Beyond Prisons

Maya Schenwar returns to Beyond Prisons to discuss voting rights, the current political landscape, and her forthcoming book. Maya is the Editor-in-Chief of Truthout. She is also the author of "Locked Down, Locked Out: Why Prison Doesn't Work and How We Can Do Better" and the co-editor of the Truthout anthology "Who Do You Serve, Who Do You Protect? Police Violence and Resistance in the United States." She has written about the prison-industrial complex for Truthout, The New York Times, The Guardian, The Nation, Salon, Ms. Magazine, and others. Maya lives in Chicago and organizes with the abolitionist collective Love & Protect. She is the co-author of an upcoming book with Victoria Law, tentatively titled, "Your Home Is Your Prison," which they hope to release next spring. Follow Maya on Twitter @MayaSchenwar Additional Reading: Allowing People in Prison to Vote Shouldn’t Be Controversial by Maya Schenwar The Shameful Moralizing On Prisoner Voting Rights by Brian Sonenstein Thoughts On Hand-Wringing Ove

Kim Wilson interviews Dr. Kimberly Robertson on her work on Native feminisms and practices, use of beadwork and zine making to generate knowledge, and the uncompensated emotional labor of Black and women of color in the academy and liberatory work. Kimberly Robertson is a citizen of the Mvskoke nation, an artivist, scholar, teacher, and mother who works diligently to employ Native feminist theories, practices, and methodologies in her hustle to fulfill the dreams of her ancestors and to build a world in which her daughters can thrive. She was born in Bakersfield, CA and currently lives on unceded Tongva lands. She is an Assistant Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at California State University, Los Angeles. Robertson is also a founding member of the Green Corn Collective and a member of the Indigenous Goddess Gang. Her creative practices include screen printing, collage, beadwork, installation art, and zine-making and centers the ideas and practices of ceremony, storytelling, intersecting su

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

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

Taylar Nuevelle joins the Beyond Prisons podcast to talk about her experiences knitting while incarcerated. In particular, we talk about her love of knitting, the space it created for her in prison, as well as how it was used to punish her. Ms. Nuevelle is a writer and advocate for justice-involved women. In 2017 she created a writing program at the Central Treatment Facility (CTF), the women’s jail in DC, “Sharing Our Stories to Reclaim Our Lives”. She is credited for creating the concept of the “Trauma-to-Prison Pipeline” for women and girls.  While incarcerated at the Corrections Corporation of America (CCA/CTF) D.C. and in the Federal Bureau of Prisons from 2010 to 2015, Ms. Nuevelle volunteered by providing legal advocacy for fellow incarcerated women. Ms. Nuevelle’s writings have appeared in The Washington Post, Talk Poverty, The Nation, the Vera Institute for Justice Blog and Ms. Magazine online. Ms. Nuevelle holds a B.A. in Literature.   You can learn more about her work via Facebook at whospeaksforme

Connie Grier joins Beyond Prisons to discuss a new policy in Pennsylvania prisons targeting materials brought in by educators, religious practitioners, recreational and therapeutic facilitators, and others. Connie is a mother of twin sons, a career educator, a mentor, and a social justice advocate. She is also the founder of The RESPECT Alliance, an organization which has, as one of its core tenets, the addressing of justice issues that impact marginalized populations both pre and post-incarceration. As an educator with 28 years of experience within the K-16 realm, Connie has an intimate relationship with the lack of advocacy and harsh discipline policies that lead to the school-to-prison pipeline and is determined to mitigate and ultimately, dismantle said pipeline, one student at a time. Connie is an Inside-Out trained instructor and has taught courses inside of correctional facilities in Philadelphia and Chester. She is actively engaged in several social justice and criminal justice initiatives focused spe

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

Nabil Hassein joins the Beyond Prisons podcast to give an update on the campaign to close Rikers Island and the fight to oppose new jail construction in New York City. Nabil is a technologist, organizer and educator based in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. He has worked professionally as a software developer and a teacher in both public schools and private settings. Nabil also works with grassroots police and prison abolitionist campaigns in NYC including Shut Down Rikers, Abolition Square and No New Jails NYC. Nabil talks about Mayor Bill de Blasio’s efforts to spend tens of billions of dollars on new jails at a time when money is desperately needed for housing, education, health care, food, and more. He talks about what the plan for new so-called “modern” jails will and won’t do about gentrification and broken windows policing. And Nabil gives an idea of what it’s like inside the various community meetings held by the city to promote the new jails and (allegedly) hear input from the public. Follow the No New Jails

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

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

Kim Wilson interviews formerly incarcerated activist Kempis "Ghani" Songster in part one of Beyond Prisons episode 29. In 1987, at the age of 15, Ghani was imprisoned for homicide.  Despite his age, he was certified as an adult, convicted of first degree murder, and given a mandatory life sentence without parole, or what is increasingly known today as death by incarceration. Thus, he became one of America’s many juvenile lifers/condemned children. While in prison, he developed and facilitated programs to help people behind the  walls with him, as well as programs to help people on the outside.  He also co-founded outside organizations such as The Redemption Project and Ubuntu Philadelphia, and is a founding member of Right To Redemption, which helped launch Philadelphia’s Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration (CADBI). After 30 years of incarceration, Ghani was released from prison at the age of 45.  Since his release, he has joined the staff at the Amistad Law Project, a grassroots abolitionist law coll

Jared Ware joins episode 28 of Beyond Prisons to discuss this year's prison strike. Recorded in the midst of the strike on August 30, co-hosts Brian Sonenstein and Kim Wilson have a conversation with Ware about the strike's progress, as well as the challenges of organizing and why the press is woefully unprepared to report on the action. Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein @jaybeware Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/

Activist and paralegal Sean Damon joins episode 27 of Beyond Prisons. Sean is a legal worker and organizer with twenty years of experience in union, community and social movement organizing. He works for Amistad Law Project, a West Philadelphia-based public interest law center focused on the human rights of incarcerated people. He is also a co-founding member of the Coalition to Abolish Death By Incarceration. Follow Sean on Twitter: @seanwestwispy Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes and on Google Play Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @phillyprof03 @bsonenstein @jaybeware Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/

TRIGGER WARNING: Content includes discussion of suicide. John Gillespie Jr. (aka swim.) is an incoming PhD student in UC Irvine’s Comparative Literature program, a poet and a recording artist hailing from Newark, Delaware currently based in Orange County, California. His research interest are in Black suicide, the relationship between scientific development (specifically the Internet and Medicine) and anti-Black racism, as well as theories of Black aesthetics. He recently released his first single entitled “Lo-Fi Suicides” which can be found anywhere from Soundcloud, Spotify, iTunes, Tidal and more. In addition to this, his written academic and creative work has been published in places like Propter Nos, Grub Street Literary Magazine, The Nation, and The Encyclopedia of Racism in American Film. You can also follow swim. on Instagram Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes and on Google Play Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonsp

Panagioti Tsolkas, an organizer with the Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons, joins the Beyond Prisons podcast for a discussion of prison ecology and the intersection between the criminal legal system and the environment. We talk about how his organization came into existence and he gives us some examples of issues they're working on in Florida (where they're based) and around the country, like access potable water, excessive heat and cold, mold and mildew, sewage problems, and toxic land use. This includes organizing prisoners in opposition to the construction of a 10,000 acre phosphate mine near their facility. Panagioti shares his experiences engaging incarcerated people on these subjects and tells us how this organizing has been received. We also talk about how this organizing has brought environmental organizers closer to prison issues, as well as the Fight Toxic Prisons 3rd annual convergence taking place in Pittsburgh, June 8-11—an event which will include the voices of people on the inside and outside. Fo

Bret Grote, legal director for the Abolitionist Law Center, joins the Beyond Prisons podcast to tell us about his organization's work and what an abolitionist approach looks like for lawyers. The conversation touches on the impact the Abolitionist Law Center has had in Pennsylvania and the work it's done on solitary confinement, juvenile life without parole, health care, and more. We talk about political and politicized prisoners and the dangerous but common practice of withholding medicine and treatment in prisons. Bret also shares his thoughts on the election of Larry Krasner as Philadelphia's new district attorney and the movement to elect "progressive prosecutors." Bret Grote is the Legal Director of Abolitionist Law Center, and a licensed attorney in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. He is a 2013 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and was recognized as the Distinguished Public Interest Scholar for his graduating class. He was the Isabel and Alger Hiss Racial Justice Fellow at the Cen

Victoria Law returns to the Beyond Prisons podcast to talk about prison publications and curating art and writing by incarcerated people. Victoria tells us about the zine she's organized for nearly 16 years, Tenacious, which is a DIY publication featuring the work of incarcerated women from around the country. She talks about her introduction to zines, her experiences curating content from incarcerated people, and how she's had to deal with obstacles to communication in putting the zine together. We discuss how zines like Tenacious help incarcerated women overcome their isolation and learn how to cope with their imprisonment by creating a platform for sharing knowledge. We talk about the topics women write about and how it can be a space for escape and liberation. We also talk about why this zine, in particular, is important because of the way most free literature projects predominantly serve men. Victoria tells us about her learning process, the work that goes into making the publication, and her efforts to

In a special two-part episode of Beyond Prisons, we discuss communicating with incarcerated people and interview pen pal and activist Ciara Kay. Ciara Kay joins us in Part 2 to tell us about how she got involved with pen palling and her experience corresponding and organizing with Michael Young, who is incarcerated in Louisiana. She talks about their friendship over the past few years, as well as their work and the challenges they've faced countering retaliation Michael has experienced for demanding mental health care. We also discuss the work that goes into organizing prison solidarity campaigns and what it's like to organize when there's little-to-no existing public attention on your cause. Ciara explains how she and other members of her community organize regular letter writing meet-ups, and how different pen pal friendships can be from person to person—from those who want to talk about what they're dealing with every day to those who see it as an escape and a place to talk about anything but prison. Ciara

In a special two-part episode of Beyond Prisons, we discuss communicating with incarcerated people and interview pen pal and activist Ciara Kay. In Part 1, we talk about forming relationships with people on the inside through email, phone, or snail mail and the obstacles you face attempting each. We also discuss how pen palling, building relationships, and maintaining communication with people on the inside is an abolitionist practice. Finally, we cover the importance of earning each others' trust and how to approach (and how not to approach) becoming someone's pen pal. Resources Black & Pink Pen Pal Program The Radical Power of a Prison Pen Pal Captive Genders Support our show and join us on Patreon. Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes and on Google Play Sign up for the Beyond Prisons newsletter to receive updates on new episodes, important news and events, and more. Send tips, comments, and questions to beyondprisonspodcast@gmail.com Follow us on Twitter: @Beyond_Prison @ph

Today is the 150th anniversary of W.E.B. Du Bois’s birth. To mark this occasion, I interviewed Du Bois scholar, Dr. Tony Monteiro. In this conversation, Dr. Monteiro talks about the year long project he and his colleagues launched in Philadelphia including a weekly radio show on WURD, where works of Du Bois are read. As part of The Year of Du Bois, Dr. Monteiro has helped form Du Bois reading groups throughout the city at historically Black churches such as Mother Bethel AME Church and The Church of the Advocate—to name just two. The significance of Du Bois in our times is also explored. Dr. Monteiro talks about Du Bois’s methodology and why his work focused on solutions to the pressing problems of his time and why this continues to be relevant today. In addition, Dr. Monteiro describes why Du Bois insisted on an analysis of problems that wedded sociology and philosophy, as well as discussing why Du Bois focused on the Black working class. Of particular interest to Beyond Prisons listeners would be the discus