis Redding Here Comes The Sun - Nina Simone A Needed/Poem for my Salvation - Sonia Sanchez Cancion de Proteccion - Little Whale This Little Light of Mine - Sam Cooke O-o-h Child - The Five Stairstep Lullaby - Arooj Aftab Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Nam-Sonenstein Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam 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
Lessons From The Garden: Practicing Vulnerability feat. Susana Victoria Parras & Alejandro Villalpando (01:17:08)
Susana Victoria Parras & Alejandro Villalpando join Kim to discuss how, through a continued practice of communal study, they are able to renew their commitment to each other, their child, and to their community in ways that are generative and don't engage in disposability politics or pathologizing their elders and ancestors. This wonderful episode is the first installment of our new series, Lessons From The Garden, where Kim will be interviewing contributors to the forthcoming anthology that she co-edited with Maya Schenwar titled We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition. You can pre-order this volume now from Haymarket or wherever you buy books. Susie and Alex share how their parents' forced displacement due to political and social unrest provides the context for understanding the legacy of inherited trauma. They discuss grief, loss, accountability, and care. Susie shares an intimate view into the love ethic that she and Alex share, and Alex reminds us that this shit is hard, and that in spite of that, we have to keep trying. We've had the opportunity to talk with so many incredible people over the years on Beyond Prisons, and we continue to be awed and unsettled. Alex often says that he is not interested in inspiring folx, but wants them to feel unsettled. We wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment because inspiration is fleeting, and requires no change in thought or behavior, but when people feel unsettled they are more likely to examine why they are, and to engage in activity to address the issue/issues that have unsettled them. The name of the series, Lessons From The Garden, is an apt phrase that reflects the metaphor in the book's title, and allows us to consider many issues related to caregiving, parenting, and abolition. As Lydia Pelot-Hobbs once said "our citation politics matter," and in that spirit we want to credit Susie Parras for the series title. Lessons From The Garden is an opportunity to engage in further conversation with the many brilliant organizers, writers, and thinkers about their work, and how they practice abolitionist parenting and caregiving in their daily lives. Additionally, we will draw on some of the themes that they wrote about in the book in order to help us deepen our understanding of caregiving - broadly configured - and what it means to live collectively in a world that is designed to keep us isolated from each other. Susana Victoria Parras is the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants, mother, friend, partner, and a mental health therapist of color committed to generating healing, justice, and care through noncarceral practices. Before she found ethnic studies, social justice, abolition, and transformative justice, she found safety and hope in places and relationships that were imperfect, spacious, loving, and curious. Her political homes include family of origin, friends, books, and her imagination. She is accountable to ancestors, herself, her Baby Sol, her partner, teachers, and all those who cultivate her process of accountable care and growth. Susana specializes in the intersectional integration of critical race and somatic practices within community and clinical settings. She is the founder of Heal Together and cocreator of Heal Together's Anti Carceral Care Collective and currently organizes with CAT 911 (Community Alternatives To/Community Action Teams 911) in South Central, Los Angeles, where she also lives, loves, and works. Susana dedicates her life to healing as a central component for justice, resistance, and activism. Alejandro Villalpando is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Pan-African Studies and the Latin American Studies Program at Cal State LA. He earned his PhD in Critical Ethnic Studies from UC Riverside and an MA from Latin American Studies at Cal State LA. His work lies at the intersection of Black, Central American, and Critical Ethnic Studies. His coauthored chapter titled "The Racialization of Central Americans in the United States" can be found in the edited volume Precarity and Belonging (Rutgers University Press, 2021). He was also a cofounder, co-organizer, and cofacilitator for a yearlong political education project titled the Abolition Open School. Villalpando is indelibly shaped and inspired to be part of and contribute to the crafting of a world rooted in justice and dignity for all by his young child and his partner, who remain the bedrocks of his existence. Episode Resources & Notes Pre-order We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition, Edited by Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson IN STORES NOV. 19, 2024! Abolition has never been a proposal to simply tear things down. As Alexis Pauline Gumbs asks, "What if abolition is something that grows?" As we struggle to build a liberatory, caring, loving, abundant future, we have much to learn from the work of birthing, raising, caring for, and loving future generations. In We Grow the World Together, abolitionists and organizers Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson bring together a remarkable collection of voices revealing the complex tapestry of ways people are living abolition in their daily lives through parenting and caregiving. Ranging from personal narratives to policy-focused analysis to activist chronicles, these writers highlight how abolition is essential to any kind of parenting justice. HELP SEND THIS BOOK INSIDE: Contribute toward sending copies of We Grow the World Together to folks in prisons and jails by donating at https://haymarketbooks.app.neoncrm.com/forms/we-grow-the-world-together Playlist for our conversation with Susie and Alex Butterfly Mornings - a playlist inspired by my conversation with Susie and Alex that speaks to grief, loss, care, love and not letting go even when things are shit. Sunrise - Norah Jones Colors - Black Pumas Bloom - Bonus Track - The Paper Kites Butterfly Mornings - Hope Sandoval & The Warm Intentions How Can You Mend a Broken Heart - Al Green Rises the moon - Liana Flores Soft on Me - Lily Hayes Come out and play - Billie Eilish Canción Pequeña - Perotá Chingó Someone to Stay - Vancouver Sleep Clinic Spell - Dora Jar I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To be Free - Nina Simone Look Up - Joy Oladokun Would You Mind Please Pulling Me - Tasha, Gregory Uhlmann Morning Sun - Melody Gardot Take it Slow -Ayla Nereo I Am Surrounded by Love - Beautiful Chorus I am Light - India Arie Making All Things New - Aaron Espe There is No Failure - Laurent Ferlet Stand by Me - Live at the Late Show - Tracy Chapman For All You Give - The Paper Kites, Lucy Rose Darling - Beautiful Chorus Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Nam-Sonenstein Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam 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
Introducing: Lessons From The Garden (00:06:06)
Beyond Prisons is excited to announce the launch of a special new series titled 'Lessons from the Garden,' where Kim Wilson will be interviewing contributors to the forthcoming anthology that she co-edited with Maya Schenwar, We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition. We Grow The World Together will be out on November 19, 2024 from Haymarket Books, and is now available for pre-order wherever you buy books. The series is an opportunity to engage in further conversation with brilliant organizers, writers, and thinkers about their work, and how they practice abolitionist parenting and caregiving in their daily lives. Additionally, we will draw on some of the themes that they wrote about in the book to help us deepen our understanding of caregiving - broadly configured - and what it means to live collectively in a world that is designed to keep us isolated from each other. In the first episode, Kim talks with Susana Victoria Parras and Alejandro Villalpando — two of the most generous, kind, and smartest people that she's had the honor of being in community with — about how their parents' forced displacement due to political and social unrest provides the context for understanding the legacy of inherited trauma. Susie and Alex also share how through a continued practice of communal study they are able to renew their commitment to each other, their child, and to their community in ways that are generative and don't engage in disposability politics or pathologizing their elders and ancestors. As part of their conversation, they talked about grief, loss, accountability, and care. Susie shares an intimate view into the love ethic that she and Alex share, and Alex reminds us that this shit is hard, and that in spite of that, we have to keep trying. At Beyond Prisons, we've had the opportunity to talk with so many incredible people over the years, and we continue to be awed and unsettled. Alex often says that he is not interested in inspiring folx, but wants them to feel unsettled. We wholeheartedly agree with this sentiment because inspiration is fleeting, and requires no change in thought or behavior, but when people feel unsettled they are more likely to examine why they are, and to engage in activity to address the issue/issues that have unsettled them. We hope that this series, and the book, leave people unsettled in the best way possible. As you will learn throughout this series, the contributors offer us glimpses into how they engage with the people in their lives and in their communities to organize against injustices, genocide, prisons, isolation, death, and more. At the core of these offerings is a deep love for humanity, which as adrienne maree brown says "love is what makes surviving worth it." The name of the series 'Lessons from the Garden' is an apt phrase that reflects the metaphor in the book's title, and allows us to consider many issues related to caregiving, parenting, and abolition. As Lydia Pelot-Hobbs once said "our citation politics matter," and in that spirit we want to credit Susie Parras for the series title. What listeners can expect in the coming months, is a resource library that will include as many contributors to 'We Grow the World Together' as we can schedule. In thinking about what we wanted to do with this series, we decided that we want it to function as a political education tool and supplement to the book. With so many incredible contributors to this anthology, we imagine that our conversations will be insightful, lively, and full of wisdom and love. We are looking forward to seeing what unfolds. Episode Resources & Notes COMING NOV. 19, 2024! Pre-order We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition, Edited by Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson Abolition has never been a proposal to simply tear things down. As Alexis Pauline Gumbs asks, "What if abolition is something that grows?" As we struggle to build a liberatory, caring, loving, abundant future, we have much to learn from the work of birthing, raising, caring for, and loving future generations. In We Grow the World Together, abolitionists and organizers Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson bring together a remarkable collection of voices revealing the complex tapestry of ways people are living abolition in their daily lives through parenting and caregiving. Ranging from personal narratives to policy-focused analysis to activist chronicles, these writers highlight how abolition is essential to any kind of parenting justice. HELP SEND THIS BOOK INSIDE: Contribute toward sending copies of We Grow the World Together to folks in prisons and jails by donating at https://haymarketbooks.app.neoncrm.com/forms/we-grow-the-world-together Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Nam-Sonenstein Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam 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
Making Movement Media feat. Chuck Modiano (01:03:09)
Kim is joined by long-time independent journalist Chuck Modiano for a conversation about movement media making, the importance of media literacy, and the intersection of sports and politics. Kim and Chuck begin by talking about what motivated him to start covering protests. He opens up about how he was impacted by the killing of Trayvon Martin, and how that tragedy reignited athlete activism in the United States. Chuck also offers us a historical perspective on the significance of sports activism dating back to the 1920s and through to today. They discuss how corporate media protects privilege, power, and profits before diving into a discussion on media literacy. The conversation wraps with a discussion on the myth of objectivity in the media, and why the work that we do as movement media makers rejects the tendency to give credence to both-sidesism. Chuck shares how the work of Ida B. Wells has shaped and informed his approach to making media, and the two touch on how liberatory and emancipatory journalism is rooted in people power. Episode Resources & Notes COMING NOV. 19, 2024! Pre-order We Grow the World Together: Parenting Toward Abolition, Edited by Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson Abolition has never been a proposal to simply tear things down. As Alexis Pauline Gumbs asks, "What if abolition is something that grows?" As we struggle to build a liberatory, caring, loving, abundant future, we have much to learn from the work of birthing, raising, caring for, and loving future generations. In We Grow the World Together, abolitionists and organizers Maya Schenwar and Kim Wilson bring together a remarkable collection of voices revealing the complex tapestry of ways people are living abolition in their daily lives through parenting and caregiving. Ranging from personal narratives to policy-focused analysis to activist chronicles, these writers highlight how abolition is essential to any kind of parenting justice. HELP SEND THIS BOOK INSIDE: Contribute toward sending copies of We Grow the World Together to folks in prisons and jails by donating at https://haymarketbooks.app.neoncrm.com/forms/we-grow-the-world-together Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Nam-Sonenstein Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam 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
Snuffing Out Revolution: Control Units & Resistance (01:19:53)
Welcome to episode two of "Over the Wall: The Abolitionist Hour with Critical Resistance." For listeners new to Beyond Prisons or our collaboration with Critical Resistance, this is a new, regular series that premiered in September of 2023. Hosted by members of Critical Resistance's The Abolitionist Editorial Collective, "Over the Wall" discusses articles and key interventions made by Critical Resistance's cross-wall, bilingual newspaper, The Abolitionist. This episode—dedicated to Critical Resistance co-founder and long-standing member Masai Ehehosi—focuses on Issue 40 of The Abolitionist and is titled, "Snuffing Out Revolution: Control Units & Resistance." Dylan and Molly are back, and analyze the history, purpose, and proliferation of control units throughout the US and beyond. Together, they discuss key articles within the issue, which foreground organized resistance to control units while emphasizing the importance of rejecting cheap liberal reforms that dilute the long-standing abolitionist demand to abolish control units. This episode includes special guest Sahar Francis of Addameer, along with Issue 40 contributing authors Masai Ehehosi, Kenjuan Congo, and Stevie Wilson. On April 1 2024, as we were circulating this issue online, we received heartbreaking news that Masai suddenly passed away. With over 50 years of working for Black liberation, including decades of resisting control units and torture of imprisoned people, Masai was a pillar of Critical Resistance (CR) and had a profound presence in each of the organizations he was a part of. CR is releasing a tribute statement for Masai on April 8, and will continue to uplift his legacy for weeks, months, and years to come. Check for the post at: criticalresistance.org/updates/ to learn more about Masai's movement contributions. Support Elder Sitawa Jamaa! As mentioned in the episode, please give what you can to support movement elder Sitawa Jamaa! Sitawa spent over 40 years in prison, and due to severe strokes while imprisoned, he requires 24/7 nursing care to survive. Please go to bit.ly/sitawa-jamaa to donate today. Resource—Surviving Solitary CR's newest resource called "Surviving Solitary," which includes a series of interviews with solitary survivors, can be requested by prisoners by writing to our national office at: Critical Resistance, PO Box 22780, Oakland CA 94609. If you're outside of a cage and would like to check it out for your work supporting imprisoned people, or share with your loved ones who are locked up, you will be able to download the resource for free from our website next month (in April) at criticalresistance.org/resources. Check out Issue 40 and Subscribe to The Abolitionist Newspaper! The time is always right to support radical political education! You can read two early-release articles from Issue 40 on CR's website: an interview with Susan Rosenberg the fight to close a control unit for radical women, Lexington High Security Unit, and an article on the historic prisoner-led hunger strikes against solitary confinement in California in 2011 and 2013. Every single paid subscription on the outside allows CR to send the paper to thousands of people locked up inside prisons, jails, and detention centers to receive this valuable political education resource FOR FREE! Go to: criticalresistance.org/subscribe-to-the-abolitionist-newspaper/ to sign up for a sliding scale subscription to the paper, or to sign up an imprisoned loved one to receive a copy of our next issue. Host Bios: Dylan Brown is a 24 year old Black organizer and educator based in New York City, and has been a member of Critical Resistance since 2020. As a member of the New York City chapter of Critical Resistance, Dylan is organizing within the Abolish ICE New York/New Jersey Coalition on their current NY Dignity Not Detention campaign, which seeks to build power to end immigrant detention throughout NY State. For the past three years, Dylan has been an editor for The Abolitionist Newspaper. Molly Porzig is a Bay Area based organizer and educator in California with nearly 20 years of organizing experience with Critical Resistance (CR). Molly is currently CR's National Media & Communications Manager, as well as the organization's project manager of The Abolitionist. Follow Critical Resistance on X/Twitter at @C_Resistance or on Instagram @criticalresistance Music Credits: Show theme song: "Taste of Freedom" by Steven Beddall Transition sound effect: "I Wish - drum loop" by Artlist Original Special thanks to Molly's former high school students and their protesting of policing in Oakland for the clip of them chanting a quote from Assata Shakur: "It is our duty to fight for our freedom; it is our duty to win; we must love and support each other; we have nothing to lose but our chains!"
Certain Days (00:52:35)
Josh Davidson and Leslie James Pickering from the Certain Days collective join the show to talk about 2024's Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners calendar and the work of their collective. We previously spoke with Josh and other folks from the collective back in 2020 and we encourage you to go listen to that episode if you haven't heard it yet. Josh and Leslie spoke to us about the works included in the 2024 calendar, how they've navigated increasingly oppressive mail policies to distribute it, Josh's upcoming book with political prisoner Eric King, the impact that focusing their work around solidarity with political prisoners has had on their political analysis and organizing, and a lot more. The Certain Days Calendar is a joint fundraising and educational project between outside organizers in Montreal, New York, and Baltimore, and current and former political prisoners, including currently imprisoned Xinachtli (s/n Alvaro Luna Hernandez) in Texas. They welcomed founding members Herman Bell and Robert Seth Hayes (Rest in Power) home from prison in 2018, and David Gilbert in 2021, each of whom spent over forty years behind bars. All of the current members of the outside collective are grounded in day-to-day organizing work other than the calendar, on issues ranging from legal aid to community media, radical education to prisoner solidarity. And they work from an anti-imperialist, anti-racist, anti-capitalist, feminist, queer- and trans-liberationist position. All proceeds from the calendar go to abolitionist organizations working for a better world. We highly encourage you to pick up a few copies of the calendar if you haven't already. Josh Davidson is an abolitionist who is involved in numerous projects, including the Certain Days: Freedom for Political Prisoners calendar collective and the Children's Art Project with political prisoner Oso Blanco. Josh also works in communications with the Zinn Education Project, which promotes the teaching of radical people's history in classrooms and provides free lessons and resources for educators. Along with political prisoner Eric King, Josh co-edited the anthology Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners (AK Press, 2023). He lives in Eugene, Oregon. Leslie James Pickering is a member of the Certain Days collective. He is a co-owner of Burning Books and was spokesperson for the Earth Liberation Front Press Office Episode Resources & Notes Buy the Certain Days calendar: CertainDays.org (US) Burning Books (US) Left Wing Books (Canada) Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam 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 first episode of our new series titled "Over the Wall: The Abolitionist Hour with Critical Resistance." This will be a regular series on Beyond Prisons, hosted by members of Critical Resistance's The Abolitionist Editorial Collective, in which they will discuss articles and key interventions made by Critical Resistance's cross-wall, bilingual newspaper, The Abolitionist. The first episode of this series focuses on Issue 39 of The Abolitionist and is titled, "Beyond Abortion: Reproductive Justice and Abolitionist Struggle." This episode is hosted by Molly Porzig and Dylan Brown, and discusses why reproductive justice is an essential field of struggle for prison industrial complex (PIC) abolition. Together, they analyze the political conditions shaping the struggle for PIC abolition and reproductive justice in this moment, discuss core points made by various articles in the issue, and weave in follow-up interviews with contributors from the latest issue of the newspaper—including Ash Williams, Moonlight Pulido, Targol Mesbah, and imprisoned columnist for The Abolitionist, Stevie Wilson. To learn more, make sure to check out Critical Resistance's upcoming webinar this Thursday, September 21, "Our Bodies, Our Freedom: Abolishing the Prison Industrial Complex Post-Roe," and register at bit.ly/OurBodies9-21 Dylan Brown is a 24 year old Black organizer and educator based in New York City, and has been a member of Critical Resistance since 2020. As a member of the New York City chapter of Critical Resistance, Dylan is organizing within the Abolish ICE New York/New Jersey Coalition on their current NY Dignity Not Detention campaign, which seeks to build power to end immigrant detention throughout NY State. For the past three years, Dylan has been an editor for The Abolitionist Newspaper. Molly Porzig is a Bay Area based organizer and educator in California with nearly 20 years of organizing experience with Critical Resistance (CR). Molly first became a member of CR in 2006 as a transitional-aged youth with experience in the juvenile system and systems-impacted youth-based, queer, and women-led anti-violence organizations. On behalf of CR, Molly has organized in Stop the Injunctions Coalition against the use of gang injunctions, Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity coalition against solitary confinement, No New SF Jail coalition to close a county jail in downtown San Francisco, Plan for a Safer Oakland in partnership with All of Us or None, the CR 10th Anniversary Conference organizing committee, the StoryTelling and Organizing Project with Creative Interventions, and more. In 2020, Molly joined CR's national staff as CR's National Media & Communications Manager, as well as the organization's project manager of its cross-wall bilingual newspaper, The Abolitionist. Follow Critical Resistance on Twitter at @C_Resistance Music Credits Taste of Freedom by Steven Beddall I Wish - drum loop by Artlist Original Special thanks to Freedom Archives for the clip of Assata Shakur Support Beyond Prisons Beyond Prisons is created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein 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
Penitence for the privileged (01:39:06)
CONTENT WARNING: This episode contains discussions of sexual violence. Kim and Brian discuss Mark E. Kann's "Penitence for the Privileged: Manhood, Race, and Penitentiaries in Early America." This essay is a chapter in the book Prison Masculinities, edited by Don Sabo, Terry A. Kupers, and Willie London. Our wide-ranging conversation examines the role of prisons in early America as a tool for sorting who was and was not American, which was understood exclusively as a white male citizen. We also discuss manhood, militarism, and self-discipline in the service of "liberty," the logic behind protecting children from "criminals," and a lot more. Episode Resources & Notes Prison Masculinities, edited by Don Sabo, Terry A. Kupers, and Willie London. Support Beyond Prisons Beyond Prisons is created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein 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
Prison Librarians (01:09:07)
For this episode, Kim sat down with Jeanie Austin, a Bay Area librarian and academic who focuses on library services for incarcerated people, and Sarah ball, a New York City public librarian working inside jails and prisons providing access to books and information for criminalized and incarcerated people and their families. We explore the multifaceted role of prison libraries, and the challenges faced by prison librarians in providing access to information and literature within the confines of the correctional system. We delve into the delicate balance between offering valuable services to incarcerated individuals while navigating the authority and constraints imposed by prison officials. Join us as we investigate how prison librarians promote access to information, address potential challenges rooted in the philosophy of rehabilitation, and challenge the dynamic shaped by whiteness, information, and power within prison library systems. We also delve into the ways in which prison censorship specifically targets LGBTQIA plus individuals and discuss strategies for dismantling biases and inequities. Additionally, we examine the historical and political contexts that have influenced the evolution of prison libraries, the impact of political ideologies and policies and the role of education and rehabilitation within prisons. For enlightening discussions, we uncover the transformative potential prison library programs, identify the challenges they face, and explore innovative approaches and best practices to enhance their effectiveness. Lastly, we explore future perspectives on prison libraries, emerging trends, the influence of technology, and the importance of raising public awareness and support for these vital programs. This episode also incorporates insights from Dr. Austin's book, "Library Services and Incarceration: Recognizing Barriers, Strengthening Access," which offers a comprehensive exploration of the topic. We examine key chapters, including the historical context, the role of information in incarceration, models of direct service, reentry support and programming, and strategies for building institutional support. Furthermore, we discussed several thought provoking articles that shed light on the impact of prison censorship, content-based bands in the denial of access to books, as well as the crucial role of community organizations and library and information science professionals in addressing these issues and fostering a more equitable information environment within prisons. Get ready to expand your understanding of prison libraries, their significance within the criminal punishment system, and their potential to empower and transform lives. Jeanie Austin (they/them) is a Bay Area librarian and academic who focuses on library services for incarcerated people. More about Jeanie is available at https://jeanieaustin.com/about/. Sarah Ball (she/her) is a NYC public librarian working inside jails and prisons, providing access to books and information for criminalized and incarcerated people and their families, with a priority on patron privacy and autonomy. Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam 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
Six Years of Beyond Prisons (Epilogue) (00:22:57)
In this follow-up to our six-year anniversary episode, Kim shares some of what she has been going through in recent years. We recommend you listen to that previous episode before listening to this one. You can support Kim on Cash App at https://cash.app/$BeyondPrisons Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam 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
Six Years of Beyond Prisons (01:08:37)
April marks 6 years of Beyond Prisons! Thank you so much to everyone who has listened to the show and supported us over the years. In this episode, Kim and Brian reflect on their work and their lives over the past several years. They discuss everything from their favorite episodes to how they work together, how doing the podcast influenced their lives, and what has brought them joy outside of the show. Episode Resources & Notes Check out Kim's art at her website: https://www.kimwilsonart.net/ You can see Victoria's bakery at https://siblings.me/ and on Instagram Our recent audiobook recommendations: Kim When Life Gives You Mangos by Kereen Getten Furia by Yamile Saied Mendez High Spirits by Camille Gomera-Tavarez Clap When You Land by Elizabeth Acevedo Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James The Lesson by Cadwell Turnbull Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi Wild Seed by Octavia Butler Brian Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris The Many-Headed Hydra by Peter Linebaugh Dancing in the Streets by Barbara Ehrenreich The Dawning of the Apocalypse by Gerald Horne Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam 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
CI Toolkit: Perspectives On Interventions feat. Mimi Kim & Shira Hassan (00:59:42)
This is the third episode in our Creative Interventions series, where we explore this fantastic and practical toolkit for stopping interpersonal violence and speak with some of the people whose organizing efforts directly informed it. We speak with Mimi Kim and Shira Hassan once again, this time with reflections, observations, and other notes for people who are considering interventions. If you've got the toolkit at home, which you can purchase from AK press or access for free at creative-interventions.org, we're touching on some of the topics in Section 2.3, which is entitled, "Violence Intervention: Some Important Lessons" and begins on page 93 of the toolkit. There's a lot more in this section than what we get to in the episode, so we highly suggest checking it out. In this conversation, Shira and Mimi answer some broad questions about common challenges with interventions. What can happen when people are asked to take accountability? What are the pro's and con's of an intervention involving people you know or may be close to? How long should an intervention last, or should it be ongoing? And a lot more. The release of this episode coincides with the publication of a new workbook companion for the CI Toolkit which features useful and practical worksheets and tools. The CI workbook was just released through AK Press. A google doc version of the workbook which you can use to adapt to your own situation of harm is available for free at creative-interventions.org. You can find links to further resources in the episode notes, including Shira's amazing new anthology, Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction, which is now available from Haymarket Books. We highly recommend you check that out and support Shira's work however you can. Shira Hassan has trained and spoken nationally on the sex trade, harm reduction, self-injury, healing justice and transformative justice. Currently working as a fellow at Interrupting Criminalization, Shira runs The Help Desk . The Help Desk offers supportive thought partnership to individuals and groups working to interrupt crises and violence without using the police. Along with Mariame Kaba, she is the co-author of Fumbling Towards Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability Facilitators and the author of Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction. 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. Her recent publications include 2020's "The Carceral Creep" and 2018's "From Carceral Feminism to Transformative Justice". She is currently working on The CHAT Project, a non-law enforcement restorative justice project addressing domestic and sexual violence in Contra Costa County, California. Mimi and Shira are also partnering on a re-boot of the StoryTelling & Organizing Project or STOP featuring stories of everyday people creatively and collectively ending violence. Stay tuned. Alright, that's it for now. You can find links to the CI website and toolkit as well as other resources in the episode notes. Thanks for listening and here's our conversation. Episode Resources & Notes Shira Hassan: Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction. Interrupting Criminalization - The Help Desk Fumbling Towards Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability Facilitators Mimi Kim: Creative Interventions Website Creative Interventions Toolkit (Physical copy) Creative Interventions Toolkit (Free PDF) Creative Interventions Toolkit in Spanish (Free PDF) Creative Interventions Workbook (Physical copy) Creative Interventions Workbook (Google Doc) The CHAT Project StoryTelling & Organizing Project (STOP) Follow CI on Facebook Follow CI on IG Follow CI on Twitter Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Nam-Sonenstein Edited by Brian Nam-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
Close California Prisons feat. Brian Kaneda & Woods Ervin (00:50:23)
Brian Kaneda and Woods Ervin join the show to tell us about the Close California Prisons Campaign. This campaign is led by the statewide coalition known as Californians United For A Responsible Budget (CURB), pressuring Governor Gavin Newsom and the California Department of Correction to close prisons across the state. Last year, CURB released The People's Plan for Prison Closures, which they describe as "a visionary report that outlines the failures of California's bloated carceral system, and offers bold, community-centered solutions for our jail problem." After setting the stage and explaining a bit about the current state of incarceration in California, Brian and Woods tell us about the campaign's goal to close 10 prisons by 2025 and release 50,000 people or 50% of the population—demands which they say represent the floor. We discuss the criteria the campaign developed for selecting which 10 prisons to close first, the work of their partners in the coalition, the lack of a plan put forth by state authorities, the plan's reliance on a Just Transition framework, and a lot more. This episode was recorded before news broke in early September that a judge ruled against the town of Susanville in a lawsuit attempting to stop the closure of the California Correctional Center or CCC. According to a press release [PDF] published by CURB, the judge's ruling marked "the end of the town's year-long fight to keep CCC––a six-decade-old facility requiring $503 million in repairs––open indefinitely." Brian Kaneda is the Deputy Director for Californians United For A Responsible Budget (CURB). He is a founding chapter member of California Coalition for Women Prisoners (CCWP) Los Angeles and has spent the past decade monitoring and challenging the incarceration crisis and advocating for the rights of incarcerated people. 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 a current Co-Director at Critical Resistance focusing on Communications. Episode Resources & Notes Follow CURB on Twitter (@curbprisons) and instagram (@curbprisons) CURB's Prison Closure Campaign The People's Plan for Prison Closures (PDF) Release: Judge Rules Prison Closure Must Move Forward (PDF) Petition: Demand Governor Newsom Close at least 8 More Prisons by 2025! CA Organizations: Join the coalition Donate to CURB 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
CI Toolkit: What Does Interpersonal Violence Look Like? feat. Mimi Kim & Shira Hassan (00:35:02)
This is the second episode in our Creative Interventions series, where we explore this fantastic and practical toolkit for stopping interpersonal violence and speak with some of the people whose organizing efforts directly informed it. We speak with Mimi and Shira Hassan about the basics of interpersonal violence as outlined in the Creative Interventions Toolkit. If you've got the toolkit at home, which you can purchase from AK press or access for free at creative-interventions.org, we're touching on some of the topics in Section 2: Some Basics Everyone Should Know. There's a lot more in this section than what we get to in the episode, so we highly suggest checking it out. After Shira tells us a bit about her work including a follow-up workbook she and Mariame Kaba created to build upon the Creative Interventions Toolkit, she and Mimi share what the term "interpersonal violence" means to them, and what it can look like. They explain why it's important to assess power dynamics when determining if an intervention should be attempted, and how we can recognize how interpersonal violence impacts people other than those most involved. The release of this episode coincides with the publication of a new workbook companion for the CI Toolkit which features useful and practical worksheets and tools. The CI workbook was just released through AK Press. A google doc version of the workbook which you can use to adapt to your own situation of harm is available for free at creative-interventions.org, You can find links to further resources in the episode notes, including Shira's amazing new anthology, Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction, which is available for pre-order now and comes out on October 4 from Haymarket Books. We highly recommend you check that out and support Shira's work however you can. Shira Hassan has trained and spoken nationally on the sex trade, harm reduction, self-injury, healing justice and transformative justice. Currently working as a fellow at Interrupting Criminalization, Shira runs The Help Desk . The Help Desk offers supportive thought partnership to individuals and groups working to interrupt crises and violence without using the police. Along with Mariame Kaba, she is the co-author of Fumbling Towards Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability Facilitators and the author of Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction. 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. Her recent publications include 2020's "The Carceral Creep" and 2018's "From Carceral Feminism to Transformative Justice". She is currently working on The CHAT Project, a non-law enforcement restorative justice project addressing domestic and sexual violence in Contra Costa County, California. Mimi and Shira are also partnering on a re-boot of the StoryTelling & Organizing Project or STOP featuring stories of everyday people creatively and collectively ending violence. Stay tuned. Alright, that's it for now. You can find links to the CI website and toolkit as well as other resources in the episode notes. Thanks for listening and here's our conversation. Episode Resources & Notes Shira Hassan: Saving Our Own Lives: A Liberatory Practice of Harm Reduction. Interrupting Criminalization - The Help Desk Fumbling Towards Repair: A Workbook for Community Accountability Facilitators Mimi Kim: Creative Interventions Website Creative Interventions Toolkit (Physical copy) Creative Interventions Toolkit (Free PDF) Creative Interventions Toolkit in Spanish (Free PDF) Creative Interventions Workbook (Physical copy) Creative Interventions Workbook (Google Doc) The CHAT Project StoryTelling & Organizing Project (STOP) Follow CI on Facebook Follow CI on IG Follow CI on Twitter Credits Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Nam-Sonenstein Edited by Brian Nam-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
How We Work Matters: Reflections From A Burned Out Organizer (00:20:19)
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!
What Is The Creative Interventions Toolkit? feat. Mimi Kim & Rachel Herzing (00:58:37)
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 Buy the Creative Interventions Toolkit from AK Press 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
Panel: Why Physical Mail In Prison Matters (01:31:44)
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
Delaware's Draconian Mail Policy feat. Monica Cosby (01:11:09)
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
