This week, Roqayah and Kumars are joined once again by the show's resident organizer, Mariame Kaba, and first-time-guest Dean Spade, Associate Professor at Seattle University School of Law. Mariame, known best as @prisonculture on Twitter, is an abolitionist whose work focuses primarily on dismantling the prison industrial complex. She's the founder of Project NIA, an advocacy group focused on ending youth incarceration. She's also co-founded a number of other organizations including the Chicago Taskforce on Violence against Girls and Young Women. Dean not only teaches law but founded the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, a non-profit law collective.

Mariame and Dean guide listeners through the world of mutual aid: from what this organizing theory means to how mutual aid projects are being applied in everyday life in order to disrupt violent, carceral institutions and inspire community building. Mariame explains what differentiates mutual aid from charity work, and why helping to lift one another up through struggle is a powerful act of solidarity and self-determination.

Dean, who helped develop the mutual aid toolbox, gives us examples of how this project gives organizers a guide on forming community support projects that touch on issues like legal aid, childcare collectives, mental health support, cop watches, and so much more.

The crew also discusses the organizing framework on abolitionist principles released this week, designed to lessen the scope and power of the prosecuting office and change the ways in which our communities respond to criminality and crisis.

You can follow Mariame on Twitter @prisonculture and Dean @deanspade. For more details on the mutual aid toolkit make sure to visit The Big Door Brigade.

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