Today’s episode highlights the campaign to close Rikers jail in New York and continues our conversation with Anne Gray Fischer about the intertwined stories of policing, the surveillance of women’s bodies, and the creation of the racialized American ghetto.  Both Sy, an organizer against Rikers, and Gray Fischer, extend the histories of control and racial domination back to the middle of the 20th century.  Sy connects their work in solidarity with Rikers prisoners to a family history surviving the Holocaust and resisting the Nazis, and Gray Fischer charts how police in the 1940s systematically punished women for transgressing the color line in their sexual relationships.

Here are some of our previous episodes about Rikers Island:

309 | Captives with Jarrod Shanahan, Part One

310 | No Reforming Them- Jarrod Shanahan on Rikers Island

258 | Stick-up on Rikers Island

275 | Close Rosie’s

Here are our previous episodes on Anne Gray Fischer’s recent book, The Streets Belong to Us: Sex, Race, and Police Power from Segregation to Gentrification:

337 | Policing Womens’ Bodies

338 | Sex Work at the Birth of the Ghetto