Beyond Prisons

This is the second part of our two-part conversation with Dr. Dylan Rodríguez. If you haven’t already, listen to part one.  In this episode, Dylan shares a few thoughts about high profile reformers like Van Jones and the dangers of the non-profit industrial complex (NPIC). We also talk about “The Problems with Community Control of the Police and Proposals for Alternatives,” a document that Dylan co-authored with Beth Richie, Mariame Kaba, Rachel Herzing, and others.  We discuss the problem with the notion of “police accountability” and why Dylan believes that it is more accurately described as casualty management. We spend some time talking about the ways that celebrities either help or hinder conversations about policing, and why we should not conflate celebrity with leadership. We close with a discussion about the politics of accessibility.  Episode Resources & Notes Follow Dylan on Twitter: @dylanrodriguez “The Problems with Community Control of the Police and Proposals for Alternatives” by Beth Richi

Professor, author, and abolitionist scholar Dr. Dylan Rodríguez joins Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein on an episode of the Beyond Prisons podcast.  This is the first part of a two part conversation. In Part 1, Dr. Rodríguez explains his belief that abolition is our obligation, touching on the development of anti-Black algorithms used to keep people in prison, what it means to be vulnerable in the context of doing this work and how vulnerability is the starting point for an abolitionist practice, and the profound impact that Robert Allen’s book Black Awakening in Capitalist America had on shaping Dylan’s own thinking.  We also talk about how academia declares institutional solidarity with white supremacy, and how some academics are the planners and architects of domestic war. Dr. Rodríguez reminds us that terror is not a thing that you can fix with training and he shares some of the conditions he places on conversations about prison reform.  Dylan Rodríguez is President of the American Studies Association (20

Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein are joined by historian and abolitionist David Stein for an episode of the Beyond Prisons podcast. David penned an excellent article in 2017 with Dan Berger and Mariame Kaba entitled, “What Abolitionists Do." He reflects on this article in this moment of greater awareness of abolition and shares his thoughts and experiences from spending time in abolitionist spaces. David Stein is a UC President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of African American Studies at UCLA. His book manuscript, Fearing Inflation, Inflating Fears: The Civil Rights Struggle for Full Employment and the Rise of the Carceral State, 1929-1986, is forthcoming from University of North Carolina Press. It describes the political economy of unemployment and efforts to win a federal governmental job guarantee, and how this struggle impacted the ascent of mass incarceration. His research focuses on the interconnection between social movements, public policy, and political economy in post-1865 U.S. history. He

Beyond Prisons host Kim Wilson has a conversation with Dr. Erin Corbett, founder and CEO of Second Chance Educational Alliance, Inc. It's a community-based prison education program in CT. SCEA aims to provide formerly incarcerated men and women with the tools necessary to become fully engaged and contributing citizens. Erin has spent almost two decades in education access in a number of roles. With experience in independent school admission, enrichment programs, and postsecondary financial aid, her commitment to expanding postsecondary opportunities for all populations has served as the foundation of her professional endeavors. Kim and Erin talk about the benefits of post-secondary education for people in prison and the challenges associated with developing a prison education program. They also explore the issue of teaching without access to technology in a world where technology plays such a vital role in our lives, why higher ed in prison attracts people that fetishize prisoners and are invested in the not

Donna Murch and Kay Whitlock join Beyond Prisons to think through the question “how do we get through this?” Donna posed this question on social media in April as the COVID-19 pandemic peaked and motivated this conversation. We begin by thinking through who the “we” is in that question, and then we attempt to define what we mean by “getting through this." Donna points out that racial capitalism and the unraveling of already weak systems is making it clear who the “we” is. Kim shares how this moment has for me triggered an eerie feeling of calmness that is a trauma response to other experiences in my life. And Kay shares how this moment has allowed her to stop pretending and to think about how we can use our collective energy in this moment.  We talk about the importance of imagination at this moment and the need to share the testimony of people directly impacted by this crisis. Finally, we discuss the rise of authoritarianism and how media reports of COVID-19 are filtered through racial-ethnonational lens. We

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

Beyond Prisons hosts Brian Sonenstein and Kim Wilson sit down with Anthony Williams to talk about co-founding the hashtag "#MasculinitySoFragile," leveraging social capital online, how their political consciousness evolved over time, and overcoming isolation through reading. We recorded this episode in early March just as the pandemic was gaining steam. The subsequent weeks have forced us all to contend with a new reality that intensifies our vulnerability and underscores the need for organizing and collective liberation. Anthony talks about cultivating joy as we live with trauma, and tells us why we should all read "Pleasure Activism" by Adrianne Maree Brown.  Anthony James Williams is a Black queer non-binary writer, sociology PhD student, and facilitator. Online, they’re responsible for co-creating and popularizing the hashtags #MasculinitySoFragile and #BlackWomenDidThat. Offline, their prior Black student organizing led the University of California system to divest $25 million from private prisons in 201

Author, educator, and activist Johanna Fernández joins the Beyond Prisons podcast to discuss a recent incident in which a Pennsylvania corrections officer perpetrated a hoax on supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal by claiming he had been hospitalized for COVID-19. The conversation extends beyond this incident to discuss American attitudes about violence and safety, the weaponization of health and concern against prisoners, and more. Johanna Fernández is the author of The Young Lords: A Radical History (UNC Press, February 2020), a history of the Puerto Rican counterpart of the Black Panther Party. She teaches 20th Century US history and the history of social movements in the Department of History at Baruch College (CUNY).  Dr. Fernández’s recent research and litigation has unearthed an arsenal of primary documents now available to scholars and members of the public. Her Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) lawsuit against the NYPD, led to the recovery of the "lost" Handschu files, the largest repository of police s

Brian Sonenstein interviews a woman who we’re calling “Alice” to protect her and her husband from retaliation by California prison officials. Alice organizes with other family members as part of a group known as Unite Against CDCR. Her husband is incarcerated in Soledad, California at the Correctional Training Facility (CTF)—one of the prisons where Gladiator Fights have taken place over the last few years. She shared some of what she has heard and experienced herself regarding the prison’s response to the pandemic. We compare and contrast what California prison officials say they are doing in response to the crisis with what Alice has heard is happening at CTF. We also discuss how the prison is reacting to efforts by her husband and other prisoners to protect themselves. Episode Resources Unite Against CDCR Petition: Tell CDCR TO Allow All Inmates Access To Tablets & Email Reporting on Gladiator Fights Contact Unite Against CDCR at UNITEAGAINSTCDCRCORRUPTION@GMAIL.COM    Support our show and join us on

In this special Beyond Prisons dispatch, Haverford College student and activist Ellis Maxwell shares a conversation they had with their friend Charles Boyd, who is incarcerated at SCI-Phoenix in Pennsylvania. Maxwell is the co-head of Rethink Incarceration, a group that advocates for the immediate abolition of all prisons. They work toward abolition in Pennsylvania in solidarity with incarcerated people and other organizations. Maxwell and Boyd met through Rethink Incarceration. Boyd is incarcerated on a death-by-incarceration sentence and has been in prison for over thirty years. During that time, Boyd has worked on projects including the Alternatives to Violence Project, Right to Redemption, and Let’s Circle Up. Let’s Circle Up was founded by men incarcerated at Graterford - which is now Phoenix - in 2007, and “seeks to build relationships, community, and leaders through experiential, participatory, and collaborative restorative justice education.”  Maxwell and Boyd's conversation was recorded on March 31,

Writer, artist, and NYU student Jose Díaz shares his experience of being arrested and imprisoned on a technical violation during the COVID-19 crisis.  Jose describes the conditions and lack of medical care inside New York City jails where he was held. He talks about the organizing efforts that secured his release and how exceptionalism played a role in gaining people’s support.  Finally, Jose shares his thoughts on why demanding the immediate release of prisoners is important and why reform efforts so often fall short of addressing people’s problems. Jose Díaz is a Master’s student majoring in Social and Cultural Analysis with an emphasis on Latino Studies at NYU. As a student and advocate, he seeks to unravel ideological narratives that underlie our common notions of race, class, and gender, and how those ideas inform public space and human interaction. He is also a writer and public speaker, where he uses the power of storytelling to highlight his personal struggles with incarceration while challenging theo

Beyond Prisons hosts Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein walk through our guide on how to support incarcerated people and their loved ones during the Coronavirus Crisis. You can check it out along with some demands we put together, mutual aid resources, and more on our new website at beyond-prisons.com/covid19. Many, many thanks to everyone who worked with us to pull this together and who have contacted us to volunteer. We’re sincerely grateful. Please share this guide with your friends, your family, on social media, wherever you can, if you find it helpful. We want to get it into the hands of as many people as it can help, and we will continue to update it in the coming days and weeks so please check back.  Additionally, if you have any regional or facility-specific suggestions for people supporting their loved ones on the inside, please submit them using our form. We’re trying to pool information that is helpful to everyone while having specific locally relevant suggestions as well. Support our show and join us

Beyond Prisons podcast host Kim Wilson sits down with Amani Sawari of the Right2Vote campaign to talk about her work on a nationwide effort that grew out of the 2018 prison strike demand to extend voting rights for all justice-involved people. Amani and Kim talk about what it was like for her to teach poetry inside a youth prison and she shares a couple of poems written by her former students. Amani Sawari is a writer, founder of the site sawarimi.org, coordinator for the Right2Vote Campaign and a 2019 Civil Rights Fellow with the Roddenberry Foundation. She graduated from the University of Washington in 2016 with a Bachelor’s degree in Media Communication Studies and Law, and Economics & Public Policy. Her visionary publications aid in distributing messages and building community among participants in the prison resistance movement on both sides of the wall. In the aftermath of the Lee County Massacre that occurred in South Carolina’s Department of Corrections, Sawari was selected by Jailhouse Lawyers S

Beyond Prisons Co-host Kim Wilson interviews Michelle Jones about her work as an artist, activist, and historian. Michelle shares the projects that she’s currently working on and she reflects on what it’s like to be a third-year graduate student working on her dissertation proposal. She speaks to Kim about reentry for women in Indiana, having a soft place to land after incarceration, and her fight for sentence modification so that she could attend grad school after having spent 20 years in prison. Michelle speaks candidly about what it means to her to have a spiritual practice, her art installation “Point of Triangulation” and the need for arts-based research. They round out the hour by addressing the problematic notion of exceptionalism with regards to prisoners and former prisoners, Michelle’s response to being "thingified" by the media, as well as what it was like to have academics attempt to co-opt the work that she and other women historians did inside. Michelle Jones is a third-year doctoral student in

On this episode of the Beyond Prisons Podcast, hosts Brian Sonenstein and Kim Wilson catch up with  Certain Days Collective members Daniel McGowan, Josh Davidson, and Sara Falconer. The group publishes the Certain Days: Freedom For Political Prisoners calendar, now in its 19th year of publication and filled with radical historical dates, 12 thought-provoking articles and beautiful artwork for each month throughout the year. All proceeds support prisoners and grassroots organizations, and we urge you to visit certaindays.org to obtain copies of their beautiful 2020 edition, the theme of which is “Knitting Together The Struggles.” The five of us discuss the artwork and articles that make up the calendar, as well as the difficult-but-extensive and necessary collaboration with incarcerated people throughout the year to produce it. We also touch on subjects such as the importance of charting radical history, prisoners’ relationship to time, and the value of having such a beautiful and thought-provoking calendar av

Abolitionist and journalist Jared Ware joins the Beyond Prisons podcast for a conversation on deteriorating abusive conditions within South Carolina prisons. Jared gives us an update on recent organizing efforts by prisoners in South Carolina and their comrades on the outside, who delivered a demand letter to UN offices in the United States, Carribean, and United Kingdom last month. They argue the South Carolina Department of Corrections (SCDC) is violating international standards for confinement known as The Mandela Standards.  We discuss the last several years of prisoner-led organizing to call attention to horrendous abuses. This includes intense restrictions on prisoners in general population within higher-security prisons, such as metal plates placed on windows, meal slots on the doors, heavy limitations on movement, and little-to-no programming or recreation.  We also touch on the disgusting, absurd games and propaganda wars SCDC engages in, including collaborations with nonprofits that serve to whitewa

In a followup to the last episode, "Stop Hugging Cops," Beyond Prisons hosts Brian Sonenstein and Kim Wilson share some resources and discuss alternatives to calling the police. We talk about the chain reaction that is created by bringing the police to a community or into an individual’s life, and we suggest ways to scrutinize the impulse to call the police. Brian also calls on White people to consider what it means for them to call the police on Black and Brown people and offers some thoughts for how white people can do better in situations that generally don’t require intervention. Kim also shares some of what she has learned from transformative justice work and what communities can do to address harm without state intervention. This episode is chock full of insights, ideas, suggestions, and lessons, and it is by no means a comprehensive account of alternatives to calling the police, but it does provide a place to begin. Resources & Additional Reading "Chain Reaction: Alternatives To Calling Police" by

In this episode of the Beyond Prisons podcast, hosts Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein discuss a video published by Critical Resistance that features Professor Dylan Rodriguez talking about policing and police practice. We encourage you to spend a few minutes watching the video before listening to this episode. We chose this video because Professor Rodriguez helps us to interrogate the way that we think about the police. He makes the case for why "policing" is a more accurate term than "police brutality" and urges us to think about why some people need to demonstrate their humanity by hugging cops. Brian and Kim use the points by Professor Rodriguez to further discuss what it means when abolitionists and other activists are willing to make exceptions for some people to go to prison, and what kinds of conversations we need to have to shift peoples' consciousness about punishment. We push back against the idea that prison and other legal punishments are forms of accountability and lay the groundwork for other upc

Beyond Prisons is back from summer break with a special double episode with Brooke Terpstra, Oaklander forever, movement veteran, and worker who organized with the Incarcerated Workers Organizer Committee (IWOC). Brooke is an organizer with the Oakland chapter of IWOC and was a member of the IWOC national media committee for the 2018 prison strike. In the first hour of this episode, Brooke walks us through incidents of prison-orchestrated violence in California, known as "Gladiator Fights." He shares the history and backstory of why California prisons are organizing these fights, dismantles the corrections department's spin on these incidents, and details the experiences of prisoners and their loved ones who are fighting for survival and to end the practice. In the second hour, Kim and Brian debrief after their conversation with Brooke. They discuss their reactions and experiences reporting on these fights and the trauma of being in proximity to the multifaceted violence of incarceration. Follow IWOC on Twitt

CONTENT WARNING: SEXUAL VIOLENCE, CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE Sarah K. Tyson joins Beyond Prisons for a conversation about her work as a philosopher, anti-violence advocate, and prison educator. We explore the contradiction between anti-violence work and its reliance on the criminal punishment system, what it's like to do philosophy in prison, the importance of building relationships with people inside, and so much more.  Sarah Tyson is an Associate Professor of Philosophy and Affiliated Faculty of Women and Gender Studies at the University of Colorado, Denver. Her research focuses on questions of authority, history, and exclusion with a particular interest in voices that have been marginalized in the history of thinking. She has published essays in: Death and Other Penalties: Philosophy in a Time of Mass Incarceration; Deconstructing the Death Penalty: Derrida's Seminars and the New Abolitionism; Feminist Philosophy Quarterly; Hypatia; Metaphilosophy; and Radical Philosophy Review. She also edited with Joshua Hall, P