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.

Follow Dylan on Twitter: @dylanrodriguez

"The Problems with Community Control of the Police and Proposals for Alternatives" by Beth Richie, Dylan Rodríguez, Mariame Kaba, Melissa Burch, Rachel Herzing, and Shana Agid

Black Awakening in Capitalist America by Robert L. Allen (Doubleday, 1969)

Books by Dylan Rodríguez:

Pre-order his next book, White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logic of Racial Genocide, and White Reconstruction II (Fordham University Press)

Critical Ethnic Studies: A Reader (Duke University Press, 2016)

Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime (University of Minnesota Press, 2006)

Suspended Apocalypse: White Supremacy, Genocide, and the Filipino Condition (University of Minnesota Press, 2009)

Created and hosted by Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein

Edited by Ellis Maxwell

Website & volunteers managed by Victoria Nam

Theme music by Jared Ware

Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com

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Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact [email protected] for more information

Twitter: @Beyond_Prison

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Professor, author, and abolitionist scholar Dr. Dylan Rodríguez joins Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein on an episode of the Beyond Prisons podcast.

This is the first part of a two part conversation. In Part 1, Dr. Rodríguez explains his belief that abolition is our obligation, touching on the development of anti-Black algorithms used to keep people in prison, what it means to be vulnerable in the context of doing this work and how vulnerability is the starting point for an abolitionist practice, and the profound impact that Robert Allen's book Black Awakening in Capitalist America had on shaping Dylan's own thinking.

We also talk about how academia declares institutional solidarity with white supremacy, and how some academics are the planners and architects of domestic war. Dr. Rodríguez reminds us that terror is not a thing that you can fix with training and he shares some of the conditions he places on conversations about prison reform.

Dylan Rodríguez is President of the American Studies Association (2020-2021). He served as the faculty-elected Chair of the UC Riverside Academic Senate (2016-2020) and a Professor at the University of California, Riverside. He spent the first sixteen years of his career in the Department of Ethnic Studies (serving as Chair from 2009-2016) and joined the Department of Media and Cultural Studies in 2017.

Dylan's thinking, writing, teaching, and scholarly activist labors address the complexity and normalized proliferation of historical regimes and logics of anti-Black and racial-colonial violence in everyday state, cultural, and social formations. His work raises the question of how insurgent communities of people inhabit oppressive regimes and logics in ways that enable the collective genius of rebellion, survival, abolition, and radical futurity. What forms of shared creativity emerge from conditions of duress, and how do these insurgencies envision—and practice—transformations of power and community?

In addition to co-editing the field-shaping anthology Critical Ethnic Studies: A Reader (Duke University Press, 2016), Dylan is the author of two books: Forced Passages: Imprisoned Radical Intellectuals and the U.S. Prison Regime (University of Minnesota Press, 2006) and Suspended Apocalypse: White Supremacy, Genocide, and the Filipino Condition (University of Minnesota Press, 2009). His next book, White Reconstruction: Domestic Warfare and the Logic of Racial Genocide, is forthcoming from Fordham University Press in Fall 2020 and will be followed in 2021 by White Reconstruction II.

Follow Dylan on Twitter: https://twitter.com/dylanrodriguez

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Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play

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Send tips, comments, and questions to [email protected]

Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact [email protected] for more information

Twitter: @Beyond_Prison

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Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/

Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein are joined by historian and abolitionist David Stein for an episode of the Beyond Prisons podcast.

David penned an excellent article in 2017 with Dan Berger and Mariame Kaba entitled, "What Abolitionists Do." He reflects on this article in this moment of greater awareness of abolition and shares his thoughts and experiences from spending time in abolitionist spaces.

David Stein is a UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of African American Studies at UCLA. His book manuscript, Fearing Inflation, Inflating Fears: The Civil Rights Struggle for Full Employment and the Rise of the Carceral State, 1929-1986, is forthcoming from University of North Carolina Press. It describes the political economy of unemployment and efforts to win a federal governmental job guarantee, and how this struggle impacted the ascent of mass incarceration. His research focuses on the interconnection between social movements, public policy, and political economy in post-1865 U.S. history.

He has been a member of Critical Resistance since 2006, though his comments in this interview are not on behalf of the organization.

"What Abolitionists Do" by Dan Berger, Mariame Kaba, and David Stein

David Stein's website: https://davidpstein.wordpress.com/

Follow David on Twitter: https://twitter.com/DavidpStein

Support 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

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Send tips, comments, and questions to [email protected]

Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact [email protected] for more information

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Beyond Prisons host Kim Wilson has a conversation with Dr. Erin Corbett, founder and CEO of Second Chance Educational Alliance, Inc. It's a community-based prison education program in CT. SCEA aims to provide formerly incarcerated men and women with the tools necessary to become fully engaged and contributing citizens.

Erin has spent almost two decades in education access in a number of roles. With experience in independent school admission, enrichment programs, and postsecondary financial aid, her commitment to expanding postsecondary opportunities for all populations has served as the foundation of her professional endeavors.

Kim and Erin talk about the benefits of post-secondary education for people in prison and the challenges associated with developing a prison education program. They also explore the issue of teaching without access to technology in a world where technology plays such a vital role in our lives, why higher ed in prison attracts people that fetishize prisoners and are invested in the notions of saviorism, and how the teaching authors like James Baldwin are transformative for some students.

They conclude the conversation with Erin's thoughts on what higher ed prison policy needs to focus on, including what questions to ask.

Feature in the Swarthmore College Alumni Magazine

Blog Post on MSI Unplugged

Dr. Corbett on Medium

Dr. Corbett on Twitter: @GrandmaCheesy77

Second Chance Educational Alliance on Twitter: @SCEA_Inc_CT

Support 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 [email protected]

Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact [email protected] for more information

Twitter: @Beyond_Prison

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Donna Murch and Kay Whitlock join Beyond Prisons to think through the question "how do we get through this?"

Donna posed this question on social media in April as the COVID-19 pandemic peaked and motivated this conversation. We begin by thinking through who the "we" is in that question, and then we attempt to define what we mean by "getting through this."

Donna points out that racial capitalism and the unraveling of already weak systems is making it clear who the "we" is. Kim shares how this moment has for me triggered an eerie feeling of calmness that is a trauma response to other experiences in my life. And Kay shares how this moment has allowed her to stop pretending and to think about how we can use our collective energy in this moment.

We talk about the importance of imagination at this moment and the need to share the testimony of people directly impacted by this crisis.

Finally, we discuss the rise of authoritarianism and how media reports of COVID-19 are filtered through racial-ethnonational lens. We end our conversation with some thoughts on mutual aid and how this crisis has the potential for teaching us greater responsibility for each other.

(Note: this conversation was recorded in April).

Kay Whitlock, a longtime activist and organizer in progressive social justice movements, lives in Missoula, Montana. She writes frequently on issues of structural violence in U.S. society. She is co-author of Queer (in)Justice: The Criminalization of LGBT People in the United States and Considering Hate: Violence, Goodness & Justice in American Culture and Politics. She is currently working with sociologist Nancy Heitzeg on a forthcoming book: Prison Break: The Deceptive Terrain of Criminal Justice Reform.

Professor Donna Murch's teaching and research specializations are historical studies of mass incarceration/war on drugs, Black Power and Civil Rights, California, social movements, and postwar U.S. cities. She is currently completing a new trade press book entitled Crack in Los Angeles: Policing the Crisis and the War on Drugs, which explores the militarization of law enforcement, the social history of drug consumption and sale, and the political economy of mass incarceration in late twentieth-century California. In October 2010, Murch published the award-winning monograph Living for the City: Migration, Education and the Rise of the Black Panther Party in Oakland, California with the University of North Carolina Press, which won the Phillis Wheatley prize in December 2011. She has published articles in the Journal of American History, Journal of Urban History, OAH Magazine of History, Black Scholar, Souls, Perspectives, New Politics, and Jacobin.

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 our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well.

Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play

Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com

Contact us at [email protected]

Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Contact us at [email protected] for more information

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Kim and Brian sit down for an extended conversation on the current Black Lives Matter protests, policing and police reform, media literacy, and more.

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 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 [email protected]

Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact [email protected] for more information

Twitter: @Beyond_Prison

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/

Beyond Prisons hosts Brian Sonenstein and Kim Wilson sit down with Anthony Williams to talk about co-founding the hashtag "#MasculinitySoFragile," leveraging social capital online, how their political consciousness evolved over time, and overcoming isolation through reading.

We recorded this episode in early March just as the pandemic was gaining steam. The subsequent weeks have forced us all to contend with a new reality that intensifies our vulnerability and underscores the need for organizing and collective liberation.

Anthony talks about cultivating joy as we live with trauma, and tells us why we should all read "Pleasure Activism" by Adrianne Maree Brown.

Anthony James Williams is a Black queer non-binary writer, sociology PhD student, and facilitator. Online, they're responsible for co-creating and popularizing the hashtags #MasculinitySoFragile and #BlackWomenDidThat. Offline, their prior Black student organizing led the University of California system to divest $25 million from private prisons in 2016.

Find them on Twitter @anthoknees or antjwilliams.com.

The painful & personal process of Black Consciousness

Sandra Bland: Beware the day they change their mind!

The Year in Creating Black Joy

social justice work is exhausting: ableism, racism, and joy

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 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 [email protected]

Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact [email protected] for more information

Twitter: @Beyond_Prison

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/

Author, educator, and activist Johanna Fernández joins the Beyond Prisons podcast to discuss a recent incident in which a Pennsylvania corrections officer perpetrated a hoax on supporters of Mumia Abu-Jamal by claiming he had been hospitalized for COVID-19.

The conversation extends beyond this incident to discuss American attitudes about violence and safety, the weaponization of health and concern against prisoners, and more.

Johanna Fernández is the author of The Young Lords: A Radical History (UNC Press, February 2020), a history of the Puerto Rican counterpart of the Black Panther Party. She teaches 20th Century US history and the history of social movements in the Department of History at Baruch College (CUNY).

Dr. Fernández's recent research and litigation has unearthed an arsenal of primary documents now available to scholars and members of the public. Her Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) lawsuit against the NYPD, led to the recovery of the "lost" Handschu files, the largest repository of police surveillance records in the country, namely over one million surveillance files of New Yorkers compiled by the NYPD between 1954-1972, including those of Malcolm X. She is the editor of Writing on the Wall: Selected Prison Writings of Mumia Abu-Jamal (City Lights, 2015). With Mumia Abu-Jamal she co-edited a special issue of the journal Socialism and Democracy, titled The Roots of Mass Incarceration in the US: Locking Up Black Dissidents and Punishing the Poor (Routledge, 2014).

Among others, her awards include the Fulbright Scholars grant to the Middle East and North Africa, which took her to Jordan, and a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship of the Scholars-in-Residence program at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York Public Library.

Professor Fernández is the writer and producer of the film, Justice on Trial: the Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal (BigNoise Films, 2010). She directed and co-curated, ¡Presente! The Young Lords in New York an exhibition in three NYC museums cited by the New York Times as one of the year's Top 10, Best In Art. Her mainstream writings have been published internationally, from Al Jazeera to the Huffington Post. She has appeared in a diverse range of print, radio, online and televised media including NPR, The New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Democracy Now!.

Fernández is the recipient of a B.A. in Literature and American Civilization from Brown University and a Ph.D. in U.S. History from Columbia University.

Episode Resources

Teach In: US Empire v. Political Prisoners (April 24, 2020 from 6-9pm East)

Buy Dr. Fernández's book, "The Young Lords: A Radical History"

Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well.

Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play

Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com

Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more

Send tips, comments, and questions to [email protected]

Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact [email protected] for more information

Twitter: @Beyond_Prison

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/

Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein

Music: Jared Ware

Brian Sonenstein interviews a woman who we're calling "Alice" to protect her and her husband from retaliation by California prison officials.

Alice organizes with other family members as part of a group known as Unite Against CDCR. Her husband is incarcerated in Soledad, California at the Correctional Training Facility (CTF)—one of the prisons where Gladiator Fights have taken place over the last few years.

She shared some of what she has heard and experienced herself regarding the prison's response to the pandemic. We compare and contrast what California prison officials say they are doing in response to the crisis with what Alice has heard is happening at CTF. We also discuss how the prison is reacting to efforts by her husband and other prisoners to protect themselves.

Unite Against CDCR

Petition: Tell CDCR TO Allow All Inmates Access To Tablets & Email

Reporting on Gladiator Fights

Contact Unite Against CDCR at [email protected]

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 [email protected]

Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact [email protected] for more information

Twitter: @Beyond_Prison

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/

Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein

Music: Jared Ware

In this special Beyond Prisons dispatch, Haverford College student and activist Ellis Maxwell shares a conversation they had with their friend Charles Boyd, who is incarcerated at SCI-Phoenix in Pennsylvania.

Maxwell is the co-head of Rethink Incarceration, a group that advocates for the immediate abolition of all prisons. They work toward abolition in Pennsylvania in solidarity with incarcerated people and other organizations.

Maxwell and Boyd met through Rethink Incarceration. Boyd is incarcerated on a death-by-incarceration sentence and has been in prison for over thirty years. During that time, Boyd has worked on projects including the Alternatives to Violence Project, Right to Redemption, and Let's Circle Up.

Let's Circle Up was founded by men incarcerated at Graterford - which is now Phoenix - in 2007, and "seeks to build relationships, community, and leaders through experiential, participatory, and collaborative restorative justice education."

Maxwell and Boyd's conversation was recorded on March 31, 2020. Since then, the prison has been locked down following the first positive test inside. The administration did not inform prisoners until day fifteen of the quarantine. In early April, a prisoner died from symptoms of COVID-19, which was not announced on the news until Monday, April 13. The administration didn't - and still to this point has not - announced this death to other prisoners. They only found out through outside news broadcasts.

As of this recording, one unit at SCI-Phoenix is completely quarantined with no present access to phones. The majority of confirmed cases have come from this one unit, so the entire prison is locked down with less than an hour of time for prisoners to be outside of their cells.

In the conversation, Boyd emphasizes the inconsistency and total lack of transparency from the Department of Corrections. He says that "in this crisis who you are, what you do, and how well you deny involvement or outright lie, determines who gets a pass and who doesn't."

"What alarms me is that I feel more cut off from society today than I have since I've been incarcerated," Boyd said.

If you want to get in touch with Maxwell, you can email them at [email protected]. For more information on Let's Circle Up, visit letscircleup.org.

Support our show and join us on Patreon. Check out our other donation options as well.

Please listen, subscribe, and rate/review our podcast on iTunes, Spotify, and on Google Play

Visit our website at beyond-prisons.com

Join our mailing list for updates on new episodes, events, and more

Send tips, comments, and questions to [email protected]

Kim Wilson is available for speaking engagements and to facilitate workshops. Please contact [email protected] for more information

Twitter: @Beyond_Prison

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/beyondprisonspodcast/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/beyondprisons/

Hosts: Kim Wilson and Brian Sonenstein

Music: Jared Ware