Beyond Prisons

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 collective working for the release of others, as they fight to end the sentencing of human beings to life without parole/death by incarceration and to abolish prison industrial complex. He has also joined the membership of Ecosocialist Horizons. Ghani continues to organize actively for healing justice and a more livable planet.

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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.

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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

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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

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Music: "Lo-Fi Suicides" by swim.

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.

Follow the Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons on Twitter @FightXPrisons and visit their website at https://fighttoxicprisons.wordpress.com/. Visit their Facebook event page for more information on the national convergence.

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Music & Production: Jared Ware

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 Center for Constitutional Rights in 2012. In addition to his work at Abolitionist Law Center, Bret has been a volunteer investigator, organizer, and researcher with HRC since 2007.

Follow the Abolitionist Law Center on Twitter @AbolitionistLC and visit their website at www.abolitionistlawcenter.org for more on their work and how you can support them.

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Music & Production: Jared Ware

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 fund it, as well as the reasons why these publications are meaningful opportunities for incarcerated people.

Victoria Law is a freelance journalist. She is a co-founder of Books Through Bars--NYC, which sends free books to incarcerated people nationwide and the editor of Tenacious, a zine of art & writings by women in prison. She is the author of Resistance Behind Bars: The Struggles of Incarcerated Women and the co-author of the upcoming Your Home is Your Prison, which explores how proposed "alternatives" to incarceration expand the carceral system. You can follow her on twitter at @LVikkiml and see more of her work at victorialaw.net.

For more history about Tenacious, see: http://www.grassrootsfeminism.net/cms/node/117

To buy current and past issues on-line, go to: http://tenaciouszine.storenvy.com/

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Music & Production: Jared Ware

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 Kay is an aspiring scholar of the amerikan carceral regime, with a particular interest in sexuality and gender as intrinsic to racial formation within the context of amerikan capitalism. She is a full-time retail worker and candidate member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation. Ciara organizes a letter-writing group, "Northampton Black & Pink Pen Pals," a space for folks to build relationships with incarcerated LGBTQ+ individuals who are seeking pen pals on the outside. Recently, this group's work has developed to include a letter-writing campaign on behalf of Michael Young, Ciara's pen pal of two years. Ciara and Mike have collaboratively written pamphlets detailing Mike's abuse and his struggle for justice at Rayburn Correctional Center in Angie, Louisiana. In February of 2018 they launched a letter-writing campaign directed at Attorney General Jeff Landry of Louisiana and Warden Robert Tanner of Rayburn Correctional Center demanding an end to Michael's abuse in prison. The two are continuing to escalate their campaign and are actively seeking support from other groups around the country.

For more information, visit http://facebook.com/nohoblackandpink and http://supportmikeyoung.wordpress.com.

Black & Pink Pen Pal Program

The Radical Power of a Prison Pen Pal

Captive Genders

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Music & Production: Jared Ware

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.

Black & Pink Pen Pal Program

The Radical Power of a Prison Pen Pal

Captive Genders

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Music & Production: Jared Ware

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 discussion of the special police force that Du Bois describes in his writings. On Du Bois's poetics and social science in the Souls of Black Folk, Dr. Monteiro says, "Humanity cannot be reduced to quantitative, or statistical or other types of variables. There is the immeasurable…" and this is, in part, why reading Du Bois is such a wonderfully rich and rewarding experience. There is much to be learned from reading Du Bois and this episode helps to highlight some of Du Bois's most significant contributions, providing insight into why his work continues to be relevant.

My interest in Du Bois's work began many years ago when I was a grad student searching for a way to make sense of the problems of mass incarceration, and particularly reentry. I would read Du Bois and even taught the Souls of Black Folk in my classes. Under the guidance of Dr. Monteiro, I expanded my understanding of Du Bois and began to make connections between what I was working on (prisons and reentry) and Du Bois's sociology, philosophy, poetics, and phenomenology. Trained as a policy analyst, I found Du Bois's work brought something to the understanding of social problems that was missing from policy analysis.

In my own writing, I describe the approach to the study of problems in public policy analysis and criminology as being rooted in methodological fetishism, which is the tendency within disciplines to esteem a single model/methodological approach. In public policy analysis the preferred/esteemed approach is cost-benefit analysis. In my view, this limits the possibility of critical inquiry—that is, it limits our understanding of social problems and doesn't address the how or why, but focuses only on the what. Du Bois's approach upsets this tendency because he drew upon empirical sources, and worked to understand the inner life world of Black people—thereby moving beyond quantitative analysis. This is why we chose to invite Dr. Monteiro back to the show and why reading Du Bois matters to us here at the podcast.

We've put together a very short list of readings and links that listeners might find useful:

1. The Year of Du Bois: https://www.yearofdubois.org
2. The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study by W.E.B. Du Bois: https://archive.org/stream/philadelphianegr001901mbp/philadelphianegr001901mbp_djvu.txt
3. The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois: http://sites.middlebury.edu/soan105tiger/files/2014/08/Du-Bois-The-Souls-of-Black-Folks.pdf
4. Some Notes on Negro Crime, Particularly in Georgia: http://scua.library.umass.edu/digital/dubois/dubois9.pdf
5. The Souls of White Folk: http://files.umwblogs.org/blogs.dir/5632/files/2012/08/The-Souls-of-White-Folk.pdf
6. Darkwater: Voices from within The Veil: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/15210/15210-h/15210-h.htm
7. Du Bois 150th Festival: https://dubois150th.com
8. Outlaw, L. T. (2000, March). W.E.B. Du Bois on the Study of Social Problems. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, The Study of African American Problems: W.E.B. Du Bois's Agenda, Then and Now, 568, 281-297.
9. Monteiro, A. (2007). W.E.B. Du Bois and the Study of Black Humanity: A Rediscovery. Journal of Black Studies, 607.
10. Monteiro, A. (2011). Race and the Racialized State: A Du Boisian Interrogation. Journal of the Research Group on Socialism and Democracy Online, 26(2).
11. Katz, M. B. (2000, March). Race, Poverty, and Welfare: Du Bois's Legacy for Policy. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, The Study of African American Problems: W.E.B. Du Bois's Agenda, Then and Now, 568, 111- 127.
12. Gordon, L. R. (2000, March). Du Bois's Humanistic Philosophy of Human Sciences. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, The Study of African American Problems: W.E.B. Du Bois's Agenda, Then and Now, 568, 265- 280.

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Music & Production: Jared Ware