This week we re-air an interview done with Aishah Shahidah Simmons, who is a writer, community organizer, prison abolitionist, and cultural worker who has done just an immense amount of work over the years to help disrupt and end the patterns of sexual abuse and assault within marginalized communities. In this interview we talk about a lot of things, her background and how she came to be doing the work shes doing right now, how better to think about concepts like accountability, what doing this work has been like for her as an out lesbian woman, and about her book Love WITH Accountability, Digging Up the Roots of Childhood Sexual Abuse which was published in 2019 from AK Press.

This interview feels very important right now, because we are in a time of overturn, tumult, stress, and uncertainty, and I think that in order for us to really be able to knuckle down and go in this for the long haul itll be imperative for our radical communities to take solid care of ourselves and of each other. I hope you get as much out of hearing Aishah's words as I did conducting and editing this interview.

Before we get started, as a content notice: we will be talking about some difficult topics in this interview. I will do my best to repeat this notice at regular intervals, but please do take care and treat yourself kindly (however that looks).

• Transcript
• Unimposed PDF
• Zine (Imposed PDF)

To keep up with Aishah, for updates on future projects and more:

• @lovewithaccountability Instagram
• @afrolez on Twitter
• Love WITH Accountability FaceBook page
• Aishah Shahidah Simmons Cultural Worker FaceBook page

To support our guest, in a time where much if not all of her income is in peril:

• PayPal: to Afro Lez Productions
• Venmo: @afrolez
• CashApp: $AfroLez

Some more ways you can see our guest’s past work:

• NO! The Rape Documentary, streaming for $1 on her website
• Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices from within the Anti-Violence Movement book that she is in.
• No Name Book Club where Love WITH Accountability was picked as one of the books for March.
• https://lovewithaccountability.com

And so many more links on her website!

. ... . .. Featured Tracks:

Philip Glass – Metamorphosis 1 (mixing by William)

Clutchy Hopkins – LAUGHING JOCKEY – Story Teller 2012